Archie also, being quick to take a hint, made prompt party-calls on the providers of the invitations, a fact which set him apart among dancing men; so that presently he began to see Joan not only at large balls but at smaller buffet suppers and the like, even at theater parties, when a hostess's need was desperate. All of which surprised Joan far more than it surprised him. He accepted the whole thing as a miracle, part of the incredible good luck which had begun to happen to him when he landed his first big order in Philadelphia, and got on to the train for home to find the One and Only sitting in the chair behind him.
"Whoops, my dear! I've got 'em locoed," said grateful Archie to himself; referring presumably to the Fates.
His luck did not confine itself to social matters. One day the president of the firm, a Mr. Moore, greatly admired in the office because of his hauteur with employees, sent for Archie for no apparent reason except to chat about life in general and business in particular. Now business was a thing which Archibald enjoyed as some men enjoy golf. Getting about among all sorts of people, making them like you whether they wanted to or not, persuading them that the varnish or glue or wax or what-not you happened to be selling was just a little better than any other on the market (which Archie certainly believed it was), overcoming the natural reluctance of human nature to try anything with which it is not familiar, and finally retiring with a fat little order in his vest-pocket—all this was as exciting to young Blair as the hazard of the highway may have been to earlier Knights of the Road. With the additional advantage of being honest. Archie always preferred, when it was possible, to be honest. So that he had a good deal to say to Mr. Moore.
He liked the president, too—a stiffish old boy whom lately he had met around quite often at the Horse Show and such places and who seemed to eye his employee on such occasions with an oddly proprietary interest. If Archie had ever chanced to read of Benjamin Franklin's discovery that the way to propitiate the enemy is to ask a favor of him, he might have understood this personal interest on Mr. Moore's part. But he had quite forgotten that he had once committed the solecism of asking that gentleman what to wear to the Horse Show.
Mr. Moore presently mentioned in the course of conversation that Smith, the sales manager of the varnish department, was about to leave the firm.
"Gee! What for?" said Archie sympathetically. "Is he sick?" It did not occur to him that any one who had attained so exalted a position would willingly leave it except for mortal reasons.
"He goes over to the Lidden people, who've offered him more money."
"Why, but—He's been with us since he was a boy!"
This comment pleased Mr. Moore. "Loyalty's as rare in business as elsewhere, Blair. I'm not sorry to let him go. He hasn't done what I hoped he would do to put that new polish of ours on the market. Rather fallen down there."
"It's a peach, too! One drop and your table-top shines like a reflector in the sun," murmured Archie perfunctorily, from sheer force of habit. A premonition had struck him of what was coming next.
It came. "How would you like to take charge of that end yourself?"
For a moment Archie was speechless. He, as sales manager!—He, one of the youngest men in the firm, put over the head of the good old boys who had taught him the business!—Very red as to the ears, he stammered something about lack of experience.
"You've had a good deal of experience, Blair," said Mr. Moore. "You were a salesman, and a successful one, at the age of—eight, wasn't it? Or six? And then you've a sort of a knack of getting on with people. That's as useful in handling men as in handling sales. In fact, Smith says you're one of the best we've got. Shouldn't be surprised if he tried to take you over to Lidden's with him."
"He needn't!" cried Archie hotly.
"Then you'll take the job?"
Archie's grin began to grow until it communicated itself to the president, to the interested stenographer, to the very clock on the wall behind him.
"Like a mice!" he murmured cryptically at last; but Mr. Moore appeared to understand him....
It was perhaps fortunate that Ellen Neal was at home when he came bounding up the stairs that evening, or he might have burst with his tidings. As it was she thought he had been drinking, and began to prepare surreptitiously a good strong cup of black coffee. (She had had some experience with antidotes, had Ellen.)
"A salaryandcommissions—do you get me, wench?" he repeated for the third time. "I'm to run the whole shebang, advertisements and all, and put what boys I like on the road with it, while I sit back in me office like a young Pierpont Morgan directing operations! La-la-laihoo!" he yodled, suddenly seizing Ellen about the waist and one-stepping her across the room, to the imminent peril of the chandelier below.
"Mr. Archibald, behave! Me, a respectable spinster woman—" she panted.
"True! ''tis pity 'tis, 'tis true!' Away with frivolity now! I must remember the dignity of me office!" he declaimed, releasing her and striking the attitude of Napoleon crossing the Alps.
"It means better wages, don't it?"
"Wages, woman? A salaryandcommissions! Ha!"
"And you'll be getting too rich and grand for the attic now, I suppose." She sighed. "You'll be setting up at some swell boarding-house, maybe, or perhaps at that club where all the young society fellows live?" (Since the Darcy début into society, Ellen was almost as conversant with its inner life as were the Misses Darcy.)
Archie's eye glinted. "The club!—why not? I hadn't thought of that." But then he grinned, "I can see 'em hailing me—'Yere's yer paper, sir!—yere's yer five o'clock edition! All about de mysterious moider on de Island!'—No, I guess it won't do. The little old Y. M. C. A.'s club enough for me. And as for leaving my attic, Mrs. Neal—" he shook his head. "Why, it's home to me. I reckon I'll be here till the roof falls in—which it's likely to do at any moment in a favorable breeze."
"Pooh! You'll be getting married before long, and you won't marry the sort of wife who'll want to live in a garret, neither!"
"Why not?
"A book of verses underneath the roof,A cup of coffee and an egg in troof,And Mrs. Neal to cook it up for us—Ah, attic life were Paradise enoof!"
"A book of verses underneath the roof,A cup of coffee and an egg in troof,And Mrs. Neal to cook it up for us—Ah, attic life were Paradise enoof!"
he warbled; and promptly encored himself amid peals of pleasure. It was his first attempt at composition, and he liked it. (One of the young ladies at the Library had recently introduced him, as may be suspected, to the Rubaiyat. Eduard Desmond was not the only young man who found in the Persian a kindred spirit.)
"Well, of all the crazy galoots!" muttered Ellen, deciding that coffee would do no good here. "You'll have to go now, Mr. Archie; I'm expecting company. Land sakes, six o'clock! and me without my biscuits in the pan."
He observed that the table was set for two, quite magnificently, with a celery glass containing five red carnations in its center.
"Floral decorations! A genuine entertainment—and I not asked! Who, who is the lucky fellow?"
"Go on with your impidence. 'Tain't a fellow. It's—Never you mind who it is! And you needn't think you're going to be discovered here by accident-like, either!"—She was pushing him toward the door as she spoke.
Light dawned upon Archie. "Mrs. Neal! Nother?" He knew that the One and Only sometimes dropped in to take tea with her old servant, a goddess descending to mortals; but he had never been lucky enough to catch her in the act.
