It was ten o'clock when Joan stood once more in the old, familiar
bedroom in which she had slept all through her childhood and
adolescence.
Nothing had been altered since the night from which she dated the
beginning of her life. Her books were in the same places. Letters from
her school friends were in the same neat pile on her desk. The things
that she had been obliged to leave on her dressing-table had not been
touched. A framed photograph of her mother, with her hands placed in
the incredible way that is so dear to the photographer's heart, still
hung crooked over a colonial chest of drawers. Her blue and white bath
wrap was in its place over the back of a chair, with her slippers
beneath it.
She opened the door of the hospitable closet. There were all the
clothes and shoes and hats that she had left. She drew out a drawer in
the chest. Nothing had been disturbed.... It was uncanny. She seemed to
have been away for years. And yet, as she looked about and got the
familiar scent of the funny little lavender sachets made by Mrs. Nye,
she found it hard to believe that Marty and Gilbert Palgrave, the house
in New York, all the kaleidoscope of Crystal rooms and restaurants, all
the murmur of voices and music and traffic were not the elusive
memories of last night's dream. But for the longing for Marty that
amounted to an absorbing, ever-present homesickness, it was difficult
to accept the fact that she was not still the same early-to-bed,
early-to-rise country girl, kicking against the pricks, rebelling
against the humdrum daily routine, spoiling to try her wings.
"Dear old room," she whispered, suddenly stretching out her arms to it.
"My dear old room. I didn't think I'd miss you a little bit. But I
have. I didn't think I should be glad to get back to you. But I am.
What are you doing to me to make me feel a tiny pain in my heart?
You're crowding all the things I did here and all the things I thought
about like a thousand white pigeons round my head. All my impatient
sighs, and big ambitions, and silly young hopes and fears are coming to
meet me and make me want to laugh and cry. But it isn't the same me
that you see; it isn't. You haven't changed, dear old room, but I have.
I'm different. I'm older. I'm not a kid any more. I'm grown up. Oh, my
dear, dear old room, be kind to me, be gentle with me. I haven't played
the game since I went away or been honest. I've been thoughtless,
selfish and untamed. I've done all the wrong things. I've attracted all
the wrong people. I've sent Marty away, Marty--my knight--and I want
him back. I want to make up to him bigly, bigly for what I ought to
have done. Be kind to me, be kind to me."
And she closed her arms as if in an embrace and put her head down as
though on the warm breast of an old friend and the good tears ran down
her cheeks.
All the windows were open. The air was warm and scented. There was no
sound. The silent voices of the stars sang their nightly anthem. The
earth was white with magic moonshine. Joan looked out. The old creeper
down which she had climbed to go to Martin that night which seemed so
far away was all in leaf. With what exhilaration she had dropped her
bag out. Had ever a girl been so utterly careless of consequences then
as she? How wonderfully and splendidly Martinish Martin had been when
she plunged in upon him, and how jolly and homelike the hall of his
house--her house--had seemed to be. To-morrow she would explore it all
and show it off to her family. To-morrow.... Yes, but to-night? Should
she allow herself to be carried away by a sudden longing to follow her
flying footsteps through the woods, pretend that Martin was waiting for
her and take a look at the outside of the house alone? Why not? No one
need know, and she had a sort of aching to see the place again that was
so essentially a part of Martin. Martin--Martin--he obsessed her, body
and brain. If only she could find Martin.
With hasty fingers she struggled with the intricate hooks of her
evening frock. Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk stockings
and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet, chose a
short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes and a
tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport shirts and
sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the mantelpiece could
recover from his astonishment became once more the Joan-all-alone for
whom he had ticked away the hours. Then to the window, and hand over
hand down the creeper again and away across the sleeping garden to the
woods.
The fairies were out. Their laughter was blown to her like thistledown.
But she was a woman now and only Martin called her--Martin who had
married her for love but was not her husband yet. Oh, where was Martin?
And as she went quickly along the winding path through the trees the
moon dropped pools of light in her way, the scrub oaks threw out their
arms to hold her back and hosts of little shadows seemed to run out to
catch at her frock. But on went Joan, just to get a sight of the house
that was Martin's and hers and to cast her spirit forward to the time
when he and she would live there as they had not lived in the city.
She marvelled and rejoiced at the change that had come over
her,--gradually, underminingly,--a change, the seeds of which had been
thrown by Alice, watered by Palgrave and forced by the disappearance of
Martin, and brought to bloom in the silent hours of wakeful nights when
the thought of all the diffidence and deference of Martin won her
gratitude and respect. In the strong, frank and rather harsh light that
had been flung on her way of life it was Martin, Martin, who stood out
clean and tender and lenient--Martin, who had developed from the Paul
of the woods, the boy chum, her fellow adventurer, her sexless Knight,
into the man who had won her love and whom she needed and ached for and
longed to find. She had been brought up with a round turn, found
herself face to face with the truth of things and, deaf to the
incessant jangle of the Merry-go-round, had discovered that Martin was
not merely the gallant and obliging boy, playing a game, trifling on
the edge of reality, but the man with the other blade of the penknife
who, like his prototype in the fairy tale, had the ordained right to
her as she had to him.
