第28章

There were, of course, the Oldershaws and the Marie Littlejohns and the Christine Hurleys and the rest.Alice had met and watched them throwing themselves against any bright light like all silly moths.

And there were the girls like Joan, newly released from the exotic atmosphere of those fashionable finishing schools which no sane country should permit.But even these wild and unbroken colts and fillies, she believed, had excuses.They were the natural results of a complete lack of parental discipline and school training.They ran amuck, advertised by the press and applauded by the hawks who pounced upon their wallets.They were more to be pitied than condemned, far more foolish and ridiculous than decadent.They were not unique, either, or peculiar to their own country.Every nation possessed its "smart set," its little group of men and women who were ripe for the lunatic asylum, and even the war and its iron tonic had failed to shock them into sanity.In her particularly sane way of looking at things, Alice saw all this, was proud to know that the majority of the people who formed American society were fine and sound and generous, and kept as much as possible out of the way of those others whose one object in life was to outrage the conventions.It was only when people began to tell her of seeing her husband and her friend about together night after night that she found herself wondering, with jealousy in her heart, how long her optimism would endure, because Gilbert had already shown her a foot of clay, and Joan was deliberately flying wild.

It was, at any rate, all to the good that Joan kept her promise and utterly refused to be turned by the pleadings and blandishments of Cannon and Hosack.They drove together to Palgrave's elaborate house, a faithful replica of one of the famous Paris mansions in the Avenue Wagram and sat down to a little supper in Alice's boudoir.

They made a curious picture, these two children, one just over twenty, the other under nineteen; and as they sat in that lofty room hung with French tapestries and furnished with the spindle-legged gilt chairs and tables of Louis XIV, they might have been playing, with all the gravity and imitative genius of little girls in a nursery, at being grown up.

While the servants moved discreetly about, Joan kept up a rattle of impersonalities, laughing at Cannon's amazing mustache and Gargantuan furniture, enthusing wildly over Caruso's once-in-a-century voice, throwing satire at Mrs.Cooper Jekyll's confirmed belief in her divine right to queen it, and saying things that made Alice chuckle about the d'Oylys--that apparently ill-matched pair.

She drank a glass of champagne with the air of a connoisseur and finally, having displayed an excellent appetite, mounted a cigarette into a long thin mother-of-pearl holder, lighted it and sank with a sigh into the room's one comfortable chair.

"Gilbert gave me a cigarette holder like that," said Alice.

"Yes? I think this comes from him," said Joan."A thoughtful person!"That Joan was not quite sure from whom she received it annoyed Alice far more than if she had boasted of it as one of Gilbert's numerous gifts.She needed no screwing up now to say what she had rather timidly brought this cool young slip of a thing there to discuss.

"Will you tell me about yourself and Gilbert?" she asked quietly.

There was no need for Joan to act complete composure.She felt it.

"What is there to tell, my dear?"

"I hope there isn't anything--I mean anything that matters.But perhaps you don't know that people have begun to talk about you, and I think you owe it to me to be perfectly frank."Even then it didn't occur to Joan that there was anything serious in the business."I'll be as frank as the front page of The Times--'All the news that's fit to print,'" she said."What do you want to know?"Alice proved her courage.She drew up a chair, bent forward and came straight to the point."Be honest with me, Joan, even if you have to hurt me.Gilbert is very handsome, and women throw themselves at him.I did, I suppose; but having won him and being still in my first year of marriage, I'm naturally jealous when he lets himself be drawn off by them.The women who have tried to take Gilbert away from me I didn't know, and they owed me no friendship.But you're different, and I can't believe that you--"Joan broke in with a peal of laughter."Can't you? Why not? Ihaven't got wings on my shoulders.Isn't everything fair in love and war?"Alice drew back.She had many times been called prim and old-fashioned, especially at school, by Joan and others when men were talked about, and the glittering life that lay beyond the walls.

Sophistication, to put it mildly, had been the order of the day in that temporary home of the young idea.But this calm declaration of disloyalty took her color away, and her breath.Here was honesty with a vengeance!

"Joan!" she cried."Joan!" And she put up her hand as though to ward off an unbelievable thought.

In an instant Joan was on her feet with her arms around the shoulders of the best friend she had, whose face had gone as white as stone."Oh, my dear," she said, "I'm sorry.Forgive me.I didn't mean that in the least, not in the very least.It was only one of my cheap flippancies, said just to amuse myself and shock you.Don't you believe me?"Tears came to Alice.She had had at least one utterly sleepless night and several days of mental anguish.She was one of the women who love too well.She confessed to these things, brokenly, and it came as a kind of shock to Joan to find some one taking things seriously and allowing herself to suffer.