WHO CARES?

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"Marty, I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't. Something went snap,
and I just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out the
window, climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom.
Nothing on earth will ever take me back to that house again,
nothing, nothing!"

All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion that
carried the boy before it. He saw and heard everything as she
described it. His own relations with his father, which had been so
free and friendly, made Joan's with those two old people seem
fantastic and impossible. All his sympathy went out to her. To help
her to get away appealed to him as being as humane as releasing a
squirrel from a trap. No thought of the fact that she was a girl who
had rushed impulsively into a most awkward position struck him. Into
his healthy mind no sex question thrust itself. She was his friend,
and as such, her claim upon him was overwhelming and unarguable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Have you thought of
anything?"

"Of course I have. In the morning, early, before they find out that
I've bolted, you must drive me to New York and take me to Alice
Palgrave. She'll put me up, and I can telegraph to Mother for money
to buy clothes with. Does it occur to you, Marty, that you're the
cause of all this? If I hadn't turned and found you that afternoon,
I should still be eating my soul away and having my young life
crushed. As it is, you've forced my hand. So you're going to take me
to the magic city, and if you want to see how a country cousin makes
up for lost time and sets things humming, watch me!"

So they talked and talked, sitting in that room which was made the
very sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clock
slipped by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched
by a million glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one
step nearer to maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the
discovery of a world out of which so many similar explorers have
crept with wounds and bitterness.

They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again.
They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once--
when, like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and
peer at the chimera that lies at their feet--

"I'm going to make my mark," Martin said. "I'm going to make
something that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'll
make it MEAN some thing out there for his sake."

"And I," said Joan, springing to her feet and throwing up her chin,
"will go joy-riding in the huge round-about. I've seen what it is to
be old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day and
hour while I'm young. I can live only once, and so I shall make life
spin whatever way I want it to go. If I can get anybody to pay my
whack, good. If not, I'll pay it myself--whatever it costs. My
motto's going to be a good time as long as I can get it, and who
cares for the price?"

The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon them
both. "Yes," he said, "you'll get a bill, all right. How did you
know that?"

"I haven't lived with all those old people so long for nothing," she
answered. "But you won't catch me grumbling if I get half as much as
I'm going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take notes, if
you want to keep up with me."

"Go ahead," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

She squared her shoulders and folded her arms in a half-defiant way.
"I shall open the door of every known Blue Room--hurrying out again
if there are ugly things inside, staying to enjoy them if they're
good to look at. I shall taste a little of every known bottle, feel
everything there is to feel except the thing that hurts, laugh with
any one whose laugh is catching, do everything there is to do, go
into every booth in the big Bazaar; and when I'm tired out and
there's nothing left, I shall slip out of the endless procession
with a thousand things stored away in my memory. Isn't that the way
to live?"

From the superior height of twenty-four, Martin looked down on Joan
indulgently. He didn't take her frank and unblushing individualism
seriously. She was just a kid, he told himself. She was a girl who
had been caged up and held in. It was natural for her to say all
those wild things. She would alter her point of view as soon as the
first surprise of being free had worn off--and then he would speak;
then he would ask her to throw in her lot with his and walk in step
with him along the street of adventure.

"I sha'n't see the sun rise on this great day," she said, letting a
yawn have full play. "I'm sleepy, Marty. I must lie down this very
instant, even if the floor's the only place you can offer me. Quick!
What else is there?" Before he could answer, she had caught sight of
a low, long, enticing divan, and onto this, with a gurgle of
pleasure, she made a dive, placed two cushions for her head, put one
little hand under her face, snuggled into an attitude of perfect
comfort and deliberately went to sleep. It was masterly.

Martin, not believing that she could turn off so suddenly at a
complete tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answer
than a long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying to
make out her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoed
out to the hall, possessed himself of a warm motor-rug, returned
with it and laid it gently and tenderly over the unconscious girl.

He didn't intend to let sleep rob him of the first sight of a day
that was to mean so much to him, and he went over to the open
window, caught the scent of lilac and listened, with all his
imagination and sense of beauty stirred, to the deep breathing of
the night. . ..Yes, he had cut through the bars which had kept this
girl from taking her place among the crowd. He was responsible for
the fact that she was about to play her part in the comedy of life.
He was glad to be responsible. He had passionately desired a cause
to which to attach hirmelf; and was there, in all the world, a
better than Joan?

Spring had come again, and all things were young, and the call to
mate rang in his ears and set his heart beating and his thoughts
racing ahead. He loved her, this girl that he had come upon standing
out in all her freshness against a blue sky. He would serve her as
the great lovers had served, and please God, she would some day
return his love. They would build up a home and bring up a family
and go together up the inevitable hill.

