Joan Thursday: A Novel

by Louis Joseph Vance

Joan opened the box—and drew the longest breath of her life. Her heart seemed to leap and then stand stock-still for a full minute before she grasped the magnificence of his present: her engagement ring!

Then and there the girl lost all touch with the tough verities of life; and throughout the day and until she lost consciousness in bed that night, a sensual enchantment held dominion over all her being....

Nor was the great adventure of the visit to Tanglewood of a nature calculated to dissipate that glamour—save, perhaps, in one untoward circumstance which, wholly unforeseen, could not have been provided against.

A woman less shrewd and intelligent than Helena Tankerville, and one as violently opposed to the match, might have planned that short week-end visit to influence and discourage the girl rather than Matthias. But Helena knew that contrast would have the desired effect only upon the man; to whom its significance would be in inverse ratio to the emphasis lent it. So with infinite tact and thoughtfulness Joan's way was made smooth for her from the moment she alighted from the train until the moment of her leave-taking; and this without the least tangible suggestion that any especial consideration was being shewn her. The smallness of the party sanctioned informality; and George Tankerville's obtuse kindness of heart (which permitted him to see nothing in the stratagems of his wife other than a desire to put the girl completely at her ease) facilitated matters immensely.

Joan was spared the embarrassment of a maid—was, indeed, given no reason to believe there were any such servants attached to the establishment. Suffered to unpack her modest effects and dispose of them herself, she received at Helena's hands the indispensable service of "hooking-up." And her unpretentious, pretty frock was by no means overshadowed by Helena's or by the unceremonious dinner jackets of the men; while the simplicity of the evening meal put her thoroughly at her ease, whose recently acquired but rather extensive acquaintance with New York restaurant ways and waiters robbed the attentions of a butler of their terrors.

Nor was it, possibly, altogether a matter of chance that neighbouring friends telephoned an after-dinner invitation to Helena and Tankerville to run over and make up a table at auction: so that Joan was left alone with her lover to become acquainted with and at home among the charms of Tanglewood....

But it wasn't until the first hours of a still and splendid September Sunday that her sense of wonder was quite ravished by the place: its foreign and luxurious atmosphere, the half-wild loveliness of its grounds, the perfection of its appointments and the uniquity of its location. Then the sense of unreality resumed full sway over her perceptions: she seemed to move and have her being in a strange, new world of rare and iridescent witchery. And Helena was at pains to leave her no time for doubts or analysis. They motored in the morning to the South Shore and back, and after luncheon took the Enchantress for a short spin up the Sound, returning for tea upon the terrace....

Tankerville and Matthias were wrangling amiably about the least comfortless routes overland to the Pacific; Helena, with binoculars at the balustrade, was simulating an extravagant interest in the manœuvers of two small yachts far in the distance (and, in the breathing-space thus cunningly contrived, wildly ransacking a rather extensive fund of resource for some subject which might prove a common ground of interest between herself and her guest) and Joan, in the depths of a basket-chair, while seeming smilingly to attend to the light banter of the men, was deeply preoccupied in consideration of her extraordinary sensation of comfort and security in this exotic environment. She was deliciously flattered by appreciation of her own ease and adaptability. The conclusion seemed inevitable that, somehow, strangely, Nature had meant her for just such an existence as this.

The terrace was aflood with the golden glow of the westering sun—the season so far advanced that there was no discomfort in its warmth. The Sound shone like a sapphire, still and vast, and the cup of the skies bending over it was flawless sapphire banded at its rim with an exquisite shade of amethyst. Ashore, the wooded slopes were all aflame in the mortal passion of Indian summer.

In the stirless, suave, and aromatic air hung an impalpable yet ineluctable hint of melancholy....