"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.
Harry Oldershaw followed, much puzzled at Joan's many quick changes of
mood. Several times during their irresponsible chatter on the beach
between dips her laughter had fallen suddenly, like a dead bird, and
she had sat for several minutes as far away from himself and the other
men as though they were cut off by a thick wall. Yesterday, in the
evening after dinner, during which her high spirits had infected the
whole table, he had walked up and down the board path with her under
the vivid white light of a full moon, and she had whipped out one or
two such savage things about life that he had been startled. During
their ride that afternoon, too, her bubbling chatter of light stuff
about people and things had several times shifted into comments as to
the conventions that were so careless as to make him ask himself
whether they could really have come from lips so fresh and young. And
why had that queer look of almost childlike grief come into her eyes a
moment ago at the sight of ah everyday sunset? He was mightily
intrigued. She was a queer kid, he told himself, as changeable and
difficult to follow as some of the music by men with such weird names
as Rachmaninoff and Tschaikowsky that his sister was so precious fond
of playing. But she was unattached and frightfully pretty and always
ready for any fun that was going, and she liked him more than the
others, and he liked being liked, and although not hopelessly in love
was ready and willing and even anxious to be walked on if she would
acknowledge his existence in no other way. It was none of his business,
he told himself, to speculate as to what she was trying to hide away in
the back of her mind, from herself as well as from everybody else. This
was his last vacation as a Yale man, and he was all out to make the
most of it.
As soon as he was at her side she ran her hand through his arm and fell
into step. The shadow had passed, and her eyes were dancing again. "It
appears that the Hosacks turn up their exclusive noses at the club
dances," she said. "What are we going to do about it?"
"There's one to-night, isn't there? Do you want to go?"
"Of course I do. I haven't danced since away back before the great
wind. Let's sneak off after dinner for an hour without a word to a soul
and get our fill of it. There's to be a special Jazz band to-night, I
hear, and I simply can't keep away. Are you game, Harry?"
"All the way," said young Oldershaw, "and it will be the first time in
the history of the Hosacks that any members of their house parties have
put in an appearance at the club at night. No wonder Easthampton has
nicknamed the place St. James's Palace, eh?"
Joan shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, my dear boy," she said, "life's too
short for all that stuff, and there's no hobby so painful as cutting
off one's nose to spite one's face. And, after all, what's the matter
with Easthampton people? I'd go to a chauffeurs' ball if the band was
the right thing. Wouldn't you?"
"With you," said Harry. "Democracy forever!"
"Oh, I'm not worrying about democracy. I'm out for a good time under
any conditions. That's the only thing that matters. Now let's go back
and change. It's too late to bathe. I'll wear a new frock to-night,
made for fox-trotting, and if Mrs. Hosack wants to know where we've
been when we come back as innocent as spring lambs, leave it to me. Men
can't lie as well as women can."
"It won't be Mrs. Hosack who'll ask," said Harry. "Bridge will do its
best to rivet her ubiquitous mind. It's the old man who'll be peeved.
He's crazy about you, you know."
Joan laughed. "He's very nice and means awfully well and all that," she
said, "but of course he isn't to be taken seriously. No men of middle
age ought to be. They all say the same things with the same expressions
as though they got them from the same books, and their gambolling makes
their joints creak. It's all like playing with a fire of damp logs. I
like something that can blaze and scorch. The game counts then."
"Then you ought to like me," said Harry, doing his best to look the
very devil of a fellow. Even he had to join in Joan's huge burst of
merriment. He had humor as well as a sense of the ridiculous, and the
first made it possible for him to laugh at himself,--a rare and
disconcerting gift which would utterly prevent his ever entering the
Senate.
"You might grow a moustache and wax the tips, Harry," she said, when
she had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak. "Curl your
hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in
for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but
you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as
refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much
as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late
for dinner." And she made him quicken his step through the dry sand.
Being very young he was not quite sure that he appreciated that type of
approval. He had liked to imagine that he was distinctly one of the
bold bad boys, a regular dog and all that. He had often talked that
sort of thing in the rooms of his best chums whose mantelpieces were
covered with the photographs of little ladies, and he hoarded in his
memory two episodes at least of jealous looks from engaged men. But,
after all, with Joan, who was married, although it was difficult to
believe it, it wouldn't be wise to exert the whole force of the danger
that was in him. He would let her down lightly, he told himself, and
grinned as he said it. She was right. He was only a nice boy, and that
was because he had had the inestimable luck to possess a mother who was
one in a million.
The rather pretentious but extremely civilized house that stood alone
in all its glory between the sea and the sixth hole was blazing with
lights as they returned to it. The color had gone out of the sky and
other twinkling eyes had appeared, and the breeze, now off the sea, had
a sting to it. Toad soloists were trying their voices for their evening
concert in near-by water and crickets were at work with all their
well-known enthusiasm. Bennett, with a sunburned nose, was tidying up
the veranda, and some one with a nice light touch was playing the
rhythmic jingles of Jerome Kern on the piano in the drawing-room.
Still with her hand on Harry Oldershaw's arm, Joan made her way across
the lofty hall, caught sight of Gilbert Palgrave coming eagerly to meet
her, and waved her hand.
"Oh, hello, Gilbert," she cried out. "Welcome to Easthampton," and ran
upstairs.
With a strange contraction of the heart, Palgrave watched her out of
sight. She was his dream come to life. All that he was and hoped to be
he had placed forever at her feet. Dignity, individualism, egoism,--all
had fallen before this young thing. She was water in the desert, the
north star to a man without a compass. He had seen her and come into
being.
Good God, it was wonderful and awful!
But who was that cursed boy?