A little thrill ran through Joan.In ten minutes, perhaps less, she would be dancing once more to the lunatic medley of a Jazz band, dancing with a boy who gave her all that she needed of him and asked absolutely nothing of her; dancing among people who were less than the dust in the scheme of things, so far as she was concerned, except to give movement and animation to the room and to be steered through.That was the right attitude towards life and its millions, she told herself.As salt was to an egg so was the element of false romance to this Golf Club dance.In a minute she would get rid of Palgrave, yes, even the fastidious Gilbert Palgrave, who had never been able quite to disguise the fact that his love for her was something of a condescension; she would fly in the face of the unwritten law of the pompous house on the dunes and mingle with what Hosack had called the crowd from the hotel.It was all laughable and petty, but it was what she wanted to do.It was all in the spirit of "Who Cares?" that she had caught at again.Why worry as to what Mrs.
Hosack might say or Palgrave might feel? Wasn't she as free as the air to follow her whims without a soul to make a claim upon her or to hold out a hand to stop?
Through these racing thoughts she heard Palgrave talking and crickets rasping and frogs croaking and a sudden burst of laughter and talk in the drawing-room,--and the whistle come again.
"Yes," she said, because yes was as good as any other word."Well, Gilbert, dear, if you're not an early bird you will see me again later,"--and jumped down from the wall.
"Where are you going?"
"Does that matter?"
"Yes, it does.I want you here.I've been waiting all these weeks."She laughed."It's a free country," she said, "and you have the right to indulge in any hobby that amuses you.Au revoir, old thing." And she spread out her arms like wings and flew to the steps and down to the beach and away with some one who had sent out a signal.
"That boy," said Palgrave."I'm to be turned down for a cursed boy!
By God, we'll know about that."
And he followed, seeing red.
He saw them get into a low-lying two-seater built on racing lines, heard a laugh flutter into the air, watched the tail light sweep round the drive and become smaller and smaller along the road.
So that was it, was it? He had been relegated to the hangers-on, reduced to the ranks, put into the position of any one of the number of extraneous men who hung round this girl-child for a smile and a word! That was the way he was to be treated, he, Gilbert Palgrave, the connoisseur, the decorative and hitherto indifferent man who had refused to be subjected to any form of discipline, who had never, until Joan had come into his life, allowed any one to put him a single inch out of his way, who had been triumphantly one-eyed and selfish,--that was the way he was to be treated by the very girl who had fulfilled his once wistful hope of making him stand, eager and startled and love-sick among the chaos of individualism and indolence, who had shaken him into the Great Emotion! Yes, by God, he'd know about that.
Bare-headed and surging with untranslatable anger he started walking.He was in no mood to go into the drawing-room and cut into a game of bridge and show his teeth and talk the pleasant inanities of polite society.All the stucco of civilization fell about him in slabs as he made his way with long strides out of the Hosacks'
place, across the sandy road and on to the springy turf of the golf links.It didn't matter where he went so long as he got elbow room for his indignation, breathing space for his rage and a wide loneliness for his blasphemy....
He had stood humble and patient before this virginal girl.He had confessed himself to her with the tremendous honesty of a man made simple by an overwhelming love.She was married.So was he.But what did that matter to either of them whose only laws were self-made?
The man to whom she was not even tied meant as little to her as the girl he had foolishly married meant or would ever mean to him.He had placed himself at her beck and call.In order to give her amusement he had taken her to places in which he wouldn't have been seen dead, had danced his good hours of sleep away for the pleasure of seeing her pleased, had revolutionized his methods with women and paid her tribute by the most scrupulous behavior and, finally, instead of setting out to turn her head with pearls and diamonds and carry her by storm while she was under the hypnotic influence of priceless glittering things for bodily adornment, which render so many women easy to take, he had recognized her as intelligent and paid her the compliment of treating her as such, had stated his case and waited for the time when the blaze of love would set her alight and bring her to his arms.
There was something more than mere egotism in all this,--the natural egotism of a man of great wealth and good looks, who had walked through life on a metaphorical red carpet pelted with flowers by adoring women to whom even virtue was well lost in return for his attention.Joan, like the spirit of spring, had come upon Palgrave at that time of his life when youth had left him and he had stood at the great crossroads, one leading down through a morass of self-indulgence to a hideous senility, the other leading up over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness.Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy in being alive, her superb health and vitality had shattered his conceit and self-obsession, broken down his aloofness and lack of scruple and filled the empty frame that he had hung in his best thoughts with her face and form.