"Yes, it is," replied Ellen, who needed no niceties of grammar to realize the identity of Archibald's "her." "So now will you hurry?"
He hurried; but once in the hall he paused in the grip of a daring idea. Success had rather gone to his head.
"Say!Who's going to see her home?"
Ellen tossed her head. "Me, of course. You don't suppose I was going to let the child go off through them dark streets all by herself?"
"Theyaredark streets," he said earnestly. "Very dark streets! Murders happen in them, frequently. Pickpockets; rats!—Really, Mrs. Neal, two women alone would hardly be safe in them."
"Perhaps I'd better get me a policeman, then!" She shook her head grimly, torn between affection for her new charge and devotion to her old. "Look here, Mr. Archie, there's no use hangin' around like you been doing lately. Oh, I know! You can't fool me. I was born with eyes all over me, I was, like that critter in the antiquarium at the Fair—You're a real nice young fellow, but a girl like Joan Darcy wouldn't so much as look at you. She's proud, proud as the queen's cat. And her pa's prouder still. They'd just as lief walk over you to their kerridge (which it's an automobile) as if you was Sir Thingumbob's coat in the history book."
"Fortunate coat," murmured Archie, grasping the allusion. "But who's asking her to look at me, Mrs. Neal? I'd rather she wouldn't, really! I'd much rather look at her. When you come right down to it, I'm sort of proud myself!—But if I just happened to be at the front door when you start out," he wheedled, "you wouldn't really object to my simply—well, to my merely—"
"Making a fool of yourself? Go as far's you like!" interrupted Ellen tartly, closing her door in his face.
So it chanced that as Joan stood at the threshold sometime later waiting for Ellen to follow downstairs, making an unconscious picture in her sweeping hat and her soft furs between the graceful pillars of the lintel, Mr. Blair appeared nonchalantly before her. And the effect of the encounter was so great that, intending to lift his hat and toss away his cigarette with a Chesterfieldian carelessness, he instead tossed his hat and lifted his cigarette,—a catastrophe that robbed him for the moment of the powers of speech and motion. He had not expected to follow out Ellen's program quite so literally.
Joan's training stood her in good stead. Her lips twitched but remained in control. The elaborateness of his surprise, together with Ellen's rather guilty countenance, had already informed her that she was the victim of a plot, into which she walked obligingly.
"Well met, Mr. Blair! I wonder whether you have anything very important to do? If not,wouldyou be good enough to take me home? Ellen really ought not to go out in the night air with her rheumatism."
"Dee—lighted," murmured Mr. Blair dazedly, in the language of his favorite hero. He recovered his hat, and with it some of his former aplomb. Indeed, as he walked away with his prize, solicitously steering her by one elbow, he was able to wink back over his shoulder at his fellow-conspirator.
It was the first time that he had been really alone with the One and Only. Hitherto their conversation had taken place against a background of other conversations, which were somehow helpful. Even when he had paid his two party calls in rapid succession, there had been others present; and though the inexplicable step-mother had quite obviously made opportunities for him to cut her out of the herd, so to speak, his nerve at the critical moment had always failed him.
It failed him now. He strolled beside her gloriously, as if on air, but in utter silence. He racked his brain for suitable conversation to offer, and for suitable language to offer it in. Somehow her crisp, cleancut speech (Joan had quite abandoned Southernism) made his own seem hideous, drawling, uncouth.
Again Joan came, more or less, to the rescue.
"Mr. Blair," she suggested gently, "if you don't mind I'd rather not be helped along quite so much. My elbow, you know!—I sha'n't stumble, I think. The sidewalks seem quite smooth."
He withdrew his hand as if it had been stung.
"Pardonme!" he gasped. "I didn't mean—
"I know—some girls like to be assisted," she said rather remorsefully (but after all a protégé must be taught!) "You'll find most of us, however, rather prefer our independence."
"Votes for Women?" he suggested in all respect.
Joan dimpled, thinking suddenly of Mrs. Rossiter. "Well, something like that. Elbows for women, anyway!" she murmured nonsensically.
Again the conversation languished, being confined on Archie's part entirely to Yea, yea and Nay, nay.
Joan was both amused and bored. It had been for some time quite evident to her that this simple soul was not indifferent to her charms; but there was something so boyish about his devotion, so grateful and unobtrusive, that it did not trouble her in the least. Rather the contrary. It reminded her of "cases" the younger girls at the Convent got up on older girls, who were in turn expected to act toward their satellites as guide, philosopher, and friend. Joan had always been very nice to her satellites. This one should come to no harm through her. Indeed, she intended that he should come ultimately to much good, for she really liked him. But this first tongue-tied stage of his admiration was a little trying to both, and she was relieved when the Darcy house came into view.
Not until then, with their parting imminent, did he summon up sufficient ease to tell her of his recent stroke of fortune. She received it pleasantly, as a teacher listens to tales of prowess on the part of a pupil.
"Sales-manager!—isn't that nice, Mr. Blair? I must get my step-mother to try some of that polish of yours. She loves things to glisten. And you'll have a lot more money, won't you? Splendid! So now," she suggested, as Ellen had suggested, "you'll probably be moving somewhere else."
She had her eye on him, though, for it may be remembered that Joan had a theory of her own as to why this up-and-coming young man continued to live in an attic in the slums.
He shook his head. "I'll stay in the old place. Even if I hadn't lived there ever since I can remember, I think I'd stay anyway."
"Why?" asked Joan, walking more slowly.
"Well, there's something sort of homey about it. I've got a fireplace in my room, you see, and I like the little panes in the windows, and the big sills—they're just as good as tables—And that funny old twisty staircase. Sometimes at night when everybody in the house is asleep you can hear the steps creaking, as if people were coming up and down. I like that. And the old tree outside taps on the roof as if it were saying, 'Here I am, kid. Go on to sleep!'"—He broke off apologetically. "You'll think me a nut, Miss Darcy, talking like this! But you see everything that's ever happened to me happened in that room, and I feel as if—well, as if I weren't exactly alone in it."
Joan nodded, her eyes bright with understanding. She had not expected him to share her feeling for the old house, or to be so sensitive to the influence of environment. She walked still slower. It was too bad their talk should come to an end just as it was showing signs of life.
"Were you born there?" she asked craftily.
"Oh, no. No, I don't know just where I was born. On the road, I reckon. You see my mother was an actress—"
But despite her lagging feet they were by this time at the Darcy door, which was promptly opened by an attentive parlor maid.
"I'm so sorry I can't ask you in," said Joan.
"No, indeed!—I didn't expect that," answered humble Archie.
Joan frowned. It may be recalled that humility was one of her dislikes.
