Who Cares? by Cosmo HamiltonA Story of Adolescence (page 5)

tanned youth, hatless and frank-eyed like Martin, and–

She got up. A cold hand seemed suddenly to have been placed on her heart. Joan,–it was Joan, the girl who, once before, at Martin’s house, had sent the earth spinning from under her feet and put Martin suddenly behind barbed wire. What hideous trick was this of Fate’s? Why was this moment the one chosen for the appearance of this girl,–his wife? This moment,–her moment?

Fight? With tooth and nail, with all the cunning and ingenuity of a member of the female species to protect what she regarded as her own. She and her plan against the world,–that was what it was. Thank God, Martin was not in sight. She had a free hand.

She had not been seen. A thick honeysuckle growing up the pillar had hidden her. She slipped into the house quickly, her heart beating in her throat. “I’ll try Lliis,” said Harry. “Wait here.” He left Joan within a few feet of the stoop, went up the two steps, and not finding a bell, knocked on the screen door. In less than an instant he saw the girl with bobbed hair come forward. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, with a little bow, “I thought Mr. Gray might live here,” and turned to go. Obviously it was the wrong house.

Very clearly and distinctly Tootles spoke. “Mr. Gray does live here. I’m Mrs. Gray. Will you leave a message?”

Harry wheeled round. He felt that the bullet which had gone through his back had lodged in Joan’s heart. He opened his mouth to speak but no word came. And Tootles spoke again, even more clearly and distinctly. She intended that her voice should travel.

“My husband won’t be back for several days,” she said, “but I shall be very glad to tell him that you called if you will leave your name.”

“It–it doesn’t matter,” said Harry, stammering. After an irresolute, unhappy pause, he turned to go–

He went straight to Joan. She was standing with her eyes shut and both hands on her heart, as white as a white rose. She looked like a young slim tree that had been struck by lightning.

“Joan,” he said, “Joan,” and touched her arm. There was no answer.

“Joan,” he said, “Joany.”

And with a little sob she tottered forward.

He caught her, blazing with anger that she had been so hurt, inarticulate with indignation and a huge sympathy, and with the one strong desire to get her away from that place, picked her up in his arms,–a dead delicious weight,–and carried her down the incline of sand and undergrowth to his car, put her in ever so gently, got in himself, backed the machine out, turned it and drove away.

And Tootles, breathing hard and shaking, stood on the edge of the stoop, and with tears streaming down her face, watched the car become a speck and disappear.

XI

The sun had gone down, and the last of its lingering glory had died before the yawl managed to cajole her way back to her mooring.

Dinner was ready by the time the hungry threesome, laughing and talking, arrived at the cottage. Howard, spoiling for a cocktail, made for the small square dining-room, and Irene, waving her hand to Tootles, cried out, “Cheero, dearie, you missed a speedy trip, I don’t think,” and took her into the house to tidy up in the one bathroom. Martin drew up short on the edge of the stoop, listened and looked about, holding his breath. It was most odd, but–there was something in the still air that had the sense of Joan in it.

After a moment, during which his very soul asked for a sight of her, he stumped into the living room and rang the bell impatiently.

The imperturbable Judson appeared at once, his eyebrows slightly raised.

“Has any one been here while I’ve been away?” asked Martin.

“No, sir. No one except Miss Capper, who’s been reading on the stoop.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“You never can be quite sure about anything in this life, sir, but I saw no one.”

“Oh,” said Martin. “All right, then.” But when he was alone, he stood again, listening and looking. There was nothing of Joan in the room. A mixture of honeysuckle and tobacco and the aroma of cooking that had slipped through the swing door into the the kitchen. That was all. And Martin sighed deeply and said to himself “Not yet. I must go on waiting,” and went upstairs to his bedroom. He could hear Irene’s voice above the rush of water in the bathroom and Howard’s, outside, raised in song. In the trees outside his window a bird was piping to its mate, and in the damp places here and there the frogs had already begun to try their voices for their community chorus. It was a peaceful earth, thereabouts falsely peaceful. An acute ear could easily have detected an angry roar of guns that came ever nearer and nearer, and caught the whisper of a Voice calling and calling.

When Martin returned to the wood-lined sitting room with its large brick chimney, its undergraduate chairs and plain oak furniture, its round thick blue and white mats and disorderly bookcase, Tootles was there, a Tootles with a high chin, a half defiant smile, and honeysuckle at her belt.

“Tootles.”

“Yes?”

“Have you been alone all the afternoon?”

“Yes.” (Fight? Tooth and nail.) “Except for the flies. . . . Why, boy?”

“Oh, nothing. I thought–I mean, I wondered–but it doesn’t matter. By gum, you have made the room look smart, haven’t you? Good old Tootles. Even a man’s room can be made to look like something when a girl takes an interest in it.”

If she had been a dog she would have wagged her tail and crinkled up her nose and jumped up to put her nozzle against his hand. As it was she flushed with pleasure and gave a little laugh. She was a thousandfold repaid for all her pains. But, during the first half of a meal made riotous by the invincible Howard and the animated Irene, Tootles sat very quiet and thoughtful and even a little awed. How could Martin have sensed the fact that she had been there? . . . Could she,–could she possibly, even with the ever-ready help of nature,–hope to win against such a handicap? She would see. She would see. It was her last card. But during all the rest of the meal she saw the picture of a muscular sun-tanned youth carrying that pretty unconscious thing down the incline to a car, and, all against her will, she was sorry. That girl, pampered as she was, outside the big ring of hard daily effort and sordid struggle as she always had had the luck to be, loved, too. Gee, it was a queer world.

The stoop called them when they left the boxlike dining room. It was still hot and airless. But the mosquitoes were out with voracious appetite and discretion held them to the living room.

Irene flung herself on the bumpy sofa with a cigarette between her lips and a box near to her elbow. “This’s the life,” she said. “I shall never be able to go back to lil’ old Broadway and grease paint and a dog kennel in Chorusland.”

“Sufficient for the day,” said Howard, loosening his belt. “If a miracle man blew in here right now with a million dollars in each hand and said: ‘Howard Guthrie Oldershaw,’–he’d be sure to know about the Guthrie,–‘this is all yours if you’ll come to the city,’ I’d . . .”

Irene leaned forward with her mouth open and her round eyes as big as headlights. “Well?”

“Take it and come right back.”

“You disappoint me, Funny-face. Go to the piano and hit the notes. That’s all you’re fit for.”

t was a baby grand, much out of tune, but Howard, bulging over the stool, made it sound like an orchestra,–a cabaret orchestra, and ran from Grieg to Jerome Kern and back to Gounod, syncopating everything with the gusto and the sense of time that is almost peculiar to a colored professional. Then he suddenly burst into song and sang about a baby in the soft round high baritone of all men who run to fat and with the same quite charming sympathy. A useful, excellent fellow, amazingly unself-conscious and gifted.

Martin was infinitely content to listen and lie back in a deep straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if–if her plan went through–

Howard lit another cigarette at the end of the song, but before he could get his hands on the notes again Irene bounded to her feet and went over to the piano. “Say, can you play ‘Love’s Epitome’?” she pronounced it “Eppy-tomy.”

“Can a duck swim?” asked Howard, resisting a temptation to emit a howl of mirth. She was too good a sort to chaff about her frequent maltreatment of the language.

“Go ahead, then, and I’ll give you all a treat.” He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. With gestures that could belong to no other school than that of the twice-dailies and the shrill nasal voice that inevitably goes with them, Irene, with the utmost solemnity, went solidly through the whole appalling thing, making the frequent yous “yee-ooo” in the true “vawdville” manner.

To Tootles it was very moving, and she was proud of her friend. Martin almost died of it, and Howard was weak from suppressed laughter. It was the first time that Irene had shown the boys what she could do, and she was delighted at their enthusiastic applause. She would have rendered another of the same sort gladly enough,–she knew dozens of them, if Tootles had not given her a quick look and risen to her feet.

“Us for the downey,” she said, and put the palm of her hand on Martin’s lips. He kissed it.

“Not yet,” said Howard. “It’s early.”

“Late enough for those who get up at dawn, old dear. Come on, Irene.”

And Irene, remembering what her friend had said that morning, played the game loyally, although most reluctant to leave that pleasant atmosphere, and said “Good night.” And she was in such good voice and Howard played her accompaniment like a streak. Well, well.

Tootles took her hand away gently, gave Martin a little disturbing smile, put her arm round the robust shoulders of her chum, opened the screen door and was gone.

Howard immediately left the piano. He had only played to keep things merry and bright. “Me for a drink,” he said. “And I think I’ve earned it.”

