Why Joan?

by Eleanor Mercein Kelly.

FOREWORD

Some time since, the author had the temerity innocently to publish a book ("Kildares of Storm"), which, like this one, employed for background the country with which she happens to be most familiar, the State of her adoption and of her affections. And great was the scandal thereof. Neighbors insisted upon recognising themselves in it, to their horror--or to their complacency, as the case might be. They also recognized the house described; although if one heard with impartial ear, the house appeared to possess as many different ident.i.ties as localities, and despite the fact that the author, in order to guard against this very contingency, had taken many liberties with geography, even to the extent of moving mountains--imagination being on occasion almost as powerful as faith.

That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens to a.s.sert that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the whole world of fancy at command, would care to inhibit productivity by the limitations imposed upon photography, invaluable as that science is in its place--which is not fiction. Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment at least, "shattering the world to bits and remolding it nearer to the heart's desire."

There is also among the craft an unwritten law against the holding up for public inspection those people with whom one has broken bread, so to speak; and as one is apt, in Kentucky, to have broken bread with all one's acquaintance, neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider themselves safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize themselves in this book, let them recognize themselves quite as readily in the living people about them. For we are, after all, of one substance, varying only with circ.u.mstance and the different stages of development. And it is with these things only--with circ.u.mstance and the stages of development, with truths rather than facts, with men and women rather than personalities--that this author at least chooses to concern herself.

ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY.

WHY JOAN?

CHAPTER I

Young Joan Darcy leaned back luxuriously upon a cushion offered by the obsequious porter (servants were usually obsequious with Joan, though she was not at all beautiful and rather too shabby to promise much in the way of largesse), watching the world go by with a dreamy, detached, yet oddly observant gaze that missed no detail of the landscape through which she pa.s.sed and registered it in her subconscious mind for future reference. It was a convenient receptacle, her subconscious mind--a sort of strongbox into which went many things valuable and valueless, to be brought forth when occasion required, quite intact. 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; also another girl, dressed as Joan would have liked to be dressed herself, who cast occasional glances of indifference in her direction, noting, it was to be hoped, the affluent litter of magazines and papers that surrounded our heroine, the fading bouquet tucked into her belt, and the expensive box of chocolates which lay open upon her knee, exposing to the world at large a masculine card on top.

Joan discovered within herself a certain impersonal, appreciative antagonism toward strange young women, such as knights may have felt who met for combat upon the jousting field. Envy was the one tribute which most a.s.suaged her vanity.

She would have liked to sample the box of candy--a parting tribute from a family friend who had a most discriminating taste in chocolates--but she feared that it would place her hopelessly in the cla.s.s of school-girls, from which she had just emerged, as world-wise, as sophisticated, as completely finished a young person as ever a convent turned loose upon the unsuspecting world. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"

was her favorite novel; she had smoked her maiden cigarette--in fact, two of them; and she no longer subscribed to the stork-and-baby myth, which seemed to her puerile.

She was still able, however, to savor keenly in advance the moment when the Pullman would empty itself into the dining-car and she would be free to approach her chocolates in the manner favored by true _bon vivants_: i.e., by nibbling off one end, extracting the contents bit by creamy bit with the head of a pin (preferably a large white-topped pin), and finally crushing the emptied sh.e.l.l deliciously upon the tongue.

Conserved in this manner, one chocolate might be made to do the duty of many chocolates, an advantage not to be despised where pocket-money is limited to twenty-five cents a week.

The moment was not yet, and reflecting sedately that self-control is good exercise for the character, she gave herself over to the pleasures of recollection.

