Who Cares [19]
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.
"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 godmother 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,
"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.
"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 godmother 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,