Who Cares? Part 19

The old lady went on, with infinite artfulness. "During the coming summer, my love, you should look out for a pleasant little house in some charming part of the country, furnish it, put men to work on the garden, and have it all ready for the following spring."

"I know just the place," put in George. "Near a fine golf course and country club with a view across the Hudson that takes your breath away."

"That might necessitate the constant attendance of a doctor," said Mrs.

Ludlow drily, "which would add considerably to the expenses. I would advise the Shinnec.o.c.k Hills, for instance, which are swept by sea breezes and so reminiscent of Scotland. Martin would be within a stone's throw of his favorite course, there, wouldn't he, Joan?"

"Yes, Grandmamma," said Joan, still with a high head and a placid smile, although it came to her in a flash that her statement as to where Martin was had not been believed. What if Grandmother knew where Martin had gone? How absurd. How could she?

And then Mr. Ludlow broke in again, impatiently. The effect of the champagne was wearing off. He hated feminine conversation in drawing-rooms, anyhow. "Why go searching about for a house for the child when she's got one already."

"Why, so I have," cried Joan. "Here. I'd forgotten all about it!"

Nothing could have suited the old lady so well. Her husband could not have said anything more right if he had been prompted. "Of course you have," she said, with a cackle of laughter. "I had forgotten it too.

Mr. Harley, can you believe our overlooking the fact that there is a most excellent house in the family a gunshot from where we are all sitting? It's natural enough for me, who have never met Joan's young husband. But for you, my love, who spent such a romantic night there!

Where are your wits?"

Joan's laugh rang out. "Goodness knows, but I really had forgotten all about it. And although I've only been in it once I've known it by sight all my life. Martin's father had it built, Papa George, and it's awfully nice and sporting, with kennels, and tennis courts, and everything."

"Yes, and beautifully furnished, I remember. I dined there several times, years ago before Mr. Gray had--" Mrs. Harley drew up short.

Mrs. Ludlow finished the sentence. "A little quarrel with me," she said. "I objected to his hounds scrambling over this property and wrote pithily to that effect. We never spoke again. My dear, while we are all together, why not personally conduct us over this country house of yours and give us an unaccustomed thrill of excitement."

"Yes, do, darling," said Mrs. Harley. "George would love to see it."

"I will," said Joan. "I'd adore to. I don't know a bit what it's like, except the hall and the library. It will come as a perfect surprise to me."

"A very perfect surprise," said Mrs. Ludlow.

Joan sprang to her feet. "Let's go now. No time like the present."

"Well," said Mrs. Harley cautiously, though equally keen.

"No, no, not to-night. Bear with your aged grandparents. Besides, the housekeeper and the other servants will probably be in bed. To-morrow now, early--"

"All right," said Joan. "To-morrow then, directly after breakfast.

Fancy forgetting that one possessed a country house. It's almost alarming." And she put her hands on her grandfather's shoulders, and bent down and kissed him. She was excited and thrilled. It was her house because it was Martin's, and soon she would be Martin's too. And they would spend a real honeymoon in the place in which they had sat together in the dark and laid their whispered plans for the great adventure. How good that would be!

And when she went back to the piano and rattled off a fox trot, Grandmother Ludlow got up and hobbled out of the room, on her tapping stick, to hide her glee.

XIII

It was ten o'clock when Joan stood once more in the old, familiar bedroom in which she had slept all through her childhood and adolescence.

Nothing had been altered since the night from which she dated the beginning of her life. Her books were in the same places. Letters from her school friends were in the same neat pile on her desk. The things that she had been obliged to leave on her dressing-table had not been touched. A framed photograph of her mother, with her hands placed in the incredible way that is so dear to the photographer's heart, still hung crooked over a colonial chest of drawers. Her blue and white bath wrap was in its place over the back of a chair, with her slippers beneath it.

She opened the door of the hospitable closet. There were all the clothes and shoes and hats that she had left. She drew out a drawer in the chest. Nothing had been disturbed.... It was uncanny. She seemed to have been away for years. And yet, as she looked about and got the familiar scent of the funny little lavender sachets made by Mrs. Nye, she found it hard to believe that Marty and Gilbert Palgrave, the house in New York, all the kaleidoscope of Crystal rooms and restaurants, all the murmur of voices and music and traffic were not the elusive memories of last night's dream. But for the longing for Marty that amounted to an absorbing, ever-present homesickness, it was difficult to accept the fact that she was not still the same early-to-bed, early-to-rise country girl, kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks, rebelling against the humdrum daily routine, spoiling to try her wings.

"Dear old room," she whispered, suddenly stretching out her arms to it.

"My dear old room. I didn't think I'd miss you a little bit. But I have. I didn't think I should be glad to get back to you. But I am.

What are you doing to me to make me feel a tiny pain in my heart?

You're crowding all the things I did here and all the things I thought about like a thousand white pigeons round my head. All my impatient sighs, and big ambitions, and silly young hopes and fears are coming to meet me and make me want to laugh and cry. But it isn't the same me that you see; it isn't. You haven't changed, dear old room, but I have.

I'm different. I'm older. I'm not a kid any more. I'm grown up. Oh, my dear, dear old room, be kind to me, be gentle with me. I haven't played the game since I went away or been honest. I've been thoughtless, selfish and untamed. I've done all the wrong things. I've attracted all the wrong people. I've sent Marty away, Marty--my knight--and I want him back. I want to make up to him bigly, bigly for what I ought to have done. Be kind to me, be kind to me."

And she closed her arms as if in an embrace and put her head down as though on the warm breast of an old friend and the good tears ran down her cheeks.

