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.
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 role she had chosen to play, her considered
coquetries and sophistications, even her dressing, the display of silken
ankles, of bared arm, her modest decolletage--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 a _marron_ from 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 to _marry_ him?"
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 for _my_ sake?"
"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 her _marron_. 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
would _kill_ him!"
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 to _speak_ to 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 gave _me_ anything 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 his _gage d'amour_ glittering 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!"
"Pardon _me_--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.