Three o'clock that afternoon found the Harleys still in Martin's house, with Mrs. Harley fidgetting to get George out for a walk in order that she might enjoy an intimate, mother-talk with Joan, and Joan deliberately using all her gifts to keep him there in order to avoid it.
Lunch had been a simple enough affair as lunches go, lifted above the ordinary ruck of such meals by the 1906 Chateau Latour and the Courvoisier Cognac from the cellar carefully stocked by Martin's father. From the psychological side of it, however, nothing could well have been more complicated. George had not forgotten his reception by the Ludlows that day of his ever-to-be-remembered visit of inspection—the cold, satirical eyes of Grandmother, the freezing courtesy of Grandfather, and the silent, eloquent resentment of the girl who saw herself on the verge of desertion by the one person who made life worth living in intermittent spots. He was nervous and overanxious to appear to advantage. The young thoroughbred at the head of the table who had given him a swift all-embracing look, an enigmatical smile and a light laughing question as to whether he would like to be called "Father, papa, Uncle George or what" awed him. He couldn't help feeling like a clumsy piece of modern pottery in the presence of an exquisite specimen of porcelain. His hands and feet multiplied themselves, and his vocabulary seemed to contain no more than a dozen slang phrases. He was conscious of the fact that his collar was too high and his clothes a little too bold in pattern, and he was definitely certain for the first time in his life, that he had not yet discovered a barber who knew how to cut hair.
Overeager to emphasize her realization of the change in her relationship to Joan, overanxious to let it be seen at once that she was merely an affectionate and interested visitor and not a mother with a budget of suggestions and corrections and rearrangements, Mrs. Harley added to the complication. Usually the most natural woman in the world with a soft infectious laugh, a rather shrewd humor and a neat gift of comment, she assumed a metallic artificiality that distressed herself and surprised Joan. She babbled about absolutely nothing by the yard, talked over George's halting but gallant attempts to make things easy like any Clubwoman, and in an ultra-scrupulous endeavor to treat Joan as if she were a woman of the world, long emancipated from maternal apron strings, said things to her, inane, insincere things, that she would not have said to a complete stranger on the veranda of a summer hotel or the sun deck of a transatlantic liner. She hated herself and was terrified.
For two reasons this unexpected lunch was an ordeal so far as Joan was concerned. She remembered how antagonistic she had been to Harley under the first rough shock of her mother's startling and what then had appeared to be disloyal aberration, and wanted to make up for it to the big, simple, uncomfortable man who was so obviously in love. Also she was still all alone in the mental chaos into which everything that had happened last night had conspired to plunge her and was trying, with every atom of courage that she possessed, to hide the fact from her mother's quick solicitous eyes. SHE of all people must not know that Martin had gone away or find the loose end of her married life!
It was one of those painful hours that crop up from time to time in life and seem to leave a little scratch upon the soul.
But when quarter past three came Mrs. Harley pulled herself together. She had already dropped hints of every known and well-recognized kind to George, without success. She had even invented appointments for him at the dentist's and the tailor's. But George was basking in Joan's favor and was too dazzled to be able to catch and concentrate upon his wife's insinuations as to things and people that didn't exist. And Joan held him with her smile and led him from one anecdote to another. Finally, with no one realized how supreme an effort, Mrs. Harley came to the point. As a rule she never came to points.
"Geordie," she said, seizing a pause, "you may run along now, dear, and take a walk. It will do you good to get a little exercise before dinner. I want to be alone with Joan for a while."
And before Joan could swing the conversation off at a tangent the faithful and obedient St. Bernard was on his feet, ready and willing to ramble whichever way he was told to go. With unconscious dignity and a guilelessness utterly unknown to drawing-rooms he bent over Joan's reluctant hand and said, "Thank you for being so kind to me," laid a hearty kiss on his wife's cheek and went.
"And now, darling," said Mrs. Harley, settling into her chair with an air of natural triumph, "tell me where Martin is and how long he's going to be away and all about everything."
These were precisely the questions that Joan had worked so hard and skilfully to dodge. "Well, first of all, Mummy," she said, with filial artfulness, "you must come and see the house."