And as he stood sentinel, in a waking dream, waiting for the finger
of dawn to rub the night away, sleep tapped him on the shoulder, and
he turned and went to the divan and sat down with his back to it,
touched one of Joan's placid hands with his lips and drifted into
further dreams with a smile around his mouth.

V

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Martin brought his car to a
stop and looked up at the heavy Gothic decorations of a pompous
house in East Fifty-fifth Street. "Is this it?"

"Yes," said Joan, getting out of the leather-lined coat that he had
wrapped her in. "It really is a house, isn't it; and luckily, all
the gargoyles are on the outside." She held out her hand and gave
Martin the sort of smile for which any genuine man would sell his
soul. "Marty," she added, "you've been far more than a brother to
me. You've been a cousin. I shall never be able to thank you. And I
adored the drive with our noses turned to the city. I shan't be able
to be seen on the streets until I've got some frocks, so please come
and see me every day. As soon as Alice has got over her shock at the
sight of me, I'm going to compose an historical letter to
Grandmother."

"Let her down lightly," said Martin, climbing out with the suit-
case. "You've won."

"Yes, that's true; but I shouldn't be a woman if I didn't get in the
last word."

"You're not a woman," said Martin. "You're a kid, and you're in New
York, and you're light-headed; so look out."

Joan laughed at his sudden gravity and ran up the wide steps and put
her finger on the bell. "I've written down your telephone number,"
she said, "and memorized your address. I'll call you up at three
o'clock this afternoon, and if you've nothing else to do, you may
take me for a walk in the Park."

"I sha'n't have anything else to do."

The door was opened. The footman was obviously English, with the art
of footmanism in his blood.

"Is Mrs. Gilbert Palgrave at home?" asked Joan as if the question
were entirely superfluous.

"No, miss."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, miss. Mrs. Palgrave left for Boston yesterday on
account of hillness in the family, miss."

There was an awkward and appalled silence. Little did the man
suspect the kind of blow that his statement contained.

Joan darted an agonized look at Martin.

"But Mr. Palgrave is at 'ome, miss."

And that galvanized the boy into action. He had met Gilbert Palgrave
out hunting. He had seen the impertinent, cocksure way in which he
ran his eyes over women. He clutched the handle of the case and
said: "That's all right, thanks. Miss Ludlow will write to Mrs.
Palgrave." Then he turned and went down the steps to the car.

Trying to look unconcerned, Joan followed.

"Get in, quick," said Martin. "We'll talk as we go."

"But why? If I don't stay here, where am I to stay?"

"I don't know. Please get in."

Joan stood firm. The color had come back to her face, and a look of
something like anger had taken the place of fright. "I didn't tell
you to march off like that. Gilbert's here."

"That's why we're going," Said Martin.

"I don't understand." Her eyes were blazing.

"I know you don't. You can't stay in that house. It isn't done."

"I can do it, and I must do it. Do you suppose I'm going back with
my tail between my legs?"

"If we argue here, we shall collect a crowd." He got into the car
and held out his hand.

Joan ignored it but followed him in. She was angry, puzzled,
disappointed, nonplussed. Alice had no right to be away on such an
occasion. Everything had looked so easy and smooth-sailing. Even
Martin had changed into a different man, and was ordering her about.
If he thought he could drive her back to that prison again, he was
considerably wrong. She would never go back, never.

The car was running slowly. "Have you any other friends in town?"
asked Martin, who seemed to be trying to hide an odd kind of
excitement.

"No," said Joan. "Alice is my only friend here. Drive to some place
where I can call up Gilbert Palgrave and explain the whole thing.
What does it matter about my being alone? If I don't mind, who
should? Please do as I say. There's no other place for me to go to,
and wild horses sha'n't drag me back."

"You sha'n't go back," said Martin. He turned the car up Madison
Avenue and drove without another word to East Sixty-seventh Street
and stopped in front of a small house that was sandwiched between a
mansion and a twelve-story apartment-house. "This is mine," he said
simply. "Will you come in?"

A smile of huge relief came into Joan's eyes. "Why worry?" she said.
"How foolish of us not to have thought of this before!"

But there was no smile on Martin's face. His eyes were amazingly
bright and his mouth set firmly. His chin looked squarer than ever.
Once more he carried out the suit-case, put a latchkey into the lock
and threw back the door. Joan went in and stood looking about the
cheery hall with its old oak, and sporting prints, white wood and
red carpet. "Oh, but this is perfectly charming, Marty," she cried
out. "Why did we bother our heads about Alice when there is this
haven of refuge?"

