Who Cares? A Story of Adolescence by Cosmo Hamilton

  IX

  The personnel of the Hosacks' house party had changed.

  Mrs. Noel d'Oyly had led her little husband away to Newport to staywith Mrs. Henry Vanderdyke, where were Beatrix and Pelham Franklin,with a bouncing baby boy, the apple of Mr. Vanderdyke's eye. EnidOuchterlony had left for Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her aunt,Mrs. Horace Pallant, entertained in an almost royal fashion and waseager to set her match-making arts to work on behalf of her onlyunmarried niece. Enid had gone to the very edge of well-bred lengths toland Courtney Millet, but Scots ancestry and an incurable habit oftalking sensibly and rather well had handicapped her efforts. She hadconfided to Primrose with a sudden burst of uncharacteristic incautionthat she seemed doomed to become an old man's darling. Her last wordsto the sympathetic Primrose were, "Oh, Prim, Prim, pray that you maynever become intellectual. It will kill all your chances." Miss Hosackwas, however, perfectly safe.

  Milwood, fired by a speech at the Harvard Club by Major General LeonardWood, had scratched all his pleasant engagements for the summer, andwas at Plattsburg learning for the first time, at the camp which willsome day occupy an inspiring chapter in the history of the UnitedStates, the full meaning of the words "duty" and "discipline." Theirplaces had been taken by Major and Mrs. Barnet Thatcher and dog, ReginaWaterhouse and Vincent Barclay, a young English officer invalided outof the Royal Flying Corps after bringing down eight German machines. Acork leg provided him with constant amusement. He had a good deal ofproperty in Canada and was making his way to Toronto by easy stages. Acheery fellow, cut off from all his cherished sports but free from eventhe suggestion of grousing. Of his own individual stunts, as he calledthem, he gave no details and made no mention of the fact that hecarried the D.S.O. and the Croix de Guerre in his bag. He had met theHosacks at the American Embassy in London in 1913. He was rather sweeton Primrose.

  The fact that Joan was still there was easily accounted for. She likedthe place, and her other invitations were not interesting. Hosackdidn't want her to go either, but of course that had nothing to do withit, and so far as Mrs. Hosack was concerned, let the bedroom beoccupied by some one of her set and she was happy enough. Indeed, itsaved her the brain fag of inviting some one else, "always difficultwith so many large houses to fill and so few people to go round, mydear."

  Harry Oldershaw was such a nice boy that he did just as he liked. If itsuited him he could keep his room until the end of the season. The caseof Gilbert Palgrave was entirely different. A privileged, spoiledperson, who made no effort to be generally agreeable and play up, hewas rather by way of falling into the same somewhat difficult categoryas a minor member of the British Royalty. His presence was an honoralthough his absence would have been a relief. He chose to prolong hisvisit indefinitely and there was an end of it.

  Every day at Easthampton had, however, been a nightmare to Palgrave.Refusing to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat playswith a mouse. Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next. Thevery instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway hishopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks andher disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw. She had taken amischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charmingand appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazingprotestations of love and leave him inarticulate with anger and woundedvanity. "If you want me to love you, make me," she had said. "I shallfight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best."He had done his best. With a totally uncharacteristic humbleness,forgetting the whole record of his former easy conquests, and with thisyoung slim thing so painfully in his blood that there were times whenhe had the greatest difficulty to retain his self-control, he hadconcentrated upon the challenge that she had flung at him and sethimself to teach her how to love with all the thirsty eagerness of aman searching for water. People who had watched him in his too wealthyadolescence and afterwards buying his way through life and achievingtriumphs on the strength of his, handsome face and unique positionwould have stared in incredulous amazement at the sight of thislove-sick man in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twisthim around her little finger and make him follow her about as if hewere a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, theegoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalantimpertinence, had picked and chosen. Was it possible?

