Paradise Garden Part 46

Marcia merely smiled, saying nothing, and when she joined the talk of another group I saw Una's gaze following her curiously.

She seemed to be able to understand Marcia little better than I did.

But in a moment from my seat in the corner just beside them I saw Una look about the room and give a little gasp of pleasure.

"This cabin! Do you remember, Jerry?" she said quietly. "You gave me a cup of tea here and we decided just what you and I were going to do with the wicked world?"

"Oh, don't I? And you told me all about the plague spots?"

"Yes." She gazed out of the window. "You were interesting that day, Jerry."

"Was! I like that."

"So elephantine in your seriousness--"

"Elephantine! Oh, I say--"

"But you _were_ nice. I don't think I've ever liked you so much as then. I think you're really much more interesting when you're elephantine. It was quite glorious the way you were planning to go galumphing over all vice and wickedness."

He shook his head soberly.

"I haven't made good, Una."

"Oh, there's still time. The jungle is still there, but it's an awfully big jungle, Jerry, bigger than you thought."

"Yes--bigger and swampier," he said slowly.

"I think if I could see more of you, Una, I might be better."

"I don't know that I've ever denied you the house," she laughed.

"I--I'm coming soon. But I want you to see my place here--the house, I mean. Couldn't you come with your mother and--and sisters and spend a few days up here?"

"Perhaps it would be time enough for me to answer that question when mother does. I--I _am_ busy, you know."

"Please! And we can have one of our good old chats."

"Yes," and then mischievously, "but you'd better ask Marcia first, don't you think?"

His gaze fell and he reddened.

"I--I don't quite see what Marcia's got to do with it," he muttered.

"Oh, _don't_ you?"

"No."

She smiled and then with a really serious air:

"Well, I do. I'm sorry I intruded, Jerry. I wouldn't have come for the world if I had known--"

"What nonsense you do talk. Promise me you'll come, Una."

"Ask Marcia first."

He laughed uneasily. "What a tease you are!"

"You ought to be very much flattered."

"How?"

"To be worth teasing."

Here they moved slightly away, turning their backs toward me and unfortunately I could hear no more. And so I sat listening to the group around Marcia, who was again enthroned at the tea-table.

I had not met the men, but they were of the usual man-about-town type, "Marcia's ex-es" somebody, I think the mannish Carew girl, amusingly called them. Among them Arthur Colton, married only a year, who already boasted that he was living "the simple double life." Besides the Laidlaws there were the Walsenberg woman, twice a gra.s.s widow and still hopeful, and the Da Costa debutante who looked as though b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth, giggled constantly and said things which she fondly hoped to be devilish, but which were only absurd. This was the girl, I think, whom Jerry had described as having only five adjectives, all of which she used every minute. Channing Lloyd, a gla.s.s of champagne at his elbow, laughed gruffly and filled the room with tobacco smoke. I listened. Small talk, ba.n.a.lities, bits of narrow glimpses of narrow pursuits. I had to admit that Marcia quite dominated this circle, and I understood why. Shallow as she was, she was the only one with the possible exception of Phil Laidlaw who gave any evidence of having done any thinking at all. I might have known as I listened that her conversation had a purpose.

"I claim that obedience to the will of man," Marcia was saying, "has robbed woman of all initiative, all incentive to achievement, all creative faculty, and that only by renouncing man and all his works will she ever be his equal."

"Why don't you renounce 'em then, Marcia?" roared Lloyd, amid laughter.

"I know at least one that I could renounce,' said Marcia, smiling as she lighted a cigarette.

"Me? You couldn't," he returned. "You've tried, you know, but you've got to admit that I'm positively in'spensible to you."

"Do be quiet, Chan. You're idiotic. I'm quite serious."

"You're always serious, but you never mean what you say."

"Oh, don't I?"

"No," he grunted over his gla.s.s.

She glanced at him for a moment and their eyes met, hers falling first. Then she turned away. I think that the man's attraction for her was nothing less than his sheer b.e.s.t.i.a.lity.

"I believe in a splendid unconventional morality," she went on, musing with half-closed eyes over the ash of her cigarette. "After awhile you men will understand what it means."

"Not I," said Lloyd, who was drinking more than he needed. "If you say that immorality is conventional I'll agree with you, my dear, but morality--" and he drank some champagne, "morality! what rot!"

The others laughed, I'll admit, more at, than with him. But the conversation was sickening enough. I saw Jerry and Una shake hands and come forward and Marcia immediately turned toward them. The end of the battle was not yet, for as Una nodded in the general direction of the group in pa.s.sing, Marcia spoke her name.

"Ah, Una dear. You're going?"

"I must," with a glance at her wrist watch. "It's getting late."

"What a pity. I wanted to talk to you--about the Mission."

"I'd like to, but--"

"We've just been discussing a theme that I know you're really vitally interested in."