Joan's respect for the sterner sex, never very exaggerated, was not increased by the avidity with which they swallowed, one by one, her inexperienced hook, bait and all. Evidently her fellow-men had very little use for nice, intelligent, modest young girls in comparison with the Brazen Hussie.... For Joan had no illusions about herself, either. She had joined, temporarily it is true, and for what seemed to her legitimate reasons, the order of the Brazen Hussies.
She put into practice as many of her step-mother's precepts as she could recall, and found that they worked astonishingly well. She also cultivated a beauty-manner, modeling herself on a certain Louisville belle whose manœuvers she had observed with interest. She became helplessly sweet and very, very feminine; and she smiled whenever there was an excuse for smiling. It was a new smile she had practised before the mirror; an intimate, confiding, personal affair that crinkled up her long eyes charmingly, and showed at least two thirds of her good white teeth. Eduard Desmond occasionally referred to these teeth as "pearls," though they were hard and sharp and strong as a young squirrel's: Eduard being the sort of person who takes his similes ready-made out of poetry.
Surprisingly enough, considering the sporting nature of the community in which she found herself, Joan heard a good deal of poetry during this visit. The moon happened to be full, and Longmeadow edged upon a river; one of those pleasant, cosy little streams that are designed by an all-wise Providence for canoes to float upon in summer evenings. By day other girls had their innings on golf-links and tennis-court (though even by day our heroine was not idle). But at night with the moon she came into her own. She made her canoe engagements days ahead, not too frequently with Eduard; and she came to the conclusion that just as infants at a certain stage must go through the teething period, so somewhat later they must go with equal painfulness through the poetry period. It gave her quite a motherly feeling toward her admirers; which fortunately she was able to dissemble.
By contrast with the sportsmanlike young women of the community, Joan, in her frills and wide hats and small, beaded, high-heeled slippers, seemed to fill a long-felt want. Her rôle was by no means an uninteresting one. Occasionally in the course of events she got almost, if not quite, kissed; and she became expert in deflecting the course of inconvenient emotion.
"It's suggestion does it," she wrote to her friend Mr. Nikolai. "Given a moon, fluffy ruffles, and the Kentucky-belle tradition—and they seem helpless, poor dears!"
But perhaps it was not entirely the power of suggestion that made her success. Joan was enough of an artist to do whatever she did with a certain finish.
Her difficulty, however, in the heady game she played, was to concentrate on the purpose in hand. At the end of two weeks, she began to fancy a slight diminution of cordiality on the part of both Betty and her mother, and she realized that her visit was growing longer than seemed usual. Other guests came and went, remaining only a few days before going on to the next engagement. Accustomed to the indeterminate visits of the South, she had not thought to set any definite time for her departure; but now she felt uncomfortably that the hour had come to bring things to a climax. She gave herself one more week at Longmeadow. Surely three weeks is a short enough time in which to provide oneself with a future and a husband!
She was by no means counting without her host. From the day of her arrival Eduard had taken no pains to hide the fact that he considered her his especial property. While his manner was still that of one who would not willingly brush the bloom from off the peach, there had always been in it a disturbing hint, a slight flattering suggestion, that peaches are tempting even to the jaded appetite. Lately his air of possession had become, to Joan's amusement, decidedly tinged with jealousy. He viewed his more youthful rivals with no attempt at equanimity.
Joan was aware that people were beginning to discuss the affair, and to watch her curiously. It put her on her mettle. She intended to satisfy their curiosity very shortly; but—she wished the thing might be managed without the necessity for so many tête-à-têtes.
It was not that she did not like her future husband. On the contrary she liked him so well as to find herself a little shy with him. She preferred his attentions to take place against a background of society; as for instance, at a dance, when his eye could be as significant as it chose without alarming her; or at table, where under cover of the general conversation, they managed some moments of real intimacy.
There was much to be said, thought Joan, for the French method of vigorously chaperoning young love up to the very threshold of matrimony.
As it was, his foot seemed uncomfortably prone to rest on hers beneath the table; and once when he stooped to recover a dropped fan, his lips had brushed like a touch of delicate flame along the bare length of her forearm—But these indications of what was to come the startled girl was able to ignore as accidental. (She had decided, it will be recalled, to be if necessary a trifle Fast.)
At last she steeled herself firmly to the necessity for tête-à-têtes, realizing that even so finished a performer as Mr. Desmond could not well manage a genuine proposal during the intricacies of the tango, or at dinner between the soup and the entrée. There were certain accompaniments, she fancied, that made the idea of a proposal in public impracticable—Joan's imagination was frequently as useful to her as experience.
She had managed to escape the perils of horseback riding by an inspired expedient. Duplicity, she found, came easily with practice.
"Straddle a horse? Oh, honey, I couldn't!" she had murmured at her most Southern, when informed that there were no side-saddles in the Longmeadow stables.
"Why," protested Betty, "there's not a side-saddle to be had this side of Kentucky, Jo—they're as extinct as the Dodo! And even if there were, papa would never allow one on any of our horses. You haven't your habit here, anyway. Do be sensible, dear. I'll let you ride the Rabbit!"
Joan shook her head, regretfully but firmly. "If my father were to see a lady of his family straddling a horse, in trousers," she said, "I think he'd have a stroke!"—which was doubtless true.
It was necessary, therefore, for Eduard's increasing desire for solitude to take the form of canoeing, or driving in the dog-cart without a groom; or preferably, strolling through a certain bit of near-by woodland.
Here he liked to fling himself at his handsome length on the moss at Joan's feet, and read to her chosen bits out of the "Rubaiyat": a work much in favor at the moment, which would appear to have been translated by Mr. Fitzgerald for the express purpose of uttering Mr. Desmond's sentiments.