  Everything is possible when a man is whirled off his feet by the GreatEmotion. History reeks with the stories of men whose natures werechanged, whose careers were blasted, whose honor and loyalty and commonsense were sacrificed, whose pride and sense of the fitness of thingswere utterly and absolutely forgotten under the stress of the sex stormthat hits us all and renders us fools or heroes, breaking or making asluck will have it and, in either case, bringing us to the common levelof primevality for the love of a woman. Nature, however refined andcultivated the man, or rarified his atmosphere, sees to this. Herselffeminine, she has no consideration for persons. To her a man is merelya man, a creature with the same heart and the same senses, working tothe same end from the same beginning. Let him struggle and cry"Excelsior!" and fix his eyes upon the heights, let him devote himselfto prayer or go grimly on his way with averted eyes, let him becomecynic or misogynist, what's it matter? Sooner or later she lays handsupon him and claims him as her child. Man, woman and love. It is theoldest and the newest story in the world, and in spite of the sneers ofthin-blooded intellectuals who think that it is clever to speak of loveas the particular pastime of the Bolsheviki and the literary parasiteswho regard themselves as critics and dismiss love as "mere sex stuff,"it is the everlasting Story of Everyman.

  Young and new and careless, obsessed only with the one idea of having agood time,--never mind who paid for it,--Joan knew nothing of thedanger of trifling with the feelings of a high-strung man who had neverbeen denied, a man over-civilized to the point of moral decay. If shehad paused in her determined pursuit of amusement and distraction toanalyze her true state of mind she might have discovered an angrydesire to pay Fate out for the way in which he had made things go withMartin by falling really and truly in love with Gilbert. As it was, sherecognized his attraction and in the few serious moments that forcedthemselves upon her when she was alone she realized that he could giveher everything that would make life easy and pleasant. She liked hiscalm sophistication, she was impressed, being young, by his utterdisregard of laws and conventions, and she was flattered at theunmistakable proofs of his passionate devotion. But she would have beensurprised to find beneath her careless way of treating herself andeverybody round her an unsuspected root of loyalty towards Alice andMartin that put up a hedge between herself and Gilbert. There was alsosomething in the fine basic qualities of her undeveloped character thatunconsciously made her resent this spoiled man's assumption of the factthat, married or not, she must sooner or later fall in with his wishes.She was in no mood for self-analysis, however, because that meant therenewal of the pain and deep disappointment as to Martin which was herone object to hide and to forget. So she kept Gilbert in tow, andsupplied her days with the excitement for which she craved by leadinghim on and laughing him off. It is true that once or twice she hadcaught in his eyes a look of madness that caused her immediately tocall the nice boy to her support and make a mental note of the factthat it would be wise never to trust herself quite alone with him, butwith a shrug of the shoulders she continued alternately to tease andcharm, according to her mood.

  She did both these things once again when she came up from the sea tofinish the remainder of the morning in the sun. Seeing Gilbert pacingthe veranda like a bear with a sore ear, she told Harry Oldershaw toleave her to her sun bath and signalled to Gilbert to come down to theedge of the beach. The others were still in the sea. He joined her witha sort of reluctance, with a look of gall and ire in his eyes that wasbecoming characteristic. There was all about him the air of a man whohad been sleeping badly. His face was white and drawn, and his fingerswere never still. He twisted a signet ring round and
round at onemoment and worried at a button on his coat the next. His nerves seemedto be outside his skin. He stood in front of Joan antagonistically andran his eyes over her slim young form in its wet bathing suit withgrudging admiration. He was too desperately in love to be able to applyto himself any of the small sense of humor that was his in normal timesand hide his feelings behind it. He was very far from being the GilbertPalgrave of the early spring,--the cool, satirical, complete man of theworld.

  "Well?" he asked.

  Joan pretended to be surprised. "Well what, Gilbert dear? I wanted tohave a nice little talk before lunch, that's all, and so I ventured todisturb you."

  "Ventured to disturb me! You're brighter than usual this morning."

  "Ah I? Is that possible? How sweet of you to say so. Do sit down andlook a little less like an avenging angel. The sand's quite warm anddry."

  He kicked a little shower of it into the air. "I don't want to sitdown," he said. "You bore me. I'm fed up with this place and sick totears of you."

  "Sick to tears of me? Why, what in the world have I done?"

  "Every conceivable and ingenious thing that I might have expected ofyou. Loyalty was entirely left out of your character, it appears. YoungOldershaw and the doddering Hosack measure up to your standard. I can'tcompete."

  Joan allowed almost a minute to go by in silence. She felt at the verytip-top of health, having ridden for some hours and gone hot into thesea. To be mischievous was natural enough. This man took himself soseriously, too. She would have been made of different stuff or haveacquired a greater knowledge of Palgrave's curious temperament to havebeen able to resist the temptation to tantalize.