"It's just that I happen to have an engagement for the evening," she explained; for in Louisville fashion she portioned out her free nights among certain admirers who are known in the vernacular as "fireside companions"—gentlemen who for reasons of poverty, or thrift, or especial devotion, do not offer the ladies of their choice any other form of entertainment than their company. Only on Sunday afternoons are the youth of a Southern city free to call unheralded anden masseon girls with any pretensions to popularity.
Joan explained this custom to Archibald, remarking with an encouraging smile, "So you see if you really want to talk to a girl alone, your only chance is to engage an evening in advance."
"I see," said Archie.
And not until the door had closed behind her did he suddenly smite himself upon the brow, ejaculating, "Dumbhead! Boob! Ivory above the neck, pure, solid ivory!"
For it penetrated to him that out of the kindness of her heart his lady had made for him an opening, an opportunity, which would certainly never occur again.
"The fact is," he muttered, turning away from that closed door, "I'm about as well fitted for society as Balaam's ass!"
An opinion in which at the moment Miss Darcy would have thoroughly concurred.
Relations between them might have ended then and there, for Joan was not in the habit of casting her pearls before swine, and the confidence was rather crushed out of Archibald by a realization of his gross stupidity.
But Effie May was as persistent in her fancies as in other matters.
"Where's the eary one?" she asked Joan one Sunday afternoon following the usual influx of visitors. "He hasn't been around since I don't know when."
"How should I know? Probably towing some lady-typist by her elbow to a church social," replied Joan, yawning.
"You may be sure it's aladytypist, then, and not the other sort," commented her step-mother. "I like that boy!"
"You seem to," murmured Joan, reflecting idly that it was a compliment Mr. Blair did not appear to return; which had been one of the few things in common between them.
But later Effie May had something to say on the subject that interested her more. She said it to her husband in Joan's hearing.
"You remember that young chap we had at the Horse show one night, whom Joan met on the train? Name of Blair?"
"Certainly, my love. An agreeable fellow, though not quite, I should say, to the manner born? However, he had a respect for his elders quite unusual nowadays," said the Major affably, recalling his personal success with the young man. "And a keen sense of humor, as I recall, very keen!"
That, as it happened, was one thing Archibald did not possess. He had in its place a hearty laugh, a passion for "jokes," and a generous appreciation of jesting intentions on the part of others, which doubtless served him quite as well.
"That's the chap. Well, some of the boys who were here this afternoon were telling me that he's quite a scrapper. Seems some of the young sports about town have been putting the gloves on with him, down to the Y. M. C. A.—Johnny Carmichael and that lot—and the other night they got up a match between him and a regular pug, just to see how good he was. Seems he stood up to him three rounds, and come out of it with his nose a pulp and his front teeth gone, askin' for more!"
"Heavens!" murmured Joan. "Those infantile front teeth?"
"Oh, I guess they stuck 'em in again," said Effie May, "but I sure would have liked to see that match! The boys were quite enthusiastic."
"Did he win?" asked Joan.
"Win?—against a professional? Lord, child, he was doin' well to stand up to him one round, let alone three! It was Dan McCabe, Dick."
"McCabe? You don't say," repeated the Major, highly interested. "Blair must be pretty good, then!"
In his younger days Richard Darcy had been something of a devotee of the gloves himself, and still kept up an interest in ring affairs. Boxing, he held, was one of the few exercises really becoming a gentleman; and he had sometimes modestly called the attention of this decadent golfing-generation to a figure any boy of them might well envy, as a result of the sport of kings.
Not latterly, however. Of the Major's more recent figure, the less said the better. Even the mild exertions of the one-step caused him to perspire and puff audibly, and he had requested that the cheval mirror be removed from his dressing-room—a rather serious sign with Richard Darcy. His wife in vain suggested riding, golf, massage. The Major preferred the expedient of doing without his mirror.
She had in mind this growingembonpointwhen she spoke of Archibald's accomplishment—as well as several other matters, being a woman who thought nothing of killing two and even three birds with one stone.
"Dickie, I been thinking how nice it would be if you were to put on the gloves with young Blair sometimes? I've always wanted to see you box."
"Pooh," he murmured, flattered, however, by the suggestion. "I couldn't interest him now. And before all those young whipper-snappers at the gymnasium? I'd be a laughing-stock!"
"Why not get him to come up here? Fix up a sort of gymnasium in the attic?"
"Oh, do!" urged Joan, who had been not a little troubled by the recent change in her father. "It will be just what you need, Dad, and such fun! I'm sure you could 'interest' him still."
The Major's eye kindled a little. He was always responsive to any belief in himself. "You think so, Dollykins? Well, possibly, possibly—But you speak as if Blair were to be had for the asking, my love!"
"Well, I think he is," remarked Effie May with a twinkle at her step-daughter. "Depends upon who does the asking—What do you say, Joan?"
"It would have to be done in words of one syllable," murmured the girl unkindly, "but I'll try."
So that again Archibald had occasion to shake hands with Fate; and found himself regularly every Saturday afternoon at four o'clock beneath the roof of his One and Only, gently exercising her parent, with every likelihood of tea to follow.
Not that Archibald had any liking for tea. On the first occasion of his accepting it, he had asked for four lumps of sugar in his cup, explaining that plenty of sweetness took the worst of the taste away. But he had firmly declined the Major's sympathetic suggestion to substitute a highball, having his own quaint notions of the proprieties. One of them was that no gentleman drinks liquor in the presence of a lady. It was a genuine shock to him to find that Major Darcy did so, freely: and what he felt when Mrs. Darcy joined her husband in the act, he was fortunately able to dissemble. It merely confirmed an earlier impression.
Joan gave up riding on Saturday afternoons to stay at home and umpire the boxing matches. She felt that her father ought to be encouraged. Besides, it rather interested her to see her protégé in a new light. Once stripped to the waist and gloved—(she soon got used to the sight of her father in a pink silk undershirt and Archibald in no shirt at all), the young man lost all his awkwardness and shyness and appeared quite a different person, confident, masterly.
"Look out, Major! I'm after your nose this time," he would smile. "Guard yourself. Here's where I get it!"
"Damned if you do!" the other would cry, feinting desperately, but without avail. Archie always got it.
At first the girl gasped with alarm whenever his glove plopped into smart contact with her father's face or body; but she soon saw that only the skill of the younger man went into these blows, never his strength. Richard Darcy saw it too, and was mortified.
"You're playing off on me, damn your young hide!" he would pant. "You wait—I'll show you yet, I'll show you yet!"
And when on one proud occasion he did "show him," to the extent of bringing an unexpected trickle of blood from Archie's nose, Joan let out a cheer of triumph—in which the victim joined with a will.
"Bully!" he cried. "That was a sockdollager! Dare you to do it again, Major! Doubledare you!"
