WHO CARES?

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

"No, no, not to-night. Bear with your aged grandparents. Besides,
the housekeeper and the other servants will probably be in bed. To-
morrow now, early--"

"All right," said Joan. "To-morrow then, directly after breakfast.
Fancy forgetting that one possessed a country house. It's almost
alarming." And she put her hands on her grandfather's shoulders. and
bent down and kissed him. She was excited and thrilled. It was her
house because it was Martin's, and soon she would be Martin's too.
And they would spend a real honeymoon in the place in which they had
sat together in the dark and laid their whispered plans for the
great adventure. How good that would be!

And when she went back to the piano and rattled off a fox trot,
Grandmother Ludlow got up and hobbled out of the room, on her
tapping stick, to hide her glee.

XIII

It was ten o'clock when Joan stood once more in the old, familiar
bedroom in which she had slept all through her childhood and
adolescence.

Nothing had been altered since the night from which she dated the
beginning of her life. Her books were in the same places. Letters
from her school friends were in the same neat pile on her desk. The
things that she had been obliged to leave on her dressing-table had
not been touched. A framed photograph of her mother, with her hands
placed in the incredible way that is so dear to the photographer's
heart, still hung crooked over a colonial chest of drawers. Her blue
and white bath wrap was in its place over the back of a chair, with
her slippers beneath it.

She opened the door of the hospitable closet. There were all the
clothes and shoes and hats that she had left. She drew out a drawer
in the chest. Nothing had been disturbed. . . . It was uncanny. She
seemed to have been away for years. And yet, as she looked about and
got the familiar scent of the funny little lavender sachets made by
Mrs. Nye, she found it hard to believe that Marty and Gilbert
Palgrave, the house in New York, all the kaleidoscope of Crystal
rooms and restaurants, all the murmur of voices and music and
traffic were not the elusive memories of last night's dream. But for
the longing for Marty that amounted to an absorbing, ever-present
homesickness, it was difficult to accept the fact that she was not
still the same early-to-bed, early-to-rise country girl, kicking
against the pricks, rebelling against the humdrum daily routine,
spoiling to try her wings.

"Dear old room," she whispered, suddenly stretching out her arms to
it. "My dear old room. I didn't think I'd miss you a little bit. But
I have. I didn't think I should be glad to get back to you. But I
am. What are you doing to me to make me feel a tiny pain in my
heart? You're crowding all the things I did here and all the things
I thought about like a thousand white pigeons round my head. All my
impatient sighs, and big ambitions, and silly young hopes and fears
are coming to meet me and make me want to laugh and cry. But it
isn't the same me that you see; it isn't. You haven't changed, dear
old room, but I have. I'm different. I'm older. I'm not a kid any
more. I'm grown up. Oh, my dear, dear old room, be kind to me, be
gentle with me. I haven't played the game since I went away or been
honest. I've been thoughtless, selfish and untamed. I've done all
the wrong things. I've attracted all the wrong people. I've sent
Marty away, Marty--my knight--and I want him back. I want to make up
to him bigly, bigly for what I ought to have done. Be kind to me, be
kind to me."

And she closed her arms as if in an embrace and put her head down as
though on the warm breast of an old friend and the good tears ran
down her cheeks.

All the windows were open. The air was warm and scented. There was
no sound. The silent voices of the stars sang their nightly anthem.
The earth was white with magic moonshine. Joan looked out. The old
creeper down which she had climbed to go to Martin that night which
seemed so far away was all in leaf. With what exhilaration she had
dropped her bag out. Had ever a girl been so utterly careless of
consequences then as she? How wonderfully and splendidly Martinish
Martin had been when she plunged in upon him, and how jolly and
homelike the hall of his house--her house--had seemed to be. To-
morrow she would explore it all and show it off to her family. To-
morrow. . . . Yes, but to-night? Should she allow herself to be
carried away by a sudden longing to follow her flying footsteps
through the woods, pretend that Martin was waiting for her and take
a look at the outside of the house alone? Why not? No one need know,
and she had a sort of aching to see the place again that was so
essentially a part of Martin. Martin--Martin--he obsessed her, body
and brain. If only she could find Martin.

With hasty fingers she struggled with the intricate hooks of her
evening frock. Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk
stockings and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet,
chose a short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes
and a tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport
shirts and sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the
mantelpiece could recover from his astonishment became once more the
Joan-all-alone for whom he had ticked away the hours. Then to the
window, and hand over hand down the creeper again and away across
the sleeping garden to the woods.

