“I musn’t lose my temper,” she told herself. Yet that was the very thing she did. The matter took such a sudden, such a grotesque turn.
He came in about eleven, his handsome face haggard, his eyes bloodshot. She was astounded at his appearance.
“Peter, you look dreadful!”
He glanced over the top of her head at his reflection in the mirror, lounged to the sofa, threw himself in the corner of it.
“Guess I’m due to look a fright after staying up all night. Didn’t get to bed till five this morning.”
She thought he’d been worrying over their quarrel. “You poor boy, you didn’t need to take it that hard.”
He stared at her. “Take what, that hard? Oh, our talk! That didn’t keep me awake. I spent the night at ‘Jake’s.’ ”
“Jake’s” was the cabaret, a cheap one, in which he had played years ago.
She couldn’t understand him. “I thought you had plenty of money without playing there.”
“I have. I didn’t play there. I was a visitor like anybody else, like Harry Portor; he spent the night there, too. There was a whole gang of us.”
Clearly she must get to the bottom of this. While she had been tossing sleepless, he had been in a cabaret, dancing with cheap women, laughing, drinking perhaps.
“You mean you deliberately went there to have a good time and stayed all night? You and Harry Portor and the rest drank, I suppose?”
“I don’t think Portor did. He’s a full-fledged doctor now, though he’s hardly any practice yet. But the rest of us did. There’s nothing in that, Joanna, fellow’s got to get to know the world.”
Her anger rose, broke. She lost her dignity.
“I suppose Maggie Ellersley taught you that, too.”
“What’s that?” His handsome face lowered. “Say, how’d Maggie Ellersley get into this? No, she never taught me anything. But I can tell you what, if a fellow were going with her and went during his holidays to have a spree at a cabaret she wouldn’t nag him about it, like you nag me. Yes, about that and about a thousand other things.”
She turned into ice. “I’ll never nag you again. Here, take this thing!” She drew off the little ring. “I don’t want it.”
A pin dropping would have crashed in that silence.
His voice came back to him. “You don’t mean this, Joanna—you can’t.”
“I do. Here, take it.”
“You—you mean the engagement is broken?” He ignored her outstretched hand.
She dropped the ring in his pocket. “I mean I can’t consider a man for a husband who throws away his career because of the meanness of a few white men. Of a man who sits all night in a low cabaret where every loafer in New York can point him out and say, ‘That’s the kind of fellow Joanna Marshall goes about with.’ ”
“Oh, I see, it isn’t for my sweet sake, then!”
She pushed him toward the door. “Go, Peter! Go!”
On New Year’s morning he came back, humble, contrite. “I was a fool, Joanna. I must have been mad. Please forgive me.”
“Of course I do, Peter.”
He fumbled in his pocket, held out the ring. “Will you take this back?”
“I can’t do that.”
“When will you?”
“I don’t know if ever.”
There was a long silence. He came over and put his hand on the back of her chair, afraid to touch her.
“Joanna, I don’t deserve your love. But you still do love me?”
She nodded slowly.
His face brightened at that. “But you won’t take back the ring?”
“No, Peter, I can’t take back the ring.”
He knelt and kissed her hands.
“Goodbye, sweetheart, I must go to Philadelphia today. Happy New Year, Joanna.”
She let him go then. None of their other partings had ever been like this. Safe in her room she cried herself sick. “Oh, Peter,” she murmured to herself, “come back like the boy I used to know.” She wished now that she had been easier with him.
“And yet if I were, he’d let go entirely. Well, it must come out all right.” But her heart was heavy.
The very next day she got a letter. Peter must have written her as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia.
“Joanna, I was wrong,” he had written contritely, “I confess had got away somewhat from your manner of thinking, and I suppose I was a little sore, too—your life seems so full. Sometimes I think there is nothing I can bring you. But I do love you, Joanna. You must always believe that and I think you love me, too. We were meant for each other. I am sure life would hold for us the deepest, most irremediable sorrow if we separated. Whether we are engaged or not, just tell me that you love me still and I can be happy.”
XVIII
If she had only answered the letter, then, that very moment!
But she had said to her impulse: “No, I must wait. I can’t let him off too easily.” Perhaps, too, there was a little sense of satisfaction at having him again at her knees, suing for her favors, but this was secondary. Joanna was really sick at heart to think that her beautiful dreams of success for both of them might not be realized. She wanted to be great herself, but she did not want that greatness to overshadow Peter.
Somehow the week slipped by, quickly enough, too. There was always plenty to do. Love—the
