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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Why Joan?
+
+Author: Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2010 [EBook #34801]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHY JOAN? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              WHY JOAN?
+
+                       BY ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY
+
+                  Author of "KILDARES OF STORM," etc.
+
+
+    NEW YORK
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+    1919
+
+    Copyright, 1919, by
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+
+    _Published, March, 1919_
+
+                     TO
+             MRS. RICHARD W. KNOTT
+       friend and neighbor to many young
+          women such as JOAN, whom she
+    has helped to find the why of themselves;
+          and whose life principle may
+         be summed up in Virgil's phrase
+
+            _Paulo majora canamus_--
+
+        (Let us sing of higher things.)
+
+
+    Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,
+    Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,
+    Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,
+      Car je suis le Cobzar.
+
+    _Quoted by Pierre de Coulevain from source unknown._
+
+Rough translation:
+
+    Love me, because I have need of love for my songs,
+    Leave me, because I have need of tears for my songs,
+    Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs,
+       For I am the Cobzar.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Some time since, the author had the temerity innocently to publish a
+book ("Kildares of Storm"), which, like this one, employed for
+background the country with which she happens to be most familiar, the
+State of her adoption and of her affections. And great was the scandal
+thereof. Neighbors insisted upon recognising themselves in it, to their
+horror--or to their complacency, as the case might be. They also
+recognized the house described; although if one heard with impartial
+ear, the house appeared to possess as many different identities as
+localities, and despite the fact that the author, in order to guard
+against this very contingency, had taken many liberties with geography,
+even to the extent of moving mountains--imagination being on occasion
+almost as powerful as faith.
+
+That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens to assert
+that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the whole world of fancy
+at command, would care to inhibit productivity by the limitations
+imposed upon photography, invaluable as that science is in its
+place--which is not fiction. Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment
+at least, "shattering the world to bits and remolding it nearer to the
+heart's desire."
+
+There is also among the craft an unwritten law against the holding up
+for public inspection those people with whom one has broken bread, so to
+speak; and as one is apt, in Kentucky, to have broken bread with all
+one's acquaintance, neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider
+themselves safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize
+themselves in this book, let them recognize themselves quite as readily
+in the living people about them. For we are, after all, of one
+substance, varying only with circumstance and the different stages of
+development. And it is with these things only--with circumstance and the
+stages of development, with truths rather than facts, with men and women
+rather than personalities--that this author at least chooses to concern
+herself.
+
+ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY.
+
+
+
+
+WHY JOAN?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Young Joan Darcy leaned back luxuriously upon a cushion offered by the
+obsequious porter (servants were usually obsequious with Joan, though
+she was not at all beautiful and rather too shabby to promise much in
+the way of largesse), watching the world go by with a dreamy, detached,
+yet oddly observant gaze that missed no detail of the landscape through
+which she passed and registered it in her subconscious mind for future
+reference. It was a convenient receptacle, her subconscious mind--a sort
+of strongbox into which went many things valuable and valueless, to be
+brought forth when occasion required, quite intact. She tucked away in
+it now not only the rushing landscape but the various people about her
+in the Pullman: a dapper person, probably a necktie drummer, who had for
+some time been discreetly taking notice and whom it was her pleasure to
+occasionally regard as if he were so much thin air; an elderly lady who
+beamed wistfully whenever their eyes met, and who, Joan decided, would
+presently summon up courage to inform her that a little daughter, had
+she lived, would have been about Joan's age; also another girl, dressed
+as Joan would have liked to be dressed herself, who cast occasional
+glances of indifference in her direction, noting, it was to be hoped,
+the affluent litter of magazines and papers that surrounded our heroine,
+the fading bouquet tucked into her belt, and the expensive box of
+chocolates which lay open upon her knee, exposing to the world at large
+a masculine card on top.
+
+Joan discovered within herself a certain impersonal, appreciative
+antagonism toward strange young women, such as knights may have felt who
+met for combat upon the jousting field. Envy was the one tribute which
+most assuaged her vanity.
+
+She would have liked to sample the box of candy--a parting tribute from
+a family friend who had a most discriminating taste in chocolates--but
+she feared that it would place her hopelessly in the class of
+school-girls, from which she had just emerged, as world-wise, as
+sophisticated, as completely finished a young person as ever a convent
+turned loose upon the unsuspecting world. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"
+was her favorite novel; she had smoked her maiden cigarette--in fact,
+two of them; and she no longer subscribed to the stork-and-baby myth,
+which seemed to her puerile.
+
+She was still able, however, to savor keenly in advance the moment when
+the Pullman would empty itself into the dining-car and she would be free
+to approach her chocolates in the manner favored by true _bon vivants_:
+i.e., by nibbling off one end, extracting the contents bit by creamy bit
+with the head of a pin (preferably a large white-topped pin), and
+finally crushing the emptied shell deliciously upon the tongue.
+Conserved in this manner, one chocolate might be made to do the duty of
+many chocolates, an advantage not to be despised where pocket-money is
+limited to twenty-five cents a week.
+
+The moment was not yet, and reflecting sedately that self-control is
+good exercise for the character, she gave herself over to the pleasures
+of recollection.
+
+What a beautiful parting it had been! What floods of tears and kisses
+and promises! Seven--no, eight--girls weeping around her while they
+exchanged dramatic farewells; firm Sister Mary Joseph, the out-sister
+who conveyed pupils to shops and trains and so forth, leading her aside
+at the last moment to press upon her, heretic though she was, a tiny
+medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two
+youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still
+masculine); and, for _pièce de résistance_, Stefan Nikolai, famous
+though elderly, who had run over from China or Egypt or somewhere to see
+her graduate. This was an attention Joan took quite for granted--he had
+been a friend of her mother's, and distance seemed nothing to his habit
+of life. But its effect upon her schoolmates, and even upon Sister Mary
+Joseph, was gratifying in the extreme. With his dark, fine features, and
+his foreign-cut clothes, he had not looked particularly elderly that
+day. His eyes, Joan recalled, had always been peculiarly expressive,
+like the eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at
+all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered
+inadvertently toward the unconscious gentleman as she tendered her medal
+of St. Joseph.
+
+Joan was fond of Mr. Nikolai, and grateful to him. She even read his
+books, though she preferred his letters, which had a good deal in them
+about herself. His presence at her graduation, his chocolates, the
+little sea of papers with which he sought to beguile the tedium of her
+journey, had all helped to comfort her for the absence of her father. He
+was, she thought warmly, almost as good as a father anyway; and far more
+generous! Everything nice she had was a gift from Stefan Nikolai. Her
+lovely Chinese shawl, her carved jade ring (Joan wished secretly that
+there had been a diamond in it somewhere), the odd piece of clear blue
+aquamarine he had brought her for a graduation present, that just
+matched her eyes; books too, in beautiful covers, and some old prints
+that were anything but beautiful, and a white bear-skin for her room.
+She would have liked to suggest to him that, in place of such costly
+trifles, occasional dresses might be acceptable, of the sort that come
+from Paris; also frilly things, hand-embroidered, which he would not
+have to choose himself, of course--there being women clerks for the
+purpose. She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it
+himself, aware as he must be of the scarcity of such desirables in the
+Darcy family.
+
+Still, one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth; and had he not been
+such a lifelong friend as to be almost a relation, Joan would have
+chafed a little, as it was, under her sense of obligation to Mr.
+Nikolai. Her mother's daughter did not take kindly to a sense of
+obligation.
+
+It was not he, however (ah, by no means he!) who had provided the
+flowers which drooped at her belt. For one moment the absence of the
+donor of these flowers had threatened to spoil the pleasure of her
+parting; and then had arrived, breathless, a messenger and a note. Joan
+was able philosophically to reflect that if the gentleman had come in
+person she would never have had the note. And there is something
+delightfully tangible and lasting about a love-letter--if, indeed, it
+was a love-letter?
+
+That was one of Eduard Desmond's great gifts: elusiveness.
+
+She put her hand to her blouse and felt the responsive crackle therein;
+and the words of the note danced before her eyes in the form of little
+cupids, bearing garlands:
+
+     My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+     of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+     Truly, "To part is to die a little." Forgive me! EDUARD.
+
+Joan had done her thrilled best to understand, since it was expected of
+her, but she felt rather puzzled. Was it that he feared his emotions at
+parting might get beyond his control? Joan sighed. She could have borne
+that. Or was it--here she frowned importantly--that his habits were
+already resuming control of him, now that her hand was, so to speak, off
+the rudder?
+
+Eduard Desmond, as all the Convent knew, was a man of the world, with a
+past. He was also in his lighter moments an artist. The Convent was
+rather vague in its mind as to the form of art he pursued; but that it
+included habits was unfortunately certain, and his young niece Betty had
+vouched personally for the authenticity of his past. It had had to do
+with a married woman. The Convent frequently prayed for him; though
+unknown to the nuns.
+
+Occasionally this distinguished-looking, fascinating, rather melancholy
+young man came to take Betty and a few chosen friends to a matinée, out
+of the kindness of his heart. Perhaps it was not pure kindness of heart
+that had called to his special attention young Joan Darcy, with her
+square chin, and straight black brows beneath which the eyes looked out
+at you with an odd intensity; unless she smiled, when they danced like
+blue water in the sun. She was not pretty, Joan, and boys rarely noticed
+her, somewhat to her chagrin; but Eduard Desmond was no boy, and his
+past perhaps had made him perceptive. The acquaintance between them
+ripened to a degree unsuspected by the good sisters at the Convent, if
+not by his family, who aided and abetted it, feeling that a young girl
+might be rather good for Eduard. Doubtless she was. She entered into the
+duty of "reforming" him with a conscientious thoroughness that might
+have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal
+of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more.
+She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined
+with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike,
+which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the
+affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly
+unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of
+being "not there when wanted," as Eduard put it to himself, annoyed. He
+thought it deliberate, the reserve of the prude, or of the embryo
+coquette; whereas it was really one of the crosses of Joan's life,
+dreaded by her as the self-conscious dread attacks of shyness.
+
+So far she had come out of what might have been an illuminating
+experience bearing only two small trophies of the sort girls love to
+whisper about together in bed after dances when the lights are out; one
+rather lingering kiss upon her slim, brown paw (which did not startle
+her at all, but made her want to giggle); and now this love-letter--if
+it was a love-letter.
+
+Again Joan sighed. She regretted with all her heart that queer aloofness
+which came upon her in critical moments, making her notice that a man's
+ears were put on wrong, or that her own finger-nails needed shining,
+when she should have been surrendering her whole soul to emotion. Was it
+always going to keep her from plumbing the depths of life?
+
+"Oh, but it shan't!" she insisted to herself. "I _will not_ be an
+innocent bystander! Things must happen to me; they must. All kinds of
+things!"
+
+It was the sort of challenge to which Fate is apt to give attentive ear.
+
+Presently, out of facts and recollections she slipped, as was her wont,
+into a game of Pretend, which had been a sort of accompaniment to Joan
+from her cradle; growing as she grew, changing as life changed its
+aspect to her eyes. She was no longer plain little Joan Darcy, returning
+from school in a shabby suit which she had outgrown, to a shabby home
+which she had also somewhat outgrown. She was a glorified young person
+of the singer or actress variety, returning from a career of conquest in
+foreign parts, with her maid Fifine traveling second class in the coach
+behind, as they do in all the better novels. Her father, not much
+altered from real life except that there were no spots on his clothes
+(the Major's manner being grand enough for any circumstances), would be
+at the station with the victoria and pair--or perhaps the limousine--and
+would murmur to the second footman, "Home, James"; and at the door of
+the family mansion, a pillared, fan-lighted door (Joan's mind lingered
+lovingly over architectural details even in her haste to reach the
+people in the doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful
+curtsies--quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!--and
+beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and newness, would
+stand her mother with outstretched arms, waiting....
+
+Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping large, hot tears
+upon her precious chocolates--she who had sworn never, never to cry any
+more in all her life, because tears are only useless things that make
+the nose red!
+
+"But _why_ am I crying?" she demanded of herself, puzzled, still mazed
+with her game of Pretend.
+
+It was because her mother would not be in that doorway, waiting; nor
+anywhere ever again--unless there really is a Heaven.
+
+Joan sat there, too proud to bury her face in her hands or to search for
+a handkerchief, intensely conscious that people were glancing her way,
+praying wildly to all her gods to keep her from blubbering aloud; and
+she looked so like a haughty infant in distress that the young man
+opposite, he whom she had characterized as a necktie drummer, could not
+long restrain active sympathy.
+
+"Pardon _me_," he said awkwardly, leaning toward her. "Are you in some
+sort of trouble? Anything I can do?"
+
+Joan summoned all her scattered forces to meet this emergency in a
+manner that would do credit to the precepts of Sister Mary Joseph. She
+elevated her small red nose, and lifting her eyes to about the level of
+his scarf-pin (a rather cheap scarf-pin) remarked: "You can go away. I
+am telling myself sad stories of the death of kings."
+
+The necktie drummer retired, permanently, to the smoking-car.
+
+This victory cheered Joan into momentarily forgetting her mother.
+Already an adventure to write to the girls! She wished that she had
+looked a little farther up than the scarf-pin.
+
+Shortly the old lady whose daughter might have been Joan's age if she
+had lived, invited Joan to be her guest in the dining-car, and was
+repulsed, coldly and firmly. One hears such tales of wicked old harpies
+on trains leading trustful girls into the most frightful predicaments!
+
+"No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much appetite on
+trains."
+
+Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last of the tears
+from her eyes, selected the largest of the chocolates and drew from some
+recess of her person a white-headed pin. There was also, to be discussed
+later, a packet of sandwiches, typical Convent affairs--large slabs of
+bread embracing pale and clammy ham. Joan thought of these with
+resignation. The odor of broiling beefsteak came back from the car ahead
+rather poignantly. Joan had lied to the old lady. At eighteen, with
+every nerve and organ in healthy coöperation, appetite is not likely to
+fail, on trains or elsewhere. Nor was it as if she did not have the
+necessary dollar in her pocket. Major Darcy always managed to rise to
+the occasion somehow when the ladies of his family went traveling. He
+had a horror of gentlewomen finding themselves among strangers
+temporarily embarrassed for funds--quite a different affair from a
+permanent condition of the sort when in the home circle.
+
+She knew that it was expected of her to spend her dollar in riotous
+living; but she could not forget (the Joans of the world never can
+forget) that a dollar is the price of a pair of white gloves or a pair
+of silk stockings. And so she munched her sacrificial sandwiches with a
+considering eye on the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Later, as she lay propped up in her snug little berth (far the
+pleasantest part of the journey to Joan), with her shade up for fear of
+missing anything of the mysterious night that passed outside--strange,
+silent cities, isolated farms asleep in the starlight, the glow of
+smelting fires as they flashed by, like a startling glimpse into the
+infernal regions--it suddenly occurred to Joan that her father had been
+unprecedentedly lavish in his provision for her journey home.
+
+"Money for good-by presents to all the girls; money for ticket, and
+sleeper, and tips, and ten dollars besides--goodness! Dad must have
+struck something!" she mused, deciding that it was really business that
+kept him from coming to see her graduate, and not, to put it delicately,
+the lack of business.
+
+In the Darcy family things were always put delicately. The mention of
+cost was deprecated. One never said crudely that a thing could not be
+afforded. One "preferred not to bother about it just then," or one
+"liked last year's hat so much better than any in the shops," or one
+"enjoyed the freedom of being without servants for a while--it was a
+relief."
+
+Occasionally Joan's mother, before she overcame the blunter speech of
+the North, had offended the family taste with plain statements about
+prices and possibilities. Joan, observant from her cradle, drew her own
+conclusions from the expression of wincing deprecation these faux pas
+produced upon her father's face, or upon that of the cousin or aunt or
+what-not in the way of Darcy relation that was usually visiting them.
+
+"Mamma," she had asked once in the murmured intimacy that preceded
+sleepy time, "isn't money a very nice fing?"
+
+"A very nice thing indeed, babykins," answered the lady with a faint
+sigh.
+
+"Then why mustn't us never speak about it?"
+
+It was not the only one of her daughter's questions that the harassed
+woman had been obliged to parry with what skill lay at her command.
+Honesty always came more easily to Mary Darcy than subterfuge.
+
+Joan grew up into the family habit of euphonious speech; but, thanks to
+a certain inheritance from her mother, facts had a way of presenting
+themselves to her inner vision with a clarity, a brutal frankness of
+outline, quite unprecedented in the mind of a Darcy.
+
+Her facility in the valuable game of Pretend came from the paternal
+strain. Richard Darcy was one of those fortunate spirits who move
+through life to the sound of an invisible drum corps--a procession of
+one, affably ready for whatever honors Fate chose to thrust upon him.
+Joan, too, was quite prepared for the best the world had to offer.
+Nevertheless, unlike her father, she was never unaware of the difference
+between pretense and reality, nor of the fixed line dividing them. When
+she lied, it was deliberately, with her eyes wide open.
+
+Just now she chose to step over the dividing line firmly into reality.
+Perhaps her dinner may have had something to do with it; a diet of
+chocolates and ham sandwiches not being conducive to glamour of thought,
+even at eighteen.
+
+Joan wished, soberly, that she were happier at the idea of going home.
+She wished that she were not haunted by a vague dread of it....
+
+The Convent--with its daily round of prescribed duties and pleasures,
+its fixed intimates and enemies, its atmosphere of simple piety, its
+guardian nuns, striving conscientiously for that "detachment from place"
+which is enjoined upon them, but lavishing all the pent-up
+mother-passion of their hearts upon the young creatures in their
+care--Joan, young as she was, visualized the place she had left as a
+sunny haven, a little quiet eddy in the whirlpool; sheltered, secluded,
+safe.
+
+She frowned at the adjective. Surely her own home was "safe," too!
+Surely the vague dread she felt had nothing to do with her father, for
+instance--her own dear, splendid Dad, so handsome despite his frayed and
+spotted clothes, with the courtly manner that had won both nuns and
+girls to awestruck admiration, and that gave him far more distinction
+than the fathers of other girls who did not wear frayed and spotted
+clothes. No, it could not be her father she dreaded!
+
+And it was certainly not Ellen Neal, the elderly woman who had followed
+the Darcy fortunes in their waxing and waning for many a year--part
+servant, part mentor, always friend; declining to be shaken off even in
+those crises when Mrs. Darcy "enjoyed doing without servants";
+supporting herself during such financial depressions by means of a
+skilful needle--supporting, Joan sometimes suspected, others than
+herself. The girl recalled one significant incident of her early
+childhood; her mother, pale and anxious, arguing at the door with a rude
+man who declined to leave without something she seemed unable to give
+him, until Ellen appeared, half running up the street, opening her
+shopping-bag as she came. And when she had thrust something into the
+rude man's hands and slammed the door in his face, Mrs. Darcy had turned
+silently to the servant and kissed her.
+
+Joan's feeling for Ellen was one of the few she had never tried to
+analyze. It was simply there, like her breath, her eyesight. She could
+not be said to love her--there was nothing attractive about Ellen Neal;
+yet her only quarrel with her father (if anything so one-sided could be
+called a quarrel) was on the subject of Ellen. Once during Joan's
+previous summer vacation, the Major, who disliked familiarity in
+servants, had taken occasion to remind Ellen most kindly that his
+daughter was almost a young lady now and should be spoken to as Miss
+Joan, no longer as "Joie" or as "Baby." Joan had thoroughly concurred in
+this opinion; until, happening to glance at Ellen as she left the room,
+she saw that the servant's compressed lips were trembling. She had cried
+out unaccountably: "No such thing, Nellen! You're to call me anything
+you like, always!"--and then she had turned upon her father, scolding,
+stammering out astonishing reminders, raising her voice, altogether
+behaving in a manner most unbecoming a gentlewoman and a Darcy--as her
+father quite obviously forebore to suggest to her. The quarrel had been
+altogether a most unsatisfactory one. During her tirade the Major had
+sat with poised carving-knife, regarding his daughter under mildly
+raised eyebrows. When she had stormed herself out, he remarked quietly,
+in quotation marks:
+
+    "Her voice was ever soft and low,
+    An excellent thing in woman."
+
+But the matter of "Miss Joan" was, by tacit consent, never resumed
+between them.
+
+No, it was decidedly not Ellen Neal who was responsible for her vague
+dread of home-coming. The girl, who had an odd dislike of anything vague
+in her mental processes, pursued the fugitive sensation to its lair with
+relentless precision.
+
+Was it the poverty of home she feared, then? Surely not, for poverty was
+a condition quite as much with her elsewhere--rather more with her
+elsewhere, for among strangers it was impossible to practice those
+useful little economies of ragged underwear and worn-out shoes which in
+the privacy of home-life made an occasional extravagance possible. Joan
+rather looked forward to the time when she no longer need be on
+dress-parade, so to speak, at every hour of the day.
+
+"If I wear cheap nightgowns, I can buy myself a good hat," was her
+thought--a thought which may be said to sum up the philosophy of the
+Darcy family.
+
+And although it seems customary among novelists to gage the refinement
+of their heroines by the daintiness of their taste in underlinen--no
+matter if her outer wear be sackcloth and ashes, the lingerie of a true
+fiction lady is invariably above reproach--one would like to submit that
+an almost equal refinement may be indicated by the present heroine's
+determination to make as brave a showing as possible before her world
+with as little strain as possible upon her father's income....
+
+Was it her mother's absence she feared then--still? Forewarned, Joan
+resolutely kept back the nervous tears that threatened to rise again at
+the thought of her mother; and she faced the possibility calmly.
+
+During the summer before, alone with her father and Ellen, Joan had been
+given plenty of time to get used to her mother's absence. Indeed, it
+seemed to her suddenly that during the several years previous she had
+been given time to get used to her mother's absence. It was as if Mary
+Darcy, knowing that the hand of death was upon her, had deliberately,
+gradually, withdrawn herself from the child she loved, in order to make
+the final separation easier.
+
+"That would have been like Mother," said Joan, nodding.
+
+She understood, in that moment of clear vision, why she had been sent
+away to boarding-school, despite her father's amazed protests--it was
+unprecedented that Mrs. Darcy should remain so firm in the matter of
+incurring unnecessary expense. She understood, too, why the narrow,
+bleak house in Louisville, which was the latest of their many homes, had
+taken on none of the look of her mother--that intimate, friendly,
+stay-awhile air which Mary Darcy, with the aid of long practice, managed
+to produce among the most unlikely surroundings within a few hours of
+occupancy. True, the old furniture made its faithful reappearance there,
+part of Joan's earliest recollections--the parlor suite of rosewood with
+blue velour, the little cottage piano, the great bed in which she, and
+her mother, and her mother's mother had been born, shorn long ago of its
+tester to accommodate altered circumstances--all looking a trifle
+shabbier, a trifle more battered after each adventure with fortune, but
+still dignified and "good," with the unmistakable mien of gentlefolk in
+reduced circumstances. For once, however, Mary Darcy had not been able
+to accomplish her usual miracle with this furniture. Chairs, sofa,
+tables, stood stiffly wherever the moving-men had chosen to place them,
+making no attempts to hide the spots on the wall-paper; the thread-bare
+velvet portières which had separated parlor from hall in every home that
+Joan remembered had never been altered to fit this one; stranger still,
+there were no green growing things in the window-sills, nor even in the
+can-strewn, sooty backyard. Joan could not recall any other home she had
+lived in without some attempt at a garden, were it only a few geraniums
+in the window-box.
+
+"Mamma must have been very tired," she thought, soberly; and realized
+that, far from dreading her mother's absence in that dingy, dreary
+house, she was almost glad of it. When one is as tired as Mrs. Darcy,
+rest is the great boon--rest from hopeless hoping, rest from making
+homes out of patience and courage and a few old sticks of furniture,
+rest from the anxious sorrow of loving.
+
+Joan was young to understand such things; but at her birth the fairies
+had given her the cruel gift of seeing out of the eyes of others....
+
+She came to the conclusion at last the thing she had been dreading was
+simply responsibility. Her play-time was over. No stretch of imagination
+could make her a little girl again--not with her hair well up on her
+head and a love-letter crackling deliciously under her pillow! Hereafter
+it was hers to create the home her mother had relinquished; hers to make
+ends meet somehow, if only in the accepted Irish way of "cutting a piece
+off one end and tying it onto the other"; hers to keep out of her
+father's eyes a certain baffled, hunted look which Joan associated with
+men who came to collect bills, referred to grimly by Ellen as "the
+Indians." No family of pioneers on the long-ago western frontier ever
+lived in greater fear of Indians than did Richard and Mary Darcy and
+their child Joan.
+
+The girl sighed, bracing her slight shoulders. But still thinking of her
+mother, she rehearsed sleepily one tenet of the little creed she had
+made long since to fit her necessities:
+
+    "It does not pay to be too unselfish."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Friends of Mary Darcy, in the distant days before they forgot to discuss
+her surprising marriage with a promoter from who knows where, were wont
+to say, "At least he makes a devoted husband and father!"
+
+Which was perfectly true. His little family had always been, as he often
+said, a passion with Richard Darcy. Perhaps his facility in saying
+things of the sort was what had appealed in the first place to the shy,
+undemonstrative Northernness of Mary. Though he was one of several who
+had professed their willingness to live for her, he was the only suitor
+who had offered to die for her--an attention she could not but
+appreciate.
+
+It was entirely for his child's sake (and, indeed, at some personal risk
+to himself, had Mary but suspected it) that two years before Major Darcy
+had so arranged the mysterious affairs he called Business as to be able
+to return to the State and city of his illustrious birth; "where," he
+explained with proud humility, "we are not quite nobodies, my darling!"
+
+(The "who knows where" on the part of Mary's friends had been sheer
+arrogant affectation; for nobody could have talked with Richard Darcy
+for five minutes without learning that he had been born and raised and
+hoped to die in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.)
+
+Joan had been quite as eager about the prospective move as her father,
+marveling at the apathy of her mother, who said, "I never mind being
+'nobodies,' Richard, so long as we have each other."
+
+Romantic visions danced through the girl's head of stately pillared
+mansions, of faithful negro servitors, of fascinating belles and
+gallants on horseback (her mental language became quite stilted and ante
+bellum to suit the picture), riding to hounds through meadows as blue as
+the skies above.
+
+"Though I don't suppose there's much bluegrass right around Louisville,
+is there, Daddy?" she demanded, with the passion for truth that was in
+her.
+
+"Plenty of it, Dollykins, plenty of it--though of course Louisville is
+not really in the bluegrass region, you remember. It belongs to the
+beargrass district." (Joan nodded. Thanks to her father's powers of
+reminiscence, she was well up on her Kentucky.) "Still, it isn't like
+one of these soulless Northern cities, which regard land as so much
+waste space on which to build monstrosities!" He glanced out truculently
+upon the streets of Chicago, which had managed in some way to incur the
+Major's displeasure. "No, no, there's plenty of bluegrass about the old
+town still, plenty of space, plenty of room to breathe. And how my old
+friends will take you to their hearts and love you! None of this
+blighting Northern indifference to everything except the chink of money.
+Money--_bah!_--It is God's country down there, my child--gentleman's
+country."
+
+This was not anti-climax on the Major's part. He visualized God at His
+best as a superior sort of Christian gentleman, who, had America been
+discovered at the time, would doubtless have chosen the Southern portion
+of it for the scene of His nativity.
+
+Of course the girl's anticipations of "God's country" were too glowing
+not to foredoom her to disappointment. The bluegrass itself was a flat
+failure; mere meadows of ordinary green, above which hung in seedtime a
+purplish tinge, like smoke from burning leaves. Louisville, too, did not
+quite meet the rosy expectations of a young person rather experienced in
+cities.
+
+They were received at the station, not by a deputation of the old
+friends who were to take them to their hearts and love them, but merely
+by a cousin, one of three Misses Darcy who had paid lengthy southern
+visits to the various places Joan had hitherto called home. By this lady
+they were conducted volubly in street-cars (Joan had hoped for a
+long-tailed carriage-pair) to an ancestral mansion which had loomed
+large in the Major's reminiscences, but which, as he himself admitted,
+appeared to have shrunk strangely, after the way of houses one has known
+in early youth. It was one of a row of duplicate tall marble fronts,
+stained and yellowed, unpleasantly suggestive to Joan's too-vivid
+imagination of neglected front teeth.
+
+From this shelter the Darcys soon departed. The cousins, while most
+cordial, were under the necessity of letting their spare chambers to
+paying guests, under which category their Cousin Richard could not with
+any certainty be classed.
+
+Joan recalled vividly the family search for a house that suited both her
+father's taste and her mother's pocket-book. The streets had seemed to
+her gray, endless cañons, from whose pavements the heat arose and eddied
+in dizzying waves. From within dark doorways women in dressing-sacks,
+waving palm-leaf fans, gazed out at them languidly. Block after block
+they traversed of houses that seemed as afraid of differing from each
+other as men in evening dress; again they came to neighborhoods where
+each dwelling stood at a bias angle from the street, as if hoping to
+achieve an impossible privacy by turning a cold shoulder upon its
+neighbor. And everywhere they huddled together as close as possible,
+presenting a solid front of masonry to repel invasion. Where was the
+space her father had boasted, the room to breathe?
+
+Joan had gazed longingly down certain vistas of tree-lined avenues,
+lined with pleasant mansions; or into compact green courts where there
+were smaller homes, with gardens. But these the elders passed without
+inquiry. They were as quick as house-agents at guessing rents.
+
+At last an abode was found that seemed to the Major suitable upon all
+counts. Mrs. Darcy, gazing up at its tall, narrow brick front, said with
+a slight sigh, "Isn't there a good deal of it to keep clean, dear?"
+
+It was the first time Joan had noticed her mother's new little air of
+weary indifference.
+
+"Ah, but in the South one cannot be cramped for room," replied the Major
+largely. "There is hospitality to be considered! You must remember that
+our daughter's début into society will take place from this house, my
+love. Who knows?--perhaps her wedding!" He pinched Joan's cheek
+playfully. "How do you like it, Dollykins?"
+
+"Not at all," she replied, too discouraged to be euphonious just then.
+"It's hideous, and there's a grocer-shop opposite, and Mother'll never
+sleep with these horrid cars jangling by. Why can't we have a house in
+one of those pretty green courts, Daddy?"
+
+The Major looked pained. Mary came to the rescue. A few years ago she
+would have explained bluntly that they could not afford one of the
+pretty green courts. Now she said with a rallying smile, "What! Not a
+banal, stupid, uninteresting new bungalow such as one might have in
+Pittsburgh, or Oshkosh, or Kalamazoo, Michigan! Where's your sense of
+local color, child? The atmosphere wouldn't be right at all!"
+
+Joan thought that the atmosphere of this neighborhood seemed to be
+largely compounded of soot and sewer-gas; but she did not say so.
+
+Richard Darcy, brightening, pointed out that while the house indeed
+faced a grocery-shop (so convenient for Ellen!), its rear was separated
+only by an alley from the rear of a house which faced upon a very fine
+avenue indeed; a backyard in which at the moment lingerie of a faint
+flesh-pink disported lacy ruffles and kicked airy silken limbs upon a
+clothes line. (Of this lingerie more anon.)
+
+"Evidently," pronounced the Major with an unconscious eye upon it, "a
+desirable neighborhood in every way."
+
+So the lease was signed, and Ellen Neal and the furniture sent for, and
+the first month's rent paid in advance; and these feats having been
+accomplished, Mary Darcy took to her familiar bed and died there,
+promptly and unobtrusively as was her way, without leaving any
+inconsiderate doctors' and nurses' bills behind her.
+
+That first summer in Kentucky was a strange time to Joan. It was filled
+with dim memories of the books she read aloud to her father day after
+day, in the futile effort to be a companion to him; of long walks she
+took with him in the cool of the evenings, through streets and parks and
+suburbs that were as strange to the man who had come back to them, Joan
+suspected, as to herself; and far more desolate. For the ghost of a boy
+haunted them; a mischievous, headstrong, innocent lad who had meant no
+harm to the world, nor to himself, in those days.
+
+Sometimes in the older streets he pointed out to her houses which came
+near to fulfilling her best hopes of pillared Southern mansions.
+
+"Tim Throckmorton used to live there," he would say, forlornly; or
+"Many's the time I've courted pretty Sally Field in that parlor!"
+
+Now there were "Furnished Room" signs in the windows, or shops in the
+lower floors, or, worst degeneracy of all, signs of negro habitation.
+For many a day the two hunted for a certain dearly remembered pond where
+a boy named Dick and his friends had been wont to repair for fishing and
+swimming and many a feat of derring-do. But they never found it; only
+houses already old, and even office-buildings, in the place where it
+might have been.
+
+And in those long and lonely walks they met no friends. It was as if for
+Richard Darcy the streets of Louisville were peopled by the dead.
+
+Joan had suffered for her father even more than for herself. Somehow she
+felt that she was better able to bear things than her father. And in her
+inner consciousness, lonely as she was for her mother, and must always
+be, she knew that the misery in her heart was a thing that would pass.
+She was too young to be so sad for long.
+
+Old Ellen wisely kept her busy with her preparations for
+boarding-school, her father having announced his intention of complying
+scrupulously with his dead wife's wishes, no matter at what cost to
+himself. Joan thought this very generous of him, although the cost was
+figurative rather than literal, as Mrs. Darcy's little property was
+willed to her child, with himself as guardian. Sometimes she had been a
+little ashamed of herself for the willingness with which she prepared to
+leave him, the eagerness with which she longed for the merry
+companionships and irresponsibilities of school again. But perhaps it
+was natural enough, considering that throughout that dreary summer her
+sole companions had been her grief-stricken father, the servant Ellen,
+and the sympathetic maiden cousins, who would have felt it indelicate to
+so much as smile in the presence of such deep mourning.
+
+Toward the end of the summer she made one other acquaintance, thanks to
+the above-mentioned lingerie. One of the sudden summer wind-storms which
+occur sometimes in the Ohio Valley landed in their yard one Monday
+morning a garment that had strayed unmistakably from the clothes line
+across the alley; a trifle of palest silk and lace and blue ribbons
+which Ellen Neal eyed with dark suspicion, but which Joan privately
+determined to copy for herself so soon as finances permitted.
+
+Monday being the day when Ellen's temper was at its most difficult, Joan
+decided to abate her dignity to the point of returning the article
+herself; and so she made her way, looking very young and touching in her
+homemade black frock, to the front entrance of the house across the
+alley. And there by good luck she met, just alighting in her
+porte-cochère from a most imposing limousine, a person who was
+indubitably the owner of the strayed garment; a plump, blonde, dimpled
+lady who suggested pink _crêpe de Chine_ and blue satin bows all over
+her. She greeted Joan with an effulgence that seemed out of all
+proportion to its cause, until in the course of conversation it
+transpired that she, like the Darcys, was a newcomer in Louisville, and
+rather lonely. Her name was Mrs. Calloway, and she came, as she vaguely
+explained, from "across the river."
+
+"It isn't as easy to get acquainted here as I thought it would be," she
+admitted naïvely, "Still," she added with her dimpling smile, "I expect
+folks will be friendly enough, once they get to know me, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Of course they will!" murmured Joan quite sincerely; for despite the
+woman's patent vulgarity, there was something attractive about her. One
+felt above all things that she was kind; and just then kindness meant a
+good deal to the lonely girl.
+
+This kindness began at once to manifest itself. Elaborate desserts and
+salads, in very ornate dishes, made their way across the alley to the
+Darcy table; obligations scrupulously returned by Ellen with pickles and
+preserves of her own making. There were other generosities, more
+difficult to return in kind; candy, automobile drives, hothouse flowers,
+the latter evidently meant for the grave where Mary Darcy lay among
+strangers.
+
+Over these attentions Ellen Neal grumbled frequently. "Your pa certainly
+ain't noticin' much these days, or he'd never let you get so thick with
+a strange woman we don't know nothin' about, Joan."
+
+"A strange _lady_, Ellen," corrected Joan with dignity.
+
+"Humph! Lady is as lady does. Look at her face, all painted up like a
+sign-board!"
+
+"Southern ladies quite frequently rouge," said Joan out of her recent
+observations; but she did not pursue the subject, for she herself had
+doubts as to her father's approval of this new acquaintance. Richard
+Darcy was no democrat. He had been heard frequently to state, as one
+rather proud of the confession, that he had no use whatever for the
+_canaille_ (which he pronounced "_canile_.")
+
+Hence she was a little embarrassed and uneasy when, one Sunday morning
+as she and her father were starting on their weekly visit to the one bit
+of his native soil owned so far by Richard Darcy--his wife's grave--a
+limousine drew up at their door, out of which beamed the face of Mrs.
+Calloway, beneath a broad pink hat.
+
+"I suspected you'd be off to the cemetery this fine morning," she called
+out cheerily, "and I thought I'd come and take you, you and your father.
+Hop right in, both of you. No, it won't be a bit of trouble. I've
+nothing else to do, and I always did love a cemetery anyway--it's the
+first place I go to whenever I strike a new town."
+
+Joan glanced nervously at her father, wondering how he would take this
+initial encounter with Mrs. Calloway. But after a moment's pause of
+sheer astonishment, the Major's native gallantry came to the rescue, and
+he advanced for the introduction with all the manner of one about to be
+presented at court.
+
+They found themselves bowling along at a smart clip among the
+churchgoers and the more lively joy-riders, out for a Sunday's pleasure,
+which thronged the avenue that sultry August morning.
+
+"Now isn't this better than a poky old street-car?" demanded Mrs.
+Calloway archly.
+
+The Major responded in kind. "Undoubtedly! Particularly in the matter of
+company."
+
+Joan's liking for her kind-hearted neighbor had suffered a sudden
+eclipse. Ellen was right about her--"Lady is as lady does." It was worse
+than vulgar to force herself upon them at such a time--it was unfeeling,
+indecent. She envied her father's poise. She had never seen him appear
+to such advantage as upon this trying occasion, in his new, cheap black
+suit which had not as yet had time to acquire spots and wrinkles, his
+fine features showing the ravages of sorrow, his handsome gray head bent
+courteously toward this voluble companion as though her every word were
+priceless. Manners, she reflected, cannot be assumed on occasion like
+garments, but are a part of the very texture of a personality. She could
+not imagine her father anything but suavely courteous, even under the
+most untoward circumstance.
+
+Nevertheless, beneath her pride in him lingered an odd fear lest, now
+that he had an audience, he might be moved to oratory over her mother's
+grave. With Richard Darcy emotion and the expression of it were usually
+simultaneous. Joan's unresponsiveness (a trait which she hated in
+herself, but could not help) had hitherto kept her father somewhat in
+check; but in the presence of a kindly warmth of sympathy like Mrs.
+Calloway's there was no telling what might happen.
+
+The Major, however, contented himself with murmuring, as he approached
+the grave, "She was very, very dear to me!" in so touching a voice that
+Mrs. Calloway openly wiped her eyes, exclaiming, "You poor man! Don't
+you think I understand--I, who've laid away two of them?"
+
+Joan moved hastily out of earshot, leaving the pair to reminiscence.
+Talk of things that hurt was to the girl like pouring acid upon an open
+wound; but if it helped her poor father, by all means let it help him.
+She had never made the mistake of thinking that because his grief was
+facile it was any the less strong and real. His utter helplessness, his
+stunned amaze that the wife he so sorely needed could have gone away and
+left him to bear the vicissitudes of life without her, were as piteous
+to his daughter as the wailing grief of a child. If she could have
+comforted him in any way other than by speech she would have done so. In
+the presence of great emotion she was dumb--though she sometimes thought
+she might be able to write him what she felt. Often at night she lay
+awake for hours, wondering how she could drive out of his eyes that
+baffled, frightened look which always came when things went wrong with
+him, and which only her mother had been able to banish....
+
+It haunted her all through the months which followed, that look of her
+father's; and sometimes in the midst of school-girl gaieties she would
+fall suddenly silent, thinking that she had no right to enjoy herself
+because he was there alone in the city of his childhood which seemed to
+have forgotten him. Joan was not yet quite the hard young egotist she
+intended to become.
+
+And so when toward the end of her journey the train slid into a pleasant
+country, mellow with the evening sun, long reaches of rolling pasture
+and hill and fertile bottom-land that meant Kentucky, something welled
+up in the girl's heart deeper than glamour of place, stronger than
+regret for her sheltered little past, than fear and hope for her
+unguessed future; perhaps the deepest and strongest feeling life plants
+in the human soul--the blood-tie. Weak or brave, fraud or fool or
+honorable gentleman--perhaps a little of all these things--it was her
+father who waited there for a woman to come and make him a home again;
+and Joan was ready.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The fellow-traveler who had incurred Miss Darcy's displeasure by a
+too-active sympathy was much pleased, being of a sentimental turn of
+mind, to witness a family reunion which presently took place in the
+station at Louisville. A tall, slender gentleman of a youngish
+Confederate colonel type--gray mustache and imperial, with a soft hat
+set very slightly to one side of his handsome head--detached himself
+from the crowd with a cry of, "Here I am, Dollykins!"
+
+Whereupon the girl dropped all her belongings, and cast herself upon him
+speechless, to be lifted well off the ground and hugged and kissed very
+thoroughly.
+
+"Fine! She's got a father, anyway, and a bully old bird at that,"
+thought the young man, who had never owned either father or mother or
+much of anything else that he could remember. It was his further
+privilege to hurry after the pair with a suit-case, some magazines, and
+a box of candy which both had characteristically forgotten.
+
+He was thanked by Major Darcy with an affable smile, and by his daughter
+with a curt, impersonal nod of dismissal after Sister Mary Joseph's best
+manner; which also pleased him, for he was by no means a thin-skinned
+young man, and preferred his gentlewomen haughty. He followed the pair
+far enough to observe the vehicle to which the father was obviously
+conducting her.
+
+"Humph!" he said to himself; "rich people!" and turned away, rather
+disappointed. (Why this should be, the writer cannot say, being merely a
+chronicler of facts.)
+
+Joan's flow of excited babble paused as she herself saw this vehicle.
+"Goodness! Are we going home in a taxicab? What grandeur!" she murmured,
+mentally figuring out the tariff. Then the monogram on the door
+enlightened her.
+
+"Oh, it's Mrs. Calloway's," she said, relieved, a little ashamed to have
+quite forgotten the existence of their well-meaning neighbor. "How good
+of her to send it for me!" she added with a giggle, recalling her recent
+game of Pretend. "All you need to do to complete the picture, Daddy, is
+to say, 'Home, James!'"
+
+Major Darcy obligingly murmured, "Home, James!" The chauffeur touched
+his cap, and enclosed them in the perfumed elegance of the limousine.
+
+Joan gave a crow of laughter, and rubbed her cheek affectionately
+against her father's sleeve. This was like old times indeed, happy old
+times, when in his lighter moments the Major had frequently entered into
+the spirit of her play. The contact of his sleeve was unusually soft,
+and she suddenly held him at arm's length to see him better.
+
+"Why, Major Darcy! If you haven't gone and bought yourself a new suit in
+honor of the occasion. A beauty, too!"
+
+He surveyed what he could of himself complacently. "The fellow has given
+me rather a good fit, I think."
+
+Joan gasped. "'The fellow!' Then it's not a ready-made--you've actually
+been to a tailor for it? Oh, Daddy darling!" she cried excitedly, "have
+you been making money?"
+
+The Major's eyebrows lifted. "I believe," he remarked, "that I have
+usually made money, have I not? Sufficient, at least, to keep my family
+comfortable."
+
+Joan was reminded with a jerk of Darcy traditions. "Of course!" She
+flushed. "I didn't mean--"
+
+And suddenly she realized that the look she had been so long dreading to
+see in his eyes, that expression of anxiety which was almost fear, had
+quite disappeared. There was an air about him of security, of
+nonchalance, as one who would say, "Bring on your Indians! Who's
+afraid?" (Not that the Major would have condescended to know the meaning
+of the family expression, "Indians.")
+
+Joan gave his hand a quick little squeeze that was oddly maternal. "I'm
+so glad, Dad," she said quietly; and went on to speak of other things.
+
+They turned into the street where home was. Silence fell upon her. The
+prospect of facing her mother's absence was more difficult than she had
+thought it would be. At least there was Ellen to comfort her; gruff,
+matter-of-fact old Ellen, always at her crossest when most deeply moved.
+She pinned her thoughts to Ellen.
+
+The Major's recent prosperity seemed not to have affected his
+dwelling-place as yet. As they drew near, Joan saw even in the dusk that
+the little lawn in front needed attention; nor was there so much as a
+light in the window to greet her--Ellen was always so careful about the
+gasbill. Then, as the limousine did not stop, she realized the For Rent
+sign on the door.
+
+"Why, Dad, we've moved!" she cried with an odd pang at her heart. "Oh,
+but where?"
+
+"Wait and see. 'Lay-lows for meddlers,'" he smiled, pleased with his
+little stage-effect.
+
+The limousine bowled smoothly around the corner into the fashionable
+avenue beyond; and Joan thought, with a habit of anxiety beyond her
+years, that the new money would not last long if they were to live in
+such a neighborhood as this. But they stopped at a door she remembered,
+an imposing door with a porte-cochère, where, still as in her game of
+Pretend, a lady in a tea-gown stood waiting for them. Not, however, her
+mother.
+
+"Here you are at last, girlie!" cried the cheery voice of Mrs. Calloway;
+and she was received into a voluminous pink chiffon embrace, highly
+scented with the latest thing in perfumes.
+
+Joan fought her way quite rudely out of this embrace, feeling
+suffocated. Her knees had begun to tremble.
+
+"Are--are we visiting you!" she quavered, piteously putting off the
+inevitable.
+
+The lady laughed, a laugh as plump and soft and cushiony as the rest of
+her. "There, now, Dickie; I don't believe you've had the nerve to tell
+her yet!"
+
+She rustled over and stood beside the Major, slightly in front of him,
+so that she could lean back archly against his shoulder; a position
+which seemed to bring an arm automatically into position about her
+waist.
+
+"Dollykins," said Richard Darcy, clearing his throat and not quite
+meeting the girl's wide gaze, "this is my--my graduation gift to you.
+Your new mamma!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Joan was alone at last in such a bed as she had never occupied in her
+life, even in her most luxurious games of Pretend. To her inexperience
+the sheets felt as if made of softest silk--at its crest the Darcy
+establishment had never run to fine linen--and they were edged with lace
+which Joan longed frugally to transfer to a best petticoat; only that
+there seemed no need for her to trouble further about best petticoats,
+nor about anything else. Under the eager guidance of her "new mamma,"
+drawer after drawer in the room she occupied had been opened to disclose
+piles of exquisite underthings, of the sort Joan had first encountered
+upon the Calloway clothes lines, except that these were white instead of
+pink.
+
+"Pink's _my_ color," explained the former Mrs. Calloway. "Besides, white
+lawngerie seems sort of better for a girl that's never been married,
+don't you think? Even if it isn't so becoming. 'Tain't as if there was
+anybody to see her in it," she added, with a conscious blush.
+
+Joan found no suitable comment to make upon this treasure-trove. Her
+lips would not utter anything beyond a perfunctory "Thank you," even
+when further investigation discovered a closet hung with dresses of
+every sort, with peignoirs, with motor-coats and dainty wraps, with
+everything in the way of finery which every girl alive hopes at some
+time to possess, but which the daughter of Richard Darcy had learned to
+look upon from afar with an air of indifference.
+
+"Are these all for me?" she asked dully.
+
+"Of course they are! Just a few little models I had sent up on
+approval." (The ex-Mrs. Calloway invariably referred to her costumes in
+affectionate diminutives, as "little gowns," "little negligées," "little
+hats," etc., though the adjective could rarely be said to fit them.) "If
+these don't suit we'll get others--though anything ought to look good on
+your form, dearie." She added, clasping her hands, "It certainly is fun
+shoppin' for a daughter of your own!"--an outburst which might have
+struck some responsive chord in a heart less young than Joan's, less
+hard and tight and bitter with the tears that would not come.
+
+Major Darcy had observed her apathy under this rain of largesse with
+some disapproval. It was not the first time he had secretly wished that
+his daughter might have inherited a trifle more of the Darcy manner. At
+length, as the girl stood looking about her new room silently, still
+with the strange lack of comment that seemed like indifference, he
+ventured a remonstrance.
+
+"I don't think you quite realize how much time and thought and trouble
+your--er, your mother and I have expended on these little surprises for
+your home-coming, Dollykins. Or you would be more appreciative."
+
+"_My mother!_" repeated Joan to herself with a sick gasp.
+
+It was the bride who came to her rescue. "She's tired out, Major, that's
+all. And no wonder! She hardly ate a bite of dinner. You go right to bed
+and sleep, girlie," she advised comfortably. "In the morning you'll be
+better able to enjoy all your pretties."
+
+So Joan was at last alone, wondering whether she would ever be able to
+enjoy anything again; alone in a strange room crowded with large blond
+bird's-eye maple furniture which reminded her oddly of her step-mother;
+with pale blue walls, a blue rug, blue silk covers on chairs and bed,
+blue stationery spread out on the desk, all to match. There was nothing,
+not a chair, nor book nor picture, to remind its forlorn inhabitant of
+home; until suddenly, lost amid the glitter of the silver on the
+dressing-table, she discovered a faded photograph of her mother which
+her father had for many years carried in his pocket. This she jerked out
+of the opulent silver frame that disguised it, and held hungrily to her
+cheek, going to bed with it finally under her pillow. It did not occur
+to her to wonder who had put it there. (But it was not Richard Darcy.)
+
+Yet still the tears would not come. She lay staring into the dark with
+hot, dry, aching eyes, repeating agonizingly to herself the questions
+she had not found courage to ask her father--foolish, trivial questions
+that seemed almost irrelevant in the face of this overwhelming
+calamity.... What had he done with the furniture, their furniture, the
+dear, shabby tables and chairs and hangings which were part of the home
+Mary Darcy had given her life in making?... And where was Ellen? What
+had he done with Ellen? Was there to be nothing left?
+
+Once she whispered aloud, "How _could_ he?"--but resolutely turned her
+mind away from that. It did not bear thinking of. The luxury of the room
+seemed to crowd upon her, choking her.... The price of her father's
+shame!...
+
+It seemed to her near morning when her door opened, softly. She began to
+shiver, thinking it must be her father come for the intimate explanatory
+talk which was inevitable between them. What could she say to him? How
+could she ever find anything to say to her father again?
+
+But it was not Richard Darcy who tiptoed in. The lamp beside her bed
+clicked on, revealing a good deal of the former Mrs. Calloway in a
+marvellous nightgown, her golden head as carefully coiffed as for a
+ball.
+
+"Major's off and going strong," she announced, "so I slipped away to see
+how you were gettin' on, dearie. I Had a kind of feelin' you wouldn't be
+asleep yet. I'm like that myself in a strange bed.... Look here," her
+voice changed as she saw the white and miserable face among the
+pillows--"you aren't holding it against your papa and me, girlie,
+because we sprung this on you as a surprise? I _told_ Major we ought to
+wait till you came home! But it was you who introduced us, you know; and
+I knew it would be all right as soon as we got to know each other
+better. And Major wouldn't hear to waiting, was bound and determined to
+have me just as soon as he could get me. Men,"--she laughed her plump,
+merry laugh--"are such babies when it comes to havin' what they want
+right away, ain't they?"
+
+"Are they?" said Joan dully.
+
+"You take it from me they are! A man that doesn't want you quick don't
+want you at all. And I must say your father needed marryin' more than
+any one I _ever_ saw! Spots all over his clothes, and that shiny in the
+back you could see your face in him. Your mother must have had a time
+keepin' that man neat! Besides, if we'd waited till you came, what would
+we have done with you on the honeymoon? Not," she added coyly, "that
+it's over yet, by any means! When he was on his death-bed Calloway said
+to me, says he, 'Effie May, our honeymoon never has been over, has it?'
+Some women are that way, just naturally affectionate and fond of makin'
+men feel at home. And both of us were real lonesome.... You don't blame
+me for marrying Major, do you?" she finished rather wistfully.
+
+Joan said after a long pause, "No, I don't think I blame you, Mrs.
+Calloway."
+
+The other gave an unexpected squeal of mirth. "Goodness' sakes, don't
+call me _that_! If you don't feel like callin' me 'mamma' yet"--(there
+was a hopeful pause, which Joan did not fill)--"then you might as well
+call me Effie May. I'm not so awfully much older than you, I guess--I
+was only sixteen when I eloped with my first. But there's one thing I
+wanted to tell you"--(her voice lost its confident note and became
+rather shy). "I married your father as much to get you as to get him,
+dearie. A man's easy enough to pick up anywhere, goodness knows! if
+you've got the looks. But a child--" she sighed. "That's something else
+again. I used to think I'd like to adopt one, only Calloway didn't want
+to be bothered--Say, it was more fun than anything I've ever done in my
+life, shopping for lawngerie and little models and all, and telling the
+girls in the stores they were for my little girl just coming home from
+boarding-school!..."
+
+At this juncture, for some inexplicable reason--perhaps the warmth of a
+kindly human presence, perhaps sheer rage with the vulgar, impossible
+creature who, having purchased her father, expected also to purchase
+her--whatever brought them, Joan's tears suddenly arrived--a torrent, a
+deluge of them; in the midst of which her new mamma, with more tact than
+might have been expected of her, disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Get up, Jo! Time you was gettin' up. Come, come--it's ten o'clock!"
+
+A familiar, relentless voice penetrated Joan's consciousness at last,
+and she screwed her swollen eyelids down tighter and even managed a
+reproving snore, wondering whether the halcyon days would ever come when
+she might be allowed to sleep her sleep out in the morning. Probably
+not, so long as Ellen Neal was within calling distance. The woman had a
+horror of what she called shiftless ways. Once in a moment of special
+exasperation she had been heard to mutter, "That's the chief thing
+that's the matter with your pa--he's never ready to get up in the
+morning!"--a remark which had remained in Joan's memory.
+
+Now the sheets were suddenly jerked off her, and the relentless voice
+continued, "No use pretendin' you're asleep when you ain't. Here's your
+breakfast they've sent up to you, child, just as if you was sick a-bed.
+Humph!"
+
+Suddenly reality came back upon her with full force--horrible reality;
+and she jumped up in bed and flung her arms around the old servant's
+neck, clinging tight, as she had done many a time before when something
+frightened her.
+
+"Oh, Nellen, Nellen!" she moaned. "It's you! I thought you had deserted
+me, too!"
+
+The woman stood immobile in this embrace, making no effort to return it.
+But her eyes blinked a little.
+
+"Sho! What would I want to do that for? Don't be silly--Look out! There
+now, if you haven't gone and upset the coffee all over them fancy
+sheets! Coffee's hard to get out, too. That's what comes of havin' your
+vittles in bedrooms, where they don't belong."
+
+The tears, which had threatened to take possession of Joan again, turned
+into a burst of wild laughter, "No matter! Plenty more where they come
+from, Nellen. What is a lace-trimmed sheet to my new mamma? I expect the
+very dishcloths are hand-embroidered. Behold the abode of cash, Ellen,
+cash! Isn't it grand? Oh," she cried, her voice breaking, "_why_ didn't
+you come to me last night! Didn't you know how I'd need you?"
+
+"I didn't know you was here, child, till I come this morning to see when
+him and her was expectin' you."
+
+The girl's face fell. "Why, Ellen! Aren't you living here?"
+
+"Me? In this house? I wouldn't so demean myself," said the other primly.
+
+"Do you mean to say"--Joan's cheeks were hot--"that after all these
+years, and everything you've done for us, my father has _let you go_?"
+
+Ellen tossed her head. "'Twan't none of his lettin', child. I told him
+that all things considered I'd ruther sew for my livin'. And so I would.
+Your time's your own that way, and you see more of folks. I like folks.
+I must say," she added conscientiously, "that woman--your pa's wife--was
+real kind about offerin' to get me work with a dressmaker. But Ellen
+Neal don't have to be beholden to nobody, thank you!"
+
+"And where do you live?"
+
+A mysterious smile twinkled in the woman's eyes. "Some day when you're
+good and sick of all this fancy flubdubbery" (she indicated with a
+disparaging hand the elegancies of the blue chamber) "you come and see
+where I live, Jo, and come often. I've got me two as nice rooms as ever
+you seen. And--I got my own furniture for 'em, too, real grand furniture
+I bought up cheap at an auction room. There's some carved chairs, and a
+walnut desk with a bookcase on top, and some blue velvet porteers, and a
+mahogany bed with the tester sawed off--"
+
+Comprehension dawned on Joan. "Ellen! _Our_ furniture!" she cried.
+
+Ellen nodded. "Some of it. As much as I could git. I'm keepin' it for
+you till you git a home of your own to put it in, Joie. I sort of
+thought your ma would want me to."
+
+Joan was weeping again, not the devastating flood of the past night, but
+sweet and healing tears, as good for strained nerves as a summer rain is
+good for flowers.
+
+"You old wretch!" she gulped. "Where did you get the money?"
+
+The other grinned. "Any time Ellen Neal gets caught without plenty in
+her stockin'-fut, you may be sure the Scots blood is failin' her! I'm a
+whole lot richer than I'm willin' to let some folks know. Why, I could
+set idle, if I'd a mind to, the rest of my life--only I don't hold with
+settin' idle just because you got a right." (Long afterwards it occurred
+to Joan that Ellen, who was not given to discoursing on her own affairs,
+must have had some reason for thus bragging of her unsuspected riches.)
+"There's nothing," she added rather irrelevantly, "that makes a person
+contented with the place she's in like knowin' she can go somewhere else
+if she's a mind to."
+
+What barrier there had been between servant and mistress--a fluctuating
+barrier at best, dependent upon Joan's varying conceptions of her own
+dignity--had gone down forever under that rain of grateful tears, and
+Joan felt free to ask some of the questions of which her heart was
+full--how, for instance, the affair between her father and Mrs. Calloway
+had begun.
+
+"How?" repeated Ellen grimly. "Well, when a lone female and a lone
+he-male ain't got nothin' to keep 'em apart but an alley-fence, and her
+with paint on her face till she looks like a fat sixteen, and food on
+her table every day as good as a two-dollar table d'hôte, what can you
+expect? I wa'n't surprised myself. Nor," she added quietly, "I don't
+believe your ma would be, Joan."
+
+"Oh, but how it must have hurt her!"
+
+Both spoke in low tones, as if the spirit of Mary Darcy might be
+lingering near enough to overhear.
+
+"I ain't so sure about that," mused Ellen. "I ain't so sure! Your ma
+always set great store on havin' the Major comfortable--'Ellen,' she
+said to me that last day, when we knew what was comin'--'Ellen, be sure
+to keep him _comfortable_ here at home, so he won't be lookin' for it
+somewheres else.' There's worse things can happen to a widow-man than
+gettin' married again."
+
+"Oh, but if I'd been here to look after him myself!" wailed Joan. "If
+you had only told me what was happening! I might have come back and
+stopped it!"
+
+"About as much chance as stopping a fire-hydrant that's blown the top
+off. You're a smart child, Joan, always was; but you don't stand a show
+against that woman your pa's married--nor I wouldn't want you to," she
+added cryptically. "You wasn't raised that way.--Anyhow it wasn't none
+of my business. And just remember this, child, it's none of yours. It's
+none of yours!"
+
+After she had gone, a sense of something heartening and bracing remained
+with Joan; and as she brushed out her straight, heavy hair with new
+silver-backed brushes which bore her own initials, a typical Ellenism
+recurred to her: "There's nothing that makes a person contented with the
+place she's in like knowing she can go somewheres else if she's a mind
+to."
+
+"At least," she thought suddenly, "I'm independent of father. Mother
+left her property to me--I can get it whenever I ask for it.... And now
+I understand why!"
+
+Mary Darcy had been a very far-sighted woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was long before Joan recovered from the dazed sensation her father's
+little surprise had produced in her mind. Perhaps she never did quite
+recover from it. Something died within her; a naïf belief in the wisdom
+of her elders, the ultimate rightness of existing things, which once
+gone never returns again. If it is true that we live in experience
+rather than in years, Joan came to her majority over night.
+
+It was her father's attitude which amazed her most. Had he seemed in the
+least apologetic, in the least ashamed or embarrassed by the quality of
+the woman he had put into her mother's place, she would have been ready
+to pity and console and help him make the best of a grave mistake. But
+the Major's attitude was that of the cat which has not only eaten the
+canary, but digested it and found it extremely beneficial to the system.
+Far from seeming apologetic, he appeared rather proud of his
+performance. There was something almost pathetic in his content with his
+new prosperity, with the ease and luxury of the establishment of which
+he found himself head.
+
+Joan sometimes thought, with a scornful sort of pity, "How Dad must have
+_hated_ to be poor!"
+
+Certainly he took to wealth, to which he had always professed himself
+indifferent, with an alacrity which surprised his daughter.
+
+She had opportunity to notice, too, for the first time in action,
+Richard Darcy's chief and perhaps sole equipment for the unequal battle
+of life; his talent for making friends. Not for keeping them--that is a
+separate art, calling for certain efforts, certain reticences, above all
+certain abstentions of which Richard Darcy was temperamentally
+incapable. But in the art of creating admiring and useful acquaintances
+out of raw material he had few equals, even among his own profession.
+
+Mary Darcy had kept herself and her child for the most part aloof from
+these easily acquired friends of her husband, though they were
+invariably quite presentable--(as has been hinted, the Major had no use
+whatever for what he called "the canile"). Possibly this was owing to
+some odd Puritan scruples on Mary's part about combining business with
+pleasure....
+
+But now that business had no longer to be combined with pleasure,
+Richard Darcy was free to exercise to the full his gift for being
+agreeable, without afterthought. It was perhaps fortunate that his new
+wife had made few friends of her own, a fact which left him unhampered
+in the matter of what he called quite seriously "resuming his position."
+
+Joan found that he was no longer forgotten in the city of his youth. The
+older residents had already been made aware by means of engraved and
+crested announcements that Richard Throckmorton Darcy had returned to
+their midst for the purpose of wedding one Effie May Smith Calloway, and
+that the bridal pair would be at home after a certain date at a very
+good address on Elmtree Street. Whither quite a respectable number of
+them hastened, if only out of curiosity, to leave cards.
+
+What they found was an extremely affable, leisurely, and
+prosperous-looking host, an establishment which appeared able and
+willing to maintain those traditions of Southern hospitality which have
+latterly fallen somewhat into disuse, and a rather silent young girl
+whose manner atoned for the perhaps excessive cordiality of her
+step-mother. Some of the callers did not come again, even under
+pressure; but on the whole Joan realized that the old friends in whom
+she had almost ceased to believe were about to take the Darcy family
+belatedly to their bosoms, indifferent to the substitution of a Mrs.
+Calloway for her mother.
+
+It was the girl's first experience of the omnipotence of money; an
+experience which if it comes young enough will make a cynic out of a
+congenital optimist, which Joan was not.
+
+To do the new Mrs. Darcy justice, she was an adaptable and, in her way,
+a tactful creature who had already in her admiration of the Major and
+his daughter, learned to modify her speech and behavior rather
+touchingly. And her frank delight with what she called "breaking into
+society," may have been rather disarming to society; or to such portion
+of it as found its way to the imposing house on Elmtree Street. She was
+extremely cordial to her guests, urging them to come often, to have more
+iced tea and cake, to take candy home to the children, to try the
+Major's cigars and whisky, for which he had an undoubted palate. If the
+women looked at her a little askance, the men were loud in her praises,
+and obeyed her urgings to come often.
+
+Effie May, encouraged, began shortly to seek new worlds to conquer.
+
+"Well, what next?" she demanded one night at dinner, after an afternoon
+of callers, stifling a wide pink yawn with the palm of a much beringed
+hand. "Your old families are all very well, Dickie boy, refined and
+classy and all that--but, my God, they ain't exciting! Now are they?
+Isn't there anybody in Louisville born since the Civil War?"
+
+"If there is, I'm afraid I don't know it," admitted the Major, smiling
+indulgently. "You see the people who were young when I left are young no
+longer."
+
+"So we've noticed," murmured his bride, making a companionable grimace
+at Joan. "But we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in the
+baldhead row, do we, girlie? You've got to find us something under sixty
+to pal around with, Hubby mine, that's all there is to it. See?"
+
+One of her step-mother's most unbearable traits, to Joan, was her habit
+of calling the Major absurd comic-supplement pet names. But his dignity
+seemed not to suffer from it. In fact he expanded visibly under the
+treatment, like a dog whose ears are being tickled.
+
+"Your commands are law, my angel," he said. "Just how would you suggest
+that I go about it?"
+
+Effie May ruminated, while the two Darcys watched her--with, however,
+somewhat varying expressions. The Major appeared to be admiring, indeed
+gloating over, the appearance she made at the head of her bountifully
+appointed table, in a dress not niggardly in its display of her
+bountifully appointed charms. His eye followed appreciatively the curve
+of her plump arm as it disappeared into enveloping laces.
+
+Joan, on the other hand, watched her step-mother warily. There was
+something about the woman she could not fathom, for all her surface
+simplicity. She felt, beneath the other's careless, easy good-nature, a
+certain force, a driving power, in the grip of which she and her father
+were mere helpless puppets. Effie May would use them always for her own
+ends--whatever those ends might be. Why had she chosen to saddle
+herself, free and rich and independent as she was, with an impoverished
+gentleman and his grown-up daughter? Certainly at that age, thought Joan
+(Effie May was in the neighborhood of forty), people could not possibly
+fall in love! No, there was something mysterious about her
+step-mother....
+
+"I have it," said the lady suddenly. "The Country Club! I see in the
+society column that everything nowadays is going on at the Country Club.
+We'll have to join that."
+
+"I believe," interposed Joan, flushing, "that people have to be invited
+to join a club, don't they, Father?"
+
+"All right--We'll _be_ invited. Won't we, Dickums?" said the bride, with
+a ravishing smile in the Major's direction.
+
+He rose to the occasion. "Certainly, my love," he replied.
+
+And they were invited. At any rate, a week or two later found the Darcy
+family dining alone at the Country Club, among various other little
+table groups, all of whom seemed to know each other intimately.
+
+To be in and not of this friendly assemblage filled Joan with that most
+miserable of all sensations, crowd-loneliness. Even the Major wore a
+rather fixed and nervous smile, and mentioned to his wife and daughter
+at intervals that Louisville society had changed very much since he used
+to frequent it. Only Effie May seemed quite unperturbed, gazing about
+her smilingly, and tapping her slippered foot, and nodding her head in
+time to the music; meeting the curious glances which strayed in their
+direction with a frank interest of her own which might have seemed bold
+if it were not so like a pleased child's.
+
+Joan, intercepting one or two of these glances, looked her step-mother
+over critically, and to her relief found her less flamboyant than usual.
+She was dressed in white--"Handsome white, not girly-girly muslin like
+yours. I'm too stout for that," she had said wisely to Joan--The girl
+reflected that it is difficult to look vulgar in white. Mrs. Darcy was
+not appreciably different in appearance from many another rather
+overdressed matron there, even in the matter of rouge and touched-up
+hair.
+
+As for her father--Richard Darcy would have been a distinguished figure
+in any assemblage he chose to enter, with his six feet of gallantly
+carried avoirdupois, his finely modeled head, his gray mustache and
+imperial concealing a mouth that might otherwise have left something to
+be desired. He wore that night--and wore well--clothes of the palest
+gray flannel, with socks and buckskin shoes to match, and a gray stripe
+in his white tie, and a gray monogram embroidered upon the exquisite
+cambric of his handkerchief. This was the parent who a few weeks ago she
+had associated irrevocably in her mind with spots and frayed collars!
+She found herself wishing that her mother could see him now--she would
+be so proud of him!...
+
+To her own appearance Joan gave little consideration. She had discovered
+that the great advantage of good clothes is that you no longer have to
+think about them. She was quite unaware of the value in contrasts she
+afforded--her small, dark, smoothly combed head lifted proudly on its
+long neck, the awkward grace of her thin young body, the pale oval of
+her face lit by surprisingly vivid eyes, of the sort that are dreamy and
+shadowed until excitement turns them into soft blue fire. She was
+excited that night, a little frightened. She did not smile at all, but
+there was that about her lips--sensitive, wistful, faintly
+drooping--that made more than one person who glanced at the Darcy table
+wonder what the smile would be like if it came.
+
+When the dancing began, Effie May's exuberance could no longer contain
+itself.
+
+"This is something like!" she cried. "This is what I call life! Come on,
+Dick--'Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!'"
+
+"But," protested the Major, "it is some time since I have waltzed, my
+love--"
+
+"Never mind, you'll waltz with me! Anybody can dance with me. The boys
+used to call me Lightfoot Ef--Oh, but you'll have to get a partner for
+Joan, first, of course; I forgot we had a family along."
+
+The girl flushed, aghast at the thought of her father whirling in the
+midst of that whirling throng. "No, no, Effie May, please--!" she urged.
+"Let's just sit here quietly and look on."
+
+The other laughed aloud. "Naturally! That's what we've come to a dance
+for, to sit against the wall and look on--Nonsense! Go and find your
+child a partner, Dick, and hurry back. My feet just won't keep still."
+She was humming gaily in time with the orchestra.
+
+The Major, gazing a little blankly at the crowd of strangers before him,
+obediently went forth to do her bidding, and Effie May seized the
+occasion to give a little womanly advice.
+
+"Don't you fret, Joan--remember there's as many young fellows in the
+world crazy to know girls as there are girls crazy to know them. And
+dearie"--her voice sank to a friendly whisper--"warm up to 'em a
+little, can't you? Jolly 'em along. Hot air, you know, talk! No
+matter what you say, just keep talking. That don't-touch-me,
+butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth air may be all right with the nuns and
+the old families but it won't go down with the men. Believe me, dearie!
+I know."
+
+It was a well-meant effort, which had the effect of congealing the
+already subdued Joan into something resembling a marble effigy.
+
+The Major shortly returned, bearing urbanely in his wake a blond young
+man who seemed not too unwilling.
+
+"I want you to meet my wife, sir," he was saying. "I want to have the
+pleasure of presenting you to my daughter. Fancy the coincidence, my
+dears--this gentleman turns out to be the son of an old schoolmate!"
+
+Effie May welcomed them with enthusiasm. "Good for you! I had my money
+on you, Dickums! Five minutes, and the son of a schoolmate! It's a
+record!--Ta-ta, young people! Enjoy yourselves," was her valedictory as
+she whirled the Major away, waving her hand over his shoulder.
+
+Joan stared aghast at the blond young man, who said, "She is an awfully
+jolly sort, your mother, isn't she?"
+
+"Very jolly," agreed Joan faintly. "But she's not my mother."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+A silence fell. He seemed to be waiting for her to break it. She gulped,
+and said in a firm voice, "Did you come to ask me to dance?"
+
+The young man indicated politely that such was his intention.
+
+"You couldn't very well help yourself, could you?" she remarked, and
+suddenly burst out laughing--rather hysterical laughter in which the
+young man joined embarrassedly.
+
+"Of course if you'd rather talk--" he murmured.
+
+Joan jumped to her feet. "Oh, but I wouldn't! I'd rather do _anything_
+than talk--no matter what I say, just talk, warm up to 'em, hot air--I
+mean," she explained desperately, "I'm much too shy to talk!"
+
+"You don't sound very shy."
+
+"I know--they're the worst sort, the ones who hide it."
+
+They commenced silently to dance. Presently he confessed, "I'm
+rather--shy, myself."
+
+"Goody!" she exclaimed with relief. "Then we needn't bother to talk at
+all."
+
+They parted quite reluctantly when a whistle blew for the "circle"--a
+useful innovation for breaking up relations, by whose aid Joan found
+herself exchanging partners at intervals throughout the evening without
+finding herself too long on the hands of any. She blessed the inventor
+of the circle. Youth and a pair of winged feet came to her rescue, and
+she forgot her strangeness in sheer joy of motion. The people she danced
+with that night were not men; they were as trees walking, for all the
+personal memory she kept of them.
+
+But when the music finally thumped itself out, and Effie May, a trifle
+blown and moist about the brow, again resumed charge of her scattered
+family, saying, "Well, dearie, you've had a pretty good time, haven't
+you?"--Joan was able to answer with some surprise that she had.
+
+"Dancing," commented the Major, puffing, "is a very healthful exercise;
+indeed, an esthetic exercise. The Greeks practised it, as I recall,
+extensively, even in their riper years. My love, with a little
+experience I think I shall easily master that step you call the fox
+trot."
+
+"Sure you will," encouraged she who had been called Lightfoot Ef,
+patting his cheek maternally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The Darcys' social career appeared to be well launched. Each Saturday
+night found them at the Country Club, and no longer dining in
+loneliness. Effie May speedily collected about her a group of congenial
+spirits, for the most part young people, among whom she was extremely
+popular--far more so than was Joan, who sometimes felt as if she were
+the only elder present. Theirs was usually the most hilarious table in
+the room. Corks popped freely, and there was much horse-play, and
+throwing about of bread, and at a certain stage of the evening rather
+frank persiflage in which, to Joan's relief, her step-mother took no
+part. She laughed her cheery, plump laugh, and made no comment; but more
+than once with a glance at her step-daughter, she managed quite deftly
+to steer the conversation into other channels. Joan came to the
+gratifying conclusion that her father's wife was afraid of her.
+
+The Major at his end of the table devoted himself assiduously to his
+duties as host, seeing that glasses were filled, distributing gallant
+remarks among the ladies, constantly signing tickets. He was in his
+element; expanding, positively glowing, with hospitality.
+
+"Another cigar, my boy? Try this brand! Take several! Fill your pockets
+with them. I can recommend them personally!"
+
+There came to be several brands which he could recommend personally,
+several vintages as well. The waiters hovered about him like cherubim
+about the throne of grace, and he knew them all by name, and took an
+interest in their families.
+
+This lavish generosity, Joan reflected, was the spirit which gave the
+old South its glamour, its traditions--to say nothing of its consequent
+poverty. There was something rather fine and large about the Major's
+apparent obliviousness of the fact that the money he spent so royally
+did not belong to him.
+
+"If Effie May does not worry, why should I?" argued his daughter with
+herself. Her father's affairs were no longer her concern; if indeed they
+had ever been. But she could not help taking a certain uneasy interest
+in them.
+
+"How do you happen to know enough people to invite to all these parties
+of yours?" she asked Effie May, aware that the Darcy family was doing
+rather more than its share of entertaining.
+
+"Oh, you don't have to know people well to ask 'em to parties,"
+explained the other innocently. "And once they eat with you, they're
+your friends."
+
+"That depends upon what you give them to eat!" interjected the Major,
+chuckling.
+
+It seemed a primitive conception of social relationships, but not on the
+whole a false one. Joan thought of the Arab and his salt....
+
+"Food," she wrote to Stefan Nikolai, "appears to be the Tie that Binds."
+
+"What about drink?" he inquired on a post-card. (They did a good deal of
+this staccato correspondence, Joan liking to exchange deep thoughts with
+him, as she expressed it, "while they were hot.")
+
+"Drink," she replied on another, "is the Tie that Loosens!..."
+
+Stefan Nikolai was the only one of her friends with whom she had found
+courage to discuss her father's marriage. Writing things out to him was
+almost like writing them out to herself. It served somehow to clear her
+mind. It is probable that Mr. Nikolai, a student of various phases of
+the human problem, got a good deal of valuable vicarious experience out
+of young Joan's letters. Certainly he encouraged them.
+
+It was to him that she confided her discovery that social life is far
+more pleasing after dinner than before. She was learning to count, as
+surely as does many an experienced hostess, upon the help of the Tie
+that Loosens. While she herself had not as yet developed her father's
+palate for cocktails and fine vintages she appreciated their effect upon
+her partners--for to her men so far were merely partners.
+
+It was after dinner that Joan's part of the evening began. Then, thanks
+to the Tie that Loosens, there was no longer need to make banal
+conversation nor to listen to it, no need to pretend friendly interest
+in young men to whom she was incurably a stranger, no need of anything
+but to yield herself to the music and the first pair of arms that
+offered, and float away into Dreamland.
+
+There was something curiously sensuous to Joan about dancing. It acted
+like a drug upon her fancy, stimulating, soothing. She was hardly aware
+of whom she danced with, if he could dance. If he could not, she
+stopped. This odd impersonality of hers was rather piquant to her
+partners. Many a youth who was afraid to talk to "that quiet Darcy
+girl--you never know what she's thinking about!"--was not afraid to
+dance with her, whenever he got the chance.
+
+At such times Joan had her rare moments of beauty. With flushed face,
+loosened hair, and wide, dreaming eyes, she was as graceful as one of
+the three circling maidens in the Primavera--the one who looks wistfully
+over her shoulder at the oblivious youth. Unfortunately her lot was cast
+among people who did not think in terms of Botticelli. Her step-mother
+wondered sometimes whether curling-tongs and perhaps a little rouge
+would make her look more like other girls....
+
+Sometimes people came to the club who attracted Joan's
+attention--quieter people than Effie May's friends, more simply dressed,
+who never seemed to join in the accentuated hilarity after dinner. Once
+in such a group she recognized the girl who had eyed her aloofly on the
+train coming home from boarding school. Joan suddenly yearned to do some
+aloof eyeing on her own account, now that she was no longer shabby but
+wore a frock as smart as any in the room.
+
+She watched her opportunity, and followed the stranger into the
+dressing-room with some such truculent idea in view; but was disarmed by
+the courtesy with which the other made room for her at a mirror, where
+they powdered their noses side by side in amity. As she was leaving the
+room, however, she heard the aloof one murmur to a friend: "What a lot
+of strange people one sees at this club nowadays! I wonder where they
+all come from? It's getting very mixed."
+
+Joan went white with anger. She struggled with the temptation to explain
+proudly that she was not a strange person, that her name entitled her to
+any society she chose to enter, that it was her step-mother who was
+"mixed," not she....
+
+And then she remembered that it was only thanks to her step-mother that
+she happened to be there at all.
+
+For the moment this encounter with the enemy took away Joan's heart for
+dancing. Crowd-loneliness got her by the throat. Was there always to be
+just one of her, and so many of everybody else?
+
+She slipped out on to a terrace that overlooked a valley with the great
+river gleaming far off, still holding some faint glow of the sunset's
+aftermath. There was a bench at the far end, lost in shadow, and she was
+about to seat herself there when she saw that it was already occupied.
+
+"Oh," she said, drawing back. "I didn't notice you!"
+
+"Women rarely do," remarked a plaintive voice with a smile in it. "I'm
+used to that. And yet I notice them, dreadfully!"
+
+Joan laughed a little, and retreated. "I won't disturb you," she
+murmured; but the voice held her.
+
+"Oh, please! Please do. I want to be disturbed. I simply came here to
+see my moonrise." A shadowy arm pointed out a dim glow over the trees to
+eastward.
+
+"Why _your_ moonrise, especially?"
+
+"By right of discovery. I seem to be the only person aware of it.... May
+I share it with you?"
+
+"You are sure you wouldn't rather see it alone?"
+
+"Goodness gracious!" cried the voice quite querulously, "what human
+being ever wanted to watch a moonrise alone?"
+
+Joan chuckled, and sat down to the first conversation she had enjoyed
+since her last one with Stefan Nikolai--one of the few real
+conversations, she thought afterwards, in her life.
+
+Yet it was difficult to remember the many things they talked about.
+Smoke, for one. He pointed out the dim loveliness of the city below,
+towers and battlements and the airy span of a bridge against the
+gray-gold sky.
+
+"'Many-storied Camelot town,'" he said, musing. "Without the shrouding
+smoke, what would it be? Factory chimneys, iron smoke-stacks, a
+filtration plant--Ugliness, ugliness! Yet there are people in that town
+who want to rid themselves of those billowing mists of rose and violet
+and silver."
+
+"I suppose," said Joan, "the beauty of smoke depends upon whether you're
+down in it, getting smuts on your nose, or looking on from a hilltop."
+
+"A question of perspective, you think? Hmnn--yes. Well, then" he said
+reasonably, "by all means _get_ your perspective. Stick to the
+hilltop--especially at sunset."
+
+"We haven't all got wings to reach a hilltop with, you see. Nor yet
+automobiles."
+
+"I haven't, myself," he said. "I use trolley-cars.... Did it ever occur
+to you what a marvel the trolley-car is? For a nickel--or at most a
+dime--all Nature is yours to command; beechwoods in their autumn field
+of the cloth of gold; little whispering streams breaking their winter
+silence, fireflies dancing--to the tune of the 'Merry Widow' waltz," (as
+that melody of the moment made itself audible from the house beyond).
+"What a twilight! Fireflies, an afterglow, and the moonrise set to
+music, all at once," he said under his breath. "And some one to share
+them with!"
+
+Joan was silent, flattered by the knowledge that this whimsical
+gentleman was letting her into his thoughts.
+
+"The beauty of such a moment is that one never loses it," he mused. "One
+puts it away as people press flowers in books, to be looked at
+when--when pleasant things need remembering. I thank God for a mind well
+stocked with beautiful occasions!"
+
+"Wild Evenings I Have Known," murmured Joan, frivolously, because for
+some reason she was rather touched.
+
+He nodded, "With wild people in them. Like you."
+
+"Me! Wild?"
+
+"Oh, I know on the surface you're a demure, well-behaved young miss, but
+underneath--good gracious! You'd shock these people to death!"--he
+indicated certain hilarious couples who had waltzed onto the terrace
+near them. "Yes, you're quite untamed, my dear. Wild as a--chipmunk."
+
+Joan leaned toward him, "How did you guess?"
+
+"I've watched you dance. And then--well, I've never quite got used to
+the cage myself, perhaps." He began to hum under his breath a tuneless
+little ditty:
+
+    "It is a very dreadful thing
+    To be so fat a child,
+    To have to sit around all day
+    And yet to feel so wild."
+
+"At least," laughed Joan, "I'm not fat!"
+
+"No!" he said soberly, "never get fat. It is the beginning of the
+end.... By fat I mean old. And cautious. Ugh!"
+
+How the conversation came about to apple-trees, Joan never was sure; but
+he told her about one he had discovered somewhere in the deep woods, all
+in bloom, a little old gnarled affair hidden among giant first growth
+sycamores and elms and beeches.
+
+"An apple-tree lost in the woods! How do you suppose it got away from
+civilization?" wondered the girl.
+
+"Some bird, perhaps; or Johnny Appleseed."
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"Fancy living in Kentucky without knowing about the first and greatest
+of our pioneers! He was a daft old creature--an innocent, as the kind
+phrase goes--who used to wander away from the settlement where he lived
+into the wilderness, scattering apple seeds. All over this Ohio Valley
+he journeyed, sowing his orchards for the benefit of those who were to
+follow. The Indians let him pass, the wild animals did not harm him;
+only his friends locked him up whenever they could catch him, because it
+seemed such a silly thing to do. Friends are that way ... Years later,
+when the pioneers fought their way at last over the mountains to stay,
+they found here and there apple-trees blossoming and fruiting in the
+great, lonely wilderness; and wherever that happened their wives made
+them build cabins and settle down, for of all things that grow an
+apple-tree most suggests home. So mad old Johnny Appleseed was the
+founder of many cities."
+
+"And yet there is no monument to him!"
+
+"Except the cities...."
+
+Here a young man appeared to claim Joan for the next dance--the blond
+young man with whom she had commenced her dancing career, and who had
+formed quite a habit of looking for her whenever the music played.
+
+She rose with reluctance. "I wish _you'd_ come in and dance with me,"
+she said to her new friend. "I'm sure you could!"
+
+"I'm sure I could, too," he replied, "if I hadn't my body with me. As it
+is, I'll just sit out here and make believe I'm dancing with you--In a
+starlit glade. With the other young nymphs and dryads..." the whimsical
+voice followed her.
+
+The blond young man stared. "Of all the assorted nuts!" he remarked,
+when they were out of earshot.
+
+"Yes--but who is he?" demanded Joan eagerly.
+
+"Something on the stock exchange. I see him there every day."
+
+"The stock exchange!"
+
+"Yes. Oh, he writes poems and things for the papers, too, I think. Quite
+a literary guy." He mentioned the name.
+
+It is a name known and remembered wherever there are moonrises and
+fireflies, smoke against the sunset, apple-trees in bloom--all the
+everyday lovely things people forget to see unless there are poets to
+remind them...
+
+It gave Joan quite a new zest in living to realize that at any moment,
+even at Country Clubs, it is possible to run across a poet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Richard Darcy was accepting the change that had come into his life much
+as he had accepted others of a less fortunate trend. He had become at
+last what Nature had always intended him to be, one of the world's
+chosen, a rich man--or, what was even better because less troublesome,
+the husband of a rich woman. He was also once more an honored citizen of
+his native commonwealth--where he had not always been entirely an
+honored citizen, owing to one of the unfortunate mistakes to which youth
+is liable. There had been some disagreement with an early employer about
+the right of employees to divert the firm's funds, temporarily of
+course, to private uses. Only family influence had prevented this
+misunderstanding from resulting in truly disastrous consequences, which
+he shuddered to this day to contemplate. But it had prevented; and the
+early employer was dead (as Richard Darcy had taken pains to ascertain
+before returning to Louisville), and the few who knew of this painful
+episode at the time appeared to have forgotten it.
+
+Very good! He was quite willing to forget it himself. It was Richard
+Darcy's creed that a gentleman takes whatever comes in his stride,
+without too many backward glances; and his stride was just now adapting
+itself gracefully to the one-step.
+
+Joan, watching her father sometimes with a faint recrudescence of pride
+in his sheer good looks, decided that he was the only stomached person
+she had seen who could perform the one-step without loss of dignity. He
+footed the measure indulgently, as a bishop or a cardinal might have
+footed it, with an air of spiritual detachment, as it were, while yet
+seeming to receive and to bestow a priceless privilege. Even lively
+young girls liked to dance with the Major. It made them feel uplifted.
+If he pressed the hand or the waist of his prettier partners more
+closely than necessary, the pressure seemed almost impersonal, a mere
+tribute to a sex which he could not but regard with tenderness, being
+himself a husband and a father.
+
+In addition to this valuable social acquirement, the Major further
+fortified his popularity by inventing and promoting (uncommercially, of
+course) a beverage which shortly bade fair to make him famous, and which
+was christened by grateful habitués of the Country Club the "Dick Fizz."
+Its ingredients were--but that is a secret not at the author's disposal.
+Suffice it to say that the "Dick Fizz" achieved results that were all
+and more than could be expected of it. (Among others, the Major's
+election to a certain gentlemen's club which had hitherto remained
+annoyingly unaware of him. So much for the power of the Tie that
+Loosens!)
+
+It was thanks to the "Dick Fizz," too, that there presently came about
+between Richard Darcy and his daughter that heart-to-heart interview
+which had been postponing itself from week to week, with the tacit
+consent of both parties; an interview dreaded by Joan perhaps even less
+than by her father.
+
+They were returning one night from one of their most successful
+evenings; Joan as usual on the front seat beside the chauffeur, where
+she might enjoy the rush of the cool night air upon her face, and hear
+as little as possible of the billing and cooing of the honeymooners in
+the tonneau behind. There seemed more of this than usual, little
+giggling exclamations and audible embraces which made the girl wince and
+the chauffeur grin surreptitiously.
+
+"Really, Father!" protested Joan over her shoulder. There was something
+physically nauseating to her in those amorous echoes from the tonneau.
+No wonder servants laughed! It made of love a travesty and a mocking.
+
+She was glad when they reached home. The Major stepped out gallantly to
+assist the ladies, but miscalculated his impetus, and after a series of
+complicated maneuvers brought up seated upon the curbstone. The
+chauffeur burst into an uncontrollable guffaw, in which his mistress
+heartily joined.
+
+"Oh, you Dick Fizz!" she laughed, wiping her eyes. "I knew it would get
+you yet. _Look_ at your funny papa, dearie! Lit up like a
+Christmas-tree!"
+
+The Major murmured something reprovingly about the duties of
+hospitality, which he found some difficulty in pronouncing; but once
+upon his feet, he gave an arm to each of them and managed the steps
+without further mishap.
+
+In the hall Joan, who had not laughed, said to her step-mother in a low
+voice, "Is he--drunk?"
+
+"Oh, not enough to hurt," replied the lady, still laughing. It occurred
+to Joan that she herself was a little flushed and expansive. "I can
+handle him, all right. Don't you worry! I always know a gentleman by the
+way he carries his liquor."
+
+"Do you?" said Joan.
+
+"Sure thing! And Major's a perfect gentleman always. Don't you fret."
+
+Joan mounted quietly to her room, and undressed in the dark. She did not
+want to see her face in the mirror, afraid of the disgust, the loathing,
+that must be reflected there--Her father--drunk! The man to whom her
+mother had given her love and her life, tipsily furnishing amusement for
+a woman who judged gentlemen by the way they carried their liquor!...
+
+She recalled one other time when she had seen her father in his present
+condition. She remembered her mother's stricken, tragic face as she
+hurried him out of sight, explaining tremulously, "Daddy's ill, darling.
+No games with Daddy to-night--he's ill."
+
+"But he wants to play! Look, mamma, he _wants_ to play!" the small Joan
+had insisted, to no avail.
+
+And when this strangely interesting Daddy was safe in bed, with Ellen
+Neal mounting guard, Joan had been hurried out to the nearest church
+(which happened to be a Catholic one, for Mary's was a casual sort of
+religion that boasted neither creed nor prejudice); and there, before a
+statue where little lamps burned, the child had prayed hard, as she was
+bid, that her father might never be ill in just that way again.
+
+"God may listen to you, even if He's tired of listening to me!" the
+mother had whispered, desperately.
+
+It was because God had listened that Joan was sent later to a Catholic
+convent. Mary Darcy's was not the nature to forget favors; and it
+occurred to her that there might be worse protectors for a girl who must
+one day be motherless than Our Lady of Sorrows. Not every faith is
+strong enough to go through life without some creed to cling to. Mary
+had offered her child what she could.
+
+Lying there in the darkness, Joan understood. She wished that she might
+have been able to take what her mother offered. She yearned for the
+anodyne of simple, unquestioning prayer, for the mesmeric comfort that
+comes to the believing from the slipping of rosary beads between the
+fingers; above all, for the right to kneel unrecognized in a quiet
+confessional and learn from some priest wiser than she in the ways of
+men where her duty lay and how she was to follow it. The confessional is
+perhaps the secret of the hold the oldest of Christian churches keeps
+upon a world which would seem to have outgrown it. That is a
+self-reliant nature indeed which does not sometimes feel the need of
+guidance at once human and detached.
+
+But Joan's creed and confessional alike were contained in her troubled
+young head; and where a happier woman would have wept and said her
+prayers, she set herself sternly to the task of thinking. It seemed to
+her that throughout the past weeks she had been shirking an issue,
+deliberately drugging her wits with anything that came to hand. Now she
+faced conditions squarely. There must be no more drifting.
+
+She focused an unsparing vision upon her father. Already there were
+changes apparent in him, signs of deterioration not entirely physical.
+His features seemed slightly blurred from their fine chiseling, there
+was a relaxed look about the lips and chin, about the very poise of his
+figure. He had lost a little of that indefinable something which gave
+him distinction, even in the days when the women of his family tried in
+vain to keep him pressed and unspotted. Prosperity was not going to be
+good for Richard Darcy.
+
+Joan pronounced ruthless judgment upon her father:
+
+"He's done for!"
+
+And, as Ellen had warned her, it was none of her business.... What then
+was her business? Clearly, to keep from being "done for" herself.
+
+She saw quite clearly that she had been in danger of this. There was
+something curiously enervating about the atmosphere of her step-mother's
+house, a _laissez-faire_ that was almost--the girl sought for the word
+and decided upon "lascivious." Luxury, ease, pleasure--these were the
+ends for which her step-mother strove--or rather accomplished without
+undue striving, an ability to which the girl gave full due. She knew
+that it must take more than mere money to keep so elaborate a household
+running without apparent effort. The servants were efficient and
+unobtrusive, the accounts scrupulously kept, every nook and cranny clean
+and in order. Even Ellen Neal, who knew whereof she spoke, admitted that
+the ex-Mrs. Calloway was a housekeeper of parts. But...
+
+Joan tried conscientiously to fathom the meaning of her "but." She
+decided that the house was too like its mistress--over-bathed,
+over-perfumed and dressed and manicured--to be quite nice. The windows
+were too fluffy with lace, the drawing-room too pretty and satiny, the
+library too red. ("Why is it," she had written to Stefan Nikolai, "that
+people who never open a book invariably have a red library?")
+
+A fantastic thought came to her. She wondered whether those strange
+houses which are sometimes whispered of even among convent girls, those
+palaces of horror where women's bodies are bought and sold, might not
+perhaps resemble this home to which her father had brought her ...
+
+Then she smiled at herself. Vulgar, her step-mother might be; hopelessly
+underbred; doubtless in some previous manifestations a shop-girl, a
+dressmaker; possibly one of those anomalous beings known in race-towns
+as "race-horse women." But she was unmistakably respectable. There was
+not a picture on her walls, nor a novel on the shelves of the red
+library, which was not, as she herself once remarked to Joan
+complacently, "perfectly refined." The girl recalled her evident
+uneasiness when sometimes at the dinner-table the talk had waxed a
+little too free. She did her step-mother the justice to believe her a
+quite decent woman.
+
+Perhaps the curious sense of enervation was due only to the heat of
+midsummer in a Southern city. Now and then the elder Darcys spoke
+vaguely of going away, only to decide that it was too much trouble. It
+was easier to stay where they were. In a Kentucky July, one follows the
+line of least resistance.
+
+Joan, like the others, slept late into the mornings, and had her coffee
+in bed, or went down to the dining-room for it with a negligée over her
+nightgown. (Her father had become quite reconciled to negligées, which
+at first startled him, accustomed as he was to the neat morning ginghams
+of his Mary.) Sometimes she found him departing reluctantly for the
+mysterious place he called the Office. Later, people would arrive
+connected with the rites of the toilet--the hair-dresser, the manicure,
+the masseuse--a chatty person who performed on Effie May what she called
+her "facial"; and other things. Cleopatra herself could have devoted no
+more time to the care of her body than did the ex-Mrs. Calloway.
+
+"You've got it to do if you're risin' forty and like to eat," she
+explained once to Joan, simply.
+
+After luncheon, which was brought on a tray--a large tray--to wherever
+it happened to be convenient, the ladies once more resumed nightgowns,
+if indeed they had ever discarded them, and napped and read until the
+sun was low in the sky; when the house like the city woke into
+animation, and they prepared to fare forth like fireflies to the evening
+revel. Then there were automobile drives to little beer-gardens, where
+they ate and drank and sat about among whitewashed tree-trunks, feeling
+Bohemian; pleasant moonlight excursions up the Ohio in launches, with a
+picnic provided which consisted largely of thermos-bottles; and the
+Country Club, always the Country Club. Joan wondered what people had
+managed to do with themselves in summer before the days of Country
+Clubs.
+
+It was a life that somehow suggested the Orient, women of the harem
+coming forth at sunset to bask on the roofs of the houses; a placid
+existence; aimless, perhaps, but pleasant enough. Joan was puzzled to
+find the harm in it. Yet that harm was there, she knew. The touch of
+Puritanism in the girl told her that to live from day to day with no
+duty but pleasure made of pleasure something akin to vice.... And often
+in the midst of this harem life she remembered almost with passion that
+out beyond her shuttered windows, beyond the clangor of trolley-cars and
+the hum and clatter of the dirty streets, was summer--summer, the
+loveliest of the year's phases; leaf-shadows on wimpling water, lush
+meadows sparkling with the sunrise dew, green-gold glades of the wood
+delicious with the smell of warm pine-needles; all the world at fullest
+bloom, open like the heart of a rose, waiting.
+
+It was a sort of nostalgia that took her then for the country she had
+never known, not Country Club country, nor the conscious, well-kept
+wildness of the parks which give the old river town its only claim to
+beauty--but simple wood and meadow and field, where homely folk live
+close to the soil they till, concerned with crops and the breeding
+season. It was this country her father had meant when he bragged about
+Kentucky. It is this country which, deep down under the surface things,
+means home to all people of Saxon blood, no matter how far astray they
+wander....
+
+And as she lay there, as if her wistful thoughts had conjured it into
+being, came a whisper of song from the leaves of the magnolia tree just
+outside her window; a murmur that died away, and began again, and rose
+and soared, melody on wings, above the clang of a trolley-car and the
+honk of passing motors. It was a mocking-bird, that voice of the
+Southern summer, singing in the glare of the arc-lamps, mistaking it
+perhaps for moonlight.
+
+Joan tiptoed to the window and listened, an aching lump in her throat.
+It was her first mocking-bird; she had not known they sang at night.
+
+"You lovely thing!" she whispered to it. "What are you doing in this
+place?... And what am _I_?"
+
+Then and there she made her plans to get away.
+
+The thought frightened her a little. She had, despite the ups and downs
+of her father's fortunes, led hitherto a very sheltered life.
+Fortunately there was her mother's money, hers whenever she chose to ask
+for it. She would not be quite penniless. But where to go?
+
+She thought first of the Misses Darcy, her father's cousins, who had
+been most affectionate and kind, particularly since her father's
+remarriage. Sometimes she wondered whether this was because they
+sympathized with her, or (with a touch of her new cynicism) because they
+did not. Effie May had been very generous to the Misses Darcy, remarking
+once that she knew what it was to be poor herself. They came frequently
+to dine at her lavish table; they appeared occasionally in _chic_ black
+costumes, as good as new, which Joan recognized as having served to
+mourn the late Mr. Calloway; the limousine was often at their disposal;
+and a limousine with a liveried chauffeur was a touch of distinction
+hitherto lacking to the Darcy fortunes, even at their palmiest.
+
+Joan suddenly doubted whether her father's cousins would welcome her
+under their roof at the risk of alienating that limousine. She did not
+blame them--poor, anxious ladies to whom life had not been very kind.
+She simply realized that they were of her father's blood, not her
+mother's.
+
+Her mother's people she did not know. Mary Darcy had managed somehow in
+her wanderings to loosen all the ties that bound her to her youth. It
+was as if she had deliberately lost herself, hidden herself away with
+husband and child from the loving eyes that are too quick to see.... It
+was the sort of pride Richard Darcy was quite incapable of
+understanding, though pride was a word often upon his lips. But Mary's
+daughter understood. Never through her should the quiet tragedy of her
+mother's life be revealed to those from whom her mother had chosen to
+hide it.
+
+She wished that Stefan Nikolai were not a man; or that, being a man, he
+had a home to which she might have invited herself. But he was a
+confirmed wanderer, and Joan felt that a young lady companion, desirable
+though she might be as a solace for his declining years, would
+undoubtedly hamper his movements.
+
+It left only Ellen Neal to rely upon. Perhaps there would be enough
+money to take a little flat somewhere, with Ellen Neal for servant and
+chaperone. A bachelor maid, with a latch-key!--the prospect was rather
+alluring. But not in Louisville. She could not leave her father's home
+and set up an establishment of her own in the same town without creating
+"talk," and, to Joan's training, "talk" was the one thing impossible.
+
+They would have to go away somewhere, she and Ellen. And study
+something, she decided vaguely. Music, art, social service--whatever it
+was people did study. Her eye began to kindle. She was the true child of
+Richard Darcy, rolling stone by nature and profession; and to such, "the
+grass is always greener down the road." New York, Boston, swam before
+her dreamy vision; even London, Paris, Rome....
+
+She brought herself back to the ungrateful consideration of ways and
+means. She feared the money would not run to much in the way of travel.
+"A mere pittance," her father had once scornfully called it. But she
+knew, or guessed, that all three of them had managed to live on the
+income from this pittance during many a period when the Major's star was
+not in the ascendant, and she thought that what had provided, however
+scantily, for three might be made to provide well for herself and Ellen.
+She wished that she had asked questions at the time her mother's will
+was read to her. It had seemed so unimportant then. What was hers
+belonged surely just as much to her father, guardian for the little
+property until such time as she chose to ask him for it.
+
+Now that the time had come, Joan faced it with some dread. How could
+they talk about money, she and he--about her mother's money? It seemed
+indelicate, unfeeling, a desecration of sacred things. Nevertheless she
+faced it. She solemnly promised herself that not another day should pass
+without a complete understanding between herself and her father.
+
+Possibly she was the only one of Richard Darcy's creditors who ever
+managed to put this promise into execution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+In the heat of the following afternoon, while Effie May dozed unaware
+beneath an electric fan, with a box of chocolates convenient to her
+drowsy hand, Joan slipped out of the house very quietly and went down
+town. She had an odd feeling of exhilaration, as if she had already
+escaped--from what, it would have been difficult to say.
+
+More than one glance of approval followed her slim figure as it flitted
+through the sweltering streets, the dark and grimy corridors of the
+office building which Richard Darcy had chosen to honor with his
+patronage. This, thought patient men as she passed, was as a girl should
+look on a July afternoon, all in cool white from her silver-buckled
+pumps to the wide hat with a big lace butterfly perched airily upon it.
+Surely it was fitting, they thought, that men should slave at their
+desks through the endless summer days in order that visions such as this
+might flit about the world in dainty idleness; and forthwith applied
+gallant noses once more to the grindstone. In the South the idea of
+economic independence for women will never be popular.
+
+Joan, under these friendly glances, was conscious of blossoming into
+real prettinees. It was not the first time she had got this pleasant
+little sensation out of so simple a matter as going down town. She
+wondered whether in any other city of the world it was possible for a
+girl to walk the streets alone, receiving from every man who passed--be
+he gentleman, clerk, coal-heaver, or small, knowing news-boy--glances of
+commendation which were neither impertinent, nor bold, nor even
+personal, but simply, as it were expert; an appraisal which flattered
+without offense. It was as if, at the sight of a pretty woman, the town
+as one man lifted its glass to the toast:
+
+"The Ladies, God bless 'em!"
+
+It was this spirit, she thought, which had perhaps given Kentucky its
+reputation for feminine pulchritude. To be a beauty is not difficult
+where every one encourages the idea, where feminine charm is regarded as
+in itself an end and a purpose, to be fortified by every means at the
+command of art or nature.... Joan fluttered along with the best,
+modestly unconscious of the eyes that paid her homage, but aware
+nevertheless of her occasional reflection in plate-glass windows; and it
+should be recorded that before she went to her father's office she made
+the purchase of a stick of pink lip-pomade and a cake of solid
+face-powder, with a little puff and mirror included. Why these articles
+should have given her increased courage for an interview with her
+parent, is difficult to state; but the fact remains that they did.
+
+She came presently to a doorway upon which was printed in large gold
+lettering: RICHARD DARCY. LOANS AND INVESTMENTS. Joan was secretly
+impressed. Perhaps the Office was not the mere figure of speech she had
+sometimes fancied it.
+
+She knocked. No answer came. Listening, she heard inside the familiar
+whirr of an electric fan mingling with a sound she could not for the
+moment place--a buzzing as of many flies, but rising and falling at more
+rhythmic intervals.
+
+She turned the knob. Within, drawn by an open window through which might
+be glimpsed the broad Ohio rolling drowsily, stood a decrepit Morris
+chair which Joan recognized as an old friend; wherein lay sprawled at
+comfortable length the Major. At his elbow stood a bottle and a glass,
+both empty. His handsome nose, forgetting for the moment all
+acquaintance with the grindstone, was tilted at the angle of least
+resistance, and from it issued the rhythmic buzzing that had puzzled his
+child.
+
+"Daddy!" she said reluctantly. Somehow the Major asleep, with a plump
+leg draped over the arm of his chair and his mouth slightly open, made
+up in disarming appeal what he lost in impressiveness. He was like a
+gray-haired little boy, tired out with playing.
+
+But, "Father!" said Joan more loudly. "Wake up, please. I've come to see
+you on business."
+
+He opened his eyes with a jerk. "Eh? What's that, what's that, what's
+that? Tut, tut! Must have dozed off. What's that?" The eyes tried to
+close again, but he was firm with them, and presently recognized his
+daughter. "That you, Dollykins? Well, well, well! Come down to pay Dad a
+visit, eh? That's nice, that's nice!"
+
+Suddenly he got to his feet and brought her a chair, reaching at the
+same time for his coat. Richard Darcy could not possibly have remained
+in a lady's presence coatless, no matter what the temperature. Her
+attention was caught by the garment into which he struggled, muttering
+apologies the while.
+
+"Why, Dad," she cried, "_what_ are you putting on?"
+
+It was not the immaculate gray flannel in which he had started that
+morning for the marts of commerce, but a thread-bare, shapeless, densely
+spotted garment which Joan recognized with a pang.
+
+"Your old second-best!" she exclaimed.
+
+Her father grinned a little sheepishly. "Why--why yes, I keep it here as
+an office coat, to save the others, you see. I'm sort of used to it," he
+added explanatorily. "It seems to fit into my curves. The new ones
+don't. One is supposed to fit into theirs!"
+
+Joan patted the sleeve of the second-best affectionately. Her eyes were
+moist. She felt nearer to her father than she had for weeks. He had kept
+the old chair out of their home equipment; he had kept the old coat. Was
+he after all not so obliviously content as he seemed in his fine new
+surroundings? Did he remember, too, and was he homesick as herself for
+the shabby days when he and she and her mother had made a little world
+of their own, happy in spite of everything?
+
+She said with a smile, "You'd better not let Effie May catch you wearing
+such a garment!"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed. "I may confess that it was with some
+difficulty I rescued this coat from the ashman, to whom your mother had
+given it."
+
+But his use of the phrase, "your mother," hardened Joan out of her
+momentary tenderness. Invariably he spoke of Effie May to her as "your
+mother," and of her real mother only as "Mary." The girl was too young
+to realize that this may have been because the name meant things to him
+which the phrase never would. Mary was something more to Richard Darcy
+than Joan's mother....
+
+"I have come to talk to you," said Joan, "about business, Father."
+
+"Business?" The Major's eyebrows lifted. Business meant money, and the
+ladies of his family never cared to talk about money! remarked those
+eyebrows. Though, to be sure, they sometimes found themselves under the
+necessity of asking for it--His hand went instinctively to his pocket.
+
+"I suppose you are out of pin-money?" he interpreted. "Stupid of me not
+to have realized it, Dollykin, though I sent you rather a good deal to
+the convent, you remember?" He brought his hand out, filled with silver.
+"There! Spend it 'not wisely but too well'--not that one need give any
+girl advice on that subject! Dear, dear, how women can make the money
+fly!" humorously sighed the Major (whose debts had probably been paid by
+women ever since he had been old enough to make them).
+
+"I should like a chance," said Joan soberly, "to make the money fly,
+Father. My money, you know."
+
+He stared at her, really bewildered.
+
+She refreshed his memory, flushing. "The money Mother left, with you as
+guardian--that I was to have whenever I asked--"
+
+"Not that she ever expected such a contingency to arrive!" commented the
+Major with a sudden accession of stiffness. "You are not of age yet, my
+child."
+
+"Was there any provision in her will about my being of age?"
+
+"No," he admitted. "Owing to what was of course purely a technical
+error, I think there was not. My poor Mary was quite unaccustomed to the
+terminology of wills, naturally, and as she and a servant drew it up
+between them, you may imagine--" he shrugged indulgently.
+
+Joan moistened her lips. She was finding the interview even more
+difficult than she had imagined. Her father's manner managed to put her
+somehow in the wrong. But she held to her purpose.
+
+"I do not think it was an error, Father. Mother wasn't the sort who says
+things she doesn't mean. I believe she foresaw that--that something
+might occur which would make me wish to be independent, even if I was
+not of age. She could trust my judgment a little. She knew that I'd
+never dream of asking for her property unless I had a good reason--I
+have a good reason now, Father--I want to be independent." Her voice
+trailed off miserably. What she really wanted was to put her arms about
+his neck and have a good cry.
+
+Unconsciously the Major discouraged the impulse. "What is this nonsense
+about independence?" he demanded. "My dear Joan, you sound like a New
+Woman!" On his lips the phrase was a scathing denunciation.
+
+Joan explained faintly that she wanted to go away somewhere, to live....
+
+The Major was honestly aghast. "Leave your father's roof?" he cried
+incredulously. "My child! What is this folly? Never with Richard Darcy's
+consent shall a daughter of his leave her father's roof except for the
+roof of her lawful husband." (In moments of emotion, the Major was
+always liable to these attacks of circumlocution.)
+
+Joan pointed out to him, still faintly but determinedly, that it was not
+her _father's_ roof she wished to leave....
+
+Even under his armor of complacency this shot told. He winced. "Have you
+been made to feel that? Has my wife ever caused you to believe that you
+were an unwelcome member of our household?" he demanded sharply, in a
+voice that boded ill for the present Mrs. Darcy if such were the case.
+
+"No, Father! I shall never give her the chance to make me feel
+unwelcome. That is why I want my mother's money."
+
+The Major toyed with a pen, and seemed to be thinking. "I am not at all
+sure," he said presently, "that the will Mary left was legal, my dear;
+whether it would stand in the courts--"
+
+"What does that matter?" interrupted Joan, "when you and I know what
+Mother meant?" Something impelled her to add, "And when Ellen Neal
+knows, too?"
+
+The Major looked quickly at her, and looked away. "Perhaps you are not
+aware that regardless of any will whatsoever the law entitles me to
+one-third of my wife's estate?"
+
+Joan flushed with an embarrassment that was more for him than for
+herself. "You're welcome to it, Daddy; you're perfectly welcome to it,
+of course! It isn't that I want to take anything away from _you_.
+It's--oh, won't you _please_ understand, and not be hurt with me?" she
+implored. "I only want to know how much there is, how much money I can
+count on getting every month to live on. Just income, you know. I
+wouldn't think of touching the--principal, don't you call it?"
+
+Richard Darcy rose abruptly and went to the window. It was a fine view
+that spread before him--a soothing, mellifluous landscape of golden
+river and hazy blue Indiana hills. Indiana, as he sometimes remarked,
+was delightful as a background though undesirable as a dwelling-place.
+He said so now. He had taken this office entirely for its view, he
+informed his daughter. The Major patronized Nature extensively, and
+believed that all gentlemen should do so; especially Kentucky gentlemen,
+to whom Nature has been so particularly lavish.
+
+Meanwhile Joan waited. He recalled that her mother used to have the same
+habit of silent waiting. Some minds seem incapable of pleasant
+digression.
+
+He sighed, and resumed the subject under discussion. His manner had
+changed somewhat, however. He spoke in the persuasive, frank,
+"he's-a-good-fellow-and-'twill-all-be-well" tones which he reserved for
+directors' boards, stockholders' meetings, and like courts of last
+resort, when things unpleasant had to be told and he was the one to tell
+them. It should be said in all justice that he rarely side-stepped these
+meetings, as he might have done, and allowed the unpleasantnesses to
+disclose themselves through others. Nobody could say that Richard Darcy
+was a coward.
+
+"Well, about this little business affair of ours, Dollykins--Of course
+the property was never large, though properly invested it might have
+brought us in a decent income instead of the trifle Mary was content
+with. The merest pittance I assure you, the merest pittance!"
+
+Joan nodded. She had heard before about the mereness of the pittance.
+
+"Often during my wife's lifetime I took occasion to point this out to
+her. The question of securities and investments being one to which I
+have devoted the greater part of my business career, I think I may say
+without undue vanity that I am qualified to give advice on such matters!
+But Mary had a certain sentimental reluctance about changing investments
+which her father had made for her, and sentiment is a thing which I am
+always able to respect."
+
+("Good for mother!" said Joan to herself.)
+
+"However, after her death--" he paused to pay his Mary the tribute of a
+sincere though dramatic sigh--"I began at once to look about for a means
+of providing my little girl with more affluence than had hitherto been
+at my disposal. The best," he smiled, patting her hand, "is none too
+good for my Dollykins! And an opportunity shortly presented itself, a
+quite exceptional opportunity, not only of increasing our income
+materially, but of assisting to develop the resources of my native
+commonwealth." He expanded suddenly with public spirit. "What a State!
+Fortunes have been made here, but nothing compared with the fortunes
+which shall be made. People have dared to call us a 'pauper
+State'--'pauper,' if you please!--with wealth at our command, untouched,
+unguessed resources lying just beneath the surface of this beautiful
+soil, which would make Aladdin's cave look like--like--"
+
+"Thirty cents," supplied Joan, in an anxious effort to get to the point.
+"I know, Father!--but what did you buy with the money?"
+
+"Oil-fields!" he said largely. "Oil-fields! Or, to be exact, stock in a
+company formed for the purpose of purchasing oil-fields, in which by
+good chance I happened to be let in on the ground floor (as we say in
+commercial parlance, Dollykins. It is not an expression I should care to
+hear you use.) You are the part possessor of something like one thousand
+acres of virgin Kentucky soil!" He leaned back in his chair and beamed
+on her.
+
+"Am I?" said Joan dubiously. "It sounds promising."
+
+Something of her father's elation disappeared in a sigh. "Promising,
+yes!--but so far only promising. Oil has been struck all about us, but
+none as yet on our holdings. I have by no means given up hope, of
+course." (Richard Darcy had never given up hope in any of his lost
+causes.) "But I must confess that I have been disappointed. Worse than
+disappointed. For a while I was--well, really, desperate!" He smiled
+deprecatingly.
+
+The smile did not for the moment touch Joan's heart; but it told her the
+truth she had dreaded. "Father! You mean you have _lost_ the
+money?--There's no income left?"
+
+"Income? Alas, no. And even the principal--Still, the land is there, one
+thousand acres of it, and that cannot escape!" he added, brightening.
+"There were times when I thought of going to live on the land. Though my
+experience of agriculture has been practically nil, many of our
+ancestors were planters and stock-breeders, and, as you know, I am a
+firm believer in the power of heredity. However, I was credibly informed
+that the property would not lend itself to agriculture. I was at my
+wit's end. Fancy the position!" (The Major was beginning rather to enjoy
+his woe in the retrospect.) "Here was I not as yet firmly established on
+my feet (as we say in business parlance); deprived alike of helpmate and
+companion, with my child at an expensive boarding-school where I had
+promised my dead wife she should remain until the completion of her
+education--and I without a dollar I could call my own! Frightful! There
+were certain obligations to tradespeople as well.... I am sure I do not
+know how for a while Ellen Neal managed to provide us with necessities!"
+(Joan thought grimly that she knew how.) "It became necessary
+to--ah!--realize on my possessions. First the silver went--I daresay you
+have wondered what has become of our family silver, my child? It was
+sacrificed to keep a roof over your head. Then the more valuable pieces
+of furniture--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" groaned the girl in a sort of angry pity, "Why didn't you
+tell me? Oh, _poor_ father!"
+
+"You may well say, 'poor father.' It was for you I suffered most, for
+you I was afraid. A man alone can always manage to subsist in some
+fashion, but a man with a helpless female dependent on him--! Thank
+heaven," he said earnestly, "you can never know what it is to be a
+father! I thought constantly, 'What a home to bring a young lady into!
+What a situation for my child!' I may confess that I prayed--no
+gentleman need be ashamed to pray when he is in distress. And then like
+light in darkness the answer came to me. At whatever cost to myself,
+whatever sacrifice, I must provide comfort for Joan, a home suitable for
+the reception of a young gentlewoman. There was nothing left to offer
+except--myself. Therefore--"
+
+His face shone with a noble sadness, and he waited for the generosity of
+his sacrifice to sink in.
+
+"You mean," said Joan slowly, "that it was for my sake you married Mrs.
+Calloway!"
+
+He bowed assent. "Why else? She is an excellent woman, a kind and
+excellent and devoted woman. But under happier circumstances, a man of
+my position, my traditions, my--shall I say fastidiousness?--" He
+shrugged, and allowed the ungallant suggestion to complete itself
+without words.
+
+"I think," said Joan quietly, "we'd better not say 'fastidiousness.'"
+
+She was struggling, struggling so hard that her hands were clenched, to
+do justice to her father. Had she misjudged him? Was his marriage after
+all not the horrid thing she had thought it, but an honest effort to
+atone to the child he had beggared? Something within her cried "No!" Her
+father had sacrificed nothing in the marriage. He had simply yielded,
+without a struggle, to the lure of the flesh-pots. Worse than this, the
+girl recalled honeymooning incidents that often made her shudder with
+mental nausea; certain billing and cooing which she had not always been
+able to avoid. It was not only the flesh-pots that had lured him....
+
+"Cad!" she cried to herself fiercely. "Cad and liar!" And the terrible
+thing was that he did not seem to know he was being a cad and a liar.
+
+Aloud she said, "And what did Mrs. Calloway get out of the bargain?"
+
+The Major stared at her, astounded. It was a question so absurd that he
+literally could not answer it. Quite unconsciously his eyes strayed
+beyond her after a moment to a mirror, as if for reassurance.
+
+Joan burst out laughing. The laughter was so palpably close to tears
+that her father forgave it, and held out his arms to her. "There, there,
+my poor child! You're overwrought," he murmured. "Come to Daddy!"
+
+She had lost all desire to weep on his shoulder now, however, and
+Richard Darcy shrank from the look she gave him, as a more innocent man
+than he might have shrunk; so level it was, so keen and without mercy.
+She saw her father in that moment not only as cad and liar, but as
+something very close to a thief. As surely as if she had been told in
+words, she knew why her mother, after fighting for years to keep her bit
+of property safe for her child, had at the last left it to the
+guardianship of her husband. It was to show him she trusted him, to put
+him on honor, as it were; to bolster up his waning self-respect by this
+final supreme act of faith in him. And he had betrayed her.
+
+Joan shrugged, and turned to go. Her head hung in shame, and Richard
+Darcy knew that the shame was not for herself. What passed through her
+brain then was for the moment clear to him, as it is sometimes with
+people of one blood.
+
+"I dare say," he said very low with a sort of dreadful questioning,
+"that the law might--might hold me responsible as guardian of your
+property, my daughter. If you cared to--if you wished to--make an issue
+of it?"
+
+"What good would that do" she replied brutally. "The money's gone, isn't
+it?"
+
+Then, glancing back, she surprised in his face that look she had almost
+forgotten--the frightened, baffled, anxious expression which she
+associated with the days when, as Ellen Neal put it, "the Indians were
+after him."
+
+Instantly the reaction came. It was she he feared now, not
+"Indians"--she, his own little girl, Joan!
+
+She ran and put her arms around him tightly, protectingly. "Nonsense!"
+she cried, her voice beautiful with the instinct of all the mothers who
+had made her. "The law'll never know a thing about it. What has the old
+law got to do with you and me? You've done the best you could, Daddy,
+I'm sure."
+
+Richard Darcy answered humbly, like a repentant child, "I have,
+daughter, truly I have. I'm sorry...."
+
+Later, as she walked wearily homeward through streets that no longer
+exhilarated her, no bachelor-maid now with a latch-key, nor yet an
+independent young traveler in foreign lands, but merely a poor relation
+dependent on the bounty of a step-mother, Joan made for herself a new
+beatitude:
+
+"Blessed are the weak," she thought stoically, "for they have got to be
+taken care of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The two rooms in which Ellen Neal had established herself were on the
+second floor of a house that had gone some decades since into a state of
+senile decrepitude. But such was the fashion of building in its day that
+it showed no particular signs of its approaching end beyond a slight
+tilt to leeward and the rather eczematic effect of its stuccoed brick
+facade. A high-waisted door surmounted by a fine fan-light and supported
+by slender columns which had once been white led into a square panelled
+hall from which curved a staircase of exquisite proportions. These
+things in a city of larger growth and greater sophistication would have
+marked the house as the natural abode of artists and their ilk; but in
+Louisville, where art is yet chiefly a thing to be taken in courses by
+the elect, it let itself out in rooms for light housekeeping and other
+humble purposes. The slender columns were defaced by such signs
+as, "Feather Cleaning and Artificial Flowers,"--"Furniture
+Upholstered,"--"Plain Dressmaking," etc.
+
+The neighborhood, except for this one decrepit mansion standing well in
+from the sidewalk with an ancient sycamore for company, had long since
+forgotten its former claims to fashion; but it was still respectable.
+Trust Ellen Neal for that! She had the same flair for respectability as
+had the Misses Darcy for gentility. No doubtful character, whether in
+house or individual, could fail to yield up its weakness to the
+corrosive rectitude of Miss Neal's shrewd eye.
+
+Joan liked to come to this house, not only because Ellen and the
+familiar home furniture were there, but because it carried her romantic
+fancy back into the Louisville her father sometimes talked about, the
+old South with all its lost glamour of gallantry and derring-do. "_Les
+belles dames du temps jadis_" was a phrase that invariably came to her
+mind as she entered the graceful, defaced portal. Nearby stood a
+street-pump where an actress who was one day to make the charm of
+American women world-famous, used to come each morning to draw water, in
+her shabby little slippers with a rope of hair over each shoulder--a
+lovely young Rebekah at the well. Around the corner stood another old
+mansion, now debased to commercial uses, in front of which the
+townspeople used to gather daily at a certain hour to watch the languid
+progress from door to carriage of a beauty so widely heralded that her
+name and her many love-affairs have become history. Here and there in a
+neglected fence-corner a ragged rose-bush, or a clump of larkspur
+bravely in bloom, spoke to a few observers, such as Joan, of gardens
+which had been the lovely setting of lovely ladies long since dead and
+dust.
+
+Twilight was the hour for that neighborhood. Joan liked to fancy Ellen's
+house as the darkness fell, with candle-light streaming from the
+wide-flung windows, and glimpses within of bells in crinoline and beaux
+in tight wrinkled trousers, dancing a quadrille. Among them moved negro
+servitors with trays of frosted silver cups, and syllabub (though she
+had no slightest notion of what syllabub might be), and black cake, and
+small, pricked, beaten biscuit with ham in their insides. And there
+would be carriages stopping constantly at the door, to emit more belles
+and gallants, girls hoop-skirted and beshawled, who ran lightly up the
+curve of the long staircase, with apologies to the couples they
+disturbed in passing....
+
+Always the house brought such fancies to Joan, and so clearly that she
+sometimes wondered whether they were less fancies than race-memories,
+souvenirs of Darcys who might have lived and made merry there in the
+halcyon days when the old gray river-town was at its zenith; truly, as
+it boasted, the Gateway to the South, stopping-place for all travelers
+on these floating palaces which no longer ply their leisurely journeys
+down the Ohio and the Mississippi to the Gulf.
+
+Once she had questioned her father about it. "No, that's not one of our
+houses, I think," he replied interestedly. "Though it might have been.
+Your ancestors were very fond of change, Dollykins--as I am myself. We
+seem to have lived in half the houses in Louisville, at one time or
+another. But that one has been shabby and tumbledown ever since I can
+remember. In my boyhood it was a cheap boarding-house, for actors and
+people of that sort, I believe. I knew no one who lived there."
+
+Joan was disappointed. She would have liked to claim the old mansion as
+a relative.
+
+As she went wearily homeward from her disastrous interview with her
+father, Joan suddenly bethought herself of this house, and of Ellen. She
+was in no mood just then for the cheerful vulgarities of her
+step-mother. On the impulse, she went into the nearest drug-store and
+telephoned that she would not be home that night for dinner.
+
+"Ellen shall cook me some pancakes, and I will help her," she decided,
+comforted by the idea. It must be remembered that Joan was only
+nineteen.
+
+Inhabitants in suspenders and dressing-sacks, seeking air on the
+doorstep, stared at the girl inquisitively as she entered; but once
+within the dimness of the panelled hall she was able to forget these
+anachronisms. The quaint elegance of an earlier day was proof against
+even Expert Feather-curling, and Upholstery Done Here.
+
+From above came a sudden tuneless whistling, and then a thump on a door
+and a man's voice calling, "Say, Mrs. Neal! Here's a bushel of fine
+assorted socks for you, and if you can get enough out of the lot to keep
+my feet off the cauld, cauld ground till pay-day, I'll be yours truly."
+
+She heard Ellen's voice replying in more muffled tones, "All right, sir,
+just dump 'em in the door, will you? My hands are in the dough."
+
+Joan was amused to hear Ellen Neal called "Mrs."--she who was so
+unmistakably and truculently a spinster; also she was surprised at the
+politeness of her "sir" in response, for Ellen was not given to the
+small amenities of social intercourse. The Major himself was rarely
+"sir" to Ellen.
+
+The whistling resumed itself, coming rapidly nearer; and around the
+curve of the stairs, which he took two at a time, bounded a young man,
+who brought himself and his whistling to a full stop just in time to
+avoid carrying Joan with him in his downward course.
+
+"Whew!--just missed you!" he exclaimed aghast. "You startled me. For a
+minute I thought you were a ghost!"
+
+"Perhaps I am," murmured Joan, and demurely passed on up the stairs.
+
+He turned and stared after the white ascending figure. She was aware of
+his eyes following her. Suddenly he chuckled, "I knew I'd find you
+again. And I found the quotation, too! 'Richard the Second,' by William
+Shakespeare."
+
+Joan glanced over her shoulder. "I do not know what you are talking
+about," she said frigidly, "and I do not know you from Adam!" She had
+brought the impertinence upon herself, but she felt quite able to handle
+it--particularly with Ellen Neal just a few steps away.
+
+Even as she spoke, however, she was aware that she did know this young
+man. Something in his voice, in his awkward, deferential manner, brought
+back to her memory the too-sympathetic drummer on the train. She lifted
+her eyes from his necktie to his face, remembering past regrets. His
+ears stuck out.
+
+"Like the Yellow Kid's!" she thought disgustedly.
+
+There is nothing in the least romantic about a man whose ears stick out.
+He might as well be fat....
+
+"'Sad stories of the death of kings,'" he was explaining eagerly. "I
+looked it up myself. Sort of sounded like Shakespeare."
+
+"Oh! I thought it was 'Alice in Wonderland'!" Joan was surprised into
+speech.
+
+"That's a new one on me--'Alice in Wonderland,'"--commented the young
+man. "Is it good stuff?"
+
+"You've never read 'Alice in Wonderland'? What a queer childhood you
+must have had!"
+
+"Didn't have any," he replied, smiling up at her. Then he removed the
+smile, made a respectful little bow, and went on out the door.
+
+Joan found that she was blushing, hotly; and no wonder. She was shocked
+by herself. She, one of Sister Mary Agnes's best exemplars of decorum,
+had deliberately started and continued a conversation with a strange
+young man met by chance on the dark stairway of a house where assuredly
+gentlemen did not live. ("Unless very poor gentlemen," she amended; for,
+ears or not, he seemed somehow to belong in the category of gentlehood.)
+Nor had she even terminated the conversation. It was he who had done
+that. He had shown more sense of the fitness of things than had she,
+Joan Darcy!
+
+It was all the effect of the hospitable old hall, Joan decided. The
+house, like the roof of a friend, had introduced them. But what was he
+doing in such a house? It was not the sort of abode that would appeal,
+she fancied, to necktie drummers.
+
+She opened Ellen's door without knocking. "Hello, there! Who's that I
+met on the stairs, and why does he call you 'Mrs.,' you giddy old
+fraud?"
+
+A spoon dropped to the floor with a clatter as Ellen turned, beaming.
+"Land sakes! You might as well kill a person as scare her to death," she
+complained, far too pleased to admit it. "What you doin' down town this
+time o' day, all dressed up like lady-come-to-see? What do you want,
+eh?"
+
+"Pancakes," explained Joan, ripping off her long gloves. "I'm going to
+stay to supper, Nellen, so get me an apron and let's begin."
+
+Ellen's smile widened. "Pancakes! On a hot night like this?"
+
+Joan nodded. "Um-humm! And lemonade," she said, "and anything else you
+can think of that's indigestible. Got any pickles?"
+
+"What would a lone woman be doin' keepin' house without pickles?"
+replied Ellen scornfully, producing them. "And there's a batch of
+cinnamon rolls in the oven this minute, just as if I was expectin' you."
+
+With a sigh of content, the girl reached down a yellow crockery bowl out
+of the cupboard--she was on quite intimate terms with Ellen's
+cupboard--and tying a gingham apron about her neck, proceeded to stir
+batter. It was the same crockery bowl, and perhaps the same gingham
+apron, in which she had stirred batter so long ago that she had been
+obliged to stand on a footstool in order to reach the kitchen-table.
+There was something substantial and fixed and unchangeable about Ellen
+Neal and her possessions, something that spelled home, though it was
+only home for other people.
+
+"But you haven't distracted my mind," said Joan judicially, "from the
+fact that a young man of your acquaintance calls you 'Mrs.' without
+correction. You haven't eloped or anything lately?"
+
+Ellen Neal bridled. "How you do go on, Joan! It makes it look better for
+a lone woman to be livin' by herself if she's called 'Mrs.' Men ain't so
+apt to get fresh with her."
+
+"No?" murmured Joan. She gazed at Ellen's gaunt unloveliness with
+twinkling eyes. "Don't tell me men have been getting fresh with you,
+Nellen!"
+
+The other's jaw snapped. "They have not, and they better not try it."
+
+"Don't you think it's rather a risk darning their socks, then?" murmured
+the girl wickedly. "It might give them false ideas."
+
+"I only do it for one of 'em, and he pays me good. Anything's proper so
+long as you get paid for it."
+
+Joan laughed aloud. "Why, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Neal, you shock me! What a
+perilous idea!"
+
+"You're awful smart, guyin' me, but I'd be ashamed to think the kind of
+thoughts you're thinkin' now," said Ellen Neal, unsmiling. "And you a
+spinster yourself! Thoughts are as bad as deeds, any day--worse, 'cause
+they come easier. That's one thing I've noticed about you lately, Joan.
+You seem to know about things that ain't ladylike, somehow. Something's
+happened to you, child. You ain't the nice little girl you used to be."
+
+"No," admitted Joan, "I'm not. And the world's not the nice little world
+it used to be, either." She went over and laid her head on her friend's
+bony shoulder. "Don't scold me to-day, dear. You're right, but--Oh,
+Nellen, father's lost our money! And there's nothing in the world I can
+call my own. Just absolutely nothing!"
+
+A silence fell. "So," said the old woman. "You've found out, at last,
+have you? I've wondered how long it would take. And now what you goin'
+to do about it?" she demanded suddenly. "Are you goin' to law?"
+
+Joan shook her head. "You know what Mother would say to that."
+
+Ellen sighed. "I suppose she wouldn't hear to it." It was a curious fact
+that when these two spoke of Mary Darcy, they always spoke as if she
+were still alive, and near them. "Anyway, you can't squeeze blood out of
+a turnip--though I must say I'd like to see _somethin'_ squeezed out of
+them kind of turnips, if it's only insides!" she added quite
+blood-thirstily. "Oh deary me, deary me! How often I've begged your ma
+to sneak what there was left out of his reach and put it away where I
+keep mine."
+
+"Where's that, Nellen?"
+
+"In an old stockin'-fut under my bedtick, where you can bet no man on
+earth ever laid eyes on it, or ever will!"
+
+The smell of scorching bread suddenly filled the room. "Land sakes, my
+cinnamon-rolls! And I'd promised that boy to save him some for
+breakfast."
+
+"Breakfast?" exclaimed Joan, glad enough of a diversion from discussing
+her undiscussable father. "You mean to tell me you're not only keeping
+your young man darned, but breakfasted? Nellen, I'm positively jealous!"
+
+"You wouldn't be if you could see him eat," said the other seriously.
+"Acts like he ain't had enough food to fill him sence he was born. He
+was gettin' all his meals out to a restaurant before I come, a place he
+calls 'The Sign of the Dirty Spoon.' Jokin', I suppose--he's a great one
+for jokes. But he looked so skinny, and was always takin' something for
+dyspepsy, so I told him I'd give him a good breakfast anyway, just to
+start the day on. Say, Joan, you ought to see him put it away! He says
+once, 'I 'spose this is what you call home-cookin', ain't it?' 'Land,
+sakes,' says I, 'don't you know home-cookin' when you see it?' 'I ain't
+never seen it before!' he says, laughing."
+
+While she talked Ellen was bustling capably about, laying a cloth,
+getting out dishes, dropping Joan's batter into a sizzling saucepan,
+from whence arose dense, pleasing vapors.
+
+"Here, Joan, mix some cinnamon in that sugar, 'less you'd ruther have
+molasses on 'em. You ought to see the room he's got. Nothin' but books,
+all over the tables, piled up on the floor, even on the window-sills--"
+
+"Books?" said Joan, pricking up an ear. She had not imagined the
+wide-eared young man in his dapper clothes a student.
+
+"Whatever people want all them books around for I can't see," said
+Ellen. "Dust collectors, I call 'em; but he says they're his college
+career. Always will have his joke! And the dirt--! He had a colored
+woman in to do for him before I come, and guess what she used to do with
+her dust?" She paused dramatically, arms akimbo.
+
+Joan admitted her imagination unequal to the task.
+
+"Swept it under the bed and left it there! Land!" said Ellen Neal, "how
+I do hate a nigger! You can bet I got that place to rights in a jiffy."
+
+"I can indeed," murmured Joan, "and I can also bet he couldn't find a
+thing belonging to him for a week afterwards."
+
+Ellen grinned. "You've the truth of it. There wasn't a morning for about
+a week but what he'd thump on the floor and yell down the chimney, 'Mrs.
+Neal, _oh_, Mrs. Neal! For heaven's sake where is my blue necktie?' or,
+'In the name of Jehoshaphat, what have you done with my other pair of
+pants?' It kind of reminded me of your pa," she said, sighing. "I been
+lookin' after him ever sence. There now, ain't you goin' to eat your
+pancakes now you've got 'em?"
+
+Joan drew up her chair to the oil-cloth covered table, and, despite the
+heat and her troubles, made such a meal as she had not eaten for weeks
+at her step-mother's elaborate board. Ellen sat opposite her, with no
+servant-and-mistress nonsense to complicate the pleasure of hospitality.
+Sometimes the old woman waited on Joan, and sometimes Joan waited on
+Ellen, all in a friendly democracy that would have caused Major Darcy's
+hair to rise on end. It had been his conscientious effort for years to
+keep Ellen Neal "in her place." The difficulty was in the ups and downs
+of the Darcy ménage to know just what might be considered Ellen's place.
+
+Not troubling themselves with any such niceties of status, the two ate
+their pancakes and drank their lemonade and otherwise courted
+indigestion contentedly, meanwhile chatting about the young man from
+upstairs, who for some reason began to appeal to Joan's imagination. His
+name, it appeared, was Archibald Blair.
+
+"Archibald Blair! Nellen, how romantic! Like an English novel. Young
+Lord Toodledeboots ruined at Monte Carlo, hiding his poverty and a
+broken heart in lodgings. I suppose these might be called lodgings? If
+only his ears had been made to fit him!"
+
+She no longer thought of him as a necktie drummer. The books made a
+difference. It seemed unlikely that necktie drummers would be on terms
+of first-name intimacy with Shakespeare. Moreover, his awkward yet
+somehow easy and unassuming air, like that of a friendly young dog who
+takes for granted that the world will be glad to see him, marked him as
+one not belonging to what her father called "the canile." No, he was a
+student and a gentleman, stranded by some freak of fortune in this
+near-slum, a youthful Beloved Vagabond. (It was the year when Locke's
+great book cast a glamour over all strange men in shabby clothing.)
+Although Archibald Blair was by no means shabby; on the contrary, rather
+appallingly dapper.
+
+"I wonder how he happens to be living in a house like this?" she
+ruminated aloud.
+
+"And why wouldn't he be living here?" demanded Ellen tartly. "It's cheap
+and decent, and there's some folks that don't like to go forever hoppin'
+from one place to another, like fleas on a dog's back. He's lived in
+that same room upstairs ever since he can remember."
+
+"Oh, has he?" Joan's eye kindled. It occurred to her that the young
+man's history might have some connection with the history of the house
+itself. "Ellen, I have it! It's the old family mansion, belonged to his
+father and grandfather and great-grandfather, and _of course_ he wants
+to go on living in it. I would myself!"
+
+Ellen grinned. "If there's a romantical notion to be found, trust you
+for finding it. But if you really want to know, folks do say--" She
+hesitated, under the hallucination (which many virtuous women share)
+that she disliked to repeat gossip.
+
+"Yes, yes? Do go on, Nellen!"
+
+"Well, they do say that if he's got a father at all it's more than he
+knows, let alone a grandfather, and great-grandfather. I had it from a
+woman downstairs (her that curls feathers, and she got it straight from
+somebody who used to live in the neighborhood when this was a actors'
+boardin'-house), that he got left here when he was a little boy, by his
+mother, in hock for her board-bill. And she never come back for him."
+
+Joan gave a gasp. "Oh," she cried. "Oh! poor woman!"
+
+Ellen eyed her curiously. "Poor _woman_? I should think you'd say 'poor
+child'!"
+
+"Poor both of them! But can't you see how much greater the tragedy must
+have been for the woman, who knew--who was to blame? Imagine how she
+must have dreamed of that pitiful little boy with his nose pressed
+against the window-pane watching for her--and she not able to come for
+him! Ellen--That's what he's doing here now! Waiting for his mother to
+come back!"
+
+"If he is, I hope it's with a club in his hand," muttered the other
+angrily. "Why wasn't she 'able to come,' I'd like to know?"
+
+"Perhaps she died. Or, she couldn't get enough money, or oh--oh, Ellen,
+don't you _see_? She didn't dare to come for him! He was getting too
+big, noticing things. For his own sake she had to give him up!" There
+were tears in Joan's eyes, ready to spill over.
