It was owing to this fortuitous train journey that one night, some weeks later, Mr. Archibald Blair found himself moving in what he considered very high society indeed. In the years when he had peddled papers on the street corners, or padded around with them on thin and sturdy legs of a Sabbath dawn, so that the world might have its news with its coffee and griddle-cakes for breakfast, Archie had amused himself and added to his mastery of his native tongue by reading an occasional account of a Galt House Ball.
"Social Event of the Season Magnificent Affair Given Last Evening To Mark The Début into Society of" etc., etc.
"Social Event of the Season Magnificent Affair Given Last Evening To Mark The Début into Society of" etc., etc.
And here he was himself, part and parcel of a Galt House Ball! It was quite amazing.
Archibald Blair was no snob; but to him, as to many another of the world's workers, "Society" represented a world apart, a sort of fairyland in which creatures of an order far superior to ordinary humans lived and moved and had their lovely being—feminine creatures, of course. About the male of the species he had no illusions. They were merely the same Charlies, Toms, and Georges one knew down town, and with whom one had played baseball or marbles or shinny, transformed by glad rags (the language is Archie's) into temporary black-tailed butterflies. They did not fool him for a moment. When he caught a familiar and surprised eye belonging to one of them, which he did more than once, he grinned and winked. In return, the owner of the eye called out, "Why, hello, Arch!" or, "Glad to see you, Blair!" in very friendly fashion, for Archibald was a popular youth among his acquaintance.
But they did not introduce him to their girls.
Archie was not chagrined. On the rare occasions when he took Miss Emma from the cashier's desk, or Miss Grace, the prettiest office stenographer, to a dance-hall, he was careful himself about whom he introduced to them. Fellows were often well enough with fellows, when they wouldn't do for one's lady-friends. Girls had to be choosy. (Again the language is Archibald's.)
He stood alone on the edge of the whirling throng with a pleased, unconscious smile on his face, watching for the girl he had come to see, wondering if it would be all right if he asked her to dance. In the society he had hitherto frequented—or rather sampled, and found not altogether satisfactory—a fellow danced only with the girl he had taken with him, or perhaps, if it had been arranged beforehand, with the partner of some friend, who in turn danced with his partner. Here things seemed to be done differently. A line of young men hovered on the edge of the dancers, and every now and then one would swoop in amongst them and seize the lady of his choice away from her partner seemingly by main force, a sort of modern Rape of the Sabines.
"Gee!" said Archibald to himself, watching. "Gee! But that takes a nerve."
However, life on the whole does take a nerve, as he had long since discovered.
He had, he supposed, as good a right to try it as the rest. The engraved card of invitation was in his pocket—nobody had taken it from him at the door. His broadcloth tails were as long and as neatly fitting as anybody's—the invitation having arrived at a fortunate time when the order he had landed in Philadelphia made it possible to buy himself a hitherto unnecessary dress suit. It is true that he had used up almost a box of lawn ties before he could get the proper touch to his bow, and even now the result should have proved indubitably that he was not a necktie drummer. He made a mental note to ask his friend Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing at Morehouse's what he could do to keep the blamed thing from riding up on him. Still, his final view of himself in the washstand mirror had not been discouraging.
"Some boy," he had murmured to himself, in the absence of a less partial critic.
So now he tensed the muscles of his jaw, and waited his chance, nervously.
How wonderful they were, these slim, delicate creatures whirling by, with their white arms and backs, their tiny feet slippered in silver and gold, their soft laughter, their eager, luring eyes smiling over the shoulders of the fortunate youths who embraced them! Archibald grew quite dizzy with the scene, and stood at gaze as certain dazzled mariners may have gazed upon the Lorelei, to their undoing.
"This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay dance-hall in town that could touch it.
Other connoisseurs more experienced than Archibald Blair have looked with delight upon a Galt House Ball—and will look no more, alas! Along the broad corridor behind the ballroom picked experts were wont to congregate early in every season to inspect Louisville's latest contribution to the beauty of the race, comparing points and conformation, class, speed, and endurance, as knowingly as such things are later discussed at Churchill Downs. Indeed, Louisville may be said to be, in some matters, a city of experts. The youth who sells you your cigar, the newsie who provides you with an evening edition, should without a moment's hesitation be able to tell you the name of two things on demand: the Derby winner and the season's beauty.
So Archibald was in a measure prepared for what he saw. Anticipations of it had kept him awake at night. His trouble was in the midst of so much loveliness to fix his ravished attention upon the finding of one face.
When he found it at last, however, his eye did not again wander. He was a young man whose head rarely contained more than one idea at a time—a fact which perhaps accounted for his growing success in the selling end of the business.
He let her pass the first time out of sheer pleasure of the sight of her in motion. Joan was wearing, as she usually wore nowadays, an odd shade of blue, very much the color of the orchids at her waist. In the hand on her partner's arm she carried another bouquet, of violets; and the second time she passed she had exchanged this for a third, of pink roses. From which it may be gathered that Louisville was at last waking up to the attractions of our heroine.
Archibald wished suddenly that he had sent her a bouquet himself, but decided that she might have thought it "fresh."
"Unless I was to send it just 'From a Friend'?" he thought, his eye brightening.
She had changed partners on each appearance, as well as bouquets; and the third time she was dancing with a portly gentleman who one-stepped so majestically, so benignly, that their passage down the room was a sort of royal progress.
"Why, the gay old guy!" thought Archibald, surprised; and decided that this was the moment for his grand coup. Girls like that should not have to dance with parties old enough to know better.
He stepped up to the couple as he had seen others do, and slapped Major Darcy on the back, remarking with the excessive nonchalance which is the result of nervousness, "So long, old top! Back to the tall timbers for you."
The Major turned and stared, really uncertain as to whether it could be himself who was thus addressed.
"It's Mr. Blair, Dad," explained Joan hurriedly, "who was so nice to me on the train; don't you remember?"
The Major still stared. But innate hospitality triumphed: and perhaps there was something disarming, too, in the wide-apart front teeth of Mr. Blair, which, as Joan had previously observed, gave him an oddly innocent expression.
"Very well, young top!" he murmured courteously, "I surrender my daughter to your mercies."
The two danced away, Blair holding his prize as if he did not know quite what to do with her now that he had got her.
"For goodness' sake, takeholdof me!" she instructed after a moment. "I feel as if I were about to float out of your grasp. I won't break, you know!"
Archie obediently held her tighter, murmuring, "Pardonme!"
He danced surprisingly well, as if he were really listening to the music, Joan thought. She did not trouble to talk to him, therefore.
"So that was your father," he said after a long and anxious silence. "Why, he's a peach, hopping around like that at his age!"
"Rather more of a pear, don't you think? As to figure?" suggested Joan; for the Major's tendency toembonpointhad increased remarkably since his marriage.
Blair threw back his head and gently roared. He was one of the people who always made Joan feel herself a wit of the first water.
