# Scars

Extracted from Detective Story magazine, 15 July 1919, pp. 133–144.
Scars
by Anna Alice Chapin
Author of “Alibi on the Board Walk,” “For the Crapeau Honor,” etc.
You will find this something of a “Lady or the Tiger?” story.
What do you think Joan said when Della telephoned her in the morning? Which way did she choose? Miss Chapin said it was obvious. We don't agree with her. Do you?
A DIVINE party, my dear—simply divine!” exclaimed the pretty young woman who was arranging her disheveled hair in front of the mirror. “Mercy, what a wreck one gets in the small hours of a dance! Look at my hair! I must take it down and put it up properly before I go home!”
“Oh, it won't show under a scarf,” Harmon, protested Joan her young hostess; but Mrs. Mercer had already begun to pull down her brown curls.
“I'm naturally a tidy person, you know,” she explained. “Oh, dear, I'll have to take off my rings! They catch in things so. Really sometimes I think a lot of gorgeous junk like this is more trouble than it's worth.”
She swept six flashing rings into a heap at one corner of the dressing table, as she proceeded to arrange her hair.
“Junk!” repeated Joan, gazing at the glitter they made, with wistful eyes. “They're—heavenly, Della! If you only knew how I adore jewels!”
Della Mercer glanced at her with smiling curiosity, the while she pinned a chestnut ringlet into place. “Do you really?” she said. “Funny! I never see you wear a thing—not even a pin!”
Joan colored a little and shook her head. “Guardian doesn't approve of jewelry for me,” she said in a voice that she tried to keep from sounding discontented. “Even since I was a kiddie he—he's frowned on many pretties for me. I've never altogether understood why. He's so dear and generous about everything else.”
A flash of sudden comprehension showed in Mrs. Mercer's clear blue eyes—or would have shown if she had not quickly looked down to pick up a hairpin. Secretly she wondered if Joan had ever been told anything about her mother and that most malign inheritance.
“The irony of fate” she said lightly. “Now I like jewels just for the color and sparkle of them, but I'm not a bit crazy about them. And Jimmy insists on hanging things on me as if I were a Christmas tree!”
“The nicest sort of Christmas tree!” retorted the girl with real affection, looking up at her taller friend. “I don't wonder he likes to do it!”
They both laughed a little. Mrs. Mercer, in her clinging leaf-green frock, was indeed rather like a slender and beautiful tree, with the grace of perfect strength and health. She had only been married a year, but was supremely crowned with that lovely assurance born of happy love. Joan, beside her, looked, despite her twenty-one years, a mere child. She was slight and elfin, yet quiet in all her motions, with wonderful tawny gold hair and eyes to match, a babylike skin, and a mouth that could change and tremble like a little girl's. A fairy child she had been, a changeling of sorts, with something elusive and quaint about her which made people love her and sometimes—fear her. Charming, sweet-natured, responsive as she was, Joan was in a way uncanny, and those who knew and loved her best were most conscious of the mystic quality. To-night, in misty-white she suggested a sprite straight out of the heart of the white moon.
Mrs. Mercer finished her hair, gave an approving pat to its rich waves, and then turned to put her firm hands on the girl's shoulders.
“Don't you worry, Jo!” she laughed tenderly. “Somebody will be hanging Christmas-tree Ornaments on you one of these days! Goodness knows you've had enough 'suitors,' as my New England aunt called them! What's the matter?” For Joan again shook her head.
“No Christmas-tree ornaments for me, Della!” she said softly. “I thought you'd guessed. This really should have been an announcement dance, only David had to go up to town——”
“David! David Ware?”
Joan nodded, and the color in her face made her suddenly beautiful. “It couldn't have been any one else really,” she confided, yielding to her friend's impulsive clasp. “I—we've always been fond of each other, and—and——
“David Ware! Why, he's a man in five hundred!” cried Della sympathetically. “Young, square, a gentleman, good looking—why, to make him a perfect paragon, the wonderful creature even has sense of humor! Is Mr. Harmon pleased?”
“Delighted, though he's delayed announcing the engagement until after my twenty-first birthday, to-night.”
Mrs. Mercer had released her and was straightening her laces with the instinctive delicate touches of a woman who is always scrupulously neat and careful of her appearance even when alone or with her best friend.
