CHAPTER I

JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS

One of the village taxis, a sorry, disreputable affair, with noisily clattering fenders, dashed bumpily along the rural highway and turned with precarious suddenness into the driveway, lined on either side by great walnut trees that formed a leafy tunnel to the big house at the far end. It was, despite considerable age, a magnificent house, and it had been modernized with green-striped awnings and sun rooms. The taxi was heavily loaded with luggage. There was one passenger, a girl of twenty-one or two, with an attractive face and expressive dark eyes, now shining with a light of eagerness, as she leaned toward the door of the jouncing vehicle. One slim, gloved hand rested upon the catch.

The little car came to a skidding halt beneath the old-fashioned portico, as the driver jammed the brakes with a suddenness that pitched his fare violently forward, knocking her hat awry. But even this failed to dim her happy, expectant smile; she did not so much as bother to straighten the hat. She had the door open and was out before the driver could double as footman.

"Hope I didn't jar you up, lady, but y' said hurry, an' I fed 'er the gas," he said with a wide grin that revealed two prominently missing teeth. "She's a great li'le car, ain't she, fer goin' on the fifth season?"

The girl nodded and gave him a dollar bill.

"Don't bother about the bags," she told him. "Just leave them anywhere, and I'll have Bates carry them in."

She ran briskly up the brief rise of steps from the driveway to the wide porch that semicircled the house on two sides. The entrance was around the turn; she paused suddenly at sight of the strange young woman who reclined in the couch hammock, asleep. For a moment she stared in surprise, wondering who she was. Women visitors were unusual at Greenacres.

"How beautiful she is!" murmured the girl, letting her eyes linger on the soft, oval face of the sleeper, crowned with bronze hair. "I wonder who she can be?" She softened her step and continued across the porch to the entrance.

Hardly had she entered the reception hall when Bates spied her and came rushing toward her, with that peculiar, shambling gait of his, a broad smile crinkling his thin, leathery face.

"Heaven bless us, it's Miss Joan!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, 'Daddy' Bates!" she cried. "It's so wonderful to get home again! The finest thing about going away is coming back. Only bit over a month, and it's seemed a year!"

Bates was the Gilmore butler, but he had been in the family since the time Joan was a child, and, in this moment of home-coming exuberance, it was only natural that she should use the old affectionate address. Bates, his hands clasped in front of his chest, continued to smile fondly and proudly.

"Well! Well!" he chuckled. "Won't Mrs. Gilmore be happy to see you again, Miss Joan! Surprised, too; she wasn't expecting you until to-morrow."

"The boat docked a day ahead of time," she explained, "and I didn't telegraph. Where is mother?"

"She went upstairs less than half an hour since. Your bags, Miss Joan?"

"Outside, Bates; I told the taxi man to dump them out any old place. Take them right up, if you please, Bates; there are some little things I bought on the other side, and I didn't forget you, either."

Bates sobered.

"Your room----" he began, but broke off suddenly, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Joan, in her excitement, did not notice. "Why, of course, my room!" she cried gayly, making for the stairs and taking the steps, two at a time. Bates stared after her, wagging his head sadly, and his thin shoulders moved with a lugubrious sigh.

"Poor Miss Joan!" he murmured. "It's going to be an awful shock to her; I didn't have the heart to tell her. And her room, too!" He shambled out to the porch for the luggage.

Reaching the upper hall, Joan went swiftly to the left wing of the house, where her mother had her private sitting room, bedroom, and bath. With a quick gesture she flung open the door and, arms reaching out eagerly, fairly leaped at the little gray-haired woman who sat by the window, reading.

"Mumsey!"

Before Mrs. Gilmore could get to her feet, the girl had swooped down on her in a cyclone of joy, smothering her with kisses and leaving her almost breathless with hugs.

"I--I didn't expect you until to-morrow, dear," gasped Mrs. Gilmore. "Why didn't you wire and let us meet you at the station? Goodness, child, give me air!"

"Oh, it's so much nicer to surprise people," laughed Joan. "How are you?"

"We've all been well."

Joan sat on the arm of the chair and cuddled her mother close.