What a beautiful parting it had been! What floods of tears and kisses and promises! Seven--no, eight--girls weeping around her while they exchanged dramatic farewells; firm Sister Mary Joseph, the out-sister who conveyed pupils to shops and trains and so forth, leading her aside at the last moment to press upon her, heretic though she was, a tiny medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still masculine); and, for _piece de resistance_, Stefan Nikolai, famous though elderly, who had run over from China or Egypt or somewhere to see her graduate. This was an attention Joan took quite for granted--he had been a friend of her mother's, and distance seemed nothing to his habit of life. But its effect upon her schoolmates, and even upon Sister Mary Joseph, was gratifying in the extreme. With his dark, fine features, and his foreign-cut clothes, he had not looked particularly elderly that day. His eyes, Joan recalled, had always been peculiarly expressive, like the eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered inadvertently toward the unconscious gentleman as she tendered her medal of St. Joseph.

Joan was fond of Mr. Nikolai, and grateful to him. She even read his books, though she preferred his letters, which had a good deal in them about herself. His presence at her graduation, his chocolates, the little sea of papers with which he sought to beguile the tedium of her journey, had all helped to comfort her for the absence of her father. He was, she thought warmly, almost as good as a father anyway; and far more generous! Everything nice she had was a gift from Stefan Nikolai. Her lovely Chinese shawl, her carved jade ring (Joan wished secretly that there had been a diamond in it somewhere), the odd piece of clear blue aquamarine he had brought her for a graduation present, that just matched her eyes; books too, in beautiful covers, and some old prints that were anything but beautiful, and a white bear-skin for her room.

She would have liked to suggest to him that, in place of such costly trifles, occasional dresses might be acceptable, of the sort that come from Paris; also frilly things, hand-embroidered, which he would not have to choose himself, of course--there being women clerks for the purpose. She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it himself, aware as he must be of the scarcity of such desirables in the Darcy family.

Still, one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth; and had he not been such a lifelong friend as to be almost a relation, Joan would have chafed a little, as it was, under her sense of obligation to Mr.

Nikolai. Her mother's daughter did not take kindly to a sense of obligation.

It was not he, however (ah, by no means he!) who had provided the flowers which drooped at her belt. For one moment the absence of the donor of these flowers had threatened to spoil the pleasure of her parting; and then had arrived, breathless, a messenger and a note. Joan was able philosophically to reflect that if the gentleman had come in person she would never have had the note. And there is something delightfully tangible and lasting about a love-letter--if, indeed, it was a love-letter?

That was one of Eduard Desmond's great gifts: elusiveness.

She put her hand to her blouse and felt the responsive crackle therein; and the words of the note danced before her eyes in the form of little cupids, bearing garlands:

My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.

Truly, "To part is to die a little." Forgive me! EDUARD.

Joan had done her thrilled best to understand, since it was expected of her, but she felt rather puzzled. Was it that he feared his emotions at parting might get beyond his control? Joan sighed. She could have borne that. Or was it--here she frowned importantly--that his habits were already resuming control of him, now that her hand was, so to speak, off the rudder?

Eduard Desmond, as all the Convent knew, was a man of the world, with a past. He was also in his lighter moments an artist. The Convent was rather vague in its mind as to the form of art he pursued; but that it included habits was unfortunately certain, and his young niece Betty had vouched personally for the authenticity of his past. It had had to do with a married woman. The Convent frequently prayed for him; though unknown to the nuns.

Occasionally this distinguished-looking, fascinating, rather melancholy young man came to take Betty and a few chosen friends to a matinee, out of the kindness of his heart. Perhaps it was not pure kindness of heart that had called to his special attention young Joan Darcy, with her square chin, and straight black brows beneath which the eyes looked out at you with an odd intensity; unless she smiled, when they danced like blue water in the sun. She was not pretty, Joan, and boys rarely noticed her, somewhat to her chagrin; but Eduard Desmond was no boy, and his past perhaps had made him perceptive. The acquaintance between them ripened to a degree unsuspected by the good sisters at the Convent, if not by his family, who aided and abetted it, feeling that a young girl might be rather good for Eduard. Doubtless she was. She entered into the duty of "reforming" him with a conscientious thoroughness that might have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more.

She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike, which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of being "not there when wanted," as Eduard put it to himself, annoyed. He thought it deliberate, the reserve of the prude, or of the embryo coquette; whereas it was really one of the crosses of Joan's life, dreaded by her as the self-conscious dread attacks of shyness.

