WHO CARES?

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

Martin found himself in a small, square living room with two windows
looking over the intimate backs of other similar houses. Under the
best of conditions it was not a room of very comfortable
possibilities. In the hands of its present occupant, it was, to
Martin's eyes, the most depressing and chaotic place he had ever
seen. The cheap furniture and the cheaper wall paper went well with
a long-unwhite-washed ceiling and smudged white paint. A line of
empty beer bottles which stood on a mantelpiece littered with
unframed photographs and dog-eared Christmas cards struck a note so
blase that it might almost have been committed for a reason. On the
square mission table in the center there was a lamp with a belaced
pink shade at a cock-eyed angle which resembled the bonnet of a
streetwalker in the early hours of the morning. An electric iron
stood coldly beneath it with its wire attached to a fixture in the
wall. Various garments littered the chairs and sofa, and jagged
pieces of newspaper which had been worried by the dogs covered the
floor.

But the young woman who shortly made her appearance was very
different from the room. Her frock was neat and clean, her face most
carefully made up, her shoes smart. She had a wide and winning grin,
teeth that should have advertised a toothpaste, and a pair of
dimples which ought to have been a valuable asset to any chorus.
"Why, but you HAVE done a hustle," she said. "I haven't even had
time to tidy up a bit." She cleared a chair and shook a finger at
the dogs, who, sneaking out from under the sofa, were eyeing her
with apprehensive affection. The Chow's mother had evidently lost
her heart to a bulldog. "Excuse the look of this back attic," she
added. "I've got to move, and I'm in the middle of packing."

"Of course," said Martin, eager to know why he had been sent for.
"It's about Tootles, you said."

"Very much so." She sat on the edge of the table, crossed her arms,
and deliberately looked Martin over with expert eyes. Knowing as
much about men as a mechanic of a main-road motor-repairing shop
knows about engines, her examination was acute and thorough.

Martin waited quietly, amused at her coolness, but impatient to come
to cues. She was a good sort, he knew. Tootles had told him so, and
he was certain that she had asked to see him out of friendship for
the girl upstairs.

Her first question was almost as disconcerting and abrupt as a
Zeppelin bomb. "What did you do to Tootles?"

Martin held her examining gaze. "Nothing, except give her a bit of a
holiday," he said.

"I saw you go off with her that morning." She smiled and her eyes
became a little more friendly. "She wrote me a letter from your
place and said she'd found out what song writers meant by the word
heaven."

"Did she?" said Martin. "I'm glad."

It came to her in a flash that her little pal had fallen in love
with this boy and instantly she understood the mystery of Tootles'
change of method and point of view--her moping, her relaxed grip on
life. She meant almost nothing to the boy and knew it.

"But don't you think you might have been to see her since you
brought her back?" she asked.

"I've been very worried," said Martin simply.

"Is that so?" and then, after another pause, this girl said a second
astonishing thing. "I wish I didn't see in you a man who tells the
truth. I wish you were just one of the ordinary sort that comes our
way. I should know how to deal with you better."

"Tell me what you mean," said Martin.

"Shall I? All right, I will." She stood up with her hands on her
hips. "If you'd played the usual game with little Tootles and
dropped her cold, I wouldn't let you get out of this room without
coming up to scratch. I'd make you cough up a good-sized check.
There's such a thing as playing the game even by us strap-hangers,
you know. As it is, I can see that you were on the square, that
you're a bit of a poet or something and did Tootles a good turn for
nothing, and honestly, I don't know the next move. You don't owe her
anything, you see."

"Is money the trouble?" asked Martin.

Irene Stanton shot out an odd, short laugh. "Let me tell you
something," she said. "You know what happened at the dress rehearsal
of 'The Ukelele Girl'? Well, the word's gone around about her
chucking the show at the last minute, and it's thumbs down for
Tootles. She hadn't a nickel when she came back from your place, and
since then she's pawned herself right down to the bone to pay her
rent and get a few eats. She wouldn't take nothing from me because
I'm out too, and this is a bad time to get into anything new. Only
two things can stop her from being put out at the end of the week.
One's going across the passage to the drunken fellow that writes
music, and the other's telling the tale to you. She won't do either.
I've never seen her the way she is now. She sits around, staring at
the wall, and when I try to put some of her usual pep into her she
won't listen. She's all changed since that taste of the country, and
I figure she won't get on her feet again without a big yank up. She
keeps on saying to herself, like a sort of song, 'Oh, Gawd, for a
sight of the trees,' and I've known girls end it quick when they get
that way."