  "Aren't you, by any chance, a little on the rude side this morning,Gilbert?"

  "If you call the truth rude," he said, "yes."

  "I do. Very. The rudest thing I know."

  He looked down at her. She was leaning against the narrow wooden backof a beach chair. Her hands were clasped round her white knees. Shewore little thin black shoes and no stockings. A tight rubber bathingcap which came low down on her forehead gave her a most attractivelyboyish look. She might have been a young French Pierrot in a picture bySem or Van Beers. He almost hated her at that moment, sitting there inall the triumph of youth, untouched by his ardor, unaffected by hispassion.

  "You needn't worry," he said. "You won't get any more of it from me. Sothat you may continue to amuse yourself undisturbed I withdraw from thebaby hunt. I'm off this afternoon."

  He had cried "Wolf!" so many times that Joan didn't believe him.

  "I daresay a change of air will do you good," she said. "Where are yougoing?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. "What's it matter? Probably to that cottageof mine to play hermit and scourge myself for having allowed you tomortify me and hold me up to the ridicule of your fulsome court ofadmirers."

  "Yes, that cottage of yours. You've forgotten your promise to drive meover to see it, haven't you?"

  Palgrave wheeled round. This was too much of a good thing. "Be careful,or my rudeness will become more truthful than even you will be able toswallow. Twice last week you arranged for me to take you over and bothtimes you turned me down and went off with young Oldershaw."

  "What IS happening to my memory?" asked Joan.

  "It must be the sea air."

  He turned on his heel and walked away.

  In an instant she was up and after him, with her hand on his arm.

  "I'm awfully sorry, Gilbert," she said. "Do forgive me."

  "I'd forgive you if you were sorry, but you're not."

  "Yes, I am."

  He drew his arm away. "No. You're not really anything; in fact you'renot real. You're only a sort of mermaid, half fish, half girl. Nothingcomes of knowing you. It's a waste of time. You're not for men. You'refor lanky youths with whom you can talk nonsense, and laugh at sillyjokes. You belong to the type known in England as the flapper--thatweird, paradoxical thing with the appearance of flagrant innocence andthe mind of an errand boy. Your unholy form of enjoyment is to put meninto false positions and play baby when they lay hands on you. Yourhourly delight is to stir passion and then run into a nursery and slamthe door. You dangle your sex in the eyes of men and as soon as you'vegot them crazy, claim chastity and make them ashamed. One of these daysyou'll drive a man into the sort of mad passion that will make him giveyou a sound thrashing or seduce you. I don't want to be that man.Oldershaw is too young for you to hurt and Hosack too old, andapparently Martin Gray has chucked you and found some human realperson. As for me, I've had enough. Good morning."

  And once more, having delivered himself coldly and clearly of thisbrutally frank indictment he went up the steps to the veranda and intothe house.

  There was not even the tail of a smile on Joan's face as she watchedhim go.

  Lunch was not quite the usual pleasant, happy-go-lucky affair that day.The gallant little Major, recently married to the fluffy-minded Mrs.Edgar Lee Reeves and her peevish little dog, sat on the right of theoverwhelmingly complacent Cornucopia. With the hope of renderinghimself more youthful for this belated adventure with the babblingwidow he had been treated by a hair specialist. The result was, asusual, farcically pathetic. His nice white hair which had given him acharming benignity and cleanness had been turned into a dead and mustyblack which made him look unearthly and unreal. His smart and carefullycherished moustache which once had laid upon his upper lip like cottonwool had been treated with the same ink-colored mixture. His clothes,once so perfectly suitable, were now those built for a man of HarryOldershaw's youthful lines and gave him the appearance of one who hadforced himself into a suit made for his son. It was of a very blueflannel with white lines,--always a trying combination. His tie andsocks were en suite and his gouty feet were martyrized to this schemeof camouflage by being pressed into a pair of tight brown and whiteshoes. Having been deprived of his swim for fear that his youthfulnessmight come off in the water and with the rather cruel badinage of hisold friend Hosack still rankling in his soul, the poor little oldgentleman was not in the best of tempers. Also he had spent most of themorning exercising Pinkie-Winkie while his wife had been writingletters, and his nerves were distinctly jaded. The pampered animalwhich had taken almost as solemn a part of his marriage vows as thebride herself had insisted upon making a series of strategic attacksagainst Mrs. Hosack's large, yellow-eyed, resentful Persian Tom, andhis endeavors to read the morning paper and rescue Pinkie from certainwreckage had made life a bitter and a restless business. He was unableto prevent himself from casting his mind back to those good bachelordays of the previous summer when he had taken his swim with the youngpeople, enjoyed his sunbath at the feet of slim and beautiful girls,and looked forward to a stiff cocktail in his bathhouse like a naturaland irresponsible old buck.

