第56章

Yesterday, in the evening after dinner, during which her high spirits had infected the whole table, he had walked up and down the board path with her under the vivid white light of a full moon, and she had whipped out one or two such savage things about life that he had been startled.During their ride that afternoon, too, her bubbling chatter of light stuff about people and things had several times shifted into comments as to the conventions that were so careless as to make him ask himself whether they could really have come from lips so fresh and young.And why had that queer look of almost childlike grief come into her eyes a moment ago at the sight of ah everyday sunset? He was mightily intrigued.She was a queer kid, he told himself, as changeable and difficult to follow as some of the music by men with such weird names as Rachmaninoff and Tschaikowsky that his sister was so precious fond of playing.But she was unattached and frightfully pretty and always ready for any fun that was going, and she liked him more than the others, and he liked being liked, and although not hopelessly in love was ready and willing and even anxious to be walked on if she would acknowledge his existence in no other way.It was none of his business, he told himself, to speculate as to what she was trying to hide away in the back of her mind, from herself as well as from everybody else.This was his last vacation as a Yale man, and he was all out to make the most of it.

As soon as he was at her side she ran her hand through his arm and fell into step.The shadow had passed, and her eyes were dancing again."It appears that the Hosacks turn up their exclusive noses at the club dances," she said."What are we going to do about it?""There's one to-night, isn't there? Do you want to go?""Of course I do.I haven't danced since away back before the great wind.Let's sneak off after dinner for an hour without a word to a soul and get our fill of it.There's to be a special Jazz band to-night, I hear, and I simply can't keep away.Are you game, Harry? ""All the way," said young Oldershaw, "and it will be the first time in the history of the Hosacks that any members of their house parties have put in an appearance at the club at night.No wonder Easthampton has nicknamed the place St.James's Palace, eh?"Joan shrugged her shoulders."Oh, my dear boy," she said, "life's too short for all that stuff, and there's no hobby so painful as cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.And, after all, what's the matter with Easthampton people? I'd go to a chauffeurs' ball if the band was the right thing.Wouldn't you?""With you," said Harry."Democracy forever!""Oh, I'm not worrying about democracy.I'm out for a good time under any conditions.That's the only thing that matters.Now let's go back and change.It's too late to bathe.I'll wear a new frock to-night, made for fox-trotting, and if Mrs.Hosack wants to know where we've been when we come back as innocent as spring lambs, leave it to me.Men can't lie as well as women can.""It won't be Mrs.Hosack who'll ask," said Harry."Bridge will do its best to rivet her ubiquitous mind.It's the old man who'll be peeved.He's crazy about you, you know."Joan laughed."He's very nice and means awfully well and all that,"she said, "but of course he isn't to be taken seriously.No men of middle age ought to be.They all say the same things with the same expressions as though they got them from the same books, and their gambolling makes their joints creak.It's all like playing with a fire of damp logs.I like something that can blaze and scorch.The game counts then.""Then you ought to like me," said Harry, doing his best to look the very devil of a fellow.Even he had to join in Joan's huge burst of merriment.He had humor as well as a sense of the ridiculous, and the first made it possible for him to laugh at himself,--a rare and disconcerting gift which would utterly prevent his ever entering the Senate.

"You might grow a moustache and wax the tips, Harry," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak."Curl your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy.That's why I like you.

You're as refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much as you like.I hope you'll never be spoilt.Come on.

We shall be late for dinner." And she made him quicken his step through the dry sand.

Being very young he was not quite sure that he appreciated that type of approval.He had liked to imagine that he was distinctly one of the bold bad boys, a regular dog and all that.He had often talked that sort of thing in the rooms of his best chums whose mantelpieces were covered with the photographs of little ladies, and he hoarded in his memory two episodes at least of jealous looks from engaged men.But, after all, with Joan, who was married, although it was difficult to believe it, it wouldn't be wise to exert the whole force of the danger that was in him.He would let her down lightly, he told himself, and grinned as he said it.She was right.He was only a nice boy, and that was because he had had the inestimable luck to possess a mother who was one in a million.

The rather pretentious but extremely civilized house that stood alone in all its glory between the sea and the sixth hole was blazing with lights as they returned to it.The color had gone out of the sky and other twinkling eyes had appeared, and the breeze, now off the sea, had a sting to it.Toad soloists were trying their voices for their evening concert in near-by water and crickets were at work with all their well-known enthusiasm.Bennett, with a sunburned nose, was tidying up the veranda, and some one with a nice light touch was playing the rhythmic jingles of Jerome Kern on the piano in the drawing-room.

Still with her hand on Harry Oldershaw's arm, Joan made her way across the lofty hall, caught sight of Gilbert Palgrave coming eagerly to meet her, and waved her hand.

"Oh, hello, Gilbert," she cried out."Welcome to Easthampton," and ran upstairs.

With a strange contraction of the heart, Palgrave watched her out of sight.She was his dream come to life.All that he was and hoped to be he had placed forever at her feet.Dignity, individualism, egoism,--all had fallen before this young thing.She was water in the desert, the north star to a man without a compass.He had seen her and come into being.

Good God, it was wonderful and awful!

But who was that cursed boy?