The fairies were out. Their laughter was blown to her like
thistledown. But she was a woman now and only Martin called her--
Martin who had married her for love but was not her husband yet. Oh,
where was Martin?

And as she went quickly along the winding path through the trees the
moon dropped pools of light in her way, the scrub oaks threw out
their arms to hold her back and hosts of little shadows seemed to
run out to catch at her frock. But on went Joan, just to get a sight
of the house that was Martin's and hers and to cast her spirit
forward to the time when he and she would live there as they had not
lived in the city.

She marvelled and rejoiced at the change that had come over her,--
gradually, underminingly,--a change, the seeds of which had been
thrown by Alice, watered by Palgrave and forced by the disappearance
of Martin, and brought to bloom in the silent hours of wakeful
nights when the thought of all the diffidence and deference of
Martin won her gratitude and respect. In the strong, frank and
rather harsh light that had been flung on her way of life it was
Martin, Martin, who stood out clean and tender and lenient--Martin,
who had developed from the Paul of the woods, the boy chum, her
fellow adventurer, her sexless Knight, into the man who had won her
love and whom she needed and ached for and longed to find. She had
been brought up with a round turn, found herself face to face with
the truth of things and, deaf to the incessant jangle of the Merry-
go-round, had discovered that Martin was not merely the gallant and
obliging boy, playing a game, trifling on the edge of reality, but
the man with the other blade of the penknife who, like his prototype
in the fairy tale, had the ordained right to her as she had to him.

And as she went on through the silvered trees, with a sort of
dignity, her chin high, her eyes sparkling like stars, her mouth
soft and sweet, it was to see the roof under which she would begin
her married life again, rightly, honestly and as a woman, crossing
the bridge between thoughtlessness and responsibility with a true
sense of its meaning,--not in cold blood.

She came out to the road, dry and white, bordered by coarse grasses
and wild flowers all asleep, with their petals closed over their
eyes, opened the gate that led into the long avenue, splashed
through the patches of moonlight on the driveway and came finally to
the door under which she had stood that other time with dancing eyes
and racing blood and "Who cares?" ringing in her head.

There was no light to be seen in any of the front windows. The house
seemed to be fast asleep. How warm and friendly and unpretentious it
looked, and there was all about it the same sense of strength that
there was about Martin. In which window had they stood in the dark,
looking out on to a world that they were going to brave together?
Was it in the right wing? Yes. She remembered that tree whose
branches turned over like a waterfall and something that looked like
a little old woman in a shawl bending to pick up sticks but which
was an old stump covered with creepers.

She went round, her heart fluttering like a bird, all her femininity
stirred at the thought of what this house must mean and shelter--and
drew up short with a quick intake of breath. A wide streak of yellow
light fell through open French windows across the veranda and on to
the grass, all dew-covered. Some one was there . . . a woman's
voice, not merry, and with a break in it. . . . When the cat's away,
the mice, in the shape of one of the servants . . .

Joan went on again. What a joke to peep in! She wouldn't frighten
the girl or walk in and ask questions. It was, as yet, too much
Marty's house for that--and, after all, what harm was she doing by
sitting up on such a lovely night? The only thing was it was
Martin's very own room filled with his intimate things and with his
father's message written largely on a card over the fireplace--"We
count it death to falter, not to die."

But she went on, unsuspecting, her hand unconsciously clasped in the
stern relentless hand of Fate, who never forgets to punish. . . . A
shadow crossed the yellow patch. There was the sound of a pipe being
knocked out on one of the firedogs. A man was there, then. Should
she take one look, or go back? She would go back. It was none of her
business, unfortunately. But she was drawn on and on, until she
could see into the long, low, masculine room.

A man was sitting on the arm of a sofa, a man with square shoulders
and a deep chest, a man with his strong young face turned to the
light, smiling--

"Marty," cried Joan. "Marty!" and went up and across the veranda and
into the room. "Why, Marty," and held out her hand, all glad and
tremulous.

And Martin got on his feet and stood in amazement, wide-eyed, and
suddenly white.

"You here!" cried Joan. "I've been waiting and wondering, but I
didn't call because I wanted you to come back for yourself and not
for me. It's been a long week, Marty, and in every hour of it I've
grown. Can't you see the change?"

And Martin looked at her, and his heart leaped, and the blood blazed
in his veins and he was about to go forward and catch her in his
arms with a great cry . . .