Martin got up. "Where do you keep your pen and ink?" he asked. Poor
old Tootles. There certainly was something to do.

Irene bent forward eagerly. "Are you going to see her through this
snag?"

"Of course I am."

"Ah, that's the talk. But wait a second. We got to be tricky about
this." She was excited and tremendously in earnest. "If she gets to
know I've been holding out the hat to you, we're wasting time. Give
me the money, see? I'll make up a peach of a story about how it came
to me,--the will of a rich uncle in Wisconsin or something, you
know,--and ask her to come and help me blow it in somewhere on the
coast, see? She gave me three weeks' holiday once. It's my turn now,
me being in luck. . . . But perhaps you don't trust me?"

"You trust me," said Martin, and gave her one of his honest smiles.

He caught sight of a bottle of ink on the window sill. There was a
pen of sorts there also. He brought them to the table and made out a
check in the name of his fellow conspirator. He was just as anxious
as she was to put "a bit of pep" into the little waif who had sat
beneath the portrait of his father. There was no blotting paper, so
he waved it in the air before handing it over.

A rush of tears came to Irene's eyes when she saw what he had
written. She held out her hand, utterly giving up an attempt to find
words.

"Thank you for calling up," said Martin, doing his best to be
perfectly natural and ordinary. "I wish you'd done so sooner. Poor
old Tootles. Write to the Devon Yacht Club, Long Island, and let me
know how you get on. We've all three been up against some rotten bad
luck, haven't we? Good-by, then. I'll go up to Tootles now."

"No, no," she said, "don't. That'd bring my old uncle to life right
away. She'd guess you was in on this, all right. Slip off and let me
have a chance with my movie stuff." With a mixture of emotion and
hilarity she suddenly waved the check above her head. "Can you
imagine the fit the receiving teller at my little old bank'll throw
when I slip this across as if it meant nothing to me?"

And then she caught up one of Martin's hands and did the most
disconcerting thing of all. She pressed it to her lips and kissed
it.

Martin got as red as a beet. "Well, then, good-by," he said, making
for the door. "Good luck."

"Good-by and good luck to you. My word, but you've made optimism
sprout all over my garden, and I thought the very roots of it were
dead."

For a few minutes after Martin was gone, she danced about her
appalling room, and laughed and cried and said the most
extraordinary things to her dogs. The little pink beast became
hysterical again, and the Chow leaped into a bundle of under-
clothing and worried the life out of it. Finally, having hidden the
check in a safe place, the girl ran upstairs to break the good news
of her uncle's death to Tootles. Why, they could do the thing like
ladies, the pair of them. It was immense, marvellous, almost beyond
belief! That old man of Wisconsin deserved a place in Heaven. . . .
Heaven--Devon.

It was an inspiration. "Gee, but that's the idea!" she said to
herself. "Devon--and the sight of that boy. That'll put the pep
back, unless I'm the original nut. And if he doesn't care about her
now, he may presently. Others have."

And when she went in, there was Tootles staring at the wall, and
through it and away beyond at the place Martin had called the
Cathedral, and at Martin, with his face dead-white because Joan had
turned and gone.

VII

It was a different Tootles who, ten days later, sat on a bank of dry
ferns that overlooked a superb stretch of water and watched the sun
go down. The little half-plucked bird of the Forty-sixth Street
garret with the pale thin face and the large tired eyes had almost
become the fairy of Joan's hill once more, the sun-tanned little
brother of Peter Pan again. A whole week of the air of Devon and the
smell of its pines, of the good wholesome food provided by the
family with whom she and Irene were lodging, of long rambles through
the woods, of bathing and sleeping, and the joy of finding herself
among trees had performed that "yank" of which her fellow chorus
lady had spoken.

Tootles was on her feet again. Her old zest to live had been given
back to her by the wonder and the beauty of sky and water and trees.
A child of nature, hitherto forced to struggle for her bread in
cities, she was revived and renewed and refreshed by the sweet
breath and the warm welcome of that simple corner of God's earth to
which Irene had so cunningly brought her. Her starved, city-ridden
spirit had blossomed and become healthy out there in the country
like a root of Creeping Jenny taken from a pot on the window-sill of
a slum house and put back into good brown earth.