And Mrs. Harley, who had been consumed with the usual feminine curiosity to examine every corner and cranny of it, rose with alacrity. "What I've already seen is all charming," she said. "I knew Martin's father, you know. He spent a great deal of time at his house near your grandfather's, and was nearly always in the saddle. He was not a bit like one's idea of a horsey man. He was, in fact, a gentleman who was fond of horses. There is a world of difference. He had a most delightful smile and was the only man I ever met, except your grandfather, who could drink too much wine without showing it. Who's this good-looking boy with the trustworthy eyes?"
"Martin," said Joan. "Martin," she added inwardly, "who treated me like a kid last night."
Mrs. Harley looked up at the portrait. An involuntary smiled played round her mouth. "Yes, of course. I remember him. What a dear boy! No wonder you fell in love with him, darling. You must be very happy."
Joan followed her mother out of the room. She was glad of the chance to control her expression. She went upstairs with a curious lack of the spirit of proprietorship. It hurt her to feel as if she were showing a house taken furnished for the season in which she had no rights, no pride and no personal interest. Martin had treated her like a kid last night and gone away in the morning without a word. Alice and Gilbert had taunted her with not being a wife. She wasn't, and this was Martin's house, not hers and Martin's ... it hurt.
"Ah," said Mrs. Harley softly as she went into Joan's bedroom. "Ah. Very nice. You both have room to move here." But the mass of little filet lace pillows puzzled her, and she darted a quick look at the tall young thing with the inscrutable face who had ceased to be her little girl and had become her daughter.
"The sun pours in," said Joan, turning away.
Mrs. Harley noticed a door and brightened up.
"Martin's dressing room?" she asked. "No. My maid's room!" Joan said.
Mrs. Harley shook her head ever so little. She was not in sympathy with what she called new-fashioned ideas. It was on the tip of her tongue to say so and to forget, just this once, the inevitable change in their relationship and speak like mammy once more. But she was a timid, sensitive little woman, and the indefinable barrier that had suddenly sprung up held her back. Joan made no attempt to meet her halfway. The moment passed.
They went along the passage. "There are Martin's rooms," said Joan.
Mrs. Harley went halfway in. "Like a bachelor's rooms, aren't they?" she said, without guile. And while she glanced at the pictures and the crowded bootrack and the old tallboys, Joan's sudden color went away again.... He was a bachelor. He had left her on the other side of the bridge. He had hurt her last night. How awfully she must have hurt him!
"When will Martin be back?"
"I don't know," said Joan. "Probably to-morrow. I'm not sure." She stumbled a little, realized that she was giving herself away,—because if a bride is not to know her husband's movements, who is?—and made a desperate effort to recover her position. "It all depends on how long he's kept. But he needed exercise, and golf's such a good game, isn't it? I sha'n't hurry him back."
She looked straight into her mother's anxious eyes, saw them clear, saw a smile come—and took a deep breath of relief. If there was one thing that she had to put up the most strenuous fight to avoid, in her present chaotic state of mind, it was a direct question as to her life with Martin. Of all people, her mother must be left in the belief that she was happy. Pride demanded that, even to the extent of lying. It was hard luck to be caught by her mother, at the very moment when she was standing among all the debris of her kid's ideas, among all the broken beams of carelessness, and the shattered panes of high spirits.
She was thankful that her mother was not one of those aggressive, close-questioning women, utterly devoid of sensitiveness and delicacy who are not satisfied until they have forced open all the secret drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,—one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no faith in human nature.
And with a sudden sense of gratitude she turned to the woman whom she had always accepted as a fact, an institution, and looked at her with new eyes, a new estimate and a new emotion. The little, loving, gentle, anxious woman with the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects that amounted to a gift but with a reticence of so fine and tender a quality that she seemed always to stand on tiptoes on the delicate ground of people's feelings, was HERS, was her mother. The word burst into a new meaning, blossomed into a new truth. She had been accepted all these years,—loved, in a sort of way; obeyed, perhaps, expected to do things and provide things and make things easy, and here she stood more needed, at the moment when she imagined that the need of her had passed, than at any other time of her motherhood.
In a flash Joan understood all this and its paradox, looked all the way back along the faithful, unappreciated years, and being no longer a child was stirred with a strange maternal fellow feeling that started her tears. Nature is merciless. Everything is sacrificed to youth. Birds build their nests and rear their young and are left as soon as wings are ready. Women marry and bear children and bring them up with love and sacrifice, only to be relegated to a second place at the first moment of independence. Joan saw this then. Her mother's altered attitude, and her own feeling of having grown out of maternal possession brought it before her. She saw the underlying drama of this small inevitable scene in the divine comedy of life and was touched by a great sympathy and made sorry and ashamed.