"Oh, hello, Lady-bird; who'd have expected to see you!"

Joan wheeled to the left.

Lying full stretched on the settee, her settee, was a girl with her
hands under her bobbed hair, a blue dress caught up under one knee,
her bare arms agleam, her elfin face all white and a smile round her
too red lips.

("White face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle.")

Martin said something, inarticulately, and moved a chair forward.
The girl spoke again, cheerily, in the spirit of good-fellowship,
astonished a little, but too comfortable to move.

But a cold hand was laid on Joan's heart, and all that rang in her
brain were the words that Alice had used,--"white face and red lips
and hair that came out of a bottle. . . . Don't YOU be the one to
turn his armor into common broadcloth."

And for a moment she stood, looking from Marty to the girl and back
to Marty, like one struck dumb, like one who draws up at the very
lip of a chasm. . . . And in that cruel and terrible minute her
heart seemed to break and die. Marty, Marty in broadcloth, and she
had put it in his hands. She had turned him away from her room and
lost him. There's not one thing that any of us can do or say that
doesn't react on some one else to hurt or bless.

With a little gasp, the sense of all this going home to her, Tootles
scrambled awkwardly off the settee, dropping a book and a
handkerchief. This, then, this beautiful girl who belonged to a
quarter of life of which she had sometimes met the men but never the
women, was Martin's wife--the wife of the man whom she loved to
adoration.

"Why, then, you're--you're Mrs. Gray," she stammered, her
impertinence gone, her hail-fellow-well-met manner blown like a
bubble.

Catching sight of the message, "We count it death to falter not to
die," Joan summoned her pride, put up her chin and gave a curious
little bow. "Forgive me," she said, "I'm trespassing," and not
daring to look at Marty, turned and went out. She heard him call her
name, saw his sturdy shadow fall across the yellow patch, choked
back a sob, started running, and stumbled away and away, with the
blood from her heart bespattering the grasses and the wild flowers,
and the fairies whimpering at her heels,--and, at last, climbing
back into the room that knew and loved and understood, threw herself
down on its bosom in a great agony of grief.

"Be kind to me, old room, be kind to me. It's Joan-all-alone,--all
alone."

PART THREE

THE GREAT EMOTION

I

Mrs. Alan Hosack, bearing a more than ever remarkable resemblance
to those ship's figureheads that are still to be seen in the corners
of old lumber yards, led the way out to the sun porch. Her lavish
charms, her beaming manner, her clear blue eye, milky complexion,
reddish hair, and the large bobbles and beads with which she
insisted upon decorating herself made Howard Cannon's nickname of
Cornucopia exquisitely right. She was followed by Mrs. Cooper Jekyll
and a man servant, whose arms were full of dogs and books and
newspapers.

"The dogs on the ground, Barrett," she said, "the books and papers
on the table there, my chair on the right-hand side of it and bring
that chair forward for Mrs. Jekyll. We will have the lemonade at
once. Tell Lestocq that I shall not want the car before lunch, ask
Miss Disberry to telephone to Mrs. John Ward Harrison and say that I
will have tea with her this afternoon with pleasure, and when those
two good little Sisters of Mercy finally arrive,--I could see them,
all sandy, struggling along the road from my room, Augusta; dear me,
what a life,--they are to be given luncheon as usual and the
envelope that is on the hall table. That will do, I think."

The man servant was entirely convinced that it would.

"And now, make yourself comfortable, dear Augusta, and tell me
everything. So very kind of you to drive over like this on such a
sunny morning. Yes, that's right. Take off that lugubrious Harem
veil,--the mark of a Southampton woman,--and let me see your
beautiful face. Before I try to give you a chance to speak I must
tell you, and I'm sure you won't mind with your keen sense of humor,
how that nice boy, Harry Oldershaw, describes those things. No,
after all, perhaps I don't think I'd better. For one reason, it was
a little bit undergraduate, and for another, I forget." She chuckled
and sat down, wabbling for a moment like an opulent blancmange.

Minus the strange dark blue thing which had hidden her ears and nose
and mouth and which suggested nothing but leprosy, Mrs. Jekyll
became human, recognizable and extremely good to look at. She wore
her tight-fitting suit of white flannel like a girl and even in that
clear detective light she did not look a day over thirty. She
painted with all the delicacy of an artist. She was there, as a
close friend of Alice Palgrave, to discover why Gilbert had not gone
with her to the Maine coast.