Seeing him so, the play of powerful muscles under skin as white as a girl's, the joyous grin on his big, plain face, the sheer good-nature of him, intent on giving an older man what he called a "run for his money," and yet as controlledly gentle with him as a great dog playing with a child, Joan began to understand why Johnny Carmichael and his friends were enthusiastic over Archie Blair. He was that rarest of finds, a good playfellow.
The companionship of men with men was something she suddenly envied. Why couldn't women put on gloves and knock some of the pettiness out of each other, the small spites and vanities and jealousies? She would very much have enjoyed letting a little blood out of the nose of, say, Emily Carmichael! In a perfectly friendly spirit, of course....
The boxing matches accomplished several results. They were extremely good for the Major, reducing his waist by several inches and so increasing his staying-powers that he could eat his way through dinner fromhors d'œuvretocrème de menthewithout losing breath. They were good for Joan, giving her a new perspective on male human nature, which since the episode of Eduard Desmond she had been in danger of regarding rather cynically. And if they weren't altogether good for Archie Blair—well, Archibald was a young man quite accustomed to taking care of himself.
He would have faced greater perils than he did for the privilege of spending a glorious hour under the same roof with Miss Darcy—whom he continued to call "Miss Darcy" even in his secret thoughts, though she had lately formed the delightful habit of addressing him as "Archie."
She had also presented him kindly with a small photograph of herself on a post-card, taken for the purpose of showing Stefan Nikolai the furs he had sent her, and incidentally the ringless condition of her left hand. (It was her answer to his letter about the phagocytes.)
Archie did not exhibit this treasure, even to his friend Ellen Neal, regarding it in the nature of a sacred trust. He had made for it a frame with a little door which locked, and which greatly intrigued the good woman for several days; until she found that the back of it came off quite easily.
In their weekly chats over her tea-table (from which the Major early excused himself, possibly under wifely suggestion), Joan got into the way of being quite confidential with Archibald. She told him one day how lonely she was for women's companionship.
"At school I had too many chums, and here I haven't any," she complained. "I really don't know why!"
"Maybe they're sort of jealous," was his suggestion.
"Why, Archie! You're getting positively subtle with your compliments," she laughed. "No, it can't be that. I'm no 'man's woman!'—I'm done with that forever! They're welcome to every beau in town for all of me, and Ineverflirt with other people's property. I'm really the ideal companion nowadays—no family complete without me.... Of course I see a lot of girls around at parties, and they're friendly enough, even make rather a fuss over me. But—that's all! Somehow we don't seem to be playing the same game."
"Ish ga bibble," murmured Archie, consolingly if cryptically. "What doyoucare, when you've got 'em all nailed to the mast? But I know just what you mean, Miss Darcy. Used to feel sort of that way myself when I went with Miss Gracie or Miss Ella, or any of them from the office. Before I knew your sort."
"So you think," said Joan, amused, "it's the sort that's wrong, not me?"
"Nothing wrong withyou!" he declared, with a comforting finality.
Being a person with whom sympathy was always active rather than passive, however, he took her case earnestly under consideration; with rather surprising results.
Some days later—it was one of the still February mornings that come to Kentucky as an earnest that spring is on the way, with cardinals fluting from the evergreens and a rusty bluebird or two on the lookout for summer quarters—Joan was called to the telephone to speak to no less a personage than Miss Emily Carmichael.
"I hear you've been riding all winter, Miss Darcy," she said. "I'm so sorry not to have known it before, so that we might have gone out together. So much pleasanter than riding with a groom, don't you think!"
Joan agreed that it would have been.
"Why shouldn't we make up for lost time at once—this morning, for instance? Shall I come by for you at eleven o'clock? Very well."
Joan hung up the telephone, mortified by her own pusillanimous behavior. Here was a golden opportunity to snub the girl who had found her "mixed," and instead of doing so she had meekly consented to be patronized. But at the word her head went up with something of the Major's dignity. Miss Carmichael would find it rather difficult to patronize Miss Darcy!
Miss Carmichael, however, seemed to have no intention of trying. She exclaimed with delight over the pretty Peggy, sleek as satin despite her winter coat, and dancing with pleasure to be out once more in equine society. (With the first approach of winter, the class in equestrianism had disbanded).
"Mr. Blair was telling me the other day about your father's wonderful Christmas present to you," she said. "It must be pleasant to be able to afford a real saddle-horse! My good old Dobbin has to pull Mother's station-wagon, too, you know, which is bad for his gaits. It'shorridto have only one horse in the stables!"
"You speak as if you were poverty-stricken," smiled Joan, thinking of the great Carmichael house, with its walled court and double galleries and outbuildings sufficient to house a retinue of servants.
"Oh, we are," sighed the other. "Absolutely! Why, do you know, I've never been to Europe in my life?"
Joan wondered what this girl would think of real poverty, which yearned in terms, not of trips to Europe, but of new shoes and unattainable spring bonnets!—And then she happened to notice, standing at the curb as they passed, a girl of about her age with a shawl over her head, a baby on one arm and a child dragging at the other, gazing listlessly at the fortunate ones who had time to be young.
Joan hastily abandoned comparisons.
"If you've only one horse, what does your groom ride?" she asked, having been rather impressed by the mention of a groom.
"A bicycle," smiled Emily. "Of course he's not a real groom, only our houseboy, Joe. It's terribly mortifying to his pride. 'Miss Em'ly, s'posin' we was to meet some one what knows us?' is his constant plea; so I ride in out-of-the-way roads to spare his feelings. If we do meet acquaintances, he drops far behind and pretends he isn't with me. When old Dob feels his oats, poor Joe has a fearful time keeping up. I hear him panting and gasping behind me, 'Woa thar, woa thar, Dobbin! Gawd sakes, Miss Em'ly, don' you know a bicycle wa'n't nevermeantto gallop?'"
Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "Ishouldn't bother with a groom at all," she murmured.
"Of course you wouldn't! But you see I've got old-fashioned parents who can't imagine a young girl being able to go about alone in safety. They suspect a bandit of lurking behind every bush for the purpose of carrying off their precious Emily. So far no bandit has had the courage to attempt it!" she sighed. "Do you know, what I envy you most is your independence?"
"My independence? But that's just what I wish I had!" cried Joan, and presently found herself confiding in this stranger something that she had hitherto kept to herself—her determination to earn her own living.
The other girl listened with sympathy, too well-bred to ask questions, but quick to understand.
