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The Ludlows, as Joan had told Alice with one of her frequent laughs, might have come over in the only staterooms on the ship which towed the heavily laden Mayflower, but that didn't alter the fact that the Hosacks, the Jekylls and the Ouchterlonys were the three most consistently exclusive and difficult families in the country, to know whom all social climbers would joyously mortgage their chances of eternity.
"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.
And he, too, had made up his mind to play his last card that night. Man and woman and love, the old, inevitable story. The personnel of the Hosacks' house party had changed. Mrs. Noel d'Oyly had led her little husband away to Newport to stay with Mrs. Henry Vanderdyke, where were Beatrix and Pelham Franklin, with a bouncing baby boy, the apple of Mr. Vanderdyke's eye.
It staggered him to arrive at the Hosacks' place and find her fooling with a smooth-faced lad. It outraged him to be left cold, as though he were a mere member of the house party and watch her to whom he had thrown open his soul go joy-riding with a cursed boy. It was, in a sort of way, heresy. It proved an almost unbelievable inability to realize the great thing that this was.
A cheery fellow, cut off from all his cherished sports but free from even the suggestion of grousing. Of his own individual stunts, as he called them, he gave no details and made no mention of the fact that he carried the D.S.O. and the Croix de Guerre in his bag. He had met the Hosacks at the American Embassy in London in 1913. He was rather sweet on Primrose.
The word "fencing" didn't strike home at first, nor did he gather at once from her simple appeal that she had not come in the mood that he had persuaded himself was hers. "This is the first time that you've given me even an hour since you drew me to the Hosacks," he said. "Be generous. Don't do things by halves." She could say nothing to that.
Wire Gilmore and fix it. I'll drive you out to-morrow. By the way, I found a letter from my cousin Harry among the others. He's in that part of the world. He's frightfully gone on your wife, it appears." Martin looked up quickly. "Where is she?" he asked. "Why, they're both staying at the Hosacks' place at Easthampton. Didn't you know that?" He was incredulous. "No," said Martin.
Set the pace, my dear, laugh and flirt and play with fire and have a good time. A short life and a merry one." And then she joined the Hosacks, drank deep of the wine of adulation, and when, at odd times, the sound of Marty's voice echoed in her memory, she forced it out and laughed it away. "Who Cares?" was his motto too, red lips and white face and hair that came out of a bottle!
Her eyes danced, her lips were parted a little, her young bosom rose and fell. "And so you see," said Palgrave, putting his hand on the back of her chair, "I can stay as long as the Hosacks will have me, and one day I'll drive you over to my bachelor cottage on the dune. It will interest you." "The only thing that has any interest at the moment is dancing," said Oldershaw loudly.
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