Lady Joan

“ She tucked away in it now not only the rushing landscape but the various people about her in the Pullman: a dapper person, probably a necktie drummer, who had for some time been discreetly taking notice and whom it was her pleasure to occasionally regard as if he were so much thin air; an elderly lady who beamed wistfully whenever their eyes met, and who, Joan decided, would presently summon up courage to inform her that a little daughter, had she lived, would have been about Joan's age ”

“ You might as well kill a person as scare her to death," she complained, far too pleased to admit it. "What you doin' down town this time o' day, all dressed up like lady-come-to-see? What do you want, eh?"
"Pancakes," explained Joan, ripping off her long gloves. "I'm going to stay to supper, Nellen, so get me an apron and let's begin."
Ellen's smile widened. "Pancakes! On a hot night like this?"
Joan nodded. "Um-humm! And lemonade," she said, "and anything else you can think of that's indigestible. Got any pickles?"
"What would a lone woman be doin' keepin' house without pickles?" ”

“ The Loos gave a garden party at Moor Park. Poor Joan! She felt horribly out of place, dressed for the occasion in a muslin frock, her cropped head, crowned by a Leghorn hat, rising incongruously from the collarless bodice. Sir Robert thought her a most unattractive young woman, but his wife still disagreed with him. She had always admired Joan, and now the fact that there was something distinctly unfeminine about the girl was an added interest in her hostess's eyes. For Lady Loo, once the best woman to hounds in a hard riding hunt, had begun to find life too restful at Moor Park. ”

“ The necktie drummer retired, permanently, to the smoking-car.
This victory cheered Joan into momentarily forgetting her mother. Already an adventure to write to the girls! She wished that she had looked a little farther up than the scarf-pin.
Shortly the old lady whose daughter might have been Joan's age if she had lived, invited Joan to be her guest in the dining-car, and was repulsed, coldly and firmly. One hears such tales of wicked old harpies on trains leading trustful girls into the most frightful predicaments!
"No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much appetite on trains." ”

“ She was a tall girl, her stained legs and arms bare below her ragged dress, her black hair hung wild and free about her face and neck. As the daughter of a native mother and an English father, her beauty had been made to seem both Saxon and savage. Stained and painted, darkened below the great gray eyes, Joan with her brows and her classic chin and throat, Joan with her secret, dangerous eyes and lithe, long body, made an arresting picture enough against the setting of vivid green and blue. ”

“ The little maid sometimes helped her father's labourers, and the idea has become general that Joan of Arc was a shepherdess; in reality, it was only an occasional occupation, and probably undertaken by Joan out of mere good-nature, seeing that her parents were well-to-do people. All that we gather of Joan's early years proves her nature to have been a compound of love and goodness. Every trait recorded of the little maid's life at home which has come down to us reveals a mixture of amiability, unselfishness, and charity. ”

“ Joan is or will be an illustrious warrior-maid, and not a passive instrument in the hands of the captains. She may save the country—"
"If she is a sorceress the curate will play the holy-water sprinkler upon her, and report to us."
"I am so much impressed by her answers, her candor, her daring, her good sense, her irresistible sincerity, that if the King sends word back with your messenger that he consents to see Joan—I am resolved to accompany her on her journey."
"Ah, Sir John," said Robert of Baudricourt, laughing; "that is a sudden resolve! Are you smitten by the pretty eyes of the maid?" ”

“ But Joan's crisis had passed. Even if on such occasions the mysterious voices remained silent and she began to look upon herself as a demented wretch, the next day, perhaps that very night, she again saw her beautiful saints approaching, adorned with their golden crowns draped in brocade, exhaling a celestial odor, [26] and, smiling, say to her: "Courage, Joan, daughter of God! You will deliver Gaul. Your King will owe his crown to you! The time approaches! Stand ready to fulfil your mission!" ”

“ But Joan laughed at danger. "God will clear my path to the king, for to this end I was born." Often they rode by night, stopping at monasteries when they could, Sometimes they slept out under the sky. Though she was young and beautiful, these two gentlemen never dreamed of paying their court to her and making love, as they do in romances, for they regarded her "as if she had been an angel." They were in awe of her, they said long afterward, and all the knights who had seen her said the same. ”

“ A dirty homely Joan! For my part, I admire how thou coud'st love her: She frets, I'll warrant you, because she lies alone: But who that is not Mad, wou'd lie with such a sapless piece of wither'd Flesh as she, when he may lie by such a one as I, that's sweet, and fresh, plump, brisk and airy, and that's full of Juice, just in the Bloom of all my Youth and Beauty. But if to this thou still prefer'st thy Dowd; take her for me, and much-good-do-thee with her.
By this Discourse, this Impudent and filthy Trull, quite sham'd him out of any thoughts of Vertue ”

