” Look at that sailboat,” said Grant Grey.
“Yes,” said Joy contentedly.
The two were sitting on the piazza of the Grey’s summer home, which fronted the beach.
It had not been Grant who had finally called Joy up, but Betty, all thrills and eagerness. She asked Joy to come down for the week-end—“and Grant wants you to come, too!” she added, as if that settled it.
It had.
Sarah was frankly envious, Jerry rejoiced, at her invitation.
“You’ll get some rest,” said Jerry; “you never do here.”
“I wishwecould get away,” Sarah grumbled; “I get so sick of summer in the city.”
“Why don’t you go somewhere for a few weeks?”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders, and knocked the ashes off her cigarette. “No funds, as the banks tell me constantly. I have to stick around town and do a little work once in awhile.”
“Work!”
Jerry laughed. “It’s time I took in washing on the side again. I am not a young lady of independent means.”
Sarah gave forth a groan. “Oh, dear, Jerry, are you going to start again?”
“Must, my lady, the situation spells must, if I am to continue to buy our delicatessen breakfasts. At times, food seems scarcely worth while to me.”
“It seems to me,” said Joy, “that we are pretty extravagant for people having no visible income.”
“How?” demanded Sarah. “We hardly ever buy any meals except breakfasts——”
“But look at the stuff we drink and pass around—so far as I can see, keeping the cellarette filled is as expensive as running a free bar——”
“Little one,” Jerry drawled, “our cellarette is endowed. Some day when I have a lot of time I’ll take you around to the wine closet and tell you the names of who has contributed to which. To send a case of spirits to a young lady was ever a delicate mark of attention. We had a wonderful collection this spring, and before the first of July—don’t you remember the cases and cases of supplies that were pouring in around then? We have to go easy on those Prohibition allotments, though. The donors collect on them every once in so often.”
Joy realized that she was learning something new every day. She travelled down to the Grey’s in a rather sombre frame of mind. Her father had returned home and she had just escaped his descending upon her on the way by business necessity which had made him haste on through and write her, wishing her to return as soon as she could. She had written him that she was at a critical period in voice-placing and did not want to leave her teacher just now, especially when she was so lucky as to have him in Boston during the summer. It was true, she was going through a critical period in voice placing. In spite of her irregular hours, under Pa Graham’s magical touch and through the scales she practised regularly, her voice was coming forth in a way that now bewildered her, now filled her with an exultant sense of power. But the moments of exultation were few and far between. It was baffling to let loose one pure, golden note, and while yet tingling from the joy of it, to follow it with half a dozen that were edgy, or swallowed, or had a thread in them—there seemed to be no end to the variety of ways one could defeat tone production. She had just achieved sufficient grasp in the art of singing to know how little she knew, and instead of discouraging her as it might have at first, she was lured on and stimulated to further endeavour. She was right not to leave Pa,—but she knew that was not the real reason she had signified her wish to remain in Boston. Was it this boy—this boy whom she had seen only once? She ought to know by this time how transient her fancies were. But this was so different from her other affair. She knew more about men now.
Betty met her at the station in a little runabout, and had driven away the flurry in Joy’s brain with her eager chatter. Grant had been intending to come to the station, too, she informed her; but at the last minute Mrs. Grey had found a number of things for him to do. Grant humoured mother a lot. Betty didn’t believe in it; encourage mothers too much, and they’ll expect everything of you.
It had been a shock to meet Mrs. Grey. She was the woman who surveyed Joy so critically the night of the dance. A tall, large woman, with independent demeanor, marcelled white hair and snapping eyes still almost as blue as Grant’s. She was gracious, but far from cordial. Very little appeared to escape the scrutiny of those eyes, and she made Joy feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Joy remembered what Packy had said: “Mother’s the Gorgon of the beach;” she decided that Packy had great descriptive powers. Mrs. Grey inspired the “what-have-I-done-anyway” feeling in one. Mr. Grey was only a shade more approachable. He seemed to consider Joy Betty’s age, to be talked to as such at convenient moments, and ignored as such most of the time.
Immediately upon arriving, Joy had had to dress for dinner, which was an absurdly formal meal for a beach house, and then after dinner the whole family had gone for a moonlight sail. She had no moment alone with Grant, and both were silent most of the evening, acutely conscious of each other’s presence, while Betty chattered and Mr. and Mrs. Grey admired the light effects of the moon on the water, and spoke of art and science and other impersonally interesting subjects to which none of the three young people listened.
Betty came in while Joy was undressing, her eyes dancing with excitement. “Joy—mother thinks Grant’s crazy about you—I heard her tell father. Do you think so? It would be so screaming! He never gets that way!”
“I think so? Why, Betty——”
“Well—can’t you always tell when a man’s crazy about you? I can!”
Joy laughed hysterically. “Maybe I haven’t had as much experience as you, Betty,” she suggested.
After Betty had gone, something happened that terrified her. For no concrete reason she burst into tears, and the more she cried, the more hysterical she became at the thought that she was crying with no apparent reason. Of course, she was very much excited. And her nerves were pretty raw, and she had not had the usual “prescription” with which to deaden them. But it couldn’t be because she had no recourse to alcohol that she felt this way. That was the way only awful people got, and after they had been drinking for years and years and years! She finally fell into a tear-tinted slumber, from which she awoke barely in time for breakfast.
And now she and Grant found themselves miraculously left alone. Betty had gone to play tennis with some friends, and to Joy’s stupefaction, Mr. and Mrs. Grey had motored up to town together. And so the two sat on the piazza, still wrapped in an anticipatory silence.
They watched the sailboat out of sight, then Grant turned to her. “I say—let’s get away from everything. Let’s take the roadster and some lunch and go way off into the country—will you?”
There are few perfect days in life that stand out golden, untarnished, with no flaws or worrisome little details to bar the way of loving memory; but that Saturday was one for Joy. As they rode far into the country, past orchards and immaculate white New England farmhouses, the hours seemed to be resting motionless, while they talked aimlessly and with long, happy silences, shyly sitting as near together as they dared. Time, as well as everything else, had gone away and left them alone.
They ate beside a pebble-hindered brook, with tall trees gossiping above them. There were not even mosquitoes to hum their way through the rainbow haze in which the two were lingering. A large and elaborate repast had been put up for them, but Joy could not eat. He, too, seemed to find difficulty in raising any enthusiasm over the luncheon, and looked at her instead. Finally they gravely repacked the almost unimpaired repast, then looked at each other over the basket. Because they were young and American, they laughed.
“It’s too hot to eat now,” said Grant, recovering hastily; “we’ll take out the basket again later, when we get hungry.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” said Joy, with dancing eyes.
It was so peaceful by the brook; she had not realised how the hectic life in the apartment had been wearing upon her. She closed her eyes with a little shiver of ecstasy. “Let’s stay here a little while,” she said. “It’s nice under the trees.”
