Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence

  V

  "You are going home?"

  "Yes," said Joan, "without the shadow of a doubt."

  "Which means that I'd better tell the chauffeur to drive round to theOne-o'clock, eh?"

  "I'll drop you there if you like. I'm really truly going home."

  "All right."

  Joan began to sing as the car bowled up Fifth Avenue. Movement alwaysmade her sing, and the effect of things slipping behind her. But shestopped suddenly as an expression of Alice's flicked across her memory."You'll catch Alice up, if you go straight back," she said.

  "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire! I wonder why it is the really good woman isnever appreciated by a man until he's obliged to sit on the other sideof the fireplace? I wish we were driving away out into the country. Ihave an unusual hankering to stand on the bank of a huge lake and watchthe moonlight on the water."

  Joan was singing again. The trees in the Park were bespattered withyoung leaves.

  Palgrave controlled an ardent desire to touch with his lips that coolwhite shoulder from which the cloak had slipped. It was extraordinaryhow this mere girl inflamed him. Alice--Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire! Sheseemed oddly like some other man's wife, these days.

  "Suppose I tell your man to drive out of the city beyond this rabble ofbricks and mortar?"

  But Joan went on singing. Spring was in her blood. How fast the car wasmoving, and those young clouds.

  Palgrave helped her out with a hot hand.

  She opened the door with her latch-key. "Thank you, Gilbert," she said."Good night."

  But Palgrave followed her in. "Don't you think I've earned the right toone cigarette?" He threw his coat into a chair in the hall and hung hishat on the longest point of an antler. It was a new thing for this muchflattered man to ask for favors. This young thing's exultant youth madehim feel old and rather humble.

  "There are sandwiches in the dining room and various things to drink,"said Joan, waving her hand toward it.

  "No, no. Let's go up to the drawing-room--that is, unless you--"

  But Joan was already on the stairs, with the chorus of her song. Shedidn't feel in the least like sleep with its escape from life. It wasso good to be awake, to be vital, to be tingling with the current ofelectricity like a telegraph wire. She flung back the curtains, raisedall the windows, opened her arms to the air, spilled her cloak on thefloor, sat at the piano and ragged "The Spring Song."

  "I am a kid," she said, speaking above the sound, and going on with herargument to Alice. "I am and I will be, I will be. And I'll play thefool and revel in it as long as I can--so there!"

  Palgrave had picked up the cloak and was holding it unconsciouslyagainst his immaculate shirt. It was the sentimental act of a virtuosoin the art of pleasing women--who are so easily pleased. At the momenthe had achieved forgetfulness of boudoir trickery and so retainedalmost all his usual assumption of dignity. Even Joan, with her quickeye for the ridiculous, failed to detect the bathos of his attitude,and merely thought that he was trying to be funny and not succeeding.

  It so happened that over Palgrave's shoulder she could see the boldcrayon drawing of Martin, brown and healthy and muscular, without anounce of affectation, an unmistakable man with his nice irregularfeatures and clean, merry eyes. There was strength and capabilitystamped all over him, and there was, as well, a pleasing sense ofreliability which gained immediate confidence. With the sort of shockone gets on going into the fresh air from a steam-heated room, sherealized the contrast between these two.

  There is always something as unreal about handsome men as there isabout Japanese gardens. Palgrave's hair was so scrupulously sleek andwiglike, his features so well-balanced and well-chosen, his wide-seteyes so large and long-lashed, and his fair, soft mustache somiraculously precise. His clothes, too, were a degree more thanperfect. They were so right as to be a little freakish because theyattracted as much attention as if they were badly cut. He was born fortea fights and winter resorts, to listen with a distrait half-smile tothe gushing adulation of the oh-my-dear type of women.

  He attracted Joan. She admired his assurance and polish and manners.With these three things even a man with a broken nose and a head baldas an egg can carry a beautiful woman to the altar. He was somethingnew to her, too, and she found much to amuse her in his way ofexpressing himself. He observed, and sometimes crystallized hisobservations with a certain neatness. Also, and she made no bones aboutowning to it, his obvious attention flattered her. All the same, shewas in the mood just then for Martin. He went better with the time ofyear, and there was something awfully companionable about his suddenlaugh. She would have hailed his appearance at that moment with anoutdoor cry.

  It was bad luck for Palgrave, because he now knew definitely that inJoan he had found the girl who was to give him the great emotion.

  She broke away from "The Spring Song" and swung into "D'ye Ken JohnPeel with His Coat So Gay?" It was Martin's favorite air. How often shehad heard him shout it among the trees on his way to meet her out thereon the edge of the woods where they had found each other. It wascurious how her thoughts turned to Martin that night.

  She left the piano in the middle of a bar. "One cigarette," she said,and held out a silver box.

  Palgrave's hand closed tightly over her slim white arm. In his throathis heart was pumping. He spoke incoherently, like a man. "God," hesaid, "you--you take my breath away. You make my brain whirl. Whydidn't you come out of your garden a year ago?"