  Gilbert Palgrave faced him, an almost silent man who, to Cornucopia'sgreat and continually voiced distress, allowed her handsomely paidcook's efforts to go by contemptuously untouched. It rendered her ownenthusiastic appetite all the more conspicuous.

  For two reasons Hosack was far from happy. One was because Mrs. BarnetThatcher was seated on his right pelting him with brightness and theother because Joan, on his left, looked clean through his head wheneverhe tried to engage her in sentimental sotto voce.

  Gaiety was left to Prim and the wounded Englishman and to youngOldershaw and the towering Regina who continually threw back her headto emit howls of laughter at Barclay's drolleries while she displayedthe large red cavern of her mouth and all her wonderful teeth. Afterevery one of these exhausting paroxysms she said, with hercharacteristic exuberance of sociability, "Isn't he the best thing?"

  "Don't you think he's the most fascinating creature?" to any one whoseeye she caught,--a nice, big, beautiful, insincere girl who had beentaught at her fashionable school that in order to succeed in Societyand help things along she must rave about everything in extravagantlanguage and make as much noise as her lungs would permit.

  Joan's unusual lack of spirits was notic
ed by every one and especially,with grim satisfaction, by Gilbert Palgrave. With a return of optimismhe told himself that his rudeness expressed so pungently had had itseffect. He congratulated himself upon having, at last, been able toshow Joan the sort of foolish figure that she cut in his sight and evenwent so far as to persuade himself that, after all, she must dosomething more than like him to be so silent and depressed.

  His deductions were, however, as hopelessly wrong as usual. His drasticcriticism had been like water on a duck's back. It inspired amusementand nothing else. It was his remark that Martin Gray had chucked herand found some human real person that had stuck, and this, with theefficiency of a surgeon's knife, had cut her sham complacence andopened up the old wound from which she had tried so hard to persuadeherself that she had recovered. Martin-Martin-what was he doing? Wherewas he, and where was that girl with the white face and the red lipsand the hair that came out of a bottle?

  The old overwhelming desire to see Martin again had been unconsciouslyset blazing by this tactless and provoked man. It was so passionate andirresistible that she could hardly remain at the table until thereplete Cornucopia rose, rattling with beads. And when, after whatseemed to be an interminable time, this happened and the partyadjourned to the shaded veranda to smoke and catch the faint breezefrom the sea, she instantly beckoned to Harry and made for thedrawing-room.

  In this furniture be-clogged room all the windows were open, but theblazing sun of the morning had left it hot and stuffy. A hideoussquatting Chinese goddess, whose tongue, by a mechanical appliance,lolled from side to side, appeared to be panting for breath, and thecut flowers in numerous pompous vases hung their limp heads. It was agorgeously hot day.

  Young Oldershaw bounded in, the picture of unrealized health. His tanwas almost black, and his teeth and the whites of, his eyes positivelygleamed. He might have been a Cuban.

  "Didn't I hear you tell Prim last night that you'd had a letter fromyour cousin?"

  "Old Howard? Yes." He was sorry that she had.

  "Is Martin with him?" It was an inspiration, an uncanny piece offeminine intuition.

  Young Oldershaw was honest. "He's staying with Gray," he saidreluctantly.

  "Where?"

  "At Devon."

  "Devon? Isn't that the place we drove to the other day--with a littleclub and a sort of pier and sailboats gliding about?"

  "Yes. They've got one."

  Ah, that was why she had had a queer feeling of Martinism while she hadsat there having tea, watching the white sails against the sky. On oneof those boats bending gracefully to the wind Martin must have been.