The rough and ready family with whom they were lodging kept a duck
farm, and it was to this white army of restless, greedy things that
Tootles owed her first laugh. Tired and smut-bespattered after a
tedious railway journey she had eagerly and with childish joy gone
at once to see them fed, the old and knowing, the young and
optimistic, and all the yellow babies with uncertain feet and tiny
noises. After that, a setting sun which set fire to the sky and
water and trees, melting and mingling them together, and Tootles
turned the corner. The motherless waif slept that night on Nature's
maternal breast and was comforted.

The warm-hearted Irene was proud of herself. Devon--Heaven--it was
indeed an inspiration. The only fly in her amber came from the fact
that Martin was away. But when she discovered that he and his friend
had merely gone for a short trip on the yawl she waited with great
content for their return, setting the seeds in Tootles' mind, with
infinite diplomacy and feminine cunning, of a determination to use
all her wiles to win even a little bit of love from Martin as soon
as she saw him again.

Playing the part of one who had unexpectedly benefited from the will
of an almost-forgotten relative she never, of course, said a word of
why she had chosen Devon for this gorgeous holiday. Temporarily
wealthy it was not necessary to look cannily at every nickel. Before
leaving New York she had bought herself and Tootles some very
necessary clothes and saw to it that they lived on as much of the
fat of the land as could be obtained in the honest and humble house
in which she had found a large two-bedded room. Her cigarettes were
Egyptian now and on the train she had bought half a dozen new novels
at which she looked with pride. Hitherto she had been obliged to
read only those much-handled blase-looking books which went the
round of the chorus. Conceive what that meant! Also she had brought
with her a bottle of the scent that was only, so far as she knew,
within reach of leading ladies. Like the cigarettes and the books,
this was really for Tootles to use, but she borrowed a little from
time to time.

As for Irene Stanton, then, she was having, and said so, the time of
her young life. She richly deserved it, and if her kindness and
thoughtfulness, patience and sympathy had not been entered in the
big volume of the Recording Angel that everlasting young woman must
have neglected her pleasant job for several weeks.

And, as for Tootles, it is true that her bobbed hair still owed its
golden brilliance to a bottle, but the white stuff on her face had
been replaced by sunburn, and her lips were red all by themselves.

She was watching the last of the great red globe when her friend
joined her. There had been a race of sloops that afternoon, and
there was unusual animation on the quay and at the little club
house. A small power boat, on which were the starter and judges and
others, had just put in with a good deal of splutter and fuss. On
the stoop of the club a small band was playing, and a bevy of young
people were dancing. Following in the wake of the last sloop a yawl
with a dingey in tow was coming towards the quay.

Seeing that Tootles was in one of her ecstatic moods and was deaf to
remarks, Irene saved her words to cool her porridge and watched the
incoming yawl. She did so at first without much interest. It was
merely a sailboat to her city eyes, and her good lines and good
management meant nothing. But as she came nearer something familiar
in the cut of the man at her helm caught her attention. Surely those
broad shoulders and that deep chest and small head could belong only
to Martin Gray? They did, they did. It was that boy at last, that
boy about whom Tootles had gone dippy, that boy whose generosity had
made their holiday possible, that boy the first sight of whom would
put the last touch to Tootles' recovery--that boy who, if her friend
set her mind and feminine charm to work, might, it seemed to the
practical Irene, make her future safe. Strap-hangers had very few
such chances.

With a tremendous effort she sat wordless and waited, knowing that
Martin must come that way to his cottage. With all her sense of the
dramatic stirred she watched the business of coming to anchor with
some impatience and when finally the dingey was hauled in and the
two men got aboard, loosed off and rowed to shore, excitement sent
the blood tingling through her veins. She heard them laugh and look
up towards the club, now almost deserted; cars were being driven
inland in quick succession. She watched them, hatless and sun-
tanned, come nearer and nearer. She got up as if to go, hesitated,
caught Martin's eye, gave an exclamation of well-acted amazement and
waved her hand. "Well," she cried out, "for Heaven's sake! I never
thought you meant this little old Devon!"

Howard had long ago caught sight of the two girls and wondered if
they were pretty, hoping they would remain until he could decide the
point for himself. They were, both of them, and Martin knew them.
Good enough. He stood by while Martin greeted the one who spoke and
then saw the other wake suddenly at the sound of his friend's voice,
stumble to her feet and go forward with a little cry.

"Why, Tootles," said Martin warmly. "I never thought of seeing you
here. How well you look."

It was like dreaming true. Tootles could only smile and cling to his
hand.