Martin’s teeth gleamed as he gave one of his silent laughs.

“How well you know me, old son,” he said.

“Of course. But–why?”

“I like Tootles awfully. She’s one in a million. But somehow it’s– oh, I dunno,–mighty difficult to talk to her.”

“Poor little devil,” said Howard involuntarily.

“But she’s having a real good time–isn’t she?”

“Is she?” He helped himself to a mild highball in reluctant deference to his weight.

“I’ve never seen her look so well,” said Martin.

Wondering whether to tell the truth about her state of mind, which his quick sophisticated eyes had very quickly mastered, Howard drank, and decided that he wouldn’t. It would only make things uncomfortable for Martin and be of no service to Tootles. If she loved him, poor little soul, and he was not made of the stuff to take advantage of it, well, there it was. He, himself, was different, but then he had no Joan as a silent third. No, he would let things alone. Poor old Tootles.

“Great weather,” he said, wrenching the conversation into a harmless generality. “Are you sleeping on the yawl to-night?”

“Yes,” replied Martin. “It’s wonderful on the water. So still. I can hear the stars whisper.”

“Most of the stars I know get precious noisy at night,” said Howard, characteristically unable to let such a chance go by. Then he grew suddenly grave and sat down. “Martin, I’m getting frightfully fed up with messing about in town. I’m going to turn a mental and physical somersault and get a bit of self-respect.”

“Oh? How’s that, old man.”

“It’s this damn war, I think. I’ve been reading a book in bed by a man called Philip Gibbs. Martin, I’m going to Plattsburg this August to see if they can make something of me.”

Martin got up. “I’m with you,” he said. “If ever we get into this business I’m going to be among the first bunch to go. So we may as well know something. Well, how about turning in now? There’ll be a wind to-morrow. Hear the trees?” He filled his pocket with cigarettes and slung a white sweater over his shoulder.

“All right,” said Howard. “I shall read down here a bit. I won’t forget to turn out and lock up.” He had forgotten one night and Judson had reported him.

“Good night, old son.”

“Good night, old man.”

XII

He was not given much to reading, but when Martin left the cottage and stood out in the liquid silver of the moon under the vast dome which dazzled with stars, and he caught the flash of fireflies among the undergrowth that were like the lanterns of the fairies a line came into his mind that he liked and repeated several times, rather whimsically pleased with himself for having found it at exactly the right moment. It was “the witching hour of night.”

He remained on top of the incline for a little while, moved to that spirit of the realization of God which touches the souls of sensitive men when they are awed by the wonder and the beauty of the earth. He stood quite still, disembodied for the moment, uplifted, stirred, with all the scents and all the whisperings about him, humble, childlike, able, in that brief flight of ecstasy, to understand the language of another world.

And then the stillness was suddenly cut by a scream of vacuous laughter, probably that of an exuberant Irish maid-servant, to whom silences are made to break, carrying on, most likely, a rough flirtation with a chauffeur.

It brought Martin back to earth like the stick of a rocket. But he didn’t go down immediately to the water. He sat there and nursed his knees and began to think. Whether it was Howard’s unexpected talk of Plattsburg and of being made something of or not he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was suddenly filled with a sort of fright. . . .”Good God,” he said to himself, “time’s rushing away, and I’m nearly twenty-six. I’m as old as some men who have done things and made things and are planted on their feet. What have I done? What am I fit to do? Nearly twenty-six and I’m still playing games like a schoolboy! . . . What’s my father saying? ‘We count it death to falter not to die’ . . . I’ve been faltering–and before I know anything about it I shall be thirty–half-time. . . . This can’t go on. This waiting for Joan is faltering. If she’s not coming to me I must go to her. If it’s not coming right it must end and I must get mended and begin again. I can’t stand in father’s shoes with all he worked to make in my hands like ripe plums. It isn’t fair, or straight. I must push up a rung and carry things on for him. Could I look him in the face having slacked? My God, I wish I’d watched the time rush by! I’m nearly twenty-six . . . Joan–to- morrow. That’s the thing to do.” He got up and strode quickly down to the water. “If she’s going to be my wife, that’s a good step on. And she can help me like no one but my father. And then I’ll make something of myself. If not . . . if not,–no faltering, Gray,–then I’ll do it alone for both their sakes.”

He chucked his sweater into the dingey, shoved it off the beach and sprang in and rowed strongly towards the yawl. Somehow he felt broader of back and harder of muscle for this summing up of things, this audit of his account. He was nearly twenty-six and nothing was done. That was the report he had to make to his conscience, that was what he had to say to the man who smiled down upon him from his place in the New York house. . . . Good Lord, it was about time that he pulled himself together.

The yawl was lying alone, aloof from the other small craft anchored near the pier. Her mast seemed taller and her lines more graceful silhouetted against the sky, silvered by the moon. It was indeed the witching hour of night.

He got aboard and tied up the dingey, cast a look round to see that everything was shipshape, took in a deep breath and went into the cabin. He was not tired and never felt less like sleep. His brain was clear as though a fog had risen from it, and energy beat in him like a running engine. He would light the lamp, get into his pajamas and think about to-morrow and Joan. He was mighty glad to have come to a decision.

Stooping, he lit the lamp, turned and gave a gasp of surprise.

There, curled up like a water sprite on the unmade bunk lay Tootles in bathing clothes, holding a rubber cap in her hand, her head, with its golden bobbed hair, dented into a cushion.

For a moment she pretended to be asleep, but anxiety to see how Martin was looking was too much for her. Also her clothes were wet and not very comfortable. She opened her eyes and sat up.

“My dear Tootles!” said Martin, “what’s the idea? You said you were going home to bed.” She would rather that he had been angry than amused. “It was the night,” she said, “and something in the air. I just had to bathe and swam out here. I didn’t think you’d be coming yet. I suppose you think I’m bug-house.”

“No, I don’t. If I hadn’t taken my bathing suit to the cottage to be mended I’d have a dip myself. Cigarette?” He held one out.

But she shook her head. How frightfully natural and brotherly this boy was, she thought. Was her last desperate card to be as useless as all the rest of the pack? How could it be! They might as well be on a desert island out there on the water and she the only woman on it.

“Feel a bit chilly? You’d better put on this sweater.”

She took it from him but laid it aside. “No. The air’s too warm,” she said. “Oh, ho, I’m so sleepy,” and she stretched herself out again with her hands under her head.

“I’m not,” said Martin. “I’m tremendously awake. Let’s talk if you’re not in a hurry to get back.”

“I’m very happy here,” she answered. “But must we have that lamp? It glares and makes the cabin hot.”

“The moon’s better than all the lamps,” said Martin, and put it out. He sat on his bunk and the gleam of his cigarette came and went. It was like a big firefly in the half dark cabin. “To-morrow,” he said to himself, with a tingle running through his blood, “to-morrow–and Joan.”

Tootles waited for him to speak. She might as well have been miles away for all that she affected him. He seemed to have forgotten that she was alive.

He had. And there was a long silence.

“To-morrow,–and Joan. That’s it. I’ll go over to Easthampton and take her away from that house and talk to her. This time I’ll break everything down and tell her what she means to me. I’ve never told her that.”

“He doesn’t care,” thought Tootles. “I’m no more than an old shoe to him.”

“If I’d told her it might have made a difference. Even if she had laughed at me she would have had something to catch hold of if she wanted it. By Jove, I wish I’d had the pluck to tell her.”

“He even looks at me and doesn’t see me,” she went on thinking, her hopes withering like cut flowers, her eagerness petering out and a great humiliation creeping over her. “What’s the matter with me? Some people think I’m pretty. Irene does . . . and last night, when I kissed him there was an answer. . . . Has that girl come between us again?”

And so they went on, these two, divided by a thousand miles, each absorbed in individual thought, and there was a long queer silence.

But she was there to fight, and having learned one side of men during her sordid pilgrimage and having an ally in Nature, she got up and sat down on the bunk at his side, snuggling close.

“You are cold, Tootles,” he said, and put his arm round her.

And hope revived, like a dying fire licked by a sudden breeze, and she put her bobbed head on his broad shoulder.

But he was away again, miles and miles away, thinking back, unfolding all the moments of his first companionship with Joan and looking at them wistfully to try and find some tenderness; thinking forward, with the picture of Joan’s face before him and wondering what would come into her eyes when he laid his heart bare for her gaze.

Waiting and waiting, on the steady rise and fall of his chest,–poor little starved Tootles, poor little devil,–tears began to gather, tears as hot as blood, and at last they broke and burst in an awful torrent, and she flung herself face down upon the other bunk, crying incoherently to God to let her die.