“I was just going to suggest that,” said Grant. “We think the same in almost everything, don’t we?”
How many millions of lovers have “thought the same”—lovers are distanced in tastes, likes and dislikes, ideas and ideals, as the poles are distanced one from the other!
“Yes,” said Joy dreamily. By now they had passed into the “you and I” stage. They drifted into what they thought was a discussion of modern education; but he was telling her about his years at Harvard. He had just graduated; Packy’s class.
“But Packy and I never ran together much,” he said. “Packy is a natural-born fusser; I’ve always been more or less of a woman-hater.”
“They say woman-haters are really the most romantic,” said Joy lightly.
“Well, they usually have the highest ideals; that’s what makes ’em dislike most women. I had almost impossibly high ideals; so high that I was getting afraid I’d never meet her.”
Silence. A twig fell from a tree, and the two started.
“I said,” said Grant, looking up at a patch of sky through the branches while Joy plucked a blade of grass into tiny bits; “I said—Iwasgetting afraid I’d never meet her.”
A throbbing stillness in the woods; then Joy spoke breathlessly. “So—was I,” she said.
A blue-jay shrieked discordantly from near by, and with a hitch, they resumed more general subjects. Somehow, when one talks about ideals, one always gets personal.
“Girls nowadays don’t encourage men to look up to them,” said Grant. “There isn’t the respect there used to be—and the girls don’t seem to miss it.”
“Some girls miss it,” said Joy; “but what can they do about it? If they object, and try to bring back past conditions, they are labelled old-fashioned, slow, stiff,—and let alone. Respect and what men consider a good time can no longer be combined.”
“That’s the girls’ side, I suppose. But a man’s position is hard, too. No man wants to fall in love with a girl who is unattractive to other men. Probably you would call that sheep-like, but it’s something we can’t help. And the popular girls nowadays, the girls that men run after, are spoiled by that very quality that makes them popular. Betty says I’m awfully stuffy—but most of them seem to me hard—flippant—and—well, unreserved. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Joy, amazed at his putting into words the half-formed thoughts that had been sifting through her brain ever since she had begun to observe boys and girls together, which had been at an early age, as with most small-town girls.
“It seems,” Grant went on, “it seems almost as if girls were trying to break down every difference that exists between them and men—smoking and drinking are only two examples——”
She winced. Vaguely conscious of her unrest, he turned to her with an impulsive gesture. “The only reason I’m saying all this is because it’s so wonderful to find a girl likeyounowadays——”
“Oh, I don’t think things are as bad as all that!” she said. He sensed her withdrawal, and they left the Modern Girl to return to Modern Education.
They started back when the sun began to gleam redly through the trees. The way seemed shorter than coming, and they talked more, whirling through a world of fiery golden sun. Before they had even thought of opening the luncheon basket, they were back at the beach house where Betty with an accusing face awaited them on the piazza.
“We’re back,” said Joy. The sun had gone, and everything seemed suddenly grey and flat.
Betty came dashing down to them. “Do you call this nice, to go off and leave me for a whole day?” she demanded, pouting. “Lucky mother and father haven’t got back yet. And now you’ll have to hurry like everything to get ready for the dance!”
They realized that she was in evening dress.
“Oh, yes, there’s a dance to-night,” said Grant intelligently.
“There usually is, Saturday nights at the club house,” Betty retorted with fine sarcasm appreciated by no one but herself. “I’m not going to wait for you two—here comes my man now and there’s a wonderful orchestra!” She waved to her “man,” a gentleman about town, possibly all of seventeen, who was boiling up the driveway in a racer, and ran off to meet him.
Joy and Grant looked at each other. “I had forgotten all about the dance,” said Grant.
“Let’s not go!” It was Joy who spoke impulsively. “I—I dance so much up in town—and it’s so beautiful just here, by the sea——”
But the golden day had faded, the perfect moment passed. “We ought to go,” Grant considered. “Mother would think Betty and I weren’t entertaining you very well. Besides, there are some duty dances I’ve got to work off, that mother’s been after me about for a long time.”
Joy bowed her head. What was this feeling of impending distress—it must be only that the sun had set!
“We’ll get dressed,” said Grant, “and then we can decide whether it’s too late to go or not.” He met her eyes with a twinkle in his. “I dress—very slowly!”
“I’ve torn my evening gown—and it will take me a long time to mend it!” Joy returned with a laugh, and they separated.
Joy dressed as slowly as she dared. Her head was aching—two days now without her prescription. Was that why she felt so depressed? She had brought the same blue evening dress, and when the work was over, even to her anxious eyes she had never shone more gorgeously. The only question was color. Her face was temporarily red from driving in the wind; but she knew it wouldn’t stay, and it would leave her pale and dragged looking, as she had been lately most of the time. Which was preferable; to put on some rouge and run the risk of looking conspicuously painted until the wind-burn died down, or to omit the rouge and face the certainty of looking ghastly later?—She put on some rouge.
When she finally went down, about nine o’clock, Grant was on the piazza. She stood in the doorway and looked at him, as he came towards her. Why couldn’t all boys be like Grant—Grant, with reverence and purity shining in those clear blue eyes——
“I was hoping you’d wear that dress,” he was saying. “It’s the one you wore the first time I ever saw you——”
The first time already seemed impossible ages away.
“That’s why I wore it,” said Joy, in a matter-of-fact tone.
Neither kept the other in doubt by word or look. They looked now—and then, because they were human, they went and ate a fairly good meal from the lunch basket. Now there was no excuse for not starting to the dance—but still they lingered.
“I never heard you sing, you know,” said Grant. “Can’t you sing after eating—or will you sing to me before we go?”
They went into the music room, where Joy had already sounded out the piano. “Singing right after a meal gives me an excuse for not doing it well,” she smiled, but her fingers trembled as she played a few chords. What if he shouldn’t like it? That would be something she could not bear. Unconsciously music was already a part of herself. It would be so hard to sing to him—the hardest singing she had ever done! “I’ll sing a song called ‘The Unrealized Ideal,’” she said.
To most singers it is a handicap to play for themselves, but for Joy, to whom playing was as natural and spontaneous as breathing, it was only an added delight. She could almost hear her heart trembling as she modulated into the song.
The accompaniment stole out—a sound as of little bells chiming from far away—and then Joy’s voice, muted and shaky, but all the more poignant for that reason——
“My only love is always nearIn country or in townIt seems that he must feel, must hearThe rustle of my gown.“I foot it after him, so youngMy locks are tied in haste—And one is o’er my shoulder flungAnd hangs below my waist.“He runs before me in the meadsAnd down the world-worn trackHe leads me on—but as he leadsHe never glances back.“Yet still his voice is in my dreamsTo witch me o’er and o’erThat wooing voice! Ah, me—it seemsLess near me than before.”
