Nvt-Brown Joan; a story for girls

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Odd One 1

II. Breakers Ahead 15

Chapter I

SLENDER girl of fourteen, so tall that she looked as though her body had been too busy shooting upward to remember also to grow broad, sat in a dissatisfied attitude on the edge of a big armchair. Her toes turned slightly inward, her elbows rested on her knees while the palms of her hands supported and tightly pressed her face. It was a thin face, all brown-tinted — olive skin, dark brown hair, big, soft, yet keen brown, eyes. The nose was clear cut and fine in type, like the distinguished noses seen in old portraits, and which are sadly gone out of fashion. The mouth had plenty of decision in its full curves, and showed, even now, pushed out of shape though it was by the long fingers, that it might be a pretty mouth if it wore a more contented expression, for when it smiled its corners went up with great sweetness and mirth, illumining the girlish face.

The room was an anomaly. Low bookcases lined its four sides, and, regarding them only, it appeared to be a library; but light French prints, with a poster or two, flippant tidies and bits of needle work, gilt chairs and screens mingled with the good engravings on the walls and the solid leather-covered furniture, while Dresden bric-a-brac, representing swains and maidens of the most light-minded appearance, pertly elbowed the bronzes and casts on the bookcases.

However, sunshine, bright autumnal sunshine, flooded the room from the bay window on its western side, and in that window, enjoying the declining sun like a cat, sat a portly lady darning, and occasionally raising her eyes to glance with an anxiously disapproving look at the oblivious little girl in — or more properly on — the armchair.

At last she spoke, and her voice had the throaty richness and the rising inflection that betrays English birth.

“ Joan, my dear/’ she said, “ what can you be thinking about? Or are you only doing what a little boy I know at home calls ‘ foozling ’ ? ”

Joan straightened herself and her discontented face brightened with a laugh. “ Foozling, I’m afraid, Auntie Deb,’’ she said. “ I wasn't thinking much; only wishing and wishing! I'm always wishing, though."

“ Girls of your age usually are, if they’re not kept busy working or playing," said Aunt Deb. “ Why don’t you darn stockings ? "

Joan made a wry face, then laughed again.

“ Which is that, work or play, auntie ? " she asked. “ Besides, I don't know how to darn stockings."

“ It is high time that you learned," remarked her great-aunt, rolling the pair she had just finished into small compass and giving it a completing blow with her first. “ When I came I found that nurse had far too much to do for universal well-doing, so I took charge of the stockings. Have you no tasks set you, Joan?"

“ There’s no one to set me any," said Joan quite honestly. “ Mama is such an invalid, and has to take so much medicine and see the doctor so often, she can’t look after us, you know.”

“ And why are you not at school ? ” asked Aunt Deb, after she had adjusted her mind to this point of view — it was exceedingly hard for that vigorous lady to be patient with nervous invalidism.

“ Why, I was brought home for Cousin Nettie’s funeral just after the term began,” said Joan. “ They had sent me to a boarding school, not the one here where Georgie and Trude go. But — though it’s horrid at home — I’m not sure I should have liked that school ; I’m ’most sure I shouldn’t. That’s not why I didn’t go back, though ; I don’t know why — I guess they forgot to send me.”

Aunt Deb took off her glasses to look at her grandniece at this speech; Aunt Deb always put on her glasses to see things, and took them off to see people. She discovered no trace of intended sarcasm in the brown little countenance before her; Joan had unmistakably meant but to state a fact.

“ Why do you call home horrid, Nut-Brown Maiden ? ” asked Aunt Deb, wisely ignoring the final statement of her niece’s remark.

“ Oh, because I don't enjoy myself in it much — it's so lonely, you see,” replied Joan, tucking one foot under her and clasping both hands behind her head.

“ Lonely! Really, that is the very last complaint I should expect to hear of this household ! ” cried Aunt Deb. “ There surely are enough of you children ! One would think you could manage not to be lonely with six brothers and sisters, Joan ! ”

“ Oh, yes ; we're a big family,'' assented Joan. “ But there aren't enough to go round. Hen and Ken are babies, and they make one pair. And Dick and Trude are chummy, considering. Then I come in, then Guy, and we don’t see much of each other. And then there’s Georgie, so there isn't anyone for me.”

