Who Cares? Part 36

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 gla.s.s 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 Roch.e.l.le, 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 circ.u.mstances. She hoped he would tell lots of long stories to cover her wordlessness.

Gilbert emptied his gla.s.s 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 persistently 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 gla.s.s. 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?"