It began to dawn upon Hosack that Joan had slipped away with Harry
Oldershaw from the fact that Palgrave first became restless and
irritable, then had a short sharp spat with Barclay about the length of
the line on the Western front that was held by the British and finally
got up and went into the house and almost immediately prowled out alone
for a sulky walk along the beach.
Chortling as he watched him, although annoyed that he, himself, was not
going to have an opportunity of saying soft things to Joan for some
hours, Hosack made himself comfortable, lit another cigar and pondered
sleepily about what he called "the infatuation of Gilbert the precious."
"I can sympathize with the feller's being gone on the girl," he said to
himself, undisturbed by Regina's frequent bursts of loud laughter at
young Barclay's quiet but persistent banter, "but dammit, why make a
conspicuous ass of himself? Why make the whole blessed house party,
including his hostess, pay for his being turned down in favor of young
Harry? Bad form, I call it. Any one would imagine that he was engaged
to be married to Joan and therefore had some right to a monopoly by the
way he goes on, snarling at everybody and showing the whites of his
eyes like a jealous collie. Everybody's talking, of course, and making
jokes about him, especially as it's perfectly obvious that the harder
he hunts her the more she dodges him.... Curious chap, Gilbert. He goes
through life like the ewe lamb of an over-indulgent mother and when he
takes a fancy to a thing he can't conceive why everybody doesn't rush
to give it him, whatever the cost or sacrifice.... If young Harry
hadn't been here to keep her amused and on the move I wonder if Joan
would have been a bit kinder to our friend G. P.? She's been in a weird
mood, as perverse as April. I don't mind her treating me as if I was a
doddering old gentleman so long as she keeps Gilbert off.... A
charming, pretty, heart-turning thing. I'd give something to know the
real reason why that husband of hers lets her run loose this way. And
where's her mother, and why don't those old people step in?--such a
child as she is. Well, it's a pretty striking commentary on the way our
young people are brought up, there's no doubt about it. If she was my
daughter, now--but I suppose she'd tell me to go and hang myself if I
tried to butt in. Divorce and a general mess-up-the usual end, I take
it."
He shook his head, and his ash dropped all over his clothes and he
began to nod. He would have given a great deal to put his feet on a
chair and a handkerchief over his face and sink into a blissful nap.
The young people had gone off somewhere, and there were only his wife,
the Major, and the bride on the veranda. And, after all, why shouldn't
he? Cornucopia could always be relied upon to play up--her
conversational well was inexhaustible, and as for Mrs.
Thatcher--nothing natural ever stopped the incessant wagging of her
tongue.
But it was not to be. He heard a new voice, the squeak of a cane chair
suddenly pushed back, looked up to see the Major in an attitude of
false delight and out came Mrs. Cooper Jekyll followed,--as he inwardly
exclaimed,--"by the gentle Alice Palgrave, by all that's complicating!
Well, I'm jiggered."
"Well," cried Cornucopia, extending her ample hand. "This IS a
surprise."
"Yes, I intended it to be," said Mrs. Jekyll, more than ever
Southampton in her plague veil and single eyeglass, "just to break the
aloofness of your beach life."
"And dear Alice, too,--neater than ever. How very nice to see you, my
dear, and how's your poor mother?"
Her little hand disappearing between Mrs. Hosack's two podgy members
like the contents of a club sandwich, Alice allowed herself to be
kissed on both cheeks, murmured an appropriate response, greeted the
Thatchers, waved to Hosack who came forward as quickly as he could with
pins and needles in one leg and threw a searching glance about for
Gilbert.
Every one caught it and gathered instinctively that Mrs. Jekyll had
been making mischief. She had certainly succeeded in her desire to
break the aloofness. The presence of Alice at that moment, with Gilbert
behaving like a madman, was calculated to set every imagination jumping.
"Um, this won't make G. P. any better tempered," thought Hosack, not
without a certain sense of glee.
Mrs. Jekyll disclosed her nose and mouth, which, it seemed, were both
there and in perfect condition. "I was in town yesterday interviewing
butlers,--that Swiss I told you about refused to be glared at by Edmond
and left us on the verge of a dinner party, summing us all up in a
burst of pure German,--and there was Alice having a lonely lunch at the
Ritz, just back from her mother's convalescent chair. I persuaded her
to come to me for a few days and what more natural than that she should
want to see what this wonderful air has done for Gilbert--who has
evidently become one of the permanent decorative objects of your
beautiful house."
"Cat," thought Mrs. Thatcher.
"And also for the pleasure of seeing so many old friends," said Alice.
"What a gorgeous stretch of sea!" She bent forward and whispered
congratulations to the Major's bride. Her quiet courage in the face of
what she knew perfectly well was a universal knowledge of the true
state of Gilbert's infatuation was good to watch. With his one brief
cold letter in her pocket and Mrs. Jekyll's innuendoes,--"all in the
friendliest spirit,"--raking her heart, her self-control deserved all
the admiration that it won from the members of the house party. To
think that Joan, her friend and schoolfellow in whose loyalty she had
had implicit faith should be the one to take Gilbert away from her.
With shrewd eyes, long accustomed to look below the surface of the thin
veneer of civilization that lay upon his not very numerous set, Hosack
observed and listened for the next half an hour, expecting at any
moment to see Joan burst upon the group or Gilbert make his appearance,
sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with
her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her
ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her
determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting
with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to
try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the
little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves,
her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives,
her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had the effect of
smashed crockery, her receptiveness to the underlying drama of the
situation and the cunning with which she managed to hide her anxiety to
be "on" in the scene which must inevitably come. He examined his old
friend, Thatcher, under whose perfect drawing-room manners, felicitous
quips and ready laughter there was an almost feminine curiosity as to
scandal and the inadvertent display of the family wash. And, having a
certain amount of humor, he even turned an introspective eye inwards
and owned up to more than a little excitement as to what was going to
happen when Gilbert realized that Mrs. Jekyll had brought his wife over
to rescue him. Conceive Gilbert being rescued! "All of us as near the
primeval as most of us are to lunacy," he told himself. "Education,
wealth, leisure and all the shibboleths of caste and culture,--how
easily they crack and gape before a touch of nature. Brooks Brothers
and Lucile do their derndest to disguise us, but we're still Adam and
Eve in a Turkish bath.... Somehow I feel,--I can't quite say why,--that
this comedy of youth in which the elements of tragedy have been dragged
in by Gilbert, is coming to a head, and unless things run off at a
sudden tangent I don't see how the curtain can fall on a happy ending
for Joan and the husband who never shows himself and the gentle Alice.
Spring has its storms and youth its penalties. I'm beginning to believe
that safety is only to be found in the dull harbor of middle-age, curse
it, and only then with a good stout anchor."
It was at the exact moment that Joan and Harry went together up the
incline towards Martin's cottage at Devon, eyed by Tootles through the
screen door, that Gilbert came back to the veranda and drew up short at
the sight of his wife.