Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence

  PART FOUR

  THE PAYMENT

  I

  It was one of those golden evenings that sometimes follows a hot clearday--one of those rare evenings which linger in the memory when summerhas slipped away and which come back into the mind like a smile, anendearment or a broad sweet melody, renewing optimism and replenishingfaith. The sun had gone, but its warm glow lingered in a sky that wasutterly unspotted. The quiet unruffled trees in all the rich green ofearly maturity stood out against it almost as though they were paintedon canvas. The light was so true that distances were brought up to theeye. Far-away sounds came closely to the ear. The murmur from the earthgathered like that of a multitude of voices responding to prayers.

  Palgrave drove slowly. The God-given peace and beauty that lay overeverything quieted the stress and storm of his mind. Somehow, too, withJoan at his side on the road to the cottage in which he was to play outthe second or the last act of the drama of his Great Emotion, life anddeath caught something of the truth and dignity of that memorableevening--the sounds of life and the distance of death. If he was not tolive with Joan he would die with her. There was, to him, in the stateof mind into which this absorbing passion had worked him, noalternative. Love, that he had made his lodestar in early youth andsought in vain, had come at last. Marriage, convention, obligations,responsibility, balance and even sanity mattered nothing. They wereswept like chaff before this sex-storm. Ten years of dreams wereepitomized in Joan. She was the ideal that he had placed on the secretaltar of his soul. She struck, all vibrant with youth, the one poeticnote that was hidden in his character behind vanity and sloth, cynicismand the ingrained belief that whatever he desired he must have. And ashe drove away from Easthampton and the Hosack house he left behind himAlice and all that she was and meant. She receded from his mind likethe white cliffs of a shore to which he never intended to return. Hewas happier than he had ever been. In his curious exaltation, life,with its tips and downs, its pettiness, its monotony, lay far belowhim, as the moving panorama of land does to a flying man. His head wasclear, his plan definite. He felt years younger--almost boyish.Laughter came easy--the sort of reasonless laughter that comes to tiredmen as they start out on a holiday. He saw the strangeness of it allwith some wonder and much triumph. The Gilbert Palgrave who had beenmolded by money and inertia and autocracy was discarded, and the manwith Joan at his side was the young Gilbert whom he had caught sight ofthat night in Paris, when, on his way home under the stars, Joan, withher brown hair and laughing eyes, tip-tilted nose and the spirit ofspring in her breath, had come out of his inner consciousness andestablished herself like a shape in a dream.

  His heart turned when he looked at Joan's face. Was its unusual gravitydue to the fact that she had come to the end of fooling--that she, too,had sensed the finality or the beginning? He thought so. He believedso. She looked younger than ever, but sweeter, less flippant, lesstriumphantly irresponsible. She sat, like a child, with her hands inher lap, her mouth soft, an odd wistfulness in her eyes with their longcurling lashes. A black straight-brimmed straw hat sat well down on hersmall head and put a shadow on her face. The slim roundness of her armsshowed through the white silk shirt, and her low collar proved all thebeauty of her throat and neck. She looked more than ever unplucked,untouched, like a rosebud.

  On the tip of his tongue there were words of adoration, not fastidiousand carefully chosen, but simple, elemental words such as a farmhandmight blunder out in the deep shadow of a lane, after dark. But he heldthem back. He would wait until after they had dined together and allround them there were silence and solitude. He drove still more slowlyin order to give the two Japanese servants time to carry out hisinstructions and remove themselves. That cottage, which he had boughton the spur of the moment, fitted out with elaborate care and used onlytwice, for two weeks since, was to justify itself, after all. Whoknows? He might have bought it two years before under an inspiration.Even then, months and months before he met Joan or knew of herexistence, this very evening might have been mapped out He was afatalist, and it fell into his creed to think so.

  He didn't wonder why Joan was silent or ask himself jealously of whatshe was thinking. He chose to believe that she had arrived at the endof impishness, had grown weary of Harry Oldershaw and his cubbish waysand had turned to himself naturally and with relief, choosing hermoment with the uncanny intuition that is the gift of women. She wasonly just in time. To-morrow would have found him following thefaithful Alice on her forlorn hope--the incurable man.

  It was only when they turned into the narrow sandy road that was withina quarter of a mile of the club at Devon that Joan came out of thenumbness that had settled upon her and recognized things that werestamped with the marks of an afternoon that was never to be forgotten.Martin--Martin--and it was all her fault.

  "But why are you coming this way?" she asked, drawing back into herseat.

  "Because my cottage is just here," said Gilbert.

  "At Devon?"

  "Yes. Why not? I had a fancy for playing hermit from time to time. Isaw the sun set behind the water,--a Byron sunset,--and in the hope ofseeing just such another I bought this shack. I did those things oncefor want of something better. Look at it," he said, and turned the carthrough a rustic gate, alive with honeysuckle.

  It was a bungalow, put up on a space cleared among a wood of youngtrees that was carpeted with ferns. It might have been built for a poetor a novelist or just an ordinary muscular man who loved the water andthe silences and the sense of being on the edge of the world. It was abungalow of logs, roughly constructed and saved from utter banality bybeing almost completely clothed in wisteria. It was admirably suited totwo men who found amusement in being primitive or to a romantichoneymoon couple who wanted to fancy themselves on a desert island.Better still, it might have been built for just that night, forPalgrave and the girl who had taken shape in his one good dream.

  Joan got out of the opulent car and watched Gilbert run it round to theside of the house. There was no garage and not even a shed to give itcover. Gilbert left it in the open, where it remained sulky andsupercilious, like a grand piano in an empty kitchen.

  Joan had noticed this place twice that day--on the way out to findMartin, and again on the way back from having heard the voice of thegirl with the white face and the red lips and the hair that came out ofa bottle. Martin--Martin--and it was all her fault.