But pride came between her and a desire to go down on her knees at her mother's side, make a clean breast of everything and beg for advice and help.
And so these two, between whom there should have been complete confidence, were like people speaking to each other from opposite banks of a stream, conscious of being overheard.
Day after day went by with not a word from Martin. April was slipping off the calendar. A consistent blue sky hung over a teeming city that grew warm and dry beneath a radiant sun. Winter forgotten, spring an overgrown boy, the whole town underwent a subtle change. Its rather sullen winter expression melted into a smile, and all its foreign characteristics and color broke out once more under the influence of sun and blue sky. Alone among the great cities of the world stands New York for contrariety and contrast. Its architecture is as various as its citizenship, its manners are as dissimilar as its accents, its moods as diverse as its climate. Awnings appeared, straw hats peppered the streets like daisies in long fields, shadows moved, days lengthened, and the call of the country fell on city ears like the thin wistful notes of the pipes of Pan.
Brought up against a black wall Joan left the Roundabout, desisted from joy-riding, and, spending most of her time with her mother, tried secretly and without any outward sign, to regain her equilibrium. She saw nothing of Alice and the set, now beginning to scatter, in which Alice had placed her. She was consistently out to Gilbert Palgrave and the other men who had been gathering hotly at her heels. Her policy of "who cares?" had received a shock and left her reluctantly and impatiently serious. She had withdrawn temporarily into a backwater in order to think things over and wait for Martin to reappear. It seemed to her that her future way of life was in his hands. If Martin came back soon and caught her in her present mood she would play the game according to the rules. If he stayed away or, coming back, persisted in considering her as a kid and treating her as such, away would go seriousness, life being short, and youth but a small part of it, and back she would go to the Merry-go-round, and once more, at twice the pace, with twice the carelessness, the joy-ride would continue. It was all up to Martin, little as he knew it.
And where was Martin?
There was no letter, no message, no sign as day followed day. Without allowing herself to send out an S. O. S. to him, which she well knew that she had the power to do, she waited, as one waits at crossroads, to go either one way or the other. Although tempted many times to tap the invisible wire which stretched between them, and to put an end to a state of uncertainty which was indescribably irksome to her impulsive and imperative nature, she held her hand. Pride steeled her, and vanity gave her temporary patience. She even went so far as to think of him under another name so that no influence of hers might bring him back. She wanted him to return naturally, on his own account, because he was unable to keep away. She wanted him, wherever he was and whatever he was doing, to want her, not to come in cold blood from a sense of duty, in the spirit of martyrdom. She wanted him, for her pride's sake, to be again the old eager Marty, the burning-eyed, inarticulate Marty, who had brought her to his house and laid it at her feet with all that was his. In no other way was she prepared to cross what she thought of as the bridge.
And so, seeing only her mother and George Harley, she waited, saying to herself confidently "If he doesn't come to-day, he will come to-morrow. I told him that I was a kid, and he understood. I've hurt him awfully, but he loves me. He will come to-morrow."
But to-morrow came and where was Martin?
It was a curious time for this girl-woman to go through alone, hiding her crisis from her mother behind smiling eyes, disguising her anxiety under a cloak of high spirits, herself hurt but realizing that she had committed a hurt. It made her feel like an aeroplane voluntarily landed in perfect condition at the start of a race, waiting for the pilot to get aboard. That he would return at any moment and take her up again she never doubted. Why should she? She knew Martin. His eyes won confidence, and there was a heart of gold behind his smile. She didn't believe that she could have lost him so soon. He would come back because he loved her. Hadn't he agreed that she was a kid? And when he did come back she would take her courage in both hands and tell him that she wanted to play the game. And then, having been honest, she would hitch on to life again with a light heart, and neither Alice nor Gilbert could stand up and flick her conscience. Martin would be happy.
To-morrow and to-morrow, and no Martin.
At the end of a week a letter was received by her mother from Grandmother Ludlow, in which, with a tinge of sarcasm, she asked that she might be honored by a visit of a few days, always supposing that trains still ran between New York and Peapack and gasolene could still be procured for privately owned cars. And there was a postscript in these words. "Perhaps you have the necessary eloquence to induce the athletic Mrs. Martin Gray to join you."
