xt7k0p0wqh1x https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7k0p0wqh1x/data/mets.xml Kelly, Eleanor Mercein, 1880-1968 1919  books b92-221-31182119 English Century, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Why Joan  / by Eleanor Mercein Kelly. text Why Joan  / by Eleanor Mercein Kelly. 1919 2002 true xt7k0p0wqh1x section xt7k0p0wqh1x 
















WHY JOAN

  

WHY



JOAN



          BY
ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY
  Author of "KILDARES OF STORM," etc.



  NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
     1919

 


























Copyright, 1919, by
THE CENTURY CO.

Pubiihed, March, 1919

 



















               TO
MRS. RICHARD W. KNOTT
friend and neighbor to many young
women such as JOAN, whom she
has helped to find the why of them-
selves; and whose life principle may
be summed up in Virgil's phrase
     Paulo majora canamus-
   (Let us sing of higher things.)

 This page in the original text is blank.

 

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 af-
fections. And great was the scandal thereof. Neighbors in-
sisted upon recognizing themselves in it, to their horror-or
to their complacency, as the case might be. They also recog-
nized the house described; although if one heard with im-
partial ear, the house appeared to possess as many different
identities 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 moun-
tains-imagination being on occasion almost as powerful as
faith.
  That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens
to assert that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the
whole world of fancy at command, would care to inhibit pro-
ductivity by the limitations imposed upon photography, in-
valuable as that science is in its place-which is not fiction.
Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment at least, "shat-
tering 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 Ken-
tucky, to have broken bread with all one 's acquaintance,
neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider themselves

 

                      FOREWORD

safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize them-
selves 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 circumstance and the
different stages of development. And it is with these things
only-with circumstance 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

 













Aime-moi, paree que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,
  Va t'en, parce que fai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,
  Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,
  Car jo suis le Cobzar.
             Quoted by Pierre de Coulevain from source unknown.
















Rough translation:
  Love me, because r have need of love for my songs,
  Leave me, because I have need of tears for my songs,
  Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs,
    For I am the Cobzar.

 

               WHY JOAN


                      CHAPTER I

rOUNG 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 passed and registered it in
her subconscious mind for future reference. It was a con-
venient receptacle, her subconscious mind-a sort of strong-
box 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.
                            3

 

WHY JOAN



  Joan discovered within herself a certain impersonal, ap-
preciative 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 assuaged 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 class 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 shell deliciously upon the tongue. Con-
served 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 weep-
ing 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



4

 

WHY JOAN



medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his
adherents; two youths from the near-by college (mere broth-
ers of friends, but still masculine) ; and, for pihce de resis-
tance, 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 eves
of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at all;
and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wan-
dered 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 ac-
ceptable, of the sort that come from Paris; also frilly things,
hand-embroidered, which he would not have to choose him-



5

 

WHY JOAN



self, of course--there being women clerks for the purpose.
She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it him-
self, 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 threat-
ened to spoil the pleasure of her parting; and then had ar-
rived, 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!                  EDUAILD.

  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 controll
Joan sighed. She could have borne that. Or was it-here
she frowned 'importantly-that his habits were already re-
suming 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



6

 

WHY JOAN



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 un-
fortunately 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. Per-
haps 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, whieh 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



7

 


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 sha'n't!" she insisted to herself. "I wilt 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 Vifine
traveling second class 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 circumstances), would
be at the station with the victoria and pair-or perhaps the



8



WHY JOAN

 

WHY JOAN



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 archi-
tectural details even in her haste to reach the people in the
doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful curt-
sies-quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!-and
beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and new-
ness, would stand her mother with outstretched arms, wait-
ing....
  Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping
large, hot tears upon her precious chocolates-she who had
sworn never, never Lo 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, wait-
ing; 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
gods 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.



9

 

WHY JOAN



  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 trust-
ful girls into the most frightful predicaments!
  "No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much
appetite on trains."
  Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last
of the tears from her eyes, selected the largest of the choco-
lates and drew from some recess of her person a white-headed
pin. There was also, to be discussed later, a packet of sand-
wiches, typical Convent affairs-large slabs of bread em-
bracing 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, appetite is not likely to fail, on trains or else-
where. 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 embarrassed for funds-quite a differ-
ent 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.