Joan murmured "Um-m-m!" and "How true!" and "Exquisite!" in the right places; but she was not often listening to him. She was watching the play of light and shade on his fine, waving hair; she was studying more keenly than she knew the chiseled features, bearing those slight marks of manly dissipation which are for some reason never wholly displeasing to the young feminine eye; she was noticing the smallness of his hands, the really beautiful cut and quality of his clothes.
What sort of person was he under the agreeable surface, this chosen husband of hers?
An artist, people had called him: but Art in his case seemed not the exacting mistress she had fancied it. Or perhaps the artistic temperament required long periods of recuperative leisure.... She had decided that it was wiser not to fall in love, at least till after marriage: but she did choose that her husband should be the sort of person it was possible to fall in love with; well-bred, fastidious, cultivated, thoroughly a man of the world. All these Eduard Desmond was, and more. He had a real and unaffected taste for music, books, nature—for what Joan called to herself "the real things." It argued well for future companionship.
There was, to be sure, the disability of what she thought of vaguely as his "habits." But there had been no sign of them in the two weeks she had lived in the same house with him; and even if he had not as yet completely overcome them, there was no reason why he should not do so later, with a watchful wife to help him. On the whole their chances for happiness together seemed quite as good as those of most people she knew, thought Joan, with unconscious cynicism.
The material side of the arrangement did not occur to her. For all her calm calculations, Joan was not mercenary. All she asked was a place of her own in the world, a sense of permanence; she longed quite wistfully for a background that "stayed put." Romance was a thing she felt she could do without forever, in return for independence from her step-mother, and perhaps a little home of her own with a garden to it. She believed that to any man who would provide these few essentials she could be a faithful and a loyal wife.
What would he expect of her in return? Would she have to go on all her life being Southern and winsome and alluring? Would he prefer her, after the honeymoon, say, to go in heavily for sports, like the women of his set? Or might she presently venture to be just herself again—just Joan, whatever that might be! The gayest of rôles becomes a trifle wearing for everyday use.
She sighed; and looking up from the Rubaiyat, he caught her eyes fixed upon him, wide and speculative.
"What is the little girl thinking of?" he asked tenderly.
She answered at once, with a return of her gay daring, "You—of course!"
But under his intensifying gaze her own dropped, and he went on reading; in a voice that shook, however.
"Now for it!" said Joan suddenly to herself. She dropped her hand negligently on the leaves, close to his.
She resisted the temptation to jerk it back as soon as she was aware of its contact with another. Very slight the contact was, no more than the touch of a leaf. She pretended not to notice it; but the blood sang in her ears, her cheeks burned—she wished suddenly that he would take her hand, if he was going to; hold it tight....
Heavens! What was happening to her? Shewantedthe touch of his hand; she liked it! Did she care for him, then? Was this being in love—already?
"Joan," he whispered. "Look at me!"
The spell was broken. She jumped to her feet. "Come, we must be getting back," she said hurriedly. "It is late."
"Ah, but how cold you are!"
"Yes, I am, a little," she said innocently. "These woods are damp."
But all the way home, beneath her relief, lingered a sense of annoyance, of disappointment.
"What a prig I am," she thought disgustedly. "It would be all over now if I'd only—let him!"
That night she wrote at unusual length to Mr. Nikolai. It was almost like writing to herself; and Joan frequently felt the need of seeing what she was about set down in black and white, for greater clarity.
She had not meant to tell Mr. Nikolai of her imminent engagement till the thing wasfait accompli; but she knew that everything would be settled by the time her letter reached him. She wanted to be reassured about her odd and unexpected emotion during the contact of her hand with Eduard Desmond's. Was it so, then, that people fell in love, just suddenly without any warning? And had the mind nothing to do with it whatever?
For mentally she was not altogether pleased with herself.
The idea that Betty and her mother were eyeing her somewhat askance troubled Joan not a little. In her heart of hearts she preferred women to men, and believed their friendship more of a compliment. She would have liked to make a friend of Mrs. Desmond, had there been time, envying Betty's camaraderie with her mother; although Mrs. Desmond presented a golfing, bridge-playing, sporting type of motherhood quite new to her experience.
There was a peculiar intimacy and freedom among all this group of people, who seemed to spend most of the year together either in Philadelphia or Aiken or Ormond or these long-established country-places surrounding the Longmeadow Hunt Club. It was like a curiously ramified family, in which husbands and wives seemed to have changed partners rather frequently, and were still in process of changing. It was Joan's first glimpse of a society in which married women hold the center of the stage rather than young girls, and she was just a little shocked by it.
There appeared to be no age limit here. It was not so much that these women concealed their age, after the rather obvious fashion of Effie May, as that they simply ignored it. Even Mrs. Desmond, dignified and well-bred though she was, had a devoted attendant or two, spoken of casually by Betty as "mamma's flames," and during Joan's visit at least Mr. Desmond remained merely an abstraction. Conjugal affection was distinctly not the fashion in the Desmond circle.
But this casualness of relations did not extend to the young girls. They had no such freedom as Joan was accustomed to in the South. Betty, at eighteen, was as carefully guarded as if she were still a child. She was not permitted to go into the city without a maid or an older woman; she neither drove or canoed alone with men, nor "sat out" with them at dances. And it did not occur to her to protest.
"That sort of thing isn't good form," she explained once to Joan. "For us, at least—Of course with Southern girls it's different."