The letter was handed to Joan across the luncheon table at the Plaza. She read the characteristic effusion with keen amusement. She could hear the old lady's incisive voice in every word and the tap of her stick across the hall as she laid the letter in the box. How good to see the country again and go through the woods to the old high place where she had turned and found Martin. How good to go back to that old prison house as an independent person, with the right to respect and even consideration. It would serve Martin right to find her away when he came back. She would leave a little note on his dressing table.
"No wonder the old lady asks if the trains have broken down," said Mrs. Harley. "Of course, we ought to have gone out to see her, Geordie."
"Of course," said George, "of course"—but he darted a glance at Joan which very plainly conveyed the hope that she would find some reason why the visit should not be made. Would he ever forget standing in that stiff drawing-room before that contemptuous old dame, feeling exactly like a very small worm?
The strain of waiting for Martin day after day had told on Joan. She longed for a change of atmosphere, a change of scene. And what a joke it would be to be able to face her grandfather and grandmother without shaking in her shoes! "Of course," said Joan. "Let's drive out to-day in time for dinner, and send a telegram at once. Nothing like striking while the iron's hot. Papa Geordie, tell the waiter to bring a blank, and we'll concoct a message between us. Is that all right for you, Mother?"
Mrs. Harley looked rather like a woman being asked to run a quarter of a mile to catch a train, but she gave a little laugh and said, "Yes, dear. I think so, although, perhaps, to-morrow—"
"To-day is a much better word," said Joan. She was sick of to-morrow and to-morrow. "Packing won't take any time. I'll go home directly after lunch and set things moving and be here in the car at three thirty. We can see the trees and smell the ferns and watch the sun set before we have to change for dinner. I'm dying to do that."
No arguments or objections were put forward.
This impetuous young thing must have her way.
And when the car drove away from the Plaza a few minutes after the appointed time Joan was as excited as a child, Mrs. Harley quite certain that she had forgotten her sponge bag and her bedroom slippers, and George Harley betting on a time that would put more lines on his face.
There was certainly more than a touch of irony in Joan's gladness to go back so soon to the cage from which she had escaped with such eagerness.
There had been no word and no sign of Martin.
But as Joan had run upstairs Gilbert Palgrave had come out from the drawing-room and put himself deliberately in her way.
"I can't stay now, Gilbert," she had said. "I'm going into the country, and I haven't half a second to spare. I'm so sorry."
He had held his place. "You've got to give me five minutes. You've got to," and something in his eyes had made her take hold of her impatience.
"You don't know what you're doing to me," he had said, with no sign of his usual style and self-consciousness, but simply, like a man who had sat in the dark and suffered. "Or if you do know your cruelty is inhuman. I've tried to see you every day—not to talk about myself or bore you with my love, but just to look at you. You've had me turned away as if I were a poor relation. You've sent your maid to lie to me over the telephone as if I were a West Point cadet in a primitive state of sloppy sentiment. Don't do it. It isn't fair. I hauled down my fourth wall to you, and however much you may scorn what you saw there you must respect it. Love must always be respected. It's the rarest thing on earth. I'm here to tell you that you must let me see you, just see you. I've waited for many years for this. I'm all upheaved. You've exploded me. I'm different. I'm remade. I'm beginning again. I shall ask for nothing but kindness until I've made you love me, and then I shall not have to ask. You will come to me. I can wait. That's all I want you to know. When you come back ring me up. I'll be patient."
With that he had stood aside with a curious humbleness, had gripped the hand that she had given him and had gone downstairs and away.
The country round Peapack was in its first glorious flush of young beauty. The green of everything dazzled under the sun. The woods were full of the echo of fairy laughter. Wild flowers ran riot among the fields. Delicate-footed May was following on the heels of April with its slight fingers full of added glory for the earth.
There was something soft and English in the look of the trees and fields as they came nearer to the old house. They might have been driving through the kind garden of Kent.
Framed in the fine Colonial doorway stood the tall old man with his white head and fireless eyes, the little distinguished woman still charged with electricity and the two veteran dogs with their hollow barks.
"Not one blushing bride, but two," said Grandmother Ludlow. "How romantic." She presented her cheek to the nervous Mrs. Harley. "You look years younger, my dear. Quite fluttery and foolish. How do you do, Mr. Harley? You are very welcome, Sir." She passed them both on to the old man and turned to Joan with the kind of smile that one sees on the faces of Chinese gods. "And here is our little girl in whose marvellous happiness we have all rejoiced."
