It was ten o'clock when Joan stood once more in the old, familiar bedroom in which she had slept all through her childhood and adolescence.
Nothing had been altered since the night from which she dated the beginning of her life.Her books were in the same places.Letters from her school friends were in the same neat pile on her desk.The things that she had been obliged to leave on her dressing-table had not been touched.A framed photograph of her mother, with her hands placed in the incredible way that is so dear to the photographer's heart, still hung crooked over a colonial chest of drawers.Her blue and white bath wrap was in its place over the back of a chair, with her slippers beneath it.
She opened the door of the hospitable closet.There were all the clothes and shoes and hats that she had left.She drew out a drawer in the chest.Nothing had been disturbed....It was uncanny.She seemed to have been away for years.And yet, as she looked about and got the familiar scent of the funny little lavender sachets made by Mrs.Nye, she found it hard to believe that Marty and Gilbert Palgrave, the house in New York, all the kaleidoscope of Crystal rooms and restaurants, all the murmur of voices and music and traffic were not the elusive memories of last night's dream.But for the longing for Marty that amounted to an absorbing, ever-present homesickness, it was difficult to accept the fact that she was not still the same early-to-bed, early-to-rise country girl, kicking against the pricks, rebelling against the humdrum daily routine, spoiling to try her wings.
"Dear old room," she whispered, suddenly stretching out her arms to it."My dear old room.I didn't think I'd miss you a little bit.But I have.I didn't think I should be glad to get back to you.But Iam.What are you doing to me to make me feel a tiny pain in my heart? You're crowding all the things I did here and all the things I thought about like a thousand white pigeons round my head.All my impatient sighs, and big ambitions, and silly young hopes and fears are coming to meet me and make me want to laugh and cry.But it isn't the same me that you see; it isn't.You haven't changed, dear old room, but I have.I'm different.I'm older.I'm not a kid any more.I'm grown up.Oh, my dear, dear old room, be kind to me, be gentle with me.I haven't played the game since I went away or been honest.I've been thoughtless, selfish and untamed.I've done all the wrong things.I've attracted all the wrong people.I've sent Marty away, Marty--my knight--and I want him back.I want to make up to him bigly, bigly for what I ought to have done.Be kind to me, be kind to me."And she closed her arms as if in an embrace and put her head down as though on the warm breast of an old friend and the good tears ran down her cheeks.
All the windows were open.The air was warm and scented.There was no sound.The silent voices of the stars sang their nightly anthem.
The earth was white with magic moonshine.Joan looked out.The old creeper down which she had climbed to go to Martin that night which seemed so far away was all in leaf.With what exhilaration she had dropped her bag out.Had ever a girl been so utterly careless of consequences then as she? How wonderfully and splendidly Martinish Martin had been when she plunged in upon him, and how jolly and homelike the hall of his house--her house--had seemed to be.To-morrow she would explore it all and show it off to her family.To-morrow....Yes, but to-night? Should she allow herself to be carried away by a sudden longing to follow her flying footsteps through the woods, pretend that Martin was waiting for her and take a look at the outside of the house alone? Why not? No one need know, and she had a sort of aching to see the place again that was so essentially a part of Martin.Martin--Martin--he obsessed her, body and brain.If only she could find Martin.
With hasty fingers she struggled with the intricate hooks of her evening frock.Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk stockings and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet, chose a short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes and a tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport shirts and sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the mantelpiece could recover from his astonishment became once more the Joan-all-alone for whom he had ticked away the hours.Then to the window, and hand over hand down the creeper again and away across the sleeping garden to the woods.
The fairies were out.Their laughter was blown to her like thistledown.But she was a woman now and only Martin called her--Martin who had married her for love but was not her husband yet.Oh, where was Martin?
And as she went quickly along the winding path through the trees the moon dropped pools of light in her way, the scrub oaks threw out their arms to hold her back and hosts of little shadows seemed to run out to catch at her frock.But on went Joan, just to get a sight of the house that was Martin's and hers and to cast her spirit forward to the time when he and she would live there as they had not lived in the city.