IV

When Mrs. Hosack rose from the dinner table and sailed Olympically into

the drawing-room, surrounded by graceful light craft in the persons of

Primrose and her girl friends, the men, as usual, followed immediately.

The house was bridge mad, and the tables called every one except Joan,

the nice boy, and Gilbert Palgrave.

During the preliminaries of an evening which would inevitably run into

the small hours, Joan went over to the piano and, with what was a quite

unconscious touch of irony, played one of Heller's inimitable

"Sleepless Nights," with the soft pedal down. The large imposing room,

a chaotic mixture of French and Italian furniture with Flemish

tapestries and Persian rugs, which accurately typified the ubiquitous

mind of the hostess, was discreetly lighted. The numerous screened

windows were open and the soft warm air came in tinged with the salt of

the sea.

Palgrave, refusing to cut in, stood about like a disembodied spirit,

with his eyes on Joan, from whom, since his arrival, he had received

only a few fleeting glances. He watched the cursed boy, as he had

labelled him, slip over to her, lean across the piano and talk eagerly.

He went nearer and caught, "the car in half an hour," and "not a word

to a soul." After which, with jealousy gnawing at his vitals, he saw

Harry Oldershaw moon about for a few minutes and then make a fishlike

dart out of the room. He had been prepared to find Joan amorously

surrounded by the men of the party but not on terms of sentimental

intimacy with a smooth-faced lad. In town she had shown preference for

sophistication. He went across to the piano and waited impatiently for

Joan to finish the piece which somehow fitted into his mood. "Come

out," he said, then, "I want to speak to you."

But Joan let her fingers wander into a waltz and raised her eyebrows.

"Do I look so much like Alice that you can order me about?" she asked.

He turned on his heel with the look of a dog at which a stone had been

flung by a friend, and disappeared.

Two minutes later there was a light touch on his arm, and Joan stood at

his side on the veranda. "Well, Gilbert," she said, "it's good to see

you again."

"So good that I might be a man touting for an encyclopedia," he

answered angrily.

She sat upon the rough stone wall and crossed her little feet. Her new

frock was white and soft and very perfectly simple. It demanded the

young body of a nymph,--and was satisfied. The magic of the moon was on

her. She might have been Spring resting after a dancing day.

"If you were," she said, taking a delight in unspoiling this immaculate

man, "I'm afraid you'd never get an order from me. Of all things the

encyclopedia must be accompanied by a winning smile and irresistible

manners. I suppose you've done lots of amusing things since I saw you

last."

He went nearer so that her knees almost touched him. "No," he said.

"Only one, and that was far from amusing. It has marked me like a blow.

I've been waiting for you. Where have you been, and why haven't you

taken the trouble to write me a single letter?"

"I've been ill," she said. "Yes, I have. Quite ill. I deliberately set

out to hurt myself and succeeded. It was an experiment that I sha'n't

repeat. I don't regret it. It taught me something that I shall never

forget. Never too young to learn, eh? Isn't it lovely here? Just smell

the sea, and look at those lights bobbing up and down out there. I

never feel any interest in ships in the daytime, but at night, when

they lie at anchor, and I can see nothing but their lonely eyes, I

would give anything to be able to fly round them like a gull and peep

into their cabins. Do they affect you like that?"

Palgrave wasn't listening to her. It was enough to look at her and

refresh his memory. She had been more than ever in his blood all these

weeks. She was like water in a desert or sunlight to a man who comes up

from a mine. He had found her again and he thanked whatever god he

recognized for that, but he was forced to realize from her

imperturbable coolness and unaffected ease that she was farther away

from him than ever. To one of his temperament and schooling this was

hard to bear with any sort of self-control. The fact that he wanted her

of all the creatures on earth, that she, alone among women, had touched

the fuse of his desire, and that, knowing this, she could sit there a

few inches from his lips and put a hundred miles between them, maddened

him, from whom nothing hitherto had been impossible.

"Have I got to begin all over again?" he asked, with a sort of

petulance.

"Begin what, Gilbert?" There was great satisfaction in playing with one

who thought that he had only to touch a bell to bring the moon and the

sun and the stars to his bidding.