Joan stood up bravely to the little old lady whose sarcasm went home like the sharp point of a rapier.
"How do you do, dear Grandmamma," she said.
"No better than can be expected, my love, but no worse." The queer smile broadened. "But surely you haven't torn yourself away from the young husband from whom, I hear, you have never been parted for a moment? That I can't believe. People tell me that there has never been such a devoted and love-sick couple. Martin Gray is driving another car, of course."
Joan never flicked an eyelash. She would rather die than let this cunning old lady have the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn blood. "No, Grandmamma," she said. "Martin needed exercise and is playing golf at Shinnecock. He rang me up this morning and asked me to say how sorry he was not to have the pleasure of seeing you this time." She went over to her grandfather and held up a marvellously equable face.
The old dame watched her with reluctant admiration. The child had all the thoroughbred points of a Ludlow. All the same she should be shown that, even in the twentieth century, young girls could not break away from discipline and flout authority without punishment. The smile became almost gleeful at the thought of the little surprise that was in store for her.
The old sportsman took Joan in his arms and held her tight for a moment. "I've missed you, my dear," he said. "The house has been like a mausoleum without you. But I've no reproaches. Youth to youth,—it's right and proper." And he led her into the lofty hall with his arm round her shoulder.
There was a sinister grin on Gleave's poacher-like face when Joan gave him a friendly nod. And it was with a momentary spasm of uneasiness that she asked herself what he and her grandmother knew. It was evident that they had something up their sleeves. But when, after a tea during which she continued to fence and play the part of happy bride, she went out into the scented garden that was like an old and loving friend, this premonition of something evil left her. With every step she felt herself greeted and welcomed. Young flowers as guileless as children waved their green hands. Heads nodded as she passed. The old trees that had watched her grow up rustled their leaves in affectionate excitement. She had not understood until that very moment how many true friends she had or how warm a place in her heart that old house had taken. It was with a curious maternal emotion that clouded her eyes with tears that she stood for a moment and kissed her hands to the right and left like a young queen to her subjects. Then she ran along the familiar path through the woods to the spot where she had been found by Martin and stood once more facing the sweep of open country and the distant horizon beyond which lay the Eldorado of her girl's dreams. She was still a girl, but she had come back hurt and sorry and ashamed. Martin might have lost his faith in her. He had gone away without a word or sign. Gilbert Palgrave held her in such small respect that he waited with patience for her to come, although married, into his arms. And there was not a man or a woman on the Round-about, except Alice, who really cared whether she ever went back again. The greedy squirrel peeked at her from behind a fern, recognized his old playmate, and came forward in a series of runs and leaps. With a little cry Joan bent down and held out her hand. And away in the distance there was the baying of Martin's hounds. But where was Martin?
"Rather beg than work, wouldn't he? I call him Micawber because he's always waiting for something to turn up."
Joan wheeled round. To hear a stranger's voice in a place that was peculiarly hers and Martin's amazed and offended her. It was unbelievable.
A girl was sitting in the long grass, hatless, with her hands clasped round her knees. The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass and had touched her white skin with a warm finger. Wistful and elfish, sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life. She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown cord riding breeches and puttees. Slight and small boned and rather thin she could easily have passed for a delicate boy or, except for something at the back of her eyes that showed that she had not always lived among trees, for Peter Pan's brother of whom the world had never heard.
Few people would have recognized in this spring maid the Tootles of Broadway and that rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street. The dew of the country had washed her face and lips, and the choir voices of Martin's big cathedral had put peace and gentleness into her expression.
She ran her eyes with frank admiration over the unself-consciously patrician Joan in her immaculate town clothes and let them rest finally on a face that seemed to her to be the most attractive that she had ever seen, for all that its expression made her want to scramble to her feet and take to her heels. But she controlled herself and sat tight, summoned her native impertinence to the rescue and gave a friendly nod. After all, it was a free country. There were no princesses knocking about.
"You don't look as if you were a pal of squirrels," she said.
Joan's resentment at the unexpected presence of this interloper only lasted a moment. It gave way almost immediately before interest and curiosity and liking,—even, for a vague reason, sympathy.
