Before she was old enough to know the exact cause of her rage she was shaken by it.She thought she had a bad temper, and was bad enough to hate her own mother without being able to help it.As she grew older she found out that she was not really so bad as she had thought, though she was obliged to concede that nothing palliative could be said about the temper.It had been violent from the first, and she had lived in an atmosphere which infuriated it.She did not suppose such a thing could be controlled.It sometimes frightened her.Had not the old Marquis of Norborough been celebrated through his entire life for his furies? Was there not a hushed-up rumor that he had once thrown a decanter at his wife, and so nearly killed her that people had been asking one another in whispers if a peer of the realm could be hanged.
He had been born that way, so had she.Her school-room days had been a horror to her, and also a terror, because she had often almost flung ink-bottles and heavy rulers at her silly, lying governesses, and once had dug a pair of scissors into one sneaking old maid fool's arm when she had made her "see red" by her ignoble trickeries.Perhaps she would be hanged some day herself.She once prayed for a week that she might be made better tempered, --not that she believed in prayer,--and of course nothing came of it.
Every year she lived she raged more furiously at the tricks she saw played by her mother and every one who surrounded her; the very servants were greater liars and pilferers than any other servants.Her mother was always trying to get things from people which they did not want to give her.She would carry off slights and snubs as though they were actual tributes, if she could gain her end.The girl knew what the meaning of her own future would be.Since she definitely disliked her daughter, Lady Mallowe did not mince matters when they were alone.
She had no money, she was extremely good looking, she had a certain number of years in which to fight for her own hand among the new debutantes who were presented every season.Her first season over, the next season other girls would be fresher than she was, and newer to the men who were worth marrying.Men like novelty.After her second season the debutantes would seem fresher still by contrast.Then people would begin to say, "She was presented four or five years ago."After that it would be all struggle,--every season it would be worse.
It would become awful.Unmarried women over thirty-five would speak of her as though they had been in the nursery together.Married girls with a child or so would treat her as though she were a maiden aunt.
She knew what was before her.Beggary stared them both in the face if she did not make the most of her looks and waste no time.And Joan knew it was all true, and that worse, far worse things were true also.
She would be obliged to spend a long life with her mother in cheap lodgings, a faded, penniless, unmarried woman, railed at, taunted, sneered at, forced to be part of humiliating tricks played to enable them to get into debt and then to avoid paying what they owed.Had she not seen one horrible old woman of their own rank who was an example of what poverty might bring one to, an old harpy who tried to queen it over her landlady in an actual back street, and was by turns fawned upon and disgustingly "your ladyshiped" or outrageously insulted by her landlady?
Then that first season! Dear, dear God! that first season when she met Jem! She was not nineteen, and the facile world pretended to be at her feet, and the sun shone as though London were in Italy, and the park was marvelous with flowers, and there were such dances and such laughter!
And it was all so young--and she met Jem! It was at a garden-party at a lovely old house on the river, a place with celebrated gardens which would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses.The frocks of the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band, and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes!
They were only a few feet from each other,--and he looked, and she looked, and the haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they had been standing there since the world began, and nothing else was true.
Afterward nothing mattered to either of them.Lady Mallowe herself ceased to count.Now and then the world stops for two people in this unearthly fashion.At such times, as far as such a pair are concerned, causes and effects cease.Her bad temper fled, and she knew she would never feel its furious lash again.
With Jem looking at her with his glowing, drooping eyes, there would be no reason for rage and shame.She confessed the temper to him and told of her terror of it; he confessed to her his fondness for high play, and they held each other's hands, not with sentimental youthful lightness, but with the strong clasp of sworn comrades, and promised on honor that they would stand by each other every hour of their lives against their worst selves.
They would have kept the pact.Neither was a slight or dishonest creature.The phase of life through which they passed is not a new one, but it is not often so nearly an omnipotent power as was their three-months' dream.
It lasted only that length of time.Then came the end of the world.
Joan did not look fresh in her second season, and before it was over men were rather afraid of her.Because she was so young the freshness returned to her cheek, but it never came back to her eyes.