Who Cares? Part 29

Harry nodded and presently brought the car to a stop under the shadow of the little clubhouse. Half a dozen other cars were parked there, and a colored chauffeur was sitting on the steps of the back entrance, fast asleep with his chin on his chest. The small but vigorous orchestra was playing a fox-trot on the far veranda, and the sound of shuffling feet resembled that of a man cleaning something with sandpaper. There was an army of flies on the screen door of the kitchen and on several galvanized iron bins stuffed with ginger-ale bottles and orange peel.

"We'll leave the car here," said Harry, "and go and have a look for the cottage. It'll be easy to find. There aren't many of 'em, if I remember right."

Joan took his arm. She had begun to tremble. "Let's go this way first,"

she said, going the right way by instinct.

"If they're in," said Harry, "and I should guess they are.--there's no wind,--I'll draw old Howard off for an hour or so."

"Yes, please do, Harry."

And they went up the sandy incline, over the thick undergrowth, and the sun blazed down on the s.h.i.+ning water, and half a dozen canvas-covered catboats near the little pier. Several people were sitting on it in bathing clothes, and some one was teaching a little girl to swim. The echo of her gurgling laughter and little cries came to them clearly.

The sound of music and shuffling feet grew fainter and fainter.

Gardiner's Island lay up against the horizon like a long inflated sand bag. There were crickets everywhere. Three or four large b.u.t.terflies gamboled in the s.h.i.+mmering air.

Away out, heading homewards, Martin's yawl, with Irene lying full stretch on the roof of the cabin, and Howard whistling for a wind, crept through the water, inch by inch.

With the tiller under one arm and a pipe in his mouth, long empty, sat Martin, thinking about Joan. Hearing voices, Tootles looked up from a book that she was trying to read. She had been lying in the hammock on the stoop of Martin's cottage for an hour, waiting for Martin. It had taken her a long time to do her hair and immense pains to satisfy herself that she looked nice,--for Martin. Her plan was cut and dried in her mind, and she had been killing time with all the impatience and throbbing of nerves of one who had brought herself up to a crisis which meant either success and joy, or failure and a drab world. She couldn't bear to go through another day without bringing about a decision. She felt that she had to jog Fate's elbow, whatever was to be the insult.

She had discovered from a casual remark of Howard's that Martin, those hot nights, had taken to sleeping on the boat. Her plan, deliberately conceived as a follow-up to what had happened out under the stars the night before, was to swim out to it and wait for him in the cabin. She knew, no one so well, that it was in the nature of a forlorn hope, but she was desperate. She loved him intransitively, to the utter extinction of the little light of modesty which her hand-to-mouth existence had left burning. She wanted love or death, and she was going to put up this last fight for love with all the unscrupulousness of a lovesick woman.

She saw two people coming towards the cottage, a tall, fair, sun-tanned youth, hatless and frank-eyed like Martin, and--

She got up. A cold hand seemed suddenly to have been placed on her heart. Joan,--it was Joan, the girl who, once before, at Martin's house, had sent the earth spinning from under her feet and put Martin suddenly behind barbed wire. What hideous trick was this of Fate's? Why was this moment the one chosen for the appearance of this girl,--his wife? This moment,--her moment?

Fight? With tooth and nail, with all the cunning and ingenuity of a member of the female species to protect what she regarded as her own.

She and her plan against the world,--that was what it was. Thank G.o.d, Martin was not in sight. She had a free hand.

She had not been seen. A thick honeysuckle growing up the pillar had hidden her. She slipped into the house quickly, her heart beating in her throat. "I'll try this," said Harry. "Wait here." He left Joan within a few feet of the stoop, went up the two steps, and not finding a bell, knocked on the screen door. In less than an instant he saw the girl with bobbed hair come forward. "I'm sorry to trouble you," he said, with a little bow, "I thought Mr. Gray might live here," and turned to go. Obviously it was the wrong house.

Very clearly and distinctly Tootles spoke. "Mr. Gray does live here.

I'm Mrs. Gray. Will you leave a message?"

Harry wheeled round. He felt that the bullet which had gone through his back had lodged in Joan's heart. He opened his mouth to speak but no word came. And Tootles spoke again, even more clearly and distinctly.

She intended that her voice should travel.

"My husband won't be back for several days," she said, "but I shall be very glad to tell him that you called if you will leave your name."

"It--it doesn't matter," said Harry, stammering. After an irresolute, unhappy pause, he turned to go--

He went straight to Joan. She was standing with her eyes shut and both hands on her heart, as white as a white rose. She looked like a young slim tree that had been struck by lightning.