"I've known this one all his life," she said. "His father and mother were among my most intimate friends and, what's more, his grandfather and grandmother relied on me to help them out in bad times."
The duet of laughter echoed among the trees.
With a total lack of dignity the squirrel retired and stood, with erect tail, behind a tuft of coarse grass, wondering what had happened.
"It's a gift to be country and look town," said Tootles, with unconcealed flattery. "It's having as many ancestors as the squirrels, I suppose. According to the rules I ought to feel awkward, oughtn't I?"
"Why?"
"Well, I'm trespassing. I saw it in your eyes. 'Pon my soul it never occurred to me before. Shall I try and make a conventional exit or may I stay if I promise not to pinch the hill? This view is better than face massage. It rubs out all the lines. My word, but it's good to be alive up here!"
The mixture of cool cheek and ecstasy, given forth in the patois of the London suburbs, amused Joan. Here was a funny, whimsical, pathetic, pretty little thing, she thought—queerly wise, too, and with all about her a curious appeal for friendship and kindness. "Stay, of course," she said. "I'm very glad you like my hill. Use it as often as you can." She sat down on the flat-topped piece of rock that she had so often shared with Martin. There was a sense of humanity about this girl that had the effect of a magnet. She inspired confidence, as Martin did.
"Thanks most awfully," said Tootles. "You're kinder than you think to let me stay here. And I'm glad you're going to sit down for a bit. I like you, and I don't mind who knows it."
"And I like you," said Joan.
And they both laughed again, feeling like children. It was a characteristic trick of Fate's to bring about this meeting.
"I don't mind telling you now," went on Tootles, all barriers down, "that I've come up here every evening for a week. It's a thousand years since I've seen the sun go to bed and watched the angels light the stars. It's making me religious. The Broadway electrics have always been between me and the sky.... Gee, but it's goin' to be great this evening." She settled herself more comfortably, leaned back against the stump of a tree and began to smile like a child at the Hippodrome in expectation of one of the "colossal effects."
Joan's curiosity was more and more piqued, but it was rather to know what than who this amazingly natural little person was. For all her youth there were lines round her mouth that were eloquent of a story begun early. Somehow, with Martin away and giving no sign, Joan was glad, and in a way comforted, to have stumbled on some one, young like herself, who had obviously faced uncertainty and stood at the crossroads. "I'd like to ask you hundreds of questions," she said impulsively. "Do you mind?"
"No, dearie. Fire away. I shan't have to tell you any fables to keep you interested. I broke through the paper hoop into the big ring when I was ten. Look! See those ducks flyin' home? The first time I saw them I thought it was a V-shaped bit of smoke running away from one of the factories round Newark."
She had told Martin that. His laugh seemed still to be in the air.
"Are you married?" asked Joan suddenly.
"Not exactly, dearie," replied Tootles, without choosing her words. But a look at the young, eager, sweet face bent towards her made her decide to use camouflage. "What I mean is, no, I'm not. Men don't marry me when it isn't absolutely necessary. I'm a small part chorus lady, if you get my point."
Joan was not quite sure that she did. Her sophistication had not gone farther up than Sixty-seventh Street or farther down than Sherry's, and it was bounded by Park Avenue on the one side and Fifth Avenue on the other. "But would you like to have been married?" All her thoughts just then were about marriage and Marty.
Tootles shook her head and gave a downward gesture with an open hand that hardly needed to be amplified. "No, not up to a few weeks ago. I've lived by the stage, you see, and that means that the men I've come across have not been men but theatricals. Very different. You may take my word. When I met my first man I didn't believe it. I thought he was the same kind of fake. But when I knew that he was a man alright,—well, I wanted to be married as much as a battered fishing smack wants to get into harbor." She was thinking of Marty too, although not of marriage any more.
"And are you going to be?"
"No, dearie. He's got a wife, it turns out. It was a bit o' cheek ever to dream of hitting a streak of such luck as that. All the same, I've won something that I shall treasure all the days of my life.... Look. Here come some of the mourners." She pointed to three crows that flapped across a sky all hung with red and gold.
Joan was puzzled. "Mourners?"
"Why, yes. Isn't this the death bed of a day?"
"I never thought of it in that way," said Joan.
"No," said Tootles, running her eyes again over Joan's well-groomed young body. "That's easy to see. You will, though, if ever you want every day to last a year. You're married, anyway."
