CHAPTER III

IN WHICH JOANNA EMBRACES A PHANTOM BLISS

The obscure psychological relation existing between twins necessarily produces either peculiar sympathy or peculiar opposition of tastes and sentiment. The record of these twin sisters was of the discordant sort. Unspoken rivalry and jealousy had divided them. Unconsciously, yet unremittingly, they had struggled for pre-eminence. At the present moment, in Joanna's case these feelings combined to produce a sensation approaching active hatred. As she leaned shivering against her bedroom door, in the oppressive warmth of the summer night, all her petty griefs and grudges against her more attractive and popular sister complained in chorus. As a child Margaret had been pretty and taking. At school, though lazy and by no means clever, she had been petted and admired. Such affection as Montagu Smyrthwaite was capable of displaying he had displayed toward her. "Margaret was sensitive, Margaret was delicate"--which meant that Margaret knew just when to cry loud enough to excite pity; just when to announce tiredness or a headache, so as to escape unwelcome exertion. She had, in short, reduced the practice of selfishness--so Joanna thought--to a fine art.

And now, finally, to-night, not timidly with disarming apology, but with flaunting assurance, Margaret dared to infringe her--Joanna's--copyright in the wonder-story of a man's love, thereby capping the climax of offense. Her transcript of the said story might be of the grosser sort; yet on that very account it showed the more convincing. No misgivings, no agonized suspense, no tremulously anxious reading between the lines, were demanded. It was printed in large type, and in language coarsely vigorous as Joseph Challoner himself! Morally it repelled Joanna, although inflaming her imagination with vague drivings of desire. Her whole poor being, indeed, was swept by conflicting and but half-comprehended passions, from amid the tempest of which this one thing declared itself in a rising scale of furious insistence--namely, that Margaret should not once again best her; that no marriage Margaret might elect to make should endanger her own marriage with Adrian Savage; that by some means, any means fair or foul, Margaret must be prevented tasting the fullness of man's love--never mind how poor an edition of love this might be, how unpoetic, bow vulgar--as long as she, Joanna, was denied love's fullness. Yet so deeply were tradition and system ingrained in her that, even at this pass, she paid homage to their ruling, since instead of making a direct attack, and owning anger as the cause of it, she tricked herself with a fiction of moral obligation.

"Margaret," she began presently from her station at the door, speaking with such self-command as she could muster, "I dislike alluding to the subject very much. No doubt you will be annoyed and will accuse me of interference; still there is something I feel I ought to say to you. If I do not say it now, there may not be a suitable opportunity later."

"Then pray say it now. As I have told you, I want to get the whole thing thoroughly thrashed out to-night, so that we may avoid odious discussions in the future. What is it, Joanna?"

"I can't help observing that it is only since papa's death Mr. Challoner has paid you so much attention. Before then--"

Margaret rose and faced round upon the speaker. Her manner remained composed, but her blue eyes held the light of battle.

"You mean it is not me, but my fortune, Challoner is in love with? I quite expected you would tell me that, Joanna, sooner or later; but I am bound to say it is not a very elegant compliment either to him or to me."

"I did not intend to bring such an accusation against him," Joanna protested. "It would be very dreadful to suppose any one's affection, any one's choice, could be seriously influenced by the fact we have money."

"I'm afraid my views are less romantic than yours. It seems to me quite natural money should prove an attraction--particularly in cases where other attractions are rather wanting."

For some reason Joanna felt the stroke of a rod across her hand again. The pain excited her. She came forward a step or two.

"You do not give me time to explain myself, Margaret. Before papa's death Mr. Challoner's name was very freely associated with that of Mrs. Spencer. Both you and Marion Chase spoke of an engagement between them as certain. Others spoke of it also. The probability of a marriage was accepted. I cannot forget this."

Margaret laughed.

"Really, it's too funny that you of all people should champion wretched little Mrs. Spencer! Why, Joanna, you invariably intimated she was quite beneath your notice, and have lost no opportunity of snubbing her. I've had to be nice, more than once, simply because I felt so awfully ashamed of your rudeness to her."

"I do not like her. She is unladylike. Still I think Mr. Challoner's change of attitude requires explanation."