"Joan," he said, "Joan," and touched her arm. There was no answer.

"Joan," he said, "Joany."

And with a little sob she tottered forward.

He caught her, blazing with anger that she had been so hurt, inarticulate with indignation and a huge sympathy, and with the one strong desire to get her away from that place, picked her up in his arms,--a dead delicious weight,--and carried her down the incline of sand and undergrowth to his car, put her in ever so gently, got in himself, backed the machine out, turned it and drove away.

And Tootles, breathing hard and shaking, stood on the edge of the stoop, and with tears streaming down her face, watched the car become a speck and disappear.

XI

The sun had gone down, and the last of its lingering glory had died before the yawl managed to cajole her way back to her mooring.

Dinner was ready by the time the hungry threesome, laughing and talking, arrived at the cottage. Howard, spoiling for a c.o.c.ktail, made for the small square dining-room, and Irene, waving her hand to Tootles, cried out, "Cheero, dearie, you missed a speedy trip, I don't think," and took her into the house to tidy up in the one bathroom.

Martin drew up short on the edge of the stoop, listened and looked about, holding his breath. It was most odd, but--there was something in the still air that had the sense of Joan in it.

After a moment, during which his very soul asked for a sight of her, he stumped into the living room and rang the bell impatiently.

The imperturbable Judson appeared at once, his eyebrows slightly raised.

"Has any one been here while I've been away?" asked Martin.

"No, sir. No one except Miss Capper, who's been reading on the stoop."

"You're quite sure?"

"You never can be quite sure about anything in this life, sir, but I saw no one."

"Oh," said Martin. "All right, then." But when he was alone, he stood again, listening and looking. There was nothing of Joan in the room. A mixture of honeysuckle and tobacco and the aroma of cooking that had slipped through the swing door into the the kitchen. That was all. And Martin sighed deeply and said to himself "Not yet. I must go on waiting," and went upstairs to his bedroom. He could hear Irene's voice above the rush of water in the bathroom and Howard's, outside, raised in song. In the trees outside his window a bird was piping to its mate, and in the damp places here and there the frogs had already begun to try their voices for their community chorus. It was a peaceful earth, thereabouts falsely peaceful. An acute ear could easily have detected an angry roar of guns that came ever nearer and nearer, and caught the whisper of a Voice calling and calling.

When Martin returned to the wood-lined sitting room with its large brick chimney, its undergraduate chairs and plain oak furniture, its round thick blue and white mats and disorderly bookcase, Tootles was there, a Tootles with a high chin, a half defiant smile, and honeysuckle at her belt.

"Tootles."

"Yes?"

"Have you been alone all the afternoon?"

"Yes." (Fight? Tooth and nail.) "Except for the flies.... Why, boy?"

"Oh, nothing. I thought--I mean, I wondered--but it doesn't matter. By gum, you have made the room look smart, haven't you? Good old Tootles.

Even a man's room can be made to look like something when a girl takes an interest in it."

If she had been a dog she would have wagged her tail and crinkled up her nose and jumped up to put her nozzle against his hand. As it was she flushed with pleasure and gave a little laugh. She was a thousandfold repaid for all her pains. But, during the first half of a meal made riotous by the invincible Howard and the animated Irene, Tootles sat very quiet and thoughtful and even a little awed. How could Martin have sensed the fact that she had been there?... Could she,--could she possibly, even with the ever-ready help of nature,--hope to win against such a handicap? She would see. She would see. It was her last card. But during all the rest of the meal she saw the picture of a muscular sun-tanned youth carrying that pretty unconscious thing down the incline to a car, and, all against her will, she was sorry. That girl, pampered as she was, outside the big ring of hard daily effort and sordid struggle as she always had had the luck to be, loved, too. Gee, it was a queer world.

The stoop called them when they left the boxlike dining room. It was still hot and airless. But the mosquitoes were out with voracious appet.i.te and discretion held them to the living room.

Irene flung herself on the b.u.mpy sofa with a cigarette between her lips and a box near to her elbow. "This's the life," she said. "I shall never be able to go back to lil' old Broadway and grease paint and a dog kennel in Chorusland."

"Sufficient for the day," said Howard, loosening his belt. "If a miracle man blew in here right now with a million dollars in each hand and said: 'Howard Guthrie Oldershaw,'--he'd be sure to know about the Guthrie,--'this is all yours if you'll come to the city,' I'd..."

Irene leaned forward with her mouth open and her round eyes as big as headlights. "Well?"