And once more the boy’s spirit, wandering high in pure air, fell like the stick of a rocket, and he sprang up and bent over the pitiful little form,–not understanding because Joan held his heart and kept it clean.

“Tootles,” he cried out. “Dear old Tootles. What is it? What’s happened?”

But there was only brotherliness in his kind touch, only the same solicitude that he had shown her all along. Nothing else. Not a thing. And she knew it, at last, definitely. This boy was too different, too much the other girl’s–curse her for having all the luck.

For an instant, for one final desperate instant, she was urged to try again, to fling aside control and restraint and with her trembling body pressed close and her eager arms clasped about his neck, pour out her love and make a passionate stammering plea for something,–just something to put into her memory, her empty loveless memory,–but suddenly, like the gleam of a lamp in a tunnel, her pride lit up, the little streak of pride which had taken her unprofaned through all her sordid life, and she sat up, choked back her sobs, and dried her face with the skirt of her bathing dress.

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “It’s the night or something. It got on my nerves, I suppose, like–like the throb of an organ. I dunno. I’m all right now, anyway.” And she stood in front of him bravely, with her chin up, but her heart breaking, and her attempt to make a laugh must surely have been entered in the book of human courage.

But before Martin could say anything, she slipped into the cockpit, balanced herself on the ledge of the cabin house, said “Good night, old dear,” and waved her hand, dived into the silver water and swam strongly towards the beach.

XIII

It began to dawn upon Hosack that Joan had slipped away with Harry Oldershaw from the fact that Palgrave first became restless and irritable, then had a short sharp spat with Barclay about the length of the line on the Western front that was held by the British and finally got up and went into the house and almost immediately prowled out alone for a sulky walk along the beach.

Chortling as he watched him, although annoyed that he, himself, was not going to have an opportunity of saying soft things to Joan for some hours, Hosack made himself comfortable, lit another cigar and pondered sleepily about what he called “the infatuation of Gilbert the precious.”

“I can sympathize with the feller’s being gone on the girl,” he said to himself, undisturbed by Regina’s frequent bursts of loud laughter at young Barclay’s quiet but persistent banter, “but dammit, why make a conspicuous ass of himself? Why make the whole blessed house party, including his hostess, pay for his being turned down in favor of young Harry? Bad form, I call it. Any one would imagine that he was engaged to be married to Joan and therefore had some right to a monopoly by the way he goes on, snarling at everybody and showing the whites of his eyes like a jealous collie. Everybody’s talking, of course, and making jokes about him, especially as it’s perfectly obvious that the harder he hunts her the more she dodges him. . . . Curious chap, Gilbert. He goes through life like the ewe lamb of an over-indulgent mother and when he takes a fancy to a thing he can’t conceive why everybody doesn’t rush to give it him, whatever the cost or sacrifice. . . . If young Harry hadn’t been here to keep her amused and on the move I wonder if Joan would have been a bit kinder to our friend G. P.? She’s been in a weird mood, as perverse as April. I don’t mind her treating me as if I was a doddering old gentleman so long as she keeps Gilbert off. . . . A charming, pretty, heart-turning thing. I’d give something to know the real reason why that husband of hers lets her run loose this way. And where’s her mother, and why don’t those old people step in?–such a child as she is. Well, it’s a pretty striking commentary on the way our young people are brought up, there’s no doubt about it. If she was my daughter, now–but I suppose she’d tell me to go and hang myself if I tried to butt in. Divorce and a general mess-up-the usual end, I take it.”

He shook his head, and his ash dropped all over his clothes and he began to nod. He would have given a great deal to put his feet on a chair and a handkerchief over his face and sink into a blissful nap. The young people had gone off somewhere, and there were only his wife, the Major, and the bride on the veranda. And, after all, why shouldn’t he? Cornucopia could always be relied upon to play up–her conversational well was inexhaustible, and as for Mrs. Thatcher– nothing natural ever stopped the incessant wagging of her tongue.

But it was not to be. He heard a new voice, the squeak of a cane chair suddenly pushed back, looked up to see the Major in an attitude of false delight and out came Mrs. Cooper Jekyll followed,- -as he inwardly exclaimed,–“by the gentle Alice Palgrave, by all that’s complicating! Well, I’m jiggered.”

“Well,” cried Cornucopia, extending her ample hand. “This IS a surprise.”

“Yes, I intended it to be,” said Mrs. Jekyll, more than ever Southampton in her plague veil and single eyeglass, “just to break the aloofness of your beach life.”

“And dear Alice, too,–neater than ever. How very nice to see you, my dear, and how’s your poor mother?”

Her little hand disappearing between Mrs. Hosack’s two podgy members like the contents of a club sandwich, Alice allowed herself to be kissed on both cheeks, murmured an appropriate response, greeted the Thatchers, waved to Hosack who came forward as quickly as he could with pins and needles in one leg and threw a searching glance about for Gilbert.

Every one caught it and gathered instinctively that Mrs. Jekyll had been making mischief. She had certainly succeeded in her desire to break the aloofness. The presence of Alice at that moment, with Gilbert behaving like a madman, was calculated to set every imagination jumping.

“Um, this won’t make G. P. any better tempered,” thought Hosack, not without a certain sense of glee.

Mrs. Jekyll disclosed her nose and mouth, which, it seemed, were both there and in perfect condition. “I was in town yesterday interviewing butlers,–that Swiss I told you about refused to be glared at by Edmond and left us on the verge of a dinner party, summing us all up in a burst of pure German,–and there was Alice having a lonely lunch at the Ritz, just back from her mother’s convalescent chair. I persuaded her to come to me for a few days and what more natural than that she should want to see what this wonderful air has done for Gilbert–who has evidently become one of the permanent decorative objects of your beautiful house.”

“Cat,” thought Mrs. Thatcher.

“And also for the pleasure of seeing so many old friends,” said Alice. “What a gorgeous stretch of sea!” She bent forward and whispered congratulations to the Major’s bride. Her quiet courage in the face of what she knew perfectly well was a universal knowledge of the true state of Gilbert’s infatuation was good to watch. With his one brief cold letter in her pocket and Mrs. Jekyll’s innuendoes,–“all in the friendliest spirit,”–raking her heart, her self-control deserved all the admiration that it won from the members of the house party. To think that Joan, her friend and schoolfellow in whose loyalty she had had implicit faith should be the one to take Gilbert away from her.

With shrewd eyes, long accustomed to look below the surface of the thin veneer of civilization that lay upon his not very numerous set, Hosack observed and listened for the next half an hour, expecting at any moment to see Joan burst upon the group or Gilbert make his appearance, sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives, her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had the effect of smashed crockery, her receptiveness to the underlying drama of the situation and the cunning with which she managed to hide her anxiety to be “on” in the scene which must inevitably come. He examined his old friend, Thatcher, under whose perfect drawing-room manners, felicitous quips and ready laughter there was an almost feminine curiosity as to scandal and the inadvertent display of the family wash. And, having a certain amount of humor, he even turned an introspective eye inwards and owned up to more than a little excitement as to what was going to happen when Gilbert realized that Mrs. Jekyll had brought his wife over to rescue him. Conceive Gilbert being rescued! “All of us as near the primeval as most of us are to lunacy,” he told himself. “Education, wealth, leisure and all the shibboleths of caste and culture,–how easily they crack and gape before a touch of nature. Brooks Brothers and Lucile do their derndest to disguise us, but we’re still Adam and Eve in a Turkish bath. . . . Somehow I feel,–I can’t quite say why,–that this comedy of youth in which the elements of tragedy have been dragged in by Gilbert, is coming to a head, and unless things run off at a sudden tangent I don’t see how the curtain can fall on a happy ending for Joan and the husband who never shows himself and the gentle Alice. Spring has its storms and youth its penalties. I’m beginning to believe that safety is only to be found in the dull harbor of middle-age, curse it, and only then with a good stout anchor.”

It was at the exact moment that Joan and Harry went together up the incline towards Martin’s cottage at Devon, eyed by Tootles through the screen door, that Gilbert came back to the veranda and drew up short at the sight of his wife.

XIV

It was when Gilbert, after a most affectionate greeting and ten minutes of easy small talk, led her away from the disappointed group, that Alice made her first mistake.

“You don’t look at all well, Gilbert,” she said anxiously.

The very fact that he knew himself to be not at all well made him hate to be told so. An irritable line ran across his forehead. “Oh, yes, I’m well,” he said, “never better. Come along to the summer house and let’s put a dune between us and those vultures.”

