第86章

It was when Gilbert, after a most affectionate greeting and ten minutes of easy small talk, led her away from the disappointed group, that Alice made her first mistake.

"You don't look at all well, Gilbert," she said anxiously.

The very fact that he knew himself to be not at all well made him hate to be told so.An irritable line ran across his forehead."Oh, yes, I'm well," he said, "never better.Come along to the summer house and let's put a dune between us and those vultures."He led her down a flight of stone steps and over a stretch of undulating dry sand to the place where Hosack invariably read the morning paper and to which his servants led their village beaux when the moon was up, there to give far too faithful imitations of the hyena.And there he sat her down and stood in front of her, enigmatically, wondering how much she knew."If it comes to that,"he said, "you look far from well yourself, Alice."And she turned her pretty, prim face up to him with a sudden trembling of the lips."What do you expect," she asked, quite simply, "when I've only had one short letter from you all the time I've been away.""I never write letters," he said."You know that.How's your mother?""But I wrote every day, and if you read them you'd know."He shifted one shoulder.These gentle creatures could be horribly disconcerting and direct.As a matter of fact he had failed to open more than two of the collection.They were too full of the vibration of a love that had never stirred him."Yes, I'm glad she's better.

I'm afraid you've been rather bored.Illness is always boring.""I can only have one mother," said Alice.

Palgrave felt the need of a cigarette.Alice, admirable as she was, had a fatal habit, he thought, of uttering bromides.

And she instantly regretted the remark.She knew that way of his of snapping his cigarette case.Was that heavily be-flowered church a dream and that great house in New York only part of a mirage? He seemed to be the husband of some other girl, barely able to tolerate this interruption.She had come determined to get the truth, however terrible it might be.But it was very difficult, and he was obviously not going to help her, and now that she saw him again, curiously worn and nervous and petulant, she dreaded to ask for facts under which her love was to be laid in waste.

"No wonder you like this place," she said, beating about the bush.

"I don't.I loathe it.The everlasting drumming of the sea puts me on edge.It's as bad as living within sound of the elevated railway.

And at night the frogs on the land side of the house add to the racket and make a row like a factory in full blast.I'd rather be condemned to a hospital for incurables than live on a dune." He said all this with the sort of hysteria that she had never noticed in him before.He was indeed far from well.Hardly, in fact, recognizable.

The suave, imperturbable Gilbert, with the quiet air of patronage and the cool irony of the polished man of the world,--what had become of him? Was it possible that Joan had resisted him? She couldn't believe such a thing.

"Then why have you stayed so long?" she asked, with this new point of view stirring hope.

"There was nowhere else to go to," he answered, refusing to meet her eyes.

This was too absurd to let pass."But nothing has happened to the house at Newport, and the yacht's been lying in the East River since the first of June and you said in your only letter that the two Japanese servants have been at the cottage near Devon for weeks!""I'm sick of Newport with all its tuft-hunting women, and the yacht doesn't call me.As for the cottage, I'm going there to-morrow, possibly to-night."Alice got up quickly and stood in front of him.There was a spot of color on both her cheeks, and her hands were clasped together.

"Gilbert, let's both go there.Let's get away from all these people for a time.I won't ask you any questions or try and pry into what's happened to you.I'll be very quiet and help you to find yourself again."She had made another mistake.His sensitiveness gave him as many quills as a porcupine."Find myself," he said, quoting her unfortunate words with sarcasm."What on earth do you mean by that, my good child?"She forced back her rising tears.Had she utterly lost her rights as a wife? He was speaking to her in the tone that a man uses to an interfering sister."What's to become of me?" she asked.

"Newport, of course.Why not? Fill the house up.I give you a free hand.""And will you join me there, Gilbert?"

"No.I'm not in the mood."

He turned on his heel and went to the other side of the summer house, and flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the scrub below.Afrog took a leap.When he spoke again it was with his back to her.

"Don't you think you'd better rejoin Mrs.Jekyll? She may be impatient to get off."But Alice took her courage in both hands.If this was to be the end she must know it.Uncertainty was not to be endured any longer.All her sleepless nights and fluctuations of hope and despair had marked her, perhaps for life.Hers was not the easily blown away infatuation of a debutante, the mere summer love of a young girl.It was the steady and devoted love of a wife, ready to make sacrifices, to forgive inconstancies, to make allowances for temporary aberrations and, when necessary, to nurse back to sanity, without one word or look of reproach, the husband who had slipped into delinquency.Not only her future and his were at stake, but there were the children for whom she prayed.They must be considered.

And so, holding back her emotion, she followed him across the pompous summer house in which, with a shudder, she recognized a horrible resemblance to a mausoleum, and laid her little hand upon his arm.

"Gilbert," she said, "tell me the truth.Be frank with me.Let me help you, dear."Poor little wife.For the third time she had said the wrong thing.

"Help"--the word angered him.Did she imagine that he was a callow youth crossed in love?