“My only love is always nearIn country or in townIt seems that he must feel, must hearThe rustle of my gown.“I foot it after him, so youngMy locks are tied in haste—And one is o’er my shoulder flungAnd hangs below my waist.“He runs before me in the meadsAnd down the world-worn trackHe leads me on—but as he leadsHe never glances back.“Yet still his voice is in my dreamsTo witch me o’er and o’erThat wooing voice! Ah, me—it seemsLess near me than before.”
“My only love is always near
In country or in town
It seems that he must feel, must hear
The rustle of my gown.
“I foot it after him, so young
My locks are tied in haste—
And one is o’er my shoulder flung
And hangs below my waist.
“He runs before me in the meads
And down the world-worn track
He leads me on—but as he leads
He never glances back.
“Yet still his voice is in my dreams
To witch me o’er and o’er
That wooing voice! Ah, me—it seems
Less near me than before.”
A pause—a little wistful interlude of tinkling notes in a minor key.
“Lightly I speed while hope is highAnd youth beguiles the raceI follow—follow still—but IShall never see his face.”
“Lightly I speed while hope is highAnd youth beguiles the raceI follow—follow still—but IShall never see his face.”
“Lightly I speed while hope is high
And youth beguiles the race
I follow—follow still—but I
Shall never see his face.”
Grant had risen and had come over to her, his eyes blazing.
“You have never sung that to Packy, have you? Joy——”
“No—I haven’t ever sung it to anybody.”
“Somehow—I couldn’t have borne it, if you had, Joy——”
A cool voice from the doorway smote in upon their throbbing hearts. “Dear me! Have you two not gone to the dance yet?”
Mrs. Grey came forward into the room, her chill eyes dwelling first on Grant, then upon Joy, lingering on her face where the mixed colours strove for supremacy. “It was a great pity Mr. Grey and I were delayed in town.” She turned to Joy. “So you’re a—singer! I rather thought you—expressed yourself in some way.” Her eyes still rested with emphasis upon Joy’s colour; it was almost as if she wished Grant to follow her gaze and see what she saw. But Grant was not looking at Joy with his mother’s eyes. “What are you going to do with your voice?”
Joy took a deep breath. “I am going to study for opera.” It was the first time she had admitted it, even to herself. Once the statement was out, she contemplated it with delight.
“Oh, indeed. A professional—with all that that entails.” The bleak words fell between Joy and Grant; and although neither dreamed it then, with the rose flush of the vanished day still upon them, they stayed between them.
Almost without words, it was determined that they start at once for the dance. Grant remarked that he and Joy would walk up the beach. A snowbound glance from the blue eyes, and the two left the house, with the understanding that they would meet Mr. and Mrs. Grey over there.
The tide had gone out, leaving long stretches of hard sand. The moon was up, full and round, staring down upon them with friendly curiosity.
“I always used to wonder why people raved so about the moon,” said Grant. A little farther on, and they were out of sight of the house, on a lonely stretch of beach and sky. “Joy, when you sang, I felt—I can’t explain how I felt. It’s wonderful, it’s—you.”
Somehow they came to a pause on the sands looking out on the moon’s arclight reflection on the water.
“I—I once read some of Shelley—in college,” and Grant looked down at her, suddenly scarlet——
“See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the wavelets kiss the seaWhat is all this kissing worthIf thou kiss not me?”
“See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the wavelets kiss the seaWhat is all this kissing worthIf thou kiss not me?”
“See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the wavelets kiss the sea
What is all this kissing worth
If thou kiss not me?”
Almost a gasp in the murmuring ocean air—and then their lips met, brushing shyly, in a frightened thistledown of contact.
“Joy—I worship you.” His trembling whisper in her ear. “I love you—I love you so! Joy——”
This time they clung together, half frightened at the passion that surged to their lips.
And then a long interval without words—until they found themselves sitting on the sand, she with her head on his shoulder, he stroking her hair.
“You have the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen. Everything about you is the most wonderful I’ve ever seen. Your eyes, your voice, your lips—” Another interval. “Joy—I never knew what it was to feel like this. You—you’re the only girl I’ve ever kissed.”
“I didn’t know a man existed, who could say that,” said Joy with a happy laugh which died away on his next words.
“And I didn’t know there were girls like you—until I met you. For I am the first with you—am I not?”
“I’ve been kissed before—once.”
An intake of breath. Then, before she could continue: “Don’t tell me about it, Joy, dear—” a pause to accustom oneself to the unfamiliar “dear”—“don’t tell me about it—I’d rather not hear any more. I’ll make you forget him—just once isn’t much——”
After a month of whiles, they walked slowly up the beach. Their conversation was incoherent, but adequate.
“The dance will be almost over—what does it matter tous—isn’t it all strange and wonderful—your mother will think we were drowned——”
They came into the club house with unmistakably luminous faces. There is something about young love that stands starkly revealed, and they were as patent as if they had been hung with sandwich-man signs.
At times life seems to move in a quick succession of scenes until the scenes begin to seem unreal, and one feels apart from the drama of events, watching impersonally while life plays on with oneself. So Joy felt, as she saw Packy at the far corner of the room, and so she watched with impartial interest as he looked at them, first carelessly, then in swift incredulity, then with a face that grew thunderous, as, hands in pockets, he strode across to where they were about to join the dancers.
“Hello, Joy,” he said shortly. “Doesn’t take you a long time to change running mates, does it?”
“My goodness, look at Packy, entirely surrounded by a frown,” she tossed back at him—how easily Jerry’s line came to one’s lips.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” he demanded, blocking their way as they started again to join the dancers.
Joy remembered a saying of Jerry’s which seemed peculiarly pat at this moment: “A girl never has the right amount of men. If she has few, it’s boring; if she has many, they get in the way and cramp her style.” She laughed. Packy was really a grotesque figure, with his glowering face and childish remarks. “You make me feel like a dancing school, with all this talk of changing partners,” she observed, and turned to Grant. She was amazed at the transformation. Grant’s lips were drawn back over his teeth, his eyes glittering.
“Would you mind stating what business it is of yours, who Joy goes to a dance with?” he asked, in a voice as chill and cold as Mrs. Grey’s herself; a voice with the ring of generations of Boston ancestors behind it.