"It's so wonderful to be home again," she murmured happily. "It was a wonderful trip, my first sea voyage, and the Sharps were perfectly wonderful to me--all through southern France by motor--but there's no place in all the world like Greenacres. How is Kirk getting along with the new novel? Has he missed his severest critic?"

An anxious, half-frightened look came into Mrs. Gilmore's face. "Kirklan," she answered slowly, an ominous note creeping into her voice, "hasn't been writing much during--during the past three weeks. He couldn't really be expected to, since----"

Joan's fingers tightened about her mother's hand.

"Mother! Something--something has happened to Kirk! Is he ill?"

"No, dear, Kirklan is perfectly well, but he----" Again Mrs. Gilmore's voice came to a halting stop.

"Why don't you tell me? The tone of your voice frightens me. What has happened to Kirk?"

"An author can't be expected to do much writing, Joan, when--when he is on his honeymoon," Mrs. Gilmore finished faintly. She felt the girl's fingers, still resting across her own, tremble and become cold.

Joan's face had turned ghastly pale and there was a stunned dullness in her dark eyes. "His--his honeymoon?" she whispered. "You mean----Oh, you can't mean that Kirk has married?"

Mrs. Gilmore nodded.

"Yes, he married--about ten days after you sailed. It was a surprise--a shock--to all of us. The first we knew of it was when he brought her home with him."

Joan was making an ineffectual attempt to keep her emotions in check, to conceal the evidence that the news had been a terrible blow to her.

"Why--why, I had no idea that Kirk was even interested in any one."

"Neither did any of us. It seems that he fell madly in love with her almost at first sight; they were married, I believe, a week after their first meeting. I can't understand how a man would rush headlong into marriage like that, although she is pretty."

Joan's mind reverted to the beautiful woman she had seen asleep in the porch hammock.

"She--she is here now? Then that--that woman I saw downstairs is Kirk's wife? Kirk's wife?" She laughed unsteadily. "It's so hard for me to believe--coming so suddenly like this. Yes, she is pretty; not only pretty--beautiful."

She walked slowly to the window and stood there, her back to the room, trying to keep her face from her mother's eyes. But Mrs. Gilmore was not deceived; she had known for a long time and had feared that the situation would bring only unhappiness.

Although Joan was Mrs. Gilmore's daughter, she still bore her father's name of Sheridan. Her mother, left a widow, had married Peyton Gilmore, a childhood sweetheart, who had himself been previously married. Peyton Gilmore had been a well-known New York lawyer. Those with long memories may remember that he had dropped dead in a crowded courtroom, during a famous murder trial, while pleading for the life of his client. There was a son, Kirklan Gilmore, only twelve years old at the time of his father's death, and Kirklan's rearing had fallen to his stepmother. The two families, merged into one, had long occupied the picturesque, rural New York estate of Greenacres, without friction or discord.

Joan and Kirklan had always hit it off well together, and when, after a try at law, Kirklan had turned to writing, it was Joan who sympathized the most over his failures and rejoiced the most over his successes. Realizing that Joan's deft touches had helped the tremendous success of his novel, "Rogue's Paradise," Kirklan had given his stepsister a trip abroad.

The silence became so long, so painful that Mrs. Gilmore felt that something had to be said.

"Her name," she murmured, "is Helen--Helen Banton before she married Kirklan."

"Does--does he seem to be--very much in love with her, mother?"

"Very much in love with her," Mrs. Gilmore answered, and Joan winced.

"I--I hope he will be very happy," the latter said with a muffled voice.

Mrs. Gilmore shook her head slowly. "I'm afraid that he won't be, my dear. A pretty face is not sufficient to make a man happy. 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' It's an old saying, but it's true--as most of the old sayings are. Kirklan has made a mistake, a terrible mistake."

"I don't believe you like her, mother."

"My likes or dislikes have nothing to do with it. They have few tastes in common; already she is sick and tired of Greenacres, and you know how Kirklan loves it out here. She has no interest in his work, and you know how much he needs sympathy, encouragement. He's not the kind that can forge on alone; the kind of wife he should have----"

"Mother, don't! Who was she--how did he happen to meet her?"

