joan, mrs. moxton perceived that afternoon, had a swift and angry fight with her summer wardrobe. both the pink gingham and the white drill had been tried on and flung aside, and she had decided at last upon a rather jolly warm blue figured voile with a belt of cherry-coloured ribbon that suited her brown skin and black hair better than those weaker supports. she had evidently opened every drawer in her room in a hasty search for white silk stockings.
when she came out into the sunshine of the garden peter’s eyes told her she had guessed the right costume.
oswald was standing up on his crutches and smiling, and peter was throwing up a racquet and catching it again with one hand.
“thank god for a left-handed childhood!” said peter. “i’m going to smash you, joan.”
528“i forgot about that,” said joan. “but you aren’t going to smash me, old petah.”
when tea-time came they were still fighting the seventh vantage game, and joan was up.
they came and sat at the tea-table, and joan as she poured the tea reflected that a young man in white flannels, flushed and a little out of breath, with his white silk shirt wide open at the neck, was a more beautiful thing than the most beautiful woman alive. and her dark eyes looked at the careless and exhausted peter, that urgent and insoluble problem, while she counted, “twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-one—about forty-one hours. how the devil shall i do it?”
it wasn’t to be done at tennis anyhow, and she lost the next three games running without apparent effort, and took peter by the arm and walked him about the garden, discoursing on flying. “i must teach you to fly,” said peter. “often when i’ve been up alone i’ve thought, ’some day i’ll teach old joan.’”
“that’s a promise, petah.”
“sure,” said peter, who had not suffered next to two americans for nothing.
“i’ve got it in writing,” said joan.
“i’d rather learn from you than any one,” said she.
peter discoursed of stunts....
they spent a long golden time revisiting odd corners in which they had played together. they went down the village and up to the church and round the edge of the wood, and there they came upon and devoured a lot of blackberries, and then they went down to the mill pond and sat for a time in baker’s boat. then they got at cross purposes about dressing for dinner. joan wanted to dress very much. she wanted to remind peter that there were prettier arms in the world than hetty reinhart’s, and a better modelled neck and shoulders. she had a new dress of ivory silk with a broad belt of velvet that echoed the bright softness of her eyes and hair. but peter would not let her dress. he did not want to dress himself. “and you couldn’t look prettier, joan, than you do in that blue thing. it’s so like you.”
and as joan couldn’t explain that the frock kept her a jolly girl he knew while the dress would have shown him the 529beautiful woman he had to discover, she lost that point in the game. and tomorrow was sunday, when pelham ford after the good custom of england never dressed for dinner.
afterwards she thought how easily she might have overruled him.
joan’s plans for the evening were dashed by this costume failure. she had relied altogether on the change of personality into something rich and strange, that the ivory dress was to have wrought. she could do nothing to develop the situation. everything seemed to be helping to intensify her sisterliness. oswald was rather seedy, and the three of them played auction bridge with a dummy. she had meant to sit up with peter, but it didn’t work out like that.
“good night, petah dear,” she said outside her bedroom door with the candlelight shining red between the fingers of her hand.
“good night, old joan,” he said from his door-mat, with an infinite friendliness in his voice.
you cannot kiss a man good night suddenly when he is fifteen yards away....
she closed the door behind her softly, put down her candle, and began to walk about her room and swear in an entirely unladylike fashion. then she went over to the open window, wringing her hands. “how am i to do it?” she said. “how am i to do it? the situation’s preposterous. he’s mine. and i might be his sister!”
“shall i make a declaration?”
“i suppose hetty did.”
but all the cunning of joan was unavailing against the invisible barriers to passion between herself and peter. they spent a long sunday of comradeship, and courage and opportunity alike failed. the dawn on monday morning found a white and haggard joan pacing her floor, half minded to attempt a desperate explanation forthwith in peter’s bedroom with a suddenly awakened peter. only her fear of shocking him and failing restrained her. she raved. she indulged in absurd soliloquies and still absurder prayers. “oh, god, give me my peter,” she prayed. “give me my peter!”
530