“ Well, and there is Georgie,” amended Aunt Deb. “ Your sister is but a trifle above two years your elder — why are you not intimate ? ”

“Now, Aunt Deb!” protested Joan. “You may have been here only two weeks, but you must have seen that Georgie and I are just miles apart! She thinks I'm a baby, and I think she's ”

Joan pulled herself up in her impetuous speech. She was about to say that she considered her sister a goose, but remembered that it was not loyal to prejudice this new great-aunt from England against Georgie. Though Georgie did not seem to think Aunt Deb any consequence, Joan was beginning to covet her good opinion.

“Georgie is very fluffy and pretty,” remarked Aunt Deb drily.

“ Oh, my, yes ! Georgie has always been like that! When we were little girls if mama took us out anywhere people always said : ‘ How lovely your elder little girl is, Mrs. Darrington ! What beautiful hair, like spun gold! And such exquisite pink and white skin ! ’ And there was I, just as I am now, black as a young crow, and as thin, and all eyes like one ! ” Joan sat up to deliver her grievance, moved to confidence in Aunt Deb, though she had never before mentioned to anyone what was the burden of her life.

“For shame, Joan! Jealous of Georgie! Grudging her her beauty ! ” exclaimed Aunt Deb, though she did not believe her own accusation as she made it.

“ No, indeed, auntie! Please don't think I'm so dreadfully mean as that! ” Joan said earnestly. “ I was always proud of Georgie — I love pretty girls — and I wouldn't have her one bit different, not in looks, anyway ! But I can't help wishing I was just the least wee bit pretty too — and it isn’t easy to hear mama say, as she always does : ‘ It looks as well as anything would on Joan.’ Or, ‘ Don’t get bright, light things for Joan; she’s so dark and scrawny it would make her look worse — brown is the only thing for poor Joan ! ' I honestly think mama is ashamed of me, and since I've grown so fearfully long it's worse than ever.

“ It's perfectly awful to be a homely girl, auntie. They're all proud of Georgie — so am I, though, honestly! I suppose you're disgusted with me, but I just can’t help it; I can't get strong-minded enough to rise superior to my long, thin brown homeliness to save my life. Even when I think I'm more sensible than Georgie, and may be a great writer, or a fine doctor, or something clever, it doesn't help me for more than a minute, because I’m just certain sure, if any girl spoke the truth, she’d say she’d rather be pretty than anything else in all the world. At any rate, I would.”

Joan hurled the last words at her aunt as if she were throwing down a gauntlet, but Miss Chisholm did not take it up. On the contrary, she laid down her darning and came over to where Joan was sitting.

“I’m not in the least disgusted with you, my dear, and I am quite sure you do not mean anything that is unkind or envious of Georgie,” she said. “ I think it is hard to be the ugly duckling, and I am glad to see that it has not made you unjust to your sister. But you remember, of course, how the ugly duckling turned out ? Little girls with Georgie’s blonde prettiness need no developing, but brown lassies, like our Joan, go through a chrysalis process, and often emerge very passable indeed. I think there are people who would find Joan not ill-looking now, if she did not look discontented, and would not dawdle. However, the sensible way is not to dwell much on the question of looks. When you’re older you will appreciate the charm of cleverness — believe me, my dear, it is far superior to beauty. But if you will be bright and sunny and contented, Joan, you won’t be ill to look at when you’re grown. Do you know, at home in England we do not use the word homely as you do here? We should think it very fine to be a homely girl.”

“What does it mean there?” asked Joan dubiously; she suspected a moral, and felt a natural objection to it.

“ It means a girl who loves home and makes it pleasant, one who has sweet, womanly traits. I think you are clever enough to make a thoroughly homely girl. You have no idea, apparently, how much pleasanter this house would be if you took hold of it in that spirit, nor how much comfort you would get out of Dick and Trude if you made their acquaintance — not to mention handsome Guy, who, I suspect, would be no worse for his sister’s friendship,” said Aunt Deb, so cheerfully that it did not sound preachy.