  She wondered for a moment why no one came to open the door. Some onewas there because smoke was coming out of a chimney. But she refused tobe impatient. She had decided to give Gilbert one evening--to be niceto him for one evening. He was terribly humble. Fate had dealt her asmashing blow on the heart, and she had returned to consciousnesswistfully eager to make up at least to this man as well as she couldfor the pain that she had caused. There was only this one evening inwhich to do so because to-morrow she was going back to the old house,the old people, the old servants and the old days, a failure, havingfallen off the Round-about, of which she had spoken so much. She wasgoing back a sort of cripple to the place from which she had escaped toput the key into life; once more to read to her grandfather, to obeythe orders of her grandmother, to sleep in the warm kind arms of herold bedroom, to go among the flowers and trees among which she hadgrown up, herself old and tired and ashamed and broken-hearted, withher gold ring burning into her finger and the constant vision ofMartin's shining armor lying bent and rusty before her eyes. What anend to her great adventure!

  Gilbert came up. He walked without his usual affectation of neverpermitting anything to hurry him. All about him there was still a sortof exaltation. His eyes were amazingly bright. His face had lost itscynicism. Ten years seemed to have fallen from his shoulders like apack. He was a youth again, like Martin and Harry and Howard. Joannoticed all this and was vaguely surprised--and glad, because obviouslyshe was giving him pleasure. He deserved it after her impish treatmentof him. What a fool she had been.

  He said, bending down, "We keep the key here," and picked it up,unl
ocked the door and stood back for her to pass.

  "Oh, isn't this nice!" said Joan.

  "Do you like it? It amused me to make it comfortable."

  "Comfortable! But it's like a picture."

  Gilbert laughed boyishly. Her enthusiasm delighted him. To make thelong low living room with its big brick chimney and open fireplaceabsolutely right had dispelled his boredom--little as he had intendedto use it. The whole thing was carried out on the lines of the mainroom in an English shooting box. The walls were matchboarded andstained an oak color, and the floor was polished and covered withskins. Old pewter plates and mugs, and queer ugly delightful bits ofpottery were everywhere--on shelves, on the wide mantelpiece, andhanging from the beams. Colored sporting prints covered the walls,among stuffed fish and heads of deer with royal antlers and beady eyeswith a fixed stare. The furniture was Jacobean--the chairs with ladderbacks and cane seats; a wide dresser, lined with colored plates; a longnarrow table with rails and bulging legs. Two old oak church pews wereset on each side of the fireplace filled with cushions covered with amerry chintz. There were flowers everywhere in big bowls--red ramblerroses, primula, sweet williams, Shasta daisies, and scarlet poppies.All the windows were open, and there was nothing damp or musty in thesmell of the room. On the contrary, the companionable aroma of tobaccosmoke hung in the air mixed with the sweet faint scent of flowers. Theplace seemed "lived-in"--as well it might. The two Japs had playedgentlemen there for some weeks. The table was laid for two, andappetizing dishes of cold food, salad and fruit were spread out on thedresser and sideboard, with iced champagne and claret cup.

  "The outside of the cottage didn't suggest all this comfort," said Joan.

  "Comfort's the easiest thing in the world when you can pay for it.There's one bedroom half the size of this and two small ones. Abathroom and kitchen beyond. There's water, of course, and electriclight, and there's a telephone. I loathe the telephone, the destroyerof aloofness, the missionary that breaks into privacy." He switched onthe lights in several old lanterns as he spoke. The day had almostdisappeared.

  He went over to her and stood smiling.

  "Well, isn't this better than a road-house reeking of food and fliesand made hideous by a Jazz band?"

  "Much better," she said.

  The delightful silence was broken by the crickets.

  "Martin--Martin," she thought, "and it was all my fault."

  A sort of tremble ran over Gilbert as he looked at her. Agony and joyclashed in his heart. He had suffered, gone sleepless, worn himself outby hard, grim exercise in order, who knew how many times, to master hisalmost unendurable passion. He had killed long nights, the very thoughtof which made him shudder, by reading books of which he never took in aword. He had stood up in the dark, unmanned, and cursed himself and herand life. He had denounced her to himself and once to her as a flapper,a fool-girl, an empty-minded frivolous thing encased in a body asbeautiful as spring. He had thrown himself on his knees and wept like ayoung boy who had been hurt to the very quick by a great injustice. Hehad faced himself up, and with the sort of fear that comes to men inmoments of physical danger, recognized madness in his eyes. But notuntil that instant, as she stood before him unguarded in his lonelycottage, so slight and sweet and unexpectedly gentle, her eyes aslimpid as the water of a brook, her lips soft and kind and unkissed,her whole young body radiating virginity, did he really know howamazingly and frighteningly he loved her. But once again he held back arush of adoring words and a desire to touch and hold and claim. Thetime had not come yet. Let her warm to him. Let him live down theugliness of the mood that she had recently put him into, do away withthe impression he must have given her of jealousy and petulance andscorn. Let her get used to him as a man who had it in him to be asnatural and impersonal, and even as cubbish, as some of the boys sheknew. Later, when night had laid its magic on the earth, he would makehis last bid for her kisses--or take her with him across the horizon.

  "How do you like that?" he asked, and pointed to a charmingly grotesquepiece of old Staffordshire pottery which made St. George a stuntedchurchwarden with the legs of a child, his horse the kind of animalthat would be used in a green grocer's cart and the dragon a crossbetween a leopard and a half-bred bulldog.

  "Very amusing," she said, going over to it.

  And the instant her back was turned, he opened a drawer in a sideboardand satisfied himself that the thing which might have to put them intoEternity together lay there, loaded.