Who Cares? Part 37

"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 gra.s.ses 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, G.o.d, 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 gentle and determined, with the look in his eyes of one who intended to own one way or the other--Live? How was she to live? He had given her a choice between something that was impossible and something that all Nature held her back from. She was locked into a lonely house as far away from help as though they were out at sea.

"We hold it death to falter not to die." The words seemed suddenly to stand out in blazing letters over the mantelpiece, as they did in Martin's room--Martin, Martin.... With a mighty effort she wound the reins round her hands and pulled herself up. In this erotic and terrible position she must not falter or show fear or exaggerate this man's sudden derangement by cries or struggles. He must be humored, kept gentle and quiet, and she must pray for help. G.o.d loved young things, and if she had forgotten Him until the very moment of great danger, He might forgive. She must, with courage and practicality, gain time so that some one might be sent. The servants might return. Harry Oldershaw might have followed them. He hadn't liked the look of Gilbert. He had said so. But if that was too good, there was Martin, Martin...

She saw herself sitting in a dressing gown on the arm of a chair in Martin's room in the little New York house. She heard Martin come along the pa.s.sage with his characteristic light tread and saw him draw up short. He looked anxious. "You wanted me?" she heard him say.

"I did and do, Marty. But how did you guess?"

"I didn't guess. I knew."

"Isn't that wonderful? Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you when I want you very much?"

"Yes, always."

"Why?"

"I dunno. It's like that. It's something that can't be explained...."

Gilbert turned and smiled at her. She smiled back. Martin was not far away, Martin. "How quiet the night is," she said, and went over to a window. Hope gleamed like a star. And then, with all her strength and urgency she gave a silent cry. "Martin, Martin. I want you, so much, oh, so much. Come to me, quickly, quickly. Martin, Martin."

IV

The crickets and the frogs vied with each other to fill the silence with sound. The moon was up and had laid a silver carpet under the trees. Fireflies flashed their little lights among the undergrowth like fairies signalling.

Joan had sent her S. O. S. into the air and with supreme confidence that it would reach Martin wherever he might be, left the window, went to the pew in which Gilbert had arranged the cushions and sat down...

Martin had grown tired of waiting for her. She had lost him. But twice before he had answered her call, and he would come. She knew it. Martin was like that. He was reliable. And even if he held her in contempt now, he had loved her once. Oh, what it must have cost him to leave her room that night--it seemed so long ago--she had clung to being a kid and had conceived it to be her right to stay on the girlhood side of the bridge. To be able to live those days over again--how different she would be.

Without permitting Gilbert to guess what she was doing, she must humor him and gain time. She gave thanks to G.o.d that he was in this gentle, exalted mood, and was treating her with a sort of reverence. Behind the danger and the terror of it all she recognized the wonder of his love.

"Gilbert," she said softly.