“I'm glad your guardian approves,” she said; “it makes it just perfect. I never could see the charm of rebelling against the powers that be! Could you?”
“No; I'm awfully glad guardian likes David. Of course,” she added with the slightest hesitation, “David isn't rich.”
Mrs. Mercer shrugged her shoulders. “He has enough, hasn't he?” she said. “Enough to look out for you, I mean? I always think that little old house of his is the dearest thing! I'll expect you to give enchanting parties when you're married!”
“Probably I sha'n't,” said Joan quietly. “David has a small settled income, and he makes enough by his model farming for a few frills, but—he's not the least bit ambitious, you know, Della. He doesn't want any more than he has.”
“Thank Heaven for the fourth wise man!” exclaimed Della' emphatically. “And see that you don't want more either! It doesn't pay, Joan, darling; truly it doesn't pay!”
“It's easy for you to talk!” rejoined Joan, with a laugh that was the least bit forced. “Jim Mercer's ever and ever so rich.”
Jim Mercer's pretty wife sighed almost impatiently.
"I know,” she said; “and I'm not such a fool or hypocrite as to pretend I wish he were poor. But, oh, Jo, take it from me, there's a limit! There's a point where a man has so much money he simply feels a sort of sacred obligation to add to it. And—maybe I'm not jealous of the hours and hours it keeps him away from me!” She laughed and began to put on her rings. “Sometimes I tell Jimmy,” she went on gayly, slipping each blazing circlet on a long white finger, “that he has conscientious scruples about that beloved money! I think he's afraid it'll get lonely, and so has to keep adding to it as a duty that——”
She stopped short.
“What is it?” asked Joan, for Mrs. Mercer was frowning in a puzzled way.
“Why, it's simply slipped onto the floor, of course——" she began.
Joan started in consternation.
“Della! You haven't lost one of your rings? Oh, what possessed you to take them off!”
She turned on another electric drop light, and both women searched the dresser and the floor.
“Which one was it? You're sure you wore it?” asked Joan, incoherent with dismay.
“The diamond hoop. Yes, I'm quite certain, because I rebelled, and told Jimmy it was execrable taste to wear so many rings; and he said it was the last present he'd given me, and, anyway, the execrable taste was his, not mine, so I should worry!”
She straightened slowly.
“Well, it simply isn't here!” she said. “I'll have a thorough search made at——” began Joan.
Della seized her arm.
“Don't be a goose!” she said. “Where, what, and whom would you search?”
“You might have dropped it down-stairs, or some one——”
"I didn't, I'm sure; but, anyway, your guests have all gone. I'm certain Jimmy and I are the very last, and he and Mr. Harmon will have smoked all the cigars in the library by this time. Look, child! It's three o'clock! Let me have my cloak, and we'll go down.”
“But the ring!” gasped Joan, sincerely troubled.
“Rubbish! It'll turn up. It may have caught in my hair when I was brushing it, and I'll find it later.”
“Della, I do wish you'd let me——”
"I'll let you do nothing. Just keep your eyes open for it when you're undressing, and again in the morning. I'll telephone after breakfast—whenever that is!”
“Won't—won't Jim be angry?”
Della laughed tenderly and hugged her. “The only thing I'm afraid of,” she confided, “is that he'll buy me one twice as splendid to take its place! Come on, dear, and do look more cheerful. And don't say anything about it to your guardian! Where's your powder? Oh, here!” She powdered her nose with a hasty dab, and put on the cloak.
They went downstairs together, and found the men in the big oak-paneled hallway waiting for them—Jim Mercer, tall, fresh-faced, and merry of eye, exhibiting polite signs of impatience.
"I suppose,” he said with mild sarcasm, “I'd better go out and wake Jameson up. He must have had a nice long nap since he brought the car up!”
“Isn't it a pity,” remarked his wife calmly, “that men can no longer say 'you've kept the horses standing!' Now they've nothing but a poor, human chauffeur!”
She turned to their host and held out her hand with her most charming smile.
“It's been the nicest sort of evening, Mr. Harmon!” she said cordially. “You can't think what a delightful surprise it's been to every one, having you so suddenly emerge from your twilight life of books and rose-growing, and give a ball. And such a ball! I hope it's broken the spell,” she added with pretty impertinence, “and that you're going to keep it up. Come, Mr. Harmon! Aren't we frivolous mortals at least as amusing as roses and first editions?”
