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Page 50
It is not too much to say that he reeled before Joan's smile. It
was so entirely unexpected. He clutched Mr. Peters' steamer trunk
in his emotion. All his resolutions to be cold and distant were
swept away. He had the feeling that in a friendless universe here
was somebody who was fond of him and glad to see him.
A smile of such importance demands analysis, and in this case
repays it; for many things lay behind this smile of Joan
Valentine's on the platform of Market Blandings Station.
In the first place, she had had another of her swift changes of
mood, and had once again tucked away hostility into its corner.
She had thought it over and had come to the conclusion that as
she had no logical grievance against Ashe for anything he had
done to be distant to him was the behavior of a cat. Consequently
she resolved, when they should meet again, to resume her attitude
of good-fellowship. That in itself would have been enough to make
her smile.
There was another reason, however, which had nothing to do with
Ashe. While she had been tucking Aline into the automobile she
met the eye of the driver of that vehicle and had perceived a
curious look in it--a look of amazement and sheer terror. A
moment, later, when Aline called the driver Freddie, she had
understood. No wonder the Honorable Freddie had looked as though
he had seen a ghost.
It would be a relief to the poor fellow when, as he undoubtedly
would do in the course of the drive, he inquired of Aline the
name of her maid and was told that it was Simpson. He would
mutter something about "Reminds me of a girl I used to know," and
would brood on the remarkable way in which Nature produces
doubles. But he had a bad moment, and it was partly at the
recollection of his face that Joan smiled.
A third reason was because the sight of the Honorable Freddie had
reminded her that R. Jones had said he had written her poetry.
That thought, too, had contributed toward the smile which so
dazzled Ashe.
Ashe, not being miraculously intuitive, accepted the easier
explanation that she smiled because she was glad to be in his
company; and this thought, coming on top of his mood of despair
and general dissatisfaction with everything mundane, acted on him
like some powerful chemical.
In every man's life there is generally one moment to which in
later years he can look back and say: "In this moment I fell in
love!" Such a moment came to Ashe now.
Betwixt the stirrup and the ground,
Mercy I asked; mercy I found.
So sings the poet and so it was with Ashe.
In the almost incredibly brief time it took the small but sturdy
porter to roll a milk can across the platform and hump it, with a
clang, against other milk cans similarly treated a moment before,
Ashe fell in love.
The word is so loosely used, to cover a thousand varying shades
of emotion--from the volcanic passion of an Antony for a
Cleopatra to the tepid preference of a grocer's assistant for the
Irish maid at the second house on Main Street, as opposed to the
Norwegian maid at the first house past the post office--the mere
statement that Ashe fell in love is not a sufficient description
of his feelings as he stood grasping Mr. Peters' steamer trunk.
Analysis is required.
From his fourteenth year onward Ashe had been in love many times.
His sensations in the case of Joan were neither the terrific
upheaval that had caused him, in his fifteenth year, to collect
twenty-eight photographs of the heroine of the road company of a
musical comedy which had visited the Hayling Opera House, nor the
milder flame that had caused him, when at college, to give up
smoking for a week and try to read the complete works of Ella
Wheeler Wilcox.
His love was something that lay between these two poles.
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