Yet she was a little sorry he had come to-night. She had sent him the card to her début ball by way of repaying an obligation. He had been very thoughtful on the train about getting her fruit and papers—almost too thoughtful; and had insisted, somewhat to Joan's embarrassment, on paying for the two meals they had taken together in the dining-car. She did not care to remain in debt to a stranger; hence the invitation. But she had not, somehow, expected him to take advantage of it.
Since he was here, however, she must do what she could for him. She knew what it was to be a stranger in a gay throng.
"Do you know any girls?" she asked.
"Not to speak to—though I've seen some of the young ladies on the street, of course. This is the first time I've ever been out in Society," he explained simply.
"Yes? I'm a débutante too, you know. And how do you like Society, so far?"
"Fine, fine!" he told her. "Better even than I thought it was. Makes the movie pictures of it look sort of silly."
"You ought to go to the Horse Show next week if you find this sort of thing interesting. I hear it is to be something splendiferous!"
"I will," he assured her, earnestly.
"And now I'd better introduce you to some other people." She shook her head smilingly at a youth who was about to touch him on the shoulder. After all, one owes something to the duties of hospitality. "Though really you don't have tomeetgirls at a thing like this before you ask them to dance. I don't know the names of half the men I dance with."
"You don't?" he repeated incredulously, wondering what Miss Emma or Miss Grace would think of that! He decided not to tell them. "I reckon I'd rather be introduced first though, if you don't mind," he murmured—"I—I wouldn't know just what to call 'em."
Laughing, she stopped with the music, and on an impulse of sheer mischief guided him toward the exclusive young person who had once made her unhappy at the Country Club, one Miss Emily Carmichael. She was not too exclusive, it appeared, to come to the Darcy ball; which she did not seem to be thoroughly enjoying, however.
"Ask her to dance—she needs it," murmured Joansotto voceas they approached.
"Sure thing," replied Archibald; and as soon as Joan had pronounced the formula: "Miss Carmichael, Mr. Blair," he said promptly, "Be pleased to have the pleasure of the next turn, Miss Carmichael."
Joan went off with another partner, chuckling. She felt that scores were even.
Blair's face fell at this desertion. "Oh, but say," he called after her, "can't I dance with you any more?"
"Whenever you like! Just come and tap my partner and carry me off as you did before. But," she added with a parting twinkle, "I don't believe I'd call him 'old top' again!"
Archibald flushed and understood. "All right," he said meekly. "I'll just call him 'Say,' instead."
He tapped her partner with some frequency after that, though not often enough to be annoying; and Joan also noticed amusedly that he danced a great deal with Miss Carmichael, who seemed quite willing. Exclusiveness was evidently in abeyance at a ball.
Sometimes when they passed each other she called out pleasantly, "Having a good time, débutant?" and he answered in the vernacular of the moment, "Fine and dandy!"
She said, during one of their brief turns together, "You seem to be getting on beautifully with that girl I introduced you to."
"Who? Miss Carmichael? She's all to the mustard, isn't she! Asked me to come and eat supper with her to-night."
"She did?" exclaimed Joan, surprised.
"Yes. You see I know her brother—put on gloves with him sometimes at the Y. M. C. A. And it seems he's told her about me," explained Archie.
"Oh!" Joan looked with new interest at his broad shoulders, his straight, supple back. She understood suddenly the lift and spring and untiring ease of his dancing, which was not grace exactly, but something just as good. He was an athlete. She began to feel quite pleased with her protégé. With a little pruning as to speech and general behavior, he would make a rather presentable ballroom adjunct. His manner with women was really nice.
One other besides Joan watched Archie's progress with interest. At the door of the dressing-room Ellen Neal, in her Sunday costume of claret-colored serge with collar and cuffs of homemade Battenberg lace, gazed proudly out upon the scene of her nurseling's triumphs, having been unable to resist Mrs. Darcy's invitation to assist on so memorable an occasion. She had removed countless evening wraps and carriage slippers, assisted deftly, albeit with prim lips, at the powdering of countless backs and bosoms, and now followed with adoring eyes a certain slim blue figure that appeared and disappeared among the dancers.
"Land," she thought. "If her mama could only see her now! The swellest among the swell! And with a dress on her little back that cost that woman a hundred dollars, if it cost a cent. She's got as many partners as any of 'em—and why wouldn't she, then, I'd like to know?"
Archibald had promised to look her up during the evening, but boylike had forgotten the old friend in quest of the new. She forgave him for it, though she would have liked very much to exchange impressions with somebody. Her pride was bursting for utterance.
Presently he came and stood quite near her, with only the width of the corridor between them. His back was turned as he stood looking out over the ballroom floor.
"Sst" called Ellen. "Psst! Mr. Archie!" She dared not leave her post for fear people would come for wraps or powder, and find only a colored woman to wait on them, which would never do. (Ellen continued to regard the colored race as a cross between the monkey and the magpie, with leanings toward the magpie.)
"Psst! Hey there!" she called.
But Archie's mind was far away from Ellen Neal, and he did not hear her. He was anathematizing Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishings at the moment for not having suggested white kid gloves to him. More than once his clumsy bare hand, struggle against it as he might, had come in contact with the delicate bare shoulder of one of his partners; and Archibald felt that if such a catastrophe should occur when he was dancing with Miss Darcy, the earth might just as well open and engulf him permanently. She would never forgive him—and indeed why should she? A man ought to have known by instinct about those reverential gloves.
So he stood frowning out upon the ballroom, heedless of Ellen's hisses; and in this way the old woman happened to be the unnoted witness of a rather curious scene.
Mrs. Darcy came tripping down the corridor alone, for the moment, having been out to inspect preparations for supper. She did not believe in leaving so important a matter as supper entirely to the hands of paid assistants, no matter how well paid. She was resplendent in rose brocade and spangles, her small plump feet encased in cloth-of-gold, a little fishtail train of cloth-of-gold whisking behind her. Her hair positively glittered, it was so golden, and her face was overspread with a rosy bloom that always intrigued her step-daughter because of its unnatural evenness, as if she had not simply rouged, but dipped her face in a permanent elixir of youth that outdid youth itself. Joan had never caught her with her face bare, as it were, even at the most unlikely hours.
Mrs. Darcy paused at sight of a young man standing by himself, gazing out with a wistful frown at the gaiety before him; and her hospitable heart smote her. She tapped his arm with her fan.
"Kind o' lonesome?" she said. "Come on in and dance with me."
He turned with a start. His eyes took her in from top to toe, and suddenly narrowed. "No, thanks," he said curtly. "What areyoudoing here, anyway?"
Effie May drew back. She looked, as Ellen expressed it to herself, "flabbergasted."
"Why! Who do you think I am?"
He continued to stare at her with those narrowed, steady eyes.
"I don't know, and I don't care. It's easy enough to seewhatyou are! You'd better go, hadn't you?" suggested Archibald grimly. "This is a private affair. Invitation only."
By this time the startled lady had recovered her poise. "You're making a mistake, young man," she replied quietly, "This happens to bemyprivate affair. I am Mrs. Darcy."
It was his turn to be flabbergasted.
"Her mother?"
"Miss Darcy's step-mother," said Effie May, with some dignity.
She continued to meet his gaze, which did not lower, though he had gone quite pale.
