"And now," he said gayly, "let's dine and, if you don't mind, I will
buttle. I hate servants in a place like this." He went to the head of
the table and drew back a chair.
Joan sat down, thanking him with a smile. It was hard to believe that,
with the words of that girl still ringing in her ears and the debris of
her hopes lying in a heap about her feet, she was going through the
process of being nice to this man who had his claims. It was unreal,
fantastic. It wasn't really happening. She must be lying face down on
some quiet corner of Mother Earth and watering its bosom with tears of
blood. Martin--Martin! It was all her fault.
Tomorrow she would be back again in the old house, with the old people
and the old dogs and the old trees and follow her old routine--old,
old. That was the price she must pay for being a kid when she should
have been a woman.
Palgrave stood at the sideboard and carved a cold chicken decorated
with slips of parsley. "Have you ever gone into a room in which you've
never been before and recognized everything in it or done some thing
for the first time that you suddenly realize isn't new to you?"
"Yes, often," replied Joan. "Why?"
"You've never sat in that chair until this minute and this chicken was
probably killed this morning. But I've seen you sitting in just that
attitude at that table and cut the wing of this very bird and watched
that identical smile round your lips when I put the plate in front of
you." He put it in front of her and the scent of her hair made him
catch his breath. "Oh, my God!" he said to himself. "This girl--this
beautiful, cool, bewitching thing--the dew of youth upon her, as chaste
as unsunned snow--Oh, my God...."
But Joan had caught the scent of honeysuckle, and back into her brain
came that cottage splashed with sun, the lithe figure of Harry
Oldershaw with his face tanned the color of mahogany and the clear
voice of "Mrs. Gray."
Gilbert filled her glass with champagne cup, carved for himself and sat
at the foot of the table. "The man from whom I bought this place," he
said, saying anything to make conversation and keep himself rig idly
light and, as he hoped, like Oldershaw, "owns a huge ready-made clothes
store on Broadway--appalling things with comic belts and weird pockets."
"Oh!" said Joan. Always, for ever, the scent of honeysuckle would bring
that picture back. Martin--Martin.
"He makes any amount of money by dressing that portion of young America
which sells motors and vacuum cleaners and gramaphone records and hangs
about stage doors smoking cheap cigarettes."
"Yes?" Joan listened but heard nothing except that high clear voice
coming through the screen door.
"He built this cottage as an antidote and spent his week-ends here
entirely alone with the trees and crickets, trying to write poetry. He
was very pleased with it and believed that this atmosphere was going to
make him immortal."
"I see,"--but all she saw was a porch covered with honeysuckle, a
hammock with an open book face downwards in it and the long shadow of
Harry Oldershaw flung across the white steps.
Gilbert went on--pathetically unable to catch the unaffected young
stuff of the nice boy and his kind. He had never been young.
"He had had no time during his hard struggle to read the masters, and
when, without malice, I quoted a chunk of Grey's 'Elegy' to him, the
poor devil's jaw fell, he withdrew his blank refusal to sell the place
to me, pocketed my cheque, packed his grip, and slouched off then and
there, looking as if a charge of dynamite had blown his chest away. His
garments, I notice, are as comic as ever, and I suppose he is now
living in a turretted house with stucco walls and stone lions at New
Rochelle, wedded to Commerce and a buxom girl who talks too much and
rag-times through her days."
Joan joined in his laugh. She was there to make up for her unkindness.
She would do her best under the circumstances. She hoped he would tell
lots of long stories to cover her wordlessness.
Gilbert emptied his glass and filled it again. He was half conscious of
dramatizing the episode as it unrolled itself and thrilled to think
that this might be the last time that he would eat and drink in the
only life that he knew. Death, upon which he had looked hitherto with
horror, didn't scare him if he went into it hand in hand with Joan.
With Alice trying, in her persistently gentle way, to cure him, life
was unthinkable. Life with Joan--there was that to achieve. Let the law
unravel the knots while he and she wandered in France and Italy, she
triumphantly young, and he a youth again, his dream come true.... Would
she have come with him to-night if she hadn't grown weary of playing
flapper? She knew what she meant to him. He had told her often enough.
Too often, perhaps. He had taken the surprise of it away, discounted
the romance..
He got up and gave her some salad and stood by her for a moment. He was
like a moth hovering about a lamp.
She smiled up at him again--homesick for the old bedroom and the old
trees, eager to sit in her grand father's room and read the paper to
him. He was old and out of life and so was she. Oh, Martin, Martin. Why
couldn't he have waited a little while longer?
The shock of touching her fingers as she took the salad plate sent the
blood to Gilbert's brain. But he reined himself in. He was afraid to
come to the point yet. Life was too good like this. The abyss yawned at
their feet. He would turn his back to it and see only the outstretched
landscape of hope.
They ate very little, and Joan ignored her glass. Gilbert frequently
filled his own, but he might just as well have been drinking water. He
was already drunk with love.
Finally, after a long silence, Joan pushed her chair back and got up.
Instantly he was in front of her, with his back to the door. "Joan," he
said, and held out his hands in supplication.
"Don't you think we ought to drive home now?" she asked.
"Home?"
"Yes. It must be getting late."
"Not yet," he said, steadying his voice. "Time is ours. Don't hurry."
He went down suddenly on to his knees and kissed her feet.
At any other time, in any other mood, the action would have stirred her
sense of the ridiculous. She would have laughed and whipped him with
sarcasm. He had done exuberant things before and left her unmoved
except to mirth. But this time she raised him up without a word, and he
answered her touch with curious unresistance, like a man hypnotized and
stood speechless, but with eyes that were filled with eloquence.
"Be good to-night, Gilbert," she said. "I've ... I've been awfully hurt
to-day and I feel tired and worn--not up to fencing with you."
The word "fencing" didn't strike home at first, nor did he gather at
once from her simple appeal that she had not come in the mood that he
had persuaded himself was hers.
"This is the first time that you've given me even an hour since you
drew me to the Hosacks," he said. "Be generous. Don't do things by
halves."
She could say nothing to that. She was there only because of a desire
to make up ever so little for having teased him. He had been
consistently generous to her. She had hoped, from his manner, that he
was simply going to be nice and kind and not indulge in romantics. She
was wrong, evidently. It was no new thing, though. She was well
accustomed to his being dramatic and almost foreign. He had said many
amazing things but always remained the civilized man, and never
attempted to make a scene. She liked him for that, and she had tried
him pretty high, she knew. She did wish that he would be good that
night, but there was nothing to say in reply to his appeal. And so she
went over to one of the pews and sat down among the cushions.
"I'll give you another hour, then," she said.