So far she had come out of what might have been an illuminating experience bearing only two small trophies of the sort girls love to whisper about together in bed after dances when the lights are out; one rather lingering kiss upon her slim, brown paw (which did not startle her at all, but made her want to giggle); and now this love-letter--if it was a love-letter.

Again Joan sighed. She regretted with all her heart that queer aloofness which came upon her in critical moments, making her notice that a man's ears were put on wrong, or that her own finger-nails needed shining, when she should have been surrendering her whole soul to emotion. Was it always going to keep her from plumbing the depths of life?

"Oh, but it shan't!" she insisted to herself. "I _will not_ be an innocent bystander! Things must happen to me; they must. All kinds of things!"

It was the sort of challenge to which Fate is apt to give attentive ear.

Presently, out of facts and recollections she slipped, as was her wont, into a game of Pretend, which had been a sort of accompaniment to Joan from her cradle; growing as she grew, changing as life changed its aspect to her eyes. She was no longer plain little Joan Darcy, returning from school in a shabby suit which she had outgrown, to a shabby home which she had also somewhat outgrown. She was a glorified young person of the singer or actress variety, returning from a career of conquest in foreign parts, with her maid Fifine traveling second cla.s.s in the coach behind, as they do in all the better novels. Her father, not much altered from real life except that there were no spots on his clothes (the Major's manner being grand enough for any circ.u.mstances), would be at the station with the victoria and pair--or perhaps the limousine--and would murmur to the second footman, "Home, James"; and at the door of the family mansion, a pillared, fan-lighted door (Joan's mind lingered lovingly over architectural details even in her haste to reach the people in the doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful curtsies--quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!--and beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and newness, would stand her mother with outstretched arms, waiting....

Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping large, hot tears upon her precious chocolates--she who had sworn never, never to cry any more in all her life, because tears are only useless things that make the nose red!

"But _why_ am I crying?" she demanded of herself, puzzled, still mazed with her game of Pretend.

It was because her mother would not be in that doorway, waiting; nor anywhere ever again--unless there really is a Heaven.

Joan sat there, too proud to bury her face in her hands or to search for a handkerchief, intensely conscious that people were glancing her way, praying wildly to all her G.o.ds to keep her from blubbering aloud; and she looked so like a haughty infant in distress that the young man opposite, he whom she had characterized as a necktie drummer, could not long restrain active sympathy.

"Pardon _me_," he said awkwardly, leaning toward her. "Are you in some sort of trouble? Anything I can do?"

Joan summoned all her scattered forces to meet this emergency in a manner that would do credit to the precepts of Sister Mary Joseph. She elevated her small red nose, and lifting her eyes to about the level of his scarf-pin (a rather cheap scarf-pin) remarked: "You can go away. I am telling myself sad stories of the death of kings."

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 appet.i.te on trains."

Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last of the tears from her eyes, selected the largest of the chocolates and drew from some recess of her person a white-headed pin. There was also, to be discussed later, a packet of sandwiches, typical Convent affairs--large slabs of bread embracing pale and clammy ham. Joan thought of these with resignation. The odor of broiling beefsteak came back from the car ahead rather poignantly. Joan had lied to the old lady. At eighteen, with every nerve and organ in healthy cooperation, appet.i.te is not likely to fail, on trains or elsewhere. Nor was it as if she did not have the necessary dollar in her pocket. Major Darcy always managed to rise to the occasion somehow when the ladies of his family went traveling. He had a horror of gentlewomen finding themselves among strangers temporarily embarra.s.sed for funds--quite a different affair from a permanent condition of the sort when in the home circle.

She knew that it was expected of her to spend her dollar in riotous living; but she could not forget (the Joans of the world never can forget) that a dollar is the price of a pair of white gloves or a pair of silk stockings. And so she munched her sacrificial sandwiches with a considering eye on the future.