"The joke's on me," he muttered at last. "It's I who'd better go, I guess. Pardonme!"
She inclined her head without speaking.
He still continued to look at her, as if puzzled. "My mistake," he said again. "If your husband wants me at any time, my name is Blair, Mrs. Darcy—Archibald Blair."
"He won't want you," said Effie May. "Good night."
Ellen Neal, aghast, watched him turn on his heel and leave.
"Land!" she said to herself. "Land sakes! He's gone and done for himself now, the young idjit!"
When she turned again, she saw Mrs. Darcy refreshing herself with a glass of "Dick Fizz" at the punch bowl. She seemed to need it.
But Effie May's amiability was proof even against this trying episode. She said to Joan, the day after the ball, when they were talking things over in unusual intimacy, "By the way, who's the young fellow that danced so much with you last night—a sort of broad, odd chap he was, with ears? I don't think I've seen him before."
"Oh, Mr. Blair," Joan smiled at the description. "He danced with me so much because he didn't know any one else."
"A stranger here? Where does he come from?"
"I don't know—the slums, I fancy. Ask Ellen Neal. He's a pal of hers. But he's a Louisville product, I believe."
Effie May glanced at her casually, "Didn't you like him, dearie?"
"Oh, well enough. Did you?"
"Yes," said the other, "I did. He's honest, and he stands up so straight—doesn't sort of droop over a girl as if his spine was feeble, like some of 'em do. I like a chap to stand up on his own two pins."
"But his ears, Effie May!"
"Oh, well, what's ears? Just means that his mother forgot to tuck 'em into his cap when he was a baby. Now if his eyes bulged out, that would be another thing. You look out for any man with a bulging eye, Joan."
"Very well," she agreed, "I will. What's dangerous about a bulging eye?"
"Stoopidity, girlie. Just plain bone-headedness. And if there's anything in the world more dangerous than that, I don't know it!—Let's ask your eary young man again to something, shall we?"
"I begin to think he'syoureary young man!" smiled Joan.
Sometimes she almost forgot herself and liked her step-mother. There was something so human about the woman....
So it happened that Mr. Blair was delighted and amazed and a little perturbed to receive a few days later a note from Joan Darcy, inviting him to sit on a certain evening in the Darcy box at the impending Horse Show. One of the Darcy guests had failed at the last moment, and Joan had accepted the suggestion that she ask her protégé.
He rushed downstairs to spread the glad tidings to Ellen, who was in turn surprised and a little perturbed. She had not imagined "that woman" so forgiving. But then Ellen was a person who did nothing by halves. Justice to the enemy was not in her creed. Where she hated, she hated.
"Just look at it!" exulted Mr. Blair, exhibiting his note. "She asks for 'the pleasure of my company'! She 'hopes a previous engagement won't prevent'! (It won't.) All in her own hand, mind you!"
"What did you expect—typewriting?" commented Ellen, a little tartly. She was always tart when pleased.
Next arose the question of what to wear. Those people who fancy that this question confines itself to the lighter-minded sex have much to learn. They have not watched a youth of twenty-five—or thirty-five—or sixty-five—trying to ascertain in advance whether long or short tails shall grace a particular occasion. And if there is a more pitiable spectacle than the misery of a man appearing, say, in sack-suit and brown boots, where others of his sex gleam as to bosom and foot-gear, the author has yet to see it. Whereas any woman worth her salt, who happens to be dressed in hat and jacket among much décolletage, can manage to make the other women present feel immodest.
Ellen Neal was of no help to Mr. Blair at this crisis. He consulted once more the oracle, Jakie Florsheimer. Archie had been to the Horse Show before, of course, but merely to see horses. This was a very different matter. Even Mr. Florsheimer admitted himself doubtful.
"You see, it's like this," he said, scratching his curly head. "If you was to go in a sporting way, y' see, I'd say a natty little sack, checked maybe, with one of our $3.99 plaid vests, and a Derby hat. But sitting in one of them boxes with society girls, all dolled up like they are, y' see—honest, I don't know would it be better to wear your swallow-tail or yet a frock with light stripe pants. Search me, Arch! You got me guessing."
Mr. Blair raised the question among his fellow employees without obtaining satisfaction, and at last in his desperation actually tackled the head of the firm, whose name sometimes appeared in the newspapers as among those present.
Thanks to this gentleman's surprised advice, Archibald made a most proper appearance on the night appointed, and this time gloves were not forgotten. Also, during the course of the afternoon, Joan received a mysterious bouquet of roses bearing the legend, "From a Friend."
She chuckled over this quite affectionately. "He's funny," she thought, "but he's really a dear!"
Archibald was very much surprised when she thanked him for the roses, and deeply relieved that she did not seem to think him "fresh."
"How did you guess it was me?" he wondered.
"Well—I haven't so many 'friends' whom it might have been."
"You?"—His incredulity was flattering.
She smiled. "Not many who would not want their generosity known, Mr. Blair. Usually in our world, when people do things for one they like to get full credit for it. They even expect a return in kind!"
Lightly as she spoke, her tone troubled him. Glancing at her furtively, he realized that this was not the little girl he had first seen in haughty tears on the train, and yearned over because she seemed too young to know the meaning of trouble. Now she was infinitely more approachable, but also, somehow, infinitely farther away. If he was not mistaken she had learned very thoroughly the meaning of trouble. There was a listless droop of the lids, a slightly weary inflection of the bright voice, that did not "belong." He remembered her as serious and dreamy. She had become gay and wary. It was a change he did not like.
But he liked Joan. He liked her almost too well. Never did a heart more chivalrous beat beneath a $3.99 waistcoat; and if he had not long ere this become a notable squire of dames, it was simply for lack of the opportunity. Most of the dames he knew seemed so amply able to take care of themselves.
The evening under these conditions became almost as glorious an occasion as the ball had been. True, he saw little of Joan, because other men came and went constantly in the box, and frequently took her away with them to stroll around the ring. Despite Mrs. Darcy's seemingly oblivious amiability, he could not talk to her with any comfort. He had no skill to hide the stiffness with which her presence affected him, and after a few kind-hearted attempts to put him at ease, she left him to the Major entirely. But that suited Archibald very well. He admired the Major tremendously, aside from the fact that he was Joan's father.
"A perfect gentleman," he pronounced him inwardly, taking envious note of his manners, his well-fitting, soft-bosomed shirt, the mellifluous tones of his really beautiful voice.
Major Darcy, always at his best before an admiring audience, produced some of his neatest anecdotes for this appreciative guest, and they presently entered into a learned and congenial discussion of the Horse, expert knowledge of which was part of their mutual birthright. It was a proud young man who later strolled out to the bar for liquid refreshment with Richard Darcy's arm thrust carelessly through his. Archibald had within him great possibilities for hero-worship.
It may have been the liquid refreshment which finally gave him courage to propose to Joan that she stroll with him around the ring, as she had strolled with others. At any rate, he shortly found himself part of that meandering show of débutantes and others, which rivaled, if it did not eclipse, the exhibit on the tanbark. He, Archie Blair, in a high silk topper, escorting a vision in a picture-hat with a plume, and a long gray velvet coat, and silvery furs around her neck, the price of which would almost have bought him an education!