He led her down a flight of stone steps and over a stretch of undulating dry sand to the place where Hosack invariably read the morning paper and to which his servants led their village beaux when the moon was up, there to give far too faithful imitations of the hyena. And there he sat her down and stood in front of her, enigmatically, wondering how much she knew. “If it comes to that,” he said, “you look far from well yourself, Alice.”

And she turned her pretty, prim face up to him with a sudden trembling of the lips. “What do you expect,” she asked, quite simply, “when I’ve only had one short letter from you all the time I’ve been away.”

“I never write letters,” he said. “You know that. How’s your mother?”

“But I wrote every day, and if you read them you’d know.”

He shifted one shoulder. These gentle creatures could be horribly disconcerting and direct. As a matter of fact he had failed to open more than two of the collection. They were too full of the vibration of a love that had never stirred him. “Yes, I’m glad she’s better. I’m afraid you’ve been rather bored. Illness is always boring.”

“I can only have one mother,” said Alice.

Palgrave felt the need of a cigarette. Alice, admirable as she was, had a fatal habit, he thought, of uttering bromides.

And she instantly regretted the remark. She knew that way of his of snapping his cigarette case. Was that heavily be-flowered church a dream and that great house in New York only part of a mirage? He seemed to be the husband of some other girl, barely able to tolerate this interruption. She had come determined to get the truth, however terrible it might be. But it was very difficult, and he was obviously not going to help her, and now that she saw him again, curiously worn and nervous and petulant, she dreaded to ask for facts under which her love was to be laid in waste.

“No wonder you like this place,” she said, beating about the bush.

“I don’t. I loathe it. The everlasting drumming of the sea puts me on edge. It’s as bad as living within sound of the elevated railway. And at night the frogs on the land side of the house add to the racket and make a row like a factory in full blast. I’d rather be condemned to a hospital for incurables than live on a dune.” He said all this with the sort of hysteria that she had never noticed in him before. He was indeed far from well. Hardly, in fact, recognizable. The suave, imperturbable Gilbert, with the quiet air of patronage and the cool irony of the polished man of the world,–what had become of him? Was it possible that Joan had resisted him? She couldn’t believe such a thing.

“Then why have you stayed so long?” she asked, with this new point of view stirring hope.

“There was nowhere else to go to,” he answered, refusing to meet her eyes.

This was too absurd to let pass. “But nothing has happened to the house at Newport, and the yacht’s been lying in the East River since the first of June and you said in your only letter that the two Japanese servants have been at the cottage near Devon for weeks!”

“I’m sick of Newport with all its tuft-hunting women, and the yacht doesn’t call me. As for the cottage, I’m going there to-morrow, possibly to-night.”

Alice got up quickly and stood in front of him. There was a spot of color on both her cheeks, and her hands were clasped together. “Gilbert, let’s both go there. Let’s get away from all these people for a time. I won’t ask you any questions or try and pry into what’s happened to you. I’ll be very quiet and help you to find yourself again.”

She had made another mistake. His sensitiveness gave him as many quills as a porcupine. “Find myself,” he said, quoting her unfortunate words with sarcasm. “What on earth do you mean by that, my good child?”

She forced back her rising tears. Had she utterly lost her rights as a wife? He was speaking to her in the tone that a man uses to an interfering sister. “What’s to become of me?” she asked.

“Newport, of course. Why not? Fill the house up. I give you a free hand.”

“And will you join me there, Gilbert?”

“No. I’m not in the mood.”

He turned on his heel and went to the other side of the summer house, and flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the scrub below. A frog took a leap. When he spoke again it was with his back to her. “Don’t you think you’d better rejoin Mrs. Jekyll? She may be impatient to get off.”

But Alice took her courage in both hands. If this was to be the end she must know it. Uncertainty was not to be endured any longer. All her sleepless nights and fluctuations of hope and despair had marked her, perhaps for life. Hers was not the easily blown away infatuation of a debutante, the mere summer love of a young girl. It was the steady and devoted love of a wife, ready to make sacrifices, to forgive inconstancies, to make allowances for temporary aberrations and, when necessary, to nurse back to sanity, without one word or look of reproach, the husband who had slipped into delinquency. Not only her future and his were at stake, but there were the children for whom she prayed. They must be considered.

And so, holding back her emotion, she followed him across the pompous summer house in which, with a shudder, she recognized a horrible resemblance to a mausoleum, and laid her little hand upon his arm.

“Gilbert,” she said, “tell me the truth. Be frank with me. Let me help you, dear.”

Poor little wife. For the third time she had said the wrong thing. “Help”–the word angered him. Did she imagine that he was a callow youth crossed in love?

He drew his arm away sharply. There was something too domestic in all this to be borne with patience. Humiliating, also, he had to confess.

“When did I ever give you the right to delve into my private affairs?” he asked, with amazing cruelty. “We’re married,–isn’t that enough? I’ve given you everything I have except my independence. You can’t ask for more than that,–from me.”

He added “from me” because the expression of pain on her pretty face made him out to be a brute, and he was not that. He tried to hedge by the use of those two small words and put it to her, without explanation, that he was different from most men,–more careless and callous to the old-fashioned vows of marriage, if she liked, but different. That might be due to character or upbringing or the times to which he belonged. He wasn’t going to argue about it. The fact remained. “I’ll take you back,” he added.

But she blocked the way. “I only want your love,” she said. “If you’ve taken that away from me, nothing else counts.”

He gave a sort of groan. Her persistence was appalling, her courage an indescribable reproach. For a moment he remained silent, with a drawn face and twitching fingers, strangely white and wasted, like a man who had been through an illness,–a caricature of the once easy- going Gilbert Palgrave, the captain of his fate and the master of his soul.

“All right then,” he said, “if you must know, you shall, but do me the credit to remember that I did my best to leave things vague and blurred.” He took her by the elbow and put her into a chair. With a touch of his old thoughtfulness and rather studied politeness he chose one that was untouched by the sun that came low over the dune. Then he sat down and bent forward and looked her full in the eyes.

“This is going to hurt you,” he said, “but you’ve asked for the truth, and as everything seems to be coming to a head, you’d better have it, naked and undisguised. In any case, you’re one of the women who always gets hurt and always thrives on it. You’re too earnest and sincere to be able to apply eye-wash to the damn thing we call life, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Gilbert,” she answered, with the look of one who had been placed in front of a firing squad, without a bandage over her eyes.

There was a brief pause, filled by what he had called the everlasting drumming of the sea.

“One night, in Paris, when I was towering on the false confidence of twenty-one,”–curious how, even at that moment, he spoke with a certain self-consciousness,–“I came out of the Moulin Rouge alone and walked back to the Maurice. It was the first time I’d ever been on the other side, and I was doing it all in the usual way of the precocious undergraduate. But the ‘gay Paree’ stuff that was specially manufactured to catch the superfluous francs of the pornographic tourist and isn’t really in the least French, bored me, almost at once. And that night, going slowly to the hotel, sickened by painted women, chypre and raw champagne I turned a mental somersault and built up a picture of what I hoped I should find in life. It contained a woman, of course–a girl, very young, the very spirit of spring, whose laugh would turn my heart and who, like an elusive wood nymph, would lead me panting and hungry through a maze of trees. I called it the Great Emotion and from that night on I tried to find the original of that boyish picture, looking everywhere with no success. At twenty-nine, coming out of what seemed to be the glamor of the impossible, I married you to oblige my mother,–you asked for this,–and imagined that I had settled into a conventional rut. Do you want me to go on with it?”

“Please, Gilbert,” said Alice.

He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, “Well, if you enjoy the Christian martyr business it’s entirely your lookout.”

But he dropped his characteristic habit of phrase making and became more jerky and real. “I respected you, Alice,” he went on. “I didn’t love you but I hoped I might, and I played the game. I liked to see you in my house. You fitted in and made it more of a home than that barrack had ever been. I began to collect prints and first editions, adjust myself to respectability and even to look forward with pride to a young Gilbert.”

Alice gave a little cry and put her hand up to her breast. But he was too much obsessed by his own pain to notice hers.

“And then,–it’s always the way,–I saw the girl. Yes, by God, I saw the girl, and the Great Emotion blew me out of domestic content and the pleasant sense of responsibility and turned me into the panting hungry youth that I had always wanted to be.” He stopped and got up and walked up and down that mausoleum, with his eyes burning and the color back in his face.

“And the girl is Joan?” asked Alice in a voice that had an oddly sharp note for once.