But Joan began to suspect that even Southern girls were expected to hold in regard this one fetish they had elected to worship, Good Form; and that according to this standard she had already been condemned.
At first the younger women had made some effort to include her in their various activities, golf, bridge, tennis. But latterly they had left her alone, not severely but tolerantly, as one dedicated to other pursuits.
"Miss Darcy? Oh, she's from the South, you know—awfully busy with the men," she overheard one of them explain to a newcomer; and she had resented the remark keenly, not only for herself, but for the women of her adopted home, who at least are rarely "busy with the men" after marriage.
The person who made this remark was a Mrs. Rossiter, a pretty, boyish creature, already divorced and remarried at thirty, and bearing her present conjugality rather lightly. She was on terms of great intimacy with the Desmond family, Eduard included; and Joan fancied that she might have been one of the "widows" mentioned by Betty as her uncle's chosen companions.
But if it had been so, her day was done. Eduard had palpably no eyes for her now, and Joan could afford the generosity of admiring Mrs. Rossiter. She was so natural and frank, and so royally indifferent to others' opinion. Joan, who had a fatal propensity for acting as the people about her expected her to act, envied her this assurance, and wished that she could make friends with her.
The truth was that the girl, despite her success, felt utterly lonely. She saw very little of Betty. Mrs. Desmond was an experienced hostess who made no attempt to regulate the comings and goings of her guests, and the girls made separate engagements. Even bedtime confidences had ceased, owing to the fact that when Joan came up to her room, Betty was usually asleep.
But on the night of her illuminating afternoon in the woods with Eduard, Betty appeared to be waiting up for her. She came yawning into Joan's room to watch her friend undress, and established herself sleepily on the foot of the bed.
"What a pity you can't wear your hair down all the time, Jo! Men adore hair, don't they? And yours has a regular patina on it, like old bronze."
"Not greenish, I hope," laughed Joan.
"No—sort of orangish. Dark, with an orange lining."
"Betty! It sounds horrible!"
"Well, you know very well it isn't.—May Rossiter thinks you are awfully clever to wear it that simple way, too, so straight and plain, when the rest of us stick out like mops. She says you're awfully clever about lots of things—too smart for the likes of us."
"Does she?" Joan was a little startled and not quite pleased. She had not intended to give the impression of cleverness. It was out of her present rôle entirely. "I wonder what Mrs. Rossiter meant by that?"
"Oh, men, of course," yawned Betty. "You see you've annexed a few of hers, which naturally makes her peevish."
"Have I?" murmured Joan. "Who, for instance?"
"Well, Uncle Neddy, for one."
"Oh! So shewasone of his flames, then?"
Betty sat up. "You mean to say you didn't know it? One of them!Theone, my child! Surely you remember about his broken heart?—the married lady he was recovering from in Washington last year? Well, May's it. Of course I'm not supposed to know, being aningénue—but our Neddy was frightfully gone on her, and she returned it, and the husband she had then got jealous (rather a bounder he was, not one of us, you know), and there was some sort of excitement, and she divorced him. Every one thought to marry Uncle Ned, of course. But instead she upped and married Mr. Rossiter! Joke on Neddy, wasn't it?"
Joan's lip curled. "What a romantic love story! Why do you suppose she married that old Mr. Rossiter?"
Betty shrugged in a worldly-wise manner. "Awfully rich, my dear. And Neddy isn't."
"But they seem friendly enough still, she and Mr. Desmond?"
"Oh, of course. Why not? It would be frightfully uncomfortable for the rest of us if they glowered and didn't speak and all that, like quarreling servants. And Uncle Neddy seems to be consoling himself!" She twinkled at Joan. "That evens things up, you see. But,"—she suddenly grew grave—"what doyouget out of all this, Joan? You couldn't possiblylikeseeing so much of Uncle Neddy! He's such a—softy. And such a bore, too, with his art and poetry and stuff."
"You mean," smiled Joan, "he's too mature for you, dear."
"Too mature for you then, too! You're only a few months older."
The other gave an unconscious sigh. "Oh, me—I'm different."
Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school—so funny and larky, and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at over at the College than if they didn't exist."
"College boysdon'texist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles, just a transition state. And rather disgusting."
"Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty blurted out, "you're not—wanting to get married, are you?"
Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low voice, "I'm not!"
Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. Shehadto get married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole."
Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong with your uncle? You mean—because he drinks?"
Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of aningénuethan she thought, and found herself getting into deep water.
"I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there'ssomethingwrong with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway. He's too fastidious—and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other ways of being dissipated—aren't there?"
"I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that.... On the whole, she felt rather relieved.
"That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused aloud, "if a man were happily married."
"If!" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank Heaven,wedon't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage—Good night, you bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend.
Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned.
The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing, "I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off against each other, and so good for them—particularly Ned! He's rather spoiled, I'm afraid—used to monopolizing his favorites...."
Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's significant phrase, "one of them."
The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely that was sufficient?
Once in her childhood she had heard her father remark in a moment of especial grandiloquence that Darcys were entitled to the society of kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement. Something within assured her that she would feel perfectly at ease with any kings or queens who chanced to cross her path. In fact the only people with whom so far she had not felt at ease were snobs and parvenues, under neither of which categories the Desmonds could be placed.
Now she wondered suddenly to what she and her father owed this comfortable sense of lofty destiny. True, theirs was "an old Southern family"; but living in a part of the world that seems entirely populated by such families, this was no distinction. Darcys, she knew, had fought and died for their country whenever occasion offered, but so had quite simple people named Smith or Jones. She racked her brain to think of anything else they might have done for their country, or even for themselves. Genius had never made its appearance among them, nor wealth, nor even beauty, to any noticeable extent. They were rich in one thing only: self-esteem.