“ And then to think of being named Joan ! ” said the bearer of that name, too embarrassed to reply to her aunt’s little homily, yet half brightening as her lively imagination recognised possibilities in the hopes held out to her. “ It’s such a io Nut-Brown Joan

homely — no, must I say such an ugly name? As brown as I am. Sound like overalls ! ”

“ It sounds like nothing of the sort, you queer child,” said Aunt Deb, laughing in spite of herself. “ Where is your history? Was Joan of Arc homespun ? But don't let me hear you complain of your name, miss, or you and I can not be friends! You are named after your grandmother, my dear sister Joan, and you should wear the name as a crown, grateful if you are not wholly unworthy to wear it. One day, if you are not too indolent and discontented and selfishly indifferent to your home and your brothers and sisters, I'll tell you the story of my sister Joan’s life.”

Joan sat up, her cheeks flushing, her eyes flashing at these epithets, which stung her, as her aunt meant them to. Joan had drifted into the habit of feeling that her home — which indeed, left much to be desired — was a cross laid upon her; that her brothers’ and sisters’ uncongeniality was a cross also. It never occurred to her that she was in the least responsible for the general unsatisfactoriness.

She was a child who loved honour and fair play ii more than most girls. It would be dreadful if she, Joan Darrington, were not playing fair, but really was selfish, lazy, whining! Before she could ask her aunt if she actually deserved to be thus accused, the door opened and a girl of sixteen entered, preceded by breezes laden with heliotrope sachet powder. She was shorter than Joan by half a head ; her lithe little figure was arrayed in a very tight gown, her tiny feet encased in patent leather shoes — low shoes, though it was beginning to get cold — with exaggerated Louis XV. heels. Her beautiful hair — pure golden, and not yellow — was so dried by much soda that it stuck out around her face in a way no Skye terrier could hope to emulate.

“ I suppose you don’t care to take a walk, Jeanne? ” said this fashionable young person.

Aunt Deb looked up sharply. “ Georgie,” she said, “ I should be much obliged if you would never again mispronounce your sister’s name in that way. The name is an honourable inheritance ; she is English Joan, a character I trust she may maintain, and she must never let the name, nor her ideal of it, be corrupted.”

“ Dear me, aunt, how fussy you are ! ” exclaimed Georgie, with a petulant laugh. “ It would be a real kindness to call the poor child something pretty. Well, will you come, Jo-an?”

“ Are you going down to that old five o’clock mail again, Georgie Darrington ? Indeed I won’t go! I don’t see how you can be so silly.” And Joan turned up her nose in impolite rejection of her invitation.

“You needn’t lecture me, miss, nor be so rude when I invite you to walk with older girls,” cried Georgie. “ There isn’t the least harm in going down to the post office at night.”

“ It isn’t nice,” said Joan decidedly. “ I never said it was exactly harm, but I wish you wouldn’t go, Georgie.”

“ Nevertheless, I am going,” said Georgie, turning on her French heels, and tossing her fluffy head. “ The next time I ask you, you’ll know it ! ” And a waft of heliotrope, following the slam of the library door, announced the indignant departure of Georgie.

“ What about the post office? Why do you disapprove it, my dear?” asked Aunt Deb.-

“ I don’t disapprove of the post office, auntie — it’s all right,” said Joan, with a twinkle. “ But at night a lot of girls go to get the last mail, and not one of them expects a letter, probably, and you know how it is in a suburban place — everyone knows us, and Georgie is so pretty, and does giggle so — I can’t help saying she does — and it looks as if she went down just to be seen too, like the rest of them. And — well some of the girls aren’t quite nice and quiet in the streets, people notice It’s no harm,” said Joan, breaking off.

Then she added, in an irrepressible burst of honest, girlish disgust : “ It makes me so mad with Georgie for going with that crowd I really can’t stand it ! I’m only fourteen, but I wouldn’t be such a silly!”