"Not exactly," said Joan, unconsciously repeating the other girl's expression.
Tootles looked at Martin's ring. "What about that, then?"
Joan looked at it too, with a curious gravity. It stood for so much more than she had ever supposed that it would. "But I don't know whether it's going to bind us, or not."
"And you so awfully young!"
"I was," said Joan.
The girl who had never had any luck darted a keen, examining glance at the girl who had all the appearance of having been born lucky. Married, as pretty as a picture, everything out of the smartest shops, the owner, probably, of this hill and those woods, and the old house that she had peeped at all among that lovely garden—she couldn't have come up against life's sharp elbow, surely? She hoped not, most awfully she hoped not.
Joan caught the look and smiled back. There was kindness here, and comradeship. "I've nothing to tell," she said, "yet. I'm just beginning to think, that's the truth, only just. I've been very young and thoughtless, but I'm better now and I'm waiting to make up for it. I'm not unhappy, only a little anxious. Everything will come right though, because my man's a man, too."
Tootles made a long arm and put her hand on Joan's. "In that case, make up for it bigly, dearie," she said earnestly. "Don't be afraid to give. There are precious few real men about and lots of women to make a snatch at them. It isn't being young that matters. Most troubles are brought about, at your time of life, by not knowing when to stop being young. Good luck, Lady-bird. I hope you never have anything to tell. Oh, just look, just look!"
Joan followed the pointing finger, but held the kind hand. And they sat in silence watching "the fair frail palaces, the fading Alps and archipelagoes, and great cloud-continents of sunset seas." And as she sat, enthralled, the whole earth hushed and still, shadows lurking towards the east, the evening air holding its breath, the night ready behind the horizon for its allotted work, God's hand on everything, it was of Marty that Joan thought, Marty whom she must have hurt so deeply and who had gone away without a word or a sign, believing that she was still a kid. Yes, she WOULD make up for it, bigly, bigly, and he should be happy, this boy-man who was a knight.
And it was of Martin that Tootles, poor, little, unlucky Tootles, thought also. All her life she would have something to which to look back, something precious and beautiful, and his name, stamped upon her heart, would go down with her to the grave.
And they stayed there, in silence, holding hands, until the last touch of color had gone out of the sky and the evening air sighed and moved on and the night climbed slowly over the dim horizon. They might have been sisters.
And then Joan rose in a sort of panic. "I must go," she said nervously, forgetting that she had grown up. "Good night, Fairy."
Tootles stood up too. "Good night, Lady-bird. Make everything come right," and held out her hand.
Joan took it again and went forward and kissed the odd little girl who was her friend.
And a moment later Tootles saw her disappearing into the wood, like a spirit. When she looked up at the watching star and waved her hand, it seemed all misty.
"And now, Mr. Harley," said Grandmother Ludlow, lashing the septuagenarian footman with one sharp look because he had spilt two or three drops of Veuve Cliquot on the tablecloth, "tell me about the present state of the money market."
Under his hostess's consistent courtesy and marked attentions George Harley had been squirming during the first half of dinner. He had led her into the fine old dining room with all the style that he could muster and been placed, to his utter dismay, on her right. He would infinitely rather have been commanded to dine with the Empress of China, which he had been told was the last word in mental and physical torture. Remembering vividly the cold and satirical scorn to which he had been treated during his former brief and nightmare visit the old lady's change of attitude to extreme politeness and even deference made him feel that he was having his leg pulled. In a brand new dinner jacket with a black tie poked under the long points of a turned-down collar, which, in his innocence, he had accepted as the mode of gentlemen and not, as he rightly supposed of waiters, he had done his best to give coherent answers to a rapid fire of difficult questions. The most uneasy man on earth, he had committed himself to statements that he knew to be unsound, had seen his untouched plate whisked away while he was floundering among words, and started a high temperature beneath what he was perfectly certain was lurking mockery behind apparently interested attention.
If any banker at that moment had overheard him describing the state of the money market he would have won for himself a commission in the earth's large army of unconfined lunatics.