Fortunately, however, Joan had her share of that; and upon further reflection she decided that "Darcy" was at least as distinguished a name as "Desmond." Doubtless their ancestors had been kings in Ireland together.
The question of her poverty occurred to her for a moment, only to be dismissed as negligible. The Desmonds were too well-bred to be mercenary. Eduard was not rich himself; and if, as Betty intimated, his reputation was a trifle tarnished, he could not be too exacting in his demands. He could not expect youth, and charm, and wit, and a dowry as well! thought Joan complacently. No: Eduard would be getting quite as much as he gave....
It was in rather a defiant mood that she appeared at dinner that night in a blue chiffon frock which the observant Eduard had pronounced his favorite; and though some people were expected afterwards for dancing, she deliberately accepted his murmured suggestion that they row up the river to see the last of the harvest moon.
There had naturally been some discussion at the Convent as to the most desirable setting for proposals, the consensus of opinion being in favor of Miss Alcott's little water-scene between Amy and the faithless Laurie. Laurie, the reader will remember, is rowing Amy about in the romantic region of Chillon (still with regretful memories of Jo hovering in the background, however), when she catches him eyeing her with an expression which
"makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying something:"'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc."'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc."Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar."'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected to silence just then."'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly."'Yes, Laurie,' very low."Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake."
"makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying something:
"'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc.
"'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc.
"Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar.
"'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected to silence just then.
"'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly.
"'Yes, Laurie,' very low.
"Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake."
This classic scene was not absent from Joan's mind as she seated herself and her blue chiffon recklessly in the prow of Eduard's canoe; though the details of stage-management troubled her somewhat. Suppose the proposer chose to kneel at the feet of the proposee—since there was no seat to share with her? And suppose the proposer lost his head (as might properly be expected of him) and embraced the proposee madly—what was to prevent so precarious a thing as a canoe from tipping over! It seemed to call for great presence of mind on the part of the proposee. Joan felt rather nervous.
Mr. Desmond, however, let the opportunity pass. Perhaps he had not read "Little Women."
Amid talk so casual that it might as well have been silence, they slipped along between the wide gray of earth and sky, afloat on a stream of silver. They came presently to an overhanging willow, where he tied the boat, and helped Joan ashore. He led her, with an air of one performing a ceremony, up a slight rise of land topped by a great beech-tree, whose widespread roots made a sort of armchair, after the hospitable fashion of beech-trees.
"Queen Joan on her throne, viewing her domain," he murmured.
He had not brought her to this place before, and she realized that he had been saving it for a special occasion. There was a view before her of shadowy, dreaming country, with a hint of stars to come, and sheep-bells tinkling in a distant field, and lights gleaming here and there from half-hidden houses.
Eduard began to murmur softly:
"When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,Miles on milesO'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheepHalf asleep,Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and cropAs they stop—"
"When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,Miles on milesO'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheepHalf asleep,Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and cropAs they stop—"
A sudden impatience seized Joan. How like him to arrange this setting, to bring things carefully to a climax, and then—to spout Browning at her!
But she said, as he paused, "Beautiful! 'Love among the Ruins,' isn't it?"
"Yes—And I," he sighed, tapping himself on the chest, "I am the Ruins!"
Despite the bombast of his tone, there was something in his sigh that struck her as genuine.
She said consolingly, "At least you're a well-preserved ruin, very popular with tourists.... I wonder what makes you feel so particularly ruinous to-night?"
"The fact that you're so damnably young," he muttered.
She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will disappear in time."
"Exactly! And before you know it, my dear.
"'The nightingale that in the branches sang—ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows!'
"'The nightingale that in the branches sang—ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows!'
"You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be back there, playing with the little boys and girls."
"But if the boys and girls bore me—?"
"Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with—?"
Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to make other people—jealous."
"You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her.
"'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a moment, "or very natural, either—as my sister-in-law was very good to point out to me only this morning!"
Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a passive but an active interest in her affairs!
"Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like Betty. I know exactly what I am doing."
He leaned toward her. "Do you? Do you, I wonder? Joan! Look at me!Doyou know what you are doing—to me?"
The darkness left only the white outline of their faces visible to each other. He struck a match, in order to see her better.
For a moment she tried to meet his eyes. They frightened her even while they drew her. The blood began to sing in her ears, as it had when he touched her hand. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her—and at the same time she wanted to run away and hide. Their long gaze seemed to let down some barrier within her, to loosen curious impulses.... Why did he not take her, and have done with it?
"No," he muttered, as if she had spoken, "Come!"
Her body made a helpless movement toward him....
Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it.
"I—I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she wanted to get this queerly painful scene over.
But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring. It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels which glittered in the dusk.
"Oh!—oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never given her anything as splendid as this.
"May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly.
She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never have done.
She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she had pictured it.
"Wh—what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when I've got a perfectly good mouth!"
After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....
A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices honor the event.
The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. For once Eduard found no poetry to suit the occasion. Joan, busy with her tumbled hair, hoped and even prayed that she might be able to slip into her room unobserved. She hurried nervously out of the dark boathouse, despite entreaties to wait, and was half way to the house before he caught up with her.
"Oh, hurry!" she whispered. "They've all gone—every light in the house is out! It must be after midnight. Ned, what if they've locked the door?"
"They haven't. My sister knows we're still out—trust her for that!"
"But suppose she's waiting up for us?—Oh, Ned, whatever shall I say?"
"You might tell her, Beautiful," he teased, "that I've had you up under the beech-tree, kissing roses into your cheeks and stars into your eyes!—though I think any one who saw you just now might suspect that without being told."
