Three o'clock that afternoon found the Harleys still in Martin's house,
with Mrs. Harley fidgetting to get George out for a walk in order that
she might enjoy an intimate, mother-talk with Joan, and Joan
deliberately using all her gifts to keep him there in order to avoid it.
Lunch had been a simple enough affair as lunches go, lifted above the
ordinary ruck of such meals by the 1906 Chateau Latour and the
Courvoisier Cognac from the cellar carefully stocked by Martin's
father. From the psychological side of it, however, nothing could well
have been more complicated. George had not forgotten his reception by
the Ludlows that day of his ever-to-be-remembered visit of
inspection--the cold, satirical eyes of Grandmother, the freezing
courtesy of Grandfather, and the silent, eloquent resentment of the
girl who saw herself on the verge of desertion by the one person who
made life worth living in intermittent spots. He was nervous and
overanxious to appear to advantage. The young thoroughbred at the head
of the table who had given him a swift all-embracing look, an
enigmatical smile and a light laughing question as to whether he would
like to be called "Father, papa, Uncle George or what" awed him. He
couldn't help feeling like a clumsy piece of modern pottery in the
presence of an exquisite specimen of porcelain. His hands and feet
multiplied themselves, and his vocabulary seemed to contain no more
than a dozen slang phrases. He was conscious of the fact that his
collar was too high and his clothes a little too bold in pattern, and
he was definitely certain for the first time in his life, that he had
not yet discovered a barber who knew how to cut hair.
Overeager to emphasize her realization of the change in her
relationship to Joan, overanxious to let it be seen at once that she
was merely an affectionate and interested visitor and not a mother with
a budget of suggestions and corrections and rearrangements, Mrs. Harley
added to the complication. Usually the most natural woman in the world
with a soft infectious laugh, a rather shrewd humor and a neat gift of
comment, she assumed a metallic artificiality that distressed herself
and surprised Joan. She babbled about absolutely nothing by the yard,
talked over George's halting but gallant attempts to make things easy
like any Clubwoman, and in an ultra-scrupulous endeavor to treat Joan
as if she were a woman of the world, long emancipated from maternal
apron strings, said things to her, inane, insincere things, that she
would not have said to a complete stranger on the veranda of a summer
hotel or the sun deck of a transatlantic liner. She hated herself and
was terrified.
For two reasons this unexpected lunch was an ordeal so far as Joan was
concerned. She remembered how antagonistic she had been to Harley under
the first rough shock of her mother's startling and what then had
appeared to be disloyal aberration, and wanted to make up for it to the
big, simple, uncomfortable man who was so obviously in love. Also she
was still all alone in the mental chaos into which everything that had
happened last night had conspired to plunge her and was trying, with
every atom of courage that she possessed, to hide the fact from her
mother's quick solicitous eyes. SHE of all people must not know that
Martin had gone away or find the loose end of her married life!
It was one of those painful hours that crop up from time to time in
life and seem to leave a little scratch upon the soul.
But when quarter past three came Mrs. Harley pulled herself together.
She had already dropped hints of every known and well-recognized kind
to George, without success. She had even invented appointments for him
at the dentist's and the tailor's. But George was basking in Joan's
favor and was too dazzled to be able to catch and concentrate upon his
wife's insinuations as to things and people that didn't exist. And Joan
held him with her smile and led him from one anecdote to another.
Finally, with no one realized how supreme an effort, Mrs. Harley came
to the point. As a rule she never came to points.
"Geordie," she said, seizing a pause, "you may run along now, dear, and
take a walk. It will do you good to get a little exercise before
dinner. I want to be alone with Joan for a while."
And before Joan could swing the conversation off at a tangent the
faithful and obedient St. Bernard was on his feet, ready and willing to
ramble whichever way he was told to go. With unconscious dignity and a
guilelessness utterly unknown to drawing-rooms he bent over Joan's
reluctant hand and said, "Thank you for being so kind to me," laid a
hearty kiss on his wife's cheek and went.
"And now, darling," said Mrs. Harley, settling into her chair with an
air of natural triumph, "tell me where Martin is and how long he's
going to be away and all about everything."