“Perhaps it is because I have feared the magic of your encroachments,” he said, with a courtly little bow which ended the sentence better than words. His eyes smiled at her.
She shook her head at him reproachfully.
“On the whole,” she conceded gravely, “you may be wise. Magic, one hears, is reciprocal.”
“Stop flirting and come home!” commanded her weary husband, with a still amiable grin.
“Good-by—good-by!”
And in two minutes the Mercers were gone.
John Harmon looked at his young ward with eyes of sober affection in which Joan seemed to see something deeper and more solicitous than usual, though her guardian's gaze was always kind.
“Tired, my child?” he asked, in his quiet, rather drawling voice.
Joan roused herself with a start. She was still worrying a bit about Della's ring, but comforted herself with the hope that it had caught in the loosened hair. She smiled brightly enough as she answered:
“Just nicely tired, dear guardian! I wish we could have parties every night!”
He looked at her seriously.
“You enjoyed it so much?”
“I—well, I simply haven't words! I felt like a school girl on her holidays, or a convict out of jail. Guardian, why do you look so queer?”
He had in fact changed color and expression, but he smiled at her now, and said: “I was perhaps sorry that your girlhood had been so—unhappy—that one gay evening——”
“Guardian, never unhappy!”
“Dull, then. You are young and——
“Not so terrifically young, guardian,” she protested. “This is my first real party, and most girls come out at eighteen,”
"I know. It seemed—wiser—to wait until you were of age. There was so much to consider. Now things are, in a way, solving themselves. David—you love him, Joan?”
Her sensitive color answered even before she whispered: “So—much!”
The butler approached, looking sleepily reproachful but resigned.
“Shall we lock up, sir?”
“Of course. And put out the lights everywhere except in the library. Then you may all go to bed.”
“Are you going to stay up longer, guardian? It's a fearful hour!”
“Only for a few minutes. I want you to come into the library a moment, my dear. I—I have something to give you.”
“To give me!” She followed him, bewildered. Then a hope flashed across her mind. He had, so far, given her no birthday present, but then he never did. Dainty simple clothes, such comforts and luxuries as his wealth and her position as his ward would demand, a limited amount of spending money, but—no gifts.
The library, with its warm-hued walls, rich with those mellowest of all color notes, beautifully bound hooks, its soft lights further blurred by blue cigar smoke, its heavy chairs covered with the sort of leather that all but defies time, its darkly-glowing Persian rugs—suddenly struck the girl who had been familiar with it for fifteen years as a new place. Intuition, premonition, something of that elfin quality of hers was at work. She looked at Mr. Harmon with wondering eyes. He motioned her to one of the deep chairs and handed her—a letter. Then he seated himself.
She stared stupidly at the sealed envelope addressed in his precise scholarly hand to “My dear ward and child, Joan Gurney Harmon, on her twenty-first birthday.”
Her lips quivered. “My dear ward and child!”
“Oh, guardian!” murmured she softly. “Shall I—am I to open it now?”
“Not now,” he said. “Later, in your room. I want to talk to you first. Joan, just what were the things about this—this evening that appealed to you so much?”
Her look was blank with astonishment. She even forgot the letter for a moment.
“Guardian! Why, what a funny question! Everything appealed to me, just absolutely everything.”
“By everything—what? The people?”
“Ye-es, the people, of course. Lots and lots of beautifully dressed people, ever so many handsome men. You were much the handsomest, guardian!”
He smiled, though gravely. In his clear-cut, severe way he was undeniably good to look at, and his tall, erect figure was at its best in evening dress.
Joan went on, in a sort of gale of warming recollection: “And pretty girls in adorable frocks! And women with jewels and jewels!”
“You liked to see the jewels?” he interrupted quietly.
“Why, of course! I think jewels are the loveliest things in the world! Don't you?”
"I prefer roses,” he said, with a faint smile, “and—a few other things. But—go on.”
“Then the music, and the dancing, and the gayety of every one. And the lights flashing like gems.”
“Don't you ever think of anything but jewels?” he demanded, speaking rather more quickly than usual.
She started, and this time her flush was a little uncomfortable.
“I—why, of course,” she answered, in a low voice; “but you see I—I simply worship precious stones!”