She turned suddenly and clung to him. Something of Joan's independence had already slipped away from her, now that she had some one to cling to. "Ned, she doesn't like me! How am I ever going to win her over?"
"Kiss her," he suggested promptly. "Kiss her as you've been kissing me. It couldn't fail!"
"Don't tease!" She lifted serious, wide eyes to his, and he saw that they were wet. "Don't you know that I shall never, never in all my life, kiss anybody else as I have kissed you?"
Touched, he drew her closer. She looked just then singularly childish and confiding. "Dear little girl, that thought herself so grown-up!" he whispered, his cheek on her tumbled hair.
When she stirred in his arms he still held her. "What's the use of hurrying now, Beautiful? The fat's in the fire—and who knows when we shall have another night like this, all to ourselves?"
But she would not stay. She felt, obscurely, that they had been engaged enough for one evening.
She found herself at last safe in her room—'safe' was the word in her mind—sitting on the edge of her bed, staring down at her ruined finery with eyes which did not see it. Her knees felt queerly weak under her, her lips were bruised, her cheeks and throat and arms burned still with remembered kisses—She said to herself, like the old woman with a shorn petticoat, "Can this be I?"
What had become of her powers of observation, her cool intelligence, her impersonal decision that it was wiser not to love the man you marry lest he be given power to hurt you? There was nothing impersonal left in her feeling for Eduard Desmond! The change had come as suddenly as a summer thunderstorm. At one moment she was waiting, nervous, a little afraid, for the event that she had brought to pass. The next, he and she seemed to have been thrown into a sort of vortex, where they clung to each other madly, desperately, as if to escape destruction. And she had been quite as frantic about it as the man....
She thought, dazedly, that there was a good deal she would be able to tell the girls at the Convent now on the subject of proposals—yes, and Miss Louisa M. Alcott, too! Except that school-girls and literary old maids were not exactly the people with whom one would discuss such phenomena—
They had fancied, she and Betty and the rest, that some sort of formula was necessary to the occasion, a definite question asked and answered, a more or less formal, "Will you, Amy?" and "Yes, Laurie." Foolish innocents! She and Ned had not exchanged a sensible word from the moment they found themselves in each other's arms. Yet the understanding between them was unmistakable. They were completely engaged—almost, Joan thought with a shiver, as good as married!
This, then, was love. A very different thing from what she had expected! A beautiful, rather terrible thing.... The touch of Puritan in the girl made her wonder whether anything so beautiful and terrible could be quite nice.
She slipped to her knees; not to pray, but simply to remember her mother. The vision of her mother always came better when she was on her knees—perhaps because of the old-time association of prayers with bedtime—and Joan felt a desperate need of her just then. She wanted to be assured that her mother understood, and had been through it all herself, and had come out of it—just her mother. She held out her jeweled bracelet childishly in the dark, as if for somebody to see. She knelt there tense, every nerve and fibre straining, whispering under her breath, "Mamma, are you here? Do you know?"
But the vision failed her. She had instead the warmth of a man's breath on her closed eyes, the roughness of his cheek on her throat....
She dropped her head in her arms and began to sob. She was very happy.
It was well into the middle of a fine blue and gold morning when Joan awoke, to find her coffee cold on the tray beside her bed. She had slept through even the entrance of the maid who called her; she who had expected not to sleep at all! An engaged girl, with her lover waiting—in the garden, perhaps, or down beside the river—their river!
The happiness of the night before came to her with a rush, and with it an enormous sense of relief. The thing was done, accomplished!
She ran to the window and peeped out eagerly, hoping he might be watching her window. But only the old gardener was in sight, pottering about among the roses. She blew a kiss from her finger-tips—whether to the gardener, the roses, or the sparkling water beyond she did not know—and began hurriedly to dress.
Singing under her breath, she tripped down the stairs. The big, sunny house was very still. Joan, going from room to room, gazed about her appreciatively. Hitherto the house, the garden, the wide, pleasant countryside had all served merely as a background, of which she was vaguely aware as actors are of a suitable setting for the play they produce. Now she felt that she really had leisure to enjoy her surroundings, which were usually very important to Joan.
She paused to examine a hunting-print, lingered over a fine etching, patted affectionately the soft, gay chintzes of the morning-room. What a relief after such an artificial house as her step-mother's! Nothing here in the least pretentious, no striving after periods, or artistry, or even originality, but everything good, well-chosen, used: luxury in abeyance to comfort; everywhere evidence of travel and culture, and the long habit of these things.
Joan drew a breath of satisfaction. Just such a home she hoped to make for Eduard, though on a smaller scale, perhaps, and with the addition of a little beauty; since it takes more than wealth to provide that.
She thought to find him in the billiard-room, or perhaps in a certain little vine-hung balcony where they sometimes met. But both were empty.
"Where's everybody this fine morning, Molly!" she asked a housemaid she met in the hall.
"Gone over to play golf, like as usual, Miss—'cep'n Mr. Eduard," added Molly, (the pantry having eyes of its own). "He took the first train to town—no'm, I guess it was the second train. Anyway it was real early for Mr. Eduard to be up."
"Oh," said Joan, blankly.
Then it occurred to her why he might have felt the sudden need of running into town. Bracelets are all very well in their way, but they are, after all, noncommittal. She glanced down at her ringless hands, and laughed.
The maid smiled, too, as if in sympathy. "That's an awful pretty bracelet you got on, miss," she was emboldened to say.
"I like it myself, Molly," she confessed, holding it off at arm's length the better to admire it.