"I haven't heard from you since we left town," she said, beating
about the bush, "and being in the neighborhood I thought it would be
delightful to catch a glimpse of you and hear your news. I have
none, except that I have just lost the butler who has been with me
for so long, and Edmond is having his portrait painted again for
some club or institution. It's the ninth time, I believe. He likes
it. It's a sort of rest cure."

"And how did you lose that very admirable butler? Illness or
indiscretion?"

"Neither. Commerce, I suppose one might call it. It appears that one
of these get-rich-quick munition men offered him double his wages to
leave me, and Derbyshire couldn't resist it. He came to me with
tears in his eyes and told me that he had to make the sacrifice
owing to the increased cost of living. He has a family, you know. He
said that the comic atmosphere of his new place might bring on
neuritis, but he must educate his three boys. Really, there is a
great deal of unsung heroism in the world, isn't there? In the
meantime, I am trying to get accustomed to a Swiss, who's probably a
German spy and who will set up a wireless installation on the roof."
Then she dropped her baited hook. "You have a large house party, I
suppose."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hosack, swinging her foot to keep the flies away.
The wind was off the land.

"Primrose is so depressed if the house isn't full. And so the
d'Oylys are here,--Nina more Junoesque than ever and really quite
like an Amazon in bathing clothes; Enid Ouchterlony, a little
bitter, I'm afraid, at not being engaged to any one yet,--men are
horribly scared of an intelligent girl and, after all, they don't
marry for intelligence, do they?--Harry Oldershaw, Frank Milwood and
Courtney Millet, all nice boys, and I almost forgot to add, Joan
Gray, that charming girl. My good man is following at her heels like
a bob-tailed sheep dog. Poor old dear! He's arrived at that pathetic
period of a man's life when almost any really blond girl still in
her teens switches him into a second state of adolescence and makes
him a most ridiculous object--what the novelists call the 'Forty-
nine feeling,' I believe."

Bennett brought the lemonade and hurried away before his memory
could be put to a further strain. "Tell me about Joan Gray," said
Mrs. jekyil, letting out her line. "There's probably no truth in it,
but I hear that she and Martin have agreed to differ. How quickly
these romantic love matches burn themselves out. I always say that a
marriage made in Heaven breaks up far sooner than one made on earth.
It has so much farther to fall. Whose fault is it, hers or his?"

Mrs. Hosack bent forward and endeavored to lower her voice. She was
a kind-hearted woman who delighted to see every one happy and
normal. "I'm very worried about those two, my dear," she answered.
"There are all sorts of stories afloat,--one to the effect that
Martin has gone off with a chorus girl, another that Joan only
married him to get away from her grandparents and a third that they
quarreled violently on the way home from church and have not been on
speaking terms since. I daresay there are many others, but whatever
did happen, and something evidently did, Joan is happy enough, and
every man in the house is sentimental about her. Look out there, for
instance."

Mrs. Jekyll followed her glance and saw a girl in bathing clothes
sitting on the beach under a red and blue striped umbrella encircled
by the outstretched forms of half a dozen men. Beyond, on the fringe
of a sea alive with bursting breakers, several girls were bathing
alone.

"H'm," said Mrs. Jekyll. "I should think that the second story is
the true one. A tip-tilted nose, chestnut hair and brown eyes are
better to flirt with than marry. Well, I must run away if I'm to be
back to lunch. I wish I could stay, but Edmond and his artist may
kill my new butler unless I intervene. They are both hotly pro-Ally.
By the way, I hear that Alice Palgrave has gone to the Maine coast
with her mother, who is ill again; I wonder where Gilbert is going?"

"Well, I had a very charming letter from him two days ago, asking me
if he could come and stay with us. He loves this house and the
beach, and I always cheer him up, he said, and he is very lonely
without Alice. Of course I said yes, and he will be here this
afternoon."

Whereupon, having landed her fish, Mrs. Jekyll rose to go. Gilbert
Palgrave and Joan Gray,--there was truth in that story, as she had
thought. She had heard of his having been seen everywhere with Joan
night after night, and her sister-in-law, who lived opposite to the
little house in East Sixty-seventh Street, had seen him leaving in
the early hours of the morning more than once. A lucky strike,
indeed. Intuition was a wonderful gift. She was highly pleased with
herself.

"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I will drive over again one day this
week and see how you are all getting on in this beautiful corner of
the world. My love to Prim, please, and do remember me to the little
siren."

