The Porcelain Mask

CHAPTER I. Joan Sheridan Returns

JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS

One of the village taxis, a sorry, disreputable affair, with noisily clattering fenders, dashed bumpily along the rural highway and turned with precarious suddenness into the driveway, lined on either side by great walnut trees that formed a leafy tunnel to the big house at the far end. It was, despite considerable age, a magnificent house, and it had been modernized with green-striped awnings and sun rooms. The taxi was heavily loaded with luggage. There was one passenger, a girl of twenty-one or two, with an attractive face and expressive dark eyes, now shining with a light of eagerness, as she leaned toward the door of the jouncing vehicle. One slim, gloved hand rested upon the catch.

The little car came to a skidding halt beneath the old-fashioned portico, as the driver jammed the brakes with a suddenness that pitched his fare violently forward, knocking her hat awry. But even this failed to dim her happy, expectant smile; she did not so much as bother to straighten the hat. She had the door open and was out before the driver could double as footman.

"Hope I didn't jar you up, lady, but y' said hurry, an' I fed 'er the gas," he said with a wide grin that revealed two prominently missing teeth. "She's a great li'le car, ain't she, fer goin' on the fifth season?"

The girl nodded and gave him a dollar bill.

"Don't bother about the bags," she told him. "Just leave them anywhere, and I'll have Bates carry them in."

She ran briskly up the brief rise of steps from the driveway to the wide porch that semicircled the house on two sides. The entrance was around the turn; she paused suddenly at sight of the strange young woman who reclined in the couch hammock, asleep. For a moment she stared in surprise, wondering who she was. Women visitors were unusual at Greenacres.

"How beautiful she is!" murmured the girl, letting her eyes linger on the soft, oval face of the sleeper, crowned with bronze hair. "I wonder who she can be?" She softened her step and continued across the porch to the entrance.

Hardly had she entered the reception hall when Bates spied her and came rushing toward her, with that peculiar, shambling gait of his, a broad smile crinkling his thin, leathery face.

"Heaven bless us, it's Miss Joan!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, 'Daddy' Bates!" she cried. "It's so wonderful to get home again! The finest thing about going away is coming back. Only bit over a month, and it's seemed a year!"

Bates was the Gilmore butler, but he had been in the family since the time Joan was a child, and, in this moment of home-coming exuberance, it was only natural that she should use the old affectionate address. Bates, his hands clasped in front of his chest, continued to smile fondly and proudly.

"Well! Well!" he chuckled. "Won't Mrs. Gilmore be happy to see you again, Miss Joan! Surprised, too; she wasn't expecting you until to-morrow."

"The boat docked a day ahead of time," she explained, "and I didn't telegraph. Where is mother?"

"She went upstairs less than half an hour since. Your bags, Miss Joan?"

"Outside, Bates; I told the taxi man to dump them out any old place. Take them right up, if you please, Bates; there are some little things I bought on the other side, and I didn't forget you, either."

Bates sobered.

"Your room----" he began, but broke off suddenly, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Joan, in her excitement, did not notice. "Why, of course, my room!" she cried gayly, making for the stairs and taking the steps, two at a time. Bates stared after her, wagging his head sadly, and his thin shoulders moved with a lugubrious sigh.

"Poor Miss Joan!" he murmured. "It's going to be an awful shock to her; I didn't have the heart to tell her. And her room, too!" He shambled out to the porch for the luggage.

Reaching the upper hall, Joan went swiftly to the left wing of the house, where her mother had her private sitting room, bedroom, and bath. With a quick gesture she flung open the door and, arms reaching out eagerly, fairly leaped at the little gray-haired woman who sat by the window, reading.

"Mumsey!"

Before Mrs. Gilmore could get to her feet, the girl had swooped down on her in a cyclone of joy, smothering her with kisses and leaving her almost breathless with hugs.

"I--I didn't expect you until to-morrow, dear," gasped Mrs. Gilmore. "Why didn't you wire and let us meet you at the station? Goodness, child, give me air!"