“You do!”
“I always have, even as a child. I envied the girls at school who had little semi-precious ones. I—I used to collect bits of mica from the big rocks, and tiny pebbles that were bright-colored, and——”
“Good heavens! And never told me?”
He had risen from his chair and gazed down at her with deeply troubled eyes.
“It—it seemed so silly!” she faltered.
He made a quick, violent gesture, instantly checked. “Silly! It was not silly, only—rather terrible!”
“But why?” asked Joan urgently. “Why should it be terrible? Guardian, isn't it natural for me to like jewels?”
He stared down at her for a moment, then turned away.
“God knows it is—natural—Joan.”
“Then——”
“No more to-night, child. We'll have Fra Lippo Lippi's 'gray beginning' in half an hour. Go to your room, read your letter, and”—he draw her to him to kiss her forehead very gently—“God bless and guide you. Good night.”
“Good night, guardian.”
He put out the lights behind them, and they went up the great staircase and to their rooms with no further word of parting.
When she had closed her bedroom door she went to look at her own rather frightened little face in the glass. Then she looked down at the letter she carried, and shivered. The whole room looked strange. It must be the coming dawn, she thought, though it was February and not yet four; no sign yet of that “gray beginning.” Her fingers clung to the paper, yet longed to drop it as if it were pestilential, freighted with ill-boding. She glanced about the pretty, girlish room with its ivory paint and old-fashioned chintz. In her absence her maid had turned down the fresh white bed, and the fine nightgown and pale-blue wrapper lay there. But she turned back to the letter, shuddering. What was the use of undressing or thinking of going to bed while that still unread?
She drew a chair close up to the dressing table where the lights were double, doubly reflected, and opened the envelope.
Besides a thick letter in her guardian's handwriting it contained other things; one or two other briefer letters, some newspaper clippings, and a small photograph.
She looked at that first, and then, for a minute, everything else was forgotten. For the face that smiled up at her with her own elfin, wistful charming look, was her own.
She stared into the looking-glass. Yes, it was truly the same face save that the girl in the mirror did not smile. And—yes, there was another, an enormous difference. She looked at the picture long and closely. This other self of hers was exquisitely, elaborately dressed, though in a style a trifle old-fashioned, and she wore quantities of jewels. In her pretty hair—it was much darker, Joan now noticed, than her own—were diamond ornaments that even a somewhat faded photograph could not keep from sparkling. Around her throat was a necklace of rare and intricate beauty; its pendant was a great gem-crusted star which hung far down on the white breast. There were brooches, too; and bracelets, such as used to be in better taste than they are to-day. The woman in the picture seemed to have deliberately encased herself in jewels as in an unimaginably costly sheath. And above and below the flaunting glitter of it all her lips smiled with such adorable delight that criticism was killed. If any one ever had been made for jewels it was she, and she knew it and smiled.
Joan turned the little picture over and read in fine, but rather reckless, handwriting, “Isabel Charteris Gurney.” She had always known that her dead father's name had been Gurney, and that her guardian had given her his when he legally adopted her. So the answer was plain. Isabel Gurney, this gay, gem-bedecked girl, who smiled so recklessly from the ghostly past, was her mother.
She unfolded John Harmon's letter, and began to read:
“My dear Joan: It has long been my intention to tell you certain facts concerning yourself and your antecedents when you should come of age. I have been, I confess, tempted to do so long before, but I have waited for many reasons, and now that the time has come, I think that it will be easier to write to you of these things than speak face to face—easier for you, and far, far easier for me. For, my Joan, you have become as dear to me as ever a daughter could have been.”
The girl's eyes filled, but she brushed the tears away with an almost fierce eagerness and read on:
“It is chiefly for your sake that I have lived this life of seclusion. I have adapted myself to it happily enough, but it was part of my promise to your father that I should guard and protect you from the world and its temptations, temptations which might in your case be both tragic and dangerous.
“You know already that your father, Richard Gurney, was my best friend. We were closer than most brothers, for besides having much in common, we each possessed a quality not universal, a genius for friendship. It seemed an ironic manifestation of our singular oneness of view that we should both love the same woman, Isabel Charteris, whose picture is before you as you read this—a picture taken several years after her marriage to your father.
