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 curious
_elan_, 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 sunset _a 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, how _dared_ you!" 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, _I_ know 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 off _my_ friends, 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.