Part 63 (1/2)

”I came here because you brought me,” she would answer. ”I did not come to be entertaining or polite.”

She was reading this evening. She heard every word of Lady Mallowe's agreeable and slightly excited conversation. She did not know exactly what had happened; but she knew that it was something which had buoyed her up with a hopefulness which exhilarated her almost too much--as an extra gla.s.s of wine might have done. Once or twice she even lost her head a little and was a trifle swaggering. T. Tembarom would not recognize the slip, but Joan saw Palliser's faint smile without looking up from her book. He observed shades in taste and bearing.

Before her own future Joan saw the blank wall of stone building itself higher and higher. If Sir Moses had capitulated, she would be counted out. With what degree of boldness could a mother cast her penniless daughter on the world? What unendurable provision make for her? Dare they offer a pound a week and send her to live in the slums until she chose to marry some Hebrew friend of her step-father's? That she knew would be the final alternative. A cruel little smile touched her lips, as she reviewed the number of things she could not do to earn her living. She could not take in sewing or was.h.i.+ng, and there was nothing she could teach. Starvation or marriage. The wall built itself higher and yet higher. What a hideous thing it was for a penniless girl to be brought up merely to be a beauty, and in consequence supposably a great lady. And yet if she was born to a certain rank and had height and figure, a lovely mouth, a delicate nose, unusual eyes and lashes, to train her to be a dressmaker or a housemaid would be a stupid investment of capital. If nothing tragic interfered and the right man wanted such a girl, she had been trained to please him. But tragic things had happened, and before her grew the wall while she pretended to read her book.

T. Tembarom was coming toward her. She had heard Palliser suggest a game of billiards.

”Will you come and play billiards with us?” Tembarom asked. ”Palliser says you play splendidly.”

”She plays brilliantly,” put in Lady Mallowe. ”Come, Joan.”

”No, thank you,” she answered. ”Let me stay here and read.”

Lady Mallowe protested. She tried an air of playful maternal reproach because she was in good spirits. Joan saw Palliser smiling quietly, and there was that in his smile which suggested to her that he was thinking her an obstinate fool.

”You had better show Temple Barholm what you can do,” he remarked.

”This will be your last chance, as you leave so soon. You ought never let a last chance slip by. I never do.”

Tembarom stood still and looked down at her from his good height. He did not know what Palliser's speech meant, but an instinct made him feel that it somehow held an ugly, quiet taunt.

”What I would like to do,” was the unspoken crudity which pa.s.sed through his mind, ”would be to swat him on the mouth. He's getting at her just when she ought to be let alone.”

”Would you like it better to stay here and read?” he inquired.

”Much better, if you please,” was her reply.

”Then that goes,” he answered, and left her.

He swept the others out of the room with a good-natured promptness which put an end to argument. When he said of anything ”Then that goes,” it usually did so.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came back continually without being called, the clearness of which always startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from herself--her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to know that she had been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had leaped so when she turned and met Jem's eyes, as he stood gazing at her under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl and Jem had been--Jem. And she had been the girl who had joined him in that young, ardent vow that they would say the same prayers at the same hour each night together. Ah! how young it had been--how YOUNG! Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.

She could hear voices and laughter and the click of b.a.l.l.s from the billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew the sound of her mother's voice would cease soon, because she would come back to her. She knew she would not leave her long, and she knew the kind of scene they would pa.s.s through together when she returned.

The old things would be said, the old arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was a pleasant thing to wait here, knowing that it was coming, and that for all her fierce pride and fierce spirit she had no defense. It was at once horrible and ridiculous that she must sit and listen--and stare at the growing wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an actual sweep across the room.

Her society air had fled, and she was unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan's chair. For a few seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed undertone:

”Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”

Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her mother's, but steadier.

”No,” she answered.

”Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.

”Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was nothing else to say. Words made things worse.