+
+Ellen paused and stared at her. "Well!" she said at last. "If I had your
+imagination, Joan Darcy, I'd go to a hospital and get it cut out. It
+ain't safe! Here you are blubbering over the troubles of a woman who
+maybe never lived, and probably was a bad lot if she did--and a'most
+making me blubber over her myself!"
+
+Joan laughed and jumped up. "Here, let me help with the dishes. You wash
+and I'll wipe. But what a funny, pitiful little boy he must have been
+with those stick-out ears and those big, innocent-looking front teeth of
+his! I wonder why it is that big front teeth always do make a person
+look so innocent, Ellen?"
+
+"Seems to me you noticed a lot to have seen Mr. Blair only once."
+
+Joan did not think it necessary to mention that she had seen him more
+than once.
+
+"I always notice things--I can't help it. Anyway, I'm glad you keep the
+poor thing darned and comfy! It's only charity."
+
+"Charity nothing. He pays me good, and prompter than I ever got paid
+before in all _my_ life," disclaimed the other rather tactlessly.
+
+While she washed and put away her dishes, the girl made a tour of
+inspection about the rooms that were so full of associations to her. She
+smiled and nodded at the two familiar Landseer dogs on the wall, which
+had been a familiar part of every dining-room she remembered. She patted
+the worn chairs affectionately, and went in to pay her respects to the
+shorn four-post bed, which looked more at ease in its present
+surroundings than in others where she had seen it. The panelled walls,
+as nearly white as scrubbing could make them, the wide-silled windows
+with arched casements, the tall mantel-shelf, the finely molded ceiling
+which years of coal soot and cobwebs and general neglect had not
+sufficed to rob of dignity, all made a more suitable setting than Ellen
+guessed for her mistress's household goods; and to Joan these two
+bare and shabby rooms had become a haven of refuge. Tenement though it
+was, there was more of genuine beauty in the place where Ellen did plain
+dressmaking for very humble customers than in all the elaborate
+establishment with which Richard Darcy had managed to provide his
+daughter. Joan was very dependent upon beauty.
+
+Later, Ellen walked out with her through the languorous summer evening
+to the house which she never called home. Nothing more had been said
+between them of the loss of her independence; but the girl felt soothed
+and comforted, strengthened as the heart is always strengthened in the
+presence of a deep though inarticulate devotion. She slipped her hand
+into the other's thin arm, and so linked they walked along without much
+talk between them, listening as they passed to pleasant sounds from many
+a shadowed porch and garden, guitar music, singing, the inevitable
+hushed murmur of boy and girl voices commingled, which is as natural to
+a summer gloaming as the twitter of birds in spring.
+
+There came again to Joan, for the first time in weeks, something of the
+glamour, the sense of promise, which had touched her in the summer past
+when she walked at night with her father through the strange city where
+he had once been young. It was as if Romance brushed her in passing with
+shadowy skirts, and Joan felt that she must catch at them, cling to
+them, before it was too late. Youth is so short, so short!...
+
+Ellen, too, felt the witchery of the soft night; but to the Ellens,
+Romance comes only vicariously.
+
+"Joie," she said after a long silence, "ain't it time you was having
+some steady company yourself, child?"
+
+The girl did not smile at the phrase. It voiced too well her own secret
+thoughts. There had been something strangely unreal, unnatural, about
+the past weeks. She had brought nothing out of her experience with life
+so far, not even a friend--for Stefan Nikolai was merely an inheritance.
+
+"You're right," she said soberly "I suppose I ought to have a 'steady
+company' at least by this time. That ought to be simple
+enough!--Marriage is about the only thing left for a girl in my
+position, isn't it?"
+
+"Who's talking about marriage? You don't have to marry every fellow you
+walk out with, I should hope," said Ellen surprisingly. "I've walked out
+with quite a few myself!... But as to gettin' married, Jo--it's about
+the only thing for a girl in any position, I guess, even if she finds
+out afterwards that she's picked a lemon. Lemons are better than
+nothing."
+
+"Why, Mrs. Neal!" laughed Joan. "What sentiments from a confirmed
+spinster-person!"
+
+To which Ellen replied quietly, "It's the spinsters who know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The discovery of her dependence upon her step-mother marked an end to
+one period of Joan's existence: the apathetic period. Heretofore she had
+allowed their daily life, their amusements, their acquaintanceships, to
+remain in the hands of Effie May. If that lady chose, as she naïvely put
+it, to "break into society," and society was willing, Joan was amenable,
+though a little dubious as to society's taste. She was amenable, that
+is, so long as she was not called upon too actively to assist in the
+process. Pride forbade her making any effort to interest or to be
+interested in people who chose to accept the present Mrs. Darcy as one
+of themselves. To the Louisville she knew so far, she was merely the
+appendage of her parents, a captive chained to the triumphal
+chariot-wheel of her step-mother.
+
+That was all very well so long as she knew that she might snap the chain
+at any moment and be free. But a dependence that seemed likely to
+continue indefinitely was not to be borne by what the Major would have
+called "the proud spirit of a Darcy." Joan, waking in the early dawn,
+rose and dressed (not in negligée), demanded breakfast at an hour when
+the astonished servants were barely awake themselves, and proceeded to
+clear her decks for action....
+
+Ellen had sowed a useful suggestion in her brain. There was one freedom
+open to all young girls who were not too exacting in their demands: the
+freedom of marriage. Joan decided to marry. She also selected the
+victim.
+
+It was the first time she had thought of him for weeks; or of "the
+girls," those heart's companions with whom she had shared for two years
+her inmost hopes and desires (to say nothing of hats and gloves and
+handkerchiefs); with whom at parting she had exchanged vows of lifelong
+fealty. Their letters had accumulated unanswered. In the shock and shame
+of her father's marriage, she had put away childish things, among them
+her schoolmates, who seemed in the retrospect immature and puerile. Even
+Eduard of the interesting past had been put away for the moment with
+outgrown things, and had remained (fortunately) unthanked for his
+parting flowers. As for the love-letter which had accompanied them--Joan
+wondered with a start of dismay what had become of it.
+
+She found it neatly smoothed of its tell-tale wrinkles (the reader will
+remember that for a day and a night it had reposed against Joan's
+heart), filed among the letters in her desk, where it had been duly
+placed after being duly read, doubtless, by one of Mrs. Darcy's
+efficient housemaids.
+
+The girl studied it with a more dispassionate eye than she had brought
+to its first perusal:
+
+     My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+     of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+     Truly, "to part is to die a little." Forgive me!--EDUARD.
+
+Joan decided that this could not, after all, be called a love-letter; or
+if so, it was of a noncommittal type distinctly piquing to the vanity.
+She had given a good many of her precious holidays to the reforming of
+Mr. Desmond.
+
+"So!" she thought, with a small gleam in her eye. "I was merely a child
+that amused him for the moment! He was probably laughing at me.... I
+wonder if he would laugh now?"
+
+She went to her mirror and examined the reflection within impartially.
+
+Something of what she had always candidly recognized as her plainness
+seemed to have disappeared. She was no longer scrawny, for one thing.
+Her lazy life of the past weeks, and possibly Effie May's beauty
+experts, whose ministrations she accepted so ungratefully, had put a
+gracious covering over her young bones, and she discovered with some
+excitement the rudiments of a figure. Her straight, burnished hair (she
+had so far resisted all temptations to "marcel" it) gave her what she
+fancied a rather _distinguè_ air, and her skin had that rare, pale
+transparency of perfect health which is lovelier even than rosiness. Her
+eyes had always given perfect satisfaction. She nodded to them in
+affectionate fashion, as to good friends (she had always fancied that
+one of them was her brain and the other her soul, and even suspected
+which was which--the left wearing rather a twinkle, in comparison with
+the right, which had a mild, innocuous expression). Her mouth was too
+large.
+
+"But then," she reflected, "large mouths are very much worn by heroines
+nowadays, and mine isn't mushy or loose at the corners, anyway. There's
+a draw-string to it."
+
+Of the nose the less said the better. It was merely a nose.
+
+On the whole, standing there in her pretty morning dress, with the grace
+and freshness of nineteen years about her like an aura, young Joan
+decided in all modesty that she was one of the women who have their
+moments, and that such moments ought not to be wasted.
+
+She sat down at once and indited a little note to Eduard Desmond
+expressing gratitude for "flowers which had meant so much to her," and
+explaining that she had not written before "because it had seemed best
+not to"--the inference being that now danger was past, and time had made
+it safe for her to think of him.
+
+"That," mused Joan nibbling her penholder, "ought to make him sit up and
+take notice, I should think?" She had been from her cradle something of
+a student of her fellow-creatures.
+
+She wrote to his niece, her friend Betty, as well; a long, confidential
+screed, mentioning the fact of her father's marriage without comment and
+allowing her friend to read between the lines. Betty had an adored
+mother of her own.
+
+Then Joan rested on her oars and awaited results, which were prompt in
+coming. Not for nothing had she been the prize letter-writer of her
+school, entrusted by friend and foe alike with the handling of anything
+that was most delicate in the way of correspondence.
+
+A few days later she was able to remark to her family that she had been
+invited to visit her schoolmate, Betty Desmond, at the Desmond country
+place near Philadelphia.
+
+"The people you spent the Christmas holidays with in Washington? A fine
+old Irish name," commented the Major, who made something of a specialty
+of names. "I have not the pleasure of their acquaintance, but I am sure
+the good Sisters would not have permitted you to visit them if they had
+not been--ah! desirable acquaintances."
+
+"They are quite rich, if that is what you mean," said his daughter
+bluntly. Her manner to her father had latterly undergone a change which
+was not altogether nice.
+
+The Major's eyebrows shot up in pained surprise. "Joan! That is
+certainly irrelevant, not to say--"
+
+"And there's an eligible young man in the family," continued the girl
+imperturbably.
+
+He stared at her, speechless. "My child!" he exclaimed after a moment.
+"One would suppose you were actually--"
+
+"Hunting for a husband? I am," she finished. "What else did you expect
+me to do?"
+
+A burst of laughter from Effie May relieved the situation. "Of course
+she's hunting for a husband! All girls are, unless they're lookin' for
+trouble. Good for you, dearie! You'll land him, too, I'll bet my hat.
+Men? Lord," she cried, "they're as easy as fallin' off a log, once you
+get the hang of 'em!"
+
+But the Major continued to gaze at his daughter incredulously. "To
+think," he murmured, "that I should live to hear _my daughter_ speak in
+such a manner!" It was evidently not the idea which shocked him, so much
+as the indelicate expression of it.
+
+Joan rose suddenly and left the table.
+
+Effie May came to her afterwards, intent on comforting. "There, there,
+girlie, you mustn't mind what your papa says; he's just a man. Besides,
+he's so genteel in his instincts he's hardly human. Your mamma would
+have understood, just like I do. _She_ wouldn't of thought you'd said
+anything unrefined!"
+
+"Thank you," muttered Joan bitterly.
+
+"Why, it's the most natural thing in the world that a girl wants a house
+of her own, and a man of her own, and so forth! Only most of 'em ain't
+honest enough to come out flat and say so.... I'm for you, dearie.
+You're to have the trip, of course, and anything else you want, just let
+me know. As if I was really your mother--I mean it!"
+
+"Thank you," said Joan again.
+
+It was not the first time she had been disconcerted to find the enemy
+fighting her battles. What is to be done with an enemy which will not
+keep its proper place?
+
+Effie May concerned herself in the preparations for departure with a
+whole-hearted generosity which occasioned Joan some secret pangs of
+remorse. As a step-relative she knew that she herself had left much to
+be desired. In vain the girl protested that she had already too many
+clothes, too much finery.
+
+"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even
+if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of
+easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the
+closet."
+
+With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed,
+to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd
+comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering.
+
+"The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the
+pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and
+don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like
+inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what
+they aren't used to. See?"
+
+Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had
+gleaned her curious wisdom.
+
+Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going
+with any uneasiness.
+
+"Look here, Joan," she said once, abruptly. "When I spoke like I done
+about marriage being the best thing for a girl, I meant marriage with
+love, child--marriage _with love_. Like your mamma's."
+
+The simile was unfortunate. The eye that Joan believed to be her brain
+twinkled mockingly. "Do you mean to insinuate that marriage and love are
+not always synonymous? Why, Mrs. Neal, you put so many strange ideas
+into my young head lately! Seriously," she added, seeing that the
+other's anxious gravity did not relax, "I don't believe it would be hard
+to pump up a little love in return for--lots of it, say, and a place of
+your own in the world, and independence."
+
+"Where there's love there ain't apt to be much independence, I've
+noticed," remarked the other.
+
+"All the more reason to do without love, then!" cried Joan, with
+triumphant logic.
+
+But she hugged Ellen remorsefully, glad that the good woman could only
+guess at what was going on at the moment in her nursling's brain.
+
+Her step-mother's casual advice and her own inner musings had resulted
+in one firm determination. If she missed romance, experience, all the
+real things of life, it would not be for lack of meeting them halfway.
+She would be no longer a passive agent. She would be bold and
+reckless--even if necessary a little Fast; though how to go about being
+Fast was somewhat of a puzzle to Mary's daughter.
+
+"If people want to say things, or squeeze my hand, or anything like
+that," she told herself rather vaguely, "I must remember not to hold
+back and be standoffish.... How do I know what I like unless I try?"
+
+But while the noun on her tongue was plural and indefinite, the noun on
+her mind was single and masculine and very definite indeed. It behooved
+Mr. Desmond to look to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Joan, already exhilarated by a foretaste of independence, and enjoying
+to the full what Turgenev calls "that carelessness, that deuce-take-it
+air which comes out so naturally in foreign travel," changed at Broad
+Street for a local train that stops at all the smart little
+flower-bedecked stations which make the environs of Philadelphia so
+charming to the eye. Neat turnouts were waiting at most of them,
+dog-carts with dapper grooms at the horses' heads, big machines driven
+by bare-headed young people in sports clothes; here and there a quietly
+elegant brougham or limousine with men in livery on the box.
+
+As her train passed, she caught glimpses of mellow, red-brick houses
+that gave the effect of age without decadence; tree-lined avenues,
+hot-houses, gardens, velvet lawns. It was country that lacked the broad,
+picturesque loveliness of Kentucky landscape, but it had a definite
+charm of its own--a well-ordered, leisurely, finished permanence which
+reminded one that not only American history but American society had its
+stronghold here, changing less than elsewhere in our adolescent land.
+There was no suggestion, as in the South, of having seen better days; no
+raw, temporary promise of the future as in the Middle West. Joan
+remembered having heard that many people who danced in the Philadelphia
+Assembly of to-day bore the same names as those who danced in it when
+Philadelphia was the country's capital, and Mr. Washington its first
+President. She wondered hopefully whether Desmond was one of those
+names....
+
+People got in and out of the train, carrying golf-bags and
+tennis-rackets. Joan smoothed the skirt of the "little model" Effie May
+had provided for traveling purposes; a fawncolored crêpe with lacy cuffs
+and collar, which had at first given her qualms of uneasiness. There was
+a long cloth coat to match, and a hat of the costliest simplicity; and
+she was not used to traveling dressed as for a party. Now, however, she
+was grateful for her step-mother's insistence, with a gratitude which
+increased in proportion to the distance between them.
+
+"Always dress up on a train," was Effie May's sage counsel, "so that
+people will notice you're a lady, and treat you according."
+
+People had undoubtedly noticed, and she had been treated "according";
+and now toward her journey's end it was particularly agreeable to feel
+that among these fellow-travelers on pleasure bent she need have no
+qualms as to her personal appearance, at least. Underneath she might
+know herself to be plain, poor little Joan Darcy, an adventuress in
+search of a husband; but on the surface she was as affluent a young lady
+as ever rang for the porter to lower a shade that was within two feet of
+her hand.
+
+It may be premature to state that our heroine had already adjusted her
+future to her present pleasing environment; but the fact remains that
+when the train stopped at the station for which her subconscious mind
+had fortunately been listening, Joan was just in the act of moving Ellen
+Neal and her mother's furniture into a large Quaker house with a gambrel
+roof....
+
+Betty was waiting for her in a dog-cart; brown as a berry, with sleeves
+rolled up, and a bare, tousled head, quite a different young person
+already from the shy little girl who had been her slave at the Convent.
+
+"Hurry up, old Joie!" she called, wrestling with the cob, who rose on
+his hind legs to snort at the snorting engine, while a diminutive groom
+tried with frantic leapings to reach his head. "The Rabbit hates to
+stand! Run and get Miss Darcy's things, Jenks" (this to the groom) "and
+be quick about it, will you? You see," she explained as Joan climbed
+perilously aboard and was duly kissed, "when I left, Mother was two up
+and four to play, and it's the finals, and she's already got a leg on
+the cup. Great, isn't it? We'll have to gallop all the way to get there
+before it's over!"
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" asked mystified Joan. "A leg on the
+cup--!" Hitherto golf had not entered into her vocabulary; though she
+had gazed at it from afar, wondering at the strange ways men choose to
+waste their golden hours.
+
+"Why, the tournament, of course! Didn't I write you? We're deep in it.
+Where are your clubs, by the way?" She glanced at Joan's bag and
+parasol-case. "Oh, dear! Have you left them on the train?"
+
+"Clubs?--You mean golf-sticks?" asked Joan, with misgivings. "Why, I
+haven't any. I don't play golf."
+
+"_Don't play golf?_" cried Betty in genuine dismay. "What ever will you
+do with yourself here? And how on earth do you amuse yourself in
+Kentucky? Just ride?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Joan feebly, "we--we ride."
+
+Once, indeed, during a period of comparative affluence, the Major had
+possessed for a while a horse of the family type; and under his
+instruction Joan had occasionally mounted the complaisant beast and
+propelled it fearfully about back streets, feeling that something was
+due her Kentucky traditions. But suppose she were expected to mount, for
+instance, some such fire-eater as the Rabbit!
+
+"I don't believe I've brought my riding-clothes," she murmured hastily.
+
+"Goose! Why not? But I dare say Mother can fit you out with trousers,"
+said Betty, glancing casually at her friend's slim length of limb.
+"Mine'd be too short. With trousers and a sweater you'll be all right."
+
+Joan's eyes opened wide, but her mouth remained closed. After all, she
+was out for experience. If it included meeting a violent death while
+clad in trousers and a sweater, so be it.
+
+"Uncle Neddy'll find you a decent horse somewhere," Betty was running
+on. "He's awfully keen about your coming, Jo. I'm afraid you're going to
+have him on your hands a lot, especially if you don't play golf."
+
+Joan brightened. "Why? Doesn't he?"
+
+"Lord, no! Too much of a duffer. Likes to do lazy things, like riding,
+and fooling around in a canoe, admiring nature. With widows and such!"
+She made a face.
+
+"Widows?" Joan pricked an ear.
+
+"Grass or sod. It's all one to our Neddy," murmured his flippant niece.
+"Girls are not grown up enough for him, of course--Except you. He always
+did take notice when you were around. I remember. But then you were
+always more grown up than the rest of us, somehow." She gave her friend
+a glance full of the old shy admiration. "Do you know, you've gotten to
+be awfully pretty too. Perhaps it's all those grand clothes!"
+
+"Perhaps it is," smiled Joan, flushing.
+
+At school she had been the poor girl of her group, the one who had most
+often to borrow and least often to lend the simple fineries current
+among them for special occasions. Now under her friend's appraising eyes
+she was a little uncomfortable, wondering whether the dress she had on
+was perhaps a little too "grand" by comparison with Betty's plain linen.
+Linens she owned herself, but braided, embroidered, lace-inserted out of
+all recognition as such. It was a physical impossibility for Effie May
+to select anything plain. Under her manipulation, the merest shirt-waist
+became what the salesladies refer to majestically as a "bloose."
+Sartorially Joan was entirely in her step-mother's hands.
+
+"But Southern girls always do dress up a lot, don't they?" said Betty,
+innocently continuing her line of thought. "You ought to have seen the
+one the Ritters had visiting them last month! All ruffles, and parasols,
+and chiffon veils. Couldn't swim or go for a ride or do anything on
+account of her complexion. All she did was to dance and sit out in
+corners with people. It was disgusting!"
+
+"And didn't your uncle take notice even of _her_?" murmured Joan.
+
+"Oh, of course. She was as good as a widow, you see--she'd had so many
+affairs. The men simply flocked. Whenever she came on to the
+tennis-court she'd break up the game, and we could hardly find enough
+men to make up a foursome, they were all so busy hanging around. It was
+too queer! I never could see the attraction in rolling your eyes, and
+flashing your dimples, and dropping your r's like a colored servant,
+could you?--Not," she added hastily, "that _all_ Southern girls are that
+sort, Joie dear! You, for instance!"
+
+"I should hope not," murmured Joan; who had decided on the instant to be
+exactly that sort herself, so far as in her lay. It suited the
+elaborateness of her wardrobe; it saved her from golf and tennis and
+other amusements which bade fair to be terrifying in this sporting
+community--particularly the embarrassments of horseback riding. Joan was
+too much of an egotist to enter willingly into competitions where she
+had no chance to excel.
+
+No; the languid beauty was her rôle for the next few weeks; and she
+flattered herself that after several months of Louisville she ought to
+be able to drop her r's and roll her eyes and flash her dimples with the
+best, particularly if the audience were not too experienced in
+Southernism. In school theatricals she had always distinguished herself.
+Moreover, she had the advantage of a lifelong model to work from; for
+Richard Darcy was one of those sons of Dixie whose characteristics
+become more markedly Dixotic the farther they travel from base.
+
+Let the Ritters' guest look to her laurels!
+
+By way of preparation Joan got out her lip-stick and her powder-puff and
+did what she could to improve on nature, Betty watching her the while in
+amused respect.
+
+"I'm glad _I_ don't have to mess my face up with things like that," she
+commented frankly. "But I suppose when one goes in for a real complexion
+it's got to be taken care of."
+
+Joan murmured something explanatory about the ravages of a Southern sun;
+and so entered upon her brief and eventful career as a Kentucky beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Joan's respect for the sterner sex, never very exaggerated, was not
+increased by the avidity with which they swallowed, one by one, her
+inexperienced hook, bait and all. Evidently her fellow-men had very
+little use for nice, intelligent, modest young girls in comparison with
+the Brazen Hussie.... For Joan had no illusions about herself, either.
+She had joined, temporarily it is true, and for what seemed to her
+legitimate reasons, the order of the Brazen Hussies.
+
+She put into practice as many of her step-mother's precepts as she could
+recall, and found that they worked astonishingly well. She also
+cultivated a beauty-manner, modeling herself on a certain Louisville
+belle whose manoeuvers she had observed with interest. She became
+helplessly sweet and very, very feminine; and she smiled whenever there
+was an excuse for smiling. It was a new smile she had practised before
+the mirror; an intimate, confiding, personal affair that crinkled up her
+long eyes charmingly, and showed at least two thirds of her good white
+teeth. Eduard Desmond occasionally referred to these teeth as "pearls,"
+though they were hard and sharp and strong as a young squirrel's: Eduard
+being the sort of person who takes his similes ready-made out of poetry.
+
+Surprisingly enough, considering the sporting nature of the community in
+which she found herself, Joan heard a good deal of poetry during this
+visit. The moon happened to be full, and Longmeadow edged upon a river;
+one of those pleasant, cosy little streams that are designed by an
+all-wise Providence for canoes to float upon in summer evenings. By day
+other girls had their innings on golf-links and tennis-court (though
+even by day our heroine was not idle). But at night with the moon she
+came into her own. She made her canoe engagements days ahead, not too
+frequently with Eduard; and she came to the conclusion that just as
+infants at a certain stage must go through the teething period, so
+somewhat later they must go with equal painfulness through the poetry
+period. It gave her quite a motherly feeling toward her admirers; which
+fortunately she was able to dissemble.
+
+By contrast with the sportsmanlike young women of the community, Joan,
+in her frills and wide hats and small, beaded, high-heeled slippers,
+seemed to fill a long-felt want. Her rôle was by no means an
+uninteresting one. Occasionally in the course of events she got almost,
+if not quite, kissed; and she became expert in deflecting the course of
+inconvenient emotion.
+
+"It's suggestion does it," she wrote to her friend Mr. Nikolai. "Given a
+moon, fluffy ruffles, and the Kentucky-belle tradition--and they seem
+helpless, poor dears!"
+
+But perhaps it was not entirely the power of suggestion that made her
+success. Joan was enough of an artist to do whatever she did with a
+certain finish.
+
+Her difficulty, however, in the heady game she played, was to
+concentrate on the purpose in hand. At the end of two weeks, she began
+to fancy a slight diminution of cordiality on the part of both Betty and
+her mother, and she realized that her visit was growing longer than
+seemed usual. Other guests came and went, remaining only a few days
+before going on to the next engagement. Accustomed to the indeterminate
+visits of the South, she had not thought to set any definite time for
+her departure; but now she felt uncomfortably that the hour had come to
+bring things to a climax. She gave herself one more week at Longmeadow.
+Surely three weeks is a short enough time in which to provide oneself
+with a future and a husband!
+
+She was by no means counting without her host. From the day of her
+arrival Eduard had taken no pains to hide the fact that he considered
+her his especial property. While his manner was still that of one who
+would not willingly brush the bloom from off the peach, there had always
+been in it a disturbing hint, a slight flattering suggestion, that
+peaches are tempting even to the jaded appetite. Lately his air of
+possession had become, to Joan's amusement, decidedly tinged with
+jealousy. He viewed his more youthful rivals with no attempt at
+equanimity.
+
+Joan was aware that people were beginning to discuss the affair, and to
+watch her curiously. It put her on her mettle. She intended to satisfy
+their curiosity very shortly; but--she wished the thing might be managed
+without the necessity for so many tête-à-têtes.
+
+It was not that she did not like her future husband. On the contrary she
+liked him so well as to find herself a little shy with him. She
+preferred his attentions to take place against a background of society;
+as for instance, at a dance, when his eye could be as significant as it
+chose without alarming her; or at table, where under cover of the
+general conversation, they managed some moments of real intimacy.
+
+There was much to be said, thought Joan, for the French method of
+vigorously chaperoning young love up to the very threshold of matrimony.
+
+As it was, his foot seemed uncomfortably prone to rest on hers beneath
+the table; and once when he stooped to recover a dropped fan, his lips
+had brushed like a touch of delicate flame along the bare length of her
+forearm--But these indications of what was to come the startled girl was
+able to ignore as accidental. (She had decided, it will be recalled, to
+be if necessary a trifle Fast.)
+
+At last she steeled herself firmly to the necessity for tête-à-têtes,
+realizing that even so finished a performer as Mr. Desmond could not
+well manage a genuine proposal during the intricacies of the tango, or
+at dinner between the soup and the entrée. There were certain
+accompaniments, she fancied, that made the idea of a proposal in public
+impracticable--Joan's imagination was frequently as useful to her as
+experience.
+
+She had managed to escape the perils of horseback riding by an inspired
+expedient. Duplicity, she found, came easily with practice.
+
+"Straddle a horse? Oh, honey, I couldn't!" she had murmured at her most
+Southern, when informed that there were no side-saddles in the
+Longmeadow stables.
+
+"Why," protested Betty, "there's not a side-saddle to be had this side
+of Kentucky, Jo--they're as extinct as the Dodo! And even if there were,
+papa would never allow one on any of our horses. You haven't your habit
+here, anyway. Do be sensible, dear. I'll let you ride the Rabbit!"
+
+Joan shook her head, regretfully but firmly. "If my father were to see a
+lady of his family straddling a horse, in trousers," she said, "I think
+he'd have a stroke!"--which was doubtless true.
+
+It was necessary, therefore, for Eduard's increasing desire for solitude
+to take the form of canoeing, or driving in the dog-cart without a
+groom; or preferably, strolling through a certain bit of near-by
+woodland.
+
+Here he liked to fling himself at his handsome length on the moss at
+Joan's feet, and read to her chosen bits out of the "Rubaiyat": a work
+much in favor at the moment, which would appear to have been translated
+by Mr. Fitzgerald for the express purpose of uttering Mr. Desmond's
+sentiments.
+
+Joan murmured "Um-m-m!" and "How true!" and "Exquisite!" in the right
+places; but she was not often listening to him. She was watching the
+play of light and shade on his fine, waving hair; she was studying more
+keenly than she knew the chiseled features, bearing those slight marks
+of manly dissipation which are for some reason never wholly displeasing
+to the young feminine eye; she was noticing the smallness of his hands,
+the really beautiful cut and quality of his clothes.
+
+What sort of person was he under the agreeable surface, this chosen
+husband of hers?
+
+An artist, people had called him: but Art in his case seemed not the
+exacting mistress she had fancied it. Or perhaps the artistic
+temperament required long periods of recuperative leisure.... She had
+decided that it was wiser not to fall in love, at least till after
+marriage: but she did choose that her husband should be the sort of
+person it was possible to fall in love with; well-bred, fastidious,
+cultivated, thoroughly a man of the world. All these Eduard Desmond was,
+and more. He had a real and unaffected taste for music, books,
+nature--for what Joan called to herself "the real things." It argued
+well for future companionship.
+
+There was, to be sure, the disability of what she thought of vaguely as
+his "habits." But there had been no sign of them in the two weeks she
+had lived in the same house with him; and even if he had not as yet
+completely overcome them, there was no reason why he should not do so
+later, with a watchful wife to help him. On the whole their chances for
+happiness together seemed quite as good as those of most people she
+knew, thought Joan, with unconscious cynicism.
+
+The material side of the arrangement did not occur to her. For all her
+calm calculations, Joan was not mercenary. All she asked was a place of
+her own in the world, a sense of permanence; she longed quite wistfully
+for a background that "stayed put." Romance was a thing she felt she
+could do without forever, in return for independence from her
+step-mother, and perhaps a little home of her own with a garden to it.
+She believed that to any man who would provide these few essentials she
+could be a faithful and a loyal wife.
+
+What would he expect of her in return? Would she have to go on all her
+life being Southern and winsome and alluring? Would he prefer her, after
+the honeymoon, say, to go in heavily for sports, like the women of his
+set? Or might she presently venture to be just herself again--just Joan,
+whatever that might be! The gayest of rôles becomes a trifle wearing for
+everyday use.
+
+She sighed; and looking up from the Rubaiyat, he caught her eyes fixed
+upon him, wide and speculative.
+
+"What is the little girl thinking of?" he asked tenderly.
+
+She answered at once, with a return of her gay daring, "You--of course!"
+
+But under his intensifying gaze her own dropped, and he went on reading;
+in a voice that shook, however.
+
+"Now for it!" said Joan suddenly to herself. She dropped her hand
+negligently on the leaves, close to his.
+
+She resisted the temptation to jerk it back as soon as she was aware of
+its contact with another. Very slight the contact was, no more than the
+touch of a leaf. She pretended not to notice it; but the blood sang in
+her ears, her cheeks burned--she wished suddenly that he would take her
+hand, if he was going to; hold it tight....
+
+Heavens! What was happening to her? She _wanted_ the touch of his hand;
+she liked it! Did she care for him, then? Was this being in
+love--already?
+
+"Joan," he whispered. "Look at me!"
+
+The spell was broken. She jumped to her feet. "Come, we must be getting
+back," she said hurriedly. "It is late."
+
+"Ah, but how cold you are!"
+
+"Yes, I am, a little," she said innocently. "These woods are damp."
+
+But all the way home, beneath her relief, lingered a sense of annoyance,
+of disappointment.
+
+"What a prig I am," she thought disgustedly. "It would be all over now
+if I'd only--let him!"
+
+That night she wrote at unusual length to Mr. Nikolai. It was almost
+like writing to herself; and Joan frequently felt the need of seeing
+what she was about set down in black and white, for greater clarity.
+
+She had not meant to tell Mr. Nikolai of her imminent engagement till
+the thing was _fait accompli_; but she knew that everything would be
+settled by the time her letter reached him. She wanted to be reassured
+about her odd and unexpected emotion during the contact of her hand with
+Eduard Desmond's. Was it so, then, that people fell in love, just
+suddenly without any warning? And had the mind nothing to do with it
+whatever?
+
+For mentally she was not altogether pleased with herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The idea that Betty and her mother were eyeing her somewhat askance
+troubled Joan not a little. In her heart of hearts she preferred women
+to men, and believed their friendship more of a compliment. She would
+have liked to make a friend of Mrs. Desmond, had there been time,
+envying Betty's camaraderie with her mother; although Mrs. Desmond
+presented a golfing, bridge-playing, sporting type of motherhood quite
+new to her experience.
+
+There was a peculiar intimacy and freedom among all this group of
+people, who seemed to spend most of the year together either in
+Philadelphia or Aiken or Ormond or these long-established country-places
+surrounding the Longmeadow Hunt Club. It was like a curiously ramified
+family, in which husbands and wives seemed to have changed partners
+rather frequently, and were still in process of changing. It was Joan's
+first glimpse of a society in which married women hold the center of the
+stage rather than young girls, and she was just a little shocked by it.
+
+There appeared to be no age limit here. It was not so much that these
+women concealed their age, after the rather obvious fashion of Effie
+May, as that they simply ignored it. Even Mrs. Desmond, dignified and
+well-bred though she was, had a devoted attendant or two, spoken of
+casually by Betty as "mamma's flames," and during Joan's visit at least
+Mr. Desmond remained merely an abstraction. Conjugal affection was
+distinctly not the fashion in the Desmond circle.
+
+But this casualness of relations did not extend to the young girls. They
+had no such freedom as Joan was accustomed to in the South. Betty, at
+eighteen, was as carefully guarded as if she were still a child. She was
+not permitted to go into the city without a maid or an older woman; she
+neither drove or canoed alone with men, nor "sat out" with them at
+dances. And it did not occur to her to protest.
+
+"That sort of thing isn't good form," she explained once to Joan. "For
+us, at least--Of course with Southern girls it's different."
+
+But Joan began to suspect that even Southern girls were expected to hold
+in regard this one fetish they had elected to worship, Good Form; and
+that according to this standard she had already been condemned.
+
+At first the younger women had made some effort to include her in their
+various activities, golf, bridge, tennis. But latterly they had left her
+alone, not severely but tolerantly, as one dedicated to other pursuits.
+
+"Miss Darcy? Oh, she's from the South, you know--awfully busy with the
+men," she overheard one of them explain to a newcomer; and she had
+resented the remark keenly, not only for herself, but for the women of
+her adopted home, who at least are rarely "busy with the men" after
+marriage.
+
+The person who made this remark was a Mrs. Rossiter, a pretty, boyish
+creature, already divorced and remarried at thirty, and bearing her
+present conjugality rather lightly. She was on terms of great intimacy
+with the Desmond family, Eduard included; and Joan fancied that she
+might have been one of the "widows" mentioned by Betty as her uncle's
+chosen companions.
+
+But if it had been so, her day was done. Eduard had palpably no eyes for
+her now, and Joan could afford the generosity of admiring Mrs. Rossiter.
+She was so natural and frank, and so royally indifferent to others'
+opinion. Joan, who had a fatal propensity for acting as the people about
+her expected her to act, envied her this assurance, and wished that she
+could make friends with her.
+
+The truth was that the girl, despite her success, felt utterly lonely.
+She saw very little of Betty. Mrs. Desmond was an experienced hostess
+who made no attempt to regulate the comings and goings of her guests,
+and the girls made separate engagements. Even bedtime confidences had
+ceased, owing to the fact that when Joan came up to her room, Betty was
+usually asleep.
+
+But on the night of her illuminating afternoon in the woods with Eduard,
+Betty appeared to be waiting up for her. She came yawning into Joan's
+room to watch her friend undress, and established herself sleepily on
+the foot of the bed.
+
+"What a pity you can't wear your hair down all the time, Jo! Men adore
+hair, don't they? And yours has a regular patina on it, like old
+bronze."
+
+"Not greenish, I hope," laughed Joan.
+
+"No--sort of orangish. Dark, with an orange lining."
+
+"Betty! It sounds horrible!"
+
+"Well, you know very well it isn't.--May Rossiter thinks you are awfully
+clever to wear it that simple way, too, so straight and plain, when the
+rest of us stick out like mops. She says you're awfully clever about
+lots of things--too smart for the likes of us."
+
+"Does she?" Joan was a little startled and not quite pleased. She had
+not intended to give the impression of cleverness. It was out of her
+present rôle entirely. "I wonder what Mrs. Rossiter meant by that?"
+
+"Oh, men, of course," yawned Betty. "You see you've annexed a few of
+hers, which naturally makes her peevish."
+
+"Have I?" murmured Joan. "Who, for instance?"
+
+"Well, Uncle Neddy, for one."
+
+"Oh! So she _was_ one of his flames, then?"
+
+Betty sat up. "You mean to say you didn't know it? One of them! _The_
+one, my child! Surely you remember about his broken heart?--the married
+lady he was recovering from in Washington last year? Well, May's it. Of
+course I'm not supposed to know, being an _ingénue_--but our Neddy was
+frightfully gone on her, and she returned it, and the husband she had
+then got jealous (rather a bounder he was, not one of us, you know), and
+there was some sort of excitement, and she divorced him. Every one
+thought to marry Uncle Ned, of course. But instead she upped and married
+Mr. Rossiter! Joke on Neddy, wasn't it?"
+
+Joan's lip curled. "What a romantic love story! Why do you suppose she
+married that old Mr. Rossiter?"
+
+Betty shrugged in a worldly-wise manner. "Awfully rich, my dear. And
+Neddy isn't."
+
+"But they seem friendly enough still, she and Mr. Desmond?"
+
+"Oh, of course. Why not? It would be frightfully uncomfortable for the
+rest of us if they glowered and didn't speak and all that, like
+quarreling servants. And Uncle Neddy seems to be consoling himself!" She
+twinkled at Joan. "That evens things up, you see. But,"--she suddenly
+grew grave--"what do _you_ get out of all this, Joan? You couldn't
+possibly _like_ seeing so much of Uncle Neddy! He's such a--softy. And
+such a bore, too, with his art and poetry and stuff."
+
+"You mean," smiled Joan, "he's too mature for you, dear."
+
+"Too mature for you then, too! You're only a few months older."
+
+The other gave an unconscious sigh. "Oh, me--I'm different."
+
+Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a
+change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly
+recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school--so funny and larky,
+and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at
+over at the College than if they didn't exist."
+
+"College boys _don't_ exist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles,
+just a transition state. And rather disgusting."
+
+"Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty
+blurted out, "you're not--wanting to get married, are you?"
+
+Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low
+voice, "I'm not!"
+
+Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did
+not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. She _had_ to get
+married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were
+getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at
+your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch
+Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole."
+
+Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong
+with your uncle? You mean--because he drinks?"
+
+Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of an _ingénue_ than she
+thought, and found herself getting into deep water.
+
+"I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there's _something_ wrong
+with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway.
+He's too fastidious--and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other
+ways of being dissipated--aren't there?"
+
+"I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus
+girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that....
+On the whole, she felt rather relieved.
+
+"That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused
+aloud, "if a man were happily married."
+
+"_If!_" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank
+Heaven, _we_ don't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to
+Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before
+you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage--Good night, you
+bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend.
+
+Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned.
+
+The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting
+her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing,
+"I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them
+guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off
+against each other, and so good for them--particularly Ned! He's rather
+spoiled, I'm afraid--used to monopolizing his favorites...."
+
+Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard
+seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be
+because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's
+significant phrase, "one of them."
+
+The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely
+that was sufficient?
+
+Once in her childhood she had heard her father remark in a moment of
+especial grandiloquence that Darcys were entitled to the society of
+kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement.
+Something within assured her that she would feel perfectly at ease with
+any kings or queens who chanced to cross her path. In fact the only
+people with whom so far she had not felt at ease were snobs and
+parvenues, under neither of which categories the Desmonds could be
+placed.
+
+Now she wondered suddenly to what she and her father owed this
+comfortable sense of lofty destiny. True, theirs was "an old Southern
+family"; but living in a part of the world that seems entirely populated
+by such families, this was no distinction. Darcys, she knew, had fought
+and died for their country whenever occasion offered, but so had quite
+simple people named Smith or Jones. She racked her brain to think of
+anything else they might have done for their country, or even for
+themselves. Genius had never made its appearance among them, nor wealth,
+nor even beauty, to any noticeable extent. They were rich in one thing
+only: self-esteem.
+
+Fortunately, however, Joan had her share of that; and upon further
+reflection she decided that "Darcy" was at least as distinguished a name
+as "Desmond." Doubtless their ancestors had been kings in Ireland
+together.
+
+The question of her poverty occurred to her for a moment, only to be
+dismissed as negligible. The Desmonds were too well-bred to be
+mercenary. Eduard was not rich himself; and if, as Betty intimated, his
+reputation was a trifle tarnished, he could not be too exacting in his
+demands. He could not expect youth, and charm, and wit, and a dowry as
+well! thought Joan complacently. No: Eduard would be getting quite as
+much as he gave....
+
+It was in rather a defiant mood that she appeared at dinner that night
+in a blue chiffon frock which the observant Eduard had pronounced his
+favorite; and though some people were expected afterwards for dancing,
+she deliberately accepted his murmured suggestion that they row up the
+river to see the last of the harvest moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+There had naturally been some discussion at the Convent as to the most
+desirable setting for proposals, the consensus of opinion being in favor
+of Miss Alcott's little water-scene between Amy and the faithless
+Laurie. Laurie, the reader will remember, is rowing Amy about in the
+romantic region of Chillon (still with regretful memories of Jo hovering
+in the background, however), when she catches him eyeing her with an
+expression which
+
+     "makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying
+     something:
+
+     "'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc.
+
+     "'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc.
+
+     "Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the
+     offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan
+     personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the
+     Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar.
+
+     "'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected
+     to silence just then.
+
+     "'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same
+     boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly.
+
+     "'Yes, Laurie,' very low.
+
+     "Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a
+     pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the
+     dissolving views reflected in the lake."
+
+This classic scene was not absent from Joan's mind as she seated herself
+and her blue chiffon recklessly in the prow of Eduard's canoe; though
+the details of stage-management troubled her somewhat. Suppose the
+proposer chose to kneel at the feet of the proposee--since there was no
+seat to share with her? And suppose the proposer lost his head (as might
+properly be expected of him) and embraced the proposee madly--what was
+to prevent so precarious a thing as a canoe from tipping over! It seemed
+to call for great presence of mind on the part of the proposee. Joan
+felt rather nervous.
+
+Mr. Desmond, however, let the opportunity pass. Perhaps he had not read
+"Little Women."
+
+Amid talk so casual that it might as well have been silence, they
+slipped along between the wide gray of earth and sky, afloat on a stream
+of silver. They came presently to an overhanging willow, where he tied
+the boat, and helped Joan ashore. He led her, with an air of one
+performing a ceremony, up a slight rise of land topped by a great
+beech-tree, whose widespread roots made a sort of armchair, after the
+hospitable fashion of beech-trees.
+
+"Queen Joan on her throne, viewing her domain," he murmured.
+
+He had not brought her to this place before, and she realized that he
+had been saving it for a special occasion. There was a view before her
+of shadowy, dreaming country, with a hint of stars to come, and
+sheep-bells tinkling in a distant field, and lights gleaming here and
+there from half-hidden houses.
+
+Eduard began to murmur softly:
+
+    "When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,
+      Miles on miles
+    O'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheep
+      Half asleep,
+    Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and crop
+      As they stop--"
+
+A sudden impatience seized Joan. How like him to arrange this setting,
+to bring things carefully to a climax, and then--to spout Browning at
+her!
+
+But she said, as he paused, "Beautiful! 'Love among the Ruins,' isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes--And I," he sighed, tapping himself on the chest, "I am the Ruins!"
+
+Despite the bombast of his tone, there was something in his sigh that
+struck her as genuine.
+
+She said consolingly, "At least you're a well-preserved ruin, very
+popular with tourists.... I wonder what makes you feel so particularly
+ruinous to-night?"
+
+"The fact that you're so damnably young," he muttered.
+
+She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those
+persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will
+disappear in time."
+
+"Exactly! And before you know it, my dear.
+
+     "'The nightingale that in the branches sang--ah, whence and
+     whither flown again, who knows!'
+
+"You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be
+back there, playing with the little boys and girls."
+
+"But if the boys and girls bore me--?"
+
+"Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with--?"
+
+Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to
+make other people--jealous."
+
+"You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her.
+
+"'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a
+moment, "or very natural, either--as my sister-in-law was very good to
+point out to me only this morning!"
+
+Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a passive but an
+active interest in her affairs!
+
+"Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like
+Betty. I know exactly what I am doing."
+
+He leaned toward her. "Do you? Do you, I wonder? Joan! Look at me! _Do_
+you know what you are doing--to me?"
+
+The darkness left only the white outline of their faces visible to each
+other. He struck a match, in order to see her better.
+
+For a moment she tried to meet his eyes. They frightened her even while
+they drew her. The blood began to sing in her ears, as it had when he
+touched her hand. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold
+her--and at the same time she wanted to run away and hide. Their long
+gaze seemed to let down some barrier within her, to loosen curious
+impulses.... Why did he not take her, and have done with it?
+
+"No," he muttered, as if she had spoken, "Come!"
+
+Her body made a helpless movement toward him....
+
+Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it.
+
+"I--I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a
+little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she
+wanted to get this queerly painful scene over.
+
+But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring.
+It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels
+which glittered in the dusk.
+
+"Oh!--oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never
+given her anything as splendid as this.
+
+"May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly.
+
+She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and
+pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner
+arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never
+have done.
+
+She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she
+had pictured it.
+
+"Wh--what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when
+I've got a perfectly good mouth!"
+
+After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....
+
+A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when
+the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly
+for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck
+of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She
+felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does
+not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices
+honor the event.
+
+The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back
+down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. For once Eduard found
+no poetry to suit the occasion. Joan, busy with her tumbled hair, hoped
+and even prayed that she might be able to slip into her room unobserved.
+She hurried nervously out of the dark boathouse, despite entreaties to
+wait, and was half way to the house before he caught up with her.
+
+"Oh, hurry!" she whispered. "They've all gone--every light in the house
+is out! It must be after midnight. Ned, what if they've locked the
+door?"
+
+"They haven't. My sister knows we're still out--trust her for that!"
+
+"But suppose she's waiting up for us?--Oh, Ned, whatever shall I say?"
+
+"You might tell her, Beautiful," he teased, "that I've had you up under
+the beech-tree, kissing roses into your cheeks and stars into your
+eyes!--though I think any one who saw you just now might suspect that
+without being told."
+
+She turned suddenly and clung to him. Something of Joan's independence
+had already slipped away from her, now that she had some one to cling
+to. "Ned, she doesn't like me! How am I ever going to win her over?"
+
+"Kiss her," he suggested promptly. "Kiss her as you've been kissing me.
+It couldn't fail!"
+
+"Don't tease!" She lifted serious, wide eyes to his, and he saw that
+they were wet. "Don't you know that I shall never, never in all my life,
+kiss anybody else as I have kissed you?"
+
+Touched, he drew her closer. She looked just then singularly childish
+and confiding. "Dear little girl, that thought herself so grown-up!" he
+whispered, his cheek on her tumbled hair.
+
+When she stirred in his arms he still held her. "What's the use of
+hurrying now, Beautiful? The fat's in the fire--and who knows when we
+shall have another night like this, all to ourselves?"
+
+But she would not stay. She felt, obscurely, that they had been engaged
+enough for one evening.
+
+She found herself at last safe in her room--'safe' was the word in her
+mind--sitting on the edge of her bed, staring down at her ruined finery
+with eyes which did not see it. Her knees felt queerly weak under her,
+her lips were bruised, her cheeks and throat and arms burned still with
+remembered kisses--She said to herself, like the old woman with a shorn
+petticoat, "Can this be I?"
+
+What had become of her powers of observation, her cool intelligence, her
+impersonal decision that it was wiser not to love the man you marry lest
+he be given power to hurt you? There was nothing impersonal left in her
+feeling for Eduard Desmond! The change had come as suddenly as a summer
+thunderstorm. At one moment she was waiting, nervous, a little afraid,
+for the event that she had brought to pass. The next, he and she seemed
+to have been thrown into a sort of vortex, where they clung to each
+other madly, desperately, as if to escape destruction. And she had been
+quite as frantic about it as the man....
+
+She thought, dazedly, that there was a good deal she would be able to
+tell the girls at the Convent now on the subject of proposals--yes, and
+Miss Louisa M. Alcott, too! Except that school-girls and literary old
+maids were not exactly the people with whom one would discuss such
+phenomena--
+
+They had fancied, she and Betty and the rest, that some sort of formula
+was necessary to the occasion, a definite question asked and answered, a
+more or less formal, "Will you, Amy?" and "Yes, Laurie." Foolish
+innocents! She and Ned had not exchanged a sensible word from the moment
+they found themselves in each other's arms. Yet the understanding
+between them was unmistakable. They were completely engaged--almost,
+Joan thought with a shiver, as good as married!
+
+This, then, was love. A very different thing from what she had expected!
+A beautiful, rather terrible thing.... The touch of Puritan in the girl
+made her wonder whether anything so beautiful and terrible could be
+quite nice.
+
+She slipped to her knees; not to pray, but simply to remember her
+mother. The vision of her mother always came better when she was on her
+knees--perhaps because of the old-time association of prayers with
+bedtime--and Joan felt a desperate need of her just then. She wanted to
+be assured that her mother understood, and had been through it all
+herself, and had come out of it--just her mother. She held out her
+jeweled bracelet childishly in the dark, as if for somebody to see. She
+knelt there tense, every nerve and fibre straining, whispering under her
+breath, "Mamma, are you here? Do you know?"
+
+But the vision failed her. She had instead the warmth of a man's breath
+on her closed eyes, the roughness of his cheek on her throat....
+
+She dropped her head in her arms and began to sob. She was very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was well into the middle of a fine blue and gold morning when Joan
+awoke, to find her coffee cold on the tray beside her bed. She had slept
+through even the entrance of the maid who called her; she who had
+expected not to sleep at all! An engaged girl, with her lover
+waiting--in the garden, perhaps, or down beside the river--their river!
+
+The happiness of the night before came to her with a rush, and with it
+an enormous sense of relief. The thing was done, accomplished!
+
+She ran to the window and peeped out eagerly, hoping he might be
+watching her window. But only the old gardener was in sight, pottering
+about among the roses. She blew a kiss from her finger-tips--whether to
+the gardener, the roses, or the sparkling water beyond she did not
+know--and began hurriedly to dress.
+
+Singing under her breath, she tripped down the stairs. The big, sunny
+house was very still. Joan, going from room to room, gazed about her
+appreciatively. Hitherto the house, the garden, the wide, pleasant
+countryside had all served merely as a background, of which she was
+vaguely aware as actors are of a suitable setting for the play they
+produce. Now she felt that she really had leisure to enjoy her
+surroundings, which were usually very important to Joan.
+
+She paused to examine a hunting-print, lingered over a fine etching,
+patted affectionately the soft, gay chintzes of the morning-room. What a
+relief after such an artificial house as her step-mother's! Nothing here
+in the least pretentious, no striving after periods, or artistry, or
+even originality, but everything good, well-chosen, used: luxury in
+abeyance to comfort; everywhere evidence of travel and culture, and the
+long habit of these things.
+
+Joan drew a breath of satisfaction. Just such a home she hoped to make
+for Eduard, though on a smaller scale, perhaps, and with the addition of
+a little beauty; since it takes more than wealth to provide that.
+
+She thought to find him in the billiard-room, or perhaps in a certain
+little vine-hung balcony where they sometimes met. But both were empty.
+
+"Where's everybody this fine morning, Molly!" she asked a housemaid she
+met in the hall.
+
+"Gone over to play golf, like as usual, Miss--'cep'n Mr. Eduard," added
+Molly, (the pantry having eyes of its own). "He took the first train to
+town--no'm, I guess it was the second train. Anyway it was real early
+for Mr. Eduard to be up."
+
+"Oh," said Joan, blankly.
+
+Then it occurred to her why he might have felt the sudden need of
+running into town. Bracelets are all very well in their way, but they
+are, after all, noncommittal. She glanced down at her ringless hands,
+and laughed.
+
+The maid smiled, too, as if in sympathy. "That's an awful pretty
+bracelet you got on, miss," she was emboldened to say.
+
+"I like it myself, Molly," she confessed, holding it off at arm's length
+the better to admire it.
+
+She wondered how long it took to get into Philadelphia and back, if one
+were in a hurry....
+
+Presently some of the golfers came in, ravenous for luncheon. In a
+sudden accession of shyness, Joan hid her bracelet in her pocket. She
+surprised them by offering to go back with them later to the golf-links.
+
+"Perhaps I'll catch a golf-germ," she explained.
+
+"What, no engagement for this afternoon? Where's our Eduard?" murmured
+Mrs. Rossiter, who was one of the party.
+
+But Joan had learned long since to meet impertinence with a noncommittal
+smile.
+
+After an hour or so of polite attention to the game, however, her
+interest flagged. She knew that when Eduard got home he would come to
+look for her, and she had a sudden dread of their first meeting before
+others, under the observant eyes of May Rossiter in particular. She made
+an excuse of letters to write, and walked back through their favorite
+woodland, on the chance of his meeting her there. Eduard had rather an
+instinct for that sort of thing.
+
+But when she reached Longmeadow, there was no sign of him. Nor did he
+appear that night at dinner. No comment whatever was made upon his
+absence.
+
+Joan became uneasy. Surely it was very strange that he should leave her
+for so long a time just now, without explanation!
+
+An explanation offered itself that drove the blood out of her
+cheeks--His habits! What did Betty know about them? Men who drink do not
+always choose the bosom of the family in which to indulge their
+weakness. In the reaction of emotion upon an artistic temperament,
+anything might be happening!
+
+The thought roused in Joan one of her finest traits: an immediate
+response to any call upon her protection. That he had so soon failed her
+was no reason for her to fail him. She must try to understand, and
+wait....
+
+People dropped in after dinner, among them as usual Mrs. Rossiter; and
+Joan, chatting rather abstractedly with one of her admirers in a corner
+of the porch, caught fragments of conversation from the room within,
+between Mrs. Rossiter and her hostess.
+
+"So Ned's torn himself away at last?"
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven! The Arnolds have postponed their cruise three times,
+waiting for him. Why people put up with his shilly-shallying, I'm sure I
+don't know!"
+
+"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say Fanny Arnold.... But what do you suppose
+the Darcy girl...."
+
+Their voices dropped lower, and Joan heard no more....
+
+She felt for the moment absolutely numb. She was like a person who has
+been shot, without having time to ascertain where. All the pride in her
+gathered to meet this blow without flinching. People must not
+suspect--they must not suspect.
+
+She went on chatting, laughing, jesting.... He had gone away for good!
+Without a word to her, he had gone away. He had known last night that he
+was going, and that he would not come back. She, Joan Darcy, had been
+jilted. She, too proud to live on a stranger's bounty, had offered
+herself, unasked, to a man who did not want her!...
+
+Somebody begged her to sing, and brought a guitar. Hers was a slight
+voice, uncultivated, but with something about it, as about Joan, that
+attracted attention. People listened to her. She had that curious
+_élan_, that sense of being borne on some outside power, that comes to
+certain natures from the response of an audience.
+
+Joan touched heights that evening. To some brains, suffering is an
+incomparable stimulant. Even Betty, with the remembrance of certain wild
+orgies at school, when quiet Joan Darcy had amazed nuns and girls alike
+by a sudden transfiguration, had never gaged to the full her friend's
+possibilities. She sang for them daringly whatever came into her head,
+negro catches, rollicking Irish lilts, wicked little songs of the
+streets and alleys. Under Betty's urgings, she exhibited a talent for
+mimicry which had occasionally reduced the good Sisters almost to
+apoplexy.
+
+She showed them her father during a political campaign, addressing his
+constituency under the handicap of a cold in the head. One could see the
+Major's urbane periods, his mellifluous hand, his tossing topknot--She
+showed them the Mother Superior, called in to quell a dormitory riot,
+endeavoring while dodging pillows to maintain proper religious
+"detachment from place." As an encore she gave them Eduard Desmond,
+conducting a sunset _à deux_, with assistance from the poets--a bit of
+recklessness that brought shouts of joy from the audience, and produced
+in Mrs. Rossiter's mocking eye something like respect.
+
+"Joie, how _dared_ you!" cried Betty, breathless with laughter, as she
+went upstairs with her arm about her friend. "It was Uncle Neddy to his
+very hands; that way he has of touching people inadvertently, as if it
+were quite by accident. You ought to have seen May Rossiter's face!"
+
+"I did," said Joan grimly.--Something of the sustaining force had begun
+to leave her, and all she asked of life for the moment was to be left
+alone.
+
+But Betty was too delighted with her friend's triumph to be easily
+quenched. "It was like old times!" she cried. "Dear old times at school,
+when there weren't any men about to spoil things, and the nuns let go
+and had a good time like anybody!... Nobody here'll ever think of you
+again as just a flirt and a man-grabber! Why, do you know what that man
+who came in with Mrs. Jameson said? (He's a clever person, a professor
+or something.) He said to Mother, 'Mrs. Desmond, that girl's got a touch
+of genius!'"
+
+"Genius for what--making believe? Much good it does me," said Joan
+bitterly.... Would the other never go?
+
+Betty hugged her. "And to think we were afraid you'd take Uncle Neddy
+seriously! Oh, if he could only have seen you!--Jo, _I_ know why you
+were in such wild spirits to-night. I'm not going to ask any questions,
+because Mother made me promise not to. But you can't deny there is a
+sort of coincidence between the fact that you spent the evening up the
+river with him, and that to-day he's gone!--now can you?"
+
+"No," said Joan, "I can't deny that there's--a sort of coincidence."
+
+"Good-by forever! Good-by-yi-yi forever,'" warbled Betty after Tosti,
+somewhat infected by her friend's recent performances. "Fancy the
+Irresistible coming another cropper, and at the hands of a mere infant
+like you! I suppose I ought to be sorry for him, but I'm not. It'll
+teach him to keep his hands off _my_ friends, anyway!" she exclaimed
+vindictively.
+
+"I gather," murmured Joan with a pale smile, "that you did not
+altogether fancy me as an aunt?"
+
+"Rather not! I prefer you 'as is.' Plenty of aunts in the world, and not
+so many Joans."
+
+She went at last, leaving the heroine of the evening to a sleepless
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Morning did not bring the word from Eduard Desmond that Joan told
+herself must surely come; the explanation, the excuse, no matter how
+bald, which she might go through the form of accepting. Nor did the day
+following bring any message.
+
+On the third day, however, came a basket of candy, a superlative affair
+of blue straw, tied with wide blue ribbons and quite realistic
+forget-me-nots. Within was the expected communication:
+
+     I never say the ugly word "good-by," if I can help it,
+     Beautiful. Better to keep intact the memory of our last evening
+     together.
+
+     From my heart I thank you for what you have given me. Such
+     experiences do not come twice in a lifetime.--I have learned.
+
+     And you, sweetest of them all, what have you learned? At least
+     to remember me, I hope! EDUARD.
+
+Joan read this over and over, incredulously--The cruelty of it, the
+sheer, epicurean viciousness, appalled her. She said to herself, like
+the man in Hedda Gabler, "But people don't do such things!"
+
+Evidently they did, and escaped unscathed. She clenched her hands
+helplessly. Oh, to be able to tell her father! A rush of primitive
+feeling came over her, almost of blood-lust. She wanted vengeance on the
+man who had surfeited himself with her innocence, her youth, it seemed
+to poor Joan her very soul--and had made amends by sending her a box of
+candy! The candy seemed somehow a worse insult than the jewel he had
+given her. It mocked her with its triviality. Bon-bons in return
+for--what?
+
+With a groan she swept the offering off the table on to the floor; and
+treading confections underfoot at every step, she fled across her room
+to the shelter of her bed, where she flung herself face downward.
+
+WHY? WHY? was the despairing cry of her spirit. How had he dared to
+treat her so lightly? What had she done?
+
+The answer was not far to seek. With a shudder she remembered her
+careful study of the rôle she had chosen to play, her considered
+coquetries and sophistications, even her dressing, the display of silken
+ankles, of bared arm, her modest décolletage--all weapons she had
+employed not quite in ignorance. Precocious instinct and the comments of
+her step-mother had taught her much. She had deliberately, and for her
+own ends, joined the order of the Brazen Hussies--With this result!
+
+Joan faced her lesson squarely. But she felt sick, degraded, literally
+soiled. This was the sort of thing that happened to girls who "fell."
+
+She had, for all her reading, a quite hazy idea of what "falling" meant.
+For a frantic moment (it must be remembered that Joan's education had
+been conducted by religious ladies who paste decent tissue-paper skirts
+over offending illustrations in the physiology books)--she struggled
+with a nightmare horror that she had perhaps "fallen" herself, that such
+a degradation of the spirit might even have physical results....
+
+"No, no, _no_!" gasped Joan, "not when I hate him so! It's impossible!"
+
+For if, according to a rather touching convent theory, it is love alone
+which calls children into being, surely hate must have the opposite
+effect?
+
+Joan had not pursued this line of mental research to her usual lengths.
+Certain things, it appeared, such as miracles and the power of prayer
+and all phenomena embraced under the generic title of Love, were better
+taken entirely on trust.
+
+With ashen cheeks and a heart thumping with terror, Joan put her hands
+over her ears to shut out the sound of her own thoughts. It was the
+first time in her life she had come face to face with the meaning of the
+word "fear." And that the fear was childish, made it none the less real.
+Nineteen, not ninety, is the age of tragedy. There are few suicides
+among the old....
+
+She did not hear a rap twice repeated, nor the opening of the door.
+Somebody peeped in, saw the sobbing figure on the bed, the scattered
+bon-bons, the crumpled note on the floor. Then came a louder knock.
+
+Joan sat up, and cried in a panic, "Don't come in!"
+
+But Mrs. Rossiter chose to misunderstand her. "Did you say come in?" she
+inquired cheerfully. "I hope so, because nobody else seems to be at
+home, and I'm pining for company."
+
+She paused as Joan sank back in despair, hiding her ravaged face in her
+handkerchief.
+
+"What's the matter, dear? Headache?" she questioned kindly, adding with
+a glance at the overturned basket, "Too much candy, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes," gulped Joan, fighting for self-control "Too much candy!"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter selected a _marron_ from the floor with care, wiped it
+daintily, and began to eat. "This looks," she said, "like one of Ned
+Desmond's offerings. He's such an artist about everything! Who but he
+would have thought of selecting a basket to match your eyes?"
+
+Joan lay still, and hated her. She thought of several biting remarks she
+might make to this woman who had come to gloat over her; but
+unfortunately she could not yet trust her voice to utter them.
+
+"So you sent him away after all?" continued the voice smilingly, "Led
+him on, and made a fool out of our poor dear Ned, and then sent him
+about his business? Naughty Joan!"
+
+Something impelled the girl to utter frankness. She was done with
+acting. "I didn't, and you know I didn't," she gulped. "I accepted him.
+I was engaged to him!"
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"Yes!--and then the next day he was gone."
+
+"Stole away," murmured Mrs. Rossiter amusedly. "That was rather crude of
+Eduard. He doesn't usually run to such lengths.... You mean he actually
+in so many words invited you to _marry_ him?"
+
+Joan covered her eyes again. "I suppose not," she said in a small,
+miserable voice. "No, he didn't. But he--he kissed me as if we were
+engaged, and I kissed him back!"
+
+"Oh," murmured the other. "You find engaged kisses so very different,
+then, from the other kind?"
+
+Joan cried indignantly, "I don't know anything about the other kind!
+I've never kissed a man before in my life."
+
+"No? 'More kissed against than kissing,' perhaps?"
+
+The girl lifted her chin as haughtily as it is possible to lift a chin
+that is quivering with held-in sobs. "I have never been kissed
+either--except on the hand or the ear or something, which doesn't
+count."
+
+"No, that hardly counts," agreed her inquisitor, looking at the girl
+quite curiously. "See here," she asked in another tone, "how old are
+you, Miss Darcy?"
+
+"Nineteen."
+
+"Hmmn! Younger than I thought. Still, a Southern girl--"
+
+"Can be just as decent as any other kind!" cried angry Joan. "Anyway,
+I'm only part a Southern girl. But I know! Lots of them are just as nice
+about such things as Betty, for instance."
+
+"Nice, of course," agreed Mrs. Rossiter. "And tremendously attractive.
+But just for that reason a little more--well, experienced, don't you
+think? We get our experience later, perhaps.... And you seemed
+particularly well-seasoned, able to take care of yourself, playing them
+off against each other like a little veteran. I've told Jane Desmond so
+more than once. She wanted to warn you--but I told her you knew the
+ropes."
+
+"I didn't," said Joan tremulously, "Warn me of what?"
+
+"Why, of Ned. She was afraid you might really land him. The wariest of
+fish takes the hook at last!"
+
+Joan winced at the remark, but she was too busy getting to the bottom of
+things to resent it.
+
+"Why did she object to my marrying him?"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter stared. "Good Lord! Well, because she's got a girl of her
+own, for one thing. Because she's married to a Desmond herself, for
+another. She knows the breed, poor Jane!"
+
+Light was breaking on Joan. "You mean--she objected for _my_ sake?"
+
+"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as
+a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to
+have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to
+marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!--No, no, Jane's not that
+sort."
+
+"Oh," said Joan faintly. She began to realize that instead of
+antagonism, it had been friendliness that watched her, motherly, anxious
+kindness, which she had been too blind to understand.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Rossiter," she cried tremulously, "I've been horrid!"
+
+"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect--men are. Votes for
+Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me,
+you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not
+altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He
+usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married
+women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or--well, the professional
+charmer."
+
+"Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!"
+
+"So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you
+know, dilettantes, non-eligibles--the bane of all good chaperones.
+'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of
+it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know
+the exact moment when one has attained the maximum--and to stop there'!
+Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan
+did not join her.
+
+After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had
+been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling her _marron_. She
+walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her
+voice had become rather shy.
+
+"Joan," she asked, "did you--care, my dear?"
+
+The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered.
+"How does one know?--I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I
+didn't want him at all, and sometimes--I did.--And now I wish my father
+would _kill_ him!"
+
+The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the
+worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have
+wanted--to kill my father."
+
+Joan forgot herself in sheer astonishment. "You!" she cried. "But I
+thought it was you who declined to marry him, even after you'd got a
+divorce to do it?"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter smiled queerly.
+
+"Did Ned tell you that?"
+
+Joan, much embarrassed, explained the Convent impression of Mr. Desmond
+and his broken heart.
+
+The other laughed. "So that's the idea he has allowed to get abroad?
+Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman--and I suppose it does put him
+in a better light, too--But unfortunately the facts of the case are
+otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him--not that he suggested it,
+oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the
+honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me--So I took up my
+residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable,
+Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting."
+
+"And then?--" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind
+the scenes.
+
+"That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany,
+painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter.
+One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!"
+
+"Don't laugh," said Joan hoarsely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped
+the other's. "Oh, how can you bear to _speak_ to him?"
+
+May Rossiter shrugged. "You don't suppose it lasts, you funny innocent?
+Besides, though he did cost me a few illusions and some suffering and a
+reputation (what's a reputation among friends?), I owe Ned Desmond one
+very good turn. Jim Rossiter's the best husband of my acquaintance."
+
+She leaned over swiftly and kissed Joan on the cheek.
+
+"So you see you're not the only silly little simpleton who learns her
+ropes by tripping on them. Makes you feel better, doesn't it? Of course!
+That's why I told you.... Look here, what's the use of wasting all this
+perfectly good candy? Jane's floors are above suspicion. Let's pick it
+up and take it downstairs and make a Roman holiday, shall we?"
+
+Between them, with some laughter and a very real sense of comradeship,
+they restored Eduard's peace-offering to its basket. Then Joan
+remembered her bracelet.
+
+"What shall I do with it?" she asked, aghast. "If I return it now, it
+will look--offended, as if I had taken him seriously!"
+
+"Which would never do," Mrs. Rossiter was quick to agree. She examined
+the bracelet with interest. "Sapphires, emeralds, nice little
+diamonds--dear, dear! And a Chartier setting. Ned must have had it
+rather badly. He never gave _me_ anything so compromising! Keep it, of
+course," she advised cynically. "It's a nice bit of jewelry, and you may
+as well have something decent for a souvenir."
+
+But Joan's hardihood was not equal to that.
+
+"Well, then"--the other's eye sparkled with sudden malice--"why not give
+it to me for a parting present! Splendid! Fancy his expression when he
+recognizes his _gage d'amour_ glittering on my wrist, of all wrists in
+the world! And, believe me, he shall recognize it--What ho! Votes for
+Women!"
+
+She laughed until she cried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Joan said good-by to Longmeadow some days later--not so soon as to
+give her departure the appearance of flight--she left trailing clouds of
+glory. The rumor had got about, thanks perhaps to Mrs. Rossiter, that
+the redoubtable Eduard had met his Waterloo at the hands of the Kentucky
+girl, which seemed not to detract from her popularity among Eduard's
+friends, male or female. She became quite legendary in the countryside.
+
+Betty, fully restored to her earlier allegiance, parted from her with
+tears, and Mrs. Desmond made her promise to visit them soon again.
+
+But it was a promise Joan knew she would not have the courage to keep.
+And when she had waved her last gay farewell, and thrown her last kiss
+impartially out of the window to the group who had come into town to see
+her off, she settled back in the train which had brought her with such
+high hopes to her first failure, and said aloud, "Thank goodness that's
+over!"
+
+"Pardon _me_--did you speak?" murmured a young man in the seat in front
+of her, turning round with a start; a wide-eared young man whom Joan
+recognized.
+
+"Goodness!" she said in some dismay. "You seem to dog my footsteps, Mr.
+Blair. There's no escaping you!"
+
+"Looks that way, don't it?" he grinned apologetically. "I've been in
+Philadelphia on a big order--Landed it, too!" he added in irrepressible
+triumph.
+
+"Which is more than I did," sighed Joan; and guessing from her
+expression that a jest was intended, Mr. Blair laughed long and loudly.
+He was always very keen on the scent of a jest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+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.
+
+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, take _hold_ of 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, "Pardon _me_!"
+
+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 to _embonpoint_ had 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 to _meet_ girls 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 Joan _sotto voce_ as 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 are _you_ doing
+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 see _what_ you 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 be _my_
+private 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. Pardon _me_!"
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+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's _your_ eary 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 little _distrait_, 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."
+
+"But _you_ don'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 the _contretemps_ of 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 Carmichael
+_père_ and Carmichael _mère_, 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 quotation _verbatim_.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+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't _wish_ to 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? _Too_ old, 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
+never _did_ go 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 been _in_ the 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+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 of _vertu_ in 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. "Yokes _are_ being 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 can _all_ have 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 been _too_ sweet 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 is
+_quite_ enough. 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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 wif _hawses_?" he repeated, scratching his
+head. "Laws, Miss Joan, _I_ dunno! 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 to _you_, 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+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 salary _and_ commissions--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 salary _and_ commissions! 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!"
+
+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! Not _her_?" 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?"
+
+"They _are_ dark 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, _would_ you 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.
+
+"Pardon _me_!" 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 and _en masse_ on
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+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 a _lady_ typist, 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 growing _embonpoint_ when 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
+from _hors d'oeuvre_ to _crème de menthe_ without 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+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 I
+_never_ flirt 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 do
+_you_ care, 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 with _you_!" 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's _horrid_
+to 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 never _meant_ to
+gallop?'"
+
+Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into
+her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "_I_ shouldn'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! Mere
+_pis 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+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 Emily _en 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. "That
+_would_ be 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?
+
+("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--_you_ know! 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+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. A
+_little_ more 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 any _reason_ for 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 simply _had_ to 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 things _you_
+like, 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!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+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
+really _needed_ it." (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 allow _us_ to 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 on _my_ wife 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 her _metier_ was 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).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+It was in April that Archie Blair conceived the happy idea of purchasing
+an automobile, thus combining business with pleasure most practically; a
+modest secondhand affair of three good cylinders and one that missed,
+but it shone (Archibald being in the paint and varnish business) with a
+glossiness that advertised its owner afar off. And like the bicycle in
+the song, it was "built for two."
+
+Archibald had no wish to intrude; still, an automobile is an automobile,
+and it seemed to him that on a fine Spring evening almost any young lady
+might like to ride in one, even if accustomed to limousines.
+
+Joan first became aware of this acquisition one fine day when it
+appeared and reappeared and once again appeared passing the window where
+she sat reading. Three times, like Hector about the walls of Troy, it
+circled the block, smelling of its new paint and complaining loudly of
+its missing cylinder; and at last Joan, puzzled by this persistence,
+thought to glance at its driver. Clutching the wheel in a death grapple,
+taking his eye from the traffic only long enough for a hopeful glance at
+the house front as he passed, she recognized her friend in all the proud
+modesty of ownership.
+
+Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take
+a walk.
+
+"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk--or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!)
+"Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!--I was just hoping I'd run
+across you somewhere."
+
+"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.
+
+"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I
+will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily,
+and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.
+
+"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the
+temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for,
+and the One and Only beside him on its seat--who can blame the man?)
+"Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I
+don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I
+can't take my eye off the road yet--" (this as a family party narrowly
+escaped annihilation)--"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my
+shoulder?"
+
+"I won't mind your talking any way at all--so long as it's not about
+armadillos."
+
+Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"
+
+"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"
+
+But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings.
+People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?--Say, what
+if we go out in the real country somewhere!--not parks, where there's
+always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I
+can step on her tail and let her rip--eh?"
+
+The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an
+abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a
+gipsy pateran.
+
+Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution,
+and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the
+neigh of startled colts in the fields as they passed, the rush of the
+golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little
+engine.
+
+"Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two--" chanted Archie with a proud eye
+on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!"
+
+Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful
+hands--as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did
+its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust
+in their faces, trees and meadows passing in long green streaks, she got
+quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was
+a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her
+companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings.
+
+"Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down.
+
+He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes.
+
+"What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place.
+
+"I--didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice.
+
+Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be
+turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me
+how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?"
+
+"You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant.
+
+"Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air.
+"Whenever you like!"
+
+Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Phoebus
+driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one
+ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend
+Lizzie, with a silver dollar.
+
+But that night as he lay in bed, with an April rain making music on the
+roof above him, he told himself soberly that he must be careful. There
+had been moments to-day, especially with her hair blowing across his
+face, when a fellow almost forgot!... He conjured himself by all his
+gods to be a wise little ostrich and keep his head well tucked into the
+sand.
+
+And Joan, listening to the same soft rain, so full of suggestion and
+race memories and the call of the year, also reminded herself that she
+would have to be careful. She thought of his humble, adoring, happy
+eyes, and her heart smote her. This one was not quite as other men. To
+hurt an Archibald was a trifle beneath one's dignity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+The career of Lizzie (whose surname may perhaps be guessed by the
+intelligent reader) was short, and her end untimely; but even so she
+served her part in the inscrutable purposes of Fate.
+
+It came about in this wise.
+
+Archibald had formed quite a habit of calling for his lady, not only on
+fine afternoons after five, but sometimes in the balmy spring nights
+after dinner, when all the world meandered two by two, occupying the
+benches in the little park opposite Joan's house, and filling the roads
+with a streaming procession of motors and traps and buggies, of anything
+that went on wheels; even perambulators.
+
+Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering
+community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like
+any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau--particularly when it cost no
+effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the
+rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.
+
+Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance;
+dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at
+least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter brasswork than hers. If
+the chariot was not altogether worthy of the lady, it was through no
+fault of Archie's. Lizzie, like her owner, strove to please.
+
+Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon
+providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her
+specialty.--"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and
+ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little
+ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was
+evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and
+abetting him.
+
+But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not
+enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions.
+All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company,
+for as long as she was willing to grant it.
+
+His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would
+come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a
+saddle-horse, or a coach and four--at any rate with something more
+suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and
+if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the
+glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if
+not an opportunist.
+
+So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew
+into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even
+when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side
+of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the
+wilderness--a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than
+Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however:
+until the day that marked the passing of Lizzie.
+
+They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald
+driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they
+deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have
+been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less
+careful than usual.
+
+It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily
+panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second
+track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze
+full into the headlight of an approaching passenger train. He had not
+enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop
+where he was.
+
+"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into
+the track just ahead of the rushing engine.
+
+Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a
+frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out
+shriek after shriek.
+
+"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute
+I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."
+
+He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at
+thirty, forty, fifty--with a pop a tire blew out.
+
+"Get that door open," he shouted at Joan, above the hissing steam.
+"Don't jump till I say the word. Trying to make a flat place. You hear?"
+
+Joan nodded. There were deep gullies on either side. She glanced over
+her shoulder. The engine seemed almost on top of them--But Archie kept
+his eye on his mirror.
+
+"Can't make it," he said suddenly. "All ready? Now! Jump!"
+
+To the after mortification of her entire life, Joan could not move. She
+understood the necessity, her head was quite clear and calm, but her
+limbs refused her bidding.
+
+The next instant he had seized her, tossed her out like a bundle, she
+was falling--falling....
+
+There came a crash, the splintering of glass and iron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long after she was able to, Joan dared not open her eyes. She fought
+back the coming of consciousness, tried not to think.
+
+She was on a moving something--a wagon perhaps, or a train. There was
+murmuring of voices near her. She strained her ears. The voices were
+strange.
+
+She wanted to pray, but could not remember God's name.
+
+She was lying on some sort of lounge--a leather lounge. She lifted her
+lids very, very slowly. She was in the smoking-compartment of a
+train--alone! Where was he? She tried wildly to sit up--to call out--
+
+And then something moved beside her on the edge of the couch. It was a
+head, a bowed, curly head which she recognized and which belonged to a
+figure that knelt beside her in an attitude of utter despair.
+
+"Oh, Archie, Archie!" she whimpered. "Then you _aren't_ killed!"
+
+The head jerked up. The next instant she was in his arms, her face
+against his. She was being kissed and kissed again--eyes, lips, cheeks,
+hair--whatever he could reach. She could not stop him. She did not try
+to stop him. Indeed there was something consoling, comforting in those
+frantic kisses, all wet with tears, and fiercely tender with the passion
+of one who has brought his treasure single-handed out of the jaws of
+death.
+
+"My God! My God! My God!" said Archibald; and nothing else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster
+about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed
+with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him
+amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He
+stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale,
+laughing face among the pillows--that face with which he had taken such
+amazing liberties.
+
+Joan in a _peignoir_, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder,
+looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the
+train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet
+his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she
+lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his
+emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched
+his hands hard.
+
+This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered
+composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had
+steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the
+thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had passed.
+
+"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong
+enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."
+
+He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated,
+looking everywhere but at Joan.
+
+"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't it _terrible_?"
+
+He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous,"
+perhaps--but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.
+
+"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at
+all?"
+
+He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."
+
+"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful
+anyway, for the new machine."
+
+He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."
+
+"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you--you can't afford
+another?"
+
+"Why, I guess the railroad company'd help to buy me another if I wanted
+it--the engineer didn't signal for that crossing. But--I don't. You
+see," he murmured, looking down, "there were--well, there were sort of
+associations with Lizzie."
+
+Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I
+do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to
+happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.--I'm sorry,
+Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."
+
+He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh,
+what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is
+what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of
+all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a
+woman than that!"
+
+"I think, and so does my father, that you took wonderfully good care of
+me! If it hadn't been for your nerve, your quickness.... Ugh!" she
+shuddered. "Dad says that not one man out of a thousand would have seen
+what to do in time to do it. In fact, he's waiting in the library to
+make you a speech before you go. Eloquence-with-gestures. Do you know, I
+never realized before that in some ways man is really woman's superior?
+You've got yourselves better in hand, your muscles do what you tell them
+to. It was a good lesson for me." She smiled up at him. His miserable
+eyes touched her, and she held out her hand. "Why, Archie! what makes
+you look so ashamed?"
+
+He ignored that friendly hand. "I'm thinking that if your father knew
+_all_ I'd done," he muttered, "he'd do something more to me than make a
+speech. Eloquence-with-gestures, all right! Gestures of the foot."
+
+Joan decided to take the bull by the horns. "You mean when I came to,
+and you--kissed me? Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely. ("There!
+Now the tooth is out," she thought.)
+
+"Because I was a damn fool," he groaned.
+
+Joan's lips twitched despite herself. "Really, you're not very
+complimentary!"
+
+But Archibald was beyond considerations of mere politeness. "Because I
+hadn't the decent horse-gumption to keep my feelings to myself! Had to
+go spilling 'em all over the place, insulting you with 'em!"
+
+There was a pause. "You care for me, then?" prompted Joan.
+
+Archie grinned, miserably. "Well, what do you think?"
+
+"I'm afraid you do."
+
+"You're dead right," he said.
+
+Another silence followed this admission, and then he rose to go. "I
+guess that'll be about all from me!--Only I want you to know, Miss
+Darcy, I--I never meant to do such a thing--I never knew I had it in me!
+Good Lord! When I saw you all crumpled up there in that gully, not
+moving at all, even when the train-gang came to pick you up--When I knew
+that I had done it, I--! And then you opened your eyes and looked at
+me.... Oh, hell, what's the use?"
+
+He turned blindly toward the door.
+
+She had to catch at his coat-tails to stop him. "Archie! Wait a
+minute.--I'm going to make you a speech myself. In the first place,
+Archibald Blair, your sort of 'feelings' wouldn't insult anybody. They
+couldn't! I'm proud to have you care for me, and I'd be glad, too, if
+only I could--But it's not as if you were asking anything in return, is
+it?"
+
+"Me?--_asking_? Good Lord, I'm not such a mutt as that!"
+
+"Some day you will be 'asking,' Archie dear--a worthier girl than I am,
+I know--and she won't think you a mutt at all!"
+
+He shook his head. "No, Miss Darcy. You've sort of spoiled ordinary
+girls for me."
+
+She cried honestly, "I hope not! Oh, I do hope not! Because I was going
+to beg you to stay friends with me--I need friends. And I _can't_ keep
+you if you're going to go on feeling that way!"
+
+"Sure you can," said Archie, his eyes lighting. "Just try me and see!
+I'll make one of the best little old pals you ever saw, if you'll just
+forgive the fool way I acted. Now that the steam's sort of blown off,
+we--we understand each other."
+
+"You're certain that we _do_ understand each other?" Her gaze met his
+squarely. "You're not going to expect things that can't ever be?"
+
+"No, ma'am," said Archie.
+
+Tears suddenly came into her eyes. There was a quality in this faithful,
+doglike devotion that made her feel ashamed. It deserved response; it
+deserved something better than mere affectionate gratitude. But that was
+all she found herself able to give.
+
+With a demonstrativeness rarer than he guessed, she caught his big hand
+in both of hers and held it for a moment to her cheek. When she let it
+go there was a tear on the back of it; which Archie, gazing at
+wonderingly, suddenly lifted to his lips.
+
+It was in acts like this, little untaught gestures of pure reverence,
+that the boy belied his slang and his big ears and his general
+clumsiness, and harked back to the age of chivalry, when a gentleman was
+not ashamed to dedicate himself to the service of his lady, and be her
+very perfect knight....
+
+After he had gone, Effie May wandered into Joan's room with a slight air
+of expectancy about her which the girl was too preoccupied to notice.
+
+"You're lookin' sort of white about the gills, dearie," she remarked.
+"Does the shoulder pain you?"
+
+"No. But something else does, and I don't know just what. Oh, Effie May,
+what's the matter with me, anyway?" she burst out. "Sometimes I think
+I'm not a human person at all, but just a big inflated Ego, floating
+around like an observation balloon, taking notes!"
+
+"Well, well, is that so?" murmured her step-mother, who had her doubts
+as to what an Ego might be. "I expect what you need for that floaty
+feeling, dearie, is a good dose of calomel--" and she hurried away to
+prepare it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+There is a certain period of the year when all its widely scattered
+children home to Kentucky as surely as bluebirds home to the hollow
+stumps in March. It is the season of the May race meet.
+
+All her life Joan had heard of the Kentucky Derby, and she looked
+forward to it with almost as much eagerness as her father. Derby Day
+means more to the Kentuckian than the running event that has become
+classic. It means the reunion in street and club and hotel-lobby of
+neighbors from the various towns of a State where neighborliness is
+cultivated to the point of a fine art; of men who have been boys
+together; of friends whose ways have drifted far apart (for your
+Kentuckian is a great wanderer), and who have years to make up over the
+clinking glasses. During the spring race meet, Louisville ceases to be
+merely Louisville, and becomes Kentucky, the great old mother-home that
+leaves its stamp upon its children even into the third and fourth
+generation.
+
+There is a good deal of sentiment about the Derby, a good deal of
+tradition; and there is as well a certain spirit of carefree, sporting,
+joyous _bonhomie_ whose like is not to be found perhaps on any other
+race-course in the world.
+
+Joan, who loved crowds, got much pleasure out of the streets at this
+time. She took appreciative note of self-conscious belles from up-State,
+in picture-hats and peek-a-boo blouses, with a predilection for wearing
+long-stemmed roses pinned to their belts. She noted the young farmers
+who accompanied them, big-shouldered, square-chinned, clear-eyed,
+crimson with the sun--a sturdy, virile type, clumsy in their
+country-made clothes, but with well-stuffed wallets bulging their hip
+pockets. There is no poverty in the farming regions of Kentucky.
+
+She learned to recognize the professional racing people, men in
+loud-checked clothes talking an incomprehensible jargon; shabby touts
+offering confidential tips to anybody who would listen; women wearing
+diamonds as large as peas, overdressed, coarse-voiced, not easily
+distinguishable from their sisters of the underworld, except that their
+men accompanied them openly.
+
+People of the larger world there were, too. The narrow streets were
+congested with great touring-cars bearing unfamiliar license tags; New
+York, Michigan, California. Once, hearing crisp Eastern voices at her
+elbow, Joan turned just in time to see some people she had met at
+Longmeadow disappearing into a hotel. For a moment her heart stood
+still. She thought Eduard Desmond was among them. But it proved to be
+another man, and Joan mingled hastily in the crowd, relieved that they
+had not noticed her.
+
+In all this preparatory excitement Major Darcy was, as his wife put it,
+"busy as a bird dog." There were kinspeople from the Bluegrass to be
+welcomed, cousins from Paducah, Maysville, Fayette County. Joan, who did
+not altogether share her father's enthusiasm for the ties of kinship,
+rather admired her step-mother's skill in side-stepping the Major's
+abounding sense of hospitality. Effie May had taken the precaution to
+fill her house with paper-hangers.
+
+"What a shame! You'll have to take your cousins and things to the hotel,
+Dickie, or put 'em up at the Country Club, won't you? If I'd only
+thought!--" she murmured innocently; but catching Jean's suspicious eye
+upon her, she winked.
+
+Joan returned the wink. She remembered her mother's patience under the
+constant influx of Darcy relatives. She had also seen the unfortunate
+Misses Darcy almost turned out of doors by the daily increasing numbers
+of their kith and kin. The bookcase in their parlor had become,
+surprisingly, a bed; and Miss Euphemia, the plump, as the one best
+fitted by nature for this ordeal, was spending her nights on a
+packing-box sparsely mitigated by pillows.--Not that the Misses Darcy
+complained, however. They were long inured to the hospitalities of Derby
+week.
+
+Effie May, indeed, was the only person of Joan's acquaintance who seemed
+unaffected by the general excitement over the Derby. She heard with
+apparent indifference that the Major had been able to secure a box
+directly opposite the judges' stand, and she declined to rise early
+enough to accompany him and Joan to Sunday morning breakfast at the
+Jockey Club, where enthusiasts met regularly to inspect and pass
+critical judgment on the offerings of the past week.
+
+"Lord, child!" she said once in answer to Joan's surprise at this
+indifference. "Horses ain't no treat to me. You see, they used to be my
+bread and butter."
+
+It was one of her few references to a past that rather intrigued her
+step-daughter.
+
+"Were both of your husbands turfmen?" asked the girl, curiously.
+
+Effie May gave a brief nod; and Joan did not somehow feel encouraged to
+further questioning.
+
+Derby Day dawned bright and sunny.
+
+"A fast track, Dollykins," cried the Major in great glee. "We ought to
+break a record to-day!"
+
+"That means the Long colt," said Joan learnedly. "The Camden entry's apt
+to prove a mud-hen."
+
+She had in the past week made an exhaustive research into the race-horse
+question. Breeding and pedigree, record and past performance, rolled
+trippingly from her tongue. Joan was what the theatrical profession call
+"quick study."
+
+The Darcys had been invited to go out to the tracks in the approved
+fashion, on top of a tallyho coach, tooled by Johnny Carmichael--who was
+not quite as sober as might have been wished. But his four-in-hand
+seemed aware of the fact, and took no ungenerous advantage of him.
+
+Effie May had awakened that morning with a bad headache, and proclaimed
+her intention of staying at home.
+
+"What! Not see the Derby run?" cried her husband incredulously.
+
+And when with a great shouting and tooting of horns the tallyho drew up
+under the porte-cochère, her determination weakened.
+
+"Oh, do come on, Mrs. Darcy! The air will do you good, and we shan't
+have half as much fun without you!" cried several voices, for she was
+very popular with young people.
+
+She hesitated. Joan decided the matter.
+
+"Put on a heavy veil to shield your eyes from the glare," she suggested;
+and Effie May yielded. It was not often that her step-daughter asked for
+her society.
+
+They became part of a procession that had been filing steadily past the
+Darcy house since sunrise. Every vehicle in town and the surrounding
+country, horse-power or motor-power, was on its way to the races.
+Street-cars passed in a solid line, with passengers hanging to the
+straps, bulging out of the windows, crowding on to the roofs. There was
+a steady throng of foot-passengers, all heading in the same direction,
+which hailed the tallyho as it passed with shouts of greeting and good
+luck. The tallyho responded with tooting horns and waving parasols.
+
+It was a friendly, intimate, highly democratic gathering such as may be
+found only south of Mason and Dixon's line; never pushing or jostling,
+but good-naturedly determined to enjoy itself. At the gate humanity was
+packed in a dense, immovable mass as far as the eye could see, and Joan,
+descending from her elevation, looked at the crowd in mild alarm. But
+the cry arose, "Make way for the ladies!" and instantly a lane appeared
+as if by magic, through which she and her companions made royal
+progress, laughing at the personalities which greeted them as they
+passed.
+
+"Nobody ever minds what happens on Derby Day!" explained Emily
+Carmichael.
+
+Once in the box, the men of the party deserted in a body for the betting
+ring, and Effie May promptly hailed a messenger. Her interest in racing
+seemed to have revived.
+
+"Let's see your tips, girls--anything good?"
+
+She looked over their various lists in a business-like way, approving
+this, discarding that, displaying a knowledge that put Joan's recent
+learned discussions to shame.
+
+"Will-o'-the-Wisp, Satyr out of Firefly. Umm! Ought! to be worth taking
+a shot at. Who's up--Casey? No. Won't do! They'll can that crooked
+little jock yet--" etc., etc., while her companions eyed her with
+respect, and the messenger consulted with her laconically as with an
+equal.
+
+"You want to play 'em straight across the board, dearie;" she admonished
+Joan. "That's the only way to win. No piking!"
+
+But Joan declined to play them straight across the board, or in any way
+at all. For one thing she had brought no purse. For another she was far
+too busy with the people about her.
+
+Faces rose behind her in a packed mass to the top of the
+grandstand--women's faces for the most part; school-girls, nice old
+ladies, mothers of families (who occasionally fed their families under
+the casual shelter of a shawl), gum-chewing shop-girls, houris of every
+variety, respectable and otherwise, all chatting together with the
+utmost simplicity under the spell of a common interest. In the boxes,
+and on the clubhouse porch, were girls and women most of whom she knew,
+dressed as if for a garden party. Chiffons fluttered in the breeze,
+plumes waved, there were bared throats, and lace-covered arms, and
+dainty white slippers. Here and there appeared the more conventional
+tailored dress, looking almost conspicuous in its severity. For on Derby
+Day, Louisville harks back to a custom as old as itself, and frankly
+looks its loveliest.
+
+Just behind Joan in the front row of the grandstand sat a respectable,
+gray-headed little old woman with a bonnet tied under her chin, quite
+alone, who looked as staid and out of place as Ellen Neal would have
+done in these surroundings. But she had a professional-looking pair of
+fieldglasses at her eyes, and Joan noticed that her lips were constantly
+moving and muttering. The girl turned her back on the Derby to watch
+this odd figure.
+
+At first she thought the old creature was praying; but the syllables
+that reached her ears were not prayer.
+
+"Come on, you Will-o'-the-Wisp! Hop it, baby! 'Ata-boy! Step, darlin',
+step lively! Oh, you Will-o'-the-Wisp!"
+
+Joan saw that she was not merely watching the great race, she was riding
+it, with whip, and knee, and voice. And at a certain moment the girl saw
+that she had lost it. There was a shrug, a little despairing gesture of
+the glasses, and the muttering ceased.
+
+An explanation suddenly occurred to Joan. She nudged Effie May. "Look at
+this funny old soul behind us! She's evidently the mother of the jockey
+that's riding Will-o'-the-Wisp," she whispered.
+
+Effie May glanced briefly over her shoulder, and smiled. "Mother
+nothing! That's Texas Nell, who's been following the ponies since the
+day of Molly McCarthy. She's lost and won more money, I guess, than any
+woman in the business."
+
+A little later she suggested that they all adjourn to the Club House for
+refreshments; but Archie Blair had come with the promise of taking Joan
+down to the paddock later, and she decided to stay where she was.
+
+Archie, who seemed to know everybody, pointed out various celebrities
+who were present; fine old General Dutton, down from Lexington with his
+flock of famous though still unmarried daughters; Nick Sanders of the
+Pisgah neighborhood, who had just escaped conviction for manslaughter
+because of the unwritten law; Mrs. Kildare of Storm, a splendid-looking
+woman in mannish hat and driving coat, here to see one of her colts go
+to the post in the Derby--though of late years Storm was raising mules
+instead of race-horses.
+
+"A shame, too, when it's one of the oldest stud-farms in the State,"
+commented Archie. "Racing's on its last legs when people like the
+Kildares turn to breeding mules!"
+
+But racing did not appear to be on its last legs that day. The
+eagerness, the wild enthusiasm, above all the joyousness of the crowd,
+struck an answering chord in Joan. For the first time she really
+understood the devotion of Kentuckians to their State and to each other.
+It is never their work that endears a people to each other; it is their
+play. In a world that takes itself overseriously, Kentucky still knows
+how to play.
+
+She followed Archie presently down toward the paddock where the winner
+was to receive his ovation; but as they reached the foot of the
+staircase, suddenly there was the sharp explosion of a pistol. Instantly
+the crowd surged in the direction of the shot.
+
+Archie, placing her behind him, forged his way through the struggling
+mass to the nearest wall, where he stood her, breathless and disheveled,
+but undismayed.
+
+"Goodness! This is local color with a vengeance! What's happening? Do
+you suppose it's your man-eating friend from Pisgah?"
+
+"Just an old woman shot herself, they say," volunteered a friendly voice
+near by, "Cleaned out, I reckon!"
+
+One of the intuitions to which Joan was liable came to her. Glancing up
+at the grandstand, she saw the seat just behind hers was empty.
+
+"Oh, Archie! It's _my_ little old woman!" she cried pitifully. "Go and
+see, will you?--a shabby old thing with a bonnet tied under her chin."
+
+He hesitated. "I don't like to leave you here alone. Suppose somebody
+should speak to you?"
+
+"Then I shall most certainly speak back!" she said, and he reluctantly
+obeyed her wish. Indeed, with Archie, her wishes were apt to assume the
+form of commands.
+
+The gaiety of the scene was gone for Joan. She had got her glimpse of
+the grim reality that lies beneath. She was to have another glimpse of
+it.
+
+As she stood there, buffeted by the passing throng, she caught sight
+across the wide passageway of her step-mother, in conversation with
+somebody who for a moment she did not see. Joan started across to join
+her. Effie May's back was toward her, and not until Joan was within
+hearing distance did she notice the man to whom her step-mother was
+speaking. Then she stopped where she was, startled.
+
+He was a dissipated-looking creature, hardly better in appearance than a
+race-horse tout, flashily dressed, wearing a large diamond in his
+tie--altogether one of the least desirable types of those who follow the
+races. But he was not only talking with evident familiarity to Mrs.
+Darcy, he had taken hold of her arm. It came to Joan in a flash that the
+man was doubtless some relative, possibly her brother. What did they
+know of Effie May's family?
+
+Joan stood still and frankly listened.
+
+"No, no, you don't put that over on me, old girl," this person was
+saying in a low but carrying voice. "You're not going to slip away on me
+again _that_ easy!"
+
+Her step-mother's rejoinder did not reach Joan's ears, but she saw her
+glance round uneasily. Joan did not blame her for not wishing to be seen
+with her present companion. She quietly slipped behind the shelter of a
+pillar.
+
+"Married, eh?" repeated the man's voice. "Come, that's a good one! I'm
+from Missouri, I am. You'll be sayin' Calloway married you next. Oho! he
+did, eh? A bigger fool than I took him for! If that's the case--" his
+voice sharpened--"you must a' come in for a pretty good thing when he
+croaked. You'll have to come across, old sport. No going back on a pal!"
+
+The color suddenly went out of Joan's cheeks. She leaned against her
+pillar, feeling rather queer. She wished she were not there--and yet she
+listened.
+
+Effie May's voice reached her, speaking quite steadily, "Not one cent,
+Joe! You're no pal of mine. When I left you it was for good and all, and
+you know why!"
+
+"Humm! Well, we'll see what your new husband thinks about it, eh?"
+
+"No, you don't!" It was a sort of gasp; but instantly the voice steadied
+again. "You'll never lay eyes on my husband, Joe. He doesn't live here.
+I--I just happened to come over for the races."
+
+The man grinned. "That's easy enough! I seen you drivin' in with your
+swell friends, and sittin' in a box and all. Recognized you right away,
+too, for all that thick veil. You ain't the sort a man forgets easy,
+Ef," he leered. "Not when he's knowed you like I have! I'll get your
+name before you leave this stand, and then--Better come across, kiddo!"
+
+"I--let me go now, Joe! I'll think it over."
+
+The man chuckled. "Afraid somebody'll see you talking to me, eh? You can
+bet your sweet life you'll think it over, and damn quick, too! See?"
+
+His grip tightened on her arm. Effie May glanced this way and that,
+nervously. Joan stepped out from behind her pillar. After all, the woman
+was her father's wife! She must be protected....
+
+Just then she saw Archie coming, and hurried to him.
+
+"It was an old lady with a bonnet tied under her chin," he told her
+soberly. "She's dead."
+
+But Joan had no ears for the earlier tragedy.
+
+"There's a man frightening Mrs. Darcy," she said breathlessly, "he seems
+to be somebody she knows. He's--threatening her! Oh, Archie, what shall
+we do?"
+
+The meaning of it, the incredible sordid horror of the thing she had
+half learned, began to come home to her. Her father's wife!
+
+"Threatening!" Archie's jaw set. "Here, that won't do!"
+
+He strode forward, Joan following. They both heard the man say with
+leering distinctness, "It ought to be worth a _little_ cash to a loving
+husband to learn the sort of woman he's married up with, Ef, old girl!"
+
+Then Archie's hand fell on his shoulder.
+
+Joan never forgot the face her step-mother turned upon them--She made a
+desperate attempt to rally.
+
+"Why--why, dearie! is that you? A--an old friend of mine's been giving
+me a tip."
+
+"Get out," said Archie to the man. "Get out, quick!"
+
+"Hold on there, kid--So, you been robbing the cradle this time, Ef?" He
+grinned at her evilly. "Wait a minute, mister, there's a few things I
+might be able to tell you about this party--"
+
+"Nothing I don't know already," muttered Archie, his grip tightening.
+"You've got five minutes to get off the grounds before I tell the
+police. Blackmail's a penitentiary offense in this State."
+
+The man hesitated, looked at Archie's grim jaw, and went....
+
+Joan and her step-mother gazed at each other. The woman's face had a
+curious gray look under its perennial bloom, and she moistened her lips
+with a dry tongue.
+
+"You--you heard?" she said at last.
+
+Joan nodded. She could not speak.
+
+It was Archie who remarked quietly: "You'll want to be going home, I
+guess. I'll get a taxicab."
+
+Then sheer pity overcame the horror in the girl's mind. "Yes, Mother.
+Come home with me!" she murmured.
+
+For the first and last time in her life she had called her father's wife
+"Mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+"I guess you've got to have the whole story now, though it ain't a very
+pretty story to tell a girl," said Effie May wearily. "I don't know as
+your papa would much want you to hear it, Joan...."
+
+To the girl the whole episode seemed unreal, part of that strange day,
+with the holiday crowds, the brief, hectic excitement of the races,
+followed by the pistol-shot that meant the death of a ruined old woman.
+She could not believe that she, Joan Darcy, convent-bred, the daughter
+of reserved and fastidious people, could be actually participating in
+this impossible melodrama.
+
+"What my father would wish hardly matters now, I think," she said, more
+frigidly than she realized. "Please say what you have to say."
+
+All the way home her step-mother had wept, steadily and hopelessly, with
+ugly snuffling noises that took away what dignity there might have been
+in her grief. Joan, always helpless in the face of uncontrolled emotion,
+made no effort to comfort her. Her impulse of pity had already died into
+disgust. She could not look at that swollen, grayish face, of whose
+careful complexion tears made strange havoc.
+
+The woman sighed. "If only you weren't so young!--I suppose you think
+I'm a bad lot--bad as they make 'em. But I'm not. I never was. Oh, I
+know I've done things ladies don't do!--but then ladies ain't often
+asked to do 'em, dearie. You got to remember that."
+
+Joan shrugged, and resigned herself to hear what she was to hear.
+
+"I guess you know I wasn't born a lady, nor raised like one, though I've
+tried.... Well, never mind that!--Pa had a little cash-and-carry grocer
+store over to Indianapolis, and we lived upstairs, all of us in two
+rooms.... It was the dirt I couldn't stand, and the crowding. It ain't
+_right_ for a whole lot of children to live like that, all mixed in so!
+The others didn't seem to mind, but I was always sort of nice in my
+ways. Maybe because I was born before Mom took to the coke."
+
+"The what?"
+
+"Coke--dope, you know. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her
+going, poor Mom! and I'm glad she had it."
+
+"Was your mother an invalid?" asked Joan, a little startled by this
+breadth of tolerance.
+
+"Oh, no. But kids come along once a year regular, and she wasn't ever,
+so to speak, well. I made up my mind when I wasn't more than ten never
+to get myself in the fix Ma was in!... My two older sisters felt that
+way, too, I guess. They always had fellows, but not the sort that'd do
+to marry. Men like Pa, you know. No 'count--One of the girls worked at a
+dressmaker's, and sewed till her eyes were red all the time, and her
+shoulders stooped and she coughed. The other--well, the other didn't
+keep straight, dearie. Awful few of the girls I knew did keep straight.
+But Mame went into one of those houses--you know?--and had a lot of
+swell clothes, and jewelry and all. I remember all us younger ones used
+to envy her. But she didn't last long at it, and she died--horrible."
+
+Effie May's eyes were fixed on strange places, and the tragedy of the
+world was in them.
+
+"She used to be a pretty thing, Mame; and sweet, too.... Well, it seemed
+to me there ought to be _something_ better for a girl than marrying a
+man like Pa and slaving, or getting a good job like Jule's and slaving,
+or going wrong like Mame and slaving worst of all! Once when I was out
+delivering dresses for the dressmaker where Jule worked, I saw what I
+was looking for. Society women. Ladies.
+
+"That's what I'm going to be," I says to myself, "a Society woman! (I
+was about twelve then.) You don't have to work, you live in a fine house
+and wear swell clothes, and you can keep as straight as you like.
+
+"The others used to laugh at me, but Mom never did. She was real
+ambitious for her children, Mom was. 'You keep on thinkin' so and you'll
+get there,' she used to say. 'You're smart and pretty enough for
+anything!' And so I was, then!" Effie May gave a sigh.
+
+"A fellow come along presently that looked pretty good to me. I met him
+over to Casey's dance-hall, I remember, and from the first it was all up
+with him. He was better than the fellows I'd been running with; a good
+dresser, always flashing his roll--you know race-horse people used to
+make good money before the Pari-Mutuels--And when he wanted me to come
+over here to Louisville with him--well, it looked to be my
+chance--Imagine starting out to be a lady, in company with Joe
+Markheim!" said Effie May grimly.
+
+Joan exclaimed, "Not that dreadful-looking creature you were talking
+with to-day?"
+
+The other nodded. "Only he wasn't dreadful-looking then. He was real
+handsome--or he looked that way to me. You see I was only sixteen," she
+sighed. "Almost anything in pants that'd take me away from home would
+have looked good to me then, I guess!--But I talked to Mom about it, and
+she thought I'd better take a chance, too. So I went."
+
+The girl had begun to shiver a little. "You mean--you married him?"
+
+Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see
+he had a wife at the time."
+
+"He--betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan.
+
+"Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a
+chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us
+it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know.
+There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, and _her_ sort."
+
+"Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips.
+
+"My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you
+after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to
+him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate
+disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began
+to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man,
+when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd
+acted decent--I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when
+he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flushing, "but it was something
+no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through
+thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway."
+
+"Did--did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly.
+
+"Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told
+him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was
+a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair.
+'Wish I'd done it before!' says he--Don't you think that's a pretty good
+recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after
+living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"I suppose so," murmured Joan--The usual thing was happening to her. Old
+standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see
+things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness--though
+there were people who considered it her strength.
+
+"Calloway was pretty near to being a gentleman--not a born one, like
+your papa, dearie, but real genteel in his instincts, and he did a whole
+lot to make a lady of me. He always insisted on us having the best of
+everything, company especially. When he knew he had to die, poor
+boy!"--her lips trembled--"he says to me, says he, 'Here's your chance,
+old girl! Take the money, and go somewhere and make a fresh start,' he
+says. 'You'll do! You're good as any of 'em.' His very words, dearie!
+'You're good as any of 'em.'"--She wiped her eyes.
+
+"And so you came here?" prompted the girl.
+
+"Yes. I'd always liked the place. It seemed sort of friendly and
+homelike, and it's small enough so that your money counts for something.
+It wouldn't be lost, I thought, like in New York or Chicago--But I was
+kind of lonesome at first--always been used to having a man around--and
+I didn't know anybody. And then your mama died, and I saw my way clear.
+You didn't know I knew your mama, did you, dearie?"
+
+Joan was rather startled. She had not realized quite how early her life
+and her father's had been swept into the stream of this woman's
+ambition.
+
+"Well, I did. Not to speak to, of course. But I used to watch her out of
+my back windows, and think what a lady she was to be so poor, and wished
+I knew how to scrape acquaintance with her. And once she caught me
+watching her, and smiled up, just as sweet, as if she'd known me always
+and liked me. (Sort of the way _you_ smile, dearie, when you're real
+pleased.)--And when she died the idea came to me, all of a sudden, that
+I was the person to look after them she'd left."
+
+Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and began to weep again. "Oh,
+Gawd! Think of where I'd got to, and look where I'm at now!"
+
+Joan moved restlessly about the room, conscious of the ache of tears in
+her own throat. She pictured that child of the streets and dancehalls,
+poor little "Lightfoot Ef," as they called her, struggling to better her
+condition, sturdily trying to find some tenable place of her own in
+life, even as she, Joan, was trying--but under what hopeless handicaps!
+She thought of the cocaine-drugged mother with ambitions; of the evil,
+treacherous creature with whom the child had chosen to "take a chance";
+and it began to seem almost a miracle that Effie May should be what she
+was. Joan looked at her with something like respect.
+
+"But I heard you tell my father you had buried two husbands!" she said
+sharply. "If you really felt that you were 'good as any of them,'
+that--that you had practically been married--why didn't you make a clean
+breast of it all?"
+
+"Because I'm no fool!" gulped Effie May. "There are some things a man
+won't stand for--though God knows why _they_ should be so all-fired
+particular! And it seemed the only chance I'd ever get to marry a real
+gentleman. Besides, there was you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I
+could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do
+for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly
+flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house,
+with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and
+a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of
+the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the
+bed with her fists.
+
+There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman
+whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised.
+
+"If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a
+hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd
+ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could
+'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair."
+
+"Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised.
+
+"Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me--I don't know
+how. But I could 'a' kept _his_ mouth shut all right!--I was fixing him
+so he'd never tell...."
+
+In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant
+to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay
+farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby.
+
+She sat erect with a gasp. "It's _him_! For goodness' sake don't let
+your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching
+for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl.
+"Quick!--pull down those shades--there, that's better. Help me into a
+negligée--no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!--a pink one.
+Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my
+headache--don't forget, that's why we came home. There!--how do I look?"
+
+She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped
+in cologne hiding her swollen eyes.
+
+Joan, rather dazed, had assisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the
+triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe
+of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer
+desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She
+meant to go down fighting.
+
+There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort.
+
+"Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door.
+
+"Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan! _Are you going to tell him right
+away?_"
+
+"Not--right away," said the girl slowly.
+
+There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her
+hands, and kissed it....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it
+throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies
+in her control.
+
+At one moment her course seemed clear beyond the question of a doubt. It
+was unthinkable that her father should continue to recognize as his
+wife--her mother's successor!--a woman who had led an immoral life, who
+had earned the very money that supported them by living for years as the
+mistress of another man. Joan's cheeks burned with the thought.
+
+At the next moment, she wondered what her father would do without the
+woman. She had no illusions left regarding Richard Darcy. He had never
+in his futile life stood on his own two feet. He was one of the
+inefficients, who must be cared for. Now, weakened morally and
+physically by the habit of luxurious living, he was less able than ever
+to take care of himself. Age was coming upon him rapidly. In the
+struggle of life, he must go down utterly to defeat--Unless his daughter
+could help him; and so far his daughter had been unable even to help
+herself.
+
+The girl wondered, too, her heart sick within her, whether he would
+consent to give up the luxury he loved when he learned the shame that
+went with it.... Not that he would be able to forgive the woman! She
+knew his fixed standards, his pride of race, too well to expect of him
+any such magnanimity. The vulgarity of Effie May had been quite enough
+for him to swallow, as it was.
+
+Joan thought that if, knowing his wife's past and utterly despising her,
+he yet kept her because of material benefits, it would be a shame she
+personally could not bear. Better, perhaps, that he be not put to the
+test.
+
+And yet--in her mother's place, a woman of the town! (The girl was not
+able to make the fine distinctions in vice suggested by her
+step-mother.)
+
+There had to be considered, also, the fraudulency of continuing to
+inflict such a woman on society in the guise of a lady.
+
+The word brought back a rush of pity to Joan's heart. Effie May had done
+her best to be a "lady," poor creature, even to the extent of vainly
+trying to remodel her speech and her manners on those of her new
+family....
+
+Joan, very white and drawn about the lips, ordered her horse in the
+early morning and went for a long gallop, hoping to clear her brain.
+When she returned, with nothing decided, she found Archie Blair in the
+library waiting for her.
+
+She had never before been so glad to see him. It came upon her, with a
+rush of relief, that here was somebody with whom she could discuss her
+problem, whose advice she could ask. Archie knew! He was not very
+clever, perhaps, never subtle nor quick in his mental processes; but
+there was something sure about him, something utterly honest and
+dependable.
+
+Evidently he had given others the same impression.
+
+"Mrs. Darcy sent for me to come out and talk things over," he said
+gravely. "She wanted me to speak to you. She thought maybe I could make
+you understand better."
+
+"Sent for _you_? Why, but you've never been one of her friends. You've
+never even pretended to be!"
+
+"No," he said simply. "She isn't my sort, and she don't belong here.
+She's too flossy. But since she's here, I'm sorry for her--Now that you
+know, what are you going to do about it, Miss Darcy?"
+
+Joan laid her problem before him with a frankness she would not have
+believed possible. She told him about her father. Never before, not even
+to Stefan Nikolai, had she disclosed Richard Darcy quite as she had come
+to know him latterly. It was an analysis that would have looked too
+brutal set down in black and white.
+
+Archie listened thoughtfully, and with no appearance of embarrassment or
+consciousness that the conversation was unusual. There was something in
+his masculinity that never suggested sex.
+
+"I get you," he said at last. "You can't make up your mind whether to
+upset the apple-cart and ease your conscience, or keep your mouth shut
+and let everybody live happily ever after."
+
+Joan looked at him quickly. She had not expected quite such a lucid
+summing up of the situation from Archie. But he seemed unconscious of
+epigram.
+
+"Did I ever tell you," he asked irrelevantly, "about an old gentleman
+that took our room after--well, after my mother went away--and let me go
+on living with him because he said I was too small to make any
+difference? A queer old bird he was, drinking himself to death as fast
+as he could, but mighty good to me. It was him--he, I mean--who taught
+me to read, and started me going to night school, and got me my first
+job. When he was about half-lit he used to talk to me as if I was just
+his age, about all sorts of things, life and books and folks--and one of
+the things he used to say kind of stuck in my head. 'When in doubt,
+Archibald' (he was the only person I ever knew who called me all of
+it!), 'when in doubt, always be a little kinder than necessary....'
+Pretty good dope, I think."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+Then Joan said slowly: "Thank you, Archie! Yes, it is pretty good dope.
+And your old drunkard must have been a good deal of a man. You must tell
+me more about him some day."
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shake of relief.
+
+"Very well!--I won't upset the apple-cart. I didn't much want to,
+anyway!"
+
+Archie smiled at her widely. It was a smile that said, "I knew it!" and
+"Good girl!" and a number of other things that made Joan blush. She had
+come by insensible degrees to value rather highly the good opinion of
+her protégé.
+
+"But there's one thing sure," he said, sobering. "You'll be wanting to
+get out of the apple-cart yourself!"
+
+That, too, Joan had faced in her long night's vigil. The question of her
+future was no longer hovering in space. It was here, immediate, urgent.
+She would have liked if possible not to spend another hour under the
+roof that had been supplied by the late Mr. Calloway.
+
+They discussed the matter of her living in every aspect.
+
+"You mean you haven't got a red cent to your name, Miss Darcy? Gee!"
+muttered Archie. "What was the old chap thinking of? Oil stocks! Might
+as well have put the money on the races." Even in his loyal mind the
+Major had undergone something of an eclipse.
+
+"Better, because then we could have seen it run," sighed Joan. "However,
+it's gone, and now I've got to get busy!" (Archibald's language was
+rather contagious.)
+
+She told him of her two alternatives. The stage he absolutely vetoed.
+
+"It's no place for a lady," he said stubbornly, and would listen to no
+argument. Joan suddenly remembered that his mother had been an actress.
+She did not pursue the question.
+
+"Newspaper work might do," he admitted. "A society reporter with the
+pull you've got ought to be worth some money."
+
+"A society reporter!--You mean I'd have to go to my friends' houses and
+publish what happens there? Oh, Archie, I'm afraid I couldn't do that."
+
+"Why not?" he said innocently. "They like it."
+
+But Joan persisted. "I'm willing to report _anything_ except society."
+
+"Murders? Police courts?" he suggested grimly.
+
+"Yes, if I must."
+
+"Well, I guess not!" said Archie.
+
+She laughed a little helplessly. "But, Archie, you veto everything I
+suggest! Really, you're not very helpful. Don't you understand that I've
+_got_ to earn my living, right at once? I'm unskilled labor. Beggars
+can't be choosers. You'd suppose nothing was good enough for me!"
+
+"And it isn't!... Gosh!" he said miserably--(she saw that his big hands
+were shaking)--"The idea makes me right down sick! A little delicate
+thing like you, out in the scramble with the rest of us--! I know what
+it is, you see. Bad enough for a fellow, sometimes. I know the things a
+working girl has to do and stand for. Honest to God, I'd rather see you
+married!" he groaned.
+
+Unselfish devotion could go no farther, and Joan knew it.
+
+She suddenly found herself on the verge of tears. She was tired out,
+mind, soul, and body. She would have liked to put her head down on his
+shoulder and simply cry till she was comforted. It was such a big, broad
+shoulder, so amply adapted to the bearing of burdens. She could make him
+happy, too, poor boy! One and all, people seemed to expect nothing of
+her but marriage--her father, Effie May, Stefan Nikolai, and now Archie.
+Perhaps they knew best. They were many and she only one. Temptation
+beset her--or was it inspiration? She did not know....
+
+Meanwhile Archie was elaborating his forlorn idea. "Isn't there
+_somebody_ who would do?" he urged. "Surely of all the fellows who've
+been hanging round, there ought to be one decent chap who'd give his
+head and ears to keep you out of this--to take you away from here
+himself?"
+
+Joan made her decision.
+
+"I think there is," she said tremulously. "Only--he won't say so."
+
+"The big mutt!" cried Archie--and then paused. Her expression, the
+significance of her voice, began to penetrate his humility.
+
+"You--_you're not joshing me_?" he gasped.
+
+Joan put out quick hands as though to ward him off, suddenly afraid of
+the glow she had kindled in his face.
+
+"Wait, Archie! I don't love you--you know that. Not as you love me, I
+mean. I don't believe I ever will love anybody that way. I--perhaps I'm
+not fine enough--But I do like you and trust you more than anybody else
+in the world. And so--if that's enough--If you want me--"
+
+"_Do I want you?_" Archie gripped the edge of his chair to keep himself
+anchored to _terra firma_. "Say, Miss Darcy, I--I--"
+
+"Don't you think," she suggested with a quivering smile, "that as we are
+about to become engaged, you might begin to call me 'Joan'?"
+
+At that, with a great cry of "JOAN!" he gave up hold on the chair and
+_terra firma_ together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sound of the overturned chair brought Effie May on a reconnoitering
+expedition to the upper landing of the stairs, which commanded an
+unsuspected view of the library. What she saw caused her to tiptoe away,
+smiling to herself a little sadly.
+
+"_His_ mouth's stopped all right--" she thought (with perfect
+truth)--"now that it doesn't matter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+There were those, notably among the Jabberwocks, who felt that in
+availing herself of the age-old solution of handing her burdens over to
+a man to bear, Joan had rather hauled down her colors. Perhaps she felt
+so herself, after the first glow of relief was over.
+
+But if she needed solace, she got it in the radiant, incredulous,
+blissful attitude of Archibald. He could not believe the marvelous thing
+that had happened to him. A dozen times a day he was obliged to glance
+at the ring he had given her (a solitaire inevitably, small but of good
+water) to make sure that he was not dreaming.
+
+He began at once, following the example of the birds about him, to
+prepare for the coming event; "twigging" as Joan called it to herself,
+amusedly. He was as mysterious about it, and quite as obvious, as any
+robin darting about with a straw in its beak. He called her to the
+telephone frequently to ask such questions as how many drawers a
+"chiffoneer" ought to have; and when she asked him why he wanted to
+know, the reply was a joyous, "Never you mind!"
+
+He listened with the stealth of a Sherlock Holmes for any expressions of
+preference on her part, putting them secretly down in a note-book; and
+Joan grew afraid to mention any object, no matter how unlikely, for fear
+it would become part of the procession of packages which Ellen reported
+as filing daily past her door to the room upstairs.
+
+"A rocking-chair come this morning," Ellen would report. "Golden oak,
+all carved! Yesterday it was one them new-fangled electric-lamps with
+brass chain hanging down like fringe. Real tasty. The day before it was
+a statute."
+
+"Heavens, Nellen--Not a statue!"
+
+"Sure! A nigger woman brandishin' a spear. I poked a hole in the
+wrappin's to get a good look at it."
+
+(Joan had once unguardedly envied the Carmichaels their rare old
+bronzes.)
+
+She was touched but alarmed, and decided that she would better hasten
+the wedding if only to put a stop to this indiscriminate twigging.
+
+Others were almost as pleased with the engagement as Archibald; her
+father, for one, who had not expected quite so early a release from
+parental responsibility. Joan, while a creditable child, had proven a
+rather difficult one, especially since his marriage.
+
+"Not that it is quite such an--er--ambitious arrangement as I could have
+wished, Dollykins,"--(a ducal alliance would have been more in accord
+with Darcy inclinations). "But young Blair is an excellent fellow, an
+excellent fellow. And after all, in this world virtue is the thing that
+counts!" He appeared to indicate that in the next world things might be
+arranged more satisfactorily.
+
+Ellen was as proud of this unexpected _dénouement_ as if it were an egg
+of her own hatching.
+
+"I didn't believe you had the gumption!" she said unflatteringly. "I
+thought you was too highminded to know a real man when you seen
+him.--And now, praise the day! you'll be needin' your mamma's furniture
+back again."
+
+"Oh, but, Nellen darling, what will you do without it?"
+
+"Me?" The old woman's face fell. "Why, I kind o' thought you'd be takin'
+me along with the furniture. Unless I'm too stiff and plain to be makin'
+you a fancy servant like you're used to nowadays!"--she tossed her head
+angrily.
+
+Joan hugged her. "I'd rather have you than all the fancy servants in the
+world, and you know it. But I thought you preferred being an independent
+modiste in lodgings. And then--you see, dear, I'm not quite sure whether
+Archie can afford a servant."
+
+She had not so far been able to bring him down from the clouds long
+enough to discuss ways and means.
+
+"Sho! He can afford _me_ all right. I'll save him money--And you don't
+suppose he's going to let you spoil them white hands of yourn with
+housework and cookin'? Not if I know Mr. Archie!..."
+
+The Misses Darcy were almost tearful with gratification, and received
+Archie with the sort of romantic respect younger girls accord to heroes
+of the matinée.
+
+"What did I prophesy?" cried Miss Virginia. "Only one season out, and
+already--! Such a beautiful name too,--'Mrs. Archibald Blair.' Not a
+Kentucky or Virginia one, of course. However, there _are_ other States,
+Maryland, or South Carolina, or even Massachusetts. Where did you say
+he was from, precious girl?"
+
+"Louisville."
+
+The sisters exchanged startled glances. "Louisville? But that's
+impossible. We do not know his people!"
+
+"He hasn't any people."
+
+It was Miss Euphemia who recovered herself first. "So much the better,"
+she murmured. "I mean--Not that one would wish them to have died, of
+course! But really, you know, in-laws--"
+
+"And so often I think a self-made man--" Miss Iphigenia took up the
+parable. "So many of our Southern families seem to run largely to girls
+nowadays. What I mean is, a little good red blood--"
+
+"Sister!" murmured two shocked voices. Everybody blushed.
+
+"I'm afraid Archie isn't even a self-made man, yet," smiled Joan,
+mentally struggling to fill in the gaps. "I shall have to help make
+him."
+
+"Ah, yes! A woman's touch, as dear papa used to say--"
+
+Joan reflected that the late Mr. Darcy must have known a good deal about
+the power of a woman's touch....
+
+Her friend Emily's congratulations were something on the same order,
+though more frankly expressed. There was a wholesome attitude of
+frankness always between the two girls.
+
+"I think it's dear of you, Joan," she exclaimed, "and so brave!"
+
+"Just why 'brave'?"
+
+Emily answered, despite embarrassment, "Why, to marry a man without
+antecedents, without position, and without money, seems to me very
+brave. I know I should never have the courage to do it, even if I cared
+for him. In fact, I should be mighty careful not to care for him!--But
+then I've never had your spirit of independence."
+
+"Perhaps because you've more to lose," said Joan quietly. "If either of
+us is brave, I think it's poor Archie."
+
+She often thought of her lover so; tenderly, even lovingly, but as "Poor
+Archie!..."
+
+Effie May was the only one of Joan's immediate environment who seemed to
+look with any doubts upon a situation she herself had largely brought to
+pass.
+
+"Look here, girlie," she said once abruptly. "You don't love that boy.
+At least you ain't in love with him--and there's a difference. Why do
+you do it, anyhow?"
+
+Joan, taken by surprise, was not immediately ready with her reply.
+
+"Is it because you want to get away from me?" asked the other.
+
+Still Joan was not ready to answer, and Effie May sighed. "You needn't
+have gone so far as that," she said, "I'd have fixed it for you
+somehow--I'm not going to forget what you've done for me, Joan. Not
+telling, treating me just as if--it was all right. You're a bigger woman
+than you know you are," she added, gravely. "I'll make it up to you some
+day, see if I don't."
+
+Joan gave her a quick, straight look. "If you mean money, Effie May, and
+I think you do, we'd better come to an understanding at once. I'm
+keeping my counsel about--about your affairs; I'm helping you commit a
+fraud, you know--entirely on my father's account. For myself--that's
+another matter. I appreciate your kindness, I know you have meant to do
+your best, but--"
+
+"But you're done with me?" finished the other.
+
+"Yes. I shall only see so much of you hereafter as is necessary to keep
+Father from suspecting anything. As for your money,"--the girl's voice
+shook--"neither I nor my husband will ever touch a cent of it under any
+circumstances. Do you understand? We do not forget how it was--earned."
+
+The other sighed again. "Well, dearie, don't forget that it _was_
+earned, good and plenty!--And I've done you one good turn already," she
+remarked _sotto voce_, as the girl turned away to greet her fiancé.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Joan and Archibald were married two weeks later, very quietly, before
+only her family, resisting all the Major's importunities to make an
+occasion of it. Nor would the girl accept a trousseau.
+
+"If I need any more clothes than I've got already, Archie will buy them
+for me. Won't you, old boy?" she said, slipping her hand into his.
+
+Archie, with the happy consciousness of a rapidly growing business and
+several years' savings in a Building Association replied proudly that he
+would.
+
+One comment she had missed on her engagement; Stefan Nikolai's. She had
+written to him at once (her first letter since his post-card advising a
+preliminary course in matrimony), saying in effect, "Now I hope you're
+satisfied!" But as no reply came, she reached the correct conclusion
+that he was on the wing again, with her letter following him from
+address to address, unread.
+
+Ten minutes after the little ceremony that left her no longer Joan
+Darcy, a cablegram was brought to her from London.
+
+"Wait. Coming. Nikolai."
+
+To which she replied with reckless extravagance:
+
+"Too late. Sorry. Come anyway...."
+
+Alone at last with her husband in a carriage (to which the negro
+yard-boy, feeling with the Major that something was lacking to the
+occasion, had generously attached one of his own shoes), Joan asked
+rather listlessly where he meant to take her. She had a conviction that
+it would be to Atlantic City, or to Niagara Falls.
+
+For Archie was everything that was most correct in the way of
+bridegrooms. His bulldog toes, his padded blue serge, his near-Panama
+hat, his very socks, were so palpably bought for the occasion that Joan
+felt that to match him she ought to be wearing dove-gray and a shrinking
+manner.
+
+But she did not feel particularly shrinking; merely relieved that the
+die was cast, and tired enough to be glad of the arm that stole
+tentatively around her.
+
+"What train are we catching, dear?" she asked.
+
+"No train at all.--Oh, Joan," he said tremulously, "I hope you won't
+mind! It's just for to-night--just a foolish idea of mine."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"Wait and see!"
+
+She waited rather apprehensively. She was a little nervous about
+surprises, since her father's recent effort in that line.
+
+But the carriage was traversing a street she knew well, and it presently
+stopped in front of the house where Ellen lived. There was still a tinge
+of afterglow reflected in its many-paned windows, and among the young
+feathery leafage of the old sycamore sparrows were preparing to go to
+bed. Two or three of the denizens of the lower floors were taking a
+breath of air on the doorstep. They stared at the carriage with
+interest.
+
+"None of 'em know about us yet," reassured Archie in a whisper. "Just
+bluff it out." Aloud he said to one of them (it was the lady who
+expertly curled feathers): "Do you know whether Mrs. Neal is in, Mrs.
+Higgs? We've come to see her."
+
+"I don't know as she is, Mr. Archie," replied the other, her eyes taking
+avid note of Joan's smart tailor-made dress and traveling hat. "But I
+know she's expectin' company all right, 'cause I been smellin' comp'ny
+cookin' all day! Go right up and make yourselves to hum," she urged,
+with the never-failing hospitality of her class.
+
+Archibald led his wife up the dim, curved stairway that had doubtless
+known the reluctant feet of many another bride before her, and opened
+Ellen's door with a key.
+
+"Yon _are_ honored," murmured Joan. "I didn't dream that Ellen had got
+to the point of trusting gentlemen with her latch-key!"
+
+"Look!" said Archie proudly.
+
+The room was gay with flowers, truly a bridal bower; and in its center
+stood the old round walnut table she had known all her life, much
+battered by the kicking of her own youthful toes, set for two, and laden
+with delicacies. There was a small but magnificent wedding-cake, there
+was chicken-salad, crisp pink tongue, pickles, chocolates of Joan's
+favorite brand, and resting in a pail of ice-water, its neck swathed in
+a napkin, a bottle of champagne.
+
+"Cinnamon-rolls keeping hot in the warmer, butter in the ice-box
+right-hand side, and I'm only to light the jet under the coffee-pot, and
+leave it to bubble ten minutes--" murmured Archie, as one reciting a
+well-conned lesson.
+
+Joan's listlessness suddenly disappeared. She hugged him.
+
+"What a perfectly _beautiful_ wedding-supper!" she cried. "Was it your
+idea, or Ellen's?"
+
+"A sort of combination, I guess. She thought you might feel more
+homelike here with your mother's things, and I--well, it's my home too,
+you see!--So you don't mind?"
+
+"Mind!" she winked hard to keep the tears back. "Archie, let's have
+pancakes, too!" she cried.
+
+They had pancakes. They also had eggs, in the scrambling of which
+Archibald was quite expert. Afterwards they washed the pans and dishes
+together, with two of Ellen's aprons tied around their necks, amid much
+merriment.
+
+"I had no idea married life was so pleasant!" she sighed. "Archie, let's
+always do our work like this, together!"
+
+"Work?" he picked up one of her hands and examined it reverently. Joan
+had rather beautiful hands, sensitive and lithe, delicately white, with
+rosy palms and finger-tips. "I'll let you play at work now and then," he
+said soberly. "But work is for us men, my Joan, not for our women!"
+
+"It's fortunate the cooks and housemaids of the land don't agree with
+you," she teased; "or perhaps they do, and hence the servant problem!"
+
+Later, they locked Ellen's door and put the key under the mat, and went
+up a flight higher. Joan entered Archie's room with some curiosity. To
+her, people's environment spoke a clear language; and sometimes she
+realized, with a little shock, that she knew nothing at all of the man
+she had married.
+
+It was a long, low attic chamber, whose ceiling sloped cosily down over
+casement windows with wide sills. There was a fine fireplace, marred,
+however, by a small stove showing evidences of occasional culinary
+efforts.
+
+The results of Archie's twigging were very apparent; notably the
+golden-oak rocking-chair, the "chiffoneer" surmounted by the bronze lady
+with a spear. But she was more interested in the things which had
+belonged to him.
+
+As Ellen had told her, the place was littered with books, shelves,
+tables, and even window-sills. Joan examined these eagerly. There was a
+very shabby Shakespeare in a good edition, an old pocket Emerson, a new
+Rubaiyat, a brand-new "Alice in Wonderland" (which made her smile); but
+it was no scholar's library. Archie's tastes were not what he would have
+called "high-brow." The works of Marie Corelli and Conan Doyle
+predominated, with several school geographies and histories, and various
+treatises on the psychology of salesmanship. She found something rather
+touching in this collection of books, remembering that he had referred
+to it as his college career.
+
+She looked next for his pictures, those other sure indications of the
+inner man. But there were none, except the small photograph of herself
+in its elaborate frame, with a little vase attached holding fresh
+flowers.
+
+"Archie!" she protested, laughing, "I look like a Madonna in a shrine!"
+
+"One of those namby-pamby parties with a dinner-plate behind her head?
+Never saw one of them that could touch you!" he pronounced candidly.
+
+"I fear your correspondence-course has been neglecting Art," she
+murmured. "There was a fellow named Botticelli who did some very neat
+little things in that line. But come now, surely you've got some other
+pictures hidden away somewhere? No naughty ballet-girls kicking up their
+limb-legs? No bareback ladies? Or Parisiennes exhibiting wicked garters?
+Honest Injun?"
+
+He grinned sheepishly. "I did have," he admitted. "But I sort of lost my
+taste for 'em when you gave me that picture of you."
+
+She kissed him.
+
+"That's a prettier compliment than the little vase of flowers before my
+picture, dear!..."
+
+Archie had been standing at the door, watching her progress around his
+room with eyes that were almost incredulous. His room!--and she in
+it!... He felt that if he opened a window she might flutter out again,
+back into the world from which she came. Once, when he was very small,
+he had found a belated autumn butterfly in the street, and brought it
+home, and put it on a geranium-plant he had in the window, hoping it
+might like to spend the winter there. But in the morning it lay dead
+against the pane. Archie remembered that butterfly now, and shivered.
+She saw him.
+
+She ensconced herself in the largest and shabbiest of his three chairs
+and patted the arm of it invitingly. "Come over here, and let's really
+talk!" she commanded.
+
+He obeyed. "What shall we talk about?"
+
+"Tell me about your mother," said Joan.
+
+He told her what he could remember. It was not much except a voice--a
+soft English voice; and the feeling of arms that held him close; and
+quite clearly the sound of sobbing beside his pillow whenever he woke
+suddenly at night.
+
+"Nothing was ever heard from her after she left you here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Money came once or twice to the landlady for my board--this
+was a boarding-house, then. But after a few months it stopped coming."
+
+"And haven't you _any_ idea what became of her?"
+
+"She died, of course," said Archie simply. "Or she'd have come back for
+me. There were people who thought--" he swallowed hard--"that she left
+me here on purpose, and never meant to come back. That isn't so. I don't
+know much about her, but I do know that she loved her child. You, can't
+fool a kid about that!... And there were people who thought she killed
+herself. But I don't somehow believe she was a quitter. What do _you_
+think?"
+
+He had taken a photograph out of his pocket, and handed it to Joan, who
+studied it closely. Despite the unbecoming "fringe" and jersey of an
+earlier day, it was a lovely face she saw, without a hint of folly or
+weakness or worse. The chin was firm as Archie's, the features strong as
+they were delicate. The face was still rounded and soft with youth, yet
+out of it looked a pair of haunted eyes.
+
+"No, your mother was no coward," she said with conviction. "But she was
+a very unhappy woman. And Archie--she was a lady!" The look of race
+seemed to her unmistakable.
+
+He drew a great breath. "I think so, too," he said gladly, "I've always
+thought so. That's how I dared--" Suddenly, passionately, he drew her up
+into his arms. "Oh, my Joan, do you see why I wanted you here in my own
+home? It's all the home I've ever had. Anything that's happened to me
+has happened here. I've lain here at night trying to be a man when I was
+nothing more than a kid. I've sat here listening, listening--Oh, for
+years I used to think I heard my mother coming up the stairs to get me,
+long after I was old enough to know she never would! And sometimes I
+thought--Do you believe in ghosts?"
+
+"Yes!" said Joan. "Ghosts of people that love us and want to help--"
+
+"That's what I mean! And that's why I wanted to stay on in this room,
+where--she could find me. It's a horrible thing not to belong anywhere,
+nor to any one, like any little fyst dog in the streets. I've never said
+this before--"
+
+"I know!" whispered Joan.
+
+"And now that I do belong to some one, I wanted my room to know it. I
+wanted--in case there _were_ any ghosts--"
+
+"I know," whispered Joan again, her lips against his.
+
+There was a taste of salt on them, and she held him close and closer,
+this great, lonely child who should never be lonely again. If, as she
+had warned him, she was not capable of offering deep love, Joan could at
+least offer deep understanding, which perhaps is rarer....
+
+And presently as she held him so in the quiet of his old room, with the
+house settling into drowsiness about them, and the sycamore tapping its
+friendly signal on the roof close above their heads, Joan's identity
+seemed to be slipping, merging, into that of some one else. She ceased
+to be Joan the girl. She felt, in that strange moment of transition,
+partly the wife, and partly the mother; but most of all the woman, whose
+mission is to give.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+There is, among the wives and mothers of what the
+
+Misses Darcy were wont to call the polite world, a general conspiracy of
+silence on the subject of honeymoons. The theory is allowed to go
+unchallenged that a honeymoon is invariably a period of bliss and
+romance unalloyed; the conspirators apparently subscribing to the ideas
+of the stoical parent who teaches his child to swim by throwing him
+unexpectedly into the water. If he manages to keep afloat, well and
+good; if he drowns, regrettable; if he comes out alive but with a
+shrinking cowardice with regard to water that never afterwards leaves
+him, perhaps it is no concern of his parent's. And again, perhaps it is.
+
+Joan and Archibald Blair returned from their honeymoon not quite as
+close friends as when they embarked upon it. Joan's manner had gained a
+certain kindliness, a gentle consideration that was akin to sympathy;
+whereas Archie, with puzzled eyes and a smile that beamed rather
+uncertainly, almost evinced his desire to propitiate by rolling over at
+her feet and holding up four paws to heaven. (Which was no way to
+propitiate our heroine.)
+
+Honeymoons, however, do not last indefinitely; and by the time Ellen
+Neal and her furniture and the results of Archie's "twigging" were moved
+into a certain modest house that simply cried aloud to be purchased (on
+the installment plan), Archie had grown almost accustomed to the sight
+of the One and Only seated at his breakfast table _en negligée_, pouring
+out his coffee, with a preoccupied word from him now and then as she
+glanced through the morning paper. (It was characteristic of that
+household that Joan was the one who read the morning paper.) He kissed
+her whenever he liked without asking leave; and in return she rumpled up
+his hair deliciously, and called him "Goose!", and reminded him to bring
+oranges from downtown because the neighboring grocery had such poor
+ones.