He felt that at any moment a bouncer might discover him, and walk up to murmur sinisterly in his ear, "Out this way!"
But none did. Now and then Joan stopped and introduced him to other visions, who gushed and babbled, asking whether she was going to So-and-so's luncheon, and who was taking her to such-and-such a cotillion, and what she was going to wear to the next costume ball. He noticed that she neither gushed nor babbled in return, but seemed pleasantly aloof, a littledistrait, as if she were an older woman listening to children.
"Business of being a society girl," he commented once, half to himself.
She gave him a smiling glance. "Yes," she said, "it has a lingo like any other trade."
"Butyoudon't speak it."
"I think perhaps it's not my trade."
He asked, greatly daring, "What is, then?"
"I don't know," said Joan, "yet."
Just then a rather dissipated-looking boy with his hat on the back of his head passed them, and paused.
"Oh, Blair!" he said, lifting his hat to Joan.
"Hello, Carmichael!" Archie greeted him.
"My sister told me to tell you you'd better come to our box and apologize. She says you were to take supper with her at some ball or other, and never turned up."
"Oh, gee!" exclaimed Archie, remorsefully, "I forgot it; clean as a whistle!"
"Better come and grovel, then," grinned the other, and passed on.
Joan looked at him in amusement. "Do you mean to say you never took Emily Carmichael out to supper after she had asked you to? What are you going to say to her?"
"That I forgot," said Archie simply. He certainly could not explain that the cause of his forgetfulness was thecontretempsof having requested his hostess under a misapprehension to leave her own entertainment!
Joan chuckled. "Well! I'm certainly glad I didn't ask you to have supper with me!"
"I wouldn't have forgotten that," said Archibald.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. It was said neither shyly not gallantly nor boldly, simply as a statement of fact.
Joan was very tired of flirtation just then. She shied away from any hint of the personal like a burnt child in the vicinity of fire. She had no desire for further victims of her bow and spear; but she did want friends. It occurred to her that this frank, tactless, simple young man might do very well in that capacity.
"Take me right back to our box," she commanded, "and go and make your peace with Miss Carmichael! Don't you know you can't afford to antagonize such a power at court?"
He obeyed meekly. With quite a proprietary interest, she watched his awkward entry into the enemy's country, his introduction to Carmichaelpèreand Carmichaelmère, a lady who looked on life (the Darcys included) through a rather invidious lorgnon. This lorgnon trained itself on Archibald at close range.
"Poor Mr. Blair!" thought Joan.
But a little while later she was surprised to see that her protégé and Mrs. Carmichael had joined the ranks of the strollers and were chatting and laughing together with quite an air of old friendship. He looked up at her as they passed, shyly, and Joan clapped her hands softly to indicate approval.
The last ring of horses was showing when he finally returned.
"Well," Joan rallied him. "I thought you'd gone over to the enemy for good!"
"Judge Carmichael and I were talking over old times when I used to sell him papers," explained Archibald. "I reminded him of a day when he treated me to a pair of shoes because he said my toes sticking out made him feel chilly.... But are they your enemies?"
Joan bit her lip. She did not like her self-consciousness about the Carmichaels. "Really, I don't know," she said indifferently. "They certainly are not my friends."
"I think they'd like to be, though!" remarked the unexpected Archie. "Miss Carmichael said you were the only one of the débutantes who looked worth while, and she asked a lot of questions about you and your father, and said she would have been to see you long ago, except for—" He stopped abruptly. He had almost finished the quotationverbatim.
Joan flushed. "I trust you were able to give her a good account of us!" she remarked haughtily.
Archie answered in all innocence. "I told her Mrs. Darcy was your step-mother."
Despite her annoyance, Joan had to laugh at that. After all it was too absurd, this protégé of hers, this discovery out of the slums, standing sponsor for the Darcy family with the Carmichaels!...
It did not occur to her to invite him to call. She had not as yet plumbed the depths of his social ignorance. He stood down-cast throughout the leave-takings, the remarks of "See you to-morrow," and "One o'clock lunch, did you say?" realizing that this wonderful evening was over, and not daring to hope that such luck would come his way a third time. He looked rather like a big, humble puppy that is about to be shut out of the house at night.
It was Effie May who noticed the resemblance. "Be sure you pay your two party-calls promptly, Mr. Blair," was her parting suggestion. "And if you happen to be at the Horse Show any other night this week, drop in at our box, you know."
"Yes 'm! yes 'm, I certainly will," he replied to both these hints—stiffly, because it was the only way he could manage to speak to this lady. But his ears were quite pink with pleasure.
On Joan's return from Longmeadow she had found her family already beginning to prepare for what was by far the most ambitious effort undertaken by Effie May as yet: her formal début into society. Joan, rather alarmed, protested. She wished nothing so much at the moment as to be allowed to slip into some inconspicuous corner and recover her lost confidence. She was in no mood for a continuation of an empty social career, particularly under the ægis of her father's wife. Other plans were beginning to formulate vaguely in her head, and she wanted leisure to perfect them.
But here for the first time she came into direct contact with the amiable, easy-going, unescapable persistence she had before suspected in her step-mother, and which made her feel as helpless as a caged rabbit; a much indulged and petted rabbit, to be sure, in which it was sheer ingratitude not to love its cage. Effie May used neither argument nor explanation. She simply went her chosen way, and the rest of the household perforce accompanied her.
Joan, herself not unaccustomed to pursuing her own path, did not submit without a struggle. The difficulty was to bring the matter out into the open. Effie May had a habit of taking things for granted that made discussion gratuitous.
"Father," Joan said determinedly one night at dinner, when the two elders were discussing the details of the impending ball, "why do we give a ball, anyway? It's not as if we were under many obligations to people—rather the contrary. And what's the point of entertaining for me in this wholesale way, when I do not wish to be a débutante?"
"Don'twishto be a débutante?" cried the astonished gentleman. "Why, my child, the pollywog might as well decide that it does not wish to be a frog! At a certain age young women of a certain position naturally have to be presented to society. What else is there for them to do?"
"Oh, lots of things," said the girl with impatient vagueness. "They can be teachers or librarians, or—stenographers, or journalists—something useful, you know."
"Never," said the Major with pained emphasis, "while I am alive and able to support her, shall a daughter of mine step out of that station in life to which it has pleased God to call her! No lady of my family has yet, I thank God, been under the necessity of becoming anything 'useful'—Useful! Absurd!"
(Joan had a momentary vision of her frail mother at sewing-machine and housework; the three Misses Darcy struggling to make ends meet by means of paying guests who did not always pay.)
"May I ask," continued her father with a dignity that verged upon acerbity, "the reason for this sudden desire on your part to be 'useful'? It is a desire usually confined, I think, to ladies who have ceased to be ornamental," he added, with a gallant inclination in her direction.
"Oh, Dad, you know what I mean!" she said rather desperately. "I simply want to be independent."