10

 

CHAPTER II



L     ATER, as she lay propped up in her snug little berth
        (far the pleasantest part of the journey to Joan),
        with her shade up for fear of missing anything of
the mysterious night that passed outside-strange, silent
cities, isolated farms asleep in the starlight, the glow of
smelting fires as they flashed by, like a startling glimpse into
the infernal regions-it suddenly occurred to Joan that her
father had been unprecedentedly lavish in his provision for
her journey home.
  "Money for good-by presents to all the girls; money for
ticket, and sleeper, and tips, and ten dollars besides-good-
ness! Dad must have struck something!" she mused, de-
ciding that it was really business that kept him from coming
to see her graduate, and not, to put it delicately, the lack of
business.
  In the Darcy family things were always put delicately.
The mention of cost was deprecated. One never said
crudely that a thing could not be afforded. One "preferred
not to bother about it just then," or one "liked last year's
hat so much better than any in the shops," or one "enjoyed
the freedom of being without servants for a while-it was
a relief."
  Occasionally Joan's mother, before she overcame the
blunter speech of the North, had offended the family taste
with plain statements about prices and possibilities. Joan,
observant from her cradle, drew her own conclusions from
the expression of wincing deprecation these faux pas pro-
duced upon her father's face, or upon that of the cousin
                            11

 

WHY JOAN



or aunt or what-not in the way of Darcy relation that was
usually visiting them.
  "Mamma," she had asked once in the murmured intimacy
that preceded sleepy time, "is n't money a very nice fing 1"
  "A very nice thing indeed, babykins," answered the lady
with a faint sigh.
  " Then why must n't us never speak about it "
  It was not the only one of her daughter's questions that
the harassed woman had been obliged to parry with what
skill lay at her command. Honesty always came more easily
to Mary Darcy than subterfuge.
  Joan grew up into the family habit of euphonious speech;
but, thanks to a certain inheritance from her mother, facts
had a way of presenting themsel -es to her inner vision with
a clarity, a brutal frankness of outline, quite unprecedented
in the mind of a Darcy.
  Her facility in the valuable game of Pretend came from
the paternal strain. Richard Darcy was one of those for-
tunate spirits who move through life to the sound of an in-
visible drum corps-a procession of one, affably ready for
whatever honors Fate chose to thrust upon him. Joan, too,
was quite prepared for the best the world had to offer. Never-
theless, unlike her father, she was never unaware of the dif-
ference between pretense and reality, nor of the fixed line
dividing them. When she lied, it was deliberately, with her
eyes wide open.
  Just now she chose to step over the dividing line firmly
into reality. Perhaps her dinner may have had something
to do with it; a diet of chocolates and ham sandwiches not
being conducive to glamour of thought, even at eighteen.
  Joan wished, soberly, that she were happier at the idea of
going home. She wished that she were not haunted by a
vague dread of it. . ..
  The Convent-with its daily round of prescribed duties and



12

 


pleasures, its fixed intimates and enemies, its atmosphere of
simple piety, its guardian nuns, striving conscientiously for
that "detachment from place" which is enjoined upon them,
but lavishing all the pent-up mother-passion of their hearts
upon the young creatures in their care-Joan, young as she
was, visualized the place she had left as a sunny haven, a
little quiet eddy in the whirlpool; sheltered, secluded, safe.
  She frowned at the adjective. Surely her own home was
"safe," too! Surely the vague dread she felt had nothing
to do with her father, for instance-her own dear, splendid
Dad, so handsome despite his frayed and spotted clothes, with
the courtly manner that had won both nuns and girls to awe-
struck admiration, and that gave him far more distinction
than the fathers of other girls who did not wear frayed and
spotted clothes. No, it could not be her father she dreaded!
  And it was certainly not Ellen Neal, the elderly woman
who had followed the Darcy fortunes in their waxing and
waning for many a year-part servant, part mentor, always
friend; declining to be shaken off even in those crises when
Mrs. Darcy "enjoyed doing without servants"; supporting
herself during such financial depressions by means of a skil-
ful needle-supporting, Joan sometimes suspected, others
than herself. The girl recalled one significant incident of
her early childhood; her mother, pale and anxious, arguing
at the door with a rude man who declined to leave without
something she seemed unable to give him, until Ellen ap-
peared, half running up the street, opening her shopping-bag
as she came. And when she had thrust something into the
rude man 's hands and slammed the door in his face, Mrs.
Darcy had turned silently to the servant and kissed her.
  Joan's feeling for Ellen was one of the few she had never
tried to analyze. It was simply there, like her breath, her
eyesight. She could not be said to love her-there was noth-
ing attractive about Ellen Neal; yet her only quarrel with