  "Where are they living?"

  "In a cottage that belongs to a pal of Gray's, so far as I couldgather."

  In a cottage, together! Then the girl whom she had called "Fairy,"--thegirl who was human and real, according to Gilbert, couldn't be, surelycouldn't be, with them.

  "Will you drive me over?" she asked.

  "When?"

  "Now."

  "Why, of course, Joan, if I--must," he said. It somehow seemed to himto be wrong and incredible that she had a husband,--this girl, so freeand young and at the very beginning of things, like himself, and whomhe had grown into the habit of regarding as his special--hardlyproperty, but certainly companion and playmate.

  "If you're not keen about it, Harry, I'll ask Mr. Hosack or achauffeur. Pray don't let me take you an inch out of your way."

  In an instant he was off his stilts and on his marrow bones. "Pleasedon't look like that and say those things. You've only got to tell mewhat you want and I'll get it. You know that."

  "Thank you, Harry, the sooner the better, then," she said, with a smilethat lit up her face like a sunbeam. She must see Martin, she must, shemust! The old longing had come back. It was like a pain. And being withHoward Oldershaw in that cottage he was alone, and being alone he hadgot back into his armor. SHE had a clean slate.

  "Hurry, hurry," she said.

  And when Harry hurried, as he did then, though with a curiousmisgiving, there were immediate results. Before Joan had chosen a hat,and for once it was difficult to make a choice, she heard his whistleand from the window of her bedroom saw him seated, hatless and sunburntto the roots of his fair hair, in his low-lying two-seater.

  It was, at his pace, a short run eastward over sandy roads, lined withstunted oaks and thick undergrowth of poison ivy, scrub and ferns;characteristic Long Island country with here a group of small untidyshacks and there a farm and outhouses with stone walls and scrap heaps,clothes drying on a line, chickens on the ceaseless hunt and a line ofgeese prowling aimlessly, easily set acackle,--a primitiveend-of-everywhere sort of country just there, with sometimes a mile ofhalf burned trees, whether done for a purpose or by accident it wouldbe difficult to say. At any rate, no one seemed to care. It all had thelook of No Man's Land,--unreclaimed and unreclaimable.

  For a little while nothing was said. Out of a clear sky the sun beatdown upon the car and the brown sand of the narrow road. Many times theboy shot sidelong glances at the silent girl beside him, burning to askquestions about this husband who was never mentioned and who appearedto him to be something of a myth and a mystery. He didn't love Joan,because it had been mutually agreed that he shouldn't. But he held herin the sort of devoted affection which, when it exists between a boyand a girl, is very good and rare and even beautiful and puts themclose to the angels.

  Presently, catching one of these deeply concerned glances, she put herlittle shoulder against his shoulder in a sisterly way. "Go on, then,Harry," she said. "Ask me about it. I know you want to know."

  And he did. Somehow he felt that he ought to know, that he had theright. After all he had stopped himself from loving her at her urgentrequest, and their friendship was the best thing that he had everknown. And he began with, "When did you do it?"

  "Away back in history," she said, "or so it seems. It's really only afew months."

  "A few months! But you can hardly have been with him any time."

  "I have never really been with him," she said. She wanted him to knoweverything. Now that the wound was open again and Martin in possessionof her once more, she felt that she must talk about it all to some one,and who could be better than Harry, who was so like a brother?

  The boy couldn't believe that she meant what she implied but would havebitten off his tongue rather than put a direct question. "Is he such arotter?" he asked instead.

  "He's not a rotter. He's just Martin--generous, sensitive, deadstraight and as reliable as a liner. You and he were made in twinmolds."

  He flushed with pleasure--but it was like meeting a new Joan, aserious, laughterless Joan, with an odd little quiver in her voice andtears behind her eyes. He felt a new sense of responsibility by beingconfided in. Older, too. It was queer--this sudden switch fromthoughtless gaiety to something which was like illness in a house andwhich made Joan almost unrecognizable.

  He began again. "But then--" and stopped.

  "I'm the rotter," she said. "It's because of me that he's in Devon andI'm at Easthampton, that he's sailing with your cousin, and I'm playingthe fool with Gilbert. I was a kid, Harry, and thought I might go onbeing a kid for a bit, and everything has gone wrong and all the blameis mine."

