Why Joan? Part 18

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 s.h.i.+lly-shallying, I'm sure I don't know!"

"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say f.a.n.n.y 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 const.i.tuency 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 a.s.sistance 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!... n.o.body 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

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-l.u.s.t. 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 ill.u.s.trations 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?