"Good God," he cried out. "You're like wet sand on which a man expects

to find yesterday's footmarks. Hasn't anything of me and the things

I've said to you remained in your memory?"

"Of course," she said. "I shall never forget the night you took me to

the Brevoort, for instance, and supplied the key to all the people with

unkempt hair and comic ties."

Some one on the beach below shot out a low whistle.

A little thrill ran through Joan. In ten minutes, perhaps less, she

would be dancing once more to the lunatic medley of a Jazz band,

dancing with a boy who gave her all that she needed of him and asked

absolutely nothing of her; dancing among people who were less than the

dust in the scheme of things, so far as she was concerned, except to

give movement and animation to the room and to be steered through. That

was the right attitude towards life and its millions, she told herself.

As salt was to an egg so was the element of false romance to this Golf

Club dance. In a minute she would get rid of Palgrave, yes, even the

fastidious Gilbert Palgrave, who had never been able quite to disguise

the fact that his love for her was something of a condescension; she

would fly in the face of the unwritten law of the pompous house on the

dunes and mingle with what Hosack had called the crowd from the hotel.

It was all laughable and petty, but it was what she wanted to do. It

was all in the spirit of "Who Cares?" that she had caught at again. Why

worry as to what Mrs. Hosack might say or Palgrave might feel? Wasn't

she as free as the air to follow her whims without a soul to make a

claim upon her or to hold out a hand to stop?

Through these racing thoughts she heard Palgrave talking and crickets

rasping and frogs croaking and a sudden burst of laughter and talk in

the drawing-room,--and the whistle come again.

"Yes," she said, because yes was as good as any other word. "Well,

Gilbert, dear, if you're not an early bird you will see me again

later,"--and jumped down from the wall.

"Where are you going?"

"Does that matter?"

"Yes, it does. I want you here. I've been waiting all these weeks."

She laughed. "It's a free country," she said, "and you have the right

to indulge in any hobby that amuses you. Au revoir, old thing." And she

spread out her arms like wings and flew to the steps and down to the

beach and away with some one who had sent out a signal.

"That boy," said Palgrave. "I'm to be turned down for a cursed boy! By

God, we'll know about that."

And he followed, seeing red.

He saw them get into a low-lying two-seater built on racing lines,

heard a laugh flutter into the air, watched the tail light sweep round

the drive and become smaller and smaller along the road.

So that was it, was it? He had been relegated to the hangers-on,

reduced to the ranks, put into the position of any one of the number of

extraneous men who hung round this girl-child for a smile and a word!

That was the way he was to be treated, he, Gilbert Palgrave, the

connoisseur, the decorative and hitherto indifferent man who had

refused to be subjected to any form of discipline, who had never, until

Joan had come into his life, allowed any one to put him a single inch

out of his way, who had been triumphantly one-eyed and selfish,--that

was the way he was to be treated by the very girl who had fulfilled his

once wistful hope of making him stand, eager and startled and love-sick

among the chaos of individualism and indolence, who had shaken him into

the Great Emotion! Yes, by God, he'd know about that.

Bare-headed and surging with untranslatable anger he started walking.

He was in no mood to go into the drawing-room and cut into a game of

bridge and show his teeth and talk the pleasant inanities of polite

society. All the stucco of civilization fell about him in slabs as he

made his way with long strides out of the Hosacks' place, across the

sandy road and on to the springy turf of the golf links. It didn't

matter where he went so long as he got elbow room for his indignation,

breathing space for his rage and a wide loneliness for his blasphemy....

He had stood humble and patient before this virginal girl. He had

confessed himself to her with the tremendous honesty of a man made

simple by an overwhelming love. She was married. So was he. But what

did that matter to either of them whose only laws were self-made? The

man to whom she was not even tied meant as little to her as the girl he

had foolishly married meant or would ever mean to him. He had placed

himself at her beck and call. In order to give her amusement he had

taken her to places in which he wouldn't have been seen dead, had

danced his good hours of sleep away for the pleasure of seeing her

pleased, had revolutionized his methods with women and paid her tribute

by the most scrupulous behavior and, finally, instead of setting out to

turn her head with pearls and diamonds and carry her by storm while she

was under the hypnotic influence of priceless glittering things for

bodily adornment, which render so many women easy to take, he had

recognized her as intelligent and paid her the compliment of treating

her as such, had stated his case and waited for the time when the blaze

of love would set her alight and bring her to his arms.