WHY JOAN



is

 

WHY JOAN



her father (if anything so one-sided could be called a quarrel)
was on the subject of Ellen. Once during Joan's previous
summer vacation, the Major, who disliked familiarity in serv-
ants, had taken occasion to remind Ellen most kindly that
his daughter was almost a young lady now and should be
spoken to as Miss Joan, no longer as "Joie" or as "Baby."
Joan had thoroughly concurred in this opinion; until, happen-
ing to glance at Ellen as she left the room, she saw that the
servant's compressed lips were trembling. She had cried
out unaccountably: "No such thing, Nellen! You 're to call
me anything you like, always! "-and then she had turned
upon her father, scolding, stammering out astonishing re-
minders, raising her voice, altogether behaving in a manner
most unbecoming a gentlewoman and a Darcy-as her father
quite obviously forebore to suggest to her. The quarrel had
been altogether a most unsatisfactory one. During her tirade
the Major had sat with poised carving-knife, regarding his
daughter under mildly raised eyebrows. When she had
stormed herself out, he remarked quietly, in quotation marks:
               "Her voice was ever soft and low,
               An excellent thing in woman."

  But the matter of "Miss Joan" was, by tacit consent, never
resumed between them.
  No, it was decidedly not Ellen Neal who was responsible
for her vague dread of home-coming. The girl, who had an
odd dislike of anything vague in her mental processes, pursued
the fugitive sensation to its lair with relentless precision.
  Was it the poverty of home she feared, then Surely not,
for poverty was a condition quite as much with her else-
where-rather more with her elsewhere, for among strangers
it was impossible to practice those useful little economies of
ragged underwear and worn-out shoes which in the privacy of
home-life made an occasional extravagance possible. Joan



14

 



rather looked forward to the time when she no longer need be
on dress-parade, so to speak, at every hour of the day.
  "If I wear cheap night-gowns, I can buy myself a good
hat," was her thought-a thought which may be said to sum
up the philosophy of the Darcy family.
  And although it seems customary among novelists to gage
the refinement of their heroines by the daintiness of their taste
in underlinen-no matter if her outer wear be sackcloth and
ashes, the lingerie of a true fiction lady is invariably above
reproach-one would like to submit that an almost equal re-
finement may be indicated by the present heroine's detcrmi-
nation to make as brave a showing as possible before her
world with as little strain as possible upon her father's
income.
  Was it her mother's absence she feared then-still Fore-
warned, Joan resolutely kept back the nervous tears that
threatened to rise again at the thought of her mother; and she
faced the possibility calmly.
  During the summer before, alone with her father and Ellen,
Joan had been given plenty of time to get used to her mother's
absence. Indeed, it seemed to her suddenly that during the
several years previous she had been given time to get used to
her mother's absence. It was as if Mary Darcy, knowing that
the hand of death was upon her, had deliberately, gradually,
withdrawn herself from the child she loved, in order to make
the final separation easier.
  "That would have been like Mother," said Joan, nodding.
  She understood, in that moment of clear vision, why she
had been sent away to boarding-school, despite her father's
amazed protests-it was unprecedented that Mrs. Darcy
should remain so firm in the matter of incurring unnecessary
expense. She understood, too, why the narrow, bleak house
in Louisville, which was the latest of their many homes, had
taken on none of the look of her mother-that intimate,



WHY JOAN



15

 