Martin marched up to her and stood eye to eye. "Because I'm alone,"
he said, "and you're a girl. That's why."

Joan made a face. "I see. The conventions again. Isn't there any
sort of woman here?"

"Yes, the cook."

She laughed. There was a comic side to this tragedy, after all, it
seemed. "Well, perhaps she'll give us some scrambled eggs and
coffee. I could eat a horse."

Martin opened the door of the sitting room. Like the one in which
she had slept so soundly the previous night, it was stamped with the
character and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm and
friendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizes
and breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was a
full-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches.
His kind eyes greeted Joan.

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then she
turned and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh,
Marty!" she said. "I AM sorry."

The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "I
told you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's the
only way, if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do you
want to stay as much as all that?"

The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worrying
out the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. There
seemed to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be
a girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward
questions. She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one
can take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously
afraid that she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say how
much he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that
the blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! What
organization! Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think of
that last night?"

But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered with
an air of extreme surprise. "I didn't know you'd come home, sir," he
said, "until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyes
rounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin. "We want some breakfast.
Will you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his hand
to Joan, in an odd, boyish way. And she took it, boyishly too.
"Thank you, Marty, dear," she said. "You've found the magic carpet.
My troubles are over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall have
for Grandmamma! And now let's explore my house. If it's all like
this, I shall simply love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,--and you certainly do
make things move when you start, Marty,--to send a telegram to
Grandmother! Lead me to the nearest place."

Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newly
married couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extreme
callousness and universal indifference. With the challenging
antagonism of an English husband,--whose national habit it is
invariably to stalk ahead of his women-kind while they scramble
along at his heels,--he led the way well in advance of his
unblushing bride. But his eyes were black with emotion. He saw
rainbows all over the sky, and rings of bright light round the
square heads of all the buildings which competed in an endeavor to
touch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for a
moment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are always
blunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraph
instruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks.
Martin did not intend to be left out of it. His best pal was off the
map, and so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly:
"Have been married to-day. Staying in New York for honeymoon. How
are you?" He was sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of a
hundred other men. He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with such
telegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with misj chief. "I think this
is a pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on her
marriage to-day may be sent to Mrs. Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-
seventh Street, New York.--Joan.' How's that?"

It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and
smiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to put
his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll have
something to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in the eye
for Gleave."

He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words were
being counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shot
a quick look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordial
congratulation.

As soon as he saw a taxi, Martin hailed it and told the chauffeur to
drive to the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. "We'll
walk from there," he said to Joan, "--if you'd like to, that is."

"I would like to. I want to peer into the shop windows and look at
hats and dresses. I've got absolutely nothing to wear. Marty, tell
me, are we well off?"

Martin laughed. She reminded him of a youngster going for a picnic
and pooling pocket money. "Yes," he said, "--quite."

She sat back with her hands crossed in her lap. "I'm so glad. It
simplifies everything to have plenty to spend." But for her
exquisite slightness and freshness, no one would have imagined that
she was an only just-fledged bird, flying for the first time. Her
equability and poise were those of a completely sophisticated woman.
Nothing seemed to surprise her. Whatever happened was all part and
parcel of the great adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatched
girl, looking yearningly at a city that appeared to be unattainable.
To-day she was a married woman who, a moment ago, had been standing
before a minister, binding herself for good or ill to a man who was
delightfully a boy and of whom she knew next to nothing. What did it
matter--what did anything matter--so long as she achieved her long-
dreamed-of ambition to live and see life?

"Then I can go ahead," she added, "and dress as becomes the wife of
a man of one of our best families. I've never been able to dress
before. Trust me to make an excellent beginning." There was a
twinkle of humor in her eyes as she said these things, and
excitement too. "Tell me this, Marty: is it as easy to get unmarried
as it is to get married?"

"You're not thinking about that already, surely!"

"Oh, no. But information is always useful, isn't it?"

Just for a moment the boy's heart went down into his boots. She
didn't love him yet; he knew that He intended to earn her love as an
honest man earns his living. What hurt was the note of flippancy in
her voice in talking of an event that was to him so momentous and
wonderful. It seemed to mean no more to her to have entered into a
lifelong tie than the buying of a mere hat--not so much, not nearly
so much, as to have found a way of not going back to those two old
people in the country. She was young, awfully young, he told himself
again. Presently her feet would touch the earth, and she would
understand.