There was something more than mere egotism in all this,--the natural

egotism of a man of great wealth and good looks, who had walked through

life on a metaphorical red carpet pelted with flowers by adoring women

to whom even virtue was well lost in return for his attention. Joan,

like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his

life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads,

one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous

senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service

to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her

golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy in being

alive, her superb health and vitality had shattered his conceit and

self-obsession, broken down his aloofness and lack of scruple and

filled the empty frame that he had hung in his best thoughts with her

face and form.

There was something of the great lover about Palgrave in his new and

changed condition. He had laid everything unconditionally at the feet

of this young thing. He had shown a certain touch of bigness, of

nobility, he of all men, when, after his outburst in the little

drawing-room that night, he had stood back to wait until Joan had grown

up. He had waited for six weeks, going through tortures of

Joan-sickness that were agonizing. He had asked her to do what she

could for him in the way of a little kindness, but had not received one

single line. He was prepared to continue to wait because he knew his

love to be so great that it must eventually catch hold of her like the

licking flame of a prairie fire. It staggered him to arrive at the

Hosacks' place and find her fooling with a smooth-faced lad. It

outraged him to be left cold, as though he were a mere member of the

house party and watch her to whom he had thrown open his soul go

joy-riding with a cursed boy. It was, in a sort of way, heresy. It

proved an almost unbelievable inability to realize the great thing that

this was. Such love as his was not an everyday affair, to be treated

lightly and carelessly. It was, on the contrary, rare and wonderful and

as such to be, at any rate, respected. That's how it seemed to him, and

by God he would see about it.

He drew up short, at last, on his strange walk across the undulating

course. The light from the Country Club streamed across his feet, and

the jangle of the Jazz band broke into his thoughts. From where he

stood, surprised to find himself in civilization, he could see the

crowd of dancers through the open windows of what resembled a huge

bungalow, at one side of which a hundred motor cars were parked. He

went nearer, drawn forward against his will. He was in no mood to watch

a summer dance of the younger set. He made his way to the wide veranda

and stood behind the rocking chairs of parents and friends. But not for

more than fifty seconds. There was Joan, with her lovely laughing face

alight with the joy of movement, held in the arms of the cursed boy.

Between two chairs he went, into and across the room in which he was a

trespasser, tapped young Oldershaw sharply on the arm, cut into the

dance, and before the boy could recover from his surprise, was out of

reach with Joan against his heart.

"Oh, well done, Gilbert," said Joan, a little breathlessly. "When Marty

did that to you at the Crystal Room..."

She stopped, and a shadow fell on her face and a little tremble ran

across her lips.

Smoking a cigarette on the veranda young Oldershaw waited for the dance

to end. It was encored several times but being a sportsman and having

achieved a monopoly of Joan during all the previous dances, he let this

man enjoy his turn. He was a great friend of hers, she had said on the

way to the club, and was, without doubt, a very perfect person with his

wide-set eyes and well-groomed head, his smooth moustache and the cleft

on his chin. He didn't like him. He had decided that at a first glance.

He was too supercilious and self-assured and had a way of looking clean

through men's heads. He conveyed the impression of having bought the

earth,--and Joan. A pity he was too old for a year or two of Yale. That

would make him a bit more of a man.

When presently the Jazzers paused in order to recuperate,--every one of

them deserving first aid for the wounded,--and Joan came out for a

little air with Palgrave, Harry strolled up. This was his evening, and

in a perfectly nice way he conveyed that impression by his manner. He

was, moreover, quite determined to give nothing more away. He conveyed

that, also.

"Shall we sit on the other side?" he asked. "The breeze off the sea

keeps the mosquitoes away a bit."

Refusing to acknowledge his existence Palgrave guided Joan towards a

vacant chair. He went on with what he had been saying and swung the

chair round.

Joan was smiling again.

Oldershaw squared his jaw. "I advise against this side, Joan," he said.