  He was acting, she thought, and she laughed. "My arm, I think," shesaid.

  "No, mine. It's got to be mine. What's the good of beating about thebush?" He spoke with a queer hoarseness, and his hand shook.

  She laughed again. He was trying his parlor tricks, as Hosack hadcalled them one night at the Crystal Room, watching him greet a womanwith both hands. What a joke to see what he would do if she pretendedto be carried away. He might as well be made to pay for keeping her up."Oh, Gilbert," she said, "what are you saying!" Her shyness and frightwere admirable.

  They added fuel to his fire. "What I've been waiting to say for yearsand never thought I should. I love you. You've just got me."

  How often had he said those very words to other women! He did itsurpassingly well. She continued to act. "Oh, Gilbert," she said in alow voice, "you mustn't. There's Alice." Two could play at his pet game.

  "Yes, there is Alice. But what does that matter? I don't care, and youdon't. Your motto is not to care. You're always saying so. I'm no moremarried to Alice than you are to Gray. They're accidents, both of them.I love you, I tell you." And he ran his hand up to her shoulder andbore down upon her. Where were his manners and polish and assurance? Itwas amazing to see the change in the man.

  But she dodged away and took up a stand behind the piano and laughed athim. "You're an artist, Gilbert," she said. "It's all very well for youto practice on women of your own age, but I'm an unsophisticated girl.You might turn my head, you know."

  Her sarcasm threw him up short. She was mocking. He was profoundlyhurt. "But you've chosen me. You've picked me out. You've used me totake you to places night after night! Don't fool with me, Joan. I'm indead earnest."

  And she saw with astonishment that he was. His face was white, and hestood in a curious attitude of supplication, with his hands out. Shewas amazed, and for a moment thrilled. Gilbert Palgrave, the woman'sman, in love with her. Think of it!

  "But Gilbert," she said, "there's Alice. She's my friend." That seemedto matter more than the fact that she was his wife.

  "That hasn't mattered to you all along. Why drag it in now? Night afternight you've danced with me; I've been at your beck and call; you usedme to rescue you from Gray that time. What are you? What are you madeof? Unsophisticated! You!" He wasn't angry. He was fumbling at reasonsin order to try and get at her point of view. "You know well enoughthat a man doesn't put himself out to that extent for nothing. Whatbecomes of give and take? Do you conceive that you are going to sailthrough life taking everything and giving nothing?"

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sp; Martin had asked her this, and Alice, and now here was Gilbert Palgraveputting it to her as though it were an indictment! "But I'm a kid," shecried out. "What do you all mean? Can't I be allowed to have any funwithout paying for it? I'm only just out of the shell. I've only beenliving for a few weeks. Can't you see that I'm a kid? I have the rightto take all I can get for nothing,--the right of youth. What do youmean--all of you?"

  She came out from behind the piano and stood in front of him, as erectas a silver birch, and as slim and young. There was a great indignationall about her.

  His eager hands went out, and fell. He was not a brute. It would becowardly to touch this amazing child. She was armed with fearlessnessand virginity--and he had mistaken these things for callousness.

  "I don't know what to say," he said. "You stagger me. How long are yougoing to hide behind this youthfulness? When are you going to be oldenough to be honest? Men have patience only up to a point. At any rate,you didn't claim youth when Gray asked you to marry him--though you mayhave done so afterward. Did you?"

  She kept silent. But her eyes ran over him with contempt. According toher, she had given him no right to put such questions.

  He ignored it. It was undeserved. It was she who deserved contempt, nothe. And he threw it back at her in a strange incoherent outburst inwhich, all the same, there was a vibrating note of gladness and relief.And all the while, unmoved by the passion into which he broke, shestood watching with a curious gravity his no longer immobile face. Shewas thinking about Martin. She was redeveloping Martin's expressionwhen she had opened the door of her bedroom the night of her marriageand let him out. What about her creed, then? Was she hiding behindyouthfulness? Were there, after all, certain things that must be paidfor? Was she already old enough to be what Alice and this man calledhonest? Was every man made of the stuff that only gave for what hehoped to get in return?

  His words trailed off. He was wasting them, he saw. She was lookingthrough his head. But he rejoiced as to one thing like a potter whoopens the door of his oven and finds his masterpiece unbroken. Andsilence fell upon them, interrupted only by the intermittent humming ofpassing cars.

  Finally Palgrave took the cigarette box out of Joan's hand and put itdown on a little table and stood looking more of a man than might havebeen expected.

  "I've always hoped that one day I should meet you--just you," he saidquietly; "and when I did, I knew that it would be to love. Well, I'vetold you. Do what you can for me until you decide that you're grown up.I'll wait."

  And he turned and went away, and presently she heard a door shut andecho, and slow footsteps in the street below.

  Where was Martin?