Who Cares? Part 6

"Well, if we've got to go into all this now I may as well sit down,"

she said, and did. "That air's rather chilly, too." She folded her arms over her breast.

It was enough. All the chivalry in Martin came up and choked his anger and bitterness and untranslatable disappointment. He went out and shut the door and stumbled downstairs into the dark sitting room and stood there for a long time all among chaos and ruin. He loved her to adoration, and the spring was in his blood; and if she was young, she was not so young as all that; and where was her side of the bargain?

And at last, through the riot and jumble of his thoughts, her creed of life came back to him, word for word: she took all she could get and gave nothing in return; and "Who cares?" was her motto.

And after that he stood like a man balanced on the edge of a precipice.

In cold blood he could go back and like a brute demand his price. And if he went forward and let her off because he loved her so and was a gentleman, down he must go, like a stone.

He was very white, and his lips were set when he went up to his room.

With curious deliberation he got back into his clothes and saw that he had money, returned to the hall, put on his coat and hat, shut the door behind him and walked out under the stars.

"All right, then, who cares?" he said, facing toward the "Great White Way." "Who the devil cares?"

And up in her room, with her hand under her cheek like a child, Joan had left the world with sleep.

PART TWO

THE ROUND-ABOUT

I

Alice Palgrave's partner had dealt, and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice--for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room, and as she caught the hostess' eye and smiled, she felt just a little bit like a fairy G.o.dmother in having surrounded Joan with so many of the smartest members of the younger set barely three weeks after her astonishing arrival in a city in which she had only one friend.

Alice didn't blind herself to the fact that in order to gamble, most of the girls in the room would go, without the smallest discrimination, to anybody's house; but there were others,--notably Mrs. Alan Hosack, Mrs.

Cooper Jekyll and Enid Ouchterlony,--whose pride it was to draw a hard, relentless line between themselves and every one, however wealthy, who did not belong to families of the same, or almost the same, unquestionable standing as their own. Their presence in the little house in East Sixty-seventh Street gave it, they were well aware, a most enviable cachet and placed Joan safely within the inner circle of New York society--the democratic royal inclosure. It was something to have achieved so soon--little as Joan appeared, in her astonishing coolness, to appreciate it. The Ludlows, as Joan had told Alice with one of her frequent laughs, might have come over in the only staterooms on the ship which towed the heavily laden Mayflower, but that didn't alter the fact that the Hosacks, the Jekylls and the Ouchterlonys were the three most consistently exclusive and difficult families in the country, to know whom all social climbers would joyously mortgage their chances of eternity. Alice placed a feather in her cap accordingly.

Joan's table was the first to break up. She was a loser to the tune of seventy dollars, and while she wrote her check to Marie Littlejohn, a tiny blond exotic not much older than herself,--who laid down the law with the ripe authority of a Cabinet Minister and kept to a daily time-table with the unalterable effrontery of a fashionable doctor,--talked over her shoulder to Christine Hurley.

"Alice tells me that your brother has gone to France with the Canadian Flying Corps. Aren't you proud of him?"

"I suppose so, but it isn't our war, and they're awfully annoyed about it at Piping Rock. He was the crack man of the polo team, you know. I don't see that there was any need of his b.u.t.ting into this European fracas."

"I quite agree with you," said Miss Littlejohn, with her eyes on the clock. "I broke my engagement to Metcalfe Hussey because he insisted on going over to join the English regiment his grandfather used to belong to. I've no patience with sentimentality." She took the check and screwed it into a small gold case. "I'm dining with my bandage-rolling aunt and going on to the opera. Thank goodness, the music will drown her war talk. Good-by." She nodded here and there and left, to be driven home with her adipose chow in a Rolls-Royce.

Christine Hurley touched a photograph that stood on Joan's desk. "Who's this good-looking person?" she asked.

"My husband," said Joan.

"Oh, really! When are we to see something of him?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Joan. "He's about somewhere."

Miss Hurley laughed. "It's like that already, is it? Haven't you only just been married?"

"Yes," said Joan lightly, "but we've begun where most people leave off.

It's a great saving of time and temper!"