“From the first, I hope you will understand that there was no rivalry between us. We were honest with each other and with her. She was a very rich girl, and my money appealed to her people. Your father was merely a clever lawyer with excellent prospects, but his way still to make in the world. As I say, her family approved of me and not of my friend. But she loved him, and one night the three of us made a hasty trip to the next town and interviewed an obliging clergyman whom I had telephoned to be ready. I have never seen anything so radiantly lovely as she was that night, and God knows when I wished her joy it was with all my heart.
“But she was never happy, even though her husband was the best on earth, and rapidly becoming more successful in his profession; even though she had you, a tiny bright-haired little maid sweet enough to have satisfied any woman. It is possible that, shielded as you have been from the various lures and crazes of social life, you will not understand that there was one and only one thing which could make your mother perfectly happy—the possession of precious stones.”
Joan laid down the page for a moment, feeling faint and ill. Her head swam giddily as she recalled her ingenuous confession to her guardian that evening. And the letter she held in her hand had already been written.
She read on, steadying herself resolutely:
“At first this passion for jewelry was attributed by her friends to a pretty woman's natural love of being fittingly decorated. But it struck deeper than that. As your father made more money, she spent it recklessly on ornaments she could not afford. They were always extravagant and lived far beyond their income. Their existence was a round of debts, notes, mortgages, speculation. Still Isabel must have her jewels. She loved them with a mad love, and I have seen her take them from the jewel boxes to touch and even to kiss. It was a mania with her, doubtless, but it broke your father—in spirit, health, and finances. Several times she borrowed large sums from me, ostensibly to lighten his load, but really, as I discovered later, to spend on some new piece of jewelry. Eventually the inevitable happened. She was found with a stolen bracelet in her possession, and—it was learned that it was not her first offense.
"I was with them when the officers came with evidence that nothing could shake. I shall never forget their two faces. Both were terrible in their despair, but hers—hers was far the saddest and most tragic. She took off every jewel she was wearing, without a word, and flung them into the fire. The officers pulled them out, but a pendant—the star she wears in the picture—remained unnoticed in the red-hot coals. I saw it, but let it lie there. Believe me, jewels seemed very unimportant things just then.
“Just then I heard your father give a strange, hoarse cry, and saw his hand move swiftly. The report followed before I could reach my friend's side. He was dying, but had strength enough to whisper: 'A letter—for you—lawyer's—Joan.' Then he died.
“Your mother did not stir for a moment or two, and her face did not change. Not even the officers took a step toward her. Then her eyes, moving slowly like living things in a dead face, sought out the spot on the embered hearth where the jeweled star still lay, red-hot by now.
“She put out her hand and took from the table beside her a pair of heavy, brass-handled library scissors. An officer started forward, but she smiled at him, and said: 'I only want to recover one trinket you missed.' We looked on as she lifted the thing from the embers and stood looking at it. She was in evening dress and very, very beautiful. I remember thinking queerly that she did not look herself in a dinner gown without a necklace, or——
“Then I saw that she was smiling at me, and that she had read my thoughts. 'My neck needs some decoration, doesn't it, John?' she said. The words were flippant, but I hope God will let me forget her voice some time before I die. Then—she pressed the red-hot star down hard upon her bare flesh and——”
Joan could read no more of that letter then. It seemed to her that it was upon her own shrinking breast that the jeweled star was burning, burning. In a sort of sick dream she picked up one of the envelopes—evidently the letter to which her father had with his last words referred as being at his lawyer's. She had not the strength to go through it all. One paragraph flamed out at her:
“... Only for God's sake and mine, old man, take Joan and bring her up as your own. It's a big order, but we've been pretty big friends, and the crisis is coming closer every day. Take Joan, old Jack, make her as good and happy as you can, but keep jewels away from her, and keep her out of the world until she's of an age to have to decide for herself whether——”
Joan choked back a dry sob and missed a few lines that followed. Then she saw:
“Best of all, I would have her marry a decent fellow who could support her comfortably, but whose position wouldn't make it necessary to spend a lot of money. She oughtn't to have a lot of money. Ambition is in her blood, and I hope the man she marries won't have any of it.”