"It doesn't seem fair," she sighed. "We girls haven't a chance at all. If you were a boy you would have been prepared in some way, of course. In our family, for instance, my brother Johnny, who isn't half as intelligent as I am (and that's not bragging, either), was put most unwillingly through college, and given three extra years at law, and sent around the world—all to prepare him for a career of horse-racing and wild oats generally. He's a dear, you know, but he must have his little wild oats.... And what did I get? Two years of an Eastern finishing school, where I learned to dress better than we can afford, to sing and play a little, and to speak French with a fair accent! I wasn't even prepared for—the thing that's expected of us," she added, flushing. "I've never cooked a meal nor made a bed in my life, Mother proceeding on the theory that if you learn how to do such things you'll have to do them—No fear! No sensible, practical, poor young man would ever have the courage to ask such a useless thing as me to share his humble lot!"
Joan looked at her curiously. She was a tall, rather statuesque type, as so many Kentucky women are; not beautiful, but with a splendid figure, a gallant poise of the head, an air of race and elegance that associated oddly with the idea of cooking and bedmaking.
"You'll simply have to choose the sort of husband that hasn't a humble lot," Joan suggested.
"Choose?" the other shrugged. "Where am I to find him? Not in this part of the world, evidently. You see I've been out several years, my dear. And Mother's far too well-bred to take me about husband hunting, even if she were able to afford it—No, no, I shall simply subside gracefully into old maidhood, as so many of us do nowadays. Haven't you noticed the numbers of old maids about here—charming, cultivated women who have waited too long for a possible partner to come and discover them? Filling their lives with Bridge and charity and committee work! Useful, I suppose, and contented enough, but—It isn't what one dreams of! Merepis aller.... And I don't see how the ballot's going to help, do you?"
"Except by changing the fashion in female education," mused Joan. "Meanwhile we've just got to help ourselves. Pull ourselves up by our own boot-straps."
"And we haven't even got the boot-straps!" laughed the other, ruefully....
This was not the last of their rides together. The unexpected understanding of this girl, whose lot in life Joan had long secretly envied, broke down the artificial barriers between them, and paved the way for a real and lasting friendship. Between them they settled many problems of the universe, while Dobbin and Pegasus respectively trotted and singlefooted about the parks or along a road where the Ohio swept, swollen with the winter's snows, almost on a level with them, overlooked by splendid cliffs where the city's rich have been wise enough to build homes that would do credit to the château country of France.
Sometimes Emily took her into one of these houses for a cup of tea, occasions which filled Effie May with a candid gratification; for hitherto the Carmichael circle had remained impregnable to her siege.
"It certainly was a good idea of yours, getting the child that horse!" she commented to her husband. "There's something genteel about a riding-horse—more so than a limousine, though I'm sure I can't see why. Heaven knows it's cheaper! But even that old plug the Carmichael girl rides has a kind of air about it."
"Horses," replied the Major sententiously, "are the only aristocrats left in the modern world."
Effie May presently suggested to Archie that he purchase himself a horse and try riding, since he was so fond of exercise. But Archie put the tempting idea away from him. What time had he for the diversions of the idle? Business before pleasure! He had recently, and for reasons that were a little vague in his own mind, decided to become rich.
Joan was so preoccupied with her new friendship that she had rather neglected the boxing matches of late, which presently languished. The Major missed the stimulating presence of a young feminine audience. So that Archie spent no more glorious half-hours over a tea-table.
But he did not complain. It was something to know that he had presented his lady with the thing her heart most craved. He could, had he so chosen, have tagged the unconscious Miss Carmichael with a card such as sometimes came to Joan in modest boxes of flowers, bearing the inscription: "From a Friend."
Miss Carmichael presently invited Joan to a meeting of an organization which she had occasionally referred to as "The Jabberwocks" though it had been christened by a more imposing name; a group of girls and young married women who met fortnightly for the apparent purpose of talking all at once about anything that came into their heads. And as a great deal came into their heads, the bewildered guest decided that its present name was aptly chosen. However, though the talk, disconnected and inconclusive, came out for the most part "at that same door wherein it went," it was to Joan like hearing a native tongue spoken in a foreign land. She listened eagerly. Ideas came up for discussion, books, plays, music, even politics, had a turn; instead of the usual, "Who is asked to So-and-so's dinner?" and "What are you going to wear at such-and-such an affair?" which she had begun to consider the chronic conversation of her sex and age.
Yet the Jabberwocks were by no means bluestockings (a class of persons which Joan held in some dread). They frequently were invited to So-and-so's dinner, and usually managed to appear extremely well-clad at such-and-such an affair; and the passion they evinced for bon-bons and weak tea would alone have protected them from the charge of over-seriousness.
Joan, after politely maintaining silence till she could bear it no more, presently burst into a certain discussion with an apt quotation on the subject from Stefan Nikolai. She was unprepared for the respectful silence that greeted her remark.
"You say," murmured somebody, "that Stefan Nikolai told you that? You know him, then, Miss Darcy?"
"Oh, yes. Very well indeed."
"How perfectly wonderful!" sighed the Jabberwocks.
"You see," explained Emily, "we've been studying him all winter. Oh, if we'd only known about you earlier!"
Joan laughed. It had not occurred to her that her friend was a person people met in solemn conclave to "study." (Why it should be that personal acquaintance with a celebrity invariably dims his luster to the affectionate eye is a puzzle which may be left to the psychologists.)
"Do tell us what he looks like!" demanded the Jabberwocks in unison. "Is he handsome?" (From which it may be gathered that the club did not devote itself to things intellectual, exclusively.)
"Why, yes—yes, I suppose he is," said Joan, pausing to reflect. "He's distinguished-looking, quite foreign, you know; with very expressive eyes and a fine, sensitive sort of face. He's not like our men exactly—and yet he doesn't look Jewish. You know his mother was a Christian. But his father was born in the Ghetto, somewhere in Russia, and Stefan actually worked in a sweat-shop when he first came to this country.—He was the son of a rabbi, though."
"They always are," murmured Emilyen passant. "Rabbis always seem to have such large families. Rabbis and rabbits—did you ever notice?"
The Jabberwocks sprung upon her tooth and nail. "Don't be coarse!" "Yes, Em, it's really too bad of you!—you're always spoiling things with your sarcasm." "Do go on, Miss Darcy!—It's so romantic."
One little placid-faced girl, stitching on a baby-dress, said quietly, "We ought to be nicer to Jews than we are, I think, girls. They're really wonderful!—so clever, you know."
"Yes," agreed Joan, "they are rather wonderful. There seems to be an intellectual force about them, a curious inner fire, that nothing can dampen, not even sweat-shops—I sometimes wish I were a Jew myself."
They stared at her in utter astonishment. "Wish you were a Jew? Why, Miss Darcy! Haven't you any prejudice against them at all?"