6WHY JOAN



friendly, stay-awhile air which Mary Darcy, with the aid
of long practice, managed to produce among the most unlikely
surroundings within a few hours of occupancy. True, the old
furniture made its faithful reappearance there, part of Joan's
earliest recollections-the parlor suite of rosewood with blue
velour, the little cottage piano, the great bed in which she,
and her mother, and her mother 's mother had been born,
shorn long ago of its tester to accommodate altered circum-
stances-all looking a trifle shabbier, a trifle more battered
after each adventure with fortune, but still dignified and
"good," with the unmistakable mien of gentlefolk in reduced
circumstances. For once, however, Mary Darcy had not
been able to accomplish her usual miracle with this furniture.
Chairs. sofa, tables, stood stiffly wherever the moving-men had
chosen to place them, making no attempts to hide the spots
on the wall-paper; the thread-bare velvet portieres which had
separated parlor from hall in every home that Joan re-
membered had never been altered to fit this one; stranger still,
there were no green growing things in the window-sills, nor
even in the can-strewn, sooty backyard. Joan could not re-
call any other home she had lived in without some attempt at
a garden, were it only a few geraniums in the window-box.
  "Mfamma must have been very tired," she thought, soberly;
and realized that, far from dreading her mother's absence in
that dingy, dreary house, she was almost glad of it. When
one is as tired as Mrs. Darcy, rest is the great boon-rest
from hopeless hoping, rest from making homes out of patience
and courage and a few old sticks of furniture, rest from the
anxious sorrow of loving.
  Joan was young to understand such things; but at her
birth the fairies had given her the cruel gift of seeing out of
the eyes of others. .
  She came to the conclusion at last the thing she had been
dreading was simply responsibility. Her play-time was over.



16

 

                      WHY JOAN                          1'

No stretch of imagination could make her a little girl again-
not with her hair well up on her head and a love-letter crack-
ling deliciously under her pillow! Hereafter it was hers to
create the home her mother had relinquished; hers to make
ends meet somehow, if only in the accepted Irish way of
"cutting a piece off one end and tying it onto the other";
hers to keep out of her father's eyes a certain baffled, hunted
look which Joan associated with men who came to collect bills,
referred to grimly by Ellen as "the Indians." No family
of pioneers on the long-ago western frontier ever lived in
greater fear of Indians than did Richard and Mary Darcy
and their child Joan.
  The girl sighed, bracing her slight shoulders. But Btill
thinking of her mother, she rehearsed sleepily one tenet of the
little creed she had made long since to fit her necessities:
             "It does not pay to be too unselfish."

 

CHAPTER III



F    RIENDS of Mary Darcy, in the distant days before
       they forgot to discuss her surprising marriage with
       a promoter from who knows where, were wont to say,
"At least he makes a devoted husband and father!"
  Which was perfectly true. His little family had always
been, as he often said, a passion with Richard Darcy. Per-
haps his facility in saying things of the sort was what had
appealed in the first place to the shy, undemonstrative North-
ernness of Mary. Though he was one of several who had
professed their willingness to live for her, he was the only
suitor who had offered to die for her-an attention she could
not but appreciate.
  It was entirely for his child's sake (and, indeed, at some
personal risk to himself, had Mary but suspected it) that two
years before Major Darcy had so arranged the mysterious
affairs he called Business as to be able to return to the State
and city of his illustrious birth; "where," he explained with
proud humility, " we are not quite nobodies, my darling I"
  (The "who knows where" on the part of Mary's friends had
been sheer arrogant affectation; for nobody could have talked
with Richard Darcy for five minutes without learning that
he had been born and raised and hoped to die in the great
Commonwealth of Kentucky.)
  Joan had been quite as eager about the prospective move as
her father, marveling at the apathy of her mother, who said,
"I never mind being 'nobodies,' Richard, so long as we have
each other."
  Romantic visions danced through the girl's head of stately
                           18

 

WHY JOAN



pillared mansions, of faithful negro servitors, of fascinating
belles and gallants on horseback (her mental language be-
came quite stilted and ante bellum to suit the picture), riding
to hounds through meadows as blue as the skies above.
  "Though I don't sup