She wore little thin black shoes and no stockings.A tight rubber bathing cap which came low down on her forehead gave her a most attractively boyish look.She might have been a young French Pierrot in a picture by Sem or Van Beers.He almost hated her at that moment, sitting there in all the triumph of youth, untouched by his ardor, unaffected by his passion.
"You needn't worry," he said."You won't get any more of it from me.
So that you may continue to amuse yourself undisturbed I withdraw from the baby hunt.I'm off this afternoon."He had cried "Wolf!" so many times that Joan didn't believe him.
"I daresay a change of air will do you good," she said."Where are you going?"He shrugged his shoulders."What's it matter? Probably to that cottage of mine to play hermit and scourge myself for having allowed you to mortify me and hold me up to the ridicule of your fulsome court of admirers.""Yes, that cottage of yours.You've forgotten your promise to drive me over to see it, haven't you?"Palgrave wheeled round.This was too much of a good thing."Be careful, or my rudeness will become more truthful than even you will be able to swallow.Twice last week you arranged for me to take you over and both times you turned me down and went off with young Oldershaw.""What IS happening to my memory?" asked Joan.
"It must be the sea air."
He turned on his heel and walked away.
In an instant she was up and after him, with her hand on his arm.
"I'm awfully sorry, Gilbert," she said."Do forgive me.""I'd forgive you if you were sorry, but you're not.""Yes, I am."
He drew his arm away."No.You're not really anything; in fact you're not real.You're only a sort of mermaid, half fish, half girl.Nothing comes of knowing you.It's a waste of time.You're not for men.You're for lanky youths with whom you can talk nonsense, and laugh at silly jokes.You belong to the type known in England as the flapper--that weird, paradoxical thing with the appearance of flagrant innocence and the mind of an errand boy.Your unholy form of enjoyment is to put men into false positions and play baby when they lay hands on you.Your hourly delight is to stir passion and then run into a nursery and slam the door.You dangle your sex in the eyes of men and as soon as you've got them crazy, claim chastity and make them ashamed.One of these days you'll drive a man into the sort of mad passion that will make him give you a sound thrashing or seduce you.I don't want to be that man.Oldershaw is too young for you to hurt and Hosack too old, and apparently Martin Gray has chucked you and found some human real person.As for me, I've had enough.Good morning."And once more, having delivered himself coldly and clearly of this brutally frank indictment he went up the steps to the veranda and into the house.
There was not even the tail of a smile on Joan's face as she watched him go.
Lunch was not quite the usual pleasant, happy-go-lucky affair that day.The gallant little Major, recently married to the fluffy-minded Mrs.Edgar Lee Reeves and her peevish little dog, sat on the right of the overwhelmingly complacent Cornucopia.With the hope of rendering himself more youthful for this belated adventure with the babbling widow he had been treated by a hair specialist.The result was, as usual, farcically pathetic.His nice white hair which had given him a charming benignity and cleanness had been turned into a dead and musty black which made him look unearthly and unreal.His smart and carefully cherished moustache which once had laid upon his upper lip like cotton wool had been treated with the same ink-colored mixture.His clothes, once so perfectly suitable, were now those built for a man of Harry Oldershaw's youthful lines and gave him the appearance of one who had forced himself into a suit made for his son.It was of a very blue flannel with white lines,--always a trying combination.His tie and socks were en suite and his gouty feet were martyrized to this scheme of camouflage by being pressed into a pair of tight brown and white shoes.Having been deprived of his swim for fear that his youthfulness might come off in the water and with the rather cruel badinage of his old friend Hosack still rankling in his soul, the poor little old gentleman was not in the best of tempers.Also he had spent most of the morning exercising Pinkie-Winkie while his wife had been writing letters, and his nerves were distinctly jaded.The pampered animal which had taken almost as solemn a part of his marriage vows as the bride herself had insisted upon making a series of strategic attacks against Mrs.
Hosack's large, yellow-eyed, resentful Persian Tom, and his endeavors to read the morning paper and rescue Pinkie from certain wreckage had made life a bitter and a restless business.He was unable to prevent himself from casting his mind back to those good bachelor days of the previous summer when he had taken his swim with the young people, enjoyed his sunbath at the feet of slim and beautiful girls, and looked forward to a stiff cocktail in his bathhouse like a natural and irresponsible old buck.
Gilbert Palgrave faced him, an almost silent man who, to Cornucopia's great and continually voiced distress, allowed her handsomely paid cook's efforts to go by contemptuously untouched.It rendered her own enthusiastic appetite all the more conspicuous.
For two reasons Hosack was far from happy.One was because Mrs.
Barnet Thatcher was seated on his right pelting him with brightness and the other because Joan, on his left, looked clean through his head whenever he tried to engage her in sentimental sotto voce.