Aunt Deb refrained from suggesting that it might be because she was fourteen, and not sixteen, that Joan was so sensible, for age does not always bring wisdom. Instead she asked : “ Does your father know that Georgie goes down to the last mail ? ”

“ Oh, papa!” exclaimed Joan, uncoiling herself and rising. “ Papa is rather busy. There

I 4 isn’t a bit of harm in Georgie, auntie,” she added, fearing that she had got her sister into a scrape. “ She goes down just for fun, and she doesn’t see that the other girls are ninnies.”

“ Decidedly,” thought Aunt Deb, as the girl’s tall figure disappeared down the hall, “ decidedly my nephew’s children need looking after. And still more decidedly I’m going to find my grandniece Joan, the homely girl, well worth cultivating.”

Chapter II

OAN went to her room to consider; she considered more or less for a week, in the midst of the excitement of a premature cold snap and unexpected skating.

Aunt Def> was wise enough not to spoil her hint by an additional word; she abhorred anything like nagging, and had confidence in Joan’s cleverness to fill out the outline sketch which she had made of future possibilities for the restless, unguided little girl.

The more she thought about it the better Joan liked the picture. It really was not bad to become the leading spirit of home, transforming the desert into a garden, even though her dreams had always taken the form of a great public career. Heretofore she had seen her grown-up self as a famous doctor, or the greatest American woman writer 15

— both, very possibly, since “ Hugh Wynne,” which she had read admiringly, was written by a physician. For the child was a dreamer of dreams, and saw the imaginary Joan in heroic proportions, although she was inclined to undervalue her real self.

It was not easy to begin where there was everything to be done, profound ignorance on the part of the would-be reformer, and a foolish self-consciousness that prevented her from asking Aunt Deb's help. But Joan did not make the mistake of so many older beginners and wait for something tremendous to do. Aunt Deb noticed, with amused satisfaction, that Joan had taken to dusting the library every morning, giving the room, which was the family sitting room, that look of habitableness which the maids had a talent for eliminating. She had begun to play with the younger children, who hailed her attentions rapturously, for Joan’s lively imagination and high spirits made her an ideal comrade when she condescended to their level.

It was Saturday morning, and all the young Darringtons were gathered in the library, Georgie and Guy with gloom on their faces, because a thaw had come, and skating, on that day of all days, when there was no school, was out of the question.

Mrs. Darrington breakfasted in her room, and rarely appeared before luncheon. Aunt Deb sat in her favourite window patting Kenneth’s head, drooping on her breast, as he sat on her lap enjoying the disgraceless cuddling following the binding up of a finger which he had slightly cut.

Six year old Henley, who had been the baby until Kenneth had usurped the position four years ago, stood by surveying his junior and chum with serious eyes. Dick was bent double over a book, as he had been most of the time for eight of his twelve years of life. Trude, near him as usual, waited with her customary calmness until he should be ready to go out.

Joan stood on a chair before one of the bookcases, not daring to trust even her long arms to reach its ornaments from the floor. She shook her duster impatiently, and glanced with extreme disfavour at the simpering Dresden marquise before her.

“ Don’t you think, auntie,” she said, “ that we might have mama bookcase tops and papa bookcase tops?”

“And don’t you think, my dear, that you might be a trifle more intelligible ? ” retorted Aunt Deb.

Guy’s gloom broke up in a laugh ; his sense of humour was hard to down.

“I know what she means,” he said. “The busts, old brasses, bronzes, casts and things father buys, and the other sort of stuff is mama’s.”

“ Yes,” continued Joan, “ and they are so queer together! Just look at this silly china person right beside this splendid Discobolus! I should think they would be better assorted.”

“And I should think it would hardly do for us to meddle with our elders’ arrangement of their own room,” said Aunt Deb.

“You can’t be an iccon o’clast,” remarked Dick, making two distinct words of the one, and pronouncing it as if it were an Irish proper name. Dick dearly loved long words, though he frequently found them somewhat unmanageable.

“What does that mean?” asked Guy, to catch him.

“An image breaker; I read it in something yesterday, and looked it up,” said Dick, with quiet triumph.