"And where can you be more independent than under your father's roof?" he demanded. "Free to come and go as you choose, free to entertain your friends as you like, to make what purchases you will, to run up accounts at the shops—"
"And without a penny I can call my own!" blurted out Joan.
"As to that," he remarked with a shrug of distaste, "you have merely to come to your father, my child."
"Exactly," said Joan bitterly.
Here Effie May entered the arena, fighting as usual upon the side of her victim. "The girl's right. She ought to have her own allowance—as you were saying only last night, Dickie."
"Was I?'" murmured the Major. "Yes, yes, so I was! An allowance of—How much did I say, my darling?"
"Two hundred dollars a month," prompted his darling. "Do you think you could manage on that, Joan?"
The girl lifted shamed eyes to her step-mother. She could not bear to look at her father, puffing himself out with conscious pride.
"Very well," she said in a low voice. "I'll be a débutante since you wish it—I'll spend the money and wear the clothes you provide, and eat the food you give me—but understand me! I'm only doing it because I have no choice."
She suddenly turned and ran out of the room. The Major stared after her, blankly.
"What's come over the child? She used to be so sweet-tempered and reasonable, grateful for everything. All this nonsense about independence! What does she mean by it, anyway?"
"She simply means she wants a man of her own, like every blessed mother's daughter of us," explained Effie May comfortably, "and that's what I'm trying to help her to, and it makes her sort of ashamed because she's got to be helped. That's all!... Say, old pet—" she seated herself upon his knee, as was her cosy custom when opportunity offered—"who's this chap Nikolai, anyway, that's always writing to her? He gives her some pretty good presents. That piece of aquamarine he sent her when she graduated—it's worth a lot of money. Is he rich?"
"He's a very successful writer, I believe."
"Hmm! Old?Tooold, I mean?"
"For what?"
"Why, for Joan, old duckie."
"Joan?" repeated the Major vaguely. He had for the moment lost interest in his daughter's affairs. The ex-widow Calloway made rather a luscious armful. He roused himself to the required attention, however. "For Joan? Why, good gad! the man's old enough to be her father! He was a friend of Mary's."
"Before she married you?"
"Oh, no, afterwards. She picked him up somewhere when Joan was a baby."
"Oho!" murmured Effie May with an indescribable expression. "I didn't know Mary was the sort to have friends after she was married!" (It is just possible that the bride was rather fed up on the virtues of her predecessor.) But a sudden stiffening of the arms that enfolded her warned her of rocks ahead, and she finished smoothly, "I thought she was too interested in you to know that any one else existed."
"By no means," smiled Richard Darcy, mollified. "On the contrary, she took an interest in many people whom I found tiresome in the extreme. Her lame ducks, I called them. Mr. Nikolai was one of those."
"Why lame?"
"Well, at the time we first knew him it seems the girl he was engaged to had just thrown him over because she found out that he was a Jew."
Effie May gave a little squeal of horror, "A Jew! Well, I don't blame her for shying at the altar! Of all the men I've known in my day, I neverdidgo with any Jew!"
"I confess I have something of the same prejudice myself," admitted the Major, "Jews and the canile.... But Mary was different, somehow. Not democratic exactly—she was one of the most fastidious women I have ever known. But people were simply people to her, particularly if they were in trouble. She and Nikolai became great friends. And of course since then he had grown to be quite a distinguished person, Jew or no Jew."
"I shouldn't have thought you'd have wanted him round the house, though!" mused Effie May, as though Mr. Nikolai's Judaism might have been contagious.
"Oh, well, he was so devoted to the child, and so grateful, and in fact made himself useful in so many ways," explained Richard Darcy with a slight blush, "that I had not the heart to object to his presence. Besides, as he is not robust, and has no progeny of his own, I thought that in time perhaps Joan—You see?"
"I see! Of course Jew money is as good as any money, especially when the Jew's dead." She nodded thoughtfully. "But it puts him out of the question as a husband for Joan."
"My darling, he has never beeninthe question as a husband for Joan! What an idea! Was it so happy in its own little nest that it wants to find nesties for all the other little birdies!" cooed the bridegroom, impatiently drawing her down into his arms again.
"Um-m-m!" responded the bride, yielding without undue reluctance.
And so Joan found them as she came remorsefully downstairs some time later, two mature love-birds perched upon a single twig, as it were, oblivious of time and the grins of passing servants; and she turned away hastily to shut out the horrid sight.
One thing almost reconciled her to the distasteful idea of entering further into the social world under the wing of her step-mother, and that was the gratification, the artless delight, taken by her father's cousins in the idea of assisting at a Galt House Ball, almost in the capacity of hostesses. There was something piteous to the girl, though humiliating, about the three little spinsters' unflagging interest in the amusements of people who had forgotten, if they ever knew of, the Misses Darcys' existence. Despite their long retirement from what they called "the polite world," these ladies were inveterate students of the social column, and constituted in themselves a complete local edition of "Who's Who."
Whenever Joan went to see them—which was rather often nowadays, for her late experience had had the not unusual effect of softening her comprehension, while it hardened her surfaces—they greeted her with eager gossip, such as: "I see the little Jones girl is to be married at last!" or, "The paper doesn't mention your name at the Smiths' cotillion last night.... Surely you were there?"
In their eyes she was evidently a most romantic figure, the embodiment of gaiety and youth and of all they had hoped but somehow failed to be. They exclaimed with quite personal delight over her frocks, her pretty underthings, her dainty shoes, the silver-fox furs Stefan Nikolai had sent her from Siberia.
"You're going to be one of the belles of the winter!" prophesied Miss Virginia raptly. "I can tell from the way the paper speaks of you already! 'Miss Darcy, the fascinating daughter of Major and Mrs. Richard Throckmorton Darcy, lately returned from the East'—etc. Clothes do help so much," she added wistfully. "I sometimes think that if dear papa had been able to manage better dresses for us—" She left her remark unfinished, a conversational characteristic of all the Darcy ladies.
"You must remember that dear papa had three of us to provide for, whereas Cousin Richard has only one," reminded Miss Iphigenia loyally. "Besides, you were too pretty to need anything but the simplest white muslins, Virgie. Fine dresses would not have been half as becoming."
"What nonsense, Genie!" blushed her sister. "I'm sure you didn't need clothes any more than I did, with all your beautiful hair."
Joan's evil imagination pictured her Cousin Iphigenia frequenting the polite world clad, like the Lady Godiva, chiefly in hair, and she chuckled; but at the same time she kissed both ladies impulsively.
This was one of the things that brought her to the dingy house so frequently; the atmosphere of affectionate appreciation that warmed it. In her father's family—and it was one of the Darcys' undoubted charms—all geese were swans, and they put not only their own but each other's best foot foremost with a touching unanimity. The three sisters regarded each other as paragons, exceeded in degree only by their first cousin Richard, who, in addition to being a Darcy, was likewise a man, and by their first-cousin-once-removed Joan, who in addition to being a Darcy was young. As to their cousin Richard's new wife—the name she had assumed in marriage banished before birth any qualms they might have felt as to her inborn qualifications for the polite world. A Darcy could naturally do no wrong.