These were precisely the questions that Joan had worked so hard and
skilfully to dodge. "Well, first of all, Mummy," she said, with filial
artfulness, "you must come and see the house."
And Mrs. Harley, who had been consumed with the usual feminine
curiosity to examine every corner and cranny of it, rose with alacrity.
"What I've already seen is all charming," she said. "I knew Martin's
father, you know. He spent a great deal of time at his house near your
grandfather's, and was nearly always in the saddle. He was not a bit
like one's idea of a horsey man. He was, in fact, a gentleman who was
fond of horses. There is a world of difference. He had a most
delightful smile and was the only man I ever met, except your
grandfather, who could drink too much wine without showing it. Who's
this good-looking boy with the trustworthy eyes?"
"Martin," said Joan. "Martin," she added inwardly, "who treated me like
a kid last night."
Mrs. Harley looked up at the portrait. An involuntary smiled played
round her mouth. "Yes, of course. I remember him. What a dear boy! No
wonder you fell in love with him, darling. You must be very happy."
Joan followed her mother out of the room. She was glad of the chance to
control her expression. She went upstairs with a curious lack of the
spirit of proprietorship. It hurt her to feel as if she were showing a
house taken furnished for the season in which she had no rights, no
pride and no personal interest. Martin had treated her like a kid last
night and gone away in the morning without a word. Alice and Gilbert
had taunted her with not being a wife. She wasn't, and this was
Martin's house, not hers and Martin's ... it hurt.
"Ah," said Mrs. Harley softly as she went into Joan's bedroom. "Ah.
Very nice. You both have room to move here." But the mass of little
filet lace pillows puzzled her, and she darted a quick look at the tall
young thing with the inscrutable face who had ceased to be her little
girl and had become her daughter.
"The sun pours in," said Joan, turning away.
Mrs. Harley noticed a door and brightened up.
"Martin's dressing room?" she asked. "No. My maid's room!" Joan said.
Mrs. Harley shook her head ever so little. She was not in sympathy with
what she called new-fashioned ideas. It was on the tip of her tongue to
say so and to forget, just this once, the inevitable change in their
relationship and speak like mammy once more. But she was a timid,
sensitive little woman, and the indefinable barrier that had suddenly
sprung up held her back. Joan made no attempt to meet her halfway. The
moment passed.
They went along the passage. "There are Martin's rooms," said Joan.
Mrs. Harley went halfway in. "Like a bachelor's rooms, aren't they?"
she said, without guile. And while she glanced at the pictures and the
crowded bootrack and the old tallboys, Joan's sudden color went away
again.... He was a bachelor. He had left her on the other side of the
bridge. He had hurt her last night. How awfully she must have hurt him!
"When will Martin be back?"
"I don't know," said Joan. "Probably to-morrow. I'm not sure." She
stumbled a little, realized that she was giving herself away,--because
if a bride is not to know her husband's movements, who is?--and made a
desperate effort to recover her position. "It all depends on how long
he's kept. But he needed exercise, and golf's such a good game, isn't
it? I sha'n't hurry him back."
She looked straight into her mother's anxious eyes, saw them clear, saw
a smile come--and took a deep breath of relief. If there was one thing
that she had to put up the most strenuous fight to avoid, in her
present chaotic state of mind, it was a direct question as to her life
with Martin. Of all people, her mother must be left in the belief that
she was happy. Pride demanded that, even to the extent of lying. It was
hard luck to be caught by her mother, at the very moment when she was
standing among all the debris of her kid's ideas, among all the broken
beams of carelessness, and the shattered panes of high spirits.
She was thankful that her mother was not one of those aggressive,
close-questioning women, utterly devoid of sensitiveness and delicacy
who are not satisfied until they have forced open all the secret
drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,--one of
those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a
department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's
new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a
large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no faith in
human nature.
And with a sudden sense of gratitude she turned to the woman whom she
had always accepted as a fact, an institution, and looked at her with
new eyes, a new estimate and a new emotion. The little, loving, gentle,
anxious woman with the capacity of receiving impressions from external
objects that amounted to a gift but with a reticence of so fine and
tender a quality that she seemed always to stand on tiptoes on the
delicate ground of people's feelings, was HERS, was her mother. The
word burst into a new meaning, blossomed into a new truth. She had been
accepted all these years,--loved, in a sort of way; obeyed, perhaps,
expected to do things and provide things and make things easy, and here
she stood more needed, at the moment when she imagined that the need of
her had passed, than at any other time of her motherhood.
