Who Cares? Part 5

"This one," she said finally. "I'm quite sure."

Martin didn't ask the price. It was for his bride. He picked it up and hung it over her wrist, said "The old address," nodded to the man,--who was just about to call attention to a tray of diamond brooches,--and led the way out, feeling at least six feet two.

And as Joan regained the street, she pa.s.sed another milestone in her life. To be the proprietor of precisely just such a gold bag had been one of her steady dreams.

"Marty," she said, "what a darling you are!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears.

VI

It was an evening Martin would never forget.

His suggestion that they should dine at Delmonico's and go to the Empire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirred Joan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll see me in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction to have whatever she bought sent home C.O.D.

It was actually two hours before he saw her again. He thanked his stars that he had enough money in the bank to meet the checks that he was required to make out in quick succession. Joan had not wasted time, and as she got into the car to drive away from that sandwich house of excited servants, two other milestones had been left behind. She was in a real evening frock, and all the other things she had bought were silk.

They drove straight home from the theater. Joan was tired. The day had been long and filled with amazements. She was out in the world at last.

Realization had exceeded expectation for the first time in history.

The sand-man had been busy with Martin's eyes too, but he led the way into the dining room with shoulders square and chin high and spring in his blood. This was home indeed.

"What a tempting little supper!" said Joan. "And just look at all these flowers."

They were everywhere, lilacs and narcissi, daffodils, violets and hothouse roses. Hours ago he had sent out the almost unbelieving footman for them. Joan and flowers--they were synonymous.

She put her pretty face into a great bowl of violets. "You remembered all my little friends, Marty," she said.

They sat opposite each other at the long table. Martin's father looked down at Martin's wife, and his mother at the boy from whom she had been taken when his eager eyes came up to the level of her pillow. And there was much tenderness on both their faces.

Martin caught the manservant's eyes. "Don't wait," he said. "We'll look after ourselves."

Presently Joan gave a little laugh. "Please have something yourself.

You're better than a footman. You're a butler."

His smile as he took his place would have lighted up a tunnel.

"I like Delmonico's," said Joan. "We'll often dine there. And the play was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see! I don't think we'll let the gra.s.s grow under our feet, Marty. And presently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in this room, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-looking and young.

It will be a long time before I shall want to see anyone old again.

Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comes back! She'll underline every word if she can find any words. She wasn't married till she was twenty."

And presently, having pecked at an admirable fruit salad, just sipped a gla.s.s of wine and made close-fitting plans that covered at least a month, Joan rose. "I shall go up now, Marty," she said. "It's twelve o'clock."

He watched her go upstairs with his heart in his throat. Surely this was all a dream, and in a moment he would find himself rudely and coldly awake, standing in the middle of a crowded, lonely world? But she stopped on the landing, turned, smiled at him and waved her hand.

He drew in a deep breath, went back into the dining room, put his lips to the violets that had been touched by her face, and switched off the lights. The scent of spring was in the air.

"Come in," she said, when presently, after a long pause, he knocked at her door.

She was sitting at a gleaming dressing table in something white and clinging, doing her hair that was so soft and brown and electrical.

He dared not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the edge of a sofa at the foot of the bed and watched her.

She went on brus.h.i.+ng but with her unoccupied hand gathered her gown about her. "What is it, Marty?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing," he said, finding something that sounded curiously unlike his voice.

She could see his young, eager face and broad shoulders in the looking-gla.s.s. His hands were clasped tightly round one knee.

"I've been listening to the sound of traffic," she said. "That's the sort of music that appeals to me. It seems a year since I did my hair in that great, prim room and heard the owls cry and watched myself grow old. Just think! It's really only a few hours ago that I dropped my suit-case out of a window and climbed down the creeper. We said we'd make things move, didn't we?"

"I shall write to your grandfather in the morning," said Martin, with almost comical gravity and an unconscious touch of patronage. How childlike the old are to the very young!

"That will be nice of you," answered Joan. "We'll be very kind to him, won't we? There'll be no one to read the papers to him now."

"He was a great chap once," said Martin. "My father liked him awfully."

She swung her hair free and turned her chair a little. "You must tell me what he said about him, in the morning. Heigh-ho, I'm so sleepy."

Martin got up and went to see if the windows were all open. "They'll call us at eight," he said, "unless you'd like it to be later."

Joan went to the door and opened it and held out her hand. "Eight's good," she said. "Good night, Marty."

The boy looked at the little open hand with its long fingers, and at his wife, who seemed so cool and sweet and friendly. What did she mean?

He asked her, with an odd catch in his voice.

And she gave him the smile of a tired child. "Just that, old boy. Good night."

"But--but we're married," he said with a little stammer.

"Do you think I can forget that, in this room, with that sound in the street?"

"Well, then, why say good night to me like this?"

"How else, Marty dear?"

An icy chill ran over Martin and struck at his heart. Was it really true that she could stand there and hold out her hand and with the beginning of impatience expect him to leave a room the right to which had been made over to him by law and agreement?

He asked her that, as well as he could, in steadier, kinder words than he need have used.

And she dropped her hand and sighed a little. "Don't spoil everything by arguing with me, Marty. I really am only a kid, you know. Be good and run along now. Look--it's almost one."

The blood rushed to his head, and he held out his hands to her. "But I love you. I love you, Joany. You can't--you CAN'T tell me to go." It was a boy's cry, a boy profoundly, terribly hurt and puzzled.