+
+Joan entered upon the domestic rôle with her usual thoroughness.
+
+At first she had been rather afraid of the expenditure the purchase of a
+house involved. It sounded to her too much like the large and not very
+practical ideas of her father. But when Archie pointed out to her that
+even day laborers managed to own their cottages, thanks to
+building-associations, and that purchase on this plan was merely a way
+of saving money, she yielded without undue reluctance. After all, there
+was not only his salary to be relied upon, but his commissions,
+dependent upon his own energy, which seemed boundless. Like many poor
+girls, she was quite ignorant of the value of money. Beyond the
+purchasing power of a concrete sum, say one thousand dollars, money
+meant nothing to her at all. Ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand
+dollars--they seemed very much the same.
+
+The house was its own best advocate; one of the charming English cottage
+types that are beginning to make home life not only comfortable but
+dignified for the small householder in our American cities. The
+neighborhood was excellent, one of the pretty green courts she had long
+ago coveted; and there was a small garden artfully arranged into vistas
+and quite an air of privacy by means of shrubbery, and overlooked by a
+secluded porch whose coolness seemed like paradise to Archie, hurrying
+to it out of the hot city.
+
+The garden was his part of the establishment; and there he might be
+observed any morning shortly after sunrise, digging, pruning, whistling
+tunelessly between his teeth, with one eye on a window whence would
+presently issue the drowsy voice of Joan, calling, "Good-morning out
+there, Adam!" Then with a rush Adam would disappear from his garden,
+leaving spade or hose where he happened to drop them, lest Eve need
+assistance with buttoning a blouse or tying a shoe.
+
+It was a glorious time for Archie. He was almost painfully happy.
+
+The Jabberwocks and others took a good deal of critical interest in
+Joan's house. She had always been suspected of being a little odd, and
+her house proved it indubitably. At a period when Louisville was
+graduating out of the green-wall-and-mission-furniture period, through
+Coloniality, into a more catholic appreciation of possessions which
+express the personality of the possessor, Joan's house was still rather
+a shock to all preconceived notions of decoration. There was none of the
+white woodwork and panelled severity which sounded the correct and most
+recent note. Joan's woodwork and walls were alike a soft, practical
+gray--"Soot-color," she explained placidly--and the plaster had been
+left rough-cast. Against it, instead of the accepted pictures of the
+day, hung two or three rare prints, a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and
+a fine strip of Persian embroidery. On the floor were black skin rugs. A
+green vine, growing out of an ancient yellowed marble jar, wandered at
+will across one wall and up the brick of the chimney-place.
+
+"You got that idea in Italy," commented one visitor.
+
+But the undoubted charm of Joan's house was that she had taken no ideas
+from anywhere. She simply had about her the sort of things she liked.
+There were ferns growing in the window-sills, and no curtains whatever
+except two lengths of heavy pumpkin-colored silk which might be drawn
+across the panes at will, but rarely were.
+
+"People will be able to see in when the lamps are lighted," protested
+her step-mother.
+
+"What of it? They won't see much over those ferns," said Joan, "and I
+always love to peep in at lighted windows myself, don't you? Haven't you
+ever noticed how much nicer the houses in this part of the world look
+when they're undressed for the summer? Personally, my taste has never
+run to lingerie in household decoration."
+
+Effie May, who was nothing if not receptive, went home and meekly took
+down her point-lace curtains.
+
+What troubled Louisville most about the Blair house was its lack of a
+dining-room. There was no chamber held sacred to the rites of
+nourishment, with chairs sitting primly against the wall and a center
+table with a centerpiece upon it, bearing a fernery or--what was more
+recently affected by the really up-to-date--a dish containing imitation
+fruit. ("So much smarter than the real kind," explained her neighbor,
+Mrs. Webster, who had quite a taste for the correct in art.) There was
+no sideboard for the display of wedding-silver, no china-cabinet
+containing the best glassware in glittering serried rows. What was the
+use of having nice things, thought many a troubled housewife, if they
+were to blush unseen in pantries?
+
+But Joan did not understand, and frankly said so, why in a small house
+one room should be set aside for use only three times a day. She needed
+the extra wall space for her books. Besides if there was a dining-room
+people seemed to feel obliged always to eat in it, instead of in the
+garden or the porch, or on a table drawn close to the window, where one
+might look out into the world while one ate, as in a pleasant
+restaurant.
+
+"I'm like the Irishman," she remarked, "who said that he was glad he
+didn't like strawberries, because if he did he'd have to eat them, and
+he hated the damn things.--Try having your meals served about in
+different places, and see if you haven't a better appetite for them!"
+
+Even the admiring Jabberwocks felt that this was carrying oddity to the
+extreme. They always took strangers, however, to see Joan's little
+house, and incidentally Joan herself. Mr. Nikolai had sent her recently
+several Mandarin costumes, unique in the history of Louisville for
+domestic wear, in which she appeared comfortable, piquante, and quite
+exotically feminine.
+
+"Fancy! Trousers on a bride! And at such a time, too," murmured the
+ladies of the neighborhood among themselves.
+
+But as Effie May pointed out to the Major, himself a trifle shocked by
+this eccentricity of costume in a lady of his family, "She's slim enough
+to wear 'em, Dickie, and those full silk pants are certainly becoming to
+the feet. Wish I had some myself--Don't you worry," she added, chuckling
+over the Major's expression, "I haven't! Pantaloons weren't meant for
+the pincushion style of figger."
+
+Archibald, of course, found the Mandarin costume adorable. He would have
+found any costume of Joan's adorable, even a Mother Hubbard, or its
+lineal descendant, the bungalow-apron.
+
+Altogether, Joan had a rather happy aftermath to her honeymoon. "The
+pasture-time," she called it, during which she was as placid and content
+as a cow in a clover-field. For the first and possibly the last time in
+her life she was quite free from worry. That was one of the things
+Archie took completely out of her hands. He would have liked to take
+everything out of her hands that might be irksome to her--her thinking,
+her very sleeping and eating, had it been possible. But worry at least
+was something he could take upon his own broad shoulders.
+
+Her personal allowance and the allowance he made her for household
+expenses were paid regularly into her account--an arrangement Joan had
+insisted upon, despite his protest.
+
+"Why should you be bothered with the paying of bills, darlingest?"
+
+"But I _love_ to pay bills, Archie," she had replied, rather piteously
+to one who had known anything of the earlier Darcy _ménage_. "It's a
+real pleasure to get them all out of the way before the tenth of the
+month!" And it was a pleasure she attended to religiously, even after
+she began to grow a little lax and indifferent about other household
+matters. There were to be no "Indians" in the annals of the Blair
+family.
+
+Joan had never been so sluggish mentally as in these first months of
+married life; yet she felt almost abnormally normal, close to the great
+heart of existence, at one with the physical world about her, content
+with the content of a cog which fits well into the wheel where it
+belongs.
+
+Long afterwards some would-be cynic asked her whether she believed that
+marriage _per se_ was an experiment which paid.
+
+"Yes!" she answered without hesitation. "If only for the moment when you
+tell your husband that he is to have a child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Her father took a satisfaction in Joan's house and husband and general
+condition of modest prosperity which surprised and rather touched the
+girl. It was as if he found in her well-being a justification of
+something that needed justifying. "I may have my weaknesses," his manner
+seemed to say, "but observe how well I have provided for my child!"
+
+He dropped in almost daily for his afternoon julep on the shaded porch
+that overlooked her garden. Effie May had the tact rarely to accompany
+him, and Joan found herself seeing more of her father than she ever had
+under his own roof.
+
+"I don't know just what it is, my dear," he once said, musingly.
+"Possibly the familiar furniture, or the presence of Ellen Neal (quite a
+fair cook, Dollykins, though her manner leaves something to be desired).
+But somehow in this little establishment of yours I always feel as
+if--well, as if Mary were about somewhere." He sighed sentimentally. "I
+feel as if she might at any moment sit down beside us and take out a bit
+of sewing. She was rarely without sewing, you remember?"
+
+"I remember." Joan patted his hand, a demonstration rare with her. "I am
+glad you feel that way, Father. Mother always does seem very close to
+me--especially just now." An odd feeling of sorriness for her
+step-mother came over Joan. "You are sure," she asked on an impulse,
+"that Effie May does not object to your coming here so much without
+her?"
+
+"Object? To my visiting my daughter under her own vine and figtree? It
+would hardly be within her province to object," he commented regally.
+"But, as it happens, she is the one who frequently suggests my visits.
+She quite understands that under the--er, the happy circumstances--you
+cannot come much to us, not caring naturally to appear any more often
+than is necessary in public." The Major adhered rigorously to every
+tenet of the old school.
+
+He had recently presented his daughter with a low, comfortable phaeton
+of the sort which, as he explained, the gentlewomen of his day were
+accustomed to drive; and Pegasus was learning to adapt herself demurely
+to the rôle of a family horse. Joan found this phaeton a great
+convenience for shopping and marketing and her rare visiting (she saw
+very little of her friends that summer); and in the evening she and
+Archie went for long drives about the parks, covering less ground than
+they had covered in the ill-fated Lizzie, but making up for this by a
+more intimate knowledge of what they passed.
+
+"It's good to go slowly enough now and then to see the wayside flowers,
+and smell the fern, and hear the bird-calls, isn't it?" she said once as
+they jogged along.
+
+"Sure it is! Now and then," replied Archie guardedly. A rising young
+business man of the present time could hardly be expected to find
+phaetoning an exhilarating means of locomotion. But "anything goes just
+now," as he said to himself, happily.
+
+He was not able to take as many of these drives with her as he should
+have liked. The cares of business were beginning to sit upon him with
+increasing heaviness. "A man's business has got to grow with his
+family," he was fond of saying, importantly; and Joan was left alone
+sometimes, even on Saturday afternoons and after supper in the
+evenings--those periods sacred in these our States to the uses of
+domesticity.
+
+But she did not complain. She was even, secretly, a little glad, for she
+had always enjoyed being alone. There were so many books to be read,
+letters to be written, thoughts to be thought in which Archie, for all
+his loyal efforts, could not quite share; and there was her music. One
+of her step-mother's several wedding presents had been a small grand
+piano, as companionable to Joan in this "pasture-time" as a dog is to
+some women.
+
+Archibald, too, loved music. He frequently urged her to play and sing,
+and was as proud of her rather indifferent performances as a _maestro_
+of a star-pupil. But he had an innocent, disconcerting habit of patting
+time with his foot, or bursting into the air at unexpected moments in a
+large, booming tenor that never by any accident quite found the key.
+Music was one of the things Joan found herself unable to share with her
+husband.
+
+She objected sometimes to his growing preoccupation with business, on
+his own account. He began to look a little thin and fine-drawn; the
+typical American husband, she told him reprovingly.
+
+"You're neglecting your exercise, Archie dear! You never go to the Y. M.
+C. A., or play around with the boys any more."
+
+"Got something better to do," he beamed at her.
+
+"Goose! But it isn't good for a man never to have any fun at all. 'All
+work and no play'--"
+
+He took her in his arms. "Fun! What do I want with fun?" he exclaimed
+quite fiercely, lifting her face to his. But before their lips met, he
+let her go.
+
+"No rough stuff," she heard him admonish himself under his breath.
+
+He kissed her hand instead....
+
+The Darcys too, were spending rather a quiet summer. Now that they had
+no débutante daughter in prospect, their names figured leas prominently
+in the social column. With his growing avoirdupois, the Major appeared
+to be abandoning the one-step in favor of the easy-chair, which was to
+be found in greater perfection at home than at the Country Club. If his
+bride regretted this lapse into settledness, she showed no signs of it.
+Her avoirdupois, also, was getting rather out of hand, despite constant
+attention to massage and sporadic attempts at dieting.
+
+"It ain't how _much_ I eat, seems like--it's _what_ I eat," she said
+once plaintively to Joan. "Everything tasty turns to flesh on me; and
+God knows, I hate a poor table!"
+
+But Joan realized that it was not entirely physical inhibitions which
+were retiring the Darcys from the social arena. Her step-mother had
+delicacy enough to understand that her place was not among Joan's
+acquaintance, now that the girl had discovered her history. Joan liked
+her the better for it. She was punctiliously careful to invite Effie May
+to her house at frequent intervals, and always accepted such invitations
+as the other offered in return. The Major, never observant, was quite
+unaware that the relations between his wife and daughter had suffered
+any change. As he once remarked impersonally, "You and my wife would
+naturally find very little in common, excellent creature though she is.
+Why should you, indeed? Your antecedents, your early environment, have
+been entirely different. And as one grows older, those are the things
+that really matter," he added, with a complacency that sat rather oddly
+upon him in the circumstances--On the whole, Joan began to feel
+distinctly sorry for her step-mother.
+
+The older people came sometimes to take her for long automobile drives
+into the State; expeditions which Joan enjoyed thoroughly. Her father's
+imperturbable good manners and Effie May's amiability made them
+excellent traveling-companions, proof against all hazards of the road;
+tire trouble, bad going, even delayed and poor meals. And they both
+treated Joan with a new consideration, oddly wistful on the woman's
+part, to which she responded gratefully.
+
+It shamed her somehow to see how kind the world was to her nowadays; as
+if, in following the line of least resistance, she had done something
+very commendable indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+These long automobile rides familiarized her as nothing else could not
+only with the State but with her father. She came to understand and
+share his peculiar, proprietary interest in the lovely Kentucky
+countryside. He pointed out to her its beauties of wood and hill and
+pasture like the owner of some vast estate exhibiting it to visitors,
+with a frank and pardonable pride. It is a habit of mind not unusual to
+the native of certain localities--notably Virginia and Maryland and
+Kentucky; but in her wandering, unimportant old father it seemed to Joan
+a little piteous, as if he had sunk his small identity into that of his
+great State, content to make its history his history, its glory his.
+
+"Here," he would say reverently, "is the spot where we made our final
+victorious stand against the Indians. Sacred ground, my daughter!"
+Or--"This is the place where our women went down to the spring for
+water, risking their lives, bless their hearts! because the men could
+not be spared from the defense of the stockade. You should thank God
+that you are a Kentucky woman!" He sometimes forgot in his enthusiasm
+that she had not been, so to speak, born to the purple--though that
+fact, as he once explained to her, was merely an accident, due to a
+certain miscalculation of dates.
+
+Joan came to realize in this new intimacy with her father that his
+futility was owing in large part to circumstances over which he had no
+control: notably the times in which he lived. He had been born a little
+too late or perhaps a little too early. There is no need for men of his
+type in the piping times of peace; but had his prime chanced to occur
+during some convulsed period of the world's history, it is conceivable
+that Richard Darcy might have rendered a great account of himself. He
+was a born leader of men, with unfortunately little opportunity to
+exercise his talent. During the only war that came within his range of
+vision (our late unpleasantness with Spain), he had chanced to be
+involved with certain trusting friends in a financial situation so acute
+that the affairs of the nation had been obliged to stand aside until he
+extricated himself; by which time, to his lasting regret, the war was
+over.
+
+He had, of course, no right to his title. It had simply accrued to him
+as titles often do accrue to men of his type, particularly in the South;
+partly by inheritance, growing as he grew, beginning with a modest
+lieutenancy in the State Guards, which had been his one and only taste
+of the career for which he had been created. He never spoke of himself
+as "Major"; but from the habit of years he had perhaps come to think of
+himself so, accepting the unsought honor gracefully as he accepted
+whatever else came his way, whether of good or evil.
+
+It is a pity that he could not have fallen asleep, say, at twenty, in
+his clean, brave youth; and awakened in the month of August 1914, ready
+for the day's work....
+
+The Darcys and Joan were running home after a long trip in the Bluegrass
+one evening, slipping along without lights in the glow of an October
+aftermath, when at the turn of an unfrequented lane they came suddenly
+upon a crowd of people collected about a bridge. The chauffeur brought
+the car to an abrupt stop. It was at once surrounded by several men with
+handkerchiefs tied over the lower parts of their faces.
+
+"What the devil--" cried Major Darcy.
+
+"Highwaymen!" gasped Joan.
+
+A man with a pistol in his hand said laconically, "No, we ain't
+highwaymen, lady. We wasn't expectin' comp'ny, but sence you've come,
+you'll hev to stay. Set right where you are and don't look. We'll be
+through this job in a minute."
+
+"Nonsense! Let us pass at once," said the Major indignantly. "Drive on
+over the bridge, James!"
+
+"Better not, James," drawled the laconic one. "We're usin' that bridge
+ourselves just now."
+
+The chauffeur hesitated, walling his eyes in fright. Joan, who was
+seated beside him, reached for the ignition switch to start the engine,
+but turned on instead the lighting-switch. The sudden glare of the
+headlights revealed some twenty or thirty roughly dressed men of the
+farmer class, and in their midst, bound hand and foot with rope, a
+cowering negro.
+
+"My God! It's a lynching," quavered Effie May.
+
+The Major had by this time collected his startled wits.
+
+With a sudden oath he jerked open the door and got out.
+
+"What are you up to here, men? Don't touch me, sir!"--this to one who
+had laid a hand on his sleeve.
+
+There was a quality in her father's voice that sent a thrill through
+Joan. She had never heard it before. The man removed his hand.
+
+"We're just stringin' up a nigger for the best of reasons," he
+explained. "'Tain't no business of yourn, stranger."
+
+"I'll make it my business," said Richard Darcy sternly. "You're not
+going to disgrace this State while _I_ am here!"
+
+The effect was histrionic; and yet Joan realized that her father was not
+blustering. He meant it.
+
+There came a wail from beyond that made her shiver, the cry of a man in
+mortal terror. "I ain't never done it, 'fore Gawd I ain't never tetched
+that woman. Oh, Boss! O-o-oh, Boss!" It was like the cry of a damned
+soul to God. "_Don'_ you let 'em git me!"
+
+There was an agony of hope in the appeal, as of one who sees at hand
+unexpected deliverance.
+
+The Major responded to it, speaking in quiet reassurance as she had
+sometimes heard him speak, years ago, when she had wakened out of some
+nightmare in the little bed beside her parents'.
+
+"All right, boy. They shan't get you,"
+
+He strode through the crowd, putting men out of his way right and left.
+In sheer surprise they let him pass till he reached the negro, who
+cringed to him, catching at his hand.
+
+Then a voice cried out, "Here, we're wastin' time. Muzzle the old boy!"
+
+The Major turned and stared magnificently in the direction of his voice,
+nettled by the term "old boy."
+
+"Evidently," he remarked, "the gentleman does not know who I am!"
+
+Joan was seized with an hysterical desire to laugh. At such a moment the
+bombast of it was too much. Suppose they should inquire
+minstrel-fashion, "Well, then, Mr. Johnsing, who _are_ you?"
+
+But the crowd was not as used to her father as she was. They hesitated,
+impressed by his hauteur, his fine clothes, the waiting limousine. They
+stirred uneasily. A voice near her murmured, "Mebbe it's the Governor!"
+
+Richard Darcy took instant advantage of the impression he had created,
+and began to speak. It was not the first time she had heard him make a
+speech, for he was frequently called upon to aid some friend in turning
+the tide of political battle. The Major, indeed, had rather a reputation
+for assisting his friends into office--It was typical of Joan that she
+listened critically despite her thumping heart; that she watched what
+she could see of the faces about her, picked out by the lights of the
+car; that she missed no expression on the gray, working features of the
+negro, darting wild glances about him like a newly caged wolf she had
+seen once at the Zoo, frantically eying the people who stood to stare at
+it.
+
+Her father's voice poured out in a golden flood, running the gamut from
+anger to gentle suasion. It was the voice of the natural orator, which
+depends very little for its effect upon words. Once, passing a negro
+church, Joan had heard just such a voice rising and falling within, and
+though not a word of the sermon reached her, after a few moments she had
+been almost ready to sway and moan with the congregation as it muttered,
+"Yas, good Lawd!" "Be mussiful to us po' sinners" "Come, Jesus, come
+down and take me home!"
+
+Some such effect began to be visible on the Major's audience. There were
+stirrings and murmurings that suggested applause. He rose to them. The
+eloquence that lies so close under the skin of Southern-born
+men--certainly of all Southern-born men of Irish stock--came to the
+surface and flowered. He showed this handful of rough farmers what it
+should mean to them to be natives of so great and glorious a
+commonwealth ("'Commonwealth'--what a splendid word, my friends!");
+wearing in her bosom all the riches of the earth, nourishing at that
+bosom a race of supermen ("And superwomen, my friends! superwomen!");
+carrying in her womb the greatness of the country's future.
+
+"Statesmen we give to the world--law-makers, not lawbreakers! Soldiers
+we give, not midnight marauders and assassins!" (If he borrowed freely
+from a certain greater Kentucky orator who speaks only with his pen, the
+Major was unaware of plagiarism.) "Show me the fools who say Kentuckians
+are lawless? We make our laws as we need them, gentlemen--and we obey
+them! Perhaps the greatest of our laws is this: 'Never kick a dog when
+it is down.'" His voice sank to a warm and personal friendliness. "I ask
+you, gentlemen--is there any dog more down than the negro? It is not his
+fault that he is here where he is no longer wanted. It is not his fault
+that he brought with him when he came the ways and the intelligence of
+the jungle. It is ours, perhaps, that he has kept them. We shall never
+tame the negro by proving ourselves savages!--My friends, you and I here
+in Kentucky pride ourselves on breaking our horses and our dogs by means
+of kindness. Shall we do less for our unfortunate black brother?"
+
+A voice in the crowd remarked, "_You_ can claim kin with him ef you want
+to, Jedge--_I_ ain't!"
+
+A ripple of laughter greeted this sally, and Joan's tension relaxed. She
+felt intuitively that a crowd which laughs does not kill.
+
+While he spoke, her father had more than once caught her eye over the
+heads of the others, urgently, meaningly. Now he nodded to her. Joan
+suddenly caught the message he was trying to convey.
+
+"He wants us to go to him. Quick, James! Start your engine. Quietly!"
+
+In his nervousness, however, the chauffeur started the car with a jerk,
+and many faces moved in their direction. The Major turned on the full
+tide of his voice, and rose to his climax.
+
+"My friends," he asked solemnly, "have you thought to take into your
+hands the privilege of the Most High, who saith, 'Vengeance is mine'?
+Perhaps you have called vengeance 'justice'? Even so there is a finer
+thing than justice. There is mercy. And there is something we may give
+even greater than mercy--something to which each of us poor souls has a
+human right. I refer, gentlemen, to the benefit of the doubt.
+
+"Some day every one of us here present--who knows how soon?--must stand
+before the Judgment Seat, cowering as this wretch is cowering now. And
+what we dare to ask then will be perhaps not justice, nor even
+mercy--but simply the benefit of the doubt."
+
+Tears came into Joan's eyes. It seemed to her that for a moment her
+father had forgotten his purpose there, and was speaking not for another
+but for himself....
+
+His mind, however, had not left the business in hand. After a slight and
+telling pause, he said in his ordinary conversational voice, "Now I am
+going to take this negro with me, gentlemen, if you don't mind. I have
+at hand a safe conveyance, as you see. I pledge you my word to deliver
+him in person to the sheriff of this county."
+
+He beckoned to Joan.
+
+The spell was broken, and pandemonium reigned. "Look out--he's makin' a
+get-away!"
+
+"Aw, what's the use? Leave him go!"
+
+"By God, it was _my sister_--"
+
+"Let me at him"--
+
+"The gen'leman's right, I tell you!"--
+
+And penetrating all a laconic drawl, "Stranger, leggo that nigger, and
+leggo quick."
+
+Joan, on tiptoe, saw her father's head and beckoning hand above the
+crowd.
+
+"Go on, James!" she said tensely. "Never mind if you run them down--"
+
+"Stop!" gasped Effie May. "Don't you see those pistols? They mean to
+shoot!"
+
+The terrified James did not know which to obey.
+
+"Here, give me the wheel," ordered Joan. "Be quiet, Effie May!" Into her
+mind came scornfully one of her father's sayings, "The canaille are
+invariably timid."
+
+Effie May suddenly screamed again. "They're going to _shoot_!"
+
+And as if at a signal for which they had been waiting, two shots barked
+out.
+
+The Major, still finely erect, thrust the negro behind him, and at the
+same moment Joan sprang out of the car to go to his defense; two
+instinctive acts which proved them father and child, and also proved
+indubitably the Darcy right to pride of race.
+
+His steady voice reached her again as she struggled through the milling
+crowd; "You poor fools, look to what your folly has already led you!
+You've shot the wrong man. You've shot _me_!"
+
+There was a second of appalled silence. Then a man muttered "Golly!" and
+turned and fled. His panic was contagious. One after another, by twos
+and threes, the lynchers melted hastily away. When Joan reached her
+father he was seated on the ground, leaning for support against the
+bridge railing, alone except for the shackled negro.
+
+He still had command of the situation. "Take my penknife, Dollykins, and
+set this boy free so that he can run," he ordered.
+
+Joan cut the ropes, sick with relief. He was so calm that she thought he
+must have been bluffing the crowd.
+
+"Dad! Dad! You're not really hurt, then?"
+
+He smiled up at her. "Not hurt, my child. Killed," he said, dramatic to
+the last....
+
+The negro did not run. In return for his defender's heroism, he
+performed a small act of heroism himself--not so small either, perhaps,
+considering that his life depended upon what use he made of the next few
+hours.
+
+"I'll tote him to de car, lady," he offered, pantingly; and delayed
+further to give the paralyzed chauffeur instructions as to where to find
+the nearest doctor.
+
+Joan sat on the floor of the limousine with her father's head in her
+lap, only half aware of his labored, fluttering breath, of the blood
+upon her dress, of her step-mother's wild pleadings with him just to
+look at her, just to say one word to his Effie May, who loved him--
+
+She was strangely exalted. Her mind seemed to have slipped into a region
+of consciousness where things were made suddenly clear to her, troubling
+questions answered, doubts set forever aside.
+
+"A gentleman," she kept repeating to herself. "A gentleman!"
+
+It seemed to her in that moment a great thing to have been born a
+gentleman, even if one became nothing more; to know that whatever the
+fortunes of life, one would be able to meet them gallantly and unafraid,
+because of a something within stronger than personal will or habit: the
+sum of the wills and habits of many ancestors. She was sorry for the
+_canaille_, the Effie Mays, who had no such inner power to rely upon....
+
+As they carried him into a doctor's office, Richard Darcy's eyes opened.
+They passed the face of his frantic wife unseeing, and came to rest upon
+Joan in some anxiety.
+
+"You all right, Dollykins? Must not allow--mere trifle like
+this--upset--"
+
+"Nothing shall upset me, Father," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Children so necessary--family traditions--"
+
+She bent close to him. "My son is going to be proud to carry on the
+family traditions, dear."
+
+His face cleared. "Good girl!" There was a little bubbling breath. "I
+promised Mary--"
+
+But Joan never learned what promise it was that he had made, and
+doubtless broken, to his Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+Joan herself, like other self-reliant people, sometimes made promises
+which she was unable to keep. She had made such a one to her father.
+Despite her best efforts, the fact and manner of his death did manage to
+upset her, disastrously.
+
+The day came not long afterwards when for hours, years, they seemed to
+her, Joan was aware of nothing but pain, and of the fact that miserable,
+terrified Archie must somehow be got out of the way before she lost
+control of herself. She thought that when she could get enough breath to
+do it, she would ask him to go down town and bring her some ice-cream or
+something; but when she did open her lips they emitted, entirely without
+permission, a queer sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a croak.
+
+"Goodness! This is no way for a gentleman to behave," she said to
+herself oddly; and must have spoken aloud, for the voice of Ellen Neal
+responded.
+
+"There, there, my lamb! Yell all you want. You ain't no gentleman, thank
+goodness! but just a poor little girl who's got a right to holler all
+she likes. That's _one_ right the men-folks ain't going to deny us and
+get away with it--not them!"
+
+Ellen as she spoke glared truculently at the doctor. It was not the
+first accouchement at which she had assisted, and at such moments she
+became feministic almost to the point of violence. Even Archie found it
+safer to remain out of reach of her accusing eye.
+
+But long, very long afterwards, Ellen herself admitted him once more to
+the Presence, for the sake of the burden he carried--a subdued, queerly
+gentle Ellen, with all the acerbity gone from voice and manner, and in
+its place something rather beautiful. It was motherhood that glowed in
+her, had any one cared to notice; motherhood come by vicariously, as
+Ellen Neal came by all the loveliness in life.
+
+"See, my lamb," she murmured, bending over the bed. "Open them pretty
+eyes and look who's here! Come close, Mr. Archie, and show her the
+present you've brought her. Quiet, now!--she ain't up to much. It's a
+surprise, Joie. Open your eyes and look!"
+
+It was a surprise, indeed. Joan, by great effort, managed to focus her
+gaze on Archie's burden. She shut her eyes quickly, and opened them
+again. They were still there; not one, but two little wrinkled, fuzzy
+heads.
+
+"Can you beat it?" demanded Archie, shakily, "Some little present, eh?"
+He held them out to her.
+
+Joan's lips moved, twitching. "From a Friend," was what she said; and
+Archie, recognizing a jest on sight, let out such a roar of joy that the
+twins awoke with pin-prick wails, and a nurse came running, and he was
+thrust once more into outer darkness.
+
+There a message was brought to him. "Your wife says why don't you
+telegraph President Roosevelt about it?"
+
+And literal Archie did so....
+
+But this was the last laughter heard in the house of Blair for many a
+weary week. Twins require more strength for their bearing and rearing
+than Joan, taken so unawares, was able to provide. The Major's final act
+of gallantry cost a good deal in the way of human life, which may, or
+may not, have been of more value than the life he saved.
+
+Afterwards, when she was able to think again, Joan sometimes wondered
+whether his death was not perhaps an even more futile thing than his
+life had been; yet she would not have had it otherwise.
+
+His widow had caused to be erected to his memory the finest granite
+monolith obtainable for money, bearing the inscription, "Greater love
+hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends";
+and Joan, after her first startled distaste for the grandiloquence
+passed, was able to appreciate how deeply the memorial must gratify the
+proud spirit of a Darcy, if it lingered near enough to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+    Through the dim corridors, the silent halls
+    Of Yesterday, the nuns move, whispering
+    Their rosary. Without, a robin calls
+    A drowsy blessing to his little mate,
+    For it is late,
+    And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer.
+    And Christ is there.
+
+    Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory--!
+    _Et verbum caro factum est_, they sing,
+    And lo! the years are as a day to me.
+    I kneel among the quiet ones again
+    To lay the pain,
+    The joy of life, where light and shadow meet
+    At Jesus' feet.
+
+
+Some time earlier, during the period when girl-emotions translate
+themselves into verse as naturally as bird-emotions translate themselves
+into song, Joan had composed these lines, with the odd prescience that
+frequently came to her when she "took her pen in hand." She had stepped
+aside from a heated game of handball one day to jot them down; and her
+play-fellows, evincing no particular surprise, had murmured to each
+other, "Leave Joan alone. She's writing Poetry." For poetry is as much a
+part of convent school-life as is handball.
+
+Now she was back among "the quiet ones" again, fulfilling her own
+prophecy, come to lay her burden of pain and joy, if not at Jesus' feet,
+at least in the safekeeping of his handmaidens. In her plain black
+frock, such as convent girls wear, with her hair down in a braid and a
+small apron tied about her waist, to protect her skirt from
+embroidery-floss, the nuns found it hard to believe it was Joan Blair
+who had come back to them out of the world, and not Joan Darcy. Only
+this was a Joan who played harder than her younger self had ever played,
+entering into the gaiety of the school, the basket-ball, the charades,
+the skating-matches, the fancy-dress impromptus, with a feverish
+eagerness which saddened the good ladies to see. Strange, vivid,
+restless young creature--what she had learned of life in the short while
+she had been away from them! Love, motherhood, and loss--the loss that
+is saddest of all losses to women, be they wives or maids or
+_religieuses_. While they in their silent corridors and hidden gardens
+had listened to month after quiet month rung away by the bells, praying,
+dreaming, working; tending the young life about them into blossom,
+sometimes carrying with candles one of their number back to a still
+place beyond the children's playground, sometimes--not often
+now--receiving into their ranks one who had done with the world's ways
+even before she came to know them. Truly "the quiet ones," blessed with
+the peace of those who resign their wills to the will of God.
+
+Joan, gazing into their serene, pure, almost childlike faces, envied
+them from her heart; but, being Joan, she asked herself wonderingly how
+they could be so sure it was the will of God to which they resigned
+themselves. Intelligent, fine-natured women, deliberately turning their
+backs on life, deliberately closing eyes and ears to what went on in the
+street just outside their cloister, lest it distract them from
+contemplation of their immortal souls--Joan shook her head sharply; and
+putting a veil over her hair, slipped into the chapel, where a voice
+behind the cloister-screen was repeating the rosary of the Sacred Heart:
+
+    "Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, burning with love for us,
+     Inflame our hearts with love for Thee."
+
+The beautiful voice rose and fell in almost passionate cadence, as if it
+were pleading. It ceased abruptly; and another, older voice took up the
+words, with mystic tenderness. There was a faint fragrance in the
+place--indeed throughout the old building--of incense and dying roses,
+which Joan always called to herself "the odor of sanctity." It came back
+to her sometimes poignantly in the most unexpected places.
+
+A very old lay-sister, in a white coif and shoes that creaked a trifle,
+pottered about among the statues of the saints, arranging small lamps
+and vases of flowers, always dropping as she passed the altar a
+business-like little curtsey. Now and then a child with a veil over her
+head would slip in at the door, and genuflect, and sink to her knees for
+a moment's prayer. Sunlight streamed in, multi-colored, through ruby and
+purple and amber glass, across the white marble Christ who stood with
+hands outstretched and head bowed, suffering little children to come
+unto Him....
+
+Joan, who had been reading Rénan (a fact which would have certainly
+caused her expulsion from that place had it been known), quoted to
+herself:
+
+     "In our bustling civilization, the memory of the life of
+     Galilee has been like the perfume of another world."
+
+It seemed to her one of the true miracles that it should indeed have
+persisted through our bustling civilization, through persecution and
+indifference, through crass hysterical religiosity, even to this day; if
+only in such places as her convent school, and little country churches
+here and there, and in the homes of the very poor. That lovely,
+pastoral, gentle life of Galilee, exquisite as the name itself--who
+could not have been good in Galilee?
+
+"If Archie had lived then, he would have followed Christ," thought Joan
+suddenly. "Followed him, and fought for him, too. And he'd never have
+let the Jews get hold of him!"
+
+It was the first time she had thought of her husband in many days....
+
+Archie's letters came with faithful regularity, but he was one of the
+personalities who do not carry well by letter. He informed her that he
+missed her, but she was not to hurry home on his account; that Ellen was
+keeping down the grocer-bill nicely; that the new man he had put on the
+road wasn't doing well and he thought of putting Johnny Carmichael in
+his place; that one of the water-pipes had burst and made a spot on the
+wall, but nothing to fret about; and that if she needed more money be
+sure to let him know. Or words to that effect.
+
+Archie, somehow, was never quite in the picture. She was better able to
+reconstruct her lost girlhood without him.
+
+And Archie understood. It was he who had suggested the Convent when
+Joan's doctor admitted himself dissatisfied with her condition, her slow
+return to normality.
+
+"You've got a peculiarly sensitive nervous organism to deal with here,"
+the doctor said. "It takes very little to throw such natures off the
+balance. You say she never speaks of her babies at all? I don't like
+that! I'd rather have her crying about all over the place."
+
+"So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could
+comfort her. Now I don't dare!"
+
+"I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone."
+
+So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and
+asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the
+tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting
+married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as
+if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her
+useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a
+religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom
+by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement,
+and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to
+enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some
+time been afraid.
+
+Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple,
+orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded
+the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed
+the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's
+uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily
+prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it.
+
+She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to
+forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather
+frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan
+was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their
+husbands, else how could they remain wives?
+
+"She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive.
+"We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."
+
+"Humph! and what about you? I suppose you ain't had a good deal of a
+shock yourself?" muttered the old woman, savage with sympathy. "Wasn't
+you bringing home toys and truck every day of the world, trains and
+dolls and I don't know what all--and them not a week old yet? Your top
+chiffoneer drawer's full of toys this minute."
+
+"Better give them away to the children in the neighborhood before she
+sees them."
+
+"No such thing! I'll be savin' 'em for the next," said Ellen,
+stoutly....
+
+Oddly enough, Joan was presently restored to her husband and her duty
+through the medium of no less a person than Eduard Desmond.
+
+She was chaperoning some of the younger girls in town one day, when she
+met him on the street. She was surprised by the encounter, for she had
+not known he was in Washington; and she bowed uncertainly, expecting him
+to be a little embarrassed.
+
+But he stopped, and held out his hand with evident pleasure. "Mrs.
+Blair! you?" he exclaimed. "What wonderful luck brings you to
+Washington? and where are you stopping?"
+
+Joan briefly explained.
+
+"Then," he said with a notable accession of eagerness, "Mr. Blair is not
+with you?"
+
+Some long-slumbering imp of malice awoke and stirred in Joan. His
+expression as he looked her up and down was unmistakable. Evidently
+matrimony had detracted nothing from her in his eyes. On the contrary.
+
+"No, Mr. Blair is not with me," she replied demurely. "I am on a
+vacation. Why should one carry a husband about on a vacation?"
+
+This was Longmeadow language, the native tongue of Mr. Desmond.
+
+"Why, indeed?" he murmured. "And when am I to come to see you?"
+
+"I'm not sure you are to come at all. We're not allowed masculine
+callers at the Convent, I think; are we, dear?" she asked the young girl
+nearest to her.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Blair!--on Wednesday afternoons, if they're brothers or
+cousins or anything like that," replied the child shyly.
+
+Eduard smiled. "I am not a cousin or a brother--fortunately--but perhaps
+I may be called 'something like that!'--Next Wednesday afternoon, then?"
+
+"I'm not really sure that I shall be able to see you," she demurred.
+
+"I am!" replied Eduard calmly; and, lifting his hat, he passed on.
+
+He proved himself a true prophet. Joan could not deny herself the bitter
+satisfaction of seeing at what a small fire she had managed so to scorch
+her young wings.
+
+He had been waiting half an hour in the convent parlor when she came to
+him, however; and half an hour in a convent parlor is an ordeal few
+forget. It was a large, bleak room divided midway by a grille, on the
+inner side of which sat a lay-sister, knitting. The other side was left
+for the reception of male relatives and connections; and a tongue-tied,
+uneasy lot they were, slipping about on the horsehair sofas, staring
+furtively at the undecorative saints who adorned the walls, conducting
+their conversation obviously with a view to the other side of the
+grille.
+
+"For heaven's sake, get me out of this!" murmured Desmond as Joan
+approached. "I feel as if the eye of God were on me constantly!"
+
+"It's only the eye of Sister Veronica," reassured Joan, "and more her
+ear than her eye, I fancy."
+
+"You don't mean that she can hear what we are saying, in there?"
+
+"I've been told there's a sounding-board concealed about this room
+somewhere. It may not be true, of course; but it's wonderful how much
+does get back to the Convent from the parlor."
+
+Eduard shuddered. "There's goose-flesh up and down my spine! Do come out
+for a walk somewhere."
+
+She shook her head, smiling. "Can't be done! But of course you haven't
+anything to say to me that Sister Veronica shouldn't hear."
+
+"Haven't I, just?" he muttered.
+
+The imp of malice stirred in her again. She asked softly, "What, for
+instance?"
+
+He gave her a quick look, glanced toward the grille, and plunged, albeit
+in a very low voice.
+
+"For one thing I want to tell you how lovely you've grown!"
+
+"Louder, please?" said Joan, "I missed that."
+
+He repeated it, with additions. "And you need not pretend you did not
+hear me, either, you witch. What's happened to you, Joan? I always knew
+you'd be a wonderful creature some day, but already!--Those exquisite
+shadows under the eyes, the hollow of your cheek, your lips--What I'd
+give to paint you now, my dear! Only that it would waste our time
+together. How much time have you, by the way? For me, I mean?"
+
+"You find me improved, then?" she enquired, demurely.
+
+"Improved! I find you--never mind what I find you! There's a subtlety, a
+fascination--But I can't express it."
+
+"There must be a subtlety indeed if _you_ can't express it," she
+commented; and added, "How is Mrs. Rossiter?"
+
+If she expected to disconcert him, she was disappointed. He informed her
+at length as to the health, appearance, and conjugal felicity of Mrs.
+Rossiter.
+
+"They're actually pulling it off," he said interestedly. "They're making
+a go of it. I've always had the theory that once a divorcée always a
+divorcée--the old-fashioned gentlewoman is more to my taste. Divorce
+always seems to me so--so unnecessary--But in this case it appears I am
+mistaken, and nobody is happier to admit it. They positively fancy each
+other, Philemon and Baucis, all that sort of thing!--By the way, I had
+no idea you had made such friends with May. You gave her my bracelet, it
+seems. Cruel of you, Joan!"
+
+"Did it hurt your feelings?" she murmured, dimpling.
+
+"Oh, frightfully. How did you have the heart? She positively gloated
+over me."
+
+"Father would never have allowed me to accept anything so handsome from
+a passing acquaintance. One had to do something with it, you see, so--"
+
+"Passing acquaintance!" he interrupted, reproachfully. "Surely I was
+more to you than that? Our evening under the beech-tree--shall I ever
+forget it?"
+
+Joan, paling a little, remarked, "Sister Veronica appears interested."
+
+"Damn!" muttered Eduard, and shortly took his leave. But first he gave
+her a note from Mrs. Desmond urging her to dine with them on any evening
+she cared to name.
+
+     "Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no
+     heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of
+     us, a family party."
+
+Joan hesitated.
+
+"Of course we all realize that you are not in a mood for gaiety," said
+Eduard with a sympathetic glance at her black. "But I _must_ see you
+somehow!--and among old friends, who understand--"
+
+To ward off any mention of things that hurt, she hastily agreed to dine
+with the Desmonds on the following Saturday.
+
+Sister Veronica, (who happened to be quite deaf) wondered what could
+have occurred to give the poor child such an expression of--not exactly
+pleasure. It was more like triumph. She would have made no sense of what
+Joan was muttering under her breath, Salome-wise, as she left the
+parlor: "Off with his head! Oh, off with his head, _and step on it_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Not only the older girls, but more than one of the nuns, made some
+excuse to come into Joan's little room when she was dressing that
+Saturday evening. The rumor had gone forth that their charge was
+beginning to take interest in worldly affairs again, and the good ladies
+congratulated each other. While they themselves had forsworn the
+pleasures of the world, they were quite aware that for some these had
+their uses, if only as an anodyne. They took, too, a quite feminine
+pleasure in Joan's frock, a simple black chiffon with transparent
+sleeves, which she had cut out a little at the neck to make it suitable
+for the evening.
+
+"I suppose," said the Reverend Mother, making her turn round and round
+for inspection, "that this is what they call in the world a décolleté
+basque, is it not? And very becoming, too! Only"--she added with the
+frank conventual innocence that occasionally startled Joan, "does not
+such a display of the person tend to encourage lust of the eye, my
+child?"
+
+Joan laughed a little. "Let us hope so, Mother!" she murmured. "We
+strive to please"--a remark which the old lady trusted that she had
+misunderstood.
+
+Her striving on that occasion was by no means in vain. There seems
+something peculiarly alluring to the masculine taste (as women of the
+oldest profession in the world are quite aware) about black. Joan, with
+nothing to relieve her somberness except a cluster of white gardenias at
+her breast, would have held the gaze of any man who saw her as surely as
+she held that of Eduard and of Betty's father, who had hitherto not
+known his daughter's friend and openly regretted his missed opportunity.
+She was one of the women whom motherhood, even denied and thwarted
+motherhood, gives a momentary poignant beauty, of the sort that Leonardo
+loved to paint. Betty's father was indeed so regretful of his missed
+opportunity that it was with some difficulty Eduard secured the
+tête-à-tête upon which he had counted.
+
+"At last!" he sighed when he had finally manoeuvered her into the
+conservatory to admire orchids. "I began to think this was going to be
+another wasted hour, like my ghastly experience of the monastic
+life.--Do you realize, my dear, that I am entitled to a little praise
+and comforting on your part?"
+
+"Just why?"
+
+"Why? Why, because of the discretion, the magnanimity, in fact the utter
+damn-fool quixotism of my late conduct! At Longmeadow, you know. Leaving
+you--when I might have stayed!"
+
+Joan was rather startled. She had not expected him to carry the war into
+the enemy's country to such an extent as this.
+
+"That makes twice," he murmured, leaning over her, "that I've let you go
+unscathed, my dear. When you left school--and when you came back to me.
+But--Fate is too strong for us. You're not expecting me, I hope, to let
+you go a third time?"
+
+"In just about five minutes," she smiled, glancing at her wristwatch.
+"I've ordered my taxi for ten o'clock."
+
+He gave a little exclamation, and caught her hand. "Don't pretend to be
+so cool and indifferent, you witch! I know you better than that.
+You--cool and indifferent! Have I forgotten that night under the
+beech-tree? Have you?"
+
+Joan suddenly blazed out at him, white with anger. "No! I've not
+forgotten that. Nor afterwards."
+
+"Afterwards?"
+
+"Will you be good enough to tell me in plain language what was your idea
+in running away?"
+
+He eyed her appreciatively. He liked a touch of temper in a woman. It
+gave them a zest your amiable creatures lack.
+
+"Why, Beautiful, what else as a man of honor could I do? A thing like
+that doesn't stand still, you know! The flare dies out--or it goes
+further. Our flare would not have died out."
+
+Her lip curled. "And as 'a man of honor' it never occurred to you that
+we might preserve our flare, as it were, in marriage?"
+
+He sighed ruefully. "Oh, yes, it did! That temptation, too, I had to
+fight. For you see, my dear, I don't believe in marriage. I've seen too
+much of it (vicariously). Believe me, it preserves no flares! It
+quenches them. The thing's as fatal as death--though not, thank God, as
+inevitable! I will not put a relation I value to a test it will not
+bear," he explained, evidently in earnest. "What!--tie a creature of
+spirit and fire like yourself to the duty of forever loving one man,
+obeying one man, giving yourself into his hands to break at his leisure?
+Can you think of any surer way of killing love than to make a duty of
+it? 'Duty'--the most hideous, cold, Puritanical word in our hideous,
+cold, Puritanical language! The French put it better. _Devoir_ suggests
+something that is by no means cold. Therefore, dearest girl"--he kissed
+her hands--"let me pay you my _devoirs_ always, and be sure that I shall
+never trouble you with anything so unpleasant as a 'duty.'--Why, suppose
+I had taken you then, bound you hand and foot to me by law--think how
+bored we should be with each other already! It would be from me you
+would be taking a vacation, instead of from the unfortunate Blair."
+(Joan winced.) "As it is--"
+
+"Well?" she prompted, veiling her eyes. "As it is--Eduard?"
+
+He drew her toward him with little inarticulate murmurs. She took a
+fleeting glance at the face approaching hers. It was flushed, the eyes a
+trifle glazed as if he had been drinking. He breathed hard.
+
+"How unbecoming it is to them!" she thought, but without resisting. (The
+reader who happens to like Joan would do well to skip this paragraph. It
+is not our heroine at her best.)
+
+"As it is," said Eduard rather hoarsely, "we have each other for all
+time, my Beautiful! Nothing to bind us, nothing to hold us, except our
+sacred--er--"
+
+"Flare?" prompted Joan, helpfully.
+
+But he was not paying his usual attention to words just then. He lifted
+her face to his, and closed his eyes the better to savor what was
+coming....
+
+An unexpected sound caused him to open them again. It was laughter,
+issuing from the very lips he was about to enjoy; not hysterical,
+nervous laughter such as might have been pardoned under the
+circumstances, but cool and sweet, and unimpassioned as the tinkling of
+ice in a pitcher.
+
+"You're not really trying to warm it up and serve it over again?"
+protested Joan, as she extricated herself from his embrace. "How absurd!
+I thought you were too much of an artist for that. And at your age,
+too!"
+
+She sauntered back to the others, still laughing over her shoulder. He
+did not follow.
+
+Which may be said to have been the end of Eduard Desmond, so far as this
+chronicle is concerned....
+
+But it was also the end of what Joan had disloyally spoken of to him as
+her vacation. The word stuck in her memory, and she was ashamed of it.
+Her heart yearned toward Archie.
+
+The nuns bade her a delighted farewell; and all the way home she made
+amends for her long neglect of him by thinking of her husband
+constantly. By contrast with Eduard's smooth hair, his slim hands, and
+well-modulated, expressive voice, Archie appeared to her the very
+epitome of manliness. She idealized his defects into beauties, big ears,
+clumsiness, and all. She remembered with a thrill how easily he carried
+her upstairs when she was tired, how he went tiptoeing squeakily about
+the house in the morning for fear of waking her, whispering in tones
+that would have roused the dead--Blessed, funny old Archie! She could
+hardly wait for the sight of him.
+
+Yet when she did see him, through the car-window, watching the platform
+for her appearance as tensely as a terrier watches a rathole, Joan
+shrank back with a faint gasp. He was looking quite appallingly dapper,
+with shiny new shoes and a Derby hat--an article of wear not designed
+for people with badly adjusted ears; and his mouth hung slightly open in
+his eagerness, showing the infantile front teeth, through which issued
+(she could almost hear it) a sort of a tuneful hissing, as was his way
+in moments of emotion, just to show that he was not nervous or excited
+in the least.
+
+Joan shrank back, the last person to leave the train. And as she passed
+a mirror, catching a glimpse of her pale face within it she whispered
+piteously, "Oh, Joan Darcy, what have you done?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+For the modern woman there lies, fortunately, a life between the two
+extremes of domesticity and frivolity, both of which Joan had tried and
+found wanting. Or rather she had not found domesticity wanting so much
+as temporary--a period of tranquil suspense, as it were, leading up to
+an inevitable climax which had somehow failed to come off. Even had her
+babies lived, it is to be doubted whether Joan could have long satisfied
+herself with domesticity pure and simple; and she could no more resume
+it now than a cocoon may be resumed by a former occupant which has
+sprouted wings.
+
+As for frivolity, plenty of that offered itself to a young matron with a
+charming house and a husband who was generally spoken of as a rising
+young business man. ("Rising," Archie certainly was; he had to be, to
+keep up with his rising expenditures.)
+
+But Joan asked perhaps too much of frivolity. She had been heard to
+remark that "nothing made the social game possible except flirtation and
+real talk; neither of which were to be had in Louisville by people who
+valued their reputations"; a rather sweeping comment, of the sort which
+soon made Joan's tongue a trifle over-famous. Simple, unexacting folk
+who liked a good dinner with a game of cards afterwards for modest
+stakes, and now and then a little dancing with each other's spouses,
+just to keep in touch with the new steps, began to be rather afraid of
+young Mrs. Blair. And Joan was equally afraid of them. She had a morbid
+suspicion that dullness might be catching.
+
+There was something appalling to her, too, in what has been somewhere
+called "the infinite littleness of social life." It seemed to have a
+strangely flattening effect upon its devotees--promoting some, demoting
+others, all to the same unstimulating level, while the wheels within
+wheels shifted and reformed kaleidoscopically. These wheels within these
+wheels puzzled Joan. "Climbers," such as her step-mother, she was able
+to understand and even to sympathize with. It seemed to her quite
+natural and thoroughly American for water to seek a higher level than
+its own. That was merely progress, merely self-respect made visible. To
+"get on" appeared a quite legitimate ambition; but to "get in"--that was
+another matter. Snobbery, that word of many interpretations, meant to
+Joan the extreme form of self-confessed vulgarity.
+
+"If it were friends they were after, I could understand," she said to
+Emily Carmichael. "Everybody wants friends--we're all lonely. But you
+have got to select your real friends one at a time, not in assorted
+clumps, like bananas. And one's real friends so rarely happen to be
+friends with each other--you've noticed that? Why this passion for
+organizing ourselves into group-formation, anyway?"
+
+"For purposes of offense and defense," explained Emily. "So that we may
+leave the Mrs. Websters out, and let the Joan Darcys in, of course."
+
+They had been discussing Joan's near neighbor, a well-bred,
+sweet-mannered, adaptable young woman who had recently laid siege to the
+town, and with whom Joan was forming one of those propinquity
+friendships which are destined not to last. None of Mrs. Webster's
+friendships appeared to last. She had used acquaintance after
+acquaintance gracefully as a stepping-stone to higher things, leaving,
+however, not a single enemy behind her. It was the fashion in the
+various circles through which she had passed to say how charming Mrs.
+Webster was, even after she seemed done with them. And now, through
+Joan, she was laying tactful but so far unsuccessful siege to the
+Jabberwocks; cleverness (in moderation) having become quite the smart
+thing nowadays.
+
+"It is not our massive intellects which attract her, however," commented
+Emily. "It is--well, modesty forbids me to say just what it is. The sign
+_verboten_ is to some natures as a red rag to a bull. They simply must
+have it to play with."
+
+"Well, but why should anybody be _verboten_ to Kathy Webster?" defended
+Joan. "She's charming, and perfectly intelligent, and unmistakably a
+lady--which is more than one can say with confidence of some of our most
+indefatigable social leaders. Look at Mrs. Gunther, for
+instance!--didn't you tell me her father used to deliver meat at your
+door out of his own cart?"
+
+"Excellent meat it was, too. Father says we have never had a decent
+butcher since."
+
+"And lo, what house more exclusive than theirs?"
+
+"Naturally! It has to be. People like that seem to develop a sort of
+protective instinct which guards them from any possible contact with
+vulgarity until such time as they shall have accumulated enough
+refinement to be immune. Not for them the company of any chance newcomer
+like Mrs. Webster! They have to be careful."
+
+"But shouldn't you think they'd have a sort of fellow-feeling for the
+new arrivals?"
+
+"Dear me, no! What's the good of attaining a pinnacle if you're going to
+share it with somebody who might push you off?"
+
+Mrs. Webster's pursuit of Joan was not entirely opportunism. There was a
+good deal of admiration in it, mixed with a sort of malice which the
+larger nature had difficulty in comprehending. Joan found herself
+entered most unwillingly into an undignified petty rivalry with her
+neighbor. If she entertained some of her friends at luncheon without
+Mrs. Webster, the other instantly retaliated by giving a luncheon
+herself without Joan, sending in dessert and decorations afterwards to
+press home the point. If the Blair house in Spring put out new awnings,
+the Webster house erupted not only into awnings but into flower-boxes as
+well, with a corresponding air of triumph in its mistress. If Joan
+received some invitation which the other did not, there arose between
+them a slight, unmistakable coolness; whereas, if the contrary occurred,
+Mrs. Webster became modest and cordial again.
+
+Yet when this unpleasant rivalry lay dormant, the two had many a
+friendly, neighborly time together over their sewing and their
+gardening; and once when Joan was taken suddenly ill the other showed
+herself genuinely kind, quick with womanly help and sympathy.
+
+Joan could never quite make up her mind whether it was the pettiness of
+Society which makes the Mrs. Websters, or the Mrs. Websters who make the
+pettiness of Society. In any case, she lost what little taste she had
+for a purely social career. It was not good enough.
+
+And so she turned the pent-up energies of her nature into those
+activities which are summed up nowadays under the general title of
+Clubwork. Investigations, commissions, agitations of all sorts came in
+for their share of her attention. She soon created for herself quite a
+following of less daring spirits, among them Emily Carmichael and others
+of the Jabberwock group who had graduated from the cocoon. It became
+known that whenever young Mrs. Blair undertook a thing, it went with a
+rush, not so much through her own efforts as through those of her
+henchmen. She was recognized in club circles, despite her youth, as
+something more valuable than a mere worker; she was an executive--All of
+which fed her vanity and her sense of usefulness; and left somewhere
+within her an aching void of dissatisfaction.
+
+Suffrage-work came nearer filling this void than had anything else, and
+that, it must be confessed, for a rather ignoble reason. It gave her a
+chance to make speeches. In the back of her mind, with the very real
+conviction that the ballot is a necessity which women are unjustly
+denied, lurked also the suspicion that the world is already aware of the
+fact without any further need of agitation. Nevertheless she continued
+to agitate, because she liked to exercise an ability which otherwise
+might have remained forever undiscovered--There is no pleasure in life
+equal to that of employing skillfully the talents that have been given
+us.
+
+She made the discovery of her gift quite by accident. At some woman's
+meeting, a lady who was to have spoken on the subject of the Federal
+Amendment failed to appear, and Joan, who had recently read up on the
+matter (it may be remembered that she was what the actors call "quick
+study"), volunteered to take her place, meaning simply to give the gist
+of the matter and thus relieve a harassed chairman. But when she found
+herself on the platform facing interested and expectant faces, something
+happened that had occasionally happened before when she "play-acted" for
+the girls at school. Joan left herself, and became a part of the
+audience.
+
+She listened to her voice going on and on, with amused approval. It was
+a voice rather like her father's, carrying and flexible, and peculiarly
+rich in its intonations.
+
+"It doesn't really matter much what I say," thought Joan, listening to
+herself; "it's how I say it. If I drop my voice a note here, they ought
+to frown." (They did.) "Now I'll have them smile a little, perhaps
+chuckle. After I stop, no applause, I think--just a nice, thoughtful
+silence." (All of which came faithfully to pass.)
+
+When she stepped down from that platform, her reputation as a public
+speaker was made. Thereafter she delivered speeches whenever and
+wherever she was asked, to the incredulous delight of Archie.
+
+"Say, come over and hear the wife do her little spiel to-night!" he
+would urge upon all his acquaintance. "It's a treat!--stands right up
+and hands it to 'em hot off the reel, without a note or anything. You
+can see her little old brain workin' while she talks--and lookin' pretty
+as a picture all the time!"
+
+His pride in her was such that he presented her with a successor to
+Lizzie, a more pretentious member of the Lizzie family, in fact, in
+which to get about to her numerous committee meetings.
+
+"Of course we can afford it," he said in answer to her demur. "Haven't
+all your friends got automobiles? Well, then!"
+
+Joan accomplished much in the way of by-product to this satisfaction of
+her vanity. Her youthful charm and her good breeding got her a hearing
+frequently where more strenuous representatives of the cause had failed;
+and through her many hitherto uncertain lambs were gathered safely into
+the fold. On one occasion, to her astonishment, Joan discovered the
+three Misses Darcy in her audience, wearing expressions of shrinking
+alarm. But if they had come--not to scoff, they were too polite for
+that: let us say to deprecate,--they remained to join.
+
+"I declare it's _shameful_ the way we women have been treated all this
+time!" cried Miss Iphigenia afterwards, truculently signing the card
+which made of her a suffragette. "I'd no idea! Not allowed a word in
+edgewise, the gentlemen spending all the money and making all the laws,
+ordering us about like we were so many white slaves--"
+
+"I don't recall that darling mama was ever treated in just that way by
+dear papa?" interjected Miss Virginia, uncertainly.
+
+"Pooh! Exceptions," snorted Miss Iphigenia (if one so gentle could be
+said to snort). "Exceptions can be made to prove anything, can't they,
+Joan? Why, we haven't even had a say-so as to whether we should marry or
+not. Simply had to sit back and say 'Thank you, sir!' to any gentleman
+who was kind enough to ask us!"
+
+Here Miss Virginia was able thoroughly to concur. "And if nobody _was_
+kind enough to ask us--Oh, my dears, I begin to think that if we could
+have had the ballot in time--!"
+
+"What's more," cried Miss Iphigenia, inspired, "I mean to bring our Susy
+to hear you the next time you make a speech, Joan. Yes, I do! If they
+try to keep her out, we shall say she is there as our maid. If we are
+all to be allowed to vote about things, colored and white alike, it's
+time for the colored women to be taught how!"--Which Joan justly
+regarded as a signal victory.
+
+But at the same time she chuckled inwardly over the mental vision of an
+audience of colored lady voters, swaying to and fro with occasional
+unctuous shouts of, "Bress us, dat's so! Um, yas, my Lawd! Come down,
+come down and gadder us sinners into de fold!"
+
+Occasionally, in the pursuance of her various public successes, Joan was
+thrown into contact with people whom she classified under the heading of
+Intelligentzia. There were plenty of these in Louisville, thinkers and
+students and writers, a growing number of names which were rather better
+known away from the city than in it. But of these Joan fought a little
+shy. She cared more for books than for the making of them, had no wish
+to peep behind the scenes for fear of losing her illusions. She got the
+impression, too, that professional thinkers and writers were so busy
+observing and interpreting the life about them as to have somehow lost
+human touch with it. And Joan was nothing if not a humanist. She had a
+youthful horror of being classified among the _bas bleux_.
+
+"Men do so hate a bluestocking," she said once pensively to her friend
+Emily.
+
+"Men? Well, what of that? Yours doesn't!--and you don't want anybody
+else's men, do you?"
+
+"None that I have seen so far," admitted Joan. "But you never can tell.
+They say it's in the dangerous thirties that we really begin to sit up
+and take notice--Anyway, I shall _never_ be married and settled enough
+to relish the idea of men running away from me as if I were something
+catching!"
+
+So she continued to avoid, rather than to cultivate, the company of the
+Intelligentzia, thereby denying herself her birthright.
+
+And at twenty-five, a leading citizeness of her community, with
+engagements so thick on her calendar that there was barely time for an
+occasional meal at home, she woke every morning with the thought, "If
+something doesn't happen to-day, I shall scream!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+At that stage of life, something usually does happen....
+
+Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized
+with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that
+Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it.
+The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of
+autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like
+homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone
+unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind.
+
+     "We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the
+     slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the
+     Beauty of the World."
+
+"How _can_ one enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly
+of herself....
+
+Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a
+little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother
+had once made an English version of it:
+
+    "Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,
+      (Byushky, byu),
+    Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,
+      Smiles thy mother, too.
+
+    "Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,--
+      (Byushky, byu).
+    Blood and tears and fear and glory
+      Shall I know through you.
+
+    "But to-night thou art my small one,
+      (Byushky, byu),
+    With the moon to bless thy slumber,
+      And thy mother, too."
+
+Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and
+accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.
+
+She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately
+done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not
+safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who
+occasionally entertained musicians--But she was mistaken. It came from
+her own house.
+
+She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her
+slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside.
+Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile
+of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.
+
+Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting,
+exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have
+called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.
+
+But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the
+tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted
+yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it
+because you are too happy?"
+
+Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a
+f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just--Mother used to
+sing that song, you know."
+
+"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little--One is never
+a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."
+
+"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look
+at you!"
+
+He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in
+foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard,
+and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impassive face. They
+met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to
+melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both
+hands.
+
+"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!--And how handsome you are! I had
+forgotten that."
+
+He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.
+
+"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"
+
+"You have never been a grown-up married woman before."
+
+"I see! You mean that we've become the same age now?" She looked at him
+more closely. "And we have! Why, Stefan, you're nothing like as old as I
+used to think you!"
+
+"I never have been," he smiled. "I rather fancied you might discover
+that fact some day. But--you wouldn't wait, my dear." He turned to some
+packages on the top of the piano. "Have you become too grown-up and
+married to like presents?"
+
+The brief moment of awkwardness passed before Joan was quite sure it had
+been there. She clapped her hands. "Presents--for me? Oh, and for Ellen
+Neal, and even for Archie, whom you don't know! Stefan, how dear of
+you!"
+
+"Your people are my people," he said. "Also, I wish to propitiate them
+into allowing me the freedom of your company, you see."
+
+"Then you're going to stay for some time?" she cried, delightedly.
+
+"As long as I am allowed to--'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the
+hunter home from the hill'--"
+
+"Till he begins to feel an itching in his wanderfoot again," said Joan,
+making a little face at him. "I know you!"
+
+At that moment Ellen came in to light the lamps. "Oh, you've come, Miss
+Joan, have you? I thought it was about time! Mr. Archie'll be home
+before long," she said primly, and was about to withdraw when Joan cried
+to her, "Nellen, have you seen Mr. Nikolai?"
+
+"Sure I have. How else did you s'pose he got into the house? I'm puttin'
+a place on the supper-table for him," she replied, tossing her head.
+
+With years Ellen's temper did not become less difficult; but Joan was at
+a loss to account for its present manifestation.
+
+"Of course you are," she murmured soothingly. "But I don't believe
+you've seen the lovely present he's brought you all the way
+from--Shanghai, is it, this time?"
+
+Ellen drew near, fascinated by the shimmering length of purple crêpe.
+"Silk! For me? Shucks, what would I be doin' with stuff like that? It's
+much too fine for the likes of me!"
+
+"Nothing is too fine for the likes of you," replied Nikolai, with quiet
+sincerity.
+
+"Why, you'll be perfectly grand in it, Nellen, with the Battenberg
+collar and cuffs!"
+
+She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept
+such things off a gentleman."
+
+"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," reassured Joan, keeping a
+straight face.
+
+But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of
+her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"
+
+"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each
+time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety
+of her sheepfold."
+
+"That's because you are what she calls a 'for'ner.'"
+
+"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it
+in their hearts to trust a Jew."
+
+"But you're only half a Jew!"
+
+"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without
+bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."
+
+He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long
+string of them with pearls between, and a tassel of pearls at either
+end.
+
+She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned
+more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her
+aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring
+out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"
+
+"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they
+are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them--The
+sapphires are better."
+
+She patted his hand. "It _is_ so nice to have somebody about again who
+notices whether I have eyes or not!"
+
+"Surely your Archibald notices?"
+
+"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate,
+like praising something of his own, you know."
+
+Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be
+in--I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"
+
+She gave him a quick glance. "I wonder what you mean by that?"
+
+But Nikolai did not explain. He said instead, "I am sorry you have no
+children."
+
+She stiffened. Among her friends it had come to be understood that
+children were best not mentioned to Joan. There was a hidden bruise
+which time seemed to have left unhealed.
+
+Nikolai, however, chose not to heed the warning of her expression.
+
+"A home without children in it," he added, "seems to us wandering folk
+only half a home."
+
+Joan stood up, a hand at her throat. "What do you think," she said in a
+stifled voice, "it seems to us who are not wandering folk?..."
+
+In three questions Stefan Nikolai had discovered about the Blair
+household all and more than he wanted to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door and Archie
+came in; a weary, cheerful Archie, not quite so dapper as of old, but
+rather the better for that, perhaps.
+
+"Hello, darlingest!--'Late as usual.' There--I said it first! Things do
+sort of pile up on a person. Why, look who's here? Wait! I know you--"
+he extended an eager hand of welcome to the man who rose to greet him.
+"I'll bet my hat it's Joan's pal, the author. Guessed you, didn't I?
+Only you said he was an old chap, Joan!--Well, well, well! Welcome to
+our city. I thought you were projickin' round, as the darkies say, in
+Mesopotamia or Timbuctoo or some such spot. Gee, it's been good as a
+geography lesson just to read the postmarks on your letters, sir! You've
+come to stay with us, of course? Hotel--nonsense!"
+
+The two shook hands warmly. Despite the breeziness of her husband's
+manner, Joan detected in it a respect which pleased her. This was no
+mere family friend Archie was welcoming to his city; it was Mr. Nikolai,
+the Author. She loved his little boyish bursts of hero-worship.
+
+"Look at my beautiful present," she said, slipping her hand through his
+arm and exhibiting her necklace. "You've got a present, too. It's like
+Christmas!"
+
+Archie was pleased as a child with his gift, a lacquer box surmounted by
+an ivory monkey which, when a handle was turned, reached down into a box
+and lifted out a cigarette.
+
+"Ain't they a wonderful little people, though, the Japanese?" he
+demanded originally. "Who but them would have thought of such a trick?"
+
+"'They!' dear," murmured Joan.
+
+"'They,' then," he repeated, unabashed. "Can't be grammatical till I've
+had my supper. I'm dead beat."
+
+It was not the first time of late that Archie had come home "dead beat,"
+though he did not often admit it. The treasurer of his company was ill,
+and Archie, upon whom Mr. Moore was growing to depend for many things,
+had volunteered to undertake the treasurer's work in addition to his
+own. But he had not the same gift for finance as for salesmanship, and
+took little joy in his new honors; except for the additional increase in
+his salary. Joan, to whom money meant nothing so long as she could pay
+her bills promptly, was rather troubled by the growing mercenariness of
+her husband. He seemed to be always thinking in terms of dollars and
+cents.
+
+But Archie lost his unwonted air of fatigue during dinner in his
+interest in the tale of Mr. Nikolai's travels. Nikolai had the writer's
+gift of accumulating odd experiences, so that even Ellen lingered unduly
+about the table. Archie was enthralled.
+
+"Isn't it just as good as a geography book to hear him?" he demanded
+several times. "To think of the natives of Yezo tattooing blue mustaches
+on the girl-babies to make sure they'll catch a husband! Ho, ho, that
+tickles me! There's a tip for Cousin Virginia, Joan."
+
+Here Ellen, who had been making her fourth unnecessary round with the
+potatoes, suddenly spluttered and retired to her pantry.
+
+("The ice," remarked Nikolai to Joan, "is beginning to break.")
+
+"I've always thought," mused Archie, "that I'd like to see the world a
+little myself some time. Armadillos on their native heath, Esquimaux
+eating tallow candles, the Latin Quarter in Paris whooping it up--things
+like that. But now," he finished with a happy glance at his wife, "I'm
+glad enough to be allowed to stay just where I am."
+
+"Who wouldn't be?" murmured his guest. "With such a charming home--"
+
+"You ought to have been here when my garden was growing," said Archie,
+highly gratified. "If I do say it myself, there's not a farmer
+in the State raises better bib-lettuce than I do. As for our
+asparagus--yum-yum! Simply melts in the mouth."
+
+The other looked at him very kindly. "Was that also one of your earlier
+dreams--to be a farmer?"
+
+Archie nodded. "It's always seemed to me about the finest thing a man
+could do, if he were able to--live on the land as he was intended to,
+raise what he needs to eat and a little more for his friends; chickens
+and pigs and a cow, and perhaps a little blooded stock if he could
+manage it--" He broke off with a faint sigh.
+
+"Why, dear," cried his wife, surprised, "I never suspected you of these
+bucolic ambitions!"
+
+"I reckon most men have 'em, if they'll own up to it--don't they, Mr.
+Nikolai? Look how all boys love to dig in the dirt!... But you needn't
+worry, darlingest. I'm never going to take _you_ off and bury you in the
+country. I know better than that!"
+
+It was late when Nikolai rose to leave them, declining an urgent
+invitation to occupy their guest-room.
+
+"No, I must get back to the hotel and relieve Sacha's mind. If I do not
+he will certainly set out to find me, and as he has no language but
+Russian, that might lead to complications."
+
+"Who," demanded Joan, "is Sacha, pray? Have you been stylish enough to
+set up a valet?"
+
+"It is Sacha who appears to have set me up. I had occasion once to do
+him a kindness, and he thereupon attached himself permanently to my
+person. There is no creature on earth so grateful as a grateful
+Russian."
+
+Joan took him by the arms and made him sit down again. "Not a foot do
+you stir till you tell us all about it!" she proclaimed, scenting a
+story.
+
+"About what? Sacha? Well!--In a village where I stopped for awhile a
+young mouzhik had been very badly beaten and thrown into prison to await
+trial, and things promised to go rather badly with him. So--"
+
+"Wait a minute. _Why_ had he been beaten?"
+
+"For murder," said Nikolai calmly.
+
+His audience gasped.
+
+"Only the murder was not successful," he continued, "Sacha was
+unfortunately interrupted before he had completed the job."
+
+"Unfortunately!"
+
+"Yes. The headman of the village had taken Sacha's little sister against
+her will, and the boy did what he could to avenge her. The law is not of
+much use in such cases--to peasants, at least. The night before I left,
+some of his friends liberated him from the village jail, and brought him
+to me. Their trust in the power of learning is piteous. They demanded
+that I take him away with me to America. That was a little difficult
+without a passport, but I managed to smuggle him over the border."
+
+"How?" demanded Archie, round-eyed.
+
+"In my trunk," replied Nikolai, as if this were an everyday occurrence.
+"I had arranged with a carter to drive me and my luggage early the next
+day to the railroad. Instead, he drove me to the border, fortunately not
+very far distant. My luggage was almost smothered by the time we got
+there, however, despite the air-holes we had bored in the trunk. Poor
+Sacha!"
+
+"But did nobody examine your luggage?" asked Joan.
+
+Nikolai shrugged. "As I told you, in Russia there is great respect for
+learning--also for roubles. I am not without friends in high places.
+Such officials as I encountered quite understood that a man of learning
+like myself would naturally travel with a heavy trunkful of books,
+ventilated by air-holes--But I have been warned that it will not be safe
+for me to return to Russia. Thanks to this episode, in connection with
+recent writings of mine, I am no longer _persona grata_ there." He
+shrugged again.
+
+Archie's eyes were round. "Whew!" he commented. "That's what I call
+life! Sounds like Michael What's-his-name, the Courier of the Czar!"
+
+"I assure you," murmured Nikolai, "that I am anything but a courier of
+the Czar!..."
+
+Later, when they had gone upstairs, Joan came upon Archie examining her
+string of sapphires, with an expression that puzzled her. It was grave,
+and not very happy.
+
+"Dear," she said suddenly, "would you for any reason rather not have me
+accept this present from Stefan? It is very handsome, I know. But he is
+a rich man, my oldest friend, and he has been giving me things of this
+sort ever since I was a baby."
+
+He turned on her a look of pure astonishment. "Not accept it! Why,
+sweetheart, I'm tickled as I can be that such a beautiful thing should
+be given to you. It looks like you, too, somehow, as if it had been
+specially made for you. I was only wishing--" he sighed faintly--"that I
+could give you things like this myself. And those Mandarin coats, and
+laces and all he sends you, and--oh, life generally! You ought to see
+the world, Joan, like he does. Maybe you can," he added hopefully, "as
+soon as I get a little ahead."
+
+She hugged him. "Why, you old goose! you're always giving me beautiful
+things. My pretty engagement-ring, and the house, and the new Lizzie,
+and--You see Stefan doesn't have to provide me with dresses and three
+meals a day, and put up with all my whims and megrims."
+
+"I'll bet he wishes he did!" exclaimed Archie, with one of his
+occasional flashes of insight.
+
+She pulled his ears. "You think because you're in love with me yourself
+that everybody else is, too! Stefan's about as much in love with me as
+he was with--baby Joan. It's simply gratitude. Mother was very sweet to
+him always--I've heard her say that it had been her job, and not an easy
+one, to restore his faith in women. It seems that he was engaged once to
+marry a girl who quite understood about his Jewish blood. But when he
+took her down to the East Side in New York to see the old aunt who had
+brought him to America, she couldn't stand it. She broke with him, not
+because of any difference in religion, but because the aunt spoke
+Yiddish and wore a horsehair wig!--Mustn't she feel like a fool, now
+that he's become so famous?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Archie doubtfully. "I'd kind of hate to have
+Yiddish and a wig in the family myself."
+
+She looked at him in surprise. "Archie! I didn't know you were such a
+snob! So long as Stefan doesn't wear a wig or speak Yiddish, what does
+the aunt matter! And the funny part of it was that the aunt rather
+looked down upon poor Stefan because his father had married a Gentile!
+So he came to regard mother and me as his only family.... Now run along
+to bed." She kissed him on his eyes, a caress that Archie loved. "I'm
+going to take a dose of valerian and have a good night's sleep. It _is_
+exciting having your best friend drop down on you from who knows where!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+It proved exciting not only to Joan. Some years earlier the arrival of
+so distinguished a visitor unadvertised and unpressagented would have
+caused little more than a ripple, except perhaps among what Joan called
+the Intelligentzia. But now that _belles lettres_ were coming quite into
+fashion, the chance of knowing personally a friend of Tolstoi and
+Maeterlinck, whose articles appeared in all the more intellectual
+magazines, whose recent book of plays had been published simultaneously
+in five languages and censored off the American stage into every
+up-to-date home in the land, was one that could not be ignored.
+
+The Russian servant, too, was a picturesque addition; a great, bearded
+fellow with eyes like a child, a tall sheepskin _papacha_ on his head,
+and his trousers tucked into wrinkled boots. This exotic apparition
+frequently opened the Blair door to visitors, and even waited on them at
+table, Sacha having without the aid of language won his way somehow to
+the rather uncertain heart of Ellen Neal; possibly because of his
+infantile appetite for sweets. He followed his master about like a dog,
+and whenever Nikolai was in the front of the house, Sacha's broken
+English and sudden high laugh were frequently to be heard from the rear.
+There were a good many callers at the Blair house in those days.
+
+The Blairs, and incidentally their friend, also found themselves deluged
+with invitations, many of which Joan accepted. She rather enjoyed
+showing off her lion, whose simple dignity was quite impervious to
+lionizing. His social successes amused her by their unexpectedness; for
+Nikolai had no small talk and pretended to none. He paid his chance
+companions the compliment of believing them to be interested in whatever
+interested him; and very often they were.
+
+Once, Joan, overhearing him enlarging to an audience composed of Archie,
+Emily Carmichael, and a particularly frivolous young divorcée of their
+acquaintance, on the Ostwald formula for happiness, felt called upon to
+come to the rescue; and received for once in her life a decided snubbing
+from her husband.
+
+"Don't interrupt, Joan, please!--Mr. Nikolai's telling us something
+mighty interesting. Go on, sir--G=E^2+W^2--I didn't quite get you about
+the Hüttengluck and the Heldengluck?"
+
+"G," explained Nikolai, "is as you know Gluck (happiness). E stands for
+Energetics; meaning activity, health, ambition, etc. W stands for
+Widerwillig, one of those comprehensive words one finds only in the
+German, meaning everything that runs counter to happiness, all the
+by-products of activity--opposition, fatigue, trouble, etc. There are
+philosophers who hold that by reducing E (the activities of life) one
+also reduces W (the unpleasantnesses), thereby attaining happiness.
+Renunciation, you understand;--the simple life, such as that of
+Diogenes, who threw away his one utensil, the cup, when he saw a man
+drinking satisfactorily out of his hand.
+
+"But the danger is that in generally reducing the formula, G also is
+reduced, and may even become minus. At its best the happiness attained
+in this way is what Ostwald calls Hüttengluck (hut-happiness). He
+advocates instead the Heldengluck (hero-happiness). Square, he says,
+both your Energetics and your Widerwillig, and the result will be a
+doubled happiness, robust, vital. In other words, live to the top of
+your powers, suffer to the top of your powers; and you will be able to
+enjoy to the top of your powers."
+
+"Sure!" said Archie. "I see that. Me for Ostwald!"
+
+The little divorcée remarked in an aside to Joan, "He certainly does
+make you think, this high-brow beau of yours! But I _like_ to think,
+sometimes."
+
+It taught Joan a lesson. She recalled a sentence of Trevelyan's: "A man
+who has too much sense to overrate his own qualities will often make
+amends to his self-esteem by underrating his neighbor's."
+
+She realized that she might have been making such a mistake herself. If,
+as she had complained, there was no real talk to be had in society, were
+not she and people like her responsible?
+
+If a scholar such as Stefan Nikolai found it worth while to give of his
+best to simpler comprehensions, was it not pretentious and even
+ridiculous of a Joan Blair to "talk down" to them, tactfully adapting
+herself to their limitations while concealing yawns behind her hand? She
+had the grace to blush for herself....
+
+The companionship of Joan and Nikolai was, as Louisville interestedly
+suspected, not an entirely intellectual one, however. Like all people
+who work hard with their heads (and Nikolai spent many hours at his desk
+daily, even in holiday seasons), he knew the full value of play, and had
+always been to Joan the most delightful of play-fellows. In her
+childhood he had often borrowed her for what they called
+"expeditions"--visits to circuses, zoölogical gardens, museums;
+boat-journeys, picnics--always to the surprise of Major Darcy, who
+regarded a child as a desirable addition to any family, something to be
+petted, and instructed, and even romped with in moderation, but by no
+means to be made a companion of.
+
+These expeditions renewed themselves now in modified form. The two were
+constantly to be met with in the most unexpected places--tramping about
+the parks in the rain, making tea over a gipsy fire by the roadside,
+climbing, their pockets bulging with books and apples, to the top of a
+certain hill whence miles of wild rolling country were to be seen, and
+the city behind them was as if it had never been. Joan had no longer to
+enjoy the Beauty of the World alone. The hill became their favorite
+haunt; and all through the open winter they climbed to its top almost
+daily, where in the shelter of the cliff they built themselves a little
+fire and sat, their backs to the world, reading and munching apples, and
+talking, talking endlessly.
+
+Joan never felt that any subject bad been exhausted between them. It
+seemed to her that the thoughts of a lifetime had been accumulating in
+her mind, waiting for him to pass judgment upon them; and to him it was
+no less than a miracle to watch her brain expanding, enlarging, visibly
+blossoming under the nourishment he supplied.
+
+Perhaps her brain was not the only thing Nikolai loved to watch about
+Joan. He usually managed to seat himself a little behind her, out of her
+range of vision, so that his own might rest where it chose, unobserved.
+But he asked no more; having learned of life to practise the Hüttengluck
+which he did not preach.
+
+Sometimes Archie made a third on these expeditions; for he had developed
+a great enthusiasm for Joan's famous friend, and occasionally neglected
+business to sit at the feet of wisdom. Not often, however. Business had
+reached a point where it declined to be neglected (the depression of
+1913 was at hand); and besides Archie, despite their affectionate
+welcome, felt rather _de trop_ with the pair.
+
+"I'm no high-brow, and there's no use pretending I am," he confessed
+once to Emily Carmichael. "But that don't keep me from appreciating
+high-brows when I see 'em. It's as good as a correspondence-course in
+literature to hear those two go on. I'm as much out of it, though, as if
+they were talkin' the French language--which they sometimes are, at
+that!"
+
+"Archie," asked Emily, hesitating, "are you never the least little
+bit--jealous?" Her friendship for Joan was too unquestionable for the
+remark to sound feline.
+
+He laughed. "Me jealous? What for? I've got her, haven't I? And he
+hasn't, poor chap! Glad to share what I can."
+
+It happened that at the same time this conversation occurred--it was a
+chance meeting down town, and Archie, always the soul of hospitality,
+had invited Emily to join him in a cup of hot clam-broth at a
+soda-fountain--that the pair on the hilltop were not indulging in either
+literature or the French language. Joan, ensconced upon a bed of leaves
+with her back against the sheltering cliff and her face warm with
+fireglow, remarked dreamily:
+
+"Stefan, how have I ever managed to live here so long without you?"
+
+His smile did not reach his eyes; those beautiful, speaking, somber eyes
+which reflected in them so much of the history of his race. He said,
+"And how shall you manage when I am gone again?"
+
+She turned quickly to look at him. Something in his voice troubled her.
+"Gone--Why, Stefan, you're not thinking of going soon?"
+
+"My book has made great progress here. It is a pleasant place for
+writing--I have nearly finished."
+
+She gave an exclamation of something like anger. "You said you were
+going to stay 'as long as possible.' And after all it was only to finish
+another book!"
+
+"Not quite 'only,' Joan."
+
+"Then," she demanded impatiently, "why do you talk about going? I am
+still here, whether the book is done or not! Are you tired of me
+already?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"Have you become such a gipsy that you can't stop anywhere more than a
+few months?"
+
+"I wish," he said soberly, "that I might put my roots into this hillside
+like a tree, and never, never stir again, except to the winds, and the
+sap in my branches, and the seasons as they come and go--"
+
+"And me beside thee singing in the wilderness?" she smiled, as he did
+not continue. "Say you'd need me here somewhere, even if you were a
+tree!"
+
+"Every tree has one bird who lives in its branches. I should keep a nest
+safe for you, my dear--you and your Archie." He broke off. "But I am not
+a tree, merely a Wandering Jew to whom the time must come again to
+wander."
+
+"But why, why? It is not as if you belonged anywhere else!"
+
+     "Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"
+
+he said. "I have always meant, when I grew old, to come to wherever you
+may be, and settle down, and grow up again with your children. But it
+seems the time is not yet. I am--not old."
+
+"You? of course not! You're not even fifty, are you?"
+
+"No," he sighed, "not even fifty. Oh, to be eighty or thereabouts, with
+the dross burnt out and only the spirit left, free--!"
+
+"I'd hate you to be all spirit, Stefan! Such an uncomfortable, unnatural
+person to play with: like one of those cherubim, with only wings and no
+_de quoi_ at all.--(You remember the miracle that happened once, when
+the Sistine Madonna said to the little angels in the picture with her,
+'_Assaiez-vous, mes enfants._' And they answered, '_Mais, Madame, nous
+n'avons pas de quoi!_'--) I never could understand people wanting to be
+old." She made a restless movement. "Perhaps you've had enough out of
+life to satisfy you, but me--Why, I feel as if I had not yet begun to
+live!"
+
+"Nor have you," he said quietly.
+
+"_Why_, Stefan!" she demanded, facing him. "Why don't I begin, then?
+Surely enough has happened to me, more than to most people. I fling
+myself into whatever comes along with all my heart. And yet--I don't
+seem to be there at all! It is as if the real me were looking on at
+somebody else who struggles and amuses herself and suffers. I'm tired of
+looking on, tired!"
+
+"Who isn't?" he said musingly. "We want to be in the thick of the fray,
+people like you and me, even if it kills us. But--we can't choose. A
+good deal is chosen for us before we're born--the color of our hair, the
+shapes of our noses" (he smiled and sighed), "doubtless the kinks in our
+brains--Come, the fire is out, and if I allow you to take cold, Ellen
+Neal will surely banish me from Eden with her flaming sword."
+
+As they walked briskly home in the early February twilight, she said
+after a long silence, "See here, Stefan, if you really are going when
+your book is finished, let's not waste any more time going about to
+silly parties and all that. You only do it to please me, and I only do
+it to show you off. Why should we pretend any longer?--Let's be together
+as much as we possibly can without bothering about anybody else! Shall
+we?"
+
+He looked rather startled.
+
+"I mean," she continued calmly, "to make no more engagements at all; and
+you needn't either--unless you wish to?"
+
+"I shall not wish to."
+
+"I thought not! There's really nobody here you care about talking to
+except me, is there? And there's nobody in the world I'd willingly waste
+a word on if you were about. So there, that's settled!" she said with a
+little breath of satisfaction. "It's a good thing you're old enough to
+be my father, Stefan, or I suppose people would begin to talk about us.
+Still," she added, "I'm glad you're not eighty!"
+
+Meeting her candid, clear, affectionate gaze, Nikolai managed to summon
+up a smile of his own that was quite grandfatherly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Joan was not the judge of human nature she fancied herself if she
+believed that a disparity in age would render gossip innocuous. The
+disparity was not as apparent as she believed. Nikolai was, in his dark,
+impassive way, a singularly handsome man, and the stories of his early
+ghetto life and later experiences made of him a romantic figure to more
+eyes than Joan's. In vain the Jabberwocks rallied around her to a girl.
+In vain Effie May, whose shrewd ears heard usually whatever was to be
+heard, even in her retirement, casually spread abroad the story of Mr.
+Nikolai's devotion to the first Mrs. Darcy.
+
+Joan's attitude was discouraging to her most loyal friends. She seemed
+quite unaware that she was being defended and rallied around. It rather
+relieved her when invitations began to dwindle in number; she was thus
+saved the trouble of declining them. She entered into their growing
+solitude _a deux_ with the same single-mindedness she had brought to
+bear upon her frivolous period, her domestic period, and her brief
+career of publicity; being one of those natures which can do only one
+thing at a time, and that very hard.
+
+When she thought about their relationship at all, it rather pleased her
+to fancy that she was playing Mrs. Thrale to Nikolai's Dr. Johnson.
+Unfortunately the people about her were for the most part unaware of
+this classic relationship; and had they known of it would have doubtless
+regarded it with one eye knowingly closed.
+
+Much of the town's attention fastened itself upon Archibald. Scandals
+there had been before this, even in its upper circles; but they had
+maintained hitherto a decent surreptitiousness, had veiled themselves
+beneath a more or less transparent cover of secrecy, until some climax
+occurred in the way of pistol-shot or divorce-proceeding. The _tertium
+quid_, acknowledged and accepted, was new to the experience of
+Louisville; and very interesting.
+
+Meanwhile Stefan Nikolai, all unconscious of the stimulus he was
+offering to general conversation, spent all of his free hours with Joan,
+having long since faced and discounted the risk of it so far as he was
+concerned. The risk Joan herself might run appeared to his experience
+negligible. He had never even in his youth attracted women as less
+intellectual men attract them.
+
+Doubtless even had he been aware of the town's talk it would not have
+troubled him. For all his knowledge of humanity, he was no man of the
+world, in the accepted sense of the term. He lived too much beyond it to
+attach great importance to its opinion. In only one person he recognized
+any right of criticism. That was Joan's husband, with whom long since he
+had come to an understanding.
+
+It is a pity that neither Joan nor Joan's world ever came to know of
+this understanding, which would have added to the affair a distinct
+flavor.
+
+Mr. Nikolai had taken a small apartment, where Joan and her husband and
+occasionally others dined with him, or dropped in for a glass of tea in
+the Russian fashion and an hour of two of music afterwards. Nikolai,
+true to the instinct of his race, never made even a temporary home
+without music in it. He had, in addition to a piano, various instruments
+collected in different lands, among them a balalaika upon which the
+servant Sacha could sometimes be induced to play a shy accompaniment to
+peasant ballads.
+
+But Archie had never come there without Joan; and so one day when he
+dropped in alone, ostensibly to "hear the Rooshian pick his banjo,"
+Nikolai felt a surprise that he was careful not to show. His trained
+eyes detected signs of distress in Archie which others, including his
+wife, had failed to notice. The beaming smile did not conceal from
+Nikolai a little anxious pucker between the brows, a nervous twitching
+of the big freckled hands.
+
+The writer was not unused to being taken into the confidence of troubled
+people. It was one of the things that compensated for the enforced
+solitude of his life, such an occasional glimpse into the secret hearts
+of his fellow-men. It is an odd fact that writers and philosophers and
+even poets, all people who live necessarily a little apart from their
+kind, are frequently chosen as confessors by those who feel the need of
+confession.
+
+So Nikolai asked no questions, sure that a friendly silence and a good
+cigar would produce results. Nor did he ring for Sacha and the "banjo."
+At length Archie blurted out without preliminaries:
+
+"Joan isn't happy, Mr. Nikolai. I guess you've noticed that! She hasn't
+been for a long while. I'm not sure she ever was.--I s'pose I was a fool
+to think a man like me could make her happy."
+
+"It is a large order for any one human being to make another human being
+happy, Blair."
+
+"But you could have!"
+
+Neither spoke for a few minutes. Nikolai made no pretense of not
+understanding. Only a slight flush came momentarily into his face, and
+left it paler by contrast. "I am not sure," he said at last. "But I
+should have liked to try."
+
+"Of course! I knew that when you cabled us to wait till you came--But
+Joan don't know it yet. Funny, isn't it, when she's so smart? She thinks
+you feel toward her like a cross between a teacher and a fond
+father.--'Father'--my eye! She don't catch you lookin' at her sometimes
+the way I do!"
+
+"Do I--look at her?"
+
+Archie nodded expressively. "I suppose I understand, because I'm in love
+myself. And she don't"--he swallowed hard--"because she isn't."
+
+"Not yet, perhaps," said the other slowly. "Give her time, my boy."
+
+"Time? I've given her time." Archie heaved a great sigh. "Now I mean to
+give her something else. I mean to give her a chance. She never really
+had a chance before, Mr. Nikolai. I--I kind of got her off her guard,
+when she was takin' the count. It wasn't sporting of me."
+
+The other, moved, laid a hand on his knee. In moments of emotion the
+foreign blood showed in such slight demonstrativeness. But Anglo-Saxon
+Archie stiffened, and the hand was at once removed.
+
+"She's too fine for me, you see," he went on. "Too sort of delicate.--I
+read somewhere that china vases and brass vases couldn't float down a
+stream together without the china ones getting smashed (though why vases
+would be floating down a stream anyway, _I_ don't know!). But I'm brass,
+you see, and she's china. I thought it might be all right after the
+twinnies came. I still think it might have been, if they--" Again he
+swallowed hard.
+
+Nikolai nodded.
+
+    "Their hearts are wild
+    As be the hearts of birds, till childer come."
+
+But, my dear boy, you speak as if the twinnies had exhausted the
+available supply!"
+
+Archie's eyes dropped. Then he lifted them again in a frank gaze. "I
+almost lost her, sir. Do you think I'd put her through a thing like that
+again? God!--her little frantic hands clutching at us! And her voice,
+hoarse as a fierce animal's--!" He jumped up and crossed to a window,
+where he stood with his back to Nikolai, his face working.
+
+After a moment the other followed, and this time Archie did not stiffen
+under his touch.
+
+"So," said the Jew, "in your love you would deny her the woman's
+privilege of suffering?"
+
+"Yes! Suffering on account of me--yes! Every time. It ain't fair, women
+having to stand the whole business. If I could help, if I could bear one
+single pain of it--But I can't."
+
+"No," said Nikolai, his lips twitching despite the sadness about them.
+"No, I am afraid you can't. But--"
+
+"And it's not," interrupted Archie, reverting doggedly to his theme, "as
+if I were the right man, you see!"
+
+They were silent again.
+
+"You are so afraid of losing her that you will not give her children,"
+mused Nikolai presently. "And yet if I understand you you are willing to
+lose her--otherwise?"
+
+"To the right man," said Archie directly. "To you--Because I think you
+are the right man. She's been more contented since you've been here than
+I ever knew her to be. Of course you're twice her age, but that don't
+count with brainy people. And you could give her everything I can't--not
+just _things_; you know what I mean! Travel, education, all that. She's
+in your class, sir, not mine.--Will you do it?"
+
+Nikolai looked rather bewildered. "Do what, Blair?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Be nice to her all you can, read poetry to her, get
+her to care for you. Make love to her, if you want!--You can bet I
+wouldn't say that to many men--" he laughed forlornly--"but you're
+different, somehow. I can trust you."
+
+"Thank you." Nikolai's face lit with a very charming smile. "Yes, I
+think you can trust me--And in case your scheme were successful, if I
+should prove to be 'the right man'--what about you?"
+
+"Oh, me? Why, I'd just naturally fade out of the landscape."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"There're lots of ways. A cramp in swimming, or an accident when you're
+cleaning a gun, or a dose of the wrong medicine--"
+
+Nikolai's brows met sharply. "You mean suicide?"
+
+"Sure! Why not? It's done every day, and done so the insurance companies
+can't prove a thing, too."
+
+Nikolai rose and stood beside him. "You, who say that you love her," he
+said sternly, "you who cannot bear that she should suffer even to obtain
+happiness--you would condemn her to a lifetime of grief and remorse? You
+might perhaps deceive others. Do you think you could deceive Joan? Happy
+or not, you know that she cares for you, Blair!"
+
+The other's face softened. "Why, yes, I reckon she does, in a way. Once
+when I had a bad cold and she was scared for fear it was going to run
+into pneumonia she was awfully upset. I guess you're right," he mused.
+"It wouldn't do for me to do that. Why, her father's death almost killed
+her, and he was a mighty worthless old scamp, and she knew it, too!
+Joan's a deeper feeler than you'd think--Say, I might do something to
+make her get a divorce?" he suggested, brightening.
+
+"What, for instance?"
+
+"Oh, other women,"--he made a face of distaste. "I'd hate it--a low
+woman certainly does get my goat! Still--"
+
+Nikolai smiled. "Do you think you could deceive Joan about that, either?
+You might succeed in hurting her, perhaps; but she would not admit it.
+Joan is proud."
+
+"Lord, don't I know it? Proud as Lucifer! No, I've got to think of
+something to do that wouldn't be any reflection on her," he mused, "and
+yet that she wouldn't stand for. Actionable, as the lawyers say--"
+
+Nikolai burst out laughing, and taking Archie by the shoulders shook him
+to and fro.
+
+"My dear boy, I fear I cannot enter into this nefarious little plot of
+yours. I am not going to make love to your wife--I should not know how!
+Nor yet am I going to lure her from you with poetry and fine words.
+But--" he added, sobering, "I think with you that she has not yet found
+herself. There, perhaps, I can help. I can at least offer her my own
+recipe for happiness."
+
+"You mean that formula thing?" said Archie doubtfully.
+
+"No formula, Blair. Simply--work."
+
+The other's face fell. "Joan never has been one of those idle society
+girls you read about," he said, defensively. "Sewing, and housekeeping,
+and civics, and suffrage, and going around giving advice to the
+poor--She's tried 'em all, Mr. Nikolai."
+
+"And found them all other people's work, not hers.--But, Blair, I must
+warn you," he added gravely, "that when she does find her _metier_ you
+are in far more danger of losing her to it than to--me, for instance."
+
+"No danger of losing what you haven't got," sighed Archie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+People who know life only on its surfaces were apt to pronounce Joan
+Blair a rather hard young person. She would herself have admitted to a
+certain hardness, secretly aware, however, that it was a trait she had
+deliberately cultivated for protective purposes. Hers was one of the
+unfortunate natures that are more attuned to the minor than the major
+chords of life.
+
+Once in her childhood she had confessed to her mother, with a burst of
+sobbing, that she never expected to be entirely happy because of all the
+stray dogs running about the world, hungry and lonesome. As she grew
+older she discovered that it is not only the stray dogs who go hungry
+and lonesome.
+
+She often wondered impatiently why it was that every one with whom she
+came into close contact seemed soon or late to develop a marked quality
+of pathos: her futile father, the struggling Misses Darcy, gruff old
+devoted Ellen, Effie May, Archie--and now more than all Stefan Nikolai.
+Despite his renown, his wide experience, his phenomenal rise in life
+from so handicapped a beginning, her friend seemed nevertheless to her a
+rather tragic figure, belonging to nobody, product of two countries and
+native of neither, without even a race to which he could claim complete
+allegiance. For his mother had been a Christian girl of high birth,
+outcast by her family because of her marriage with a Jew; who had been
+in turn rejected by his own people because of her.
+
+Both had been killed in a _pogrom_, one of those appalling man-hunts
+that still take place in the Russian pale in the name of Christianity;
+and his father's sister, escaping to a land where there are no
+_pogroms_, had brought the child Stefan with her. It must have been a
+forlorn boyhood for a sensitive, gifted, half-alien lad, none too
+welcome in a poor and growing Jewish family of the slums; working his
+brilliant way through school and university, only to meet a crushing
+rebuff in this land of the free and equal at the hands of a girl who was
+afraid to marry him.
+
+Joan understood why her mother had taken the hurt and lonely youth into
+her rare friendship. Aside from Nikolai's charm of companionship and her
+gratitude to him, she felt it an inherited duty to "make it up" to him
+for the sadness of his past. And where Joan gave, she gave
+unstintingly....
+
+She did not pursue her headstrong course without receiving faint
+inklings now and then as to its effect upon the community. The warnings
+began with Ellen.
+
+"I ain't sayin' he's not a quiet, pleasant-spoken enough gentleman, as
+free with his money as if he was a Christian--Most _too_ free, if you
+ast me! What's he want out of it all? After all, a Jew's a Jew."
+
+"Even if he happens to be a Unitarian?" (Nikolai, during his college
+life, had chanced to adopt that creed.)
+
+"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all
+bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a
+Jack-in-the-Box--You needn't laugh, Joie--you kin see it all in that eye
+of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier
+eye--! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way,
+myself. Seems sort of shameless."
+
+"Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself
+to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good
+deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on
+behind it, the more it reflects--As witness my own," she added
+complacently.
+
+Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs.
+Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in
+her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and
+lorgnon.
+
+"You are looking very charming, dear child--one wonders at not seeing
+you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town,
+however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time."
+
+Joan admitted the imputation.
+
+"Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!--Still, Mr. Blair would
+naturally be democratic in his point of view."
+
+"Democratic? I think I don't understand."
+
+The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect.
+"Oh, these writing-people--it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't
+it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous."
+
+"It does not take a great deal of courage," said Joan, flushing, "to
+continue my mother's friendship with the most brilliant man I know.
+There even seem to be people who envy me the opportunity."
+
+(This shot told, Mrs. Carmichael having been one of the first and most
+eager to entertain the visiting celebrity.)
+
+"Doubtless he is brilliant as a writer," she conceded. "That is his
+profession. But even as a writer (I know nothing of him, of course,
+otherwise!) do you consider him quite safe, my dear? Those plays, for
+instance."
+
+"Have you read them?" asked Joan bluntly.
+
+"Why, not yet. I bought them, of course--one does. But one has so little
+time for reading. I am told, however, that in one of them a child is
+born practically on the stage. At least the characters converse about it
+quite openly."
+
+"Shocking of them," murmured Joan. "Those things should be managed by
+means of asterisks. But it's so hard to find actors who play asterisks
+acceptably."
+
+Mrs. Carmichael's lorgnon busied itself. "I should be sorry," remarked
+its owner, "to think that any friend of my daughter's would care to
+encourage indelicacy, whether in literature or--or in life."
+
+"Dear me, yes!--life is indelicate enough anyway, without our
+encouragement, isn't it?" murmured Joan.
+
+She felt, perhaps justly, that she had come out of this encounter with
+the honors of war. But Joan could ill afford to make enemies....
+
+The finish of Nikolai's book postponed itself from week to week. Spring
+came, and early summer, that most witching of seasons in the middle
+South, languid with the scent of magnolia-blossoms, gay with the bright
+parasols and fragile muslins that flutter forth like butterflies at the
+first touch of sun. With Nikolai to share it, the gray old town regained
+something of its former glamour for Joan. She had many favorite spots to
+show him--a quiet tree-arched street of patriarchal mansions in the
+midst of warehouses, with all the charm and old-world dignity of a
+London square; a certain secluded nook low on the bank of the slow,
+yellow river, undiscovered save by an occasional working-girl and her
+shirt-sleeved "gentleman-friend," with whom Nikolai conversed as
+pleasantly as with old acquaintances. He had not the Major's elegant
+distaste for the _canaille_.
+
+Through his trained eyes, Joan began to note again certain picturesque
+touches which had charmed her when first she came to Louisville; a
+primitive, two-wheeled cart bobbing along a crowded street, drawn by
+mules hitched tandem-fashion, on one of which a dusky muleteer perched
+sidewise, singing. "That might be Spain," said Nikolai. Or perhaps two
+mulatto women, dressed in the extreme of fashion even to rouge and
+face-veils, greeting each other with lifted, outflung hand--a gesture as
+savage and typically African as if they were only a few weeks out of the
+jungle, instead of a few generations--Joan found that with Nikolai it
+was possible to do a good deal of traveling right at home.
+
+Meanwhile the scandal of their association grew and spread; and at last
+Emily, distressed at the magnitude of the storm of which her friend was
+the center, decided to interfere. Not with words, however. Long social
+experience had given her tact, if not wisdom.
+
+Thereafter it began to be noticed that Mrs. Blair and her distinguished
+friend were not to be seen so often alone together. There was usually a
+third on their expeditions, and frequently a fourth, whenever Archie
+could be pressed into service.
+
+"Now that I've got some one to talk to myself, I don't feel so in the
+way," he confessed naïvely.
+
+Emily formed a habit of dropping in at the Blairs' in the early
+afternoon (just at the finish of writing hours), so that she had
+naturally to be included in any plans that were afoot.
+
+"I don't know what's come over you, dear," remarked Joan once, half
+laughing. "You're positively rushing me nowadays!--or is it Nikolai? I
+begin to suspect you of designs upon Stefan."
+
+"And why not? He's perfectly eligible. We old maids have to keep a
+weather eye out, you know--But how do you know it isn't Archie I'm
+pursuing?" asked Emily calmly. "I appreciated him long before you did,
+you know."
+
+"Emmy, Emmy, such indelicacy!" sighed Joan. "And him a married party,
+too! What would your mother say?"
+
+"I'm feeding her Shaw lately in broken doses. She's prepared for almost
+anything--You don't really mind my trailing you about this way, do you,
+Joan?" she asked, sobering. "I love hearing you two talk. Am I in the
+way, if I just keep quiet as a mouse?"
+
+"Mind? Of course not!" Joan kissed her. "You and Stefan are my two
+dearest friends, and I _love_ to have you friends with each other.
+Besides, he says you have an 'interesting mind,' my dear. Welcome to our
+city!"
+
+So Emily continued to make a courageous third in their walks and talks
+and studies; accepted by Nikolai with his usual courteous friendliness,
+and by the gossips with feelings which were not unmixed.
+
+"It's the husband's doings--he's awake at last!" declared one faction.
+
+"Men are so fickle. He's had a good deal of her--and Emily Carmichael is
+looking particularly well this year. Poor Joan!" murmured the other
+faction, composed of her more intimate acquaintances.
+
+Joan's feelings on the matter were also not unmixed. She loved Emily;
+her presence was always a pleasure; she had assuredly nothing to discuss
+with Nikolai that could not be discussed before so devoted an audience.
+And yet--
+
+Stefan came to take the other girl's company so much for granted that
+one evening, when Joan suggested a row up the river for their next day's
+outing, it was natural enough for him to say, "That sounds charming! and
+I think Miss Carmichael will enjoy it, too."
+
+This innocent remark produced surprising results; as surprising to Joan
+as to himself. She jumped to her feet. "Look here, Stefan! If you want
+Emily so much, why don't you take her by yourself?" she cried, and
+bursting into tears she fled from the room.
+
+Nikolai stared blankly at Archie.
+
+"Will you tell me _what_ I have said?"
+
+For once the other was the first to understand.
+
+"Don't you see?" he replied with his patient smile (and there is nothing
+sadder to see in life than patience on the face of a young man). "It's
+come about just as I thought it would, Mr. Nikolai. She's--she's jealous
+of you. That's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Stefan Nikolai, usually very regular in habit, sat so late by
+his open window that the servant Sacha emerged at intervals to
+investigate.
+
+"Is Excellency ill, that he neither sleeps nor reads?"
+
+"Not ill, Sacha. Go to bed."
+
+There was a lilac-tree blooming below the window, and the scent of the
+young summer came in to him, flooding his heart, his senses--
+
+The servant appeared again.
+
+"Has Excellency sadness?"
+
+"Not sadness, Sacha. I think--it is happiness."
+
+"And yet he sighs?"
+
+Nikolai stirred, and got to his feet.
+
+"That is because our wandering begins again. The book is done. In a few
+days we go."
+
+The servant took an eager step toward him. "Not alone?"
+
+Nikolai started. He had forgotten, as so many forget, the watching eyes
+of those who serve us. "Certainly, alone!" he said sharply. "Am I not
+always alone?"
+
+Sacha's eyes dropped. "In my country," he suggested gently, "when we see
+a woman which we need, we take her."
+
+The other smiled. The two had been through much together. "And if she
+chances to belong to some one else?"
+
+"Then"--with an eloquent thrust of the hand--"we kill!" But seeing that
+the hint was unlikely to bear fruit, he added dispiritedly, "Excellency
+is not, however, a peasant. Sometimes to be a peasant is good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+The storm which burst in August, 1914, had the effect of blotting out
+smaller storms into nothingness. It brought in its wake different things
+to different natures: to some apprehension, sheer personal terror, to
+others the quickening sense of high adventure, to others yet sick
+disillusionment with a world that was still capable of such gigantic
+folly.
+
+To Joan, in the dead blankness that followed the departure of her
+friend, the great war seemed strangely like a godsend. It was as if she
+had cried in desperation to Providence. "What next?" and Providence had
+answered, "This!"
+
+Perhaps she was not the only woman to whom the sudden extraneous demand
+for all that was in her came as a godsend.
+
+She flung herself head, hand, and heart, into the organization of relief
+work. As the Germans pursued their incredible way through Belgium, it
+seemed to her that every frantic mother, every maimed child, every
+desperate father, the very roofless houses and ruined orchards, cried
+aloud upon her, Joan Blair, for help. She could not understand why
+others did not seem to hear the cry, how those about her could pursue
+the usual course of life unheeding--Joan was one of the first Americans
+to declare war upon Germany.
+
+But those about her heard better than she realized. Gradually as the
+change came, it came. Hers was not the only blood in the old border
+State to thrill to the call of drums. And as in the earlier days, while
+the men got down their firearms to clean them, the women rolled up their
+sleeves and settled down to work.
+
+Under the impetus of Joan and others like her, Bridge quickly gave way
+to bandage-making, the click of unaccustomed needles drowned the chatter
+of clubrooms and tea-table, and the Jabberwocks in a body abandoned the
+pursuit of culture for a course in hospital assistance. "So that we
+shall be ready by the time our own boys need us," explained Joan.
+
+"But, Mrs. Blair, you ought to curb those firebrand sentiments of
+yours!" protested Judge Carmichael to her after one of her public
+utterances. "It is enjoined upon us Americans to be strictly neutral."
+
+"Neutral?" cried the daughter of Richard Darcy. "Neutral? Have you ever
+seen a pit-terrier jump on a respectable little poodle-dog out in the
+front yard protecting his household--and were you able to remain
+_neutral_? I know my country better than that!"
+
+In keeping up with Joan's new activities, the town quite forgot to look
+at her askance.
+
+Nikolai, too, was making of the war a personal matter. He wrote that he,
+with other writers in New York, was financing a hospital unit with which
+he intended to go to France in any capacity where he would be useful. He
+had been in his youth, among other things, a student of medicine.
+
+"Isn't it fine, Archie?" she cried, thrilling to this letter. "Oh, if we
+could only do something ourselves! I'd like to send him a contribution
+for his unit, anyway. May I?"
+
+Archie hesitated. "How much, dear?"
+
+Joan flushed. It was the first time he had failed to give her without
+question whatever she asked of him.
+
+"Sorry to have to ask," she said, rather stiffly. "But I've given the
+last cent I had to the Red Cross. Could you spare me fifty dollars, say,
+and take it out of my next allowance?"
+
+Archie silently got out his check-book.
+
+It troubled her to notice in him something almost like apathy toward the
+war. The startling headlines, the growing report of horrors, even the
+eleventh-hour miracle of that stand upon the Marne, moved him to no more
+than a preoccupied attention. He appeared to concern himself far more
+with the uncertain state of the stock-market, which he studied
+assiduously. Joan could not accustom herself to the idea of an Archie
+commercialized: interesting himself at such a crisis in the world's
+history merely with money.
+
+An explanation at last dawned upon her. "My dear," she accused him one
+day, "I believe you've been speculating!"
+
+"Who--me? Oh, every man speculates, sweetheart. Business itself is a
+good deal of a speculation nowadays. Nothing to worry your precious head
+about, though."
+
+"Would you like me to economize, Archie, more than I usually do?" she
+asked.
+
+"Oh, no. You're never extravagant. A little more or less can't matter."
+
+Preoccupied though he seemed, he was never too preoccupied to show her
+the special consideration and gentleness she had noticed ever since
+Nikolai left.
+
+"As if he were trying to comfort me!" she thought uneasily. Her queer
+outburst of nerves with Stefan was something she never allowed herself
+to think of. She did not quite understand it; and Joan dreaded things
+she could not understand.
+
+Archie seemed to be developing nerves himself of late. When the doorbell
+or telephone rang suddenly, he jumped as if he had been touched; and he
+went to his office almost every evening, coming home late and very
+tired.
+
+"You're working too hard, old boy," protested Joan. "I'll be glad when
+the treasurer of your company feels well enough to come back from
+Saranac and take his old job again."
+
+"He's back now. I expect to turn the books over to him in a few days."
+
+"Good! I'm glad of it."
+
+"Are you?" asked Archie, rather queerly.
+
+"Of course!--though it means less salary, doesn't it? What do we care?
+We had enough before. You know, dear, money simply means _nothing_ to
+me, so long as the bills are paid."
+
+"I know," he said soberly.
+
+Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the war, Joan might have been
+better prepared for what was coming....
+
+One day, on her way home from the Red Cross rooms, she bought herself an
+early edition of an evening paper, and was looking over the headlines
+when she came across the following:
+
+                SHORTAGE DISCOVERED
+     BOOKS OF MOORE AND COMPANY IN HANDS OF EXPERT
+
+Farther down, aghast, incredulous, she read the name of her husband.
+
+When she reached home, he was already there. Johnny Carmichael and Ellen
+were with him, both talking at once. They stopped as Joan came bursting
+in.
+
+"Archie! This can't be _true_?"
+
+He had risen to go to her. Now he sank back in his chair, nodding.
+
+"I been tellin' him he's got to git out while the gittin's good,"
+muttered Ellen Neal, her language consorting oddly with the tense fear
+in her face. "Here's plenty of money"--she held out a battered
+pocket-book. "He can hop on the L. & N. train as it passes Fourth
+Street. They ain't a minute to waste! The main thing's to git him away
+before they--take him!"
+
+"She's right!" insisted Johnny Carmichael, stuttering with excitement.
+"Once he's out of the way, my father'll get everything fixed. He's
+closeted with Moore now. We've stopped that beastly article in the
+paper--lots of people won't have seen the first edition. Father's taken
+on the case--Mrs. Blair, you've got to make Archie _wake up_!"
+
+But Joan could not speak.
+
+Archie rose to his feet again. He seemed invested with a new, quiet
+dignity. He put a hand on each of their shoulders.
+
+"I'm not going to run, of course," he said. "Thank you just the same.
+Now cut along, will you? I want to talk to my wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Always afterwards, in thinking of that nightmare time, Joan remembered
+with a stab of remorse that when he held out his arms to her she had not
+gone to them--He did not make the mistake again.
+
+In the hour they had together before others came, he made things as
+plain to her as he could. The sum was not large as defalcations go.
+Moore and Company would not suffer for it--they were a rich firm; and
+later when he had served out his term he would be able to pay them back.
+This he repeated over and over.
+
+The trouble had commenced with the purchase of the house. It was too
+ambitious. Archie, struggle as he might, had begun shortly to fall
+behind with the payments, and had borrowed more money on it to meet
+them. (Joan recalled signing the papers, which meant nothing to her;
+merely "business.") Somehow, what Archie made never went quite far
+enough. Not through her fault!--this, too, he insisted upon again and
+again. How was she to guess how things were, so long as her own and the
+household allowances were paid to her regularly?
+
+"Oh, but why didn't you _tell_ me?"
+
+"A fellow don't like to admit that he's bitten off more than he can
+chew, till he's sure."
+
+So he had tried a little speculating, and won; a little more, and won
+again. (It was at this time that he bought Joan her modest automobile.)
+After that, the story is too trite to need repeating. There came the
+depression of 1913, later the cataclysm of the war; and Archie with the
+finances of Moore and Company at his disposal. He lost, heavily, and
+borrowed to protect himself; recovered enough to replace his borrowings;
+went in deeper--and was caught with no means of making good some
+$15,000.
+
+"Our house?" suggested Joan, trembling.
+
+"Mortgaged up to the eaves. Our equity in it wouldn't be a drop in the
+bucket."
+
+"What about your stock in that Building Association!"
+
+He laughed. "Swallowed up so long ago I'd forgotten I ever had any....
+No, dear, I'm done. I took a long chance, and I took it once too often.
+Nothing for it but to serve out whatever term they give me, and then
+come back and--show 'em." His set jaw quivered a little.
+
+"'Serve out'--Archie! You don't mean _jail_?"
+
+He nodded, still with his amazing quietness. "I want to. It's coming to
+me. And I'm young yet. You'll see!... But that don't mean _you're_ to be
+mixed up in it," he added, slowly. "When I go to the Pen, that lets you
+out, dear. You get your freedom. Nobody will expect you to--to stay
+married to a criminal."
+
+He was watching her closely, and she stared back at him. He had proposed
+the monstrous idea seemingly in all seriousness, as if it were one to
+which he had given long consideration.
+
+"Don't talk that way!" she said, with sudden sternness. "Of course you
+are not to go to jail. I'll fix that somehow--I'll get the money."
+
+But still she could not go to him, could not offer him any comfort. She
+was too stunned. This did not seem to her Archie, this quiet stranger
+who spoke so casually of penitentiaries and criminals and divorce.
+
+They were glad when people came to interrupt them.
+
+And people did come, in a steady stream. It seemed as if half the town
+had read that hastily suppressed news-item, and were determined that
+Archie Blair should not go to prison.
+
+"It's most worth while getting into trouble to see how many friends
+you've got you never knew about!" he sighed.
+
+The rescuers began with Effie May, check-book in hand and panting with
+distress, so upset that she had forgotten to rouge her face; and it
+ended with Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing, who intimated that
+if a couple of thou' at the usual rate of interest would be of any use
+to Archie, they were his.
+
+The offer that perhaps touched him the most deeply came from the Misses
+Darcy.
+
+"We happen to be at the moment temporarily embarrassed for funds,"
+explained Miss Iphigenia, at her stateliest, (and looking curiously like
+her Cousin Richard). "But it will be a simple matter to arrange another
+mortgage on our house. Dear papa did so frequently, I remember. And of
+course in a--an accident of this sort--Why, my dear boy, that is what
+houses are for!"
+
+But to all these suggestions Archie was able gratefully to explain that
+his wife had already arranged matters. For as soon as she collected her
+numbed faculties, she had telegraphed to Stefan Nikolai, and he had
+replied within the hour: "Draw on me to any amount."
+
+"There," she remarked to the weeping Ellen. "That's the Jewness coming
+out in him, just as you said it would!..."
+
+Ellen did all the weeping that was done in the Blair household during
+this crisis. The shock seemed to have quite broken her, so that it was
+the mistress who had to comfort the servant.
+
+"I'd ought to have known," she wailed, "with him lookin' so peakid and
+all! But I thought it was--something else. Oh, why couldn't he have
+_told_ me? I could have kep' the bills down more, had pot-roasts instead
+of fancy-cuts, and hearts--you know how tasty beef-hearts can be, Joan,
+when I set my mind to 'em! 'T aint as if I wasn't an old hand at makin'
+things do. But you always had such rich ways, just like your father. And
+I let it fool me.... Oh, the poor boy, the poor, scairt, lonesome boy,
+tryin' to go ahead all by himself!"
+
+Joan's heart ached for her husband, too, as much as a heart can ache
+that seems turned into stone. She felt physically numb all over, except
+in her brain, and that worked mercilessly as ever--merciless not only to
+him but to herself. She did not hesitate to put the blame where much of
+it belonged.
+
+"I have been utterly selfish, one of the vampires that sap a man's
+strength, his ability, his very decency, and give nothing in return.
+Yet--does any one but a fool yield to vampires?"
+
+She tried to make for him every excuse he had not made for himself.
+
+"It was all for me, to give me what he thought I wanted, the things my
+friends have. He could not bear to deprive me of anything."
+
+Yet he had deprived her of the thing she valued most in life: her pride.
+He had committed the sin unpardonable. He had, as the English put it,
+"let her down." She, Joan Darcy, in whom pride was the dominant trait,
+pride of race, of intellect, of character--she was the wife of a
+defaulter, a common thief!
+
+Despite people's marked kindness and consideration toward her, she
+fancied she knew what they were saying: "An extravagant wife. A woman
+who neglected her home and her husband."
+
+But of the charge of extravagance at least she was able to acquit
+herself. The iron of poverty had entered too early and too deep into her
+soul for that. She knew that dressing, for instance, cost her far less
+than it cost any woman of her acquaintance. She had always made taste
+and skill take the place of money there, and in other ways. Much that
+was unusual in her little house she had done herself, staining walls,
+painting woodwork, covering furniture. Where her neighbors employed
+several servants, she did very well with one; and if she left much of
+her household management in Ellen's hands, it was because she knew them
+to be more experienced than her own.
+
+"No," she told herself, puzzling the thing over, "we have simply cut our
+coat according to other people's cloth--And how was I to know?"
+
+It is the cry of many a startled wife whose husband has tried to keep on
+his shoulders the burden two should share: How was I to know?
+
+She was comforted to think that no tradespeople at least were suffering
+from their catastrophe; she owed not a dollar in the world.... Here Joan
+winced, recalling her determination that there should be no "Indians" in
+the annals of the Blair family. Archie, in order that she might pay
+bills promptly, had allowed her to pay them with other people's money!
+
+His own attitude was incredible to her. He seemed not particularly
+ashamed, nor even down-cast; if anything, rather relieved that the
+strain was over. The enormity of the thing he had done did not appear to
+impress him. He was more like a man who has bet too heavily at the
+races, but means to show himself a good loser. For the first time Joan
+considered seriously the mystery surrounding his birth. Emily Carmichael
+had been right--it was "brave" to marry a man of such doubtful
+antecedents. Who knew what handicaps were his to fight, what heritage of
+moral obliquity?
+
+There was after all a certain safety in good birth, she
+thought--forgetting that traditions and fine breeding had not sufficed
+to keep her own father from a slight moral obliquity, such as had
+permitted him to speculate with trust-funds. (Of the Major's earlier
+misadventure she never learned.)
+
+And then a sudden rush of reaction came over her. Archie--and moral
+obliquity! It was as impossible to associate the two as to associate a
+fine dog with treachery. He had simply, for her sake, chosen to take his
+long chance and abide by the consequences. An act more gallant, more
+blindly, foolishly, needlessly sacrificial, had never been laid upon the
+altar of love. And yet--she could not forgive him for it.
+
+"It must be because I do not care for him," she told herself stonily;
+and was glad in her heart that his children had not lived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+
+But if she could not offer Archie the tenderness he craved, she gave him
+at least all the other assistance in her power. Her executive ability
+stood them both in good stead.
+
+It was she who interviewed Mr. Moore, far more successfully than Judge
+Carmichael had done, persuading him not only to hush the matter up but
+to retain Archie in his employ. "If I can afford to take another chance
+on him, surely you can?" she insisted; an argument which the dazzled old
+gentleman found quite unanswerable.
+
+Within a week she had procured an excellent tenant for the house,
+furnished, with privilege of sale at a month's notice. She had disposed
+of her little car at a good price, and placed Pegasus for the time being
+in the Carmichael stable.
+
+"I can't sell her, of course, nor give her away--it would be like
+selling or giving away Ellen Neal! But if you'll just ride her, Emily,
+and play with her sometimes? She's used to a good deal of attention."
+
+"I'll probably spoil her to death," promised Emily, deeply touched by
+this first sign of sentiment she had seen in her friend during that
+tragic time.
+
+Joan moved about her pretty house, cleaning, packing, getting things in
+order for the tenant, as calmly as if she were not leaving it forever.
+Even in the nursery she was perfectly composed, until she came upon the
+toys Ellen had hidden there. Then she locked the door for awhile, and
+neither Emily nor Ellen dared go to her.
+
+"But what are we going to do ourselves?" moaned Ellen, rocking
+helplessly to and fro in her kitchen. All her self-reliance had deserted
+her. She was suddenly an old woman.
+
+"I haven't decided yet, dear. One thing at a time," replied her
+mistress, steadily....
+
+But in the end it was Archie who decided.
+
+He had acquiesced without comment in all Joan's arrangements. Only once
+had he protested. It was when she telegraphed Stefan Nikolai for the
+money.
+
+"Not that, Joan--not that, _please_!" he said, with a quick flush. "I'd
+rather go to the Pen than that--Really, the Pen will be quite a rest for
+me," he added, piteously.
+
+"Nonsense!" she replied; and he said no more.
+
+But for all his acquiescence, he did not seem to be numbed by the thing,
+as Joan was. Though she often heard him walking up and down his room at
+night, and suffered for him, at times he appeared almost happy.
+
+"I can't get over how _good_ people are!" he said once. "Think of Mr.
+Moore being willing to take me back! Not as manager, of course--the boys
+wouldn't be wanting to take orders from me yet awhile. Nor I couldn't
+expect to handle money. But he sent for me, and said I was the best
+salesman he'd ever had, and offered me the old job back on a commission
+basis! Pretty nice, what?"
+
+"Shall you take it?" she asked, curiously. She herself could not have
+faced disgrace with any such meekness.
+
+"Take it? Why, I jumped at the chance!"
+
+Joan flushed.
+
+"Archie," she said suddenly, "do you realize that there's a war going on
+over there in Europe! Do you realize that there is need in France for
+every able-bodied man that's got a life to spare?--Have you thought of
+that?"
+
+She was startled by the change in his face. The veins stood out on his
+forehead, and his hands clenched. "Have I thought of it? God, girl, what
+else do you suppose I've been thinking about the past year? I'd give the
+soul out of my body to slip away from this--this grab-bag, and get into
+a good clean fight--Those damned baby-killers! Gosh!--fight? Just give
+me a chance at that dachshund of a Kaiser with my two bare hands!
+But"--he made the little gesture that she realized was becoming
+characteristic of him--a gesture of renunciation--"I've got to stay here
+now. There isn't any money in soldiering."
+
+Her flush deepened. "Money! I never want to hear the word again. Haven't
+you had enough to do with just 'money,' Archie?"
+
+"Not on your life," he said doggedly. "I've got to make a heap of it
+before I'm through. Fifteen thousand dollars!--That reminds me," he went
+on in another tone. "You say they need able-bodied men over there--don't
+they need women, too? D'you suppose your friend Nikolai could find
+something for you to do in that unit of his?"
+
+He caught the sudden gleam in her eye.
+
+"That would please you, wouldn't it?" he said quietly. "Of course it
+would mean hard work, dangerous work, too, perhaps--but it's a great
+chance for you, for anybody! To sort of help make history.... Mr.
+Nikolai was talkin' to us once about those two kinds of happiness,
+Hüttengluck and Heldengluck--remember? Well, I don't believe you're the
+sort to be satisfied with any Hüttengluck--nor I wouldn't want you to
+be. Take your chance, Joan--and don't lose it." His voice shook a
+little. "I'd like mighty well to have somebody of my name mixed up in
+this war somehow!"
+
+She put her hand on his--almost her first demonstration of tenderness
+since the shock came; but the gleam had already died out of her eyes.
+
+"That's dear of you, Archie--fine and generous. But if your place is
+here, mine is, too. I am not going to desert you. How can you think such
+a thing? I mean to be a better wife to you than I have been. We've got
+to start again, and start right. I want to help you...."
+
+And then inexplicably, unbelievably, the worm turned. His nerves had
+strained too far. He shook off her hand as if it burned him.
+
+"Help!" he said roughly. "Help? A hell of a lot of help _you_ are! Going
+around like a martyr, with a don't touch-me, how-dare-you look on your
+face, as if I'd done the thing just to spite you! My God! A woman with
+any guts to her--"
+
+"_Archie!_"
+
+"Oh, yes, that shocks you--such a fine lady as you are," He seemed to be
+working himself up, like a woman in hysterics. "So grandly indifferent
+to money, too!--just so's you've got enough of it. Who spent the money,
+anyway?--tell me that! Was it me, who haven't bought myself so much as a
+new pair of pants in three years?"
+
+She stared at him, mutely. "_So this_," she thought, "_is the real
+man!_" His ears, his great, coarse hands--they meant something after
+all.
+
+Her white look drove him into a further frenzy. "Oh, yes, glare at me,
+if I'm good enough for you to glare at!--Let me tell you something--if
+it's on my account you're staying, you needn't. That's all! It's a
+_wife_ a man wants at a time like this, not any marble image, not any
+tragedy-queen! Not any noble character that watches him out of the
+corner of her eye, and if he's real good--pats him on the hand! I've had
+enough of that!--Go on with your friend Nikolai," he cried violently.
+"Try him out for six months or a year, and if he suits, and you don't
+want to come back here--by God, you needn't!"
+
+"Archie," she said, trembling in every limb, "I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."
+
+"Good!" he cried. "Good! And I'm going to beat you to it!"
+
+He strode to the kitchen door and flung it wide. "Come here, Ellen Neal,
+and bear witness that I'm leaving this house first."
+
+The front door banged behind him....
+
+The two women stared at each other.
+
+"Was that--was that _Mr. Archie_?"
+
+"Yes," said Joan, still trembling, "it was!--Come upstairs and help me
+pack my trunk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+
+There is little to be said here about Joan's experiences in France. The
+story of those is better told in her own remarkable letters, which began
+shortly to appear in certain magazines; and in the book that followed.
+
+Stefan Nikolai had found her shelter with a friend of his, Lady
+Arbuthnot, a clever old Englishwoman whose long horse-face and charming
+voice and odd combinations of tweed skirt and evening blouses were known
+and loved in every institution of mercy about Paris. Under Lady
+Arbuthnot's guidance Joan found use for not only her Red Cross training
+but for everything else she had, whether by gift or acquirement.
+Singing, story-telling, "play-acting," letter-writing, even dancing, all
+seemed as important a part of her equipment as the regulation sewing,
+bandage-making, and cookery. She tried an inexperienced hand at washing
+dishes and scrubbing floors. She also tried her hand at mending
+shattered nerves and even broken hearts; and at none of these things was
+she entirely unsuccessful. There was a certain power of concentration in
+Joan that made failure unlikely in whatever she undertook.
+
+It was a wonderful time to her. She never got nearer the trenches than
+Paris; but there the trenches came to her, with all their horror, their
+sordid hideousness, their sheer, soul-stirring grandeur. She saw
+shattered men struggling back to life that they might offer it again,
+with eagerness; she saw philanthropists living in comfort on money that
+had been obtained to feed starving refugees; she saw girl-children, who
+had been forced to bear German babies, loving those babies with a
+passion of maternity piteously beyond their years. Priests labored side
+by side with panders; women of the great world, such as Lady Arbuthnot,
+shared bed and board and ceaseless effort with W. C. T. U. workers from
+Kansas, with missionaries out of China, with ex-courtesans from the
+Paris streets, with those most sheltered of all aristocrats, the women
+of the upper French bourgeoisie.
+
+It was humanity with all barriers down, all contacts clean and clear.
+And Louisville, Kentucky, seemed as far away and negligible as the
+planet Earth may seem to possible dwellers on the moon.
+
+Sometimes she had word from there--not often, for Ellen Neal was no
+letter-writer, and even Emily Carmichael's loyalty had been strained by
+Joan's unexplained desertion of her husband in his trouble. Once her
+cousin Miss Iphigenia Darcy wrote, and from her letter Joan gathered
+some impression of the effect of her sudden departure from Louisville.
+
+     In my day girls were taught that their first duty was to the
+     _Home_, married or not. But I daresay this is a very
+     old-fashioned notion, and with all those poor, unfortunate
+     French needing help--Sister Euphie and Sister Virgie and I have
+     frequently discussed offering our services. It is strange to
+     have a war going on without any Darcys in it! (You haven't the
+     _name_, you see, although a _true Darcy_ in every other
+     particular.) However, it does not seem the place for
+     _unmarried_ ladies just now, with so many men lying about in
+     the hospitals not fully clothed, and those unfortunate Belgian
+     victims (you know what I mean)! As I tell everybody, "Advanced
+     young matrons like Joan are the ones really needed over there."
+     But you know how narrow people are, my dear! I sometimes think
+     our city is growing a little _provincial_.
+
+Joan smiled and sighed over this communication; and then forgot it.
+
+From Archie she had no word, except an occasional line or two with the
+money-order that came regularly on the first of each month, and was as
+regularly returned. The magazine connections Stefan Nikolai had made for
+her provided what money she needed, and she had not yet sufficiently
+forgiven Archie to be willing to accept anything from him.
+
+At first she wrote to him, not so much from any sense of duty, as from
+pity. She did not forget what had passed between them, she made no
+attempt to ignore the fact that he had failed her utterly in every way.
+But she no longer had time to brood upon her own affairs. In the vortex
+of life where she now found herself, personal troubles seemed somehow to
+disappear into the common whole. Constant association with others'
+sorrow developed her quality of sympathy to an almost painful extent;
+and though she knew that Ellen Neal was making Archie comfortable enough
+in the old rooms on Poplar Street, his loneliness, his humble
+acquiescence in disgrace, hurt like a bruise on her heart. So she wrote
+to him, impersonally but kindly.
+
+Since he so rarely replied, however, her letters gradually ceased.
+Evidently Archie, like many others, found it difficult to forgive where
+he had wronged. Joan shrugged--a little gesture she had learned from
+Nikolai--and dismissed her husband as much as possible from her mind.
+
+There was much else to occupy it: not only in the way of work but of
+pleasure. Paris, even in her grief, did not forget the human necessity
+for pleasure, nor did Stefan Nikolai. She saw rather less of him than
+she had expected to, for he was frequently absent for weeks at a time on
+unexplained journeys, about which Joan had learned to ask no questions.
+But whether he was near her or not, she was always conscious of his
+enveloping care, his devoted watchfulness. He gave her, too, many
+friends besides Lady Arbuthnot.
+
+Once Sacha, always left on guard over Joan during these absences of
+Nikolai's, betrayed the fact that his master had gone into Russia. Joan
+taxed him with it when he returned.
+
+"Russia is not safe for you, Stefan!--you told me so yourself."
+
+"Surely you would not have me at such a time seek only places of
+safety?" he smiled.
+
+"Why can't you stick to the hospital work you came over for, instead of
+gallivanting about all over the place?" she demanded, with a petulance
+that concealed anxiety.
+
+"One goes where one is useful," he replied quietly. "There are many who
+know more about medicine than I, but few who know more about
+Russia--except in Germany, perhaps! My countrymen are very susceptible
+to the spoken word."
+
+It was his only explanation of his frequent disappearances; but Joan,
+understanding that wars must be won not only on the battlefield, uttered
+no more protests, and made the most of her friend when she had him.
+
+For the first time in her life, she came near to the innermost meaning
+of the word happiness. It was not the placid content of her
+"pasture-time," nor the feverish, half-guilty ecstasy which had come to
+her for a brief hour through the unworthy medium of Eduard Desmond. It
+wrapped her round warmly like the consciousness of some beloved
+presence--which indeed it was, though Joan for once did not quite dare
+to analyze the sensation. She only knew that here, among strangers
+speaking a strange tongue, she was for the first time in her experience
+utterly at home. And she was curiously at the top of her powers. In that
+atmosphere, nothing seemed impossible of accomplishment. There was a
+sense of personal possession and being possessed--"By Paris," she told
+herself; but in her heart another name echoed.
+
+Unaware, the great experience, the thing for which she had blindly
+groped, had come upon her; not with a sudden leap to which her nature
+leaped in response, but with a slow, quiet, irresistibly gathering
+force, like a great stream that bore her upon its breast, without
+volition, without struggle, toward some bourne of which she had no
+knowledge. And no fear.
+
+Joan might have said with Browning:
+
+    "Let us be unashamed of soul ...
+    Is it in our control
+    To love or not to love?"
+
+It is always the body that suggests shame; and the body had ever been a
+negligible part of Joan's make-up. She felt as independent of it now as
+if she were already spirit, floating about in space--always with this
+certainty of meeting there another spirit, however, and mingling with
+it.
+
+This spiritual mingling was a matter she never discussed with
+Nikolai--the only thing in the universe, perhaps, which they did not
+discuss. Theirs was an understanding too close for words, and beyond
+words.... But sometimes, when Joan remembered that she had once feared
+love, believing it one of those things that are better done without, she
+smiled to herself; an inner, brooding smile that gave the final touch of
+the chisel to her features, and made her much sought by painters.
+
+Paris seemed more than usual that year the rendezvous for people who had
+won distinction in the arts and sciences, and who came to render their
+patron city in her hour of need what assistance was in their power.
+Among these people Nikolai was made welcome with an eagerness, and even
+a deference, which delighted Joan, and a little surprised her; for his
+simplicity made it easy to forget that he belonged among famous folk as
+a matter of right.
+
+On his account, perhaps a little on her own as well, Joan also was
+welcomed by them. She was not at all abashed by the company of
+greatness, having inherited from Richard Darcy the naïve conviction that
+the best was good enough for her; and moreover she found among them the
+keen power of enjoyment that invariably accompanies high mental
+development. She had long since suspected, and now proved, that only
+thinking people know how to play.
+
+It was a great relief to her, just then, to be with strangers who
+accepted her entirely at face-value, with neither curiosity nor demand.
+An unquestioning, simple freedom prevailed in these upper reaches which
+Joan fancied might be dangerous enough (unless it had the effect of
+putting people, as it were, on honor). Nobody enquired whether she had a
+husband, for instance, or where he was. It seemed quite sufficient that
+she was the young friend of Stefan Nikolai; "_Spiritosa e simpatica_,"
+as a certain great Italian tragedienne pronounced her. Their relations
+were taken as a matter of course. The two were always included together
+in whatever plans were afoot, and Joan noticed other such companionships
+among them which passed equally unquestioned. She was nominally under
+the care of Lady Arbuthnot; but that widely experienced noblewoman
+displayed a carelessness of chaperonage that would have caused hair to
+rise on the head of, say, Mrs. Carmichael.
+
+Joan was at perfect liberty to spend with her friend every hour that
+either could spare from the day's duties, and did so. "Why not?"
+appeared to be the attitude of a company which concerns itself more with
+matters of the spirit than of the flesh....
+
+In Louisville speculation was once more rife and lurid, sharing interest
+only with the war headlines and with Joan Blair's latest letter to the
+magazines.
+
+"We appear to have been nourishing Genius in our bosom unawares!"
+remarked the Jabberwocks to each other; not altogether pleased, as is
+the immemorial way of friendship.