"Do you?" Margaret retorted. "Here is the explanation then. Simply that Challoner is too kind-hearted to save himself at the expense of a woman, even when she has treated him badly. He told me all about her months ago. He felt I had better hear it from him, but he did his best to excuse her. He showed wonderfully nice feeling about it all. I was not prepared for his being so scrupulous, and it made me admire him. For she is the sort of person who spends her time in extracting money and presents from every man she can get hold of. Challoner admits he was taken in by her at first, and was foolishly weak with her. She pretended to be almost penniless, and worked upon his feelings so much that he let her live in that house of his in Silver Chine Road, rent free, for nearly two years. And when her demands became too extortionate, and she persecuted him so disgracefully that he was compelled in self-defense to get rid of her, he found her another house at Marychurch, and, I believe, pays half the rent of it for her still. I know he gave her sister, Beattie Stacey--who is engaged to an officer on one of the Cape liners--a beautifully fitted traveling-bag as a wedding present. Marion saw it only last week.--Those are the facts, Joanna. I hope now your conscience is easy."

She stood looking down, pressing back an upturned corner of the rug, upon which Joanna had knelt earlier in the evening, with the pointed toe of her beaded slipper.

"Of course I sha'n't receive her," she said. "I told Challoner my magnanimity wouldn't carry me as far as that after the abominable way in which she's exploited him. All the same, I'm rather grateful to the wretched little woman. But for her I mightn't have known how generous Challoner could be. I really believe the satisfaction of rescuing him from her clutches is among my chief reasons for accepting him--that, and then, of course, Cousin Adrian Savage."

With a sort of rush Joanna came close--the violence of some half-starved creature in her pale eyes, her drawn face and her parted lips.

"Adrian?" she cried. "Adrian? What possible connection can there be between Cousin Adrian and your engagement to Mr. Challoner?"

For some seconds Margaret Smyrthwaite looked hard and thoughtfully at her sister. Then, holding the skirt of her dress aside, she pressed the upturned corner of the rug into place again with the pointed toe of her slipper.

"I shall be so thankful," she said, "when you give up wearing that frightful old dressing-gown, Nannie. Decidedly, it is not as clean as it might be, and it looks so horridly stuffy. I never have understood your craze for hoarding--"

"But--but--Adrian?" Joanna insisted.

"Adrian? Surely you must have seen, Nannie? It's just one of those things which aren't easy to put into words, but which I should have thought even you must have grasped, though you are so different to most people. I sometimes have wondered lately, though, whether you really are so different to other people, or whether you're only extraordinarily secretive.--But, naturally having a young man like Cousin Adrian staying so long in the house this winter, put ideas into one's head and made one think a good deal about marriage, and so on. I took for granted papa had some notion of that kind when he appointed Adrian his executor. He had a great opinion of him, and would have liked him as a son-in-law--or fancied he would. Of course he wanted to bring us together--that was the object of the appointment."

"You think so?" Joanna questioned. Joy, anxious but great, arose in her.

"I haven't a doubt about it. All the same I couldn't, out of respect for papa's wishes, make advances to a young man who showed quite clearly he didn't care a row of pins about me."

"He was always kind and civil to you, Margaret," Joanna interrupted restrainingly. Jealousy folded its beating wings, betaking itself to most unaccustomed repose.

"Civil and kind, I dare say. But--well, of course there are signs one can't mistake, unless one blinds oneself wilfully to their meaning."

She tossed her head, her eyes hard and bright. Joanna's expression meanwhile became increasingly ecstatic.

"Yes, there are signs one cannot mistake--signs which it would be weak and faithless to mistake," she whispered.

"I don't deny I felt rather enraged," Margaret continued, too busy with her own vexation to remark the other's singular aspect. "I could have been very much upset about it all if I had let myself go."

"I am sorry," Joanna murmured, touched by unexpected pity. "Indeed, Margaret, I am sorry."

"Oh, you weren't to blame in any way, Nannie. And, you see, I didn't let myself go. I just turned my attention to Challoner. There is nothing ambiguous about his admiration. And now"--she glanced curiously at her sister--"now," she continued, "as things have turned out, I'm most uncommonly glad I didn't allow myself to get into a state of mind about Adrian."

"As things have turned out?--I understand. I am pleased you do not blame me, Margaret. Yes, as things have turned out!" Joanna repeated excitedly.