All the windows were open. The air was warm and scented. There was no sound. The silent voices of the stars sang their nightly anthem. The earth was white with magic moonshine. Joan looked out. The old creeper down which she had climbed to go to Martin that night which seemed so far away was all in leaf. With what exhilaration she had dropped her bag out. Had ever a girl been so utterly careless of consequences then as she? How wonderfully and splendidly Martinish Martin had been when she plunged in upon him, and how jolly and homelike the hall of his house--her house--had seemed to be. To-morrow she would explore it all and show it off to her family. To-morrow.... Yes, but to-night? Should she allow herself to be carried away by a sudden longing to follow her flying footsteps through the woods, pretend that Martin was waiting for her and take a look at the outside of the house alone? Why not? No one need know, and she had a sort of aching to see the place again that was so essentially a part of Martin. Martin--Martin--he obsessed her, body and brain. If only she could find Martin.

With hasty fingers she struggled with the intricate hooks of her evening frock. Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk stockings and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet, chose a short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes and a tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport shirts and sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the mantelpiece could recover from his astonishment became once more the Joan-all-alone for whom he had ticked away the hours. Then to the window, and hand over hand down the creeper again and away across the sleeping garden to the woods.

The fairies were out. Their laughter was blown to her like thistledown.

But she was a woman now and only Martin called her--Martin who had married her for love but was not her husband yet. Oh, where was Martin?

And as she went quickly along the winding path through the trees the moon dropped pools of light in her way, the scrub oaks threw out their arms to hold her back and hosts of little shadows seemed to run out to catch at her frock. But on went Joan, just to get a sight of the house that was Martin's and hers and to cast her spirit forward to the time when he and she would live there as they had not lived in the city.

She marvelled and rejoiced at the change that had come over her,--gradually, underminingly,--a change, the seeds of which had been thrown by Alice, watered by Palgrave and forced by the disappearance of Martin, and brought to bloom in the silent hours of wakeful nights when the thought of all the diffidence and deference of Martin won her grat.i.tude and respect. In the strong, frank and rather harsh light that had been flung on her way of life it was Martin, Martin, who stood out clean and tender and lenient--Martin, who had developed from the Paul of the woods, the boy chum, her fellow adventurer, her s.e.xless Knight, into the man who had won her love and whom she needed and ached for and longed to find. She had been brought up with a round turn, found herself face to face with the truth of things and, deaf to the incessant jangle of the Merry-go-round, had discovered that Martin was not merely the gallant and obliging boy, playing a game, trifling on the edge of reality, but the man with the other blade of the penknife who, like his prototype in the fairy tale, had the ordained right to her as she had to him.

And as she went on through the silvered trees, with a sort of dignity, her chin high, her eyes sparkling like stars, her mouth soft and sweet, it was to see the roof under which she would begin her married life again, rightly, honestly and as a woman, crossing the bridge between thoughtlessness and responsibility with a true sense of its meaning,--not in cold blood.

She came out to the road, dry and white, bordered by coa.r.s.e gra.s.ses and wild flowers all asleep, with their petals closed over their eyes, opened the gate that led into the long avenue, splashed through the patches of moonlight on the driveway and came finally to the door under which she had stood that other time with dancing eyes and racing blood and "Who cares?" ringing in her head.

There was no light to be seen in any of the front windows. The house seemed to be fast asleep. How warm and friendly and unpretentious it looked, and there was all about it the same sense of strength that there was about Martin. In which window had they stood in the dark, looking out on to a world that they were going to brave together? Was it in the right wing? Yes. She remembered that tree whose branches turned over like a waterfall and something that looked like a little old woman in a shawl bending to pick up sticks but which was an old stump covered with creepers.

She went round, her heart fluttering like a bird, all her femininity stirred at the thought of what this house must mean and shelter--and drew up short with a quick intake of breath. A wide streak of yellow light fell through open French windows across the veranda and on to the gra.s.s, all dew-covered. Some one was there ... a woman's voice, not merry, and with a break in it.... When the cat's away, the mice, in the shape of one of the servants...

Joan went on again. What a joke to peep in! She wouldn't frighten the girl or walk in and ask questions. It was, as yet, too much Marty's house for that--and, after all, what harm was she doing by sitting up on such a lovely night? The only thing was it was Martin's very own room filled with his intimate things and with his father's message written largely on a card over the fireplace--"We count it death to falter, not to die."

But she went on, unsuspecting, her hand unconsciously clasped in the stern relentless hand of Fate, who never forgets to punish.... A shadow crossed the yellow patch. There was the sound of a pipe being knocked out on one of the firedogs. A man was there, then. Should she take one look, or go back? She would go back. It was none of her business, unfortunately. But she was drawn on and on, until she could see into the long, low, masculine room.

A man was sitting on the arm of a sofa, a man with square shoulders and a deep chest, a man with his strong young face turned to the light, smiling--

"Marty," cried Joan. "Marty!" and went up and across the veranda and into the room. "Why, Marty," and held out her hand, all glad and tremulous.

And Martin got on his feet and stood in amazement, wide-eyed, and suddenly white.

"You here!" cried Joan. "I've been waiting and wondering, but I didn't call because I wanted you to come back for yourself and not for me.

It's been a long week, Marty, and in every hour of it I've grown. Can't you see the change?"

And Martin looked at her, and his heart leaped, and the blood blazed in his veins and he was about to go forward and catch her in his arms with a great cry...

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Lady-bird; who'd have expected to see you!"

Joan wheeled to the left.

Lying full stretched on the settee, her settee, was a girl with her hands under her bobbed hair, a blue dress caught up under one knee, her bare arms agleam, her elfin face all white and a smile round her too red lips.