One of the things Joan liked best in Effie May was her consistent kindness to these rather tiresome and unimportant spinsters. "Buying them!" she had thought at first. But after all why should any one trouble to buy them? Hers was not entirely a material kindness, either. She consulted them faithfully in social matters, even in household matters (though the Misses Darcy were not notable housekeepers). She and the Major and the limousine accompanied them occasionally to church, the only form of social dissipation in which they still indulged. Altogether she exhibited in dealing with them a tact which in anybody else Joan would have attributed to good breeding.
One morning, when the girl stopped in to make her cousins a visit, the opening door revealed an unusual amount of chatter coming down from the floor above; soft, pretty chatter (like her father, the Darcy ladies had charming voices), mingled with the steady hum of a sewing-machine.
"What's up, Susy?" she asked the languid colored slattern who let her in.
"De ladies is gittin' ready fo' de ball, I'specks, Miss Joan, fittin' on dey new dresses."
"New dresses? A ball?" repeated the surprised Joan, who did not connect these activities with her own début, scheduled to take place a month or so later. "I must investigate!" and ignoring Susy's best efforts to toll her into the parlor, she pursued the chatter to its source.
She avoided that parlor whenever possible, having earlier exhausted its charms. It was a rather dismal chamber, with shutters always closed against a too-revealing sunlight. Innumerable small tables and a double mantel-shelf were crowded with articles ofvertuin the shape of hand-painted vases, and ginger-jars, and marble hands. On the walls, concealing as much as possible of the original decoration, hung specimens of all the artistic aspirations of the Darcy family and friends; "Yards of Pansies," still-life studies of a fan in interesting juxtaposition to a coal-scuttle, and the like. Concealment seemed to be the motif of the decoration-scheme. The fireplace was concealed by moribund cat-tails, the former usefulness of a spinning-wheel was concealed by gilt paint, the function of the lamp was concealed, if not permanently impaired, by a ruffled blue silk petticoat reminiscent for the best of reasons of a certain blue silk party-dress that had once done yeoman's service in the family.
The elegance of their parlor enabled Joan's cousins to ask several dollars more a month for their rooms than did any other house in the square; but Joan, who, had inherited from the maternal side a strain of practicality, positively ached in her joints at the thought of the hours it must take to thoroughly sweep and dust it—if indeed it ever were thoroughly swept and dusted.
She poked her head around a door that stood ajar on the third floor: "May I come in?"
The three turned startled faces to greet her, two in dressing-sacks whose fronts bristled with pins, the third in a costume which seemed vaguely familiar, a dress which glittered with jet sequins and was cut so low that it was perhaps fortunate Miss Euphemia had neglected to remove her gray flannel underwear.
"Why, Joan!" they chorused, dismay mingling with their welcome. (Even in conversation they were a most united family, speaking usually all three at once.) "However did you find your way up here? That stupid Susy should have shown you into the drawing-room!—or at least have announced you, so that you would not have caught us like this."
"Nonsense! Susy tried to shoo me into the parlor, but I wouldn't be shooed; and as for 'announcing' me—she did howl up the stairs. But you were too engrossed to hear." The naïve respect with which they treated their prosperous young cousin always mortified Joan. She had her own conception of the family dignity. "You'd suppose I'd never seen a dressing-sack or a sewing-machine in my life, whereas I was raised on 'em.—My word, Cousin Euphie, how grand you are!"
"Am I, dear? The dress is grand, I know," said Miss Euphemia doubtfully, "but I'm not sure it's quite in my style. The others thought I'd better have it because I'm plumpest, in the—in the chest, you know. But really, the waist!—There simply isn't any, Joan! What would you suggest?"
"A yoke," said the girl gravely.
"Just what I said!" twittered Miss Iphigenia. "Yokesarebeing worn, or I'm certain Joan wouldn't have suggested it. A guimpe of black net perhaps—tucked, would you say, Joan dear!—and long wrinkled sleeves of the same. Which would do away with the necessity for long gloves, girls!"
This happy thought was greeted with acclaim. "How clever of you, Genie! We canallhave guimpes and long sleeves? You see, three pairs of long white gloves—" they explained to Joan.
"Of course!" she said hastily, making a mental note to supply her cousins with long white gloves if she had to ask her step-mother for the money.
They showed her the other dresses eagerly; an amber-colored satin—"With slippers to match, my dear!"—and one of old-rose brocade which Miss Virginia almost kissed in her affection for it.
"I sometimes think if I could have had a dress like this earlier—" she murmured. "Though of course my real color, like yours, Joan, was blue. A blue sash, and a pink rose in the hair. As General Fitzhugh Lee once said to me at a Galt House ball—"
"No, wasn't it at the Governor's Inauguration, sister?" interposed Miss Euphemia.
In the gentle altercation which ensued, Joan never heard just what the gallant general had said to her cousin Virginia; but she suspected it of having some connection with blue eyes.
"You're a lucky girl to be presented at a Galt House ball!" they exclaimed presently, returning to the subject in hand. "And Cousin Effie May has really beentoosweet about it. Insists, simply insists that we shall all three of us stand up with her in the receiving line! Says she'd be terribly shy without us." (Joan smiled faintly at the picture of Effie May being shy.) "We said to her, 'No, my dear, one of us isquiteenough. We'll draw straws for it, as we always used to.' Dear papa never let all three of us go to the same party. As he said, 'It's too much of a good thing!' (Slang, you know.) But she assured us that she had three evening dresses she couldn't get into,"—it was Miss Euphemia speaking at the moment, quite unaware of any naïvété in the sequence of her remarks,—"and that it would be a real kindness on our part to take them off her hands. You know, dear, Cousin Effie May really is getting a little stout. And she says it's such a problem to know what to do with outgrown party dresses."
"It certainly is!" agreed Miss Iphigenia, as if it were one that weighed upon her heavily. "You simply can't give things of that sort to the poor."
"Why not?" murmured Joan, "if the poor would enjoy them?"
They all rounded on her. "Why, but dear child, it wouldn't be suitable! It would give the poor ideas beyond their station. Fancy presenting a spangled net evening-gown to—Susy, say! It would never do!"
"I suppose not, because she would certainly burst with joy. But think," mused Joan, "what an enviable death!"
The Darcy ladies looked at her uncertainly. They were never quite sure whether their young cousin was jesting or not. They preferred people to laugh when they joked. It made things clearer.
"Never mind," the girl added hastily. "Susie's not going to get these magnificent costumes, anyway!—and I am so glad you are coming to my ball, dears. We'll be a whole family of débutantes!"
Afterwards she realized soberly how near her pride had come to depriving these innocent ladies of a real pleasure. Pride, she reflected, may be very close kin to selfishness. She postponed her own plans a while longer.
These were at their best vague plans. Only one thing was definite about them. They were to include no more make-believe. Whatever came hereafter, Joan intended to be herself. The world must accept her on her own terms; in the phrase of her childhood "like her or lump her!"
The difficulty was to decide just what that self might be. Hitherto it had altered obligingly to suit different situations; blowing now hot, now cold, according to the wind of circumstance. But surely underneath there was a definite entity, which did not chop and change and adapt itself, but remained Joan?