"She was employed in some minor capacity by Kirklan's publishers," Mrs. Gilmore replied. "As to who she is--I wonder. Yes, I wonder. I don't think even Kirklan knows anything about her. I don't consider it a good sign when a girl is reticent about her family. Kirklan says, 'I've married a girl I love, not a family tree.'"

Joan winced again, for that was a line she had written into Kirklan's successful novel.

"If--if they're in love with each other, mother, I suppose that's all that matters."

"He's in love with her, but they're not in love with each other, and those one-sided romances always end in disaster. I can't help but feel that she is going to smash his life."

"She--she'd better not!" whispered Joan, her hands clenched. "We won't talk about it any more--please. I'm going to my room and unpack. I'll--I'll come back in a little while, mother." Her tone was weary, lifeless.

Mrs Gilmore gave her daughter another quick glance, as she prepared to deliver the second blow.

"I--I guess you'll miss your old room, Joan; you've always loved it so, with its view of the river."

Startled, bewildered, the girl turned away from the window. "Miss my old room? Why, mother, what--what do you mean?"

"Kirklan had your things moved to the east wing, dear. He tried to make her understand, but----"

"The things moved--from my room!" cried Joan. "Kirklan did that? He--he tried to make her understand? You mean that woman----"

"It wasn't Kirklan's fault, Joan; he tried hard enough to reason with her, but his wife is so headstrong. It is the best room in the house, of course, and I suppose she felt that she had a right, as the new mistress of Greenacres, to it. The place is Kirklan's property."

"That--that woman--in my room!" There was a catching sob in Joan's voice. "Oh, how dare she? And Kirk let her do it."

"You don't understand how headstrong she is," Mrs. Gilmore explained hastily. "She's the sort who demands, who takes what she wants. Kirklan tried to avert it, but I suppose it's hard for a man to deny his bride anything. Kirklan has the adjoining room, a separate sleeping chamber. It's the modern thing, I believe, these days. She's had a doorway cut through; the carpenters finished their work yesterday. I knew you would resent giving up your room."

"Of course I resent it!" flared Joan. "She has no right----" She paused and then added bitterly, "No, I suppose I'm wrong; the house is Kirk's, and she did have a right--to everything. I'm going to unpack now, there are some little souvenirs I brought back with me----"

This was but an excuse to get away, to be alone. Leaving the sentence unfinished, she fled. A moment later she was in the east wing, where her personal belongings had been banished by the usurper. Some one--Kirk, no doubt--had tried to hang her pictures in the same position they had occupied in the beloved room that had been hers for so long. An effort had been made to make things appear the same, but they were not the same; they would never be the same. Here she felt a stranger, almost like a guest in a transient hotel. Nothing would ever be the same--now.

Bates had already brought up her bags, and they were stacked in an orderly pile on the floor, but Joan made no move to unpack. That had been but an excuse. She stumbled toward her bed and flung herself across it, giving way to a torrent of tears.

"I love him so!" she sobbed. "It never would have happened--if I hadn't gone away. I know it wouldn't have happened. No other woman has a right to him when I love him so much."

Presently she got herself in check and went listlessly to the window and, lifting back the curtains, looked out. From here she had not so much as a glimpse of the Tappan Zee, where the Hudson broadens a good three miles wide. In her old room, curled up in the window seat, with soft pillows at her back, she had been able to look out across the water to the rugged rise of the Palisades looming up picturesquely from the New Jersey shore--and dream.

And now in that other room--her room--would be Kirklan's wife! Perhaps the other woman and Kirklan would sit in her beloved window seat, his arm about her; the thought of it made the blood pound in Joan's brain, made a red mist swim before her eyes.

Below her a figure moved across the lawn, a graceful figure in a white sport skirt. Even from that distance the woman's bronze hair glinted in the strong sunlight. Joan stared down, her hands clenching until the nails bit deep into her palms.

"She has taken two of the things I have loved best!" she whispered fiercely. "I hate her! I can't help it, I hate her!"