As they walked up Fifth Avenue and with little gurgles of enthusiasm
Joan halted at every other shop to look at hats that appealed to
Martin as absurdly, willfully freakish, and evening dresses which
seemed deliberately to have been handed over to a cat to be torn to
ribbons, it came back to him that one just such soft spring evening,
the year before, he had walked home from the Grand Central Station
and been seized suddenly with an almost painful longing to be asked
by some precious person who belonged wholly to him to share her
delight in all the things which then stood for nothing in his life.
Then and there he fulfilled an ambition long cherished and hidden
away; he touched Joan on the arm and opened the elaborate door of a
famous jeweler. He was known to the shop from the fact that he and
his father had always dealt there for wedding and Christmas
presents. He was welcomed by a man in the clothes of a concert
singer and with the bedside manner of a family doctor.

He was desperately self-conscious, and his collar felt two sizes too
small, but he managed to get into his voice a tone that was
sufficiently matter-of-fact to blunt the edge of the man's rather
roguish smile. "Let me see your latest gold-mesh bags," he said as
ordinary, everyday people ask to see collar studs.

"Marty!" whispered Joan. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Martin. "You can't get along without a
bag, you see."

Half a dozen yellow, insinuating things were laid out on the shining
glass, and with a wonderful smile that was worth all the gold the
earth contained to Martin, Joan made a choice--but not hastily, and
not before she had inspected every other gold bag in the shop. Even
at eighteen she was woman enough to want to be quite certain that
she possessed herself of the very best thing of its kind and would
never have, in future, to feel jealous of one that might lie
alluringly in the window.

"This one," she said finally. "I'm quite sure."

Martin didn't ask the price. It was for his bride. He picked it up
and hung it over her wrist, said "The old address," nodded to the
man,--who was just about to call attention to a tray of diamond
brooches,--and led the way out, feeling at least six feet two.

And as Joan regained the street, she passed another milestone in her
life. To be the proprietor of precisely just such a gold bag had
been one of her steady dreams.

"Marty," she said, "what a darling you are!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears.

VI

It was an evening Martin would never forget.

His suggestion that they should dine at Delmonico's and go to the
Empire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirred
Joan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll see
me in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction to
have whatever she bought sent home C.O.D.

It was actually two hours before he saw her again. He thanked his
stars that he had enough money in the bank to meet the checks that
he was required to make out in quick succession. Joan had not wasted
time, and as she got into the car to drive away from that sandwich
house of excited servants, two other milestones had been left
behind. She was in a real evening frock, and all the other things
she had bought were silk.

They drove straight home from the theater. Joan was tired. The day
had been long and filled with amazements. She was out in the world
at last. Realization had exceeded expectation for the first time in
history.

The sand-man had been busy with Martin's eyes too, but he led the
way into the dining room with shoulders square and chin high and
spring in his blood. This was home indeed.

"What a tempting little supper!" said Joan. "And just look at all
these flowers."

They were everywhere, lilacs and narcissi, daffodils, violets and
hothouse roses. Hours ago he had sent out the almost unbelieving
footman for them. Joan and flowers--they were synonymous.

She put her pretty face into a great bowl of violets. "You
remembered all my little friends, Marty," she said.

They sat opposite each other at the long table. Martin's father
looked down at Martin's wife, and his mother at the boy from whom
she had been taken when his eager eyes came up to the level of her
pillow. And there was much tenderness on both their faces.

Martin caught the manservant's eyes. "Don't wait," he said. "We'll
look after ourselves."

Presently Joan gave a little laugh. "Please have something yourself.
You're better than a footman. You're a butler."

His smile as he took his place would have lighted up a tunnel.

"I like Delmonico's," said Joan. "We'll often dine there. And the
play was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see!
I don't think we'll let the grass grow under our feet, Marty. And
presently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in this
room, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-
looking and young. It will be a long time before I shall want to see
anyone old again. Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comes
back! She'll underline every word if she can find any words. She
wasn't married till she was twenty."

And presently, having pecked at an admirable fruit salad, just
sipped a glass of wine and made close-fitting plans that covered at
least a month, Joan rose. "I shall go up now, Marty," she said.
"It's twelve o'clock."

He watched her go upstairs with his heart in his throat. Surely this
was all a dream, and in a moment he would find himself rudely and
coldly awake, standing in the middle of a crowded, lonely world? But
she stopped on the landing, turned, smiled at him and waved her
hand. He drew in a deep breath, went back into the dining room, put
his lips to the violets that had been touched by her face, and
switched off the lights. The scent of spring was in the air.

"Come in," she said, when presently, after a long pause, he knocked
at her door.

She was sitting at a gleaming dressing table in something white and
clinging, doing her hair that was so soft and brown and electrical.

He dared not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the edge of a
sofa at the foot of the bed and watched her.

She went on brushing but with her unoccupied hand gathered her gown
about her. "What is it, Marty?" she asked quietly.

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