+
+"I don't know why you were unaware," commented Emily Carmichael,
+quietly. "She has always shown every earmark of genius, even to
+neglecting the best husband that ever lived!"
+
+The Jabberwocks exchanged surprised and meaningful glances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+
+Into the busy abstraction of Joan's Paris life came presently one of her
+step-mother's rare letters. It was a round, childish, yet curiously firm
+scrawl written on lavender paper (Effie May having abandoned pink
+effects in honor of her widowhood), which for some reason brought home
+to Joan her father's little city so clearly that she could almost smell
+it; a distinctive summer smell compounded of hot asphalt, blossoming
+ailanthus trees, and a suggestion of the glue-factory.
+
+     Folks here are making bets as to whether you ever mean to come
+     back again,
+
+(wrote Effie May).
+
+     And why should you? is what I say. I keep thinking how pleased
+     Major would be to have you hobnobbing with lady earls and
+     famous characters and high life generally. It's just where you
+     belong, and so did he.
+
+     Archie comes to see me real often, and he don't look so poorly
+     as he did at first. He's got him up a regiment, mostly Y. M. C.
+     A. fellows and a few old boys with stummicks and bald heads,
+     and I hear they drill real cute. He goes horseback riding a
+     good deal with the Carmichael girl, too, and I guess it does
+     him good. Ellen says he seems more peckish for his meals.
+
+(Here Joan laid down the letter, thoughtfully. "Emily!--Well, why not?
+She always did like him. I'm glad," she mused. She certainly was not
+going to begrudge her husband the freedom she asked for herself.)
+
+     Ellen comes in every day to look after things for me, now that
+     I'm laid up. She don't like me any better than she used to, and
+     I expect she just thinks it's a family duty, but I'm glad to
+     have her anyhow. I keep nigger help now, the white ones being
+     so hard to get, and I'm not the hand with them your father was.
+     I never saw any one get as much out of niggers as Major
+     could!--out of white folks, too, for that matter, couldn't he?
+
+     Of course I'm not so sick as the doctors make out (they got to
+     earn the money somehow), but it's hard to sleep sitting up this
+     way, and sometimes at night I get to thinking. So I made a
+     will. I knew you'd never touch Calloway's money with a ten-foot
+     pole, but I thought maybe you wouldn't mind seeing it got spent
+     right. I want it to go to one of those shelters you told about
+     in the magazine, for little French girls with babies and no
+     husbands. Seems only fair, when I've had more than my share of
+     husbands and no kids.
+
+     Paris seems awful far away, and I guess I better let you off
+     that promise you made me to see that I didn't get laid out with
+     no corset on. They probably couldn't get a corset on me now,
+     anyway, I'm that fleshy. Not that I'm ordering me a coffin for
+     anytime real soon, dearie! but sometimes at night a person gets
+     to thinking.
+
+Joan was rather startled by this letter, and sent for Nikolai.
+
+"What do you make of it, Stefan? That part: 'It's hard to sleep sitting
+up this way'--what does it mean?"
+
+"I am afraid," he said gravely, "it means something serious--Advanced
+heart-disease, probably. A woman of her weight would be liable to it."
+
+Joan gave an exclamation of dismay. In that moment she discovered that
+she not only did not dislike Effie May; she was fond of her. The thought
+of never again seeing the vulgar, cheery, friendly soul was unexpectedly
+distressing.
+
+"Poor woman!--all alone there with her 'nigger help!' and Ellen sourly
+doing her duty--Or is it _my_ duty?" She was not thinking entirely of
+Effie May.... "Stefan"--her face blanched. "She was my father's wife.
+She tried her best to be a mother to me. I owe her a good deal. Has the
+time come to repay it? Does this mean--Oh, Stefan, do you think this
+means I ought to go back? I've been so happy here, so useful! For the
+first time in my life I have felt that I really 'belonged.' These people
+who are doing things--"
+
+She gazed at him beseechingly. It gradually dawned upon her that what
+she dreaded so to leave was not these people who were doing things, not
+that larger, freer life to which Nikolai had given her the key; not even
+the Spirit that met her Spirit there in space. It was Nikolai himself,
+the man, the comrade--the lover.
+
+Her whole being seemed to rush out to meet the need that suddenly gazed
+at her from Nikolai's eyes....
+
+"Stefan," she said very low, "_must_ I go back?"
+
+For a moment he did not answer. Then he said, his voice not quite under
+control "You expect me to decide that for you? My dear, you ask too
+much."
+
+He took his hat and left; but Joan knew that he had decided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked up and down the _quai_ for an hour or so before the gangway
+was drawn in. Joan always afterwards remembered what they said, as one
+recalls the least syllable of the dying. There was a sense of finality
+about this parting, against which she struggled in vain.
+
+She filled her eyes with him as if she had never seen him before, and
+would not again. She noted little physical details which had hitherto
+escaped her--the fine cameo cutting of his features, the long,
+sensitive, expressive hands, the air he shared with many Europeans of
+belonging to an older, more finished race than her own. In his calm
+impassivity there was a suggestion of Slavic fatalism, combined with the
+tragic patience of the Jew. Only his eyes smoldered with an unquenchable
+spark that flamed to hers.
+
+She knew that the Romance which had always eluded her was here at her
+side, in the person of this perfect comrade, this shadowy, insistent
+influence in her life which was about to withdraw into the shadows
+again. Perhaps she understood, too, that Romance to remain Romance must
+be elusive. Seized and held, it changes into something else. Yet she
+tried to cling to it.
+
+"You will be right here waiting on this spot when I come back, won't
+you, Stefan?--For I _will_ come back," she exclaimed as he did not
+answer. "Say that you know I will!"
+
+"I know that you will do whatever seems to you right."
+
+She made a mutinous face at him. "That's more than I know! I'm much more
+likely to do whatever seems to me nice--Oh, Stefan, why will you persist
+in believing in me always, no matter how badly I behave?" Lightly as she
+spoke, her eyes were fixed on him, telling him consciously what her lips
+could not utter.
+
+He answered at one of his usual tangents. "Do you not know that every
+splinter of a genuine Cremona violin vibrates to the bow on as true a
+tone as did the unbroken instrument?"
+
+"You mean--Mother," she said. "Oh, but I'm not all Cremona! I think
+there's a good deal in me of the fiddle Nero played while Rome burned.
+It's not _fair_ to be expected to live up to a self-sacrificing mother!
+If you don't, you have failed her; if you do, she gets the
+credit--Besides, I'm needed here just as much as I am in Louisville.
+More! Not only these poor people need me, but--you do, Stefan."
+
+She had brought it into the open at last, the one thing which they had
+never yet discussed in their discussions of everything under the sun;
+that eternal human question of Thou-and-I. She was a little frightened,
+dreading yet eager for the answer.
+
+It was long in coming. Nikolai understood the crisis they had reached.
+He knew that it was his to put out his hand and hold her, to keep
+forever in his life this one gift of the gods he craved, the fulfilled
+hope which had been his beacon through many a lonely year. Once before
+because of a mistake in judgment he had lost her, to her own
+unhappiness. There must be no more mistakes in judgment.
+
+But the habit of truth in thought and word was too great for him.
+
+"No," he said at last, "I do not need you."
+
+He saw her wince.
+
+"I do not need you," he repeated steadily, "and you do not need me,
+Joan. People like us get on quite well alone. Better, perhaps. It is not
+good for us to be too happy--Besides, what we already have of each other
+cannot be affected by time or space. You know that? The rest--is
+extraneous. Tell me this: Have you ever in any important moment of your
+life forgotten me, have you ever failed to be conscious of my presence,
+no matter what the distance between us?"
+
+She looked deep into the luminous eyes fixed upon hers.
+
+"Never, Stefan. Even in my unthinking school-days, even in that strange
+time after I lost my babies and could not write to you, I have counted
+upon you always. Everything that has come to me, good or bad, big or
+little, I have shared with you in my thoughts. Only--I did not realize
+it."
+
+"That," he said quietly, "is marriage. Your mother realized it. She knew
+when you were only a child of the tie between us--But she and I thought
+that I must keep away from you until the accident of time corrected
+itself. You see we have been sent into this incarnation rather far
+apart."
+
+"You kept away too long, Stefan!"
+
+"I know. But what does it matter?" He spoke half to himself, with his
+little shrug. "This manifestation or the next--we shall not be apart
+always."
+
+"No, no!" she cried, catching at his hand. "That is too ethereal, too
+mystic for me--I can't bear it, Stefan! I want the people I love with me
+_now_, in this 'manifestation,' as you call it, where I can talk with
+them, and touch them, and hold on to them--I am not all spirit. I
+thought I was, but--I'm not. Oh, my dear, aren't you human _at all_?"
+
+He did not reply; and Joan, looking at him through swimming tears, saw
+that it was because he could not.
+
+She dropped his hand. "Forgive me!" she whispered. "I will try to climb
+up to you--since you will not come down to me.... But you must help me."
+
+"I will help," said Nikolai.
+
+They spoke a little later of Archie, who had been all the while at the
+back of their thoughts. Both knew it was to him she was returning,
+rather than to her step-mother.
+
+"You expect too much of him, Joan--you always expect too much of people.
+Try to take them as you find them. He is one of the many who think
+better with their hearts than with their heads."
+
+She commented with a faint smile, "My step-mother once told me that
+there was nothing in the world so dangerous as what she called
+'bone-headedness.'"
+
+"Exactly!--especially to the bone-headed--Your Archie is no fool,
+however. There are perhaps fewer convolutions in his gray matter than in
+ours, that is all. He has made mistakes with his head, and will again.
+But with his heart--never."
+
+"You are not condoning," she asked slowly, "what Archie has done?"
+
+He answered after a little pause, "To me there seems nothing
+unforgivable, nothing utterly vicious, except selfishness. There is no
+self in Archie Blair. Not enough self."
+
+Joan told him then reluctantly of something she had never before
+mentioned: her final incredible scene with her husband. She was
+curiously ashamed of that scene, as though it were she who had betrayed
+herself, instead of Archie. "Should you not call that a mistake of the
+heart?"
+
+But Nikolai did not appear to be particularly shocked by it. "I had no
+idea," he commented, "that Blair was so good an actor."
+
+"An actor!--You think that scene was not genuine?"
+
+"I think, in fact I know, that your husband would hesitate to sacrifice
+nothing to what he believed your happiness; even your respect--I love
+that man," he said simply. "And so do you, Joan. Otherwise he would have
+been powerless to hurt you."
+
+Her eyes widened. She asked, as so many before her have asked, "Is it
+possible to love--two people at once?"
+
+"Two? A dozen--a hundred! Does a mother love two children at
+once?--Surely that depends upon the stage of the soul's development."
+
+"But always one best," she said quite fiercely.
+
+"Always one best," he repeated....
+
+The parting had come. Staring at him desperately, she saw in his eyes a
+depth of pain and loneliness that made her own for the moment
+insignificant. So much of his life was done; so much of hers, after all,
+only beginning.
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she cried in a sort of bewilderment. "What is it
+all about? Is there a purpose somewhere in this muddle of things? Why do
+you say it is not good for people like us to be happy, when others go to
+the end of their days in calm security? I do not want any--wicked
+things, Stefan! I only want to be with you always. To take care of you
+if you are sick, to mend your clothes, and make you comfortable,
+and--love you. I want us to grow old together, not alone. Oh, my dear,
+all your life you have been alone; and I can't bear it!--What is the
+good of this thing that has waked in me at last, if I am not to use it?"
+
+"You are," he said steadily. "Emotion to be safe must, _must_ translate
+itself into action."
+
+"But how, how? By doing for others, you are going to say--but it's such
+a thankless task, Stefan! A red-blooded woman like me to take to
+altruism, as some take to drugs!--Why must some of us live so intensely,
+so consciously, only to be denied again and again the fulfilment that we
+crave? Sinking our lives into those of lesser people, always of lesser
+people!"
+
+He answered gently, "'_Car je suis le Cobzar._'--It is time you
+understood.... You know what a Cobzar is?"
+
+She shook her head; and he told her.
+
+"In the more remote Magyar villages, news of the world comes to the
+people by means of a sort of minstrel who is called the Cobzar. He is to
+them not only newsbringer, but historian and poet and philosopher as
+well. He is treated with respect, they reward his singing with food and
+wine and a place beside the fire, for it is an honor to be born a
+Cobzar. But not always a happy honor, Joan. People do not listen to
+singing that comes out of an empty heart. It is the Cobzar's duty to
+tell them the story of themselves, and that is only the story of
+himself, wrought into many forms. Their fears and joys, their failures
+and their suffering and their hopes--he must be part of it all, and yet
+apart, that he may not only understand but watch, remembering always his
+mission to bring life to the knowledge of those who live."
+
+He quoted for her then some lines which Joan never forgot:
+
+    "Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,
+    Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,
+    Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,
+      Car je suis le Cobzar."
+
+The water widened between them....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+
+All during her homeward journey Joan had the feeling that she was waking
+slowly from a long dream; such a dream as ether gives, more vivid than
+reality itself but impossible of recapture. As he came literally nearer,
+Archie grew to be the dominant figure in her thoughts rather than
+Nikolai, though Nikolai was always there; Archie under the new light her
+friend's parting words had shed upon him. It mortified her to realize
+that another, almost a stranger to him, should have read her husband
+better than she did. It occurred to her, too, that with Nikolai she had
+not left behind her all Romance. A man who was capable of such a
+sacrifice as Archie Blair's could not be entirely commonplace. Her eyes
+had been suddenly opened.
+
+Perhaps this was part of the help Nikolai had promised.
+
+Indeed, her sentiments toward her husband became rather puzzling, being
+composed so far as she could decipher them of a desire to comfort him
+for the loss of herself, combined with a desire to be comforted by him
+for the loss of Stefan....
+
+Her fellow-travelers eyed Joan with more than the usual interest she
+invariably excited among strangers; but to no avail. It was a time when
+what few barriers exist on shipboard at best went down in the sharing of
+a common peril, the menace of the submarine. Not so with Joan, however.
+She seemed unaware of friendly advances or invidious criticism: wrapped
+in a curious aloofness, from danger and from her fellowman alike. Nor
+was it an aloofness that would pass.
+
+She had her great renunciation to make, and faced it; a renunciation
+which took the most difficult form, of dedication. Loneliness was upon
+her, not loneliness as she had known it before, a groping restlessness,
+a dissatisfaction. There was nothing left to grope for. She knew quite
+well now what she wanted, had always wanted, and might never have; but
+she knew, too, that on this solitary road of life, the warm human clasp
+of hands is something, the warm human touch of lips.... Thinking of
+Archie as Nikolai thought of him, her heart seemed to be stretching,
+literally expanding, with growing-pains; so that there might be room in
+it for two--or for a dozen, a hundred, as he had promised.
+
+And presently she was able to return in spirit to the first night of her
+marriage, when for a little interval of time she had lost Joan the
+individual, and become simply the woman, whose mission is to give....
+
+She had thought so much of her husband that she was quite prepared to
+find him waiting at the dock for her, yellow boots, Derby hat, and all.
+But he was not there, nor yet at the station in Louisville, though she
+had wired him from New York the date and hour of her coming.
+
+Only two of the Misses Darcy were there to meet her, in Effie May's
+limousine, their manner nicely adjusted between melancholy, importance,
+and the _empressement_ due a distinguished relative returning from
+foreign parts.
+
+"Yes, my dear, she is low, very low! Restoratives have to be
+administered constantly," sighed Miss Virginia. "What a charming hat!
+Paris, I suppose? I always have maintained that the French touch--So
+that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take
+turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen
+Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses--No
+expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury,
+isn't it? She has been watching for you every day--seemed to be quite
+certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."
+
+Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate
+whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances.
+
+"Cousin Effie May happened to mention that he was out riding this
+afternoon. Doubtless he had made some engagement before your letter
+came, or I am sure--" Miss Euphemia nudged her visibly into silence.
+
+"I see," said Joan, flushing a trifle....
+
+If Effie May was as "low" as reported, she showed little sign of it. She
+welcomed Joan in her usual loud and cheery tones, magnificent in a new
+lavender tea-gown, as pink-cheeked and carefully coiffed as ever. At her
+elbow was a box of chocolates.
+
+"I knew that letter'd fetch you!" she chuckled. "Sort o' pitiful, wasn't
+it? People were mighty surprised to hear you were coming back. But not
+me. You're not so hard-shelled as you try to be, girlie!"
+
+Like the Misses Darcy, she displayed immediate interest in the Paris
+hat.
+
+"Chick as it can be," she pronounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad
+you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth
+is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her."
+
+"There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight
+lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous
+journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was
+concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black
+crêpe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning
+'chickly'--poor Paris!"
+
+The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor
+comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins
+quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with
+Major--And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the
+two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my
+mind!"
+
+She made Joan sit down beside her and tell her at once all about Paris,
+and how many noblewomen she had met, and what they wore, and whether it
+was true that Frenchmen took more notice of married women, even of
+middleaged ones than of girls.
+
+"Paris is the burg for me!" she sighed.
+
+But in the midst of Joan's liveliest recital, her head dropped suddenly
+forward and she fell asleep. It was the other's first intimation that
+she had not come after all upon a wild goose chase.
+
+She sat for a moment looking at this woman who had tried to be a mother
+to her, with her absurd golden head and beringed, puffy hands. Then,
+following an impulse rare with her, she stooped and kissed the painted
+cheek very tenderly. It was a pity that Effie May did not know.
+
+She slipped away to the telephone and called up the Carmichael house.
+The maid told her that Miss Emily was at home.
+
+("So _she's_ not out riding with him!" thought Joan.)
+
+Emily appeared politely surprised by her friend's arrival.
+
+"Yes, Archie tells me how ill your step-mother is. I am so sorry! You
+say you will be here some time before you go back? I shall hope to see
+you, then."
+
+"I hope you may," replied Joan even more politely, "but unfortunately I
+shall be very busy.... Look here, Emily Carmichael, what's the matter
+with you anyway? Come right over here and explain."
+
+Emily came.
+
+When the two had had their talk out and parted, tear-stained but
+reconciled, Joan went once more to the telephone and called up her
+husband.
+
+His familiar voice over the wire gave her an unexpected thrill. She had
+forgotten how big and warm it was, even when he sang out of tune.
+
+"Archie," she asked directly, "why weren't you at the station to meet
+me?"
+
+He stammered out some rather breathless excuse.
+
+"Yes, I know all about that--Emily told me that she often gets you to
+exercise Pegasus for her when she hasn't time. But why to-day
+particularly, when you knew I was coming?"
+
+His voice was under better control now. "Why, you see, I didn't think it
+would look well for us to be seen together just now--"
+
+"Wouldn't look well!"
+
+"Why, no, Joan. You've got a pretty good case of abandonment--I left the
+house first, you know--but if we were to be seen together the minute you
+get home, sort of friendly-like, it might get to the ears of the Judge
+and prejudice him. When the whole thing's settled, of course, then--"
+
+Joan gasped.
+
+"What do you mean," she interrupted, "by a case of abandonment?"
+
+"You wouldn't care to bring suit on any other grounds, would you!" he
+asked anxiously. "The fact is I'm afraid you couldn't, Joan. There
+_aren't_ any other grounds."
+
+"Oh," she said blankly. "I understand.... Well, my dear, I'm sorry you
+feel that you can't come and say at least hello to me--'sort of
+friendly-like.'"
+
+"So am I," he answered, gently....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joan wandered back to her step-mother's room, feeling queer and dazed.
+She had never before realized that anything other than death might be
+irremediable.
+
+During all her months in Paris she had not even contemplated the
+possibility of divorcing Archie. She was blindly content with things as
+they stood, and it had not occurred to her that Archie might be
+otherwise, that he had seriously meant, for his own sake, perhaps, the
+suggestion he had once made to her. She was so used to doing his
+thinking for him.
+
+Divorce!--that refuge of the foolish, the frail, those so lacking in
+pride as to be willing to confide their failures to the world!
+
+"It is so--so unnecessary," she protested aloud, wondering vaguely why
+the phrase was familiar to her. Then with a start she recognized it as
+one of Eduard Desmond's.
+
+The hot blood rushed into her face. Did they--Emily, Effie May, even
+Archie himself--believe her capable of the sort of thing Eduard Desmond
+meant? Dropping one husband to take on another--or perhaps taking on
+another without dropping the first? Was this the interpretation that had
+been put upon her life abroad, her precious companionship with
+Nikolai?--She shivered. No wonder Archie had not cared to come to see
+her!
+
+For once the thought of Nikolai was of no comfort to her. She put it
+from her almost with horror. It seemed to her that their relationship
+was irreparably smirched, degraded, by the touch of profane hands....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She hoped that Effie May had awakened from her doze, so great was her
+need just then of the shrewd, tolerant, entirely human counsel of her
+step-mother.
+
+But Effie May had not awakened; nor did she wake again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+
+The funeral did great credit to the Misses Darcys' experience in such
+affairs. A crowded, beflowered church bore witness to the fact that
+Darcy was still a name to be reckoned with in the community. Not only
+the best people were there in quite sufficient numbers, but many of
+those lesser folk whose duties bring them happily into touch with the
+best people; milliners, modistes, clerks in the better shops, and so
+forth.
+
+As Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing remarked to Miss Murphy of
+the Silks: "Such a loss to trade, ain't she?"
+
+Among these humbler friends not a few genuine tears were shed, however,
+for Effie May had scattered her kindness impartially.
+
+Joan, in solitary state as chief mourner, with the Misses Darcy sadly
+rustling in the pew behind her, was conscious of many curious glances
+turned her way. Perhaps her husband was the only person there whose eyes
+never turned in her direction. She was glad of her heavy veil, through
+which she might study him unobserved.
+
+He sat just opposite among the other pall-bearers, grave and quiet, with
+the odd dignity still about him which had come at the time of his
+disgrace. She noted new lines in his face, an unexpected touch of gray
+in his boyish, curling hair. The ears, the freckles, the great, clumsy
+hands were still much in evidence; but somehow Archie had lost forever
+his slight touch of the ridiculous. Declining to run away from disgrace,
+facing his music, humbly but unafraid, it occurred to Joan that her
+husband was approaching rather nearly her own and her father's standard
+of gentlehood.
+
+"Blessings brighten," she reminded herself, grimly, "as they take their
+flight!..."
+
+She came presently under the soothing spell of the old cathedral, a
+shabby, not very beautiful edifice left stranded in a neighborhood no
+longer its own, but whose pews still bore the names of the town's first
+citizens, gentlemen who had been her father's boyhood playmates, and
+whose fathers had worshiped there with his father. Oddly enough,
+considering how little time she had spent within its walls, the echoing
+dimness of it gave Joan her first sense of home-coming. This old house
+of God, that had witnessed so many ends and so many beginnings of human
+endeavor, had gathered into itself the heart of a city.
+
+A warm heart, it was, thought Joan; despite those speculative glances
+fixed upon her. She recalled people's kindness to Archie in his trouble,
+their quick response to any call upon their sympathy, their willingness
+to give every stranger his chance. She remembered their invincible
+hospitality, whether in wealth or poverty; the ardor with which they
+entered into the interest of the moment, be it work or play, their
+generous admiration for any fellow-citizen who made a success in the
+world. A warm heart, she thought, and a loyal one.
+
+She understood in that moment why it was that the people of this little
+city rarely drifted too far away to come back again. Just as the human
+body claims in the end its six feet of earth for a resting-place, so
+must the human spirit claim its bit of the world for a resting-place, a
+Neighborhood. The tragedy of a wandering life such as Nikolai's was, she
+saw, in its detachment from common human interests, from a Neighborhood.
+Better a tree, with its roots in friendly soil, as he had once said.
+
+Cast her out though it might, Joan knew that her Neighborhood was here,
+here among her father's people....
+
+A trolley-car clanged past, and the challenge of the peanutman came
+cheerfully in at the open door. "Pop-corn, Lady? Yere's your fine fraish
+roasted peanuts, right off the hopper!"
+
+The little lads in the choir stirred restlessly to this voice of the
+summer outside. "Lead, Kindly Light," they warbled in a piercing young
+treble, with now and then the Bishop's robust tones added in a
+hospitable effort to make the thing go.
+
+Joan's irrepressible fancy recalled the last occasion on which she had
+heard this noble anthem. It was at the Country Club, where some
+irreverent wag was playing it in rag-time; and Effie May had danced to
+it merrily, Lightfoot Ef with her indulgent Major. Joan wondered whether
+Lightfoot Ef might be remembering, too, and smiling perhaps in her
+coffin....
+
+But out at the cemetery her queer sense of elation vanished. Here, in
+the shadow of her father's monolith, with Mary's modest headstone on one
+side, a yawning grave on the other, at her feet two mounds so small as
+hardly to be noticed, the aloneness of the human soul suddenly smote her
+with such force that she could not stand under it. Was she never to know
+again that human touch of hands and of lips? Was her only neighborhood
+after all to be this quiet city of the dead?
+
+She went quite dizzy and might have fallen, but for the quick arm that
+supported her; whose in that bitter moment she neither knew nor cared.
+But she was not surprised to find herself presently alone in a carriage
+with Archie.
+
+"I guess I oughtn't to have done this," he apologized, when he saw that
+she could listen to him. "I just didn't think--out there. I'll go as
+soon as you feel better, dear. Where do you want the driver to take
+you!"
+
+"Home," she said. It was no more than a whisper.
+
+"You mean to Mrs. Darcy's house? Won't that be pretty gloomy for you
+just now? Better let him take you to your cousins'--or to Miss Emily's.
+How would that be? I know she'd he mighty glad to have you."
+
+Joan gathered herself together for an effort. It seemed to her, faint as
+she was, that much depended upon this moment. But for once her eloquence
+failed her. She could only repeat that she wanted to go home.
+
+Archie understood her trembling better than her speech, perhaps. He,
+too, began to tremble.
+
+"I--I haven't got any home now, Joan. Only the old attic-room in Poplar
+Street--"
+
+She cried out, painfully, "Archie! don't you _want_ me any more?..."
+
+In his arms at last, her face pressed roughly against the familiar
+roughness of his coat, words returned to her. She quoted her husband's
+sole adventure into poetry:
+
+    "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."
+
+Archibald did his faithful best to laugh; but the effort was not
+successful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So it happened that they were received from a funeral as they had once
+been from a wedding, into the portal of an ancient, friendly mansion
+whose stairway still creaks to the tread of ghosts and broken people,
+with now and then a happy footstep to remind it of its youth. And there
+Ellen Neal, mounting stiffly and wearily with the aid of the curving
+bannister, was hailed by a loud whisper from the floor above.
+
+"Hsst! Come on up and look who's here."
+
+A radiant Archie led her to his door, and exhibited the One and Only,
+clad in his bathrobe, curled up asleep upon his bed.
+
+"Humph!" gulped Ellen through her tears. "I _knew_ that woman'd manage
+to fix things somehow!" Which was a final reluctant tribute to the force
+of kindness that had been Effie May.
+
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS LATER
+
+
+A distinguished, foreign-looking gentleman with pointed gray beard got
+off an interurban car in the vicinity of Louisville, and stood gazing
+about him uncertainly. It was not the suburban neighborhood he had
+expected to find, but a distinctly rural one. Here and there smoke was
+visible above the tree-tops, but the only house within sight was a small
+farm-cottage of red brick, which had doubtless stood there among its
+gnarled fruit-trees at a time when the turnpike that passed it was a
+postroad leading from the metropolis of Middletown (now half a hundred
+houses strung along the pike) to the little port of Louisville on the
+Ohio.
+
+There was a big chimney at either end, in the picturesque but
+impractical early fashion, and a bricked-up terrace across the front
+overflowing with simple flowers: petunias, snapdragon, larkspur. Upon
+the lawn grazed a rather stiff-kneed thoroughbred, apparently under
+convoy of a pair of infants. One of these, the smaller, got about on all
+fours with astonishing rapidity, and seemed imbued with the spirit of
+investigation. The other, slightly larger, was extremely black as to
+color and extremely capable as to manner.
+
+"Tek keer, you Steffum!" Mr. Nikolai heard this one admonish. "Don't you
+go so near his mouf, you heah me? Dat hawss could snap you up jes' as
+easy as nippin' off a dandelium!"
+
+The visitor leaned over the fence in sudden interest, "Can you tell me,
+young person, whether Mrs. Blair lives here?"
+
+At sound of his voice the investigatory infant, in an excess of
+hospitality, rose to its legs and teetered eagerly toward him, only to
+come to earth at Mr. Nikolai's feet. Nothing daunted, however, it gazed
+up at him from this lowly position with a mixture of Archie's grin and
+the droll, blue, wistful twinkle of Joan.
+
+"Dar you goes, Steffum!" cried the guardian, in hot pursuit. "Dirtyin'
+up anodder clean dress so's Miss Ellen gwinter whup me good--He's always
+a-fallin' over on his face dataway," she complained, while maternally
+repairing damages with the skirt of what appeared to be an only garment.
+"I b'lieve he goes and does it a-purpose!"
+
+"To gain experience, perhaps?" suggested the visitor.
+
+"I reck'n," assented the other, doubtfully. "Yassuh, Mis' Blair she
+_libs_ heah, but she's playin' on de type-writer dis mawnin'. Will I run
+an' tell her comp'ny is came?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Not if she is playing on a
+typewriter."
+
+"Mr. Archie, _he_ libs heah, too, when he ain't a trabelin' on de
+railroad train," volunteered the black one, "He's out behine, makin' him
+a little house to put a hawg in. Heah him?"
+
+Mr. Nikolai nodded. There was a good deal of intermittent hammering and
+whistling going on in the background.
+
+"You need not announce me, thank you. Perhaps my namesake will lead me
+to him?"
+
+He held out a forefinger to the younger Stefan, who examined it, found
+it good, and clasped a trusting fist about it. So linked, the two moved
+off at a pace suitable to experimental footsteps.
+
+In this slow progress they presently came upon a somewhat nondescript
+figure at work in a potato-patch. It wore blue jeans overall trousers,
+surmounted by what had once been a leghorn picture-hat, from which
+straggled a lock or two of sparse gray hair.
+
+Mr. Nikolai stared at this figure for a puzzled moment; and then burst
+out laughing.
+
+"Why, Ellen Neal! I did not recognize you as a farmerette."
+
+"Land sakes!" She sat down abruptly among the potato-plants, whether out
+of surprise or for purposes of concealment it is impossible to state.
+
+But her welcome when it came was for once not grudging. Perhaps she
+recalled a certain timely offer of help; or perhaps this graybeard, with
+his slight, tired stoop and his lined eyes, no longer seemed to her a
+menace to the sheepfold. Be that as it may, her greeting was not outdone
+in warmth even by Archie's.
+
+"I've simply _got_ to tell Joan!" cried Archie. "She'll never forgive me
+if I don't interrupt her just this once."
+
+"Not when it is coming like that," forbade Nikolai, listening to the
+rapid click of a typewriter from the house beyond. "Neither battle,
+murder, nor sudden death must be allowed to interfere with a flow of
+thought that is coming a hundred words to the minute."
+
+"Well, I suppose you know," conceded the husband, reluctantly--
+
+An hour later, however, Ellen took matters into her own hands. She
+appeared at the kitchen door (dressed, Nikolai was flattered to observe,
+in a costume of purple crêpe with Battenburg touches), and loudly rang a
+dinner-bell.
+
+"That'll fetch her! Joan ain't ever too much up in the clouds to hear a
+dinner-bell; and I don't mean to have my jelly-omelette kep' waitin' on
+no flows of thought," she remarked.
+
+Joan came out to them, a little untidy as to dress and hair (why is it
+that the Muse can never be pursued in perfect neatness?) and moving
+vaguely, as if half in a dream. There was a faint vertical wrinkle
+between her brows which was new to Nikolai, but her pallor had given
+place to warm tan, and both face and figure showed a slight suggestion
+of fullness, a little matronly poise that was more charming than her
+Botticelli _maigre_ had been.
+
+As she passed her son, she swooped down upon him and lifted him with a
+fine free swing onto her shoulder.
+
+"Hi there, old Dirt-in-the-Face! Where's your Dada?"
+
+Mother and child made a memorable picture as they approached, the long
+lifting lines of the woman's body, her laughing face upturned to the
+boy, who straddled her shoulder unafraid of his high position, chuckling
+and kicking fat legs as she tickled him.
+
+The two men who loved Joan exchanged a sympathetic glance. "Mine!" said
+each in his heart; the one triumphantly, the other with the little shrug
+that was habitual to him.
+
+Not until she was close upon them did she realize who waited for her
+there beside Archie. She stopped short. Then, without a word, she put
+down her child and went to Nikolai and kissed him.
+
+If that kiss, so impulsive and without self-consciousness, was like a
+stab in Nikolai's heart, he did not show it. She had not dared to kiss
+him when they parted.
+
+There came back to him in that moment an echo of a certain prophesy he
+had once made to Archie: "I must warn you that when she does find her
+_metier_, you are more in danger of losing her to it than to me."
+
+Was she lost to both of them, already?...
+
+"Oh, but Stefan, dear, how tired you look!" ("And how old!" her thought
+finished.) "You've been working too hard over there!"
+
+"One does. It seems the least one can do."
+
+"Too much work and not enough exercise," pronounced Archie, casting a
+semi-professional eye over him. "Nothing ages a man so quick as to let
+his muscles sag on him--but you brainy people always forget you've got
+muscles except in your heads. I'll have to make you hoe the garden and
+put on the gloves with me now and then, like I do Joan."
+
+"No wonder she is able to hoist fat sons about as if they were
+feathers!" commented Nikolai.
+
+It was a happy luncheon they had together, and a garrulous one. The
+Blair family talked all at once, including the youngest, who had three
+words at his command and liked to practice them. Ellen also joined
+freely in the conversation as she waited upon them. Nikolai was the only
+quiet one, seeming content to look and listen.
+
+He had to hear all about the finding of the Farm, as Archie called his
+two acres and a cottage. When the reunited Blairs had been looking about
+for a place they could afford to live in--"And raise a family," added
+Archie happily--they had come across the little place, weed-grown and
+deserted, and rented it for almost nothing.
+
+"The chickens and the garden alone practically pay the rent," boasted
+Archie, "and this summer I'm going to set up a hog. Real money in hogs,
+Mr. Nikolai! Of course the house is pretty old-timey and plain,"--he
+indicated the low ceilings and deep-set, many-paned windows--"but Joan
+likes old-timey things. She says this is a country cousin to that old
+place I used to live in on Poplar Street. Says a house without any
+ghosts in it is as uninteresting as a house without any books in it."
+(Archie was always fond of quoting the sayings of his Joan.)
+
+"You do not miss people?" Nikolai asked her, recalling how easily the
+young American had made her place in what is perhaps the most finished
+society in the world.
+
+"I have no chance to. We have neighbors enough--nice country women who
+exchange patterns and recipes and cuttings with me, and even a book now
+and then. If I want another sort, it is easy enough to run into town--or
+even on to New York, now that I've the excuse of publishers to be seen!
+And lately the town has begun to come out to me. Not at first. Emily and
+the others had a good deal to say about the folly of burying oneself in
+the country. You see this is not Country Club or golf-course country.
+But now I notice that they're glad enough to come whenever I ask
+them--or even when I don't!--Oh, the peace of it, Stefan! At night you
+can positively hear the silence."
+
+    "Amid the darkness that we feel is green,"
+
+he said.
+
+She nodded. "And no formal callers to interrupt, and no ridiculous
+competitions with Mrs. Websters--I think people are more themselves in
+the country, somehow. Kentucky people, at any rate. Your Kentuckian does
+not run quite true to type herded in masses."
+
+"Hear the wise authorine!" beamed Archie.
+
+"Perhaps that is true of all Anglo-Saxons," she went on, unheeding.
+"They need to get their roots into the soil."
+
+"Not only of Anglo-Saxons, Joan--of Semitic people, of all people, I
+think," said Nikolai. "Humanity began in a garden, if we may believe our
+myths. And with all races the dream of the ultimate Paradise is a
+garden."
+
+"Why don't you put some roots out yourself?" asked Archie, eagerly.
+"There's a lot of good land about here for sale cheap. Why don't you buy
+some and settle down near us?"
+
+"Oh, do!" urged Joan. "What a splendid idea!"
+
+He looked from one to the other, the slight flush that had risen to his
+face dying away.
+
+"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thank you, my friends. Perhaps--some
+day."
+
+Joan remembered that he had spoken once of his intention to settle down
+near her and grow up with her children, "when he was old enough."
+
+Surely, she thought (quite unaware of any cruelty in her thought) he was
+old enough now!
+
+Her eyes had been making their usual running commentary on the
+conversation, quick blue flashes, grave or merry or reassuring, that
+always spoke to Nikolai more clearly than her words. But presently he
+noticed in them a return of the preoccupation, the vague dreaminess,
+that had been about her when she first appeared.
+
+"Your mind is at that typewriter," he accused her suddenly.
+
+"Of course it is," complained Archie. "She'd be at the thing all day
+long, if I didn't drag her out in the fields occasionally to work!"
+
+"Archie thinks writing is not work," she interpolated, "merely an
+elegant way of passing a lady's leisure, like embroidery or
+crocheting!--But I'm not always as bad as this, Stefan," she apologized.
+"It's just that a crisis is on the way, and thoughts seem to come faster
+than I can get them down.--Luckily for you I've got a public now to
+spill them onto, instead of you!"
+
+"Do you find the public as responsive?"
+
+"_Does_ she!" cried the proud husband. "Letters in every mail, and
+requests for autographs--why, she's a public character! The other day in
+a street-car--Tell him what happened the other day in the street-car,
+Joan."
+
+She pulled his hair, laughing. "Ain't I the most wonder-fullest
+boy?--Well, the other day in a street-car, Stefan, a perfectly strange
+man came up to me and said, 'Aren't you the Mrs. Blair who writes? Say,
+what business have _you_ got knowing how scared a man is of his grown
+son? You're only a girl.'"
+
+"I congratulate you," said Nikolai. "Yes, that is response. Taking the
+world into your circle of intimates--that is the thing that makes the
+game worth while for people like you and me."
+
+"Don't include me with yourself," she protested in quick deprecation.
+"I'm not and never shall be 'literary.' Human nature is all I'm after,
+Stefan. Villains who won't stay villains; heroes with fatal flaws of
+character; good, fine, noble natures who spread havoc all about
+'em--that's the sort of thing I want to do; never 'literature'!"
+
+He smiled, nodding. "Spoken like a true Cobzar!--But at that rate you'll
+find it difficult to escape literature, my dear." He rose to leave,
+against protests. "No, no, I have no intention of sharing honors with a
+Climax. Let me come back to-morrow, when the crisis is out of her
+system. I know how that is!"
+
+"You always know how things are," murmured Joan gratefully, pressing his
+hand....
+
+Archie walked with him to the car-station.
+
+"You think she's looking well, sir?" he asked as soon as they were out
+of earshot.
+
+"Better than well, Blair. Content."
+
+The husband sighed with satisfaction. "I think so myself--though of
+course it's the kid who's done that, not me--Mr. Nikolai, I've got to
+talk to you on business. How big a hurry are you in for that money you
+lent me?"
+
+"None at all," answered the other pleasantly. "I've accumulated a good
+deal of moss for such a rolling-stone--a racial trait, perhaps! Take
+your time. You've already paid me more than half, I think."
+
+"Joan's book did most of that, not me," admitted Archie, flushing.
+"Though of course I'm going to pay her back."
+
+"Don't," said the other.
+
+"_Don't!_ Why not?"
+
+"Our only hold upon such as Joan is--our need of them."
+
+Archie ruminated upon this in silence. "I get you," he said at last.
+"Let 'em think we're sort of helpless, like--like children, eh? But it's
+pretty hard accepting money from a woman!"
+
+"Why? When we have consented to accept life itself from a woman--Where
+there is love there is no debt, Blair!"
+
+"I guess that's right," said Archie slowly. "What's mine is hers of
+course; and so what's hers is mine--But speaking of the war--"
+
+It happened that they had not been speaking of the war at all, though it
+hung in the background of their talk, grim and menacing, as it hung in
+the background of all talk just then.
+
+"Yes, Blair?"
+
+"We're getting into it at last, thank God! And as soon as we do, I'm
+going."
+
+"Of course," said Nikolai.
+
+Archie turned to him eagerly. "You think I've got a right to go?"
+
+"So much of a right that I've come out here largely to see how I can
+help you--Of course you know," he added after a moment's hesitation,
+"that anything I have will go some day to my namesake Stefan?"
+
+"Say, that's great!" cried Archie, beaming. "That makes me mighty easy
+about the future! And the present's all right, too. I'm pretty sure of
+getting a commission, and Joan makes more money than I do now. The thing
+that's been troubling me is wondering how _you'd_ ever get paid back....
+I'm pretty tall for the trenches," he explained. "And I seem to get sort
+of careless when I'm excited--the Irish coming out on me, I reckon. The
+chances are against my coming back. And in that case all you'd get would
+be--Joan."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+"And the kid, of course--He's a pretty nice little fellow," Archie added
+tentatively. "I don't suppose he'd be much of a--drawback?"
+
+"On the contrary," said Nikolai. "I think he might be considered
+interest on the investment!"
+
+Archie laughed with relief.
+
+"I tell you, it makes me feel pretty comfortable to know that whatever
+happens to me they'll be safe! And to know that you'll be taking care of
+her, sir. She needs a good deal of taking care of, too--though she don't
+know it. Thinks she's as independent as a little pig on ice. But they're
+none of 'em independent, Mr. Nikolai--take it from me! They've got to be
+humored, and teased, and exercised, and petted--and the smarter they are
+the more petting they need. This high-brow business seems to leave
+people sort of lonesome in their hearts--you know what I mean?"
+
+"Yes," said Nikolai, "I know what you mean--I shall accept your legacy
+gladly, Blair, if I am here to accept it. But--I am going to the war,
+myself. Not into the trenches, no. Into Russia."
+
+Archie protested as Joan had. "But I thought Russia was not safe for
+you!"
+
+"It is not. Nor for anybody else just now. There is something brewing
+there. You will see. And I think perhaps I can do a little something for
+both my countries, the new and the old. That is why I have come to
+America; to arrange my affairs, and to--say good-by."
+
+"I get you," said Archie, simply, and held out his hand. His face had
+fallen. "Gee, supposing neither of us comes back? What will she do
+then?"
+
+Nikolai gravely smiled. "Listen!" he said.
+
+Through the hush of the still afternoon came to their ears, faint but
+distinct, the steady clicking of a typewriter.
+
+"That is what she will do, my friend, with us or without. She has
+graduated from you and me--from herself as well. She has turned from men
+to Man; and of him the supply is inexhaustible."
+
+Archie sighed, a little jealously. "You gave her that! You've given her
+almost everything she values, sir, haven't you?"
+
+"Not quite everything, Blair."
+
+Archie's eyes brightened. He remembered then the thing the other had not
+given her: their boy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a scene that etched itself upon Nikolai's memory as he stood
+there waiting for his car, one of those pictures the heart carries with
+it into far places, and forever; the pleasant, homely cottage among its
+flowers and gnarled apple-trees, children's voices prattling about, the
+smell of cooking pickle in the air, Archie's cheery, retreating whistle,
+and dominating all the eager clicking of a typewriter.
+
+His eyes followed the broad shoulders of the younger man, swinging along
+the road to the brisk, martial tread all young men have learned
+latterly.... Nikolai's life had thrown him into contact with all phases
+of the human problem, low and high. He knew how inextricably the two are
+mingled. Heroism, self-sacrifice, he had found in the most unlikely
+places, and thrilled to them as a fighting nature thrills to the drum.
+It hurt him to realize that the finest heroism, the most exquisite
+sacrifice, must always be hidden things, hidden often even from the eyes
+of him who sacrifices. Archibald Blair, failure in all that the world
+finds important, would have called himself undoubtedly a poor stick.
+Only to the occasional eye did he loom a hero.
+
+Nikolai looked after him sadly, listening to the steady click of that
+typewriter. At last he quoted to himself, with a shrug,
+
+    "Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons."[1]
+
+Between them, he knew, they would manage to serve Joan's needs to the
+end.
+
+
+THE END
+
+[Footnote: 1 "Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs."]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Why Joan?
+
+Author: Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2010 [EBook #34801]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHY JOAN? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Mary Meehan and the Online
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+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>WHY JOAN?</h1>
+
+<h2>BY ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY</h2>
+
+<h3>Author of "<span class="smcap">Kildares of Storm</span>," etc.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>NEW YORK<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+1919</h3>
+
+<h3>Copyright, 1919, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span></h3>
+
+<h3><i>Published, March, 1919</i></h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h3>TO<br />
+MRS. RICHARD W. KNOTT<br />
+friend and neighbor to many young<br />
+women such as JOAN, whom she<br />
+has helped to find the why of themselves;<br />
+and whose life principle may<br />
+be summed up in Virgil's phrase<br />
+<i>Paulo majora canamus</i>&mdash;<br />
+(Let us sing of higher things.)</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Car je suis le Cobzar.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Quoted by Pierre de Coulevain from source unknown.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Rough translation:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love me, because I have need of love for my songs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave me, because I have need of tears for my songs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">For I am the Cobzar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/front.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOREWORD" id="FOREWORD"></a>FOREWORD</h2>
+
+
+<p>Some time since, the author had the temerity innocently to publish a
+book ("Kildares of Storm"), which, like this one, employed for
+background the country with which she happens to be most familiar, the
+State of her adoption and of her affections. And great was the scandal
+thereof. Neighbors insisted upon recognising themselves in it, to their
+horror&mdash;or to their complacency, as the case might be. They also
+recognized the house described; although if one heard with impartial
+ear, the house appeared to possess as many different identities as
+localities, and despite the fact that the author, in order to guard
+against this very contingency, had taken many liberties with geography,
+even to the extent of moving mountains&mdash;imagination being on occasion
+almost as powerful as faith.</p>
+
+<p>That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens to assert
+that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the whole world of fancy
+at command, would care to inhibit productivity by the limitations
+imposed upon photography, invaluable as that science is in its
+place&mdash;which is not fiction. Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment
+at least, "shattering the world to bits and remolding it nearer to the
+heart's desire."</p>
+
+<p>There is also among the craft an unwritten law against the holding up
+for public inspection those people with whom one has broken bread, so to
+speak; and as one is apt, in Kentucky, to have broken bread with all
+one's acquaintance, neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider
+themselves safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize
+themselves in this book, let them recognize themselves quite as readily
+in the living people about them. For we are, after all, of one
+substance, varying only with circumstance and the different stages of
+development. And it is with these things only&mdash;with circumstance and the
+stages of development, with truths rather than facts, with men and women
+rather than personalities&mdash;that this author at least chooses to concern
+herself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Eleanor Mercein Kelly.</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#FOREWORD">FOREWORD</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">CHAPTER XXXIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XL">CHAPTER XL</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">CHAPTER XLI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">CHAPTER XLII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">CHAPTER XLIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">CHAPTER XLIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">CHAPTER XLV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">CHAPTER XLVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">CHAPTER XLVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII">CHAPTER XLVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX">CHAPTER XLIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_L">CHAPTER L</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LI">CHAPTER LI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LII">CHAPTER LII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LIII">CHAPTER LIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LIV">CHAPTER LIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LV">CHAPTER LV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LVI">CHAPTER LVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_LVII">CHAPTER LVII</a><br />
+<a href="#TWO_YEARS_LATER">TWO YEARS LATER</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>WHY JOAN?</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>Young Joan Darcy leaned back luxuriously upon a cushion offered by the
+obsequious porter (servants were usually obsequious with Joan, though
+she was not at all beautiful and rather too shabby to promise much in
+the way of largesse), watching the world go by with a dreamy, detached,
+yet oddly observant gaze that missed no detail of the landscape through
+which she passed and registered it in her subconscious mind for future
+reference. It was a convenient receptacle, her subconscious mind&mdash;a sort
+of strongbox into which went many things valuable and valueless, to be
+brought forth when occasion required, quite intact. She tucked away in
+it now not only the rushing landscape but the various people about her
+in the Pullman: a dapper person, probably a necktie drummer, who had for
+some time been discreetly taking notice and whom it was her pleasure to
+occasionally regard as if he were so much thin air; an elderly lady who
+beamed wistfully whenever their eyes met, and who, Joan decided, would
+presently summon up courage to inform her that a little daughter, had
+she lived, would have been about Joan's age; also another girl, dressed
+as Joan would have liked to be dressed herself, who cast occasional
+glances of indifference in her direction, noting, it was to be hoped,
+the affluent litter of magazines and papers that surrounded our heroine,
+the fading bouquet tucked into her belt, and the expensive box of
+chocolates which lay open upon her knee, exposing to the world at large
+a masculine card on top.</p>
+
+<p>Joan discovered within herself a certain impersonal, appreciative
+antagonism toward strange young women, such as knights may have felt who
+met for combat upon the jousting field. Envy was the one tribute which
+most assuaged her vanity.</p>
+
+<p>She would have liked to sample the box of candy&mdash;a parting tribute from
+a family friend who had a most discriminating taste in chocolates&mdash;but
+she feared that it would place her hopelessly in the class of
+school-girls, from which she had just emerged, as world-wise, as
+sophisticated, as completely finished a young person as ever a convent
+turned loose upon the unsuspecting world. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"
+was her favorite novel; she had smoked her maiden cigarette&mdash;in fact,
+two of them; and she no longer subscribed to the stork-and-baby myth,
+which seemed to her puerile.</p>
+
+<p>She was still able, however, to savor keenly in advance the moment when
+the Pullman would empty itself into the dining-car and she would be free
+to approach her chocolates in the manner favored by true <i>bon vivants</i>:
+i.e., by nibbling off one end, extracting the contents bit by creamy bit
+with the head of a pin (preferably a large white-topped pin), and
+finally crushing the emptied shell deliciously upon the tongue.
+Conserved in this manner, one chocolate might be made to do the duty of
+many chocolates, an advantage not to be despised where pocket-money is
+limited to twenty-five cents a week.</p>
+
+<p>The moment was not yet, and reflecting sedately that self-control is
+good exercise for the character, she gave herself over to the pleasures
+of recollection.</p>
+
+<p>What a beautiful parting it had been! What floods of tears and kisses
+and promises! Seven&mdash;no, eight&mdash;girls weeping around her while they
+exchanged dramatic farewells; firm Sister Mary Joseph, the out-sister
+who conveyed pupils to shops and trains and so forth, leading her aside
+at the last moment to press upon her, heretic though she was, a tiny
+medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two
+youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still
+masculine); and, for <i>pièce de résistance</i>, Stefan Nikolai, famous
+though elderly, who had run over from China or Egypt or somewhere to see
+her graduate. This was an attention Joan took quite for granted&mdash;he had
+been a friend of her mother's, and distance seemed nothing to his habit
+of life. But its effect upon her schoolmates, and even upon Sister Mary
+Joseph, was gratifying in the extreme. With his dark, fine features, and
+his foreign-cut clothes, he had not looked particularly elderly that
+day. His eyes, Joan recalled, had always been peculiarly expressive,
+like the eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at
+all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered
+inadvertently toward the unconscious gentleman as she tendered her medal
+of St. Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was fond of Mr. Nikolai, and grateful to him. She even read his
+books, though she preferred his letters, which had a good deal in them
+about herself. His presence at her graduation, his chocolates, the
+little sea of papers with which he sought to beguile the tedium of her
+journey, had all helped to comfort her for the absence of her father. He
+was, she thought warmly, almost as good as a father anyway; and far more
+generous! Everything nice she had was a gift from Stefan Nikolai. Her
+lovely Chinese shawl, her carved jade ring (Joan wished secretly that
+there had been a diamond in it somewhere), the odd piece of clear blue
+aquamarine he had brought her for a graduation present, that just
+matched her eyes; books too, in beautiful covers, and some old prints
+that were anything but beautiful, and a white bear-skin for her room.
+She would have liked to suggest to him that, in place of such costly
+trifles, occasional dresses might be acceptable, of the sort that come
+from Paris; also frilly things, hand-embroidered, which he would not
+have to choose himself, of course&mdash;there being women clerks for the
+purpose. She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it
+himself, aware as he must be of the scarcity of such desirables in the
+Darcy family.</p>
+
+<p>Still, one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth; and had he not been
+such a lifelong friend as to be almost a relation, Joan would have
+chafed a little, as it was, under her sense of obligation to Mr.
+Nikolai. Her mother's daughter did not take kindly to a sense of
+obligation.</p>
+
+<p>It was not he, however (ah, by no means he!) who had provided the
+flowers which drooped at her belt. For one moment the absence of the
+donor of these flowers had threatened to spoil the pleasure of her
+parting; and then had arrived, breathless, a messenger and a note. Joan
+was able philosophically to reflect that if the gentleman had come in
+person she would never have had the note. And there is something
+delightfully tangible and lasting about a love-letter&mdash;if, indeed, it
+was a love-letter?</p>
+
+<p>That was one of Eduard Desmond's great gifts: elusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand to her blouse and felt the responsive crackle therein;
+and the words of the note danced before her eyes in the form of little
+cupids, bearing garlands:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+Truly, "To part is to die a little." Forgive me! <span class="smcap">Eduard.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan had done her thrilled best to understand, since it was expected of
+her, but she felt rather puzzled. Was it that he feared his emotions at
+parting might get beyond his control? Joan sighed. She could have borne
+that. Or was it&mdash;here she frowned importantly&mdash;that his habits were
+already resuming control of him, now that her hand was, so to speak, off
+the rudder?</p>
+
+<p>Eduard Desmond, as all the Convent knew, was a man of the world, with a
+past. He was also in his lighter moments an artist. The Convent was
+rather vague in its mind as to the form of art he pursued; but that it
+included habits was unfortunately certain, and his young niece Betty had
+vouched personally for the authenticity of his past. It had had to do
+with a married woman. The Convent frequently prayed for him; though
+unknown to the nuns.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally this distinguished-looking, fascinating, rather melancholy
+young man came to take Betty and a few chosen friends to a matinée, out
+of the kindness of his heart. Perhaps it was not pure kindness of heart
+that had called to his special attention young Joan Darcy, with her
+square chin, and straight black brows beneath which the eyes looked out
+at you with an odd intensity; unless she smiled, when they danced like
+blue water in the sun. She was not pretty, Joan, and boys rarely noticed
+her, somewhat to her chagrin; but Eduard Desmond was no boy, and his
+past perhaps had made him perceptive. The acquaintance between them
+ripened to a degree unsuspected by the good sisters at the Convent, if
+not by his family, who aided and abetted it, feeling that a young girl
+might be rather good for Eduard. Doubtless she was. She entered into the
+duty of "reforming" him with a conscientious thoroughness that might
+have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal
+of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more.
+She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined
+with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike,
+which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the
+affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly
+unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of
+being "not there when wanted," as Eduard put it to himself, annoyed. He
+thought it deliberate, the reserve of the prude, or of the embryo
+coquette; whereas it was really one of the crosses of Joan's life,
+dreaded by her as the self-conscious dread attacks of shyness.</p>
+
+<p>So far she had come out of what might have been an illuminating
+experience bearing only two small trophies of the sort girls love to
+whisper about together in bed after dances when the lights are out; one
+rather lingering kiss upon her slim, brown paw (which did not startle
+her at all, but made her want to giggle); and now this love-letter&mdash;if
+it was a love-letter.</p>
+
+<p>Again Joan sighed. She regretted with all her heart that queer aloofness
+which came upon her in critical moments, making her notice that a man's
+ears were put on wrong, or that her own finger-nails needed shining,
+when she should have been surrendering her whole soul to emotion. Was it
+always going to keep her from plumbing the depths of life?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but it shan't!" she insisted to herself. "I <i>will not</i> be an
+innocent bystander! Things must happen to me; they must. All kinds of
+things!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the sort of challenge to which Fate is apt to give attentive ear.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, out of facts and recollections she slipped, as was her wont,
+into a game of Pretend, which had been a sort of accompaniment to Joan
+from her cradle; growing as she grew, changing as life changed its
+aspect to her eyes. She was no longer plain little Joan Darcy, returning
+from school in a shabby suit which she had outgrown, to a shabby home
+which she had also somewhat outgrown. She was a glorified young person
+of the singer or actress variety, returning from a career of conquest in
+foreign parts, with her maid Fifine traveling second class in the coach
+behind, as they do in all the better novels. Her father, not much
+altered from real life except that there were no spots on his clothes
+(the Major's manner being grand enough for any circumstances), would be
+at the station with the victoria and pair&mdash;or perhaps the limousine&mdash;and
+would murmur to the second footman, "Home, James"; and at the door of
+the family mansion, a pillared, fan-lighted door (Joan's mind lingered
+lovingly over architectural details even in her haste to reach the
+people in the doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful
+curtsies&mdash;quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!&mdash;and
+beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and newness, would
+stand her mother with outstretched arms, waiting....</p>
+
+<p>Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping large, hot tears
+upon her precious chocolates&mdash;she who had sworn never, never to cry any
+more in all her life, because tears are only useless things that make
+the nose red!</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>why</i> am I crying?" she demanded of herself, puzzled, still mazed
+with her game of Pretend.</p>
+
+<p>It was because her mother would not be in that doorway, waiting; nor
+anywhere ever again&mdash;unless there really is a Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sat there, too proud to bury her face in her hands or to search for
+a handkerchief, intensely conscious that people were glancing her way,
+praying wildly to all her gods to keep her from blubbering aloud; and
+she looked so like a haughty infant in distress that the young man
+opposite, he whom she had characterized as a necktie drummer, could not
+long restrain active sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon <i>me</i>," he said awkwardly, leaning toward her. "Are you in some
+sort of trouble? Anything I can do?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan summoned all her scattered forces to meet this emergency in a
+manner that would do credit to the precepts of Sister Mary Joseph. She
+elevated her small red nose, and lifting her eyes to about the level of
+his scarf-pin (a rather cheap scarf-pin) remarked: "You can go away. I
+am telling myself sad stories of the death of kings."</p>
+
+<p>The necktie drummer retired, permanently, to the smoking-car.</p>
+
+<p>This victory cheered Joan into momentarily forgetting her mother.
+Already an adventure to write to the girls! She wished that she had
+looked a little farther up than the scarf-pin.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly the old lady whose daughter might have been Joan's age if she
+had lived, invited Joan to be her guest in the dining-car, and was
+repulsed, coldly and firmly. One hears such tales of wicked old harpies
+on trains leading trustful girls into the most frightful predicaments!</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much appetite on
+trains."</p>
+
+<p>Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last of the tears
+from her eyes, selected the largest of the chocolates and drew from some
+recess of her person a white-headed pin. There was also, to be discussed
+later, a packet of sandwiches, typical Convent affairs&mdash;large slabs of
+bread embracing pale and clammy ham. Joan thought of these with
+resignation. The odor of broiling beefsteak came back from the car ahead
+rather poignantly. Joan had lied to the old lady. At eighteen, with
+every nerve and organ in healthy coöperation, appetite is not likely to
+fail, on trains or elsewhere. Nor was it as if she did not have the
+necessary dollar in her pocket. Major Darcy always managed to rise to
+the occasion somehow when the ladies of his family went traveling. He
+had a horror of gentlewomen finding themselves among strangers
+temporarily embarrassed for funds&mdash;quite a different affair from a
+permanent condition of the sort when in the home circle.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that it was expected of her to spend her dollar in riotous
+living; but she could not forget (the Joans of the world never can
+forget) that a dollar is the price of a pair of white gloves or a pair
+of silk stockings. And so she munched her sacrificial sandwiches with a
+considering eye on the future.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>Later, as she lay propped up in her snug little berth (far the
+pleasantest part of the journey to Joan), with her shade up for fear of
+missing anything of the mysterious night that passed outside&mdash;strange,
+silent cities, isolated farms asleep in the starlight, the glow of
+smelting fires as they flashed by, like a startling glimpse into the
+infernal regions&mdash;it suddenly occurred to Joan that her father had been
+unprecedentedly lavish in his provision for her journey home.</p>
+
+<p>"Money for good-by presents to all the girls; money for ticket, and
+sleeper, and tips, and ten dollars besides&mdash;goodness! Dad must have
+struck something!" she mused, deciding that it was really business that
+kept him from coming to see her graduate, and not, to put it delicately,
+the lack of business.</p>
+
+<p>In the Darcy family things were always put delicately. The mention of
+cost was deprecated. One never said crudely that a thing could not be
+afforded. One "preferred not to bother about it just then," or one
+"liked last year's hat so much better than any in the shops," or one
+"enjoyed the freedom of being without servants for a while&mdash;it was a
+relief."</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally Joan's mother, before she overcame the blunter speech of
+the North, had offended the family taste with plain statements about
+prices and possibilities. Joan, observant from her cradle, drew her own
+conclusions from the expression of wincing deprecation these faux pas
+produced upon her father's face, or upon that of the cousin or aunt or
+what-not in the way of Darcy relation that was usually visiting them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma," she had asked once in the murmured intimacy that preceded
+sleepy time, "isn't money a very nice fing?"</p>
+
+<p>"A very nice thing indeed, babykins," answered the lady with a faint
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why mustn't us never speak about it?"</p>
+
+<p>It was not the only one of her daughter's questions that the harassed
+woman had been obliged to parry with what skill lay at her command.
+Honesty always came more easily to Mary Darcy than subterfuge.</p>
+
+<p>Joan grew up into the family habit of euphonious speech; but, thanks to
+a certain inheritance from her mother, facts had a way of presenting
+themselves to her inner vision with a clarity, a brutal frankness of
+outline, quite unprecedented in the mind of a Darcy.</p>
+
+<p>Her facility in the valuable game of Pretend came from the paternal
+strain. Richard Darcy was one of those fortunate spirits who move
+through life to the sound of an invisible drum corps&mdash;a procession of
+one, affably ready for whatever honors Fate chose to thrust upon him.
+Joan, too, was quite prepared for the best the world had to offer.
+Nevertheless, unlike her father, she was never unaware of the difference
+between pretense and reality, nor of the fixed line dividing them. When
+she lied, it was deliberately, with her eyes wide open.</p>
+
+<p>Just now she chose to step over the dividing line firmly into reality.
+Perhaps her dinner may have had something to do with it; a diet of
+chocolates and ham sandwiches not being conducive to glamour of thought,
+even at eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>Joan wished, soberly, that she were happier at the idea of going home.
+She wished that she were not haunted by a vague dread of it....</p>
+
+<p>The Convent&mdash;with its daily round of prescribed duties and pleasures,
+its fixed intimates and enemies, its atmosphere of simple piety, its
+guardian nuns, striving conscientiously for that "detachment from place"
+which is enjoined upon them, but lavishing all the pent-up
+mother-passion of their hearts upon the young creatures in their
+care&mdash;Joan, young as she was, visualized the place she had left as a
+sunny haven, a little quiet eddy in the whirlpool; sheltered, secluded,
+safe.</p>
+
+<p>She frowned at the adjective. Surely her own home was "safe," too!
+Surely the vague dread she felt had nothing to do with her father, for
+instance&mdash;her own dear, splendid Dad, so handsome despite his frayed and
+spotted clothes, with the courtly manner that had won both nuns and
+girls to awestruck admiration, and that gave him far more distinction
+than the fathers of other girls who did not wear frayed and spotted
+clothes. No, it could not be her father she dreaded!</p>
+
+<p>And it was certainly not Ellen Neal, the elderly woman who had followed
+the Darcy fortunes in their waxing and waning for many a year&mdash;part
+servant, part mentor, always friend; declining to be shaken off even in
+those crises when Mrs. Darcy "enjoyed doing without servants";
+supporting herself during such financial depressions by means of a
+skilful needle&mdash;supporting, Joan sometimes suspected, others than
+herself. The girl recalled one significant incident of her early
+childhood; her mother, pale and anxious, arguing at the door with a rude
+man who declined to leave without something she seemed unable to give
+him, until Ellen appeared, half running up the street, opening her
+shopping-bag as she came. And when she had thrust something into the
+rude man's hands and slammed the door in his face, Mrs. Darcy had turned
+silently to the servant and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's feeling for Ellen was one of the few she had never tried to
+analyze. It was simply there, like her breath, her eyesight. She could
+not be said to love her&mdash;there was nothing attractive about Ellen Neal;
+yet her only quarrel with her father (if anything so one-sided could be
+called a quarrel) was on the subject of Ellen. Once during Joan's
+previous summer vacation, the Major, who disliked familiarity in
+servants, had taken occasion to remind Ellen most kindly that his
+daughter was almost a young lady now and should be spoken to as Miss
+Joan, no longer as "Joie" or as "Baby." Joan had thoroughly concurred in
+this opinion; until, happening to glance at Ellen as she left the room,
+she saw that the servant's compressed lips were trembling. She had cried
+out unaccountably: "No such thing, Nellen! You're to call me anything
+you like, always!"&mdash;and then she had turned upon her father, scolding,
+stammering out astonishing reminders, raising her voice, altogether
+behaving in a manner most unbecoming a gentlewoman and a Darcy&mdash;as her
+father quite obviously forebore to suggest to her. The quarrel had been
+altogether a most unsatisfactory one. During her tirade the Major had
+sat with poised carving-knife, regarding his daughter under mildly
+raised eyebrows. When she had stormed herself out, he remarked quietly,
+in quotation marks:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Her voice was ever soft and low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An excellent thing in woman."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the matter of "Miss Joan" was, by tacit consent, never resumed
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was decidedly not Ellen Neal who was responsible for her vague
+dread of home-coming. The girl, who had an odd dislike of anything vague
+in her mental processes, pursued the fugitive sensation to its lair with
+relentless precision.</p>
+
+<p>Was it the poverty of home she feared, then? Surely not, for poverty was
+a condition quite as much with her elsewhere&mdash;rather more with her
+elsewhere, for among strangers it was impossible to practice those
+useful little economies of ragged underwear and worn-out shoes which in
+the privacy of home-life made an occasional extravagance possible. Joan
+rather looked forward to the time when she no longer need be on
+dress-parade, so to speak, at every hour of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"If I wear cheap nightgowns, I can buy myself a good hat," was her
+thought&mdash;a thought which may be said to sum up the philosophy of the
+Darcy family.</p>
+
+<p>And although it seems customary among novelists to gage the refinement
+of their heroines by the daintiness of their taste in underlinen&mdash;no
+matter if her outer wear be sackcloth and ashes, the lingerie of a true
+fiction lady is invariably above reproach&mdash;one would like to submit that
+an almost equal refinement may be indicated by the present heroine's
+determination to make as brave a showing as possible before her world
+with as little strain as possible upon her father's income....</p>
+
+<p>Was it her mother's absence she feared then&mdash;still? Forewarned, Joan
+resolutely kept back the nervous tears that threatened to rise again at
+the thought of her mother; and she faced the possibility calmly.</p>
+
+<p>During the summer before, alone with her father and Ellen, Joan had been
+given plenty of time to get used to her mother's absence. Indeed, it
+seemed to her suddenly that during the several years previous she had
+been given time to get used to her mother's absence. It was as if Mary
+Darcy, knowing that the hand of death was upon her, had deliberately,
+gradually, withdrawn herself from the child she loved, in order to make
+the final separation easier.</p>
+
+<p>"That would have been like Mother," said Joan, nodding.</p>
+
+<p>She understood, in that moment of clear vision, why she had been sent
+away to boarding-school, despite her father's amazed protests&mdash;it was
+unprecedented that Mrs. Darcy should remain so firm in the matter of
+incurring unnecessary expense. She understood, too, why the narrow,
+bleak house in Louisville, which was the latest of their many homes, had
+taken on none of the look of her mother&mdash;that intimate, friendly,
+stay-awhile air which Mary Darcy, with the aid of long practice, managed
+to produce among the most unlikely surroundings within a few hours of
+occupancy. True, the old furniture made its faithful reappearance there,
+part of Joan's earliest recollections&mdash;the parlor suite of rosewood with
+blue velour, the little cottage piano, the great bed in which she, and
+her mother, and her mother's mother had been born, shorn long ago of its
+tester to accommodate altered circumstances&mdash;all looking a trifle
+shabbier, a trifle more battered after each adventure with fortune, but
+still dignified and "good," with the unmistakable mien of gentlefolk in
+reduced circumstances. For once, however, Mary Darcy had not been able
+to accomplish her usual miracle with this furniture. Chairs, sofa,
+tables, stood stiffly wherever the moving-men had chosen to place them,
+making no attempts to hide the spots on the wall-paper; the thread-bare
+velvet portières which had separated parlor from hall in every home that
+Joan remembered had never been altered to fit this one; stranger still,
+there were no green growing things in the window-sills, nor even in the
+can-strewn, sooty backyard. Joan could not recall any other home she had
+lived in without some attempt at a garden, were it only a few geraniums
+in the window-box.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma must have been very tired," she thought, soberly; and realized
+that, far from dreading her mother's absence in that dingy, dreary
+house, she was almost glad of it. When one is as tired as Mrs. Darcy,
+rest is the great boon&mdash;rest from hopeless hoping, rest from making
+homes out of patience and courage and a few old sticks of furniture,
+rest from the anxious sorrow of loving.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was young to understand such things; but at her birth the fairies
+had given her the cruel gift of seeing out of the eyes of others....</p>
+
+<p>She came to the conclusion at last the thing she had been dreading was
+simply responsibility. Her play-time was over. No stretch of imagination
+could make her a little girl again&mdash;not with her hair well up on her
+head and a love-letter crackling deliciously under her pillow! Hereafter
+it was hers to create the home her mother had relinquished; hers to make
+ends meet somehow, if only in the accepted Irish way of "cutting a piece
+off one end and tying it onto the other"; hers to keep out of her
+father's eyes a certain baffled, hunted look which Joan associated with
+men who came to collect bills, referred to grimly by Ellen as "the
+Indians." No family of pioneers on the long-ago western frontier ever
+lived in greater fear of Indians than did Richard and Mary Darcy and
+their child Joan.</p>
+
+<p>The girl sighed, bracing her slight shoulders. But still thinking of her
+mother, she rehearsed sleepily one tenet of the little creed she had
+made long since to fit her necessities:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It does not pay to be too unselfish."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>Friends of Mary Darcy, in the distant days before they forgot to discuss
+her surprising marriage with a promoter from who knows where, were wont
+to say, "At least he makes a devoted husband and father!"</p>
+
+<p>Which was perfectly true. His little family had always been, as he often
+said, a passion with Richard Darcy. Perhaps his facility in saying
+things of the sort was what had appealed in the first place to the shy,
+undemonstrative Northernness of Mary. Though he was one of several who
+had professed their willingness to live for her, he was the only suitor
+who had offered to die for her&mdash;an attention she could not but
+appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>It was entirely for his child's sake (and, indeed, at some personal risk
+to himself, had Mary but suspected it) that two years before Major Darcy
+had so arranged the mysterious affairs he called Business as to be able
+to return to the State and city of his illustrious birth; "where," he
+explained with proud humility, "we are not quite nobodies, my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>(The "who knows where" on the part of Mary's friends had been sheer
+arrogant affectation; for nobody could have talked with Richard Darcy
+for five minutes without learning that he had been born and raised and
+hoped to die in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.)</p>
+
+<p>Joan had been quite as eager about the prospective move as her father,
+marveling at the apathy of her mother, who said, "I never mind being
+'nobodies,' Richard, so long as we have each other."</p>
+
+<p>Romantic visions danced through the girl's head of stately pillared
+mansions, of faithful negro servitors, of fascinating belles and
+gallants on horseback (her mental language became quite stilted and ante
+bellum to suit the picture), riding to hounds through meadows as blue as
+the skies above.</p>
+
+<p>"Though I don't suppose there's much bluegrass right around Louisville,
+is there, Daddy?" she demanded, with the passion for truth that was in
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty of it, Dollykins, plenty of it&mdash;though of course Louisville is
+not really in the bluegrass region, you remember. It belongs to the
+beargrass district." (Joan nodded. Thanks to her father's powers of
+reminiscence, she was well up on her Kentucky.) "Still, it isn't like
+one of these soulless Northern cities, which regard land as so much
+waste space on which to build monstrosities!" He glanced out truculently
+upon the streets of Chicago, which had managed in some way to incur the
+Major's displeasure. "No, no, there's plenty of bluegrass about the old
+town still, plenty of space, plenty of room to breathe. And how my old
+friends will take you to their hearts and love you! None of this
+blighting Northern indifference to everything except the chink of money.
+Money&mdash;<i>bah!</i>&mdash;It is God's country down there, my child&mdash;gentleman's
+country."</p>
+
+<p>This was not anti-climax on the Major's part. He visualized God at His
+best as a superior sort of Christian gentleman, who, had America been
+discovered at the time, would doubtless have chosen the Southern portion
+of it for the scene of His nativity.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the girl's anticipations of "God's country" were too glowing
+not to foredoom her to disappointment. The bluegrass itself was a flat
+failure; mere meadows of ordinary green, above which hung in seedtime a
+purplish tinge, like smoke from burning leaves. Louisville, too, did not
+quite meet the rosy expectations of a young person rather experienced in
+cities.</p>
+
+<p>They were received at the station, not by a deputation of the old
+friends who were to take them to their hearts and love them, but merely
+by a cousin, one of three Misses Darcy who had paid lengthy southern
+visits to the various places Joan had hitherto called home. By this lady
+they were conducted volubly in street-cars (Joan had hoped for a
+long-tailed carriage-pair) to an ancestral mansion which had loomed
+large in the Major's reminiscences, but which, as he himself admitted,
+appeared to have shrunk strangely, after the way of houses one has known
+in early youth. It was one of a row of duplicate tall marble fronts,
+stained and yellowed, unpleasantly suggestive to Joan's too-vivid
+imagination of neglected front teeth.</p>
+
+<p>From this shelter the Darcys soon departed. The cousins, while most
+cordial, were under the necessity of letting their spare chambers to
+paying guests, under which category their Cousin Richard could not with
+any certainty be classed.</p>
+
+<p>Joan recalled vividly the family search for a house that suited both her
+father's taste and her mother's pocket-book. The streets had seemed to
+her gray, endless cañons, from whose pavements the heat arose and eddied
+in dizzying waves. From within dark doorways women in dressing-sacks,
+waving palm-leaf fans, gazed out at them languidly. Block after block
+they traversed of houses that seemed as afraid of differing from each
+other as men in evening dress; again they came to neighborhoods where
+each dwelling stood at a bias angle from the street, as if hoping to
+achieve an impossible privacy by turning a cold shoulder upon its
+neighbor. And everywhere they huddled together as close as possible,
+presenting a solid front of masonry to repel invasion. Where was the
+space her father had boasted, the room to breathe?</p>
+
+<p>Joan had gazed longingly down certain vistas of tree-lined avenues,
+lined with pleasant mansions; or into compact green courts where there
+were smaller homes, with gardens. But these the elders passed without
+inquiry. They were as quick as house-agents at guessing rents.</p>
+
+<p>At last an abode was found that seemed to the Major suitable upon all
+counts. Mrs. Darcy, gazing up at its tall, narrow brick front, said with
+a slight sigh, "Isn't there a good deal of it to keep clean, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time Joan had noticed her mother's new little air of
+weary indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but in the South one cannot be cramped for room," replied the Major
+largely. "There is hospitality to be considered! You must remember that
+our daughter's début into society will take place from this house, my
+love. Who knows?&mdash;perhaps her wedding!" He pinched Joan's cheek
+playfully. "How do you like it, Dollykins?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," she replied, too discouraged to be euphonious just then.
+"It's hideous, and there's a grocer-shop opposite, and Mother'll never
+sleep with these horrid cars jangling by. Why can't we have a house in
+one of those pretty green courts, Daddy?"</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked pained. Mary came to the rescue. A few years ago she
+would have explained bluntly that they could not afford one of the
+pretty green courts. Now she said with a rallying smile, "What! Not a
+banal, stupid, uninteresting new bungalow such as one might have in
+Pittsburgh, or Oshkosh, or Kalamazoo, Michigan! Where's your sense of
+local color, child? The atmosphere wouldn't be right at all!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan thought that the atmosphere of this neighborhood seemed to be
+largely compounded of soot and sewer-gas; but she did not say so.</p>
+
+<p>Richard Darcy, brightening, pointed out that while the house indeed
+faced a grocery-shop (so convenient for Ellen!), its rear was separated
+only by an alley from the rear of a house which faced upon a very fine
+avenue indeed; a backyard in which at the moment lingerie of a faint
+flesh-pink disported lacy ruffles and kicked airy silken limbs upon a
+clothes line. (Of this lingerie more anon.)</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently," pronounced the Major with an unconscious eye upon it, "a
+desirable neighborhood in every way."</p>
+
+<p>So the lease was signed, and Ellen Neal and the furniture sent for, and
+the first month's rent paid in advance; and these feats having been
+accomplished, Mary Darcy took to her familiar bed and died there,
+promptly and unobtrusively as was her way, without leaving any
+inconsiderate doctors' and nurses' bills behind her.</p>
+
+<p>That first summer in Kentucky was a strange time to Joan. It was filled
+with dim memories of the books she read aloud to her father day after
+day, in the futile effort to be a companion to him; of long walks she
+took with him in the cool of the evenings, through streets and parks and
+suburbs that were as strange to the man who had come back to them, Joan
+suspected, as to herself; and far more desolate. For the ghost of a boy
+haunted them; a mischievous, headstrong, innocent lad who had meant no
+harm to the world, nor to himself, in those days.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in the older streets he pointed out to her houses which came
+near to fulfilling her best hopes of pillared Southern mansions.</p>
+
+<p>"Tim Throckmorton used to live there," he would say, forlornly; or
+"Many's the time I've courted pretty Sally Field in that parlor!"</p>
+
+<p>Now there were "Furnished Room" signs in the windows, or shops in the
+lower floors, or, worst degeneracy of all, signs of negro habitation.
+For many a day the two hunted for a certain dearly remembered pond where
+a boy named Dick and his friends had been wont to repair for fishing and
+swimming and many a feat of derring-do. But they never found it; only
+houses already old, and even office-buildings, in the place where it
+might have been.</p>
+
+<p>And in those long and lonely walks they met no friends. It was as if for
+Richard Darcy the streets of Louisville were peopled by the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Joan had suffered for her father even more than for herself. Somehow she
+felt that she was better able to bear things than her father. And in her
+inner consciousness, lonely as she was for her mother, and must always
+be, she knew that the misery in her heart was a thing that would pass.
+She was too young to be so sad for long.</p>
+
+<p>Old Ellen wisely kept her busy with her preparations for
+boarding-school, her father having announced his intention of complying
+scrupulously with his dead wife's wishes, no matter at what cost to
+himself. Joan thought this very generous of him, although the cost was
+figurative rather than literal, as Mrs. Darcy's little property was
+willed to her child, with himself as guardian. Sometimes she had been a
+little ashamed of herself for the willingness with which she prepared to
+leave him, the eagerness with which she longed for the merry
+companionships and irresponsibilities of school again. But perhaps it
+was natural enough, considering that throughout that dreary summer her
+sole companions had been her grief-stricken father, the servant Ellen,
+and the sympathetic maiden cousins, who would have felt it indelicate to
+so much as smile in the presence of such deep mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the summer she made one other acquaintance, thanks to
+the above-mentioned lingerie. One of the sudden summer wind-storms which
+occur sometimes in the Ohio Valley landed in their yard one Monday
+morning a garment that had strayed unmistakably from the clothes line
+across the alley; a trifle of palest silk and lace and blue ribbons
+which Ellen Neal eyed with dark suspicion, but which Joan privately
+determined to copy for herself so soon as finances permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Monday being the day when Ellen's temper was at its most difficult, Joan
+decided to abate her dignity to the point of returning the article
+herself; and so she made her way, looking very young and touching in her
+homemade black frock, to the front entrance of the house across the
+alley. And there by good luck she met, just alighting in her
+porte-cochère from a most imposing limousine, a person who was
+indubitably the owner of the strayed garment; a plump, blonde, dimpled
+lady who suggested pink <i>crêpe de Chine</i> and blue satin bows all over
+her. She greeted Joan with an effulgence that seemed out of all
+proportion to its cause, until in the course of conversation it
+transpired that she, like the Darcys, was a newcomer in Louisville, and
+rather lonely. Her name was Mrs. Calloway, and she came, as she vaguely
+explained, from "across the river."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't as easy to get acquainted here as I thought it would be," she
+admitted naïvely, "Still," she added with her dimpling smile, "I expect
+folks will be friendly enough, once they get to know me, don't you
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they will!" murmured Joan quite sincerely; for despite the
+woman's patent vulgarity, there was something attractive about her. One
+felt above all things that she was kind; and just then kindness meant a
+good deal to the lonely girl.</p>
+
+<p>This kindness began at once to manifest itself. Elaborate desserts and
+salads, in very ornate dishes, made their way across the alley to the
+Darcy table; obligations scrupulously returned by Ellen with pickles and
+preserves of her own making. There were other generosities, more
+difficult to return in kind; candy, automobile drives, hothouse flowers,
+the latter evidently meant for the grave where Mary Darcy lay among
+strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Over these attentions Ellen Neal grumbled frequently. "Your pa certainly
+ain't noticin' much these days, or he'd never let you get so thick with
+a strange woman we don't know nothin' about, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"A strange <i>lady</i>, Ellen," corrected Joan with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Lady is as lady does. Look at her face, all painted up like a
+sign-board!"</p>
+
+<p>"Southern ladies quite frequently rouge," said Joan out of her recent
+observations; but she did not pursue the subject, for she herself had
+doubts as to her father's approval of this new acquaintance. Richard
+Darcy was no democrat. He had been heard frequently to state, as one
+rather proud of the confession, that he had no use whatever for the
+<i>canaille</i> (which he pronounced "<i>canile</i>.")</p>
+
+<p>Hence she was a little embarrassed and uneasy when, one Sunday morning
+as she and her father were starting on their weekly visit to the one bit
+of his native soil owned so far by Richard Darcy&mdash;his wife's grave&mdash;a
+limousine drew up at their door, out of which beamed the face of Mrs.
+Calloway, beneath a broad pink hat.</p>
+
+<p>"I suspected you'd be off to the cemetery this fine morning," she called
+out cheerily, "and I thought I'd come and take you, you and your father.
+Hop right in, both of you. No, it won't be a bit of trouble. I've
+nothing else to do, and I always did love a cemetery anyway&mdash;it's the
+first place I go to whenever I strike a new town."</p>
+
+<p>Joan glanced nervously at her father, wondering how he would take this
+initial encounter with Mrs. Calloway. But after a moment's pause of
+sheer astonishment, the Major's native gallantry came to the rescue, and
+he advanced for the introduction with all the manner of one about to be
+presented at court.</p>
+
+<p>They found themselves bowling along at a smart clip among the
+churchgoers and the more lively joy-riders, out for a Sunday's pleasure,
+which thronged the avenue that sultry August morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Now isn't this better than a poky old street-car?" demanded Mrs.
+Calloway archly.</p>
+
+<p>The Major responded in kind. "Undoubtedly! Particularly in the matter of
+company."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's liking for her kind-hearted neighbor had suffered a sudden
+eclipse. Ellen was right about her&mdash;"Lady is as lady does." It was worse
+than vulgar to force herself upon them at such a time&mdash;it was unfeeling,
+indecent. She envied her father's poise. She had never seen him appear
+to such advantage as upon this trying occasion, in his new, cheap black
+suit which had not as yet had time to acquire spots and wrinkles, his
+fine features showing the ravages of sorrow, his handsome gray head bent
+courteously toward this voluble companion as though her every word were
+priceless. Manners, she reflected, cannot be assumed on occasion like
+garments, but are a part of the very texture of a personality. She could
+not imagine her father anything but suavely courteous, even under the
+most untoward circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, beneath her pride in him lingered an odd fear lest, now
+that he had an audience, he might be moved to oratory over her mother's
+grave. With Richard Darcy emotion and the expression of it were usually
+simultaneous. Joan's unresponsiveness (a trait which she hated in
+herself, but could not help) had hitherto kept her father somewhat in
+check; but in the presence of a kindly warmth of sympathy like Mrs.
+Calloway's there was no telling what might happen.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, however, contented himself with murmuring, as he approached
+the grave, "She was very, very dear to me!" in so touching a voice that
+Mrs. Calloway openly wiped her eyes, exclaiming, "You poor man! Don't
+you think I understand&mdash;I, who've laid away two of them?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan moved hastily out of earshot, leaving the pair to reminiscence.
+Talk of things that hurt was to the girl like pouring acid upon an open
+wound; but if it helped her poor father, by all means let it help him.
+She had never made the mistake of thinking that because his grief was
+facile it was any the less strong and real. His utter helplessness, his
+stunned amaze that the wife he so sorely needed could have gone away and
+left him to bear the vicissitudes of life without her, were as piteous
+to his daughter as the wailing grief of a child. If she could have
+comforted him in any way other than by speech she would have done so. In
+the presence of great emotion she was dumb&mdash;though she sometimes thought
+she might be able to write him what she felt. Often at night she lay
+awake for hours, wondering how she could drive out of his eyes that
+baffled, frightened look which always came when things went wrong with
+him, and which only her mother had been able to banish....</p>
+
+<p>It haunted her all through the months which followed, that look of her
+father's; and sometimes in the midst of school-girl gaieties she would
+fall suddenly silent, thinking that she had no right to enjoy herself
+because he was there alone in the city of his childhood which seemed to
+have forgotten him. Joan was not yet quite the hard young egotist she
+intended to become.</p>
+
+<p>And so when toward the end of her journey the train slid into a pleasant
+country, mellow with the evening sun, long reaches of rolling pasture
+and hill and fertile bottom-land that meant Kentucky, something welled
+up in the girl's heart deeper than glamour of place, stronger than
+regret for her sheltered little past, than fear and hope for her
+unguessed future; perhaps the deepest and strongest feeling life plants
+in the human soul&mdash;the blood-tie. Weak or brave, fraud or fool or
+honorable gentleman&mdash;perhaps a little of all these things&mdash;it was her
+father who waited there for a woman to come and make him a home again;
+and Joan was ready.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The fellow-traveler who had incurred Miss Darcy's displeasure by a
+too-active sympathy was much pleased, being of a sentimental turn of
+mind, to witness a family reunion which presently took place in the
+station at Louisville. A tall, slender gentleman of a youngish
+Confederate colonel type&mdash;gray mustache and imperial, with a soft hat
+set very slightly to one side of his handsome head&mdash;detached himself
+from the crowd with a cry of, "Here I am, Dollykins!"</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon the girl dropped all her belongings, and cast herself upon him
+speechless, to be lifted well off the ground and hugged and kissed very
+thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! She's got a father, anyway, and a bully old bird at that,"
+thought the young man, who had never owned either father or mother or
+much of anything else that he could remember. It was his further
+privilege to hurry after the pair with a suit-case, some magazines, and
+a box of candy which both had characteristically forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>He was thanked by Major Darcy with an affable smile, and by his daughter
+with a curt, impersonal nod of dismissal after Sister Mary Joseph's best
+manner; which also pleased him, for he was by no means a thin-skinned
+young man, and preferred his gentlewomen haughty. He followed the pair
+far enough to observe the vehicle to which the father was obviously
+conducting her.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" he said to himself; "rich people!" and turned away, rather
+disappointed. (Why this should be, the writer cannot say, being merely a
+chronicler of facts.)</p>
+
+<p>Joan's flow of excited babble paused as she herself saw this vehicle.
+"Goodness! Are we going home in a taxicab? What grandeur!" she murmured,
+mentally figuring out the tariff. Then the monogram on the door
+enlightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's Mrs. Calloway's," she said, relieved, a little ashamed to have
+quite forgotten the existence of their well-meaning neighbor. "How good
+of her to send it for me!" she added with a giggle, recalling her recent
+game of Pretend. "All you need to do to complete the picture, Daddy, is
+to say, 'Home, James!'"</p>
+
+<p>Major Darcy obligingly murmured, "Home, James!" The chauffeur touched
+his cap, and enclosed them in the perfumed elegance of the limousine.</p>
+
+<p>Joan gave a crow of laughter, and rubbed her cheek affectionately
+against her father's sleeve. This was like old times indeed, happy old
+times, when in his lighter moments the Major had frequently entered into
+the spirit of her play. The contact of his sleeve was unusually soft,
+and she suddenly held him at arm's length to see him better.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Major Darcy! If you haven't gone and bought yourself a new suit in
+honor of the occasion. A beauty, too!"</p>
+
+<p>He surveyed what he could of himself complacently. "The fellow has given
+me rather a good fit, I think."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gasped. "'The fellow!' Then it's not a ready-made&mdash;you've actually
+been to a tailor for it? Oh, Daddy darling!" she cried excitedly, "have
+you been making money?"</p>
+
+<p>The Major's eyebrows lifted. "I believe," he remarked, "that I have
+usually made money, have I not? Sufficient, at least, to keep my family
+comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Joan was reminded with a jerk of Darcy traditions. "Of course!" She
+flushed. "I didn't mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly she realized that the look she had been so long dreading to
+see in his eyes, that expression of anxiety which was almost fear, had
+quite disappeared. There was an air about him of security, of
+nonchalance, as one who would say, "Bring on your Indians! Who's
+afraid?" (Not that the Major would have condescended to know the meaning
+of the family expression, "Indians.")</p>
+
+<p>Joan gave his hand a quick little squeeze that was oddly maternal. "I'm
+so glad, Dad," she said quietly; and went on to speak of other things.</p>
+
+<p>They turned into the street where home was. Silence fell upon her. The
+prospect of facing her mother's absence was more difficult than she had
+thought it would be. At least there was Ellen to comfort her; gruff,
+matter-of-fact old Ellen, always at her crossest when most deeply moved.
+She pinned her thoughts to Ellen.</p>
+
+<p>The Major's recent prosperity seemed not to have affected his
+dwelling-place as yet. As they drew near, Joan saw even in the dusk that
+the little lawn in front needed attention; nor was there so much as a
+light in the window to greet her&mdash;Ellen was always so careful about the
+gasbill. Then, as the limousine did not stop, she realized the For Rent
+sign on the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Dad, we've moved!" she cried with an odd pang at her heart. "Oh,
+but where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait and see. 'Lay-lows for meddlers,'" he smiled, pleased with his
+little stage-effect.</p>
+
+<p>The limousine bowled smoothly around the corner into the fashionable
+avenue beyond; and Joan thought, with a habit of anxiety beyond her
+years, that the new money would not last long if they were to live in
+such a neighborhood as this. But they stopped at a door she remembered,
+an imposing door with a porte-cochère, where, still as in her game of
+Pretend, a lady in a tea-gown stood waiting for them. Not, however, her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are at last, girlie!" cried the cheery voice of Mrs. Calloway;
+and she was received into a voluminous pink chiffon embrace, highly
+scented with the latest thing in perfumes.</p>
+
+<p>Joan fought her way quite rudely out of this embrace, feeling
+suffocated. Her knees had begun to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"Are&mdash;are we visiting you!" she quavered, piteously putting off the
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>The lady laughed, a laugh as plump and soft and cushiony as the rest of
+her. "There, now, Dickie; I don't believe you've had the nerve to tell
+her yet!"</p>
+
+<p>She rustled over and stood beside the Major, slightly in front of him,
+so that she could lean back archly against his shoulder; a position
+which seemed to bring an arm automatically into position about her
+waist.</p>
+
+<p>"Dollykins," said Richard Darcy, clearing his throat and not quite
+meeting the girl's wide gaze, "this is my&mdash;my graduation gift to you.
+Your new mamma!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan was alone at last in such a bed as she had never occupied in her
+life, even in her most luxurious games of Pretend. To her inexperience
+the sheets felt as if made of softest silk&mdash;at its crest the Darcy
+establishment had never run to fine linen&mdash;and they were edged with lace
+which Joan longed frugally to transfer to a best petticoat; only that
+there seemed no need for her to trouble further about best petticoats,
+nor about anything else. Under the eager guidance of her "new mamma,"
+drawer after drawer in the room she occupied had been opened to disclose
+piles of exquisite underthings, of the sort Joan had first encountered
+upon the Calloway clothes lines, except that these were white instead of
+pink.</p>
+
+<p>"Pink's <i>my</i> color," explained the former Mrs. Calloway. "Besides, white
+lawngerie seems sort of better for a girl that's never been married,
+don't you think? Even if it isn't so becoming. 'Tain't as if there was
+anybody to see her in it," she added, with a conscious blush.</p>
+
+<p>Joan found no suitable comment to make upon this treasure-trove. Her
+lips would not utter anything beyond a perfunctory "Thank you," even
+when further investigation discovered a closet hung with dresses of
+every sort, with peignoirs, with motor-coats and dainty wraps, with
+everything in the way of finery which every girl alive hopes at some
+time to possess, but which the daughter of Richard Darcy had learned to
+look upon from afar with an air of indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Are these all for me?" she asked dully.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they are! Just a few little models I had sent up on
+approval." (The ex-Mrs. Calloway invariably referred to her costumes in
+affectionate diminutives, as "little gowns," "little negligées," "little
+hats," etc., though the adjective could rarely be said to fit them.) "If
+these don't suit we'll get others&mdash;though anything ought to look good on
+your form, dearie." She added, clasping her hands, "It certainly is fun
+shoppin' for a daughter of your own!"&mdash;an outburst which might have
+struck some responsive chord in a heart less young than Joan's, less
+hard and tight and bitter with the tears that would not come.</p>
+
+<p>Major Darcy had observed her apathy under this rain of largesse with
+some disapproval. It was not the first time he had secretly wished that
+his daughter might have inherited a trifle more of the Darcy manner. At
+length, as the girl stood looking about her new room silently, still
+with the strange lack of comment that seemed like indifference, he
+ventured a remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you quite realize how much time and thought and trouble
+your&mdash;er, your mother and I have expended on these little surprises for
+your home-coming, Dollykins. Or you would be more appreciative."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My mother!</i>" repeated Joan to herself with a sick gasp.</p>
+
+<p>It was the bride who came to her rescue. "She's tired out, Major, that's
+all. And no wonder! She hardly ate a bite of dinner. You go right to bed
+and sleep, girlie," she advised comfortably. "In the morning you'll be
+better able to enjoy all your pretties."</p>
+
+<p>So Joan was at last alone, wondering whether she would ever be able to
+enjoy anything again; alone in a strange room crowded with large blond
+bird's-eye maple furniture which reminded her oddly of her step-mother;
+with pale blue walls, a blue rug, blue silk covers on chairs and bed,
+blue stationery spread out on the desk, all to match. There was nothing,
+not a chair, nor book nor picture, to remind its forlorn inhabitant of
+home; until suddenly, lost amid the glitter of the silver on the
+dressing-table, she discovered a faded photograph of her mother which
+her father had for many years carried in his pocket. This she jerked out
+of the opulent silver frame that disguised it, and held hungrily to her
+cheek, going to bed with it finally under her pillow. It did not occur
+to her to wonder who had put it there. (But it was not Richard Darcy.)</p>
+
+<p>Yet still the tears would not come. She lay staring into the dark with
+hot, dry, aching eyes, repeating agonizingly to herself the questions
+she had not found courage to ask her father&mdash;foolish, trivial questions
+that seemed almost irrelevant in the face of this overwhelming
+calamity.... What had he done with the furniture, their furniture, the
+dear, shabby tables and chairs and hangings which were part of the home
+Mary Darcy had given her life in making?... And where was Ellen? What
+had he done with Ellen? Was there to be nothing left?</p>
+
+<p>Once she whispered aloud, "How <i>could</i> he?"&mdash;but resolutely turned her
+mind away from that. It did not bear thinking of. The luxury of the room
+seemed to crowd upon her, choking her.... The price of her father's
+shame!...</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her near morning when her door opened, softly. She began to
+shiver, thinking it must be her father come for the intimate explanatory
+talk which was inevitable between them. What could she say to him? How
+could she ever find anything to say to her father again?</p>
+
+<p>But it was not Richard Darcy who tiptoed in. The lamp beside her bed
+clicked on, revealing a good deal of the former Mrs. Calloway in a
+marvellous nightgown, her golden head as carefully coiffed as for a
+ball.</p>
+
+<p>"Major's off and going strong," she announced, "so I slipped away to see
+how you were gettin' on, dearie. I Had a kind of feelin' you wouldn't be
+asleep yet. I'm like that myself in a strange bed.... Look here," her
+voice changed as she saw the white and miserable face among the
+pillows&mdash;"you aren't holding it against your papa and me, girlie,
+because we sprung this on you as a surprise? I <i>told</i> Major we ought to
+wait till you came home! But it was you who introduced us, you know; and
+I knew it would be all right as soon as we got to know each other
+better. And Major wouldn't hear to waiting, was bound and determined to
+have me just as soon as he could get me. Men,"&mdash;she laughed her plump,
+merry laugh&mdash;"are such babies when it comes to havin' what they want
+right away, ain't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are they?" said Joan dully.</p>
+
+<p>"You take it from me they are! A man that doesn't want you quick don't
+want you at all. And I must say your father needed marryin' more than
+any one I <i>ever</i> saw! Spots all over his clothes, and that shiny in the
+back you could see your face in him. Your mother must have had a time
+keepin' that man neat! Besides, if we'd waited till you came, what would
+we have done with you on the honeymoon? Not," she added coyly, "that
+it's over yet, by any means! When he was on his death-bed Calloway said
+to me, says he, 'Effie May, our honeymoon never has been over, has it?'
+Some women are that way, just naturally affectionate and fond of makin'
+men feel at home. And both of us were real lonesome.... You don't blame
+me for marrying Major, do you?" she finished rather wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>Joan said after a long pause, "No, I don't think I blame you, Mrs.
+Calloway."</p>
+
+<p>The other gave an unexpected squeal of mirth. "Goodness' sakes, don't
+call me <i>that</i>! If you don't feel like callin' me 'mamma' yet"&mdash;(there
+was a hopeful pause, which Joan did not fill)&mdash;"then you might as well
+call me Effie May. I'm not so awfully much older than you, I guess&mdash;I
+was only sixteen when I eloped with my first. But there's one thing I
+wanted to tell you"&mdash;(her voice lost its confident note and became
+rather shy). "I married your father as much to get you as to get him,
+dearie. A man's easy enough to pick up anywhere, goodness knows! if
+you've got the looks. But a child&mdash;" she sighed. "That's something else
+again. I used to think I'd like to adopt one, only Calloway didn't want
+to be bothered&mdash;Say, it was more fun than anything I've ever done in my
+life, shopping for lawngerie and little models and all, and telling the
+girls in the stores they were for my little girl just coming home from
+boarding-school!..."</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture, for some inexplicable reason&mdash;perhaps the warmth of a
+kindly human presence, perhaps sheer rage with the vulgar, impossible
+creature who, having purchased her father, expected also to purchase
+her&mdash;whatever brought them, Joan's tears suddenly arrived&mdash;a torrent, a
+deluge of them; in the midst of which her new mamma, with more tact than
+might have been expected of her, disappeared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Get up, Jo! Time you was gettin' up. Come, come&mdash;it's ten o'clock!"</p>
+
+<p>A familiar, relentless voice penetrated Joan's consciousness at last,
+and she screwed her swollen eyelids down tighter and even managed a
+reproving snore, wondering whether the halcyon days would ever come when
+she might be allowed to sleep her sleep out in the morning. Probably
+not, so long as Ellen Neal was within calling distance. The woman had a
+horror of what she called shiftless ways. Once in a moment of special
+exasperation she had been heard to mutter, "That's the chief thing
+that's the matter with your pa&mdash;he's never ready to get up in the
+morning!"&mdash;a remark which had remained in Joan's memory.</p>
+
+<p>Now the sheets were suddenly jerked off her, and the relentless voice
+continued, "No use pretendin' you're asleep when you ain't. Here's your
+breakfast they've sent up to you, child, just as if you was sick a-bed.
+Humph!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly reality came back upon her with full force&mdash;horrible reality;
+and she jumped up in bed and flung her arms around the old servant's
+neck, clinging tight, as she had done many a time before when something
+frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Nellen, Nellen!" she moaned. "It's you! I thought you had deserted
+me, too!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman stood immobile in this embrace, making no effort to return it.
+But her eyes blinked a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Sho! What would I want to do that for? Don't be silly&mdash;Look out! There
+now, if you haven't gone and upset the coffee all over them fancy
+sheets! Coffee's hard to get out, too. That's what comes of havin' your
+vittles in bedrooms, where they don't belong."</p>
+
+<p>The tears, which had threatened to take possession of Joan again, turned
+into a burst of wild laughter, "No matter! Plenty more where they come
+from, Nellen. What is a lace-trimmed sheet to my new mamma? I expect the
+very dishcloths are hand-embroidered. Behold the abode of cash, Ellen,
+cash! Isn't it grand? Oh," she cried, her voice breaking, "<i>why</i> didn't
+you come to me last night! Didn't you know how I'd need you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know you was here, child, till I come this morning to see when
+him and her was expectin' you."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's face fell. "Why, Ellen! Aren't you living here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me? In this house? I wouldn't so demean myself," said the other primly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say"&mdash;Joan's cheeks were hot&mdash;"that after all these
+years, and everything you've done for us, my father has <i>let you go</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen tossed her head. "'Twan't none of his lettin', child. I told him
+that all things considered I'd ruther sew for my livin'. And so I would.
+Your time's your own that way, and you see more of folks. I like folks.
+I must say," she added conscientiously, "that woman&mdash;your pa's wife&mdash;was
+real kind about offerin' to get me work with a dressmaker. But Ellen
+Neal don't have to be beholden to nobody, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>"And where do you live?"</p>
+
+<p>A mysterious smile twinkled in the woman's eyes. "Some day when you're
+good and sick of all this fancy flubdubbery" (she indicated with a
+disparaging hand the elegancies of the blue chamber) "you come and see
+where I live, Jo, and come often. I've got me two as nice rooms as ever
+you seen. And&mdash;I got my own furniture for 'em, too, real grand furniture
+I bought up cheap at an auction room. There's some carved chairs, and a
+walnut desk with a bookcase on top, and some blue velvet porteers, and a
+mahogany bed with the tester sawed off&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Comprehension dawned on Joan. "Ellen! <i>Our</i> furniture!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen nodded. "Some of it. As much as I could git. I'm keepin' it for
+you till you git a home of your own to put it in, Joie. I sort of
+thought your ma would want me to."</p>
+
+<p>Joan was weeping again, not the devastating flood of the past night, but
+sweet and healing tears, as good for strained nerves as a summer rain is
+good for flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"You old wretch!" she gulped. "Where did you get the money?"</p>
+
+<p>The other grinned. "Any time Ellen Neal gets caught without plenty in
+her stockin'-fut, you may be sure the Scots blood is failin' her! I'm a
+whole lot richer than I'm willin' to let some folks know. Why, I could
+set idle, if I'd a mind to, the rest of my life&mdash;only I don't hold with
+settin' idle just because you got a right." (Long afterwards it occurred
+to Joan that Ellen, who was not given to discoursing on her own affairs,
+must have had some reason for thus bragging of her unsuspected riches.)
+"There's nothing," she added rather irrelevantly, "that makes a person
+contented with the place she's in like knowin' she can go somewhere else
+if she's a mind to."</p>
+
+<p>What barrier there had been between servant and mistress&mdash;a fluctuating
+barrier at best, dependent upon Joan's varying conceptions of her own
+dignity&mdash;had gone down forever under that rain of grateful tears, and
+Joan felt free to ask some of the questions of which her heart was
+full&mdash;how, for instance, the affair between her father and Mrs. Calloway
+had begun.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" repeated Ellen grimly. "Well, when a lone female and a lone
+he-male ain't got nothin' to keep 'em apart but an alley-fence, and her
+with paint on her face till she looks like a fat sixteen, and food on
+her table every day as good as a two-dollar table d'hôte, what can you
+expect? I wa'n't surprised myself. Nor," she added quietly, "I don't
+believe your ma would be, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but how it must have hurt her!"</p>
+
+<p>Both spoke in low tones, as if the spirit of Mary Darcy might be
+lingering near enough to overhear.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't so sure about that," mused Ellen. "I ain't so sure! Your ma
+always set great store on havin' the Major comfortable&mdash;'Ellen,' she
+said to me that last day, when we knew what was comin'&mdash;'Ellen, be sure
+to keep him <i>comfortable</i> here at home, so he won't be lookin' for it
+somewheres else.' There's worse things can happen to a widow-man than
+gettin' married again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but if I'd been here to look after him myself!" wailed Joan. "If
+you had only told me what was happening! I might have come back and
+stopped it!"</p>
+
+<p>"About as much chance as stopping a fire-hydrant that's blown the top
+off. You're a smart child, Joan, always was; but you don't stand a show
+against that woman your pa's married&mdash;nor I wouldn't want you to," she
+added cryptically. "You wasn't raised that way.&mdash;Anyhow it wasn't none
+of my business. And just remember this, child, it's none of yours. It's
+none of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>After she had gone, a sense of something heartening and bracing remained
+with Joan; and as she brushed out her straight, heavy hair with new
+silver-backed brushes which bore her own initials, a typical Ellenism
+recurred to her: "There's nothing that makes a person contented with the
+place she's in like knowing she can go somewheres else if she's a mind
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"At least," she thought suddenly, "I'm independent of father. Mother
+left her property to me&mdash;I can get it whenever I ask for it.... And now
+I understand why!"</p>
+
+<p>Mary Darcy had been a very far-sighted woman.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was long before Joan recovered from the dazed sensation her father's
+little surprise had produced in her mind. Perhaps she never did quite
+recover from it. Something died within her; a naïf belief in the wisdom
+of her elders, the ultimate rightness of existing things, which once
+gone never returns again. If it is true that we live in experience
+rather than in years, Joan came to her majority over night.</p>
+
+<p>It was her father's attitude which amazed her most. Had he seemed in the
+least apologetic, in the least ashamed or embarrassed by the quality of
+the woman he had put into her mother's place, she would have been ready
+to pity and console and help him make the best of a grave mistake. But
+the Major's attitude was that of the cat which has not only eaten the
+canary, but digested it and found it extremely beneficial to the system.
+Far from seeming apologetic, he appeared rather proud of his
+performance. There was something almost pathetic in his content with his
+new prosperity, with the ease and luxury of the establishment of which
+he found himself head.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sometimes thought, with a scornful sort of pity, "How Dad must have
+<i>hated</i> to be poor!"</p>
+
+<p>Certainly he took to wealth, to which he had always professed himself
+indifferent, with an alacrity which surprised his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>She had opportunity to notice, too, for the first time in action,
+Richard Darcy's chief and perhaps sole equipment for the unequal battle
+of life; his talent for making friends. Not for keeping them&mdash;that is a
+separate art, calling for certain efforts, certain reticences, above all
+certain abstentions of which Richard Darcy was temperamentally
+incapable. But in the art of creating admiring and useful acquaintances
+out of raw material he had few equals, even among his own profession.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Darcy had kept herself and her child for the most part aloof from
+these easily acquired friends of her husband, though they were
+invariably quite presentable&mdash;(as has been hinted, the Major had no use
+whatever for what he called "the canile"). Possibly this was owing to
+some odd Puritan scruples on Mary's part about combining business with
+pleasure....</p>
+
+<p>But now that business had no longer to be combined with pleasure,
+Richard Darcy was free to exercise to the full his gift for being
+agreeable, without afterthought. It was perhaps fortunate that his new
+wife had made few friends of her own, a fact which left him unhampered
+in the matter of what he called quite seriously "resuming his position."</p>
+
+<p>Joan found that he was no longer forgotten in the city of his youth. The
+older residents had already been made aware by means of engraved and
+crested announcements that Richard Throckmorton Darcy had returned to
+their midst for the purpose of wedding one Effie May Smith Calloway, and
+that the bridal pair would be at home after a certain date at a very
+good address on Elmtree Street. Whither quite a respectable number of
+them hastened, if only out of curiosity, to leave cards.</p>
+
+<p>What they found was an extremely affable, leisurely, and
+prosperous-looking host, an establishment which appeared able and
+willing to maintain those traditions of Southern hospitality which have
+latterly fallen somewhat into disuse, and a rather silent young girl
+whose manner atoned for the perhaps excessive cordiality of her
+step-mother. Some of the callers did not come again, even under
+pressure; but on the whole Joan realized that the old friends in whom
+she had almost ceased to believe were about to take the Darcy family
+belatedly to their bosoms, indifferent to the substitution of a Mrs.
+Calloway for her mother.</p>
+
+<p>It was the girl's first experience of the omnipotence of money; an
+experience which if it comes young enough will make a cynic out of a
+congenital optimist, which Joan was not.</p>
+
+<p>To do the new Mrs. Darcy justice, she was an adaptable and, in her way,
+a tactful creature who had already in her admiration of the Major and
+his daughter, learned to modify her speech and behavior rather
+touchingly. And her frank delight with what she called "breaking into
+society," may have been rather disarming to society; or to such portion
+of it as found its way to the imposing house on Elmtree Street. She was
+extremely cordial to her guests, urging them to come often, to have more
+iced tea and cake, to take candy home to the children, to try the
+Major's cigars and whisky, for which he had an undoubted palate. If the
+women looked at her a little askance, the men were loud in her praises,
+and obeyed her urgings to come often.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May, encouraged, began shortly to seek new worlds to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what next?" she demanded one night at dinner, after an afternoon
+of callers, stifling a wide pink yawn with the palm of a much beringed
+hand. "Your old families are all very well, Dickie boy, refined and
+classy and all that&mdash;but, my God, they ain't exciting! Now are they?
+Isn't there anybody in Louisville born since the Civil War?"</p>
+
+<p>"If there is, I'm afraid I don't know it," admitted the Major, smiling
+indulgently. "You see the people who were young when I left are young no
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>"So we've noticed," murmured his bride, making a companionable grimace
+at Joan. "But we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in the
+baldhead row, do we, girlie? You've got to find us something under sixty
+to pal around with, Hubby mine, that's all there is to it. See?"</p>
+
+<p>One of her step-mother's most unbearable traits, to Joan, was her habit
+of calling the Major absurd comic-supplement pet names. But his dignity
+seemed not to suffer from it. In fact he expanded visibly under the
+treatment, like a dog whose ears are being tickled.</p>
+
+<p>"Your commands are law, my angel," he said. "Just how would you suggest
+that I go about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Effie May ruminated, while the two Darcys watched her&mdash;with, however,
+somewhat varying expressions. The Major appeared to be admiring, indeed
+gloating over, the appearance she made at the head of her bountifully
+appointed table, in a dress not niggardly in its display of her
+bountifully appointed charms. His eye followed appreciatively the curve
+of her plump arm as it disappeared into enveloping laces.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, on the other hand, watched her step-mother warily. There was
+something about the woman she could not fathom, for all her surface
+simplicity. She felt, beneath the other's careless, easy good-nature, a
+certain force, a driving power, in the grip of which she and her father
+were mere helpless puppets. Effie May would use them always for her own
+ends&mdash;whatever those ends might be. Why had she chosen to saddle
+herself, free and rich and independent as she was, with an impoverished
+gentleman and his grown-up daughter? Certainly at that age, thought Joan
+(Effie May was in the neighborhood of forty), people could not possibly
+fall in love! No, there was something mysterious about her
+step-mother....</p>
+
+<p>"I have it," said the lady suddenly. "The Country Club! I see in the
+society column that everything nowadays is going on at the Country Club.
+We'll have to join that."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," interposed Joan, flushing, "that people have to be invited
+to join a club, don't they, Father?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;We'll <i>be</i> invited. Won't we, Dickums?" said the bride, with
+a ravishing smile in the Major's direction.</p>
+
+<p>He rose to the occasion. "Certainly, my love," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>And they were invited. At any rate, a week or two later found the Darcy
+family dining alone at the Country Club, among various other little
+table groups, all of whom seemed to know each other intimately.</p>
+
+<p>To be in and not of this friendly assemblage filled Joan with that most
+miserable of all sensations, crowd-loneliness. Even the Major wore a
+rather fixed and nervous smile, and mentioned to his wife and daughter
+at intervals that Louisville society had changed very much since he used
+to frequent it. Only Effie May seemed quite unperturbed, gazing about
+her smilingly, and tapping her slippered foot, and nodding her head in
+time to the music; meeting the curious glances which strayed in their
+direction with a frank interest of her own which might have seemed bold
+if it were not so like a pleased child's.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, intercepting one or two of these glances, looked her step-mother
+over critically, and to her relief found her less flamboyant than usual.
+She was dressed in white&mdash;"Handsome white, not girly-girly muslin like
+yours. I'm too stout for that," she had said wisely to Joan&mdash;The girl
+reflected that it is difficult to look vulgar in white. Mrs. Darcy was
+not appreciably different in appearance from many another rather
+overdressed matron there, even in the matter of rouge and touched-up
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>As for her father&mdash;Richard Darcy would have been a distinguished figure
+in any assemblage he chose to enter, with his six feet of gallantly
+carried avoirdupois, his finely modeled head, his gray mustache and
+imperial concealing a mouth that might otherwise have left something to
+be desired. He wore that night&mdash;and wore well&mdash;clothes of the palest
+gray flannel, with socks and buckskin shoes to match, and a gray stripe
+in his white tie, and a gray monogram embroidered upon the exquisite
+cambric of his handkerchief. This was the parent who a few weeks ago she
+had associated irrevocably in her mind with spots and frayed collars!
+She found herself wishing that her mother could see him now&mdash;she would
+be so proud of him!...</p>
+
+<p>To her own appearance Joan gave little consideration. She had discovered
+that the great advantage of good clothes is that you no longer have to
+think about them. She was quite unaware of the value in contrasts she
+afforded&mdash;her small, dark, smoothly combed head lifted proudly on its
+long neck, the awkward grace of her thin young body, the pale oval of
+her face lit by surprisingly vivid eyes, of the sort that are dreamy and
+shadowed until excitement turns them into soft blue fire. She was
+excited that night, a little frightened. She did not smile at all, but
+there was that about her lips&mdash;sensitive, wistful, faintly
+drooping&mdash;that made more than one person who glanced at the Darcy table
+wonder what the smile would be like if it came.</p>
+
+<p>When the dancing began, Effie May's exuberance could no longer contain
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"This is something like!" she cried. "This is what I call life! Come on,
+Dick&mdash;'Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!'"</p>
+
+<p>"But," protested the Major, "it is some time since I have waltzed, my
+love&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, you'll waltz with me! Anybody can dance with me. The boys
+used to call me Lightfoot Ef&mdash;Oh, but you'll have to get a partner for
+Joan, first, of course; I forgot we had a family along."</p>
+
+<p>The girl flushed, aghast at the thought of her father whirling in the
+midst of that whirling throng. "No, no, Effie May, please&mdash;!" she urged.
+"Let's just sit here quietly and look on."</p>
+
+<p>The other laughed aloud. "Naturally! That's what we've come to a dance
+for, to sit against the wall and look on&mdash;Nonsense! Go and find your
+child a partner, Dick, and hurry back. My feet just won't keep still."
+She was humming gaily in time with the orchestra.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, gazing a little blankly at the crowd of strangers before him,
+obediently went forth to do her bidding, and Effie May seized the
+occasion to give a little womanly advice.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you fret, Joan&mdash;remember there's as many young fellows in the
+world crazy to know girls as there are girls crazy to know them. And
+dearie"&mdash;her voice sank to a friendly whisper&mdash;"warm up to 'em a
+little, can't you? Jolly 'em along. Hot air, you know, talk! No
+matter what you say, just keep talking. That don't-touch-me,
+butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth air may be all right with the nuns and
+the old families but it won't go down with the men. Believe me, dearie!
+I know."</p>
+
+<p>It was a well-meant effort, which had the effect of congealing the
+already subdued Joan into something resembling a marble effigy.</p>
+
+<p>The Major shortly returned, bearing urbanely in his wake a blond young
+man who seemed not too unwilling.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to meet my wife, sir," he was saying. "I want to have the
+pleasure of presenting you to my daughter. Fancy the coincidence, my
+dears&mdash;this gentleman turns out to be the son of an old schoolmate!"</p>
+
+<p>Effie May welcomed them with enthusiasm. "Good for you! I had my money
+on you, Dickums! Five minutes, and the son of a schoolmate! It's a
+record!&mdash;Ta-ta, young people! Enjoy yourselves," was her valedictory as
+she whirled the Major away, waving her hand over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Joan stared aghast at the blond young man, who said, "She is an awfully
+jolly sort, your mother, isn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very jolly," agreed Joan faintly. "But she's not my mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell. He seemed to be waiting for her to break it. She gulped,
+and said in a firm voice, "Did you come to ask me to dance?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man indicated politely that such was his intention.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't very well help yourself, could you?" she remarked, and
+suddenly burst out laughing&mdash;rather hysterical laughter in which the
+young man joined embarrassedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course if you'd rather talk&mdash;" he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Joan jumped to her feet. "Oh, but I wouldn't! I'd rather do <i>anything</i>
+than talk&mdash;no matter what I say, just talk, warm up to 'em, hot air&mdash;I
+mean," she explained desperately, "I'm much too shy to talk!"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't sound very shy."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;they're the worst sort, the ones who hide it."</p>
+
+<p>They commenced silently to dance. Presently he confessed, "I'm
+rather&mdash;shy, myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Goody!" she exclaimed with relief. "Then we needn't bother to talk at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>They parted quite reluctantly when a whistle blew for the "circle"&mdash;a
+useful innovation for breaking up relations, by whose aid Joan found
+herself exchanging partners at intervals throughout the evening without
+finding herself too long on the hands of any. She blessed the inventor
+of the circle. Youth and a pair of winged feet came to her rescue, and
+she forgot her strangeness in sheer joy of motion. The people she danced
+with that night were not men; they were as trees walking, for all the
+personal memory she kept of them.</p>
+
+<p>But when the music finally thumped itself out, and Effie May, a trifle
+blown and moist about the brow, again resumed charge of her scattered
+family, saying, "Well, dearie, you've had a pretty good time, haven't
+you?"&mdash;Joan was able to answer with some surprise that she had.</p>
+
+<p>"Dancing," commented the Major, puffing, "is a very healthful exercise;
+indeed, an esthetic exercise. The Greeks practised it, as I recall,
+extensively, even in their riper years. My love, with a little
+experience I think I shall easily master that step you call the fox
+trot."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you will," encouraged she who had been called Lightfoot Ef,
+patting his cheek maternally.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Darcys' social career appeared to be well launched. Each Saturday
+night found them at the Country Club, and no longer dining in
+loneliness. Effie May speedily collected about her a group of congenial
+spirits, for the most part young people, among whom she was extremely
+popular&mdash;far more so than was Joan, who sometimes felt as if she were
+the only elder present. Theirs was usually the most hilarious table in
+the room. Corks popped freely, and there was much horse-play, and
+throwing about of bread, and at a certain stage of the evening rather
+frank persiflage in which, to Joan's relief, her step-mother took no
+part. She laughed her cheery, plump laugh, and made no comment; but more
+than once with a glance at her step-daughter, she managed quite deftly
+to steer the conversation into other channels. Joan came to the
+gratifying conclusion that her father's wife was afraid of her.</p>
+
+<p>The Major at his end of the table devoted himself assiduously to his
+duties as host, seeing that glasses were filled, distributing gallant
+remarks among the ladies, constantly signing tickets. He was in his
+element; expanding, positively glowing, with hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"Another cigar, my boy? Try this brand! Take several! Fill your pockets
+with them. I can recommend them personally!"</p>
+
+<p>There came to be several brands which he could recommend personally,
+several vintages as well. The waiters hovered about him like cherubim
+about the throne of grace, and he knew them all by name, and took an
+interest in their families.</p>
+
+<p>This lavish generosity, Joan reflected, was the spirit which gave the
+old South its glamour, its traditions&mdash;to say nothing of its consequent
+poverty. There was something rather fine and large about the Major's
+apparent obliviousness of the fact that the money he spent so royally
+did not belong to him.</p>
+
+<p>"If Effie May does not worry, why should I?" argued his daughter with
+herself. Her father's affairs were no longer her concern; if indeed they
+had ever been. But she could not help taking a certain uneasy interest
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you happen to know enough people to invite to all these parties
+of yours?" she asked Effie May, aware that the Darcy family was doing
+rather more than its share of entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't have to know people well to ask 'em to parties,"
+explained the other innocently. "And once they eat with you, they're
+your friends."</p>
+
+<p>"That depends upon what you give them to eat!" interjected the Major,
+chuckling.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a primitive conception of social relationships, but not on the
+whole a false one. Joan thought of the Arab and his salt....</p>
+
+<p>"Food," she wrote to Stefan Nikolai, "appears to be the Tie that Binds."</p>
+
+<p>"What about drink?" he inquired on a post-card. (They did a good deal of
+this staccato correspondence, Joan liking to exchange deep thoughts with
+him, as she expressed it, "while they were hot.")</p>
+
+<p>"Drink," she replied on another, "is the Tie that Loosens!..."</p>
+
+<p>Stefan Nikolai was the only one of her friends with whom she had found
+courage to discuss her father's marriage. Writing things out to him was
+almost like writing them out to herself. It served somehow to clear her
+mind. It is probable that Mr. Nikolai, a student of various phases of
+the human problem, got a good deal of valuable vicarious experience out
+of young Joan's letters. Certainly he encouraged them.</p>
+
+<p>It was to him that she confided her discovery that social life is far
+more pleasing after dinner than before. She was learning to count, as
+surely as does many an experienced hostess, upon the help of the Tie
+that Loosens. While she herself had not as yet developed her father's
+palate for cocktails and fine vintages she appreciated their effect upon
+her partners&mdash;for to her men so far were merely partners.</p>
+
+<p>It was after dinner that Joan's part of the evening began. Then, thanks
+to the Tie that Loosens, there was no longer need to make banal
+conversation nor to listen to it, no need to pretend friendly interest
+in young men to whom she was incurably a stranger, no need of anything
+but to yield herself to the music and the first pair of arms that
+offered, and float away into Dreamland.</p>
+
+<p>There was something curiously sensuous to Joan about dancing. It acted
+like a drug upon her fancy, stimulating, soothing. She was hardly aware
+of whom she danced with, if he could dance. If he could not, she
+stopped. This odd impersonality of hers was rather piquant to her
+partners. Many a youth who was afraid to talk to "that quiet Darcy
+girl&mdash;you never know what she's thinking about!"&mdash;was not afraid to
+dance with her, whenever he got the chance.</p>
+
+<p>At such times Joan had her rare moments of beauty. With flushed face,
+loosened hair, and wide, dreaming eyes, she was as graceful as one of
+the three circling maidens in the Primavera&mdash;the one who looks wistfully
+over her shoulder at the oblivious youth. Unfortunately her lot was cast
+among people who did not think in terms of Botticelli. Her step-mother
+wondered sometimes whether curling-tongs and perhaps a little rouge
+would make her look more like other girls....</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes people came to the club who attracted Joan's
+attention&mdash;quieter people than Effie May's friends, more simply dressed,
+who never seemed to join in the accentuated hilarity after dinner. Once
+in such a group she recognized the girl who had eyed her aloofly on the
+train coming home from boarding school. Joan suddenly yearned to do some
+aloof eyeing on her own account, now that she was no longer shabby but
+wore a frock as smart as any in the room.</p>
+
+<p>She watched her opportunity, and followed the stranger into the
+dressing-room with some such truculent idea in view; but was disarmed by
+the courtesy with which the other made room for her at a mirror, where
+they powdered their noses side by side in amity. As she was leaving the
+room, however, she heard the aloof one murmur to a friend: "What a lot
+of strange people one sees at this club nowadays! I wonder where they
+all come from? It's getting very mixed."</p>
+
+<p>Joan went white with anger. She struggled with the temptation to explain
+proudly that she was not a strange person, that her name entitled her to
+any society she chose to enter, that it was her step-mother who was
+"mixed," not she....</p>
+
+<p>And then she remembered that it was only thanks to her step-mother that
+she happened to be there at all.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment this encounter with the enemy took away Joan's heart for
+dancing. Crowd-loneliness got her by the throat. Was there always to be
+just one of her, and so many of everybody else?</p>
+
+<p>She slipped out on to a terrace that overlooked a valley with the great
+river gleaming far off, still holding some faint glow of the sunset's
+aftermath. There was a bench at the far end, lost in shadow, and she was
+about to seat herself there when she saw that it was already occupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, drawing back. "I didn't notice you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Women rarely do," remarked a plaintive voice with a smile in it. "I'm
+used to that. And yet I notice them, dreadfully!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan laughed a little, and retreated. "I won't disturb you," she
+murmured; but the voice held her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please! Please do. I want to be disturbed. I simply came here to
+see my moonrise." A shadowy arm pointed out a dim glow over the trees to
+eastward.</p>
+
+<p>"Why <i>your</i> moonrise, especially?"</p>
+
+<p>"By right of discovery. I seem to be the only person aware of it.... May
+I share it with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure you wouldn't rather see it alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious!" cried the voice quite querulously, "what human
+being ever wanted to watch a moonrise alone?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan chuckled, and sat down to the first conversation she had enjoyed
+since her last one with Stefan Nikolai&mdash;one of the few real
+conversations, she thought afterwards, in her life.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it was difficult to remember the many things they talked about.
+Smoke, for one. He pointed out the dim loveliness of the city below,
+towers and battlements and the airy span of a bridge against the
+gray-gold sky.</p>
+
+<p>"'Many-storied Camelot town,'" he said, musing. "Without the shrouding
+smoke, what would it be? Factory chimneys, iron smoke-stacks, a
+filtration plant&mdash;Ugliness, ugliness! Yet there are people in that town
+who want to rid themselves of those billowing mists of rose and violet
+and silver."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," said Joan, "the beauty of smoke depends upon whether you're
+down in it, getting smuts on your nose, or looking on from a hilltop."</p>
+
+<p>"A question of perspective, you think? Hmnn&mdash;yes. Well, then" he said
+reasonably, "by all means <i>get</i> your perspective. Stick to the
+hilltop&mdash;especially at sunset."</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't all got wings to reach a hilltop with, you see. Nor yet
+automobiles."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't, myself," he said. "I use trolley-cars.... Did it ever occur
+to you what a marvel the trolley-car is? For a nickel&mdash;or at most a
+dime&mdash;all Nature is yours to command; beechwoods in their autumn field
+of the cloth of gold; little whispering streams breaking their winter
+silence, fireflies dancing&mdash;to the tune of the 'Merry Widow' waltz," (as
+that melody of the moment made itself audible from the house beyond).
+"What a twilight! Fireflies, an afterglow, and the moonrise set to
+music, all at once," he said under his breath. "And some one to share
+them with!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was silent, flattered by the knowledge that this whimsical
+gentleman was letting her into his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"The beauty of such a moment is that one never loses it," he mused. "One
+puts it away as people press flowers in books, to be looked at
+when&mdash;when pleasant things need remembering. I thank God for a mind well
+stocked with beautiful occasions!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wild Evenings I Have Known," murmured Joan, frivolously, because for
+some reason she was rather touched.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, "With wild people in them. Like you."</p>
+
+<p>"Me! Wild?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know on the surface you're a demure, well-behaved young miss, but
+underneath&mdash;good gracious! You'd shock these people to death!"&mdash;he
+indicated certain hilarious couples who had waltzed onto the terrace
+near them. "Yes, you're quite untamed, my dear. Wild as a&mdash;chipmunk."</p>
+
+<p>Joan leaned toward him, "How did you guess?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've watched you dance. And then&mdash;well, I've never quite got used to
+the cage myself, perhaps." He began to hum under his breath a tuneless
+little ditty:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It is a very dreadful thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be so fat a child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have to sit around all day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet to feel so wild."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"At least," laughed Joan, "I'm not fat!"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he said soberly, "never get fat. It is the beginning of the
+end.... By fat I mean old. And cautious. Ugh!"</p>
+
+<p>How the conversation came about to apple-trees, Joan never was sure; but
+he told her about one he had discovered somewhere in the deep woods, all
+in bloom, a little old gnarled affair hidden among giant first growth
+sycamores and elms and beeches.</p>
+
+<p>"An apple-tree lost in the woods! How do you suppose it got away from
+civilization?" wondered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Some bird, perhaps; or Johnny Appleseed."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy living in Kentucky without knowing about the first and greatest
+of our pioneers! He was a daft old creature&mdash;an innocent, as the kind
+phrase goes&mdash;who used to wander away from the settlement where he lived
+into the wilderness, scattering apple seeds. All over this Ohio Valley
+he journeyed, sowing his orchards for the benefit of those who were to
+follow. The Indians let him pass, the wild animals did not harm him;
+only his friends locked him up whenever they could catch him, because it
+seemed such a silly thing to do. Friends are that way ... Years later,
+when the pioneers fought their way at last over the mountains to stay,
+they found here and there apple-trees blossoming and fruiting in the
+great, lonely wilderness; and wherever that happened their wives made
+them build cabins and settle down, for of all things that grow an
+apple-tree most suggests home. So mad old Johnny Appleseed was the
+founder of many cities."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there is no monument to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Except the cities...."</p>
+
+<p>Here a young man appeared to claim Joan for the next dance&mdash;the blond
+young man with whom she had commenced her dancing career, and who had
+formed quite a habit of looking for her whenever the music played.</p>
+
+<p>She rose with reluctance. "I wish <i>you'd</i> come in and dance with me,"
+she said to her new friend. "I'm sure you could!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I could, too," he replied, "if I hadn't my body with me. As it
+is, I'll just sit out here and make believe I'm dancing with you&mdash;In a
+starlit glade. With the other young nymphs and dryads..." the whimsical
+voice followed her.</p>
+
+<p>The blond young man stared. "Of all the assorted nuts!" he remarked,
+when they were out of earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but who is he?" demanded Joan eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Something on the stock exchange. I see him there every day."</p>
+
+<p>"The stock exchange!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Oh, he writes poems and things for the papers, too, I think. Quite
+a literary guy." He mentioned the name.</p>
+
+<p>It is a name known and remembered wherever there are moonrises and
+fireflies, smoke against the sunset, apple-trees in bloom&mdash;all the
+everyday lovely things people forget to see unless there are poets to
+remind them...</p>
+
+<p>It gave Joan quite a new zest in living to realize that at any moment,
+even at Country Clubs, it is possible to run across a poet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Richard Darcy was accepting the change that had come into his life much
+as he had accepted others of a less fortunate trend. He had become at
+last what Nature had always intended him to be, one of the world's
+chosen, a rich man&mdash;or, what was even better because less troublesome,
+the husband of a rich woman. He was also once more an honored citizen of
+his native commonwealth&mdash;where he had not always been entirely an
+honored citizen, owing to one of the unfortunate mistakes to which youth
+is liable. There had been some disagreement with an early employer about
+the right of employees to divert the firm's funds, temporarily of
+course, to private uses. Only family influence had prevented this
+misunderstanding from resulting in truly disastrous consequences, which
+he shuddered to this day to contemplate. But it had prevented; and the
+early employer was dead (as Richard Darcy had taken pains to ascertain
+before returning to Louisville), and the few who knew of this painful
+episode at the time appeared to have forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>Very good! He was quite willing to forget it himself. It was Richard
+Darcy's creed that a gentleman takes whatever comes in his stride,
+without too many backward glances; and his stride was just now adapting
+itself gracefully to the one-step.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, watching her father sometimes with a faint recrudescence of pride
+in his sheer good looks, decided that he was the only stomached person
+she had seen who could perform the one-step without loss of dignity. He
+footed the measure indulgently, as a bishop or a cardinal might have
+footed it, with an air of spiritual detachment, as it were, while yet
+seeming to receive and to bestow a priceless privilege. Even lively
+young girls liked to dance with the Major. It made them feel uplifted.
+If he pressed the hand or the waist of his prettier partners more
+closely than necessary, the pressure seemed almost impersonal, a mere
+tribute to a sex which he could not but regard with tenderness, being
+himself a husband and a father.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this valuable social acquirement, the Major further
+fortified his popularity by inventing and promoting (uncommercially, of
+course) a beverage which shortly bade fair to make him famous, and which
+was christened by grateful habitués of the Country Club the "Dick Fizz."
+Its ingredients were&mdash;but that is a secret not at the author's disposal.
+Suffice it to say that the "Dick Fizz" achieved results that were all
+and more than could be expected of it. (Among others, the Major's
+election to a certain gentlemen's club which had hitherto remained
+annoyingly unaware of him. So much for the power of the Tie that
+Loosens!)</p>
+
+<p>It was thanks to the "Dick Fizz," too, that there presently came about
+between Richard Darcy and his daughter that heart-to-heart interview
+which had been postponing itself from week to week, with the tacit
+consent of both parties; an interview dreaded by Joan perhaps even less
+than by her father.</p>
+
+<p>They were returning one night from one of their most successful
+evenings; Joan as usual on the front seat beside the chauffeur, where
+she might enjoy the rush of the cool night air upon her face, and hear
+as little as possible of the billing and cooing of the honeymooners in
+the tonneau behind. There seemed more of this than usual, little
+giggling exclamations and audible embraces which made the girl wince and
+the chauffeur grin surreptitiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Father!" protested Joan over her shoulder. There was something
+physically nauseating to her in those amorous echoes from the tonneau.
+No wonder servants laughed! It made of love a travesty and a mocking.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad when they reached home. The Major stepped out gallantly to
+assist the ladies, but miscalculated his impetus, and after a series of
+complicated maneuvers brought up seated upon the curbstone. The
+chauffeur burst into an uncontrollable guffaw, in which his mistress
+heartily joined.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you Dick Fizz!" she laughed, wiping her eyes. "I knew it would get
+you yet. <i>Look</i> at your funny papa, dearie! Lit up like a
+Christmas-tree!"</p>
+
+<p>The Major murmured something reprovingly about the duties of
+hospitality, which he found some difficulty in pronouncing; but once
+upon his feet, he gave an arm to each of them and managed the steps
+without further mishap.</p>
+
+<p>In the hall Joan, who had not laughed, said to her step-mother in a low
+voice, "Is he&mdash;drunk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not enough to hurt," replied the lady, still laughing. It occurred
+to Joan that she herself was a little flushed and expansive. "I can
+handle him, all right. Don't you worry! I always know a gentleman by the
+way he carries his liquor."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure thing! And Major's a perfect gentleman always. Don't you fret."</p>
+
+<p>Joan mounted quietly to her room, and undressed in the dark. She did not
+want to see her face in the mirror, afraid of the disgust, the loathing,
+that must be reflected there&mdash;Her father&mdash;drunk! The man to whom her
+mother had given her love and her life, tipsily furnishing amusement for
+a woman who judged gentlemen by the way they carried their liquor!...</p>
+
+<p>She recalled one other time when she had seen her father in his present
+condition. She remembered her mother's stricken, tragic face as she
+hurried him out of sight, explaining tremulously, "Daddy's ill, darling.
+No games with Daddy to-night&mdash;he's ill."</p>
+
+<p>"But he wants to play! Look, mamma, he <i>wants</i> to play!" the small Joan
+had insisted, to no avail.</p>
+
+<p>And when this strangely interesting Daddy was safe in bed, with Ellen
+Neal mounting guard, Joan had been hurried out to the nearest church
+(which happened to be a Catholic one, for Mary's was a casual sort of
+religion that boasted neither creed nor prejudice); and there, before a
+statue where little lamps burned, the child had prayed hard, as she was
+bid, that her father might never be ill in just that way again.</p>
+
+<p>"God may listen to you, even if He's tired of listening to me!" the
+mother had whispered, desperately.</p>
+
+<p>It was because God had listened that Joan was sent later to a Catholic
+convent. Mary Darcy's was not the nature to forget favors; and it
+occurred to her that there might be worse protectors for a girl who must
+one day be motherless than Our Lady of Sorrows. Not every faith is
+strong enough to go through life without some creed to cling to. Mary
+had offered her child what she could.</p>
+
+<p>Lying there in the darkness, Joan understood. She wished that she might
+have been able to take what her mother offered. She yearned for the
+anodyne of simple, unquestioning prayer, for the mesmeric comfort that
+comes to the believing from the slipping of rosary beads between the
+fingers; above all, for the right to kneel unrecognized in a quiet
+confessional and learn from some priest wiser than she in the ways of
+men where her duty lay and how she was to follow it. The confessional is
+perhaps the secret of the hold the oldest of Christian churches keeps
+upon a world which would seem to have outgrown it. That is a
+self-reliant nature indeed which does not sometimes feel the need of
+guidance at once human and detached.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan's creed and confessional alike were contained in her troubled
+young head; and where a happier woman would have wept and said her
+prayers, she set herself sternly to the task of thinking. It seemed to
+her that throughout the past weeks she had been shirking an issue,
+deliberately drugging her wits with anything that came to hand. Now she
+faced conditions squarely. There must be no more drifting.</p>
+
+<p>She focused an unsparing vision upon her father. Already there were
+changes apparent in him, signs of deterioration not entirely physical.