She wondered how long it took to get into Philadelphia and back, if one were in a hurry....
Presently some of the golfers came in, ravenous for luncheon. In a sudden accession of shyness, Joan hid her bracelet in her pocket. She surprised them by offering to go back with them later to the golf-links.
"Perhaps I'll catch a golf-germ," she explained.
"What, no engagement for this afternoon? Where's our Eduard?" murmured Mrs. Rossiter, who was one of the party.
But Joan had learned long since to meet impertinence with a noncommittal smile.
After an hour or so of polite attention to the game, however, her interest flagged. She knew that when Eduard got home he would come to look for her, and she had a sudden dread of their first meeting before others, under the observant eyes of May Rossiter in particular. She made an excuse of letters to write, and walked back through their favorite woodland, on the chance of his meeting her there. Eduard had rather an instinct for that sort of thing.
But when she reached Longmeadow, there was no sign of him. Nor did he appear that night at dinner. No comment whatever was made upon his absence.
Joan became uneasy. Surely it was very strange that he should leave her for so long a time just now, without explanation!
An explanation offered itself that drove the blood out of her cheeks—His habits! What did Betty know about them? Men who drink do not always choose the bosom of the family in which to indulge their weakness. In the reaction of emotion upon an artistic temperament, anything might be happening!
The thought roused in Joan one of her finest traits: an immediate response to any call upon her protection. That he had so soon failed her was no reason for her to fail him. She must try to understand, and wait....
People dropped in after dinner, among them as usual Mrs. Rossiter; and Joan, chatting rather abstractedly with one of her admirers in a corner of the porch, caught fragments of conversation from the room within, between Mrs. Rossiter and her hostess.
"So Ned's torn himself away at last?"
"Yes, thank Heaven! The Arnolds have postponed their cruise three times, waiting for him. Why people put up with his shilly-shallying, I'm sure I don't know!"
"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say Fanny Arnold.... But what do you suppose the Darcy girl...."
Their voices dropped lower, and Joan heard no more....
She felt for the moment absolutely numb. She was like a person who has been shot, without having time to ascertain where. All the pride in her gathered to meet this blow without flinching. People must not suspect—they must not suspect.
She went on chatting, laughing, jesting.... He had gone away for good! Without a word to her, he had gone away. He had known last night that he was going, and that he would not come back. She, Joan Darcy, had been jilted. She, too proud to live on a stranger's bounty, had offered herself, unasked, to a man who did not want her!...
Somebody begged her to sing, and brought a guitar. Hers was a slight voice, uncultivated, but with something about it, as about Joan, that attracted attention. People listened to her. She had that curiousélan, that sense of being borne on some outside power, that comes to certain natures from the response of an audience.
Joan touched heights that evening. To some brains, suffering is an incomparable stimulant. Even Betty, with the remembrance of certain wild orgies at school, when quiet Joan Darcy had amazed nuns and girls alike by a sudden transfiguration, had never gaged to the full her friend's possibilities. She sang for them daringly whatever came into her head, negro catches, rollicking Irish lilts, wicked little songs of the streets and alleys. Under Betty's urgings, she exhibited a talent for mimicry which had occasionally reduced the good Sisters almost to apoplexy.
She showed them her father during a political campaign, addressing his constituency under the handicap of a cold in the head. One could see the Major's urbane periods, his mellifluous hand, his tossing topknot—She showed them the Mother Superior, called in to quell a dormitory riot, endeavoring while dodging pillows to maintain proper religious "detachment from place." As an encore she gave them Eduard Desmond, conducting a sunsetà deux, with assistance from the poets—a bit of recklessness that brought shouts of joy from the audience, and produced in Mrs. Rossiter's mocking eye something like respect.
"Joie, howdaredyou!" cried Betty, breathless with laughter, as she went upstairs with her arm about her friend. "It was Uncle Neddy to his very hands; that way he has of touching people inadvertently, as if it were quite by accident. You ought to have seen May Rossiter's face!"
"I did," said Joan grimly.—Something of the sustaining force had begun to leave her, and all she asked of life for the moment was to be left alone.
But Betty was too delighted with her friend's triumph to be easily quenched. "It was like old times!" she cried. "Dear old times at school, when there weren't any men about to spoil things, and the nuns let go and had a good time like anybody!... Nobody here'll ever think of you again as just a flirt and a man-grabber! Why, do you know what that man who came in with Mrs. Jameson said? (He's a clever person, a professor or something.) He said to Mother, 'Mrs. Desmond, that girl's got a touch of genius!'"
"Genius for what—making believe? Much good it does me," said Joan bitterly.... Would the other never go?
Betty hugged her. "And to think we were afraid you'd take Uncle Neddy seriously! Oh, if he could only have seen you!—Jo,Iknow why you were in such wild spirits to-night. I'm not going to ask any questions, because Mother made me promise not to. But you can't deny there is a sort of coincidence between the fact that you spent the evening up the river with him, and that to-day he's gone!—now can you?"
"No," said Joan, "I can't deny that there's—a sort of coincidence."
"Good-by forever! Good-by-yi-yi forever,'" warbled Betty after Tosti, somewhat infected by her friend's recent performances. "Fancy the Irresistible coming another cropper, and at the hands of a mere infant like you! I suppose I ought to be sorry for him, but I'm not. It'll teach him to keep his hands offmyfriends, anyway!" she exclaimed vindictively.
"I gather," murmured Joan with a pale smile, "that you did not altogether fancy me as an aunt?"
"Rather not! I prefer you 'as is.' Plenty of aunts in the world, and not so many Joans."
