Spots

A theory of free love meets a man who believes none of it

Joan Rutherford, twenty-three and six months on her own in London, has read her way to the conviction that marriage is a male invention for enslaving women. Gilbert Stanning, indolent and selfish, borrows her vocabulary to ask her to live at his Knightsbridge flat, and she laughs that it will be rather fun. The fun requires lies, to her landlady Mrs. Thomas and to the beloved Aunt Janet. When she bursts in on Gilbert's men friends, his frown shows he is ashamed of the life she calls honest.

CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER…

Laws protect the weak but punish them first

Back home in the country with Uncle John and Aunt Janet, Joan has left Gilbert, who answers with a threat that no man will marry her once he tells. Miss Abercrombie, a self-confessed pioneer, argues that marriage exists to protect the child, and Joan begins to fear she is carrying one. Then seventeen-year-old Bridget, condemned by Aunt Janet's stern morality, drowns herself; Janet can only say the wages of sin is death. Joan faints in the cottage doorway under the steady blue eyes of a stranger, Dick Grant.

CHAPTER V → CHAPTER VII

Relief at losing a child is the confession no one forgives

After an accident in London, Joan wakes in a hospital ward repeating that she has her back against the wall and must fight; her family has turned against her. A mission visitor, Mrs. Westwood, tells her the baby is dead, and Joan gasps that it is a good thing, earning only a sermon on God's unsleeping laws. Privately she admits she never had the courage of her convictions. Meanwhile Mabel Grant marries the wealthy Tom Jarvis to provide for her extravagant mother, over brother Dick's protest.

CHAPTER VIII → CHAPTER XII

Loneliness wears pride down until any escape looks like life

At night school Joan befriends Mr. Simpson, the class laughing-stock, until he falls in love and she must snub him; he asks only for her old notebook. Months of fruitless job-hunting from dreary Shamrock House follow, Aunt Janet never mentions her, and Joan longs for Gilbert's comforts. A man named Landon, who calls her Pierrette, proves not straight. So when chorus girl Fanny Bellairs offers a place on tour, Joan accepts, admitting it means turning her back on a battle.

CHAPTER XIII → CHAPTER XVII

Applause and champagne fill an hour, not a life

Fanny introduces Joan to Daddy Brown, a fat, shrewd manager whose bald danger mark flushes red before every storm. The touring company's first night at Tonbridge begins in chaos, with a lost property box and The Country Girl swapped onto the bill. Fanny, coughing yet alive only when dancing, coaxes Joan through on Brown's champagne, and the soldiers' applause sweeps her up. Brown promises her a special dance, but as the wine wears off the world goes grey again.

CHAPTER XVIII → CHAPTER XX

A man who knows the worst can still choose to love

Dick Grant, now a doctor, has carried Joan's face in his mind for two years and, seeing her dance near his sister's home at Sevenoaks, resolves to marry her. He tells a horrified Mabel he has always known about the child and saw innocence in Joan's eyes. Fanny schemes to leave the pair alone, and on a drive Dick quotes Joan's own creed back to her: courage means making life fine and gay and brave. She cannot believe she still has it.

CHAPTER XXI → CHAPTER XXIV

Love wants marriage, so Joan stages her own disgrace

Joan concludes that her old theories were wrong: loving truly means wanting to belong to the man and bear his children, and marriage was built on that. Believing her past would shadow Dick forever, she uses Landon, met by chance in Hyde Park, inviting him to tea at Montague Square before Dick's appointed hour so his familiarity will drive Dick off. Miss Abercrombie writes that Aunt Janet is dying and longs for her. Mobilization stirs on the Continent as landlady Mrs. Carew fumes about gentlemen callers.

CHAPTER XXV → CHAPTER XXVIII

War strips away pride and leaves only what love demands

Aunt Janet dies the night war is declared, reconciled with Joan, who stays at Wrotham while Uncle John revives as the district's tireless recruiter. Joan prays for Dick's safety at the grave, hearing only that he has joined. Dick spends the black days of Mons examining boys who lie about their age, Fanny pours her love onto every passing soldier, and Tom Jarvis chafes at being too old. Ordered to France with a field hospital, Dick realises he cannot go without seeing Joan.

CHAPTER XXIX → CHAPTER XXXI

Book

To Love

How a young woman's book-learned creed of free love breaks against shame, poverty, and real love on the eve of war.

@spots #romance #edwardian #marriage #war
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