+His features seemed slightly blurred from their fine chiseling, there
+was a relaxed look about the lips and chin, about the very poise of his
+figure. He had lost a little of that indefinable something which gave
+him distinction, even in the days when the women of his family tried in
+vain to keep him pressed and unspotted. Prosperity was not going to be
+good for Richard Darcy.</p>
+
+<p>Joan pronounced ruthless judgment upon her father:</p>
+
+<p>"He's done for!"</p>
+
+<p>And, as Ellen had warned her, it was none of her business.... What then
+was her business? Clearly, to keep from being "done for" herself.</p>
+
+<p>She saw quite clearly that she had been in danger of this. There was
+something curiously enervating about the atmosphere of her step-mother's
+house, a <i>laissez-faire</i> that was almost&mdash;the girl sought for the word
+and decided upon "lascivious." Luxury, ease, pleasure&mdash;these were the
+ends for which her step-mother strove&mdash;or rather accomplished without
+undue striving, an ability to which the girl gave full due. She knew
+that it must take more than mere money to keep so elaborate a household
+running without apparent effort. The servants were efficient and
+unobtrusive, the accounts scrupulously kept, every nook and cranny clean
+and in order. Even Ellen Neal, who knew whereof she spoke, admitted that
+the ex-Mrs. Calloway was a housekeeper of parts. But...</p>
+
+<p>Joan tried conscientiously to fathom the meaning of her "but." She
+decided that the house was too like its mistress&mdash;over-bathed,
+over-perfumed and dressed and manicured&mdash;to be quite nice. The windows
+were too fluffy with lace, the drawing-room too pretty and satiny, the
+library too red. ("Why is it," she had written to Stefan Nikolai, "that
+people who never open a book invariably have a red library?")</p>
+
+<p>A fantastic thought came to her. She wondered whether those strange
+houses which are sometimes whispered of even among convent girls, those
+palaces of horror where women's bodies are bought and sold, might not
+perhaps resemble this home to which her father had brought her ...</p>
+
+<p>Then she smiled at herself. Vulgar, her step-mother might be; hopelessly
+underbred; doubtless in some previous manifestations a shop-girl, a
+dressmaker; possibly one of those anomalous beings known in race-towns
+as "race-horse women." But she was unmistakably respectable. There was
+not a picture on her walls, nor a novel on the shelves of the red
+library, which was not, as she herself once remarked to Joan
+complacently, "perfectly refined." The girl recalled her evident
+uneasiness when sometimes at the dinner-table the talk had waxed a
+little too free. She did her step-mother the justice to believe her a
+quite decent woman.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the curious sense of enervation was due only to the heat of
+midsummer in a Southern city. Now and then the elder Darcys spoke
+vaguely of going away, only to decide that it was too much trouble. It
+was easier to stay where they were. In a Kentucky July, one follows the
+line of least resistance.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, like the others, slept late into the mornings, and had her coffee
+in bed, or went down to the dining-room for it with a negligée over her
+nightgown. (Her father had become quite reconciled to negligées, which
+at first startled him, accustomed as he was to the neat morning ginghams
+of his Mary.) Sometimes she found him departing reluctantly for the
+mysterious place he called the Office. Later, people would arrive
+connected with the rites of the toilet&mdash;the hair-dresser, the manicure,
+the masseuse&mdash;a chatty person who performed on Effie May what she called
+her "facial"; and other things. Cleopatra herself could have devoted no
+more time to the care of her body than did the ex-Mrs. Calloway.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got it to do if you're risin' forty and like to eat," she
+explained once to Joan, simply.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon, which was brought on a tray&mdash;a large tray&mdash;to wherever
+it happened to be convenient, the ladies once more resumed nightgowns,
+if indeed they had ever discarded them, and napped and read until the
+sun was low in the sky; when the house like the city woke into
+animation, and they prepared to fare forth like fireflies to the evening
+revel. Then there were automobile drives to little beer-gardens, where
+they ate and drank and sat about among whitewashed tree-trunks, feeling
+Bohemian; pleasant moonlight excursions up the Ohio in launches, with a
+picnic provided which consisted largely of thermos-bottles; and the
+Country Club, always the Country Club. Joan wondered what people had
+managed to do with themselves in summer before the days of Country
+Clubs.</p>
+
+<p>It was a life that somehow suggested the Orient, women of the harem
+coming forth at sunset to bask on the roofs of the houses; a placid
+existence; aimless, perhaps, but pleasant enough. Joan was puzzled to
+find the harm in it. Yet that harm was there, she knew. The touch of
+Puritanism in the girl told her that to live from day to day with no
+duty but pleasure made of pleasure something akin to vice.... And often
+in the midst of this harem life she remembered almost with passion that
+out beyond her shuttered windows, beyond the clangor of trolley-cars and
+the hum and clatter of the dirty streets, was summer&mdash;summer, the
+loveliest of the year's phases; leaf-shadows on wimpling water, lush
+meadows sparkling with the sunrise dew, green-gold glades of the wood
+delicious with the smell of warm pine-needles; all the world at fullest
+bloom, open like the heart of a rose, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sort of nostalgia that took her then for the country she had
+never known, not Country Club country, nor the conscious, well-kept
+wildness of the parks which give the old river town its only claim to
+beauty&mdash;but simple wood and meadow and field, where homely folk live
+close to the soil they till, concerned with crops and the breeding
+season. It was this country her father had meant when he bragged about
+Kentucky. It is this country which, deep down under the surface things,
+means home to all people of Saxon blood, no matter how far astray they
+wander....</p>
+
+<p>And as she lay there, as if her wistful thoughts had conjured it into
+being, came a whisper of song from the leaves of the magnolia tree just
+outside her window; a murmur that died away, and began again, and rose
+and soared, melody on wings, above the clang of a trolley-car and the
+honk of passing motors. It was a mocking-bird, that voice of the
+Southern summer, singing in the glare of the arc-lamps, mistaking it
+perhaps for moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>Joan tiptoed to the window and listened, an aching lump in her throat.
+It was her first mocking-bird; she had not known they sang at night.</p>
+
+<p>"You lovely thing!" she whispered to it. "What are you doing in this
+place?... And what am <i>I</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Then and there she made her plans to get away.</p>
+
+<p>The thought frightened her a little. She had, despite the ups and downs
+of her father's fortunes, led hitherto a very sheltered life.
+Fortunately there was her mother's money, hers whenever she chose to ask
+for it. She would not be quite penniless. But where to go?</p>
+
+<p>She thought first of the Misses Darcy, her father's cousins, who had
+been most affectionate and kind, particularly since her father's
+remarriage. Sometimes she wondered whether this was because they
+sympathized with her, or (with a touch of her new cynicism) because they
+did not. Effie May had been very generous to the Misses Darcy, remarking
+once that she knew what it was to be poor herself. They came frequently
+to dine at her lavish table; they appeared occasionally in <i>chic</i> black
+costumes, as good as new, which Joan recognized as having served to
+mourn the late Mr. Calloway; the limousine was often at their disposal;
+and a limousine with a liveried chauffeur was a touch of distinction
+hitherto lacking to the Darcy fortunes, even at their palmiest.</p>
+
+<p>Joan suddenly doubted whether her father's cousins would welcome her
+under their roof at the risk of alienating that limousine. She did not
+blame them&mdash;poor, anxious ladies to whom life had not been very kind.
+She simply realized that they were of her father's blood, not her
+mother's.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother's people she did not know. Mary Darcy had managed somehow in
+her wanderings to loosen all the ties that bound her to her youth. It
+was as if she had deliberately lost herself, hidden herself away with
+husband and child from the loving eyes that are too quick to see.... It
+was the sort of pride Richard Darcy was quite incapable of
+understanding, though pride was a word often upon his lips. But Mary's
+daughter understood. Never through her should the quiet tragedy of her
+mother's life be revealed to those from whom her mother had chosen to
+hide it.</p>
+
+<p>She wished that Stefan Nikolai were not a man; or that, being a man, he
+had a home to which she might have invited herself. But he was a
+confirmed wanderer, and Joan felt that a young lady companion, desirable
+though she might be as a solace for his declining years, would
+undoubtedly hamper his movements.</p>
+
+<p>It left only Ellen Neal to rely upon. Perhaps there would be enough
+money to take a little flat somewhere, with Ellen Neal for servant and
+chaperone. A bachelor maid, with a latch-key!&mdash;the prospect was rather
+alluring. But not in Louisville. She could not leave her father's home
+and set up an establishment of her own in the same town without creating
+"talk," and, to Joan's training, "talk" was the one thing impossible.</p>
+
+<p>They would have to go away somewhere, she and Ellen. And study
+something, she decided vaguely. Music, art, social service&mdash;whatever it
+was people did study. Her eye began to kindle. She was the true child of
+Richard Darcy, rolling stone by nature and profession; and to such, "the
+grass is always greener down the road." New York, Boston, swam before
+her dreamy vision; even London, Paris, Rome....</p>
+
+<p>She brought herself back to the ungrateful consideration of ways and
+means. She feared the money would not run to much in the way of travel.
+"A mere pittance," her father had once scornfully called it. But she
+knew, or guessed, that all three of them had managed to live on the
+income from this pittance during many a period when the Major's star was
+not in the ascendant, and she thought that what had provided, however
+scantily, for three might be made to provide well for herself and Ellen.
+She wished that she had asked questions at the time her mother's will
+was read to her. It had seemed so unimportant then. What was hers
+belonged surely just as much to her father, guardian for the little
+property until such time as she chose to ask him for it.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the time had come, Joan faced it with some dread. How could
+they talk about money, she and he&mdash;about her mother's money? It seemed
+indelicate, unfeeling, a desecration of sacred things. Nevertheless she
+faced it. She solemnly promised herself that not another day should pass
+without a complete understanding between herself and her father.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly she was the only one of Richard Darcy's creditors who ever
+managed to put this promise into execution.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the heat of the following afternoon, while Effie May dozed unaware
+beneath an electric fan, with a box of chocolates convenient to her
+drowsy hand, Joan slipped out of the house very quietly and went down
+town. She had an odd feeling of exhilaration, as if she had already
+escaped&mdash;from what, it would have been difficult to say.</p>
+
+<p>More than one glance of approval followed her slim figure as it flitted
+through the sweltering streets, the dark and grimy corridors of the
+office building which Richard Darcy had chosen to honor with his
+patronage. This, thought patient men as she passed, was as a girl should
+look on a July afternoon, all in cool white from her silver-buckled
+pumps to the wide hat with a big lace butterfly perched airily upon it.
+Surely it was fitting, they thought, that men should slave at their
+desks through the endless summer days in order that visions such as this
+might flit about the world in dainty idleness; and forthwith applied
+gallant noses once more to the grindstone. In the South the idea of
+economic independence for women will never be popular.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, under these friendly glances, was conscious of blossoming into
+real prettinees. It was not the first time she had got this pleasant
+little sensation out of so simple a matter as going down town. She
+wondered whether in any other city of the world it was possible for a
+girl to walk the streets alone, receiving from every man who passed&mdash;be
+he gentleman, clerk, coal-heaver, or small, knowing news-boy&mdash;glances of
+commendation which were neither impertinent, nor bold, nor even
+personal, but simply, as it were expert; an appraisal which flattered
+without offense. It was as if, at the sight of a pretty woman, the town
+as one man lifted its glass to the toast:</p>
+
+<p>"The Ladies, God bless 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>It was this spirit, she thought, which had perhaps given Kentucky its
+reputation for feminine pulchritude. To be a beauty is not difficult
+where every one encourages the idea, where feminine charm is regarded as
+in itself an end and a purpose, to be fortified by every means at the
+command of art or nature.... Joan fluttered along with the best,
+modestly unconscious of the eyes that paid her homage, but aware
+nevertheless of her occasional reflection in plate-glass windows; and it
+should be recorded that before she went to her father's office she made
+the purchase of a stick of pink lip-pomade and a cake of solid
+face-powder, with a little puff and mirror included. Why these articles
+should have given her increased courage for an interview with her
+parent, is difficult to state; but the fact remains that they did.</p>
+
+<p>She came presently to a doorway upon which was printed in large gold
+lettering: RICHARD DARCY. LOANS AND INVESTMENTS. Joan was secretly
+impressed. Perhaps the Office was not the mere figure of speech she had
+sometimes fancied it.</p>
+
+<p>She knocked. No answer came. Listening, she heard inside the familiar
+whirr of an electric fan mingling with a sound she could not for the
+moment place&mdash;a buzzing as of many flies, but rising and falling at more
+rhythmic intervals.</p>
+
+<p>She turned the knob. Within, drawn by an open window through which might
+be glimpsed the broad Ohio rolling drowsily, stood a decrepit Morris
+chair which Joan recognized as an old friend; wherein lay sprawled at
+comfortable length the Major. At his elbow stood a bottle and a glass,
+both empty. His handsome nose, forgetting for the moment all
+acquaintance with the grindstone, was tilted at the angle of least
+resistance, and from it issued the rhythmic buzzing that had puzzled his
+child.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy!" she said reluctantly. Somehow the Major asleep, with a plump
+leg draped over the arm of his chair and his mouth slightly open, made
+up in disarming appeal what he lost in impressiveness. He was like a
+gray-haired little boy, tired out with playing.</p>
+
+<p>But, "Father!" said Joan more loudly. "Wake up, please. I've come to see
+you on business."</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes with a jerk. "Eh? What's that, what's that, what's
+that? Tut, tut! Must have dozed off. What's that?" The eyes tried to
+close again, but he was firm with them, and presently recognized his
+daughter. "That you, Dollykins? Well, well, well! Come down to pay Dad a
+visit, eh? That's nice, that's nice!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he got to his feet and brought her a chair, reaching at the
+same time for his coat. Richard Darcy could not possibly have remained
+in a lady's presence coatless, no matter what the temperature. Her
+attention was caught by the garment into which he struggled, muttering
+apologies the while.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Dad," she cried, "<i>what</i> are you putting on?"</p>
+
+<p>It was not the immaculate gray flannel in which he had started that
+morning for the marts of commerce, but a thread-bare, shapeless, densely
+spotted garment which Joan recognized with a pang.</p>
+
+<p>"Your old second-best!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Her father grinned a little sheepishly. "Why&mdash;why yes, I keep it here as
+an office coat, to save the others, you see. I'm sort of used to it," he
+added explanatorily. "It seems to fit into my curves. The new ones
+don't. One is supposed to fit into theirs!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan patted the sleeve of the second-best affectionately. Her eyes were
+moist. She felt nearer to her father than she had for weeks. He had kept
+the old chair out of their home equipment; he had kept the old coat. Was
+he after all not so obliviously content as he seemed in his fine new
+surroundings? Did he remember, too, and was he homesick as herself for
+the shabby days when he and she and her mother had made a little world
+of their own, happy in spite of everything?</p>
+
+<p>She said with a smile, "You'd better not let Effie May catch you wearing
+such a garment!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed. "I may confess that it was with some
+difficulty I rescued this coat from the ashman, to whom your mother had
+given it."</p>
+
+<p>But his use of the phrase, "your mother," hardened Joan out of her
+momentary tenderness. Invariably he spoke of Effie May to her as "your
+mother," and of her real mother only as "Mary." The girl was too young
+to realize that this may have been because the name meant things to him
+which the phrase never would. Mary was something more to Richard Darcy
+than Joan's mother....</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to talk to you," said Joan, "about business, Father."</p>
+
+<p>"Business?" The Major's eyebrows lifted. Business meant money, and the
+ladies of his family never cared to talk about money! remarked those
+eyebrows. Though, to be sure, they sometimes found themselves under the
+necessity of asking for it&mdash;His hand went instinctively to his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are out of pin-money?" he interpreted. "Stupid of me not
+to have realized it, Dollykin, though I sent you rather a good deal to
+the convent, you remember?" He brought his hand out, filled with silver.
+"There! Spend it 'not wisely but too well'&mdash;not that one need give any
+girl advice on that subject! Dear, dear, how women can make the money
+fly!" humorously sighed the Major (whose debts had probably been paid by
+women ever since he had been old enough to make them).</p>
+
+<p>"I should like a chance," said Joan soberly, "to make the money fly,
+Father. My money, you know."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, really bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>She refreshed his memory, flushing. "The money Mother left, with you as
+guardian&mdash;that I was to have whenever I asked&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that she ever expected such a contingency to arrive!" commented the
+Major with a sudden accession of stiffness. "You are not of age yet, my
+child."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there any provision in her will about my being of age?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he admitted. "Owing to what was of course purely a technical
+error, I think there was not. My poor Mary was quite unaccustomed to the
+terminology of wills, naturally, and as she and a servant drew it up
+between them, you may imagine&mdash;" he shrugged indulgently.</p>
+
+<p>Joan moistened her lips. She was finding the interview even more
+difficult than she had imagined. Her father's manner managed to put her
+somehow in the wrong. But she held to her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think it was an error, Father. Mother wasn't the sort who says
+things she doesn't mean. I believe she foresaw that&mdash;that something
+might occur which would make me wish to be independent, even if I was
+not of age. She could trust my judgment a little. She knew that I'd
+never dream of asking for her property unless I had a good reason&mdash;I
+have a good reason now, Father&mdash;I want to be independent." Her voice
+trailed off miserably. What she really wanted was to put her arms about
+his neck and have a good cry.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously the Major discouraged the impulse. "What is this nonsense
+about independence?" he demanded. "My dear Joan, you sound like a New
+Woman!" On his lips the phrase was a scathing denunciation.</p>
+
+<p>Joan explained faintly that she wanted to go away somewhere, to live....</p>
+
+<p>The Major was honestly aghast. "Leave your father's roof?" he cried
+incredulously. "My child! What is this folly? Never with Richard Darcy's
+consent shall a daughter of his leave her father's roof except for the
+roof of her lawful husband." (In moments of emotion, the Major was
+always liable to these attacks of circumlocution.)</p>
+
+<p>Joan pointed out to him, still faintly but determinedly, that it was not
+her <i>father's</i> roof she wished to leave....</p>
+
+<p>Even under his armor of complacency this shot told. He winced. "Have you
+been made to feel that? Has my wife ever caused you to believe that you
+were an unwelcome member of our household?" he demanded sharply, in a
+voice that boded ill for the present Mrs. Darcy if such were the case.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Father! I shall never give her the chance to make me feel
+unwelcome. That is why I want my mother's money."</p>
+
+<p>The Major toyed with a pen, and seemed to be thinking. "I am not at all
+sure," he said presently, "that the will Mary left was legal, my dear;
+whether it would stand in the courts&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter?" interrupted Joan, "when you and I know what
+Mother meant?" Something impelled her to add, "And when Ellen Neal
+knows, too?"</p>
+
+<p>The Major looked quickly at her, and looked away. "Perhaps you are not
+aware that regardless of any will whatsoever the law entitles me to
+one-third of my wife's estate?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed with an embarrassment that was more for him than for
+herself. "You're welcome to it, Daddy; you're perfectly welcome to it,
+of course! It isn't that I want to take anything away from <i>you</i>.
+It's&mdash;oh, won't you <i>please</i> understand, and not be hurt with me?" she
+implored. "I only want to know how much there is, how much money I can
+count on getting every month to live on. Just income, you know. I
+wouldn't think of touching the&mdash;principal, don't you call it?"</p>
+
+<p>Richard Darcy rose abruptly and went to the window. It was a fine view
+that spread before him&mdash;a soothing, mellifluous landscape of golden
+river and hazy blue Indiana hills. Indiana, as he sometimes remarked,
+was delightful as a background though undesirable as a dwelling-place.
+He said so now. He had taken this office entirely for its view, he
+informed his daughter. The Major patronized Nature extensively, and
+believed that all gentlemen should do so; especially Kentucky gentlemen,
+to whom Nature has been so particularly lavish.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Joan waited. He recalled that her mother used to have the same
+habit of silent waiting. Some minds seem incapable of pleasant
+digression.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed, and resumed the subject under discussion. His manner had
+changed somewhat, however. He spoke in the persuasive, frank,
+"he's-a-good-fellow-and-'twill-all-be-well" tones which he reserved for
+directors' boards, stockholders' meetings, and like courts of last
+resort, when things unpleasant had to be told and he was the one to tell
+them. It should be said in all justice that he rarely side-stepped these
+meetings, as he might have done, and allowed the unpleasantnesses to
+disclose themselves through others. Nobody could say that Richard Darcy
+was a coward.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, about this little business affair of ours, Dollykins&mdash;Of course
+the property was never large, though properly invested it might have
+brought us in a decent income instead of the trifle Mary was content
+with. The merest pittance I assure you, the merest pittance!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded. She had heard before about the mereness of the pittance.</p>
+
+<p>"Often during my wife's lifetime I took occasion to point this out to
+her. The question of securities and investments being one to which I
+have devoted the greater part of my business career, I think I may say
+without undue vanity that I am qualified to give advice on such matters!
+But Mary had a certain sentimental reluctance about changing investments
+which her father had made for her, and sentiment is a thing which I am
+always able to respect."</p>
+
+<p>("Good for mother!" said Joan to herself.)</p>
+
+<p>"However, after her death&mdash;" he paused to pay his Mary the tribute of a
+sincere though dramatic sigh&mdash;"I began at once to look about for a means
+of providing my little girl with more affluence than had hitherto been
+at my disposal. The best," he smiled, patting her hand, "is none too
+good for my Dollykins! And an opportunity shortly presented itself, a
+quite exceptional opportunity, not only of increasing our income
+materially, but of assisting to develop the resources of my native
+commonwealth." He expanded suddenly with public spirit. "What a State!
+Fortunes have been made here, but nothing compared with the fortunes
+which shall be made. People have dared to call us a 'pauper
+State'&mdash;'pauper,' if you please!&mdash;with wealth at our command, untouched,
+unguessed resources lying just beneath the surface of this beautiful
+soil, which would make Aladdin's cave look like&mdash;like&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty cents," supplied Joan, in an anxious effort to get to the point.
+"I know, Father!&mdash;but what did you buy with the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oil-fields!" he said largely. "Oil-fields! Or, to be exact, stock in a
+company formed for the purpose of purchasing oil-fields, in which by
+good chance I happened to be let in on the ground floor (as we say in
+commercial parlance, Dollykins. It is not an expression I should care to
+hear you use.) You are the part possessor of something like one thousand
+acres of virgin Kentucky soil!" He leaned back in his chair and beamed
+on her.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?" said Joan dubiously. "It sounds promising."</p>
+
+<p>Something of her father's elation disappeared in a sigh. "Promising,
+yes!&mdash;but so far only promising. Oil has been struck all about us, but
+none as yet on our holdings. I have by no means given up hope, of
+course." (Richard Darcy had never given up hope in any of his lost
+causes.) "But I must confess that I have been disappointed. Worse than
+disappointed. For a while I was&mdash;well, really, desperate!" He smiled
+deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>The smile did not for the moment touch Joan's heart; but it told her the
+truth she had dreaded. "Father! You mean you have <i>lost</i> the
+money?&mdash;There's no income left?"</p>
+
+<p>"Income? Alas, no. And even the principal&mdash;Still, the land is there, one
+thousand acres of it, and that cannot escape!" he added, brightening.
+"There were times when I thought of going to live on the land. Though my
+experience of agriculture has been practically nil, many of our
+ancestors were planters and stock-breeders, and, as you know, I am a
+firm believer in the power of heredity. However, I was credibly informed
+that the property would not lend itself to agriculture. I was at my
+wit's end. Fancy the position!" (The Major was beginning rather to enjoy
+his woe in the retrospect.) "Here was I not as yet firmly established on
+my feet (as we say in business parlance); deprived alike of helpmate and
+companion, with my child at an expensive boarding-school where I had
+promised my dead wife she should remain until the completion of her
+education&mdash;and I without a dollar I could call my own! Frightful! There
+were certain obligations to tradespeople as well.... I am sure I do not
+know how for a while Ellen Neal managed to provide us with necessities!"
+(Joan thought grimly that she knew how.) "It became necessary
+to&mdash;ah!&mdash;realize on my possessions. First the silver went&mdash;I daresay you
+have wondered what has become of our family silver, my child? It was
+sacrificed to keep a roof over your head. Then the more valuable pieces
+of furniture&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't!" groaned the girl in a sort of angry pity, "Why didn't you
+tell me? Oh, <i>poor</i> father!"</p>
+
+<p>"You may well say, 'poor father.' It was for you I suffered most, for
+you I was afraid. A man alone can always manage to subsist in some
+fashion, but a man with a helpless female dependent on him&mdash;! Thank
+heaven," he said earnestly, "you can never know what it is to be a
+father! I thought constantly, 'What a home to bring a young lady into!
+What a situation for my child!' I may confess that I prayed&mdash;no
+gentleman need be ashamed to pray when he is in distress. And then like
+light in darkness the answer came to me. At whatever cost to myself,
+whatever sacrifice, I must provide comfort for Joan, a home suitable for
+the reception of a young gentlewoman. There was nothing left to offer
+except&mdash;myself. Therefore&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His face shone with a noble sadness, and he waited for the generosity of
+his sacrifice to sink in.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," said Joan slowly, "that it was for my sake you married Mrs.
+Calloway!"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed assent. "Why else? She is an excellent woman, a kind and
+excellent and devoted woman. But under happier circumstances, a man of
+my position, my traditions, my&mdash;shall I say fastidiousness?&mdash;" He
+shrugged, and allowed the ungallant suggestion to complete itself
+without words.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Joan quietly, "we'd better not say 'fastidiousness.'"</p>
+
+<p>She was struggling, struggling so hard that her hands were clenched, to
+do justice to her father. Had she misjudged him? Was his marriage after
+all not the horrid thing she had thought it, but an honest effort to
+atone to the child he had beggared? Something within her cried "No!" Her
+father had sacrificed nothing in the marriage. He had simply yielded,
+without a struggle, to the lure of the flesh-pots. Worse than this, the
+girl recalled honeymooning incidents that often made her shudder with
+mental nausea; certain billing and cooing which she had not always been
+able to avoid. It was not only the flesh-pots that had lured him....</p>
+
+<p>"Cad!" she cried to herself fiercely. "Cad and liar!" And the terrible
+thing was that he did not seem to know he was being a cad and a liar.</p>
+
+<p>Aloud she said, "And what did Mrs. Calloway get out of the bargain?"</p>
+
+<p>The Major stared at her, astounded. It was a question so absurd that he
+literally could not answer it. Quite unconsciously his eyes strayed
+beyond her after a moment to a mirror, as if for reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>Joan burst out laughing. The laughter was so palpably close to tears
+that her father forgave it, and held out his arms to her. "There, there,
+my poor child! You're overwrought," he murmured. "Come to Daddy!"</p>
+
+<p>She had lost all desire to weep on his shoulder now, however, and
+Richard Darcy shrank from the look she gave him, as a more innocent man
+than he might have shrunk; so level it was, so keen and without mercy.
+She saw her father in that moment not only as cad and liar, but as
+something very close to a thief. As surely as if she had been told in
+words, she knew why her mother, after fighting for years to keep her bit
+of property safe for her child, had at the last left it to the
+guardianship of her husband. It was to show him she trusted him, to put
+him on honor, as it were; to bolster up his waning self-respect by this
+final supreme act of faith in him. And he had betrayed her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shrugged, and turned to go. Her head hung in shame, and Richard
+Darcy knew that the shame was not for herself. What passed through her
+brain then was for the moment clear to him, as it is sometimes with
+people of one blood.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say," he said very low with a sort of dreadful questioning,
+"that the law might&mdash;might hold me responsible as guardian of your
+property, my daughter. If you cared to&mdash;if you wished to&mdash;make an issue
+of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What good would that do" she replied brutally. "The money's gone, isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, glancing back, she surprised in his face that look she had almost
+forgotten&mdash;the frightened, baffled, anxious expression which she
+associated with the days when, as Ellen Neal put it, "the Indians were
+after him."</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the reaction came. It was she he feared now, not
+"Indians"&mdash;she, his own little girl, Joan!</p>
+
+<p>She ran and put her arms around him tightly, protectingly. "Nonsense!"
+she cried, her voice beautiful with the instinct of all the mothers who
+had made her. "The law'll never know a thing about it. What has the old
+law got to do with you and me? You've done the best you could, Daddy,
+I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>Richard Darcy answered humbly, like a repentant child, "I have,
+daughter, truly I have. I'm sorry...."</p>
+
+<p>Later, as she walked wearily homeward through streets that no longer
+exhilarated her, no bachelor-maid now with a latch-key, nor yet an
+independent young traveler in foreign lands, but merely a poor relation
+dependent on the bounty of a step-mother, Joan made for herself a new
+beatitude:</p>
+
+<p>"Blessed are the weak," she thought stoically, "for they have got to be
+taken care of."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The two rooms in which Ellen Neal had established herself were on the
+second floor of a house that had gone some decades since into a state of
+senile decrepitude. But such was the fashion of building in its day that
+it showed no particular signs of its approaching end beyond a slight
+tilt to leeward and the rather eczematic effect of its stuccoed brick
+facade. A high-waisted door surmounted by a fine fan-light and supported
+by slender columns which had once been white led into a square panelled
+hall from which curved a staircase of exquisite proportions. These
+things in a city of larger growth and greater sophistication would have
+marked the house as the natural abode of artists and their ilk; but in
+Louisville, where art is yet chiefly a thing to be taken in courses by
+the elect, it let itself out in rooms for light housekeeping and other
+humble purposes. The slender columns were defaced by such signs
+as, "Feather Cleaning and Artificial Flowers,"&mdash;"Furniture
+Upholstered,"&mdash;"Plain Dressmaking," etc.</p>
+
+<p>The neighborhood, except for this one decrepit mansion standing well in
+from the sidewalk with an ancient sycamore for company, had long since
+forgotten its former claims to fashion; but it was still respectable.
+Trust Ellen Neal for that! She had the same flair for respectability as
+had the Misses Darcy for gentility. No doubtful character, whether in
+house or individual, could fail to yield up its weakness to the
+corrosive rectitude of Miss Neal's shrewd eye.</p>
+
+<p>Joan liked to come to this house, not only because Ellen and the
+familiar home furniture were there, but because it carried her romantic
+fancy back into the Louisville her father sometimes talked about, the
+old South with all its lost glamour of gallantry and derring-do. "<i>Les
+belles dames du temps jadis</i>" was a phrase that invariably came to her
+mind as she entered the graceful, defaced portal. Nearby stood a
+street-pump where an actress who was one day to make the charm of
+American women world-famous, used to come each morning to draw water, in
+her shabby little slippers with a rope of hair over each shoulder&mdash;a
+lovely young Rebekah at the well. Around the corner stood another old
+mansion, now debased to commercial uses, in front of which the
+townspeople used to gather daily at a certain hour to watch the languid
+progress from door to carriage of a beauty so widely heralded that her
+name and her many love-affairs have become history. Here and there in a
+neglected fence-corner a ragged rose-bush, or a clump of larkspur
+bravely in bloom, spoke to a few observers, such as Joan, of gardens
+which had been the lovely setting of lovely ladies long since dead and
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight was the hour for that neighborhood. Joan liked to fancy Ellen's
+house as the darkness fell, with candle-light streaming from the
+wide-flung windows, and glimpses within of bells in crinoline and beaux
+in tight wrinkled trousers, dancing a quadrille. Among them moved negro
+servitors with trays of frosted silver cups, and syllabub (though she
+had no slightest notion of what syllabub might be), and black cake, and
+small, pricked, beaten biscuit with ham in their insides. And there
+would be carriages stopping constantly at the door, to emit more belles
+and gallants, girls hoop-skirted and beshawled, who ran lightly up the
+curve of the long staircase, with apologies to the couples they
+disturbed in passing....</p>
+
+<p>Always the house brought such fancies to Joan, and so clearly that she
+sometimes wondered whether they were less fancies than race-memories,
+souvenirs of Darcys who might have lived and made merry there in the
+halcyon days when the old gray river-town was at its zenith; truly, as
+it boasted, the Gateway to the South, stopping-place for all travelers
+on these floating palaces which no longer ply their leisurely journeys
+down the Ohio and the Mississippi to the Gulf.</p>
+
+<p>Once she had questioned her father about it. "No, that's not one of our
+houses, I think," he replied interestedly. "Though it might have been.
+Your ancestors were very fond of change, Dollykins&mdash;as I am myself. We
+seem to have lived in half the houses in Louisville, at one time or
+another. But that one has been shabby and tumbledown ever since I can
+remember. In my boyhood it was a cheap boarding-house, for actors and
+people of that sort, I believe. I knew no one who lived there."</p>
+
+<p>Joan was disappointed. She would have liked to claim the old mansion as
+a relative.</p>
+
+<p>As she went wearily homeward from her disastrous interview with her
+father, Joan suddenly bethought herself of this house, and of Ellen. She
+was in no mood just then for the cheerful vulgarities of her
+step-mother. On the impulse, she went into the nearest drug-store and
+telephoned that she would not be home that night for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Ellen shall cook me some pancakes, and I will help her," she decided,
+comforted by the idea. It must be remembered that Joan was only
+nineteen.</p>
+
+<p>Inhabitants in suspenders and dressing-sacks, seeking air on the
+doorstep, stared at the girl inquisitively as she entered; but once
+within the dimness of the panelled hall she was able to forget these
+anachronisms. The quaint elegance of an earlier day was proof against
+even Expert Feather-curling, and Upholstery Done Here.</p>
+
+<p>From above came a sudden tuneless whistling, and then a thump on a door
+and a man's voice calling, "Say, Mrs. Neal! Here's a bushel of fine
+assorted socks for you, and if you can get enough out of the lot to keep
+my feet off the cauld, cauld ground till pay-day, I'll be yours truly."</p>
+
+<p>She heard Ellen's voice replying in more muffled tones, "All right, sir,
+just dump 'em in the door, will you? My hands are in the dough."</p>
+
+<p>Joan was amused to hear Ellen Neal called "Mrs."&mdash;she who was so
+unmistakably and truculently a spinster; also she was surprised at the
+politeness of her "sir" in response, for Ellen was not given to the
+small amenities of social intercourse. The Major himself was rarely
+"sir" to Ellen.</p>
+
+<p>The whistling resumed itself, coming rapidly nearer; and around the
+curve of the stairs, which he took two at a time, bounded a young man,
+who brought himself and his whistling to a full stop just in time to
+avoid carrying Joan with him in his downward course.</p>
+
+<p>"Whew!&mdash;just missed you!" he exclaimed aghast. "You startled me. For a
+minute I thought you were a ghost!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I am," murmured Joan, and demurely passed on up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and stared after the white ascending figure. She was aware of
+his eyes following her. Suddenly he chuckled, "I knew I'd find you
+again. And I found the quotation, too! 'Richard the Second,' by William
+Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>Joan glanced over her shoulder. "I do not know what you are talking
+about," she said frigidly, "and I do not know you from Adam!" She had
+brought the impertinence upon herself, but she felt quite able to handle
+it&mdash;particularly with Ellen Neal just a few steps away.</p>
+
+<p>Even as she spoke, however, she was aware that she did know this young
+man. Something in his voice, in his awkward, deferential manner, brought
+back to her memory the too-sympathetic drummer on the train. She lifted
+her eyes from his necktie to his face, remembering past regrets. His
+ears stuck out.</p>
+
+<p>"Like the Yellow Kid's!" she thought disgustedly.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing in the least romantic about a man whose ears stick out.
+He might as well be fat....</p>
+
+<p>"'Sad stories of the death of kings,'" he was explaining eagerly. "I
+looked it up myself. Sort of sounded like Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I thought it was 'Alice in Wonderland'!" Joan was surprised into
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a new one on me&mdash;'Alice in Wonderland,'"&mdash;commented the young
+man. "Is it good stuff?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've never read 'Alice in Wonderland'? What a queer childhood you
+must have had!"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't have any," he replied, smiling up at her. Then he removed the
+smile, made a respectful little bow, and went on out the door.</p>
+
+<p>Joan found that she was blushing, hotly; and no wonder. She was shocked
+by herself. She, one of Sister Mary Agnes's best exemplars of decorum,
+had deliberately started and continued a conversation with a strange
+young man met by chance on the dark stairway of a house where assuredly
+gentlemen did not live. ("Unless very poor gentlemen," she amended; for,
+ears or not, he seemed somehow to belong in the category of gentlehood.)
+Nor had she even terminated the conversation. It was he who had done
+that. He had shown more sense of the fitness of things than had she,
+Joan Darcy!</p>
+
+<p>It was all the effect of the hospitable old hall, Joan decided. The
+house, like the roof of a friend, had introduced them. But what was he
+doing in such a house? It was not the sort of abode that would appeal,
+she fancied, to necktie drummers.</p>
+
+<p>She opened Ellen's door without knocking. "Hello, there! Who's that I
+met on the stairs, and why does he call you 'Mrs.,' you giddy old
+fraud?"</p>
+
+<p>A spoon dropped to the floor with a clatter as Ellen turned, beaming.
+"Land sakes! You might as well kill a person as scare her to death," she
+complained, far too pleased to admit it. "What you doin' down town this
+time o' day, all dressed up like lady-come-to-see? What do you want,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pancakes," explained Joan, ripping off her long gloves. "I'm going to
+stay to supper, Nellen, so get me an apron and let's begin."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen's smile widened. "Pancakes! On a hot night like this?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded. "Um-humm! And lemonade," she said, "and anything else you
+can think of that's indigestible. Got any pickles?"</p>
+
+<p>"What would a lone woman be doin' keepin' house without pickles?"
+replied Ellen scornfully, producing them. "And there's a batch of
+cinnamon rolls in the oven this minute, just as if I was expectin' you."</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh of content, the girl reached down a yellow crockery bowl out
+of the cupboard&mdash;she was on quite intimate terms with Ellen's
+cupboard&mdash;and tying a gingham apron about her neck, proceeded to stir
+batter. It was the same crockery bowl, and perhaps the same gingham
+apron, in which she had stirred batter so long ago that she had been
+obliged to stand on a footstool in order to reach the kitchen-table.
+There was something substantial and fixed and unchangeable about Ellen
+Neal and her possessions, something that spelled home, though it was
+only home for other people.</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't distracted my mind," said Joan judicially, "from the
+fact that a young man of your acquaintance calls you 'Mrs.' without
+correction. You haven't eloped or anything lately?"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Neal bridled. "How you do go on, Joan! It makes it look better for
+a lone woman to be livin' by herself if she's called 'Mrs.' Men ain't so
+apt to get fresh with her."</p>
+
+<p>"No?" murmured Joan. She gazed at Ellen's gaunt unloveliness with
+twinkling eyes. "Don't tell me men have been getting fresh with you,
+Nellen!"</p>
+
+<p>The other's jaw snapped. "They have not, and they better not try it."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it's rather a risk darning their socks, then?" murmured
+the girl wickedly. "It might give them false ideas."</p>
+
+<p>"I only do it for one of 'em, and he pays me good. Anything's proper so
+long as you get paid for it."</p>
+
+<p>Joan laughed aloud. "Why, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Neal, you shock me! What a
+perilous idea!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're awful smart, guyin' me, but I'd be ashamed to think the kind of
+thoughts you're thinkin' now," said Ellen Neal, unsmiling. "And you a
+spinster yourself! Thoughts are as bad as deeds, any day&mdash;worse, 'cause
+they come easier. That's one thing I've noticed about you lately, Joan.
+You seem to know about things that ain't ladylike, somehow. Something's
+happened to you, child. You ain't the nice little girl you used to be."</p>
+
+<p>"No," admitted Joan, "I'm not. And the world's not the nice little world
+it used to be, either." She went over and laid her head on her friend's
+bony shoulder. "Don't scold me to-day, dear. You're right, but&mdash;Oh,
+Nellen, father's lost our money! And there's nothing in the world I can
+call my own. Just absolutely nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell. "So," said the old woman. "You've found out, at last,
+have you? I've wondered how long it would take. And now what you goin'
+to do about it?" she demanded suddenly. "Are you goin' to law?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head. "You know what Mother would say to that."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen sighed. "I suppose she wouldn't hear to it." It was a curious fact
+that when these two spoke of Mary Darcy, they always spoke as if she
+were still alive, and near them. "Anyway, you can't squeeze blood out of
+a turnip&mdash;though I must say I'd like to see <i>somethin'</i> squeezed out of
+them kind of turnips, if it's only insides!" she added quite
+blood-thirstily. "Oh deary me, deary me! How often I've begged your ma
+to sneak what there was left out of his reach and put it away where I
+keep mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's that, Nellen?"</p>
+
+<p>"In an old stockin'-fut under my bedtick, where you can bet no man on
+earth ever laid eyes on it, or ever will!"</p>
+
+<p>The smell of scorching bread suddenly filled the room. "Land sakes, my
+cinnamon-rolls! And I'd promised that boy to save him some for
+breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast?" exclaimed Joan, glad enough of a diversion from discussing
+her undiscussable father. "You mean to tell me you're not only keeping
+your young man darned, but breakfasted? Nellen, I'm positively jealous!"</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't be if you could see him eat," said the other seriously.
+"Acts like he ain't had enough food to fill him sence he was born. He
+was gettin' all his meals out to a restaurant before I come, a place he
+calls 'The Sign of the Dirty Spoon.' Jokin', I suppose&mdash;he's a great one
+for jokes. But he looked so skinny, and was always takin' something for
+dyspepsy, so I told him I'd give him a good breakfast anyway, just to
+start the day on. Say, Joan, you ought to see him put it away! He says
+once, 'I 'spose this is what you call home-cookin', ain't it?' 'Land,
+sakes,' says I, 'don't you know home-cookin' when you see it?' 'I ain't
+never seen it before!' he says, laughing."</p>
+
+<p>While she talked Ellen was bustling capably about, laying a cloth,
+getting out dishes, dropping Joan's batter into a sizzling saucepan,
+from whence arose dense, pleasing vapors.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Joan, mix some cinnamon in that sugar, 'less you'd ruther have
+molasses on 'em. You ought to see the room he's got. Nothin' but books,
+all over the tables, piled up on the floor, even on the window-sills&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Books?" said Joan, pricking up an ear. She had not imagined the
+wide-eared young man in his dapper clothes a student.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever people want all them books around for I can't see," said
+Ellen. "Dust collectors, I call 'em; but he says they're his college
+career. Always will have his joke! And the dirt&mdash;! He had a colored
+woman in to do for him before I come, and guess what she used to do with
+her dust?" She paused dramatically, arms akimbo.</p>
+
+<p>Joan admitted her imagination unequal to the task.</p>
+
+<p>"Swept it under the bed and left it there! Land!" said Ellen Neal, "how
+I do hate a nigger! You can bet I got that place to rights in a jiffy."</p>
+
+<p>"I can indeed," murmured Joan, "and I can also bet he couldn't find a
+thing belonging to him for a week afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen grinned. "You've the truth of it. There wasn't a morning for about
+a week but what he'd thump on the floor and yell down the chimney, 'Mrs.
+Neal, <i>oh</i>, Mrs. Neal! For heaven's sake where is my blue necktie?' or,
+'In the name of Jehoshaphat, what have you done with my other pair of
+pants?' It kind of reminded me of your pa," she said, sighing. "I been
+lookin' after him ever sence. There now, ain't you goin' to eat your
+pancakes now you've got 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan drew up her chair to the oil-cloth covered table, and, despite the
+heat and her troubles, made such a meal as she had not eaten for weeks
+at her step-mother's elaborate board. Ellen sat opposite her, with no
+servant-and-mistress nonsense to complicate the pleasure of hospitality.
+Sometimes the old woman waited on Joan, and sometimes Joan waited on
+Ellen, all in a friendly democracy that would have caused Major Darcy's
+hair to rise on end. It had been his conscientious effort for years to
+keep Ellen Neal "in her place." The difficulty was in the ups and downs
+of the Darcy ménage to know just what might be considered Ellen's place.</p>
+
+<p>Not troubling themselves with any such niceties of status, the two ate
+their pancakes and drank their lemonade and otherwise courted
+indigestion contentedly, meanwhile chatting about the young man from
+upstairs, who for some reason began to appeal to Joan's imagination. His
+name, it appeared, was Archibald Blair.</p>
+
+<p>"Archibald Blair! Nellen, how romantic! Like an English novel. Young
+Lord Toodledeboots ruined at Monte Carlo, hiding his poverty and a
+broken heart in lodgings. I suppose these might be called lodgings? If
+only his ears had been made to fit him!"</p>
+
+<p>She no longer thought of him as a necktie drummer. The books made a
+difference. It seemed unlikely that necktie drummers would be on terms
+of first-name intimacy with Shakespeare. Moreover, his awkward yet
+somehow easy and unassuming air, like that of a friendly young dog who
+takes for granted that the world will be glad to see him, marked him as
+one not belonging to what her father called "the canile." No, he was a
+student and a gentleman, stranded by some freak of fortune in this
+near-slum, a youthful Beloved Vagabond. (It was the year when Locke's
+great book cast a glamour over all strange men in shabby clothing.)
+Although Archibald Blair was by no means shabby; on the contrary, rather
+appallingly dapper.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder how he happens to be living in a house like this?" she
+ruminated aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"And why wouldn't he be living here?" demanded Ellen tartly. "It's cheap
+and decent, and there's some folks that don't like to go forever hoppin'
+from one place to another, like fleas on a dog's back. He's lived in
+that same room upstairs ever since he can remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, has he?" Joan's eye kindled. It occurred to her that the young
+man's history might have some connection with the history of the house
+itself. "Ellen, I have it! It's the old family mansion, belonged to his
+father and grandfather and great-grandfather, and <i>of course</i> he wants
+to go on living in it. I would myself!"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen grinned. "If there's a romantical notion to be found, trust you
+for finding it. But if you really want to know, folks do say&mdash;" She
+hesitated, under the hallucination (which many virtuous women share)
+that she disliked to repeat gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes? Do go on, Nellen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they do say that if he's got a father at all it's more than he
+knows, let alone a grandfather, and great-grandfather. I had it from a
+woman downstairs (her that curls feathers, and she got it straight from
+somebody who used to live in the neighborhood when this was a actors'
+boardin'-house), that he got left here when he was a little boy, by his
+mother, in hock for her board-bill. And she never come back for him."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gave a gasp. "Oh," she cried. "Oh! poor woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen eyed her curiously. "Poor <i>woman</i>? I should think you'd say 'poor
+child'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor both of them! But can't you see how much greater the tragedy must
+have been for the woman, who knew&mdash;who was to blame? Imagine how she
+must have dreamed of that pitiful little boy with his nose pressed
+against the window-pane watching for her&mdash;and she not able to come for
+him! Ellen&mdash;That's what he's doing here now! Waiting for his mother to
+come back!"</p>
+
+<p>"If he is, I hope it's with a club in his hand," muttered the other
+angrily. "Why wasn't she 'able to come,' I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she died. Or, she couldn't get enough money, or oh&mdash;oh, Ellen,
+don't you <i>see</i>? She didn't dare to come for him! He was getting too
+big, noticing things. For his own sake she had to give him up!" There
+were tears in Joan's eyes, ready to spill over.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen paused and stared at her. "Well!" she said at last. "If I had your
+imagination, Joan Darcy, I'd go to a hospital and get it cut out. It
+ain't safe! Here you are blubbering over the troubles of a woman who
+maybe never lived, and probably was a bad lot if she did&mdash;and a'most
+making me blubber over her myself!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan laughed and jumped up. "Here, let me help with the dishes. You wash
+and I'll wipe. But what a funny, pitiful little boy he must have been
+with those stick-out ears and those big, innocent-looking front teeth of
+his! I wonder why it is that big front teeth always do make a person
+look so innocent, Ellen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me you noticed a lot to have seen Mr. Blair only once."</p>
+
+<p>Joan did not think it necessary to mention that she had seen him more
+than once.</p>
+
+<p>"I always notice things&mdash;I can't help it. Anyway, I'm glad you keep the
+poor thing darned and comfy! It's only charity."</p>
+
+<p>"Charity nothing. He pays me good, and prompter than I ever got paid
+before in all <i>my</i> life," disclaimed the other rather tactlessly.</p>
+
+<p>While she washed and put away her dishes, the girl made a tour of
+inspection about the rooms that were so full of associations to her. She
+smiled and nodded at the two familiar Landseer dogs on the wall, which
+had been a familiar part of every dining-room she remembered. She patted
+the worn chairs affectionately, and went in to pay her respects to the
+shorn four-post bed, which looked more at ease in its present
+surroundings than in others where she had seen it. The panelled walls,
+as nearly white as scrubbing could make them, the wide-silled windows
+with arched casements, the tall mantel-shelf, the finely molded ceiling
+which years of coal soot and cobwebs and general neglect had not
+sufficed to rob of dignity, all made a more suitable setting than Ellen
+guessed for her mistress's household goods; and to Joan these two
+bare and shabby rooms had become a haven of refuge. Tenement though it
+was, there was more of genuine beauty in the place where Ellen did plain
+dressmaking for very humble customers than in all the elaborate
+establishment with which Richard Darcy had managed to provide his
+daughter. Joan was very dependent upon beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Ellen walked out with her through the languorous summer evening
+to the house which she never called home. Nothing more had been said
+between them of the loss of her independence; but the girl felt soothed
+and comforted, strengthened as the heart is always strengthened in the
+presence of a deep though inarticulate devotion. She slipped her hand
+into the other's thin arm, and so linked they walked along without much
+talk between them, listening as they passed to pleasant sounds from many
+a shadowed porch and garden, guitar music, singing, the inevitable
+hushed murmur of boy and girl voices commingled, which is as natural to
+a summer gloaming as the twitter of birds in spring.</p>
+
+<p>There came again to Joan, for the first time in weeks, something of the
+glamour, the sense of promise, which had touched her in the summer past
+when she walked at night with her father through the strange city where
+he had once been young. It was as if Romance brushed her in passing with
+shadowy skirts, and Joan felt that she must catch at them, cling to
+them, before it was too late. Youth is so short, so short!...</p>
+
+<p>Ellen, too, felt the witchery of the soft night; but to the Ellens,
+Romance comes only vicariously.</p>
+
+<p>"Joie," she said after a long silence, "ain't it time you was having
+some steady company yourself, child?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl did not smile at the phrase. It voiced too well her own secret
+thoughts. There had been something strangely unreal, unnatural, about
+the past weeks. She had brought nothing out of her experience with life
+so far, not even a friend&mdash;for Stefan Nikolai was merely an inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," she said soberly "I suppose I ought to have a 'steady
+company' at least by this time. That ought to be simple
+enough!&mdash;Marriage is about the only thing left for a girl in my
+position, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who's talking about marriage? You don't have to marry every fellow you
+walk out with, I should hope," said Ellen surprisingly. "I've walked out
+with quite a few myself!... But as to gettin' married, Jo&mdash;it's about
+the only thing for a girl in any position, I guess, even if she finds
+out afterwards that she's picked a lemon. Lemons are better than
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mrs. Neal!" laughed Joan. "What sentiments from a confirmed
+spinster-person!"</p>
+
+<p>To which Ellen replied quietly, "It's the spinsters who know."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The discovery of her dependence upon her step-mother marked an end to
+one period of Joan's existence: the apathetic period. Heretofore she had
+allowed their daily life, their amusements, their acquaintanceships, to
+remain in the hands of Effie May. If that lady chose, as she naïvely put
+it, to "break into society," and society was willing, Joan was amenable,
+though a little dubious as to society's taste. She was amenable, that
+is, so long as she was not called upon too actively to assist in the
+process. Pride forbade her making any effort to interest or to be
+interested in people who chose to accept the present Mrs. Darcy as one
+of themselves. To the Louisville she knew so far, she was merely the
+appendage of her parents, a captive chained to the triumphal
+chariot-wheel of her step-mother.</p>
+
+<p>That was all very well so long as she knew that she might snap the chain
+at any moment and be free. But a dependence that seemed likely to
+continue indefinitely was not to be borne by what the Major would have
+called "the proud spirit of a Darcy." Joan, waking in the early dawn,
+rose and dressed (not in negligée), demanded breakfast at an hour when
+the astonished servants were barely awake themselves, and proceeded to
+clear her decks for action....</p>
+
+<p>Ellen had sowed a useful suggestion in her brain. There was one freedom
+open to all young girls who were not too exacting in their demands: the
+freedom of marriage. Joan decided to marry. She also selected the
+victim.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had thought of him for weeks; or of "the
+girls," those heart's companions with whom she had shared for two years
+her inmost hopes and desires (to say nothing of hats and gloves and
+handkerchiefs); with whom at parting she had exchanged vows of lifelong
+fealty. Their letters had accumulated unanswered. In the shock and shame
+of her father's marriage, she had put away childish things, among them
+her schoolmates, who seemed in the retrospect immature and puerile. Even
+Eduard of the interesting past had been put away for the moment with
+outgrown things, and had remained (fortunately) unthanked for his
+parting flowers. As for the love-letter which had accompanied them&mdash;Joan
+wondered with a start of dismay what had become of it.</p>
+
+<p>She found it neatly smoothed of its tell-tale wrinkles (the reader will
+remember that for a day and a night it had reposed against Joan's
+heart), filed among the letters in her desk, where it had been duly
+placed after being duly read, doubtless, by one of Mrs. Darcy's
+efficient housemaids.</p>
+
+<p>The girl studied it with a more dispassionate eye than she had brought
+to its first perusal:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+Truly, "to part is to die a little." Forgive me!&mdash;<span class="smcap">Eduard.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan decided that this could not, after all, be called a love-letter; or
+if so, it was of a noncommittal type distinctly piquing to the vanity.
+She had given a good many of her precious holidays to the reforming of
+Mr. Desmond.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" she thought, with a small gleam in her eye. "I was merely a child
+that amused him for the moment! He was probably laughing at me.... I
+wonder if he would laugh now?"</p>
+
+<p>She went to her mirror and examined the reflection within impartially.</p>
+
+<p>Something of what she had always candidly recognized as her plainness
+seemed to have disappeared. She was no longer scrawny, for one thing.
+Her lazy life of the past weeks, and possibly Effie May's beauty
+experts, whose ministrations she accepted so ungratefully, had put a
+gracious covering over her young bones, and she discovered with some
+excitement the rudiments of a figure. Her straight, burnished hair (she
+had so far resisted all temptations to "marcel" it) gave her what she
+fancied a rather <i>distinguè</i> air, and her skin had that rare, pale
+transparency of perfect health which is lovelier even than rosiness. Her
+eyes had always given perfect satisfaction. She nodded to them in
+affectionate fashion, as to good friends (she had always fancied that
+one of them was her brain and the other her soul, and even suspected
+which was which&mdash;the left wearing rather a twinkle, in comparison with
+the right, which had a mild, innocuous expression). Her mouth was too
+large.</p>
+
+<p>"But then," she reflected, "large mouths are very much worn by heroines
+nowadays, and mine isn't mushy or loose at the corners, anyway. There's
+a draw-string to it."</p>
+
+<p>Of the nose the less said the better. It was merely a nose.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, standing there in her pretty morning dress, with the grace
+and freshness of nineteen years about her like an aura, young Joan
+decided in all modesty that she was one of the women who have their
+moments, and that such moments ought not to be wasted.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down at once and indited a little note to Eduard Desmond
+expressing gratitude for "flowers which had meant so much to her," and
+explaining that she had not written before "because it had seemed best
+not to"&mdash;the inference being that now danger was past, and time had made
+it safe for her to think of him.</p>
+
+<p>"That," mused Joan nibbling her penholder, "ought to make him sit up and
+take notice, I should think?" She had been from her cradle something of
+a student of her fellow-creatures.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to his niece, her friend Betty, as well; a long, confidential
+screed, mentioning the fact of her father's marriage without comment and
+allowing her friend to read between the lines. Betty had an adored
+mother of her own.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joan rested on her oars and awaited results, which were prompt in
+coming. Not for nothing had she been the prize letter-writer of her
+school, entrusted by friend and foe alike with the handling of anything
+that was most delicate in the way of correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later she was able to remark to her family that she had been
+invited to visit her schoolmate, Betty Desmond, at the Desmond country
+place near Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>"The people you spent the Christmas holidays with in Washington? A fine
+old Irish name," commented the Major, who made something of a specialty
+of names. "I have not the pleasure of their acquaintance, but I am sure
+the good Sisters would not have permitted you to visit them if they had
+not been&mdash;ah! desirable acquaintances."</p>
+
+<p>"They are quite rich, if that is what you mean," said his daughter
+bluntly. Her manner to her father had latterly undergone a change which
+was not altogether nice.</p>
+
+<p>The Major's eyebrows shot up in pained surprise. "Joan! That is
+certainly irrelevant, not to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And there's an eligible young man in the family," continued the girl
+imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, speechless. "My child!" he exclaimed after a moment.
+"One would suppose you were actually&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hunting for a husband? I am," she finished. "What else did you expect
+me to do?"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of laughter from Effie May relieved the situation. "Of course
+she's hunting for a husband! All girls are, unless they're lookin' for
+trouble. Good for you, dearie! You'll land him, too, I'll bet my hat.
+Men? Lord," she cried, "they're as easy as fallin' off a log, once you
+get the hang of 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>But the Major continued to gaze at his daughter incredulously. "To
+think," he murmured, "that I should live to hear <i>my daughter</i> speak in
+such a manner!" It was evidently not the idea which shocked him, so much
+as the indelicate expression of it.</p>
+
+<p>Joan rose suddenly and left the table.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May came to her afterwards, intent on comforting. "There, there,
+girlie, you mustn't mind what your papa says; he's just a man. Besides,
+he's so genteel in his instincts he's hardly human. Your mamma would
+have understood, just like I do. <i>She</i> wouldn't of thought you'd said
+anything unrefined!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," muttered Joan bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's the most natural thing in the world that a girl wants a house
+of her own, and a man of her own, and so forth! Only most of 'em ain't
+honest enough to come out flat and say so.... I'm for you, dearie.
+You're to have the trip, of course, and anything else you want, just let
+me know. As if I was really your mother&mdash;I mean it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Joan again.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time she had been disconcerted to find the enemy
+fighting her battles. What is to be done with an enemy which will not
+keep its proper place?</p>
+
+<p>Effie May concerned herself in the preparations for departure with a
+whole-hearted generosity which occasioned Joan some secret pangs of
+remorse. As a step-relative she knew that she herself had left much to
+be desired. In vain the girl protested that she had already too many
+clothes, too much finery.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even
+if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of
+easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the
+closet."</p>
+
+<p>With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed,
+to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd
+comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the
+pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and
+don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like
+inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what
+they aren't used to. See?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had
+gleaned her curious wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going
+with any uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Joan," she said once, abruptly. "When I spoke like I done
+about marriage being the best thing for a girl, I meant marriage with
+love, child&mdash;marriage <i>with love</i>. Like your mamma's."</p>
+
+<p>The simile was unfortunate. The eye that Joan believed to be her brain
+twinkled mockingly. "Do you mean to insinuate that marriage and love are
+not always synonymous? Why, Mrs. Neal, you put so many strange ideas
+into my young head lately! Seriously," she added, seeing that the
+other's anxious gravity did not relax, "I don't believe it would be hard
+to pump up a little love in return for&mdash;lots of it, say, and a place of
+your own in the world, and independence."</p>
+
+<p>"Where there's love there ain't apt to be much independence, I've
+noticed," remarked the other.</p>
+
+<p>"All the more reason to do without love, then!" cried Joan, with
+triumphant logic.</p>
+
+<p>But she hugged Ellen remorsefully, glad that the good woman could only
+guess at what was going on at the moment in her nursling's brain.</p>
+
+<p>Her step-mother's casual advice and her own inner musings had resulted
+in one firm determination. If she missed romance, experience, all the
+real things of life, it would not be for lack of meeting them halfway.
+She would be no longer a passive agent. She would be bold and
+reckless&mdash;even if necessary a little Fast; though how to go about being
+Fast was somewhat of a puzzle to Mary's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"If people want to say things, or squeeze my hand, or anything like
+that," she told herself rather vaguely, "I must remember not to hold
+back and be standoffish.... How do I know what I like unless I try?"</p>
+
+<p>But while the noun on her tongue was plural and indefinite, the noun on
+her mind was single and masculine and very definite indeed. It behooved
+Mr. Desmond to look to himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan, already exhilarated by a foretaste of independence, and enjoying
+to the full what Turgenev calls "that carelessness, that deuce-take-it
+air which comes out so naturally in foreign travel," changed at Broad
+Street for a local train that stops at all the smart little
+flower-bedecked stations which make the environs of Philadelphia so
+charming to the eye. Neat turnouts were waiting at most of them,
+dog-carts with dapper grooms at the horses' heads, big machines driven
+by bare-headed young people in sports clothes; here and there a quietly
+elegant brougham or limousine with men in livery on the box.</p>
+
+<p>As her train passed, she caught glimpses of mellow, red-brick houses
+that gave the effect of age without decadence; tree-lined avenues,
+hot-houses, gardens, velvet lawns. It was country that lacked the broad,
+picturesque loveliness of Kentucky landscape, but it had a definite
+charm of its own&mdash;a well-ordered, leisurely, finished permanence which
+reminded one that not only American history but American society had its
+stronghold here, changing less than elsewhere in our adolescent land.
+There was no suggestion, as in the South, of having seen better days; no
+raw, temporary promise of the future as in the Middle West. Joan
+remembered having heard that many people who danced in the Philadelphia
+Assembly of to-day bore the same names as those who danced in it when
+Philadelphia was the country's capital, and Mr. Washington its first
+President. She wondered hopefully whether Desmond was one of those
+names....</p>
+
+<p>People got in and out of the train, carrying golf-bags and
+tennis-rackets. Joan smoothed the skirt of the "little model" Effie May
+had provided for traveling purposes; a fawncolored crêpe with lacy cuffs
+and collar, which had at first given her qualms of uneasiness. There was
+a long cloth coat to match, and a hat of the costliest simplicity; and
+she was not used to traveling dressed as for a party. Now, however, she
+was grateful for her step-mother's insistence, with a gratitude which
+increased in proportion to the distance between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Always dress up on a train," was Effie May's sage counsel, "so that
+people will notice you're a lady, and treat you according."</p>
+
+<p>People had undoubtedly noticed, and she had been treated "according";
+and now toward her journey's end it was particularly agreeable to feel
+that among these fellow-travelers on pleasure bent she need have no
+qualms as to her personal appearance, at least. Underneath she might
+know herself to be plain, poor little Joan Darcy, an adventuress in
+search of a husband; but on the surface she was as affluent a young lady
+as ever rang for the porter to lower a shade that was within two feet of
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>It may be premature to state that our heroine had already adjusted her
+future to her present pleasing environment; but the fact remains that
+when the train stopped at the station for which her subconscious mind
+had fortunately been listening, Joan was just in the act of moving Ellen
+Neal and her mother's furniture into a large Quaker house with a gambrel
+roof....</p>
+
+<p>Betty was waiting for her in a dog-cart; brown as a berry, with sleeves
+rolled up, and a bare, tousled head, quite a different young person
+already from the shy little girl who had been her slave at the Convent.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up, old Joie!" she called, wrestling with the cob, who rose on
+his hind legs to snort at the snorting engine, while a diminutive groom
+tried with frantic leapings to reach his head. "The Rabbit hates to
+stand! Run and get Miss Darcy's things, Jenks" (this to the groom) "and
+be quick about it, will you? You see," she explained as Joan climbed
+perilously aboard and was duly kissed, "when I left, Mother was two up
+and four to play, and it's the finals, and she's already got a leg on
+the cup. Great, isn't it? We'll have to gallop all the way to get there
+before it's over!"</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>are</i> you talking about?" asked mystified Joan. "A leg on the
+cup&mdash;!" Hitherto golf had not entered into her vocabulary; though she
+had gazed at it from afar, wondering at the strange ways men choose to
+waste their golden hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the tournament, of course! Didn't I write you? We're deep in it.
+Where are your clubs, by the way?" She glanced at Joan's bag and
+parasol-case. "Oh, dear! Have you left them on the train?"</p>
+
+<p>"Clubs?&mdash;You mean golf-sticks?" asked Joan, with misgivings. "Why, I
+haven't any. I don't play golf."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't play golf?</i>" cried Betty in genuine dismay. "What ever will you
+do with yourself here? And how on earth do you amuse yourself in
+Kentucky? Just ride?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," said Joan feebly, "we&mdash;we ride."</p>
+
+<p>Once, indeed, during a period of comparative affluence, the Major had
+possessed for a while a horse of the family type; and under his
+instruction Joan had occasionally mounted the complaisant beast and
+propelled it fearfully about back streets, feeling that something was
+due her Kentucky traditions. But suppose she were expected to mount, for
+instance, some such fire-eater as the Rabbit!</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I've brought my riding-clothes," she murmured hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Goose! Why not? But I dare say Mother can fit you out with trousers,"
+said Betty, glancing casually at her friend's slim length of limb.
+"Mine'd be too short. With trousers and a sweater you'll be all right."</p>
+
+<p>Joan's eyes opened wide, but her mouth remained closed. After all, she
+was out for experience. If it included meeting a violent death while
+clad in trousers and a sweater, so be it.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Neddy'll find you a decent horse somewhere," Betty was running
+on. "He's awfully keen about your coming, Jo. I'm afraid you're going to
+have him on your hands a lot, especially if you don't play golf."</p>
+
+<p>Joan brightened. "Why? Doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, no! Too much of a duffer. Likes to do lazy things, like riding,
+and fooling around in a canoe, admiring nature. With widows and such!"
+She made a face.</p>
+
+<p>"Widows?" Joan pricked an ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Grass or sod. It's all one to our Neddy," murmured his flippant niece.
+"Girls are not grown up enough for him, of course&mdash;Except you. He always
+did take notice when you were around. I remember. But then you were
+always more grown up than the rest of us, somehow." She gave her friend
+a glance full of the old shy admiration. "Do you know, you've gotten to
+be awfully pretty too. Perhaps it's all those grand clothes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is," smiled Joan, flushing.</p>
+
+<p>At school she had been the poor girl of her group, the one who had most
+often to borrow and least often to lend the simple fineries current
+among them for special occasions. Now under her friend's appraising eyes
+she was a little uncomfortable, wondering whether the dress she had on
+was perhaps a little too "grand" by comparison with Betty's plain linen.
+Linens she owned herself, but braided, embroidered, lace-inserted out of
+all recognition as such. It was a physical impossibility for Effie May
+to select anything plain. Under her manipulation, the merest shirt-waist
+became what the salesladies refer to majestically as a "bloose."
+Sartorially Joan was entirely in her step-mother's hands.</p>
+
+<p>"But Southern girls always do dress up a lot, don't they?" said Betty,
+innocently continuing her line of thought. "You ought to have seen the
+one the Ritters had visiting them last month! All ruffles, and parasols,
+and chiffon veils. Couldn't swim or go for a ride or do anything on
+account of her complexion. All she did was to dance and sit out in
+corners with people. It was disgusting!"</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't your uncle take notice even of <i>her</i>?" murmured Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course. She was as good as a widow, you see&mdash;she'd had so many
+affairs. The men simply flocked. Whenever she came on to the
+tennis-court she'd break up the game, and we could hardly find enough
+men to make up a foursome, they were all so busy hanging around. It was
+too queer! I never could see the attraction in rolling your eyes, and
+flashing your dimples, and dropping your r's like a colored servant,
+could you?&mdash;Not," she added hastily, "that <i>all</i> Southern girls are that
+sort, Joie dear! You, for instance!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not," murmured Joan; who had decided on the instant to be
+exactly that sort herself, so far as in her lay. It suited the
+elaborateness of her wardrobe; it saved her from golf and tennis and
+other amusements which bade fair to be terrifying in this sporting
+community&mdash;particularly the embarrassments of horseback riding. Joan was
+too much of an egotist to enter willingly into competitions where she
+had no chance to excel.</p>
+
+<p>No; the languid beauty was her rôle for the next few weeks; and she
+flattered herself that after several months of Louisville she ought to
+be able to drop her r's and roll her eyes and flash her dimples with the
+best, particularly if the audience were not too experienced in
+Southernism. In school theatricals she had always distinguished herself.
+Moreover, she had the advantage of a lifelong model to work from; for
+Richard Darcy was one of those sons of Dixie whose characteristics
+become more markedly Dixotic the farther they travel from base.</p>
+
+<p>Let the Ritters' guest look to her laurels!</p>
+
+<p>By way of preparation Joan got out her lip-stick and her powder-puff and
+did what she could to improve on nature, Betty watching her the while in
+amused respect.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad <i>I</i> don't have to mess my face up with things like that," she
+commented frankly. "But I suppose when one goes in for a real complexion
+it's got to be taken care of."</p>
+
+<p>Joan murmured something explanatory about the ravages of a Southern sun;
+and so entered upon her brief and eventful career as a Kentucky beauty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan's respect for the sterner sex, never very exaggerated, was not
+increased by the avidity with which they swallowed, one by one, her
+inexperienced hook, bait and all. Evidently her fellow-men had very
+little use for nice, intelligent, modest young girls in comparison with
+the Brazen Hussie.... For Joan had no illusions about herself, either.
+She had joined, temporarily it is true, and for what seemed to her
+legitimate reasons, the order of the Brazen Hussies.</p>
+
+<p>She put into practice as many of her step-mother's precepts as she could
+recall, and found that they worked astonishingly well. She also
+cultivated a beauty-manner, modeling herself on a certain Louisville
+belle whose man&oelig;uvers she had observed with interest. She became
+helplessly sweet and very, very feminine; and she smiled whenever there
+was an excuse for smiling. It was a new smile she had practised before
+the mirror; an intimate, confiding, personal affair that crinkled up her
+long eyes charmingly, and showed at least two thirds of her good white
+teeth. Eduard Desmond occasionally referred to these teeth as "pearls,"
+though they were hard and sharp and strong as a young squirrel's: Eduard
+being the sort of person who takes his similes ready-made out of poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Surprisingly enough, considering the sporting nature of the community in
+which she found herself, Joan heard a good deal of poetry during this
+visit. The moon happened to be full, and Longmeadow edged upon a river;
+one of those pleasant, cosy little streams that are designed by an
+all-wise Providence for canoes to float upon in summer evenings. By day
+other girls had their innings on golf-links and tennis-court (though
+even by day our heroine was not idle). But at night with the moon she
+came into her own. She made her canoe engagements days ahead, not too
+frequently with Eduard; and she came to the conclusion that just as
+infants at a certain stage must go through the teething period, so
+somewhat later they must go with equal painfulness through the poetry
+period. It gave her quite a motherly feeling toward her admirers; which
+fortunately she was able to dissemble.</p>
+
+<p>By contrast with the sportsmanlike young women of the community, Joan,
+in her frills and wide hats and small, beaded, high-heeled slippers,
+seemed to fill a long-felt want. Her rôle was by no means an
+uninteresting one. Occasionally in the course of events she got almost,
+if not quite, kissed; and she became expert in deflecting the course of
+inconvenient emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"It's suggestion does it," she wrote to her friend Mr. Nikolai. "Given a
+moon, fluffy ruffles, and the Kentucky-belle tradition&mdash;and they seem
+helpless, poor dears!"</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps it was not entirely the power of suggestion that made her
+success. Joan was enough of an artist to do whatever she did with a
+certain finish.</p>
+
+<p>Her difficulty, however, in the heady game she played, was to
+concentrate on the purpose in hand. At the end of two weeks, she began
+to fancy a slight diminution of cordiality on the part of both Betty and
+her mother, and she realized that her visit was growing longer than
+seemed usual. Other guests came and went, remaining only a few days
+before going on to the next engagement. Accustomed to the indeterminate
+visits of the South, she had not thought to set any definite time for
+her departure; but now she felt uncomfortably that the hour had come to
+bring things to a climax. She gave herself one more week at Longmeadow.
+Surely three weeks is a short enough time in which to provide oneself
+with a future and a husband!</p>
+
+<p>She was by no means counting without her host. From the day of her
+arrival Eduard had taken no pains to hide the fact that he considered
+her his especial property. While his manner was still that of one who
+would not willingly brush the bloom from off the peach, there had always
+been in it a disturbing hint, a slight flattering suggestion, that
+peaches are tempting even to the jaded appetite. Lately his air of
+possession had become, to Joan's amusement, decidedly tinged with
+jealousy. He viewed his more youthful rivals with no attempt at
+equanimity.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was aware that people were beginning to discuss the affair, and to
+watch her curiously. It put her on her mettle. She intended to satisfy
+their curiosity very shortly; but&mdash;she wished the thing might be managed
+without the necessity for so many tête-à-têtes.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that she did not like her future husband. On the contrary she
+liked him so well as to find herself a little shy with him. She
+preferred his attentions to take place against a background of society;
+as for instance, at a dance, when his eye could be as significant as it
+chose without alarming her; or at table, where under cover of the
+general conversation, they managed some moments of real intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>There was much to be said, thought Joan, for the French method of
+vigorously chaperoning young love up to the very threshold of matrimony.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, his foot seemed uncomfortably prone to rest on hers beneath
+the table; and once when he stooped to recover a dropped fan, his lips
+had brushed like a touch of delicate flame along the bare length of her
+forearm&mdash;But these indications of what was to come the startled girl was
+able to ignore as accidental. (She had decided, it will be recalled, to
+be if necessary a trifle Fast.)</p>
+
+<p>At last she steeled herself firmly to the necessity for tête-à-têtes,
+realizing that even so finished a performer as Mr. Desmond could not
+well manage a genuine proposal during the intricacies of the tango, or
+at dinner between the soup and the entrée. There were certain
+accompaniments, she fancied, that made the idea of a proposal in public
+impracticable&mdash;Joan's imagination was frequently as useful to her as
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>She had managed to escape the perils of horseback riding by an inspired
+expedient. Duplicity, she found, came easily with practice.</p>
+
+<p>"Straddle a horse? Oh, honey, I couldn't!" she had murmured at her most
+Southern, when informed that there were no side-saddles in the
+Longmeadow stables.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," protested Betty, "there's not a side-saddle to be had this side
+of Kentucky, Jo&mdash;they're as extinct as the Dodo! And even if there were,
+papa would never allow one on any of our horses. You haven't your habit
+here, anyway. Do be sensible, dear. I'll let you ride the Rabbit!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan shook her head, regretfully but firmly. "If my father were to see a
+lady of his family straddling a horse, in trousers," she said, "I think
+he'd have a stroke!"&mdash;which was doubtless true.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary, therefore, for Eduard's increasing desire for solitude
+to take the form of canoeing, or driving in the dog-cart without a
+groom; or preferably, strolling through a certain bit of near-by
+woodland.</p>
+
+<p>Here he liked to fling himself at his handsome length on the moss at
+Joan's feet, and read to her chosen bits out of the "Rubaiyat": a work
+much in favor at the moment, which would appear to have been translated
+by Mr. Fitzgerald for the express purpose of uttering Mr. Desmond's
+sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>Joan murmured "Um-m-m!" and "How true!" and "Exquisite!" in the right
+places; but she was not often listening to him. She was watching the
+play of light and shade on his fine, waving hair; she was studying more
+keenly than she knew the chiseled features, bearing those slight marks
+of manly dissipation which are for some reason never wholly displeasing
+to the young feminine eye; she was noticing the smallness of his hands,
+the really beautiful cut and quality of his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>What sort of person was he under the agreeable surface, this chosen
+husband of hers?</p>
+
+<p>An artist, people had called him: but Art in his case seemed not the
+exacting mistress she had fancied it. Or perhaps the artistic
+temperament required long periods of recuperative leisure.... She had
+decided that it was wiser not to fall in love, at least till after
+marriage: but she did choose that her husband should be the sort of
+person it was possible to fall in love with; well-bred, fastidious,
+cultivated, thoroughly a man of the world. All these Eduard Desmond was,
+and more. He had a real and unaffected taste for music, books,
+nature&mdash;for what Joan called to herself "the real things." It argued
+well for future companionship.</p>
+
+<p>There was, to be sure, the disability of what she thought of vaguely as
+his "habits." But there had been no sign of them in the two weeks she
+had lived in the same house with him; and even if he had not as yet
+completely overcome them, there was no reason why he should not do so
+later, with a watchful wife to help him. On the whole their chances for
+happiness together seemed quite as good as those of most people she
+knew, thought Joan, with unconscious cynicism.</p>
+
+<p>The material side of the arrangement did not occur to her. For all her
+calm calculations, Joan was not mercenary. All she asked was a place of
+her own in the world, a sense of permanence; she longed quite wistfully
+for a background that "stayed put." Romance was a thing she felt she
+could do without forever, in return for independence from her
+step-mother, and perhaps a little home of her own with a garden to it.
+She believed that to any man who would provide these few essentials she
+could be a faithful and a loyal wife.</p>
+
+<p>What would he expect of her in return? Would she have to go on all her
+life being Southern and winsome and alluring? Would he prefer her, after
+the honeymoon, say, to go in heavily for sports, like the women of his
+set? Or might she presently venture to be just herself again&mdash;just Joan,
+whatever that might be! The gayest of rôles becomes a trifle wearing for
+everyday use.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed; and looking up from the Rubaiyat, he caught her eyes fixed
+upon him, wide and speculative.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the little girl thinking of?" he asked tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>She answered at once, with a return of her gay daring, "You&mdash;of course!"</p>
+
+<p>But under his intensifying gaze her own dropped, and he went on reading;
+in a voice that shook, however.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for it!" said Joan suddenly to herself. She dropped her hand
+negligently on the leaves, close to his.</p>
+
+<p>She resisted the temptation to jerk it back as soon as she was aware of
+its contact with another. Very slight the contact was, no more than the
+touch of a leaf. She pretended not to notice it; but the blood sang in
+her ears, her cheeks burned&mdash;she wished suddenly that he would take her
+hand, if he was going to; hold it tight....</p>
+
+<p>Heavens! What was happening to her? She <i>wanted</i> the touch of his hand;
+she liked it! Did she care for him, then? Was this being in
+love&mdash;already?</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," he whispered. "Look at me!"</p>
+
+<p>The spell was broken. She jumped to her feet. "Come, we must be getting
+back," she said hurriedly. "It is late."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but how cold you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am, a little," she said innocently. "These woods are damp."</p>
+
+<p>But all the way home, beneath her relief, lingered a sense of annoyance,
+of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"What a prig I am," she thought disgustedly. "It would be all over now
+if I'd only&mdash;let him!"</p>
+
+<p>That night she wrote at unusual length to Mr. Nikolai. It was almost
+like writing to herself; and Joan frequently felt the need of seeing
+what she was about set down in black and white, for greater clarity.</p>
+
+<p>She had not meant to tell Mr. Nikolai of her imminent engagement till
+the thing was <i>fait accompli</i>; but she knew that everything would be
+settled by the time her letter reached him. She wanted to be reassured
+about her odd and unexpected emotion during the contact of her hand with
+Eduard Desmond's. Was it so, then, that people fell in love, just
+suddenly without any warning? And had the mind nothing to do with it
+whatever?</p>
+
+<p>For mentally she was not altogether pleased with herself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The idea that Betty and her mother were eyeing her somewhat askance
+troubled Joan not a little. In her heart of hearts she preferred women
+to men, and believed their friendship more of a compliment. She would
+have liked to make a friend of Mrs. Desmond, had there been time,
+envying Betty's camaraderie with her mother; although Mrs. Desmond
+presented a golfing, bridge-playing, sporting type of motherhood quite
+new to her experience.</p>
+
+<p>There was a peculiar intimacy and freedom among all this group of
+people, who seemed to spend most of the year together either in
+Philadelphia or Aiken or Ormond or these long-established country-places
+surrounding the Longmeadow Hunt Club. It was like a curiously ramified
+family, in which husbands and wives seemed to have changed partners
+rather frequently, and were still in process of changing. It was Joan's
+first glimpse of a society in which married women hold the center of the
+stage rather than young girls, and she was just a little shocked by it.</p>
+
+<p>There appeared to be no age limit here. It was not so much that these
+women concealed their age, after the rather obvious fashion of Effie
+May, as that they simply ignored it. Even Mrs. Desmond, dignified and
+well-bred though she was, had a devoted attendant or two, spoken of
+casually by Betty as "mamma's flames," and during Joan's visit at least
+Mr. Desmond remained merely an abstraction. Conjugal affection was
+distinctly not the fashion in the Desmond circle.</p>
+
+<p>But this casualness of relations did not extend to the young girls. They
+had no such freedom as Joan was accustomed to in the South. Betty, at
+eighteen, was as carefully guarded as if she were still a child. She was
+not permitted to go into the city without a maid or an older woman; she
+neither drove or canoed alone with men, nor "sat out" with them at
+dances. And it did not occur to her to protest.</p>
+
+<p>"That sort of thing isn't good form," she explained once to Joan. "For
+us, at least&mdash;Of course with Southern girls it's different."</p>
+
+<p>But Joan began to suspect that even Southern girls were expected to hold
+in regard this one fetish they had elected to worship, Good Form; and
+that according to this standard she had already been condemned.</p>
+
+<p>At first the younger women had made some effort to include her in their
+various activities, golf, bridge, tennis. But latterly they had left her
+alone, not severely but tolerantly, as one dedicated to other pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Darcy? Oh, she's from the South, you know&mdash;awfully busy with the
+men," she overheard one of them explain to a newcomer; and she had
+resented the remark keenly, not only for herself, but for the women of
+her adopted home, who at least are rarely "busy with the men" after
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>The person who made this remark was a Mrs. Rossiter, a pretty, boyish
+creature, already divorced and remarried at thirty, and bearing her
+present conjugality rather lightly. She was on terms of great intimacy
+with the Desmond family, Eduard included; and Joan fancied that she
+might have been one of the "widows" mentioned by Betty as her uncle's
+chosen companions.</p>
+
+<p>But if it had been so, her day was done. Eduard had palpably no eyes for
+her now, and Joan could afford the generosity of admiring Mrs. Rossiter.
+She was so natural and frank, and so royally indifferent to others'
+opinion. Joan, who had a fatal propensity for acting as the people about
+her expected her to act, envied her this assurance, and wished that she
+could make friends with her.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that the girl, despite her success, felt utterly lonely.
+She saw very little of Betty. Mrs. Desmond was an experienced hostess
+who made no attempt to regulate the comings and goings of her guests,
+and the girls made separate engagements. Even bedtime confidences had
+ceased, owing to the fact that when Joan came up to her room, Betty was
+usually asleep.</p>
+
+<p>But on the night of her illuminating afternoon in the woods with Eduard,
+Betty appeared to be waiting up for her. She came yawning into Joan's
+room to watch her friend undress, and established herself sleepily on
+the foot of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity you can't wear your hair down all the time, Jo! Men adore
+hair, don't they? And yours has a regular patina on it, like old
+bronze."</p>
+
+<p>"Not greenish, I hope," laughed Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;sort of orangish. Dark, with an orange lining."</p>
+
+<p>"Betty! It sounds horrible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know very well it isn't.&mdash;May Rossiter thinks you are awfully
+clever to wear it that simple way, too, so straight and plain, when the
+rest of us stick out like mops. She says you're awfully clever about
+lots of things&mdash;too smart for the likes of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she?" Joan was a little startled and not quite pleased. She had
+not intended to give the impression of cleverness. It was out of her
+present rôle entirely. "I wonder what Mrs. Rossiter meant by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, men, of course," yawned Betty. "You see you've annexed a few of
+hers, which naturally makes her peevish."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I?" murmured Joan. "Who, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Uncle Neddy, for one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! So she <i>was</i> one of his flames, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Betty sat up. "You mean to say you didn't know it? One of them! <i>The</i>
+one, my child! Surely you remember about his broken heart?&mdash;the married
+lady he was recovering from in Washington last year? Well, May's it. Of
+course I'm not supposed to know, being an <i>ingénue</i>&mdash;but our Neddy was
+frightfully gone on her, and she returned it, and the husband she had
+then got jealous (rather a bounder he was, not one of us, you know), and
+there was some sort of excitement, and she divorced him. Every one
+thought to marry Uncle Ned, of course. But instead she upped and married
+Mr. Rossiter! Joke on Neddy, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan's lip curled. "What a romantic love story! Why do you suppose she
+married that old Mr. Rossiter?"</p>
+
+<p>Betty shrugged in a worldly-wise manner. "Awfully rich, my dear. And
+Neddy isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"But they seem friendly enough still, she and Mr. Desmond?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course. Why not? It would be frightfully uncomfortable for the
+rest of us if they glowered and didn't speak and all that, like
+quarreling servants. And Uncle Neddy seems to be consoling himself!" She
+twinkled at Joan. "That evens things up, you see. But,"&mdash;she suddenly
+grew grave&mdash;"what do <i>you</i> get out of all this, Joan? You couldn't
+possibly <i>like</i> seeing so much of Uncle Neddy! He's such a&mdash;softy. And
+such a bore, too, with his art and poetry and stuff."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," smiled Joan, "he's too mature for you, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Too mature for you then, too! You're only a few months older."</p>
+
+<p>The other gave an unconscious sigh. "Oh, me&mdash;I'm different."</p>
+
+<p>Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a
+change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly
+recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school&mdash;so funny and larky,
+and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at
+over at the College than if they didn't exist."</p>
+
+<p>"College boys <i>don't</i> exist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles,
+just a transition state. And rather disgusting."</p>
+
+<p>"Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty
+blurted out, "you're not&mdash;wanting to get married, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low
+voice, "I'm not!"</p>
+
+<p>Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did
+not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. She <i>had</i> to get
+married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were
+getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at
+your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch
+Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole."</p>
+
+<p>Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong
+with your uncle? You mean&mdash;because he drinks?"</p>
+
+<p>Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of an <i>ingénue</i> than she
+thought, and found herself getting into deep water.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there's <i>something</i> wrong
+with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway.
+He's too fastidious&mdash;and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other
+ways of being dissipated&mdash;aren't there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus
+girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that....
+On the whole, she felt rather relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused
+aloud, "if a man were happily married."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>If!</i>" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank
+Heaven, <i>we</i> don't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to
+Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before
+you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage&mdash;Good night, you
+bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned.</p>
+
+<p>The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting
+her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing,
+"I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them
+guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off
+against each other, and so good for them&mdash;particularly Ned! He's rather
+spoiled, I'm afraid&mdash;used to monopolizing his favorites...."</p>
+
+<p>Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard
+seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be
+because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's
+significant phrase, "one of them."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely
+that was sufficient?</p>
+
+<p>Once in her childhood she had heard her father remark in a moment of
+especial grandiloquence that Darcys were entitled to the society of
+kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement.
+Something within assured her that she would feel perfectly at ease with
+any kings or queens who chanced to cross her path. In fact the only
+people with whom so far she had not felt at ease were snobs and
+parvenues, under neither of which categories the Desmonds could be
+placed.</p>
+
+<p>Now she wondered suddenly to what she and her father owed this
+comfortable sense of lofty destiny. True, theirs was "an old Southern
+family"; but living in a part of the world that seems entirely populated
+by such families, this was no distinction. Darcys, she knew, had fought
+and died for their country whenever occasion offered, but so had quite
+simple people named Smith or Jones. She racked her brain to think of
+anything else they might have done for their country, or even for
+themselves. Genius had never made its appearance among them, nor wealth,
+nor even beauty, to any noticeable extent. They were rich in one thing
+only: self-esteem.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, however, Joan had her share of that; and upon further
+reflection she decided that "Darcy" was at least as distinguished a name
+as "Desmond." Doubtless their ancestors had been kings in Ireland
+together.</p>
+
+<p>The question of her poverty occurred to her for a moment, only to be
+dismissed as negligible. The Desmonds were too well-bred to be
+mercenary. Eduard was not rich himself; and if, as Betty intimated, his
+reputation was a trifle tarnished, he could not be too exacting in his
+demands. He could not expect youth, and charm, and wit, and a dowry as
+well! thought Joan complacently. No: Eduard would be getting quite as
+much as he gave....</p>
+
+<p>It was in rather a defiant mood that she appeared at dinner that night
+in a blue chiffon frock which the observant Eduard had pronounced his
+favorite; and though some people were expected afterwards for dancing,
+she deliberately accepted his murmured suggestion that they row up the
+river to see the last of the harvest moon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>There had naturally been some discussion at the Convent as to the most
+desirable setting for proposals, the consensus of opinion being in favor
+of Miss Alcott's little water-scene between Amy and the faithless
+Laurie. Laurie, the reader will remember, is rowing Amy about in the
+romantic region of Chillon (still with regretful memories of Jo hovering
+in the background, however), when she catches him eyeing her with an
+expression which</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying
+something:</p>
+
+<p>"'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc.</p>
+
+<p>"Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the
+offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan
+personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the
+Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar.</p>
+
+<p>"'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected
+to silence just then.</p>
+
+<p>"'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same
+boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, Laurie,' very low.</p>
+
+<p>"Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a
+pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the
+dissolving views reflected in the lake."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This classic scene was not absent from Joan's mind as she seated herself
+and her blue chiffon recklessly in the prow of Eduard's canoe; though
+the details of stage-management troubled her somewhat. Suppose the
+proposer chose to kneel at the feet of the proposee&mdash;since there was no
+seat to share with her? And suppose the proposer lost his head (as might
+properly be expected of him) and embraced the proposee madly&mdash;what was
+to prevent so precarious a thing as a canoe from tipping over! It seemed
+to call for great presence of mind on the part of the proposee. Joan
+felt rather nervous.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Desmond, however, let the opportunity pass. Perhaps he had not read
+"Little Women."</p>
+
+<p>Amid talk so casual that it might as well have been silence, they
+slipped along between the wide gray of earth and sky, afloat on a stream
+of silver. They came presently to an overhanging willow, where he tied
+the boat, and helped Joan ashore. He led her, with an air of one
+performing a ceremony, up a slight rise of land topped by a great
+beech-tree, whose widespread roots made a sort of armchair, after the
+hospitable fashion of beech-trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Queen Joan on her throne, viewing her domain," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He had not brought her to this place before, and she realized that he
+had been saving it for a special occasion. There was a view before her
+of shadowy, dreaming country, with a hint of stars to come, and
+sheep-bells tinkling in a distant field, and lights gleaming here and
+there from half-hidden houses.</p>
+
+<p>Eduard began to murmur softly:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Miles on miles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheep<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half asleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and crop<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As they stop&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A sudden impatience seized Joan. How like him to arrange this setting,
+to bring things carefully to a climax, and then&mdash;to spout Browning at
+her!</p>
+
+<p>But she said, as he paused, "Beautiful! 'Love among the Ruins,' isn't
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;And I," he sighed, tapping himself on the chest, "I am the Ruins!"</p>
+
+<p>Despite the bombast of his tone, there was something in his sigh that
+struck her as genuine.</p>
+
+<p>She said consolingly, "At least you're a well-preserved ruin, very
+popular with tourists.... I wonder what makes you feel so particularly
+ruinous to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fact that you're so damnably young," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those
+persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will
+disappear in time."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly! And before you know it, my dear.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'The nightingale that in the branches sang&mdash;ah, whence and
+whither flown again, who knows!'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be
+back there, playing with the little boys and girls."</p>
+
+<p>"But if the boys and girls bore me&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to
+make other people&mdash;jealous."</p>
+
+<p>"You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a
+moment, "or very natural, either&mdash;as my sister-in-law was very good to
+point out to me only this morning!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a passive but an
+active interest in her affairs!</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like
+Betty. I know exactly what I am doing."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned toward her. "Do you? Do you, I wonder? Joan! Look at me! <i>Do</i>
+you know what you are doing&mdash;to me?"</p>
+
+<p>The darkness left only the white outline of their faces visible to each
+other. He struck a match, in order to see her better.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she tried to meet his eyes. They frightened her even while
+they drew her. The blood began to sing in her ears, as it had when he
+touched her hand. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold
+her&mdash;and at the same time she wanted to run away and hide. Their long
+gaze seemed to let down some barrier within her, to loosen curious
+impulses.... Why did he not take her, and have done with it?</p>
+
+<p>"No," he muttered, as if she had spoken, "Come!"</p>
+
+<p>Her body made a helpless movement toward him....</p>
+
+<p>Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a
+little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she
+wanted to get this queerly painful scene over.</p>
+
+<p>But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring.
+It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels
+which glittered in the dusk.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never
+given her anything as splendid as this.</p>
+
+<p>"May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and
+pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner
+arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she
+had pictured it.</p>
+
+<p>"Wh&mdash;what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when
+I've got a perfectly good mouth!"</p>
+
+<p>After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....</p>
+
+<p>A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when
+the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly
+for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck
+of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She
+felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does
+not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices
+honor the event.</p>
+
+<p>The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back
+down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. For once Eduard found
+no poetry to suit the occasion. Joan, busy with her tumbled hair, hoped
+and even prayed that she might be able to slip into her room unobserved.
+She hurried nervously out of the dark boathouse, despite entreaties to
+wait, and was half way to the house before he caught up with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hurry!" she whispered. "They've all gone&mdash;every light in the house
+is out! It must be after midnight. Ned, what if they've locked the
+door?"</p>
+
+<p>"They haven't. My sister knows we're still out&mdash;trust her for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"But suppose she's waiting up for us?&mdash;Oh, Ned, whatever shall I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"You might tell her, Beautiful," he teased, "that I've had you up under
+the beech-tree, kissing roses into your cheeks and stars into your
+eyes!&mdash;though I think any one who saw you just now might suspect that
+without being told."</p>
+
+<p>She turned suddenly and clung to him. Something of Joan's independence
+had already slipped away from her, now that she had some one to cling
+to. "Ned, she doesn't like me! How am I ever going to win her over?"</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss her," he suggested promptly. "Kiss her as you've been kissing me.
+It couldn't fail!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tease!" She lifted serious, wide eyes to his, and he saw that
+they were wet. "Don't you know that I shall never, never in all my life,
+kiss anybody else as I have kissed you?"</p>
+
+<p>Touched, he drew her closer. She looked just then singularly childish
+and confiding. "Dear little girl, that thought herself so grown-up!" he
+whispered, his cheek on her tumbled hair.</p>
+
+<p>When she stirred in his arms he still held her. "What's the use of
+hurrying now, Beautiful? The fat's in the fire&mdash;and who knows when we
+shall have another night like this, all to ourselves?"</p>
+
+<p>But she would not stay. She felt, obscurely, that they had been engaged
+enough for one evening.</p>
+
+<p>She found herself at last safe in her room&mdash;'safe' was the word in her
+mind&mdash;sitting on the edge of her bed, staring down at her ruined finery
+with eyes which did not see it. Her knees felt queerly weak under her,
+her lips were bruised, her cheeks and throat and arms burned still with
+remembered kisses&mdash;She said to herself, like the old woman with a shorn
+petticoat, "Can this be I?"</p>
+
+<p>What had become of her powers of observation, her cool intelligence, her
+impersonal decision that it was wiser not to love the man you marry lest
+he be given power to hurt you? There was nothing impersonal left in her
+feeling for Eduard Desmond! The change had come as suddenly as a summer
+thunderstorm. At one moment she was waiting, nervous, a little afraid,
+for the event that she had brought to pass. The next, he and she seemed
+to have been thrown into a sort of vortex, where they clung to each
+other madly, desperately, as if to escape destruction. And she had been
+quite as frantic about it as the man....</p>
+
+<p>She thought, dazedly, that there was a good deal she would be able to
+tell the girls at the Convent now on the subject of proposals&mdash;yes, and
+Miss Louisa M. Alcott, too! Except that school-girls and literary old
+maids were not exactly the people with whom one would discuss such
+phenomena&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>They had fancied, she and Betty and the rest, that some sort of formula
+was necessary to the occasion, a definite question asked and answered, a
+more or less formal, "Will you, Amy?" and "Yes, Laurie." Foolish
+innocents! She and Ned had not exchanged a sensible word from the moment
+they found themselves in each other's arms. Yet the understanding
+between them was unmistakable. They were completely engaged&mdash;almost,
+Joan thought with a shiver, as good as married!</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was love. A very different thing from what she had expected!
+A beautiful, rather terrible thing.... The touch of Puritan in the girl
+made her wonder whether anything so beautiful and terrible could be
+quite nice.</p>
+
+<p>She slipped to her knees; not to pray, but simply to remember her
+mother. The vision of her mother always came better when she was on her
+knees&mdash;perhaps because of the old-time association of prayers with
+bedtime&mdash;and Joan felt a desperate need of her just then. She wanted to
+be assured that her mother understood, and had been through it all
+herself, and had come out of it&mdash;just her mother. She held out her
+jeweled bracelet childishly in the dark, as if for somebody to see. She
+knelt there tense, every nerve and fibre straining, whispering under her
+breath, "Mamma, are you here? Do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>But the vision failed her. She had instead the warmth of a man's breath
+on her closed eyes, the roughness of his cheek on her throat....</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her head in her arms and began to sob. She was very happy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was well into the middle of a fine blue and gold morning when Joan
+awoke, to find her coffee cold on the tray beside her bed. She had slept
+through even the entrance of the maid who called her; she who had
+expected not to sleep at all! An engaged girl, with her lover
+waiting&mdash;in the garden, perhaps, or down beside the river&mdash;their river!</p>
+
+<p>The happiness of the night before came to her with a rush, and with it
+an enormous sense of relief. The thing was done, accomplished!</p>
+
+<p>She ran to the window and peeped out eagerly, hoping he might be
+watching her window. But only the old gardener was in sight, pottering
+about among the roses. She blew a kiss from her finger-tips&mdash;whether to
+the gardener, the roses, or the sparkling water beyond she did not
+know&mdash;and began hurriedly to dress.</p>
+
+<p>Singing under her breath, she tripped down the stairs. The big, sunny
+house was very still. Joan, going from room to room, gazed about her
+appreciatively. Hitherto the house, the garden, the wide, pleasant
+countryside had all served merely as a background, of which she was
+vaguely aware as actors are of a suitable setting for the play they
+produce. Now she felt that she really had leisure to enjoy her
+surroundings, which were usually very important to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>She paused to examine a hunting-print, lingered over a fine etching,
+patted affectionately the soft, gay chintzes of the morning-room. What a
+relief after such an artificial house as her step-mother's! Nothing here
+in the least pretentious, no striving after periods, or artistry, or
+even originality, but everything good, well-chosen, used: luxury in
+abeyance to comfort; everywhere evidence of travel and culture, and the
+long habit of these things.</p>
+
+<p>Joan drew a breath of satisfaction. Just such a home she hoped to make
+for Eduard, though on a smaller scale, perhaps, and with the addition of
+a little beauty; since it takes more than wealth to provide that.</p>
+
+<p>She thought to find him in the billiard-room, or perhaps in a certain
+little vine-hung balcony where they sometimes met. But both were empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's everybody this fine morning, Molly!" she asked a housemaid she
+met in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone over to play golf, like as usual, Miss&mdash;'cep'n Mr. Eduard," added
+Molly, (the pantry having eyes of its own). "He took the first train to
+town&mdash;no'm, I guess it was the second train. Anyway it was real early
+for Mr. Eduard to be up."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Joan, blankly.</p>
+
+<p>Then it occurred to her why he might have felt the sudden need of
+running into town. Bracelets are all very well in their way, but they
+are, after all, noncommittal. She glanced down at her ringless hands,
+and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The maid smiled, too, as if in sympathy. "That's an awful pretty
+bracelet you got on, miss," she was emboldened to say.</p>
+
+<p>"I like it myself, Molly," she confessed, holding it off at arm's length
+the better to admire it.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered how long it took to get into Philadelphia and back, if one
+were in a hurry....</p>
+
+<p>Presently some of the golfers came in, ravenous for luncheon. In a
+sudden accession of shyness, Joan hid her bracelet in her pocket. She
+surprised them by offering to go back with them later to the golf-links.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'll catch a golf-germ," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>"What, no engagement for this afternoon? Where's our Eduard?" murmured
+Mrs. Rossiter, who was one of the party.</p>
+
+<p>But Joan had learned long since to meet impertinence with a noncommittal
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour or so of polite attention to the game, however, her
+interest flagged. She knew that when Eduard got home he would come to
+look for her, and she had a sudden dread of their first meeting before
+others, under the observant eyes of May Rossiter in particular. She made
+an excuse of letters to write, and walked back through their favorite
+woodland, on the chance of his meeting her there. Eduard had rather an
+instinct for that sort of thing.</p>
+
+<p>But when she reached Longmeadow, there was no sign of him. Nor did he
+appear that night at dinner. No comment whatever was made upon his
+absence.</p>
+
+<p>Joan became uneasy. Surely it was very strange that he should leave her
+for so long a time just now, without explanation!</p>
+
+<p>An explanation offered itself that drove the blood out of her
+cheeks&mdash;His habits! What did Betty know about them? Men who drink do not
+always choose the bosom of the family in which to indulge their
+weakness. In the reaction of emotion upon an artistic temperament,
+anything might be happening!</p>
+
+<p>The thought roused in Joan one of her finest traits: an immediate
+response to any call upon her protection. That he had so soon failed her
+was no reason for her to fail him. She must try to understand, and
+wait....</p>
+
+<p>People dropped in after dinner, among them as usual Mrs. Rossiter; and
+Joan, chatting rather abstractedly with one of her admirers in a corner
+of the porch, caught fragments of conversation from the room within,
+between Mrs. Rossiter and her hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"So Ned's torn himself away at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank Heaven! The Arnolds have postponed their cruise three times,
+waiting for him. Why people put up with his shilly-shallying, I'm sure I
+don't know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say Fanny Arnold.... But what do you suppose
+the Darcy girl...."</p>
+
+<p>Their voices dropped lower, and Joan heard no more....</p>
+
+<p>She felt for the moment absolutely numb. She was like a person who has
+been shot, without having time to ascertain where. All the pride in her
+gathered to meet this blow without flinching. People must not
+suspect&mdash;they must not suspect.</p>
+
+<p>She went on chatting, laughing, jesting.... He had gone away for good!
+Without a word to her, he had gone away. He had known last night that he
+was going, and that he would not come back. She, Joan Darcy, had been
+jilted. She, too proud to live on a stranger's bounty, had offered
+herself, unasked, to a man who did not want her!...</p>
+
+<p>Somebody begged her to sing, and brought a guitar. Hers was a slight
+voice, uncultivated, but with something about it, as about Joan, that
+attracted attention. People listened to her. She had that curious
+<i>élan</i>, that sense of being borne on some outside power, that comes to
+certain natures from the response of an audience.</p>
+
+<p>Joan touched heights that evening. To some brains, suffering is an
+incomparable stimulant. Even Betty, with the remembrance of certain wild
+orgies at school, when quiet Joan Darcy had amazed nuns and girls alike
+by a sudden transfiguration, had never gaged to the full her friend's
+possibilities. She sang for them daringly whatever came into her head,
+negro catches, rollicking Irish lilts, wicked little songs of the
+streets and alleys. Under Betty's urgings, she exhibited a talent for
+mimicry which had occasionally reduced the good Sisters almost to
+apoplexy.</p>
+
+<p>She showed them her father during a political campaign, addressing his
+constituency under the handicap of a cold in the head. One could see the
+Major's urbane periods, his mellifluous hand, his tossing topknot&mdash;She
+showed them the Mother Superior, called in to quell a dormitory riot,
+endeavoring while dodging pillows to maintain proper religious
+"detachment from place." As an encore she gave them Eduard Desmond,
+conducting a sunset <i>à deux</i>, with assistance from the poets&mdash;a bit of
+recklessness that brought shouts of joy from the audience, and produced
+in Mrs. Rossiter's mocking eye something like respect.</p>
+
+<p>"Joie, how <i>dared</i> you!" cried Betty, breathless with laughter, as she
+went upstairs with her arm about her friend. "It was Uncle Neddy to his
+very hands; that way he has of touching people inadvertently, as if it
+were quite by accident. You ought to have seen May Rossiter's face!"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," said Joan grimly.&mdash;Something of the sustaining force had begun
+to leave her, and all she asked of life for the moment was to be left
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>But Betty was too delighted with her friend's triumph to be easily
+quenched. "It was like old times!" she cried. "Dear old times at school,
+when there weren't any men about to spoil things, and the nuns let go
+and had a good time like anybody!... Nobody here'll ever think of you
+again as just a flirt and a man-grabber! Why, do you know what that man
+who came in with Mrs. Jameson said? (He's a clever person, a professor
+or something.) He said to Mother, 'Mrs. Desmond, that girl's got a touch
+of genius!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Genius for what&mdash;making believe? Much good it does me," said Joan
+bitterly.... Would the other never go?</p>
+
+<p>Betty hugged her. "And to think we were afraid you'd take Uncle Neddy
+seriously! Oh, if he could only have seen you!&mdash;Jo, <i>I</i> know why you
+were in such wild spirits to-night. I'm not going to ask any questions,
+because Mother made me promise not to. But you can't deny there is a
+sort of coincidence between the fact that you spent the evening up the
+river with him, and that to-day he's gone!&mdash;now can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Joan, "I can't deny that there's&mdash;a sort of coincidence."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by forever! Good-by-yi-yi forever,'" warbled Betty after Tosti,
+somewhat infected by her friend's recent performances. "Fancy the
+Irresistible coming another cropper, and at the hands of a mere infant
+like you! I suppose I ought to be sorry for him, but I'm not. It'll
+teach him to keep his hands off <i>my</i> friends, anyway!" she exclaimed
+vindictively.</p>
+
+<p>"I gather," murmured Joan with a pale smile, "that you did not
+altogether fancy me as an aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather not! I prefer you 'as is.' Plenty of aunts in the world, and not
+so many Joans."</p>
+
+<p>She went at last, leaving the heroine of the evening to a sleepless
+night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Morning did not bring the word from Eduard Desmond that Joan told
+herself must surely come; the explanation, the excuse, no matter how
+bald, which she might go through the form of accepting. Nor did the day
+following bring any message.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day, however, came a basket of candy, a superlative affair
+of blue straw, tied with wide blue ribbons and quite realistic
+forget-me-nots. Within was the expected communication:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>I never say the ugly word "good-by," if I can help it,
+Beautiful. Better to keep intact the memory of our last evening
+together.</p>
+
+<p>From my heart I thank you for what you have given me. Such
+experiences do not come twice in a lifetime.&mdash;I have learned.</p>
+
+<p>And you, sweetest of them all, what have you learned? At least
+to remember me, I hope! <span class="smcap">Eduard.</span></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan read this over and over, incredulously&mdash;The cruelty of it, the
+sheer, epicurean viciousness, appalled her. She said to herself, like
+the man in Hedda Gabler, "But people don't do such things!"</p>
+
+<p>Evidently they did, and escaped unscathed. She clenched her hands
+helplessly. Oh, to be able to tell her father! A rush of primitive
+feeling came over her, almost of blood-lust. She wanted vengeance on the
+man who had surfeited himself with her innocence, her youth, it seemed
+to poor Joan her very soul&mdash;and had made amends by sending her a box of
+candy! The candy seemed somehow a worse insult than the jewel he had
+given her. It mocked her with its triviality. Bon-bons in return
+for&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>With a groan she swept the offering off the table on to the floor; and
+treading confections underfoot at every step, she fled across her room
+to the shelter of her bed, where she flung herself face downward.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Why? Why?</span> was the despairing cry of her spirit. How had he dared to
+treat her so lightly? What had she done?</p>
+
+<p>The answer was not far to seek. With a shudder she remembered her
+careful study of the rôle she had chosen to play, her considered
+coquetries and sophistications, even her dressing, the display of silken
+ankles, of bared arm, her modest décolletage&mdash;all weapons she had
+employed not quite in ignorance. Precocious instinct and the comments of
+her step-mother had taught her much. She had deliberately, and for her
+own ends, joined the order of the Brazen Hussies&mdash;With this result!</p>
+
+<p>Joan faced her lesson squarely. But she felt sick, degraded, literally
+soiled. This was the sort of thing that happened to girls who "fell."</p>
+
+<p>She had, for all her reading, a quite hazy idea of what "falling" meant.
+For a frantic moment (it must be remembered that Joan's education had
+been conducted by religious ladies who paste decent tissue-paper skirts
+over offending illustrations in the physiology books)&mdash;she struggled
+with a nightmare horror that she had perhaps "fallen" herself, that such
+a degradation of the spirit might even have physical results....</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, <i>no</i>!" gasped Joan, "not when I hate him so! It's impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>For if, according to a rather touching convent theory, it is love alone
+which calls children into being, surely hate must have the opposite
+effect?</p>
+
+<p>Joan had not pursued this line of mental research to her usual lengths.
+Certain things, it appeared, such as miracles and the power of prayer
+and all phenomena embraced under the generic title of Love, were better
+taken entirely on trust.</p>
+
+<p>With ashen cheeks and a heart thumping with terror, Joan put her hands
+over her ears to shut out the sound of her own thoughts. It was the
+first time in her life she had come face to face with the meaning of the
+word "fear." And that the fear was childish, made it none the less real.
+Nineteen, not ninety, is the age of tragedy. There are few suicides
+among the old....</p>
+
+<p>She did not hear a rap twice repeated, nor the opening of the door.
+Somebody peeped in, saw the sobbing figure on the bed, the scattered
+bon-bons, the crumpled note on the floor. Then came a louder knock.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sat up, and cried in a panic, "Don't come in!"</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Rossiter chose to misunderstand her. "Did you say come in?" she
+inquired cheerfully. "I hope so, because nobody else seems to be at
+home, and I'm pining for company."</p>
+
+<p>She paused as Joan sank back in despair, hiding her ravaged face in her
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, dear? Headache?" she questioned kindly, adding with
+a glance at the overturned basket, "Too much candy, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," gulped Joan, fighting for self-control "Too much candy!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rossiter selected a <i>marron</i> from the floor with care, wiped it
+daintily, and began to eat. "This looks," she said, "like one of Ned
+Desmond's offerings. He's such an artist about everything! Who but he
+would have thought of selecting a basket to match your eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan lay still, and hated her. She thought of several biting remarks she
+might make to this woman who had come to gloat over her; but
+unfortunately she could not yet trust her voice to utter them.</p>
+
+<p>"So you sent him away after all?" continued the voice smilingly, "Led
+him on, and made a fool out of our poor dear Ned, and then sent him
+about his business? Naughty Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>Something impelled the girl to utter frankness. She was done with
+acting. "I didn't, and you know I didn't," she gulped. "I accepted him.
+I was engaged to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!&mdash;and then the next day he was gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Stole away," murmured Mrs. Rossiter amusedly. "That was rather crude of
+Eduard. He doesn't usually run to such lengths.... You mean he actually
+in so many words invited you to <i>marry</i> him?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan covered her eyes again. "I suppose not," she said in a small,
+miserable voice. "No, he didn't. But he&mdash;he kissed me as if we were
+engaged, and I kissed him back!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," murmured the other. "You find engaged kisses so very different,
+then, from the other kind?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan cried indignantly, "I don't know anything about the other kind!
+I've never kissed a man before in my life."</p>
+
+<p>"No? 'More kissed against than kissing,' perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl lifted her chin as haughtily as it is possible to lift a chin
+that is quivering with held-in sobs. "I have never been kissed
+either&mdash;except on the hand or the ear or something, which doesn't
+count."</p>
+
+<p>"No, that hardly counts," agreed her inquisitor, looking at the girl
+quite curiously. "See here," she asked in another tone, "how old are
+you, Miss Darcy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nineteen."</p>
+
+<p>"Hmmn! Younger than I thought. Still, a Southern girl&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Can be just as decent as any other kind!" cried angry Joan. "Anyway,
+I'm only part a Southern girl. But I know! Lots of them are just as nice
+about such things as Betty, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice, of course," agreed Mrs. Rossiter. "And tremendously attractive.
+But just for that reason a little more&mdash;well, experienced, don't you
+think? We get our experience later, perhaps.... And you seemed
+particularly well-seasoned, able to take care of yourself, playing them
+off against each other like a little veteran. I've told Jane Desmond so
+more than once. She wanted to warn you&mdash;but I told her you knew the
+ropes."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't," said Joan tremulously, "Warn me of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of Ned. She was afraid you might really land him. The wariest of
+fish takes the hook at last!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan winced at the remark, but she was too busy getting to the bottom of
+things to resent it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did she object to my marrying him?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rossiter stared. "Good Lord! Well, because she's got a girl of her
+own, for one thing. Because she's married to a Desmond herself, for
+another. She knows the breed, poor Jane!"</p>
+
+<p>Light was breaking on Joan. "You mean&mdash;she objected for <i>my</i> sake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as
+a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to
+have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to
+marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!&mdash;No, no, Jane's not that
+sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Joan faintly. She began to realize that instead of
+antagonism, it had been friendliness that watched her, motherly, anxious
+kindness, which she had been too blind to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Rossiter," she cried tremulously, "I've been horrid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect&mdash;men are. Votes for
+Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me,
+you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not
+altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He
+usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married
+women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or&mdash;well, the professional
+charmer."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!"</p>
+
+<p>"So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you
+know, dilettantes, non-eligibles&mdash;the bane of all good chaperones.
+'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of
+it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know
+the exact moment when one has attained the maximum&mdash;and to stop there'!
+Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan
+did not join her.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had
+been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling her <i>marron</i>. She
+walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her
+voice had become rather shy.</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," she asked, "did you&mdash;care, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered.
+"How does one know?&mdash;I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I
+didn't want him at all, and sometimes&mdash;I did.&mdash;And now I wish my father
+would <i>kill</i> him!"</p>
+
+<p>The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the
+worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have
+wanted&mdash;to kill my father."</p>
+
+<p>Joan forgot herself in sheer astonishment. "You!" she cried. "But I
+thought it was you who declined to marry him, even after you'd got a
+divorce to do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Rossiter smiled queerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Ned tell you that?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, much embarrassed, explained the Convent impression of Mr. Desmond
+and his broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>The other laughed. "So that's the idea he has allowed to get abroad?
+Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman&mdash;and I suppose it does put him
+in a better light, too&mdash;But unfortunately the facts of the case are
+otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him&mdash;not that he suggested it,
+oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the
+honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me&mdash;So I took up my
+residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable,
+Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?&mdash;" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind
+the scenes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany,
+painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter.
+One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh," said Joan hoarsely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped
+the other's. "Oh, how can you bear to <i>speak</i> to him?"</p>
+
+<p>May Rossiter shrugged. "You don't suppose it lasts, you funny innocent?
+Besides, though he did cost me a few illusions and some suffering and a
+reputation (what's a reputation among friends?), I owe Ned Desmond one
+very good turn. Jim Rossiter's the best husband of my acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned over swiftly and kissed Joan on the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see you're not the only silly little simpleton who learns her
+ropes by tripping on them. Makes you feel better, doesn't it? Of course!
+That's why I told you.... Look here, what's the use of wasting all this
+perfectly good candy? Jane's floors are above suspicion. Let's pick it
+up and take it downstairs and make a Roman holiday, shall we?"</p>
+
+<p>Between them, with some laughter and a very real sense of comradeship,
+they restored Eduard's peace-offering to its basket. Then Joan
+remembered her bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do with it?" she asked, aghast. "If I return it now, it
+will look&mdash;offended, as if I had taken him seriously!"</p>
+
+<p>"Which would never do," Mrs. Rossiter was quick to agree. She examined
+the bracelet with interest. "Sapphires, emeralds, nice little
+diamonds&mdash;dear, dear! And a Chartier setting. Ned must have had it
+rather badly. He never gave <i>me</i> anything so compromising! Keep it, of
+course," she advised cynically. "It's a nice bit of jewelry, and you may
+as well have something decent for a souvenir."</p>
+
+<p>But Joan's hardihood was not equal to that.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then"&mdash;the other's eye sparkled with sudden malice&mdash;"why not give
+it to me for a parting present! Splendid! Fancy his expression when he
+recognizes his <i>gage d'amour</i> glittering on my wrist, of all wrists in
+the world! And, believe me, he shall recognize it&mdash;What ho! Votes for
+Women!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed until she cried.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When Joan said good-by to Longmeadow some days later&mdash;not so soon as to
+give her departure the appearance of flight&mdash;she left trailing clouds of
+glory. The rumor had got about, thanks perhaps to Mrs. Rossiter, that
+the redoubtable Eduard had met his Waterloo at the hands of the Kentucky
+girl, which seemed not to detract from her popularity among Eduard's
+friends, male or female. She became quite legendary in the countryside.</p>
+
+<p>Betty, fully restored to her earlier allegiance, parted from her with
+tears, and Mrs. Desmond made her promise to visit them soon again.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a promise Joan knew she would not have the courage to keep.
+And when she had waved her last gay farewell, and thrown her last kiss
+impartially out of the window to the group who had come into town to see
+her off, she settled back in the train which had brought her with such
+high hopes to her first failure, and said aloud, "Thank goodness that's
+over!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon <i>me</i>&mdash;did you speak?" murmured a young man in the seat in front
+of her, turning round with a start; a wide-eared young man whom Joan
+recognized.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness!" she said in some dismay. "You seem to dog my footsteps, Mr.
+Blair. There's no escaping you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Looks that way, don't it?" he grinned apologetically. "I've been in
+Philadelphia on a big order&mdash;Landed it, too!" he added in irrepressible
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Which is more than I did," sighed Joan; and guessing from her
+expression that a jest was intended, Mr. Blair laughed long and loudly.
+He was always very keen on the scent of a jest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Social Event of the Season Magnificent Affair Given Last
+Evening To Mark The Début into Society of" etc., etc.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And here he was himself, part and parcel of a Galt House Ball! It was
+quite amazing.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>But they did not introduce him to their girls.</p>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or rather sampled, and found not
+altogether satisfactory&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" said Archibald to himself, watching. "Gee! But that takes a
+nerve."</p>
+
+<p>However, life on the whole does take a nerve, as he had long since
+discovered.</p>
+
+<p>He had, he supposed, as good a right to try it as the rest. The engraved
+card of invitation was in his pocket&mdash;nobody had taken it from him at
+the door. His broadcloth tails were as long and as neatly fitting as
+anybody's&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Some boy," he had murmured to himself, in the absence of a less partial
+critic.</p>
+
+<p>So now he tensed the muscles of his jaw, and waited his chance,
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay
+dance-hall in town that could touch it.</p>
+
+<p>Other connoisseurs more experienced than Archibald Blair have looked
+with delight upon a Galt House Ball&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+fact which perhaps accounted for his growing success in the selling end
+of the business.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Archibald wished suddenly that he had sent her a bouquet himself, but
+decided that she might have thought it "fresh."</p>
+
+<p>"Unless I was to send it just 'From a Friend'?" he thought, his eye
+brightening.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>The Major turned and stared, really uncertain as to whether it could be
+himself who was thus addressed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mr. Blair, Dad," explained Joan hurriedly, "who was so nice to me
+on the train; don't you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, young top!" he murmured courteously, "I surrender my
+daughter to your mercies."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness' sake, take <i>hold</i> of 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!"</p>
+
+<p>Archie obediently held her tighter, murmuring, "Pardon <i>me</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>He danced surprisingly well, as if he were really listening to the
+music, Joan thought. She did not trouble to talk to him, therefore.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather more of a pear, don't you think? As to figure?" suggested Joan;
+for the Major's tendency to <i>embonpoint</i> had increased remarkably since
+his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know any girls?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to speak to&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes? I'm a débutante too, you know. And how do you like Society, so
+far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, fine!" he told her. "Better even than I thought it was. Makes the
+movie pictures of it look sort of silly."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will," he assured her, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"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 to <i>meet</i> girls at a thing like this before you
+ask them to dance. I don't know the names of half the men I dance with."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"I&mdash;I wouldn't know just what to call 'em."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her to dance&mdash;she needs it," murmured Joan <i>sotto voce</i> as they
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Joan went off with another partner, chuckling. She felt that scores were
+even.</p>
+
+<p>Blair's face fell at this desertion. "Oh, but say," he called after her,
+"can't I dance with you any more?"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>Archibald flushed and understood. "All right," he said meekly. "I'll
+just call him 'Say,' instead."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>She said, during one of their brief turns together, "You seem to be
+getting on beautifully with that girl I introduced you to."</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Miss Carmichael? She's all to the mustard, isn't she! Asked me to
+come and eat supper with her to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"She did?" exclaimed Joan, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You see I know her brother&mdash;put on gloves with him sometimes at
+the Y. M. C. A. And it seems he's told her about me," explained Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and why wouldn't she, then, I'd like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.)</p>
+
+<p>"Psst! Hey there!" she called.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and indeed why should she?
+A man ought to have known by instinct about those reverential gloves.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Kind o' lonesome?" she said. "Come on in and dance with me."</p>
+
+<p>He turned with a start. His eyes took her in from top to toe, and
+suddenly narrowed. "No, thanks," he said curtly. "What are <i>you</i> doing
+here, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>Effie May drew back. She looked, as Ellen expressed it to herself,
+"flabbergasted."</p>
+
+<p>"Why! Who do you think I am?"</p>
+
+<p>He continued to stare at her with those narrowed, steady eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, and I don't care. It's easy enough to see <i>what</i> you are!
+You'd better go, hadn't you?" suggested Archibald grimly. "This is a
+private affair. Invitation only."</p>
+
+<p>By this time the startled lady had recovered her poise. "You're making a
+mistake, young man," she replied quietly, "This happens to be <i>my</i>
+private affair. I am Mrs. Darcy."</p>
+
+<p>It was his turn to be flabbergasted.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Her mother?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Darcy's step-mother," said Effie May, with some dignity.</p>
+
+<p>She continued to meet his gaze, which did not lower, though he had gone
+quite pale.</p>
+
+<p>"The joke's on me," he muttered at last. "It's I who'd better go, I
+guess. Pardon <i>me</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>She inclined her head without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Archibald Blair."</p>
+
+<p>"He won't want you," said Effie May. "Good night."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen Neal, aghast, watched him turn on his heel and leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Land!" she said to herself. "Land sakes! He's gone and done for himself
+now, the young idjit!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;a sort of broad, odd chap he was,
+with ears? I don't think I've seen him before."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Blair," Joan smiled at the description. "He danced with me so
+much because he didn't know any one else."</p>
+
+<p>"A stranger here? Where does he come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;the slums, I fancy. Ask Ellen Neal. He's a pal of hers.
+But he's a Louisville product, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>Effie May glanced at her casually, "Didn't you like him, dearie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well enough. Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the other, "I did. He's honest, and he stands up so
+straight&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"But his ears, Effie May!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she agreed, "I will. What's dangerous about a bulging eye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stoopidity, girlie. Just plain bone-headedness. And if there's anything
+in the world more dangerous than that, I don't know it!&mdash;Let's ask your
+eary young man again to something, shall we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to think he's <i>your</i> eary young man!" smiled Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she almost forgot herself and liked her step-mother. There was
+something so human about the woman....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you expect&mdash;typewriting?" commented Ellen, a little tartly.
+She was always tart when pleased.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or thirty-five&mdash;or
+sixty-five&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>She chuckled over this quite affectionately. "He's funny," she thought,
+"but he's really a dear!"</p>
+
+<p>Archibald was very much surprised when she thanked him for the roses,
+and deeply relieved that she did not seem to think him "fresh."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you guess it was me?" he wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I haven't so many 'friends' whom it might have been."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You?</i>"&mdash;His incredulity was flattering.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>He felt that at any moment a bouncer might discover him, and walk up to
+murmur sinisterly in his ear, "Out this way!"</p>
+
+<p>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 little <i>distrait</i>, as if she were an older woman
+listening to children.</p>
+
+<p>"Business of being a society girl," he commented once, half to himself.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a smiling glance. "Yes," she said, "it has a lingo like any
+other trade."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> don't speak it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think perhaps it's not my trade."</p>
+
+<p>He asked, greatly daring, "What is, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Joan, "yet."</p>
+
+<p>Just then a rather dissipated-looking boy with his hat on the back of
+his head passed them, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Blair!" he said, lifting his hat to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Carmichael!" Archie greeted him.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, gee!" exclaimed Archie, remorsefully, "I forgot it; clean as a
+whistle!"</p>
+
+<p>"Better come and grovel, then," grinned the other, and passed on.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I forgot," said Archie simply. He certainly could not explain that
+the cause of his forgetfulness was the <i>contretemps</i> of having requested
+his hostess under a misapprehension to leave her own entertainment!</p>
+
+<p>Joan chuckled. "Well! I'm certainly glad I didn't ask you to have supper
+with me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have forgotten that," said Archibald.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed meekly. With quite a proprietary interest, she watched his
+awkward entry into the enemy's country, his introduction to Carmichael
+<i>père</i> and Carmichael <i>mère</i>, a lady who looked on life (the Darcys
+included) through a rather invidious lorgnon. This lorgnon trained
+itself on Archibald at close range.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Mr. Blair!" thought Joan.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The last ring of horses was showing when he finally returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Joan rallied him. "I thought you'd gone over to the enemy for
+good!"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;" He
+stopped abruptly. He had almost finished the quotation <i>verbatim</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed. "I trust you were able to give her a good account of us!"
+she remarked haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>Archie answered in all innocence. "I told her Mrs. Darcy was your
+step-mother."</p>
+
+<p>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!...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes 'm! yes 'm, I certainly will," he replied to both these
+hints&mdash;stiffly, because it was the only way he could manage to speak to
+this lady. But his ears were quite pink with pleasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't <i>wish</i> to 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, lots of things," said the girl with impatient vagueness. "They can
+be teachers or librarians, or&mdash;stenographers, or journalists&mdash;something
+useful, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"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'&mdash;Useful! Absurd!"</p>
+
+<p>(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.)</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dad, you know what I mean!" she said rather desperately. "I simply
+want to be independent."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And without a penny I can call my own!" blurted out Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"As to that," he remarked with a shrug of distaste, "you have merely to
+come to your father, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Joan bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as you
+were saying only last night, Dickie."</p>
+
+<p>"Was I?'" murmured the Major. "Yes, yes, so I was! An allowance of&mdash;How
+much did I say, my darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two hundred dollars a month," prompted his darling. "Do you think you
+could manage on that, Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl lifted shamed eyes to her step-mother. She could not bear to
+look at her father, puffing himself out with conscious pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she said in a low voice. "I'll be a débutante since you
+wish it&mdash;I'll spend the money and wear the clothes you provide, and eat
+the food you give me&mdash;but understand me! I'm only doing it because I
+have no choice."</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly turned and ran out of the room. The Major stared after her,
+blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;" she seated
+herself upon his knee, as was her cosy custom when opportunity
+offered&mdash;"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&mdash;it's worth a lot of money. Is he rich?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's a very successful writer, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Hmm! Old? <i>Too</i> old, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"For what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, for Joan, old duckie."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Before she married you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, afterwards. She picked him up somewhere when Joan was a baby."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oho!</i>" 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why lame?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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
+never <i>did</i> go with any Jew!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;You see?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling, he has never been <i>in</i> the 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Um-m-m!" responded the bride, yielding without undue reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Whenever Joan went to see them&mdash;which was rather often nowadays, for her
+late experience had had the not unusual effect of softening her
+comprehension, while it hardened her surfaces&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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'&mdash;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&mdash;" She left her remark
+unfinished, a conversational characteristic of all the Darcy ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense, Genie!" blushed her sister. "I'm sure you didn't need
+clothes any more than I did, with all your beautiful hair."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and it was one of the Darcys' undoubted
+charms&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up, Susy?" she asked the languid colored slattern who let her
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"De ladies is gittin' ready fo' de ball, I'specks, Miss Joan, fittin' on
+dey new dresses."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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 of <i>vertu</i> in 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;if indeed it ever were
+thoroughly swept and dusted.</p>
+
+<p>She poked her head around a door that stood ajar on the third floor:
+"May I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!&mdash;or at least have announced
+you, so that you would not have caught us like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Susy tried to shoo me into the parlor, but I wouldn't be
+shooed; and as for 'announcing' me&mdash;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.&mdash;My word, Cousin Euphie, how grand you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;in the chest, you know. But
+really, the waist!&mdash;There simply isn't any, Joan! What would you
+suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>"A yoke," said the girl gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I said!" twittered Miss Iphigenia. "Yokes <i>are</i> being worn,
+or I'm certain Joan wouldn't have suggested it. A guimpe of black net
+perhaps&mdash;tucked, would you say, Joan dear!&mdash;and long wrinkled sleeves of
+the same. Which would do away with the necessity for long gloves,
+girls!"</p>
+
+<p>This happy thought was greeted with acclaim. "How clever of you, Genie!
+We can <i>all</i> have guimpes and long sleeves? You see, three pairs of long
+white gloves&mdash;" they explained to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>They showed her the other dresses eagerly; an amber-colored satin&mdash;"With
+slippers to match, my dear!"&mdash;and one of old-rose brocade which Miss
+Virginia almost kissed in her affection for it.</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes think if I could have had a dress like this earlier&mdash;" 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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, wasn't it at the Governor's Inauguration, sister?" interposed Miss
+Euphemia.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 been <i>too</i> sweet 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 is
+<i>quite</i> enough. 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,"&mdash;it was Miss
+Euphemia speaking at the moment, quite unaware of any naïvété in the
+sequence of her remarks,&mdash;"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" murmured Joan, "if the poor would enjoy them?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Susy, say! It would never do!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not, because she would certainly burst with joy. But think,"
+mused Joan, "what an enviable death!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," the girl added hastily. "Susie's not going to get these
+magnificent costumes, anyway!&mdash;and I am so glad you are coming to my
+ball, dears. We'll be a whole family of débutantes!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>At school she had shown no particular aptitude that would help her
+now&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She liked:</p>
+
+<p>1. Books. On any subject whatever, provided they did not try to teach
+anything and came up to her rather exacting standards of style.</p>
+
+<p>2. Dancing&mdash;if people kept in step with the music and did not hold her
+too close.</p>
+
+<p>3. Out-of-doors, especially when the wind was blowing.</p>
+
+<p>4. Music, if there was no one around to discuss it or analyse it.</p>
+
+<p>5. Children, without their families.</p>
+
+<p>6. Almost any sort of a dog, particularly if it did not seem to belong
+to anybody. Strays regarded her as their own.</p>
+
+<p>She disliked (and here there were no qualifications. It was never hard
+for Joan to say what she disliked!):</p>
+
+<p>1. Debt.</p>
+
+<p>2. Effusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>3. Humility.</p>
+
+<p>4. Vulgarity&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Except, of course, Mr. Nikolai: and he did not count.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>("What," wondered bewildered Joan, "is the man talking about? It sounds
+like a medical almanac!")</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"By this time you will be recuperating from your first love-attack.
+Severe, doubtless, but so much the better. More phagocytes!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sincerely hoped that enough of the phagocytes had been released by
+the innoculation to render her immune from further attack forever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>There began to appear, even among the freshest of the débutantes, an
+expression described by Joan to her friend Nikolai as the Bridge
+Face&mdash;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.)</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I never was intended for a horseback rider," she admitted with
+a sigh. "No, I'm not exactly scared, dearie&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>She exhibited to the puzzled Joan certain injuries to her person which
+made her efforts at equestrianism seem nothing short of heroic.</p>
+
+<p>"But why not go without bones in front, as I do?"</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan promised&mdash;of which promise more anon.</p>
+
+<p>She herself shortly became the riding-master's best pupil, a fact in
+which her father took great pride.</p>
+
+<p>"A matter of inheritance, doubtless," he said modestly. "As you know,
+Dollykins, I am a believer in the power of inheritance."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;such was his
+intimation&mdash;bred for her use by a horse-raising cousin in the heart of
+the Bluegrass.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Huccom I knows how to do wif <i>hawses</i>?" he repeated, scratching his
+head. "Laws, Miss Joan, <i>I</i> dunno! Huccum I knows how to chaw terbacca,
+or to w'istle thoo my teef? Reck'n I was jes' natchelly bo'n dat-away."</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Major, gimme two-bits?" one of them would suggest tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want two-bits for, you infernal beggar?"</p>
+
+<p>"To buy me a drink with, please, suh. My th'oat's dusty."</p>
+
+<p>"A damn good reason for a damn impudent request," Richard Darcy would
+grumble, his hand going into his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" cried the Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Gimme hit when hit's done worn out, den?"</p>
+
+<p>"D'you think I've nothing better to do than watch my clothes for signs
+of wear so that I may present them to <i>you</i>, you ugly rascal? I will
+not!"</p>
+
+<p>But some days later Joan recognized on the negro's neck the tie in
+question, which appeared to have worn out with unprecedented rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Niggers are the curse of the South," he announced. "Always have been
+and always will be."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.&mdash;Perhaps Louisville, with a
+reputation to sustain, is wise to give her unknown Cinderellas the
+benefit of the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoops, my dear! I've got 'em locoed," said grateful Archie to himself;
+referring presumably to the Fates.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>He liked the president, too&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Moore presently mentioned in the course of conversation that Smith,
+the sales manager of the varnish department, was about to leave the
+firm.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"He goes over to the Lidden people, who've offered him more money."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, but&mdash;He's been with us since he was a boy!"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>It came. "How would you like to take charge of that end yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Archie was speechless. He, as sales manager!&mdash;He, one of
+the youngest men in the firm, put over the head of the good old boys who
+had taught him the business!&mdash;Very red as to the ears, he stammered
+something about lack of experience.</p>
+
+<p>"You've had a good deal of experience, Blair," said Mr. Moore. "You were
+a salesman, and a successful one, at the age of&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"He needn't!" cried Archie hotly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'll take the job?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a mice!" he murmured cryptically at last; but Mr. Moore appeared
+to understand him....</p>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p>"A salary <i>and</i> commissions&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Archibald, behave! Me, a respectable spinster woman&mdash;" she panted.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It means better wages, don't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wages, woman? A salary <i>and</i> commissions! Ha!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.)</p>
+
+<p>Archie's eye glinted. "The club!&mdash;why not? I hadn't thought of that."
+But then he grinned, "I can see 'em hailing me&mdash;'Yere's yer paper,
+sir!&mdash;yere's yer five o'clock edition! All about de mysterious moider on
+de Island!'&mdash;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&mdash;" he shook his
+head. "Why, it's home to me. I reckon I'll be here till the roof falls
+in&mdash;which it's likely to do at any moment in a favorable breeze."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A book of verses underneath the roof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cup of coffee and an egg in troof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Mrs. Neal to cook it up for us&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, attic life were Paradise enoof!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He observed that the table was set for two, quite magnificently, with a
+celery glass containing five red carnations in its center.</p>
+
+<p>"Floral decorations! A genuine entertainment&mdash;and I not asked! Who, who
+is the lucky fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on with your impidence. 'Tain't a fellow. It's&mdash;Never you mind who
+it is! And you needn't think you're going to be discovered here by
+accident-like, either!"&mdash;She was pushing him toward the door as she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Light dawned upon Archie. "Mrs. Neal! Not <i>her</i>?" 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is," replied Ellen, who needed no niceties of grammar to
+realize the identity of Archibald's "her." "So now will you hurry?"</p>
+
+<p>He hurried; but once in the hall he paused in the grip of a daring idea.
+Success had rather gone to his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Say! <i>Who's going to see her home?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"They <i>are</i> dark streets," he said earnestly. "Very dark streets!
+Murders happen in them, frequently. Pickpockets; rats!&mdash;Really, Mrs.
+Neal, two women alone would hardly be safe in them."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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!&mdash;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&mdash;well,
+to my merely&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Making a fool of yourself? Go as far's you like!" interrupted Ellen
+tartly, closing her door in his face.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well met, Mr. Blair! I wonder whether you have anything very important
+to do? If not, <i>would</i> you be good enough to take me home? Ellen really
+ought not to go out in the night air with her rheumatism."</p>
+
+<p>"Dee&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Again Joan came, more or less, to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Blair," she suggested gently, "if you don't mind I'd rather not be
+helped along quite so much. My elbow, you know!&mdash;I sha'n't stumble, I
+think. The sidewalks seem quite smooth."</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew his hand as if it had been stung.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon <i>me</i>!" he gasped. "I didn't mean&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Votes for Women?" he suggested in all respect.</p>
+
+<p>Joan dimpled, thinking suddenly of Mrs. Rossiter. "Well, something like
+that. Elbows for women, anyway!" she murmured nonsensically.</p>
+
+<p>Again the conversation languished, being confined on Archie's part
+entirely to Yea, yea and Nay, nay.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Sales-manager!&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Joan, walking more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;they're just as good as tables&mdash;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!'"&mdash;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&mdash;well, as if I weren't exactly alone in it."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you born there?" she asked craftily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. No, I don't know just where I was born. On the road, I reckon.
