I
Alice Palgrave's partner had dealt, and having gone three in "no
trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before
her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did
Alice--for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere
Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four
bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room, and as she
caught the hostess' eye and smiled, she felt just a little bit like a
fairy godmother in having surrounded Joan with so many of the smartest
members of the younger set barely three weeks after her astonishing
arrival in a city in which she had only one friend.
Alice didn't blind herself to the fact that in order to gamble, most of
the girls in the room would go, without the smallest discrimination, to
anybody's house; but there were others,--notably Mrs. Alan Hosack, Mrs.
Cooper Jekyll and Enid Ouchterlony,--whose pride it was to draw a hard,
relentless line between themselves and every one, however wealthy, who
did not belong to families of the same, or almost the same,
unquestionable standing as their own. Their presence in the little
house in East Sixty-seventh Street gave it, they were well aware, a
most enviable cachet and placed Joan safely within the inner circle of
New York society--the democratic royal inclosure. It was something to
have achieved so soon--little as Joan appeared, in her astonishing
coolness, to appreciate it. The Ludlows, as Joan had told Alice with
one of her frequent laughs, might have come over in the only staterooms
on the ship which towed the heavily laden Mayflower, but that didn't
alter the fact that the Hosacks, the Jekylls and the Ouchterlonys were
the three most consistently exclusive and difficult families in the
country, to know whom all social climbers would joyously mortgage their
chances of eternity. Alice placed a feather in her cap accordingly.
Joan's table was the first to break up. She was a loser to the tune of
seventy dollars, and while she wrote her check to Marie Littlejohn, a
tiny blond exotic not much older than herself,--who laid down the law
with the ripe authority of a Cabinet Minister and kept to a daily
time-table with the unalterable effrontery of a fashionable
doctor,--talked over her shoulder to Christine Hurley.
"Alice tells me that your brother has gone to France with the Canadian
Flying Corps. Aren't you proud of him?"
"I suppose so, but it isn't our war, and they're awfully annoyed about
it at Piping Rock. He was the crack man of the polo team, you know. I
don't see that there was any need of his butting into this European
fracas."
"I quite agree with you," said Miss Littlejohn, with her eyes on the
clock. "I broke my engagement to Metcalfe Hussey because he insisted on
going over to join the English regiment his grandfather used to belong
to. I've no patience with sentimentality." She took the check and
screwed it into a small gold case. "I'm dining with my bandage-rolling
aunt and going on to the opera. Thank goodness, the music will drown
her war talk. Good-by." She nodded here and there and left, to be
driven home with her adipose chow in a Rolls-Royce.
Christine Hurley touched a photograph that stood on Joan's desk. "Who's
this good-looking person?" she asked.
"My husband," said Joan.
"Oh, really! When are we to see something of him?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Joan. "He's about somewhere."
Miss Hurley laughed. "It's like that already, is it? Haven't you only
just been married?"
"Yes," said Joan lightly, "but we've begun where most people leave off.
It's a great saving of time and temper!"
The sophisticated Christine, no longer in the first flush of giddy
youth, still unmarried after four enterprising years, was surprised
into looking with very real interest at the girl who had been until
that moment merely a hostess. Her extreme finish, her unself-conscious
confidence and intrepidity, her unassumed lightness of temper were not
often found in one so young and apparently virginal. She dismissed as
unbelievable the story that this girl had been brought up in the
country in an atmosphere of early Victorianism. She had obviously just
come from one of those elaborate finishing schools in which the
daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants
and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of
superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore
duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With
admiration and amusement she watched her say good-by to one woman after
another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a
moment to see the way in which Joan gave as careless and unawed a hand
to Mrs. Alan Hosack and Mrs. Cooper Jekyll as to the Countess Palotta,
who had nothing but pride to rattle in her little bag; and when finally
she too drove away, it was with the uneasy sense of dissatisfaction
that goes with the dramatic critic from a production in which he has
honestly to confess that there is something new--and arresting.
Alice Palgrave stayed behind. She felt a natural proprietary interest
in the success of the afternoon. "My dear," she said emotionally,
"you're perfectly wonderful!"
"I am? Why?"
"To any other just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, a
nerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish--I've been
watching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodge and
hobnobbed all your life with ambassadors. How do you do it?"
Joan laughed and threw out her arms. "Oh, I don't know," she said, with
her eyes dancing and her nostrils extended. "I don't stop to think how
to do things. I just do them. These people are young and alive, and
it's good to be among them. I work off some of my own vitality on them
and get recharged at the sound of their chatter. People, people--give
me people and the clash of tongues and the sense of movement. I don't
much care who they are. I shall pick up all the little snobbish stuff
sooner or later, of course, and talk about the right set and all that,
as you do. I'm bound to. At present everything's new and exciting, and
I'm whipping it up. You wait a little. I'll cut out some of the dull
and pompous when I've got things going, and limit myself to red-blooded
speed-breakers. Give me time, Alice."
