Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence

  III

  There was a touch of idealism hidden away somewhere in Martin'scharacter. A more than usually keen-eyed boy had once called him "thepoet" at school. In order that this dubious nickname should bestrangled at birth, there had been an epoch-making fight. Both ladscame out of it in a more or less unrecognizable condition, but Martinreestablished his reputation and presently entered Yale free from thesuspicion of being anything but a first-rate sportsman and anindisputable man.

  There Martin had played football with all the desired bullishness. Hehad hammered ragtime on the piano like the best ordinary man in theUniversity. With his father he rode to hounds hell for leather, and hewrote comic stuff in a Yale magazine which made him admiringly regardedas a sort of junior George Ade. It was only in secret, and then with asneaking sense of shame, that he allowed his idealistic side to feed onBrowning and Ruskin, Maeterlinck and Barrie, and only when alone onvacation that he bathed in the beauty of French cathedrals, satthrilled and stirred by the waves of melody of the great composers,drew up curiously touched and awed at the sight of the places in thefamous cities of Europe that echoed with the footsteps of history.

  If the ideality of that boy had been seized upon and developed by asympathetic hand, if his lively imagination and passion for thebeautiful had been put through a proper educational course, he mighthave used the latent creative power with which nature had endowed himand taken a high place among artists, writers or composers. As it was,his machinelike, matter-of-fact training and his own self-consciousanxiety not to be different from the average good sportsman had madehim conform admirably to type. He was a fine specimen of the eager,naive, quick-witted, clean-minded young American, free from "side,"devoid of mannerisms, determined to make the utmost of life and itspossibilities.

  It is true that when death seized upon the man who was brother and palas well as father to Martin, all the stucco beneath which he had socarefully hidden his spiritual and imaginative side cracked and broke.Under the indescribable shock of what seemed to him to be wanton andmeaningless cruelty, the boy gave way to a grief that was angry andagonized by turns. He had left a fit, high-spirited father to drive toa golf shop to buy a new mashie, returned to take him out to SleepyHollow for a couple of rounds--and found him stretched out on the floorof the library, dead. Was it any wonder that he tortured himself withunanswerable questions, sat for hours in the dark trying with the mostpitiful futility to fathom the riddle of life, or that he wanderedaimlessly about the place, which was stamped with his father's fine andkindly personality,--like a stick suddenly swept out of the current ofthe main stream into a tideless backwater, untouched by the sun? Andwhen finally, still deaf to the call of spring, his father's message ofcourage, "We count it death to falter, not to die," rang out andstraightened him up and set him on the rails of action once again, itwas not quite the same Martin Gray who uttered the silent cry forcompanionship that found an answer in Joan's lonely and rebelliousheart. Sorrow had strengthened him. Out of the silent manliness ofgrief he went out again on the great main road with a wistful desire tolove and be loved, to find some one with whom to link an arm in anempty world all crowded with strangers--and there stood Joan.

  It was natural that he should believe, under those circumstances, thathe and she did not meet by mere accident, that they had been broughttogether by design--all the more natural when he listened to her storyof mental and physical imprisonment and came to see, during their dailystolen meetings, that he was as necessary to her as she was to him.Every time he left her and watched her run back to that old house ofold people, it was borne in upon him more definitely that he wasappointed in the cosmic scheme to rescue Joan from her peculiar cageand help her to try her wings. All about that young fresh, eagercreature whose eyes were always turned so ardently toward the city, hisimagination and superstition built a bower of love.

  He had never met a girl in any way like her--one who wanted so much andwould give so little in return for it, who had an eel-like way ofdodging hard-and-fast facts and who had made up her mind with all thezest and thoughtlessness of youth to mold life, when finally she couldprove how much alive she was, into no other shape than the one whichmost appealed to her. She surprised and delighted him with her quickmental turns and twists, and although she sometimes made him catch hisbreath at her astoundingly frank expression of individualism, he toldhimself that she was still in the chrysalis stage and could only get atrue and normal hang of things after rubbing shoulders with what shecalled life with a capital L.