In a flash Joan understood all this and its paradox, looked all the way
back along the faithful, unappreciated years, and being no longer a
child was stirred with a strange maternal fellow feeling that started
her tears. Nature is merciless. Everything is sacrificed to youth.
Birds build their nests and rear their young and are left as soon as
wings are ready. Women marry and bear children and bring them up with
love and sacrifice, only to be relegated to a second place at the first
moment of independence. Joan saw this then. Her mother's altered
attitude, and her own feeling of having grown out of maternal
possession brought it before her. She saw the underlying drama of this
small inevitable scene in the divine comedy of life and was touched by
a great sympathy and made sorry and ashamed.
But pride came between her and a desire to go down on her knees at her
mother's side, make a clean breast of everything and beg for advice and
help.
And so these two, between whom there should have been complete
confidence, were like people speaking to each other from opposite banks
of a stream, conscious of being overheard.
X
Day after day went by with not a word from Martin. April was slipping
off the calendar. A consistent blue sky hung over a teeming city that
grew warm and dry beneath a radiant sun. Winter forgotten, spring an
overgrown boy, the whole town underwent a subtle change. Its rather
sullen winter expression melted into a smile, and all its foreign
characteristics and color broke out once more under the influence of
sun and blue sky. Alone among the great cities of the world stands New
York for contrariety and contrast. Its architecture is as various as
its citizenship, its manners are as dissimilar as its accents, its
moods as diverse as its climate. Awnings appeared, straw hats peppered
the streets like daisies in long fields, shadows moved, days
lengthened, and the call of the country fell on city ears like the thin
wistful notes of the pipes of Pan.
Brought up against a black wall Joan left the Roundabout, desisted from
joy-riding, and, spending most of her time with her mother, tried
secretly and without any outward sign, to regain her equilibrium. She
saw nothing of Alice and the set, now beginning to scatter, in which
Alice had placed her. She was consistently out to Gilbert Palgrave and
the other men who had been gathering hotly at her heels. Her policy of
"who cares?" had received a shock and left her reluctantly and
impatiently serious. She had withdrawn temporarily into a backwater in
order to think things over and wait for Martin to reappear. It seemed
to her that her future way of life was in his hands. If Martin came
back soon and caught her in her present mood she would play the game
according to the rules. If he stayed away or, coming back, persisted in
considering her as a kid and treating her as such, away would go
seriousness, life being short, and youth but a small part of it, and
back she would go to the Merry-go-round, and once more, at twice the
pace, with twice the carelessness, the joy-ride would continue. It was
all up to Martin, little as he knew it.
And where was Martin?
There was no letter, no message, no sign as day followed day. Without
allowing herself to send out an S. O. S. to him, which she well knew
that she had the power to do, she waited, as one waits at crossroads,
to go either one way or the other. Although tempted many times to tap
the invisible wire which stretched between them, and to put an end to a
state of uncertainty which was indescribably irksome to her impulsive
and imperative nature, she held her hand. Pride steeled her, and vanity
gave her temporary patience. She even went so far as to think of him
under another name so that no influence of hers might bring him back.
She wanted him to return naturally, on his own account, because he was
unable to keep away. She wanted him, wherever he was and whatever he
was doing, to want her, not to come in cold blood from a sense of duty,
in the spirit of martyrdom. She wanted him, for her pride's sake, to be
again the old eager Marty, the burning-eyed, inarticulate Marty, who
had brought her to his house and laid it at her feet with all that was
his. In no other way was she prepared to cross what she thought of as
the bridge.
And so, seeing only her mother and George Harley, she waited, saying to
herself confidently "If he doesn't come to-day, he will come to-morrow.
I told him that I was a kid, and he understood. I've hurt him awfully,
but he loves me. He will come to-morrow."
But to-morrow came and where was Martin?
