The long drought broke at last in an afternoon and night of thunder and scourging violence of rain, drowning out summer. A week of chill westerly weather followed, lowering gray skies, a perpetual lament of wind through the great woodland, combined with a soaking, misty drizzle which forced the firs and pines into their blue-black winter habit and rusted the pink spires of the heather. The flower-garden, dashed by the initial downpour, became daily more sodden, its glory very sensibly departed. Water stood in pools on the lawns. Leaves, dessicated by the continuous sun-scorch, fell in dingy brown showers from the beeches; and a robin, perching upon one of the posts of the tennis-net, practised the opening, plaintively sweet notes of his autumn song.
On the Thursday evening of this wet week, Joanna Smyrthwaite went to her room immediately after dinner, and, lighting the candles, sat down at her bureau. The rain beat against the windows. She heard it drip with a continuous monotonous tapping off the edge of the balcony on to the glass and tile roof of the veranda below. She heard the intermittent sighing sweep of the wind through the near trees, and the wet sucking sob of it in the hinges and fastenings of the casements. Nature wept, now petulantly, now, as it seemed, with the resignation of despair; and Joanna, sitting at the bureau with her diary open before her, listened to that weeping. It offered a fitting accompaniment to her gloomy concentration and exaltation of mind.
"August 29, 190-
"I supposed that I should have received an answer to my letter in the course of to-day at latest, but none has reached me," she wrote. "I am not conscious of regretting the delay. The reply, when it does come, can only confirm that which I already now know. I am no longer in suspense, and I wait to receive the reply merely to prevent the possibility of its falling into other hands than my own. That I could not permit. Although it can modify neither my intention nor my thought, it is mine, it belongs to me alone; and I refuse to allow the vulgar curiosity of any third person to be satisfied by perusal of it. I am sure that I do not regret the delay. It gives me time to reckon with myself and with all that has occurred. It also gives me time to test myself and make sure that I am not swayed by impulse, but that my will is active and my reason unbiased by feeling. I am quite calm. I have been so all day. For this I am thankful, although whether my calmness arises from self-control or from physical incapacity of further emotion I cannot decide. I do not know that the cause really matters, yet I should prefer to believe it self-control."
Joanna paused, leaning upon her elbow and listening to the sobbing of wind and rain.
"I suppose finality must always produce repose, however dreadful the cost at which finality is obtained. Only so can I account for my existing attitude of mind. I want, if I can, to put down clearly and consecutively exactly what happened last night. I think it may be useful to me in face of this period of waiting for the answer to my letter; also, I wish to live through it again step by step. I have learned very much during the last twenty-four hours. I have learned that pain, self-inflicted pain, can be voluptuous. Even a few days ago I should have been scandalized by such an admission. I am no longer scandalized. Torture has emancipated me from many delusions and overnice prejudices. I have not time now, even had I still inclination, to be overnice.
"Margaret and Marion Chase dined in town and went to the theater with Mr. Challoner last night. A London touring company is giving some musical comedy at Stourmouth. When they returned I was still awake. I had not taken any of the tabloids Doctor Norbiton gave me to procure sleep. I did not care to sleep. I preferred to think. Margaret and Marion remained some time upon the gallery laughing and talking rather excitedly. They kept on repeating scraps of a frivolous song which they had heard at the play; and of which, so Margaret told me to-day—she apologized for the thoughtless disturbance they had made—neither could remember the exact tune. Their voices and the interest they evidently took in so senseless and trivial a thing jarred upon me. I felt annoyed and resentful. Their behavior offered such a startling contrast to my own trouble and to the whole tenor of my life that I could not but be displeased by their light-mindedness. I felt my own superiority. I did not attempt to disguise the fact of that superiority from myself. I despised them. I may have done wrong in despising them, but I did not care. The ambition to assert myself, in some striking and forcible manner which should compel recognition not only from Margaret and Marion, but from the whole circle of our acquaintance, took possession of me. I have always shrunk from publicity and been weakly sensitive to criticism and remark. I have been disposed to efface myself. To rule others has been an effort to me. Any influence I may have exercised has been exercised in obedience not to inclination but to my sense of duty. Now I felt differently. I felt my nature and intelligence had never found their full expression, that the strength of my character had never fully disclosed itself. I desired—I still desire—to manifest what I really am, of what I am capable. I even crave after the astonishment and possible alarm such a disclosure would create.
"Thinking steadily, I came to the conclusion this desire for entire and arresting self-expression is not actually new in me. I saw that I have always, implicitly though silently, entertained a conviction that the opportunity for self-expression would eventually present itself. This conviction has supported me under many mortifications. In the events of the last six months that opportunity appeared in process of taking tangible and very perfect shape. More than my imagination had ever dared suggest was in process of being granted me. If I married Adrian—"
Joanna raised her hand from the paper, or rather it raised itself, with a jerk, refusing further obedience. She sat stiffly upright, listening to the wind and the rain. The steady drip off the edge of the balcony on to the roof below sounded indescribably mournful in its single, muffled, reiterated note. Taken in connection with the words she had just written, that mournfulness threatened her composure. The muscles of her poor face twitched and her winged nostrils quivered, in her effort to repress an outbreak of emotion. After a struggle she turned fiercely to her open diary.
"If I married Adrian Savage," she wrote, "this, in itself, would bear indisputable witness to the fact of my superiority, would justify me to myself and command the respect of others. But, last night, I saw it was necessary to go beyond that, and ask myself a question which, even in my worst hours of doubt, I have never had sufficient fortitude to ask myself before. I am anxious here to state positively that I did ask myself the said question; and that I answered it deliberately and calmly before certain things happened, which I shall presently set down. If I did not marry Adrian—"