  "You're only a kid now," said Harry, trying to find excuses for her. Heresented her taking all the blame.

  She shook her head. "No, I'm not. I'm only pretending to be. I came toEasthampton to pretend to be. All the time you've known me I've beenpretending,--pretending to pretend. I ceased to be a kid before thespring was over,--when I came face to face with something I had drivenMartin to do and it broke me. I've been bluffing since then,--bluffingmyself that I didn't care and that it wasn't my fault. I might havekept it up a bit longer,--even to the end of the summer, but Gilbertsaid something this morning that took the lynch pin out of the sham andbrought it all about my ears."

  And there was another short silence,--if it could be called silencewith the whirring of the engine and the boy driving
with the throttleout.

  "You care for him, then?" he asked finally, looking at her.

  She nodded and the tears came.

  It was a great shock to him, somehow; he couldn't quite say why. Thisgirl had, as she had said, played the fool with Gilbert,--led the manon and teased him into desperation. He loathed the supercilious fellowand didn't give a hang how much he suffered. Anyway, he was married andought to have known better. But what hit was the fact that all thewhile she had loved this Martin of hers,--she, by whom he dated things,who had given him a new point of view about girls and who was his ownvery best pal. That was not up to her form and somehow hurt.

  And she saw that it did and was deeply sorry and ashamed. Was she tohave a bad effect on every man she met? "I won't make excuses, Harry,"she said. "They're so hopeless. But I want you to know that I spranginto marriage before I'd given a thought to what it all meant, and Itook it as a lark, a chapter in my adventure, something that I couldeasily stop and look at after I'd seen and done everything and was alittle breathless. I thought that Martin had gone into it in the samespirit and that for the joke of the thing we were just going to play atkeeping house, as we might have played at being Indians away in thewoods. It was the easiest way out of a hole I was in and made itpossible for me not to creep back to my grandmother and take a whippinglike a dog. Do you understand?"

  The boy nodded. He had seen her do things and heard her say things onthe spur of the moment that were almost as unbelievable.

  His sympathy and quick perception were like water to her. And it wasindescribably good to be believed without incredulous side-looks andsuspicions, half-smiles such as Hosack would have given,--and some ofthe others who had lost their fineness in the world.

  "And when Martin,--who was to me then just what you are, Harrydear,--came up to my room in his own particular natural way, I thoughtit was hard luck to be taken so literally and not be left alone to findmy wings for a little. I had just escaped from a long term ofsubjection, and I wanted to have the joy of being free--quiteabsolutely free. Still not thinking, I sent him away and like a brickhe went, and I didn't suppose it really mattered to him, any more thanit did to me, and honestly if it had mattered it wouldn't have made anydifference because I had promised myself to hit it up and work off themarks of my shackles and I was full of the 'Who Cares?' feeling. Andthen Gilbert Palgrave came along and helped to turn my head. Oh, what aperfect little fool I was, what a precocious, shallow, selfish littlefool. And while I was having what I imagined was a good time and seeinglife, Martin was wandering about alone, suffering from two things thataren't good for boys,--injustice and ingratitude. And then of course Iwoke up and saw things straight and knew his value, and when I went toget him and begin all over again he wasn't mine. I'd lost him."

  The boy's eyebrows contracted sharply. "What a beastly shame," he said,"I mean for both of you." He included Martin because he liked him now,reading between the lines. He must be an awfully decent chap who hadhad a pretty bad time.

  "Yes," said Joan, "it is, for both of us." And she was grateful to himfor such complete understanding,--grateful for Martin, too. They mighthave been brothers, these boys. "But for you, Easthampton would havebeen impossible," she added. "I don't mean the house or the place orthe sea, which is glorious. I mean from what I have forced myself todo. I came down labelled 'Who Cares?' caring all the time, and just toshare my hurt with some one I've made Gilbert care too. He's in an uglymood. I feel that he'll make me pay some day--in full. But I'm notafraid to be alone now and drop my bluff because I believe Martin iswaiting for me and is back in armor again with your cousin. And Ibelieve the old look will come into his eyes when he sees me, and he'llhear me ask him to forgive and we'll go back and play at keeping housein earnest. Harry, I believe that. Little as I deserve it I'm going tohave another chance given to me,--every mile we go I feel that! Afterall, I'm awfully young and I've kept my slate clean and I ought to begiven another chance, oughtn't I?"