“ Joan Thursday seemed but a memory, a slight and somehow wistful shadow in the shadowed depths of that darkling mirror, yesterday; in her place another creature altogether reigned, the Joan Quard of today, woman, actress, wife; with a gold band round her finger; mature, initiate of mysteries, ripe in wisdom; strong, poised serenely, clear of eye; with added graciousness in her beauty, conscious of added powers over Man, but discreet in their employment. ”

“ Games and fetes were improvised to soften the hardship of exile for the proscribed princess; but amid the outbursts of joy from every town, castle, and city, Joan, always sad, lived ever in her silent grief and glowing memories.
At the gates of Aix she found the clergy, the nobility, and the chief magistrates, who received her respectfully but with no signs of enthusiasm. As the queen advanced, her astonishment increased as she saw the coldness of the people and the solemn, constrained air of the great men who escorted her. ”

“ 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, moreover, was not of those puling visionaries, who expect from God alone the triumph of a good cause. One of her favorite sayings was: "Help yourself, and heaven will help you." [24] She ever put in practice that adage of rustic common sense. When on a later occasion a captain said to her disdainfully: "If God wished to drive the English out of Gaul, He could do so by the sole power of His will; He would need neither you, Joan, nor any men-at-arms," Joan answered:
"The men-at-arms will battle—God will give the victory." ”

“ While the hands perform low, menial service, the soul untrammelled is away, and revelling amidst its own creations of beauty and of bliss. She is silent and abstracted; always alone among her fellows—for among them all she sees no kindred spirit; she finds none who can touch the chords within her heart, or respond to their melody, when she would herself sweep its harp-strings.
Joan has no friends; far less does she ever think of earthly lovers; and who would love her, the wild and strange Joan! ”

“ Joan was then in her seventeenth year, and, although nothing but tradition has reached us of her looks and outward form, it is not difficult to imagine her as she rides out of that old gate, a comely maid, with a frank, brave countenance, lit up by the flame of an intense enthusiasm for her country and people. There can be no doubt that by her companions in arms—rough soldiers though most of them were—she was held in veneration; they bore testimony to their feelings by a kind of adoration for one who seemed indeed to them more than mortal. ”

“ When Joan told her friends of this dream, they laughed at her.
"How can a poor girl help the prince?" asked they.
"I do not know," replied Joan; "but I must go, for God has sent me." So she went to the prince, and said: "Sir, my name is Joan. God has sent me to help you to win the crown of France."
They gave Joan a suit of white armour, and a white horse, and set her at the head of the army. She led the soldiers to fight, and the rough men thought she was an angel, and fought so bravely that they won many battles.
Then the prince was crowned King of France. ”

“ The latter fought in arms in the open; the former labored in the dark, and plotted treason. Absorbed in these meditations, Joan threw herself upon a bed of fresh cut grass, the only couch that her hosts could offer her. She invoked the support and the advice of her saints, and their dear voices speedily whispered in her ear:
"Go, daughter of God; no weakness; fulfil your mission; heaven will not forsake you!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ They smile right kind on many a boy,
But only one on me.
But I have a penny, a fiddle, and Joan,
And my sweet Joan has me.
Meadow and flock, the wise folk said,
It never were right to miss,
But my maid Joan has a kirtle red
And a merry mouth to kiss.
And I can fiddle and Joan can sing,
And what were better than this?
The young men talk of getting and gold,
And lands far over the sea.
But I and my fiddle will never grow old,
And this is the life for me.
I have a penny, my fiddle, and Joan,
And my sweet Joan has me.
ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH. Smith College Monthly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Between these two passionately determined women stood Joan, miserable and young, longing for things to come to a head, for something that she felt ought to happen; she didn't know what. She was conscious of a sense of emptiness, of unfulfilment; she was sleeping badly again, tormented by dreams that were only half remembered, the shadow of which haunted her throughout the day. She longed for peace; when she was away from Elizabeth she was restless until they met again, yet when they were together now their companionship was spoilt by Joan's consciousness of her mother's disapproval. ”

“ A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices honor the event.
The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the scaffold's spacious platform Joan is to appear, surrounded by the ecclesiastics, and make a public abjuration.
The impatient crowd awaits the arrival of the cortege. More than half a century under the yoke of English rule, most of the people of Rouen are of the Burgundian party, and see in Joan Darc only an enemy. Nevertheless, the astounding renown of the martial maid, her youth, her beauty, her misfortune, her glory, awaken a profound sentiment of pity for her among all, and the feeling is strongest among those who have remained French at heart and are of the Armagnac party. ”