For here, as she saw it, was the hour of her triumph, of assured and splendid victory. The room seemed too small to hold her rapture. Hardly aware of that which she did, she brushed past her sister--still standing, fan in hand, beside the chair at the window--and went out on to the balcony.

She required to be alone, so as to savor to the full the heady sweetness of her own emotion. She wanted to forget every one, everything, save that only. She wanted to abandon herself without reserve to the thought of Adrian Savage; to gloat over every incident of her intercourse with him, and project her imagination onward to the closer, the continuous and exclusive intercourse of the future. For had not Margaret's confession--the more persuasive because reluctantly made--amounted to an admission that Adrian's affection belonged to her, and to her only? Did it not supply reasonable confirmation of her sorely tried faith in him, and ratify all her hopes by setting the seal of witness upon the fact of his love for her?

Such was the meaning she read into the recent conversation, piecing evidence together into a coherent whole. Never before had she been absolutely certain. Now, as she told herself, she was certain--could safely be so, in that Margaret had admitted the fact, if not in so many words, yet implicitly. Her father's wish and purpose had been that the young man should marry one of his two daughters--Margaret had perceived this. And she, Joanna, was the one he had chosen, thereby justifying all her past efforts and labors, and rehabilitating the poor, cynically denuded family system into the bargain. Was not the whole habit and conduct of her life vindicated, inasmuch as it led to this superb result? The years had not been wasted, but were, on the contrary, the patient seed-time of this welcome harvest. She had been right from the first, right in every particular, so that not upon her or her methods, but upon those who differed from, undervalued, or slighted her rested the onus of proof. And here the intellectual and moral arrogance latent in Joanna Smyrthwaite's nature upheaved itself mightily and stood aggressively erect. Overweening self-esteem, as on giant wings, sustained her. For to such disastrous inflations of pride are introspective persons liable when they fail--as they do so frequently fail--to discriminate between deeds and emotions, between the barren power to feel and the fertile, the life-giving power to act! Of all traps set by Satan for the catching of souls, the trap of "feelings" is perhaps the wiliest and the worst. And into this trap poor Joanna walked, head in air, careless of consequence. She felt deified, lifted above the crawling, common ways of common men, defiant of all opposition, all criticism; since, being the chosen and desired of him whom she so dotingly worshiped, she became an object worthy of worship in and to herself.

And the night--playing into the devil's hands somewhat, as at times the aspects of Nature will--in its windless silence and opaque, hot darkness, appeared queerly reflective of and sympathetic to Joanna's mood of portentous self-exaltation. The planes rather than the forms of all which composed the scene were perceptible. Joanna's eyes detected the slope of the veranda roof immediately beneath the balcony, the flat outspread of the gardens and lawns, and the vertical palisade of lofty trees encircling them; but no single object detached itself--all were fused by and soaked in that thick broth of thunder-smoke. And this heated obscurity she welcomed, because it ministered to the sense of solitude and of aloofness which she craved. Nothing visible interfered to distract her attention from herself and the thought of her high destiny. Only once or twice the sky opened, for the distant storm had moved westward, striking the black canopies of the firs, their stems and many branches, into vivid and instantaneous relief, while behind and above them, midway to the zenith, lightning licked and flickered like some miracle of soundless, sardonic laughter playing over the livid features of a corpse nine days dead.

It was in the moment of one such disquieting celestial display that Margaret Smyrthwaite, stifling an audible yawn, strolled on to the balcony. She had gathered up her magazines and papers again, and tucked them under her arm.

"If you don't intend to come in and talk any more, Nannie," she said, rather irritably, "I may as well go. I'm getting frightfully sleepy, and I've promised Challoner to motor him over to Weymouth to-morrow. We make an early start. Too, Marion's sure to be waiting to hear how my talk with you has gone off, and I've a conscience about keeping her up any longer.--Now, you do quite understand, don't you, that I am going to marry Challoner, and that opposition is absolutely no good? It would look ever so much better, and be so very much more comfortable for every one concerned, if you could only make up your mind to be nice about it. You're always saying how you hate people talking over our affairs. Why give them occasion to talk then by being disagreeable and contrary about a thing which is really no business of yours, and which you are quite powerless to prevent?"

