“I shall remain right here,” Susan replied, clutching at the remnants of her dignity. “When you are in this mood my place is with my father.” Wild horses couldn’t have dragged her away, father or no father.
Joan barely glanced at her: Susan wasn’t worth hating.
Amused, Professor Frost smiled at his younger daughter. “And what is the cause of these primeval passions, my dear?”
“Full of big talk as usual, aren’t you?” Joan said, sitting on his desk. “You can’t make me feel cheap with your lousy two-bit words.”
“Quite so, Joan,” he said calmly. “You are cheap, although I scarcely expect you to accept my evaluation of you.”
“You should be more respectful toward your father,” Susan unwisely interrupted.
Without turning Joan said, “You milksop. Don’t peddle your virtue around me.”
“Susan, perhaps you had better leave. I assure you I won’t require your protection. Joan’s periodic tantrums are more interesting than dangerous.”
“What’s that you’ve been writing, dear Papa?” Joan said. She snatched his diary from the desk and read aloud to Susan: “ ‘Virtue is a clammy thing, rather oppressive in these quantities.’ That’s you, Susan. Now shall I read something about me?”
“If you must humiliate yourself, Joan,” Professor Frost said.
“Listen to this. ‘June first. Am rather out of pocket this month, Joan’s penchant for the possessions of others having extended to Miss Bonner’s pearl ring. Total outlay: two hundred dollars.’ ”
“Joan!” Susan cried, horrified.
“This diary is worth a lot to me. I think I’ll keep it. If you don’t mind.”
Professor Frost held out his hand for the diary. “Certainly I mind. Don’t be childish, Joan. It has no value to you. It’s purely a personal record.”
She jumped off the desk and swung round to face him. “Personal record, hell! I know what you’re going to do with it, you bastard.”
He caught her hand, hard. “Put it back on my desk, Joan. Instantly. Put it back.”
Her fist caught him on the cheek. He lurched back, grasped at the desk helplessly, and fell to the floor. Joan watched impassively as Susan helped him to his feet.
“I’m packing,” she said calmly. “I’ll be gone tonight. And may the devil protect me from ever meeting either of you again.”
“Tom dear, you’re not eating,” Mary Little said at lunch. “What is the matter? You know you can tell me everything, dear, and I always understand.”
Tom choked and reached out hastily for a glass of water.
“It’s not about that young Frost girl, surely?”
“Of course not,” Tom said in an injured tone.
Mary sighed. She would have liked to believe the best, but it was so often wrong that she was compelled to believe the worst.
“Has she been forcing her attentions on you, Tom, dear?”
“No,” he said, with some truth.
“Oh dear! Tom, you’re not feeling — weak again, are you?”
“Why don’t you eat your lunch and not bother about me?” Tom speared a lettuce leaf viciously. “I’ve got a stomachache.”
Mary sighed again. How much better it would be for everyone if he really had a stomachache. But no, the trouble was spiritual.
“Tom, dear, you mustn’t try to deceive me. No matter how black the truth is—”
“It isn’t black,” Tom said loudly. “I haven’t done anything. There’s nothing to tell. I have a stomachache.”
Jennie saved the situation, as she often did, by bringing in the tea. She was apparently in the throes of some tremendous excitement, for her plump cheeks were pink and shining and her glasses had slid down almost to the end of her nose. She was very fond of Mrs. Little, and the relations between them were informal.
“They just had an awful row up at the Frosts’,” she announced with pride.
“It isn’t kind to gossip, Jennie,” Mary said, hoping that Jennie would not take this reprimand too seriously. Jennie didn’t.
“Miss Joan is running away. And she knocked her father down flat on the floor and pulled out handfuls of Susan’s hair. Oh, it must have been wonder — dreadful!” Jennie’s informant, Hattie Brown, frequently sacrificed truth to drama.
Tom turned pea-green. “That’s enough, Jennie.”
“Is Professor Frost seriously injured?” Mary asked in a shocked voice.
“Good gracious, I forgot to ask, Mrs. Little.”
“And Joan is really going away? Has she left yet?”
“She’s going tonight.”
“Thank you, Jennie. You may go now.”
Jennie hurried out, and Mary turned to her husband.
“Is that what is worrying you, Tom?”
“I’m not worried. I have a stomachache.”
“Poor Tom,” Mary said, shaking her head. “You are feeling weak again, aren’t you?”
“Oh hell,” Tom said.
She got up and came around the table to him, and put her hand fondly on his head.
“We’ll fight it together, Tom, as we always do.”
Tom’s face was ghastly. From the kitchen came Jennie’s voice raised in ecstatic song: “In the good old summertime, tra la.”
In her room on the ground floor Joan Frost finished her lunch. She set her tray on the floor outside the door and locked the door. Then she lit a cigarette and once again picked up her father’s diary. Now that she was leaving and had nothing to fear she could read his diary with considerable enjoyment. Later she would burn it, of course, but it was amusing to see how she had made him squirm.
“Joan has been sent home from Bishop Bethune. She is, according to the headmistress’ report, completely intractable. That lady made no definite accusations, but she made it clear that she considers Joan responsible for certain petty thefts that have occurred in the senior dormitory. Rather than be humiliated in this fashion I would increase her pocket money (already twice as much as Susan’s) but this would appear to be superficial treatment at best. Susan is uncommonly pleased at Joan’s return. The air bristles with righteous reproach.”
“Milksop,” Joan said absently, and flicked over the pages.
“Joan has just brought me the news of her engagement to Ralph Bonner. Although she has an emerald ring to substantiate her statement, I shall shelve it temporarily. Miss Bonner’s opinion of Joan is so low — and I have heard it so often — that I am forced to believe Joan’s fabrications are becoming more ambitious. Faced with the choice of Joan or death, Emily would, I fancy, choose the more innocuous.”
“What the hell does he mean by that?” Joan said.
“Susan managed to convey to me, with extreme reluctance, of course, the information that Joan is casting a predatory eye on that most unattractive fellow, Tom Little. She seemed disappointed that I did not immediately challenge the fellow to a duel. But I have two reasons for my isolationist policy in this affair: my efforts would be ineffectual, and I feel that to Mary Little forgiveness is the breath of life.”
“Is it?” Joan said softly. “Is it really?”
She closed the book and hid it beneath a pile of dresses in her suitcase. Then she went over to the mirror and examined her face intently, as if it were the face of a stranger. She was still at the mirror when Ralph came.
He knocked timidly at her door. Ralph was always a little frightened of Joan, and he knew from the sound of her voice over the telephone that she was going to be unpleasant.
She unlocked the door and he went in, a tall, handsome young man with a slightly vacant expression as if he were bewildered by everything that happened to him. All his efforts to help himself had been thwarted: Wang chose his clothes and dressed him, and Emily did his thinking and provided pocket money. Joan Frost was his first close contact with the world, and in her hands he was a baby in a blizzard.