"Oh, it's so much nicer to surprise people," laughed Joan. "How are you?"

"We've all been well."

Joan sat on the arm of the chair and cuddled her mother close.

"It's so wonderful to be home again," she murmured happily. "It was a wonderful trip, my first sea voyage, and the Sharps were perfectly wonderful to me--all through southern France by motor--but there's no place in all the world like Greenacres. How is Kirk getting along with the new novel? Has he missed his severest critic?"

An anxious, half-frightened look came into Mrs. Gilmore's face. "Kirklan," she answered slowly, an ominous note creeping into her voice, "hasn't been writing much during--during the past three weeks. He couldn't really be expected to, since----"

Joan's fingers tightened about her mother's hand.

"Mother! Something--something has happened to Kirk! Is he ill?"

"No, dear, Kirklan is perfectly well, but he----" Again Mrs. Gilmore's voice came to a halting stop.

"Why don't you tell me? The tone of your voice frightens me. What has happened to Kirk?"

"An author can't be expected to do much writing, Joan, when--when he is on his honeymoon," Mrs. Gilmore finished faintly. She felt the girl's fingers, still resting across her own, tremble and become cold.

Joan's face had turned ghastly pale and there was a stunned dullness in her dark eyes. "His--his honeymoon?" she whispered. "You mean----Oh, you can't mean that Kirk has married?"

Mrs. Gilmore nodded.

"Yes, he married--about ten days after you sailed. It was a surprise--a shock--to all of us. The first we knew of it was when he brought her home with him."

Joan was making an ineffectual attempt to keep her emotions in check, to conceal the evidence that the news had been a terrible blow to her.

"Why--why, I had no idea that Kirk was even interested in any one."

"Neither did any of us. It seems that he fell madly in love with her almost at first sight; they were married, I believe, a week after their first meeting. I can't understand how a man would rush headlong into marriage like that, although she is pretty."

Joan's mind reverted to the beautiful woman she had seen asleep in the porch hammock.

"She--she is here now? Then that--that woman I saw downstairs is Kirk's wife? Kirk's wife?" She laughed unsteadily. "It's so hard for me to believe--coming so suddenly like this. Yes, she is pretty; not only pretty--beautiful."

She walked slowly to the window and stood there, her back to the room, trying to keep her face from her mother's eyes. But Mrs. Gilmore was not deceived; she had known for a long time and had feared that the situation would bring only unhappiness.

Although Joan was Mrs. Gilmore's daughter, she still bore her father's name of Sheridan. Her mother, left a widow, had married Peyton Gilmore, a childhood sweetheart, who had himself been previously married. Peyton Gilmore had been a well-known New York lawyer. Those with long memories may remember that he had dropped dead in a crowded courtroom, during a famous murder trial, while pleading for the life of his client. There was a son, Kirklan Gilmore, only twelve years old at the time of his father's death, and Kirklan's rearing had fallen to his stepmother. The two families, merged into one, had long occupied the picturesque, rural New York estate of Greenacres, without friction or discord.

Joan and Kirklan had always hit it off well together, and when, after a try at law, Kirklan had turned to writing, it was Joan who sympathized the most over his failures and rejoiced the most over his successes. Realizing that Joan's deft touches had helped the tremendous success of his novel, "Rogue's Paradise," Kirklan had given his stepsister a trip abroad.

The silence became so long, so painful that Mrs. Gilmore felt that something had to be said.

"Her name," she murmured, "is Helen--Helen Banton before she married Kirklan."

"Does--does he seem to be--very much in love with her, mother?"

"Very much in love with her," Mrs. Gilmore answered, and Joan winced.

"I--I hope he will be very happy," the latter said with a muffled voice.

Mrs. Gilmore shook her head slowly. "I'm afraid that he won't be, my dear. A pretty face is not sufficient to make a man happy. 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' It's an old saying, but it's true--as most of the old sayings are. Kirklan has made a mistake, a terrible mistake."

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