Martin was not given to suspicion. He accepted people at their face
value and believed in human nature. It never occurred to him, then,
that the apparently ingenuous and disarming Irene, with her straight
glance and wide smile, had brought Tootles to Devon except by accident
or for anything but health and peace. He was awfully glad to see them.
They added to the excellent effect upon his spirits which had been
worked by the constant companionship of the irrepressible Howard,
before whose habitual breeziness depression could stand little chance.
Also he had youth and health and plenty to do in gorgeous weather, and
so his case, which he had been examining rather morbidly, assumed a
less painful aspect. His love and need of Joan remained just as strong,
but the sense of martyrdom brought about by loneliness and
self-analysis left him. Once more he assured himself that Joan was a
kid and must have her head until she became a woman and faced facts.
Over and over again he repeated to himself the creed that she had flung
into the teeth of fate, and in this he found more excuse than she
deserved for the way in which she had used him to suit her purpose and
put him into the position of a big elder brother whose duty it was to
support her, in loco parentis, and not interfere with her pastimes.
However much she fooled and flirted, he had an unshakable faith in her
cleanness and sweetness, and if he continued to let her alone, to get
fed up with what she called the Merry-go-round, she would one day come
home and begin all over again. She was a kid, just a kid as she had
said, and why, after all, should she be bullied and bully-ragged before
she had had time to work it off? That's how he argued.
Meanwhile, he was, thankfully enough, no longer alone. Here were Howard
and the two girls and the yawl and the sun, and he would keep merry and
bright until Joan came back. He was too proud and sensitive to go to
Joan and have it all out with her and thus dispel what had developed
into a double misunderstanding, and too loyal to go to Joan's mother
and tell his story and beg for help. Like Joan and Howard, and who
knows how many other young things in the world, he was paying the
inevitable penalty for believing that he could face the problems of
life unassisted, unadvised and was making a dreadful hash of it in
consequence. He little knew that his kindness to Tootles had made Joan
believe that he had exchanged his armor for broadcloth and put her in a
"who cares?" mood far more dangerous than the one which had sent her
into the night life of New York, or that, owing to Tootles, she was, at
that very moment, for the fun of the thing, driving Gilbert Palgrave to
a state of anger and desperation which might lead to tragedy. Poor
young things, misguided and falsely proud and at a loose end! What a
waste of youth and spring which a few wise words of counsel would
retrieve and render blessed.
And as for Tootles, with her once white face and red lips and hair that
came out of a bottle, Martin was to her what Joan was to Palgrave and
for the same reason. Irene's hints and innuendos had taken root. Caring
nothing for the practical side of her friend's point of view,--the
assured future business,--all her energies were bent to attract Martin,
all that was feminine in her was making a huge effort to win, by hook
or crook, somehow soon, an answer, however temporary, to her love.
Never mind what happened after these summer weeks were over. What
matter if she went mad so that she had her day? She had never come
across any man like this young Martin, with his clean eyes and
sensitive soul and honest hands, his, to her, inconceivable capacity of
"being brother," his puzzling aloofness from the lure of sex. She
didn't understand what it meant to a boy of Martin's type to cherish
ideals and struggle to live up to a standard that had been set for him
by his father. In her daily fight for mere self-preservation, in which
joy came by accident, any such thing as principle seemed crazy. Her
street--Arab interpretation of the law of life was to snatch at
everything that she could reach because there was so much that was
beyond her grasp. Her love for Martin was the one passion of her sordid
little life, and she would be thankful and contented to carry memories
back to her garret which no future rough-and-tumble could ever take
away or blot out.
For several days after the first of many dinners with the boys, Tootles
played her cards with the utmost care. The foursome became inseparable,
bathing, sailing and motoring from morning to night. If there was any
truth in the power of propinquity, it must have been discovered then.
Howard attached himself to Irene whom he found something more than
merry and amusing,--a girl of indomitable courage and optimism, in
fact. He liked her immensely. And so Tootles paired off with Martin and
had innumerable opportunities of putting forward the challenge of sex.
She took them all, but with the most carefully considered subtlety. She
descended to nothing obvious, as was to be expected from one of her
type, which was not famous for such a thing as self-restraint. She paid
great attention to her appearance and kept a close watch on her tongue.
She played what she imagined was the part of a little lady, toned down
her usual exuberance, her too loud laugh and her characteristic habit
of giving quick and smart back answers. But in all her long talks with
Martin she hinted ever so lightly that she and he had not been thrown
together from opposite poles without a reason. She tried to touch his
mind with the thought that it was to become what she said it might the
night of the accident,--a romance, a perfectly private little affair of
their own, stolen from their particular routine, which could be ended
at a moment's notice. She tried to wrap the episode up in a page of
poetry which might have been torn from a little book by Francois Villon
and give it a wistfulness and charm that she thought would appeal to
him. But it was not until one more than usually exquisite night, when
the spirit of July lingered in the air and the warmth of the sun still
lay among the stars, that she made her first step towards her goal.