+You see my mother was an actress&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But despite her lagging feet they were by this time at the Darcy door,
+which was promptly opened by an attentive parlor maid.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry I can't ask you in," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed!&mdash;I didn't expect that," answered humble Archie.</p>
+
+<p>Joan frowned. It may be recalled that humility was one of her dislikes.</p>
+
+<p>"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"&mdash;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 and <i>en masse</i> on
+girls with any pretensions to popularity.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Archie.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," he muttered, turning away from that closed door, "I'm
+about as well fitted for society as Balaam's ass!"</p>
+
+<p>An opinion in which at the moment Miss Darcy would have thoroughly
+concurred.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Effie May was as persistent in her fancies as in other matters.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know? Probably towing some lady-typist by her elbow to a
+church social," replied Joan, yawning.</p>
+
+<p>"You may be sure it's a <i>lady</i> typist, then, and not the other sort,"
+commented her step-mother. "I like that boy!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember that young chap we had at the Horse show one night, whom
+Joan met on the train? Name of Blair?"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.&mdash;Johnny Carmichael and that lot&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens!" murmured Joan. "Those infantile front teeth?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he win?" asked Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Win?&mdash;against a professional? Lord, child, he was doin' well to stand
+up to him one round, let alone three! It was Dan McCabe, Dick."</p>
+
+<p>"McCabe? You don't say," repeated the Major, highly interested. "Blair
+must be pretty good, then!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>She had in mind this growing <i>embonpoint</i> when she spoke of Archibald's
+accomplishment&mdash;as well as several other matters, being a woman who
+thought nothing of killing two and even three birds with one stone.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not get him to come up here? Fix up a sort of gymnasium in the
+attic?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The Major's eye kindled a little. He was always responsive to any belief
+in himself. "You think so, Dollykins? Well, possibly, possibly&mdash;But you
+speak as if Blair were to be had for the asking, my love!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think he is," remarked Effie May with a twinkle at her
+step-daughter. "Depends upon who does the asking&mdash;What do you say,
+Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would have to be done in words of one syllable," murmured the girl
+unkindly, "but I'll try."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;(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.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, Major! I'm after your nose this time," he would smile. "Guard
+yourself. Here's where I get it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Damned if you do!" the other would cry, feinting desperately, but
+without avail. Archie always got it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You're playing off on me, damn your young hide!" he would pant. "You
+wait&mdash;I'll show you yet, I'll show you yet!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in which the victim joined with a will.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully!" he cried. "That was a sockdollager! Dare you to do it again,
+Major! Doubledare you!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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
+from <i>hors d'&oelig;uvre</i> to <i>crème de menthe</i> without 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&mdash;well, Archibald was a young man quite accustomed to taking
+care of himself.</p>
+
+<p>He would have faced greater perils than he did for the privilege of
+spending a glorious hour under the same roof with Miss Darcy&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"At school I had too many chums, and here I haven't any," she
+complained. "I really don't know why!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe they're sort of jealous," was his suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Archie! You're getting positively subtle with your compliments,"
+she laughed. "No, it can't be that. I'm no 'man's woman!'&mdash;I'm done with
+that forever! They're welcome to every beau in town for all of me, and I
+<i>never</i> flirt with other people's property. I'm really the ideal
+companion nowadays&mdash;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&mdash;that's all! Somehow we don't seem to be
+playing the same game."</p>
+
+<p>"Ish ga bibble," murmured Archie, consolingly if cryptically. "What do
+<i>you</i> care, 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."</p>
+
+<p>"So you think," said Joan, amused, "it's the sort that's wrong, not me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing wrong with <i>you</i>!" he declared, with a comforting finality.</p>
+
+<p>Being a person with whom sympathy was always active rather than passive,
+however, he took her case earnestly under consideration; with rather
+surprising results.</p>
+
+<p>Some days later&mdash;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&mdash;Joan was called to the telephone to speak to no less a
+personage than Miss Emily Carmichael.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan agreed that it would have been.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't we make up for lost time at once&mdash;this morning, for
+instance? Shall I come by for you at eleven o'clock? Very well."</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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).</p>
+
+<p>"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's <i>horrid</i>
+to have only one horse in the stables!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we are," sighed the other. "Absolutely! Why, do you know, I've
+never been to Europe in my life?"</p>
+
+<p>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!&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Joan hastily abandoned comparisons.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've only one horse, what does your groom ride?" she asked, having
+been rather impressed by the mention of a groom.</p>
+
+<p>"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 never <i>meant</i> to
+gallop?'"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into
+her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "<i>I</i> shouldn't bother with a
+groom at all," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;her determination to earn her own living.</p>
+
+<p>The other girl listened with sympathy, too well-bred to ask questions,
+but quick to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll simply have to choose the sort of husband that hasn't a humble
+lot," Joan suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;It isn't what one dreams of! Mere
+<i>pis aller</i>.... And I don't see how the ballot's going to help, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And we haven't even got the boot-straps!" laughed the other,
+ruefully....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Horses," replied the Major sententiously, "are the only aristocrats
+left in the modern world."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You say," murmured somebody, "that Stefan Nikolai told you that? You
+know him, then, Miss Darcy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Very well indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly wonderful!" sighed the Jabberwocks.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," explained Emily, "we've been studying him all winter. Oh, if
+we'd only known about you earlier!"</p>
+
+<p>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.)</p>
+
+<p>"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.)</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes&mdash;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&mdash;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.&mdash;He was the son of a rabbi, though."</p>
+
+<p>"They always are," murmured Emily <i>en passant</i>. "Rabbis always seem to
+have such large families. Rabbis and rabbits&mdash;did you ever notice?"</p>
+
+<p>The Jabberwocks sprung upon her tooth and nail. "Don't be coarse!" "Yes,
+Em, it's really too bad of you!&mdash;you're always spoiling things with your
+sarcasm." "Do go on, Miss Darcy!&mdash;It's so romantic."</p>
+
+<p>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!&mdash;so clever, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I sometimes wish I were a Jew myself."</p>
+
+<p>They stared at her in utter astonishment. "Wish you were a Jew? Why,
+Miss Darcy! Haven't you any prejudice against them at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prejudice&mdash;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. "That
+<i>would</i> be 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&mdash;the oily sort. And Christians too&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>The Jabberwocks were enchanted.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't mind if it's quite personal? They sometimes are."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better!..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>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!&mdash;By the way, what color have your eyes become? Do
+they still match my aquamarine, or must it be gray sapphires
+the next time?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>("Dear me," murmured Joan, "perhaps I'd better skip!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word!" breathed the Jabberwocks, sitting forward.)</p>
+
+<p>She read manfully on, wondering what had come over her friend to make
+him so particularly&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, no! Quite old. Forty or fifty, or thereabouts. An uncle-ish
+sort of person."</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness," murmured somebody. "Fancy having an uncle like that!..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>(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.)</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;<i>you</i> know! It's only lately that we ordinary folk
+have concerned ourselves with&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not half as pathetic as trying to pursue it alone," said Joan, who
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, it's distinctly smart nowadays to read and have opinions and
+know something, even in our most frivolous circles&mdash;thank heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Business of being a high-brow,' as Archie Blair would say," smiled
+Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Archie Blair! Isn't he absurd?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," said Emily Carmichael unexpectedly. "But that doesn't keep
+him from being funny!&mdash;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&mdash;he positively teases her, and she likes it! The big
+house and that sort of thing wouldn't impress him&mdash;he's not enough of a
+snob. And yet he will not come to see me. Queer, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"So you've been having him to dinner?" she murmured. "He never told me
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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!&mdash;one of the things that made me
+want to know you better."</p>
+
+<p>Joan waived this compliment. One would suppose him Emily's discovery
+instead of her own!</p>
+
+<p>"How did your brother happen to know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, boys always know each other&mdash;they're so much more democratic than
+girls. Horrid little snips we used to be, remember?&mdash;turning up our
+noses at any other children who didn't go to dancing school?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not go to dancing school myself," remarked Joan quietly. "My
+mother taught me."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Odd that he didn't side with the Alley Gang, wasn't it?" commented
+Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't you see?&mdash;the Av'noo Kids were getting the worst of it.
+That's Archie!..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Major Darcy was equally pleased with this compliment, which he
+characteristically accepted for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very gratifying to have old friends take one's child to their
+hearts in this fashion&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;charming, charming! Though a trifle stiff for my fancy. A
+<i>little</i> more suavity of manner. She was a Dillingham, you know. Her
+father represented us at one time at the Court of St. James."</p>
+
+<p>"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'&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Something both wistful and generous in this speech touched the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;" she
+hesitated&mdash;"it isn't that there's any <i>reason</i> for her not to call. Of
+course everybody knows who your father is, and he's perfectly
+delightful, too! It's just&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," said Joan quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Emily put an arm around her. "My dear, I hope you do&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;not exterminated exactly,
+but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mixed?" suggested Joan. "I remember you called me 'mixed' the first
+time you deigned to notice me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not the first time&mdash;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.&mdash;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 simply <i>had</i> to snub you somehow!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" gasped Joan. "That is exactly the way I felt about you!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't!" said Joan rather shyly, kissing her in return....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She began at once, "Why and whence the armadillo, Archie? You sounded
+like a University Extension lecture!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I?" he grinned. "Was it all right? There were some things I forgot
+to tell 'em. About the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind!" said Joan hastily. "What I want to know is how you came by
+the armadillo, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm taking a correspondence course," he confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"In&mdash;in armadillos?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 things <i>you</i>
+like, you know&mdash;not learned, exactly, but sort of high-brow.&mdash;Books and
+all.&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stupendous!" murmured Joan. "But, Archie, suppose you meet a
+fellow-student at some&mdash;er, social gathering who happens to be pursuing
+the same line of cultivation? Mightn't that be rather embarrassing?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She said softly, "Keep on with your correspondence course by all
+means!&mdash;only, Archie, don't talk about it to other people, will you?
+They might not understand."</p>
+
+<p>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.&mdash;Except you. I guess
+you know, anyway!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;a subject discussed frequently, if not very fruitfully, by
+her friends the Jabberwocks, who preached rather more radically than
+they practiced.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+really <i>needed</i> it." (Which was likewise the Jabberwockian attitude
+toward suffrage.)</p>
+
+<p>Joan, however, not only believed in economic independence, but needed
+it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I often think that if dear papa had been able to allow <i>us</i> to be less
+careful&mdash;"; sighed Miss Virginia. "But of course in our day a silk
+stocking was a silk stocking."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"With age?" asked Joan, rather startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, dear. With dye."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the cowards!"</p>
+
+<p>The Darcy ladies exchanged puzzled glances.</p>
+
+<p>"Cowards&mdash;stockings?" repeated Miss Iphigenia. "I'm afraid I don't quite
+see the connection&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any&mdash;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....</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;which Joan's step-mother would have to provide. It put these
+professions out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a state of affairs which gave Major Darcy acute distress.</p>
+
+<p>"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 on <i>my</i> wife and daughter, at least."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 her <i>metier</i> was not good works.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;heads of
+departments, buyers, chief milliners, etc.,&mdash;they are of course more
+than economically independent. But in the meanwhile....</p>
+
+<p>It was the meanwhile that troubled Joan. When she broke with her family,
+she intended to do so with a magnificent completeness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Please write me by return mail," (she commanded), "which you think
+would offer me the most advantageous career, the stage or journalism."</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed on a post-card marked Christiania (his postmarks were
+frequently the only indication of his whereabouts):</p>
+
+<p>"I should suggest the usual course in matrimony as a preliminary to any
+career."</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;particularly
+in Kentucky, and in Springtime.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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).</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was in April that Archie Blair conceived the happy idea of purchasing
+an automobile, thus combining business with pleasure most practically; a
+modest secondhand affair of three good cylinders and one that missed,
+but it shone (Archibald being in the paint and varnish business) with a
+glossiness that advertised its owner afar off. And like the bicycle in
+the song, it was "built for two."</p>
+
+<p>Archibald had no wish to intrude; still, an automobile is an automobile,
+and it seemed to him that on a fine Spring evening almost any young lady
+might like to ride in one, even if accustomed to limousines.</p>
+
+<p>Joan first became aware of this acquisition one fine day when it
+appeared and reappeared and once again appeared passing the window where
+she sat reading. Three times, like Hector about the walls of Troy, it
+circled the block, smelling of its new paint and complaining loudly of
+its missing cylinder; and at last Joan, puzzled by this persistence,
+thought to glance at its driver. Clutching the wheel in a death grapple,
+taking his eye from the traffic only long enough for a hopeful glance at
+the house front as he passed, she recognized her friend in all the proud
+modesty of ownership.</p>
+
+<p>Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take
+a walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk&mdash;or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!)
+"Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!&mdash;I was just hoping I'd run
+across you somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I
+will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily,
+and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.</p>
+
+<p>"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the
+temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for,
+and the One and Only beside him on its seat&mdash;who can blame the man?)
+"Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I
+don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I
+can't take my eye off the road yet&mdash;" (this as a family party narrowly
+escaped annihilation)&mdash;"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my
+shoulder?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't mind your talking any way at all&mdash;so long as it's not about
+armadillos."</p>
+
+<p>Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"</p>
+
+<p>But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings.
+People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?&mdash;Say, what
+if we go out in the real country somewhere!&mdash;not parks, where there's
+always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I
+can step on her tail and let her rip&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an
+abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a
+gipsy pateran.</p>
+
+<p>Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution,
+and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the
+neigh of startled colts in the fields as they passed, the rush of the
+golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little
+engine.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two&mdash;" chanted Archie with a proud eye
+on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful
+hands&mdash;as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did
+its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust
+in their faces, trees and meadows passing in long green streaks, she got
+quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was
+a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her
+companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down.</p>
+
+<p>He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be
+turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me
+how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air.
+"Whenever you like!"</p>
+
+<p>Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Ph&oelig;bus
+driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one
+ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend
+Lizzie, with a silver dollar.</p>
+
+<p>But that night as he lay in bed, with an April rain making music on the
+roof above him, he told himself soberly that he must be careful. There
+had been moments to-day, especially with her hair blowing across his
+face, when a fellow almost forgot!... He conjured himself by all his
+gods to be a wise little ostrich and keep his head well tucked into the
+sand.</p>
+
+<p>And Joan, listening to the same soft rain, so full of suggestion and
+race memories and the call of the year, also reminded herself that she
+would have to be careful. She thought of his humble, adoring, happy
+eyes, and her heart smote her. This one was not quite as other men. To
+hurt an Archibald was a trifle beneath one's dignity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The career of Lizzie (whose surname may perhaps be guessed by the
+intelligent reader) was short, and her end untimely; but even so she
+served her part in the inscrutable purposes of Fate.</p>
+
+<p>It came about in this wise.</p>
+
+<p>Archibald had formed quite a habit of calling for his lady, not only on
+fine afternoons after five, but sometimes in the balmy spring nights
+after dinner, when all the world meandered two by two, occupying the
+benches in the little park opposite Joan's house, and filling the roads
+with a streaming procession of motors and traps and buggies, of anything
+that went on wheels; even perambulators.</p>
+
+<p>Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering
+community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like
+any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau&mdash;particularly when it cost no
+effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the
+rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.</p>
+
+<p>Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance;
+dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at
+least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter brasswork than hers. If
+the chariot was not altogether worthy of the lady, it was through no
+fault of Archie's. Lizzie, like her owner, strove to please.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon
+providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her
+specialty.&mdash;"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and
+ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little
+ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was
+evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and
+abetting him.</p>
+
+<p>But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not
+enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions.
+All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company,
+for as long as she was willing to grant it.</p>
+
+<p>His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would
+come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a
+saddle-horse, or a coach and four&mdash;at any rate with something more
+suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and
+if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the
+glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if
+not an opportunist.</p>
+
+<p>So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew
+into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even
+when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side
+of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the
+wilderness&mdash;a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than
+Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however:
+until the day that marked the passing of Lizzie.</p>
+
+<p>They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald
+driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they
+deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have
+been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less
+careful than usual.</p>
+
+<p>It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily
+panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second
+track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze
+full into the headlight of an approaching passenger train. He had not
+enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop
+where he was.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into
+the track just ahead of the rushing engine.</p>
+
+<p>Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a
+frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out
+shriek after shriek.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute
+I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."</p>
+
+<p>He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at
+thirty, forty, fifty&mdash;with a pop a tire blew out.</p>
+
+<p>"Get that door open," he shouted at Joan, above the hissing steam.
+"Don't jump till I say the word. Trying to make a flat place. You hear?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded. There were deep gullies on either side. She glanced over
+her shoulder. The engine seemed almost on top of them&mdash;But Archie kept
+his eye on his mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't make it," he said suddenly. "All ready? Now! Jump!"</p>
+
+<p>To the after mortification of her entire life, Joan could not move. She
+understood the necessity, her head was quite clear and calm, but her
+limbs refused her bidding.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant he had seized her, tossed her out like a bundle, she
+was falling&mdash;falling....</p>
+
+<p>There came a crash, the splintering of glass and iron.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Long after she was able to, Joan dared not open her eyes. She fought
+back the coming of consciousness, tried not to think.</p>
+
+<p>She was on a moving something&mdash;a wagon perhaps, or a train. There was
+murmuring of voices near her. She strained her ears. The voices were
+strange.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to pray, but could not remember God's name.</p>
+
+<p>She was lying on some sort of lounge&mdash;a leather lounge. She lifted her
+lids very, very slowly. She was in the smoking-compartment of a
+train&mdash;alone! Where was he? She tried wildly to sit up&mdash;to call out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And then something moved beside her on the edge of the couch. It was a
+head, a bowed, curly head which she recognized and which belonged to a
+figure that knelt beside her in an attitude of utter despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Archie, Archie!" she whimpered. "Then you <i>aren't</i> killed!"</p>
+
+<p>The head jerked up. The next instant she was in his arms, her face
+against his. She was being kissed and kissed again&mdash;eyes, lips, cheeks,
+hair&mdash;whatever he could reach. She could not stop him. She did not try
+to stop him. Indeed there was something consoling, comforting in those
+frantic kisses, all wet with tears, and fiercely tender with the passion
+of one who has brought his treasure single-handed out of the jaws of
+death.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! My God! My God!" said Archibald; and nothing else.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster
+about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed
+with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him
+amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He
+stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale,
+laughing face among the pillows&mdash;that face with which he had taken such
+amazing liberties.</p>
+
+<p>Joan in a <i>peignoir</i>, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder,
+looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the
+train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet
+his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she
+lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his
+emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched
+his hands hard.</p>
+
+<p>This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered
+composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had
+steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the
+thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had passed.</p>
+
+<p>"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong
+enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated,
+looking everywhere but at Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't it <i>terrible</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous,"
+perhaps&mdash;but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at
+all?"</p>
+
+<p>He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."</p>
+
+<p>"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful
+anyway, for the new machine."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you&mdash;you can't afford
+another?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I guess the railroad company'd help to buy me another if I wanted
+it&mdash;the engineer didn't signal for that crossing. But&mdash;I don't. You
+see," he murmured, looking down, "there were&mdash;well, there were sort of
+associations with Lizzie."</p>
+
+<p>Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I
+do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to
+happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.&mdash;I'm sorry,
+Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh,
+what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is
+what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of
+all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a
+woman than that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think, and so does my father, that you took wonderfully good care of
+me! If it hadn't been for your nerve, your quickness.... Ugh!" she
+shuddered. "Dad says that not one man out of a thousand would have seen
+what to do in time to do it. In fact, he's waiting in the library to
+make you a speech before you go. Eloquence-with-gestures. Do you know, I
+never realized before that in some ways man is really woman's superior?
+You've got yourselves better in hand, your muscles do what you tell them
+to. It was a good lesson for me." She smiled up at him. His miserable
+eyes touched her, and she held out her hand. "Why, Archie! what makes
+you look so ashamed?"</p>
+
+<p>He ignored that friendly hand. "I'm thinking that if your father knew
+<i>all</i> I'd done," he muttered, "he'd do something more to me than make a
+speech. Eloquence-with-gestures, all right! Gestures of the foot."</p>
+
+<p>Joan decided to take the bull by the horns. "You mean when I came to,
+and you&mdash;kissed me? Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely. ("There!
+Now the tooth is out," she thought.)</p>
+
+<p>"Because I was a damn fool," he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's lips twitched despite herself. "Really, you're not very
+complimentary!"</p>
+
+<p>But Archibald was beyond considerations of mere politeness. "Because I
+hadn't the decent horse-gumption to keep my feelings to myself! Had to
+go spilling 'em all over the place, insulting you with 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. "You care for me, then?" prompted Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Archie grinned, miserably. "Well, what do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you do."</p>
+
+<p>"You're dead right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Another silence followed this admission, and then he rose to go. "I
+guess that'll be about all from me!&mdash;Only I want you to know, Miss
+Darcy, I&mdash;I never meant to do such a thing&mdash;I never knew I had it in me!
+Good Lord! When I saw you all crumpled up there in that gully, not
+moving at all, even when the train-gang came to pick you up&mdash;When I knew
+that I had done it, I&mdash;! And then you opened your eyes and looked at
+me.... Oh, hell, what's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned blindly toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>She had to catch at his coat-tails to stop him. "Archie! Wait a
+minute.&mdash;I'm going to make you a speech myself. In the first place,
+Archibald Blair, your sort of 'feelings' wouldn't insult anybody. They
+couldn't! I'm proud to have you care for me, and I'd be glad, too, if
+only I could&mdash;But it's not as if you were asking anything in return, is
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me?&mdash;<i>asking</i>? Good Lord, I'm not such a mutt as that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Some day you will be 'asking,' Archie dear&mdash;a worthier girl than I am,
+I know&mdash;and she won't think you a mutt at all!"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "No, Miss Darcy. You've sort of spoiled ordinary
+girls for me."</p>
+
+<p>She cried honestly, "I hope not! Oh, I do hope not! Because I was going
+to beg you to stay friends with me&mdash;I need friends. And I <i>can't</i> keep
+you if you're going to go on feeling that way!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you can," said Archie, his eyes lighting. "Just try me and see!
+I'll make one of the best little old pals you ever saw, if you'll just
+forgive the fool way I acted. Now that the steam's sort of blown off,
+we&mdash;we understand each other."</p>
+
+<p>"You're certain that we <i>do</i> understand each other?" Her gaze met his
+squarely. "You're not going to expect things that can't ever be?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am," said Archie.</p>
+
+<p>Tears suddenly came into her eyes. There was a quality in this faithful,
+doglike devotion that made her feel ashamed. It deserved response; it
+deserved something better than mere affectionate gratitude. But that was
+all she found herself able to give.</p>
+
+<p>With a demonstrativeness rarer than he guessed, she caught his big hand
+in both of hers and held it for a moment to her cheek. When she let it
+go there was a tear on the back of it; which Archie, gazing at
+wonderingly, suddenly lifted to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>It was in acts like this, little untaught gestures of pure reverence,
+that the boy belied his slang and his big ears and his general
+clumsiness, and harked back to the age of chivalry, when a gentleman was
+not ashamed to dedicate himself to the service of his lady, and be her
+very perfect knight....</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone, Effie May wandered into Joan's room with a slight air
+of expectancy about her which the girl was too preoccupied to notice.</p>
+
+<p>"You're lookin' sort of white about the gills, dearie," she remarked.
+"Does the shoulder pain you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But something else does, and I don't know just what. Oh, Effie May,
+what's the matter with me, anyway?" she burst out. "Sometimes I think
+I'm not a human person at all, but just a big inflated Ego, floating
+around like an observation balloon, taking notes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, is that so?" murmured her step-mother, who had her doubts
+as to what an Ego might be. "I expect what you need for that floaty
+feeling, dearie, is a good dose of calomel&mdash;" and she hurried away to
+prepare it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>There is a certain period of the year when all its widely scattered
+children home to Kentucky as surely as bluebirds home to the hollow
+stumps in March. It is the season of the May race meet.</p>
+
+<p>All her life Joan had heard of the Kentucky Derby, and she looked
+forward to it with almost as much eagerness as her father. Derby Day
+means more to the Kentuckian than the running event that has become
+classic. It means the reunion in street and club and hotel-lobby of
+neighbors from the various towns of a State where neighborliness is
+cultivated to the point of a fine art; of men who have been boys
+together; of friends whose ways have drifted far apart (for your
+Kentuckian is a great wanderer), and who have years to make up over the
+clinking glasses. During the spring race meet, Louisville ceases to be
+merely Louisville, and becomes Kentucky, the great old mother-home that
+leaves its stamp upon its children even into the third and fourth
+generation.</p>
+
+<p>There is a good deal of sentiment about the Derby, a good deal of
+tradition; and there is as well a certain spirit of carefree, sporting,
+joyous <i>bonhomie</i> whose like is not to be found perhaps on any other
+race-course in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, who loved crowds, got much pleasure out of the streets at this
+time. She took appreciative note of self-conscious belles from up-State,
+in picture-hats and peek-a-boo blouses, with a predilection for wearing
+long-stemmed roses pinned to their belts. She noted the young farmers
+who accompanied them, big-shouldered, square-chinned, clear-eyed,
+crimson with the sun&mdash;a sturdy, virile type, clumsy in their
+country-made clothes, but with well-stuffed wallets bulging their hip
+pockets. There is no poverty in the farming regions of Kentucky.</p>
+
+<p>She learned to recognize the professional racing people, men in
+loud-checked clothes talking an incomprehensible jargon; shabby touts
+offering confidential tips to anybody who would listen; women wearing
+diamonds as large as peas, overdressed, coarse-voiced, not easily
+distinguishable from their sisters of the underworld, except that their
+men accompanied them openly.</p>
+
+<p>People of the larger world there were, too. The narrow streets were
+congested with great touring-cars bearing unfamiliar license tags; New
+York, Michigan, California. Once, hearing crisp Eastern voices at her
+elbow, Joan turned just in time to see some people she had met at
+Longmeadow disappearing into a hotel. For a moment her heart stood
+still. She thought Eduard Desmond was among them. But it proved to be
+another man, and Joan mingled hastily in the crowd, relieved that they
+had not noticed her.</p>
+
+<p>In all this preparatory excitement Major Darcy was, as his wife put it,
+"busy as a bird dog." There were kinspeople from the Bluegrass to be
+welcomed, cousins from Paducah, Maysville, Fayette County. Joan, who did
+not altogether share her father's enthusiasm for the ties of kinship,
+rather admired her step-mother's skill in side-stepping the Major's
+abounding sense of hospitality. Effie May had taken the precaution to
+fill her house with paper-hangers.</p>
+
+<p>"What a shame! You'll have to take your cousins and things to the hotel,
+Dickie, or put 'em up at the Country Club, won't you? If I'd only
+thought!&mdash;" she murmured innocently; but catching Jean's suspicious eye
+upon her, she winked.</p>
+
+<p>Joan returned the wink. She remembered her mother's patience under the
+constant influx of Darcy relatives. She had also seen the unfortunate
+Misses Darcy almost turned out of doors by the daily increasing numbers
+of their kith and kin. The bookcase in their parlor had become,
+surprisingly, a bed; and Miss Euphemia, the plump, as the one best
+fitted by nature for this ordeal, was spending her nights on a
+packing-box sparsely mitigated by pillows.&mdash;Not that the Misses Darcy
+complained, however. They were long inured to the hospitalities of Derby
+week.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May, indeed, was the only person of Joan's acquaintance who seemed
+unaffected by the general excitement over the Derby. She heard with
+apparent indifference that the Major had been able to secure a box
+directly opposite the judges' stand, and she declined to rise early
+enough to accompany him and Joan to Sunday morning breakfast at the
+Jockey Club, where enthusiasts met regularly to inspect and pass
+critical judgment on the offerings of the past week.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, child!" she said once in answer to Joan's surprise at this
+indifference. "Horses ain't no treat to me. You see, they used to be my
+bread and butter."</p>
+
+<p>It was one of her few references to a past that rather intrigued her
+step-daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Were both of your husbands turfmen?" asked the girl, curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May gave a brief nod; and Joan did not somehow feel encouraged to
+further questioning.</p>
+
+<p>Derby Day dawned bright and sunny.</p>
+
+<p>"A fast track, Dollykins," cried the Major in great glee. "We ought to
+break a record to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"That means the Long colt," said Joan learnedly. "The Camden entry's apt
+to prove a mud-hen."</p>
+
+<p>She had in the past week made an exhaustive research into the race-horse
+question. Breeding and pedigree, record and past performance, rolled
+trippingly from her tongue. Joan was what the theatrical profession call
+"quick study."</p>
+
+<p>The Darcys had been invited to go out to the tracks in the approved
+fashion, on top of a tallyho coach, tooled by Johnny Carmichael&mdash;who was
+not quite as sober as might have been wished. But his four-in-hand
+seemed aware of the fact, and took no ungenerous advantage of him.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May had awakened that morning with a bad headache, and proclaimed
+her intention of staying at home.</p>
+
+<p>"What! Not see the Derby run?" cried her husband incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>And when with a great shouting and tooting of horns the tallyho drew up
+under the porte-cochère, her determination weakened.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do come on, Mrs. Darcy! The air will do you good, and we shan't
+have half as much fun without you!" cried several voices, for she was
+very popular with young people.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated. Joan decided the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Put on a heavy veil to shield your eyes from the glare," she suggested;
+and Effie May yielded. It was not often that her step-daughter asked for
+her society.</p>
+
+<p>They became part of a procession that had been filing steadily past the
+Darcy house since sunrise. Every vehicle in town and the surrounding
+country, horse-power or motor-power, was on its way to the races.
+Street-cars passed in a solid line, with passengers hanging to the
+straps, bulging out of the windows, crowding on to the roofs. There was
+a steady throng of foot-passengers, all heading in the same direction,
+which hailed the tallyho as it passed with shouts of greeting and good
+luck. The tallyho responded with tooting horns and waving parasols.</p>
+
+<p>It was a friendly, intimate, highly democratic gathering such as may be
+found only south of Mason and Dixon's line; never pushing or jostling,
+but good-naturedly determined to enjoy itself. At the gate humanity was
+packed in a dense, immovable mass as far as the eye could see, and Joan,
+descending from her elevation, looked at the crowd in mild alarm. But
+the cry arose, "Make way for the ladies!" and instantly a lane appeared
+as if by magic, through which she and her companions made royal
+progress, laughing at the personalities which greeted them as they
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody ever minds what happens on Derby Day!" explained Emily
+Carmichael.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the box, the men of the party deserted in a body for the betting
+ring, and Effie May promptly hailed a messenger. Her interest in racing
+seemed to have revived.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see your tips, girls&mdash;anything good?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked over their various lists in a business-like way, approving
+this, discarding that, displaying a knowledge that put Joan's recent
+learned discussions to shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Will-o'-the-Wisp, Satyr out of Firefly. Umm! Ought! to be worth taking
+a shot at. Who's up&mdash;Casey? No. Won't do! They'll can that crooked
+little jock yet&mdash;" etc., etc., while her companions eyed her with
+respect, and the messenger consulted with her laconically as with an
+equal.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to play 'em straight across the board, dearie;" she admonished
+Joan. "That's the only way to win. No piking!"</p>
+
+<p>But Joan declined to play them straight across the board, or in any way
+at all. For one thing she had brought no purse. For another she was far
+too busy with the people about her.</p>
+
+<p>Faces rose behind her in a packed mass to the top of the
+grandstand&mdash;women's faces for the most part; school-girls, nice old
+ladies, mothers of families (who occasionally fed their families under
+the casual shelter of a shawl), gum-chewing shop-girls, houris of every
+variety, respectable and otherwise, all chatting together with the
+utmost simplicity under the spell of a common interest. In the boxes,
+and on the clubhouse porch, were girls and women most of whom she knew,
+dressed as if for a garden party. Chiffons fluttered in the breeze,
+plumes waved, there were bared throats, and lace-covered arms, and
+dainty white slippers. Here and there appeared the more conventional
+tailored dress, looking almost conspicuous in its severity. For on Derby
+Day, Louisville harks back to a custom as old as itself, and frankly
+looks its loveliest.</p>
+
+<p>Just behind Joan in the front row of the grandstand sat a respectable,
+gray-headed little old woman with a bonnet tied under her chin, quite
+alone, who looked as staid and out of place as Ellen Neal would have
+done in these surroundings. But she had a professional-looking pair of
+fieldglasses at her eyes, and Joan noticed that her lips were constantly
+moving and muttering. The girl turned her back on the Derby to watch
+this odd figure.</p>
+
+<p>At first she thought the old creature was praying; but the syllables
+that reached her ears were not prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, you Will-o'-the-Wisp! Hop it, baby! 'Ata-boy! Step, darlin',
+step lively! Oh, you Will-o'-the-Wisp!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan saw that she was not merely watching the great race, she was riding
+it, with whip, and knee, and voice. And at a certain moment the girl saw
+that she had lost it. There was a shrug, a little despairing gesture of
+the glasses, and the muttering ceased.</p>
+
+<p>An explanation suddenly occurred to Joan. She nudged Effie May. "Look at
+this funny old soul behind us! She's evidently the mother of the jockey
+that's riding Will-o'-the-Wisp," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May glanced briefly over her shoulder, and smiled. "Mother
+nothing! That's Texas Nell, who's been following the ponies since the
+day of Molly McCarthy. She's lost and won more money, I guess, than any
+woman in the business."</p>
+
+<p>A little later she suggested that they all adjourn to the Club House for
+refreshments; but Archie Blair had come with the promise of taking Joan
+down to the paddock later, and she decided to stay where she was.</p>
+
+<p>Archie, who seemed to know everybody, pointed out various celebrities
+who were present; fine old General Dutton, down from Lexington with his
+flock of famous though still unmarried daughters; Nick Sanders of the
+Pisgah neighborhood, who had just escaped conviction for manslaughter
+because of the unwritten law; Mrs. Kildare of Storm, a splendid-looking
+woman in mannish hat and driving coat, here to see one of her colts go
+to the post in the Derby&mdash;though of late years Storm was raising mules
+instead of race-horses.</p>
+
+<p>"A shame, too, when it's one of the oldest stud-farms in the State,"
+commented Archie. "Racing's on its last legs when people like the
+Kildares turn to breeding mules!"</p>
+
+<p>But racing did not appear to be on its last legs that day. The
+eagerness, the wild enthusiasm, above all the joyousness of the crowd,
+struck an answering chord in Joan. For the first time she really
+understood the devotion of Kentuckians to their State and to each other.
+It is never their work that endears a people to each other; it is their
+play. In a world that takes itself overseriously, Kentucky still knows
+how to play.</p>
+
+<p>She followed Archie presently down toward the paddock where the winner
+was to receive his ovation; but as they reached the foot of the
+staircase, suddenly there was the sharp explosion of a pistol. Instantly
+the crowd surged in the direction of the shot.</p>
+
+<p>Archie, placing her behind him, forged his way through the struggling
+mass to the nearest wall, where he stood her, breathless and disheveled,
+but undismayed.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! This is local color with a vengeance! What's happening? Do
+you suppose it's your man-eating friend from Pisgah?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just an old woman shot herself, they say," volunteered a friendly voice
+near by, "Cleaned out, I reckon!"</p>
+
+<p>One of the intuitions to which Joan was liable came to her. Glancing up
+at the grandstand, she saw the seat just behind hers was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Archie! It's <i>my</i> little old woman!" she cried pitifully. "Go and
+see, will you?&mdash;a shabby old thing with a bonnet tied under her chin."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. "I don't like to leave you here alone. Suppose somebody
+should speak to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall most certainly speak back!" she said, and he reluctantly
+obeyed her wish. Indeed, with Archie, her wishes were apt to assume the
+form of commands.</p>
+
+<p>The gaiety of the scene was gone for Joan. She had got her glimpse of
+the grim reality that lies beneath. She was to have another glimpse of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>As she stood there, buffeted by the passing throng, she caught sight
+across the wide passageway of her step-mother, in conversation with
+somebody who for a moment she did not see. Joan started across to join
+her. Effie May's back was toward her, and not until Joan was within
+hearing distance did she notice the man to whom her step-mother was
+speaking. Then she stopped where she was, startled.</p>
+
+<p>He was a dissipated-looking creature, hardly better in appearance than a
+race-horse tout, flashily dressed, wearing a large diamond in his
+tie&mdash;altogether one of the least desirable types of those who follow the
+races. But he was not only talking with evident familiarity to Mrs.
+Darcy, he had taken hold of her arm. It came to Joan in a flash that the
+man was doubtless some relative, possibly her brother. What did they
+know of Effie May's family?</p>
+
+<p>Joan stood still and frankly listened.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, you don't put that over on me, old girl," this person was
+saying in a low but carrying voice. "You're not going to slip away on me
+again <i>that</i> easy!"</p>
+
+<p>Her step-mother's rejoinder did not reach Joan's ears, but she saw her
+glance round uneasily. Joan did not blame her for not wishing to be seen
+with her present companion. She quietly slipped behind the shelter of a
+pillar.</p>
+
+<p>"Married, eh?" repeated the man's voice. "Come, that's a good one! I'm
+from Missouri, I am. You'll be sayin' Calloway married you next. Oho! he
+did, eh? A bigger fool than I took him for! If that's the case&mdash;" his
+voice sharpened&mdash;"you must a' come in for a pretty good thing when he
+croaked. You'll have to come across, old sport. No going back on a pal!"</p>
+
+<p>The color suddenly went out of Joan's cheeks. She leaned against her
+pillar, feeling rather queer. She wished she were not there&mdash;and yet she
+listened.</p>
+
+<p>Effie May's voice reached her, speaking quite steadily, "Not one cent,
+Joe! You're no pal of mine. When I left you it was for good and all, and
+you know why!"</p>
+
+<p>"Humm! Well, we'll see what your new husband thinks about it, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't!" It was a sort of gasp; but instantly the voice steadied
+again. "You'll never lay eyes on my husband, Joe. He doesn't live here.
+I&mdash;I just happened to come over for the races."</p>
+
+<p>The man grinned. "That's easy enough! I seen you drivin' in with your
+swell friends, and sittin' in a box and all. Recognized you right away,
+too, for all that thick veil. You ain't the sort a man forgets easy,
+Ef," he leered. "Not when he's knowed you like I have! I'll get your
+name before you leave this stand, and then&mdash;Better come across, kiddo!"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;let me go now, Joe! I'll think it over."</p>
+
+<p>The man chuckled. "Afraid somebody'll see you talking to me, eh? You can
+bet your sweet life you'll think it over, and damn quick, too! See?"</p>
+
+<p>His grip tightened on her arm. Effie May glanced this way and that,
+nervously. Joan stepped out from behind her pillar. After all, the woman
+was her father's wife! She must be protected....</p>
+
+<p>Just then she saw Archie coming, and hurried to him.</p>
+
+<p>"It was an old lady with a bonnet tied under her chin," he told her
+soberly. "She's dead."</p>
+
+<p>But Joan had no ears for the earlier tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a man frightening Mrs. Darcy," she said breathlessly, "he seems
+to be somebody she knows. He's&mdash;threatening her! Oh, Archie, what shall
+we do?"</p>
+
+<p>The meaning of it, the incredible sordid horror of the thing she had
+half learned, began to come home to her. Her father's wife!</p>
+
+<p>"Threatening!" Archie's jaw set. "Here, that won't do!"</p>
+
+<p>He strode forward, Joan following. They both heard the man say with
+leering distinctness, "It ought to be worth a <i>little</i> cash to a loving
+husband to learn the sort of woman he's married up with, Ef, old girl!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Archie's hand fell on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Joan never forgot the face her step-mother turned upon them&mdash;She made a
+desperate attempt to rally.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why, dearie! is that you? A&mdash;an old friend of mine's been giving
+me a tip."</p>
+
+<p>"Get out," said Archie to the man. "Get out, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on there, kid&mdash;So, you been robbing the cradle this time, Ef?" He
+grinned at her evilly. "Wait a minute, mister, there's a few things I
+might be able to tell you about this party&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing I don't know already," muttered Archie, his grip tightening.
+"You've got five minutes to get off the grounds before I tell the
+police. Blackmail's a penitentiary offense in this State."</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated, looked at Archie's grim jaw, and went....</p>
+
+<p>Joan and her step-mother gazed at each other. The woman's face had a
+curious gray look under its perennial bloom, and she moistened her lips
+with a dry tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you heard?" she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Joan nodded. She could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>It was Archie who remarked quietly: "You'll want to be going home, I
+guess. I'll get a taxicab."</p>
+
+<p>Then sheer pity overcame the horror in the girl's mind. "Yes, Mother.
+Come home with me!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>For the first and last time in her life she had called her father's wife
+"Mother."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I guess you've got to have the whole story now, though it ain't a very
+pretty story to tell a girl," said Effie May wearily. "I don't know as
+your papa would much want you to hear it, Joan...."</p>
+
+<p>To the girl the whole episode seemed unreal, part of that strange day,
+with the holiday crowds, the brief, hectic excitement of the races,
+followed by the pistol-shot that meant the death of a ruined old woman.
+She could not believe that she, Joan Darcy, convent-bred, the daughter
+of reserved and fastidious people, could be actually participating in
+this impossible melodrama.</p>
+
+<p>"What my father would wish hardly matters now, I think," she said, more
+frigidly than she realized. "Please say what you have to say."</p>
+
+<p>All the way home her step-mother had wept, steadily and hopelessly, with
+ugly snuffling noises that took away what dignity there might have been
+in her grief. Joan, always helpless in the face of uncontrolled emotion,
+made no effort to comfort her. Her impulse of pity had already died into
+disgust. She could not look at that swollen, grayish face, of whose
+careful complexion tears made strange havoc.</p>
+
+<p>The woman sighed. "If only you weren't so young!&mdash;I suppose you think
+I'm a bad lot&mdash;bad as they make 'em. But I'm not. I never was. Oh, I
+know I've done things ladies don't do!&mdash;but then ladies ain't often
+asked to do 'em, dearie. You got to remember that."</p>
+
+<p>Joan shrugged, and resigned herself to hear what she was to hear.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you know I wasn't born a lady, nor raised like one, though I've
+tried.... Well, never mind that!&mdash;Pa had a little cash-and-carry grocer
+store over to Indianapolis, and we lived upstairs, all of us in two
+rooms.... It was the dirt I couldn't stand, and the crowding. It ain't
+<i>right</i> for a whole lot of children to live like that, all mixed in so!
+The others didn't seem to mind, but I was always sort of nice in my
+ways. Maybe because I was born before Mom took to the coke."</p>
+
+<p>"The what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coke&mdash;dope, you know. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her
+going, poor Mom! and I'm glad she had it."</p>
+
+<p>"Was your mother an invalid?" asked Joan, a little startled by this
+breadth of tolerance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. But kids come along once a year regular, and she wasn't ever,
+so to speak, well. I made up my mind when I wasn't more than ten never
+to get myself in the fix Ma was in!... My two older sisters felt that
+way, too, I guess. They always had fellows, but not the sort that'd do
+to marry. Men like Pa, you know. No 'count&mdash;One of the girls worked at a
+dressmaker's, and sewed till her eyes were red all the time, and her
+shoulders stooped and she coughed. The other&mdash;well, the other didn't
+keep straight, dearie. Awful few of the girls I knew did keep straight.
+But Mame went into one of those houses&mdash;you know?&mdash;and had a lot of
+swell clothes, and jewelry and all. I remember all us younger ones used
+to envy her. But she didn't last long at it, and she died&mdash;horrible."</p>
+
+<p>Effie May's eyes were fixed on strange places, and the tragedy of the
+world was in them.</p>
+
+<p>"She used to be a pretty thing, Mame; and sweet, too.... Well, it seemed
+to me there ought to be <i>something</i> better for a girl than marrying a
+man like Pa and slaving, or getting a good job like Jule's and slaving,
+or going wrong like Mame and slaving worst of all! Once when I was out
+delivering dresses for the dressmaker where Jule worked, I saw what I
+was looking for. Society women. Ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I'm going to be," I says to myself, "a Society woman! (I
+was about twelve then.) You don't have to work, you live in a fine house
+and wear swell clothes, and you can keep as straight as you like.</p>
+
+<p>"The others used to laugh at me, but Mom never did. She was real
+ambitious for her children, Mom was. 'You keep on thinkin' so and you'll
+get there,' she used to say. 'You're smart and pretty enough for
+anything!' And so I was, then!" Effie May gave a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"A fellow come along presently that looked pretty good to me. I met him
+over to Casey's dance-hall, I remember, and from the first it was all up
+with him. He was better than the fellows I'd been running with; a good
+dresser, always flashing his roll&mdash;you know race-horse people used to
+make good money before the Pari-Mutuels&mdash;And when he wanted me to come
+over here to Louisville with him&mdash;well, it looked to be my
+chance&mdash;Imagine starting out to be a lady, in company with Joe
+Markheim!" said Effie May grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Joan exclaimed, "Not that dreadful-looking creature you were talking
+with to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded. "Only he wasn't dreadful-looking then. He was real
+handsome&mdash;or he looked that way to me. You see I was only sixteen," she
+sighed. "Almost anything in pants that'd take me away from home would
+have looked good to me then, I guess!&mdash;But I talked to Mom about it, and
+she thought I'd better take a chance, too. So I went."</p>
+
+<p>The girl had begun to shiver a little. "You mean&mdash;you married him?"</p>
+
+<p>Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see
+he had a wife at the time."</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a
+chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us
+it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know.
+There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, and <i>her</i> sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips.</p>
+
+<p>"My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you
+after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to
+him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate
+disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began
+to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man,
+when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd
+acted decent&mdash;I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when
+he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flushing, "but it was something
+no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through
+thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway."</p>
+
+<p>"Did&mdash;did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told
+him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was
+a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair.
+'Wish I'd done it before!' says he&mdash;Don't you think that's a pretty good
+recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after
+living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," murmured Joan&mdash;The usual thing was happening to her. Old
+standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see
+things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness&mdash;though
+there were people who considered it her strength.</p>
+
+<p>"Calloway was pretty near to being a gentleman&mdash;not a born one, like
+your papa, dearie, but real genteel in his instincts, and he did a whole
+lot to make a lady of me. He always insisted on us having the best of
+everything, company especially. When he knew he had to die, poor
+boy!"&mdash;her lips trembled&mdash;"he says to me, says he, 'Here's your chance,
+old girl! Take the money, and go somewhere and make a fresh start,' he
+says. 'You'll do! You're good as any of 'em.' His very words, dearie!
+'You're good as any of 'em.'"&mdash;She wiped her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you came here?" prompted the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I'd always liked the place. It seemed sort of friendly and
+homelike, and it's small enough so that your money counts for something.
+It wouldn't be lost, I thought, like in New York or Chicago&mdash;But I was
+kind of lonesome at first&mdash;always been used to having a man around&mdash;and
+I didn't know anybody. And then your mama died, and I saw my way clear.
+You didn't know I knew your mama, did you, dearie?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was rather startled. She had not realized quite how early her life
+and her father's had been swept into the stream of this woman's
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did. Not to speak to, of course. But I used to watch her out of
+my back windows, and think what a lady she was to be so poor, and wished
+I knew how to scrape acquaintance with her. And once she caught me
+watching her, and smiled up, just as sweet, as if she'd known me always
+and liked me. (Sort of the way <i>you</i> smile, dearie, when you're real
+pleased.)&mdash;And when she died the idea came to me, all of a sudden, that
+I was the person to look after them she'd left."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and began to weep again. "Oh,
+Gawd! Think of where I'd got to, and look where I'm at now!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan moved restlessly about the room, conscious of the ache of tears in
+her own throat. She pictured that child of the streets and dancehalls,
+poor little "Lightfoot Ef," as they called her, struggling to better her
+condition, sturdily trying to find some tenable place of her own in
+life, even as she, Joan, was trying&mdash;but under what hopeless handicaps!
+She thought of the cocaine-drugged mother with ambitions; of the evil,
+treacherous creature with whom the child had chosen to "take a chance";
+and it began to seem almost a miracle that Effie May should be what she
+was. Joan looked at her with something like respect.</p>
+
+<p>"But I heard you tell my father you had buried two husbands!" she said
+sharply. "If you really felt that you were 'good as any of them,'
+that&mdash;that you had practically been married&mdash;why didn't you make a clean
+breast of it all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'm no fool!" gulped Effie May. "There are some things a man
+won't stand for&mdash;though God knows why <i>they</i> should be so all-fired
+particular! And it seemed the only chance I'd ever get to marry a real
+gentleman. Besides, there was you."</p>
+
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I
+could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do
+for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly
+flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house,
+with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and
+a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of
+the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the
+bed with her fists.</p>
+
+<p>There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman
+whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a
+hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd
+ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could
+'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair."</p>
+
+<p>"Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me&mdash;I don't know
+how. But I could 'a' kept <i>his</i> mouth shut all right!&mdash;I was fixing him
+so he'd never tell...."</p>
+
+<p>In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant
+to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay
+farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby.</p>
+
+<p>She sat erect with a gasp. "It's <i>him</i>! For goodness' sake don't let
+your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching
+for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl.
+"Quick!&mdash;pull down those shades&mdash;there, that's better. Help me into a
+negligée&mdash;no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!&mdash;a pink one.
+Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my
+headache&mdash;don't forget, that's why we came home. There!&mdash;how do I look?"</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped
+in cologne hiding her swollen eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, rather dazed, had assisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the
+triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe
+of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer
+desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She
+meant to go down fighting.</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan! <i>Are you going to tell him right
+away?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Not&mdash;right away," said the girl slowly.</p>
+
+<p>There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her
+hands, and kissed it....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it
+throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies
+in her control.</p>
+
+<p>At one moment her course seemed clear beyond the question of a doubt. It
+was unthinkable that her father should continue to recognize as his
+wife&mdash;her mother's successor!&mdash;a woman who had led an immoral life, who
+had earned the very money that supported them by living for years as the
+mistress of another man. Joan's cheeks burned with the thought.</p>
+
+<p>At the next moment, she wondered what her father would do without the
+woman. She had no illusions left regarding Richard Darcy. He had never
+in his futile life stood on his own two feet. He was one of the
+inefficients, who must be cared for. Now, weakened morally and
+physically by the habit of luxurious living, he was less able than ever
+to take care of himself. Age was coming upon him rapidly. In the
+struggle of life, he must go down utterly to defeat&mdash;Unless his daughter
+could help him; and so far his daughter had been unable even to help
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>The girl wondered, too, her heart sick within her, whether he would
+consent to give up the luxury he loved when he learned the shame that
+went with it.... Not that he would be able to forgive the woman! She
+knew his fixed standards, his pride of race, too well to expect of him
+any such magnanimity. The vulgarity of Effie May had been quite enough
+for him to swallow, as it was.</p>
+
+<p>Joan thought that if, knowing his wife's past and utterly despising her,
+he yet kept her because of material benefits, it would be a shame she
+personally could not bear. Better, perhaps, that he be not put to the
+test.</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;in her mother's place, a woman of the town! (The girl was not
+able to make the fine distinctions in vice suggested by her
+step-mother.)</p>
+
+<p>There had to be considered, also, the fraudulency of continuing to
+inflict such a woman on society in the guise of a lady.</p>
+
+<p>The word brought back a rush of pity to Joan's heart. Effie May had done
+her best to be a "lady," poor creature, even to the extent of vainly
+trying to remodel her speech and her manners on those of her new
+family....</p>
+
+<p>Joan, very white and drawn about the lips, ordered her horse in the
+early morning and went for a long gallop, hoping to clear her brain.
+When she returned, with nothing decided, she found Archie Blair in the
+library waiting for her.</p>
+
+<p>She had never before been so glad to see him. It came upon her, with a
+rush of relief, that here was somebody with whom she could discuss her
+problem, whose advice she could ask. Archie knew! He was not very
+clever, perhaps, never subtle nor quick in his mental processes; but
+there was something sure about him, something utterly honest and
+dependable.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently he had given others the same impression.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Darcy sent for me to come out and talk things over," he said
+gravely. "She wanted me to speak to you. She thought maybe I could make
+you understand better."</p>
+
+<p>"Sent for <i>you</i>? Why, but you've never been one of her friends. You've
+never even pretended to be!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said simply. "She isn't my sort, and she don't belong here.
+She's too flossy. But since she's here, I'm sorry for her&mdash;Now that you
+know, what are you going to do about it, Miss Darcy?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan laid her problem before him with a frankness she would not have
+believed possible. She told him about her father. Never before, not even
+to Stefan Nikolai, had she disclosed Richard Darcy quite as she had come
+to know him latterly. It was an analysis that would have looked too
+brutal set down in black and white.</p>
+
+<p>Archie listened thoughtfully, and with no appearance of embarrassment or
+consciousness that the conversation was unusual. There was something in
+his masculinity that never suggested sex.</p>
+
+<p>"I get you," he said at last. "You can't make up your mind whether to
+upset the apple-cart and ease your conscience, or keep your mouth shut
+and let everybody live happily ever after."</p>
+
+<p>Joan looked at him quickly. She had not expected quite such a lucid
+summing up of the situation from Archie. But he seemed unconscious of
+epigram.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I ever tell you," he asked irrelevantly, "about an old gentleman
+that took our room after&mdash;well, after my mother went away&mdash;and let me go
+on living with him because he said I was too small to make any
+difference? A queer old bird he was, drinking himself to death as fast
+as he could, but mighty good to me. It was him&mdash;he, I mean&mdash;who taught
+me to read, and started me going to night school, and got me my first
+job. When he was about half-lit he used to talk to me as if I was just
+his age, about all sorts of things, life and books and folks&mdash;and one of
+the things he used to say kind of stuck in my head. 'When in doubt,
+Archibald' (he was the only person I ever knew who called me all of
+it!), 'when in doubt, always be a little kinder than necessary....'
+Pretty good dope, I think."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then Joan said slowly: "Thank you, Archie! Yes, it is pretty good dope.
+And your old drunkard must have been a good deal of a man. You must tell
+me more about him some day."</p>
+
+<p>She gave her shoulders a little shake of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well!&mdash;I won't upset the apple-cart. I didn't much want to,
+anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>Archie smiled at her widely. It was a smile that said, "I knew it!" and
+"Good girl!" and a number of other things that made Joan blush. She had
+come by insensible degrees to value rather highly the good opinion of
+her protégé.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's one thing sure," he said, sobering. "You'll be wanting to
+get out of the apple-cart yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>That, too, Joan had faced in her long night's vigil. The question of her
+future was no longer hovering in space. It was here, immediate, urgent.
+She would have liked if possible not to spend another hour under the
+roof that had been supplied by the late Mr. Calloway.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the matter of her living in every aspect.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you haven't got a red cent to your name, Miss Darcy? Gee!"
+muttered Archie. "What was the old chap thinking of? Oil stocks! Might
+as well have put the money on the races." Even in his loyal mind the
+Major had undergone something of an eclipse.</p>
+
+<p>"Better, because then we could have seen it run," sighed Joan. "However,
+it's gone, and now I've got to get busy!" (Archibald's language was
+rather contagious.)</p>
+
+<p>She told him of her two alternatives. The stage he absolutely vetoed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no place for a lady," he said stubbornly, and would listen to no
+argument. Joan suddenly remembered that his mother had been an actress.
+She did not pursue the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Newspaper work might do," he admitted. "A society reporter with the
+pull you've got ought to be worth some money."</p>
+
+<p>"A society reporter!&mdash;You mean I'd have to go to my friends' houses and
+publish what happens there? Oh, Archie, I'm afraid I couldn't do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he said innocently. "They like it."</p>
+
+<p>But Joan persisted. "I'm willing to report <i>anything</i> except society."</p>
+
+<p>"Murders? Police courts?" he suggested grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if I must."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess not!" said Archie.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little helplessly. "But, Archie, you veto everything I
+suggest! Really, you're not very helpful. Don't you understand that I've
+<i>got</i> to earn my living, right at once? I'm unskilled labor. Beggars
+can't be choosers. You'd suppose nothing was good enough for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"And it isn't!... Gosh!" he said miserably&mdash;(she saw that his big hands
+were shaking)&mdash;"The idea makes me right down sick! A little delicate
+thing like you, out in the scramble with the rest of us&mdash;! I know what
+it is, you see. Bad enough for a fellow, sometimes. I know the things a
+working girl has to do and stand for. Honest to God, I'd rather see you
+married!" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Unselfish devotion could go no farther, and Joan knew it.</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly found herself on the verge of tears. She was tired out,
+mind, soul, and body. She would have liked to put her head down on his
+shoulder and simply cry till she was comforted. It was such a big, broad
+shoulder, so amply adapted to the bearing of burdens. She could make him
+happy, too, poor boy! One and all, people seemed to expect nothing of
+her but marriage&mdash;her father, Effie May, Stefan Nikolai, and now Archie.
+Perhaps they knew best. They were many and she only one. Temptation
+beset her&mdash;or was it inspiration? She did not know....</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Archie was elaborating his forlorn idea. "Isn't there
+<i>somebody</i> who would do?" he urged. "Surely of all the fellows who've
+been hanging round, there ought to be one decent chap who'd give his
+head and ears to keep you out of this&mdash;to take you away from here
+himself?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan made her decision.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there is," she said tremulously. "Only&mdash;he won't say so."</p>
+
+<p>"The big mutt!" cried Archie&mdash;and then paused. Her expression, the
+significance of her voice, began to penetrate his humility.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;<i>you're not joshing me</i>?" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Joan put out quick hands as though to ward him off, suddenly afraid of
+the glow she had kindled in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, Archie! I don't love you&mdash;you know that. Not as you love me, I
+mean. I don't believe I ever will love anybody that way. I&mdash;perhaps I'm
+not fine enough&mdash;But I do like you and trust you more than anybody else
+in the world. And so&mdash;if that's enough&mdash;If you want me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Do I want you?</i>" Archie gripped the edge of his chair to keep himself
+anchored to <i>terra firma</i>. "Say, Miss Darcy, I&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think," she suggested with a quivering smile, "that as we are
+about to become engaged, you might begin to call me 'Joan'?"</p>
+
+<p>At that, with a great cry of "JOAN!" he gave up hold on the chair and
+<i>terra firma</i> together.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The sound of the overturned chair brought Effie May on a reconnoitering
+expedition to the upper landing of the stairs, which commanded an
+unsuspected view of the library. What she saw caused her to tiptoe away,
+smiling to herself a little sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>His</i> mouth's stopped all right&mdash;" she thought (with perfect
+truth)&mdash;"now that it doesn't matter!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>There were those, notably among the Jabberwocks, who felt that in
+availing herself of the age-old solution of handing her burdens over to
+a man to bear, Joan had rather hauled down her colors. Perhaps she felt
+so herself, after the first glow of relief was over.</p>
+
+<p>But if she needed solace, she got it in the radiant, incredulous,
+blissful attitude of Archibald. He could not believe the marvelous thing
+that had happened to him. A dozen times a day he was obliged to glance
+at the ring he had given her (a solitaire inevitably, small but of good
+water) to make sure that he was not dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>He began at once, following the example of the birds about him, to
+prepare for the coming event; "twigging" as Joan called it to herself,
+amusedly. He was as mysterious about it, and quite as obvious, as any
+robin darting about with a straw in its beak. He called her to the
+telephone frequently to ask such questions as how many drawers a
+"chiffoneer" ought to have; and when she asked him why he wanted to
+know, the reply was a joyous, "Never you mind!"</p>
+
+<p>He listened with the stealth of a Sherlock Holmes for any expressions of
+preference on her part, putting them secretly down in a note-book; and
+Joan grew afraid to mention any object, no matter how unlikely, for fear
+it would become part of the procession of packages which Ellen reported
+as filing daily past her door to the room upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"A rocking-chair come this morning," Ellen would report. "Golden oak,
+all carved! Yesterday it was one them new-fangled electric-lamps with
+brass chain hanging down like fringe. Real tasty. The day before it was
+a statute."</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens, Nellen&mdash;Not a statue!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! A nigger woman brandishin' a spear. I poked a hole in the
+wrappin's to get a good look at it."</p>
+
+<p>(Joan had once unguardedly envied the Carmichaels their rare old
+bronzes.)</p>
+
+<p>She was touched but alarmed, and decided that she would better hasten
+the wedding if only to put a stop to this indiscriminate twigging.</p>
+
+<p>Others were almost as pleased with the engagement as Archibald; her
+father, for one, who had not expected quite so early a release from
+parental responsibility. Joan, while a creditable child, had proven a
+rather difficult one, especially since his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that it is quite such an&mdash;er&mdash;ambitious arrangement as I could have
+wished, Dollykins,"&mdash;(a ducal alliance would have been more in accord
+with Darcy inclinations). "But young Blair is an excellent fellow, an
+excellent fellow. And after all, in this world virtue is the thing that
+counts!" He appeared to indicate that in the next world things might be
+arranged more satisfactorily.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen was as proud of this unexpected <i>dénouement</i> as if it were an egg
+of her own hatching.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't believe you had the gumption!" she said unflatteringly. "I
+thought you was too highminded to know a real man when you seen
+him.&mdash;And now, praise the day! you'll be needin' your mamma's furniture
+back again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but, Nellen darling, what will you do without it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" The old woman's face fell. "Why, I kind o' thought you'd be takin'
+me along with the furniture. Unless I'm too stiff and plain to be makin'
+you a fancy servant like you're used to nowadays!"&mdash;she tossed her head
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>Joan hugged her. "I'd rather have you than all the fancy servants in the
+world, and you know it. But I thought you preferred being an independent
+modiste in lodgings. And then&mdash;you see, dear, I'm not quite sure whether
+Archie can afford a servant."</p>
+
+<p>She had not so far been able to bring him down from the clouds long
+enough to discuss ways and means.</p>
+
+<p>"Sho! He can afford <i>me</i> all right. I'll save him money&mdash;And you don't
+suppose he's going to let you spoil them white hands of yourn with
+housework and cookin'? Not if I know Mr. Archie!..."</p>
+
+<p>The Misses Darcy were almost tearful with gratification, and received
+Archie with the sort of romantic respect younger girls accord to heroes
+of the matinée.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I prophesy?" cried Miss Virginia. "Only one season out, and
+already&mdash;! Such a beautiful name too,&mdash;'Mrs. Archibald Blair.' Not a
+Kentucky or Virginia one, of course. However, there <i>are</i> other States,
+Maryland, or South Carolina, or even Massachusetts. Where did you say
+he was from, precious girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Louisville."</p>
+
+<p>The sisters exchanged startled glances. "Louisville? But that's
+impossible. We do not know his people!"</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't any people."</p>
+
+<p>It was Miss Euphemia who recovered herself first. "So much the better,"
+she murmured. "I mean&mdash;Not that one would wish them to have died, of
+course! But really, you know, in-laws&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And so often I think a self-made man&mdash;" Miss Iphigenia took up the
+parable. "So many of our Southern families seem to run largely to girls
+nowadays. What I mean is, a little good red blood&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sister!" murmured two shocked voices. Everybody blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Archie isn't even a self-made man, yet," smiled Joan,
+mentally struggling to fill in the gaps. "I shall have to help make
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes! A woman's touch, as dear papa used to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Joan reflected that the late Mr. Darcy must have known a good deal about
+the power of a woman's touch....</p>
+
+<p>Her friend Emily's congratulations were something on the same order,
+though more frankly expressed. There was a wholesome attitude of
+frankness always between the two girls.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's dear of you, Joan," she exclaimed, "and so brave!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just why 'brave'?"</p>
+
+<p>Emily answered, despite embarrassment, "Why, to marry a man without
+antecedents, without position, and without money, seems to me very
+brave. I know I should never have the courage to do it, even if I cared
+for him. In fact, I should be mighty careful not to care for him!&mdash;But
+then I've never had your spirit of independence."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps because you've more to lose," said Joan quietly. "If either of
+us is brave, I think it's poor Archie."</p>
+
+<p>She often thought of her lover so; tenderly, even lovingly, but as "Poor
+Archie!..."</p>
+
+<p>Effie May was the only one of Joan's immediate environment who seemed to
+look with any doubts upon a situation she herself had largely brought to
+pass.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, girlie," she said once abruptly. "You don't love that boy.
+At least you ain't in love with him&mdash;and there's a difference. Why do
+you do it, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, taken by surprise, was not immediately ready with her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it because you want to get away from me?" asked the other.</p>
+
+<p>Still Joan was not ready to answer, and Effie May sighed. "You needn't
+have gone so far as that," she said, "I'd have fixed it for you
+somehow&mdash;I'm not going to forget what you've done for me, Joan. Not
+telling, treating me just as if&mdash;it was all right. You're a bigger woman
+than you know you are," she added, gravely. "I'll make it up to you some
+day, see if I don't."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gave her a quick, straight look. "If you mean money, Effie May, and
+I think you do, we'd better come to an understanding at once. I'm
+keeping my counsel about&mdash;about your affairs; I'm helping you commit a
+fraud, you know&mdash;entirely on my father's account. For myself&mdash;that's
+another matter. I appreciate your kindness, I know you have meant to do
+your best, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you're done with me?" finished the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I shall only see so much of you hereafter as is necessary to keep
+Father from suspecting anything. As for your money,"&mdash;the girl's voice
+shook&mdash;"neither I nor my husband will ever touch a cent of it under any
+circumstances. Do you understand? We do not forget how it was&mdash;earned."</p>
+
+<p>The other sighed again. "Well, dearie, don't forget that it <i>was</i>
+earned, good and plenty!&mdash;And I've done you one good turn already," she
+remarked <i>sotto voce</i>, as the girl turned away to greet her fiancé.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan and Archibald were married two weeks later, very quietly, before
+only her family, resisting all the Major's importunities to make an
+occasion of it. Nor would the girl accept a trousseau.</p>
+
+<p>"If I need any more clothes than I've got already, Archie will buy them
+for me. Won't you, old boy?" she said, slipping her hand into his.</p>
+
+<p>Archie, with the happy consciousness of a rapidly growing business and
+several years' savings in a Building Association replied proudly that he
+would.</p>
+
+<p>One comment she had missed on her engagement; Stefan Nikolai's. She had
+written to him at once (her first letter since his post-card advising a
+preliminary course in matrimony), saying in effect, "Now I hope you're
+satisfied!" But as no reply came, she reached the correct conclusion
+that he was on the wing again, with her letter following him from
+address to address, unread.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes after the little ceremony that left her no longer Joan
+Darcy, a cablegram was brought to her from London.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait. Coming. Nikolai."</p>
+
+<p>To which she replied with reckless extravagance:</p>
+
+<p>"Too late. Sorry. Come anyway...."</p>
+
+<p>Alone at last with her husband in a carriage (to which the negro
+yard-boy, feeling with the Major that something was lacking to the
+occasion, had generously attached one of his own shoes), Joan asked
+rather listlessly where he meant to take her. She had a conviction that
+it would be to Atlantic City, or to Niagara Falls.</p>
+
+<p>For Archie was everything that was most correct in the way of
+bridegrooms. His bulldog toes, his padded blue serge, his near-Panama
+hat, his very socks, were so palpably bought for the occasion that Joan
+felt that to match him she ought to be wearing dove-gray and a shrinking
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not feel particularly shrinking; merely relieved that the
+die was cast, and tired enough to be glad of the arm that stole
+tentatively around her.</p>
+
+<p>"What train are we catching, dear?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No train at all.&mdash;Oh, Joan," he said tremulously, "I hope you won't
+mind! It's just for to-night&mdash;just a foolish idea of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"What is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait and see!"</p>
+
+<p>She waited rather apprehensively. She was a little nervous about
+surprises, since her father's recent effort in that line.</p>
+
+<p>But the carriage was traversing a street she knew well, and it presently
+stopped in front of the house where Ellen lived. There was still a tinge
+of afterglow reflected in its many-paned windows, and among the young
+feathery leafage of the old sycamore sparrows were preparing to go to
+bed. Two or three of the denizens of the lower floors were taking a
+breath of air on the doorstep. They stared at the carriage with
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"None of 'em know about us yet," reassured Archie in a whisper. "Just
+bluff it out." Aloud he said to one of them (it was the lady who
+expertly curled feathers): "Do you know whether Mrs. Neal is in, Mrs.
+Higgs? We've come to see her."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as she is, Mr. Archie," replied the other, her eyes taking
+avid note of Joan's smart tailor-made dress and traveling hat. "But I
+know she's expectin' company all right, 'cause I been smellin' comp'ny
+cookin' all day! Go right up and make yourselves to hum," she urged,
+with the never-failing hospitality of her class.</p>
+
+<p>Archibald led his wife up the dim, curved stairway that had doubtless
+known the reluctant feet of many another bride before her, and opened
+Ellen's door with a key.</p>
+
+<p>"Yon <i>are</i> honored," murmured Joan. "I didn't dream that Ellen had got
+to the point of trusting gentlemen with her latch-key!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" said Archie proudly.</p>
+
+<p>The room was gay with flowers, truly a bridal bower; and in its center
+stood the old round walnut table she had known all her life, much
+battered by the kicking of her own youthful toes, set for two, and laden
+with delicacies. There was a small but magnificent wedding-cake, there
+was chicken-salad, crisp pink tongue, pickles, chocolates of Joan's
+favorite brand, and resting in a pail of ice-water, its neck swathed in
+a napkin, a bottle of champagne.</p>
+
+<p>"Cinnamon-rolls keeping hot in the warmer, butter in the ice-box
+right-hand side, and I'm only to light the jet under the coffee-pot, and
+leave it to bubble ten minutes&mdash;" murmured Archie, as one reciting a
+well-conned lesson.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's listlessness suddenly disappeared. She hugged him.</p>
+
+<p>"What a perfectly <i>beautiful</i> wedding-supper!" she cried. "Was it your
+idea, or Ellen's?"</p>
+
+<p>"A sort of combination, I guess. She thought you might feel more
+homelike here with your mother's things, and I&mdash;well, it's my home too,
+you see!&mdash;So you don't mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mind!" she winked hard to keep the tears back. "Archie, let's have
+pancakes, too!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>They had pancakes. They also had eggs, in the scrambling of which
+Archibald was quite expert. Afterwards they washed the pans and dishes
+together, with two of Ellen's aprons tied around their necks, amid much
+merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea married life was so pleasant!" she sighed. "Archie, let's
+always do our work like this, together!"</p>
+
+<p>"Work?" he picked up one of her hands and examined it reverently. Joan
+had rather beautiful hands, sensitive and lithe, delicately white, with
+rosy palms and finger-tips. "I'll let you play at work now and then," he
+said soberly. "But work is for us men, my Joan, not for our women!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's fortunate the cooks and housemaids of the land don't agree with
+you," she teased; "or perhaps they do, and hence the servant problem!"</p>
+
+<p>Later, they locked Ellen's door and put the key under the mat, and went
+up a flight higher. Joan entered Archie's room with some curiosity. To
+her, people's environment spoke a clear language; and sometimes she
+realized, with a little shock, that she knew nothing at all of the man
+she had married.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long, low attic chamber, whose ceiling sloped cosily down over
+casement windows with wide sills. There was a fine fireplace, marred,
+however, by a small stove showing evidences of occasional culinary
+efforts.</p>
+
+<p>The results of Archie's twigging were very apparent; notably the
+golden-oak rocking-chair, the "chiffoneer" surmounted by the bronze lady
+with a spear. But she was more interested in the things which had
+belonged to him.</p>
+
+<p>As Ellen had told her, the place was littered with books, shelves,
+tables, and even window-sills. Joan examined these eagerly. There was a
+very shabby Shakespeare in a good edition, an old pocket Emerson, a new
+Rubaiyat, a brand-new "Alice in Wonderland" (which made her smile); but
+it was no scholar's library. Archie's tastes were not what he would have
+called "high-brow." The works of Marie Corelli and Conan Doyle
+predominated, with several school geographies and histories, and various
+treatises on the psychology of salesmanship. She found something rather
+touching in this collection of books, remembering that he had referred
+to it as his college career.</p>
+
+<p>She looked next for his pictures, those other sure indications of the
+inner man. But there were none, except the small photograph of herself
+in its elaborate frame, with a little vase attached holding fresh
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"Archie!" she protested, laughing, "I look like a Madonna in a shrine!"</p>
+
+<p>"One of those namby-pamby parties with a dinner-plate behind her head?
+Never saw one of them that could touch you!" he pronounced candidly.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear your correspondence-course has been neglecting Art," she
+murmured. "There was a fellow named Botticelli who did some very neat
+little things in that line. But come now, surely you've got some other
+pictures hidden away somewhere? No naughty ballet-girls kicking up their
+limb-legs? No bareback ladies? Or Parisiennes exhibiting wicked garters?
+Honest Injun?"</p>
+
+<p>He grinned sheepishly. "I did have," he admitted. "But I sort of lost my
+taste for 'em when you gave me that picture of you."</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a prettier compliment than the little vase of flowers before my
+picture, dear!..."</p>
+
+<p>Archie had been standing at the door, watching her progress around his
+room with eyes that were almost incredulous. His room!&mdash;and she in
+it!... He felt that if he opened a window she might flutter out again,
+back into the world from which she came. Once, when he was very small,
+he had found a belated autumn butterfly in the street, and brought it
+home, and put it on a geranium-plant he had in the window, hoping it
+might like to spend the winter there. But in the morning it lay dead
+against the pane. Archie remembered that butterfly now, and shivered.
+She saw him.</p>
+
+<p>She ensconced herself in the largest and shabbiest of his three chairs
+and patted the arm of it invitingly. "Come over here, and let's really
+talk!" she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed. "What shall we talk about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about your mother," said Joan.</p>
+
+<p>He told her what he could remember. It was not much except a voice&mdash;a
+soft English voice; and the feeling of arms that held him close; and
+quite clearly the sound of sobbing beside his pillow whenever he woke
+suddenly at night.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing was ever heard from her after she left you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Money came once or twice to the landlady for my board&mdash;this
+was a boarding-house, then. But after a few months it stopped coming."</p>
+
+<p>"And haven't you <i>any</i> idea what became of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She died, of course," said Archie simply. "Or she'd have come back for
+me. There were people who thought&mdash;" he swallowed hard&mdash;"that she left
+me here on purpose, and never meant to come back. That isn't so. I don't
+know much about her, but I do know that she loved her child. You, can't
+fool a kid about that!... And there were people who thought she killed
+herself. But I don't somehow believe she was a quitter. What do <i>you</i>
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>He had taken a photograph out of his pocket, and handed it to Joan, who
+studied it closely. Despite the unbecoming "fringe" and jersey of an
+earlier day, it was a lovely face she saw, without a hint of folly or
+weakness or worse. The chin was firm as Archie's, the features strong as
+they were delicate. The face was still rounded and soft with youth, yet
+out of it looked a pair of haunted eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, your mother was no coward," she said with conviction. "But she was
+a very unhappy woman. And Archie&mdash;she was a lady!" The look of race
+seemed to her unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a great breath. "I think so, too," he said gladly, "I've always
+thought so. That's how I dared&mdash;" Suddenly, passionately, he drew her up
+into his arms. "Oh, my Joan, do you see why I wanted you here in my own
+home? It's all the home I've ever had. Anything that's happened to me
+has happened here. I've lain here at night trying to be a man when I was
+nothing more than a kid. I've sat here listening, listening&mdash;Oh, for
+years I used to think I heard my mother coming up the stairs to get me,
+long after I was old enough to know she never would! And sometimes I
+thought&mdash;Do you believe in ghosts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" said Joan. "Ghosts of people that love us and want to help&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I mean! And that's why I wanted to stay on in this room,
+where&mdash;she could find me. It's a horrible thing not to belong anywhere,
+nor to any one, like any little fyst dog in the streets. I've never said
+this before&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know!" whispered Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"And now that I do belong to some one, I wanted my room to know it. I
+wanted&mdash;in case there <i>were</i> any ghosts&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," whispered Joan again, her lips against his.</p>
+
+<p>There was a taste of salt on them, and she held him close and closer,
+this great, lonely child who should never be lonely again. If, as she
+had warned him, she was not capable of offering deep love, Joan could at
+least offer deep understanding, which perhaps is rarer....</p>
+
+<p>And presently as she held him so in the quiet of his old room, with the
+house settling into drowsiness about them, and the sycamore tapping its
+friendly signal on the roof close above their heads, Joan's identity
+seemed to be slipping, merging, into that of some one else. She ceased
+to be Joan the girl. She felt, in that strange moment of transition,
+partly the wife, and partly the mother; but most of all the woman, whose
+mission is to give.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>There is, among the wives and mothers of what the</p>
+
+<p>Misses Darcy were wont to call the polite world, a general conspiracy of
+silence on the subject of honeymoons. The theory is allowed to go
+unchallenged that a honeymoon is invariably a period of bliss and
+romance unalloyed; the conspirators apparently subscribing to the ideas
+of the stoical parent who teaches his child to swim by throwing him
+unexpectedly into the water. If he manages to keep afloat, well and
+good; if he drowns, regrettable; if he comes out alive but with a
+shrinking cowardice with regard to water that never afterwards leaves
+him, perhaps it is no concern of his parent's. And again, perhaps it is.</p>
+
+<p>Joan and Archibald Blair returned from their honeymoon not quite as
+close friends as when they embarked upon it. Joan's manner had gained a
+certain kindliness, a gentle consideration that was akin to sympathy;
+whereas Archie, with puzzled eyes and a smile that beamed rather
+uncertainly, almost evinced his desire to propitiate by rolling over at
+her feet and holding up four paws to heaven. (Which was no way to
+propitiate our heroine.)</p>
+
+<p>Honeymoons, however, do not last indefinitely; and by the time Ellen
+Neal and her furniture and the results of Archie's "twigging" were moved
+into a certain modest house that simply cried aloud to be purchased (on
+the installment plan), Archie had grown almost accustomed to the sight
+of the One and Only seated at his breakfast table <i>en negligée</i>, pouring
+out his coffee, with a preoccupied word from him now and then as she
+glanced through the morning paper. (It was characteristic of that
+household that Joan was the one who read the morning paper.) He kissed
+her whenever he liked without asking leave; and in return she rumpled up
+his hair deliciously, and called him "Goose!", and reminded him to bring
+oranges from downtown because the neighboring grocery had such poor
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>Joan entered upon the domestic rôle with her usual thoroughness.</p>
+
+<p>At first she had been rather afraid of the expenditure the purchase of a
+house involved. It sounded to her too much like the large and not very
+practical ideas of her father. But when Archie pointed out to her that
+even day laborers managed to own their cottages, thanks to
+building-associations, and that purchase on this plan was merely a way
+of saving money, she yielded without undue reluctance. After all, there
+was not only his salary to be relied upon, but his commissions,
+dependent upon his own energy, which seemed boundless. Like many poor
+girls, she was quite ignorant of the value of money. Beyond the
+purchasing power of a concrete sum, say one thousand dollars, money
+meant nothing to her at all. Ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand
+dollars&mdash;they seemed very much the same.</p>
+
+<p>The house was its own best advocate; one of the charming English cottage
+types that are beginning to make home life not only comfortable but
+dignified for the small householder in our American cities. The
+neighborhood was excellent, one of the pretty green courts she had long
+ago coveted; and there was a small garden artfully arranged into vistas
+and quite an air of privacy by means of shrubbery, and overlooked by a
+secluded porch whose coolness seemed like paradise to Archie, hurrying
+to it out of the hot city.</p>
+
+<p>The garden was his part of the establishment; and there he might be
+observed any morning shortly after sunrise, digging, pruning, whistling
+tunelessly between his teeth, with one eye on a window whence would
+presently issue the drowsy voice of Joan, calling, "Good-morning out
+there, Adam!" Then with a rush Adam would disappear from his garden,
+leaving spade or hose where he happened to drop them, lest Eve need
+assistance with buttoning a blouse or tying a shoe.</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious time for Archie. He was almost painfully happy.</p>
+
+<p>The Jabberwocks and others took a good deal of critical interest in
+Joan's house. She had always been suspected of being a little odd, and
+her house proved it indubitably. At a period when Louisville was
+graduating out of the green-wall-and-mission-furniture period, through
+Coloniality, into a more catholic appreciation of possessions which
+express the personality of the possessor, Joan's house was still rather
+a shock to all preconceived notions of decoration. There was none of the
+white woodwork and panelled severity which sounded the correct and most
+recent note. Joan's woodwork and walls were alike a soft, practical
+gray&mdash;"Soot-color," she explained placidly&mdash;and the plaster had been
+left rough-cast. Against it, instead of the accepted pictures of the
+day, hung two or three rare prints, a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and
+a fine strip of Persian embroidery. On the floor were black skin rugs. A
+green vine, growing out of an ancient yellowed marble jar, wandered at
+will across one wall and up the brick of the chimney-place.</p>
+
+<p>"You got that idea in Italy," commented one visitor.</p>
+
+<p>But the undoubted charm of Joan's house was that she had taken no ideas
+from anywhere. She simply had about her the sort of things she liked.
+There were ferns growing in the window-sills, and no curtains whatever
+except two lengths of heavy pumpkin-colored silk which might be drawn
+across the panes at will, but rarely were.</p>
+
+<p>"People will be able to see in when the lamps are lighted," protested
+her step-mother.</p>
+
+<p>"What of it? They won't see much over those ferns," said Joan, "and I
+always love to peep in at lighted windows myself, don't you? Haven't you
+ever noticed how much nicer the houses in this part of the world look
+when they're undressed for the summer? Personally, my taste has never
+run to lingerie in household decoration."</p>
+
+<p>Effie May, who was nothing if not receptive, went home and meekly took
+down her point-lace curtains.</p>
+
+<p>What troubled Louisville most about the Blair house was its lack of a
+dining-room. There was no chamber held sacred to the rites of
+nourishment, with chairs sitting primly against the wall and a center
+table with a centerpiece upon it, bearing a fernery or&mdash;what was more
+recently affected by the really up-to-date&mdash;a dish containing imitation
+fruit. ("So much smarter than the real kind," explained her neighbor,
+Mrs. Webster, who had quite a taste for the correct in art.) There was
+no sideboard for the display of wedding-silver, no china-cabinet
+containing the best glassware in glittering serried rows. What was the
+use of having nice things, thought many a troubled housewife, if they
+were to blush unseen in pantries?</p>
+
+<p>But Joan did not understand, and frankly said so, why in a small house
+one room should be set aside for use only three times a day. She needed
+the extra wall space for her books. Besides if there was a dining-room
+people seemed to feel obliged always to eat in it, instead of in the
+garden or the porch, or on a table drawn close to the window, where one
+might look out into the world while one ate, as in a pleasant
+restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm like the Irishman," she remarked, "who said that he was glad he
+didn't like strawberries, because if he did he'd have to eat them, and
+he hated the damn things.&mdash;Try having your meals served about in
+different places, and see if you haven't a better appetite for them!"</p>
+
+<p>Even the admiring Jabberwocks felt that this was carrying oddity to the
+extreme. They always took strangers, however, to see Joan's little
+house, and incidentally Joan herself. Mr. Nikolai had sent her recently
+several Mandarin costumes, unique in the history of Louisville for
+domestic wear, in which she appeared comfortable, piquante, and quite
+exotically feminine.</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy! Trousers on a bride! And at such a time, too," murmured the
+ladies of the neighborhood among themselves.</p>
+
+<p>But as Effie May pointed out to the Major, himself a trifle shocked by
+this eccentricity of costume in a lady of his family, "She's slim enough
+to wear 'em, Dickie, and those full silk pants are certainly becoming to
+the feet. Wish I had some myself&mdash;Don't you worry," she added, chuckling
+over the Major's expression, "I haven't! Pantaloons weren't meant for
+the pincushion style of figger."</p>
+
+<p>Archibald, of course, found the Mandarin costume adorable. He would have
+found any costume of Joan's adorable, even a Mother Hubbard, or its
+lineal descendant, the bungalow-apron.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, Joan had a rather happy aftermath to her honeymoon. "The
+pasture-time," she called it, during which she was as placid and content
+as a cow in a clover-field. For the first and possibly the last time in
+her life she was quite free from worry. That was one of the things
+Archie took completely out of her hands. He would have liked to take
+everything out of her hands that might be irksome to her&mdash;her thinking,
+her very sleeping and eating, had it been possible. But worry at least
+was something he could take upon his own broad shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Her personal allowance and the allowance he made her for household
+expenses were paid regularly into her account&mdash;an arrangement Joan had
+insisted upon, despite his protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you be bothered with the paying of bills, darlingest?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>love</i> to pay bills, Archie," she had replied, rather piteously
+to one who had known anything of the earlier Darcy <i>ménage</i>. "It's a
+real pleasure to get them all out of the way before the tenth of the
+month!" And it was a pleasure she attended to religiously, even after
+she began to grow a little lax and indifferent about other household
+matters. There were to be no "Indians" in the annals of the Blair
+family.</p>
+
+<p>Joan had never been so sluggish mentally as in these first months of
+married life; yet she felt almost abnormally normal, close to the great
+heart of existence, at one with the physical world about her, content
+with the content of a cog which fits well into the wheel where it
+belongs.</p>
+
+<p>Long afterwards some would-be cynic asked her whether she believed that
+marriage <i>per se</i> was an experiment which paid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" she answered without hesitation. "If only for the moment when you
+tell your husband that he is to have a child."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2>
+
+
+<p>Her father took a satisfaction in Joan's house and husband and general
+condition of modest prosperity which surprised and rather touched the
+girl. It was as if he found in her well-being a justification of
+something that needed justifying. "I may have my weaknesses," his manner
+seemed to say, "but observe how well I have provided for my child!"</p>
+
+<p>He dropped in almost daily for his afternoon julep on the shaded porch
+that overlooked her garden. Effie May had the tact rarely to accompany
+him, and Joan found herself seeing more of her father than she ever had
+under his own roof.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know just what it is, my dear," he once said, musingly.
+"Possibly the familiar furniture, or the presence of Ellen Neal (quite a
+fair cook, Dollykins, though her manner leaves something to be desired).
+But somehow in this little establishment of yours I always feel as
+if&mdash;well, as if Mary were about somewhere." He sighed sentimentally. "I
+feel as if she might at any moment sit down beside us and take out a bit
+of sewing. She was rarely without sewing, you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember." Joan patted his hand, a demonstration rare with her. "I am
+glad you feel that way, Father. Mother always does seem very close to
+me&mdash;especially just now." An odd feeling of sorriness for her
+step-mother came over Joan. "You are sure," she asked on an impulse,
+"that Effie May does not object to your coming here so much without
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Object? To my visiting my daughter under her own vine and figtree? It
+would hardly be within her province to object," he commented regally.
+"But, as it happens, she is the one who frequently suggests my visits.
+She quite understands that under the&mdash;er, the happy circumstances&mdash;you
+cannot come much to us, not caring naturally to appear any more often
+than is necessary in public." The Major adhered rigorously to every
+tenet of the old school.</p>
+
+<p>He had recently presented his daughter with a low, comfortable phaeton
+of the sort which, as he explained, the gentlewomen of his day were
+accustomed to drive; and Pegasus was learning to adapt herself demurely
+to the rôle of a family horse. Joan found this phaeton a great
+convenience for shopping and marketing and her rare visiting (she saw
+very little of her friends that summer); and in the evening she and
+Archie went for long drives about the parks, covering less ground than
+they had covered in the ill-fated Lizzie, but making up for this by a
+more intimate knowledge of what they passed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's good to go slowly enough now and then to see the wayside flowers,
+and smell the fern, and hear the bird-calls, isn't it?" she said once as
+they jogged along.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure it is! Now and then," replied Archie guardedly. A rising young
+business man of the present time could hardly be expected to find
+phaetoning an exhilarating means of locomotion. But "anything goes just
+now," as he said to himself, happily.</p>
+
+<p>He was not able to take as many of these drives with her as he should
+have liked. The cares of business were beginning to sit upon him with
+increasing heaviness. "A man's business has got to grow with his
+family," he was fond of saying, importantly; and Joan was left alone
+sometimes, even on Saturday afternoons and after supper in the
+evenings&mdash;those periods sacred in these our States to the uses of
+domesticity.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not complain. She was even, secretly, a little glad, for she
+had always enjoyed being alone. There were so many books to be read,
+letters to be written, thoughts to be thought in which Archie, for all
+his loyal efforts, could not quite share; and there was her music. One
+of her step-mother's several wedding presents had been a small grand
+piano, as companionable to Joan in this "pasture-time" as a dog is to
+some women.</p>
+
+<p>Archibald, too, loved music. He frequently urged her to play and sing,
+and was as proud of her rather indifferent performances as a <i>maestro</i>
+of a star-pupil. But he had an innocent, disconcerting habit of patting
+time with his foot, or bursting into the air at unexpected moments in a
+large, booming tenor that never by any accident quite found the key.
+Music was one of the things Joan found herself unable to share with her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>She objected sometimes to his growing preoccupation with business, on
+his own account. He began to look a little thin and fine-drawn; the
+typical American husband, she told him reprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You're neglecting your exercise, Archie dear! You never go to the Y. M.
+C. A., or play around with the boys any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Got something better to do," he beamed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Goose! But it isn't good for a man never to have any fun at all. 'All
+work and no play'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He took her in his arms. "Fun! What do I want with fun?" he exclaimed
+quite fiercely, lifting her face to his. But before their lips met, he
+let her go.</p>
+
+<p>"No rough stuff," she heard him admonish himself under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand instead....</p>
+
+<p>The Darcys too, were spending rather a quiet summer. Now that they had
+no débutante daughter in prospect, their names figured leas prominently
+in the social column. With his growing avoirdupois, the Major appeared
+to be abandoning the one-step in favor of the easy-chair, which was to
+be found in greater perfection at home than at the Country Club. If his
+bride regretted this lapse into settledness, she showed no signs of it.
+Her avoirdupois, also, was getting rather out of hand, despite constant
+attention to massage and sporadic attempts at dieting.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't how <i>much</i> I eat, seems like&mdash;it's <i>what</i> I eat," she said
+once plaintively to Joan. "Everything tasty turns to flesh on me; and
+God knows, I hate a poor table!"</p>
+
+<p>But Joan realized that it was not entirely physical inhibitions which
+were retiring the Darcys from the social arena. Her step-mother had
+delicacy enough to understand that her place was not among Joan's
+acquaintance, now that the girl had discovered her history. Joan liked
+her the better for it. She was punctiliously careful to invite Effie May
+to her house at frequent intervals, and always accepted such invitations
+as the other offered in return. The Major, never observant, was quite
+unaware that the relations between his wife and daughter had suffered
+any change. As he once remarked impersonally, "You and my wife would
+naturally find very little in common, excellent creature though she is.
+Why should you, indeed? Your antecedents, your early environment, have
+been entirely different. And as one grows older, those are the things
+that really matter," he added, with a complacency that sat rather oddly
+upon him in the circumstances&mdash;On the whole, Joan began to feel
+distinctly sorry for her step-mother.</p>
+
+<p>The older people came sometimes to take her for long automobile drives
+into the State; expeditions which Joan enjoyed thoroughly. Her father's
+imperturbable good manners and Effie May's amiability made them
+excellent traveling-companions, proof against all hazards of the road;
+tire trouble, bad going, even delayed and poor meals. And they both
+treated Joan with a new consideration, oddly wistful on the woman's
+part, to which she responded gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>It shamed her somehow to see how kind the world was to her nowadays; as
+if, in following the line of least resistance, she had done something
+very commendable indeed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2>
+
+
+<p>These long automobile rides familiarized her as nothing else could not
+only with the State but with her father. She came to understand and
+share his peculiar, proprietary interest in the lovely Kentucky
+countryside. He pointed out to her its beauties of wood and hill and
+pasture like the owner of some vast estate exhibiting it to visitors,
+with a frank and pardonable pride. It is a habit of mind not unusual to
+the native of certain localities&mdash;notably Virginia and Maryland and
+Kentucky; but in her wandering, unimportant old father it seemed to Joan
+a little piteous, as if he had sunk his small identity into that of his
+great State, content to make its history his history, its glory his.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," he would say reverently, "is the spot where we made our final
+victorious stand against the Indians. Sacred ground, my daughter!"
+Or&mdash;"This is the place where our women went down to the spring for
+water, risking their lives, bless their hearts! because the men could
+not be spared from the defense of the stockade. You should thank God
+that you are a Kentucky woman!" He sometimes forgot in his enthusiasm
+that she had not been, so to speak, born to the purple&mdash;though that
+fact, as he once explained to her, was merely an accident, due to a
+certain miscalculation of dates.</p>
+
+<p>Joan came to realize in this new intimacy with her father that his
+futility was owing in large part to circumstances over which he had no
+control: notably the times in which he lived. He had been born a little
+too late or perhaps a little too early. There is no need for men of his
+type in the piping times of peace; but had his prime chanced to occur
+during some convulsed period of the world's history, it is conceivable
+that Richard Darcy might have rendered a great account of himself. He
+was a born leader of men, with unfortunately little opportunity to
+exercise his talent. During the only war that came within his range of
+vision (our late unpleasantness with Spain), he had chanced to be
+involved with certain trusting friends in a financial situation so acute
+that the affairs of the nation had been obliged to stand aside until he
+extricated himself; by which time, to his lasting regret, the war was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>He had, of course, no right to his title. It had simply accrued to him
+as titles often do accrue to men of his type, particularly in the South;
+partly by inheritance, growing as he grew, beginning with a modest
+lieutenancy in the State Guards, which had been his one and only taste
+of the career for which he had been created. He never spoke of himself
+as "Major"; but from the habit of years he had perhaps come to think of
+himself so, accepting the unsought honor gracefully as he accepted
+whatever else came his way, whether of good or evil.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pity that he could not have fallen asleep, say, at twenty, in
+his clean, brave youth; and awakened in the month of August 1914, ready
+for the day's work....</p>
+
+<p>The Darcys and Joan were running home after a long trip in the Bluegrass
+one evening, slipping along without lights in the glow of an October
+aftermath, when at the turn of an unfrequented lane they came suddenly
+upon a crowd of people collected about a bridge. The chauffeur brought
+the car to an abrupt stop. It was at once surrounded by several men with
+handkerchiefs tied over the lower parts of their faces.</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil&mdash;" cried Major Darcy.</p>
+
+<p>"Highwaymen!" gasped Joan.</p>
+
+<p>A man with a pistol in his hand said laconically, "No, we ain't
+highwaymen, lady. We wasn't expectin' comp'ny, but sence you've come,
+you'll hev to stay. Set right where you are and don't look. We'll be
+through this job in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Let us pass at once," said the Major indignantly. "Drive on
+over the bridge, James!"</p>
+
+<p>"Better not, James," drawled the laconic one. "We're usin' that bridge
+ourselves just now."</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur hesitated, walling his eyes in fright. Joan, who was
+seated beside him, reached for the ignition switch to start the engine,
+but turned on instead the lighting-switch. The sudden glare of the
+headlights revealed some twenty or thirty roughly dressed men of the
+farmer class, and in their midst, bound hand and foot with rope, a
+cowering negro.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! It's a lynching," quavered Effie May.</p>
+
+<p>The Major had by this time collected his startled wits.</p>
+
+<p>With a sudden oath he jerked open the door and got out.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you up to here, men? Don't touch me, sir!"&mdash;this to one who
+had laid a hand on his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>There was a quality in her father's voice that sent a thrill through
+Joan. She had never heard it before. The man removed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"We're just stringin' up a nigger for the best of reasons," he
+explained. "'Tain't no business of yourn, stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make it my business," said Richard Darcy sternly. "You're not
+going to disgrace this State while <i>I</i> am here!"</p>
+
+<p>The effect was histrionic; and yet Joan realized that her father was not
+blustering. He meant it.</p>
+
+<p>There came a wail from beyond that made her shiver, the cry of a man in
+mortal terror. "I ain't never done it, 'fore Gawd I ain't never tetched
+that woman. Oh, Boss! O-o-oh, Boss!" It was like the cry of a damned
+soul to God. "<i>Don'</i> you let 'em git me!"</p>
+
+<p>There was an agony of hope in the appeal, as of one who sees at hand
+unexpected deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>The Major responded to it, speaking in quiet reassurance as she had
+sometimes heard him speak, years ago, when she had wakened out of some
+nightmare in the little bed beside her parents'.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, boy. They shan't get you,"</p>
+
+<p>He strode through the crowd, putting men out of his way right and left.
+In sheer surprise they let him pass till he reached the negro, who
+cringed to him, catching at his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then a voice cried out, "Here, we're wastin' time. Muzzle the old boy!"</p>
+
+<p>The Major turned and stared magnificently in the direction of his voice,
+nettled by the term "old boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently," he remarked, "the gentleman does not know who I am!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was seized with an hysterical desire to laugh. At such a moment the
+bombast of it was too much. Suppose they should inquire
+minstrel-fashion, "Well, then, Mr. Johnsing, who <i>are</i> you?"</p>
+
+<p>But the crowd was not as used to her father as she was. They hesitated,
+impressed by his hauteur, his fine clothes, the waiting limousine. They
+stirred uneasily. A voice near her murmured, "Mebbe it's the Governor!"</p>
+
+<p>Richard Darcy took instant advantage of the impression he had created,
+and began to speak. It was not the first time she had heard him make a
+speech, for he was frequently called upon to aid some friend in turning
+the tide of political battle. The Major, indeed, had rather a reputation
+for assisting his friends into office&mdash;It was typical of Joan that she
+listened critically despite her thumping heart; that she watched what
+she could see of the faces about her, picked out by the lights of the
+car; that she missed no expression on the gray, working features of the
+negro, darting wild glances about him like a newly caged wolf she had
+seen once at the Zoo, frantically eying the people who stood to stare at
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Her father's voice poured out in a golden flood, running the gamut from
+anger to gentle suasion. It was the voice of the natural orator, which
+depends very little for its effect upon words. Once, passing a negro
+church, Joan had heard just such a voice rising and falling within, and
+though not a word of the sermon reached her, after a few moments she had
+been almost ready to sway and moan with the congregation as it muttered,
+"Yas, good Lawd!" "Be mussiful to us po' sinners" "Come, Jesus, come
+down and take me home!"</p>
+
+<p>Some such effect began to be visible on the Major's audience. There were
+stirrings and murmurings that suggested applause. He rose to them. The
+eloquence that lies so close under the skin of Southern-born
+men&mdash;certainly of all Southern-born men of Irish stock&mdash;came to the
+surface and flowered. He showed this handful of rough farmers what it
+should mean to them to be natives of so great and glorious a
+commonwealth ("'Commonwealth'&mdash;what a splendid word, my friends!");
+wearing in her bosom all the riches of the earth, nourishing at that
+bosom a race of supermen ("And superwomen, my friends! superwomen!");
+carrying in her womb the greatness of the country's future.</p>
+
+<p>"Statesmen we give to the world&mdash;law-makers, not lawbreakers! Soldiers
+we give, not midnight marauders and assassins!" (If he borrowed freely
+from a certain greater Kentucky orator who speaks only with his pen, the
+Major was unaware of plagiarism.) "Show me the fools who say Kentuckians
+are lawless? We make our laws as we need them, gentlemen&mdash;and we obey
+them! Perhaps the greatest of our laws is this: 'Never kick a dog when
+it is down.'" His voice sank to a warm and personal friendliness. "I ask
+you, gentlemen&mdash;is there any dog more down than the negro? It is not his
+fault that he is here where he is no longer wanted. It is not his fault
+that he brought with him when he came the ways and the intelligence of
+the jungle. It is ours, perhaps, that he has kept them. We shall never
+tame the negro by proving ourselves savages!&mdash;My friends, you and I here
+in Kentucky pride ourselves on breaking our horses and our dogs by means
+of kindness. Shall we do less for our unfortunate black brother?"</p>
+
+<p>A voice in the crowd remarked, "<i>You</i> can claim kin with him ef you want
+to, Jedge&mdash;<i>I</i> ain't!"</p>
+
+<p>A ripple of laughter greeted this sally, and Joan's tension relaxed. She
+felt intuitively that a crowd which laughs does not kill.</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke, her father had more than once caught her eye over the
+heads of the others, urgently, meaningly. Now he nodded to her. Joan
+suddenly caught the message he was trying to convey.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants us to go to him. Quick, James! Start your engine. Quietly!"</p>
+
+<p>In his nervousness, however, the chauffeur started the car with a jerk,
+and many faces moved in their direction. The Major turned on the full
+tide of his voice, and rose to his climax.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," he asked solemnly, "have you thought to take into your
+hands the privilege of the Most High, who saith, 'Vengeance is mine'?
+Perhaps you have called vengeance 'justice'? Even so there is a finer
+thing than justice. There is mercy. And there is something we may give
+even greater than mercy&mdash;something to which each of us poor souls has a
+human right. I refer, gentlemen, to the benefit of the doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Some day every one of us here present&mdash;who knows how soon?&mdash;must stand
+before the Judgment Seat, cowering as this wretch is cowering now. And
+what we dare to ask then will be perhaps not justice, nor even
+mercy&mdash;but simply the benefit of the doubt."</p>
+
+<p>Tears came into Joan's eyes. It seemed to her that for a moment her
+father had forgotten his purpose there, and was speaking not for another
+but for himself....</p>
+
+<p>His mind, however, had not left the business in hand. After a slight and
+telling pause, he said in his ordinary conversational voice, "Now I am
+going to take this negro with me, gentlemen, if you don't mind. I have
+at hand a safe conveyance, as you see. I pledge you my word to deliver
+him in person to the sheriff of this county."</p>
+
+<p>He beckoned to Joan.</p>
+
+<p>The spell was broken, and pandemonium reigned. "Look out&mdash;he's makin' a
+get-away!"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, what's the use? Leave him go!"</p>
+
+<p>"By God, it was <i>my sister</i>&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me at him"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The gen'leman's right, I tell you!"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And penetrating all a laconic drawl, "Stranger, leggo that nigger, and
+leggo quick."</p>
+
+<p>Joan, on tiptoe, saw her father's head and beckoning hand above the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, James!" she said tensely. "Never mind if you run them down&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" gasped Effie May. "Don't you see those pistols? They mean to
+shoot!"</p>
+
+<p>The terrified James did not know which to obey.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, give me the wheel," ordered Joan. "Be quiet, Effie May!" Into her
+mind came scornfully one of her father's sayings, "The canaille are
+invariably timid."</p>
+
+<p>Effie May suddenly screamed again. "They're going to <i>shoot</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>And as if at a signal for which they had been waiting, two shots barked
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The Major, still finely erect, thrust the negro behind him, and at the
+same moment Joan sprang out of the car to go to his defense; two
+instinctive acts which proved them father and child, and also proved
+indubitably the Darcy right to pride of race.</p>
+
+<p>His steady voice reached her again as she struggled through the milling
+crowd; "You poor fools, look to what your folly has already led you!
+You've shot the wrong man. You've shot <i>me</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a second of appalled silence. Then a man muttered "Golly!" and
+turned and fled. His panic was contagious. One after another, by twos
+and threes, the lynchers melted hastily away. When Joan reached her
+father he was seated on the ground, leaning for support against the
+bridge railing, alone except for the shackled negro.</p>
+
+<p>He still had command of the situation. "Take my penknife, Dollykins, and
+set this boy free so that he can run," he ordered.</p>
+
+<p>Joan cut the ropes, sick with relief. He was so calm that she thought he
+must have been bluffing the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad! Dad! You're not really hurt, then?"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled up at her. "Not hurt, my child. Killed," he said, dramatic to
+the last....</p>
+
+<p>The negro did not run. In return for his defender's heroism, he
+performed a small act of heroism himself&mdash;not so small either, perhaps,
+considering that his life depended upon what use he made of the next few
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tote him to de car, lady," he offered, pantingly; and delayed
+further to give the paralyzed chauffeur instructions as to where to find
+the nearest doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Joan sat on the floor of the limousine with her father's head in her
+lap, only half aware of his labored, fluttering breath, of the blood
+upon her dress, of her step-mother's wild pleadings with him just to
+look at her, just to say one word to his Effie May, who loved him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She was strangely exalted. Her mind seemed to have slipped into a region
+of consciousness where things were made suddenly clear to her, troubling
+questions answered, doubts set forever aside.</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman," she kept repeating to herself. "A gentleman!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her in that moment a great thing to have been born a
+gentleman, even if one became nothing more; to know that whatever the
+fortunes of life, one would be able to meet them gallantly and unafraid,
+because of a something within stronger than personal will or habit: the
+sum of the wills and habits of many ancestors. She was sorry for the
+<i>canaille</i>, the Effie Mays, who had no such inner power to rely upon....</p>
+
+<p>As they carried him into a doctor's office, Richard Darcy's eyes opened.
+They passed the face of his frantic wife unseeing, and came to rest upon
+Joan in some anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"You all right, Dollykins? Must not allow&mdash;mere trifle like
+this&mdash;upset&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing shall upset me, Father," she said, smiling at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Children so necessary&mdash;family traditions&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She bent close to him. "My son is going to be proud to carry on the
+family traditions, dear."</p>
+
+<p>His face cleared. "Good girl!" There was a little bubbling breath. "I
+promised Mary&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Joan never learned what promise it was that he had made, and
+doubtless broken, to his Mary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan herself, like other self-reliant people, sometimes made promises
+which she was unable to keep. She had made such a one to her father.
+Despite her best efforts, the fact and manner of his death did manage to
+upset her, disastrously.</p>
+
+<p>The day came not long afterwards when for hours, years, they seemed to
+her, Joan was aware of nothing but pain, and of the fact that miserable,
+terrified Archie must somehow be got out of the way before she lost
+control of herself. She thought that when she could get enough breath to
+do it, she would ask him to go down town and bring her some ice-cream or
+something; but when she did open her lips they emitted, entirely without
+permission, a queer sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a croak.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness! This is no way for a gentleman to behave," she said to
+herself oddly; and must have spoken aloud, for the voice of Ellen Neal
+responded.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, my lamb! Yell all you want. You ain't no gentleman, thank
+goodness! but just a poor little girl who's got a right to holler all
+she likes. That's <i>one</i> right the men-folks ain't going to deny us and
+get away with it&mdash;not them!"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen as she spoke glared truculently at the doctor. It was not the
+first accouchement at which she had assisted, and at such moments she
+became feministic almost to the point of violence. Even Archie found it
+safer to remain out of reach of her accusing eye.</p>
+
+<p>But long, very long afterwards, Ellen herself admitted him once more to
+the Presence, for the sake of the burden he carried&mdash;a subdued, queerly
+gentle Ellen, with all the acerbity gone from voice and manner, and in
+its place something rather beautiful. It was motherhood that glowed in
+her, had any one cared to notice; motherhood come by vicariously, as
+Ellen Neal came by all the loveliness in life.</p>
+
+<p>"See, my lamb," she murmured, bending over the bed. "Open them pretty
+eyes and look who's here! Come close, Mr. Archie, and show her the
+present you've brought her. Quiet, now!&mdash;she ain't up to much. It's a
+surprise, Joie. Open your eyes and look!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a surprise, indeed. Joan, by great effort, managed to focus her
+gaze on Archie's burden. She shut her eyes quickly, and opened them
+again. They were still there; not one, but two little wrinkled, fuzzy
+heads.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you beat it?" demanded Archie, shakily, "Some little present, eh?"
+He held them out to her.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's lips moved, twitching. "From a Friend," was what she said; and
+Archie, recognizing a jest on sight, let out such a roar of joy that the
+twins awoke with pin-prick wails, and a nurse came running, and he was
+thrust once more into outer darkness.</p>
+
+<p>There a message was brought to him. "Your wife says why don't you
+telegraph President Roosevelt about it?"</p>
+
+<p>And literal Archie did so....</p>
+
+<p>But this was the last laughter heard in the house of Blair for many a
+weary week. Twins require more strength for their bearing and rearing
+than Joan, taken so unawares, was able to provide. The Major's final act
+of gallantry cost a good deal in the way of human life, which may, or
+may not, have been of more value than the life he saved.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when she was able to think again, Joan sometimes wondered
+whether his death was not perhaps an even more futile thing than his
+life had been; yet she would not have had it otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>His widow had caused to be erected to his memory the finest granite
+monolith obtainable for money, bearing the inscription, "Greater love
+hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends";
+and Joan, after her first startled distaste for the grandiloquence
+passed, was able to appreciate how deeply the memorial must gratify the
+proud spirit of a Darcy, if it lingered near enough to know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the dim corridors, the silent halls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Yesterday, the nuns move, whispering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their rosary. Without, a robin calls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A drowsy blessing to his little mate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For it is late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Christ is there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory&mdash;!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Et verbum caro factum est</i>, they sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo! the years are as a day to me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I kneel among the quiet ones again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To lay the pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The joy of life, where light and shadow meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At Jesus' feet.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Some time earlier, during the period when girl-emotions translate
+themselves into verse as naturally as bird-emotions translate themselves
+into song, Joan had composed these lines, with the odd prescience that
+frequently came to her when she "took her pen in hand." She had stepped
+aside from a heated game of handball one day to jot them down; and her
+play-fellows, evincing no particular surprise, had murmured to each
+other, "Leave Joan alone. She's writing Poetry." For poetry is as much a
+part of convent school-life as is handball.</p>
+
+<p>Now she was back among "the quiet ones" again, fulfilling her own
+prophecy, come to lay her burden of pain and joy, if not at Jesus' feet,
+at least in the safekeeping of his handmaidens. In her plain black
+frock, such as convent girls wear, with her hair down in a braid and a
+small apron tied about her waist, to protect her skirt from
+embroidery-floss, the nuns found it hard to believe it was Joan Blair
+who had come back to them out of the world, and not Joan Darcy. Only
+this was a Joan who played harder than her younger self had ever played,
+entering into the gaiety of the school, the basket-ball, the charades,
+the skating-matches, the fancy-dress impromptus, with a feverish
+eagerness which saddened the good ladies to see. Strange, vivid,
+restless young creature&mdash;what she had learned of life in the short while
+she had been away from them! Love, motherhood, and loss&mdash;the loss that
+is saddest of all losses to women, be they wives or maids or
+<i>religieuses</i>. While they in their silent corridors and hidden gardens
+had listened to month after quiet month rung away by the bells, praying,
+dreaming, working; tending the young life about them into blossom,
+sometimes carrying with candles one of their number back to a still
+place beyond the children's playground, sometimes&mdash;not often
+now&mdash;receiving into their ranks one who had done with the world's ways
+even before she came to know them. Truly "the quiet ones," blessed with
+the peace of those who resign their wills to the will of God.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, gazing into their serene, pure, almost childlike faces, envied
+them from her heart; but, being Joan, she asked herself wonderingly how
+they could be so sure it was the will of God to which they resigned
+themselves. Intelligent, fine-natured women, deliberately turning their
+backs on life, deliberately closing eyes and ears to what went on in the
+street just outside their cloister, lest it distract them from
+contemplation of their immortal souls&mdash;Joan shook her head sharply; and
+putting a veil over her hair, slipped into the chapel, where a voice
+behind the cloister-screen was repeating the rosary of the Sacred Heart:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, burning with love for us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Inflame our hearts with love for Thee."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The beautiful voice rose and fell in almost passionate cadence, as if it
+were pleading. It ceased abruptly; and another, older voice took up the
+words, with mystic tenderness. There was a faint fragrance in the
+place&mdash;indeed throughout the old building&mdash;of incense and dying roses,
+which Joan always called to herself "the odor of sanctity." It came back
+to her sometimes poignantly in the most unexpected places.</p>
+
+<p>A very old lay-sister, in a white coif and shoes that creaked a trifle,
+pottered about among the statues of the saints, arranging small lamps
+and vases of flowers, always dropping as she passed the altar a
+business-like little curtsey. Now and then a child with a veil over her
+head would slip in at the door, and genuflect, and sink to her knees for
+a moment's prayer. Sunlight streamed in, multi-colored, through ruby and
+purple and amber glass, across the white marble Christ who stood with
+hands outstretched and head bowed, suffering little children to come
+unto Him....</p>
+
+<p>Joan, who had been reading Rénan (a fact which would have certainly
+caused her expulsion from that place had it been known), quoted to
+herself:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"In our bustling civilization, the memory of the life of
+Galilee has been like the perfume of another world."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>It seemed to her one of the true miracles that it should indeed have
+persisted through our bustling civilization, through persecution and
+indifference, through crass hysterical religiosity, even to this day; if
+only in such places as her convent school, and little country churches
+here and there, and in the homes of the very poor. That lovely,
+pastoral, gentle life of Galilee, exquisite as the name itself&mdash;who
+could not have been good in Galilee?</p>
+
+<p>"If Archie had lived then, he would have followed Christ," thought Joan
+suddenly. "Followed him, and fought for him, too. And he'd never have
+let the Jews get hold of him!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time she had thought of her husband in many days....</p>
+
+<p>Archie's letters came with faithful regularity, but he was one of the
+personalities who do not carry well by letter. He informed her that he
+missed her, but she was not to hurry home on his account; that Ellen was
+keeping down the grocer-bill nicely; that the new man he had put on the
+road wasn't doing well and he thought of putting Johnny Carmichael in
+his place; that one of the water-pipes had burst and made a spot on the
+wall, but nothing to fret about; and that if she needed more money be
+sure to let him know. Or words to that effect.</p>
+
+<p>Archie, somehow, was never quite in the picture. She was better able to
+reconstruct her lost girlhood without him.</p>
+
+<p>And Archie understood. It was he who had suggested the Convent when
+Joan's doctor admitted himself dissatisfied with her condition, her slow
+return to normality.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got a peculiarly sensitive nervous organism to deal with here,"
+the doctor said. "It takes very little to throw such natures off the
+balance. You say she never speaks of her babies at all? I don't like
+that! I'd rather have her crying about all over the place."</p>
+
+<p>"So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could
+comfort her. Now I don't dare!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone."</p>
+
+<p>So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and
+asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the
+tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting
+married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as
+if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her
+useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a
+religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom
+by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement,
+and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to
+enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some
+time been afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple,
+orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded
+the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed
+the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's
+uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily
+prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it.</p>
+
+<p>She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to
+forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather
+frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan
+was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their
+husbands, else how could they remain wives?</p>
+
+<p>"She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive.
+"We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! and what about you? I suppose you ain't had a good deal of a
+shock yourself?" muttered the old woman, savage with sympathy. "Wasn't
+you bringing home toys and truck every day of the world, trains and
+dolls and I don't know what all&mdash;and them not a week old yet? Your top
+chiffoneer drawer's full of toys this minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Better give them away to the children in the neighborhood before she
+sees them."</p>
+
+<p>"No such thing! I'll be savin' 'em for the next," said Ellen,
+stoutly....</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough, Joan was presently restored to her husband and her duty
+through the medium of no less a person than Eduard Desmond.</p>
+
+<p>She was chaperoning some of the younger girls in town one day, when she
+met him on the street. She was surprised by the encounter, for she had
+not known he was in Washington; and she bowed uncertainly, expecting him
+to be a little embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped, and held out his hand with evident pleasure. "Mrs.
+Blair! you?" he exclaimed. "What wonderful luck brings you to
+Washington? and where are you stopping?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan briefly explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," he said with a notable accession of eagerness, "Mr. Blair is not
+with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Some long-slumbering imp of malice awoke and stirred in Joan. His
+expression as he looked her up and down was unmistakable. Evidently
+matrimony had detracted nothing from her in his eyes. On the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Blair is not with me," she replied demurely. "I am on a
+vacation. Why should one carry a husband about on a vacation?"</p>
+
+<p>This was Longmeadow language, the native tongue of Mr. Desmond.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, indeed?" he murmured. "And when am I to come to see you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure you are to come at all. We're not allowed masculine
+callers at the Convent, I think; are we, dear?" she asked the young girl
+nearest to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, Mrs. Blair!&mdash;on Wednesday afternoons, if they're brothers or
+cousins or anything like that," replied the child shyly.</p>
+
+<p>Eduard smiled. "I am not a cousin or a brother&mdash;fortunately&mdash;but perhaps
+I may be called 'something like that!'&mdash;Next Wednesday afternoon, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not really sure that I shall be able to see you," she demurred.</p>
+
+<p>"I am!" replied Eduard calmly; and, lifting his hat, he passed on.</p>
+
+<p>He proved himself a true prophet. Joan could not deny herself the bitter
+satisfaction of seeing at what a small fire she had managed so to scorch
+her young wings.</p>
+
+<p>He had been waiting half an hour in the convent parlor when she came to
+him, however; and half an hour in a convent parlor is an ordeal few
+forget. It was a large, bleak room divided midway by a grille, on the
+inner side of which sat a lay-sister, knitting. The other side was left
+for the reception of male relatives and connections; and a tongue-tied,
+uneasy lot they were, slipping about on the horsehair sofas, staring
+furtively at the undecorative saints who adorned the walls, conducting
+their conversation obviously with a view to the other side of the
+grille.</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, get me out of this!" murmured Desmond as Joan
+approached. "I feel as if the eye of God were on me constantly!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's only the eye of Sister Veronica," reassured Joan, "and more her
+ear than her eye, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that she can hear what we are saying, in there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been told there's a sounding-board concealed about this room
+somewhere. It may not be true, of course; but it's wonderful how much
+does get back to the Convent from the parlor."</p>
+
+<p>Eduard shuddered. "There's goose-flesh up and down my spine! Do come out
+for a walk somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, smiling. "Can't be done! But of course you haven't
+anything to say to me that Sister Veronica shouldn't hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I, just?" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>The imp of malice stirred in her again. She asked softly, "What, for
+instance?"</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a quick look, glanced toward the grille, and plunged, albeit
+in a very low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"For one thing I want to tell you how lovely you've grown!"</p>
+
+<p>"Louder, please?" said Joan, "I missed that."</p>
+
+<p>He repeated it, with additions. "And you need not pretend you did not
+hear me, either, you witch. What's happened to you, Joan? I always knew
+you'd be a wonderful creature some day, but already!&mdash;Those exquisite
+shadows under the eyes, the hollow of your cheek, your lips&mdash;What I'd
+give to paint you now, my dear! Only that it would waste our time
+together. How much time have you, by the way? For me, I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You find me improved, then?" she enquired, demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"Improved! I find you&mdash;never mind what I find you! There's a subtlety, a
+fascination&mdash;But I can't express it."</p>
+
+<p>"There must be a subtlety indeed if <i>you</i> can't express it," she
+commented; and added, "How is Mrs. Rossiter?"</p>
+
+<p>If she expected to disconcert him, she was disappointed. He informed her
+at length as to the health, appearance, and conjugal felicity of Mrs.
+Rossiter.</p>
+
+<p>"They're actually pulling it off," he said interestedly. "They're making
+a go of it. I've always had the theory that once a divorcée always a
+divorcée&mdash;the old-fashioned gentlewoman is more to my taste. Divorce
+always seems to me so&mdash;so unnecessary&mdash;But in this case it appears I am
+mistaken, and nobody is happier to admit it. They positively fancy each
+other, Philemon and Baucis, all that sort of thing!&mdash;By the way, I had
+no idea you had made such friends with May. You gave her my bracelet, it
+seems. Cruel of you, Joan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did it hurt your feelings?" she murmured, dimpling.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, frightfully. How did you have the heart? She positively gloated
+over me."</p>
+
+<p>"Father would never have allowed me to accept anything so handsome from
+a passing acquaintance. One had to do something with it, you see, so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Passing acquaintance!" he interrupted, reproachfully. "Surely I was
+more to you than that? Our evening under the beech-tree&mdash;shall I ever
+forget it?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, paling a little, remarked, "Sister Veronica appears interested."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn!" muttered Eduard, and shortly took his leave. But first he gave
+her a note from Mrs. Desmond urging her to dine with them on any evening
+she cared to name.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no
+heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of
+us, a family party."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we all realize that you are not in a mood for gaiety," said
+Eduard with a sympathetic glance at her black. "But I <i>must</i> see you
+somehow!&mdash;and among old friends, who understand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>To ward off any mention of things that hurt, she hastily agreed to dine
+with the Desmonds on the following Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>Sister Veronica, (who happened to be quite deaf) wondered what could
+have occurred to give the poor child such an expression of&mdash;not exactly
+pleasure. It was more like triumph. She would have made no sense of what
+Joan was muttering under her breath, Salome-wise, as she left the
+parlor: "Off with his head! Oh, off with his head, <i>and step on it</i>!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Not only the older girls, but more than one of the nuns, made some
+excuse to come into Joan's little room when she was dressing that
+Saturday evening. The rumor had gone forth that their charge was
+beginning to take interest in worldly affairs again, and the good ladies
+congratulated each other. While they themselves had forsworn the
+pleasures of the world, they were quite aware that for some these had
+their uses, if only as an anodyne. They took, too, a quite feminine
+pleasure in Joan's frock, a simple black chiffon with transparent
+sleeves, which she had cut out a little at the neck to make it suitable
+for the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," said the Reverend Mother, making her turn round and round
+for inspection, "that this is what they call in the world a décolleté
+basque, is it not? And very becoming, too! Only"&mdash;she added with the
+frank conventual innocence that occasionally startled Joan, "does not
+such a display of the person tend to encourage lust of the eye, my
+child?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan laughed a little. "Let us hope so, Mother!" she murmured. "We
+strive to please"&mdash;a remark which the old lady trusted that she had
+misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>Her striving on that occasion was by no means in vain. There seems
+something peculiarly alluring to the masculine taste (as women of the
+oldest profession in the world are quite aware) about black. Joan, with
+nothing to relieve her somberness except a cluster of white gardenias at
+her breast, would have held the gaze of any man who saw her as surely as
+she held that of Eduard and of Betty's father, who had hitherto not
+known his daughter's friend and openly regretted his missed opportunity.
+She was one of the women whom motherhood, even denied and thwarted
+motherhood, gives a momentary poignant beauty, of the sort that Leonardo
+loved to paint. Betty's father was indeed so regretful of his missed
+opportunity that it was with some difficulty Eduard secured the
+tête-à-tête upon which he had counted.</p>
+
+<p>"At last!" he sighed when he had finally man&oelig;uvered her into the
+conservatory to admire orchids. "I began to think this was going to be
+another wasted hour, like my ghastly experience of the monastic
+life.&mdash;Do you realize, my dear, that I am entitled to a little praise
+and comforting on your part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why, because of the discretion, the magnanimity, in fact the utter
+damn-fool quixotism of my late conduct! At Longmeadow, you know. Leaving
+you&mdash;when I might have stayed!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan was rather startled. She had not expected him to carry the war into
+the enemy's country to such an extent as this.</p>
+
+<p>"That makes twice," he murmured, leaning over her, "that I've let you go
+unscathed, my dear. When you left school&mdash;and when you came back to me.
+But&mdash;Fate is too strong for us. You're not expecting me, I hope, to let
+you go a third time?"</p>
+
+<p>"In just about five minutes," she smiled, glancing at her wristwatch.
+"I've ordered my taxi for ten o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>He gave a little exclamation, and caught her hand. "Don't pretend to be
+so cool and indifferent, you witch! I know you better than that.
+You&mdash;cool and indifferent! Have I forgotten that night under the
+beech-tree? Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan suddenly blazed out at him, white with anger. "No! I've not
+forgotten that. Nor afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Afterwards?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be good enough to tell me in plain language what was your idea
+in running away?"</p>
+
+<p>He eyed her appreciatively. He liked a touch of temper in a woman. It
+gave them a zest your amiable creatures lack.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Beautiful, what else as a man of honor could I do? A thing like
+that doesn't stand still, you know! The flare dies out&mdash;or it goes
+further. Our flare would not have died out."</p>
+
+<p>Her lip curled. "And as 'a man of honor' it never occurred to you that
+we might preserve our flare, as it were, in marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>He sighed ruefully. "Oh, yes, it did! That temptation, too, I had to
+fight. For you see, my dear, I don't believe in marriage. I've seen too
+much of it (vicariously). Believe me, it preserves no flares! It
+quenches them. The thing's as fatal as death&mdash;though not, thank God, as
+inevitable! I will not put a relation I value to a test it will not
+bear," he explained, evidently in earnest. "What!&mdash;tie a creature of
+spirit and fire like yourself to the duty of forever loving one man,
+obeying one man, giving yourself into his hands to break at his leisure?
+Can you think of any surer way of killing love than to make a duty of
+it? 'Duty'&mdash;the most hideous, cold, Puritanical word in our hideous,
+cold, Puritanical language! The French put it better. <i>Devoir</i> suggests
+something that is by no means cold. Therefore, dearest girl"&mdash;he kissed
+her hands&mdash;"let me pay you my <i>devoirs</i> always, and be sure that I shall
+never trouble you with anything so unpleasant as a 'duty.'&mdash;Why, suppose
+I had taken you then, bound you hand and foot to me by law&mdash;think how
+bored we should be with each other already! It would be from me you
+would be taking a vacation, instead of from the unfortunate Blair."
+(Joan winced.) "As it is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" she prompted, veiling her eyes. "As it is&mdash;Eduard?"</p>
+
+<p>He drew her toward him with little inarticulate murmurs. She took a
+fleeting glance at the face approaching hers. It was flushed, the eyes a
+trifle glazed as if he had been drinking. He breathed hard.</p>
+
+<p>"How unbecoming it is to them!" she thought, but without resisting. (The
+reader who happens to like Joan would do well to skip this paragraph. It
+is not our heroine at her best.)</p>
+
+<p>"As it is," said Eduard rather hoarsely, "we have each other for all
+time, my Beautiful! Nothing to bind us, nothing to hold us, except our
+sacred&mdash;er&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Flare?" prompted Joan, helpfully.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not paying his usual attention to words just then. He lifted
+her face to his, and closed his eyes the better to savor what was
+coming....</p>
+
+<p>An unexpected sound caused him to open them again. It was laughter,
+issuing from the very lips he was about to enjoy; not hysterical,
+nervous laughter such as might have been pardoned under the
+circumstances, but cool and sweet, and unimpassioned as the tinkling of
+ice in a pitcher.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not really trying to warm it up and serve it over again?"
+protested Joan, as she extricated herself from his embrace. "How absurd!
+I thought you were too much of an artist for that. And at your age,
+too!"</p>
+
+<p>She sauntered back to the others, still laughing over her shoulder. He
+did not follow.</p>
+
+<p>Which may be said to have been the end of Eduard Desmond, so far as this
+chronicle is concerned....</p>
+
+<p>But it was also the end of what Joan had disloyally spoken of to him as
+her vacation. The word stuck in her memory, and she was ashamed of it.
+Her heart yearned toward Archie.</p>
+
+<p>The nuns bade her a delighted farewell; and all the way home she made
+amends for her long neglect of him by thinking of her husband
+constantly. By contrast with Eduard's smooth hair, his slim hands, and
+well-modulated, expressive voice, Archie appeared to her the very
+epitome of manliness. She idealized his defects into beauties, big ears,
+clumsiness, and all. She remembered with a thrill how easily he carried
+her upstairs when she was tired, how he went tiptoeing squeakily about
+the house in the morning for fear of waking her, whispering in tones
+that would have roused the dead&mdash;Blessed, funny old Archie! She could
+hardly wait for the sight of him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when she did see him, through the car-window, watching the platform
+for her appearance as tensely as a terrier watches a rathole, Joan
+shrank back with a faint gasp. He was looking quite appallingly dapper,
+with shiny new shoes and a Derby hat&mdash;an article of wear not designed
+for people with badly adjusted ears; and his mouth hung slightly open in
+his eagerness, showing the infantile front teeth, through which issued
+(she could almost hear it) a sort of a tuneful hissing, as was his way
+in moments of emotion, just to show that he was not nervous or excited
+in the least.</p>
+
+<p>Joan shrank back, the last person to leave the train. And as she passed
+a mirror, catching a glimpse of her pale face within it she whispered
+piteously, "Oh, Joan Darcy, what have you done?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV</h2>
+
+
+<p>For the modern woman there lies, fortunately, a life between the two
+extremes of domesticity and frivolity, both of which Joan had tried and
+found wanting. Or rather she had not found domesticity wanting so much
+as temporary&mdash;a period of tranquil suspense, as it were, leading up to
+an inevitable climax which had somehow failed to come off. Even had her
+babies lived, it is to be doubted whether Joan could have long satisfied
+herself with domesticity pure and simple; and she could no more resume
+it now than a cocoon may be resumed by a former occupant which has
+sprouted wings.</p>
+
+<p>As for frivolity, plenty of that offered itself to a young matron with a
+charming house and a husband who was generally spoken of as a rising
+young business man. ("Rising," Archie certainly was; he had to be, to
+keep up with his rising expenditures.)</p>
+
+<p>But Joan asked perhaps too much of frivolity. She had been heard to
+remark that "nothing made the social game possible except flirtation and
+real talk; neither of which were to be had in Louisville by people who
+valued their reputations"; a rather sweeping comment, of the sort which
+soon made Joan's tongue a trifle over-famous. Simple, unexacting folk
+who liked a good dinner with a game of cards afterwards for modest
+stakes, and now and then a little dancing with each other's spouses,
+just to keep in touch with the new steps, began to be rather afraid of
+young Mrs. Blair. And Joan was equally afraid of them. She had a morbid
+suspicion that dullness might be catching.</p>
+
+<p>There was something appalling to her, too, in what has been somewhere
+called "the infinite littleness of social life." It seemed to have a
+strangely flattening effect upon its devotees&mdash;promoting some, demoting
+others, all to the same unstimulating level, while the wheels within
+wheels shifted and reformed kaleidoscopically. These wheels within these
+wheels puzzled Joan. "Climbers," such as her step-mother, she was able
+to understand and even to sympathize with. It seemed to her quite
+natural and thoroughly American for water to seek a higher level than
+its own. That was merely progress, merely self-respect made visible. To
+"get on" appeared a quite legitimate ambition; but to "get in"&mdash;that was
+another matter. Snobbery, that word of many interpretations, meant to
+Joan the extreme form of self-confessed vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were friends they were after, I could understand," she said to
+Emily Carmichael. "Everybody wants friends&mdash;we're all lonely. But you
+have got to select your real friends one at a time, not in assorted
+clumps, like bananas. And one's real friends so rarely happen to be
+friends with each other&mdash;you've noticed that? Why this passion for
+organizing ourselves into group-formation, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"For purposes of offense and defense," explained Emily. "So that we may
+leave the Mrs. Websters out, and let the Joan Darcys in, of course."</p>
+
+<p>They had been discussing Joan's near neighbor, a well-bred,
+sweet-mannered, adaptable young woman who had recently laid siege to the
+town, and with whom Joan was forming one of those propinquity
+friendships which are destined not to last. None of Mrs. Webster's
+friendships appeared to last. She had used acquaintance after
+acquaintance gracefully as a stepping-stone to higher things, leaving,
+however, not a single enemy behind her. It was the fashion in the
+various circles through which she had passed to say how charming Mrs.
+Webster was, even after she seemed done with them. And now, through
+Joan, she was laying tactful but so far unsuccessful siege to the
+Jabberwocks; cleverness (in moderation) having become quite the smart
+thing nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not our massive intellects which attract her, however," commented
+Emily. "It is&mdash;well, modesty forbids me to say just what it is. The sign
+<i>verboten</i> is to some natures as a red rag to a bull. They simply must
+have it to play with."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but why should anybody be <i>verboten</i> to Kathy Webster?" defended
+Joan. "She's charming, and perfectly intelligent, and unmistakably a
+lady&mdash;which is more than one can say with confidence of some of our most
+indefatigable social leaders. Look at Mrs. Gunther, for
+instance!&mdash;didn't you tell me her father used to deliver meat at your
+door out of his own cart?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent meat it was, too. Father says we have never had a decent
+butcher since."</p>
+
+<p>"And lo, what house more exclusive than theirs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally! It has to be. People like that seem to develop a sort of
+protective instinct which guards them from any possible contact with
+vulgarity until such time as they shall have accumulated enough
+refinement to be immune. Not for them the company of any chance newcomer
+like Mrs. Webster! They have to be careful."</p>
+
+<p>"But shouldn't you think they'd have a sort of fellow-feeling for the
+new arrivals?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, no! What's the good of attaining a pinnacle if you're going to
+share it with somebody who might push you off?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Webster's pursuit of Joan was not entirely opportunism. There was a
+good deal of admiration in it, mixed with a sort of malice which the
+larger nature had difficulty in comprehending. Joan found herself
+entered most unwillingly into an undignified petty rivalry with her
+neighbor. If she entertained some of her friends at luncheon without
+Mrs. Webster, the other instantly retaliated by giving a luncheon
+herself without Joan, sending in dessert and decorations afterwards to
+press home the point. If the Blair house in Spring put out new awnings,
+the Webster house erupted not only into awnings but into flower-boxes as
+well, with a corresponding air of triumph in its mistress. If Joan
+received some invitation which the other did not, there arose between
+them a slight, unmistakable coolness; whereas, if the contrary occurred,
+Mrs. Webster became modest and cordial again.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when this unpleasant rivalry lay dormant, the two had many a
+friendly, neighborly time together over their sewing and their
+gardening; and once when Joan was taken suddenly ill the other showed
+herself genuinely kind, quick with womanly help and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Joan could never quite make up her mind whether it was the pettiness of
+Society which makes the Mrs. Websters, or the Mrs. Websters who make the
+pettiness of Society. In any case, she lost what little taste she had
+for a purely social career. It was not good enough.</p>
+
+<p>And so she turned the pent-up energies of her nature into those
+activities which are summed up nowadays under the general title of
+Clubwork. Investigations, commissions, agitations of all sorts came in
+for their share of her attention. She soon created for herself quite a
+following of less daring spirits, among them Emily Carmichael and others
+of the Jabberwock group who had graduated from the cocoon. It became
+known that whenever young Mrs. Blair undertook a thing, it went with a
+rush, not so much through her own efforts as through those of her
+henchmen. She was recognized in club circles, despite her youth, as
+something more valuable than a mere worker; she was an executive&mdash;All of
+which fed her vanity and her sense of usefulness; and left somewhere
+within her an aching void of dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Suffrage-work came nearer filling this void than had anything else, and
+that, it must be confessed, for a rather ignoble reason. It gave her a
+chance to make speeches. In the back of her mind, with the very real
+conviction that the ballot is a necessity which women are unjustly
+denied, lurked also the suspicion that the world is already aware of the
+fact without any further need of agitation. Nevertheless she continued
+to agitate, because she liked to exercise an ability which otherwise
+might have remained forever undiscovered&mdash;There is no pleasure in life
+equal to that of employing skillfully the talents that have been given
+us.</p>
+
+<p>She made the discovery of her gift quite by accident. At some woman's
+meeting, a lady who was to have spoken on the subject of the Federal
+Amendment failed to appear, and Joan, who had recently read up on the
+matter (it may be remembered that she was what the actors call "quick
+study"), volunteered to take her place, meaning simply to give the gist
+of the matter and thus relieve a harassed chairman. But when she found
+herself on the platform facing interested and expectant faces, something
+happened that had occasionally happened before when she "play-acted" for
+the girls at school. Joan left herself, and became a part of the
+audience.</p>
+
+<p>She listened to her voice going on and on, with amused approval. It was
+a voice rather like her father's, carrying and flexible, and peculiarly
+rich in its intonations.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't really matter much what I say," thought Joan, listening to
+herself; "it's how I say it. If I drop my voice a note here, they ought
+to frown." (They did.) "Now I'll have them smile a little, perhaps
+chuckle. After I stop, no applause, I think&mdash;just a nice, thoughtful
+silence." (All of which came faithfully to pass.)</p>
+
+<p>When she stepped down from that platform, her reputation as a public
+speaker was made. Thereafter she delivered speeches whenever and
+wherever she was asked, to the incredulous delight of Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, come over and hear the wife do her little spiel to-night!" he
+would urge upon all his acquaintance. "It's a treat!&mdash;stands right up
+and hands it to 'em hot off the reel, without a note or anything. You
+can see her little old brain workin' while she talks&mdash;and lookin' pretty
+as a picture all the time!"</p>
+
+<p>His pride in her was such that he presented her with a successor to
+Lizzie, a more pretentious member of the Lizzie family, in fact, in
+which to get about to her numerous committee meetings.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we can afford it," he said in answer to her demur. "Haven't
+all your friends got automobiles? Well, then!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan accomplished much in the way of by-product to this satisfaction of
+her vanity. Her youthful charm and her good breeding got her a hearing
+frequently where more strenuous representatives of the cause had failed;
+and through her many hitherto uncertain lambs were gathered safely into
+the fold. On one occasion, to her astonishment, Joan discovered the
+three Misses Darcy in her audience, wearing expressions of shrinking
+alarm. But if they had come&mdash;not to scoff, they were too polite for
+that: let us say to deprecate,&mdash;they remained to join.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare it's <i>shameful</i> the way we women have been treated all this
+time!" cried Miss Iphigenia afterwards, truculently signing the card
+which made of her a suffragette. "I'd no idea! Not allowed a word in
+edgewise, the gentlemen spending all the money and making all the laws,
+ordering us about like we were so many white slaves&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't recall that darling mama was ever treated in just that way by
+dear papa?" interjected Miss Virginia, uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! Exceptions," snorted Miss Iphigenia (if one so gentle could be
+said to snort). "Exceptions can be made to prove anything, can't they,
+Joan? Why, we haven't even had a say-so as to whether we should marry or
+not. Simply had to sit back and say 'Thank you, sir!' to any gentleman
+who was kind enough to ask us!"</p>
+
+<p>Here Miss Virginia was able thoroughly to concur. "And if nobody <i>was</i>
+kind enough to ask us&mdash;Oh, my dears, I begin to think that if we could
+have had the ballot in time&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's more," cried Miss Iphigenia, inspired, "I mean to bring our Susy
+to hear you the next time you make a speech, Joan. Yes, I do! If they
+try to keep her out, we shall say she is there as our maid. If we are
+all to be allowed to vote about things, colored and white alike, it's
+time for the colored women to be taught how!"&mdash;Which Joan justly
+regarded as a signal victory.</p>
+
+<p>But at the same time she chuckled inwardly over the mental vision of an
+audience of colored lady voters, swaying to and fro with occasional
+unctuous shouts of, "Bress us, dat's so! Um, yas, my Lawd! Come down,
+come down and gadder us sinners into de fold!"</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, in the pursuance of her various public successes, Joan was
+thrown into contact with people whom she classified under the heading of
+Intelligentzia. There were plenty of these in Louisville, thinkers and
+students and writers, a growing number of names which were rather better
+known away from the city than in it. But of these Joan fought a little
+shy. She cared more for books than for the making of them, had no wish
+to peep behind the scenes for fear of losing her illusions. She got the
+impression, too, that professional thinkers and writers were so busy
+observing and interpreting the life about them as to have somehow lost
+human touch with it. And Joan was nothing if not a humanist. She had a
+youthful horror of being classified among the <i>bas bleux</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Men do so hate a bluestocking," she said once pensively to her friend
+Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"Men? Well, what of that? Yours doesn't!&mdash;and you don't want anybody
+else's men, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"None that I have seen so far," admitted Joan. "But you never can tell.