She went at last, leaving the heroine of the evening to a sleepless night.
Morning did not bring the word from Eduard Desmond that Joan told herself must surely come; the explanation, the excuse, no matter how bald, which she might go through the form of accepting. Nor did the day following bring any message.
On the third day, however, came a basket of candy, a superlative affair of blue straw, tied with wide blue ribbons and quite realistic forget-me-nots. Within was the expected communication:
I never say the ugly word "good-by," if I can help it, Beautiful. Better to keep intact the memory of our last evening together.From my heart I thank you for what you have given me. Such experiences do not come twice in a lifetime.—I have learned.And you, sweetest of them all, what have you learned? At least to remember me, I hope!Eduard.
I never say the ugly word "good-by," if I can help it, Beautiful. Better to keep intact the memory of our last evening together.
From my heart I thank you for what you have given me. Such experiences do not come twice in a lifetime.—I have learned.
And you, sweetest of them all, what have you learned? At least to remember me, I hope!Eduard.
Joan read this over and over, incredulously—The cruelty of it, the sheer, epicurean viciousness, appalled her. She said to herself, like the man in Hedda Gabler, "But people don't do such things!"
Evidently they did, and escaped unscathed. She clenched her hands helplessly. Oh, to be able to tell her father! A rush of primitive feeling came over her, almost of blood-lust. She wanted vengeance on the man who had surfeited himself with her innocence, her youth, it seemed to poor Joan her very soul—and had made amends by sending her a box of candy! The candy seemed somehow a worse insult than the jewel he had given her. It mocked her with its triviality. Bon-bons in return for—what?
With a groan she swept the offering off the table on to the floor; and treading confections underfoot at every step, she fled across her room to the shelter of her bed, where she flung herself face downward.
Why? Why?was the despairing cry of her spirit. How had he dared to treat her so lightly? What had she done?
The answer was not far to seek. With a shudder she remembered her careful study of the rôle she had chosen to play, her considered coquetries and sophistications, even her dressing, the display of silken ankles, of bared arm, her modest décolletage—all weapons she had employed not quite in ignorance. Precocious instinct and the comments of her step-mother had taught her much. She had deliberately, and for her own ends, joined the order of the Brazen Hussies—With this result!
Joan faced her lesson squarely. But she felt sick, degraded, literally soiled. This was the sort of thing that happened to girls who "fell."
She had, for all her reading, a quite hazy idea of what "falling" meant. For a frantic moment (it must be remembered that Joan's education had been conducted by religious ladies who paste decent tissue-paper skirts over offending illustrations in the physiology books)—she struggled with a nightmare horror that she had perhaps "fallen" herself, that such a degradation of the spirit might even have physical results....
"No, no,no!" gasped Joan, "not when I hate him so! It's impossible!"
For if, according to a rather touching convent theory, it is love alone which calls children into being, surely hate must have the opposite effect?
Joan had not pursued this line of mental research to her usual lengths. Certain things, it appeared, such as miracles and the power of prayer and all phenomena embraced under the generic title of Love, were better taken entirely on trust.
With ashen cheeks and a heart thumping with terror, Joan put her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of her own thoughts. It was the first time in her life she had come face to face with the meaning of the word "fear." And that the fear was childish, made it none the less real. Nineteen, not ninety, is the age of tragedy. There are few suicides among the old....
She did not hear a rap twice repeated, nor the opening of the door. Somebody peeped in, saw the sobbing figure on the bed, the scattered bon-bons, the crumpled note on the floor. Then came a louder knock.
Joan sat up, and cried in a panic, "Don't come in!"
But Mrs. Rossiter chose to misunderstand her. "Did you say come in?" she inquired cheerfully. "I hope so, because nobody else seems to be at home, and I'm pining for company."
She paused as Joan sank back in despair, hiding her ravaged face in her handkerchief.
"What's the matter, dear? Headache?" she questioned kindly, adding with a glance at the overturned basket, "Too much candy, perhaps?"
"Yes," gulped Joan, fighting for self-control "Too much candy!"
Mrs. Rossiter selected amarronfrom the floor with care, wiped it daintily, and began to eat. "This looks," she said, "like one of Ned Desmond's offerings. He's such an artist about everything! Who but he would have thought of selecting a basket to match your eyes?"
Joan lay still, and hated her. She thought of several biting remarks she might make to this woman who had come to gloat over her; but unfortunately she could not yet trust her voice to utter them.
"So you sent him away after all?" continued the voice smilingly, "Led him on, and made a fool out of our poor dear Ned, and then sent him about his business? Naughty Joan!"
Something impelled the girl to utter frankness. She was done with acting. "I didn't, and you know I didn't," she gulped. "I accepted him. I was engaged to him!"
"Engaged?"
"Yes!—and then the next day he was gone."
"Stole away," murmured Mrs. Rossiter amusedly. "That was rather crude of Eduard. He doesn't usually run to such lengths.... You mean he actually in so many words invited you tomarryhim?"
Joan covered her eyes again. "I suppose not," she said in a small, miserable voice. "No, he didn't. But he—he kissed me as if we were engaged, and I kissed him back!"
"Oh," murmured the other. "You find engaged kisses so very different, then, from the other kind?"
Joan cried indignantly, "I don't know anything about the other kind! I've never kissed a man before in my life."
"No? 'More kissed against than kissing,' perhaps?"
The girl lifted her chin as haughtily as it is possible to lift a chin that is quivering with held-in sobs. "I have never been kissed either—except on the hand or the ear or something, which doesn't count."
"No, that hardly counts," agreed her inquisitor, looking at the girl quite curiously. "See here," she asked in another tone, "how old are you, Miss Darcy?"