"Let me take you round."

He earned a quick amused look and a half shrug of white shoulders from

Joan. Palgrave continued to talk in a low confidential voice. He

regarded Oldershaw's remarks as no more of an interruption than the

chorus of the frogs. Oldershaw's blood began to boil, and he had a

queer prickly sensation at the back of his neck. Whoo, but there'd have

to be a pretty good shine in a minute, he said to himself. This man

Palgrave must be taught.

He marched up to Joan and held out his arm. "We may as well get back,"

he said. "The band's going to begin again."

But Joan sat down, looking from one man to the other. All the woman in

her revelled in this rivalry,--all that made her long-dead sisters

crowd to the arenas, wave to armored knights in deadly combat, lean

forward in grand stands to watch the Titanic struggles of Army and

Navy, Yale and Harvard on the football field. Her eyes danced, her lips

were parted a little, her young bosom rose and fell.

"And so you see," said Palgrave, putting his hand on the back of her

chair, "I can stay as long as the Hosacks will have me, and one day

I'll drive you over to my bachelor cottage on the dune. It will

interest you."

"The only thing that has any interest at the moment is dancing," said

Oldershaw loudly. "By the way, you don't happen to be a member of the

club, do you, Mr. Palgrave?"

With consummate impudence Palgrave caught his eye and made a sort of

policeman gesture. "Run away, my lad," he said, "run away and amuse

yourself." He almost asked for death.

With a thick mutter that sounded like "My God," Oldershaw balanced

himself to hit, his face the color of a beet-root,--and instantly Joan

was on her feet between them with a hand on the boy's chest.

"No murder here," she said, "please!"

"Murder!" echoed Palgrave, scoffing.

"Yes, murder. Can't you see that this boy could take you and break you

like a dry twig? Let's go back, all three of us. We don't want to

become the center of a sight-seeing crowd." And she took an arm of each

shaking man and went across the drive to where the car was parked.

And so the danger moment was evaded,--young Oldershaw warm with pride,

Palgrave sullen and angry. They made a trio which had its prototypes

all the way back to the beginning of the world.

It did Palgrave no good to crouch ignominiously on the step of the car

which Oldershaw drove back hell for leather.

The bridge tables were still occupied. The white lane was still across

the sea. Frogs and crickets still continued their noisy rivalry, but it

was a different climate out there on the dunes from that of the village

with its cloying warmth.

Palgrave went into the house at once with a brief "Thank you." Joan

waited while Harry put the car into a garage. Bed made no appeal.

Bridge bored,--it required concentration. She would play the game of

sex with Gilbert if he were to be found. So the boy had to be disposed

of.

"Harry," she said, when he joined her, chuckling at having come top dog

out of the recent blaze, "you'd better go straight to bed now. We're

going to be up early in the morning, you know."

"Just what I was thinking," he answered. "By Jove, you've given me a

corking good evening. The best of my young life. You ... you certainly

are,--well, I don't know how to do you justice. I'd have to be a poet."

He fumbled for her hand and kissed it a little sheepishly.

They went in. "You're a nice boy, Harry," she said. There was something

in his charming simplicity and muscular strength that reminded her

of,--but she refused to let the name enter her mind.

"I could have broken that chap like a dry twig, too, easy. Who does he

think he is?" He would have pawned his life at that moment for the

taste of her lips.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs and held out her hand. "Good

night, old boy," she said.

And he took it and hurt it. "Good night, Joany," he answered.

That pet name hurt her more than his eager grasp. It was Marty's own

word--Marty, who--who--

She threw up her head and stamped her foot, and slammed the door of her

thoughts. "Who cares?" she said to herself, challenging life and fate.

"Come on. Make things move."

She saw Palgrave standing alone in the library looking at the sea. "You

might be Canute," she said lightly.

His face was curiously white. "I'm off in the morning," he said. "We

may as well say good-by now."

"Good-by, then," she answered.

"I can't stay in this cursed place and let you play the fool with me."

"Why should you?"

"There'll be Hosack and the others as well as your new pet."

"That's true."

He caught her suddenly by the arms. "Damn you," he said. "I wish to God

I'd never seen you."