"Prejudice—against a race of several billion people?" Joan was astonished in her turn. A singularly tolerant mother, and later, life in a little conventual world which had its own standards and viewpoints, had sheltered her from much of the contagion of current opinion. "Thatwouldbe a large order!" she smiled. "No, I can't seem to do my prejudicing in wholesale lots. But of course I have seen Jews one could cheerfully do without—the oily sort. And Christians too—haven't you?" She dismissed the subject with a shrug. "Since you're so interested in Stefan Nikolai, I wonder if you'd like to hear a letter from him. There's one in my muff that the postman brought just as I started."
The Jabberwocks were enchanted.
"You won't mind if it's quite personal? They sometimes are."
"So much the better!..."
It seemed to be distinctly personal, as Joan realized after she had got well into it. Mr. Nikolai wrote to thank her for the little picture of the furs and the ringless hand.
The fox who rendered up his life to furnish forth a tippet would cry, "O death, where is thy sting?" if he could see himself now!—By the way, what color have your eyes become? Do they still match my aquamarine, or must it be gray sapphires the next time?
The fox who rendered up his life to furnish forth a tippet would cry, "O death, where is thy sting?" if he could see himself now!—By the way, what color have your eyes become? Do they still match my aquamarine, or must it be gray sapphires the next time?
("Dear me," murmured Joan, "perhaps I'd better skip!"
"Not a word!" breathed the Jabberwocks, sitting forward.)
She read manfully on, wondering what had come over her friend to make him so particularly—well, personal was the word. The ringless hand seemed especially to take his fancy. He referred to it several times, and Joan could not well explain these references to her audience. She left them to draw their own conclusions; which they did, with some exchanging of glances.
There was an audible breath after she had finished. Emily Carmichael voiced the Jabberwocks when she asked casually, "Did you say he was young, Joan?"
"Oh, dear, no! Quite old. Forty or fifty, or thereabouts. An uncle-ish sort of person."
"Goodness," murmured somebody. "Fancy having an uncle like that!..."
Joan was asked to meetings of the club again. In fact, she was shortly invited to become a Jabberwock herself, having, without quite realizing why, been promoted from the rank of mere débutante to that of Interesting Person. In this way she came into contact with a phase of Louisville society strange to her father, strange even to the Misses Darcy, expert as they were in the ways of the best people. She learned that lately many little groups such as this club had come into existence, formed of women who had grown tired of more superficial forms of amusement, and had come together in the vague pursuit of something better.
"Do you know, I think we're rather in a transition state nowadays," explained Emily Carmichael. "It's as if we were waiting for something real to happen, marking time. The town's growing up, just as people grow up, and getting tired of childish games—Of course there's always been plenty of intellectual life here, as there is in most old Southern places where people have had leisure for books. We've even produced our share of literature."
(Joan nodded, recalling her poet at the Country Club, and remembering several names which are usually associated less with Louisville than with the world of letters.)
"But heretofore the intellectual people have been privileged characters, set apart and labeled, and expected to be a little odd about their clothes and hair—youknow! It's only lately that we ordinary folk have concerned ourselves with—well, culture, I suppose it is, though one hates the word! And there is something almost pathetic in the way we herd together to pursue it, as if to give each other countenance!"
"Not half as pathetic as trying to pursue it alone," said Joan, who knew.
"Anyway, it's distinctly smart nowadays to read and have opinions and know something, even in our most frivolous circles—thank heaven!"
"'Business of being a high-brow,' as Archie Blair would say," smiled Joan.
"Oh, Archie Blair! Isn't he absurd?"
Joan suddenly found herself on the defensive. It was all well enough for her to laugh at her protégé, but she did not intend to extend the privilege to others.
"I like him very much," she said, with decision. "He's honest and nice. I believe I like him better than any man I know."
"So do I," said Emily Carmichael unexpectedly. "But that doesn't keep him from being funny!—Do you know, Joan, often as we have him to dinner, and promptly as he pays his party-calls (who taught him that, I wonder?) he has never once set foot in this house just casually, of his own accord! I believe he thinks it wouldn't be 'respectful' of him. And yet I don't seem to awe him particularly, and it certainly isn't Mother's lorgnon—he positively teases her, and she likes it! The big house and that sort of thing wouldn't impress him—he's not enough of a snob. And yet he will not come to see me. Queer, isn't it?"
Joan admitted the queerness, though she was conscious of a slight feeling of gratification. She believed she understood, having once heard Archibald express rather forcibly his opinion of the sort of man who "went with" more than one girl at a time. While he could hardly be said to be "going with" herself, he had made little concealment of the fact that he was entirely at her disposal. She liked him the better for not being at Emily's as well.
"So you've been having him to dinner?" she murmured. "He never told me that!"
"Oh, no, he wouldn't. Haven't you noticed that for all his artlessness, he never really does tell much about himself? Or about anything else! That's one reason he's so popular with Johnny and all of them, I think. He's a sort of confidential agent to the crowd. I know that when Father can't find Johnny sometimes" (she blushed, and Joan nodded sympathetically) "he always calls up Archie Blair, who presently produces him. Sometimes he doesn't bring him home for several days, and telephones that he's got him at his rooms—recuperating, I suppose. Johnny swears by him, of course. I've heard of the wonderful Archie for years, but never saw him until that night at your ball.... It was splendid of you to have him there, Joan!—one of the things that made me want to know you better."
Joan waived this compliment. One would suppose him Emily's discovery instead of her own!
"How did your brother happen to know him?"
"Oh, boys always know each other—they're so much more democratic than girls. Horrid little snips we used to be, remember?—turning up our noses at any other children who didn't go to dancing school?"
"I did not go to dancing school myself," remarked Joan quietly. "My mother taught me."
"Then your mother must have been Queen of the Fairies!" said her friend, rather prettily. "Johnny and Archie first met, I believe, upon the field of battle. There used to be a continuous warfare on in this neighborhood between what were known as the Alley Gang and the Av'noo Kids. We expected Johnny to be brought in any day a mangled corpse—he being the leader of the Av'noo Kids. One day the Alley Gang caught him and his cohorts rather depleted as to numbers, and were naturally engaged in wiping them off the face of the earth, when the paper-boy came up on his wheel. With a whoop he dropped wheel and papers and joined in the fray. The Alley Gang were getting the worst of it when policemen arrived—it seems some windows had been smashed. The other boys scattered, but the rescuer dared not desert his papers and so got caught; and Johnny came panting home to get Father to bail him out of jail. That's the first we heard of Archie Blair."
"Odd that he didn't side with the Alley Gang, wasn't it?" commented Joan.
"Why, don't you see?—the Av'noo Kids were getting the worst of it. That's Archie!..."
Joan decided to be a little kinder to her protégé the next time she saw him. It is an odd fact that we frequently do not appreciate our possessions until others appear to value them unduly.
