Joan of Kent

“ Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.—I'm sorry, Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."
He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh, what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a woman than that!" ”

“ There came again to Joan, for the first time in weeks, something of the glamour, the sense of promise, which had touched her in the summer past when she walked at night with her father through the strange city where he had once been young. It was as if Romance brushed her in passing with shadowy skirts, and Joan felt that she must catch at them, cling to them, before it was too late. Youth is so short, so short!...
Ellen, too, felt the witchery of the soft night; but to the Ellens, Romance comes only vicariously. ”

“ He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them—The sapphires are better."
She patted his hand. "It is so nice to have somebody about again who notices whether I have eyes or not!"
"Surely your Archibald notices?"
"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate, like praising something of his own, you know."
Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be in—I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?" ”

“ Venetia repeated in an uninflected voice.
His dark face darkening, Marbridge glanced to Helena, to Tankerville, ignored Matthias, looked back to Joan: gaining as little encouragement from her, as from his host and hostess, since she dared not again meet his gaze. With a movement of his heavy shoulders and a chuckle he heaved himself out of the chair.
"Oh, all right," he called indulgently to his wife: "coming!... All women are crazy, anyhow," he confided to the others. "You've got to let 'em have their own way. ”

“ But what does it matter?" He spoke half to himself, with his little shrug. "This manifestation or the next—we shall not be apart always."
"No, no!" she cried, catching at his hand. "That is too ethereal, too mystic for me—I can't bear it, Stefan! I want the people I love with me now, in this 'manifestation,' as you call it, where I can talk with them, and touch them, and hold on to them—I am not all spirit. I thought I was, but—I'm not. Oh, my dear, aren't you human at all?"
He did not reply; and Joan, looking at him through swimming tears, saw that it was because he could not. ”

“ Not see the Derby run?" cried her husband incredulously.
And when with a great shouting and tooting of horns the tallyho drew up under the porte-cochère, her determination weakened.
"Oh, do come on, Mrs. Darcy! The air will do you good, and we shan't have half as much fun without you!" cried several voices, for she was very popular with young people.
She hesitated. Joan decided the matter.
"Put on a heavy veil to shield your eyes from the glare," she suggested; and Effie May yielded. It was not often that her step-daughter asked for her society. ”

“ Ogden, that's all; I think it will be Joan's ruin."
"Elizabeth!"
"Wait, I must speak. Joan is brilliant, you know that she's brilliant, and that she ought to do something with her life. You must surely feel that she can't stay here in Seabourne for ever? She must—oh! if I could only find the right words—she must fulfil herself in some way—either marriage or work, at all events some interest outside of and beyond you. She's consuming herself even now, and what will she do later on? Yet, how can she come to fruition if she's drained dry before she begins to live at all? ”

“ Effie May had the tact rarely to accompany him, and Joan found herself seeing more of her father than she ever had under his own roof.
"I don't know just what it is, my dear," he once said, musingly. "Possibly the familiar furniture, or the presence of Ellen Neal (quite a fair cook, Dollykins, though her manner leaves something to be desired) . But somehow in this little establishment of yours I always feel as if—well, as if Mary were about somewhere." He sighed sentimentally. "I feel as if she might at any moment sit down beside us and take out a bit of sewing. ”

“ I always have maintained that the French touch—So that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses—No expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury, isn't it? She has been watching for you every day—seemed to be quite certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."
Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances. ”

“ Elizabeth could not resist looking at Joan, but she held her tongue and the dangerous moment passed.
Joan began to find it in her to bless Father Cuthbert and Holy Martyrs, for between them they took up a good deal of Mrs. Ogden's time. To be sure, her eyes were red with secret weeping, and she lost even that remnant of appetite that her religious scruples permitted her; but Joan was happy and selfish to the verge of recklessness. She was like a man reprieved when the noose is already round his throat; for the moment nothing mattered except just being alive. ”

“ And the terrible thing was that he did not seem to know he was being a cad and a liar.
Aloud she said, "And what did Mrs. Calloway get out of the bargain?"
The Major stared at her, astounded. It was a question so absurd that he literally could not answer it. Quite unconsciously his eyes strayed beyond her after a moment to a mirror, as if for reassurance.
Joan burst out laughing. The laughter was so palpably close to tears that her father forgave it, and held out his arms to her. "There, there, my poor child! You're overwrought," he murmured. "Come to Daddy!" ”

“ Over these attentions Ellen Neal grumbled frequently. "Your pa certainly ain't noticin' much these days, or he'd never let you get so thick with a strange woman we don't know nothin' about, Joan."
"A strange lady, Ellen," corrected Joan with dignity.
"Humph! Lady is as lady does. Look at her face, all painted up like a sign-board!"
"Southern ladies quite frequently rouge," said Joan out of her recent observations; but she did not pursue the subject, for she herself had doubts as to her father's approval of this new acquaintance. Richard Darcy was no democrat. ”