“ It’s no good trying to trip up Richard,” said Joan. “ I honestly believe I should like to break them, Diccon; but I’d be satisfied with driving them into their own pens.”

“ They are not animals, Joan,” remarked Trude, the literal.

It was curious to see the difference between all the Darringtons. Georgie, blonde, pretty, feather-brained; Guy, handsome, dark, daring, easy-going; Joan, quick, impetuous, clever and thoughtful; Dick, pale, dreamy, studious, combining Georgie with Guy and Joan in colouring; Gertrude, fair, with brown eyes and hair, slow of thought and speech, plump and phlegmatic, yet the artist of the family, seeing very true with her wide eyes, and drawing marvellously well for a little girl of ten; Hen and Ken, one fair and gentle, the other the darkest tinted of all the family, with a positive genius for getting into scrapes and breaking bones. It was no wonder that Aunt Deb felt that she had before her a large task in looking after this heterogeneous little flock.

Joan descended from her perch. “I’ve been thinking out a plan,” she said, the colour mounting as she realised that Aunt Deb would understand what had inspired her. “ A plan for something nice for us to do,” she added, as nobody took the trouble to inquire into her idea.

“I wish it would freeze,” remarked Georgie, yawning slightly.

“ Joan was going to say something,” said Guy, frowning. “Fire away, J.”

“I thought it might be nice to form a secret society,” Joan began.

“Too babyish,” interrupted Georgie. “And what would be the fun, anyway, just ourselves?”

“ I don’t see how it can be babyish unless there are babies in it,” retorted Joan, nettled as Georgie had meant her to be. “We shouldn’t have to keep it to ourselves, either, if we didn’t choose to.”

“What kind of a society?” asked Guy.

“ None of your old book clubs or circles ! And how could it be secret, if girls were in it?”

“Now, Guy, you know I can keep a secret!” said Joan reproachfully.

“ Yes ; you can,” said Guy handsomely, remembering an important occasion when Joan had done so. “ But how about Georgie ? ”

“ I thought it would be nice to do deeds, adventures, and daring things, and have a badge, and meetings, and relate our adventures. We should each solemnly promise to be brave, and secret, and sure,” said Joan hastily, as Georgie scowled ominously at Guy.

“ It isn't half bad, if you were all any good at carrying it out, but it would be kid stuff; I'd rather have such a society with the fellows.”

“ We could ask my set ; then it might be interesting,” said Georgie condescendingly.

“ Oh, I meant this to be something to do when we were alone, and didn’t know what to do,” said Joan, not very lucidly, finding, like many another founder, that her followers exaggerated her ideas into a distortion of them.

“Our first adventure might be to investigate the haunted house,” said Dick, as quietly as though it were the most natural suggestion.

There was a shout, after a moment of stunned silence ; one never knew what to expect from quiet Dick. None of the Darringtons had ever dared approach the mysterious deserted house, which bore a most forbidding reputation.

“Let's go there to-day!” cried Guy, starting up, but his suggestion was destined not to be carried out.

“ Miss Chisholm, please, Mrs. Darrington would like to see you in her room, and would Miss Georgie and Miss Johanna come wid ye?” said Maggie, the waitress, standing twisting her apron in the doorway. One of Joan’s greatest small trials was this girl’s version of her not-too acceptable name.

Aunt Deb set Ken on his feet and led the way upstairs, followed by the wondering girls. Guy, deprived of his despised feminine allies, who were, after all, better than no one in the midst of inertia, took his cap and flung himself out of the house.

Georgie and Joan were not alarmed at finding their mother in tears ; the weakness of Mrs. Darrington’ s nerves made them a thing of frequent occurrence. But Aunt Deb was too lately arrived in the household to regard them lightly, and she went hastily to her niece-in-law’s sofa, crying: “ My dear, what is it ? Has anything happened ? ” “ Enough has happened,” moaned Mrs. Darrington. “First, read that!” And she handed her husband’s aunt a letter.

Aunt Deb read it with a puzzled face, while the girls waited with considerable anxiety.