  Two weeks slipped away more quickly than these two young things hadever known them to go, and the daily meetings, utterly guileless andfree from flirtation, were the best part of the day; but there was anew note in Joan's laugh as she swung out of the wood and went towardMartin one afternoon.

  He caught it and looked anxiously at her. "Is anything wrong?"

  "There will be," she said. "I just caught sight of Gleave among thetrees. He was spying!"

  "Why do you think so?"

  "Oh, he never walks a yard unless he has to. I thought I saw him eyingme rather queerly at lunch. I've been looking happy lately, and that'smade him suspicious."

  "But what can he do?"

  "What can't he do! Grandmother's one of the old-fashioned sort whothinks that a girl must never speak to a man without a chaperon. Theymust have been a lively lot of young women in her time! Gleave willtell her that I've been coming here to meet you, and then there'll be apretty considerable row."

  Martin was incredulous. He was in America in the twentieth century.Young people did as they liked, and parents hardly ventured toremonstrate. He showed his teeth in the silent laugh that wascharacteristic of him. "Oh, no! I'll be all right. Your grandfatherknew my father."

  "That won't make any difference. I believe that in a sort of way he'sjealous of my having a good time. Queer, isn't it? Are all old peoplelike that? And as to Grandmother, this will give her one of the finestchances to let herself go that she's had since I set a curtain on firewith a candle; and when she does that, well, things fly, I assure you."

  "Are you worried about it?"

  Joan gave a gesture of the most eloquent impatience. "I have to be,"she said. "You can't understand it, but I'm treated just as if I were alittle girl in short frocks. It's simply appalling. Everything I sayand do and look is criticized from the point of view of 1850. Can't youimagine what will be thought of my sneaking out every afternoon to talkto a dangerous young man who has only just left Yale and lives amonghorses?"

  That was too much for Martin. His laugh echoed among the trees.

  But Joan didn't make it a duet. "It wouldn't be so funny to you if youstood in my shoes, Martin," she said. "If I had gone to Grandmother andasked her if I might meet you,--and just think of my having to dothat,--she would have been utterly scandalized. Now, having done thisperfectly dreadful thing without permission, I shall be hauled up ontwo charges,--deceit and unbecoming behavior,--and I shall be punished."

  The boy wheeled around in amazement. "You don't mean that?"

  "Of course I mean it. Haven't I told you over and over again that thesetwo dear but irritating old people look down at me from their awfulpile of years and only see me as a child?"

  "But what will they do to you?"

  Joan shrugged her shoulders. "Anything they like. I'm completely attheir mercy. For Mother's sake I try to be patient and put up with itall. It's the only home I've got, and when you're dependent and haven'ta cent to bless yourself with, you can't pack up and telephone for acab and get out, can you? But it can't go on forever. Some day I shallanswer back, and sparks will fly, and I shall borrow money from thecoachman, who's my only friend, and go to Alice Palgrave and ask her toput me up until Mother comes back. I'm a queer case, Martin--that's thetruth of it. In a book the other day I came across an exact descriptionof myself. I could have laughed if it hadn't hit me so hard. It said:'She was a super-modern in an early-Victorian frame, a pint ofchampagne in a little old cut-glass bottle, a gnome engine attached
toa coach and pair.'" She picked up a stone and flung it down the hill.

  One eager wild thought rushed through Martin's brain. It had made hisblood race several times before, but he had thrown it aside because,during all their talks and walks, Joan had never once looked at himwith anything but the eyes of a sister. As his wife he could free her,lift her out of her anomalous atmosphere and take her to the city towhich her face was always turned. But he lacked the courage to speakand continued to hope that some day, by some miracle, she might becomeless superlatively neutral, less almost boyish in her way of treatinghim. He threw it aside again, tempted as he was to take advantage of achance to bribe her into becoming his wife with an offer of life. Thentoo, she was only eighteen, and although he was twenty-four and in thehabit of thinking of himself as a man of ripe years, he had to confessthat the mere idea of marriage made him feel awfully young and scared.And so he said nothing and went on hoping.

  Joan broke the silence. "Everything will be different when Mother comesback," she said. "I shall live with her then, and I give you my wordI'll make up for lost time. So who cares? There are three good hoursbefore I face Grandmother. Let's enjoy ourselves."