“ Joan was not yet quite the hard young egotist she intended to become.
And so when toward the end of her journey the train slid into a pleasant country, mellow with the evening sun, long reaches of rolling pasture and hill and fertile bottom-land that meant Kentucky, something welled up in the girl's heart deeper than glamour of place, stronger than regret for her sheltered little past, than fear and hope for her unguessed future; perhaps the deepest and strongest feeling life plants in the human soul—the blood-tie. ”

“ Joan had been quite as eager about the prospective move as her father, marveling at the apathy of her mother, who said, "I never mind being 'nobodies,' Richard, so long as we have each other."
Romantic visions danced through the girl's head of stately pillared mansions, of faithful negro servitors, of fascinating belles and gallants on horseback (her mental language became quite stilted and ante bellum to suit the picture) , riding to hounds through meadows as blue as the skies above.
"Though I don't suppose there's much bluegrass right around Louisville, is there, Daddy?" ”

“ She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept such things off a gentleman."
"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," reassured Joan, keeping a straight face.
But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"
"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety of her sheepfold." ”

“ It might have been thought that she would thus dominate her world: to the contrary, she haunted it, more a wraith than a body, a creature of functions rather than of faculties. She had a way of being in a room without attracting a glance, of passing through and from it without leaving an impression of her transit.
When Joan made herself look directly at her mother, she was able to detect traces of ravaged beauty. A living shell in which its tenant lay dormant, her subjective will to live alone kept this woman going her sempiternal rounds of monotony. ”

“ Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau—particularly when it cost no effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.
Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance; dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter brasswork than hers. ”

“ Has Jonathan been amusing?"
"No, not at all," said Joan. "He has been lecturing me. He is getting old; he is just like father. I will gladly change with you."
Nancy stared, but said nothing. She and Joan were accustomed to criticise everybody. But they had never yet criticised John Spence.
"Well, my dear Joan," said the Judge, as she took her place by his side after lunch, "I heaped disgrace upon myself this morning, and I very much doubt if I shall wipe any of it off this afternoon. The Kencote partridges are too many for me—too many and too fast. ”

“ Blair? I must get my step-mother to try some of that polish of yours. She loves things to glisten. And you'll have a lot more money, won't you? Splendid! So now," she suggested, as Ellen had suggested, "you'll probably be moving somewhere else."
She had her eye on him, though, for it may be remembered that Joan had a theory of her own as to why this up-and-coming young man continued to live in an attic in the slums. ”

“ Undoubtedly the car was stopping on the drive. Helena moved a few paces toward the house, paused, waited. A woman's laugh with an accent of cheerful excitement came to them. Joan saw Helena start and noticed Matthias break off a sentence in the middle and swing round in his chair. Immediately a woman ran through the doorway to the terrace, a light dust-wrap streaming from her shoulders. A man followed, but at the time Joan hardly noticed him. The woman absorbed all her interest, even though it was an interest compounded of jealousy and hostility. ”

“ With a docility and total absence of distrust that later surprised her to remember, Joan sank back, eyes eloquent with the question unuttered by her parted lips.
Her host, lounging, turned to her a face of which one half was in dense shadow: a keen, strongly modelled face with deep-set eyes at once whimsical and thoughtful, and a mouth thin-lipped but generously wide. He rested an elbow on the table and his head on a spare, sinewy hand, thrusting slender fingers up into hair straight, not long, and rather light in colour. ”

“ Paris seems awful far away, and I guess I better let you off that promise you made me to see that I didn't get laid out with no corset on. They probably couldn't get a corset on me now, anyway, I'm that fleshy. Not that I'm ordering me a coffin for anytime real soon, dearie! but sometimes at night a person gets to thinking.
Joan was rather startled by this letter, and sent for Nikolai.
"What do you make of it, Stefan? That part: 'It's hard to sleep sitting up this way'—what does it mean?" ”

“ She was as good as a widow, you see—she'd had so many affairs. The men simply flocked. Whenever she came on to the tennis-court she'd break up the game, and we could hardly find enough men to make up a foursome, they were all so busy hanging around. It was too queer! I never could see the attraction in rolling your eyes, and flashing your dimples, and dropping your r's like a colored servant, could you?—Not," she added hastily, "that all Southern girls are that sort, Joie dear! You, for instance!"
"I should hope not," murmured Joan ”

“ He rose to leave, against protests. "No, no, I have no intention of sharing honors with a Climax. Let me come back to-morrow, when the crisis is out of her system. I know how that is!"
"You always know how things are," murmured Joan gratefully, pressing his hand....
Archie walked with him to the car-station.
"You think she's looking well, sir?" he asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
"Better than well, Blair. Content."
The husband sighed with satisfaction. "I think so myself—though of course it's the kid who's done that, not me—Mr. Nikolai, I've got to talk to you on business. ”

“ Look, mamma, he wants to play!" the small Joan had insisted, to no avail.
And when this strangely interesting Daddy was safe in bed, with Ellen Neal mounting guard, Joan had been hurried out to the nearest church (which happened to be a Catholic one, for Mary's was a casual sort of religion that boasted neither creed nor prejudice) ; and there, before a statue where little lamps burned, the child had prayed hard, as she was bid, that her father might never be ill in just that way again.
"God may listen to you, even if He's tired of listening to me!" ”