Who's this good-looking boy with the trustworthy eyes?""Martin," said Joan."Martin," she added inwardly, "who treated me like a kid last night."Mrs.Harley looked up at the portrait.An involuntary smiled played round her mouth."Yes, of course.I remember him.What a dear boy!
No wonder you fell in love with him, darling.You must be very happy."Joan followed her mother out of the room.She was glad of the chance to control her expression.She went upstairs with a curious lack of the spirit of proprietorship.It hurt her to feel as if she were showing a house taken furnished for the season in which she had no rights, no pride and no personal interest.Martin had treated her like a kid last night and gone away in the morning without a word.
Alice and Gilbert had taunted her with not being a wife.She wasn't, and this was Martin's house, not hers and Martin's...it hurt.
"Ah," said Mrs.Harley softly as she went into Joan's bedroom."Ah.
Very nice.You both have room to move here." But the mass of little filet lace pillows puzzled her, and she darted a quick look at the tall young thing with the inscrutable face who had ceased to be her little girl and had become her daughter.
"The sun pours in," said Joan, turning away.
Mrs.Harley noticed a door and brightened up.
"Martin's dressing room?" she asked."No.My maid's room!" Joan said.
Mrs.Harley shook her head ever so little.She was not in sympathy with what she called new-fashioned ideas.It was on the tip of her tongue to say so and to forget, just this once, the inevitable change in their relationship and speak like mammy once more.But she was a timid, sensitive little woman, and the indefinable barrier that had suddenly sprung up held her back.Joan made no attempt to meet her halfway.The moment passed.
They went along the passage."There are Martin's rooms," said Joan.
Mrs.Harley went halfway in."Like a bachelor's rooms, aren't they?"she said, without guile.And while she glanced at the pictures and the crowded bootrack and the old tallboys, Joan's sudden color went away again....He was a bachelor.He had left her on the other side of the bridge.He had hurt her last night.How awfully she must have hurt him!
"When will Martin be back?"
"I don't know," said Joan."Probably to-morrow.I'm not sure." She stumbled a little, realized that she was giving herself away,--because if a bride is not to know her husband's movements, who is?--and made a desperate effort to recover her position."It all depends on how long he's kept.But he needed exercise, and golf's such a good game, isn't it? I sha'n't hurry him back."She looked straight into her mother's anxious eyes, saw them clear, saw a smile come--and took a deep breath of relief.If there was one thing that she had to put up the most strenuous fight to avoid, in her present chaotic state of mind, it was a direct question as to her life with Martin.Of all people, her mother must be left in the belief that she was happy.Pride demanded that, even to the extent of lying.It was hard luck to be caught by her mother, at the very moment when she was standing among all the debris of her kid's ideas, among all the broken beams of carelessness, and the shattered panes of high spirits.
She was thankful that her mother was not one of those aggressive, close-questioning women, utterly devoid of sensitiveness and delicacy who are not satisfied until they have forced open all the secret drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,--one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no faith in human nature.
And with a sudden sense of gratitude she turned to the woman whom she had always accepted as a fact, an institution, and looked at her with new eyes, a new estimate and a new emotion.The little, loving, gentle, anxious woman with the capacity of receiving impressions from external objects that amounted to a gift but with a reticence of so fine and tender a quality that she seemed always to stand on tiptoes on the delicate ground of people's feelings, was HERS, was her mother.The word burst into a new meaning, blossomed into a new truth.She had been accepted all these years,--loved, in a sort of way; obeyed, perhaps, expected to do things and provide things and make things easy, and here she stood more needed, at the moment when she imagined that the need of her had passed, than at any other time of her motherhood.
In a flash Joan understood all this and its paradox, looked all the way back along the faithful, unappreciated years, and being no longer a child was stirred with a strange maternal fellow feeling that started her tears.Nature is merciless.Everything is sacrificed to youth.Birds build their nests and rear their young and are left as soon as wings are ready.Women marry and bear children and bring them up with love and sacrifice, only to be relegated to a second place at the first moment of independence.
Joan saw this then.Her mother's altered attitude, and her own feeling of having grown out of maternal possession brought it before her.She saw the underlying drama of this small inevitable scene in the divine comedy of life and was touched by a great sympathy and made sorry and ashamed.
But pride came between her and a desire to go down on her knees at her mother's side, make a clean breast of everything and beg for advice and help.
And so these two, between whom there should have been complete confidence, were like people speaking to each other from opposite banks of a stream, conscious of being overheard.