Alice marched up to her, blazing with anger and indignation. She was
not, at that moment, the gentle Alice, as everybody called her,
Alice-sit-by-the-fire, equable and pacific, believing the best of
people. She was the mother-woman eager to revenge the hurt that had
been done to one who had all her love.
"Ah," she said, "you're just in time for me to tell you what I think of
you."
"Whatever you may think of me," replied Joan, "is nothing to what I
think of myself."
But Alice was not to be diverted by that characteristic way of evading
hard words, as she thought it. She had seen Joan dodge the issues like
that before, many times, at school. They were still screened from the
veranda by a scrub-supported dune. She could let herself go.
"You're a thief," she blurted out, trembling and out of all control for
once. "Not a full-blown thief because you don't steal to keep. But a
kleptomaniac who can't resist laying hands on other women's men. You
ought not to be allowed about loose. You're a danger, a trap. You have
no respect for yourself and none for friendship. Loyalty? You don't
know the meaning of the word. You're not to be trusted out of sight. I
despise you and never want to see you again."
Could this be Alice,--this little fury, white and tense, with clenched
hands and glinting eyes, animal-like in her fierce protectiveness?
Joan looked at her in amazement. Hadn't she already been hit hard
enough? But before she could speak Alice was in breath again. "You
can't answer me back,--even you, clever as you are. You've nothing to
say. That night at my house, when we had it out before, you said that
you were not interested in Gilbert. If that wasn't a cold-blooded lie
what was it? Your interest has been so great that you've never let him
alone since. You may not have called him deliberately, but when he came
you flaunted your sex in his face and teased him just to see him
suffer. You were flattered, of course, and your vanity swelled to see
him dogging your heels. There's a pretty expressive word for you and
your type, and you know it as well as I do. Let me pass, please."
Joan moved off the narrow board-walk without a word.
And Alice passed, but piqued by this unexpected silence, turned and
went for her once most intimate friend again. If she was callous and
still in her "Who Cares?" mood words should be said that could never be
forgotten.
"I am Mrs. Gray. My husband won't be back for several days," These were
the only words that rang in Joan's ears now. Alice might as well have
been talking to a stone.
"Things are coming to a head," Alice went on, unconsciously using
Gilbert's expression and Hosack's.
"And all the seeds that you've carelessly sown have grown into great
rank weeds. Ask Mrs. Jekyll what you've driven Martin into doing if
you're curious to know. She can tell you. Many people have seen. But if
you still don't care, don't trouble, because it's too late. Go a few
yards down there and look at that man bent double in the summer house.
If you do that and can still cry out 'Who Cares?' go on to the hour
when everything will combine to make you care. It can't be far away."
"I'm Mrs. Gray. My husband won't be back for several days." Like the
song of death the refrain of that line rose above the sound of the sea
and of Alice's voice. Joan could listen to nothing else.
And Alice caught the wounded look in the eyes of the girl in whom she
had once had faith and was recompensed. And having said all that she
had had in her mind and more than she had meant to say, she turned on
her heel, forced herself back into control and went smiling towards the
group on the veranda. And there Joan remained standing looking as
though she had seen a ghost,--the ghost of happiness.
"Mrs. Gray,--and her husband Martin.... But what have I got to say,--I,
who refused to be his wife? It only seemed half true when I found them
together before, although that was bad enough. But this time, now that
my love for Martin has broken through all those days of pretending to
pretend and that girl is openly in that cottage, nothing could be
truer. It isn't Martin who has taken off his armor. It's I who have cut
the straps and made it fall from his shoulders Oh, my God, if only I
hadn't wanted to finish being a kid."
She moved away, at last, from the place where Alice had left her and
without looking to the right or left walked slowly down to the edge of
the sea. Vaguely, as though it was something that had happened in a
former life, she remembered the angry but neat figure of Alice and a
few of the fierce words that had got through to her. "Rank weeds ...
driven Martin ... too late.... Who Cares?" Only these had stuck. But
why should Alice have said them? It was all unnecessary. She knew them.
She had said them all on the way back from Devon, all and many more,
seated beside that nice boy, Harry, in his car.... She had died a few
feet from the stoop of the cottage, in the scent of honeysuckle and
Come back to something that wasn't life to be tortured with regrets.
All the way back she had said things to herself that Alice, angry and
bitter as she had seemed to be, never could have invented. But they too
were unnecessary. Saying things now was of no more use than throwing
stones into the sea at any time. Rank weeds ... driven Martin ... too
late ... who cares--only who cares should have come first because
everything else was the result.