“Yes,” he said. “Joan. . . . She’s done it,” he added, no longer choosing his words. “She’s got me. She’s in my blood. I’m insane about her. I follow her like a dog, leaping up at a kind word, slinking away with my tail between my legs when she orders me to heel. My God, it’s hell! I’m as near madness as a poor devil of a dope fiend out of reach of his joy. I wish I’d never seen her. She’s made me loathe myself. She’s put me through every stage of humiliation. I’d rather be dead than endure this craving that’s worse than a disease. You were right when you said that I’m ill. I am ill. I’m horribly ill. I’m . . . I’m . . .”

He stammered and his voice broke, and he covered his face with his hands.

And instantly, with the maternal spirit that goes with all true womanly love ablaze in her heart, Alice went to him and put her arms about his neck and drew his head down on her shoulder.

And he left it there, with tears.

A little later they sat down again side by side, holding hands.

As Hosack had told himself, and Gilbert had just said, things seemed to be coming to a head. At that moment Tootles was strung up to play her last card, Joan was being driven back by Harry from the cottage of “Mrs. Gray” and Martin, becalmed on the water, with an empty pipe between his teeth, was thinking about Joan.

Palgrave was comforted. The making of his confession was like having an abscess lanced. In his weakness, in his complete abandonment of affectation, he had never been so much of a man.

There was not to Alice, who had vision and sympathy, anything either strange or perverse in the fact that Gilbert had told his story and was not ashamed. Love had been and would remain the one big thing in her own life, the only thing that mattered, and so she could understand, even as she suffered, what this Great Emotion meant to Gilbert. She adopted his words in thinking it all over. They appealed to her as being exactly right.

She too was comforted, because she saw a chance that Gilbert, with the aid of the utmost tact and the most tender affection, might be drawn back to her and mended. She almost used Hosack’s caustic expression “rescued.” The word came into her mind but was instantly discarded because it was obvious that Joan, however impishly she had played with Gilbert, was unaffected. Angry as it made her to know that any girl could see in Gilbert merely a man with whom to fool she was supremely thankful that the complication was not as tragic as it might have been. So long as Joan held out. the ruin of her marriage was incomplete. Hope, therefore, gleamed like a distant light. Gilbert had gone back to youth. It seemed to her that she had better treat him as though he were very young and hurt.

“Dearest,” she said, “I’m going to take you away.”

“Are you, Alice?”

“Yes. We will go on the yacht, and you shall read and sleep and get your strength back.”

He gave a queer laugh. “You talk like a mother,” he said, with a catch in his voice.

She went forward and kissed him passionately.

“I love you like a mother as well as a wife, my man,” she whispered. “Never forget that.”

“You’re,–you’re a good woman, Alice; I’m not worthy of you, my dear.”

It pained her exquisitely to see him so humble. . . . Wait until she met Joan. She should be made to pay the price for this! “Who cares?” had been her cry. How many others had she made to care?

“I’ll go back to Mrs. Jekyll now,” she went on, almost afraid that things were running too well to be true, “and stay at Southampton to-night. To-morrow I’ll return to New York and have everything packed and ready by the time you join me there. And I’ll send a telegram to Captain Stewart to expect us on Friday. Then we’ll go to sea and be alone and get refreshment from the wide spaces and the clean air.”

“Just as you say,” he said, patting her hand. He was terribly like a boy who had slipped and fallen.

Then she got up, nearer to a breakdown than ever before. It was such a queer reversal of their old positions. And in order that he shouldn’t rise she put her hands on his shoulders and stood close to him so that his head was against her breast.

“God bless you, dearest boy,” she said softly. “Trust in me. Give all your troubles to me. I’m your wife, and I need them. They belong to me. They’re mine. I took them all over when you gave me my ring.” She lifted his face that was worn as from a consuming fire and kissed his unresponsive lips. “Stay here,” she added, “and I’ll go back. To-morrow then, in New York.”

He echoed her. “To-morrow then, in New York,” and held her hand against his forehead.

Just once she looked back, saw him bent double and stopped. A prophetic feeling that she was never to hear his voice again seized her in a cold grip,–but she shook it off and put a smile on her face with which to stand before the scandal-mongers.

And there stood Joan, looking as though she had seen a ghost.

XV

Alice marched up to her, blazing with anger and indignation. She was not, at that moment, the gentle Alice, as everybody called her, Alice-sit-by-the-fire, equable and pacific, believing the best of people. She was the mother-woman eager to revenge the hurt that had been done to one who had all her love.

“Ah,” she said, “you’re just in time for me to tell you what I think of you.”

“Whatever you may think of me,” replied Joan, “is nothing to what I think of myself.”

But Alice was not to be diverted by that characteristic way of evading hard words, as she thought it. She had seen Joan dodge the issues like that before, many times, at school. They were still screened from the veranda by a scrub-supported dune. She could let herself go.

“You’re a thief,” she blurted out, trembling and out of all control for once. “Not a full-blown thief because you don’t steal to keep. But a kleptomaniac who can’t resist laying hands on other women’s men. You ought not to be allowed about loose. You’re a danger, a trap. You have no respect for yourself and none for friendship. Loyalty? You don’t know the meaning of the word. You’re not to be trusted out of sight. I despise you and never want to see you again.”

Could this be Alice,–this little fury, white and tense, with clenched hands and glinting eyes, animal-like in her fierce protectiveness?

Joan looked at her in amazement. Hadn’t she already been hit hard enough? But before she could speak Alice was in breath again. “You can’t answer me back,–even you, clever as you are. You’ve nothing to say. That night at my house, when we had it out before, you said that you were not interested in Gilbert. If that wasn’t a cold- blooded lie what was it? Your interest has been so great that you’ve never let him alone since. You may not have called him deliberately, but when he came you flaunted your sex in his face and teased him just to see him suffer. You were flattered, of course, and your vanity swelled to see him dogging your heels. There’s a pretty expressive word for you and your type, and you know it as well as I do. Let me pass, please.”

Joan moved off the narrow board-walk without a word.

And Alice passed, but piqued by this unexpected silence, turned and went for her once most intimate friend again. If she was callous and still in her “Who Cares?” mood words should be said that could never be forgotten.

“I am Mrs. Gray. My husband won’t be back for several days,” These were the only words that rang in Joan’s ears now. Alice might as well have been talking to a stone.

“Things are coming to a head,” Alice went on, unconsciously using Gilbert’s expression and Hosack’s.

“And all the seeds that you’ve carelessly sown have grown into great rank weeds. Ask Mrs. Jekyll what you’ve driven Martin into doing if you’re curious to know. She can tell you. Many people have seen. But if you still don’t care, don’t trouble, because it’s too late. Go a few yards down there and look at that man bent double in the summer house. If you do that and can still cry out ‘Who Cares?’ go on to the hour when everything will combine to make you care. It can’t be far away.”

“I’m Mrs. Gray. My husband won’t be back for several days.” Like the song of death the refrain of that line rose above the sound of the sea and of Alice’s voice. Joan could listen to nothing else.

And Alice caught the wounded look in the eyes of the girl in whom she had once had faith and was recompensed. And having said all that she had had in her mind and more than she had meant to say, she turned on her heel, forced herself back into control and went smiling towards the group on the veranda. And there Joan remained standing looking as though she had seen a ghost,–the ghost of happiness.

“Mrs. Gray,–and her husband Martin. . . . But what have I got to say,–I, who refused to be his wife? It only seemed half true when I found them together before, although that was bad enough. But this time, now that my love for Martin has broken through all those days of pretending to pretend and that girl is openly in that cottage, nothing could be truer. It isn’t Martin who has taken off his armor. It’s I who have cut the straps and made it fall from his shoulders Oh, my God, if only I hadn’t wanted to finish being a kid.”

She moved away, at last, from the place where Alice had left her and without looking to the right or left walked slowly down to the edge of the sea. Vaguely, as though it was something that had happened in a former life, she remembered the angry but neat figure of Alice and a few of the fierce words that had got through to her. “Rank weeds . . . driven Martin . . . too late. . . . Who Cares?” Only these had stuck. But why should Alice have said them? It was all unnecessary. She knew them. She had said them all on the way back from Devon, all and many more, seated beside that nice boy, Harry, in his car. . . . She had died a few feet from the stoop of the cottage, in the scent of honeysuckle and Come back to something that wasn’t life to be tortured with regrets. All the way back she had said things to herself that Alice, angry and bitter as she had seemed to be, never could have invented. But they too were unnecessary. Saying things now was of no more use than throwing stones into the sea at any time. Rank weeds . . . driven Martin . . . too late . . . who cares–only who cares should have come first because everything else was the result.