  Harry nodded and presently brought the car to a stop under the shadowof the little clubhouse. Half a dozen other cars were parked there, anda colored chauffeur was sitting on the steps of the back entrance, fastasleep with his chin on his chest. The small but vigorous orchestra wasplaying a fox-trot on the far veranda, and the sound of shuffling feetresembled that of a man cleaning something with sandpaper. There was anarmy of flies on the screen door of the kitchen and on severalgalvanized iron bins stuffed with ginger-ale bottles and orange peel.

  "We'll leave the car here," said Harry, "and go and have a look for thecottage. It'll be easy to find. There aren't many of 'em, if I rememberright."

  Joan took his arm. She had begun to tremble. "Let's go this way first,"she said, going the right way by instinct.

  "If they're in," said Harry, "and I should guess they are.--there's nowind,--I'll draw old Howard off for an hour or so."

  "Yes, please do, Harry."

  And they went up the sandy incline, over the thick undergrowth, and thesun blazed down on the shining water, and half a dozen canvas-coveredcatboats near the little pier. Several people were sitting on it inbathing clothes, and some one was teaching a little girl to swim. Theecho of her gurgling laughter and little cries came to them clearly.The sound of music and shuffling feet grew fainter and fainter.Gardiner's Island lay up against the horizon like a long inflated sandbag. There were crickets everywhere. Three or four large butterfliesgamboled in the shimmering air.

  Away out, heading homewards, Martin's yawl, with Irene lying fullstretch on the roof of the cabin, and Howard whistling for a wind,crept through the water, inch by inch.

  With the tiller under one arm and a pipe in his mouth, long empty, satMartin, thinking about Joan. Hearing voices, Tootles looked up from abook that she was trying to read. She had been lying in the hammock onthe stoop of Martin's cottage for an hour, waiting for Martin. It hadtaken her a long time to do her hair and immense pains to satisfyherself that she looked nice,--for Martin. Her plan was cut and driedin her mind, and she had been killing time with all the impatience andthrobbing of nerves of one who had brought herself up to a crisis whichmeant either success and joy, or failure and a drab world. She couldn'tbear to go through another day without bringing about a decision. Shefelt that she had to jog Fate's elbow, whatever was to be the insult.She had discovered from a casual remark of Howard's that Martin, thosehot nights, had taken to sleeping on the boat. Her plan, deliberatelyconceived as a follow-up to what had happened out under the stars thenight before, was to swim out to it and wait for him in the cabin. Sheknew, no one so well, that it was in the nature of a forlorn hope, butshe was desperate. She loved him intransitively, to the utterextinction of the little light of modesty which her hand-to-mouthexistence had left burning. She wanted love or death, and she was goingto put up this last fight for love with all the unscrupulousness of alovesick woman.

  She saw two people coming towards the cottage, a tall, fair, sun-tannedyouth, hatless and frank-eyed like Martin, and--

  She got up. A cold hand seemed suddenly to have been placed on herheart. Joan,--it was Joan, the girl who, once before, at Martin'shouse, had sent the earth spinning from under her feet and put Martinsuddenly behind barbed wire. What hideous trick was this of Fate's? Whywas this moment the one chosen for the appearance of this girl,--hiswife? This moment,--her moment?

  Fight? With tooth and nail, with all the cunning and ingenuity of amember 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 hadhidden her. She slipped into the house quickly, her heart beating inher throat. "I'll try this," said Harry. "Wait here." He left Joanwithin a few feet of the stoop, went up the two steps, and not findinga bell, knocked on the screen door. In less than an instant he saw thegirl with bobbed hair come forward. "I'm sorry to trouble you," hesaid, with a little bow, "I thought Mr. Gray might live here,
" andturned 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 hisback had lodged in Joan's heart. He opened his mouth to speak but noword 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 bevery 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 bothhands on her heart, as white as a white rose. She looked like a youngslim 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 onestrong desire to get her away from that place, picked her up in hisarms,--a dead delicious weight,--and carried her down the incline ofsand and undergrowth to his car, put her in ever so gently, got inhimself, backed the machine out, turned it and drove away.

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