And away she went, leaving Mrs. Hosack to wonder what was the
meaning of her rather curious smile. Only a hidebound prejudice on
the part of the Ministries of all the nations has precluded women
from the Diplomatic Service.

II

"Ah, here you are," said Hosack, scrambling a little stiffly out of
a hammock. "Well, have you had a good ride?"

Joan came up the steps with Harry Oldershaw, the nice boy. She was
in white linen riding kit, with breeches and brown top boots. A
man's straw hat sat squarely on her little head and there was a
brown and white spotted tie under her white silk collar. Color
danced on her cheeks, health sparkled in her eyes and there was a
laugh of sheer high spirits floating behind her like the blown
petals of a daisy.

"Perfectly wonderful," she said. "I love the country about here,
with the little oaks and sturdy ferns. It's so springy. And aren't
the chestnut trees in the village a sight for the blind? I don't
wonder you built a house in Easthampton, Mr. Hosack. Are we too late
for tea?"

Hosack ran his eyes over her and blinked a little as though he had
looked at the sun. "Too late by an hour," he said, with a sulky
glance at young Oldershaw. "I thought you were never coming back."
His resentment of middle age and jealousy of the towering youth of
the sun-tanned lad who had been Joan's companion were a little
pitiful.

Harry caught his look and laughed with the sublime audacity of one
who believes that he ranks among the Immortals. To him forty-nine
seemed to be a colossal sum of years, almost beyond belief. It was
pathetic of this old fellow to imagine that he had any right to the
company of a girl so springlike as Joan. "If we hadn't worn the
horses to a frazzle," he said, "we shouldn't have been back till
dark. Have a drink, Joan?"

"Yes, water. Buckets of it. Hurry up, Harry."

The boy, triumphant at being in favor, swung away, and Joan flung
her crop on to a cane sofa. "Where's everybody?" she asked.

"What's it matter," said Hosack. "Sit here and talk to me for a
change. I've hardly had a word with you all day." He caught her hand
and drew her into the swinging hammock. "What a pretty thing you
are," he added, with a catch in his breath. "I know," said Joan.
"Otherwise, probably, I shouldn't be here, should I?" She forgot all
about him, and an irresistible desire to tease, at the sight of the
sea which, a stone's throw from the house, pounded on the yellow
sweep of sand and swooped up in large half circles of glistening
water. "I've a jolly good mind to have another dip before changing.
What do you say?"

"No, don't," said Hosack, a martyr to the Forty-nine-feeling.
"Concentrate on me for ten minutes, if only because, damn it, I'm
your host."

Joan pushed his hand away. "I've given up concentrating," she said.
"I gave it a turn a little while ago, but it led nowhere, so why
worry? I'm on the good old Merry-go-round again, and if it doesn't
whack up to the limit of its speed I'll know the reason why. There's
a dance at the Club to-night, isn't there?"

"Yes, but we don't go."

She was incredulous. "Don't go,--to a dance? Why?"

"It's rather a mixed business," he said. "The hotel pours its crowd
out. It isn't amusing. We can dance here if you want to."

But her attention was caught by young Oldershaw who came out
carrying a glass and a jug of iced water. She sprang up and went to
meet him, the dance forgotten, Hosack forgotten. Her mood was that
of a bird, irresponsible, restless. "Good for you," she said, and
drank like a thirsty plant. "Nothing like water, is there?" She
smiled up at him.

He was as pleased with himself as though he owned the reservoir.
"Have another ?"

"I should think so." And she drank again, put the glass down on the
first place that came to hand, relieved him of the jug, put it next
to the glass, caught hold of his muscular arm, ran him down the
steps, and along the board path to the beach. "I'll race you to the
sea," she cried, and was off like a mountain goat. He was too young
to let her beat him and waited for her with the foam frothing round
his ankles and a broad grin on his attractive face.

He was about to cheek her when she held up a finger and with a
little exclamation of delight pointed to the sky behind the house.
The sun was setting among a mass of royal clouds. A golden wand had
touched the dunes and the tips of the scrub and all over the green
of the golf course, still dotted with scattered figures, waves of
reflected lusters played. To the left of the great red ball one
clear star sparkled like an eye. Just for a moment her lips trembled
and her young breasts rose and fell, and then she threw her head up
and wheeled round and went off at a run. Not for her to think back,
or remember similar sights behind the woods near Marty's place. Life
was too short for pain. "Who Cares?" was her motto once more, and
this time joy-riding must live up to its name.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20