It was the end of the dance; and Joy now realized, in a sort of detached horror, that they were becoming conspicuous. Grant and Packy were facing each other in the same tense, bristly pose that dogs assume before a pitched battle; faces were turning their way; she could see Mrs. Grey rising, in impotent protest, across the room——
A voice assailed her memory. “Is it really you, Miss Nelson?” Standing close at hand, his eyes upon their little group in grave attention, was a good-looking boy of medium height, with blond, wavy hair that had been plastered back in an attempt to make it look straight—At her look of vague recognition, he stepped nearer, said to Grant and Packy in an undertone: “Couldn’t you talk it over just as well out-doors?” then smiled at Joy, and in a normal, bread-and-butter voice that seemed to have the effect of suddenly bringing everything back to an everyday basis, said: “You don’t remember me, do you? I met you at Prom this spring—my name’s Dalton.”
“Mr. Dalton—of course!” she exclaimed. “I remember you very well—” she stopped, and twinkled. The echo of his blunt lecture seemed for a moment to hang in the air. She turned to introduce him to Grant and Packy; but Packy had gone. The scene was over, and she relaxed.
“I’ll cut in later,” said Jim Dalton, and moved away. The music had started again, the orchestra-leader announcing that this was “the last dance.” In Grant’s arms she floated off to the strains of “I Love You Truly.”
“Hope that fellow who said he’d cut in, will have sense enough not to do it on the last dance,” he growled, clasping her almost fiercely to him.
“If that fellow hadn’t come up just then, I don’t know what might have happened,” Joy suggested.
“Damn Packy! Forgive me, Joy; but don’t you think Packy rates a damn or two? Of all the cake-eating parlour pythons——”
“Your mother was watching us. In fact, she still is. That was an awful scene to make, Grant.”
“Scene! Asking him one question. It was nothing to what I wanted to do. At that, though, he faded away pretty quick. Joy you dance like—like nothing at all.”
“So do you!” she thrilled up at him; and they drifted rapturously past Mrs. Grey, whose eyes, freshly iced, followed them everywhere.
Jim Dalton did not cut in until the very last encore. Grant relinquished Joy, then went revengefully to cut in on Betty, who looked far from delighted to be interrupted in the midst of “I Love You Truly” by abrother.
“I want to thank you for coming up when you did,” Joy said.
“It was nothing; I wanted to see you. How have you been? You look——”
“I look—what?”
“It’s not easy to describe the change. I would hardly have known you if I hadn’t overheard one of those two young men—ah—mentioning your name.”
Joy’s lips twitched. “Do I look like ‘a typical model showing off some undress creation’?” She was as surprised as he at the ease with which she remembered his words. Certainly, being with Jerry sharpened one’s wits.
“No. Of course not. You look older, for one thing—and——”
“And—what?”
“And as if—well, as if you were—unsettled in your mind—looking for something you hadn’t found.”
“Everyone—always is looking for something they haven’t found—don’t you think so?” she countered, watching Grant from the corner of her eye, while her heart beat a painful tattoo of triumph against her side. She had—found what she had always been looking for! Girlhood’s tentative dream was victorious certainty.
“I haven’t asked you how you happened to be around these parts?”
She told him she was studying music in Boston, and living with Jerry. This he received in a silence which became so long that she did not know what thread he was taking up when he finally demanded:
“Did you mean that?”
“Mean what?”
“That you were living with Jerry. Were you serious?” Receiving an affirmative answer, he fell back again into a silence which lasted until Grant cut back at the end of the dance.
They rode home with Betty and her “man,” thus escaping Mrs. Grey, and Joy and Betty went upstairs before Mr. and Mrs. Grey returned. Betty was full of thrills. She confided to Joy that she “had found someone harmonious, even to dancing, at last.” He was her escort of the evening, and they were engaged.
“Engaged!” Joy exclaimed. “You, at your age—you don’t want to be married at sixteen, do you?”
“Of course not!” Betty tossed her head. “My goodness, Joy, I’ve been engaged three times already—being engaged and getting married have got nothing to do with each other!”
Saying which, she departed, leaving Joy undecided whether to laugh or be horrified. Decidedly, there was more to these naïve, sunburned kittens than met the eye of the innocent bystander.
Sunday breakfast at the Greys’ was a late affair, and the table was not fully assembled until eleven. Joy dreaded meeting Mrs. Grey’s scrutiny again; she even shrank from seeing Grant, for in the morning sun she blushed at the memory of things under the white heat of the moon, and longed for another moon with no glaring day intervening; but finally she could not longer postpone it. Mrs. Grey was presiding at the table, immaculate and unruffled as ever, not a hair of her marcel straying from its designated path. She enquired meticulously if Joy had slept well, then talked past Joy on one side and Grant and Betty on the other, to Mr. Grey at the head. Joy and Grant met each other’s eyes for one glowing moment, then devoted their attention to their plates. After all, it was the first real meal they had had since yesterday morning. Conversation flitted its way about as noncommittally as a feather-duster, ignoring the vital corners. It was Mr. Grey who grew expansive after his soft-boiled eggs and toast.
“In my day,” he remarked with a chuckle, “we didn’t choose a club-house dance in which to pick a fight. We chose some vacant lot.”
“We weren’t fighting,” said Grant curtly.
Mrs. Grey allowed her sea blue eyes, cold and sparkling as salt water, to rest on Joy for one pungent moment. The air tingled with omission. She spoke finally, as she rose from the table: “We shall hope to hear you sing later in the day, Miss Nelson.”
A stupid, hot Sunday, composed of working through the Sunday papers, sitting on the piazza talking about weather probabilities, and keeping maids perspiring to bring cooling drinks. Grant and Joy had no excuse to slip away, with the events of the day before stalking in the minds if not the words of the Greys, and the stubborn fact that Joy was nominally Betty’s guest. Betty remarked that it was a pity church attendance had gone out of style; it did fill in part of Sunday, anyway. She had suggested golf, which Joy did not play, and tennis, which Joy had expressed a willingness to watch; and everyone had unanimously declared that it was too hot to go down on the beach in the blaze of the sun. Motoring was voted down, since on Sunday “there was such a fearful rabble in the road,” and the day groaned away in an agony of repressions for Grant and Joy.
Towards evening, as it grew cooler, some callers arrived, and Betty pointed out that now was the time for Joy to sing. So Joy sang—not the “Unrealized Ideal” this time, but some little French songs which evoked polite murmurs of appreciation from the guests who were of the type that know nothing about music and care less, but know that it is the thing to appreciate it. And then Betty, rolling her eyes in a manner she considered romantic, requested “Last Night.”
The room with its conventional puppets of listeners faded away; Joy was only conscious of one intent brown face. What if all day they had been and still were hedged about by tiresome details; she could speak to him if there were thousands listening. Oh, to make love with one’s voice:
“I think of you in the daytimeI dream of you by nightI wake and would you were here, loveAnd tears are blinding my sight.I hear a low breath in the lime-treeThe wind is floating throughAnd oh, the night, my darling,Is sighing, sighing for you, for you.”
“I think of you in the daytimeI dream of you by nightI wake and would you were here, loveAnd tears are blinding my sight.I hear a low breath in the lime-treeThe wind is floating throughAnd oh, the night, my darling,Is sighing, sighing for you, for you.”