Howard and Irene had wandered down to the water, and she was left with
Martin sitting elfishly among the ferns on the bank below the cottage
and above the silver lapping water. Martin, very much alive to the
magic spell of the night, with the young sap stirring in his veins, lay
at her feet, and she put her hand caressingly on his head and began to
talk in a half whisper.
"Boy, oh, boy," she said, "what shall I do without you when this dream
comes to an end?"
"Dream again," said Martin.
"Down there in the city, so far away from trees?"
"Why not? We can take our dreams with us wherever we go. But it isn't
coming to an end yet."
"How long will it last?"
"Until the sun gets cold," said Martin, catching her mood, "and there's
a chill in the air."
She slipped down a little so that he should see the light in her eyes.
There was hardly an inch between their lips, and the only sound was the
beating of her heart. Youth and July and the scent of honeysuckle.
"I thought I was dead when you helped me out of that wreck," she went
on in a quivering voice, and her long-fingered hand on his face. "I
think I must be really dead to-night. Surely this is too sweet to be
life."
"Dear little Tootles," said Martin softly. She was so close that he
could feel the rise and fall of her breasts. "Don't let's talk of
death. We're too young."
The sap was stirring in his veins. She was like a fairy, this girl, who
ought never to have wandered into a city.
"Martin," she said, "when the sun gets cold and there's a chill in the
air will you ever come back to this hour in a dream?"
"Often, Tootles, my dear."
"And will you see the light in my eyes and feel my hands on your face
and my lips on your lips?"
She bent forward and put them there and drew back with a shaking sob
and scrambled up and fled.
She had seen the others coming, but that was not why she had torn
herself away. One flash of sex was enough that night. The next time he
must do the kissing.
Eve and July and the scent of honeysuckle!
Breakfast was on the table. To Irene, who came down in her dressing
gown with her hair just bundled up and her face coated with powder,
eight o'clock was an unearthly hour at which to begin the day. In New
York she slept until eleven, read the paper until twelve, cooked and
disposed of a combined breakfast-lunch at one, and if it was a matinee
day, rushed round to the theater, and if it wasn't, killed time until
her work called her in the evening. A boob's life, as she called it,
was a trying business, but the tyranny of the bustling woman with whom
she lodged was such that if breakfast was not eaten at eight o'clock it
was not there to eat. Like an English undergraduate who scrambles out
of bed to attend Chapel simply to avoid a fine, this product of
Broadway theaterdom conformed to the rule of Mrs. Burrell's energetic
house because the good air of Devon gave her a voracious appetite.
Then, too, even if she missed breakfast, she had to pay for it, "so
there you are, old dear."
Tootles, up with the lark as usual, was down among the ducks, giving
Farmer Burrell a useful hand. She delighted in doing so. From a country
grandfather she had inherited a love of animals and of the early
freshness of the morning that found eager expression, now that she had
the chance of giving it full rein. Then, too, all that was maternal in
her nature warmed at the sight and sound of all those new, soft, yellow
things that waddled closely behind the wagging tails of their mothers,
and it gave her a sort of sweet comfort to go down on her knees and
hold one of these frightened babies against her cheek.
Crying out, "Oo-oo, Tootles," from halfway down the cinder path, Irene,
stimulated by the aroma of hot coffee and toast, and eggs and bacon,
returned to the living room and fell to humming, "You're here and I'm
here."
Tootles joined her immediately, a very different looking little person
from the tired-eyed, yawning girl of the city rabbit warren. Health was
in her eyes and a little smile at the corners of her mouth. Quick work
was made of the meal to the intermittent duck talk of Mrs. Burrell who
came in and out of the kitchen through a creaking door,--a normal,
noisy soul, to whom life was a succession of laborious days spent
between the cooking stove and the washtub with a regular Saturday
night, in her best clothes, at the motion-picture theater at Sag Harbor
to gape at the abnormality of Theda Bara and scream with uncontrolled
mirth at the ingenious antics of Charlie Chaplin. An ancient Ford made
possible this weekly dip into these intense excitements.
And then the two girls left the living room with its inevitable rocking
chairs and framed texts and old heating stove with a funnel through the
wall and went out into the sun.
"Well, dearie," said Irene, sitting on the edge of the stoop, within
sound of the squeaking of a many-armed clothes drier, teased by a nice
sailing wind. "Us for the yawl to-day."
"You for the yawl," said Tootles. "I'm staying here to help old man
Burrell. It's his busy day."