"By Jove, the other girl," thought Howard, with what, after all, was
only an easy touch of intuition. The girl's face told her story.
"What will this mean?" Then there were introductions, questions and
answers, laughter, jokes, a quick exchange of glances between Martin
and Irene, in which he received and acknowledged her warning, and a
little silence.

"Come up to the cottage and have dinner with us," said Martin,
breaking it rather nervously. "Can you?"

Tootles nodded. Devon--Heaven. How perfectly the words rhymed.

"You couldn't keep us away with a stick," said Irene. This was the
way things should go. Also, the jovial, fat person with the roving
eyes might brighten things considerably for her.

"Great work!" Said Howard.

And then, taking Tootle's arm and breaking into enthusiastic details
of the sailing trip, Martin led the way up to the cottage among the
firs. It was good to have been able to put little Tootles into
spirits again.

Howard followed with Irene. "Gee whiz!" he said to himself, "some
dimples!"

A few miles away as the crow flies Gilbert Palgrave In his bedroom
in St. James's Palace cursed himself and life because Joan was still
as difficult to win as sunshine was to bottle.

And up in the sky that hung above them all the angels were lighting
the stars.

VIII

Martin was not given to suspicion. He accepted people at their face
value and believed in human nature. It never occurred to him, then,
that the apparently ingenuous and disarming Irene, with her straight
glance and wide smile, had brought Tootles to Devon except by
accident or for anything but health and peace. He was awfully glad
to see them. They added to the excellent effect upon his spirits
which had been worked by the constant companionship of the
irrepressible Howard, before whose habitual breeziness depression
could stand little chance.

Also he had youth and health and plenty to do in gorgeous weather,
and so his case, which he had been examining rather morbidly,
assumed a less painful aspect. His love and need of Joan remained
just as strong, but the sense of martyrdom brought about by
loneliness and self-analysis left him. Once more he assured himself
that Joan was a kid and must have her head until she became a woman
and faced facts. Over and over again he repeated to himself the
creed that she had flung into the teeth of fate, and in this he
found more excuse than she deserved for the way in which she had
used him to suit her purpose and put him into the position of a big
elder brother whose duty it was to support her, in loco parentis,
and not interfere with her pastimes. However much she fooled and
flirted, he had an unshakable faith in her cleanness and sweetness,
and if he continued to let her alone, to get fed up with what she
called the Merry-go-round, she would one day come home and begin all
over again. She was a kid, just a kid as she had said, and why,
after all, should she be bullied and bully-ragged before she had had
time to work it off? That's how he argued.

Meanwhile, he was, thankfully enough, no longer alone. Here were
Howard and the two girls and the yawl and the sun, and he would keep
merry and bright until Joan came back. He was too proud and
sensitive to go to Joan and have it all out with her and thus dispel
what had developed into a double misunderstanding, and too loyal to
go to Joan's mother and tell his story and beg for help. Like Joan
and Howard, and who knows how many other young things in the world,
he was paying the inevitable penalty for believing that he could
face the problems of life unassisted, unadvised and was making a
dreadful hash of it in consequence. He little knew that his kindness
to Tootles had made Joan believe that he had exchanged his armor for
broadcloth and put her in a "who cares?" mood far more dangerous
than the one which had sent her into the night life of New York, or
that, owing to Tootles, she was, at that very moment, for the fun of
the thing, driving Gilbert Palgrave to a state of anger and
desperation which might lead to tragedy. Poor young things,
misguided and falsely proud and at a loose end! What a waste of
youth and spring which a few wise words of counsel would retrieve
and render blessed.

And as for Tootles, with her once white face and red lips and hair
that came out of a bottle, Martin was to her what Joan was to
Palgrave and for the same reason. Irene's hints and innuendos had
taken root. Caring nothing for the practical side of her friend's
point of view,--the assured future business,--all her energies were
bent to attract Martin, all that was feminine in her was making a
huge effort to win, by hook or crook, somehow soon, an answer,
however temporary, to her love. Never mind what happened after these
summer weeks were over. What matter if she went mad so that she had
her day? She had never come across any man like this young Martin,
with his clean eyes and sensitive soul and honest hands, his, to
her, inconceivable capacity of "being brother," his puzzling
aloofness from the lure of sex. She didn't understand what it meant
to a boy of Martin's type to cherish ideals and struggle to live up
to a standard that had been set for him by his father. In her daily
fight for mere self-preservation, in which joy came by accident, any
such thing as principle seemed crazy. Her street--Arab
interpretation of the law of life was to snatch at everything that
she could reach because there was so much that was beyond her grasp.
Her love for Martin was the one passion of her sordid little life,
and she would be thankful and contented to carry memories back to
her garret which no future rough-and-tumble could ever take away or
blot out.