The sophisticated Christine, no longer in the first flush of giddy youth, still unmarried after four enterprising years, was surprised into looking with very real interest at the girl who had been until that moment merely a hostess. Her extreme finish, her unself-conscious confidence and intrepidity, her una.s.sumed lightness of temper were not often found in one so young and apparently virginal. She dismissed as unbelievable the story that this girl had been brought up in the country in an atmosphere of early Victorianism. She had obviously just come from one of those elaborate finishing schools in which the daughters of rich people are turned into hothouse plants by sycophants and parasites and sent out into the world the most perfect specimens of superautocracy, to patronize their parents, scoff at discipline, ignore duty and demand the sort of luxury that brought Rome to its fall. With admiration and amus.e.m.e.nt she watched her say good-by to one woman after another as the various tables broke up. It really gave her quite a moment to see the way in which Joan gave as careless and unawed a hand to Mrs. Alan Hosack and Mrs. Cooper Jekyll as to the Countess Palotta, who had nothing but pride to rattle in her little bag; and when finally she too drove away, it was with the uneasy sense of dissatisfaction that goes with the dramatic critic from a production in which he has honestly to confess that there is something new--and arresting.

Alice Palgrave stayed behind. She felt a natural proprietary interest in the success of the afternoon. "My dear," she said emotionally, "you're perfectly wonderful!"

"I am? Why?"

"To any other just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, a nerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish--I've been watching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodge and hobn.o.bbed all your life with amba.s.sadors. How do you do it?"

Joan laughed and threw out her arms. "Oh, I don't know," she said, with her eyes dancing and her nostrils extended. "I don't stop to think how to do things. I just do them. These people are young and alive, and it's good to be among them. I work off some of my own vitality on them and get recharged at the sound of their chatter. People, people--give me people and the clash of tongues and the sense of movement. I don't much care who they are. I shall pick up all the little sn.o.bbish stuff sooner or later, of course, and talk about the right set and all that, as you do. I'm bound to. At present everything's new and exciting, and I'm whipping it up. You wait a little. I'll cut out some of the dull and pompous when I've got things going, and limit myself to red-blooded speed-breakers. Give me time, Alice."

She sat down at the piano and crashed out a fox-trot that was all over town. No one would have imagined from her freshness and vivacity that she had been dancing until daylight every night that week.

"Well," said Alice when she could be heard, "I see you making history, my dear; there's no doubt about that."

"None whatever," answered Joan. "I'm outside the walls at last, and I'll go the pace until the ambulance comes."

"With or without Martin Gray?"

"With, if he's quick enough--without, if not."

"Be careful," said Alice.

"Not I, my dear. I left care away back in the country with my little old frocks."

Alice held out her hand. "You bewilder me a little," she said. "You make me feel as if I were in a high wind. You did when we were at school, I remember. Well, don't bother to thank me for having got up this party." She added this a little dryly.

With a most winning smile Joan kissed her. "You're a good pal, Alice,"

she said, "and I'm very grateful."

Alice was compensated, although her shrewd knowledge of character told her how easily her friend won her points. "And I hope you're duly grateful to Martin Gray?"

"To dear old Marty? Rather! He and I are great pals."

But that was all Alice got. Her burning curiosity to know precisely how this young couple stood must go unsatisfied for the time being. She had only caught a few fleeting glimpses of the man who had given Joan the key to life, and every time had wondered, from something in his eyes, whether he found things wholly good. She was just a little suspicious of romances. Her own had worn thin so quickly. "Good-by, my dear," she said. "Don't forget you're dining with me to-morrow."

"Not likely."

"What are you doing to-night?"

"Going to bed at nine o'clock to sleep the clock round. I'm awfully tired."

She stood quite still for many minutes after Alice had gone, and shut her eyes. In a quick series of moving pictures she saw thousands of little lights and swaying people and clashing colors, and caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of lilting music and laughter. She was tired, and something that seemed like a hand pressed her forehead tightly, but the near-by sound of incessant traffic sent her blood spinning, and she opened her eyes and gave a little laugh and went out.

Martin was on his way downstairs. He drew up abruptly. "Oh, h.e.l.lo!" he said.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo!" said Joan.