“I think of you in the daytime
I dream of you by night
I wake and would you were here, love
And tears are blinding my sight.
I hear a low breath in the lime-tree
The wind is floating through
And oh, the night, my darling,
Is sighing, sighing for you, for you.”
Her emotion was mastering her, so that her voice came forth in bursts of gorgeous tone or died away in a tremulous whisper; but it carried a quality that made her listeners look uncomfortable, as conventional people tend to do when they feel that their emotions are being aroused in a public place.
She ended, and there was a small moment of recapitulation before the polite murmurs started again. She left the piano and crossed to Grant—veiled under the general chatter, it was the first moment they had to speak to each other.
“I sang to you,” she said; and the Chinese masks which they had both been assuming all day, made easier by the breath-taking weather and the environment, fell away from them as they looked at each other.
“You must always sing to me, Joy—your singing’s you—and I can’t bear to have anyone else even get a part of you.”
She smiled up at him, seeing only the worship of the idea. The callers stayed to a “simple” Sunday supper of three courses and “on the sides,” then left the Grey family to settle down to a repletely quiet Sunday evening. Not so Betty; she announced that “Mr. Cortland” was coming to take her riding, and Joy and Grant could come along too. Mrs. Grey made a few quiet remarks about the ordinary people who rode Sunday evenings, but “Mr. Cortland,” Betty’s newly-acquired fiancé, arrived about that time, and the four set off without even a pretense of asking Mr. and Mrs. Grey to accompany them. They went in “Mr. Cortland’s” racer, which necessitated three-in-one seat and one-on-the-floor, always a piquant combination.
“No use taking a larger car,” said the fiancé, in a bored-man-of-the-world tone: “everyone would scrap as to who wouldn’t drive, and I’d have to, and I can’t drive with one arm—I can only stop.”
“Oh, Nick, you do tear off the worst line,” trilled Betty. “Come on—take the Jerusalem road—of course we’ll go to Nantasket. I want to ride in the roller-coasters!”
Grant turned and looked up at Betty. “You’re not going to Nantasket to-night,” he said. “I suppose you want to ride the merry-go-round too, and dance in the Palm Garden! Where do you get your lowbrow tastes?”
Betty played a tune on Nick’s shoulder. “Drive straight to the border,” she told him in a sepulchral voice, then to Grant: “Stuffy old thing! I’ve been cooped in all day till I couldscream—, thank goodness, we can forget it’s Sunday at Paragon Park!”
What was there about visiting an amusement park on Sunday to call forth such dignity from Grant? It was almost like his mother might have spoken—Joy anxiously intervened before the brother-and-sister controversy became too distressing: “It’s Mr. Cortland’s car, so we can’t help where they go;—but we can sit and wait for them.”
So they sat in the car outside Paragon Park, while Betty went in to try her fiancé’s endurance on the roller-coaster and in eating pop-corn. The time raced by as swiftly as their heart-beats; they had a whole day to catch up with, Grant said. “Our whole lives, too, Grant,” Joy whispered against his lips.
“To think that we never knew each other—before!”
“But—loving this way is much more beautiful! If we had known each other always—love would have made no more impression than a—a candle lighted in a room blazing with electricity. But what a difference—when the candle is lit in the darkness!”
“Joy, how can you say such wonderful things? You say them all—everything that I can only feel, you say—or sing! How can a girl like you ever be satisfied with me?”
“Don’t, Grant—that’s blasphemy! Or something!”
“I can’t bear to think of you going away to-morrow. We’ve seen each other so little. I’ll be coming up to Boston every day, though.”
“Every day!—Every single day? Could—could we honestly keep that up?”
“Silly girl. . . . Now you make me feel almost up to your level. Do you realize how much we’ll have to see of each other before we dare spring an engagement on my people?”
“Oh . . . I had forgotten all about . . . people and things,” she mumbled and the exalted rhythm of her heart-beat sagged ever so little. Mrs. Grey had such adequately discouraging eyes. . . .
” Pa,” said Joy, “would you let me sing Louise to-day?—I—feel—just—like it!”
It was nine o’clock of a Monday morning; Joy had ridden up to town on an early train and gone straight to her lesson. She had burst into the studio, cheeks aflame, singing almost before she entered. Her scales had gone well; her tones were carrying more point, and were delivered with a resonance that made the windows vibrate. Pa was looking exhilarated; his old eyes were almost shining.
“We shall make a Louise out of you!” he said now for the first time since that first day. “As well as a tender Mimi and a piteous Butterfly and a heart-torn Gilda! But not yet. There is no use in toying with those airs for quite a while.”
“But I want to show you,” said Joy. “Please let me, Pa—I may never be in Louise’s mood again!”
Pa threw up his hands and the accompanist played the two opening measures. Joy abandoned herself to the ecstasy of the song . . . so recently—she had been there herself. When the last blissful echo had died away, she threw back her head and looked at Pa in triumph. He looked back at her, and shook his head.
“Of course, you must remember that mood,” he said, “so that some day you may sing it, and set people to dreaming of their first love. But you must be able to take your moods out of your pocket, and hold them in your hand. Do you see, my dear? If you give yourself up to the mood, it gets out of hand—When one is thrilled oneself, one is rarely thrilling one’s audience. Mind! Mind over all—or the result is artistic chaos.”
“I don’t want to sing so that people will think of my mind—” Joy objected, rebellious. “No; but you must have yourself under control or you cannot control your audience. Be blissful, or passionate, or dreaming; but plan it out first; don’t rely upon the moment’s mood for spurts of inspiration.”
She left the studio, her spirits more dashed than a newly-engaged girl’s should have been over such a matter. The singer’s road was so long, so hard—so nerve-racking—She whiled away the trolley journey to the apartment in finding adjectives, none of which were sufficiently comprehensive. Yet, remembering the way her scales had soared—and the windows vibrated—the exultant sense of power that had been hers—the voices within her were more contented lately, she liked to fancy—Yes, music drew one on even while one despaired.
The apartment seemed changed. Had Jerry been house-cleaning in her absence? There was more furniture in the hall than usual, furniture that belonged in the reception room; and everything shone as if it had been newly scrubbed. Ordinarily, while the apartment was not really untidy, it bore an air of very light housekeeping. Joy poked her head inside the reception room, and dropped the suitcase at what she saw.