For several days after the first of many dinners with the boys,
Tootles played her cards with the utmost care. The foursome became
inseparable, bathing, sailing and motoring from morning to night. If
there was any truth in the power of propinquity, it must have been
discovered then. Howard attached himself to Irene whom he found
something more than merry and amusing,--a girl of indomitable
courage and optimism, in fact. He liked her immensely. And so
Tootles paired off with Martin and had innumerable opportunities of
putting forward the challenge of sex. She took them all, but with
the most carefully considered subtlety. She descended to nothing
obvious, as was to be expected from one of her type, which was not
famous for such a thing as self-restraint. She paid great attention
to her appearance and kept a close watch on her tongue. She played
what she imagined was the part of a little lady, toned down her
usual exuberance, her too loud laugh and her characteristic habit of
giving quick and smart back answers. But in all her long talks with
Martin she hinted ever so lightly that she and he had not been
thrown together from opposite poles without a reason. She tried to
touch his mind with the thought that it was to become what she said
it might the night of the accident,--a romance, a perfectly private
little affair of their own, stolen from their particular routine,
which could be ended at a moment's notice. She tried to wrap the
episode up in a page of poetry which might have been torn from a
little book by Francois Villon and give it a wistfulness and charm
that she thought would appeal to him. But it was not until one more
than usually exquisite night, when the spirit of July lingered in
the air and the warmth of the sun still lay among the stars, that
she made her first step towards her goal. Howard and Irene had
wandered down to the water, and she was left with Martin sitting
elfishly among the ferns on the bank below the cottage and above the
silver lapping water. Martin, very much alive to the magic spell of
the night, with the young sap stirring in his veins, lay at her
feet, and she put her hand caressingly on his head and began to talk
in a half whisper.

"Boy, oh, boy," she said, "what shall I do without you when this
dream comes to an end?"

"Dream again," said Martin.

"Down there in the city, so far away from trees?"

"Why not? We can take our dreams with us wherever we go. But it
isn't coming to an end yet."

"How long will it last?"

"Until the sun gets cold," said Martin, catching her mood, "and
there's a chill in the air."

She slipped down a little so that he should see the light in her
eyes. There was hardly an inch between their lips, and the only
sound was the beating of her heart. Youth and July and the scent of
honeysuckle.

"I thought I was dead when you helped me out of that wreck," she
went on in a quivering voice, and her long-fingered hand on his
face. "I think I must be really dead to-night. Surely this is too
sweet to be life."

"Dear little Tootles," said Martin softly. She was so close that he
could feel the rise and fall of her breasts. "Don't let's talk of
death. We're too young."

The sap was stirring in his veins. She was like a fairy, this girl,
who ought never to have wandered into a city.

"Martin," she said, "when the sun gets cold and there's a chill in
the air will you ever come back to this hour in a dream?"

"Often, Tootles, my dear."

"And will you see the light in my eyes and feel my hands on your
face and my lips on your lips?"

She bent forward and put them there and drew back with a shaking sob
and scrambled up and fled.

She had seen the others coming, but that was not why she had torn
herself away. One flash of sex was enough that night. The next time
he must do the kissing.

Eve and July and the scent of honeysuckle!

Breakfast was on the table. To Irene, who came down in her dressing
gown with her hair just bundled up and her face coated with powder,
eight o'clock was an unearthly hour at which to begin the day. In
New York she slept until eleven, read the paper until twelve, cooked
and disposed of a combined breakfast-lunch at one, and if it was a
matinee day, rushed round to the theater, and if it wasn't, killed
time until her work called her in the evening. A boob's life, as she
called it, was a trying business, but the tyranny of the bustling
woman with whom she lodged was such that if breakfast was not eaten
at eight o'clock it was not there to eat. Like an English
undergraduate who scrambles out of bed to attend Chapel simply to
avoid a fine, this product of Broadway theaterdom conformed to the
rule of Mrs. Burrell's energetic house because the good air of Devon
gave her a voracious appetite. Then, too, even if she missed
breakfast, she had to pay for it, "so there you are, old dear."

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