Their next meeting occurred at the Carmichael house at dinner. Emily, with the approach of the Easter season, had one day announced her intention of giving a dinner in Joan's honor, greatly to the younger girl's pleasure. It meant that she had won not only the friendship of Emily, but that of her mother as well; a rather more difficult feat.
Major Darcy was equally pleased with this compliment, which he characteristically accepted for himself.
"It is very gratifying to have old friends take one's child to their hearts in this fashion—very gratifying! There are no better people in the State than the Carmichaels, my dear. It is true that I have seen less of the Judge than I could have wished since my return—we were school-boys together. But I felt that soon or late there was bound to be some recognition. A fine fellow, and a most able lawyer! Yes, yes. And his wife—charming, charming! Though a trifle stiff for my fancy. Alittlemore suavity of manner. She was a Dillingham, you know. Her father represented us at one time at the Court of St. James."
"Oh! Is that why she's so airy?" commented Effie May. "Well, I don't mind airs if people have got a right to 'em, and nobody needs call on me who don't want to. I'm real glad you're getting in with that crowd, Joan. They're better than most 'old families'—they're still alive and kicking and right at the top. And you've done it all by yourself, too! Parties don't seem to do no good with their kind.... That's what comes of being born a lady yourself."
Something both wistful and generous in this speech touched the girl.
"I had forgotten Mrs. Carmichael has not called on you, Effie May," she said quickly. "Of course that makes it impossible for me to accept their invitation. I'll tell Emily."
And neither the Major's hasty reassurances or her step-mother's remonstrances sufficed to alter her decision. She declined Emily's invitation, and told her why.
"You're quite right, and Mother'd be the first person to tell you so," said Emily in instant approval. "I'll see what I can do. You know—" she hesitated—"it isn't that there's anyreasonfor her not to call. Of course everybody knows who your father is, and he's perfectly delightful, too! It's just—"
"I understand," said Joan quietly.
Emily put an arm around her. "My dear, I hope you do—This is such a small puddle that the big frogs in it take themselves rather seriously. And it's changing lately. It used to be that in the South money or the lack of it meant almost nothing at all. Now it means a great deal—more, I fancy, than in places where there's more of it. It doesn't seem to take even one generation to make a gentleman nowadays—or what passes for a gentleman. And so the old guard feel that they have to be especially wary, to make a decided stand, in order to retain their own identity. They're horribly afraid of being—not exterminated exactly, but—"
"Mixed?" suggested Joan. "I remember you called me 'mixed' the first time you deigned to notice me."
"Not the first time—the second," laughed Emily, blushing. "The first time was on the train, and you had flowers and a box of candy, and I hadn't.—The second time you were such a haughty little minx, with your Eastern airs and your lovely clothes, and so utterly unaware of my provincial existence, that I simplyhadto snub you somehow!"
"Well!" gasped Joan. "That is exactly the way I felt about you!"
"And there we were bristling our hackles at each other like two strange puppy dogs, each waiting for the other to wag a tail. Anyway, I wagged first!" cried Emily, kissing her friend. "And I'm not going to lose you now, simply because my family hasn't been polite to your family."
"You couldn't!" said Joan rather shyly, kissing her in return....
As a result of this understanding, some days later the cards of both Judge and Mrs. Jonathan Carmichael appeared on the Darcy hall table (from which they were not removed until gray with age and exposure); to be followed by an even more unequivocal bit of pasteboard which informed Mrs. and Miss Darcy that Mrs. Carmichael would be at home on a certain afternoon in April from four until six.
Effie May's innocent joy in this trophy, and the frequency with which it figured in subsequent conversations, filled Joan with a combination of embarrassment and satisfaction. She felt that she had at last done something to repay, in part, the obligation she owed to her father's wife....
She was not surprised to find Archibald at Emily's dinner. It was the first time she had seen him under quite such a strong social light, however, and she was a little nervous as to what the evening might bring forth. "The Sign of the Dirty Spoon," did not sound like the most reliable school of table manners.
He sat opposite her, between Emily and a débutante of the type that makes conversation an act of supererogation, and she was able without seeming to do so to keep her protégé under a watchful eye.
But to her relief he neither swallowed his spoon nor grasped his fork with undue firmness, and seemed not at all perturbed by the variety of the silver implements beside his plate. Joan was quite mystified by his prowess; until she happened to notice that Emily also had him under a watchful eye. With each course Emily promptly and ostentatiously selected the proper implement, and Archie, after one glance out of the corner of an eye, followed suit. It was perhaps fortunate that Emily was his leader instead of the more impish Joan, who would have been impelled by sheer force of circumstance to attempt her fish with her coffee spoon.
What surprised her even more than Archibald's table manners was his conversation; a flow, a positive torrent, which poured on in a constant stream, pausing only for the extreme exigencies of mastication, and not always then. In the intervals of her own talk, Joan caught occasional bits of this monologue. During the soup course it apparently concerned itself with the South American armadillo, habits and habitat. During the dessert it still appeared to linger about the armadillo.
Now and then Emily cast a puzzled glance across at Joan, and the débutante on his other side had long since been reduced to "Oh, really?" and "I can hardly believe that!" But the armadillo went on and on.
Joan had not suspected him of a concealed passion for natural history. She could hardly wait for dinner to be over to investigate this new development. But she had to call him to her side in so many words before he ventured to join her. His eyes had been upon her most of the evening, removing themselves hastily whenever they caught hers; but he did not wish to intrude. It was quite sufficient for him to be in the same room with her.
She began at once, "Why and whence the armadillo, Archie? You sounded like a University Extension lecture!"
"Did I?" he grinned. "Was it all right? There were some things I forgot to tell 'em. About the—"
"Never mind!" said Joan hastily. "What I want to know is how you came by the armadillo, anyway?"
"I'm taking a correspondence course," he confessed.
"In—in armadillos?"
"No, in conversation," he said seriously. "Subjects of General Discussion Suitable for Social Gatherings. I thought, seeing as I'm going out in society so much these days, I ought to work up a different line of talk than a fellow needs in business. The sort of thingsyoulike, you know—not learned, exactly, but sort of high-brow.—Books and all.—They send us out a subject once a week. 'All about the North Pole' it was once. 'The Infant in Portraiture,' another time. Last week it was 'The Armadillo and Its Ways.' Great scheme, ain't it?"
"Stupendous!" murmured Joan. "But, Archie, suppose you meet a fellow-student at some—er, social gathering who happens to be pursuing the same line of cultivation? Mightn't that be rather embarrassing?"
"Give me away, you mean? What's the dif? I would give him away, too, and we'd have something to talk about! Anyway, to know all about something's a mighty fine idea, even if you don't get a chance to tell folks."