Contemptuously Joanna turned from contemplation of that strangely flickering sky and contemplation of her own--subjective--glory. She resented the intrusion of Margaret, with her perfumes and fashion papers, her complacent utilitarianism, her motor-car and underbred lover; but resented it half-pityingly, as the weakness of an inferior being behaving according to the manner of its kind.

"I may be powerless to prevent your marriage," she said, "still I most deeply object to it. I cannot do otherwise. I consider it unsuitable and most unfortunate. I cannot disguise from myself that it will stand between us in the future and render intercourse difficult. There can be little sympathy between two persons whose aims and interests are as far apart as yours and mine must inevitably be. I feel it my duty to mention this to you, Margaret, although I know that I have ceased to exercise any influence over you. It is all very sad. It is painful to me that you should repudiate our parents' teaching, all the more painful because I never understood as fully as I now do how noble that teaching is, and how much it has done to form my character and tastes, thus preparing me for the position and duties to which I am called."

She drew her breath sharply, raising her hands to her forehead, greatly moved by the thought of that high calling.

"This for us is the parting of the ways, Margaret," she added, a singular effect of dramatic tension in her manner, her pale ungracious face and figure against the red-brick background of the house-front, momentarily illuminated by a swift amazement of lightning rippling and shuddering behind the fir-trees in the west. "The parting of the ways," she repeated. "You go yours, I mine. I deplore your choice. Can I do otherwise, seeing how different my own prospects are? But as, after due consideration, you have made that choice, all further argument must, I fear, be wasted upon you."

"Very well, then--there's an end of the matter."

As she spoke Margaret crossed the balcony, and, leaning upon the balustrade, looked down into the gloom-shrouded garden. The candle-light streaming outward through the open window touched her shapely back and shoulders, and her bright, curled and folded, auburn hair.

"There's an end of it, then," she repeated coldly, rather bitterly. "We agree to part. You might easily have been kinder and nicer to me; but I bear you no ill-will. I suppose you can't help being disagreeable. Certainly it's nothing new.--Only, Nannie, though I don't want to upset you or make a quarrel, there is something I should like to be quite clear about, because, I own, I've been half afraid lately that you were getting yourself into a silly state over Adrian Savage."

She stood upright, looking full at Joanna.

"I know you've corresponded with him a good deal, so, of course, you may know already. Colonel Haig told me. He met her in Paris, on his way to Carlsbad, and was awfully smitten with her. Has Cousin Adrian ever spoken to you about Madame St. Leger?"

Silence followed. A distinct menace was perceptible in Joanna's tone when she at last answered.

"I have never attempted to force myself into Adrian's confidence. To do so would be the worst possible taste under existing circumstances. I should never dream of asking him questions regarding his--his former friends."

"Then you don't know about Madame St. Leger, Nannie?"

"I do not know, nor have I the least wish to hear anything respecting any acquaintance of Adrian's, except what he himself may choose to tell me."

Joanna spoke violently, her back against the wall, both in the literal and figurative sense.

"That's all very proper, but I really think you ought to hear this. In the end it may save everybody a lot of misunderstanding and worry. I'm pretty sure Colonel Haig meant me to pass the information on to you. That was why he told me."

Joanna stretched her arms out on either side, the palms of her hands toward the wall. As her fingers worked, opening and closing, her nails gritted upon the rough surface of the brick.

"I do not wish to hear anything, Margaret, not anything," she repeated vehemently.

"But evidently there's no secret about this whatever. Every one, so Haig says, knows the whole story in Paris. The affair has been going on for ever so long; only until Madame St. Leger's husband died, of course, there couldn't be any question of marriage. I don't mean to imply the smallest harm. Haig says there never has been the slightest scandal. But her husband was years and years her senior, and she is very beautiful--Haig raves about her. I have never heard him so enthusiastic over any one. And he was told Adrian has been in--"

"I refuse to hear anything more. I will not, Margaret--no--no--I will not. This is a wicked fabrication. I do not believe it. It is not true, I tell you--it is not true," Joanna panted, her finger-nails tearing at the brickwork.