She put that letter down, too, and looked at the other enclosures in a dead, mechanical way. The newspaper clippings made her quiver once or twice. They referred to the “scandal in society;” to the “arrest of the fascinating Mrs. Richard Gurney, whose jewels had made her famous even in the ostentatious town she lived in;” to “gossip which had long been whispered in a certain smart little set and which had been at last merged in the shrill clamor of the law.” And so on, and so on. There were accounts of the trial. Mrs. Gurney had appeared very stoical and calm, though she looked very ill and was accompanied by a physician. She was, indeed, reported to be suffering from the effects of some mysterious accident as well as from the shock of her husband's tragic death.
Joan did not read many of the clippings. There was one enclosure left, a letter written in the same fine, hurried handwriting which had signed the back of the photograph. It was not a long letter, and it was, according to a note in the upper corner, from one of America's best-known prisons:
Dear Joan Harmon: They've given me quite a term, but it may be shortened. Anyway, I'm counting on seeing my girl again after she's twenty-one. You can't keep her then, if she doesn't want to stay. Oh, I am writing madly, when really I am so grateful, John. Oh, be good to her, John! But then, you always are good. You were always good even to wicked, unappreciative, disloyal Isabel Gurney
Joan looked long at the signature, delicate, spirited, with a long reckless dash; prison hadn't broken her yet. Somehow the girl felt that nothing would ever, could ever break her, this strange, fiery mother of hers. She seemed suddenly near, a woman she could only remember as, oddly enough, an exotic fragrance when she kissed her good night in the nursery. Near? She seemed overwhelmingly, intimately close, as if she might be behind her chair.
She shivered and turned involuntarily. No; the room was empty, she was alone with the letters. She finished her guardian's:
"I have tried to carry out your father's wishes, and to train you as he and I both would have you. I hope and believe that this hereditary curse he feared for you was purely visionary; such things are in reality rare. But now you are going to marry David Ware my heart is almost light. You would be my heir naturally, but I shall leave my money to David in trust for you and your children. This, dear, is not because I distrust you, but because of your father's wishes. He did not want you to have the handling of large sums of money as he did not wish you tempted by the enchantment of precious stones and the world that is called gay.
"I have been expecting to hear from your mother. I know she left prison some years ago. But no word of her has reached me. It is a terrible thing to say to a daughter, but I can only hope that no word of her will ever reach you.
“The guests are arriving for your first party, little Joan, so I must seal this. Your first party! I wonder how you will take it?
“Always with deep love, my child, your guardian, John Harmon.”
She sat clutching the sheet of paper with a hand that had suddenly become feverish. New thoughts, new points of view raced through her brain; her own eyes in the glass made her recoil instinctively. For she found herself resenting the letter—the kind, protecting, good guardian's letter, the letter which as tenderly as might be sought to guard her against a possible phantom, a more evil self. Phantom? Was it a phantom, then, this Joan whose nerves crisped and tingled at the memory of certain phrases? “He did not wish you to have the handling of large sums of money;” “he did not wish you tempted by the enchantment of precious stones.”
She clenched her little white teeth almost viciously, then saw there were a few lines after John Harmon's signature.
“I have lived apart from the world for some years now and spent much of my time with books, the world's dreamers and seers. I have come to believe, like all students, in signs and wonders. I believe that in some way now, at this, the crossroads, your twenty-first birthday, the eve of your formal engagement, there will come to you some sign—something which will cause you, wisely or unwisely, to choose what your life will be. I am fifty-five years old and I have never known the Hour without the Sign. May yours be a happy one!”
What a strange thing to say! It chilled the odd little tempest that had previously shaken her like a wind from the east. “I have never known the Hour without the Sign!” She noticed then that the light was growing mixed and eerie; the gray was beginning at last. She went to the window and opened the long sashes wide, for though she still shivered she felt suffocated. A cold, ghostly dawning met her, with only the sigh of a rising wind and a strip of dull silver to show where day would be.
She went back to the dressing table and put the papers back into the envelope. "I have never known the Hour without the Sign.” Mechanically she began to move things she scarcely knew what she was doing. Her powder puff was lying where Della had tossed it. Joan picked it up to put it into the silver powder box where it belonged and—the room grew black for a short moment. For, caught in the fluffy eiderdown of the puff, was the missing hoop of diamonds.
In a second her vision cleared, and God knows what age-old automatic instinct made her detach the ring, slip it inside her tight white satin girdle, and close the powder box.