When she had finished Aunt Deb asked : “ Who is this girl? I could not quite understand.”

“ She is the child of my widowed sister, just Joan’s age,” replied Mrs. Darrington. “ It is the most unfortunate thing! I never could endure her father, and he died precisely when he was most needed.”

Joan laughed, thinking her mother meant this for a jest, but Aunt Deb shook her head at her while she asked : “ Are you going to take her ? ”

“What can I do?” sighed Mrs. Darrington helplessly. “ She has no one else ; my sister is left without a penny. I promised if worse came to worse I would look after the child, but just now ”

“Mama, what does it all mean?’’ cried Georgie. “Not that you are going to adopt some horrid girl, as old as Joan? ”

“ She may not be horrid, my darling beautygirl,” said her mother, looking fondly at the pretty, peevish face. “ She is your own cousin. I don’t see how we can help letting her come here ; not adopted, you know ”

“ Well, it is a perfect shame ! ” interrupted Georgie hysterically, but Joan in turn interrupted her.

“ I think it is a nuisance, myself,” she said. “But if she is quite poor, and our own cousin, how can we help letting her come here, as mama says? It won’t make any real difference; there is such a lot of us, all going our own ways, and I suppose she can go another way. Is it Sophie Ivins, mama?”

“ Yes; I wish now we had had her here visiting, and knew something of her,” sighed Mrs. Darrington.

“ Well,” said Joan, the unconscious philosopher,

“ if she has to come anyway, it doesn’t matter, for if we like her when we know her, it will be all right, and if she should be horrid, as Georgie said, it’s better not to dread her.”

“ Pay her board in a school, and don’t let her come,” said Georgie angrily. “I don’t believe we have to be bothered with her. If she comes I’ll never rest till I have teased you into sending me away to school. I shouldn’t mind going, anyway; not if it was a fashionable finishing school, where you didn’t have to study.”

“Oh, my darling, I hope your cousin won’t annoy you! Try not to mind her, my precious,” cried poor Mrs. Darrington. “ There really is no escape from the charge of Sophie, and as to sending her, or you, away to school, my blessing, it is sadly, dreadfully impossible ! My dear, sensitive little girl, I have been dreading to tell you, but your father has gotten his business into a very bad state, and for all I know he has ruined us!”

Georgie uttered a scream that would have done credit to an adept in hysteria, while Aunt Deb started up with an exclamation of horror, but

Joan’s eyes filled with angry tears. The fact stated by her mother bore no significance to her youthful ears; indeed she hardly heard her say that they might be ruined, but she caught the implied blame of her father, and her cheeks flamed. Afar off, Joan loved her father more than any other earthly object. Mr. Darrington was such a busy man, so occupied in providing for his little brood and trying to amass an inheritance for them, that, like many another American father, he knew them but slightly. Joan was his own daughter, and, though she rarely had a chance to test it, was conscious of sympathy between her nature and her father’s, a sympathy which led her to exalt him into a hero and worship him mutely.

Now, as her feeble mother’s tearful voice accused him — or she thought it did — Joan quivered between the desire to defend him and pity for the poor invalid.

“ Papa can’t have got his affairs into a bad state, mama dear,” she cried, her own voice shaking. “ You know he is a splendid business man — everyone says so. If something ruined us, he couldn’t help it, but I’m sure he’ll keep ruin off ; he can do anything he chooses. If we were

ruined What does ruined mean, anyway ? ”

she asked, breaking off suddenly.

“ It means being poor, miss, and having nothing nice to wear, or do, or eat,” said Georgie spitefully. “ If papa has lost his money I’ll never forgive him — just when I’m almost grown up too ! ” And Georgie burst into tears of selfpity.

Aunt Deb laid her hand, kind and firm, on Joan’s wrist, for she saw her shrink at this heartless speech.

“ Matters are not so bad, I dare say,” said Miss Chisholm; “but if they were, it would be more daughterly, Georgie, to think how you could help your father — who, as Joan says, is a clever man, and who would rather die than see one of his children want — than to think only of yourself.”