At school she had shown no particular aptitude that would help her now—or rather had shown an aptitude in so many directions as to give rise to a widespread impression that "Joan Darcy would get somewhere some day," but which had caused more than one of her teachers to shake her head and murmur something about Jack of all trades being master of none. She herself had found this facility convenient, not in the pursuit of study but in the avoidance of it. She had managed to slip through the brief period allotted by Richard Darcy for the necessities of a young gentlewoman's education, with the minimum of work combined with the maximum of pleasure. It seemed to her then, and afterwards, the wisest possible use to make of a superior brain. Possibly the mental diet offered for her consideration was not altogether suited to Joan's peculiar requirements.
Certainly she came away from school with little more knowledge than she had taken into it, even with regard to herself. Vague yearnings she was aware of, vague inhibitions and promptings; together with tastes and distastes that were not vague at all. She put the latter down on a bit of paper, in an effort to come to a clearer understanding of the girl who was Joan Darcy.
She liked:
1. Books. On any subject whatever, provided they did not try to teach anything and came up to her rather exacting standards of style.
2. Dancing—if people kept in step with the music and did not hold her too close.
3. Out-of-doors, especially when the wind was blowing.
4. Music, if there was no one around to discuss it or analyse it.
5. Children, without their families.
6. Almost any sort of a dog, particularly if it did not seem to belong to anybody. Strays regarded her as their own.
She disliked (and here there were no qualifications. It was never hard for Joan to say what she disliked!):
1. Debt.
2. Effusiveness.
3. Humility.
4. Vulgarity—under which heading she included everything her step-mother did, or said, or thought, or wore, or was. Yet she did not quite dislike her step-mother.
This exhaustive survey left her with the impression of a hypercritical, overconfident, extremely unpleasant young ego, which intended to get as much out of life as possible with as little given in return, and which so far had got about what it deserved. She was glad that no one of her acquaintance was clever enough to see her quite as clearly as she saw herself.
Except, of course, Mr. Nikolai: and he did not count.
There was something odd about Stefan Nikolai's attitude toward his fellow-men. He seemed to regard humanity as if it were a vast picture puzzle which it was his privilege to take apart and put together again for his amusement. He asked nothing of any piece of the puzzle except that it fit eventually into the spot where it belonged. Joan had a comfortable feeling that he would presently find her spot for her in case she failed to find it for herself. But she preferred to find it for herself, if possible.
His letter in response to the one in which she informed him of her impending engagement to Eduard Desmond had confirmed her faith in his uncanny insight. She did not realize how vividly her untrammeled descriptions made people and conditions about her known to a student of human kind. If she always saw things more clearly herself after she had set them down in black and white, the clarity doubtless extended to other vision.
He wrote from Russia, where he had been living for a while among the mouzhiks in order to understand how mouzhiks live. His curiosity about such things was insatiable.
"I also have a wish to see how Tzars live, since it is an order that is passing," he added casually. "But I fear for one of my race that will be difficult. Mouzhiks have less reason to fear us Jews than have Tsars."
Then he went off at one of his usual tangents, and described to Joan briefly the theory of vaccination. "It is a question of phagocytes, you understand. Metchnikoff's idea is that when a disease manifests itself a certain number of phagocytes detach themselves from the blood to fight it. The stronger the virus injected of that disease, the greater the number of phagocytes formed; and it is the presence of these detached phagocytes after the virus has run its course that render the patient immune from further attack."
("What," wondered bewildered Joan, "is the man talking about? It sounds like a medical almanac!")
But as there was usually some method in Mr. Nikolai's tangents, she read on. At the end of the last page he enlightened her, and disposed of the affair with Eduard Desmond in two sentences.
"By this time you will be recuperating from your first love-attack. Severe, doubtless, but so much the better. More phagocytes!"
It was his only reference to her revelations with regard to Eduard Desmond. Evidently to the scientific mind love in its various manifestations was merely a form of mal-ease to which humanity is subject.
Joan sincerely hoped that enough of the phagocytes had been released by the innoculation to render her immune from further attack forever.
Social life, in a small American city that prides itself upon traditions of social life, may be as absorbing, if not as profitable, as that in any of the world's great capitals—perhaps more absorbing. For while it is possible in Paris, Rome, London, New York, to disappear at will out of the current and no questions asked, such a procedure would be as impracticable in one of the self-sufficient societies of our South or East as for a diving duck to remain ad libitum in the bottom of the duck-pond. He may remain, to be sure, even until he drowns; but his corpse need not expect a welcome when it returns to the surface, nor will there be any attempts to resuscitate him. It behooves a socially-inclined duck to hug the company of his fellows.
Joan was caught up presently into a whirl of little events which effectually precluded introspection and even thought. Dance followed dance; there were teas, luncheons, dinners—above all Bridge, which was just beginning to oust euchre from a society that must have its gambling, even if the stakes be merely cut-glass fern dishes. The time was not yet, in the South at least, when gentlewomen appeared at card parties purse in hand; but certain hostesses, notably our Effie May, soon learned to offer prizes that made attention to the game worth while. Mrs. Darcy's Bridges were invariably successful.
There began to appear, even among the freshest of the débutantes, an expression described by Joan to her friend Nikolai as the Bridge Face—an eager, grim look of do-or-die, which Joan did not find becoming. (Perhaps this was because she herself never learned to play the game, except with her hands.)
A wave of interest in things equestrian followed the Horse Show for a time, too, and Joan was one of several who rode out two or three days a week with a riding-master on hired horses, feeling very picturesque and Kentuckian. She was determined never to be caught napping again as she had been at Longmeadow.
Effie May also signified her intention of joining the equestriennes, and actually appeared on two occasions in a habit which fitted her as its cover fits a pincushion. But her misery was so apparent, though silent, that Joan presently advised her to give it up.
"I guess I never was intended for a horseback rider," she admitted with a sigh. "No, I'm not exactly scared, dearie—who'd be afraid of old trained sheep like them? You ought to have seen the trotters Calloway used to drive! Nothing ever come too fast for Calloway. But somehow it's different when you're on top of 'em, with nothing to hold on by. And then those bones in front. It was something fierce!"
She exhibited to the puzzled Joan certain injuries to her person which made her efforts at equestrianism seem nothing short of heroic.
"But why not go without bones in front, as I do?"
Effie May grinned. "Ever see me without a corset, hon? And you never will! No woman of my weight should ever be seen in public in her natural figger, not even in her coffin. Say, Joan, promise me you won't let the undertaker lay me out without a corset on!"
Joan promised—of which promise more anon.
She herself shortly became the riding-master's best pupil, a fact in which her father took great pride.
"A matter of inheritance, doubtless," he said modestly. "As you know, Dollykins, I am a believer in the power of inheritance."
And though he declined himself to join in the exercise (possibly not wishing to put too great a strain upon the power of inheritance), his Christmas present to his daughter was a beautiful little gaited saddle-mare, especially selected, trained, and—such was his intimation—bred for her use by a horse-raising cousin in the heart of the Bluegrass.