"Nineteen."
"Hmmn! Younger than I thought. Still, a Southern girl—"
"Can be just as decent as any other kind!" cried angry Joan. "Anyway, I'm only part a Southern girl. But I know! Lots of them are just as nice about such things as Betty, for instance."
"Nice, of course," agreed Mrs. Rossiter. "And tremendously attractive. But just for that reason a little more—well, experienced, don't you think? We get our experience later, perhaps.... And you seemed particularly well-seasoned, able to take care of yourself, playing them off against each other like a little veteran. I've told Jane Desmond so more than once. She wanted to warn you—but I told her you knew the ropes."
"I didn't," said Joan tremulously, "Warn me of what?"
"Why, of Ned. She was afraid you might really land him. The wariest of fish takes the hook at last!"
Joan winced at the remark, but she was too busy getting to the bottom of things to resent it.
"Why did she object to my marrying him?"
Mrs. Rossiter stared. "Good Lord! Well, because she's got a girl of her own, for one thing. Because she's married to a Desmond herself, for another. She knows the breed, poor Jane!"
Light was breaking on Joan. "You mean—she objected formysake?"
"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!—No, no, Jane's not that sort."
"Oh," said Joan faintly. She began to realize that instead of antagonism, it had been friendliness that watched her, motherly, anxious kindness, which she had been too blind to understand.
"Oh, Mrs. Rossiter," she cried tremulously, "I've been horrid!"
"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect—men are. Votes for Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me, you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or—well, the professional charmer."
"Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!"
"So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you know, dilettantes, non-eligibles—the bane of all good chaperones. 'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know the exact moment when one has attained the maximum—and to stop there'! Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan did not join her.
After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling hermarron. She walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her voice had become rather shy.
"Joan," she asked, "did you—care, my dear?"
The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered. "How does one know?—I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I didn't want him at all, and sometimes—I did.—And now I wish my father wouldkillhim!"
The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have wanted—to kill my father."
Joan forgot herself in sheer astonishment. "You!" she cried. "But I thought it was you who declined to marry him, even after you'd got a divorce to do it?"
Mrs. Rossiter smiled queerly.
"Did Ned tell you that?"
Joan, much embarrassed, explained the Convent impression of Mr. Desmond and his broken heart.
The other laughed. "So that's the idea he has allowed to get abroad? Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman—and I suppose it does put him in a better light, too—But unfortunately the facts of the case are otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him—not that he suggested it, oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me—So I took up my residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable, Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting."
"And then?—" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind the scenes.
"That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany, painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter. One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!"
"Don't laugh," said Joan hoarsely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped the other's. "Oh, how can you bear tospeakto him?"
May Rossiter shrugged. "You don't suppose it lasts, you funny innocent? Besides, though he did cost me a few illusions and some suffering and a reputation (what's a reputation among friends?), I owe Ned Desmond one very good turn. Jim Rossiter's the best husband of my acquaintance."
She leaned over swiftly and kissed Joan on the cheek.
"So you see you're not the only silly little simpleton who learns her ropes by tripping on them. Makes you feel better, doesn't it? Of course! That's why I told you.... Look here, what's the use of wasting all this perfectly good candy? Jane's floors are above suspicion. Let's pick it up and take it downstairs and make a Roman holiday, shall we?"
Between them, with some laughter and a very real sense of comradeship, they restored Eduard's peace-offering to its basket. Then Joan remembered her bracelet.
"What shall I do with it?" she asked, aghast. "If I return it now, it will look—offended, as if I had taken him seriously!"
"Which would never do," Mrs. Rossiter was quick to agree. She examined the bracelet with interest. "Sapphires, emeralds, nice little diamonds—dear, dear! And a Chartier setting. Ned must have had it rather badly. He never gavemeanything so compromising! Keep it, of course," she advised cynically. "It's a nice bit of jewelry, and you may as well have something decent for a souvenir."
But Joan's hardihood was not equal to that.
"Well, then"—the other's eye sparkled with sudden malice—"why not give it to me for a parting present! Splendid! Fancy his expression when he recognizes hisgage d'amourglittering on my wrist, of all wrists in the world! And, believe me, he shall recognize it—What ho! Votes for Women!"
She laughed until she cried.
When Joan said good-by to Longmeadow some days later—not so soon as to give her departure the appearance of flight—she left trailing clouds of glory. The rumor had got about, thanks perhaps to Mrs. Rossiter, that the redoubtable Eduard had met his Waterloo at the hands of the Kentucky girl, which seemed not to detract from her popularity among Eduard's friends, male or female. She became quite legendary in the countryside.
Betty, fully restored to her earlier allegiance, parted from her with tears, and Mrs. Desmond made her promise to visit them soon again.
But it was a promise Joan knew she would not have the courage to keep. And when she had waved her last gay farewell, and thrown her last kiss impartially out of the window to the group who had come into town to see her off, she settled back in the train which had brought her with such high hopes to her first failure, and said aloud, "Thank goodness that's over!"
"Pardonme—did you speak?" murmured a young man in the seat in front of her, turning round with a start; a wide-eared young man whom Joan recognized.
"Goodness!" she said in some dismay. "You seem to dog my footsteps, Mr. Blair. There's no escaping you!"
"Looks that way, don't it?" he grinned apologetically. "I've been in Philadelphia on a big order—Landed it, too!" he added in irrepressible triumph.
"Which is more than I did," sighed Joan; and guessing from her expression that a jest was intended, Mr. Blair laughed long and loudly. He was always very keen on the scent of a jest.