She sat down at the piano and crashed out a fox-trot that was all over
town. No one would have imagined from her freshness and vivacity that
she had been dancing until daylight every night that week.
"Well," said Alice when she could be heard, "I see you making history,
my dear; there's no doubt about that."
"None whatever," answered Joan. "I'm outside the walls at last, and
I'll go the pace until the ambulance comes."
"With or without Martin Gray?"
"With, if he's quick enough--without, if not."
"Be careful," said Alice.
"Not I, my dear. I left care away back in the country with my little
old frocks."
Alice held out her hand. "You bewilder me a little," she said. "You
make me feel as if I were in a high wind. You did when we were at
school, I remember. Well, don't bother to thank me for having got up
this party." She added this a little dryly.
With a most winning smile Joan kissed her. "You're a good pal, Alice,"
she said, "and I'm very grateful."
Alice was compensated, although her shrewd knowledge of character told
her how easily her friend won her points. "And I hope you're duly
grateful to Martin Gray?"
"To dear old Marty? Rather! He and I are great pals."
But that was all Alice got. Her burning curiosity to know precisely how
this young couple stood must go unsatisfied for the time being. She had
only caught a few fleeting glimpses of the man who had given Joan the
key to life, and every time had wondered, from something in his eyes,
whether he found things wholly good. She was just a little suspicious
of romances. Her own had worn thin so quickly. "Good-by, my dear," she
said. "Don't forget you're dining with me to-morrow."
"Not likely."
"What are you doing to-night?"
"Going to bed at nine o'clock to sleep the clock round. I'm awfully
tired."
She stood quite still for many minutes after Alice had gone, and shut
her eyes. In a quick series of moving pictures she saw thousands of
little lights and swaying people and clashing colors, and caught
snatches of lilting music and laughter. She was tired, and something
that seemed like a hand pressed her forehead tightly, but the near-by
sound of incessant traffic sent her blood spinning, and she opened her
eyes and gave a little laugh and went out.
Martin was on his way downstairs. He drew up abruptly. "Oh, hello!" he
said.
"Oh, hello!" said Joan.
He was in evening clothes. His face had lost its tan and his eyes their
clear country early-to-bed look. "You've had a tea-fight, I see. I
peered into the drawing-room an hour ago and backed out, quick."
"Why? They were all consumed with curiosity about you. Alice has
advertised our romantic story, you see." She clasped her hands together
and adopted a pose in caricature of the play heroine in an ecstasy of
egomania.
But Martin's laugh was short and hollow. He wasn't amused. "How did you
get on?" he asked.
"Lost seventy dollars--that's all. Three-handed bridge with Grandfather
and Grandmother was not a good apprenticeship. I must have a few
lessons. D'you like my frock? Come up. You can't see it from there."
And he came up and looked at her as she turned this way and that. How
slim she was, and alluring! The fire in him flamed up, and his eyes
flickered. "Awful nice!" he said.
"You really like it?"
"Yes, really. You look beyond criticism in anything, always."
Joan stretched out her hand. "Thank you, Marty," she said. "You say and
do the most charming things that have ever been said and done."
He bent over the long-fingered hand. His pride begged him not to let
her see the hunger and pain that were in his eyes.
"Going out?" she asked.
Martin gave a careless glance at one of B. C. Koekkoek's inimitable
Dutch interiors that hung between two pieces of Flemish tapestry. His
voice showed some of his eagerness, though. "I was going to have dinner
with some men at the University Club, but I can chuck that and take you
to the Biltmore or somewhere else if you like."
Joan shook her head. "Not to-night, Marty. I'm going to bed early, for
a change."
"Aren't you going to give me one evening, then?" His question was
apparently as casual as his attitude. He stood with his hands in his
pockets and his legs wide apart and his teeth showing. He might have
been talking to a sister.
"Oh, lots, presently. I'm so tired to-night, old boy."
He would have given Parnassus for a different answer. "All right then,"
he said. "So long."
"So long, Marty! Don't be too late." She nodded and smiled and went
upstairs.
And he nodded and smiled and went down--to the mental depths. "What am
I to do?" he asked himself. "What am I to do?" And he put his arms into
the coat that was held out and took his hat. In the street the soft
April light was fading, and the scent of spring was blown to him from
the Park. He turned into Fifth Avenue in company with a horde of
questions that he couldn't shake off. He couldn't believe that any of
all this was true. Was there no one in all this world of people who
would help him and give him a few words of advice? "Oh, Father," he
said from the bottom of his heart, "dear old Father, where are you?"
The telephone bell was ringing as Joan went into her room. Gilbert
Palgrave spoke--lightly and fluently and with easy words of flattery.
She laughed and sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs and put
the instrument on her knee. "You read all that in a book," she said.
"I'm tired. Yesterday and the night before... No... No... All right,
then. Fetch me in an hour." She put the receiver back.
"Why not?" she said to herself, ringing for her maid. "Bed's for old
people. Thank God, I sha'n't be old for a century."
She presented her back to the deft-fingered girl and yawned. But the
near-by clatter of traffic sounded in her ears.