第95章

"And now," he said gayly, "let's dine and, if you don't mind, Iwill buttle.I hate servants in a place like this." He went to the head of the table and drew back a chair.

Joan sat down, thanking him with a smile.It was hard to believe that, with the words of that girl still ringing in her ears and the debris of her hopes lying in a heap about her feet, she was going through the process of being nice to this man who had his claims.It was unreal, fantastic.It wasn't really happening.She must be lying face down on some quiet corner of Mother Earth and watering its bosom with tears of blood.Martin--Martin! It was all her fault.

Tomorrow she would be back again in the old house, with the old people and the old dogs and the old trees and follow her old routine--old, old.That was the price she must pay for being a kid when she should have been a woman.

Palgrave stood at the sideboard and carved a cold chicken decorated with slips of parsley."Have you ever gone into a room in which you've never been before and recognized everything in it or done some thing for the first time that you suddenly realize isn't new to you?""Yes, often," replied Joan."Why?"

"You've never sat in that chair until this minute and this chicken was probably killed this morning.But I've seen you sitting in just that attitude at that table and cut the wing of this very bird and watched that identical smile round your lips when I put the plate in front of you." He put it in front of her and the scent of her hair made him catch his breath."Oh, my God!" he said to himself."This girl--this beautiful, cool, bewitching thing--the dew of youth upon her, as chaste as unsunned snow--Oh, my God...."But Joan had caught the scent of honeysuckle, and back into her brain came that cottage splashed with sun, the lithe figure of Harry Oldershaw with his face tanned the color of mahogany and the clear voice of "Mrs.Gray."Gilbert filled her glass with champagne cup, carved for himself and sat at the foot of the table."The man from whom I bought this place," he said, saying anything to make conversation and keep himself rig idly light and, as he hoped, like Oldershaw, "owns a huge ready-made clothes store on Broadway--appalling things with comic belts and weird pockets.""Oh!" said Joan.Always, for ever, the scent of honeysuckle would bring that picture back.Martin--Martin.

"He makes any amount of money by dressing that portion of young America which sells motors and vacuum cleaners and gramaphone records and hangs about stage doors smoking cheap cigarettes.""Yes?" Joan listened but heard nothing except that high clear voice coming through the screen door.

"He built this cottage as an antidote and spent his week-ends here entirely alone with the trees and crickets, trying to write poetry.

He was very pleased with it and believed that this atmosphere was going to make him immortal.""I see,"--but all she saw was a porch covered with honeysuckle, a hammock with an open book face downwards in it and the long shadow of Harry Oldershaw flung across the white steps.

Gilbert went on--pathetically unable to catch the unaffected young stuff of the nice boy and his kind.He had never been young.

"He had had no time during his hard struggle to read the masters, and when, without malice, I quoted a chunk of Grey's 'Elegy' to him, the poor devil's jaw fell, he withdrew his blank refusal to sell the place to me, pocketed my cheque, packed his grip, and slouched off then and there, looking as if a charge of dynamite had blown his chest away.His garments, I notice, are as comic as ever, and Isuppose he is now living in a turretted house with stucco walls and stone lions at New Rochelle, wedded to Commerce and a buxom girl who talks too much and rag-times through her days."Joan joined in his laugh.She was there to make up for her unkindness.She would do her best under the circumstances.She hoped he would tell lots of long stories to cover her wordlessness.

Gilbert emptied his glass and filled it again.He was half conscious of dramatizing the episode as it unrolled itself and thrilled to think that this might be the last time that he would eat and drink in the only life that he knew.Death, upon which he had looked hitherto with horror, didn't scare him if he went into it hand in hand with Joan.With Alice trying, in her per sistently gentle way, to cure him, life was unthinkable.Life with Joan--there was that to achieve.Let the law unravel the knots while he and she wandered in France and Italy, she triumphantly young, and he a youth again, his dream come true....Would she have come with him to-night if she hadn't grown weary of playing flapper? She knew what she meant to him.He had told her often enough.Too often, perhaps.He had taken the surprise of it away, discounted the romance..

He got up and gave her some salad and stood by her for a moment.He was like a moth hovering about a lamp.

She smiled up at him again--homesick for the old bedroom and the old trees, eager to sit in her grand father's room and read the paper to him.He was old and out of life and so was she.Oh, Martin, Martin.

Why couldn't he have waited a little while longer?

The shock of touching her fingers as she took the salad plate sent the blood to Gilbert's brain.But he reined himself in.He was afraid to come to the point yet.Life was too good like this.The abyss yawned at their feet.He would turn his back to it and see only the outstretched landscape of hope.