Then she trembled from head to foot, for she had actually not thought while she acted. The hiding of the ring about her person had been utterly involuntary, without design or conscious plan. She saw then that she had left her mother's picture out in replacing the contents of her guardian's envelope. The smiling, audacious face of her mother looked up at her, and, oh, her jewels!
The Hour and the Sign.
She put her hand to her temples; they throbbed, and her throat was dry. She could not stay in that room another moment. She did not know why, but she could not. She left the envelope and the photograph on the dressing table and went out hurriedly and softly into the dark upper corridor. She went downstairs without making a sound and was about to turn on the light in the electric bracket in the lower hall when she stood frozen. The library lights were already burning!
Her guardian, of course; but she couldn't meet him now. She—— Then suddenly the half-open door swung wide and a woman stood there.
“Joan?” said a low voice. “I had made up my mind to read here till breakfast time. Splendid books John Harmon has, hasn't he?”
Step by step, the girl followed that voice—quite a wonderful voice, deeply pitched, not sweet, but somehow fascinating to hear. When she was in the library, the woman closed the door and smiled at her. And suddenly Joan knew. For, though the woman's hair was white, and the smile did not soften the lines in her face but made them the more tragic, it was the same countenance that had shone so gayly from the little photograph upstairs.
Without a word she opened her coat. She was wearing a dark dress loose at the throat. Deliberately she unfastened the two upper buttons of the waist and disclosed a scar long healed, but still horrible to see, a scar bearing a resemblance in shape to a rude star.
Joan gasped and hid her face.
“So you know all about it?” said her mother quietly, rebuttoning the dark blouse. “When did he tell you?”
“To-night.”
Isabel Gurney nodded with a bitter little smile. “Strictly according to Hoyle!” she commented. “Oh, well, I've not come to talk about John Harmon. He's the salt of the earth, and all that, but—I wanted to see my little girl.” Her voice did not exactly break; it was a singularly steady voice. But she paused a moment before going on. “You're twenty-one, Joan, and I've not seen you since you were six—such a funny little tot!—and I never had half enough time for you!” She paused again. “I'm glad you've his hair and eyes,” she said, looking at her queerly. “Richard's was golden in coloring, too. But you're a little, too, like me. Joan, after fifteen years, one doesn't want to play a sentimental scene or—anything—but—would you care to kiss me?”
With a queer choking in her throat the girl went up to her. They kissed a quick, close kiss and fell apart. In that moment Joan felt closer to her mother than she had ever felt to any living being. Closer? Why, she was a part of her, feeling with her.
Her mother's eyes met hers gravely,
“You're at an impressionable age,” she said quietly, “and this is rather a melodramatic sort of occasion. You mustn't feel romantic about me, you know. It would have been better if I had appeared with the bacon and eggs —and John Harmon!” She laughed a little, noiselessly. “I only came to-night because I didn't want to sit in the station till morning. It was simpler to break in here. Don't wince!” she went on quickly. “Of course I broke in. It's my business.”
“Your—business?”
“How did you suppose I lived since I left jail? I'm an exceedingly expert thief and, on the whole, do fairly well. But”—it was a longer pause this time—"I wouldn't recommend it as an entertaining career.”
“Mother!” Joan muttered the word without realizing she had done so.
Again that strange, tragic deepening of the lines that might be called a smile.
“Stand over more toward the light!” said Mrs. Gurney. “You are very pretty—as pretty as I used to be. I hope you're a lot different. Tell me—I've got to know—it's one of the things I came for, and I must have the truth. Have you—got—it, too?”
“It?” Joan repeated. But she knew what the other meant, and the diamond ring suddenly burned her very skin, through silk and chiffon.
“It—yes! The passion or craze or whatever it is for jewels! The madness to get them somehow—to——” She stopped short, staring at Joan's face.
The girl answered as if the words were dragged out of her: “I love them better than anything in the world—or could, if I had them!”
“Oh, just Heaven!” gasped her mother, staring at her. “Then, child, child, never have them! They are such cruel things to love! Isn't there some human being——”
“I think I love you,” said her daughter shyly.
The woman shook her head with that tragic smile. “Don't love me! I, too, am a cruel thing to love. And John Harmon——”
“He's very kind,” said Joan.
Again her mother shook her head. “Oh, you are like me!” she complained. “Joan, you're twenty-one. Are you in love?”