And for a little while, with the feeling that she was on an island,
deserted and forgotten, she stood on the edge of the sea, looking at a
horizon that was utterly blank. What was she to do? Where was she to
go? ... Not yet a woman, and all the future lay about her in chaos....
Once more she went back in spirit to that room of Martin's which had
been made the very sanctum of Romance by young blood and moonlight and
listened to the plans they had made together for the discovery of a
world out of which so many similar explorers had crept with wounds and
bitterness.
"I'm going to make my mark," she heard Martin cry. "I'm going to make
something that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'll
make it mean something out here for his sake."
"And I," she heard herself say, "will go joy-riding on that huge
Round-about. I've seen what it is to be old and useless, and so I shall
make the most of every day and hour while I'm young. I can live only
once, and I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to go. If I
can get anybody to pay my whack, good. If not, I'll pay it
myself,--whatever it costs. My motto's going to be a good time as long
as I can get it and who cares for the price!"
Young fool, you young fool!
The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon them
both.
"Yes, you'll get a bill all right. How did you know that?"
And once more she heard her answer. "I haven't lived with all those old
people so long for nothing. But you won't catch me grumbling if I get
half as much as I'm going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take
notes if you want to keep up with me.... I shall open the door of every
known Blue Room, hurrying out if there are ugly things inside. I shall
taste a little of every known bottle, feel everything there is to feel
except the thing that hurts, laugh with everybody whose laugh is
catching, do everything there is to do, go into every booth in the big
Bazaar, and when I'm tired and there's nothing left, slip out of the
endless procession with a thousand things stored in my memory. Isn't
that the way to live?"
"Young fool, you young fool," she cried, with the feeling of being
forgotten and deserted, with not one speck on the blank horizon.
"You've failed--failed in everything. You haven't even carried out your
program. Others have paid,--Martin and Gilbert and Alice, but the big
bill has come in to you ... Who cares? You do, you do, you young fool,
and you must creep out of the procession with only one thing stored in
your memory,--the loss of Martin, Martin."
It was a bad hour for this girl-child who had tried her wings too young.
And when Gilbert straightened up and gave thanks to God for the woman
who had never stirred him, but whose courage and tenderness had added
to his respect, he too turned towards the sea with its blank
horizon,--the sea upon which he was to be taken by his good wife for
rest and sleep, and there was Joan ... young, and slight and alluring,
with her back to him and her hands behind her back, and the mere sight
of her churned his blood again, and set his dull fire into flames. Once
more the old craving returned, the old madness revived, as it always
would when the sight and sound of her caught him, and all the common
sense and uncommon goodness of the little woman who had given him
comfort rose like smoke and was blown away.... To win this girl he
would sacrifice Alice and barter his soul. She was in his blood. She
was the living picture of his youthful vision. She only could satisfy
the Great Emotion.... There was the plan that he had forgotten,--the
lunatic plan from which, even in his most desperate moment, he had
drawn back, afraid,--to cajole her to the cottage away from which he
would send his servants; make, with doors and windows locked, one last
passionate appeal, and then, if mocked and held away, to take her with
him into death and hold her spirit in his arms.
To own himself beaten by this slip of a girl, to pack his traps and
leave her the field and sneak off like a beardless boy,--was that the
sort of way he did things who had had merely to raise his voice to hear
the approach of obsequious feet? ... Alice and the yacht and nothing
but sea to a blank horizon? He laughed to think of it. It was, in fact,
unthinkable.
He would put it to Joan in a different way this time. He would hide his
fire and be more like that cursed boy. That would be a new way. She
liked new things.
He left the summer house, only the roof of which was touched by the
last golden rays of the sun, and with curious cunning adopted a sort of
caricature of his old light manner. There was a queer jauntiness in his
walk as he made his way over the sand, carrying his hat, and a flippant
note in his voice when he arrived at her side.
"Waiting for your ship to come home?" he asked.
"It's come," she said.
"You have all the luck, don't you?"
She choked back a sob.
He saw the new look on her face. Something,--perhaps boredom,--perhaps
the constant companionship of that cursed boy,--had brought her down
from her high horse. This was his chance! ...
"You thought I had gone, I suppose?"
"Yes," she said.
"To-morrow suits me best. I'm off to-morrow,--I've not decided where. A
long journey, it may be. If you're fed up with these people what do you
say to my driving you somewhere for dinner? A last little dinner to
remind us of the spring in New York?"
"Would you like me to very much?"