A strange woman sitting on the comfortable sofa—a woman with very blonde hair and a figure which would have been expansive if given a chance by her potent corsets. An earringed, bejewelled woman, with dark, hard hollows for eyes in a face whose pink and white layers gave her skin an ironed-out look which trembled into telltale wrinkles and creases in the neck. Jerry was standing before her—a changed Jerry in a bright, bizarre gown of some rough green silk which clung to her like a wet bathing-suit—her hair pulled back straight and confined by a ribbon of the same bright silk—jade earrings lilting from her ears. Her face was rouged; her lips a splotch of scarlet. She swayed lithely as Joy stared, spellbound, and was saying, in a silken, rustling voice which reminded Joy oddly of the dress she wore: “I am sure you will enjoy the little frock, Mrs. Bowman. Florence Fay was in Saturday, and I am creating one for her that is very similar.”
Joy felt her jaw dropping, and closed it with a click that made Jerry turn swiftly on the toes of the cream-coloured sandals she wore on her bare feet. “Mrs. Bowman” followed her glance, and lifted a jewelled lorgnette to stare at Joy. “One of your models, Madame?” she asked, in a voice as thick and flabby as her eyelids.
Jerry nodded languidly, with a swift, impinging wink at Joy.
“She’s just my colouring—better than the other,” the doughy voice went on. Joy reacted from the blow by staggering back a step and tripping over the suitcase. “I’d like to see her in some negligées—I’m looking for just the right kind and I must say it’s hard to suit me in them.”
“Let me see,” Jerry wafted her hand to her forehead. “You do not wish light colours, I take it.”
“You know I don’t.” The voice became stickily peevish, although the face did not alter its bland, open look. “My figure is impossible in light colors, you know that quite well.”
“Of course you are at your best in dark, which brings out your hair to a vividness,” Jerry murmured. “I have in mind something all made up, which is distinctly your negligée from the first moment one looks at it. But should I even show it to you?” Her hands interrogated, “Florence Fay saw it, and said she was almost sure she would want it for the bedroom scene in ‘Making a Night of It,’ her new fall vehicle.”
“Oh—h, Imustsee it!” Mrs. Bowman appealed, her neck working with emotion. “Imust, Madame Géry!”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders, a quick, theatrical gesture that threw her gown into all sorts of new ripples and cadences. “Well, possibly there is no harm inshowingit to you,” she conceded. “Pardon me for one swift moment—” and she curved out into the hall, gathering Joy after her. “Joy,” she whispered, a goblin grin disturbing her blobby lips, “Joy—do you mind going and putting on that purple negligée Packy and Twink sent, and coming back here to show her how she won’t look? Sorry, but you peeked yourself into this!”
Joy went back to Jerry’s room fighting a wild desire to laugh hysterically and completely. Would there ever be an end to the surprises of this apartment? Sarah was sitting on the bed, hugging a decidedly cross expression. A large, creamy pasteboard box which she had evidently just done up, judging from the papers and string scattered about the room, was lying beside her.
“Will you please tell me,” said Joy, “how long since Jerry has turned modiste?”
“Oh, you’re back,” said Sarah brilliantly. “Have a good time? Is that sunburn or rouge?”
Joy went to the closet for the negligée without replying. “That” was nothing more or less than a hectic flush which had been on her ever since Grant had left her on the train that morning. The ecstatic distress of their first parting had keyed her up to almost fever pitch. Her pulses had been pounding, her blood had mounted to her face, and even the coldwater spray of that singing lesson had not succeeded in bringing her back to normal. Her lips parted now in dramatic recollection, as she slipped into the gorgeous purple brocade of Twink’s settlement. It was beyond belief that there could be such rapture—
“I thought Jerry’d better play that off, too,” said Sarah. “She’s never worn it, and she ought to be able to stick old Mrs. Messy in deep for it.”
Joy snapped the clasp that held the thing together, and went down the hall again. It was a wonderful negligée—it would make even “Mrs. Messy” look like a fresh young twig of a girl. For although not yet a gnarled old bough, one might call her considerable of a branch. How did models walk? She took her cue from Jerry’s modulated ambulations, and swayed into the reception room. “Mrs. Messy’s” lorgnette surveyed her.
“That negligée,” the voice soughed, “is mine. I have to have it. I couldn’t even consider anything else—after seeing it.”
Jerry’s hands fluttered. “But, my dear Mrs. Bowman, Florence Fay——”
“I tell you I must have it! I’ll pay you twice as much as she would!”
“The works of art that I put out,” said Jerry smoothly, “as works of art, contain in their price no relation to material or cost of labour. My years of study and design, of creating lesser works of art—they set the price. Mrs. Bowman, I do not change my values. For you, or for Florence Fay, they remain the same. And since Miss Fay did not absolutely reserve it, I might let you take it—although it is against my custom to disappoint my patrons in a gown they have partially optioned. The negligée is three hundred and fifty dollars, as it now stands.”
Joy’s pose almost disintegrated at this. Although not the type of girl who generally indulges in such remarks, she longed to ask Jerry if that included her too. But Mrs. Bowman showed no sign of shock.
“Have it done up at once, and have the two boxes carried out to my car,” she said in thick satisfaction.
When the door finally closed on Mrs. Bowman and the two boxes which Sarah carried uncordially to the car, Joy turned to Jerry, who was smoking swiftly:
“So this is what you meant, when you said you were going to take in washing on the side!”
Jerry pulled off her green bandeau. “You pinned it on the wall that time—It’s my only regular calling now. I hold these receptions four times a year—in all of the four off-season intervals, when the stores are marking down—the mid-summer sales are on now, you know—and the newly and oozily rich, like our friend Mrs. Bowman, don’t want to demean themselves by going to markdowns—yet want to go right on spending. It gives ’em a thrill to come here to private exhibits of ‘advance models,’ where they get individual attention from a jazzy person who looks like a double life. Isn’t my make-up temperamental?” And she waved her sandals.
“Jerry, I think you’re—wonderful. Were you—were you ever an actress?”
The downward quirk to Jerry’s mouth again. “No. I could have been, couldn’t I?”
Joy was amazed at the depth of her disappointment. She had been cherishing the exciting belief that that was Jerry’s “past,” for so long.
“I like designing and sewing things together,” said Jerry; “it’s the only kind of work Idolike. If I liked it better than having a good time, I’d do it all the year around. As it is, whenever I see a dress of good material marked down because of lack of style, I buy it—the same with remnants of materials. Then from time to time I get an idea on a way to change the dress so it will look like Irene Castle improved on. I cut it all over, probably—drape it on Sal, who does an imitation of Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works while I polish it off. So when the time comes for me to call it a week and I phone announcements to my patrons—telling each of ’em I’m especially callingtheminstead of sending ’em a printed slip—I have quite a little collection of made-over mark-downs to parade. Sal shows ’em off well, too—that girl’s got style—but if she ever was cast on a desert island without a rouge-box and a marcel-iron and a few other little things I’d hate to look at her. Put her in clothes, and she crashes through. An old friend of mine used to say, and it’s true any way you look at it: ‘Without clothes, you can’t get very far.’”