The girl flushed quite charmingly and with a flooding sense of shame. During this whole interview she had not thought of David once. And she did love him—dear, boyish, adoring David. She looked ridiculously young and enchanting as she raised soft eyes to meet her mother's.
“Indeed I am in love!” she declared proudly.
“Thank God!" was Isabel Gurney's comment. And then she said a strange thing: “More than he is with you?”
“Why, no,” replied the girl rather blankly; “of course not! We care awfully for each other, but—well, I suppose David cares most.”
“I'm sorry for that,” said her mysterious mother; “but—you're young, and if he's the right sort of man and not too ambitious——” She broke off to laugh silently at Joan's expression “Quite mad, am I not?” she said. “But, oh my girl, believe me when I say that you must love most always—you must, if you want to be happy. Never try to sway a man through his love for you, never——” She broke off, to go with a quick, light step up to her daughter and look deep into her wondering eyes. “I had a great love in my keeping, my dear, and I broke it,” she said. “To remind me of that I put a scar upon my body. Oh, Joan, my little girl, grown-up Joan whom I shall never see again, don't let it ever come to me that by my wild life I put a scar on your soul!”
She did not kiss her daughter again, she did not touch her, nor utter another word. She only turned swiftly and without sound and went out of one of the library windows.
Joan saw that it stood wide open and the morning was full upon the world. Pale rose, dusky mauve, fairy-like gold, the colors were beginning to come.
She went out onto the veranda that ran just outside that side of the house. How still it was, the little small town street, with the still leafless trees casting queer shadows before the growing light! Her mother had disappeared as though she were some phantom fated to “vanish with the morning's breath.” Joan was alone with the new day.
The Hour and the Sign!
A man was coming down the street, striding rapidly, but moving more slowly as he neared the house. He was tall and broad and carried a bag. With a little leap of her heart Joan recognized him. And at the same moment he saw her, and with a soft whistle of delighted surprise, opened the gate and ran up to join her.
“Joan! Dearest girl, many happy returns of the—I mean yesterday. Honey, you haven't been to bed!”
“Oh, it was an awfully late party!”
"I should say so, for this burg. Joan, you're in a low-necked gown, and it's freezing!”
He pulled off his overcoat and wrapped her in it.
"I wasn't cold, truly,” she said. She was looking at him with new eyes, not less tender but more appraising. Was he—— Yes, that question was easily answered. He was the sort of man to be easily swayed by love. Big, handsome, strong, it was the devotion of a worshipful slave that looked out of his gray eyes. Joan remembered that her guardian was going to let David have the handling of the money; and she hated herself for remembering it.
Meanwhile, with one arm still about her, he fished in a waistcoat pocket till he produced a tiny box.
“Your engagement ring, sweetest!” he whispered, flushing with his splendid young ardor. “Open it.”
It was a little hoop of pearls, delicate and sweetly symbolic of girlhood and purity. He put it on her finger. As he did so Joan thought of the other ring concealed in her girdle, the glittering diamond circlet that belonged to another woman.
As David lifted his head after kissing her with tenderest solemnity, he started and pulled her a foot or two away from where she had been standing.
“What's the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing—just absurdity! I must be getting fanciful! Do you know, as you stood there the sun shone out red for the first time, and that elm tree over by the steps threw the queerest shadow over you.” He laughed shamefacedly, “The red light between the black shadows of the branches was like—some horrible burn or other.”
She stood with her head down and her mother's words echoing in her ears; “A scar on your soul!” Was there?
“Run away now, David, dear,” she said gently. “My ring is lovely.”
“Get to bed, sweetheart, and rest. Oh, and I'm going to invite myself to lunch. All right?”
“All right!”
With his coat and bag he departed, once more whistling blithely, utterly in tune with the fresh and vivid morning. Joan watched him till he was out of sight, then turned and went indoors, carefully locking the library window behind her. She turned out the lights and went slowly upstairs.
As she went, she pressed her hand hard and harder on the ring inside her girdle. After breakfast Della Mercer would telephone and ask if it had been found. “I have never known the Hour without the Sign,” Joan seemed to see again.
She went into her own room, the dainty room of her quiet girlhood. Della would telephone, and Joan would say that she had found it.
Or—should she?
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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