And for a little while, with the feeling that she was on an island, deserted and forgotten, she stood on the edge of the sea, looking at a horizon that was utterly blank. What was she to do? Where was she to go? . . . Not yet a woman, and all the future lay about her in chaos. . . . Once more she went back in spirit to that room of Martin’s which had been made the very sanctum of Romance by young blood and moonlight and listened to the plans they had made together for the discovery of a woild out of which so many similar explorers had crept with wounds and bitterness.

“I’m going to make my mark,” she heard Martin cry. “I’m going to make something that will last. My father’s name was Martin Gray, and I’ll make it mean something out here for his sake.”

“And I,” she heard herself say, “will go joy-riding on that huge Round-about. I’ve seen what it is to be old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day and hour while I’m young. I can live only once, and I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to go. If I can get anybody to pay my whack, good. If not, I’ll pay it myself,–whatever it costs. My motto’s going to be a good time as long as I can get it and who cares for the price!”

Young fool, you young fool!

The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon them both.

“Yes, you’ll get a bill all right. How did you know that?”

And once more she heard her answer. “I haven’t lived with all those old people so long for nothing. But you won’t catch me grumbling if I get half as much as I’m going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take notes if you want to keep up with me. . . . I shall open the door of every known Blue Room, hurrying out if there are ugly things inside. I shall taste a little of every known bottle, feel everything there is to feel except the thing that hurts, laugh with everybody whose laugh is catching, do everything there is to do, go into every booth in the big Bazaar, and when I’m tired and there’s nothing left, slip out of the endless procession with a thousand things stored in my memory. Isn’t that the way to live?”

“Young fool, you young fool,” she cried, with the feeling of being forgotten and deserted, with not one speck on the blank horizon. “You’ve failed–failed in everything. You haven’t even carried out your program. Others have paid,–Martin and Gilbert and Alice, but the big bill has come in to you . . . Who cares? You do, you do, you young fool, and you must creep out of the procession with only one thing stored in your memory,–the loss of Martin, Martin.”

It was a bad hour for this girl-child who had tried her wings too young.

And when Gilbert straightened up and gave thanks to God for the woman who had never stirred him, but whose courage and tenderness had added to his respect, he too turned towards the sea with its blank horizon,–the sea upon which he was to be taken by his good wife for rest and sleep, and there was Joan . . . young, and slight and alluring, with her back to him and her hands behind her back, and the mere sight of her churned his blood again, and set his dull fire into flames. Once more the old craving returned, the old madness revived, as it always would when the sight and sound of her caught him, and all the common sense and uncommon goodness of the little woman who had given him comfort rose like smoke and was blown away. . . . To win this girl he would sacrifice Alice and barter his soul. She was in his blood. She was the living picture of his youthful vision. She only could satisfy the Great Emotion. . . . There was the plan that he had forgotten,–the lunatic plan from which, even in his most desperate moment, he had drawn back, afraid,–to cajole her to the cottage away from which he would send his servants; make, with doors and windows locked, one last passionate appeal, and then, if mocked and held away, to take her with him into death and hold her spirit in his arms.

To own himself beaten by this slip of a girl, to pack his traps and leave her the field and sneak off like a beardless boy,–was that the sort of way he did things who had had merely to raise his voice to hear the approach of obsequious feet? . . . Alice and the yacht and nothing but sea to a blank horizon? He laughed to think of it. It was, in fact, unthinkable.

He would put it to Joan in a different way this time. He would hide his fire and be more like that cursed boy. That would be a new way. She liked new things.

He left the summer house, only the roof of which was touched by the last golden rays of the sun, and with curious cunning adopted a sort of caricature of his old light manner. There was a queer jauntiness in his walk as he made his way over the sand, carrying his hat, and a flippant note in his voice when he arrived at her side.

“Waiting for your ship to come home?” he asked.

“It’s come,” she said.

“You have all the luck, don’t you?”

She choked back a sob.

He saw the new look on her face. Something,–perhaps boredom,– perhaps the constant companionship of that cursed boy,–had brought her down from her high horse. This was his chance! . . .

“You thought I had gone, I suppose?”

“Yes,” she said.

“To-morrow suits me best. I’m off to-morrow,–I’ve not decided where. A long journey, it may be. If you’re fed up with these people what do you say to my driving you somewhere for dinner? A last little dinner to remind us of the spring in New York?”

“Would you like me to very much?”

He steadied his voice. “We might be amused, I think.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she said.

“I’d love you to,” he answered. “It would be fair, too. I’ve not seen much of you here.”

Yes, it would be fair. Let her try, even at that late stage of the game, to make things a little even. This man had paid enough.

“Very well,” she said. “Let’s go.” It would be good to get away from prying eyes and the dull ache of pain for a few hours.

He could hardly believe his ears. Joan,–to give him something! It was almost incredible.

She turned and led the way up. The sun had almost gone. “I’ll get my hat at once,” she said, “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

His heart was thumping. “I’ll telephone to a place I know, and be waiting in the car.”

“Let me go in alone,” she said. “We don’t want to be held up to explain and argue. You’re sure you want me to come?” She drew up and looked at him.

He bowed to hide his face. “Of all things on earth,” he said.

She ran on ahead, slipped into the house and up to her room.

Exultant and full of hope, Gilbert waited for a moment before following her in. Going straight to the telephone room he shut the door, asked for the number of his cottage and drummed the instrument with his fingers.

At last!

“Is that you, Itrangi? . . . Lay some sort of dinner for two,–cold things with wine. It doesn’t matter what, but at once. I shall be over in about an hour. Then get out, with the cook. I want the place to myself to-night. Put the door key on the earth at the left-hand corner of the bottom step. Telephone for a car and go to the hotel at Sag Harbor. Be back in the morning about nine. Do these things without fail. I rely upon you.”

He hardly waited for the sibilant assurance before putting back the receiver. He went round to the garage himself. This was the first time he had driven Joan in his car. It might be the last.

Harry was at the bottom of the stairs as Joan came down.

“You’re not going out?” he asked. She was still in day clothes, wearing a hat.

“Yes, I am, Harry.”

“Where? Why?”

She laid her hand on his arm. “Don’t grudge Gilbert one evening,– his last. I’ve been perfectly rotten to him all along.”

“Palgrave? Are you going out with Palgrave?”

“Yes, to dine somewhere. I want to, Harry, oh, for lots of reasons. You know one. Don’t stop me.” Her voice broke a little.

“But not with Palgrave.”

“Why?”

“I saw him dodge out of the telephone room a minute ago. He looked– queer. Don’t go, Joan.”

“I must,” she said and went to the door. He was after her and caught hold of her arm.

“Joan, don’t go. I don’t want you to.”

“I must,” she said again.” Surely you can understand? I have to get away from myself.”

“But won’t I do?”

“It’s Gilbert’s turn,” she said. “Let go, Harry dear.” It was good to know that she hadn’t hurt this boy.

“I don’t like it. Please stay,” but he let her go, and watched her down the steps and into the car, with unaccountable misgiving. He had seen Gilbert’s face.

And he saw it again under the strong light of the entrance– triumphant.

For minutes after the car had gone, with a wave from Joan, he stood still, with an icy hand on his heart.

“I don’t like it,” he repeated. “I wish to God I’d had the right to stop her.”

She thought that he didn’t love her, and he had done his best to obey. But he did love her, more than Martin, it seemed, more than Gilbert, he thought, and by this time she was well on her way to– what?

PART FOUR

THE PAYMENT

I

It was one of those golden evenings that sometimes follows a hot clear day–one of those rare evenings which linger in the memory when summer has slipped away and which come back into the mind like a smile, an endearment or a broad sweet melody, renewing optimism and replenishing faith. The sun had gone, but its warm glow lingered in a sky that was utterly unspotted. The quiet unruffled trees in all the rich green of early maturity stood out against it almost as though they were painted on canvas. The light was so true that distances were brought up to the eye. Far-away sounds came closely to the ear. The murmur from the earth gathered like that of a multitude of voices responding to prayers.