"But what possible object could Haig have in repeating the story if it wasn't true? I'm awfully sorry to put you in such a fuss, Nannie, but Haig believes it implicitly himself. There isn't the least doubt of that. And when one comes to think, it does explain Adrian's behavior when he was with us. One sees, of course, how improbable it is that a young man like him should not have some attachment which--"

Joanna quitted the sheltering wall, and came toward the speaker, holding up her hands--the finger-tips frayed and reddened--with a threatening gesture.

"Go away, Margaret!" she cried passionately. "Go away! Leave me alone--you had much better. This story is false--it is false, I tell you. And I forbid you to repeat it. I will not listen. I will not have it said. Go--or I may do something dreadful to you. Go--and never speak to me again about this--never dare to do so--never--never--do you hear?"

"Really, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Nannie," the other protested, half angry, half frightened. "I'm positively astonished at your making such an exhibition of yourself--"

But Joanna laid hold of her by the shoulders, and pushed her back forcibly through the open window, into the center of the quiet, softly lighted room.

"Take your candle and go," she said, and her face was terrible, forbidding argument or rebuke. "This is a wicked falsehood, concocted by some jealous person who is trying to alienate Adrian's affection from me. Who that person is I do not know. I had better not know. It is all very cruel, very dreadful; but I want no explanations, or questions, or advice. Above all I want no sympathy. I only want to be alone.--And I warn you, Margaret, if you ever betray what has happened here to-night I will take my own life. I shall be certain to find you out sooner or later, and I will not survive betrayal, so my death will lie at your door. Remember that, if you are tempted to gossip about me with Mr. Challoner or Marion Chase.--And now, pray, go away, and leave me to myself. That is all I ask of you. Don't call Isherwood and send her to me. I want nothing--nobody. If she came I should not let her in. Go away--here is your candle--go away and leave me alone!"

Joanna locked the door behind her sister, came back to the middle of the room and stood there motionless, her arms stiffly extended. She had no words, no thoughts, but an ache through mind and body of blank misery, at once incomprehensible and deadening from its very completeness. Presently she blew out the lights. They irritated her as showing her definite objects, her own reflection in the cheval glass beside the dressing-table, her diary and silver writing-set upon the slab of the open bureau, all the ornaments and fittings of her bedroom. She called on the darkness to cover her, and to cover these things also, blotting remembrance of them out. She needed to make her loneliness more lonely, her solitude more unmitigated and absolute.

An intolerable restlessness seized on her. She began to range blindly, aimlessly, to and fro. More than once she knocked against some angle or outstanding piece of furniture, bruising herself; but she was hardly sensible of pain. At last, treading upon the trailing fronts of her pleated _négligé_, she stumbled, fell her length, face downward, and lay exhausted for a time; then slowly dragging herself into a sitting position, she remained there, massed together stupidly, upon the floor--while, through the large, well-ordered, soberly luxurious house, the clocks chimed the hours and half-hours, to be answered by the chime of the stable clock out of doors.

As the night drew toward morning the lightning became faint and infrequent behind the fir-trees in the west, for the drought still held and the refreshment of rain would not be yet. But in the gray of the dawn a cool breathing of wind came up from the sea. Then, for a minute or so, the great woodland stirred, finding its lost voice; and the tree-tops swayed, singing together to hail the sun-rising and the coming day.

The cool draught of air sweeping in at the still open window aroused Joanna somewhat from her stupor. In the broadening light she looked about her. The room was in disorder--chairs pushed aside, a table thrown down, well-bound books, fragments of a gold and glass bowl, sprigs of lemon verbena and fading roses, the wallet in which she kept Adrian Savage's letters lying open, alongside its contents, scattered broadcast upon the ground.

Joanna stared at these treasured possessions apathetically. She put up her hands to push back her hair, which hung down in heavy strands over her face and shoulders. Her fingers felt sticky. They pricked and smarted. She examined them. The nails were nicked and jagged, in places the tips were raw.

"I will wait until they have healed," she said half aloud in her thin, toneless voice, "then I will write to Adrian and ask him if it is true. But I must wait till they are healed, I think. Now I had better sleep. There is nothing else left for me to do."

She staggered to her feet, walked unsteadily across the intervening space and threw herself, unkempt and half-dressed as she was, upon the fine embroidered linen sheets and delicate lace coverlet of the satinwood bed.

##