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. Conserved 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 weeping 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 medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still masculine); and, for pièce de résistance, 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 eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered 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 acceptable, of the sort that come from Paris; also frilly things, hand-embroidered, which he would not have to choose himself, of course—there being women clerks for the purpose. She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it himself, 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 threatened to spoil the pleasure of her parting; and then had arrived, 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! Eduard.