Palgrave drove slowly. The God-given peace and beauty that lay over everything quieted the stress and storm of his mind. Somehow, too, with Joan at his side on the road to the cottage in which he was to play out the second or the last act of the drama of his Great Emotion, life and death caught something of the truth and dignity of that memorable evening–the sounds of life and the distance of death. If he was not to live with Joan he would die with her. There was, to him, in the state of mind into which this absorbing passion had worked him, no alternative. Love, that he had made his lodestar in early youth and sought in vain, had come at last. Marriage, convention, obligations, responsibility, balance and even sanity mattered nothing. They were swept like chaff before this sex-storm. Ten years of dreams were epitomized in Joan. She was the ideal that he had placed on the secret altar of his soul. She struck, all vibrant with youth, the one poetic note that was hidden in his character behind vanity and sloth, cynicism and the ingrained belief that whatever he desired he must have. And as he drove away from Easthampton and the Hosack house he left behind him Alice and all that she was and meant. She receded from his mind like the white cliffs of a shore to which he never intended to return. He was happier than he had ever been. In his curious exaltation, life, with its tips and downs, its pettiness, its monotony, lay far below him, as the moving panorama of land does to a flying man. His head was clear, his plan definite. He felt years younger–almost boyish. Laughter came easy–the sort of reasonless laughter that comes to tired men as they start out on a holiday. He saw the strangeness of it all with some wonder and much triumph. The Gilbert Palgrave who had been molded by money and inertia and autocracy was discarded, and the man with Joan at his side was the young Gilbert whom he had caught sight of that night in Paris, when, on his way home under the stars, Joan, with her brown hair and laughing eyes, tip-tilted nose and the spirit of spring in her breath, had come out of his inner consciousness and established herself like a shape in a dream.

His heart turned when he looked at Joan’s face. Was its unusual gravity due 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 believed so. She looked younger than ever, but sweeter, less flippant, less triumphantly irresponsible. She sat, like a child, with her hands in her lap, her mouth soft, an odd wistfulness in her eyes with their long curling lashes. A black straight-brimmed straw hat sat well down on her small head and put a shadow on her face. The slim roundness of her arms showed through the white silk shirt, and her low collar proved all the beauty 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 fastidious and carefully chosen, but simple, elemental words such as a farmhand might blunder out in the deep shadow of a lane, after dark. But he held them back. He would wait until after they had dined together and all round them there were silence and solitude. He drove still more slowly in order to give the two Japanese servants time to carry out his instructions and remove themselves. That cottage, which he had bought on the spur of the moment, fitted out with elaborate care and used only twice, for two weeks since, was to justify itself, after all. Who knows? He might have bought it two years before under an inspiration. Even then, months and months before he met Joan or knew of her existence, this very evening might have been mapped out He was a fatalist, and it fell into his creed to think so.

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

It was only when they turned into the narrow sandy road that was within a quarter of a mile of the club at Devon that Joan came out of the numbness that had settled upon her and recognized things that were stamped 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 her seat.

“Because my cottage is just here,” said Gilbert.

“At Devon?”

“Yes. Why not? I had a fancy for playing hermit from time to time. I saw the sun set behind the water,–a Byron sunset,–and in the hope of seeing just such another I bought this shack. I did those things once for want of something better. Look at it,” he said, and turned the car through a rustic gate, alive with honeysuckle.

It was a bungalow, put up on a space cleared among a wood of young trees that was carpeted with ferns. It might have been built for a poet or a novelist or just an ordinary muscular man who loved the water and the silences and the sense of being on the edge of the world. It was a bungalow of logs, roughly constructed and saved from utter banality by being almost completely clothed in wisteria. It was admirably suited to two men who found amusement in being primitive or to a romantic honeymoon couple who wanted to fancy themselves on a desert island. Better still, it might have been built for just that night, for Palgrave 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 the side of the house. There was no garage and not even a shed to give it cover. Gilbert left it in the open, where it remained sulky and supercilious, like a grand piano in an empty kitchen.

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

She wondered for a moment why no one came to open the door. Some one was there because smoke was coming out of a chimney. But she refused to be impatient. She had decided to give Gilbert one evening–to be nice to him for one evening. He was terribly humble. Fate had dealt her a smashing blow on the heart, and she had returned to consciousness wistfully eager to make up at least to this man as well as she could for the pain that she had caused. There was only this one evening in which 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, having fallen off the Round-about, of which she had spoken so much. She was going back a sort of cripple to the place from which she had escaped to put the key into life; once more to read to her grandfather, to obey the orders of her grandmother, to sleep in the warm kind arms of her old bedroom, to go among the flowers and trees among which she had grown up, herself old and tired and ashamed and broken-hearted, with her gold ring burning into her finger and the constant vision of Martin’s shining armor lying bent and rusty before her eyes. What an end to her great adventure!

Gilbert came up. He walked without his usual affectation of never permitting anything to hurry him. All about him there was still a sort of exaltation. His eyes were amazingly bright. His face had lost its cynicism. Ten years seemed to have fallen from his shoulders like a pack. He was a youth again, like Martin and Harry and Howard. Joan noticed all this and was vaguely surprised–and glad, because obviously she was giving him pleasure. He deserved it after her impish treatment of him. What a fool she had been.

He said, bending down, “We keep the key here,” and picked it up, unlocked 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 the long low living room with its big brick chimney and open fireplace absolutely right had dispelled his boredom–little as he had intended to use it. The whole thing was carried out on the lines of the main room in an English shooting box. The walls were matchboarded and stained an oak color, and the floor was polished and covered with skins. Old pewter plates and mugs, and queer ugly delightful bits of pottery were everywhere–on shelves, on the wide mantelpiece, and hanging from the beams. Colored sporting prints covered the walls, among stuffed fish and heads of deer with royal antlers and beady eyes with a fixed stare. The furniture was Jacobean–the chairs with ladder backs and cane seats; a wide dresser, lined with colored plates; a long narrow table with rails and bulging legs. Two old oak church pews were set on each side of the fireplace filled with cushions covered with a merry chintz. There were flowers everywhere in big bowls–red rambler roses, primula, sweet williams, Shasta daisies, and scarlet poppies. All the windows were open, and there was nothing damp or musty in the smell of the room. On the contrary, the companionable aroma of tobacco smoke hung in the air mixed with the sweet faint scent of flowers. The place seemed “lived-in”–as well it might. The two Japs had played gentlemen there for some weeks. The table was laid for two, and appetizing dishes of cold food, salad and fruit were spread out on the dresser 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. A bathroom and kitchen beyond. There’s water, of course, and electric light, and there’s a telephone. I loathe the telephone, the destroyer of aloofness, the missionary that breaks into privacy.” He switched on the lights in several old lanterns as he spoke. The day had almost disappeared.

He went over to her and stood smiling.

“Well, isn’t this better than a road-house reeking of food and flies and 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 joy clashed in his heart. He had suffered, gone sleepless, worn himself out by hard, grim exercise in order, who knew how many times, to master his almost unendurable passion. He had killed long nights, the very thought of which made him shudder, by reading books of which he never took in a word. He had stood up in the dark, unmanned, and cursed himself and her and 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 as beautiful as spring. He had thrown himself on his knees and wept like a young boy who had been hurt to the very quick by a great injustice. He had faced himself up, and with the sort of fear that comes to men in moments of physical danger, recognized madness in his eyes. But not until that instant, as she stood before him unguarded in his lonely cottage, so slight and sweet and unexpectedly gentle, her eyes as limpid as the water of a brook, her lips soft and kind and unkissed, her whole young body radiating virginity, did he really know how amazingly and frighteningly he loved her. But once again he held back a rush of adoring words and a desire to touch and hold and claim. The time had not come yet. Let her warm to him. Let him live down the ugliness of the mood that she had recently put him into, do away with the impression he must have given her of jealousy and petulance and scorn. Let her get used to him as a man who had it in him to be as natural and impersonal, and even as cubbish, as some of the boys she knew. Later, when night had laid its magic on the earth, he would make his 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 grotesque piece of old Staffordshire pottery which made St. George a stunted churchwar den with the legs of a child, his horse the kind of animal that would be used in a green grocer’s cart and the dragon a cross between 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 sideboard and satisfied himself that the thing which might have to put them into Eternity together lay there, loaded.

II

“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 per sistently 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.

But the word had begun to rankle. “Fencing!–Fencing! . . .”

He repeated it several times.

She watched him wander oddly about the room, thinking aloud rather than speaking to her. How different he had become. For the first time it dawned upon her that the whole look of the man had undergone a change. He held himself with less affectation. His petulance had gone. He was like a Gilbert Palgrave who had been ill and had come out of it with none of his old arrogance.

He took up a cigarette and began wandering again, muttering her unfortunate word. She was sorry to have hurt his feelings. It was the very last thing that she had wanted to do. “Aren’t there any matches?” she asked. “Ring for some.”

She was impatient of indecision.

He drew up and looked at her. “Ring? Why? No one will come.”

“Are we the only people in the house, then?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s part of my plan.”

“Plan?” She was on her feet. “What do you mean? Have you thought all this out and made a scheme of it?”

“Yes; all out,” he said. “The moment has come, Joan.”