+They say it's in the dangerous thirties that we really begin to sit up
+and take notice&mdash;Anyway, I shall <i>never</i> be married and settled enough
+to relish the idea of men running away from me as if I were something
+catching!"</p>
+
+<p>So she continued to avoid, rather than to cultivate, the company of the
+Intelligentzia, thereby denying herself her birthright.</p>
+
+<p>And at twenty-five, a leading citizeness of her community, with
+engagements so thick on her calendar that there was barely time for an
+occasional meal at home, she woke every morning with the thought, "If
+something doesn't happen to-day, I shall scream!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>At that stage of life, something usually does happen....</p>
+
+<p>Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized
+with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that
+Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it.
+The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of
+autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like
+homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone
+unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the
+slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the
+Beauty of the World."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"How <i>can</i> one enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly
+of herself....</p>
+
+<p>Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a
+little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother
+had once made an English version of it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Byushky, byu),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smiles thy mother, too.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Byushky, byu).<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blood and tears and fear and glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall I know through you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But to-night thou art my small one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Byushky, byu),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the moon to bless thy slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thy mother, too."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and
+accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.</p>
+
+<p>She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately
+done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not
+safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who
+occasionally entertained musicians&mdash;But she was mistaken. It came from
+her own house.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her
+slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside.
+Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile
+of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting,
+exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have
+called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.</p>
+
+<p>But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the
+tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted
+yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it
+because you are too happy?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a
+f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just&mdash;Mother used to
+sing that song, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little&mdash;One is never
+a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look
+at you!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in
+foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard,
+and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impassive face. They
+met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to
+melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!&mdash;And how handsome you are! I had
+forgotten that."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have never been a grown-up married woman before."</p>
+
+<p>"I see! You mean that we've become the same age now?" She looked at him
+more closely. "And we have! Why, Stefan, you're nothing like as old as I
+used to think you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never have been," he smiled. "I rather fancied you might discover
+that fact some day. But&mdash;you wouldn't wait, my dear." He turned to some
+packages on the top of the piano. "Have you become too grown-up and
+married to like presents?"</p>
+
+<p>The brief moment of awkwardness passed before Joan was quite sure it had
+been there. She clapped her hands. "Presents&mdash;for me? Oh, and for Ellen
+Neal, and even for Archie, whom you don't know! Stefan, how dear of
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your people are my people," he said. "Also, I wish to propitiate them
+into allowing me the freedom of your company, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're going to stay for some time?" she cried, delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>"As long as I am allowed to&mdash;'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the
+hunter home from the hill'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Till he begins to feel an itching in his wanderfoot again," said Joan,
+making a little face at him. "I know you!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Ellen came in to light the lamps. "Oh, you've come, Miss
+Joan, have you? I thought it was about time! Mr. Archie'll be home
+before long," she said primly, and was about to withdraw when Joan cried
+to her, "Nellen, have you seen Mr. Nikolai?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I have. How else did you s'pose he got into the house? I'm puttin'
+a place on the supper-table for him," she replied, tossing her head.</p>
+
+<p>With years Ellen's temper did not become less difficult; but Joan was at
+a loss to account for its present manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you are," she murmured soothingly. "But I don't believe
+you've seen the lovely present he's brought you all the way
+from&mdash;Shanghai, is it, this time?"</p>
+
+<p>Ellen drew near, fascinated by the shimmering length of purple crêpe.
+"Silk! For me? Shucks, what would I be doin' with stuff like that? It's
+much too fine for the likes of me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is too fine for the likes of you," replied Nikolai, with quiet
+sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you'll be perfectly grand in it, Nellen, with the Battenberg
+collar and cuffs!"</p>
+
+<p>She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept
+such things off a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," reassured Joan, keeping a
+straight face.</p>
+
+<p>But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of
+her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each
+time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety
+of her sheepfold."</p>
+
+<p>"That's because you are what she calls a 'for'ner.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it
+in their hearts to trust a Jew."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're only half a Jew!"</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without
+bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."</p>
+
+<p>He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long
+string of them with pearls between, and a tassel of pearls at either
+end.</p>
+
+<p>She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned
+more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her
+aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring
+out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they
+are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them&mdash;The
+sapphires are better."</p>
+
+<p>She patted his hand. "It <i>is</i> so nice to have somebody about again who
+notices whether I have eyes or not!"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely your Archibald notices?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate,
+like praising something of his own, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be
+in&mdash;I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a quick glance. "I wonder what you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>But Nikolai did not explain. He said instead, "I am sorry you have no
+children."</p>
+
+<p>She stiffened. Among her friends it had come to be understood that
+children were best not mentioned to Joan. There was a hidden bruise
+which time seemed to have left unhealed.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai, however, chose not to heed the warning of her expression.</p>
+
+<p>"A home without children in it," he added, "seems to us wandering folk
+only half a home."</p>
+
+<p>Joan stood up, a hand at her throat. "What do you think," she said in a
+stifled voice, "it seems to us who are not wandering folk?..."</p>
+
+<p>In three questions Stefan Nikolai had discovered about the Blair
+household all and more than he wanted to know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door and Archie
+came in; a weary, cheerful Archie, not quite so dapper as of old, but
+rather the better for that, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, darlingest!&mdash;'Late as usual.' There&mdash;I said it first! Things do
+sort of pile up on a person. Why, look who's here? Wait! I know you&mdash;"
+he extended an eager hand of welcome to the man who rose to greet him.
+"I'll bet my hat it's Joan's pal, the author. Guessed you, didn't I?
+Only you said he was an old chap, Joan!&mdash;Well, well, well! Welcome to
+our city. I thought you were projickin' round, as the darkies say, in
+Mesopotamia or Timbuctoo or some such spot. Gee, it's been good as a
+geography lesson just to read the postmarks on your letters, sir! You've
+come to stay with us, of course? Hotel&mdash;nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>The two shook hands warmly. Despite the breeziness of her husband's
+manner, Joan detected in it a respect which pleased her. This was no
+mere family friend Archie was welcoming to his city; it was Mr. Nikolai,
+the Author. She loved his little boyish bursts of hero-worship.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at my beautiful present," she said, slipping her hand through his
+arm and exhibiting her necklace. "You've got a present, too. It's like
+Christmas!"</p>
+
+<p>Archie was pleased as a child with his gift, a lacquer box surmounted by
+an ivory monkey which, when a handle was turned, reached down into a box
+and lifted out a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't they a wonderful little people, though, the Japanese?" he
+demanded originally. "Who but them would have thought of such a trick?"</p>
+
+<p>"'They!' dear," murmured Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"'They,' then," he repeated, unabashed. "Can't be grammatical till I've
+had my supper. I'm dead beat."</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time of late that Archie had come home "dead beat,"
+though he did not often admit it. The treasurer of his company was ill,
+and Archie, upon whom Mr. Moore was growing to depend for many things,
+had volunteered to undertake the treasurer's work in addition to his
+own. But he had not the same gift for finance as for salesmanship, and
+took little joy in his new honors; except for the additional increase in
+his salary. Joan, to whom money meant nothing so long as she could pay
+her bills promptly, was rather troubled by the growing mercenariness of
+her husband. He seemed to be always thinking in terms of dollars and
+cents.</p>
+
+<p>But Archie lost his unwonted air of fatigue during dinner in his
+interest in the tale of Mr. Nikolai's travels. Nikolai had the writer's
+gift of accumulating odd experiences, so that even Ellen lingered unduly
+about the table. Archie was enthralled.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it just as good as a geography book to hear him?" he demanded
+several times. "To think of the natives of Yezo tattooing blue mustaches
+on the girl-babies to make sure they'll catch a husband! Ho, ho, that
+tickles me! There's a tip for Cousin Virginia, Joan."</p>
+
+<p>Here Ellen, who had been making her fourth unnecessary round with the
+potatoes, suddenly spluttered and retired to her pantry.</p>
+
+<p>("The ice," remarked Nikolai to Joan, "is beginning to break.")</p>
+
+<p>"I've always thought," mused Archie, "that I'd like to see the world a
+little myself some time. Armadillos on their native heath, Esquimaux
+eating tallow candles, the Latin Quarter in Paris whooping it up&mdash;things
+like that. But now," he finished with a happy glance at his wife, "I'm
+glad enough to be allowed to stay just where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Who wouldn't be?" murmured his guest. "With such a charming home&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have been here when my garden was growing," said Archie,
+highly gratified. "If I do say it myself, there's not a farmer
+in the State raises better bib-lettuce than I do. As for our
+asparagus&mdash;yum-yum! Simply melts in the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>The other looked at him very kindly. "Was that also one of your earlier
+dreams&mdash;to be a farmer?"</p>
+
+<p>Archie nodded. "It's always seemed to me about the finest thing a man
+could do, if he were able to&mdash;live on the land as he was intended to,
+raise what he needs to eat and a little more for his friends; chickens
+and pigs and a cow, and perhaps a little blooded stock if he could
+manage it&mdash;" He broke off with a faint sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, dear," cried his wife, surprised, "I never suspected you of these
+bucolic ambitions!"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon most men have 'em, if they'll own up to it&mdash;don't they, Mr.
+Nikolai? Look how all boys love to dig in the dirt!... But you needn't
+worry, darlingest. I'm never going to take <i>you</i> off and bury you in the
+country. I know better than that!"</p>
+
+<p>It was late when Nikolai rose to leave them, declining an urgent
+invitation to occupy their guest-room.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I must get back to the hotel and relieve Sacha's mind. If I do not
+he will certainly set out to find me, and as he has no language but
+Russian, that might lead to complications."</p>
+
+<p>"Who," demanded Joan, "is Sacha, pray? Have you been stylish enough to
+set up a valet?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is Sacha who appears to have set me up. I had occasion once to do
+him a kindness, and he thereupon attached himself permanently to my
+person. There is no creature on earth so grateful as a grateful
+Russian."</p>
+
+<p>Joan took him by the arms and made him sit down again. "Not a foot do
+you stir till you tell us all about it!" she proclaimed, scenting a
+story.</p>
+
+<p>"About what? Sacha? Well!&mdash;In a village where I stopped for awhile a
+young mouzhik had been very badly beaten and thrown into prison to await
+trial, and things promised to go rather badly with him. So&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute. <i>Why</i> had he been beaten?"</p>
+
+<p>"For murder," said Nikolai calmly.</p>
+
+<p>His audience gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Only the murder was not successful," he continued, "Sacha was
+unfortunately interrupted before he had completed the job."</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The headman of the village had taken Sacha's little sister against
+her will, and the boy did what he could to avenge her. The law is not of
+much use in such cases&mdash;to peasants, at least. The night before I left,
+some of his friends liberated him from the village jail, and brought him
+to me. Their trust in the power of learning is piteous. They demanded
+that I take him away with me to America. That was a little difficult
+without a passport, but I managed to smuggle him over the border."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" demanded Archie, round-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"In my trunk," replied Nikolai, as if this were an everyday occurrence.
+"I had arranged with a carter to drive me and my luggage early the next
+day to the railroad. Instead, he drove me to the border, fortunately not
+very far distant. My luggage was almost smothered by the time we got
+there, however, despite the air-holes we had bored in the trunk. Poor
+Sacha!"</p>
+
+<p>"But did nobody examine your luggage?" asked Joan.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai shrugged. "As I told you, in Russia there is great respect for
+learning&mdash;also for roubles. I am not without friends in high places.
+Such officials as I encountered quite understood that a man of learning
+like myself would naturally travel with a heavy trunkful of books,
+ventilated by air-holes&mdash;But I have been warned that it will not be safe
+for me to return to Russia. Thanks to this episode, in connection with
+recent writings of mine, I am no longer <i>persona grata</i> there." He
+shrugged again.</p>
+
+<p>Archie's eyes were round. "Whew!" he commented. "That's what I call
+life! Sounds like Michael What's-his-name, the Courier of the Czar!"</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you," murmured Nikolai, "that I am anything but a courier of
+the Czar!..."</p>
+
+<p>Later, when they had gone upstairs, Joan came upon Archie examining her
+string of sapphires, with an expression that puzzled her. It was grave,
+and not very happy.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear," she said suddenly, "would you for any reason rather not have me
+accept this present from Stefan? It is very handsome, I know. But he is
+a rich man, my oldest friend, and he has been giving me things of this
+sort ever since I was a baby."</p>
+
+<p>He turned on her a look of pure astonishment. "Not accept it! Why,
+sweetheart, I'm tickled as I can be that such a beautiful thing should
+be given to you. It looks like you, too, somehow, as if it had been
+specially made for you. I was only wishing&mdash;" he sighed faintly&mdash;"that I
+could give you things like this myself. And those Mandarin coats, and
+laces and all he sends you, and&mdash;oh, life generally! You ought to see
+the world, Joan, like he does. Maybe you can," he added hopefully, "as
+soon as I get a little ahead."</p>
+
+<p>She hugged him. "Why, you old goose! you're always giving me beautiful
+things. My pretty engagement-ring, and the house, and the new Lizzie,
+and&mdash;You see Stefan doesn't have to provide me with dresses and three
+meals a day, and put up with all my whims and megrims."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet he wishes he did!" exclaimed Archie, with one of his
+occasional flashes of insight.</p>
+
+<p>She pulled his ears. "You think because you're in love with me yourself
+that everybody else is, too! Stefan's about as much in love with me as
+he was with&mdash;baby Joan. It's simply gratitude. Mother was very sweet to
+him always&mdash;I've heard her say that it had been her job, and not an easy
+one, to restore his faith in women. It seems that he was engaged once to
+marry a girl who quite understood about his Jewish blood. But when he
+took her down to the East Side in New York to see the old aunt who had
+brought him to America, she couldn't stand it. She broke with him, not
+because of any difference in religion, but because the aunt spoke
+Yiddish and wore a horsehair wig!&mdash;Mustn't she feel like a fool, now
+that he's become so famous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," said Archie doubtfully. "I'd kind of hate to have
+Yiddish and a wig in the family myself."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in surprise. "Archie! I didn't know you were such a
+snob! So long as Stefan doesn't wear a wig or speak Yiddish, what does
+the aunt matter! And the funny part of it was that the aunt rather
+looked down upon poor Stefan because his father had married a Gentile!
+So he came to regard mother and me as his only family.... Now run along
+to bed." She kissed him on his eyes, a caress that Archie loved. "I'm
+going to take a dose of valerian and have a good night's sleep. It <i>is</i>
+exciting having your best friend drop down on you from who knows where!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It proved exciting not only to Joan. Some years earlier the arrival of
+so distinguished a visitor unadvertised and unpressagented would have
+caused little more than a ripple, except perhaps among what Joan called
+the Intelligentzia. But now that <i>belles lettres</i> were coming quite into
+fashion, the chance of knowing personally a friend of Tolstoi and
+Maeterlinck, whose articles appeared in all the more intellectual
+magazines, whose recent book of plays had been published simultaneously
+in five languages and censored off the American stage into every
+up-to-date home in the land, was one that could not be ignored.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian servant, too, was a picturesque addition; a great, bearded
+fellow with eyes like a child, a tall sheepskin <i>papacha</i> on his head,
+and his trousers tucked into wrinkled boots. This exotic apparition
+frequently opened the Blair door to visitors, and even waited on them at
+table, Sacha having without the aid of language won his way somehow to
+the rather uncertain heart of Ellen Neal; possibly because of his
+infantile appetite for sweets. He followed his master about like a dog,
+and whenever Nikolai was in the front of the house, Sacha's broken
+English and sudden high laugh were frequently to be heard from the rear.
+There were a good many callers at the Blair house in those days.</p>
+
+<p>The Blairs, and incidentally their friend, also found themselves deluged
+with invitations, many of which Joan accepted. She rather enjoyed
+showing off her lion, whose simple dignity was quite impervious to
+lionizing. His social successes amused her by their unexpectedness; for
+Nikolai had no small talk and pretended to none. He paid his chance
+companions the compliment of believing them to be interested in whatever
+interested him; and very often they were.</p>
+
+<p>Once, Joan, overhearing him enlarging to an audience composed of Archie,
+Emily Carmichael, and a particularly frivolous young divorcée of their
+acquaintance, on the Ostwald formula for happiness, felt called upon to
+come to the rescue; and received for once in her life a decided snubbing
+from her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't interrupt, Joan, please!&mdash;Mr. Nikolai's telling us something
+mighty interesting. Go on, sir&mdash;G=E^2+W^2&mdash;I didn't quite get you about
+the Hüttengluck and the Heldengluck?"</p>
+
+<p>"G," explained Nikolai, "is as you know Gluck (happiness). E stands for
+Energetics; meaning activity, health, ambition, etc. W stands for
+Widerwillig, one of those comprehensive words one finds only in the
+German, meaning everything that runs counter to happiness, all the
+by-products of activity&mdash;opposition, fatigue, trouble, etc. There are
+philosophers who hold that by reducing E (the activities of life) one
+also reduces W (the unpleasantnesses), thereby attaining happiness.
+Renunciation, you understand;&mdash;the simple life, such as that of
+Diogenes, who threw away his one utensil, the cup, when he saw a man
+drinking satisfactorily out of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But the danger is that in generally reducing the formula, G also is
+reduced, and may even become minus. At its best the happiness attained
+in this way is what Ostwald calls Hüttengluck (hut-happiness). He
+advocates instead the Heldengluck (hero-happiness). Square, he says,
+both your Energetics and your Widerwillig, and the result will be a
+doubled happiness, robust, vital. In other words, live to the top of
+your powers, suffer to the top of your powers; and you will be able to
+enjoy to the top of your powers."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" said Archie. "I see that. Me for Ostwald!"</p>
+
+<p>The little divorcée remarked in an aside to Joan, "He certainly does
+make you think, this high-brow beau of yours! But I <i>like</i> to think,
+sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>It taught Joan a lesson. She recalled a sentence of Trevelyan's: "A man
+who has too much sense to overrate his own qualities will often make
+amends to his self-esteem by underrating his neighbor's."</p>
+
+<p>She realized that she might have been making such a mistake herself. If,
+as she had complained, there was no real talk to be had in society, were
+not she and people like her responsible?</p>
+
+<p>If a scholar such as Stefan Nikolai found it worth while to give of his
+best to simpler comprehensions, was it not pretentious and even
+ridiculous of a Joan Blair to "talk down" to them, tactfully adapting
+herself to their limitations while concealing yawns behind her hand? She
+had the grace to blush for herself....</p>
+
+<p>The companionship of Joan and Nikolai was, as Louisville interestedly
+suspected, not an entirely intellectual one, however. Like all people
+who work hard with their heads (and Nikolai spent many hours at his desk
+daily, even in holiday seasons), he knew the full value of play, and had
+always been to Joan the most delightful of play-fellows. In her
+childhood he had often borrowed her for what they called
+"expeditions"&mdash;visits to circuses, zoölogical gardens, museums;
+boat-journeys, picnics&mdash;always to the surprise of Major Darcy, who
+regarded a child as a desirable addition to any family, something to be
+petted, and instructed, and even romped with in moderation, but by no
+means to be made a companion of.</p>
+
+<p>These expeditions renewed themselves now in modified form. The two were
+constantly to be met with in the most unexpected places&mdash;tramping about
+the parks in the rain, making tea over a gipsy fire by the roadside,
+climbing, their pockets bulging with books and apples, to the top of a
+certain hill whence miles of wild rolling country were to be seen, and
+the city behind them was as if it had never been. Joan had no longer to
+enjoy the Beauty of the World alone. The hill became their favorite
+haunt; and all through the open winter they climbed to its top almost
+daily, where in the shelter of the cliff they built themselves a little
+fire and sat, their backs to the world, reading and munching apples, and
+talking, talking endlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Joan never felt that any subject bad been exhausted between them. It
+seemed to her that the thoughts of a lifetime had been accumulating in
+her mind, waiting for him to pass judgment upon them; and to him it was
+no less than a miracle to watch her brain expanding, enlarging, visibly
+blossoming under the nourishment he supplied.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps her brain was not the only thing Nikolai loved to watch about
+Joan. He usually managed to seat himself a little behind her, out of her
+range of vision, so that his own might rest where it chose, unobserved.
+But he asked no more; having learned of life to practise the Hüttengluck
+which he did not preach.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Archie made a third on these expeditions; for he had developed
+a great enthusiasm for Joan's famous friend, and occasionally neglected
+business to sit at the feet of wisdom. Not often, however. Business had
+reached a point where it declined to be neglected (the depression of
+1913 was at hand); and besides Archie, despite their affectionate
+welcome, felt rather <i>de trop</i> with the pair.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no high-brow, and there's no use pretending I am," he confessed
+once to Emily Carmichael. "But that don't keep me from appreciating
+high-brows when I see 'em. It's as good as a correspondence-course in
+literature to hear those two go on. I'm as much out of it, though, as if
+they were talkin' the French language&mdash;which they sometimes are, at
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Archie," asked Emily, hesitating, "are you never the least little
+bit&mdash;jealous?" Her friendship for Joan was too unquestionable for the
+remark to sound feline.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "Me jealous? What for? I've got her, haven't I? And he
+hasn't, poor chap! Glad to share what I can."</p>
+
+<p>It happened that at the same time this conversation occurred&mdash;it was a
+chance meeting down town, and Archie, always the soul of hospitality,
+had invited Emily to join him in a cup of hot clam-broth at a
+soda-fountain&mdash;that the pair on the hilltop were not indulging in either
+literature or the French language. Joan, ensconced upon a bed of leaves
+with her back against the sheltering cliff and her face warm with
+fireglow, remarked dreamily:</p>
+
+<p>"Stefan, how have I ever managed to live here so long without you?"</p>
+
+<p>His smile did not reach his eyes; those beautiful, speaking, somber eyes
+which reflected in them so much of the history of his race. He said,
+"And how shall you manage when I am gone again?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned quickly to look at him. Something in his voice troubled her.
+"Gone&mdash;Why, Stefan, you're not thinking of going soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"My book has made great progress here. It is a pleasant place for
+writing&mdash;I have nearly finished."</p>
+
+<p>She gave an exclamation of something like anger. "You said you were
+going to stay 'as long as possible.' And after all it was only to finish
+another book!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite 'only,' Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," she demanded impatiently, "why do you talk about going? I am
+still here, whether the book is done or not! Are you tired of me
+already?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you become such a gipsy that you can't stop anywhere more than a
+few months?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," he said soberly, "that I might put my roots into this hillside
+like a tree, and never, never stir again, except to the winds, and the
+sap in my branches, and the seasons as they come and go&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And me beside thee singing in the wilderness?" she smiled, as he did
+not continue. "Say you'd need me here somewhere, even if you were a
+tree!"</p>
+
+<p>"Every tree has one bird who lives in its branches. I should keep a nest
+safe for you, my dear&mdash;you and your Archie." He broke off. "But I am not
+a tree, merely a Wandering Jew to whom the time must come again to
+wander."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, why? It is not as if you belonged anywhere else!"</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>he said. "I have always meant, when I grew old, to come to wherever you
+may be, and settle down, and grow up again with your children. But it
+seems the time is not yet. I am&mdash;not old."</p>
+
+<p>"You? of course not! You're not even fifty, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he sighed, "not even fifty. Oh, to be eighty or thereabouts, with
+the dross burnt out and only the spirit left, free&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd hate you to be all spirit, Stefan! Such an uncomfortable, unnatural
+person to play with: like one of those cherubim, with only wings and no
+<i>de quoi</i> at all.&mdash;(You remember the miracle that happened once, when
+the Sistine Madonna said to the little angels in the picture with her,
+'<i>Assaiez-vous, mes enfants.</i>' And they answered, '<i>Mais, Madame, nous
+n'avons pas de quoi!</i>'&mdash;) I never could understand people wanting to be
+old." She made a restless movement. "Perhaps you've had enough out of
+life to satisfy you, but me&mdash;Why, I feel as if I had not yet begun to
+live!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor have you," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Why</i>, Stefan!" she demanded, facing him. "Why don't I begin, then?
+Surely enough has happened to me, more than to most people. I fling
+myself into whatever comes along with all my heart. And yet&mdash;I don't
+seem to be there at all! It is as if the real me were looking on at
+somebody else who struggles and amuses herself and suffers. I'm tired of
+looking on, tired!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who isn't?" he said musingly. "We want to be in the thick of the fray,
+people like you and me, even if it kills us. But&mdash;we can't choose. A
+good deal is chosen for us before we're born&mdash;the color of our hair, the
+shapes of our noses" (he smiled and sighed), "doubtless the kinks in our
+brains&mdash;Come, the fire is out, and if I allow you to take cold, Ellen
+Neal will surely banish me from Eden with her flaming sword."</p>
+
+<p>As they walked briskly home in the early February twilight, she said
+after a long silence, "See here, Stefan, if you really are going when
+your book is finished, let's not waste any more time going about to
+silly parties and all that. You only do it to please me, and I only do
+it to show you off. Why should we pretend any longer?&mdash;Let's be together
+as much as we possibly can without bothering about anybody else! Shall
+we?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked rather startled.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," she continued calmly, "to make no more engagements at all; and
+you needn't either&mdash;unless you wish to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not wish to."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought not! There's really nobody here you care about talking to
+except me, is there? And there's nobody in the world I'd willingly waste
+a word on if you were about. So there, that's settled!" she said with a
+little breath of satisfaction. "It's a good thing you're old enough to
+be my father, Stefan, or I suppose people would begin to talk about us.
+Still," she added, "I'm glad you're not eighty!"</p>
+
+<p>Meeting her candid, clear, affectionate gaze, Nikolai managed to summon
+up a smile of his own that was quite grandfatherly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Joan was not the judge of human nature she fancied herself if she
+believed that a disparity in age would render gossip innocuous. The
+disparity was not as apparent as she believed. Nikolai was, in his dark,
+impassive way, a singularly handsome man, and the stories of his early
+ghetto life and later experiences made of him a romantic figure to more
+eyes than Joan's. In vain the Jabberwocks rallied around her to a girl.
+In vain Effie May, whose shrewd ears heard usually whatever was to be
+heard, even in her retirement, casually spread abroad the story of Mr.
+Nikolai's devotion to the first Mrs. Darcy.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's attitude was discouraging to her most loyal friends. She seemed
+quite unaware that she was being defended and rallied around. It rather
+relieved her when invitations began to dwindle in number; she was thus
+saved the trouble of declining them. She entered into their growing
+solitude <i>a deux</i> with the same single-mindedness she had brought to
+bear upon her frivolous period, her domestic period, and her brief
+career of publicity; being one of those natures which can do only one
+thing at a time, and that very hard.</p>
+
+<p>When she thought about their relationship at all, it rather pleased her
+to fancy that she was playing Mrs. Thrale to Nikolai's Dr. Johnson.
+Unfortunately the people about her were for the most part unaware of
+this classic relationship; and had they known of it would have doubtless
+regarded it with one eye knowingly closed.</p>
+
+<p>Much of the town's attention fastened itself upon Archibald. Scandals
+there had been before this, even in its upper circles; but they had
+maintained hitherto a decent surreptitiousness, had veiled themselves
+beneath a more or less transparent cover of secrecy, until some climax
+occurred in the way of pistol-shot or divorce-proceeding. The <i>tertium
+quid</i>, acknowledged and accepted, was new to the experience of
+Louisville; and very interesting.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Stefan Nikolai, all unconscious of the stimulus he was
+offering to general conversation, spent all of his free hours with Joan,
+having long since faced and discounted the risk of it so far as he was
+concerned. The risk Joan herself might run appeared to his experience
+negligible. He had never even in his youth attracted women as less
+intellectual men attract them.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless even had he been aware of the town's talk it would not have
+troubled him. For all his knowledge of humanity, he was no man of the
+world, in the accepted sense of the term. He lived too much beyond it to
+attach great importance to its opinion. In only one person he recognized
+any right of criticism. That was Joan's husband, with whom long since he
+had come to an understanding.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pity that neither Joan nor Joan's world ever came to know of
+this understanding, which would have added to the affair a distinct
+flavor.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nikolai had taken a small apartment, where Joan and her husband and
+occasionally others dined with him, or dropped in for a glass of tea in
+the Russian fashion and an hour of two of music afterwards. Nikolai,
+true to the instinct of his race, never made even a temporary home
+without music in it. He had, in addition to a piano, various instruments
+collected in different lands, among them a balalaika upon which the
+servant Sacha could sometimes be induced to play a shy accompaniment to
+peasant ballads.</p>
+
+<p>But Archie had never come there without Joan; and so one day when he
+dropped in alone, ostensibly to "hear the Rooshian pick his banjo,"
+Nikolai felt a surprise that he was careful not to show. His trained
+eyes detected signs of distress in Archie which others, including his
+wife, had failed to notice. The beaming smile did not conceal from
+Nikolai a little anxious pucker between the brows, a nervous twitching
+of the big freckled hands.</p>
+
+<p>The writer was not unused to being taken into the confidence of troubled
+people. It was one of the things that compensated for the enforced
+solitude of his life, such an occasional glimpse into the secret hearts
+of his fellow-men. It is an odd fact that writers and philosophers and
+even poets, all people who live necessarily a little apart from their
+kind, are frequently chosen as confessors by those who feel the need of
+confession.</p>
+
+<p>So Nikolai asked no questions, sure that a friendly silence and a good
+cigar would produce results. Nor did he ring for Sacha and the "banjo."
+At length Archie blurted out without preliminaries:</p>
+
+<p>"Joan isn't happy, Mr. Nikolai. I guess you've noticed that! She hasn't
+been for a long while. I'm not sure she ever was.&mdash;I s'pose I was a fool
+to think a man like me could make her happy."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a large order for any one human being to make another human being
+happy, Blair."</p>
+
+<p>"But you could have!"</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke for a few minutes. Nikolai made no pretense of not
+understanding. Only a slight flush came momentarily into his face, and
+left it paler by contrast. "I am not sure," he said at last. "But I
+should have liked to try."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! I knew that when you cabled us to wait till you came&mdash;But
+Joan don't know it yet. Funny, isn't it, when she's so smart? She thinks
+you feel toward her like a cross between a teacher and a fond
+father.&mdash;'Father'&mdash;my eye! She don't catch you lookin' at her sometimes
+the way I do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I&mdash;look at her?"</p>
+
+<p>Archie nodded expressively. "I suppose I understand, because I'm in love
+myself. And she don't"&mdash;he swallowed hard&mdash;"because she isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, perhaps," said the other slowly. "Give her time, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Time? I've given her time." Archie heaved a great sigh. "Now I mean to
+give her something else. I mean to give her a chance. She never really
+had a chance before, Mr. Nikolai. I&mdash;I kind of got her off her guard,
+when she was takin' the count. It wasn't sporting of me."</p>
+
+<p>The other, moved, laid a hand on his knee. In moments of emotion the
+foreign blood showed in such slight demonstrativeness. But Anglo-Saxon
+Archie stiffened, and the hand was at once removed.</p>
+
+<p>"She's too fine for me, you see," he went on. "Too sort of delicate.&mdash;I
+read somewhere that china vases and brass vases couldn't float down a
+stream together without the china ones getting smashed (though why vases
+would be floating down a stream anyway, <i>I</i> don't know!). But I'm brass,
+you see, and she's china. I thought it might be all right after the
+twinnies came. I still think it might have been, if they&mdash;" Again he
+swallowed hard.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai nodded.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Their hearts are wild<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As be the hearts of birds, till childer come."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But, my dear boy, you speak as if the twinnies had exhausted the
+available supply!"</p>
+
+<p>Archie's eyes dropped. Then he lifted them again in a frank gaze. "I
+almost lost her, sir. Do you think I'd put her through a thing like that
+again? God!&mdash;her little frantic hands clutching at us! And her voice,
+hoarse as a fierce animal's&mdash;!" He jumped up and crossed to a window,
+where he stood with his back to Nikolai, his face working.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment the other followed, and this time Archie did not stiffen
+under his touch.</p>
+
+<p>"So," said the Jew, "in your love you would deny her the woman's
+privilege of suffering?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Suffering on account of me&mdash;yes! Every time. It ain't fair, women
+having to stand the whole business. If I could help, if I could bear one
+single pain of it&mdash;But I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Nikolai, his lips twitching despite the sadness about them.
+"No, I am afraid you can't. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And it's not," interrupted Archie, reverting doggedly to his theme, "as
+if I were the right man, you see!"</p>
+
+<p>They were silent again.</p>
+
+<p>"You are so afraid of losing her that you will not give her children,"
+mused Nikolai presently. "And yet if I understand you you are willing to
+lose her&mdash;otherwise?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the right man," said Archie directly. "To you&mdash;Because I think you
+are the right man. She's been more contented since you've been here than
+I ever knew her to be. Of course you're twice her age, but that don't
+count with brainy people. And you could give her everything I can't&mdash;not
+just <i>things</i>; you know what I mean! Travel, education, all that. She's
+in your class, sir, not mine.&mdash;Will you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai looked rather bewildered. "Do what, Blair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. Be nice to her all you can, read poetry to her, get
+her to care for you. Make love to her, if you want!&mdash;You can bet I
+wouldn't say that to many men&mdash;" he laughed forlornly&mdash;"but you're
+different, somehow. I can trust you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you." Nikolai's face lit with a very charming smile. "Yes, I
+think you can trust me&mdash;And in case your scheme were successful, if I
+should prove to be 'the right man'&mdash;what about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, me? Why, I'd just naturally fade out of the landscape."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"There're lots of ways. A cramp in swimming, or an accident when you're
+cleaning a gun, or a dose of the wrong medicine&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai's brows met sharply. "You mean suicide?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Why not? It's done every day, and done so the insurance companies
+can't prove a thing, too."</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai rose and stood beside him. "You, who say that you love her," he
+said sternly, "you who cannot bear that she should suffer even to obtain
+happiness&mdash;you would condemn her to a lifetime of grief and remorse? You
+might perhaps deceive others. Do you think you could deceive Joan? Happy
+or not, you know that she cares for you, Blair!"</p>
+
+<p>The other's face softened. "Why, yes, I reckon she does, in a way. Once
+when I had a bad cold and she was scared for fear it was going to run
+into pneumonia she was awfully upset. I guess you're right," he mused.
+"It wouldn't do for me to do that. Why, her father's death almost killed
+her, and he was a mighty worthless old scamp, and she knew it, too!
+Joan's a deeper feeler than you'd think&mdash;Say, I might do something to
+make her get a divorce?" he suggested, brightening.</p>
+
+<p>"What, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, other women,"&mdash;he made a face of distaste. "I'd hate it&mdash;a low
+woman certainly does get my goat! Still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai smiled. "Do you think you could deceive Joan about that, either?
+You might succeed in hurting her, perhaps; but she would not admit it.
+Joan is proud."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, don't I know it? Proud as Lucifer! No, I've got to think of
+something to do that wouldn't be any reflection on her," he mused, "and
+yet that she wouldn't stand for. Actionable, as the lawyers say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai burst out laughing, and taking Archie by the shoulders shook him
+to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, I fear I cannot enter into this nefarious little plot of
+yours. I am not going to make love to your wife&mdash;I should not know how!
+Nor yet am I going to lure her from you with poetry and fine words.
+But&mdash;" he added, sobering, "I think with you that she has not yet found
+herself. There, perhaps, I can help. I can at least offer her my own
+recipe for happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that formula thing?" said Archie doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"No formula, Blair. Simply&mdash;work."</p>
+
+<p>The other's face fell. "Joan never has been one of those idle society
+girls you read about," he said, defensively. "Sewing, and housekeeping,
+and civics, and suffrage, and going around giving advice to the
+poor&mdash;She's tried 'em all, Mr. Nikolai."</p>
+
+<p>"And found them all other people's work, not hers.&mdash;But, Blair, I must
+warn you," he added gravely, "that when she does find her <i>metier</i> you
+are in far more danger of losing her to it than to&mdash;me, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"No danger of losing what you haven't got," sighed Archie.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L</h2>
+
+
+<p>People who know life only on its surfaces were apt to pronounce Joan
+Blair a rather hard young person. She would herself have admitted to a
+certain hardness, secretly aware, however, that it was a trait she had
+deliberately cultivated for protective purposes. Hers was one of the
+unfortunate natures that are more attuned to the minor than the major
+chords of life.</p>
+
+<p>Once in her childhood she had confessed to her mother, with a burst of
+sobbing, that she never expected to be entirely happy because of all the
+stray dogs running about the world, hungry and lonesome. As she grew
+older she discovered that it is not only the stray dogs who go hungry
+and lonesome.</p>
+
+<p>She often wondered impatiently why it was that every one with whom she
+came into close contact seemed soon or late to develop a marked quality
+of pathos: her futile father, the struggling Misses Darcy, gruff old
+devoted Ellen, Effie May, Archie&mdash;and now more than all Stefan Nikolai.
+Despite his renown, his wide experience, his phenomenal rise in life
+from so handicapped a beginning, her friend seemed nevertheless to her a
+rather tragic figure, belonging to nobody, product of two countries and
+native of neither, without even a race to which he could claim complete
+allegiance. For his mother had been a Christian girl of high birth,
+outcast by her family because of her marriage with a Jew; who had been
+in turn rejected by his own people because of her.</p>
+
+<p>Both had been killed in a <i>pogrom</i>, one of those appalling man-hunts
+that still take place in the Russian pale in the name of Christianity;
+and his father's sister, escaping to a land where there are no
+<i>pogroms</i>, had brought the child Stefan with her. It must have been a
+forlorn boyhood for a sensitive, gifted, half-alien lad, none too
+welcome in a poor and growing Jewish family of the slums; working his
+brilliant way through school and university, only to meet a crushing
+rebuff in this land of the free and equal at the hands of a girl who was
+afraid to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>Joan understood why her mother had taken the hurt and lonely youth into
+her rare friendship. Aside from Nikolai's charm of companionship and her
+gratitude to him, she felt it an inherited duty to "make it up" to him
+for the sadness of his past. And where Joan gave, she gave
+unstintingly....</p>
+
+<p>She did not pursue her headstrong course without receiving faint
+inklings now and then as to its effect upon the community. The warnings
+began with Ellen.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't sayin' he's not a quiet, pleasant-spoken enough gentleman, as
+free with his money as if he was a Christian&mdash;Most <i>too</i> free, if you
+ast me! What's he want out of it all? After all, a Jew's a Jew."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if he happens to be a Unitarian?" (Nikolai, during his college
+life, had chanced to adopt that creed.)</p>
+
+<p>"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all
+bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a
+Jack-in-the-Box&mdash;You needn't laugh, Joie&mdash;you kin see it all in that eye
+of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier
+eye&mdash;! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way,
+myself. Seems sort of shameless."</p>
+
+<p>"Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself
+to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good
+deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on
+behind it, the more it reflects&mdash;As witness my own," she added
+complacently.</p>
+
+<p>Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs.
+Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in
+her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and
+lorgnon.</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking very charming, dear child&mdash;one wonders at not seeing
+you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town,
+however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time."</p>
+
+<p>Joan admitted the imputation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!&mdash;Still, Mr. Blair would
+naturally be democratic in his point of view."</p>
+
+<p>"Democratic? I think I don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect.
+"Oh, these writing-people&mdash;it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't
+it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous."</p>
+
+<p>"It does not take a great deal of courage," said Joan, flushing, "to
+continue my mother's friendship with the most brilliant man I know.
+There even seem to be people who envy me the opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>(This shot told, Mrs. Carmichael having been one of the first and most
+eager to entertain the visiting celebrity.)</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless he is brilliant as a writer," she conceded. "That is his
+profession. But even as a writer (I know nothing of him, of course,
+otherwise!) do you consider him quite safe, my dear? Those plays, for
+instance."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you read them?" asked Joan bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, not yet. I bought them, of course&mdash;one does. But one has so little
+time for reading. I am told, however, that in one of them a child is
+born practically on the stage. At least the characters converse about it
+quite openly."</p>
+
+<p>"Shocking of them," murmured Joan. "Those things should be managed by
+means of asterisks. But it's so hard to find actors who play asterisks
+acceptably."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carmichael's lorgnon busied itself. "I should be sorry," remarked
+its owner, "to think that any friend of my daughter's would care to
+encourage indelicacy, whether in literature or&mdash;or in life."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, yes!&mdash;life is indelicate enough anyway, without our
+encouragement, isn't it?" murmured Joan.</p>
+
+<p>She felt, perhaps justly, that she had come out of this encounter with
+the honors of war. But Joan could ill afford to make enemies....</p>
+
+<p>The finish of Nikolai's book postponed itself from week to week. Spring
+came, and early summer, that most witching of seasons in the middle
+South, languid with the scent of magnolia-blossoms, gay with the bright
+parasols and fragile muslins that flutter forth like butterflies at the
+first touch of sun. With Nikolai to share it, the gray old town regained
+something of its former glamour for Joan. She had many favorite spots to
+show him&mdash;a quiet tree-arched street of patriarchal mansions in the
+midst of warehouses, with all the charm and old-world dignity of a
+London square; a certain secluded nook low on the bank of the slow,
+yellow river, undiscovered save by an occasional working-girl and her
+shirt-sleeved "gentleman-friend," with whom Nikolai conversed as
+pleasantly as with old acquaintances. He had not the Major's elegant
+distaste for the <i>canaille</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Through his trained eyes, Joan began to note again certain picturesque
+touches which had charmed her when first she came to Louisville; a
+primitive, two-wheeled cart bobbing along a crowded street, drawn by
+mules hitched tandem-fashion, on one of which a dusky muleteer perched
+sidewise, singing. "That might be Spain," said Nikolai. Or perhaps two
+mulatto women, dressed in the extreme of fashion even to rouge and
+face-veils, greeting each other with lifted, outflung hand&mdash;a gesture as
+savage and typically African as if they were only a few weeks out of the
+jungle, instead of a few generations&mdash;Joan found that with Nikolai it
+was possible to do a good deal of traveling right at home.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the scandal of their association grew and spread; and at last
+Emily, distressed at the magnitude of the storm of which her friend was
+the center, decided to interfere. Not with words, however. Long social
+experience had given her tact, if not wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter it began to be noticed that Mrs. Blair and her distinguished
+friend were not to be seen so often alone together. There was usually a
+third on their expeditions, and frequently a fourth, whenever Archie
+could be pressed into service.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that I've got some one to talk to myself, I don't feel so in the
+way," he confessed naïvely.</p>
+
+<p>Emily formed a habit of dropping in at the Blairs' in the early
+afternoon (just at the finish of writing hours), so that she had
+naturally to be included in any plans that were afoot.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what's come over you, dear," remarked Joan once, half
+laughing. "You're positively rushing me nowadays!&mdash;or is it Nikolai? I
+begin to suspect you of designs upon Stefan."</p>
+
+<p>"And why not? He's perfectly eligible. We old maids have to keep a
+weather eye out, you know&mdash;But how do you know it isn't Archie I'm
+pursuing?" asked Emily calmly. "I appreciated him long before you did,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Emmy, Emmy, such indelicacy!" sighed Joan. "And him a married party,
+too! What would your mother say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm feeding her Shaw lately in broken doses. She's prepared for almost
+anything&mdash;You don't really mind my trailing you about this way, do you,
+Joan?" she asked, sobering. "I love hearing you two talk. Am I in the
+way, if I just keep quiet as a mouse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mind? Of course not!" Joan kissed her. "You and Stefan are my two
+dearest friends, and I <i>love</i> to have you friends with each other.
+Besides, he says you have an 'interesting mind,' my dear. Welcome to our
+city!"</p>
+
+<p>So Emily continued to make a courageous third in their walks and talks
+and studies; accepted by Nikolai with his usual courteous friendliness,
+and by the gossips with feelings which were not unmixed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the husband's doings&mdash;he's awake at last!" declared one faction.</p>
+
+<p>"Men are so fickle. He's had a good deal of her&mdash;and Emily Carmichael is
+looking particularly well this year. Poor Joan!" murmured the other
+faction, composed of her more intimate acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's feelings on the matter were also not unmixed. She loved Emily;
+her presence was always a pleasure; she had assuredly nothing to discuss
+with Nikolai that could not be discussed before so devoted an audience.
+And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Stefan came to take the other girl's company so much for granted that
+one evening, when Joan suggested a row up the river for their next day's
+outing, it was natural enough for him to say, "That sounds charming! and
+I think Miss Carmichael will enjoy it, too."</p>
+
+<p>This innocent remark produced surprising results; as surprising to Joan
+as to himself. She jumped to her feet. "Look here, Stefan! If you want
+Emily so much, why don't you take her by yourself?" she cried, and
+bursting into tears she fled from the room.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai stared blankly at Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me <i>what</i> I have said?"</p>
+
+<p>For once the other was the first to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see?" he replied with his patient smile (and there is nothing
+sadder to see in life than patience on the face of a young man). "It's
+come about just as I thought it would, Mr. Nikolai. She's&mdash;she's jealous
+of you. That's all."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That night Stefan Nikolai, usually very regular in habit, sat so late by
+his open window that the servant Sacha emerged at intervals to
+investigate.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Excellency ill, that he neither sleeps nor reads?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not ill, Sacha. Go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>There was a lilac-tree blooming below the window, and the scent of the
+young summer came in to him, flooding his heart, his senses&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The servant appeared again.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Excellency sadness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not sadness, Sacha. I think&mdash;it is happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he sighs?"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai stirred, and got to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"That is because our wandering begins again. The book is done. In a few
+days we go."</p>
+
+<p>The servant took an eager step toward him. "Not alone?"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai started. He had forgotten, as so many forget, the watching eyes
+of those who serve us. "Certainly, alone!" he said sharply. "Am I not
+always alone?"</p>
+
+<p>Sacha's eyes dropped. "In my country," he suggested gently, "when we see
+a woman which we need, we take her."</p>
+
+<p>The other smiled. The two had been through much together. "And if she
+chances to belong to some one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then"&mdash;with an eloquent thrust of the hand&mdash;"we kill!" But seeing that
+the hint was unlikely to bear fruit, he added dispiritedly, "Excellency
+is not, however, a peasant. Sometimes to be a peasant is good."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The storm which burst in August, 1914, had the effect of blotting out
+smaller storms into nothingness. It brought in its wake different things
+to different natures: to some apprehension, sheer personal terror, to
+others the quickening sense of high adventure, to others yet sick
+disillusionment with a world that was still capable of such gigantic
+folly.</p>
+
+<p>To Joan, in the dead blankness that followed the departure of her
+friend, the great war seemed strangely like a godsend. It was as if she
+had cried in desperation to Providence. "What next?" and Providence had
+answered, "This!"</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she was not the only woman to whom the sudden extraneous demand
+for all that was in her came as a godsend.</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself head, hand, and heart, into the organization of relief
+work. As the Germans pursued their incredible way through Belgium, it
+seemed to her that every frantic mother, every maimed child, every
+desperate father, the very roofless houses and ruined orchards, cried
+aloud upon her, Joan Blair, for help. She could not understand why
+others did not seem to hear the cry, how those about her could pursue
+the usual course of life unheeding&mdash;Joan was one of the first Americans
+to declare war upon Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But those about her heard better than she realized. Gradually as the
+change came, it came. Hers was not the only blood in the old border
+State to thrill to the call of drums. And as in the earlier days, while
+the men got down their firearms to clean them, the women rolled up their
+sleeves and settled down to work.</p>
+
+<p>Under the impetus of Joan and others like her, Bridge quickly gave way
+to bandage-making, the click of unaccustomed needles drowned the chatter
+of clubrooms and tea-table, and the Jabberwocks in a body abandoned the
+pursuit of culture for a course in hospital assistance. "So that we
+shall be ready by the time our own boys need us," explained Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mrs. Blair, you ought to curb those firebrand sentiments of
+yours!" protested Judge Carmichael to her after one of her public
+utterances. "It is enjoined upon us Americans to be strictly neutral."</p>
+
+<p>"Neutral?" cried the daughter of Richard Darcy. "Neutral? Have you ever
+seen a pit-terrier jump on a respectable little poodle-dog out in the
+front yard protecting his household&mdash;and were you able to remain
+<i>neutral</i>? I know my country better than that!"</p>
+
+<p>In keeping up with Joan's new activities, the town quite forgot to look
+at her askance.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai, too, was making of the war a personal matter. He wrote that he,
+with other writers in New York, was financing a hospital unit with which
+he intended to go to France in any capacity where he would be useful. He
+had been in his youth, among other things, a student of medicine.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it fine, Archie?" she cried, thrilling to this letter. "Oh, if we
+could only do something ourselves! I'd like to send him a contribution
+for his unit, anyway. May I?"</p>
+
+<p>Archie hesitated. "How much, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed. It was the first time he had failed to give her without
+question whatever she asked of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to have to ask," she said, rather stiffly. "But I've given the
+last cent I had to the Red Cross. Could you spare me fifty dollars, say,
+and take it out of my next allowance?"</p>
+
+<p>Archie silently got out his check-book.</p>
+
+<p>It troubled her to notice in him something almost like apathy toward the
+war. The startling headlines, the growing report of horrors, even the
+eleventh-hour miracle of that stand upon the Marne, moved him to no more
+than a preoccupied attention. He appeared to concern himself far more
+with the uncertain state of the stock-market, which he studied
+assiduously. Joan could not accustom herself to the idea of an Archie
+commercialized: interesting himself at such a crisis in the world's
+history merely with money.</p>
+
+<p>An explanation at last dawned upon her. "My dear," she accused him one
+day, "I believe you've been speculating!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;me? Oh, every man speculates, sweetheart. Business itself is a
+good deal of a speculation nowadays. Nothing to worry your precious head
+about, though."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like me to economize, Archie, more than I usually do?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. You're never extravagant. A little more or less can't matter."</p>
+
+<p>Preoccupied though he seemed, he was never too preoccupied to show her
+the special consideration and gentleness she had noticed ever since
+Nikolai left.</p>
+
+<p>"As if he were trying to comfort me!" she thought uneasily. Her queer
+outburst of nerves with Stefan was something she never allowed herself
+to think of. She did not quite understand it; and Joan dreaded things
+she could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Archie seemed to be developing nerves himself of late. When the doorbell
+or telephone rang suddenly, he jumped as if he had been touched; and he
+went to his office almost every evening, coming home late and very
+tired.</p>
+
+<p>"You're working too hard, old boy," protested Joan. "I'll be glad when
+the treasurer of your company feels well enough to come back from
+Saranac and take his old job again."</p>
+
+<p>"He's back now. I expect to turn the books over to him in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! I'm glad of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you?" asked Archie, rather queerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!&mdash;though it means less salary, doesn't it? What do we care?
+We had enough before. You know, dear, money simply means <i>nothing</i> to
+me, so long as the bills are paid."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said soberly.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the war, Joan might have been
+better prepared for what was coming....</p>
+
+<p>One day, on her way home from the Red Cross rooms, she bought herself an
+early edition of an evening paper, and was looking over the headlines
+when she came across the following:</p>
+
+<h4>SHORTAGE DISCOVERED</h4>
+
+<h4>BOOKS OF MOORE AND COMPANY IN HANDS OF EXPERT</h4>
+
+<p>Farther down, aghast, incredulous, she read the name of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached home, he was already there. Johnny Carmichael and Ellen
+were with him, both talking at once. They stopped as Joan came bursting
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"Archie! This can't be <i>true</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>He had risen to go to her. Now he sank back in his chair, nodding.</p>
+
+<p>"I been tellin' him he's got to git out while the gittin's good,"
+muttered Ellen Neal, her language consorting oddly with the tense fear
+in her face. "Here's plenty of money"&mdash;she held out a battered
+pocket-book. "He can hop on the L. &amp; N. train as it passes Fourth
+Street. They ain't a minute to waste! The main thing's to git him away
+before they&mdash;take him!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's right!" insisted Johnny Carmichael, stuttering with excitement.
+"Once he's out of the way, my father'll get everything fixed. He's
+closeted with Moore now. We've stopped that beastly article in the
+paper&mdash;lots of people won't have seen the first edition. Father's taken
+on the case&mdash;Mrs. Blair, you've got to make Archie <i>wake up</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>But Joan could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>Archie rose to his feet again. He seemed invested with a new, quiet
+dignity. He put a hand on each of their shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to run, of course," he said. "Thank you just the same.
+Now cut along, will you? I want to talk to my wife."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Always afterwards, in thinking of that nightmare time, Joan remembered
+with a stab of remorse that when he held out his arms to her she had not
+gone to them&mdash;He did not make the mistake again.</p>
+
+<p>In the hour they had together before others came, he made things as
+plain to her as he could. The sum was not large as defalcations go.
+Moore and Company would not suffer for it&mdash;they were a rich firm; and
+later when he had served out his term he would be able to pay them back.
+This he repeated over and over.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble had commenced with the purchase of the house. It was too
+ambitious. Archie, struggle as he might, had begun shortly to fall
+behind with the payments, and had borrowed more money on it to meet
+them. (Joan recalled signing the papers, which meant nothing to her;
+merely "business.") Somehow, what Archie made never went quite far
+enough. Not through her fault!&mdash;this, too, he insisted upon again and
+again. How was she to guess how things were, so long as her own and the
+household allowances were paid to her regularly?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but why didn't you <i>tell</i> me?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fellow don't like to admit that he's bitten off more than he can
+chew, till he's sure."</p>
+
+<p>So he had tried a little speculating, and won; a little more, and won
+again. (It was at this time that he bought Joan her modest automobile.)
+After that, the story is too trite to need repeating. There came the
+depression of 1913, later the cataclysm of the war; and Archie with the
+finances of Moore and Company at his disposal. He lost, heavily, and
+borrowed to protect himself; recovered enough to replace his borrowings;
+went in deeper&mdash;and was caught with no means of making good some
+$15,000.</p>
+
+<p>"Our house?" suggested Joan, trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Mortgaged up to the eaves. Our equity in it wouldn't be a drop in the
+bucket."</p>
+
+<p>"What about your stock in that Building Association!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "Swallowed up so long ago I'd forgotten I ever had any....
+No, dear, I'm done. I took a long chance, and I took it once too often.
+Nothing for it but to serve out whatever term they give me, and then
+come back and&mdash;show 'em." His set jaw quivered a little.</p>
+
+<p>"'Serve out'&mdash;Archie! You don't mean <i>jail</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, still with his amazing quietness. "I want to. It's coming to
+me. And I'm young yet. You'll see!... But that don't mean <i>you're</i> to be
+mixed up in it," he added, slowly. "When I go to the Pen, that lets you
+out, dear. You get your freedom. Nobody will expect you to&mdash;to stay
+married to a criminal."</p>
+
+<p>He was watching her closely, and she stared back at him. He had proposed
+the monstrous idea seemingly in all seriousness, as if it were one to
+which he had given long consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk that way!" she said, with sudden sternness. "Of course you
+are not to go to jail. I'll fix that somehow&mdash;I'll get the money."</p>
+
+<p>But still she could not go to him, could not offer him any comfort. She
+was too stunned. This did not seem to her Archie, this quiet stranger
+who spoke so casually of penitentiaries and criminals and divorce.</p>
+
+<p>They were glad when people came to interrupt them.</p>
+
+<p>And people did come, in a steady stream. It seemed as if half the town
+had read that hastily suppressed news-item, and were determined that
+Archie Blair should not go to prison.</p>
+
+<p>"It's most worth while getting into trouble to see how many friends
+you've got you never knew about!" he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>The rescuers began with Effie May, check-book in hand and panting with
+distress, so upset that she had forgotten to rouge her face; and it
+ended with Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing, who intimated that
+if a couple of thou' at the usual rate of interest would be of any use
+to Archie, they were his.</p>
+
+<p>The offer that perhaps touched him the most deeply came from the Misses
+Darcy.</p>
+
+<p>"We happen to be at the moment temporarily embarrassed for funds,"
+explained Miss Iphigenia, at her stateliest, (and looking curiously like
+her Cousin Richard). "But it will be a simple matter to arrange another
+mortgage on our house. Dear papa did so frequently, I remember. And of
+course in a&mdash;an accident of this sort&mdash;Why, my dear boy, that is what
+houses are for!"</p>
+
+<p>But to all these suggestions Archie was able gratefully to explain that
+his wife had already arranged matters. For as soon as she collected her
+numbed faculties, she had telegraphed to Stefan Nikolai, and he had
+replied within the hour: "Draw on me to any amount."</p>
+
+<p>"There," she remarked to the weeping Ellen. "That's the Jewness coming
+out in him, just as you said it would!..."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen did all the weeping that was done in the Blair household during
+this crisis. The shock seemed to have quite broken her, so that it was
+the mistress who had to comfort the servant.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd ought to have known," she wailed, "with him lookin' so peakid and
+all! But I thought it was&mdash;something else. Oh, why couldn't he have
+<i>told</i> me? I could have kep' the bills down more, had pot-roasts instead
+of fancy-cuts, and hearts&mdash;you know how tasty beef-hearts can be, Joan,
+when I set my mind to 'em! 'T aint as if I wasn't an old hand at makin'
+things do. But you always had such rich ways, just like your father. And
+I let it fool me.... Oh, the poor boy, the poor, scairt, lonesome boy,
+tryin' to go ahead all by himself!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan's heart ached for her husband, too, as much as a heart can ache
+that seems turned into stone. She felt physically numb all over, except
+in her brain, and that worked mercilessly as ever&mdash;merciless not only to
+him but to herself. She did not hesitate to put the blame where much of
+it belonged.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been utterly selfish, one of the vampires that sap a man's
+strength, his ability, his very decency, and give nothing in return.
+Yet&mdash;does any one but a fool yield to vampires?"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to make for him every excuse he had not made for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all for me, to give me what he thought I wanted, the things my
+friends have. He could not bear to deprive me of anything."</p>
+
+<p>Yet he had deprived her of the thing she valued most in life: her pride.
+He had committed the sin unpardonable. He had, as the English put it,
+"let her down." She, Joan Darcy, in whom pride was the dominant trait,
+pride of race, of intellect, of character&mdash;she was the wife of a
+defaulter, a common thief!</p>
+
+<p>Despite people's marked kindness and consideration toward her, she
+fancied she knew what they were saying: "An extravagant wife. A woman
+who neglected her home and her husband."</p>
+
+<p>But of the charge of extravagance at least she was able to acquit
+herself. The iron of poverty had entered too early and too deep into her
+soul for that. She knew that dressing, for instance, cost her far less
+than it cost any woman of her acquaintance. She had always made taste
+and skill take the place of money there, and in other ways. Much that
+was unusual in her little house she had done herself, staining walls,
+painting woodwork, covering furniture. Where her neighbors employed
+several servants, she did very well with one; and if she left much of
+her household management in Ellen's hands, it was because she knew them
+to be more experienced than her own.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she told herself, puzzling the thing over, "we have simply cut our
+coat according to other people's cloth&mdash;And how was I to know?"</p>
+
+<p>It is the cry of many a startled wife whose husband has tried to keep on
+his shoulders the burden two should share: How was I to know?</p>
+
+<p>She was comforted to think that no tradespeople at least were suffering
+from their catastrophe; she owed not a dollar in the world.... Here Joan
+winced, recalling her determination that there should be no "Indians" in
+the annals of the Blair family. Archie, in order that she might pay
+bills promptly, had allowed her to pay them with other people's money!</p>
+
+<p>His own attitude was incredible to her. He seemed not particularly
+ashamed, nor even down-cast; if anything, rather relieved that the
+strain was over. The enormity of the thing he had done did not appear to
+impress him. He was more like a man who has bet too heavily at the
+races, but means to show himself a good loser. For the first time Joan
+considered seriously the mystery surrounding his birth. Emily Carmichael
+had been right&mdash;it was "brave" to marry a man of such doubtful
+antecedents. Who knew what handicaps were his to fight, what heritage of
+moral obliquity?</p>
+
+<p>There was after all a certain safety in good birth, she
+thought&mdash;forgetting that traditions and fine breeding had not sufficed
+to keep her own father from a slight moral obliquity, such as had
+permitted him to speculate with trust-funds. (Of the Major's earlier
+misadventure she never learned.)</p>
+
+<p>And then a sudden rush of reaction came over her. Archie&mdash;and moral
+obliquity! It was as impossible to associate the two as to associate a
+fine dog with treachery. He had simply, for her sake, chosen to take his
+long chance and abide by the consequences. An act more gallant, more
+blindly, foolishly, needlessly sacrificial, had never been laid upon the
+altar of love. And yet&mdash;she could not forgive him for it.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be because I do not care for him," she told herself stonily;
+and was glad in her heart that his children had not lived.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>But if she could not offer Archie the tenderness he craved, she gave him
+at least all the other assistance in her power. Her executive ability
+stood them both in good stead.</p>
+
+<p>It was she who interviewed Mr. Moore, far more successfully than Judge
+Carmichael had done, persuading him not only to hush the matter up but
+to retain Archie in his employ. "If I can afford to take another chance
+on him, surely you can?" she insisted; an argument which the dazzled old
+gentleman found quite unanswerable.</p>
+
+<p>Within a week she had procured an excellent tenant for the house,
+furnished, with privilege of sale at a month's notice. She had disposed
+of her little car at a good price, and placed Pegasus for the time being
+in the Carmichael stable.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't sell her, of course, nor give her away&mdash;it would be like
+selling or giving away Ellen Neal! But if you'll just ride her, Emily,
+and play with her sometimes? She's used to a good deal of attention."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll probably spoil her to death," promised Emily, deeply touched by
+this first sign of sentiment she had seen in her friend during that
+tragic time.</p>
+
+<p>Joan moved about her pretty house, cleaning, packing, getting things in
+order for the tenant, as calmly as if she were not leaving it forever.
+Even in the nursery she was perfectly composed, until she came upon the
+toys Ellen had hidden there. Then she locked the door for awhile, and
+neither Emily nor Ellen dared go to her.</p>
+
+<p>"But what are we going to do ourselves?" moaned Ellen, rocking
+helplessly to and fro in her kitchen. All her self-reliance had deserted
+her. She was suddenly an old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't decided yet, dear. One thing at a time," replied her
+mistress, steadily....</p>
+
+<p>But in the end it was Archie who decided.</p>
+
+<p>He had acquiesced without comment in all Joan's arrangements. Only once
+had he protested. It was when she telegraphed Stefan Nikolai for the
+money.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that, Joan&mdash;not that, <i>please</i>!" he said, with a quick flush. "I'd
+rather go to the Pen than that&mdash;Really, the Pen will be quite a rest for
+me," he added, piteously.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" she replied; and he said no more.</p>
+
+<p>But for all his acquiescence, he did not seem to be numbed by the thing,
+as Joan was. Though she often heard him walking up and down his room at
+night, and suffered for him, at times he appeared almost happy.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't get over how <i>good</i> people are!" he said once. "Think of Mr.
+Moore being willing to take me back! Not as manager, of course&mdash;the boys
+wouldn't be wanting to take orders from me yet awhile. Nor I couldn't
+expect to handle money. But he sent for me, and said I was the best
+salesman he'd ever had, and offered me the old job back on a commission
+basis! Pretty nice, what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you take it?" she asked, curiously. She herself could not have
+faced disgrace with any such meekness.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it? Why, I jumped at the chance!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Archie," she said suddenly, "do you realize that there's a war going on
+over there in Europe! Do you realize that there is need in France for
+every able-bodied man that's got a life to spare?&mdash;Have you thought of
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>She was startled by the change in his face. The veins stood out on his
+forehead, and his hands clenched. "Have I thought of it? God, girl, what
+else do you suppose I've been thinking about the past year? I'd give the
+soul out of my body to slip away from this&mdash;this grab-bag, and get into
+a good clean fight&mdash;Those damned baby-killers! Gosh!&mdash;fight? Just give
+me a chance at that dachshund of a Kaiser with my two bare hands!
+But"&mdash;he made the little gesture that she realized was becoming
+characteristic of him&mdash;a gesture of renunciation&mdash;"I've got to stay here
+now. There isn't any money in soldiering."</p>
+
+<p>Her flush deepened. "Money! I never want to hear the word again. Haven't
+you had enough to do with just 'money,' Archie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life," he said doggedly. "I've got to make a heap of it
+before I'm through. Fifteen thousand dollars!&mdash;That reminds me," he went
+on in another tone. "You say they need able-bodied men over there&mdash;don't
+they need women, too? D'you suppose your friend Nikolai could find
+something for you to do in that unit of his?"</p>
+
+<p>He caught the sudden gleam in her eye.</p>
+
+<p>"That would please you, wouldn't it?" he said quietly. "Of course it
+would mean hard work, dangerous work, too, perhaps&mdash;but it's a great
+chance for you, for anybody! To sort of help make history.... Mr.
+Nikolai was talkin' to us once about those two kinds of happiness,
+Hüttengluck and Heldengluck&mdash;remember? Well, I don't believe you're the
+sort to be satisfied with any Hüttengluck&mdash;nor I wouldn't want you to
+be. Take your chance, Joan&mdash;and don't lose it." His voice shook a
+little. "I'd like mighty well to have somebody of my name mixed up in
+this war somehow!"</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand on his&mdash;almost her first demonstration of tenderness
+since the shock came; but the gleam had already died out of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"That's dear of you, Archie&mdash;fine and generous. But if your place is
+here, mine is, too. I am not going to desert you. How can you think such
+a thing? I mean to be a better wife to you than I have been. We've got
+to start again, and start right. I want to help you...."</p>
+
+<p>And then inexplicably, unbelievably, the worm turned. His nerves had
+strained too far. He shook off her hand as if it burned him.</p>
+
+<p>"Help!" he said roughly. "Help? A hell of a lot of help <i>you</i> are! Going
+around like a martyr, with a don't touch-me, how-dare-you look on your
+face, as if I'd done the thing just to spite you! My God! A woman with
+any guts to her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Archie!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, that shocks you&mdash;such a fine lady as you are," He seemed to be
+working himself up, like a woman in hysterics. "So grandly indifferent
+to money, too!&mdash;just so's you've got enough of it. Who spent the money,
+anyway?&mdash;tell me that! Was it me, who haven't bought myself so much as a
+new pair of pants in three years?"</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him, mutely. "<i>So this</i>," she thought, "<i>is the real
+man!</i>" His ears, his great, coarse hands&mdash;they meant something after
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Her white look drove him into a further frenzy. "Oh, yes, glare at me,
+if I'm good enough for you to glare at!&mdash;Let me tell you something&mdash;if
+it's on my account you're staying, you needn't. That's all! It's a
+<i>wife</i> a man wants at a time like this, not any marble image, not any
+tragedy-queen! Not any noble character that watches him out of the
+corner of her eye, and if he's real good&mdash;pats him on the hand! I've had
+enough of that!&mdash;Go on with your friend Nikolai," he cried violently.
+"Try him out for six months or a year, and if he suits, and you don't
+want to come back here&mdash;by God, you needn't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Archie," she said, trembling in every limb, "I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" he cried. "Good! And I'm going to beat you to it!"</p>
+
+<p>He strode to the kitchen door and flung it wide. "Come here, Ellen Neal,
+and bear witness that I'm leaving this house first."</p>
+
+<p>The front door banged behind him....</p>
+
+<p>The two women stared at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that&mdash;was that <i>Mr. Archie</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Joan, still trembling, "it was!&mdash;Come upstairs and help me
+pack my trunk."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIV" id="CHAPTER_LIV"></a>CHAPTER LIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>There is little to be said here about Joan's experiences in France. The
+story of those is better told in her own remarkable letters, which began
+shortly to appear in certain magazines; and in the book that followed.</p>
+
+<p>Stefan Nikolai had found her shelter with a friend of his, Lady
+Arbuthnot, a clever old Englishwoman whose long horse-face and charming
+voice and odd combinations of tweed skirt and evening blouses were known
+and loved in every institution of mercy about Paris. Under Lady
+Arbuthnot's guidance Joan found use for not only her Red Cross training
+but for everything else she had, whether by gift or acquirement.
+Singing, story-telling, "play-acting," letter-writing, even dancing, all
+seemed as important a part of her equipment as the regulation sewing,
+bandage-making, and cookery. She tried an inexperienced hand at washing
+dishes and scrubbing floors. She also tried her hand at mending
+shattered nerves and even broken hearts; and at none of these things was
+she entirely unsuccessful. There was a certain power of concentration in
+Joan that made failure unlikely in whatever she undertook.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful time to her. She never got nearer the trenches than
+Paris; but there the trenches came to her, with all their horror, their
+sordid hideousness, their sheer, soul-stirring grandeur. She saw
+shattered men struggling back to life that they might offer it again,
+with eagerness; she saw philanthropists living in comfort on money that
+had been obtained to feed starving refugees; she saw girl-children, who
+had been forced to bear German babies, loving those babies with a
+passion of maternity piteously beyond their years. Priests labored side
+by side with panders; women of the great world, such as Lady Arbuthnot,
+shared bed and board and ceaseless effort with W. C. T. U. workers from
+Kansas, with missionaries out of China, with ex-courtesans from the
+Paris streets, with those most sheltered of all aristocrats, the women
+of the upper French bourgeoisie.</p>
+
+<p>It was humanity with all barriers down, all contacts clean and clear.
+And Louisville, Kentucky, seemed as far away and negligible as the
+planet Earth may seem to possible dwellers on the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she had word from there&mdash;not often, for Ellen Neal was no
+letter-writer, and even Emily Carmichael's loyalty had been strained by
+Joan's unexplained desertion of her husband in his trouble. Once her
+cousin Miss Iphigenia Darcy wrote, and from her letter Joan gathered
+some impression of the effect of her sudden departure from Louisville.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In my day girls were taught that their first duty was to the
+<i>Home</i>, married or not. But I daresay this is a very
+old-fashioned notion, and with all those poor, unfortunate
+French needing help&mdash;Sister Euphie and Sister Virgie and I have
+frequently discussed offering our services. It is strange to
+have a war going on without any Darcys in it! (You haven't the
+<i>name</i>, you see, although a <i>true Darcy</i> in every other
+particular.) However, it does not seem the place for
+<i>unmarried</i> ladies just now, with so many men lying about in
+the hospitals not fully clothed, and those unfortunate Belgian
+victims (you know what I mean)! As I tell everybody, "Advanced
+young matrons like Joan are the ones really needed over there."
+But you know how narrow people are, my dear! I sometimes think
+our city is growing a little <i>provincial</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan smiled and sighed over this communication; and then forgot it.</p>
+
+<p>From Archie she had no word, except an occasional line or two with the
+money-order that came regularly on the first of each month, and was as
+regularly returned. The magazine connections Stefan Nikolai had made for
+her provided what money she needed, and she had not yet sufficiently
+forgiven Archie to be willing to accept anything from him.</p>
+
+<p>At first she wrote to him, not so much from any sense of duty, as from
+pity. She did not forget what had passed between them, she made no
+attempt to ignore the fact that he had failed her utterly in every way.
+But she no longer had time to brood upon her own affairs. In the vortex
+of life where she now found herself, personal troubles seemed somehow to
+disappear into the common whole. Constant association with others'
+sorrow developed her quality of sympathy to an almost painful extent;
+and though she knew that Ellen Neal was making Archie comfortable enough
+in the old rooms on Poplar Street, his loneliness, his humble
+acquiescence in disgrace, hurt like a bruise on her heart. So she wrote
+to him, impersonally but kindly.</p>
+
+<p>Since he so rarely replied, however, her letters gradually ceased.
+Evidently Archie, like many others, found it difficult to forgive where
+he had wronged. Joan shrugged&mdash;a little gesture she had learned from
+Nikolai&mdash;and dismissed her husband as much as possible from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>There was much else to occupy it: not only in the way of work but of
+pleasure. Paris, even in her grief, did not forget the human necessity
+for pleasure, nor did Stefan Nikolai. She saw rather less of him than
+she had expected to, for he was frequently absent for weeks at a time on
+unexplained journeys, about which Joan had learned to ask no questions.
+But whether he was near her or not, she was always conscious of his
+enveloping care, his devoted watchfulness. He gave her, too, many
+friends besides Lady Arbuthnot.</p>
+
+<p>Once Sacha, always left on guard over Joan during these absences of
+Nikolai's, betrayed the fact that his master had gone into Russia. Joan
+taxed him with it when he returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Russia is not safe for you, Stefan!&mdash;you told me so yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you would not have me at such a time seek only places of
+safety?" he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you stick to the hospital work you came over for, instead of
+gallivanting about all over the place?" she demanded, with a petulance
+that concealed anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"One goes where one is useful," he replied quietly. "There are many who
+know more about medicine than I, but few who know more about
+Russia&mdash;except in Germany, perhaps! My countrymen are very susceptible
+to the spoken word."</p>
+
+<p>It was his only explanation of his frequent disappearances; but Joan,
+understanding that wars must be won not only on the battlefield, uttered
+no more protests, and made the most of her friend when she had him.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in her life, she came near to the innermost meaning
+of the word happiness. It was not the placid content of her
+"pasture-time," nor the feverish, half-guilty ecstasy which had come to
+her for a brief hour through the unworthy medium of Eduard Desmond. It
+wrapped her round warmly like the consciousness of some beloved
+presence&mdash;which indeed it was, though Joan for once did not quite dare
+to analyze the sensation. She only knew that here, among strangers
+speaking a strange tongue, she was for the first time in her experience
+utterly at home. And she was curiously at the top of her powers. In that
+atmosphere, nothing seemed impossible of accomplishment. There was a
+sense of personal possession and being possessed&mdash;"By Paris," she told
+herself; but in her heart another name echoed.</p>
+
+<p>Unaware, the great experience, the thing for which she had blindly
+groped, had come upon her; not with a sudden leap to which her nature
+leaped in response, but with a slow, quiet, irresistibly gathering
+force, like a great stream that bore her upon its breast, without
+volition, without struggle, toward some bourne of which she had no
+knowledge. And no fear.</p>
+
+<p>Joan might have said with Browning:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let us be unashamed of soul ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it in our control<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To love or not to love?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is always the body that suggests shame; and the body had ever been a
+negligible part of Joan's make-up. She felt as independent of it now as
+if she were already spirit, floating about in space&mdash;always with this
+certainty of meeting there another spirit, however, and mingling with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>This spiritual mingling was a matter she never discussed with
+Nikolai&mdash;the only thing in the universe, perhaps, which they did not
+discuss. Theirs was an understanding too close for words, and beyond
+words.... But sometimes, when Joan remembered that she had once feared
+love, believing it one of those things that are better done without, she
+smiled to herself; an inner, brooding smile that gave the final touch of
+the chisel to her features, and made her much sought by painters.</p>
+
+<p>Paris seemed more than usual that year the rendezvous for people who had
+won distinction in the arts and sciences, and who came to render their
+patron city in her hour of need what assistance was in their power.
+Among these people Nikolai was made welcome with an eagerness, and even
+a deference, which delighted Joan, and a little surprised her; for his
+simplicity made it easy to forget that he belonged among famous folk as
+a matter of right.</p>
+
+<p>On his account, perhaps a little on her own as well, Joan also was
+welcomed by them. She was not at all abashed by the company of
+greatness, having inherited from Richard Darcy the naïve conviction that
+the best was good enough for her; and moreover she found among them the
+keen power of enjoyment that invariably accompanies high mental
+development. She had long since suspected, and now proved, that only
+thinking people know how to play.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great relief to her, just then, to be with strangers who
+accepted her entirely at face-value, with neither curiosity nor demand.
+An unquestioning, simple freedom prevailed in these upper reaches which
+Joan fancied might be dangerous enough (unless it had the effect of
+putting people, as it were, on honor). Nobody enquired whether she had a
+husband, for instance, or where he was. It seemed quite sufficient that
+she was the young friend of Stefan Nikolai; "<i>Spiritosa e simpatica</i>,"
+as a certain great Italian tragedienne pronounced her. Their relations
+were taken as a matter of course. The two were always included together
+in whatever plans were afoot, and Joan noticed other such companionships
+among them which passed equally unquestioned. She was nominally under
+the care of Lady Arbuthnot; but that widely experienced noblewoman
+displayed a carelessness of chaperonage that would have caused hair to
+rise on the head of, say, Mrs. Carmichael.</p>
+
+<p>Joan was at perfect liberty to spend with her friend every hour that
+either could spare from the day's duties, and did so. "Why not?"
+appeared to be the attitude of a company which concerns itself more with
+matters of the spirit than of the flesh....</p>
+
+<p>In Louisville speculation was once more rife and lurid, sharing interest
+only with the war headlines and with Joan Blair's latest letter to the
+magazines.</p>
+
+<p>"We appear to have been nourishing Genius in our bosom unawares!"
+remarked the Jabberwocks to each other; not altogether pleased, as is
+the immemorial way of friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why you were unaware," commented Emily Carmichael,
+quietly. "She has always shown every earmark of genius, even to
+neglecting the best husband that ever lived!"</p>
+
+<p>The Jabberwocks exchanged surprised and meaningful glances.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LV" id="CHAPTER_LV"></a>CHAPTER LV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Into the busy abstraction of Joan's Paris life came presently one of her
+step-mother's rare letters. It was a round, childish, yet curiously firm
+scrawl written on lavender paper (Effie May having abandoned pink
+effects in honor of her widowhood), which for some reason brought home
+to Joan her father's little city so clearly that she could almost smell
+it; a distinctive summer smell compounded of hot asphalt, blossoming
+ailanthus trees, and a suggestion of the glue-factory.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Folks here are making bets as to whether you ever mean to come
+back again,</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>(wrote Effie May).</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>And why should you? is what I say. I keep thinking how pleased
+Major would be to have you hobnobbing with lady earls and
+famous characters and high life generally. It's just where you
+belong, and so did he.</p>
+
+<p>Archie comes to see me real often, and he don't look so poorly
+as he did at first. He's got him up a regiment, mostly Y. M. C.
+A. fellows and a few old boys with stummicks and bald heads,
+and I hear they drill real cute. He goes horseback riding a
+good deal with the Carmichael girl, too, and I guess it does
+him good. Ellen says he seems more peckish for his meals.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>(Here Joan laid down the letter, thoughtfully. "Emily!&mdash;Well, why not?
+She always did like him. I'm glad," she mused. She certainly was not
+going to begrudge her husband the freedom she asked for herself.)</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Ellen comes in every day to look after things for me, now that
+I'm laid up. She don't like me any better than she used to, and
+I expect she just thinks it's a family duty, but I'm glad to
+have her anyhow. I keep nigger help now, the white ones being
+so hard to get, and I'm not the hand with them your father was.
+I never saw any one get as much out of niggers as Major
+could!&mdash;out of white folks, too, for that matter, couldn't he?</p>
+
+<p>Of course I'm not so sick as the doctors make out (they got to
+earn the money somehow), but it's hard to sleep sitting up this
+way, and sometimes at night I get to thinking. So I made a
+will. I knew you'd never touch Calloway's money with a ten-foot
+pole, but I thought maybe you wouldn't mind seeing it got spent
+right. I want it to go to one of those shelters you told about
+in the magazine, for little French girls with babies and no
+husbands. Seems only fair, when I've had more than my share of
+husbands and no kids.</p>
+
+<p>Paris seems awful far away, and I guess I better let you off
+that promise you made me to see that I didn't get laid out with
+no corset on. They probably couldn't get a corset on me now,
+anyway, I'm that fleshy. Not that I'm ordering me a coffin for
+anytime real soon, dearie! but sometimes at night a person gets
+to thinking.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Joan was rather startled by this letter, and sent for Nikolai.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you make of it, Stefan? That part: 'It's hard to sleep sitting
+up this way'&mdash;what does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid," he said gravely, "it means something serious&mdash;Advanced
+heart-disease, probably. A woman of her weight would be liable to it."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gave an exclamation of dismay. In that moment she discovered that
+she not only did not dislike Effie May; she was fond of her. The thought
+of never again seeing the vulgar, cheery, friendly soul was unexpectedly
+distressing.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor woman!&mdash;all alone there with her 'nigger help!' and Ellen sourly
+doing her duty&mdash;Or is it <i>my</i> duty?" She was not thinking entirely of
+Effie May.... "Stefan"&mdash;her face blanched. "She was my father's wife.
+She tried her best to be a mother to me. I owe her a good deal. Has the
+time come to repay it? Does this mean&mdash;Oh, Stefan, do you think this
+means I ought to go back? I've been so happy here, so useful! For the
+first time in my life I have felt that I really 'belonged.' These people
+who are doing things&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him beseechingly. It gradually dawned upon her that what
+she dreaded so to leave was not these people who were doing things, not
+that larger, freer life to which Nikolai had given her the key; not even
+the Spirit that met her Spirit there in space. It was Nikolai himself,
+the man, the comrade&mdash;the lover.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole being seemed to rush out to meet the need that suddenly gazed
+at her from Nikolai's eyes....</p>
+
+<p>"Stefan," she said very low, "<i>must</i> I go back?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he did not answer. Then he said, his voice not quite under
+control "You expect me to decide that for you? My dear, you ask too
+much."</p>
+
+<p>He took his hat and left; but Joan knew that he had decided.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>They walked up and down the <i>quai</i> for an hour or so before the gangway
+was drawn in. Joan always afterwards remembered what they said, as one
+recalls the least syllable of the dying. There was a sense of finality
+about this parting, against which she struggled in vain.</p>
+
+<p>She filled her eyes with him as if she had never seen him before, and
+would not again. She noted little physical details which had hitherto
+escaped her&mdash;the fine cameo cutting of his features, the long,
+sensitive, expressive hands, the air he shared with many Europeans of
+belonging to an older, more finished race than her own. In his calm
+impassivity there was a suggestion of Slavic fatalism, combined with the
+tragic patience of the Jew. Only his eyes smoldered with an unquenchable
+spark that flamed to hers.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that the Romance which had always eluded her was here at her
+side, in the person of this perfect comrade, this shadowy, insistent
+influence in her life which was about to withdraw into the shadows
+again. Perhaps she understood, too, that Romance to remain Romance must
+be elusive. Seized and held, it changes into something else. Yet she
+tried to cling to it.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be right here waiting on this spot when I come back, won't
+you, Stefan?&mdash;For I <i>will</i> come back," she exclaimed as he did not
+answer. "Say that you know I will!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that you will do whatever seems to you right."</p>
+
+<p>She made a mutinous face at him. "That's more than I know! I'm much more
+likely to do whatever seems to me nice&mdash;Oh, Stefan, why will you persist
+in believing in me always, no matter how badly I behave?" Lightly as she
+spoke, her eyes were fixed on him, telling him consciously what her lips
+could not utter.</p>
+
+<p>He answered at one of his usual tangents. "Do you not know that every
+splinter of a genuine Cremona violin vibrates to the bow on as true a
+tone as did the unbroken instrument?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;Mother," she said. "Oh, but I'm not all Cremona! I think
+there's a good deal in me of the fiddle Nero played while Rome burned.
+It's not <i>fair</i> to be expected to live up to a self-sacrificing mother!
+If you don't, you have failed her; if you do, she gets the
+credit&mdash;Besides, I'm needed here just as much as I am in Louisville.
+More! Not only these poor people need me, but&mdash;you do, Stefan."</p>
+
+<p>She had brought it into the open at last, the one thing which they had
+never yet discussed in their discussions of everything under the sun;
+that eternal human question of Thou-and-I. She was a little frightened,
+dreading yet eager for the answer.</p>
+
+<p>It was long in coming. Nikolai understood the crisis they had reached.
+He knew that it was his to put out his hand and hold her, to keep
+forever in his life this one gift of the gods he craved, the fulfilled
+hope which had been his beacon through many a lonely year. Once before
+because of a mistake in judgment he had lost her, to her own
+unhappiness. There must be no more mistakes in judgment.</p>
+
+<p>But the habit of truth in thought and word was too great for him.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said at last, "I do not need you."</p>
+
+<p>He saw her wince.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need you," he repeated steadily, "and you do not need me,
+Joan. People like us get on quite well alone. Better, perhaps. It is not
+good for us to be too happy&mdash;Besides, what we already have of each other
+cannot be affected by time or space. You know that? The rest&mdash;is
+extraneous. Tell me this: Have you ever in any important moment of your
+life forgotten me, have you ever failed to be conscious of my presence,
+no matter what the distance between us?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked deep into the luminous eyes fixed upon hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, Stefan. Even in my unthinking school-days, even in that strange
+time after I lost my babies and could not write to you, I have counted
+upon you always. Everything that has come to me, good or bad, big or
+little, I have shared with you in my thoughts. Only&mdash;I did not realize
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"That," he said quietly, "is marriage. Your mother realized it. She knew
+when you were only a child of the tie between us&mdash;But she and I thought
+that I must keep away from you until the accident of time corrected
+itself. You see we have been sent into this incarnation rather far
+apart."</p>
+
+<p>"You kept away too long, Stefan!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But what does it matter?" He spoke half to himself, with his
+little shrug. "This manifestation or the next&mdash;we shall not be apart
+always."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she cried, catching at his hand. "That is too ethereal, too
+mystic for me&mdash;I can't bear it, Stefan! I want the people I love with me
+<i>now</i>, in this 'manifestation,' as you call it, where I can talk with
+them, and touch them, and hold on to them&mdash;I am not all spirit. I
+thought I was, but&mdash;I'm not. Oh, my dear, aren't you human <i>at all</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not reply; and Joan, looking at him through swimming tears, saw
+that it was because he could not.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped his hand. "Forgive me!" she whispered. "I will try to climb
+up to you&mdash;since you will not come down to me.... But you must help me."</p>
+
+<p>"I will help," said Nikolai.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke a little later of Archie, who had been all the while at the
+back of their thoughts. Both knew it was to him she was returning,
+rather than to her step-mother.</p>
+
+<p>"You expect too much of him, Joan&mdash;you always expect too much of people.
+Try to take them as you find them. He is one of the many who think
+better with their hearts than with their heads."</p>
+
+<p>She commented with a faint smile, "My step-mother once told me that
+there was nothing in the world so dangerous as what she called
+'bone-headedness.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly!&mdash;especially to the bone-headed&mdash;Your Archie is no fool,
+however. There are perhaps fewer convolutions in his gray matter than in
+ours, that is all. He has made mistakes with his head, and will again.
+But with his heart&mdash;never."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not condoning," she asked slowly, "what Archie has done?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered after a little pause, "To me there seems nothing
+unforgivable, nothing utterly vicious, except selfishness. There is no
+self in Archie Blair. Not enough self."</p>
+
+<p>Joan told him then reluctantly of something she had never before
+mentioned: her final incredible scene with her husband. She was
+curiously ashamed of that scene, as though it were she who had betrayed
+herself, instead of Archie. "Should you not call that a mistake of the
+heart?"</p>
+
+<p>But Nikolai did not appear to be particularly shocked by it. "I had no
+idea," he commented, "that Blair was so good an actor."</p>
+
+<p>"An actor!&mdash;You think that scene was not genuine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think, in fact I know, that your husband would hesitate to sacrifice
+nothing to what he believed your happiness; even your respect&mdash;I love
+that man," he said simply. "And so do you, Joan. Otherwise he would have
+been powerless to hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes widened. She asked, as so many before her have asked, "Is it
+possible to love&mdash;two people at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two? A dozen&mdash;a hundred! Does a mother love two children at
+once?&mdash;Surely that depends upon the stage of the soul's development."</p>
+
+<p>"But always one best," she said quite fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Always one best," he repeated....</p>
+
+<p>The parting had come. Staring at him desperately, she saw in his eyes a
+depth of pain and loneliness that made her own for the moment
+insignificant. So much of his life was done; so much of hers, after all,
+only beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she cried in a sort of bewilderment. "What is it
+all about? Is there a purpose somewhere in this muddle of things? Why do
+you say it is not good for people like us to be happy, when others go to
+the end of their days in calm security? I do not want any&mdash;wicked
+things, Stefan! I only want to be with you always. To take care of you
+if you are sick, to mend your clothes, and make you comfortable,
+and&mdash;love you. I want us to grow old together, not alone. Oh, my dear,
+all your life you have been alone; and I can't bear it!&mdash;What is the
+good of this thing that has waked in me at last, if I am not to use it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are," he said steadily. "Emotion to be safe must, <i>must</i> translate
+itself into action."</p>
+
+<p>"But how, how? By doing for others, you are going to say&mdash;but it's such
+a thankless task, Stefan! A red-blooded woman like me to take to
+altruism, as some take to drugs!&mdash;Why must some of us live so intensely,
+so consciously, only to be denied again and again the fulfilment that we
+crave? Sinking our lives into those of lesser people, always of lesser
+people!"</p>
+
+<p>He answered gently, "'<i>Car je suis le Cobzar.</i>'&mdash;It is time you
+understood.... You know what a Cobzar is?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head; and he told her.</p>
+
+<p>"In the more remote Magyar villages, news of the world comes to the
+people by means of a sort of minstrel who is called the Cobzar. He is to
+them not only newsbringer, but historian and poet and philosopher as
+well. He is treated with respect, they reward his singing with food and
+wine and a place beside the fire, for it is an honor to be born a
+Cobzar. But not always a happy honor, Joan. People do not listen to
+singing that comes out of an empty heart. It is the Cobzar's duty to
+tell them the story of themselves, and that is only the story of
+himself, wrought into many forms. Their fears and joys, their failures
+and their suffering and their hopes&mdash;he must be part of it all, and yet
+apart, that he may not only understand but watch, remembering always his
+mission to bring life to the knowledge of those who live."</p>
+
+<p>He quoted for her then some lines which Joan never forgot:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Car je suis le Cobzar."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The water widened between them....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVI" id="CHAPTER_LVI"></a>CHAPTER LVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>All during her homeward journey Joan had the feeling that she was waking
+slowly from a long dream; such a dream as ether gives, more vivid than
+reality itself but impossible of recapture. As he came literally nearer,
+Archie grew to be the dominant figure in her thoughts rather than
+Nikolai, though Nikolai was always there; Archie under the new light her
+friend's parting words had shed upon him. It mortified her to realize
+that another, almost a stranger to him, should have read her husband
+better than she did. It occurred to her, too, that with Nikolai she had
+not left behind her all Romance. A man who was capable of such a
+sacrifice as Archie Blair's could not be entirely commonplace. Her eyes
+had been suddenly opened.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this was part of the help Nikolai had promised.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, her sentiments toward her husband became rather puzzling, being
+composed so far as she could decipher them of a desire to comfort him
+for the loss of herself, combined with a desire to be comforted by him
+for the loss of Stefan....</p>
+
+<p>Her fellow-travelers eyed Joan with more than the usual interest she
+invariably excited among strangers; but to no avail. It was a time when
+what few barriers exist on shipboard at best went down in the sharing of
+a common peril, the menace of the submarine. Not so with Joan, however.
+She seemed unaware of friendly advances or invidious criticism: wrapped
+in a curious aloofness, from danger and from her fellowman alike. Nor
+was it an aloofness that would pass.</p>
+
+<p>She had her great renunciation to make, and faced it; a renunciation
+which took the most difficult form, of dedication. Loneliness was upon
+her, not loneliness as she had known it before, a groping restlessness,
+a dissatisfaction. There was nothing left to grope for. She knew quite
+well now what she wanted, had always wanted, and might never have; but
+she knew, too, that on this solitary road of life, the warm human clasp
+of hands is something, the warm human touch of lips.... Thinking of
+Archie as Nikolai thought of him, her heart seemed to be stretching,
+literally expanding, with growing-pains; so that there might be room in
+it for two&mdash;or for a dozen, a hundred, as he had promised.</p>
+
+<p>And presently she was able to return in spirit to the first night of her
+marriage, when for a little interval of time she had lost Joan the
+individual, and become simply the woman, whose mission is to give....</p>
+
+<p>She had thought so much of her husband that she was quite prepared to
+find him waiting at the dock for her, yellow boots, Derby hat, and all.
+But he was not there, nor yet at the station in Louisville, though she
+had wired him from New York the date and hour of her coming.</p>
+
+<p>Only two of the Misses Darcy were there to meet her, in Effie May's
+limousine, their manner nicely adjusted between melancholy, importance,
+and the <i>empressement</i> due a distinguished relative returning from
+foreign parts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear, she is low, very low! Restoratives have to be
+administered constantly," sighed Miss Virginia. "What a charming hat!
+Paris, I suppose? I always have maintained that the French touch&mdash;So
+that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take
+turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen
+Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses&mdash;No
+expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury,
+isn't it? She has been watching for you every day&mdash;seemed to be quite
+certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."</p>
+
+<p>Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate
+whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Effie May happened to mention that he was out riding this
+afternoon. Doubtless he had made some engagement before your letter
+came, or I am sure&mdash;" Miss Euphemia nudged her visibly into silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Joan, flushing a trifle....</p>
+
+<p>If Effie May was as "low" as reported, she showed little sign of it. She
+welcomed Joan in her usual loud and cheery tones, magnificent in a new
+lavender tea-gown, as pink-cheeked and carefully coiffed as ever. At her
+elbow was a box of chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that letter'd fetch you!" she chuckled. "Sort o' pitiful, wasn't
+it? People were mighty surprised to hear you were coming back. But not
+me. You're not so hard-shelled as you try to be, girlie!"</p>
+
+<p>Like the Misses Darcy, she displayed immediate interest in the Paris
+hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Chick as it can be," she pronounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad
+you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth
+is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight
+lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous
+journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was
+concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black
+crêpe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning
+'chickly'&mdash;poor Paris!"</p>
+
+<p>The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor
+comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins
+quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with
+Major&mdash;And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the
+two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my
+mind!"</p>
+
+<p>She made Joan sit down beside her and tell her at once all about Paris,
+and how many noblewomen she had met, and what they wore, and whether it
+was true that Frenchmen took more notice of married women, even of
+middleaged ones than of girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Paris is the burg for me!" she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>But in the midst of Joan's liveliest recital, her head dropped suddenly
+forward and she fell asleep. It was the other's first intimation that
+she had not come after all upon a wild goose chase.</p>
+
+<p>She sat for a moment looking at this woman who had tried to be a mother
+to her, with her absurd golden head and beringed, puffy hands. Then,
+following an impulse rare with her, she stooped and kissed the painted
+cheek very tenderly. It was a pity that Effie May did not know.</p>
+
+<p>She slipped away to the telephone and called up the Carmichael house.
+The maid told her that Miss Emily was at home.</p>
+
+<p>("So <i>she's</i> not out riding with him!" thought Joan.)</p>
+
+<p>Emily appeared politely surprised by her friend's arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Archie tells me how ill your step-mother is. I am so sorry! You
+say you will be here some time before you go back? I shall hope to see
+you, then."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you may," replied Joan even more politely, "but unfortunately I
+shall be very busy.... Look here, Emily Carmichael, what's the matter
+with you anyway? Come right over here and explain."</p>
+
+<p>Emily came.</p>
+
+<p>When the two had had their talk out and parted, tear-stained but
+reconciled, Joan went once more to the telephone and called up her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>His familiar voice over the wire gave her an unexpected thrill. She had
+forgotten how big and warm it was, even when he sang out of tune.</p>
+
+<p>"Archie," she asked directly, "why weren't you at the station to meet
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>He stammered out some rather breathless excuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know all about that&mdash;Emily told me that she often gets you to
+exercise Pegasus for her when she hasn't time. But why to-day
+particularly, when you knew I was coming?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice was under better control now. "Why, you see, I didn't think it
+would look well for us to be seen together just now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't look well!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, Joan. You've got a pretty good case of abandonment&mdash;I left the
+house first, you know&mdash;but if we were to be seen together the minute you
+get home, sort of friendly-like, it might get to the ears of the Judge
+and prejudice him. When the whole thing's settled, of course, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Joan gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean," she interrupted, "by a case of abandonment?"</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't care to bring suit on any other grounds, would you!" he
+asked anxiously. "The fact is I'm afraid you couldn't, Joan. There
+<i>aren't</i> any other grounds."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said blankly. "I understand.... Well, my dear, I'm sorry you
+feel that you can't come and say at least hello to me&mdash;'sort of
+friendly-like.'"</p>
+
+<p>"So am I," he answered, gently....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Joan wandered back to her step-mother's room, feeling queer and dazed.
+She had never before realized that anything other than death might be
+irremediable.</p>
+
+<p>During all her months in Paris she had not even contemplated the
+possibility of divorcing Archie. She was blindly content with things as
+they stood, and it had not occurred to her that Archie might be
+otherwise, that he had seriously meant, for his own sake, perhaps, the
+suggestion he had once made to her. She was so used to doing his
+thinking for him.</p>
+
+<p>Divorce!&mdash;that refuge of the foolish, the frail, those so lacking in
+pride as to be willing to confide their failures to the world!</p>
+
+<p>"It is so&mdash;so unnecessary," she protested aloud, wondering vaguely why
+the phrase was familiar to her. Then with a start she recognized it as
+one of Eduard Desmond's.</p>
+
+<p>The hot blood rushed into her face. Did they&mdash;Emily, Effie May, even
+Archie himself&mdash;believe her capable of the sort of thing Eduard Desmond
+meant? Dropping one husband to take on another&mdash;or perhaps taking on
+another without dropping the first? Was this the interpretation that had
+been put upon her life abroad, her precious companionship with
+Nikolai?&mdash;She shivered. No wonder Archie had not cared to come to see
+her!</p>
+
+<p>For once the thought of Nikolai was of no comfort to her. She put it
+from her almost with horror. It seemed to her that their relationship
+was irreparably smirched, degraded, by the touch of profane hands....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>She hoped that Effie May had awakened from her doze, so great was her
+need just then of the shrewd, tolerant, entirely human counsel of her
+step-mother.</p>
+
+<p>But Effie May had not awakened; nor did she wake again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVII" id="CHAPTER_LVII"></a>CHAPTER LVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The funeral did great credit to the Misses Darcys' experience in such
+affairs. A crowded, beflowered church bore witness to the fact that
+Darcy was still a name to be reckoned with in the community. Not only
+the best people were there in quite sufficient numbers, but many of
+those lesser folk whose duties bring them happily into touch with the
+best people; milliners, modistes, clerks in the better shops, and so
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing remarked to Miss Murphy of
+the Silks: "Such a loss to trade, ain't she?"</p>
+
+<p>Among these humbler friends not a few genuine tears were shed, however,
+for Effie May had scattered her kindness impartially.</p>
+
+<p>Joan, in solitary state as chief mourner, with the Misses Darcy sadly
+rustling in the pew behind her, was conscious of many curious glances
+turned her way. Perhaps her husband was the only person there whose eyes
+never turned in her direction. She was glad of her heavy veil, through
+which she might study him unobserved.</p>
+
+<p>He sat just opposite among the other pall-bearers, grave and quiet, with
+the odd dignity still about him which had come at the time of his
+disgrace. She noted new lines in his face, an unexpected touch of gray
+in his boyish, curling hair. The ears, the freckles, the great, clumsy
+hands were still much in evidence; but somehow Archie had lost forever
+his slight touch of the ridiculous. Declining to run away from disgrace,
+facing his music, humbly but unafraid, it occurred to Joan that her
+husband was approaching rather nearly her own and her father's standard
+of gentlehood.</p>
+
+<p>"Blessings brighten," she reminded herself, grimly, "as they take their
+flight!..."</p>
+
+<p>She came presently under the soothing spell of the old cathedral, a
+shabby, not very beautiful edifice left stranded in a neighborhood no
+longer its own, but whose pews still bore the names of the town's first
+citizens, gentlemen who had been her father's boyhood playmates, and
+whose fathers had worshiped there with his father. Oddly enough,
+considering how little time she had spent within its walls, the echoing
+dimness of it gave Joan her first sense of home-coming. This old house
+of God, that had witnessed so many ends and so many beginnings of human
+endeavor, had gathered into itself the heart of a city.</p>
+
+<p>A warm heart, it was, thought Joan; despite those speculative glances
+fixed upon her. She recalled people's kindness to Archie in his trouble,
+their quick response to any call upon their sympathy, their willingness
+to give every stranger his chance. She remembered their invincible
+hospitality, whether in wealth or poverty; the ardor with which they
+entered into the interest of the moment, be it work or play, their
+generous admiration for any fellow-citizen who made a success in the
+world. A warm heart, she thought, and a loyal one.</p>
+
+<p>She understood in that moment why it was that the people of this little
+city rarely drifted too far away to come back again. Just as the human
+body claims in the end its six feet of earth for a resting-place, so
+must the human spirit claim its bit of the world for a resting-place, a
+Neighborhood. The tragedy of a wandering life such as Nikolai's was, she
+saw, in its detachment from common human interests, from a Neighborhood.
+Better a tree, with its roots in friendly soil, as he had once said.</p>
+
+<p>Cast her out though it might, Joan knew that her Neighborhood was here,
+here among her father's people....</p>
+
+<p>A trolley-car clanged past, and the challenge of the peanutman came
+cheerfully in at the open door. "Pop-corn, Lady? Yere's your fine fraish
+roasted peanuts, right off the hopper!"</p>
+
+<p>The little lads in the choir stirred restlessly to this voice of the
+summer outside. "Lead, Kindly Light," they warbled in a piercing young
+treble, with now and then the Bishop's robust tones added in a
+hospitable effort to make the thing go.</p>
+
+<p>Joan's irrepressible fancy recalled the last occasion on which she had
+heard this noble anthem. It was at the Country Club, where some
+irreverent wag was playing it in rag-time; and Effie May had danced to
+it merrily, Lightfoot Ef with her indulgent Major. Joan wondered whether
+Lightfoot Ef might be remembering, too, and smiling perhaps in her
+coffin....</p>
+
+<p>But out at the cemetery her queer sense of elation vanished. Here, in
+the shadow of her father's monolith, with Mary's modest headstone on one
+side, a yawning grave on the other, at her feet two mounds so small as
+hardly to be noticed, the aloneness of the human soul suddenly smote her
+with such force that she could not stand under it. Was she never to know
+again that human touch of hands and of lips? Was her only neighborhood
+after all to be this quiet city of the dead?</p>
+
+<p>She went quite dizzy and might have fallen, but for the quick arm that
+supported her; whose in that bitter moment she neither knew nor cared.
+But she was not surprised to find herself presently alone in a carriage
+with Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I oughtn't to have done this," he apologized, when he saw that
+she could listen to him. "I just didn't think&mdash;out there. I'll go as
+soon as you feel better, dear. Where do you want the driver to take
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Home," she said. It was no more than a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to Mrs. Darcy's house? Won't that be pretty gloomy for you
+just now? Better let him take you to your cousins'&mdash;or to Miss Emily's.
+How would that be? I know she'd he mighty glad to have you."</p>
+
+<p>Joan gathered herself together for an effort. It seemed to her, faint as
+she was, that much depended upon this moment. But for once her eloquence
+failed her. She could only repeat that she wanted to go home.</p>
+
+<p>Archie understood her trembling better than her speech, perhaps. He,
+too, began to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I haven't got any home now, Joan. Only the old attic-room in Poplar
+Street&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She cried out, painfully, "Archie! don't you <i>want</i> me any more?..."</p>
+
+<p>In his arms at last, her face pressed roughly against the familiar
+roughness of his coat, words returned to her. She quoted her husband's
+sole adventure into poetry:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A book of verses underneath the roof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cup of coffee and an egg, in troof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Mrs Neal to cook it up for us&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, attic life were Paradise enoof."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Archibald did his faithful best to laugh; but the effort was not
+successful.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>So it happened that they were received from a funeral as they had once
+been from a wedding, into the portal of an ancient, friendly mansion
+whose stairway still creaks to the tread of ghosts and broken people,
+with now and then a happy footstep to remind it of its youth. And there
+Ellen Neal, mounting stiffly and wearily with the aid of the curving
+bannister, was hailed by a loud whisper from the floor above.</p>
+
+<p>"Hsst! Come on up and look who's here."</p>
+
+<p>A radiant Archie led her to his door, and exhibited the One and Only,
+clad in his bathrobe, curled up asleep upon his bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" gulped Ellen through her tears. "I <i>knew</i> that woman'd manage
+to fix things somehow!" Which was a final reluctant tribute to the force
+of kindness that had been Effie May.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWO_YEARS_LATER" id="TWO_YEARS_LATER"></a>TWO YEARS LATER</h2>
+
+
+<p>A distinguished, foreign-looking gentleman with pointed gray beard got
+off an interurban car in the vicinity of Louisville, and stood gazing
+about him uncertainly. It was not the suburban neighborhood he had
+expected to find, but a distinctly rural one. Here and there smoke was
+visible above the tree-tops, but the only house within sight was a small
+farm-cottage of red brick, which had doubtless stood there among its
+gnarled fruit-trees at a time when the turnpike that passed it was a
+postroad leading from the metropolis of Middletown (now half a hundred
+houses strung along the pike) to the little port of Louisville on the
+Ohio.</p>
+
+<p>There was a big chimney at either end, in the picturesque but
+impractical early fashion, and a bricked-up terrace across the front
+overflowing with simple flowers: petunias, snapdragon, larkspur. Upon
+the lawn grazed a rather stiff-kneed thoroughbred, apparently under
+convoy of a pair of infants. One of these, the smaller, got about on all
+fours with astonishing rapidity, and seemed imbued with the spirit of
+investigation. The other, slightly larger, was extremely black as to
+color and extremely capable as to manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Tek keer, you Steffum!" Mr. Nikolai heard this one admonish. "Don't you
+go so near his mouf, you heah me? Dat hawss could snap you up jes' as
+easy as nippin' off a dandelium!"</p>
+
+<p>The visitor leaned over the fence in sudden interest, "Can you tell me,
+young person, whether Mrs. Blair lives here?"</p>
+
+<p>At sound of his voice the investigatory infant, in an excess of
+hospitality, rose to its legs and teetered eagerly toward him, only to
+come to earth at Mr. Nikolai's feet. Nothing daunted, however, it gazed
+up at him from this lowly position with a mixture of Archie's grin and
+the droll, blue, wistful twinkle of Joan.</p>
+
+<p>"Dar you goes, Steffum!" cried the guardian, in hot pursuit. "Dirtyin'
+up anodder clean dress so's Miss Ellen gwinter whup me good&mdash;He's always
+a-fallin' over on his face dataway," she complained, while maternally
+repairing damages with the skirt of what appeared to be an only garment.
+"I b'lieve he goes and does it a-purpose!"</p>
+
+<p>"To gain experience, perhaps?" suggested the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"I reck'n," assented the other, doubtfully. "Yassuh, Mis' Blair she
+<i>libs</i> heah, but she's playin' on de type-writer dis mawnin'. Will I run
+an' tell her comp'ny is came?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Not if she is playing on a
+typewriter."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Archie, <i>he</i> libs heah, too, when he ain't a trabelin' on de
+railroad train," volunteered the black one, "He's out behine, makin' him
+a little house to put a hawg in. Heah him?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nikolai nodded. There was a good deal of intermittent hammering and
+whistling going on in the background.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not announce me, thank you. Perhaps my namesake will lead me
+to him?"</p>
+
+<p>He held out a forefinger to the younger Stefan, who examined it, found
+it good, and clasped a trusting fist about it. So linked, the two moved
+off at a pace suitable to experimental footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>In this slow progress they presently came upon a somewhat nondescript
+figure at work in a potato-patch. It wore blue jeans overall trousers,
+surmounted by what had once been a leghorn picture-hat, from which
+straggled a lock or two of sparse gray hair.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nikolai stared at this figure for a puzzled moment; and then burst
+out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Ellen Neal! I did not recognize you as a farmerette."</p>
+
+<p>"Land sakes!" She sat down abruptly among the potato-plants, whether out
+of surprise or for purposes of concealment it is impossible to state.</p>
+
+<p>But her welcome when it came was for once not grudging. Perhaps she
+recalled a certain timely offer of help; or perhaps this graybeard, with
+his slight, tired stoop and his lined eyes, no longer seemed to her a
+menace to the sheepfold. Be that as it may, her greeting was not outdone
+in warmth even by Archie's.</p>
+
+<p>"I've simply <i>got</i> to tell Joan!" cried Archie. "She'll never forgive me
+if I don't interrupt her just this once."</p>
+
+<p>"Not when it is coming like that," forbade Nikolai, listening to the
+rapid click of a typewriter from the house beyond. "Neither battle,
+murder, nor sudden death must be allowed to interfere with a flow of
+thought that is coming a hundred words to the minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose you know," conceded the husband, reluctantly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, however, Ellen took matters into her own hands. She
+appeared at the kitchen door (dressed, Nikolai was flattered to observe,
+in a costume of purple crêpe with Battenburg touches), and loudly rang a
+dinner-bell.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll fetch her! Joan ain't ever too much up in the clouds to hear a
+dinner-bell; and I don't mean to have my jelly-omelette kep' waitin' on
+no flows of thought," she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Joan came out to them, a little untidy as to dress and hair (why is it
+that the Muse can never be pursued in perfect neatness?) and moving
+vaguely, as if half in a dream. There was a faint vertical wrinkle
+between her brows which was new to Nikolai, but her pallor had given
+place to warm tan, and both face and figure showed a slight suggestion
+of fullness, a little matronly poise that was more charming than her
+Botticelli <i>maigre</i> had been.</p>
+
+<p>As she passed her son, she swooped down upon him and lifted him with a
+fine free swing onto her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi there, old Dirt-in-the-Face! Where's your Dada?"</p>
+
+<p>Mother and child made a memorable picture as they approached, the long
+lifting lines of the woman's body, her laughing face upturned to the
+boy, who straddled her shoulder unafraid of his high position, chuckling
+and kicking fat legs as she tickled him.</p>
+
+<p>The two men who loved Joan exchanged a sympathetic glance. "Mine!" said
+each in his heart; the one triumphantly, the other with the little shrug
+that was habitual to him.</p>
+
+<p>Not until she was close upon them did she realize who waited for her
+there beside Archie. She stopped short. Then, without a word, she put
+down her child and went to Nikolai and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>If that kiss, so impulsive and without self-consciousness, was like a
+stab in Nikolai's heart, he did not show it. She had not dared to kiss
+him when they parted.</p>
+
+<p>There came back to him in that moment an echo of a certain prophesy he
+had once made to Archie: "I must warn you that when she does find her
+<i>metier</i>, you are more in danger of losing her to it than to me."</p>
+
+<p>Was she lost to both of them, already?...</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Stefan, dear, how tired you look!" ("And how old!" her thought
+finished.) "You've been working too hard over there!"</p>
+
+<p>"One does. It seems the least one can do."</p>
+
+<p>"Too much work and not enough exercise," pronounced Archie, casting a
+semi-professional eye over him. "Nothing ages a man so quick as to let
+his muscles sag on him&mdash;but you brainy people always forget you've got
+muscles except in your heads. I'll have to make you hoe the garden and
+put on the gloves with me now and then, like I do Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder she is able to hoist fat sons about as if they were
+feathers!" commented Nikolai.</p>
+
+<p>It was a happy luncheon they had together, and a garrulous one. The
+Blair family talked all at once, including the youngest, who had three
+words at his command and liked to practice them. Ellen also joined
+freely in the conversation as she waited upon them. Nikolai was the only
+quiet one, seeming content to look and listen.</p>
+
+<p>He had to hear all about the finding of the Farm, as Archie called his
+two acres and a cottage. When the reunited Blairs had been looking about
+for a place they could afford to live in&mdash;"And raise a family," added
+Archie happily&mdash;they had come across the little place, weed-grown and
+deserted, and rented it for almost nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"The chickens and the garden alone practically pay the rent," boasted
+Archie, "and this summer I'm going to set up a hog. Real money in hogs,
+Mr. Nikolai! Of course the house is pretty old-timey and plain,"&mdash;he
+indicated the low ceilings and deep-set, many-paned windows&mdash;"but Joan
+likes old-timey things. She says this is a country cousin to that old
+place I used to live in on Poplar Street. Says a house without any
+ghosts in it is as uninteresting as a house without any books in it."
+(Archie was always fond of quoting the sayings of his Joan.)</p>
+
+<p>"You do not miss people?" Nikolai asked her, recalling how easily the
+young American had made her place in what is perhaps the most finished
+society in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no chance to. We have neighbors enough&mdash;nice country women who
+exchange patterns and recipes and cuttings with me, and even a book now
+and then. If I want another sort, it is easy enough to run into town&mdash;or
+even on to New York, now that I've the excuse of publishers to be seen!
+And lately the town has begun to come out to me. Not at first. Emily and
+the others had a good deal to say about the folly of burying oneself in
+the country. You see this is not Country Club or golf-course country.
+But now I notice that they're glad enough to come whenever I ask
+them&mdash;or even when I don't!&mdash;Oh, the peace of it, Stefan! At night you
+can positively hear the silence."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Amid the darkness that we feel is green,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he said.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded. "And no formal callers to interrupt, and no ridiculous
+competitions with Mrs. Websters&mdash;I think people are more themselves in
+the country, somehow. Kentucky people, at any rate. Your Kentuckian does
+not run quite true to type herded in masses."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the wise authorine!" beamed Archie.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps that is true of all Anglo-Saxons," she went on, unheeding.
+"They need to get their roots into the soil."</p>
+
+<p>"Not only of Anglo-Saxons, Joan&mdash;of Semitic people, of all people, I
+think," said Nikolai. "Humanity began in a garden, if we may believe our
+myths. And with all races the dream of the ultimate Paradise is a
+garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you put some roots out yourself?" asked Archie, eagerly.
+"There's a lot of good land about here for sale cheap. Why don't you buy
+some and settle down near us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do!" urged Joan. "What a splendid idea!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked from one to the other, the slight flush that had risen to his
+face dying away.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thank you, my friends. Perhaps&mdash;some
+day."</p>
+
+<p>Joan remembered that he had spoken once of his intention to settle down
+near her and grow up with her children, "when he was old enough."</p>
+
+<p>Surely, she thought (quite unaware of any cruelty in her thought) he was
+old enough now!</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes had been making their usual running commentary on the
+conversation, quick blue flashes, grave or merry or reassuring, that
+always spoke to Nikolai more clearly than her words. But presently he
+noticed in them a return of the preoccupation, the vague dreaminess,
+that had been about her when she first appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mind is at that typewriter," he accused her suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," complained Archie. "She'd be at the thing all day
+long, if I didn't drag her out in the fields occasionally to work!"</p>
+
+<p>"Archie thinks writing is not work," she interpolated, "merely an
+elegant way of passing a lady's leisure, like embroidery or
+crocheting!&mdash;But I'm not always as bad as this, Stefan," she apologized.
+"It's just that a crisis is on the way, and thoughts seem to come faster
+than I can get them down.&mdash;Luckily for you I've got a public now to
+spill them onto, instead of you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you find the public as responsive?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Does</i> she!" cried the proud husband. "Letters in every mail, and
+requests for autographs&mdash;why, she's a public character! The other day in
+a street-car&mdash;Tell him what happened the other day in the street-car,
+Joan."</p>
+
+<p>She pulled his hair, laughing. "Ain't I the most wonder-fullest
+boy?&mdash;Well, the other day in a street-car, Stefan, a perfectly strange
+man came up to me and said, 'Aren't you the Mrs. Blair who writes? Say,
+what business have <i>you</i> got knowing how scared a man is of his grown
+son? You're only a girl.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you," said Nikolai. "Yes, that is response. Taking the
+world into your circle of intimates&mdash;that is the thing that makes the
+game worth while for people like you and me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't include me with yourself," she protested in quick deprecation.
+"I'm not and never shall be 'literary.' Human nature is all I'm after,
+Stefan. Villains who won't stay villains; heroes with fatal flaws of
+character; good, fine, noble natures who spread havoc all about
+'em&mdash;that's the sort of thing I want to do; never 'literature'!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, nodding. "Spoken like a true Cobzar!&mdash;But at that rate you'll
+find it difficult to escape literature, my dear." He rose to leave,
+against protests. "No, no, I have no intention of sharing honors with a
+Climax. Let me come back to-morrow, when the crisis is out of her
+system. I know how that is!"</p>
+
+<p>"You always know how things are," murmured Joan gratefully, pressing his
+hand....</p>
+
+<p>Archie walked with him to the car-station.</p>
+
+<p>"You think she's looking well, sir?" he asked as soon as they were out
+of earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than well, Blair. Content."</p>
+
+<p>The husband sighed with satisfaction. "I think so myself&mdash;though of
+course it's the kid who's done that, not me&mdash;Mr. Nikolai, I've got to
+talk to you on business. How big a hurry are you in for that money you
+lent me?"</p>
+
+<p>"None at all," answered the other pleasantly. "I've accumulated a good
+deal of moss for such a rolling-stone&mdash;a racial trait, perhaps! Take
+your time. You've already paid me more than half, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Joan's book did most of that, not me," admitted Archie, flushing.
+"Though of course I'm going to pay her back."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," said the other.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't!</i> Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our only hold upon such as Joan is&mdash;our need of them."</p>
+
+<p>Archie ruminated upon this in silence. "I get you," he said at last.
+"Let 'em think we're sort of helpless, like&mdash;like children, eh? But it's
+pretty hard accepting money from a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? When we have consented to accept life itself from a woman&mdash;Where
+there is love there is no debt, Blair!"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that's right," said Archie slowly. "What's mine is hers of
+course; and so what's hers is mine&mdash;But speaking of the war&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It happened that they had not been speaking of the war at all, though it
+hung in the background of their talk, grim and menacing, as it hung in
+the background of all talk just then.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Blair?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're getting into it at last, thank God! And as soon as we do, I'm
+going."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Nikolai.</p>
+
+<p>Archie turned to him eagerly. "You think I've got a right to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"So much of a right that I've come out here largely to see how I can
+help you&mdash;Of course you know," he added after a moment's hesitation,
+"that anything I have will go some day to my namesake Stefan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, that's great!" cried Archie, beaming. "That makes me mighty easy
+about the future! And the present's all right, too. I'm pretty sure of
+getting a commission, and Joan makes more money than I do now. The thing
+that's been troubling me is wondering how <i>you'd</i> ever get paid back....
+I'm pretty tall for the trenches," he explained. "And I seem to get sort
+of careless when I'm excited&mdash;the Irish coming out on me, I reckon. The
+chances are against my coming back. And in that case all you'd get would
+be&mdash;Joan."</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell.</p>
+
+<p>"And the kid, of course&mdash;He's a pretty nice little fellow," Archie added
+tentatively. "I don't suppose he'd be much of a&mdash;drawback?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," said Nikolai. "I think he might be considered
+interest on the investment!"</p>
+
+<p>Archie laughed with relief.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, it makes me feel pretty comfortable to know that whatever
+happens to me they'll be safe! And to know that you'll be taking care of
+her, sir. She needs a good deal of taking care of, too&mdash;though she don't
+know it. Thinks she's as independent as a little pig on ice. But they're
+none of 'em independent, Mr. Nikolai&mdash;take it from me! They've got to be
+humored, and teased, and exercised, and petted&mdash;and the smarter they are
+the more petting they need. This high-brow business seems to leave
+people sort of lonesome in their hearts&mdash;you know what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Nikolai, "I know what you mean&mdash;I shall accept your legacy
+gladly, Blair, if I am here to accept it. But&mdash;I am going to the war,
+myself. Not into the trenches, no. Into Russia."</p>
+
+<p>Archie protested as Joan had. "But I thought Russia was not safe for
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not. Nor for anybody else just now. There is something brewing
+there. You will see. And I think perhaps I can do a little something for
+both my countries, the new and the old. That is why I have come to
+America; to arrange my affairs, and to&mdash;say good-by."</p>
+
+<p>"I get you," said Archie, simply, and held out his hand. His face had
+fallen. "Gee, supposing neither of us comes back? What will she do
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai gravely smiled. "Listen!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Through the hush of the still afternoon came to their ears, faint but
+distinct, the steady clicking of a typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what she will do, my friend, with us or without. She has
+graduated from you and me&mdash;from herself as well. She has turned from men
+to Man; and of him the supply is inexhaustible."</p>
+
+<p>Archie sighed, a little jealously. "You gave her that! You've given her
+almost everything she values, sir, haven't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite everything, Blair."</p>
+
+<p>Archie's eyes brightened. He remembered then the thing the other had not
+given her: their boy.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was a scene that etched itself upon Nikolai's memory as he stood
+there waiting for his car, one of those pictures the heart carries with
+it into far places, and forever; the pleasant, homely cottage among its
+flowers and gnarled apple-trees, children's voices prattling about, the
+smell of cooking pickle in the air, Archie's cheery, retreating whistle,
+and dominating all the eager clicking of a typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes followed the broad shoulders of the younger man, swinging along
+the road to the brisk, martial tread all young men have learned
+latterly.... Nikolai's life had thrown him into contact with all phases
+of the human problem, low and high. He knew how inextricably the two are
+mingled. Heroism, self-sacrifice, he had found in the most unlikely
+places, and thrilled to them as a fighting nature thrills to the drum.
+It hurt him to realize that the finest heroism, the most exquisite
+sacrifice, must always be hidden things, hidden often even from the eyes
+of him who sacrifices. Archibald Blair, failure in all that the world
+finds important, would have called himself undoubtedly a poor stick.
+Only to the occasional eye did he loom a hero.</p>
+
+<p>Nikolai looked after him sadly, listening to the steady click of that
+typewriter. At last he quoted to himself, with a shrug,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Between them, he knew, they would manage to serve Joan's needs to the
+end.</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs."</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Why Joan?
+
+Author: Eleanor Mercein Kelly
+
+Release Date: December 31, 2010 [EBook #34801]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHY JOAN? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              WHY JOAN?
+
+                       BY ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY
+
+                  Author of "KILDARES OF STORM," etc.
+
+
+    NEW YORK
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+    1919
+
+    Copyright, 1919, by
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+
+    _Published, March, 1919_
+
+                     TO
+             MRS. RICHARD W. KNOTT
+       friend and neighbor to many young
+          women such as JOAN, whom she
+    has helped to find the why of themselves;
+          and whose life principle may
+         be summed up in Virgil's phrase
+
+            _Paulo majora canamus_--
+
+        (Let us sing of higher things.)
+
+
+    Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,
+    Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,
+    Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,
+      Car je suis le Cobzar.
+
+    _Quoted by Pierre de Coulevain from source unknown._
+
+Rough translation:
+
+    Love me, because I have need of love for my songs,
+    Leave me, because I have need of tears for my songs,
+    Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs,
+       For I am the Cobzar.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+Some time since, the author had the temerity innocently to publish a
+book ("Kildares of Storm"), which, like this one, employed for
+background the country with which she happens to be most familiar, the
+State of her adoption and of her affections. And great was the scandal
+thereof. Neighbors insisted upon recognising themselves in it, to their
+horror--or to their complacency, as the case might be. They also
+recognized the house described; although if one heard with impartial
+ear, the house appeared to possess as many different identities as
+localities, and despite the fact that the author, in order to guard
+against this very contingency, had taken many liberties with geography,
+even to the extent of moving mountains--imagination being on occasion
+almost as powerful as faith.
+
+That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens to assert
+that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the whole world of fancy
+at command, would care to inhibit productivity by the limitations
+imposed upon photography, invaluable as that science is in its
+place--which is not fiction. Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment
+at least, "shattering the world to bits and remolding it nearer to the
+heart's desire."
+
+There is also among the craft an unwritten law against the holding up
+for public inspection those people with whom one has broken bread, so to
+speak; and as one is apt, in Kentucky, to have broken bread with all
+one's acquaintance, neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider
+themselves safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize
+themselves in this book, let them recognize themselves quite as readily
+in the living people about them. For we are, after all, of one
+substance, varying only with circumstance and the different stages of
+development. And it is with these things only--with circumstance and the
+stages of development, with truths rather than facts, with men and women
+rather than personalities--that this author at least chooses to concern
+herself.
+
+ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY.
+
+
+
+
+WHY JOAN?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Young Joan Darcy leaned back luxuriously upon a cushion offered by the
+obsequious porter (servants were usually obsequious with Joan, though
+she was not at all beautiful and rather too shabby to promise much in
+the way of largesse), watching the world go by with a dreamy, detached,
+yet oddly observant gaze that missed no detail of the landscape through
+which she passed and registered it in her subconscious mind for future
+reference. It was a convenient receptacle, her subconscious mind--a sort
+of strongbox into which went many things valuable and valueless, to be
+brought forth when occasion required, quite intact. She tucked away in
+it now not only the rushing landscape but the various people about her
+in the Pullman: a dapper person, probably a necktie drummer, who had for
+some time been discreetly taking notice and whom it was her pleasure to
+occasionally regard as if he were so much thin air; an elderly lady who
+beamed wistfully whenever their eyes met, and who, Joan decided, would
+presently summon up courage to inform her that a little daughter, had
+she lived, would have been about Joan's age; also another girl, dressed
+as Joan would have liked to be dressed herself, who cast occasional
+glances of indifference in her direction, noting, it was to be hoped,
+the affluent litter of magazines and papers that surrounded our heroine,
+the fading bouquet tucked into her belt, and the expensive box of
+chocolates which lay open upon her knee, exposing to the world at large
+a masculine card on top.
+
+Joan discovered within herself a certain impersonal, appreciative
+antagonism toward strange young women, such as knights may have felt who
+met for combat upon the jousting field. Envy was the one tribute which
+most assuaged her vanity.
+
+She would have liked to sample the box of candy--a parting tribute from
+a family friend who had a most discriminating taste in chocolates--but
+she feared that it would place her hopelessly in the class of
+school-girls, from which she had just emerged, as world-wise, as
+sophisticated, as completely finished a young person as ever a convent
+turned loose upon the unsuspecting world. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"
+was her favorite novel; she had smoked her maiden cigarette--in fact,
+two of them; and she no longer subscribed to the stork-and-baby myth,
+which seemed to her puerile.
+
+She was still able, however, to savor keenly in advance the moment when
+the Pullman would empty itself into the dining-car and she would be free
+to approach her chocolates in the manner favored by true _bon vivants_:
+i.e., by nibbling off one end, extracting the contents bit by creamy bit
+with the head of a pin (preferably a large white-topped pin), and
+finally crushing the emptied shell deliciously upon the tongue.
+Conserved in this manner, one chocolate might be made to do the duty of
+many chocolates, an advantage not to be despised where pocket-money is
+limited to twenty-five cents a week.
+
+The moment was not yet, and reflecting sedately that self-control is
+good exercise for the character, she gave herself over to the pleasures
+of recollection.
+
+What a beautiful parting it had been! What floods of tears and kisses
+and promises! Seven--no, eight--girls weeping around her while they
+exchanged dramatic farewells; firm Sister Mary Joseph, the out-sister
+who conveyed pupils to shops and trains and so forth, leading her aside
+at the last moment to press upon her, heretic though she was, a tiny
+medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two
+youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still
+masculine); and, for _piece de resistance_, Stefan Nikolai, famous
+though elderly, who had run over from China or Egypt or somewhere to see
+her graduate. This was an attention Joan took quite for granted--he had
+been a friend of her mother's, and distance seemed nothing to his habit
+of life. But its effect upon her schoolmates, and even upon Sister Mary
+Joseph, was gratifying in the extreme. With his dark, fine features, and
+his foreign-cut clothes, he had not looked particularly elderly that
+day. His eyes, Joan recalled, had always been peculiarly expressive,
+like the eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at
+all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered
+inadvertently toward the unconscious gentleman as she tendered her medal
+of St. Joseph.
+
+Joan was fond of Mr. Nikolai, and grateful to him. She even read his
+books, though she preferred his letters, which had a good deal in them
+about herself. His presence at her graduation, his chocolates, the
+little sea of papers with which he sought to beguile the tedium of her
+journey, had all helped to comfort her for the absence of her father. He
+was, she thought warmly, almost as good as a father anyway; and far more
+generous! Everything nice she had was a gift from Stefan Nikolai. Her
+lovely Chinese shawl, her carved jade ring (Joan wished secretly that
+there had been a diamond in it somewhere), the odd piece of clear blue
+aquamarine he had brought her for a graduation present, that just
+matched her eyes; books too, in beautiful covers, and some old prints
+that were anything but beautiful, and a white bear-skin for her room.
+She would have liked to suggest to him that, in place of such costly
+trifles, occasional dresses might be acceptable, of the sort that come
+from Paris; also frilly things, hand-embroidered, which he would not
+have to choose himself, of course--there being women clerks for the
+purpose. She was a little surprised that he had not thought of it
+himself, aware as he must be of the scarcity of such desirables in the
+Darcy family.
+
+Still, one must not look a gift-horse in the mouth; and had he not been
+such a lifelong friend as to be almost a relation, Joan would have
+chafed a little, as it was, under her sense of obligation to Mr.
+Nikolai. Her mother's daughter did not take kindly to a sense of
+obligation.
+
+It was not he, however (ah, by no means he!) who had provided the
+flowers which drooped at her belt. For one moment the absence of the
+donor of these flowers had threatened to spoil the pleasure of her
+parting; and then had arrived, breathless, a messenger and a note. Joan
+was able philosophically to reflect that if the gentleman had come in
+person she would never have had the note. And there is something
+delightfully tangible and lasting about a love-letter--if, indeed, it
+was a love-letter?
+
+That was one of Eduard Desmond's great gifts: elusiveness.
+
+She put her hand to her blouse and felt the responsive crackle therein;
+and the words of the note danced before her eyes in the form of little
+cupids, bearing garlands:
+
+     My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+     of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+     Truly, "To part is to die a little." Forgive me! EDUARD.
+
+Joan had done her thrilled best to understand, since it was expected of
+her, but she felt rather puzzled. Was it that he feared his emotions at
+parting might get beyond his control? Joan sighed. She could have borne
+that. Or was it--here she frowned importantly--that his habits were
+already resuming control of him, now that her hand was, so to speak, off
+the rudder?
+
+Eduard Desmond, as all the Convent knew, was a man of the world, with a
+past. He was also in his lighter moments an artist. The Convent was
+rather vague in its mind as to the form of art he pursued; but that it
+included habits was unfortunately certain, and his young niece Betty had
+vouched personally for the authenticity of his past. It had had to do
+with a married woman. The Convent frequently prayed for him; though
+unknown to the nuns.
+
+Occasionally this distinguished-looking, fascinating, rather melancholy
+young man came to take Betty and a few chosen friends to a matinee, out
+of the kindness of his heart. Perhaps it was not pure kindness of heart
+that had called to his special attention young Joan Darcy, with her
+square chin, and straight black brows beneath which the eyes looked out
+at you with an odd intensity; unless she smiled, when they danced like
+blue water in the sun. She was not pretty, Joan, and boys rarely noticed
+her, somewhat to her chagrin; but Eduard Desmond was no boy, and his
+past perhaps had made him perceptive. The acquaintance between them
+ripened to a degree unsuspected by the good sisters at the Convent, if
+not by his family, who aided and abetted it, feeling that a young girl
+might be rather good for Eduard. Doubtless she was. She entered into the
+duty of "reforming" him with a conscientious thoroughness that might
+have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal
+of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more.
+She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined
+with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike,
+which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the
+affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly
+unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of
+being "not there when wanted," as Eduard put it to himself, annoyed. He
+thought it deliberate, the reserve of the prude, or of the embryo
+coquette; whereas it was really one of the crosses of Joan's life,
+dreaded by her as the self-conscious dread attacks of shyness.
+
+So far she had come out of what might have been an illuminating
+experience bearing only two small trophies of the sort girls love to
+whisper about together in bed after dances when the lights are out; one
+rather lingering kiss upon her slim, brown paw (which did not startle
+her at all, but made her want to giggle); and now this love-letter--if
+it was a love-letter.
+
+Again Joan sighed. She regretted with all her heart that queer aloofness
+which came upon her in critical moments, making her notice that a man's
+ears were put on wrong, or that her own finger-nails needed shining,
+when she should have been surrendering her whole soul to emotion. Was it
+always going to keep her from plumbing the depths of life?
+
+"Oh, but it shan't!" she insisted to herself. "I _will not_ be an
+innocent bystander! Things must happen to me; they must. All kinds of
+things!"
+
+It was the sort of challenge to which Fate is apt to give attentive ear.
+
+Presently, out of facts and recollections she slipped, as was her wont,
+into a game of Pretend, which had been a sort of accompaniment to Joan
+from her cradle; growing as she grew, changing as life changed its
+aspect to her eyes. She was no longer plain little Joan Darcy, returning
+from school in a shabby suit which she had outgrown, to a shabby home
+which she had also somewhat outgrown. She was a glorified young person
+of the singer or actress variety, returning from a career of conquest in
+foreign parts, with her maid Fifine traveling second class in the coach
+behind, as they do in all the better novels. Her father, not much
+altered from real life except that there were no spots on his clothes
+(the Major's manner being grand enough for any circumstances), would be
+at the station with the victoria and pair--or perhaps the limousine--and
+would murmur to the second footman, "Home, James"; and at the door of
+the family mansion, a pillared, fan-lighted door (Joan's mind lingered
+lovingly over architectural details even in her haste to reach the
+people in the doorway) would be Ellen Neal first, dropping respectful
+curtsies--quite a stretch, this, even for Joan's imagination!--and
+beyond her, in a lovely tea-gown, all silk and lace and newness, would
+stand her mother with outstretched arms, waiting....
+
+Here Joan became suddenly aware that she was dropping large, hot tears
+upon her precious chocolates--she who had sworn never, never to cry any
+more in all her life, because tears are only useless things that make
+the nose red!
+
+"But _why_ am I crying?" she demanded of herself, puzzled, still mazed
+with her game of Pretend.
+
+It was because her mother would not be in that doorway, waiting; nor
+anywhere ever again--unless there really is a Heaven.
+
+Joan sat there, too proud to bury her face in her hands or to search for
+a handkerchief, intensely conscious that people were glancing her way,
+praying wildly to all her gods to keep her from blubbering aloud; and
+she looked so like a haughty infant in distress that the young man
+opposite, he whom she had characterized as a necktie drummer, could not
+long restrain active sympathy.
+
+"Pardon _me_," he said awkwardly, leaning toward her. "Are you in some
+sort of trouble? Anything I can do?"
+
+Joan summoned all her scattered forces to meet this emergency in a
+manner that would do credit to the precepts of Sister Mary Joseph. She
+elevated her small red nose, and lifting her eyes to about the level of
+his scarf-pin (a rather cheap scarf-pin) remarked: "You can go away. I
+am telling myself sad stories of the death of kings."
+
+The necktie drummer retired, permanently, to the smoking-car.
+
+This victory cheered Joan into momentarily forgetting her mother.
+Already an adventure to write to the girls! She wished that she had
+looked a little farther up than the scarf-pin.
+
+Shortly the old lady whose daughter might have been Joan's age if she
+had lived, invited Joan to be her guest in the dining-car, and was
+repulsed, coldly and firmly. One hears such tales of wicked old harpies
+on trains leading trustful girls into the most frightful predicaments!
+
+"No, thank you," said our heroine. "I never have much appetite on
+trains."
+
+Soon the car was quite empty, and Joan, mopping the last of the tears
+from her eyes, selected the largest of the chocolates and drew from some
+recess of her person a white-headed pin. There was also, to be discussed
+later, a packet of sandwiches, typical Convent affairs--large slabs of
+bread embracing pale and clammy ham. Joan thought of these with
+resignation. The odor of broiling beefsteak came back from the car ahead
+rather poignantly. Joan had lied to the old lady. At eighteen, with
+every nerve and organ in healthy cooeperation, appetite is not likely to
+fail, on trains or elsewhere. Nor was it as if she did not have the
+necessary dollar in her pocket. Major Darcy always managed to rise to
+the occasion somehow when the ladies of his family went traveling. He
+had a horror of gentlewomen finding themselves among strangers
+temporarily embarrassed for funds--quite a different affair from a
+permanent condition of the sort when in the home circle.
+
+She knew that it was expected of her to spend her dollar in riotous
+living; but she could not forget (the Joans of the world never can
+forget) that a dollar is the price of a pair of white gloves or a pair
+of silk stockings. And so she munched her sacrificial sandwiches with a
+considering eye on the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Later, as she lay propped up in her snug little berth (far the
+pleasantest part of the journey to Joan), with her shade up for fear of
+missing anything of the mysterious night that passed outside--strange,
+silent cities, isolated farms asleep in the starlight, the glow of
+smelting fires as they flashed by, like a startling glimpse into the
+infernal regions--it suddenly occurred to Joan that her father had been
+unprecedentedly lavish in his provision for her journey home.
+
+"Money for good-by presents to all the girls; money for ticket, and
+sleeper, and tips, and ten dollars besides--goodness! Dad must have
+struck something!" she mused, deciding that it was really business that
+kept him from coming to see her graduate, and not, to put it delicately,
+the lack of business.
+
+In the Darcy family things were always put delicately. The mention of
+cost was deprecated. One never said crudely that a thing could not be
+afforded. One "preferred not to bother about it just then," or one
+"liked last year's hat so much better than any in the shops," or one
+"enjoyed the freedom of being without servants for a while--it was a
+relief."