The old sportsman, sitting with Joan on his right and his daughter-in-law on his left, was more nearly merry and bright than any one had seen him since the two great changes in his household. His delight in having Joan near him again was pathetic. He had shaved for the second time that day, a most unusual occurrence. His white hair glistened with brilliantine, and there was a gardenia in his buttonhole. Some of the old fire had returned to his eyes, and his tongue had regained its once invariable knack of paying charming compliments. In his excitement and delight he departed from his rigid diet, and, his wife's attention being focussed upon George Harley, punished the champagne with something of his old vigor, and revived as a natural result many of the stories which Joan and her mother had been told ad nauseam over any number of years with so much freshness as to make them seem almost new.
Mrs. Harley, wearing a steady smile, was performing the painful feat of listening with one ear to the old gentleman and with the other to the old lady. All her sympathy was with her unfortunate and uneasy husband who looked exactly like a great nervous St. Bernard being teased by a Pekinese.
Joan missed none of the underlying humor of the whole thing. It was amusing and satisfactory to be treated as the guest of honor in a house in which she had always been regarded as the naughty and rebellious child. She was happy in being able to put her usually morose grandfather into such high spirits and moved to a mixture of mirth and pity at the sight of George Harley's plucky efforts. Also she had brought away with her from the girl she called the fairy a strengthened desire to play the game and a good feeling that Marty was nearer to her than he had been for a long and trying week. It's true that from time to time she caught in her grandmother's eyes that queer look of triumphant glee that had disturbed her when they met and the same expression of malicious spite at the corner of Gleave's sunken mouth which had made her wonder what he knew, but these things she waved aside. Instinct, and her complete knowledge of Mrs. Cumberland Ludlow's temperament, made her realize that if the old lady could find a way to get even with her for having run off she would leave no stone unturned, and that she would not hesitate to use the cunning ex-fighting man to help her. But, after all, what could they do? It would be foolish to worry.
Far from foolish, if she had had an inkling of the trap that had been laid for her and into which she was presently going to fall without suspicion.
The facts were that Gleave had seen Martin drive up to his house with Tootles, had watched them riding and walking together throughout the week, had reported what he had seen to Mrs. Ludlow and left it to her fertile imagination to make use of what was to him an ugly business. And the old lady, grasping her chance, had written that letter to Mrs. Harley and having achieved her point of getting Joan into her hands, had discovered that she did not know where Martin was and had made up her mind to show her. Revenge is sweet, saith the phrasemonger, and to the old lady whose discipline had been flouted and whose amour propre had been rudely shaken it was very sweet indeed. Her diabolical scheme, conceived in the mischievous spirit of second childhood, was to lead Joan on to a desire to show off her country house to her relations at the moment when the man she had married and the girl with whom he was amusing himself on the sly were together. "How dramatic," she chuckled, in concocting the plan. "How delightfully dramatic." And she might have added, "How hideously cruel."
But it was not until some little time after they had all adjourned to the drawing-room, and Joan had played the whole range of her old pieces for the edification of her grandfather, that she set her trap.
"If I had my time over again," she said, looking the epitome of benevolence, "I would never spend spring in the city."
"Wouldn't you, dear?" prompted Mrs. Harley, eager to make the conversation general and so give poor George a rest.
"No, my love. I would make my winter season begin in November and end in February—four good months for the Opera, the theatres, entertaining and so forth. Then on the first of March, the kind-hearted month that nurses April's violets, I would leave town for my country place and, as the poets have it watch the changing skies and the hazel blooms peep through the swelling buds and hear the trees begin to whisper and the throstles break into song. One loses these things by remaining among bricks and mortar till the end of April. Joan, my dear, give this your consideration next year. If your good husband is anything like his father, whom we knew very slightly and admired, he is a lover of the country and should be considered."
"Yes, Grandmamma," said Joan, wondering if Marty had come back and found her note on his dressing-table.
"Always supposing, of course, that next year finds you both as much in love as you are to-day,—the most devoted pair of turtle doves, as I am told." She laughed a little roguishly to disguise the sting.
"They will be," said Mrs. Harley quickly. "There is no doubt about that."
"None," said Joan, looking full at the old lady with a confident smile and a high chin. Would her grandmother never forget that escape from the window?
"Why suggest the possibility of a break?" asked Mr. Ludlow, with a touch of anger. "Really, my dear."
"A little joke, Cumberland, merely a little joke. Joan understands me, I know."
"I think so," said Joan, smiling back. Not on her, whatever happened, would she see the white feather. Some one had told the tale of her kid's rush into the heart of things and her many evenings with Palgrave and the others, when "Who cares?" was her motto.
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 Shinnecock 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.