And as she went on through the silvered trees, with a sort of dignity,
her chin high, her eyes sparkling like stars, her mouth soft and sweet,
it was to see the roof under which she would begin her married life
again, rightly, honestly and as a woman, crossing the bridge between
thoughtlessness and responsibility with a true sense of its
meaning,--not in cold blood.
She came out to the road, dry and white, bordered by coarse grasses and
wild flowers all asleep, with their petals closed over their eyes,
opened the gate that led into the long avenue, splashed through the
patches of moonlight on the driveway and came finally to the door under
which she had stood that other time with dancing eyes and racing blood
and "Who cares?" ringing in her head.
There was no light to be seen in any of the front windows. The house
seemed to be fast asleep. How warm and friendly and unpretentious it
looked, and there was all about it the same sense of strength that
there was about Martin. In which window had they stood in the dark,
looking out on to a world that they were going to brave together? Was
it in the right wing? Yes. She remembered that tree whose branches
turned over like a waterfall and something that looked like a little
old woman in a shawl bending to pick up sticks but which was an old
stump covered with creepers.
She went round, her heart fluttering like a bird, all her femininity
stirred at the thought of what this house must mean and shelter--and
drew up short with a quick intake of breath. A wide streak of yellow
light fell through open French windows across the veranda and on to the
grass, all dew-covered. Some one was there ... a woman's voice, not
merry, and with a break in it.... When the cat's away, the mice, in the
shape of one of the servants...
Joan went on again. What a joke to peep in! She wouldn't frighten the
girl or walk in and ask questions. It was, as yet, too much Marty's
house for that--and, after all, what harm was she doing by sitting up
on such a lovely night? The only thing was it was Martin's very own
room filled with his intimate things and with his father's message
written largely on a card over the fireplace--"We count it death to
falter, not to die."
But she went on, unsuspecting, her hand unconsciously clasped in the
stern relentless hand of Fate, who never forgets to punish.... A shadow
crossed the yellow patch. There was the sound of a pipe being knocked
out on one of the firedogs. A man was there, then. Should she take one
look, or go back? She would go back. It was none of her business,
unfortunately. But she was drawn on and on, until she could see into
the long, low, masculine room.
A man was sitting on the arm of a sofa, a man with square shoulders and
a deep chest, a man with his strong young face turned to the light,
smiling--
"Marty," cried Joan. "Marty!" and went up and across the veranda and
into the room. "Why, Marty," and held out her hand, all glad and
tremulous.
And Martin got on his feet and stood in amazement, wide-eyed, and
suddenly white.
"You here!" cried Joan. "I've been waiting and wondering, but I didn't
call because I wanted you to come back for yourself and not for me.
It's been a long week, Marty, and in every hour of it I've grown. Can't
you see the change?"
And Martin looked at her, and his heart leaped, and the blood blazed in
his veins and he was about to go forward and catch her in his arms with
a great cry...
"Oh, hello, Lady-bird; who'd have expected to see you!"
Joan wheeled to the left.
Lying full stretched on the settee, her settee, was a girl with her
hands under her bobbed hair, a blue dress caught up under one knee, her
bare arms agleam, her elfin face all white and a smile round her too
red lips.
("White face and red lips and hair that came out of a bottle.")
Martin said something, inarticulately, and moved a chair forward. The
girl spoke again, cheerily, in the spirit of good-fellowship,
astonished a little, but too comfortable to move.
But a cold hand was laid on Joan's heart, and all that rang in her
brain were the words that Alice had used,--"white face and red lips and
hair that came out of a bottle.... Don't YOU be the one to turn his
armor into common broadcloth."
And for a moment she stood, looking from Marty to the girl and back to
Marty, like one struck dumb, like one who draws up at the very lip of a
chasm.... And in that cruel and terrible minute her heart seemed to
break and die. Marty, Marty in broadcloth, and she had put it in his
hands. She had turned him away from her room and lost him. There's not
one thing that any of us can do or say that doesn't react on some one
else to hurt or bless.
With a little gasp, the sense of all this going home to her, Tootles
scrambled awkwardly off the settee, dropping a book and a handkerchief.
This, then, this beautiful girl who belonged to a quarter of life of
which she had sometimes met the men but never the women, was Martin's
wife--the wife of the man whom she loved to adoration.
"Why, then, you're--you're Mrs. Gray," she stammered, her impertinence
gone, her hail-fellow-well-met manner blown like a bubble.
Catching sight of the message, "We count it death to falter not to
die," Joan summoned her pride, put up her chin and gave a curious
little bow. "Forgive me," she said, "I'm trespassing," and not daring
to look at Marty, turned and went out. She heard him call her name, saw
his sturdy shadow fall across the yellow patch, choked back a sob,
started running, and stumbled away and away, with the blood from her
heart bespattering the grasses and the wild flowers, and the fairies
whimpering at her heels,--and, at last, climbing back into the room
that knew and loved and understood, threw herself down on its bosom in
a great agony of grief.
"Be kind to me, old room, be kind to me. It's Joan-all-alone,--all
alone."