Joan did not smile. She realized that here, manifesting itself no matter how uncouthly, was the true spirit of research, a thing which she respected above all other impulses of the human brain.
She said softly, "Keep on with your correspondence course by all means!—only, Archie, don't talk about it to other people, will you? They might not understand."
He gave her a quick little grin of comprehension. "Not on your life! It don't pay to wise people up to what a boob you are.—Except you. I guess you know, anyway!"
Joan, in yielding to family pressure temporarily, had by no means given up the idea of what she had learned recently to call her economic independence—a subject discussed frequently, if not very fruitfully, by her friends the Jabberwocks, who preached rather more radically than they practiced.
"You see," as they explained when reproached by Joan with inconsistency, "we believe in that sort of thing, of course! but it isn't as if we reallyneededit." (Which was likewise the Jabberwockian attitude toward suffrage.)
Joan, however, not only believed in economic independence, but needed it—as she reminded herself at gradually increasing intervals. She was in danger, and knew it, of going over to Mammon. She had found it far easier than she expected to live along from moment to moment, accepting life as it came, enjoying the surface without questioning the depths. The habit of mere material luxury is an insidious thing that fastens upon one unaware; and Joan had all her father's taste for the good things of life.
She had begun to form many little extravagant ways, such, for instance, as wearing silk stockings under her heaviest shoes, using a towel only once before casting it aside, having her hair shampooed down town when she was perfectly able to do it herself in her own bathroom. Not very reckless extravagances, perhaps, from the point of view of her new friends; but the sort of thing which the Misses Darcy observed with something like awe.
"I often think that if dear papa had been able to allowusto be less careful—"; sighed Miss Virginia. "But of course in our day a silk stocking was a silk stocking."
"Indeed it was! Do you remember the lovely pair Aunt Sara Miggs brought from abroad when she made the grand tour? White they were, Joan; and when they began to get a little yellow with washing, she gave them to me; and when I'd had plenty of use out of them, they were dipped pink for Sister Euphie; and by the time Sister Virgie got them they had become black."
"With age?" asked Joan, rather startled.
"Oh, no, dear. With dye."
"Where are the stockings of yester-year?" murmured the girl. "You can't buy good old family standbys like that nowadays, not at any price. Nothing but these miserable sleazy affairs that run if you look at them—the cowards!"
The Darcy ladies exchanged puzzled glances.
"Cowards—stockings?" repeated Miss Iphigenia. "I'm afraid I don't quite see the connection—"
"There isn't any—don't mind me! And really it's quite a distinction to wear cotton ones nowadays," hurriedly said Joan, who hoped sincerely never to possess a cotton stocking again in all her life. And at the same time planned to earn her own living in any honest fashion available, no matter how lowly! Inconsistency was not a fault with which she had the right to twit her fellow Jabberwocks....
But she never quite forgot her destination in the pleasures of the wayside. She did a good deal of quiet investigating, in a desultory way. Teachers, librarians, bookkeepers, stenographers, all came under the head of skilled labor, as she soon discovered, and required a course of training—which Joan's step-mother would have to provide. It put these professions out of the question.
There were various small establishments in Louisville conducted by acquaintances of hers, those "ladies in reduced circumstances" of which every Southern town is full; tea-rooms, hat-shops, lingerie-shops, and the like—a state of affairs which gave Major Darcy acute distress.
"Imagine the daughters of my old friend Colonel Dinwiddie selling bibelots to any vulgarian who has the effrontery to purchase them! What can their brothers be thinking of?" he would groan. "Of course you will be careful never to enter the shop, my dears! The poor ladies shall not be embarrassed by having to wait onmywife and daughter, at least."
But aside from her father's peculiar but not unique point of view, these ventures required capital; which again put them out of the question.
She heard now and then of certain well-paid positions in connection with social service of various sorts; but these again seemed to require a special training, or a special aptitude, which Joan did not believe herself to possess. The very words "social service" had to her a chilling, impersonal, busybodyish sound, almost as ugly as "philanthropy." She was not of those to whom a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. "Charity" sounded to her Christian, and warm, and friendly; but she dreaded to offer "philanthropy," or "social service" to the unfortunate almost as much as she would have dreaded to receive such things. She decided that hermetierwas not good works.
Clerks in stores, she learned, do not for the most part earn a living wage. They are expected evidently to live at home, or to supplement their salary in some other fashion (just how Joan was not sure, but she entertained uneasy suspicions). By the time they become expert—heads of departments, buyers, chief milliners, etc.,—they are of course more than economically independent. But in the meanwhile....
It was the meanwhile that troubled Joan. When she broke with her family, she intended to do so with a magnificent completeness.
Only two alternatives seemed open to her inexperience; the stage and journalism. She weighed them one against the other without being able to come to a decision. Joan was rather fond of making her own decisions, and had all the impatience of her nineteen years with mature advice. But at length she consulted Stefan Nikolai.
"Please write me by return mail," (she commanded), "which you think would offer me the most advantageous career, the stage or journalism."
He obeyed on a post-card marked Christiania (his postmarks were frequently the only indication of his whereabouts):
"I should suggest the usual course in matrimony as a preliminary to any career."
Joan stamped her foot over this banality. It was something she might have expected from a man of her father's generation, but hardly from Stefan Nikolai. Particularly when he knew about Eduard, and must certainly realize that her interest in man as a sex was over!
Useful she still found them as dancing partners, to be sure, as providers of candy and flowers and theaters, even to a certain extent as companions, since one cannot very well sit about after nightfall conversing with women, if only for appearance' sake. One or two she might admit to her friendship, provided they remain sufficiently "in their place," like Archie Blair. But as lovers, husbands! Never again. Fortunately, sufficient phagocytes had been released to take care of that.
Hers was an attitude of mind which if generally entertained would, she realized, mitigate against the welfare of the race; but judging from the people about her, it would never be generally entertained—particularly in Kentucky, and in Springtime.
It is a season when matters of pairing off that may have hung fire throughout the winter are apt to come rapidly to a climax. Each Sunday paper brings forth its batch of Spring engagements; and Joan herself was under the pleasing necessity of chilling off two of her admirers in quick succession. One was a youth of the fireside-companion type, who innocently fancied that there might be room for one more under the hospitable Darcy roof. The other was the blond young man who had been Joan's first partner, and who, having danced her successfully through the season, saw no reason why he should not dance her successfully through life.
They met with small mercy at her hands. "Off with his head!" murmured Joan cheerily to herself on each occasion, thinking of a certain evening under a beech-tree by the light of the gibbous moon....
These two unfortunates were not the only ones in her life who were to suffer vicarious atonement for the sins of Eduard Desmond (and obscurely of Richard Darcy as well).