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 manoeuvers 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 role 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 tete-a-tetes.
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 tete-a-tetes,
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 entree. 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 roles 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? She _wanted_ the 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 was _fait 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.