“But how about that purple negligée?”
“That was pure profiteering. I got into the mood of roasting the old marshmallow; the negligée was handy, you dropped in—Say, tell me about the visit. I haven’t half looked at you yet.”
They were in the living room, and Joy without answering went over to the cellarette. With a leap, Jerry was there before her. “Listen here, Joy—you’ve been without it for several days now. Don’t you think it’s a good time to begin to stop?”
“Why? You drink three times as much as I do——”
“I’m hopeless. You’re not. You’ve just started in, and you can stop—easily.”
Joy considered the lights and shadows of the glass in her hand. “I wonder—if it’s really doing me any harm.” She drank it reflectively, while Jerry went back to her seat with a shrug. “I—I cried a long time, the first night down at the seashore. Jerry, do you suppose this had anything to do with it?”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders again. Having made her appeal, she evidently did not intend either to repeat or reinforce it. There was a brief silence between the two, broken by Joy, who suddenly found that she must pour forth the story of the week-end just passed; such glowing wonder could not be bottled up within her. Jerry listened, first smoking at her usual gait, but as the story wore on sitting with a fresh cigarette unlit between her teeth. When Joy’s narration finally came to an end, she bit into the cigarette.
“Well?” said Joy. It was the first time she had ever approached Jerry with a serious matter, the first time men had entered their conversation as anything but incidentals to a good time, and she did not know how a hint of permanency would hit her.
“Well?” Jerry repeated. “What do you want me to say?”
“Say?” Joy’s look of breathless bliss crumbled as a toy balloon under a pin prick. “Why—why, nothing, if you don’t want to. I’m sorry—if I bored you about it. But you see—I owe him to you, in a way. Because I never would have met Packy if I hadn’t come here, and I never would have met him if it hadn’t been for Packy—I didn’t mean to bore you.”
Jerry lit another cigarette. “Look here, Joy, I don’t want to be a thrill-dispeller or anything, but I can’t put on a quiver I don’t feel. This thing may turn out all right, but at present quoting it sounds to me like a bad case of beach and moon. The whole thing has dusted along with that summer swiftness we all read about.”
“Oh, we realize it’s been swift,” said Joy, “and just to test ourselves, we’re not going to see each other until Wednesday, when I am going to meet him at the Copley for dinner.”
“Wednesday,” Joy murmured. “And to-day’s Monday. Oh, well, absence at this stage of the game only makes you keener—you should have stayed down there a week!”
“Bon soir—a week down there! I couldn’t stand that—not with his mother!”
“I gather from what you said that his mother is a riot. Is he anything like her?”
“Of course not—” Joy began indignantly, but the rise of recollection checked denial. Grant ossifying at the idea of Paragon Park on Sunday. . . . But anyone might do that. She rose, gathering conviction about her as a Shakespearean actor whips his cloak about him before an exit on a sounding phrase. “I can’t talk about it any more, Jerry. But when you know, you know.”
And so for a day or two, things remained as static as unexploded dynamite. Joy received a letter over which she wept ecstatic tears; Jerry shrugged her shoulders at both the tears and the ecstasy.
On Wednesday evening, Joy came to her for inspection, sheathed in defiance. “Do I look all right?”
Jerry was doing up a “little model” in one of her long cream paste-board boxes. She snapped the string around and tied it without replying. Then she said: “For the love of mud put on a veil or something to take the edge off those eyes. It isn’t fair to hit a place like the Copley looking like you do.”
“One should never wear a veil after six in the evening,” Joy retorted. “So I evenlookas if I were in love, do I?”
“You look—something,” said Jerry. “I haven’t got time to decide what—Bring him back afterwards; Sal and I are going down to Sonntaug with Baldy and his gang, so you’ll have it all to yourself.”
Joy thought, as she trolleyed to the door of the Copley, that Jerry was peculiarly unresponsive about the wonderful turn things had taken. The two days’ separation had made her nervous, and Jerry’s attitude did not tend to make her less so. But she forgot her nervousness in the warm tide of anticipation sweeping over her that she had not dared to allow before.
In coming through the swinging doors, the first person she saw was Jim Dalton, in the act of checking his hat. His recognition was as swift as hers, and he came forward to meet her. “I was just thinking about you,” he said without background. “I was wondering whereabouts Jerry’s apartment was, because I wanted to look you up.”
“How long are you going to be in town?” she asked perfunctorily, as they moved up the “Peacock Alley” of Boston, the long narrow way of chairs and sofas facing each other, with a few stuffy people seated thereon, all glaring at one another.
“I’m working here now, so I expect to be here right along. May I come and see you?”
“I don’t know.” She could not tell him about Grant—But what other excuse was there?” “I—I really don’t know—you see, I’m so awfully busy all the time.”
She had forgotten how keen his eyes were. They were now boring into hers until she cast hers down. “I am coming up sometime, if I may,” he said, “and if I can’t see you, I’ll see Jerry, and talk about you with her.”
They had come to a halt by an empty sofa, and now, as Joy looked at him in a hope that if she looked long enough she could think of something to say, Grant came swiftly up to them from the lobby.
“Good evening, Joy,” he said quietly.
“Oh—Grant—have you met Mr. Dalton—” There was no particular reason for being confused, and showing it, but she was and did. Grant’s demeanor, while not rude, bordered on the glacial as he bowed, then stood waiting for Jim to go. Jim looked from one to the other, a swift, earnest look.
“I’ll see you again, Miss Nelson,” he said, and with a negligent nod to Grant, was gone.
The two went into the dining room in silence. It was only after they had ordered, that Grant spoke.
“Who is that fellow, Joy—where did you meet him and what did he mean when he said he’d see you again?”
Joy put down the roll she had been fingering. In the first keen disappointment over the flatness of their meeting, his words bit like acid. “I met him at a Prom this spring,” she said, striving to keep a pleasant and normal tone. “The only other time I have seen him was at the dance last week. I ran into him by accident here. That is all.”
The waiter brought their first course, and Grant began to talk of impersonal matters. Why, oh, why, had they chosen such a place as this for their first meeting? Joy thought. He had not once looked at her—the way he had always looked at her, before.
When the waiter had taken their plates away, they met each other’s eyes steadily for almost the first time that evening, and Grant’s face softened. “You look rather tired to-night, Joy darling,” he said. “Whatever on earth have you been doing to yourself? You work too hard on your singing.”
“Oh, no, Grant—I’ve been neglecting it really—I’ll have to work much harder to get it where I want it——”
“You sing well enough for me already—and after you belong to me, you’ll not have to peg away at it any more.” He attacked his salad; the subject was closed as far as he was concerned.