It was a curious time for this girl-woman to go through alone, hiding
her crisis from her mother behind smiling eyes, disguising her anxiety
under a cloak of high spirits, herself hurt but realizing that she had
committed a hurt. It made her feel like an aeroplane voluntarily landed
in perfect condition at the start of a race, waiting for the pilot to
get aboard. That he would return at any moment and take her up again
she never doubted. Why should she? She knew Martin. His eyes won
confidence, and there was a heart of gold behind his smile. She didn't
believe that she could have lost him so soon. He would come back
because he loved her. Hadn't he agreed that she was a kid? And when he
did come back she would take her courage in both hands and tell him
that she wanted to play the game. And then, having been honest, she
would hitch on to life again with a light heart, and neither Alice nor
Gilbert could stand up and flick her conscience. Martin would be happy.
To-morrow and to-morrow, and no Martin.
At the end of a week a letter was received by her mother from
Grandmother Ludlow, in which, with a tinge of sarcasm, she asked that
she might be honored by a visit of a few days, always supposing that
trains still ran between New York and Peapack and gasolene could still
be procured for privately owned cars. And there was a postscript in
these words. "Perhaps you have the necessary eloquence to induce the
athletic Mrs. Martin Gray to join you."
The letter was handed to Joan across the luncheon table at the Plaza.
She read the characteristic effusion with keen amusement. She could
hear the old lady's incisive voice in every word and the tap of her
stick across the hall as she laid the letter in the box. How good to
see the country again and go through the woods to the old high place
where she had turned and found Martin. How good to go back to that old
prison house as an independent person, with the right to respect and
even consideration. It would serve Martin right to find her away when
he came back. She would leave a little note on his dressing table.
"No wonder the old lady asks if the trains have broken down," said Mrs.
Harley. "Of course, we ought to have gone out to see her, Geordie."
"Of course," said George, "of course"--but he darted a glance at Joan
which very plainly conveyed the hope that she would find some reason
why the visit should not be made. Would he ever forget standing in that
stiff drawing-room before that contemptuous old dame, feeling exactly
like a very small worm?
The strain of waiting for Martin day after day had told on Joan. She
longed for a change of atmosphere, a change of scene. And what a joke
it would be to be able to face her grandfather and grandmother without
shaking in her shoes! "Of course," said Joan. "Let's drive out to-day
in time for dinner, and send a telegram at once. Nothing like striking
while the iron's hot. Papa Geordie, tell the waiter to bring a blank,
and we'll concoct a message between us. Is that all right for you,
Mother?"
Mrs. Harley looked rather like a woman being asked to run a quarter of
a mile to catch a train, but she gave a little laugh and said, "Yes,
dear. I think so, although, perhaps, to-morrow--"
"To-day is a much better word," said Joan. She was sick of to-morrow
and to-morrow. "Packing won't take any time. I'll go home directly
after lunch and set things moving and be here in the car at three
thirty. We can see the trees and smell the ferns and watch the sun set
before we have to change for dinner. I'm dying to do that."
No arguments or objections were put forward.
This impetuous young thing must have her way.
And when the car drove away from the Plaza a few minutes after the
appointed time Joan was as excited as a child, Mrs. Harley quite
certain that she had forgotten her sponge bag and her bedroom slippers,
and George Harley betting on a time that would put more lines on his
face.
There was certainly more than a touch of irony in Joan's gladness to go
back so soon to the cage from which she had escaped with such eagerness.
There had been no word and no sign of Martin.
But as Joan had run upstairs Gilbert Palgrave had come out from the
drawing-room and put himself deliberately in her way.
"I can't stay now, Gilbert," she had said. "I'm going into the country,
and I haven't half a second to spare. I'm so sorry."
He had held his place. "You've got to give me five minutes. You've got
to," and something in his eyes had made her take hold of her impatience.
"You don't know what you're doing to me," he had said, with no sign of
his usual style and self-consciousness, but simply, like a man who had
sat in the dark and suffered. "Or if you do know your cruelty is
inhuman. I've tried to see you every day--not to talk about myself or
bore you with my love, but just to look at you. You've had me turned
away as if I were a poor relation. You've sent your maid to lie to me
over the telephone as if I were a West Point cadet in a primitive state
of sloppy sentiment. Don't do it. It isn't fair. I hauled down my
fourth wall to you, and however much you may scorn what you saw there
you must respect it. Love must always be respected. It's the rarest
thing on earth. I'm here to tell you that you must let me see you, just
see you. I've waited for many years for this. I'm all upheaved. You've
exploded me. I'm different. I'm remade. I'm beginning again. I shall
ask for nothing but kindness until I've made you love me, and then I
shall not have to ask. You will come to me. I can wait. That's all I
want you to know. When you come back ring me up. I'll be patient."
