Renting an apartment? What a dismal outlook. Robert detested apartments. They were all right in New York, but in the South! He wanted room—room to loaf about and read, room for riding and playing tennis, room to entertain his friends. The tennis court, he noticed, had been allowed to run down and he decided to have it put back in shape the first chance he got.
In the meantime there were so many old friends to visit, so many questions to answer. On the first night home, a reporter from the morning paper had come—it was almost midnight—to interview him, and the reporters from the afternoon papers had followed the next day. They had asked not merely questions about his personal experiences, but questions of which he knew nothing. About the peace conference, about the League of Nations. What did the French think of President Wilson and of Americans in general? Who won the war? And what part did the Southern, and particularly the Georgian, troops play in the war? Of course, he had been with New York troops, but he generously accorded the Southern soldiers their full meed of praise, which they doubtlessly deserved anyway, and of which he had heard indirectly.
And Margaret? He had to become acquainted with her all over again, too. She seemed younger than before he had left her to go to France. It was not alone her dress. He noticed that the women were wearing short skirts in imitation of the Parisiennes. It was not alone in her manner of combing her hair. It lay in a childish freshness that was at once impudent and sophisticated. Margaret had never been a serious-minded young lady, but now she seemed fairly to flutter above the realities of life.
They were returning from a dance one evening, at which Robert had incurred Margaret’s displeasure by attempting to sit out most of his dances. It was almost two o’clock and they were driving down a deserted street. Before the war, midnight had generally been the limit for a dance, unless it was some exceptional occasion, like the annual charity ball, for instance.
“You know, you seem—you seem so much younger than when I left,” said Robert.
“Oh, do I?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose you don’t like it. You’d want me to stay home every evening and darn socks and go to bed at nine, I suppose. What’s the matter with you, Bob? We used to be such good pals. Don’t, don’t—oh, I don’t know.”
They drove on in silence. How could he explain things to her? How could he make her understand his feelings? He wished, in a way, that he had postponed their engagement, not that they wouldn’t marry eventually anyway, but that it placed him under obligations. He had to escort her to dances and receptions and take her to the theatre. Of course, he got a certain amount of pleasure out of these things, but then he preferred simply to loaf about the house. It was queer, a fellow lay in the mud in Flanders for months under a drizzling sky and dreamed of coming home. Home was pre-eminently a place for loafing. A place where one could sleep as late as one wanted, lounge about in old clothes and sleep some more. Now that one finally did reach home, one found that practise did not square with theory. Theoretically, Hamilton could have stayed in bed all morning. But when his parents were at the breakfast table at eight o’clock, he felt under a moral obligation to do likewise, especially now that the burden of housework had fallen on the shoulders of a single servant. Theoretically, too, he could have retired at eight every evening or stayed up until three in the morning, but practically, there were always social duties to perform. Margaret was always calling him up and claiming him.
There was no use trying to explain a thing like that to Margaret. How could she understand? She would probably think that he was getting old. He was only twenty-six. Had the war aged him? He had always taken Pinkney for a prematurely aged young man, and yet, while Pinkney was able to talk business and finances with the elders of the city, he was able to cut a commanding figure in the younger social set. He knew all the latest steps and even introduced little variations that he had picked up in New Orleans, Charleston and Baltimore.