Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence

  VI

  She wanted Martin. Everything that had happened that night made herwant Martin. He knew that she was a kid, and treated her as such. Hedidn't stand up and try and force her forward into being awoman--although, of all men, he had the right. He was big and generousand had given her his name and house and the run of the world, but notfrom his lips ever came the hard words that she had heard that night.How extraordinary that they should have come from Alice as well as fromGilbert.

  She wanted Martin. Where was Martin? She felt more like a bird, at thatmoment, than a butterfly--like a bird that had flown too far from itsnest and couldn't find its way back. She had been honest with Martin,all along. Why, the night before they had started on the street ofadventure, she had told him her creed, in that dark, quiet room withthe moonlight on the floor in a little pool, and had frankly cried out,"Who cares?" for the first time. And later, upstairs in her room, inhis house, she had asked him to leave her; and he had gone, because heunderstood that she wanted to remain irresponsible for a time and mustnot be taken by the shoulders and shaken into caring until she had hadher fling. He understood everything--especially as to what she meant bysaying that she would go joy-riding, that she would make life spinwhichever way she wanted it to go. It was the right of youth, and whatwas she but just a kid? He had never stood over her and demandedpayment, and yet he had given her everything. He understood that shewas new to the careless and carefree, and had never flung the wordhonest at her head, because, being so young, she considered that shecould be let off from making payments for a time.

  She wanted Martin. She wanted the comforting sight of his clean eyesand deep chest and square shoulders. She wanted to sit down knee toknee with him as they had done so often on the edge of the woods, andtalk and talk. She wanted to hear his man's voice and see thelaughter-lines come and go round his eyes. He was her pal and was asreliable as the calendar. He would wipe out the effect of thereproaches that she had been made to listen to by Alice and Gilbert.They might be justified; they were justified; but they showed a lack ofunderstanding of her present mood that was to her inconceivable. Shewas a kid. Couldn't they see that she was a kid? Why should they boththrow bricks at her as though she were a hawk and not a mere butterfly?

  Where was Martin? Why hadn't she seen him for several days? Why had hestayed away from home without saying where he was and what he wasdoing? And what was all this about a girl with a white face and redlips? Martin must have friends, of course. She had hers--Gilbert andHosack and the others, if they could be called friends. But why a girlwith a white face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle? Thatdidn't sound much like Martin.

  All these thoughts ran through Joan's mind as she walked about thedrawing-room with its open windows, in the first hour of the morning,sending out an S. O. S. to Martin. She ought to be in bed andasleep--not thinking and going over everything as if she were a woman.She wasn't a woman yet, and could only be a kid once. It was too bad ofAlice to try and force her to take things seriously so soon.Seriousness was for older people, and even then something to avoid ifpossible. And as for Gilbert--well, she didn't for one instant deny thefact that it was rather exciting and exhilarating for him to be in lovewith her, although she was awfully sorry for Alice. She had donenothing to encourage him, and it was really a matter of absoluteindifference to her whether he loved her or not, so long as he was athand to take her about. And she didn't intend to encourage him, either.Love meant ties and responsibility--Alice proved that clearly enough.There was plenty of time for love. Let her flit first. Let her remainyoung as long as she could, careless and care-free. The fact that shewas married was just an accident, an item in her adventure. It didn'tmake her less young to be married, and she didn't see why it should.Martin understood, and that was why it was so far-fetched of Alice tosuggest that her attitude could turn Martin's armor into broadcloth,and hint at his having ceased to be a knight because he had been seenwith a girl--never mind whether her face was white and her lips red,and her hair too golden.

  "I'm a kid, I tell you," she said aloud, throwing out her justificationto the whole world. "I am and I will be, I will be. I'll play the fooland revel in it as long as I can--so there. Who cares?" And she laughedonce more, and ran her hand over her hair as though waving all thesethoughts away, and shut the windows and turned out the lights and wentupstairs to her bedroom. "I'm a selfish, self-willed little devil,crazy about myself, thinking of nothing but having a good time," sheadded inwardly. "I know it, all of you, as well as you do, but give metime. Give me my head for a bit. When I must begin to pay, I'll paywith all I've got."

  But presently, all ready for bed, she put on a dressing gown and lefther room and padded along the passage in heelless slippers to Martin'sroom. He might have been asleep all this time. How silly not to havethought of that! She would wake him for one of their talks. It seemedan age since they had sat on the hill together among the young buds,and she had conjured up the high-reaching buildings of New York againstthe blue sky, like a mirage.

  She had begun to think again. Alice and Gilbert between them had sether brain working--and she couldn't stop it. What if the time had comealready when she must pull herself together and face facts and playwhat everybody called the game? Well, if it had, and she simplycouldn't hide behind youthfulness any longer, as Gilbert had said, shewould show that she could change her tune of "Who cares?" to "I care"with the best of them! "I'm only a little over eighteen. I don't knowquite what it is, but I'm something more than pretty. I'm still notmuch more than a flapper--an irritating, empty-headed,fashionable-school-fed, undisciplined, sophisticated kid. I know allabout that as well as they do. I'm making no pretense to be anythingdifferent. Heaven knows, I'm frank enough about it--even to myself. Butit's only a phase. Why not let me get over it and live it down? Ifthere's anything good in me, and there is, it will come out sooner orlater. Why not let me go through it my own way? A few months to playthe fool in--it isn't much to ask, and don't I know what it means to beold?"

  She hadn't been along that passage before. It was Martin's side of thehouse. She hadn't given much thought to Martin's side of anything. Shetried a door and opened it, fumbled for the button that would turn thelight on and found it. It was a large and usefully fitted dressing roomwith a hanging cupboard that ran all along one wall, with severaldoors. Two old shiny-faced English tallboys were separated by a bootrack. Between the two windows was a shaving glass over a basin. Therewas a bookcase on each side of the fire-place and a table convenientlynear a deep armchair with a tobacco jar, pipes and a box of cigarettes.Every available space of wall was crammed with framed photographs ofcollege groups, some showing men with the whiskered faces and thestrange garments of the early Victorian period, others of theclean-shaven men of the day, but all of them fit and eager andcare-free, caught in their happiest hours. It was a man's room,arranged by one, now used by another.

  Joan went through into the bedroom. The light followed her. There wasno Martin. It was all strangely tidy. Its owner might have been awayfor weeks.

  With a sense of chill and a feeling of queer loneliness, she went backto the dressing room. She wanted Martin. If Martin had been there, shewould have had it all out with him, freely and frankly. Somehow shecouldn't wave away the idea any longer that the time had come for herto cross another bridge. Thank God she would still be young, but thekid of her would be left on the other side. If Martin had been there,she would have told him some of the things that Alice had said aboutbeing honest and paying up, and left it to him to say whether thegirlhood which she had wanted to spin out was over and must be put awayamong her toys.

  Alice and Gilbert Palgrave,--curious that it should have been thosetwo,--had shaken her individualism, as well as something else, vagueand untranslatable, that she couldn't quite grasp, that eluded herhand. She sat down in the deep chair and with a little smile took upone of Martin's pipes and looked at it. The good tobaccoey scent of ittook her back to the hill on the edge of the woods, and in her mind'seye there
was a picture of two clean eyes with laughter-lines comingand going, a strong young face that had already caught the sun, squareshoulders and a broad chest, and a pair of reliable hands withspatulate fingers clasped round a knee. She could hear birds calling.Spring was in the air.

  Where was Martin?