It was a docile, friendly creature, christened by its donor "Pegasus," in order not to lay too much emphasis on its sex (the Major was rather nice in such matters). And it soon learned to nuzzle Joan for sugar and follow her about the yard like a big dog, looking quite injured and surprised that she did not take it into the house with her. In her delight and gratitude, Joan almost forgot to wonder whether the horse-raising cousin had been paid for Pegasus, and by whom.
The possession of a horse automatically increased her acquaintance with human nature, introducing her to an element of Louisville society hitherto unknown to her except at a distance—the negro. Mrs. Darcy employed, with the exception of a chauffeur and a yard-boy, what she designated as "white help." She, like Ellen Neal, had an inherent distrust of a black skin. But wherever there is a good horse may also be found, drawn by an irresistible affinity, all the male negroes of the vicinity.
Joan, advised and assisted by the chauffeur, the yard-boy, and innumerable colored acquaintances from the alley, soon learned more about horses and horsemanship than could have been taught her in all the riding-schools in the world. Pegasus was brought up literally by hand. The yard-boy proved himself particularly adept, though how he came by so much knowledge of horse-flesh in his eighteen ragged years of cutting grass and whitening front steps and washing windows, was a puzzle to Joan. She asked him once.
"Huccom I knows how to do wifhawses?" he repeated, scratching his head. "Laws, Miss Joan,Idunno! Huccum I knows how to chaw terbacca, or to w'istle thoo my teef? Reck'n I was jes' natchelly bo'n dat-away."
She wondered what, with the gradual disappearance of the horse, would become of his friend the negro. Perhaps both, like the Indian, were doomed soon to become a legend in the land....
Richard Darcy formed quite a habit of dropping in at the stable himself to give Joan the benefit of his advice and inexperience; and his attitude toward their colored visitors was a source of never-failing interest to her. He treated them with an off-hand casualness quite impossible to his daughter, to whom they were a race apart, to be pitied and dealt with gently. The Major dealt with them anything but gently. He bullied them, swore at them, ordered them around as if they were still goods and chattels, and apparently they loved him for it. One and all they sprang to his least suggestion, from the humblest alley-rat of the neighborhood to the haughtiest chauffeur—and there is nothing haughtier in the world than a colored man in livery. At the same time, they felt quite free to confide in him the most intimate details of their private lives; and they asked without reserve for anything of his that took their fancy. His cigars, his small change, the very clothes on his back, were not sacred from their requisition.
"Please, Major, gimme two-bits?" one of them would suggest tentatively.
"What do you want two-bits for, you infernal beggar?"
"To buy me a drink with, please, suh. My th'oat's dusty."
"A damn good reason for a damn impudent request," Richard Darcy would grumble, his hand going into his pocket.
Once Joan heard a dressy youth, who was at the moment rubbing a special polish onto Pegasus, remark: "Dat's a mighty fine tie you-all's wearin' dis mawnin', suh. Gimme hit?"
"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" cried the Major.
"Gimme hit when hit's done worn out, den?"
"D'you think I've nothing better to do than watch my clothes for signs of wear so that I may present them toyou, you ugly rascal? I will not!"
But some days later Joan recognized on the negro's neck the tie in question, which appeared to have worn out with unprecedented rapidity.
From signs like this Joan came to the conclusion that there existed between Richard Darcy and the negroes something of the same affinity as between the negro and the horse. They were all part together of a day that has passed. It was another of the records of the old South for which she was constantly looking; and a far finer, truer relation it seemed to her than the mistrust and dislike which independence has latterly fostered between the races. She recalled that her father had never in his life spoken of his family's servants as "our slaves," but always as "our people." To him all negroes were still "our people"; a responsibility and a charge, to be kept in order, bullied perhaps, but protected, too, because of their great need of protection. And to all negroes, if to no one else in the world, Richard Darcy was a great man, one of the masters.
She tried to express something of this idea once to Archie Blair, who was always so eager to follow her mental excursions that she sometimes made the mistake of believing he did follow them. But for once he disagreed with his oracle utterly.
"Niggers are the curse of the South," he announced. "Always have been and always will be."
She attempted to make him explain this peremptory point of view, but Archie was not very good at explaining. He was one of the people who know what they know without knowing why they know it (blood-brothers to those art-critics who are always aware of what they like when they see it). Such do not shine in debate. He could only shake his head and repeat his conviction that niggers were the curse of the South.
She changed the subject rather impatiently. She would have liked to retort that well-bred people at least do not call them "niggers." But somehow Archibald was not fair game.
She was seeing rather more than she had expected of her protégé. In Louisville there is a certain catholicity in the matter of big entertainments. That portion of the population which possesses the inborn or acquired right to call itself "Society" is not large enough to supply a sufficient number of dancing-men to sustain the true belle's boast that she never dances more than once around a ballroom with the same partner. Indeed, in the matter of belles themselves there is a certain catholicity. Every pretty girl who grows up in the old town with any pretentious to grammar and respectability and polite behavior has one chance in her lifetime to foot it with the best. She may, if she so wishes, enroll herself among the season's débutantes.
If her family can afford a certain amount of entertaining to support this pretention, well and good. If not, she must manage as best she can with the friendly aid of the society column—no small power in the land. Let the would-be débutante but supply herself with presentable dancing frocks and slippers, and Louisville will do the rest.—For one season. During that brief time, however, she must make good her footing by means of matrimony or otherwise, or back to the chimney-corner for her, like Cinderella when the cock crew. The town is full of disappointed little Cinderellas, comforting themselves with good works or a humble domesticity, dreaming who knows what dreams of the Might-Have-Been.
They do not all return to the chimney-corner, however. Sometimes they stay. Sometimes they fare forth joyously into a larger world, and their names lend luster to greater events than are chronicled in our society column. One, at least, trails gracefully through ducal halls, and the strawberry leaves are almost as becoming to her pretty hair as the rose she wore to her first Galt House ball.—Perhaps Louisville, with a reputation to sustain, is wise to give her unknown Cinderellas the benefit of the doubt.
The male Cinderellas, if they are not welcomed with quite the same interest, are at least not as soon thrust back into the limbo of things forgotten. Once their names appear in the list of presentable dancers, they may arrive year after year at the larger balls, eat, drink and make merry, select such partners as please them, and retire into their lairs again until the next entertainment, with no further obligation on their part than perhaps a perfunctory handshaking with their host and hostess. Not even that, if modesty forbids. Nor need anything bar the gates to them except age, conspicuous behavior, or the lack of a long-tailed coat.
Archibald Blair presently got used to the surprise of receiving frequently in his mail engraved invitations from people who did not know him, and began to look upon them as a special dispensation on the part of Providence to favor his pursuit of Miss Joan Darcy.—If anything so entirely self-effacing could be called a pursuit! His wish was merely to see her whenever possible, to listen to her whenever possible, and if absolutely necessary to talk to her till somebody more worthy came to take his place. And having made, a week apart, his two party-calls as suggested by her inexplicable but obliging step-mother, he would have been at a loss as to how to manage further encounters if it had not been for the assistance of these providential invitations.