With that he had stood aside with a curious humbleness, had gripped the
hand that she had given him and had gone downstairs and away.
The country round Peapack was in its first glorious flush of young
beauty. The green of everything dazzled under the sun. The woods were
full of the echo of fairy laughter. Wild flowers ran riot among the
fields. Delicate-footed May was following on the heels of April with
its slight fingers full of added glory for the earth.
There was something soft and English in the look of the trees and
fields as they came nearer to the old house. They might have been
driving through the kind garden of Kent.
Framed in the fine Colonial doorway stood the tall old man with his
white head and fireless eyes, the little distinguished woman still
charged with electricity and the two veteran dogs with their hollow
barks.
"Not one blushing bride, but two," said Grandmother Ludlow. "How
romantic." She presented her cheek to the nervous Mrs. Harley. "You
look years younger, my dear. Quite fluttery and foolish. How do you do,
Mr. Harley? You are very welcome, Sir." She passed them both on to the
old man and turned to Joan with the kind of smile that one sees on the
faces of Chinese gods. "And here is our little girl in whose marvellous
happiness we have all rejoiced."
Joan stood up bravely to the little old lady whose sarcasm went home
like the sharp point of a rapier.
"How do you do, dear Grandmamma," she said.
"No better than can be expected, my love, but no worse." The queer
smile broadened. "But surely you haven't torn yourself away from the
young husband from whom, I hear, you have never been parted for a
moment? That I can't believe. People tell me that there has never been
such a devoted and love-sick couple. Martin Gray is driving another
car, of course."
Joan never flicked an eyelash. She would rather die than let this
cunning old lady have the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn
blood. "No, Grandmamma," she said. "Martin needed exercise and is
playing golf at Shinnecock. He rang me up this morning and asked me to
say how sorry he was not to have the pleasure of seeing you this time."
She went over to her grandfather and held up a marvellously equable
face.
The old dame watched her with reluctant admiration. The child had all
the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown
that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away
from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile
became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that was in
store for her.
The old sportsman took Joan in his arms and held her tight for a
moment. "I've missed you, my dear," he said. "The house has been like a
mausoleum without you. But I've no reproaches. Youth to youth,--it's
right and proper." And he led her into the lofty hall with his arm
round her shoulder.
There was a sinister grin on Gleave's poacher-like face when Joan gave
him a friendly nod. And it was with a momentary spasm of uneasiness
that she asked herself what he and her grandmother knew. It was evident
that they had something up their sleeves. But when, after a tea during
which she continued to fence and play the part of happy bride, she went
out into the scented garden that was like an old and loving friend,
this premonition of something evil left her. With every step she felt
herself greeted and welcomed. Young flowers as guileless as children
waved their green hands. Heads nodded as she passed. The old trees that
had watched her grow up rustled their leaves in affectionate
excitement. She had not understood until that very moment how many true
friends she had or how warm a place in her heart that old house had
taken. It was with a curious maternal emotion that clouded her eyes
with tears that she stood for a moment and kissed her hands to the
right and left like a young queen to her subjects. Then she ran along
the familiar path through the woods to the spot where she had been
found by Martin and stood once more facing the sweep of open country
and the distant horizon beyond which lay the Eldorado of her girl's
dreams. She was still a girl, but she had come back hurt and sorry and
ashamed. Martin might have lost his faith in her. He had gone away
without a word or sign. Gilbert Palgrave held her in such small respect
that he waited with patience for her to come, although married, into
his arms. And there was not a man or a woman on the Round-about, except
Alice, who really cared whether she ever went back again. The greedy
squirrel peeked at her from behind a fern, recognized his old playmate,
and came forward in a series of runs and leaps. With a little cry Joan
bent down and held out her hand. And away in the distance there was the
baying of Martin's hounds. But where was Martin?