She was gazing at him wide-eyed. “You mean you wouldn’t want me to—oh, of course—you—wouldn’t.” She moved her fork in and about her salad aimlessly. Her mother had forgotten her voice—when she had met the man she loved. She had forgotten it, in the rapture ofbelongingto him—that phrase had such an unpleasant sound. And the generations before her mother had forgotten their voices for those they loved. She was the result; and all the repression of generations lay within her—simmering. She gave Grant a sudden alive, direct glance. This was the man she loved and she had not forgotten her voice. How could this be? He must teach her—teach her to forget—and not make her so vaguely unhappy over such immaterialities as Jim Dalton.
“Hi, Joy! Cheerio, old dear!” She jerked her head up from contemplation of nothing to see Davy Carter and Wigs Smith, Jerry’s and Sarah’s most competent playmates, with some other youths, hailing her boisterously while passing to a table close by. She managed a smile from her abstraction, and fell to pushing her fork about again.
“You seem to have an unlimited supply of casual young men acquaintances,” came from across the table in a voice that weirdly reminded Joy of Mrs. Grey’s chill blue eyes.
“Grant, what a silly attitude to take!” she exploded. “There are nineteen years in which you have not known me. It certainly would be strange if in that time I had met no other men——”
She realized just that fatal fraction of an inch too late, that she had said the wrong thing, and stopped, leaving the appeal in mid air, where it stayed. His face had queerly altered, and the air tingled with silence.
“Let’s go,” he said finally, in an even tone; “that is, if you do not care to eat any more.”
She had eaten practically nothing throughout the dinner; but it was so different from the day when they had both lost their appetites!
As they came through the dining room, Joy collided with a showily-dressed woman who was entering with a large, greasy-looking man. There had been sufficient room for them both to pass, but Joy’s mind had been far away. The woman drew back and raised a monocle upon her.
“Oh—it is one of Madame Géry’s models!” rolled out an unforgettably doughy voice. “How fortunate—will you tell Madame Géry, my dear, that I am coming Saturday instead of to-morrow?”
Joy nodded and made her escape, walking swiftly, battling an insane desire to shriek with laughter and startle the inmates of the Copley out of their stodgy repose. Grant kept his silence on ice as they left the hotel and he signaled for a taxi. When he helped her into the machine that finally drew up, Joy burst forth with the hysterical giggles she had been fighting.
“Will you please stop laughing long enough to tell me your address?” Grant asked, in the same tone with which he told the driver where to go, when she gasped out the number. What nonsense—Grant knew her address. Everything was getting to be nonsense—
They rode for some minutes with no sound but Joy’s laughter. Grant spoke at last. “Did I hear right? Did that—that woman say you were—a model? Is that true, Joy?”
“No—yes,—that is,—well, I was once in a manner of speaking—” She went off again into what sounded like perfect carillons of laughter.
“Joy—can’t you control yourself any better than this—don’t you know how you are hurting me?”
She was suddenly quiet. “You are hurting me, too, Grant. I don’t know what’s happened—but something has—and everything is so awful that I can’t seem to believe that it used to be so wonderful.” She started to sob in pitiful little hiccoughs. He made no move to comfort her, but stared ahead of him in the taxi.
“You’re right, Joy—something has happened. I saw Packy this week—and he said certain things about you that made me pound the everlasting daylight out of him. Knowing you—and everything that had passed between us—naturally I called him a liar and rammed his words back in his throat.”
Joy had stopped sobbing; her hysterics were shocked out of her. “What did he say about me?” she cried sharply. “What did he say about me?”
“He told me—what kind of girls you were living with and the kind of life you led—from man to man instead of from hand to mouth is the way he put it——”
The numbness of utter bewilderment possessed her. In a choked silence she listened to his voice droning over the rattle of the taxi.
“And then—I come to meet you—and find you talking with a man—who seems to think he knows you pretty well—a man who as good as told Packy and me what to do with ourselves, the other night down at the dance, as if he owned you—and then a bunch of would-be speeds that I happen to know are no living good, hail you as a boon companion—call out to you in a way no girl should be spoken to in a public dining-room——”
“Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to God!” Joy murmured. A nebular recklessness, as if she were moving in a dream, had settled upon her. “Go on—you haven’t reached the part where I became a model!”
“Joy, for God’s sake, don’t make this any worse by being flippant. You must be frank with me for once and tell me what to think. I never asked any questions about you—but now I have the right to know.”
Their taxi came to a scrunching stop in front of the apartment house, and there was an enforced silence while he paid the man and they journeyed up to Jerry’s apartment. In the living-room they faced each other, pale and vibrant.
“You say, ‘be frank with mefor once,’” Joy panted; “I’ve never told you anything about my life, it is true; but that’s only because there wasn’t—time. I’ll tell you the story of my life now—just as fast as I can. But first—oh, Grant—don’t you love me any more—not the smallest bit?”
“I—I don’t know what I love, Joy. Help me—help me to get back to where we were two days ago!”
Standing there, his eyes imploring her, he looked like a pathetic little boy. Joy’s tenderness came back suddenly, with a rush. “Grant, dear—what’s all this about, anyway?” and she took a step toward him.
And then as the gravitation of two bodies who like to speak of such affairs as of the heart or soul, hung imminent—a breath more, and the questioning would have rested in each other’s arms—Grant stumbled over something on the floor. There was a sound of glass shattering to shivery bits,—and the gravitation shattered. He stooped to reclaim the damage he had chanced to wreak—and straightened up again. They were standing by the sofa. On the floor by the head of the sofa was a bottle, a bottle of unmistakable denomination, surrounded by three friendly looking glasses that gave forth the impression of having lived through much. It was one of those glasses, strayed from its brothers, that Grant had rendered incapable of further service.
There was a busy silence in the room. Joy found herself thinking dryly that it must have been Sarah who had left those there; Jerry would never have been quite so more than careless. Grant slowly turned and looked about him—at the clubroom furnishings—and back down at the bottle with those three evil witches of glasses:
“Joy,” he said, his breath making patchwork of his voice; “tell me what Packy meant—tell me what he meant!”
“I don’t knowwhathe meant!” she cried. “You have to tell me just what he said——It’s true I am living here with two girls who are neither Cabots nor Lowells——”
“That’s—quite—evident.” His eyes were again visiting different pungent details of the room. “And how in the name of all that’s fitting—did you happen to come here?”
She wanted to beat her fists against the air—against the wall that was rising between them. She tried to speak, but the full tide of what she had to say clogged her utterance. “I—why—I can’t explain—at a moment like this! At a moment like this! There’s too much to tell!”
He was moving away from her—moving away down the room. With the sharp needle-prick of incredulity she watched him go.
“Joy”—his voice was a long way off, like the echo of a vanished heart-beat—“I—must—think. I’ve—got—to—think.”
Still incredulous, she stood motionless, watching.
“I’ve got to—think!”
And she was alone in the big living-room.