No longer did the scent of honeysuckle take Joan back to the sun- bathed cottage and the voice behind the door. No longer did she feel that all this wasn’t really happening, that it was fantastic. Stark reality forced itself upon her and brought her into the present as though some one had turned up all the lights in a dark room. She was alone with the man whom she had driven to the limit of his patience. No one knew that she was there. It was a trick into which she had fallen out of a new wish to be kind. A sense of self-preservation scattered the dire effects of everything that had happened during the afternoon. She must get out, quickly. She made for the door.

But Gilbert was there first. He locked it, drew out the key, put it in his pocket and before she could turn towards the door leading to the other rooms, he was there. He repeated the process with peculiar deftness and when he saw her dart a look at the windows, he shook his head.

“You can’t jump through those screens,” he said.

“It isn’t fair,” she cried.

“Have you been fair?”

“I shall shout for help.”

“The nearest cottage is too far away for any one to hear you.”

“What are you going to do?”

He went back to her. He was far too quiet and dignified and unlike himself. She could have managed the old vain Gilbert. A scoffing laugh, and he would have withered. But this new Gilbert, who looked at her with such a curious, exalted expression–what was she to do with him?

“Joan,” he said, “listen. This is the end or the beginning. I haven’t locked the doors and sent the servants away to get you into a vulgar trap. I might have done it a few weeks ago, but not as I am now. This is my night, my beautiful Joan. You have given it to me. After all this fencing, as you call it, you are here with me alone, as far away from the old foolishness as if you were out at sea. What I have to say is so much a private thing, and what I may have to do so much a matter to be treated with the profoundest solemnity that we must run no risk of disturbance. Do you begin to understand, little Joan?”

“No,” she said.

“I will explain it to you, then. You are very young and have been very thoughtless. You haven’t stopped to think that you have been playing with a soul as well as a heart. I have brought you here to- night to face things up simply and quietly and finally, and leave it to you to make a choice.”

“A choice?”

“Yes, between life with me or death in my arms.”

III

All that was healthy and normal in Joan broke into revolt. There was something erotic, uncanny about all this. Life or death? What was he talking about? Her pride, too, which had never been put to such a test, was up in arms against the unfairness and cunning of the way in which she had been taken advantage of. She had meant to be kind and pay something of her debt to this man, and it was a vulgar trap, whatever he said in excuse. Let him dare to touch her. Let him dare. She would show him how strong she was and put up such a fight as would amaze him. Just now she had placed herself among those old people and old trees, because she had suffered. But she was young, tingling with youth, and her slate was clean, notwithstanding the fool game that she had played, and she would keep it clean, if she had to fight her way out.

She took up her stand behind the table, alert and watchful.

“I don’t get you when you go in for melodrama,” she said. “I much prefer your usual way of talking. Translate for me.” She spoke scornfully because hitherto she had been able to turn him off by scorn.

But it didn’t work this time. It was not anger that came into his eyes, only an unexpected and disconcerting reproach. He made no attempt to go near her. He looked extraordinarily patient and gentle. She had never seen him like this before. “Don’t stand there,” he said. “Come and sit down and let’s go into this sensibly, like people who have emerged from stupidity. In any case you are not going back to Easthampton to-night.”

She began to be frightened. “Not going back to Easthampton?”

“No, my dear.”

She left her place behind the table and went up to him. Had all the world gone wrong? Had her foolishness been so colossal that she was to be broken twice on the same day? “Gilbert,” she said. “What is it? What do you mean? Why do you say these odd things in this queer way? You’re–you’re frightening me, Gilbert.”

Young? She was a child as she stood there with her lovely face upturned. It was torture to keep his hands off her and not take her lips. But he did nothing. He stood steady and waited for his brain to clear. “Odd things in a queer way? Is that how I strike you?”

“Yes. I’ve never seen you in this mood before. If you’ve brought me here to make me say I’m sorry, I will, because I am sorry. I’d do anything to have all these days over again–every one since I climbed out of my old bedroom window. If you said hard things to me all night I should deserve them all and I’ll pay you what I can of my debt, but don’t ask me to pay too much. I trusted you by coming here alone. Don’t go back on me, Gilbert.”

He touched her cheek and drew his hand away.

“But I haven’t brought you here to make you humble yourself,” he said. “There’s nothing small in this. What you’ve done to me has left its marks, of course, deep marks. I don’t think you ever really understood the sort of love mine is. But the hour has gone by for apologies and arguments and regrets. I’m standing on the very edge of things. I’m just keeping my balance on the lip of eternity. It’s for you to draw me back or go tumbling over with me. That’s why you’re here. I told you that. Are you really so young that you don’t understand?”

“I’m a kid, I’m a kid,” she cried out, going back to her old excuse. “That’s the trouble.”

“Then I’ll put it into plain words,” he said, with the same appalling composure. “I’ve had these things in my mind to say to you for hours. I can repeat them like a parrot. If the sort of unimaginative people who measure everybody by themselves were to hear what I’m going to say, I suppose they would think I’m insane. But you won’t. You have imagination. You’ve seen me in every stage of what I call the Great Emotion. But you’ve not treated me well, Joan, or taken me seriously, and this is the one serious thing of my life.”

He was still under control, although his voice had begun to shake and his hands to tremble. She could do nothing but wait for him to go on. The crickets and the frogs filled in the short silence.

“And now it’s come to this. I can be played with no longer. I can’t wait for you any more. Either you love me, or you don’t. If you do, you must be as serious as I am, tear up your roots such as they are and come away with me. Your husband, who counts for as little as my wife, will set the law in action. So will Alice. We will wander among any places that take your fancy until we can be married and then if you want to come back, we will. But if you don’t and won’t love me, I can’t live and see you love any other man. I look upon you as mine. I created you for myself ten years ago. Not being able to live without you, I am not made of the stuff to leave you behind me. I shall take you and if there’s another life on the other side, live it with you. If not, then we’ll snuff out together. Like all great lovers, I’m selfish, you see. That’s what I meant when I talked just now about choice.”

He moved away, quietly, and piled several cushions into a corner of one of the pews. The look of exaltation was on his face again.

“Sit here, my dream girl,” he added, with the most wonderful tenderness, “and think it over. Don’t hurry. The night belongs to us.” He found a match and lit a cigarette and stood at one of the windows looking out at the stars.

But Joan was unable to move. Her blood was as cold as ice. As though a searchlight had suddenly been thrown on to Gilbert, she saw him as he was. “Unimaginative people will think I’m insane.” . . . SHE didn’t think he was insane, imaginative as he said she was. She KNEW it. If she had been able to think of one thing but Martin and that girl and her own chaos, she must have guessed it at Easthampton from the look in his eyes when he helped her into his car. . . . He had lost his balance, gone over the dividing hue between soundness and unsoundness. And it was her fault for having fooled with his feelings. Everything was her fault, everything. And now she stood on what Gilbert had called the lip of Eternity. “Who Cares?” had come back at her like a boomerang. And as to a choice between giving herself to Gilbert or to death, what was the good of thinking that over? She didn’t love this man and never could. She loved Martin, Martin. She had always loved Martin from the moment that she had turned and found him on the hill. She had lost him, that was true, He had been unable to wait. He had gone to the girl with the white face and the red lips and the hair that came out of a bottle. She had sent him to her, fool that she had been. Already she had decided to creep back to the old prison house and thus to leave life. Without Martin nothing mattered. Why put up a fight for something that didn’t count? Why continue mechanically to live when living meant waiting for death? Why not grasp this opportunity of leaving it actually, at once, and urge Gilbert on to stop the beating of her wounded and contrite heart? . . . Death, the great consoler. Sleep, endless sleep and peace.

But as she stood there, tempted, with the weight of Martin’s discarded armor on her shoulders and the sense of failure hanging like a millstone round her neck, she saw the creeper bursting into buds on the wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses and the low sweet crooning of baby voices– felt a tiny greedy hand upon her breast, was bewildered with a sudden overwhelming rush of mother-longing . . . young, young? Oh, God, she was young, and in the springtime with its stirring sap, its call to life and action, its urge to create, to build, its ringing cry to be up and doing, serving, sowing, tending–the pains of winter forgotten, hope in the warming sun.

She must live. Even without Martin she must live. She was too young for death and sleep and peace. Life called and claimed and demanded. It had need of the young for a good spring, a ripe summer, a golden autumn. She must live and work and justify.

But how?

There was Gilbert watching the stars with a smile, calmly and quietly and horribly waiting for her to make a choice, having slipped over on the other side of the dividing line. A scream of fear and terror rose to her throat. This quiet, exalted man, so