+
+Occasionally Joan's mother, before she overcame the blunter speech of
+the North, had offended the family taste with plain statements about
+prices and possibilities. Joan, observant from her cradle, drew her own
+conclusions from the expression of wincing deprecation these faux pas
+produced upon her father's face, or upon that of the cousin or aunt or
+what-not in the way of Darcy relation that was usually visiting them.
+
+"Mamma," she had asked once in the murmured intimacy that preceded
+sleepy time, "isn't money a very nice fing?"
+
+"A very nice thing indeed, babykins," answered the lady with a faint
+sigh.
+
+"Then why mustn't us never speak about it?"
+
+It was not the only one of her daughter's questions that the harassed
+woman had been obliged to parry with what skill lay at her command.
+Honesty always came more easily to Mary Darcy than subterfuge.
+
+Joan grew up into the family habit of euphonious speech; but, thanks to
+a certain inheritance from her mother, facts had a way of presenting
+themselves to her inner vision with a clarity, a brutal frankness of
+outline, quite unprecedented in the mind of a Darcy.
+
+Her facility in the valuable game of Pretend came from the paternal
+strain. Richard Darcy was one of those fortunate spirits who move
+through life to the sound of an invisible drum corps--a procession of
+one, affably ready for whatever honors Fate chose to thrust upon him.
+Joan, too, was quite prepared for the best the world had to offer.
+Nevertheless, unlike her father, she was never unaware of the difference
+between pretense and reality, nor of the fixed line dividing them. When
+she lied, it was deliberately, with her eyes wide open.
+
+Just now she chose to step over the dividing line firmly into reality.
+Perhaps her dinner may have had something to do with it; a diet of
+chocolates and ham sandwiches not being conducive to glamour of thought,
+even at eighteen.
+
+Joan wished, soberly, that she were happier at the idea of going home.
+She wished that she were not haunted by a vague dread of it....
+
+The Convent--with its daily round of prescribed duties and pleasures,
+its fixed intimates and enemies, its atmosphere of simple piety, its
+guardian nuns, striving conscientiously for that "detachment from place"
+which is enjoined upon them, but lavishing all the pent-up
+mother-passion of their hearts upon the young creatures in their
+care--Joan, young as she was, visualized the place she had left as a
+sunny haven, a little quiet eddy in the whirlpool; sheltered, secluded,
+safe.
+
+She frowned at the adjective. Surely her own home was "safe," too!
+Surely the vague dread she felt had nothing to do with her father, for
+instance--her own dear, splendid Dad, so handsome despite his frayed and
+spotted clothes, with the courtly manner that had won both nuns and
+girls to awestruck admiration, and that gave him far more distinction
+than the fathers of other girls who did not wear frayed and spotted
+clothes. No, it could not be her father she dreaded!
+
+And it was certainly not Ellen Neal, the elderly woman who had followed
+the Darcy fortunes in their waxing and waning for many a year--part
+servant, part mentor, always friend; declining to be shaken off even in
+those crises when Mrs. Darcy "enjoyed doing without servants";
+supporting herself during such financial depressions by means of a
+skilful needle--supporting, Joan sometimes suspected, others than
+herself. The girl recalled one significant incident of her early
+childhood; her mother, pale and anxious, arguing at the door with a rude
+man who declined to leave without something she seemed unable to give
+him, until Ellen appeared, half running up the street, opening her
+shopping-bag as she came. And when she had thrust something into the
+rude man's hands and slammed the door in his face, Mrs. Darcy had turned
+silently to the servant and kissed her.
+
+Joan's feeling for Ellen was one of the few she had never tried to
+analyze. It was simply there, like her breath, her eyesight. She could
+not be said to love her--there was nothing attractive about Ellen Neal;
+yet her only quarrel with her father (if anything so one-sided could be
+called a quarrel) was on the subject of Ellen. Once during Joan's
+previous summer vacation, the Major, who disliked familiarity in
+servants, had taken occasion to remind Ellen most kindly that his
+daughter was almost a young lady now and should be spoken to as Miss
+Joan, no longer as "Joie" or as "Baby." Joan had thoroughly concurred in
+this opinion; until, happening to glance at Ellen as she left the room,
+she saw that the servant's compressed lips were trembling. She had cried
+out unaccountably: "No such thing, Nellen! You're to call me anything
+you like, always!"--and then she had turned upon her father, scolding,
+stammering out astonishing reminders, raising her voice, altogether
+behaving in a manner most unbecoming a gentlewoman and a Darcy--as her
+father quite obviously forebore to suggest to her. The quarrel had been
+altogether a most unsatisfactory one. During her tirade the Major had
+sat with poised carving-knife, regarding his daughter under mildly
+raised eyebrows. When she had stormed herself out, he remarked quietly,
+in quotation marks:
+
+    "Her voice was ever soft and low,
+    An excellent thing in woman."
+
+But the matter of "Miss Joan" was, by tacit consent, never resumed
+between them.
+
+No, it was decidedly not Ellen Neal who was responsible for her vague
+dread of home-coming. The girl, who had an odd dislike of anything vague
+in her mental processes, pursued the fugitive sensation to its lair with
+relentless precision.
+
+Was it the poverty of home she feared, then? Surely not, for poverty was
+a condition quite as much with her elsewhere--rather more with her
+elsewhere, for among strangers it was impossible to practice those
+useful little economies of ragged underwear and worn-out shoes which in
+the privacy of home-life made an occasional extravagance possible. Joan
+rather looked forward to the time when she no longer need be on
+dress-parade, so to speak, at every hour of the day.
+
+"If I wear cheap nightgowns, I can buy myself a good hat," was her
+thought--a thought which may be said to sum up the philosophy of the
+Darcy family.
+
+And although it seems customary among novelists to gage the refinement
+of their heroines by the daintiness of their taste in underlinen--no
+matter if her outer wear be sackcloth and ashes, the lingerie of a true
+fiction lady is invariably above reproach--one would like to submit that
+an almost equal refinement may be indicated by the present heroine's
+determination to make as brave a showing as possible before her world
+with as little strain as possible upon her father's income....
+
+Was it her mother's absence she feared then--still? Forewarned, Joan
+resolutely kept back the nervous tears that threatened to rise again at
+the thought of her mother; and she faced the possibility calmly.
+
+During the summer before, alone with her father and Ellen, Joan had been
+given plenty of time to get used to her mother's absence. Indeed, it
+seemed to her suddenly that during the several years previous she had
+been given time to get used to her mother's absence. It was as if Mary
+Darcy, knowing that the hand of death was upon her, had deliberately,
+gradually, withdrawn herself from the child she loved, in order to make
+the final separation easier.
+
+"That would have been like Mother," said Joan, nodding.
+
+She understood, in that moment of clear vision, why she had been sent
+away to boarding-school, despite her father's amazed protests--it was
+unprecedented that Mrs. Darcy should remain so firm in the matter of
+incurring unnecessary expense. She understood, too, why the narrow,
+bleak house in Louisville, which was the latest of their many homes, had
+taken on none of the look of her mother--that intimate, friendly,
+stay-awhile air which Mary Darcy, with the aid of long practice, managed
+to produce among the most unlikely surroundings within a few hours of
+occupancy. True, the old furniture made its faithful reappearance there,
+part of Joan's earliest recollections--the parlor suite of rosewood with
+blue velour, the little cottage piano, the great bed in which she, and
+her mother, and her mother's mother had been born, shorn long ago of its
+tester to accommodate altered circumstances--all looking a trifle
+shabbier, a trifle more battered after each adventure with fortune, but
+still dignified and "good," with the unmistakable mien of gentlefolk in
+reduced circumstances. For once, however, Mary Darcy had not been able
+to accomplish her usual miracle with this furniture. Chairs, sofa,
+tables, stood stiffly wherever the moving-men had chosen to place them,
+making no attempts to hide the spots on the wall-paper; the thread-bare
+velvet portieres which had separated parlor from hall in every home that
+Joan remembered had never been altered to fit this one; stranger still,
+there were no green growing things in the window-sills, nor even in the
+can-strewn, sooty backyard. Joan could not recall any other home she had
+lived in without some attempt at a garden, were it only a few geraniums
+in the window-box.
+
+"Mamma must have been very tired," she thought, soberly; and realized
+that, far from dreading her mother's absence in that dingy, dreary
+house, she was almost glad of it. When one is as tired as Mrs. Darcy,
+rest is the great boon--rest from hopeless hoping, rest from making
+homes out of patience and courage and a few old sticks of furniture,
+rest from the anxious sorrow of loving.
+
+Joan was young to understand such things; but at her birth the fairies
+had given her the cruel gift of seeing out of the eyes of others....
+
+She came to the conclusion at last the thing she had been dreading was
+simply responsibility. Her play-time was over. No stretch of imagination
+could make her a little girl again--not with her hair well up on her
+head and a love-letter crackling deliciously under her pillow! Hereafter
+it was hers to create the home her mother had relinquished; hers to make
+ends meet somehow, if only in the accepted Irish way of "cutting a piece
+off one end and tying it onto the other"; hers to keep out of her
+father's eyes a certain baffled, hunted look which Joan associated with
+men who came to collect bills, referred to grimly by Ellen as "the
+Indians." No family of pioneers on the long-ago western frontier ever
+lived in greater fear of Indians than did Richard and Mary Darcy and
+their child Joan.
+
+The girl sighed, bracing her slight shoulders. But still thinking of her
+mother, she rehearsed sleepily one tenet of the little creed she had
+made long since to fit her necessities:
+
+    "It does not pay to be too unselfish."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Friends of Mary Darcy, in the distant days before they forgot to discuss
+her surprising marriage with a promoter from who knows where, were wont
+to say, "At least he makes a devoted husband and father!"
+
+Which was perfectly true. His little family had always been, as he often
+said, a passion with Richard Darcy. Perhaps his facility in saying
+things of the sort was what had appealed in the first place to the shy,
+undemonstrative Northernness of Mary. Though he was one of several who
+had professed their willingness to live for her, he was the only suitor
+who had offered to die for her--an attention she could not but
+appreciate.
+
+It was entirely for his child's sake (and, indeed, at some personal risk
+to himself, had Mary but suspected it) that two years before Major Darcy
+had so arranged the mysterious affairs he called Business as to be able
+to return to the State and city of his illustrious birth; "where," he
+explained with proud humility, "we are not quite nobodies, my darling!"
+
+(The "who knows where" on the part of Mary's friends had been sheer
+arrogant affectation; for nobody could have talked with Richard Darcy
+for five minutes without learning that he had been born and raised and
+hoped to die in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.)
+
+Joan had been quite as eager about the prospective move as her father,
+marveling at the apathy of her mother, who said, "I never mind being
+'nobodies,' Richard, so long as we have each other."
+
+Romantic visions danced through the girl's head of stately pillared
+mansions, of faithful negro servitors, of fascinating belles and
+gallants on horseback (her mental language became quite stilted and ante
+bellum to suit the picture), riding to hounds through meadows as blue as
+the skies above.
+
+"Though I don't suppose there's much bluegrass right around Louisville,
+is there, Daddy?" she demanded, with the passion for truth that was in
+her.
+
+"Plenty of it, Dollykins, plenty of it--though of course Louisville is
+not really in the bluegrass region, you remember. It belongs to the
+beargrass district." (Joan nodded. Thanks to her father's powers of
+reminiscence, she was well up on her Kentucky.) "Still, it isn't like
+one of these soulless Northern cities, which regard land as so much
+waste space on which to build monstrosities!" He glanced out truculently
+upon the streets of Chicago, which had managed in some way to incur the
+Major's displeasure. "No, no, there's plenty of bluegrass about the old
+town still, plenty of space, plenty of room to breathe. And how my old
+friends will take you to their hearts and love you! None of this
+blighting Northern indifference to everything except the chink of money.
+Money--_bah!_--It is God's country down there, my child--gentleman's
+country."
+
+This was not anti-climax on the Major's part. He visualized God at His
+best as a superior sort of Christian gentleman, who, had America been
+discovered at the time, would doubtless have chosen the Southern portion
+of it for the scene of His nativity.
+
+Of course the girl's anticipations of "God's country" were too glowing
+not to foredoom her to disappointment. The bluegrass itself was a flat
+failure; mere meadows of ordinary green, above which hung in seedtime a
+purplish tinge, like smoke from burning leaves. Louisville, too, did not
+quite meet the rosy expectations of a young person rather experienced in
+cities.
+
+They were received at the station, not by a deputation of the old
+friends who were to take them to their hearts and love them, but merely
+by a cousin, one of three Misses Darcy who had paid lengthy southern
+visits to the various places Joan had hitherto called home. By this lady
+they were conducted volubly in street-cars (Joan had hoped for a
+long-tailed carriage-pair) to an ancestral mansion which had loomed
+large in the Major's reminiscences, but which, as he himself admitted,
+appeared to have shrunk strangely, after the way of houses one has known
+in early youth. It was one of a row of duplicate tall marble fronts,
+stained and yellowed, unpleasantly suggestive to Joan's too-vivid
+imagination of neglected front teeth.
+
+From this shelter the Darcys soon departed. The cousins, while most
+cordial, were under the necessity of letting their spare chambers to
+paying guests, under which category their Cousin Richard could not with
+any certainty be classed.
+
+Joan recalled vividly the family search for a house that suited both her
+father's taste and her mother's pocket-book. The streets had seemed to
+her gray, endless canons, from whose pavements the heat arose and eddied
+in dizzying waves. From within dark doorways women in dressing-sacks,
+waving palm-leaf fans, gazed out at them languidly. Block after block
+they traversed of houses that seemed as afraid of differing from each
+other as men in evening dress; again they came to neighborhoods where
+each dwelling stood at a bias angle from the street, as if hoping to
+achieve an impossible privacy by turning a cold shoulder upon its
+neighbor. And everywhere they huddled together as close as possible,
+presenting a solid front of masonry to repel invasion. Where was the
+space her father had boasted, the room to breathe?
+
+Joan had gazed longingly down certain vistas of tree-lined avenues,
+lined with pleasant mansions; or into compact green courts where there
+were smaller homes, with gardens. But these the elders passed without
+inquiry. They were as quick as house-agents at guessing rents.
+
+At last an abode was found that seemed to the Major suitable upon all
+counts. Mrs. Darcy, gazing up at its tall, narrow brick front, said with
+a slight sigh, "Isn't there a good deal of it to keep clean, dear?"
+
+It was the first time Joan had noticed her mother's new little air of
+weary indifference.
+
+"Ah, but in the South one cannot be cramped for room," replied the Major
+largely. "There is hospitality to be considered! You must remember that
+our daughter's debut into society will take place from this house, my
+love. Who knows?--perhaps her wedding!" He pinched Joan's cheek
+playfully. "How do you like it, Dollykins?"
+
+"Not at all," she replied, too discouraged to be euphonious just then.
+"It's hideous, and there's a grocer-shop opposite, and Mother'll never
+sleep with these horrid cars jangling by. Why can't we have a house in
+one of those pretty green courts, Daddy?"
+
+The Major looked pained. Mary came to the rescue. A few years ago she
+would have explained bluntly that they could not afford one of the
+pretty green courts. Now she said with a rallying smile, "What! Not a
+banal, stupid, uninteresting new bungalow such as one might have in
+Pittsburgh, or Oshkosh, or Kalamazoo, Michigan! Where's your sense of
+local color, child? The atmosphere wouldn't be right at all!"
+
+Joan thought that the atmosphere of this neighborhood seemed to be
+largely compounded of soot and sewer-gas; but she did not say so.
+
+Richard Darcy, brightening, pointed out that while the house indeed
+faced a grocery-shop (so convenient for Ellen!), its rear was separated
+only by an alley from the rear of a house which faced upon a very fine
+avenue indeed; a backyard in which at the moment lingerie of a faint
+flesh-pink disported lacy ruffles and kicked airy silken limbs upon a
+clothes line. (Of this lingerie more anon.)
+
+"Evidently," pronounced the Major with an unconscious eye upon it, "a
+desirable neighborhood in every way."
+
+So the lease was signed, and Ellen Neal and the furniture sent for, and
+the first month's rent paid in advance; and these feats having been
+accomplished, Mary Darcy took to her familiar bed and died there,
+promptly and unobtrusively as was her way, without leaving any
+inconsiderate doctors' and nurses' bills behind her.
+
+That first summer in Kentucky was a strange time to Joan. It was filled
+with dim memories of the books she read aloud to her father day after
+day, in the futile effort to be a companion to him; of long walks she
+took with him in the cool of the evenings, through streets and parks and
+suburbs that were as strange to the man who had come back to them, Joan
+suspected, as to herself; and far more desolate. For the ghost of a boy
+haunted them; a mischievous, headstrong, innocent lad who had meant no
+harm to the world, nor to himself, in those days.
+
+Sometimes in the older streets he pointed out to her houses which came
+near to fulfilling her best hopes of pillared Southern mansions.
+
+"Tim Throckmorton used to live there," he would say, forlornly; or
+"Many's the time I've courted pretty Sally Field in that parlor!"
+
+Now there were "Furnished Room" signs in the windows, or shops in the
+lower floors, or, worst degeneracy of all, signs of negro habitation.
+For many a day the two hunted for a certain dearly remembered pond where
+a boy named Dick and his friends had been wont to repair for fishing and
+swimming and many a feat of derring-do. But they never found it; only
+houses already old, and even office-buildings, in the place where it
+might have been.
+
+And in those long and lonely walks they met no friends. It was as if for
+Richard Darcy the streets of Louisville were peopled by the dead.
+
+Joan had suffered for her father even more than for herself. Somehow she
+felt that she was better able to bear things than her father. And in her
+inner consciousness, lonely as she was for her mother, and must always
+be, she knew that the misery in her heart was a thing that would pass.
+She was too young to be so sad for long.
+
+Old Ellen wisely kept her busy with her preparations for
+boarding-school, her father having announced his intention of complying
+scrupulously with his dead wife's wishes, no matter at what cost to
+himself. Joan thought this very generous of him, although the cost was
+figurative rather than literal, as Mrs. Darcy's little property was
+willed to her child, with himself as guardian. Sometimes she had been a
+little ashamed of herself for the willingness with which she prepared to
+leave him, the eagerness with which she longed for the merry
+companionships and irresponsibilities of school again. But perhaps it
+was natural enough, considering that throughout that dreary summer her
+sole companions had been her grief-stricken father, the servant Ellen,
+and the sympathetic maiden cousins, who would have felt it indelicate to
+so much as smile in the presence of such deep mourning.
+
+Toward the end of the summer she made one other acquaintance, thanks to
+the above-mentioned lingerie. One of the sudden summer wind-storms which
+occur sometimes in the Ohio Valley landed in their yard one Monday
+morning a garment that had strayed unmistakably from the clothes line
+across the alley; a trifle of palest silk and lace and blue ribbons
+which Ellen Neal eyed with dark suspicion, but which Joan privately
+determined to copy for herself so soon as finances permitted.
+
+Monday being the day when Ellen's temper was at its most difficult, Joan
+decided to abate her dignity to the point of returning the article
+herself; and so she made her way, looking very young and touching in her
+homemade black frock, to the front entrance of the house across the
+alley. And there by good luck she met, just alighting in her
+porte-cochere from a most imposing limousine, a person who was
+indubitably the owner of the strayed garment; a plump, blonde, dimpled
+lady who suggested pink _crepe de Chine_ and blue satin bows all over
+her. She greeted Joan with an effulgence that seemed out of all
+proportion to its cause, until in the course of conversation it
+transpired that she, like the Darcys, was a newcomer in Louisville, and
+rather lonely. Her name was Mrs. Calloway, and she came, as she vaguely
+explained, from "across the river."
+
+"It isn't as easy to get acquainted here as I thought it would be," she
+admitted naively, "Still," she added with her dimpling smile, "I expect
+folks will be friendly enough, once they get to know me, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Of course they will!" murmured Joan quite sincerely; for despite the
+woman's patent vulgarity, there was something attractive about her. One
+felt above all things that she was kind; and just then kindness meant a
+good deal to the lonely girl.
+
+This kindness began at once to manifest itself. Elaborate desserts and
+salads, in very ornate dishes, made their way across the alley to the
+Darcy table; obligations scrupulously returned by Ellen with pickles and
+preserves of her own making. There were other generosities, more
+difficult to return in kind; candy, automobile drives, hothouse flowers,
+the latter evidently meant for the grave where Mary Darcy lay among
+strangers.
+
+Over these attentions Ellen Neal grumbled frequently. "Your pa certainly
+ain't noticin' much these days, or he'd never let you get so thick with
+a strange woman we don't know nothin' about, Joan."
+
+"A strange _lady_, Ellen," corrected Joan with dignity.
+
+"Humph! Lady is as lady does. Look at her face, all painted up like a
+sign-board!"
+
+"Southern ladies quite frequently rouge," said Joan out of her recent
+observations; but she did not pursue the subject, for she herself had
+doubts as to her father's approval of this new acquaintance. Richard
+Darcy was no democrat. He had been heard frequently to state, as one
+rather proud of the confession, that he had no use whatever for the
+_canaille_ (which he pronounced "_canile_.")
+
+Hence she was a little embarrassed and uneasy when, one Sunday morning
+as she and her father were starting on their weekly visit to the one bit
+of his native soil owned so far by Richard Darcy--his wife's grave--a
+limousine drew up at their door, out of which beamed the face of Mrs.
+Calloway, beneath a broad pink hat.
+
+"I suspected you'd be off to the cemetery this fine morning," she called
+out cheerily, "and I thought I'd come and take you, you and your father.
+Hop right in, both of you. No, it won't be a bit of trouble. I've
+nothing else to do, and I always did love a cemetery anyway--it's the
+first place I go to whenever I strike a new town."
+
+Joan glanced nervously at her father, wondering how he would take this
+initial encounter with Mrs. Calloway. But after a moment's pause of
+sheer astonishment, the Major's native gallantry came to the rescue, and
+he advanced for the introduction with all the manner of one about to be
+presented at court.
+
+They found themselves bowling along at a smart clip among the
+churchgoers and the more lively joy-riders, out for a Sunday's pleasure,
+which thronged the avenue that sultry August morning.
+
+"Now isn't this better than a poky old street-car?" demanded Mrs.
+Calloway archly.
+
+The Major responded in kind. "Undoubtedly! Particularly in the matter of
+company."
+
+Joan's liking for her kind-hearted neighbor had suffered a sudden
+eclipse. Ellen was right about her--"Lady is as lady does." It was worse
+than vulgar to force herself upon them at such a time--it was unfeeling,
+indecent. She envied her father's poise. She had never seen him appear
+to such advantage as upon this trying occasion, in his new, cheap black
+suit which had not as yet had time to acquire spots and wrinkles, his
+fine features showing the ravages of sorrow, his handsome gray head bent
+courteously toward this voluble companion as though her every word were
+priceless. Manners, she reflected, cannot be assumed on occasion like
+garments, but are a part of the very texture of a personality. She could
+not imagine her father anything but suavely courteous, even under the
+most untoward circumstance.
+
+Nevertheless, beneath her pride in him lingered an odd fear lest, now
+that he had an audience, he might be moved to oratory over her mother's
+grave. With Richard Darcy emotion and the expression of it were usually
+simultaneous. Joan's unresponsiveness (a trait which she hated in
+herself, but could not help) had hitherto kept her father somewhat in
+check; but in the presence of a kindly warmth of sympathy like Mrs.
+Calloway's there was no telling what might happen.
+
+The Major, however, contented himself with murmuring, as he approached
+the grave, "She was very, very dear to me!" in so touching a voice that
+Mrs. Calloway openly wiped her eyes, exclaiming, "You poor man! Don't
+you think I understand--I, who've laid away two of them?"
+
+Joan moved hastily out of earshot, leaving the pair to reminiscence.
+Talk of things that hurt was to the girl like pouring acid upon an open
+wound; but if it helped her poor father, by all means let it help him.
+She had never made the mistake of thinking that because his grief was
+facile it was any the less strong and real. His utter helplessness, his
+stunned amaze that the wife he so sorely needed could have gone away and
+left him to bear the vicissitudes of life without her, were as piteous
+to his daughter as the wailing grief of a child. If she could have
+comforted him in any way other than by speech she would have done so. In
+the presence of great emotion she was dumb--though she sometimes thought
+she might be able to write him what she felt. Often at night she lay
+awake for hours, wondering how she could drive out of his eyes that
+baffled, frightened look which always came when things went wrong with
+him, and which only her mother had been able to banish....
+
+It haunted her all through the months which followed, that look of her
+father's; and sometimes in the midst of school-girl gaieties she would
+fall suddenly silent, thinking that she had no right to enjoy herself
+because he was there alone in the city of his childhood which seemed to
+have forgotten him. Joan was not yet quite the hard young egotist she
+intended to become.
+
+And so when toward the end of her journey the train slid into a pleasant
+country, mellow with the evening sun, long reaches of rolling pasture
+and hill and fertile bottom-land that meant Kentucky, something welled
+up in the girl's heart deeper than glamour of place, stronger than
+regret for her sheltered little past, than fear and hope for her
+unguessed future; perhaps the deepest and strongest feeling life plants
+in the human soul--the blood-tie. Weak or brave, fraud or fool or
+honorable gentleman--perhaps a little of all these things--it was her
+father who waited there for a woman to come and make him a home again;
+and Joan was ready.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The fellow-traveler who had incurred Miss Darcy's displeasure by a
+too-active sympathy was much pleased, being of a sentimental turn of
+mind, to witness a family reunion which presently took place in the
+station at Louisville. A tall, slender gentleman of a youngish
+Confederate colonel type--gray mustache and imperial, with a soft hat
+set very slightly to one side of his handsome head--detached himself
+from the crowd with a cry of, "Here I am, Dollykins!"
+
+Whereupon the girl dropped all her belongings, and cast herself upon him
+speechless, to be lifted well off the ground and hugged and kissed very
+thoroughly.
+
+"Fine! She's got a father, anyway, and a bully old bird at that,"
+thought the young man, who had never owned either father or mother or
+much of anything else that he could remember. It was his further
+privilege to hurry after the pair with a suit-case, some magazines, and
+a box of candy which both had characteristically forgotten.
+
+He was thanked by Major Darcy with an affable smile, and by his daughter
+with a curt, impersonal nod of dismissal after Sister Mary Joseph's best
+manner; which also pleased him, for he was by no means a thin-skinned
+young man, and preferred his gentlewomen haughty. He followed the pair
+far enough to observe the vehicle to which the father was obviously
+conducting her.
+
+"Humph!" he said to himself; "rich people!" and turned away, rather
+disappointed. (Why this should be, the writer cannot say, being merely a
+chronicler of facts.)
+
+Joan's flow of excited babble paused as she herself saw this vehicle.
+"Goodness! Are we going home in a taxicab? What grandeur!" she murmured,
+mentally figuring out the tariff. Then the monogram on the door
+enlightened her.
+
+"Oh, it's Mrs. Calloway's," she said, relieved, a little ashamed to have
+quite forgotten the existence of their well-meaning neighbor. "How good
+of her to send it for me!" she added with a giggle, recalling her recent
+game of Pretend. "All you need to do to complete the picture, Daddy, is
+to say, 'Home, James!'"
+
+Major Darcy obligingly murmured, "Home, James!" The chauffeur touched
+his cap, and enclosed them in the perfumed elegance of the limousine.
+
+Joan gave a crow of laughter, and rubbed her cheek affectionately
+against her father's sleeve. This was like old times indeed, happy old
+times, when in his lighter moments the Major had frequently entered into
+the spirit of her play. The contact of his sleeve was unusually soft,
+and she suddenly held him at arm's length to see him better.
+
+"Why, Major Darcy! If you haven't gone and bought yourself a new suit in
+honor of the occasion. A beauty, too!"
+
+He surveyed what he could of himself complacently. "The fellow has given
+me rather a good fit, I think."
+
+Joan gasped. "'The fellow!' Then it's not a ready-made--you've actually
+been to a tailor for it? Oh, Daddy darling!" she cried excitedly, "have
+you been making money?"
+
+The Major's eyebrows lifted. "I believe," he remarked, "that I have
+usually made money, have I not? Sufficient, at least, to keep my family
+comfortable."
+
+Joan was reminded with a jerk of Darcy traditions. "Of course!" She
+flushed. "I didn't mean--"
+
+And suddenly she realized that the look she had been so long dreading to
+see in his eyes, that expression of anxiety which was almost fear, had
+quite disappeared. There was an air about him of security, of
+nonchalance, as one who would say, "Bring on your Indians! Who's
+afraid?" (Not that the Major would have condescended to know the meaning
+of the family expression, "Indians.")
+
+Joan gave his hand a quick little squeeze that was oddly maternal. "I'm
+so glad, Dad," she said quietly; and went on to speak of other things.
+
+They turned into the street where home was. Silence fell upon her. The
+prospect of facing her mother's absence was more difficult than she had
+thought it would be. At least there was Ellen to comfort her; gruff,
+matter-of-fact old Ellen, always at her crossest when most deeply moved.
+She pinned her thoughts to Ellen.
+
+The Major's recent prosperity seemed not to have affected his
+dwelling-place as yet. As they drew near, Joan saw even in the dusk that
+the little lawn in front needed attention; nor was there so much as a
+light in the window to greet her--Ellen was always so careful about the
+gasbill. Then, as the limousine did not stop, she realized the For Rent
+sign on the door.
+
+"Why, Dad, we've moved!" she cried with an odd pang at her heart. "Oh,
+but where?"
+
+"Wait and see. 'Lay-lows for meddlers,'" he smiled, pleased with his
+little stage-effect.
+
+The limousine bowled smoothly around the corner into the fashionable
+avenue beyond; and Joan thought, with a habit of anxiety beyond her
+years, that the new money would not last long if they were to live in
+such a neighborhood as this. But they stopped at a door she remembered,
+an imposing door with a porte-cochere, where, still as in her game of
+Pretend, a lady in a tea-gown stood waiting for them. Not, however, her
+mother.
+
+"Here you are at last, girlie!" cried the cheery voice of Mrs. Calloway;
+and she was received into a voluminous pink chiffon embrace, highly
+scented with the latest thing in perfumes.
+
+Joan fought her way quite rudely out of this embrace, feeling
+suffocated. Her knees had begun to tremble.
+
+"Are--are we visiting you!" she quavered, piteously putting off the
+inevitable.
+
+The lady laughed, a laugh as plump and soft and cushiony as the rest of
+her. "There, now, Dickie; I don't believe you've had the nerve to tell
+her yet!"
+
+She rustled over and stood beside the Major, slightly in front of him,
+so that she could lean back archly against his shoulder; a position
+which seemed to bring an arm automatically into position about her
+waist.
+
+"Dollykins," said Richard Darcy, clearing his throat and not quite
+meeting the girl's wide gaze, "this is my--my graduation gift to you.
+Your new mamma!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Joan was alone at last in such a bed as she had never occupied in her
+life, even in her most luxurious games of Pretend. To her inexperience
+the sheets felt as if made of softest silk--at its crest the Darcy
+establishment had never run to fine linen--and they were edged with lace
+which Joan longed frugally to transfer to a best petticoat; only that
+there seemed no need for her to trouble further about best petticoats,
+nor about anything else. Under the eager guidance of her "new mamma,"
+drawer after drawer in the room she occupied had been opened to disclose
+piles of exquisite underthings, of the sort Joan had first encountered
+upon the Calloway clothes lines, except that these were white instead of
+pink.
+
+"Pink's _my_ color," explained the former Mrs. Calloway. "Besides, white
+lawngerie seems sort of better for a girl that's never been married,
+don't you think? Even if it isn't so becoming. 'Tain't as if there was
+anybody to see her in it," she added, with a conscious blush.
+
+Joan found no suitable comment to make upon this treasure-trove. Her
+lips would not utter anything beyond a perfunctory "Thank you," even
+when further investigation discovered a closet hung with dresses of
+every sort, with peignoirs, with motor-coats and dainty wraps, with
+everything in the way of finery which every girl alive hopes at some
+time to possess, but which the daughter of Richard Darcy had learned to
+look upon from afar with an air of indifference.
+
+"Are these all for me?" she asked dully.
+
+"Of course they are! Just a few little models I had sent up on
+approval." (The ex-Mrs. Calloway invariably referred to her costumes in
+affectionate diminutives, as "little gowns," "little negligees," "little
+hats," etc., though the adjective could rarely be said to fit them.) "If
+these don't suit we'll get others--though anything ought to look good on
+your form, dearie." She added, clasping her hands, "It certainly is fun
+shoppin' for a daughter of your own!"--an outburst which might have
+struck some responsive chord in a heart less young than Joan's, less
+hard and tight and bitter with the tears that would not come.
+
+Major Darcy had observed her apathy under this rain of largesse with
+some disapproval. It was not the first time he had secretly wished that
+his daughter might have inherited a trifle more of the Darcy manner. At
+length, as the girl stood looking about her new room silently, still
+with the strange lack of comment that seemed like indifference, he
+ventured a remonstrance.
+
+"I don't think you quite realize how much time and thought and trouble
+your--er, your mother and I have expended on these little surprises for
+your home-coming, Dollykins. Or you would be more appreciative."
+
+"_My mother!_" repeated Joan to herself with a sick gasp.
+
+It was the bride who came to her rescue. "She's tired out, Major, that's
+all. And no wonder! She hardly ate a bite of dinner. You go right to bed
+and sleep, girlie," she advised comfortably. "In the morning you'll be
+better able to enjoy all your pretties."
+
+So Joan was at last alone, wondering whether she would ever be able to
+enjoy anything again; alone in a strange room crowded with large blond
+bird's-eye maple furniture which reminded her oddly of her step-mother;
+with pale blue walls, a blue rug, blue silk covers on chairs and bed,
+blue stationery spread out on the desk, all to match. There was nothing,
+not a chair, nor book nor picture, to remind its forlorn inhabitant of
+home; until suddenly, lost amid the glitter of the silver on the
+dressing-table, she discovered a faded photograph of her mother which
+her father had for many years carried in his pocket. This she jerked out
+of the opulent silver frame that disguised it, and held hungrily to her
+cheek, going to bed with it finally under her pillow. It did not occur
+to her to wonder who had put it there. (But it was not Richard Darcy.)
+
+Yet still the tears would not come. She lay staring into the dark with
+hot, dry, aching eyes, repeating agonizingly to herself the questions
+she had not found courage to ask her father--foolish, trivial questions
+that seemed almost irrelevant in the face of this overwhelming
+calamity.... What had he done with the furniture, their furniture, the
+dear, shabby tables and chairs and hangings which were part of the home
+Mary Darcy had given her life in making?... And where was Ellen? What
+had he done with Ellen? Was there to be nothing left?
+
+Once she whispered aloud, "How _could_ he?"--but resolutely turned her
+mind away from that. It did not bear thinking of. The luxury of the room
+seemed to crowd upon her, choking her.... The price of her father's
+shame!...
+
+It seemed to her near morning when her door opened, softly. She began to
+shiver, thinking it must be her father come for the intimate explanatory
+talk which was inevitable between them. What could she say to him? How
+could she ever find anything to say to her father again?
+
+But it was not Richard Darcy who tiptoed in. The lamp beside her bed
+clicked on, revealing a good deal of the former Mrs. Calloway in a
+marvellous nightgown, her golden head as carefully coiffed as for a
+ball.
+
+"Major's off and going strong," she announced, "so I slipped away to see
+how you were gettin' on, dearie. I Had a kind of feelin' you wouldn't be
+asleep yet. I'm like that myself in a strange bed.... Look here," her
+voice changed as she saw the white and miserable face among the
+pillows--"you aren't holding it against your papa and me, girlie,
+because we sprung this on you as a surprise? I _told_ Major we ought to
+wait till you came home! But it was you who introduced us, you know; and
+I knew it would be all right as soon as we got to know each other
+better. And Major wouldn't hear to waiting, was bound and determined to
+have me just as soon as he could get me. Men,"--she laughed her plump,
+merry laugh--"are such babies when it comes to havin' what they want
+right away, ain't they?"
+
+"Are they?" said Joan dully.
+
+"You take it from me they are! A man that doesn't want you quick don't
+want you at all. And I must say your father needed marryin' more than
+any one I _ever_ saw! Spots all over his clothes, and that shiny in the
+back you could see your face in him. Your mother must have had a time
+keepin' that man neat! Besides, if we'd waited till you came, what would
+we have done with you on the honeymoon? Not," she added coyly, "that
+it's over yet, by any means! When he was on his death-bed Calloway said
+to me, says he, 'Effie May, our honeymoon never has been over, has it?'
+Some women are that way, just naturally affectionate and fond of makin'
+men feel at home. And both of us were real lonesome.... You don't blame
+me for marrying Major, do you?" she finished rather wistfully.
+
+Joan said after a long pause, "No, I don't think I blame you, Mrs.
+Calloway."
+
+The other gave an unexpected squeal of mirth. "Goodness' sakes, don't
+call me _that_! If you don't feel like callin' me 'mamma' yet"--(there
+was a hopeful pause, which Joan did not fill)--"then you might as well
+call me Effie May. I'm not so awfully much older than you, I guess--I
+was only sixteen when I eloped with my first. But there's one thing I
+wanted to tell you"--(her voice lost its confident note and became
+rather shy). "I married your father as much to get you as to get him,
+dearie. A man's easy enough to pick up anywhere, goodness knows! if
+you've got the looks. But a child--" she sighed. "That's something else
+again. I used to think I'd like to adopt one, only Calloway didn't want
+to be bothered--Say, it was more fun than anything I've ever done in my
+life, shopping for lawngerie and little models and all, and telling the
+girls in the stores they were for my little girl just coming home from
+boarding-school!..."
+
+At this juncture, for some inexplicable reason--perhaps the warmth of a
+kindly human presence, perhaps sheer rage with the vulgar, impossible
+creature who, having purchased her father, expected also to purchase
+her--whatever brought them, Joan's tears suddenly arrived--a torrent, a
+deluge of them; in the midst of which her new mamma, with more tact than
+might have been expected of her, disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"Get up, Jo! Time you was gettin' up. Come, come--it's ten o'clock!"
+
+A familiar, relentless voice penetrated Joan's consciousness at last,
+and she screwed her swollen eyelids down tighter and even managed a
+reproving snore, wondering whether the halcyon days would ever come when
+she might be allowed to sleep her sleep out in the morning. Probably
+not, so long as Ellen Neal was within calling distance. The woman had a
+horror of what she called shiftless ways. Once in a moment of special
+exasperation she had been heard to mutter, "That's the chief thing
+that's the matter with your pa--he's never ready to get up in the
+morning!"--a remark which had remained in Joan's memory.
+
+Now the sheets were suddenly jerked off her, and the relentless voice
+continued, "No use pretendin' you're asleep when you ain't. Here's your
+breakfast they've sent up to you, child, just as if you was sick a-bed.
+Humph!"
+
+Suddenly reality came back upon her with full force--horrible reality;
+and she jumped up in bed and flung her arms around the old servant's
+neck, clinging tight, as she had done many a time before when something
+frightened her.
+
+"Oh, Nellen, Nellen!" she moaned. "It's you! I thought you had deserted
+me, too!"
+
+The woman stood immobile in this embrace, making no effort to return it.
+But her eyes blinked a little.
+
+"Sho! What would I want to do that for? Don't be silly--Look out! There
+now, if you haven't gone and upset the coffee all over them fancy
+sheets! Coffee's hard to get out, too. That's what comes of havin' your
+vittles in bedrooms, where they don't belong."
+
+The tears, which had threatened to take possession of Joan again, turned
+into a burst of wild laughter, "No matter! Plenty more where they come
+from, Nellen. What is a lace-trimmed sheet to my new mamma? I expect the
+very dishcloths are hand-embroidered. Behold the abode of cash, Ellen,
+cash! Isn't it grand? Oh," she cried, her voice breaking, "_why_ didn't
+you come to me last night! Didn't you know how I'd need you?"
+
+"I didn't know you was here, child, till I come this morning to see when
+him and her was expectin' you."
+
+The girl's face fell. "Why, Ellen! Aren't you living here?"
+
+"Me? In this house? I wouldn't so demean myself," said the other primly.
+
+"Do you mean to say"--Joan's cheeks were hot--"that after all these
+years, and everything you've done for us, my father has _let you go_?"
+
+Ellen tossed her head. "'Twan't none of his lettin', child. I told him
+that all things considered I'd ruther sew for my livin'. And so I would.
+Your time's your own that way, and you see more of folks. I like folks.
+I must say," she added conscientiously, "that woman--your pa's wife--was
+real kind about offerin' to get me work with a dressmaker. But Ellen
+Neal don't have to be beholden to nobody, thank you!"
+
+"And where do you live?"
+
+A mysterious smile twinkled in the woman's eyes. "Some day when you're
+good and sick of all this fancy flubdubbery" (she indicated with a
+disparaging hand the elegancies of the blue chamber) "you come and see
+where I live, Jo, and come often. I've got me two as nice rooms as ever
+you seen. And--I got my own furniture for 'em, too, real grand furniture
+I bought up cheap at an auction room. There's some carved chairs, and a
+walnut desk with a bookcase on top, and some blue velvet porteers, and a
+mahogany bed with the tester sawed off--"
+
+Comprehension dawned on Joan. "Ellen! _Our_ furniture!" she cried.
+
+Ellen nodded. "Some of it. As much as I could git. I'm keepin' it for
+you till you git a home of your own to put it in, Joie. I sort of
+thought your ma would want me to."
+
+Joan was weeping again, not the devastating flood of the past night, but
+sweet and healing tears, as good for strained nerves as a summer rain is
+good for flowers.
+
+"You old wretch!" she gulped. "Where did you get the money?"
+
+The other grinned. "Any time Ellen Neal gets caught without plenty in
+her stockin'-fut, you may be sure the Scots blood is failin' her! I'm a
+whole lot richer than I'm willin' to let some folks know. Why, I could
+set idle, if I'd a mind to, the rest of my life--only I don't hold with
+settin' idle just because you got a right." (Long afterwards it occurred
+to Joan that Ellen, who was not given to discoursing on her own affairs,
+must have had some reason for thus bragging of her unsuspected riches.)
+"There's nothing," she added rather irrelevantly, "that makes a person
+contented with the place she's in like knowin' she can go somewhere else
+if she's a mind to."
+
+What barrier there had been between servant and mistress--a fluctuating
+barrier at best, dependent upon Joan's varying conceptions of her own
+dignity--had gone down forever under that rain of grateful tears, and
+Joan felt free to ask some of the questions of which her heart was
+full--how, for instance, the affair between her father and Mrs. Calloway
+had begun.
+
+"How?" repeated Ellen grimly. "Well, when a lone female and a lone
+he-male ain't got nothin' to keep 'em apart but an alley-fence, and her
+with paint on her face till she looks like a fat sixteen, and food on
+her table every day as good as a two-dollar table d'hote, what can you
+expect? I wa'n't surprised myself. Nor," she added quietly, "I don't
+believe your ma would be, Joan."
+
+"Oh, but how it must have hurt her!"
+
+Both spoke in low tones, as if the spirit of Mary Darcy might be
+lingering near enough to overhear.
+
+"I ain't so sure about that," mused Ellen. "I ain't so sure! Your ma
+always set great store on havin' the Major comfortable--'Ellen,' she
+said to me that last day, when we knew what was comin'--'Ellen, be sure
+to keep him _comfortable_ here at home, so he won't be lookin' for it
+somewheres else.' There's worse things can happen to a widow-man than
+gettin' married again."
+
+"Oh, but if I'd been here to look after him myself!" wailed Joan. "If
+you had only told me what was happening! I might have come back and
+stopped it!"
+
+"About as much chance as stopping a fire-hydrant that's blown the top
+off. You're a smart child, Joan, always was; but you don't stand a show
+against that woman your pa's married--nor I wouldn't want you to," she
+added cryptically. "You wasn't raised that way.--Anyhow it wasn't none
+of my business. And just remember this, child, it's none of yours. It's
+none of yours!"
+
+After she had gone, a sense of something heartening and bracing remained
+with Joan; and as she brushed out her straight, heavy hair with new
+silver-backed brushes which bore her own initials, a typical Ellenism
+recurred to her: "There's nothing that makes a person contented with the
+place she's in like knowing she can go somewheres else if she's a mind
+to."
+
+"At least," she thought suddenly, "I'm independent of father. Mother
+left her property to me--I can get it whenever I ask for it.... And now
+I understand why!"
+
+Mary Darcy had been a very far-sighted woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was long before Joan recovered from the dazed sensation her father's
+little surprise had produced in her mind. Perhaps she never did quite
+recover from it. Something died within her; a naif belief in the wisdom
+of her elders, the ultimate rightness of existing things, which once
+gone never returns again. If it is true that we live in experience
+rather than in years, Joan came to her majority over night.
+
+It was her father's attitude which amazed her most. Had he seemed in the
+least apologetic, in the least ashamed or embarrassed by the quality of
+the woman he had put into her mother's place, she would have been ready
+to pity and console and help him make the best of a grave mistake. But
+the Major's attitude was that of the cat which has not only eaten the
+canary, but digested it and found it extremely beneficial to the system.
+Far from seeming apologetic, he appeared rather proud of his
+performance. There was something almost pathetic in his content with his
+new prosperity, with the ease and luxury of the establishment of which
+he found himself head.
+
+Joan sometimes thought, with a scornful sort of pity, "How Dad must have
+_hated_ to be poor!"
+
+Certainly he took to wealth, to which he had always professed himself
+indifferent, with an alacrity which surprised his daughter.
+
+She had opportunity to notice, too, for the first time in action,
+Richard Darcy's chief and perhaps sole equipment for the unequal battle
+of life; his talent for making friends. Not for keeping them--that is a
+separate art, calling for certain efforts, certain reticences, above all
+certain abstentions of which Richard Darcy was temperamentally
+incapable. But in the art of creating admiring and useful acquaintances
+out of raw material he had few equals, even among his own profession.
+
+Mary Darcy had kept herself and her child for the most part aloof from
+these easily acquired friends of her husband, though they were
+invariably quite presentable--(as has been hinted, the Major had no use
+whatever for what he called "the canile"). Possibly this was owing to
+some odd Puritan scruples on Mary's part about combining business with
+pleasure....
+
+But now that business had no longer to be combined with pleasure,
+Richard Darcy was free to exercise to the full his gift for being
+agreeable, without afterthought. It was perhaps fortunate that his new
+wife had made few friends of her own, a fact which left him unhampered
+in the matter of what he called quite seriously "resuming his position."
+
+Joan found that he was no longer forgotten in the city of his youth. The
+older residents had already been made aware by means of engraved and
+crested announcements that Richard Throckmorton Darcy had returned to
+their midst for the purpose of wedding one Effie May Smith Calloway, and
+that the bridal pair would be at home after a certain date at a very
+good address on Elmtree Street. Whither quite a respectable number of
+them hastened, if only out of curiosity, to leave cards.
+
+What they found was an extremely affable, leisurely, and
+prosperous-looking host, an establishment which appeared able and
+willing to maintain those traditions of Southern hospitality which have
+latterly fallen somewhat into disuse, and a rather silent young girl
+whose manner atoned for the perhaps excessive cordiality of her
+step-mother. Some of the callers did not come again, even under
+pressure; but on the whole Joan realized that the old friends in whom
+she had almost ceased to believe were about to take the Darcy family
+belatedly to their bosoms, indifferent to the substitution of a Mrs.
+Calloway for her mother.
+
+It was the girl's first experience of the omnipotence of money; an
+experience which if it comes young enough will make a cynic out of a
+congenital optimist, which Joan was not.
+
+To do the new Mrs. Darcy justice, she was an adaptable and, in her way,
+a tactful creature who had already in her admiration of the Major and
+his daughter, learned to modify her speech and behavior rather
+touchingly. And her frank delight with what she called "breaking into
+society," may have been rather disarming to society; or to such portion
+of it as found its way to the imposing house on Elmtree Street. She was
+extremely cordial to her guests, urging them to come often, to have more
+iced tea and cake, to take candy home to the children, to try the
+Major's cigars and whisky, for which he had an undoubted palate. If the
+women looked at her a little askance, the men were loud in her praises,
+and obeyed her urgings to come often.
+
+Effie May, encouraged, began shortly to seek new worlds to conquer.
+
+"Well, what next?" she demanded one night at dinner, after an afternoon
+of callers, stifling a wide pink yawn with the palm of a much beringed
+hand. "Your old families are all very well, Dickie boy, refined and
+classy and all that--but, my God, they ain't exciting! Now are they?
+Isn't there anybody in Louisville born since the Civil War?"
+
+"If there is, I'm afraid I don't know it," admitted the Major, smiling
+indulgently. "You see the people who were young when I left are young no
+longer."
+
+"So we've noticed," murmured his bride, making a companionable grimace
+at Joan. "But we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in the
+baldhead row, do we, girlie? You've got to find us something under sixty
+to pal around with, Hubby mine, that's all there is to it. See?"
+
+One of her step-mother's most unbearable traits, to Joan, was her habit
+of calling the Major absurd comic-supplement pet names. But his dignity
+seemed not to suffer from it. In fact he expanded visibly under the
+treatment, like a dog whose ears are being tickled.
+
+"Your commands are law, my angel," he said. "Just how would you suggest
+that I go about it?"
+
+Effie May ruminated, while the two Darcys watched her--with, however,
+somewhat varying expressions. The Major appeared to be admiring, indeed
+gloating over, the appearance she made at the head of her bountifully
+appointed table, in a dress not niggardly in its display of her
+bountifully appointed charms. His eye followed appreciatively the curve
+of her plump arm as it disappeared into enveloping laces.
+
+Joan, on the other hand, watched her step-mother warily. There was
+something about the woman she could not fathom, for all her surface
+simplicity. She felt, beneath the other's careless, easy good-nature, a
+certain force, a driving power, in the grip of which she and her father
+were mere helpless puppets. Effie May would use them always for her own
+ends--whatever those ends might be. Why had she chosen to saddle
+herself, free and rich and independent as she was, with an impoverished
+gentleman and his grown-up daughter? Certainly at that age, thought Joan
+(Effie May was in the neighborhood of forty), people could not possibly
+fall in love! No, there was something mysterious about her
+step-mother....
+
+"I have it," said the lady suddenly. "The Country Club! I see in the
+society column that everything nowadays is going on at the Country Club.
+We'll have to join that."
+
+"I believe," interposed Joan, flushing, "that people have to be invited
+to join a club, don't they, Father?"
+
+"All right--We'll _be_ invited. Won't we, Dickums?" said the bride, with
+a ravishing smile in the Major's direction.
+
+He rose to the occasion. "Certainly, my love," he replied.
+
+And they were invited. At any rate, a week or two later found the Darcy
+family dining alone at the Country Club, among various other little
+table groups, all of whom seemed to know each other intimately.
+
+To be in and not of this friendly assemblage filled Joan with that most
+miserable of all sensations, crowd-loneliness. Even the Major wore a
+rather fixed and nervous smile, and mentioned to his wife and daughter
+at intervals that Louisville society had changed very much since he used
+to frequent it. Only Effie May seemed quite unperturbed, gazing about
+her smilingly, and tapping her slippered foot, and nodding her head in
+time to the music; meeting the curious glances which strayed in their
+direction with a frank interest of her own which might have seemed bold
+if it were not so like a pleased child's.
+
+Joan, intercepting one or two of these glances, looked her step-mother
+over critically, and to her relief found her less flamboyant than usual.
+She was dressed in white--"Handsome white, not girly-girly muslin like
+yours. I'm too stout for that," she had said wisely to Joan--The girl
+reflected that it is difficult to look vulgar in white. Mrs. Darcy was
+not appreciably different in appearance from many another rather
+overdressed matron there, even in the matter of rouge and touched-up
+hair.
+
+As for her father--Richard Darcy would have been a distinguished figure
+in any assemblage he chose to enter, with his six feet of gallantly
+carried avoirdupois, his finely modeled head, his gray mustache and
+imperial concealing a mouth that might otherwise have left something to
+be desired. He wore that night--and wore well--clothes of the palest
+gray flannel, with socks and buckskin shoes to match, and a gray stripe
+in his white tie, and a gray monogram embroidered upon the exquisite
+cambric of his handkerchief. This was the parent who a few weeks ago she
+had associated irrevocably in her mind with spots and frayed collars!
+She found herself wishing that her mother could see him now--she would
+be so proud of him!...
+
+To her own appearance Joan gave little consideration. She had discovered
+that the great advantage of good clothes is that you no longer have to
+think about them. She was quite unaware of the value in contrasts she
+afforded--her small, dark, smoothly combed head lifted proudly on its
+long neck, the awkward grace of her thin young body, the pale oval of
+her face lit by surprisingly vivid eyes, of the sort that are dreamy and
+shadowed until excitement turns them into soft blue fire. She was
+excited that night, a little frightened. She did not smile at all, but
+there was that about her lips--sensitive, wistful, faintly
+drooping--that made more than one person who glanced at the Darcy table
+wonder what the smile would be like if it came.
+
+When the dancing began, Effie May's exuberance could no longer contain
+itself.
+
+"This is something like!" she cried. "This is what I call life! Come on,
+Dick--'Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!'"
+
+"But," protested the Major, "it is some time since I have waltzed, my
+love--"
+
+"Never mind, you'll waltz with me! Anybody can dance with me. The boys
+used to call me Lightfoot Ef--Oh, but you'll have to get a partner for
+Joan, first, of course; I forgot we had a family along."
+
+The girl flushed, aghast at the thought of her father whirling in the
+midst of that whirling throng. "No, no, Effie May, please--!" she urged.
+"Let's just sit here quietly and look on."
+
+The other laughed aloud. "Naturally! That's what we've come to a dance
+for, to sit against the wall and look on--Nonsense! Go and find your
+child a partner, Dick, and hurry back. My feet just won't keep still."
+She was humming gaily in time with the orchestra.
+
+The Major, gazing a little blankly at the crowd of strangers before him,
+obediently went forth to do her bidding, and Effie May seized the
+occasion to give a little womanly advice.
+
+"Don't you fret, Joan--remember there's as many young fellows in the
+world crazy to know girls as there are girls crazy to know them. And
+dearie"--her voice sank to a friendly whisper--"warm up to 'em a
+little, can't you? Jolly 'em along. Hot air, you know, talk! No
+matter what you say, just keep talking. That don't-touch-me,
+butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth air may be all right with the nuns and
+the old families but it won't go down with the men. Believe me, dearie!
+I know."
+
+It was a well-meant effort, which had the effect of congealing the
+already subdued Joan into something resembling a marble effigy.
+
+The Major shortly returned, bearing urbanely in his wake a blond young
+man who seemed not too unwilling.
+
+"I want you to meet my wife, sir," he was saying. "I want to have the
+pleasure of presenting you to my daughter. Fancy the coincidence, my
+dears--this gentleman turns out to be the son of an old schoolmate!"
+
+Effie May welcomed them with enthusiasm. "Good for you! I had my money
+on you, Dickums! Five minutes, and the son of a schoolmate! It's a
+record!--Ta-ta, young people! Enjoy yourselves," was her valedictory as
+she whirled the Major away, waving her hand over his shoulder.
+
+Joan stared aghast at the blond young man, who said, "She is an awfully
+jolly sort, your mother, isn't she?"
+
+"Very jolly," agreed Joan faintly. "But she's not my mother."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+A silence fell. He seemed to be waiting for her to break it. She gulped,
+and said in a firm voice, "Did you come to ask me to dance?"
+
+The young man indicated politely that such was his intention.
+
+"You couldn't very well help yourself, could you?" she remarked, and
+suddenly burst out laughing--rather hysterical laughter in which the
+young man joined embarrassedly.
+
+"Of course if you'd rather talk--" he murmured.
+
+Joan jumped to her feet. "Oh, but I wouldn't! I'd rather do _anything_
+than talk--no matter what I say, just talk, warm up to 'em, hot air--I
+mean," she explained desperately, "I'm much too shy to talk!"
+
+"You don't sound very shy."
+
+"I know--they're the worst sort, the ones who hide it."
+
+They commenced silently to dance. Presently he confessed, "I'm
+rather--shy, myself."
+
+"Goody!" she exclaimed with relief. "Then we needn't bother to talk at
+all."
+
+They parted quite reluctantly when a whistle blew for the "circle"--a
+useful innovation for breaking up relations, by whose aid Joan found
+herself exchanging partners at intervals throughout the evening without
+finding herself too long on the hands of any. She blessed the inventor
+of the circle. Youth and a pair of winged feet came to her rescue, and
+she forgot her strangeness in sheer joy of motion. The people she danced
+with that night were not men; they were as trees walking, for all the
+personal memory she kept of them.
+
+But when the music finally thumped itself out, and Effie May, a trifle
+blown and moist about the brow, again resumed charge of her scattered
+family, saying, "Well, dearie, you've had a pretty good time, haven't
+you?"--Joan was able to answer with some surprise that she had.
+
+"Dancing," commented the Major, puffing, "is a very healthful exercise;
+indeed, an esthetic exercise. The Greeks practised it, as I recall,
+extensively, even in their riper years. My love, with a little
+experience I think I shall easily master that step you call the fox
+trot."
+
+"Sure you will," encouraged she who had been called Lightfoot Ef,
+patting his cheek maternally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The Darcys' social career appeared to be well launched. Each Saturday
+night found them at the Country Club, and no longer dining in
+loneliness. Effie May speedily collected about her a group of congenial
+spirits, for the most part young people, among whom she was extremely
+popular--far more so than was Joan, who sometimes felt as if she were
+the only elder present. Theirs was usually the most hilarious table in
+the room. Corks popped freely, and there was much horse-play, and
+throwing about of bread, and at a certain stage of the evening rather
+frank persiflage in which, to Joan's relief, her step-mother took no
+part. She laughed her cheery, plump laugh, and made no comment; but more
+than once with a glance at her step-daughter, she managed quite deftly
+to steer the conversation into other channels. Joan came to the
+gratifying conclusion that her father's wife was afraid of her.
+
+The Major at his end of the table devoted himself assiduously to his
+duties as host, seeing that glasses were filled, distributing gallant
+remarks among the ladies, constantly signing tickets. He was in his
+element; expanding, positively glowing, with hospitality.
+
+"Another cigar, my boy? Try this brand! Take several! Fill your pockets
+with them. I can recommend them personally!"
+
+There came to be several brands which he could recommend personally,
+several vintages as well. The waiters hovered about him like cherubim
+about the throne of grace, and he knew them all by name, and took an
+interest in their families.
+
+This lavish generosity, Joan reflected, was the spirit which gave the
+old South its glamour, its traditions--to say nothing of its consequent
+poverty. There was something rather fine and large about the Major's
+apparent obliviousness of the fact that the money he spent so royally
+did not belong to him.
+
+"If Effie May does not worry, why should I?" argued his daughter with
+herself. Her father's affairs were no longer her concern; if indeed they
+had ever been. But she could not help taking a certain uneasy interest
+in them.
+
+"How do you happen to know enough people to invite to all these parties
+of yours?" she asked Effie May, aware that the Darcy family was doing
+rather more than its share of entertaining.
+
+"Oh, you don't have to know people well to ask 'em to parties,"
+explained the other innocently. "And once they eat with you, they're
+your friends."
+
+"That depends upon what you give them to eat!" interjected the Major,
+chuckling.
+
+It seemed a primitive conception of social relationships, but not on the
+whole a false one. Joan thought of the Arab and his salt....
+
+"Food," she wrote to Stefan Nikolai, "appears to be the Tie that Binds."
+
+"What about drink?" he inquired on a post-card. (They did a good deal of
+this staccato correspondence, Joan liking to exchange deep thoughts with
+him, as she expressed it, "while they were hot.")
+
+"Drink," she replied on another, "is the Tie that Loosens!..."
+
+Stefan Nikolai was the only one of her friends with whom she had found
+courage to discuss her father's marriage. Writing things out to him was
+almost like writing them out to herself. It served somehow to clear her
+mind. It is probable that Mr. Nikolai, a student of various phases of
+the human problem, got a good deal of valuable vicarious experience out
+of young Joan's letters. Certainly he encouraged them.
+
+It was to him that she confided her discovery that social life is far
+more pleasing after dinner than before. She was learning to count, as
+surely as does many an experienced hostess, upon the help of the Tie
+that Loosens. While she herself had not as yet developed her father's
+palate for cocktails and fine vintages she appreciated their effect upon
+her partners--for to her men so far were merely partners.
+
+It was after dinner that Joan's part of the evening began. Then, thanks
+to the Tie that Loosens, there was no longer need to make banal
+conversation nor to listen to it, no need to pretend friendly interest
+in young men to whom she was incurably a stranger, no need of anything
+but to yield herself to the music and the first pair of arms that
+offered, and float away into Dreamland.
+
+There was something curiously sensuous to Joan about dancing. It acted
+like a drug upon her fancy, stimulating, soothing. She was hardly aware
+of whom she danced with, if he could dance. If he could not, she
+stopped. This odd impersonality of hers was rather piquant to her
+partners. Many a youth who was afraid to talk to "that quiet Darcy
+girl--you never know what she's thinking about!"--was not afraid to
+dance with her, whenever he got the chance.
+
+At such times Joan had her rare moments of beauty. With flushed face,
+loosened hair, and wide, dreaming eyes, she was as graceful as one of
+the three circling maidens in the Primavera--the one who looks wistfully
+over her shoulder at the oblivious youth. Unfortunately her lot was cast
+among people who did not think in terms of Botticelli. Her step-mother
+wondered sometimes whether curling-tongs and perhaps a little rouge
+would make her look more like other girls....
+
+Sometimes people came to the club who attracted Joan's
+attention--quieter people than Effie May's friends, more simply dressed,
+who never seemed to join in the accentuated hilarity after dinner. Once
+in such a group she recognized the girl who had eyed her aloofly on the
+train coming home from boarding school. Joan suddenly yearned to do some
+aloof eyeing on her own account, now that she was no longer shabby but
+wore a frock as smart as any in the room.
+
+She watched her opportunity, and followed the stranger into the
+dressing-room with some such truculent idea in view; but was disarmed by
+the courtesy with which the other made room for her at a mirror, where
+they powdered their noses side by side in amity. As she was leaving the
+room, however, she heard the aloof one murmur to a friend: "What a lot
+of strange people one sees at this club nowadays! I wonder where they
+all come from? It's getting very mixed."
+
+Joan went white with anger. She struggled with the temptation to explain
+proudly that she was not a strange person, that her name entitled her to
+any society she chose to enter, that it was her step-mother who was
+"mixed," not she....
+
+And then she remembered that it was only thanks to her step-mother that
+she happened to be there at all.
+
+For the moment this encounter with the enemy took away Joan's heart for
+dancing. Crowd-loneliness got her by the throat. Was there always to be
+just one of her, and so many of everybody else?
+
+She slipped out on to a terrace that overlooked a valley with the great
+river gleaming far off, still holding some faint glow of the sunset's
+aftermath. There was a bench at the far end, lost in shadow, and she was
+about to seat herself there when she saw that it was already occupied.
+
+"Oh," she said, drawing back. "I didn't notice you!"
+
+"Women rarely do," remarked a plaintive voice with a smile in it. "I'm
+used to that. And yet I notice them, dreadfully!"
+
+Joan laughed a little, and retreated. "I won't disturb you," she
+murmured; but the voice held her.
+
+"Oh, please! Please do. I want to be disturbed. I simply came here to
+see my moonrise." A shadowy arm pointed out a dim glow over the trees to
+eastward.
+
+"Why _your_ moonrise, especially?"
+
+"By right of discovery. I seem to be the only person aware of it.... May
+I share it with you?"
+
+"You are sure you wouldn't rather see it alone?"
+
+"Goodness gracious!" cried the voice quite querulously, "what human
+being ever wanted to watch a moonrise alone?"
+
+Joan chuckled, and sat down to the first conversation she had enjoyed
+since her last one with Stefan Nikolai--one of the few real
+conversations, she thought afterwards, in her life.
+
+Yet it was difficult to remember the many things they talked about.
+Smoke, for one. He pointed out the dim loveliness of the city below,
+towers and battlements and the airy span of a bridge against the
+gray-gold sky.
+
+"'Many-storied Camelot town,'" he said, musing. "Without the shrouding
+smoke, what would it be? Factory chimneys, iron smoke-stacks, a
+filtration plant--Ugliness, ugliness! Yet there are people in that town
+who want to rid themselves of those billowing mists of rose and violet
+and silver."
+
+"I suppose," said Joan, "the beauty of smoke depends upon whether you're
+down in it, getting smuts on your nose, or looking on from a hilltop."
+
+"A question of perspective, you think? Hmnn--yes. Well, then" he said
+reasonably, "by all means _get_ your perspective. Stick to the
+hilltop--especially at sunset."
+
+"We haven't all got wings to reach a hilltop with, you see. Nor yet
+automobiles."
+
+"I haven't, myself," he said. "I use trolley-cars.... Did it ever occur
+to you what a marvel the trolley-car is? For a nickel--or at most a
+dime--all Nature is yours to command; beechwoods in their autumn field
+of the cloth of gold; little whispering streams breaking their winter
+silence, fireflies dancing--to the tune of the 'Merry Widow' waltz," (as
+that melody of the moment made itself audible from the house beyond).
+"What a twilight! Fireflies, an afterglow, and the moonrise set to
+music, all at once," he said under his breath. "And some one to share
+them with!"
+
+Joan was silent, flattered by the knowledge that this whimsical
+gentleman was letting her into his thoughts.
+
+"The beauty of such a moment is that one never loses it," he mused. "One
+puts it away as people press flowers in books, to be looked at
+when--when pleasant things need remembering. I thank God for a mind well
+stocked with beautiful occasions!"
+
+"Wild Evenings I Have Known," murmured Joan, frivolously, because for
+some reason she was rather touched.
+
+He nodded, "With wild people in them. Like you."
+
+"Me! Wild?"
+
+"Oh, I know on the surface you're a demure, well-behaved young miss, but
+underneath--good gracious! You'd shock these people to death!"--he
+indicated certain hilarious couples who had waltzed onto the terrace
+near them. "Yes, you're quite untamed, my dear. Wild as a--chipmunk."
+
+Joan leaned toward him, "How did you guess?"
+
+"I've watched you dance. And then--well, I've never quite got used to
+the cage myself, perhaps." He began to hum under his breath a tuneless
+little ditty:
+
+    "It is a very dreadful thing
+    To be so fat a child,
+    To have to sit around all day
+    And yet to feel so wild."
+
+"At least," laughed Joan, "I'm not fat!"
+
+"No!" he said soberly, "never get fat. It is the beginning of the
+end.... By fat I mean old. And cautious. Ugh!"
+
+How the conversation came about to apple-trees, Joan never was sure; but
+he told her about one he had discovered somewhere in the deep woods, all
+in bloom, a little old gnarled affair hidden among giant first growth
+sycamores and elms and beeches.
+
+"An apple-tree lost in the woods! How do you suppose it got away from
+civilization?" wondered the girl.
+
+"Some bird, perhaps; or Johnny Appleseed."
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"Fancy living in Kentucky without knowing about the first and greatest
+of our pioneers! He was a daft old creature--an innocent, as the kind
+phrase goes--who used to wander away from the settlement where he lived
+into the wilderness, scattering apple seeds. All over this Ohio Valley
+he journeyed, sowing his orchards for the benefit of those who were to
+follow. The Indians let him pass, the wild animals did not harm him;
+only his friends locked him up whenever they could catch him, because it
+seemed such a silly thing to do. Friends are that way ... Years later,
+when the pioneers fought their way at last over the mountains to stay,
+they found here and there apple-trees blossoming and fruiting in the
+great, lonely wilderness; and wherever that happened their wives made
+them build cabins and settle down, for of all things that grow an
+apple-tree most suggests home. So mad old Johnny Appleseed was the
+founder of many cities."
+
+"And yet there is no monument to him!"
+
+"Except the cities...."
+
+Here a young man appeared to claim Joan for the next dance--the blond
+young man with whom she had commenced her dancing career, and who had
+formed quite a habit of looking for her whenever the music played.
+
+She rose with reluctance. "I wish _you'd_ come in and dance with me,"
+she said to her new friend. "I'm sure you could!"
+
+"I'm sure I could, too," he replied, "if I hadn't my body with me. As it
+is, I'll just sit out here and make believe I'm dancing with you--In a
+starlit glade. With the other young nymphs and dryads..." the whimsical
+voice followed her.
+
+The blond young man stared. "Of all the assorted nuts!" he remarked,
+when they were out of earshot.
+
+"Yes--but who is he?" demanded Joan eagerly.
+
+"Something on the stock exchange. I see him there every day."
+
+"The stock exchange!"
+
+"Yes. Oh, he writes poems and things for the papers, too, I think. Quite
+a literary guy." He mentioned the name.
+
+It is a name known and remembered wherever there are moonrises and
+fireflies, smoke against the sunset, apple-trees in bloom--all the
+everyday lovely things people forget to see unless there are poets to
+remind them...
+
+It gave Joan quite a new zest in living to realize that at any moment,
+even at Country Clubs, it is possible to run across a poet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Richard Darcy was accepting the change that had come into his life much
+as he had accepted others of a less fortunate trend. He had become at
+last what Nature had always intended him to be, one of the world's
+chosen, a rich man--or, what was even better because less troublesome,
+the husband of a rich woman. He was also once more an honored citizen of
+his native commonwealth--where he had not always been entirely an
+honored citizen, owing to one of the unfortunate mistakes to which youth
+is liable. There had been some disagreement with an early employer about
+the right of employees to divert the firm's funds, temporarily of
+course, to private uses. Only family influence had prevented this
+misunderstanding from resulting in truly disastrous consequences, which
+he shuddered to this day to contemplate. But it had prevented; and the
+early employer was dead (as Richard Darcy had taken pains to ascertain
+before returning to Louisville), and the few who knew of this painful
+episode at the time appeared to have forgotten it.
+
+Very good! He was quite willing to forget it himself. It was Richard
+Darcy's creed that a gentleman takes whatever comes in his stride,
+without too many backward glances; and his stride was just now adapting
+itself gracefully to the one-step.
+
+Joan, watching her father sometimes with a faint recrudescence of pride
+in his sheer good looks, decided that he was the only stomached person
+she had seen who could perform the one-step without loss of dignity. He
+footed the measure indulgently, as a bishop or a cardinal might have
+footed it, with an air of spiritual detachment, as it were, while yet
+seeming to receive and to bestow a priceless privilege. Even lively
+young girls liked to dance with the Major. It made them feel uplifted.
+If he pressed the hand or the waist of his prettier partners more
+closely than necessary, the pressure seemed almost impersonal, a mere
+tribute to a sex which he could not but regard with tenderness, being
+himself a husband and a father.
+
+In addition to this valuable social acquirement, the Major further
+fortified his popularity by inventing and promoting (uncommercially, of
+course) a beverage which shortly bade fair to make him famous, and which
+was christened by grateful habitues of the Country Club the "Dick Fizz."
+Its ingredients were--but that is a secret not at the author's disposal.
+Suffice it to say that the "Dick Fizz" achieved results that were all
+and more than could be expected of it. (Among others, the Major's
+election to a certain gentlemen's club which had hitherto remained
+annoyingly unaware of him. So much for the power of the Tie that
+Loosens!)
+
+It was thanks to the "Dick Fizz," too, that there presently came about
+between Richard Darcy and his daughter that heart-to-heart interview
+which had been postponing itself from week to week, with the tacit
+consent of both parties; an interview dreaded by Joan perhaps even less
+than by her father.
+
+They were returning one night from one of their most successful
+evenings; Joan as usual on the front seat beside the chauffeur, where
+she might enjoy the rush of the cool night air upon her face, and hear
+as little as possible of the billing and cooing of the honeymooners in
+the tonneau behind. There seemed more of this than usual, little
+giggling exclamations and audible embraces which made the girl wince and
+the chauffeur grin surreptitiously.
+
+"Really, Father!" protested Joan over her shoulder. There was something
+physically nauseating to her in those amorous echoes from the tonneau.
+No wonder servants laughed! It made of love a travesty and a mocking.
+
+She was glad when they reached home. The Major stepped out gallantly to
+assist the ladies, but miscalculated his impetus, and after a series of
+complicated maneuvers brought up seated upon the curbstone. The
+chauffeur burst into an uncontrollable guffaw, in which his mistress
+heartily joined.
+
+"Oh, you Dick Fizz!" she laughed, wiping her eyes. "I knew it would get
+you yet. _Look_ at your funny papa, dearie! Lit up like a
+Christmas-tree!"
+
+The Major murmured something reprovingly about the duties of
+hospitality, which he found some difficulty in pronouncing; but once
+upon his feet, he gave an arm to each of them and managed the steps
+without further mishap.
+
+In the hall Joan, who had not laughed, said to her step-mother in a low
+voice, "Is he--drunk?"
+
+"Oh, not enough to hurt," replied the lady, still laughing. It occurred
+to Joan that she herself was a little flushed and expansive. "I can
+handle him, all right. Don't you worry! I always know a gentleman by the
+way he carries his liquor."
+
+"Do you?" said Joan.
+
+"Sure thing! And Major's a perfect gentleman always. Don't you fret."
+
+Joan mounted quietly to her room, and undressed in the dark. She did not
+want to see her face in the mirror, afraid of the disgust, the loathing,
+that must be reflected there--Her father--drunk! The man to whom her
+mother had given her love and her life, tipsily furnishing amusement for
+a woman who judged gentlemen by the way they carried their liquor!...
+
+She recalled one other time when she had seen her father in his present
+condition. She remembered her mother's stricken, tragic face as she
+hurried him out of sight, explaining tremulously, "Daddy's ill, darling.
+No games with Daddy to-night--he's ill."
+
+"But he wants to play! Look, mamma, he _wants_ to play!" the small Joan
+had insisted, to no avail.
+
+And when this strangely interesting Daddy was safe in bed, with Ellen
+Neal mounting guard, Joan had been hurried out to the nearest church
+(which happened to be a Catholic one, for Mary's was a casual sort of
+religion that boasted neither creed nor prejudice); and there, before a
+statue where little lamps burned, the child had prayed hard, as she was
+bid, that her father might never be ill in just that way again.
+
+"God may listen to you, even if He's tired of listening to me!" the
+mother had whispered, desperately.
+
+It was because God had listened that Joan was sent later to a Catholic
+convent. Mary Darcy's was not the nature to forget favors; and it
+occurred to her that there might be worse protectors for a girl who must
+one day be motherless than Our Lady of Sorrows. Not every faith is
+strong enough to go through life without some creed to cling to. Mary
+had offered her child what she could.
+
+Lying there in the darkness, Joan understood. She wished that she might
+have been able to take what her mother offered. She yearned for the
+anodyne of simple, unquestioning prayer, for the mesmeric comfort that
+comes to the believing from the slipping of rosary beads between the
+fingers; above all, for the right to kneel unrecognized in a quiet
+confessional and learn from some priest wiser than she in the ways of
+men where her duty lay and how she was to follow it. The confessional is
+perhaps the secret of the hold the oldest of Christian churches keeps
+upon a world which would seem to have outgrown it. That is a
+self-reliant nature indeed which does not sometimes feel the need of
+guidance at once human and detached.
+
+But Joan's creed and confessional alike were contained in her troubled
+young head; and where a happier woman would have wept and said her
+prayers, she set herself sternly to the task of thinking. It seemed to
+her that throughout the past weeks she had been shirking an issue,
+deliberately drugging her wits with anything that came to hand. Now she
+faced conditions squarely. There must be no more drifting.
+
+She focused an unsparing vision upon her father. Already there were
+changes apparent in him, signs of deterioration not entirely physical.
+His features seemed slightly blurred from their fine chiseling, there
+was a relaxed look about the lips and chin, about the very poise of his
+figure. He had lost a little of that indefinable something which gave
+him distinction, even in the days when the women of his family tried in
+vain to keep him pressed and unspotted. Prosperity was not going to be
+good for Richard Darcy.
+
+Joan pronounced ruthless judgment upon her father:
+
+"He's done for!"
+
+And, as Ellen had warned her, it was none of her business.... What then
+was her business? Clearly, to keep from being "done for" herself.
+
+She saw quite clearly that she had been in danger of this. There was
+something curiously enervating about the atmosphere of her step-mother's
+house, a _laissez-faire_ that was almost--the girl sought for the word
+and decided upon "lascivious." Luxury, ease, pleasure--these were the
+ends for which her step-mother strove--or rather accomplished without
+undue striving, an ability to which the girl gave full due. She knew
+that it must take more than mere money to keep so elaborate a household
+running without apparent effort. The servants were efficient and
+unobtrusive, the accounts scrupulously kept, every nook and cranny clean
+and in order. Even Ellen Neal, who knew whereof she spoke, admitted that
+the ex-Mrs. Calloway was a housekeeper of parts. But...
+
+Joan tried conscientiously to fathom the meaning of her "but." She
+decided that the house was too like its mistress--over-bathed,
+over-perfumed and dressed and manicured--to be quite nice. The windows
+were too fluffy with lace, the drawing-room too pretty and satiny, the
+library too red. ("Why is it," she had written to Stefan Nikolai, "that
+people who never open a book invariably have a red library?")
+
+A fantastic thought came to her. She wondered whether those strange
+houses which are sometimes whispered of even among convent girls, those
+palaces of horror where women's bodies are bought and sold, might not
+perhaps resemble this home to which her father had brought her ...
+
+Then she smiled at herself. Vulgar, her step-mother might be; hopelessly
+underbred; doubtless in some previous manifestations a shop-girl, a
+dressmaker; possibly one of those anomalous beings known in race-towns
+as "race-horse women." But she was unmistakably respectable. There was
+not a picture on her walls, nor a novel on the shelves of the red
+library, which was not, as she herself once remarked to Joan
+complacently, "perfectly refined." The girl recalled her evident
+uneasiness when sometimes at the dinner-table the talk had waxed a
+little too free. She did her step-mother the justice to believe her a
+quite decent woman.
+
+Perhaps the curious sense of enervation was due only to the heat of
+midsummer in a Southern city. Now and then the elder Darcys spoke
+vaguely of going away, only to decide that it was too much trouble. It
+was easier to stay where they were. In a Kentucky July, one follows the
+line of least resistance.
+
+Joan, like the others, slept late into the mornings, and had her coffee
+in bed, or went down to the dining-room for it with a negligee over her
+nightgown. (Her father had become quite reconciled to negligees, which
+at first startled him, accustomed as he was to the neat morning ginghams
+of his Mary.) Sometimes she found him departing reluctantly for the
+mysterious place he called the Office. Later, people would arrive
+connected with the rites of the toilet--the hair-dresser, the manicure,
+the masseuse--a chatty person who performed on Effie May what she called
+her "facial"; and other things. Cleopatra herself could have devoted no
+more time to the care of her body than did the ex-Mrs. Calloway.
+
+"You've got it to do if you're risin' forty and like to eat," she
+explained once to Joan, simply.
+
+After luncheon, which was brought on a tray--a large tray--to wherever
+it happened to be convenient, the ladies once more resumed nightgowns,
+if indeed they had ever discarded them, and napped and read until the
+sun was low in the sky; when the house like the city woke into
+animation, and they prepared to fare forth like fireflies to the evening
+revel. Then there were automobile drives to little beer-gardens, where
+they ate and drank and sat about among whitewashed tree-trunks, feeling
+Bohemian; pleasant moonlight excursions up the Ohio in launches, with a
+picnic provided which consisted largely of thermos-bottles; and the
+Country Club, always the Country Club. Joan wondered what people had
+managed to do with themselves in summer before the days of Country
+Clubs.
+
+It was a life that somehow suggested the Orient, women of the harem
+coming forth at sunset to bask on the roofs of the houses; a placid
+existence; aimless, perhaps, but pleasant enough. Joan was puzzled to
+find the harm in it. Yet that harm was there, she knew. The touch of
+Puritanism in the girl told her that to live from day to day with no
+duty but pleasure made of pleasure something akin to vice.... And often
+in the midst of this harem life she remembered almost with passion that
+out beyond her shuttered windows, beyond the clangor of trolley-cars and
+the hum and clatter of the dirty streets, was summer--summer, the
+loveliest of the year's phases; leaf-shadows on wimpling water, lush
+meadows sparkling with the sunrise dew, green-gold glades of the wood
+delicious with the smell of warm pine-needles; all the world at fullest
+bloom, open like the heart of a rose, waiting.
+
+It was a sort of nostalgia that took her then for the country she had
+never known, not Country Club country, nor the conscious, well-kept
+wildness of the parks which give the old river town its only claim to
+beauty--but simple wood and meadow and field, where homely folk live
+close to the soil they till, concerned with crops and the breeding
+season. It was this country her father had meant when he bragged about
+Kentucky. It is this country which, deep down under the surface things,
+means home to all people of Saxon blood, no matter how far astray they
+wander....
+
+And as she lay there, as if her wistful thoughts had conjured it into
+being, came a whisper of song from the leaves of the magnolia tree just
+outside her window; a murmur that died away, and began again, and rose
+and soared, melody on wings, above the clang of a trolley-car and the
+honk of passing motors. It was a mocking-bird, that voice of the
+Southern summer, singing in the glare of the arc-lamps, mistaking it
+perhaps for moonlight.
+
+Joan tiptoed to the window and listened, an aching lump in her throat.
+It was her first mocking-bird; she had not known they sang at night.
+
+"You lovely thing!" she whispered to it. "What are you doing in this
+place?... And what am _I_?"
+
+Then and there she made her plans to get away.
+
+The thought frightened her a little. She had, despite the ups and downs
+of her father's fortunes, led hitherto a very sheltered life.
+Fortunately there was her mother's money, hers whenever she chose to ask
+for it. She would not be quite penniless. But where to go?
+
+She thought first of the Misses Darcy, her father's cousins, who had
+been most affectionate and kind, particularly since her father's
+remarriage. Sometimes she wondered whether this was because they
+sympathized with her, or (with a touch of her new cynicism) because they
+did not. Effie May had been very generous to the Misses Darcy, remarking
+once that she knew what it was to be poor herself. They came frequently
+to dine at her lavish table; they appeared occasionally in _chic_ black
+costumes, as good as new, which Joan recognized as having served to
+mourn the late Mr. Calloway; the limousine was often at their disposal;
+and a limousine with a liveried chauffeur was a touch of distinction
+hitherto lacking to the Darcy fortunes, even at their palmiest.
+
+Joan suddenly doubted whether her father's cousins would welcome her
+under their roof at the risk of alienating that limousine. She did not
+blame them--poor, anxious ladies to whom life had not been very kind.
+She simply realized that they were of her father's blood, not her
+mother's.
+
+Her mother's people she did not know. Mary Darcy had managed somehow in
+her wanderings to loosen all the ties that bound her to her youth. It
+was as if she had deliberately lost herself, hidden herself away with
+husband and child from the loving eyes that are too quick to see.... It
+was the sort of pride Richard Darcy was quite incapable of
+understanding, though pride was a word often upon his lips. But Mary's
+daughter understood. Never through her should the quiet tragedy of her
+mother's life be revealed to those from whom her mother had chosen to
+hide it.
+
+She wished that Stefan Nikolai were not a man; or that, being a man, he
+had a home to which she might have invited herself. But he was a
+confirmed wanderer, and Joan felt that a young lady companion, desirable
+though she might be as a solace for his declining years, would
+undoubtedly hamper his movements.
+
+It left only Ellen Neal to rely upon. Perhaps there would be enough
+money to take a little flat somewhere, with Ellen Neal for servant and
+chaperone. A bachelor maid, with a latch-key!--the prospect was rather
+alluring. But not in Louisville. She could not leave her father's home
+and set up an establishment of her own in the same town without creating
+"talk," and, to Joan's training, "talk" was the one thing impossible.
+
+They would have to go away somewhere, she and Ellen. And study
+something, she decided vaguely. Music, art, social service--whatever it
+was people did study. Her eye began to kindle. She was the true child of
+Richard Darcy, rolling stone by nature and profession; and to such, "the
+grass is always greener down the road." New York, Boston, swam before
+her dreamy vision; even London, Paris, Rome....
+
+She brought herself back to the ungrateful consideration of ways and
+means. She feared the money would not run to much in the way of travel.
+"A mere pittance," her father had once scornfully called it. But she
+knew, or guessed, that all three of them had managed to live on the
+income from this pittance during many a period when the Major's star was
+not in the ascendant, and she thought that what had provided, however
+scantily, for three might be made to provide well for herself and Ellen.
+She wished that she had asked questions at the time her mother's will
+was read to her. It had seemed so unimportant then. What was hers
+belonged surely just as much to her father, guardian for the little
+property until such time as she chose to ask him for it.
+
+Now that the time had come, Joan faced it with some dread. How could
+they talk about money, she and he--about her mother's money? It seemed
+indelicate, unfeeling, a desecration of sacred things. Nevertheless she
+faced it. She solemnly promised herself that not another day should pass
+without a complete understanding between herself and her father.
+
+Possibly she was the only one of Richard Darcy's creditors who ever
+managed to put this promise into execution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+In the heat of the following afternoon, while Effie May dozed unaware
+beneath an electric fan, with a box of chocolates convenient to her
+drowsy hand, Joan slipped out of the house very quietly and went down
+town. She had an odd feeling of exhilaration, as if she had already
+escaped--from what, it would have been difficult to say.
+
+More than one glance of approval followed her slim figure as it flitted
+through the sweltering streets, the dark and grimy corridors of the
+office building which Richard Darcy had chosen to honor with his
+patronage. This, thought patient men as she passed, was as a girl should
+look on a July afternoon, all in cool white from her silver-buckled
+pumps to the wide hat with a big lace butterfly perched airily upon it.
+Surely it was fitting, they thought, that men should slave at their
+desks through the endless summer days in order that visions such as this
+might flit about the world in dainty idleness; and forthwith applied
+gallant noses once more to the grindstone. In the South the idea of
+economic independence for women will never be popular.
+
+Joan, under these friendly glances, was conscious of blossoming into
+real prettinees. It was not the first time she had got this pleasant
+little sensation out of so simple a matter as going down town. She
+wondered whether in any other city of the world it was possible for a
+girl to walk the streets alone, receiving from every man who passed--be
+he gentleman, clerk, coal-heaver, or small, knowing news-boy--glances of
+commendation which were neither impertinent, nor bold, nor even
+personal, but simply, as it were expert; an appraisal which flattered
+without offense. It was as if, at the sight of a pretty woman, the town
+as one man lifted its glass to the toast:
+
+"The Ladies, God bless 'em!"
+
+It was this spirit, she thought, which had perhaps given Kentucky its
+reputation for feminine pulchritude. To be a beauty is not difficult
+where every one encourages the idea, where feminine charm is regarded as
+in itself an end and a purpose, to be fortified by every means at the
+command of art or nature.... Joan fluttered along with the best,
+modestly unconscious of the eyes that paid her homage, but aware
+nevertheless of her occasional reflection in plate-glass windows; and it
+should be recorded that before she went to her father's office she made
+the purchase of a stick of pink lip-pomade and a cake of solid
+face-powder, with a little puff and mirror included. Why these articles
+should have given her increased courage for an interview with her
+parent, is difficult to state; but the fact remains that they did.
+
+She came presently to a doorway upon which was printed in large gold
+lettering: RICHARD DARCY. LOANS AND INVESTMENTS. Joan was secretly
+impressed. Perhaps the Office was not the mere figure of speech she had
+sometimes fancied it.
+
+She knocked. No answer came. Listening, she heard inside the familiar
+whirr of an electric fan mingling with a sound she could not for the
+moment place--a buzzing as of many flies, but rising and falling at more
+rhythmic intervals.
+
+She turned the knob. Within, drawn by an open window through which might
+be glimpsed the broad Ohio rolling drowsily, stood a decrepit Morris
+chair which Joan recognized as an old friend; wherein lay sprawled at
+comfortable length the Major. At his elbow stood a bottle and a glass,
+both empty. His handsome nose, forgetting for the moment all
+acquaintance with the grindstone, was tilted at the angle of least
+resistance, and from it issued the rhythmic buzzing that had puzzled his
+child.
+
+"Daddy!" she said reluctantly. Somehow the Major asleep, with a plump
+leg draped over the arm of his chair and his mouth slightly open, made
+up in disarming appeal what he lost in impressiveness. He was like a
+gray-haired little boy, tired out with playing.
+
+But, "Father!" said Joan more loudly. "Wake up, please. I've come to see
+you on business."
+
+He opened his eyes with a jerk. "Eh? What's that, what's that, what's
+that? Tut, tut! Must have dozed off. What's that?" The eyes tried to
+close again, but he was firm with them, and presently recognized his
+daughter. "That you, Dollykins? Well, well, well! Come down to pay Dad a
+visit, eh? That's nice, that's nice!"
+
+Suddenly he got to his feet and brought her a chair, reaching at the
+same time for his coat. Richard Darcy could not possibly have remained
+in a lady's presence coatless, no matter what the temperature. Her
+attention was caught by the garment into which he struggled, muttering
+apologies the while.
+
+"Why, Dad," she cried, "_what_ are you putting on?"
+
+It was not the immaculate gray flannel in which he had started that
+morning for the marts of commerce, but a thread-bare, shapeless, densely
+spotted garment which Joan recognized with a pang.
+
+"Your old second-best!" she exclaimed.
+
+Her father grinned a little sheepishly. "Why--why yes, I keep it here as
+an office coat, to save the others, you see. I'm sort of used to it," he
+added explanatorily. "It seems to fit into my curves. The new ones
+don't. One is supposed to fit into theirs!"
+
+Joan patted the sleeve of the second-best affectionately. Her eyes were
+moist. She felt nearer to her father than she had for weeks. He had kept
+the old chair out of their home equipment; he had kept the old coat. Was
+he after all not so obliviously content as he seemed in his fine new
+surroundings? Did he remember, too, and was he homesick as herself for
+the shabby days when he and she and her mother had made a little world
+of their own, happy in spite of everything?
+
+She said with a smile, "You'd better not let Effie May catch you wearing
+such a garment!"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed. "I may confess that it was with some
+difficulty I rescued this coat from the ashman, to whom your mother had
+given it."
+
+But his use of the phrase, "your mother," hardened Joan out of her
+momentary tenderness. Invariably he spoke of Effie May to her as "your
+mother," and of her real mother only as "Mary." The girl was too young
+to realize that this may have been because the name meant things to him
+which the phrase never would. Mary was something more to Richard Darcy
+than Joan's mother....
+
+"I have come to talk to you," said Joan, "about business, Father."
+
+"Business?" The Major's eyebrows lifted. Business meant money, and the
+ladies of his family never cared to talk about money! remarked those
+eyebrows. Though, to be sure, they sometimes found themselves under the
+necessity of asking for it--His hand went instinctively to his pocket.
+
+"I suppose you are out of pin-money?" he interpreted. "Stupid of me not
+to have realized it, Dollykin, though I sent you rather a good deal to
+the convent, you remember?" He brought his hand out, filled with silver.
+"There! Spend it 'not wisely but too well'--not that one need give any
+girl advice on that subject! Dear, dear, how women can make the money
+fly!" humorously sighed the Major (whose debts had probably been paid by
+women ever since he had been old enough to make them).
+
+"I should like a chance," said Joan soberly, "to make the money fly,
+Father. My money, you know."
+
+He stared at her, really bewildered.
+
+She refreshed his memory, flushing. "The money Mother left, with you as
+guardian--that I was to have whenever I asked--"
+
+"Not that she ever expected such a contingency to arrive!" commented the
+Major with a sudden accession of stiffness. "You are not of age yet, my
+child."
+
+"Was there any provision in her will about my being of age?"
+
+"No," he admitted. "Owing to what was of course purely a technical
+error, I think there was not. My poor Mary was quite unaccustomed to the
+terminology of wills, naturally, and as she and a servant drew it up
+between them, you may imagine--" he shrugged indulgently.
+
+Joan moistened her lips. She was finding the interview even more
+difficult than she had imagined. Her father's manner managed to put her
+somehow in the wrong. But she held to her purpose.
+
+"I do not think it was an error, Father. Mother wasn't the sort who says
+things she doesn't mean. I believe she foresaw that--that something
+might occur which would make me wish to be independent, even if I was
+not of age. She could trust my judgment a little. She knew that I'd
+never dream of asking for her property unless I had a good reason--I
+have a good reason now, Father--I want to be independent." Her voice
+trailed off miserably. What she really wanted was to put her arms about
+his neck and have a good cry.
+
+Unconsciously the Major discouraged the impulse. "What is this nonsense
+about independence?" he demanded. "My dear Joan, you sound like a New
+Woman!" On his lips the phrase was a scathing denunciation.
+
+Joan explained faintly that she wanted to go away somewhere, to live....
+
+The Major was honestly aghast. "Leave your father's roof?" he cried
+incredulously. "My child! What is this folly? Never with Richard Darcy's
+consent shall a daughter of his leave her father's roof except for the
+roof of her lawful husband." (In moments of emotion, the Major was
+always liable to these attacks of circumlocution.)
+
+Joan pointed out to him, still faintly but determinedly, that it was not
+her _father's_ roof she wished to leave....
+
+Even under his armor of complacency this shot told. He winced. "Have you
+been made to feel that? Has my wife ever caused you to believe that you
+were an unwelcome member of our household?" he demanded sharply, in a
+voice that boded ill for the present Mrs. Darcy if such were the case.
+
+"No, Father! I shall never give her the chance to make me feel
+unwelcome. That is why I want my mother's money."
+
+The Major toyed with a pen, and seemed to be thinking. "I am not at all
+sure," he said presently, "that the will Mary left was legal, my dear;
+whether it would stand in the courts--"
+
+"What does that matter?" interrupted Joan, "when you and I know what
+Mother meant?" Something impelled her to add, "And when Ellen Neal
+knows, too?"
+
+The Major looked quickly at her, and looked away. "Perhaps you are not
+aware that regardless of any will whatsoever the law entitles me to
+one-third of my wife's estate?"
+
+Joan flushed with an embarrassment that was more for him than for
+herself. "You're welcome to it, Daddy; you're perfectly welcome to it,
+of course! It isn't that I want to take anything away from _you_.
+It's--oh, won't you _please_ understand, and not be hurt with me?" she
+implored. "I only want to know how much there is, how much money I can
+count on getting every month to live on. Just income, you know. I
+wouldn't think of touching the--principal, don't you call it?"
+
+Richard Darcy rose abruptly and went to the window. It was a fine view
+that spread before him--a soothing, mellifluous landscape of golden
+river and hazy blue Indiana hills. Indiana, as he sometimes remarked,
+was delightful as a background though undesirable as a dwelling-place.
+He said so now. He had taken this office entirely for its view, he
+informed his daughter. The Major patronized Nature extensively, and
+believed that all gentlemen should do so; especially Kentucky gentlemen,
+to whom Nature has been so particularly lavish.
+
+Meanwhile Joan waited. He recalled that her mother used to have the same
+habit of silent waiting. Some minds seem incapable of pleasant
+digression.
+
+He sighed, and resumed the subject under discussion. His manner had
+changed somewhat, however. He spoke in the persuasive, frank,
+"he's-a-good-fellow-and-'twill-all-be-well" tones which he reserved for
+directors' boards, stockholders' meetings, and like courts of last
+resort, when things unpleasant had to be told and he was the one to tell
+them. It should be said in all justice that he rarely side-stepped these
+meetings, as he might have done, and allowed the unpleasantnesses to
+disclose themselves through others. Nobody could say that Richard Darcy
+was a coward.
+
+"Well, about this little business affair of ours, Dollykins--Of course
+the property was never large, though properly invested it might have
+brought us in a decent income instead of the trifle Mary was content
+with. The merest pittance I assure you, the merest pittance!"
+
+Joan nodded. She had heard before about the mereness of the pittance.
+
+"Often during my wife's lifetime I took occasion to point this out to
+her. The question of securities and investments being one to which I
+have devoted the greater part of my business career, I think I may say
+without undue vanity that I am qualified to give advice on such matters!
+But Mary had a certain sentimental reluctance about changing investments
+which her father had made for her, and sentiment is a thing which I am
+always able to respect."
+
+("Good for mother!" said Joan to herself.)
+
+"However, after her death--" he paused to pay his Mary the tribute of a
+sincere though dramatic sigh--"I began at once to look about for a means
+of providing my little girl with more affluence than had hitherto been
+at my disposal. The best," he smiled, patting her hand, "is none too
+good for my Dollykins! And an opportunity shortly presented itself, a
+quite exceptional opportunity, not only of increasing our income
+materially, but of assisting to develop the resources of my native
+commonwealth." He expanded suddenly with public spirit. "What a State!
+Fortunes have been made here, but nothing compared with the fortunes
+which shall be made. People have dared to call us a 'pauper
+State'--'pauper,' if you please!--with wealth at our command, untouched,
+unguessed resources lying just beneath the surface of this beautiful
+soil, which would make Aladdin's cave look like--like--"
+
+"Thirty cents," supplied Joan, in an anxious effort to get to the point.
+"I know, Father!--but what did you buy with the money?"
+
+"Oil-fields!" he said largely. "Oil-fields! Or, to be exact, stock in a
+company formed for the purpose of purchasing oil-fields, in which by
+good chance I happened to be let in on the ground floor (as we say in
+commercial parlance, Dollykins. It is not an expression I should care to
+hear you use.) You are the part possessor of something like one thousand
+acres of virgin Kentucky soil!" He leaned back in his chair and beamed
+on her.
+
+"Am I?" said Joan dubiously. "It sounds promising."
+
+Something of her father's elation disappeared in a sigh. "Promising,
+yes!--but so far only promising. Oil has been struck all about us, but
+none as yet on our holdings. I have by no means given up hope, of
+course." (Richard Darcy had never given up hope in any of his lost
+causes.) "But I must confess that I have been disappointed. Worse than
+disappointed. For a while I was--well, really, desperate!" He smiled
+deprecatingly.
+
+The smile did not for the moment touch Joan's heart; but it told her the
+truth she had dreaded. "Father! You mean you have _lost_ the
+money?--There's no income left?"
+
+"Income? Alas, no. And even the principal--Still, the land is there, one
+thousand acres of it, and that cannot escape!" he added, brightening.
+"There were times when I thought of going to live on the land. Though my
+experience of agriculture has been practically nil, many of our
+ancestors were planters and stock-breeders, and, as you know, I am a
+firm believer in the power of heredity. However, I was credibly informed
+that the property would not lend itself to agriculture. I was at my
+wit's end. Fancy the position!" (The Major was beginning rather to enjoy
+his woe in the retrospect.) "Here was I not as yet firmly established on
+my feet (as we say in business parlance); deprived alike of helpmate and
+companion, with my child at an expensive boarding-school where I had
+promised my dead wife she should remain until the completion of her
+education--and I without a dollar I could call my own! Frightful! There
+were certain obligations to tradespeople as well.... I am sure I do not
+know how for a while Ellen Neal managed to provide us with necessities!"
+(Joan thought grimly that she knew how.) "It became necessary
+to--ah!--realize on my possessions. First the silver went--I daresay you
+have wondered what has become of our family silver, my child? It was
+sacrificed to keep a roof over your head. Then the more valuable pieces
+of furniture--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" groaned the girl in a sort of angry pity, "Why didn't you
+tell me? Oh, _poor_ father!"
+
+"You may well say, 'poor father.' It was for you I suffered most, for
+you I was afraid. A man alone can always manage to subsist in some
+fashion, but a man with a helpless female dependent on him--! Thank
+heaven," he said earnestly, "you can never know what it is to be a
+father! I thought constantly, 'What a home to bring a young lady into!
+What a situation for my child!' I may confess that I prayed--no
+gentleman need be ashamed to pray when he is in distress. And then like
+light in darkness the answer came to me. At whatever cost to myself,
+whatever sacrifice, I must provide comfort for Joan, a home suitable for
+the reception of a young gentlewoman. There was nothing left to offer
+except--myself. Therefore--"
+
+His face shone with a noble sadness, and he waited for the generosity of
+his sacrifice to sink in.
+
+"You mean," said Joan slowly, "that it was for my sake you married Mrs.
+Calloway!"
+
+He bowed assent. "Why else? She is an excellent woman, a kind and
+excellent and devoted woman. But under happier circumstances, a man of
+my position, my traditions, my--shall I say fastidiousness?--" He
+shrugged, and allowed the ungallant suggestion to complete itself
+without words.
+
+"I think," said Joan quietly, "we'd better not say 'fastidiousness.'"
+
+She was struggling, struggling so hard that her hands were clenched, to
+do justice to her father. Had she misjudged him? Was his marriage after
+all not the horrid thing she had thought it, but an honest effort to
+atone to the child he had beggared? Something within her cried "No!" Her
+father had sacrificed nothing in the marriage. He had simply yielded,
+without a struggle, to the lure of the flesh-pots. Worse than this, the
+girl recalled honeymooning incidents that often made her shudder with
+mental nausea; certain billing and cooing which she had not always been
+able to avoid. It was not only the flesh-pots that had lured him....
+
+"Cad!" she cried to herself fiercely. "Cad and liar!" And the terrible
+thing was that he did not seem to know he was being a cad and a liar.
+
+Aloud she said, "And what did Mrs. Calloway get out of the bargain?"
+
+The Major stared at her, astounded. It was a question so absurd that he
+literally could not answer it. Quite unconsciously his eyes strayed
+beyond her after a moment to a mirror, as if for reassurance.
+
+Joan burst out laughing. The laughter was so palpably close to tears
+that her father forgave it, and held out his arms to her. "There, there,
+my poor child! You're overwrought," he murmured. "Come to Daddy!"
+
+She had lost all desire to weep on his shoulder now, however, and
+Richard Darcy shrank from the look she gave him, as a more innocent man
+than he might have shrunk; so level it was, so keen and without mercy.
+She saw her father in that moment not only as cad and liar, but as
+something very close to a thief. As surely as if she had been told in
+words, she knew why her mother, after fighting for years to keep her bit
+of property safe for her child, had at the last left it to the
+guardianship of her husband. It was to show him she trusted him, to put
+him on honor, as it were; to bolster up his waning self-respect by this
+final supreme act of faith in him. And he had betrayed her.
+
+Joan shrugged, and turned to go. Her head hung in shame, and Richard
+Darcy knew that the shame was not for herself. What passed through her
+brain then was for the moment clear to him, as it is sometimes with
+people of one blood.
+
+"I dare say," he said very low with a sort of dreadful questioning,
+"that the law might--might hold me responsible as guardian of your
+property, my daughter. If you cared to--if you wished to--make an issue
+of it?"
+
+"What good would that do" she replied brutally. "The money's gone, isn't
+it?"
+
+Then, glancing back, she surprised in his face that look she had almost
+forgotten--the frightened, baffled, anxious expression which she
+associated with the days when, as Ellen Neal put it, "the Indians were
+after him."
+
+Instantly the reaction came. It was she he feared now, not
+"Indians"--she, his own little girl, Joan!
+
+She ran and put her arms around him tightly, protectingly. "Nonsense!"
+she cried, her voice beautiful with the instinct of all the mothers who
+had made her. "The law'll never know a thing about it. What has the old
+law got to do with you and me? You've done the best you could, Daddy,
+I'm sure."
+
+Richard Darcy answered humbly, like a repentant child, "I have,
+daughter, truly I have. I'm sorry...."
+
+Later, as she walked wearily homeward through streets that no longer
+exhilarated her, no bachelor-maid now with a latch-key, nor yet an
+independent young traveler in foreign lands, but merely a poor relation
+dependent on the bounty of a step-mother, Joan made for herself a new
+beatitude:
+
+"Blessed are the weak," she thought stoically, "for they have got to be
+taken care of."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The two rooms in which Ellen Neal had established herself were on the
+second floor of a house that had gone some decades since into a state of
+senile decrepitude. But such was the fashion of building in its day that
+it showed no particular signs of its approaching end beyond a slight
+tilt to leeward and the rather eczematic effect of its stuccoed brick
+facade. A high-waisted door surmounted by a fine fan-light and supported
+by slender columns which had once been white led into a square panelled
+hall from which curved a staircase of exquisite proportions. These
+things in a city of larger growth and greater sophistication would have
+marked the house as the natural abode of artists and their ilk; but in
+Louisville, where art is yet chiefly a thing to be taken in courses by
+the elect, it let itself out in rooms for light housekeeping and other
+humble purposes. The slender columns were defaced by such signs
+as, "Feather Cleaning and Artificial Flowers,"--"Furniture
+Upholstered,"--"Plain Dressmaking," etc.
+
+The neighborhood, except for this one decrepit mansion standing well in
+from the sidewalk with an ancient sycamore for company, had long since
+forgotten its former claims to fashion; but it was still respectable.
+Trust Ellen Neal for that! She had the same flair for respectability as
+had the Misses Darcy for gentility. No doubtful character, whether in
+house or individual, could fail to yield up its weakness to the
+corrosive rectitude of Miss Neal's shrewd eye.
+
+Joan liked to come to this house, not only because Ellen and the
+familiar home furniture were there, but because it carried her romantic
+fancy back into the Louisville her father sometimes talked about, the
+old South with all its lost glamour of gallantry and derring-do. "_Les
+belles dames du temps jadis_" was a phrase that invariably came to her
+mind as she entered the graceful, defaced portal. Nearby stood a
+street-pump where an actress who was one day to make the charm of
+American women world-famous, used to come each morning to draw water, in
+her shabby little slippers with a rope of hair over each shoulder--a
+lovely young Rebekah at the well. Around the corner stood another old
+mansion, now debased to commercial uses, in front of which the
+townspeople used to gather daily at a certain hour to watch the languid
+progress from door to carriage of a beauty so widely heralded that her
+name and her many love-affairs have become history. Here and there in a
+neglected fence-corner a ragged rose-bush, or a clump of larkspur
+bravely in bloom, spoke to a few observers, such as Joan, of gardens
+which had been the lovely setting of lovely ladies long since dead and
+dust.
+
+Twilight was the hour for that neighborhood. Joan liked to fancy Ellen's
+house as the darkness fell, with candle-light streaming from the
+wide-flung windows, and glimpses within of bells in crinoline and beaux
+in tight wrinkled trousers, dancing a quadrille. Among them moved negro
+servitors with trays of frosted silver cups, and syllabub (though she
+had no slightest notion of what syllabub might be), and black cake, and
+small, pricked, beaten biscuit with ham in their insides. And there
+would be carriages stopping constantly at the door, to emit more belles
+and gallants, girls hoop-skirted and beshawled, who ran lightly up the
+curve of the long staircase, with apologies to the couples they
+disturbed in passing....
+
+Always the house brought such fancies to Joan, and so clearly that she
+sometimes wondered whether they were less fancies than race-memories,
+souvenirs of Darcys who might have lived and made merry there in the
+halcyon days when the old gray river-town was at its zenith; truly, as
+it boasted, the Gateway to the South, stopping-place for all travelers
+on these floating palaces which no longer ply their leisurely journeys
+down the Ohio and the Mississippi to the Gulf.
+
+Once she had questioned her father about it. "No, that's not one of our
+houses, I think," he replied interestedly. "Though it might have been.
+Your ancestors were very fond of change, Dollykins--as I am myself. We
+seem to have lived in half the houses in Louisville, at one time or
+another. But that one has been shabby and tumbledown ever since I can
+remember. In my boyhood it was a cheap boarding-house, for actors and
+people of that sort, I believe. I knew no one who lived there."
+
+Joan was disappointed. She would have liked to claim the old mansion as
+a relative.
+
+As she went wearily homeward from her disastrous interview with her
+father, Joan suddenly bethought herself of this house, and of Ellen. She
+was in no mood just then for the cheerful vulgarities of her
+step-mother. On the impulse, she went into the nearest drug-store and
+telephoned that she would not be home that night for dinner.
+
+"Ellen shall cook me some pancakes, and I will help her," she decided,
+comforted by the idea. It must be remembered that Joan was only
+nineteen.
+
+Inhabitants in suspenders and dressing-sacks, seeking air on the
+doorstep, stared at the girl inquisitively as she entered; but once
+within the dimness of the panelled hall she was able to forget these
+anachronisms. The quaint elegance of an earlier day was proof against
+even Expert Feather-curling, and Upholstery Done Here.
+
+From above came a sudden tuneless whistling, and then a thump on a door
+and a man's voice calling, "Say, Mrs. Neal! Here's a bushel of fine
+assorted socks for you, and if you can get enough out of the lot to keep
+my feet off the cauld, cauld ground till pay-day, I'll be yours truly."
+
+She heard Ellen's voice replying in more muffled tones, "All right, sir,
+just dump 'em in the door, will you? My hands are in the dough."
+
+Joan was amused to hear Ellen Neal called "Mrs."--she who was so
+unmistakably and truculently a spinster; also she was surprised at the
+politeness of her "sir" in response, for Ellen was not given to the
+small amenities of social intercourse. The Major himself was rarely
+"sir" to Ellen.
+
+The whistling resumed itself, coming rapidly nearer; and around the
+curve of the stairs, which he took two at a time, bounded a young man,
+who brought himself and his whistling to a full stop just in time to
+avoid carrying Joan with him in his downward course.
+
+"Whew!--just missed you!" he exclaimed aghast. "You startled me. For a
+minute I thought you were a ghost!"
+
+"Perhaps I am," murmured Joan, and demurely passed on up the stairs.
+
+He turned and stared after the white ascending figure. She was aware of
+his eyes following her. Suddenly he chuckled, "I knew I'd find you
+again. And I found the quotation, too! 'Richard the Second,' by William
+Shakespeare."
+
+Joan glanced over her shoulder. "I do not know what you are talking
+about," she said frigidly, "and I do not know you from Adam!" She had
+brought the impertinence upon herself, but she felt quite able to handle
+it--particularly with Ellen Neal just a few steps away.
+
+Even as she spoke, however, she was aware that she did know this young
+man. Something in his voice, in his awkward, deferential manner, brought
+back to her memory the too-sympathetic drummer on the train. She lifted
+her eyes from his necktie to his face, remembering past regrets. His
+ears stuck out.
+
+"Like the Yellow Kid's!" she thought disgustedly.
+
+There is nothing in the least romantic about a man whose ears stick out.
+He might as well be fat....
+
+"'Sad stories of the death of kings,'" he was explaining eagerly. "I
+looked it up myself. Sort of sounded like Shakespeare."
+
+"Oh! I thought it was 'Alice in Wonderland'!" Joan was surprised into
+speech.
+
+"That's a new one on me--'Alice in Wonderland,'"--commented the young
+man. "Is it good stuff?"
+
+"You've never read 'Alice in Wonderland'? What a queer childhood you
+must have had!"
+
+"Didn't have any," he replied, smiling up at her. Then he removed the
+smile, made a respectful little bow, and went on out the door.
+
+Joan found that she was blushing, hotly; and no wonder. She was shocked
+by herself. She, one of Sister Mary Agnes's best exemplars of decorum,
+had deliberately started and continued a conversation with a strange
+young man met by chance on the dark stairway of a house where assuredly
+gentlemen did not live. ("Unless very poor gentlemen," she amended; for,
+ears or not, he seemed somehow to belong in the category of gentlehood.)
+Nor had she even terminated the conversation. It was he who had done
+that. He had shown more sense of the fitness of things than had she,
+Joan Darcy!
+
+It was all the effect of the hospitable old hall, Joan decided. The
+house, like the roof of a friend, had introduced them. But what was he
+doing in such a house? It was not the sort of abode that would appeal,
+she fancied, to necktie drummers.
+
+She opened Ellen's door without knocking. "Hello, there! Who's that I
+met on the stairs, and why does he call you 'Mrs.,' you giddy old
+fraud?"
+
+A spoon dropped to the floor with a clatter as Ellen turned, beaming.
+"Land sakes! You might as well kill a person as scare her to death," she
+complained, far too pleased to admit it. "What you doin' down town this
+time o' day, all dressed up like lady-come-to-see? What do you want,
+eh?"
+
+"Pancakes," explained Joan, ripping off her long gloves. "I'm going to
+stay to supper, Nellen, so get me an apron and let's begin."
+
+Ellen's smile widened. "Pancakes! On a hot night like this?"
+
+Joan nodded. "Um-humm! And lemonade," she said, "and anything else you
+can think of that's indigestible. Got any pickles?"
+
+"What would a lone woman be doin' keepin' house without pickles?"
+replied Ellen scornfully, producing them. "And there's a batch of
+cinnamon rolls in the oven this minute, just as if I was expectin' you."
+
+With a sigh of content, the girl reached down a yellow crockery bowl out
+of the cupboard--she was on quite intimate terms with Ellen's
+cupboard--and tying a gingham apron about her neck, proceeded to stir
+batter. It was the same crockery bowl, and perhaps the same gingham
+apron, in which she had stirred batter so long ago that she had been
+obliged to stand on a footstool in order to reach the kitchen-table.
+There was something substantial and fixed and unchangeable about Ellen
+Neal and her possessions, something that spelled home, though it was
+only home for other people.
+
+"But you haven't distracted my mind," said Joan judicially, "from the
+fact that a young man of your acquaintance calls you 'Mrs.' without
+correction. You haven't eloped or anything lately?"
+
+Ellen Neal bridled. "How you do go on, Joan! It makes it look better for
+a lone woman to be livin' by herself if she's called 'Mrs.' Men ain't so
+apt to get fresh with her."
+
+"No?" murmured Joan. She gazed at Ellen's gaunt unloveliness with
+twinkling eyes. "Don't tell me men have been getting fresh with you,
+Nellen!"
+
+The other's jaw snapped. "They have not, and they better not try it."
+
+"Don't you think it's rather a risk darning their socks, then?" murmured
+the girl wickedly. "It might give them false ideas."
+
+"I only do it for one of 'em, and he pays me good. Anything's proper so
+long as you get paid for it."
+
+Joan laughed aloud. "Why, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Neal, you shock me! What a
+perilous idea!"
+
+"You're awful smart, guyin' me, but I'd be ashamed to think the kind of
+thoughts you're thinkin' now," said Ellen Neal, unsmiling. "And you a
+spinster yourself! Thoughts are as bad as deeds, any day--worse, 'cause
+they come easier. That's one thing I've noticed about you lately, Joan.
+You seem to know about things that ain't ladylike, somehow. Something's
+happened to you, child. You ain't the nice little girl you used to be."
+
+"No," admitted Joan, "I'm not. And the world's not the nice little world
+it used to be, either." She went over and laid her head on her friend's
+bony shoulder. "Don't scold me to-day, dear. You're right, but--Oh,
+Nellen, father's lost our money! And there's nothing in the world I can
+call my own. Just absolutely nothing!"
+
+A silence fell. "So," said the old woman. "You've found out, at last,
+have you? I've wondered how long it would take. And now what you goin'
+to do about it?" she demanded suddenly. "Are you goin' to law?"
+
+Joan shook her head. "You know what Mother would say to that."
+
+Ellen sighed. "I suppose she wouldn't hear to it." It was a curious fact
+that when these two spoke of Mary Darcy, they always spoke as if she
+were still alive, and near them. "Anyway, you can't squeeze blood out of
+a turnip--though I must say I'd like to see _somethin'_ squeezed out of
+them kind of turnips, if it's only insides!" she added quite
+blood-thirstily. "Oh deary me, deary me! How often I've begged your ma
+to sneak what there was left out of his reach and put it away where I
+keep mine."
+
+"Where's that, Nellen?"
+
+"In an old stockin'-fut under my bedtick, where you can bet no man on
+earth ever laid eyes on it, or ever will!"
+
+The smell of scorching bread suddenly filled the room. "Land sakes, my
+cinnamon-rolls! And I'd promised that boy to save him some for
+breakfast."
+
+"Breakfast?" exclaimed Joan, glad enough of a diversion from discussing
+her undiscussable father. "You mean to tell me you're not only keeping
+your young man darned, but breakfasted? Nellen, I'm positively jealous!"
+
+"You wouldn't be if you could see him eat," said the other seriously.
+"Acts like he ain't had enough food to fill him sence he was born. He
+was gettin' all his meals out to a restaurant before I come, a place he
+calls 'The Sign of the Dirty Spoon.' Jokin', I suppose--he's a great one
+for jokes. But he looked so skinny, and was always takin' something for
+dyspepsy, so I told him I'd give him a good breakfast anyway, just to
+start the day on. Say, Joan, you ought to see him put it away! He says
+once, 'I 'spose this is what you call home-cookin', ain't it?' 'Land,
+sakes,' says I, 'don't you know home-cookin' when you see it?' 'I ain't
+never seen it before!' he says, laughing."
+
+While she talked Ellen was bustling capably about, laying a cloth,
+getting out dishes, dropping Joan's batter into a sizzling saucepan,
+from whence arose dense, pleasing vapors.
+
+"Here, Joan, mix some cinnamon in that sugar, 'less you'd ruther have
+molasses on 'em. You ought to see the room he's got. Nothin' but books,
+all over the tables, piled up on the floor, even on the window-sills--"
+
+"Books?" said Joan, pricking up an ear. She had not imagined the
+wide-eared young man in his dapper clothes a student.
+
+"Whatever people want all them books around for I can't see," said
+Ellen. "Dust collectors, I call 'em; but he says they're his college
+career. Always will have his joke! And the dirt--! He had a colored
+woman in to do for him before I come, and guess what she used to do with
+her dust?" She paused dramatically, arms akimbo.
+
+Joan admitted her imagination unequal to the task.
+
+"Swept it under the bed and left it there! Land!" said Ellen Neal, "how
+I do hate a nigger! You can bet I got that place to rights in a jiffy."
+
+"I can indeed," murmured Joan, "and I can also bet he couldn't find a
+thing belonging to him for a week afterwards."
+
+Ellen grinned. "You've the truth of it. There wasn't a morning for about
+a week but what he'd thump on the floor and yell down the chimney, 'Mrs.
+Neal, _oh_, Mrs. Neal! For heaven's sake where is my blue necktie?' or,
+'In the name of Jehoshaphat, what have you done with my other pair of
+pants?' It kind of reminded me of your pa," she said, sighing. "I been
+lookin' after him ever sence. There now, ain't you goin' to eat your
+pancakes now you've got 'em?"
+
+Joan drew up her chair to the oil-cloth covered table, and, despite the
+heat and her troubles, made such a meal as she had not eaten for weeks
+at her step-mother's elaborate board. Ellen sat opposite her, with no
+servant-and-mistress nonsense to complicate the pleasure of hospitality.
+Sometimes the old woman waited on Joan, and sometimes Joan waited on
+Ellen, all in a friendly democracy that would have caused Major Darcy's
+hair to rise on end. It had been his conscientious effort for years to
+keep Ellen Neal "in her place." The difficulty was in the ups and downs
+of the Darcy menage to know just what might be considered Ellen's place.
+
+Not troubling themselves with any such niceties of status, the two ate
+their pancakes and drank their lemonade and otherwise courted
+indigestion contentedly, meanwhile chatting about the young man from
+upstairs, who for some reason began to appeal to Joan's imagination. His
+name, it appeared, was Archibald Blair.
+
+"Archibald Blair! Nellen, how romantic! Like an English novel. Young
+Lord Toodledeboots ruined at Monte Carlo, hiding his poverty and a
+broken heart in lodgings. I suppose these might be called lodgings? If
+only his ears had been made to fit him!"
+
+She no longer thought of him as a necktie drummer. The books made a
+difference. It seemed unlikely that necktie drummers would be on terms
+of first-name intimacy with Shakespeare. Moreover, his awkward yet
+somehow easy and unassuming air, like that of a friendly young dog who
+takes for granted that the world will be glad to see him, marked him as
+one not belonging to what her father called "the canile." No, he was a
+student and a gentleman, stranded by some freak of fortune in this
+near-slum, a youthful Beloved Vagabond. (It was the year when Locke's
+great book cast a glamour over all strange men in shabby clothing.)
+Although Archibald Blair was by no means shabby; on the contrary, rather
+appallingly dapper.
+
+"I wonder how he happens to be living in a house like this?" she
+ruminated aloud.
+
+"And why wouldn't he be living here?" demanded Ellen tartly. "It's cheap
+and decent, and there's some folks that don't like to go forever hoppin'
+from one place to another, like fleas on a dog's back. He's lived in
+that same room upstairs ever since he can remember."
+
+"Oh, has he?" Joan's eye kindled. It occurred to her that the young
+man's history might have some connection with the history of the house
+itself. "Ellen, I have it! It's the old family mansion, belonged to his
+father and grandfather and great-grandfather, and _of course_ he wants
+to go on living in it. I would myself!"
+
+Ellen grinned. "If there's a romantical notion to be found, trust you
+for finding it. But if you really want to know, folks do say--" She
+hesitated, under the hallucination (which many virtuous women share)
+that she disliked to repeat gossip.
+
+"Yes, yes? Do go on, Nellen!"
+
+"Well, they do say that if he's got a father at all it's more than he
+knows, let alone a grandfather, and great-grandfather. I had it from a
+woman downstairs (her that curls feathers, and she got it straight from
+somebody who used to live in the neighborhood when this was a actors'
+boardin'-house), that he got left here when he was a little boy, by his
+mother, in hock for her board-bill. And she never come back for him."
+
+Joan gave a gasp. "Oh," she cried. "Oh! poor woman!"
+
+Ellen eyed her curiously. "Poor _woman_? I should think you'd say 'poor
+child'!"
+
+"Poor both of them! But can't you see how much greater the tragedy must
+have been for the woman, who knew--who was to blame? Imagine how she
+must have dreamed of that pitiful little boy with his nose pressed
+against the window-pane watching for her--and she not able to come for
+him! Ellen--That's what he's doing here now! Waiting for his mother to
+come back!"
+
+"If he is, I hope it's with a club in his hand," muttered the other
+angrily. "Why wasn't she 'able to come,' I'd like to know?"
+
+"Perhaps she died. Or, she couldn't get enough money, or oh--oh, Ellen,
+don't you _see_? She didn't dare to come for him! He was getting too
+big, noticing things. For his own sake she had to give him up!" There
+were tears in Joan's eyes, ready to spill over.
+
+Ellen paused and stared at her. "Well!" she said at last. "If I had your
+imagination, Joan Darcy, I'd go to a hospital and get it cut out. It
+ain't safe! Here you are blubbering over the troubles of a woman who
+maybe never lived, and probably was a bad lot if she did--and a'most
+making me blubber over her myself!"
+
+Joan laughed and jumped up. "Here, let me help with the dishes. You wash
+and I'll wipe. But what a funny, pitiful little boy he must have been
+with those stick-out ears and those big, innocent-looking front teeth of
+his! I wonder why it is that big front teeth always do make a person
+look so innocent, Ellen?"
+
+"Seems to me you noticed a lot to have seen Mr. Blair only once."
+
+Joan did not think it necessary to mention that she had seen him more
+than once.
+
+"I always notice things--I can't help it. Anyway, I'm glad you keep the
+poor thing darned and comfy! It's only charity."
+
+"Charity nothing. He pays me good, and prompter than I ever got paid
+before in all _my_ life," disclaimed the other rather tactlessly.
+
+While she washed and put away her dishes, the girl made a tour of
+inspection about the rooms that were so full of associations to her. She
+smiled and nodded at the two familiar Landseer dogs on the wall, which
+had been a familiar part of every dining-room she remembered. She patted
+the worn chairs affectionately, and went in to pay her respects to the
+shorn four-post bed, which looked more at ease in its present
+surroundings than in others where she had seen it. The panelled walls,
+as nearly white as scrubbing could make them, the wide-silled windows
+with arched casements, the tall mantel-shelf, the finely molded ceiling
+which years of coal soot and cobwebs and general neglect had not
+sufficed to rob of dignity, all made a more suitable setting than Ellen
+guessed for her mistress's household goods; and to Joan these two
+bare and shabby rooms had become a haven of refuge. Tenement though it
+was, there was more of genuine beauty in the place where Ellen did plain
+dressmaking for very humble customers than in all the elaborate
+establishment with which Richard Darcy had managed to provide his
+daughter. Joan was very dependent upon beauty.
+
+Later, Ellen walked out with her through the languorous summer evening
+to the house which she never called home. Nothing more had been said
+between them of the loss of her independence; but the girl felt soothed
+and comforted, strengthened as the heart is always strengthened in the
+presence of a deep though inarticulate devotion. She slipped her hand
+into the other's thin arm, and so linked they walked along without much
+talk between them, listening as they passed to pleasant sounds from many
+a shadowed porch and garden, guitar music, singing, the inevitable
+hushed murmur of boy and girl voices commingled, which is as natural to
+a summer gloaming as the twitter of birds in spring.
+
+There came again to Joan, for the first time in weeks, something of the
+glamour, the sense of promise, which had touched her in the summer past
+when she walked at night with her father through the strange city where
+he had once been young. It was as if Romance brushed her in passing with
+shadowy skirts, and Joan felt that she must catch at them, cling to
+them, before it was too late. Youth is so short, so short!...
+
+Ellen, too, felt the witchery of the soft night; but to the Ellens,
+Romance comes only vicariously.
+
+"Joie," she said after a long silence, "ain't it time you was having
+some steady company yourself, child?"
+
+The girl did not smile at the phrase. It voiced too well her own secret
+thoughts. There had been something strangely unreal, unnatural, about
+the past weeks. She had brought nothing out of her experience with life
+so far, not even a friend--for Stefan Nikolai was merely an inheritance.
+
+"You're right," she said soberly "I suppose I ought to have a 'steady
+company' at least by this time. That ought to be simple
+enough!--Marriage is about the only thing left for a girl in my
+position, isn't it?"
+
+"Who's talking about marriage? You don't have to marry every fellow you
+walk out with, I should hope," said Ellen surprisingly. "I've walked out
+with quite a few myself!... But as to gettin' married, Jo--it's about
+the only thing for a girl in any position, I guess, even if she finds
+out afterwards that she's picked a lemon. Lemons are better than
+nothing."
+
+"Why, Mrs. Neal!" laughed Joan. "What sentiments from a confirmed
+spinster-person!"
+
+To which Ellen replied quietly, "It's the spinsters who know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The discovery of her dependence upon her step-mother marked an end to
+one period of Joan's existence: the apathetic period. Heretofore she had
+allowed their daily life, their amusements, their acquaintanceships, to
+remain in the hands of Effie May. If that lady chose, as she naively put
+it, to "break into society," and society was willing, Joan was amenable,
+though a little dubious as to society's taste. She was amenable, that
+is, so long as she was not called upon too actively to assist in the
+process. Pride forbade her making any effort to interest or to be
+interested in people who chose to accept the present Mrs. Darcy as one
+of themselves. To the Louisville she knew so far, she was merely the
+appendage of her parents, a captive chained to the triumphal
+chariot-wheel of her step-mother.
+
+That was all very well so long as she knew that she might snap the chain
+at any moment and be free. But a dependence that seemed likely to
+continue indefinitely was not to be borne by what the Major would have
+called "the proud spirit of a Darcy." Joan, waking in the early dawn,
+rose and dressed (not in negligee), demanded breakfast at an hour when
+the astonished servants were barely awake themselves, and proceeded to
+clear her decks for action....
+
+Ellen had sowed a useful suggestion in her brain. There was one freedom
+open to all young girls who were not too exacting in their demands: the
+freedom of marriage. Joan decided to marry. She also selected the
+victim.
+
+It was the first time she had thought of him for weeks; or of "the
+girls," those heart's companions with whom she had shared for two years
+her inmost hopes and desires (to say nothing of hats and gloves and
+handkerchiefs); with whom at parting she had exchanged vows of lifelong
+fealty. Their letters had accumulated unanswered. In the shock and shame
+of her father's marriage, she had put away childish things, among them
+her schoolmates, who seemed in the retrospect immature and puerile. Even
+Eduard of the interesting past had been put away for the moment with
+outgrown things, and had remained (fortunately) unthanked for his
+parting flowers. As for the love-letter which had accompanied them--Joan
+wondered with a start of dismay what had become of it.
+
+She found it neatly smoothed of its tell-tale wrinkles (the reader will
+remember that for a day and a night it had reposed against Joan's
+heart), filed among the letters in her desk, where it had been duly
+placed after being duly read, doubtless, by one of Mrs. Darcy's
+efficient housemaids.
+
+The girl studied it with a more dispassionate eye than she had brought
+to its first perusal:
+
+     My flowers must tell you what I dare not, dearest little girl
+     of my heart. You will understand why I cannot say good-by.
+     Truly, "to part is to die a little." Forgive me!--EDUARD.
+
+Joan decided that this could not, after all, be called a love-letter; or
+if so, it was of a noncommittal type distinctly piquing to the vanity.
+She had given a good many of her precious holidays to the reforming of
+Mr. Desmond.
+
+"So!" she thought, with a small gleam in her eye. "I was merely a child
+that amused him for the moment! He was probably laughing at me.... I
+wonder if he would laugh now?"
+
+She went to her mirror and examined the reflection within impartially.
+
+Something of what she had always candidly recognized as her plainness
+seemed to have disappeared. She was no longer scrawny, for one thing.
+Her lazy life of the past weeks, and possibly Effie May's beauty
+experts, whose ministrations she accepted so ungratefully, had put a
+gracious covering over her young bones, and she discovered with some
+excitement the rudiments of a figure. Her straight, burnished hair (she
+had so far resisted all temptations to "marcel" it) gave her what she
+fancied a rather _distingue_ air, and her skin had that rare, pale
+transparency of perfect health which is lovelier even than rosiness. Her
+eyes had always given perfect satisfaction. She nodded to them in
+affectionate fashion, as to good friends (she had always fancied that
+one of them was her brain and the other her soul, and even suspected
+which was which--the left wearing rather a twinkle, in comparison with
+the right, which had a mild, innocuous expression). Her mouth was too
+large.
+
+"But then," she reflected, "large mouths are very much worn by heroines
+nowadays, and mine isn't mushy or loose at the corners, anyway. There's
+a draw-string to it."
+
+Of the nose the less said the better. It was merely a nose.
+
+On the whole, standing there in her pretty morning dress, with the grace
+and freshness of nineteen years about her like an aura, young Joan
+decided in all modesty that she was one of the women who have their
+moments, and that such moments ought not to be wasted.
+
+She sat down at once and indited a little note to Eduard Desmond
+expressing gratitude for "flowers which had meant so much to her," and
+explaining that she had not written before "because it had seemed best
+not to"--the inference being that now danger was past, and time had made
+it safe for her to think of him.
+
+"That," mused Joan nibbling her penholder, "ought to make him sit up and
+take notice, I should think?" She had been from her cradle something of
+a student of her fellow-creatures.
+
+She wrote to his niece, her friend Betty, as well; a long, confidential
+screed, mentioning the fact of her father's marriage without comment and
+allowing her friend to read between the lines. Betty had an adored
+mother of her own.
+
+Then Joan rested on her oars and awaited results, which were prompt in
+coming. Not for nothing had she been the prize letter-writer of her
+school, entrusted by friend and foe alike with the handling of anything
+that was most delicate in the way of correspondence.
+
+A few days later she was able to remark to her family that she had been
+invited to visit her schoolmate, Betty Desmond, at the Desmond country
+place near Philadelphia.
+
+"The people you spent the Christmas holidays with in Washington? A fine
+old Irish name," commented the Major, who made something of a specialty
+of names. "I have not the pleasure of their acquaintance, but I am sure
+the good Sisters would not have permitted you to visit them if they had
+not been--ah! desirable acquaintances."
+
+"They are quite rich, if that is what you mean," said his daughter
+bluntly. Her manner to her father had latterly undergone a change which
+was not altogether nice.
+
+The Major's eyebrows shot up in pained surprise. "Joan! That is
+certainly irrelevant, not to say--"
+
+"And there's an eligible young man in the family," continued the girl
+imperturbably.
+
+He stared at her, speechless. "My child!" he exclaimed after a moment.
+"One would suppose you were actually--"
+
+"Hunting for a husband? I am," she finished. "What else did you expect
+me to do?"
+
+A burst of laughter from Effie May relieved the situation. "Of course
+she's hunting for a husband! All girls are, unless they're lookin' for
+trouble. Good for you, dearie! You'll land him, too, I'll bet my hat.
+Men? Lord," she cried, "they're as easy as fallin' off a log, once you
+get the hang of 'em!"
+
+But the Major continued to gaze at his daughter incredulously. "To
+think," he murmured, "that I should live to hear _my daughter_ speak in
+such a manner!" It was evidently not the idea which shocked him, so much
+as the indelicate expression of it.
+
+Joan rose suddenly and left the table.
+
+Effie May came to her afterwards, intent on comforting. "There, there,
+girlie, you mustn't mind what your papa says; he's just a man. Besides,
+he's so genteel in his instincts he's hardly human. Your mamma would
+have understood, just like I do. _She_ wouldn't of thought you'd said
+anything unrefined!"
+
+"Thank you," muttered Joan bitterly.
+
+"Why, it's the most natural thing in the world that a girl wants a house
+of her own, and a man of her own, and so forth! Only most of 'em ain't
+honest enough to come out flat and say so.... I'm for you, dearie.
+You're to have the trip, of course, and anything else you want, just let
+me know. As if I was really your mother--I mean it!"
+
+"Thank you," said Joan again.
+
+It was not the first time she had been disconcerted to find the enemy
+fighting her battles. What is to be done with an enemy which will not
+keep its proper place?
+
+Effie May concerned herself in the preparations for departure with a
+whole-hearted generosity which occasioned Joan some secret pangs of
+remorse. As a step-relative she knew that she herself had left much to
+be desired. In vain the girl protested that she had already too many
+clothes, too much finery.
+
+"Nonsense! A girl can't have too much finery," was the rejoinder. "Even
+if you don't get to wear all your pretties, it makes you feel sort of
+easy, sort of good-as-anybody like, just to know you've got 'em in the
+closet."
+
+With her own hands she ran ribbons and rearranged trimmings and packed,
+to the secret jealousy of Ellen, keeping up a constant stream of shrewd
+comment and advice, some of which Joan found worth remembering.
+
+"The trouble with you is, girlie, you think too much," was one of the
+pearls that fell from her lips. "Just let go and have a good time, and
+don't take yourself so hard. You can feel as different as you like
+inside, just so folks don't know it. Folks are sort of leery of what
+they aren't used to. See?"
+
+Joan often wondered in what school of experience her step-mother had
+gleaned her curious wisdom.
+
+Ellen Neal was the only one of the three elders who watched her going
+with any uneasiness.
+
+"Look here, Joan," she said once, abruptly. "When I spoke like I done
+about marriage being the best thing for a girl, I meant marriage with
+love, child--marriage _with love_. Like your mamma's."
+
+The simile was unfortunate. The eye that Joan believed to be her brain
+twinkled mockingly. "Do you mean to insinuate that marriage and love are
+not always synonymous? Why, Mrs. Neal, you put so many strange ideas
+into my young head lately! Seriously," she added, seeing that the
+other's anxious gravity did not relax, "I don't believe it would be hard
+to pump up a little love in return for--lots of it, say, and a place of
+your own in the world, and independence."
+
+"Where there's love there ain't apt to be much independence, I've
+noticed," remarked the other.
+
+"All the more reason to do without love, then!" cried Joan, with
+triumphant logic.
+
+But she hugged Ellen remorsefully, glad that the good woman could only
+guess at what was going on at the moment in her nursling's brain.
+
+Her step-mother's casual advice and her own inner musings had resulted
+in one firm determination. If she missed romance, experience, all the
+real things of life, it would not be for lack of meeting them halfway.
+She would be no longer a passive agent. She would be bold and
+reckless--even if necessary a little Fast; though how to go about being
+Fast was somewhat of a puzzle to Mary's daughter.
+
+"If people want to say things, or squeeze my hand, or anything like
+that," she told herself rather vaguely, "I must remember not to hold
+back and be standoffish.... How do I know what I like unless I try?"
+
+But while the noun on her tongue was plural and indefinite, the noun on
+her mind was single and masculine and very definite indeed. It behooved
+Mr. Desmond to look to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Joan, already exhilarated by a foretaste of independence, and enjoying
+to the full what Turgenev calls "that carelessness, that deuce-take-it
+air which comes out so naturally in foreign travel," changed at Broad
+Street for a local train that stops at all the smart little
+flower-bedecked stations which make the environs of Philadelphia so
+charming to the eye. Neat turnouts were waiting at most of them,
+dog-carts with dapper grooms at the horses' heads, big machines driven
+by bare-headed young people in sports clothes; here and there a quietly
+elegant brougham or limousine with men in livery on the box.
+
+As her train passed, she caught glimpses of mellow, red-brick houses
+that gave the effect of age without decadence; tree-lined avenues,
+hot-houses, gardens, velvet lawns. It was country that lacked the broad,
+picturesque loveliness of Kentucky landscape, but it had a definite
+charm of its own--a well-ordered, leisurely, finished permanence which
+reminded one that not only American history but American society had its
+stronghold here, changing less than elsewhere in our adolescent land.
+There was no suggestion, as in the South, of having seen better days; no
+raw, temporary promise of the future as in the Middle West. Joan
+remembered having heard that many people who danced in the Philadelphia
+Assembly of to-day bore the same names as those who danced in it when
+Philadelphia was the country's capital, and Mr. Washington its first
+President. She wondered hopefully whether Desmond was one of those
+names....
+
+People got in and out of the train, carrying golf-bags and
+tennis-rackets. Joan smoothed the skirt of the "little model" Effie May
+had provided for traveling purposes; a fawncolored crepe with lacy cuffs
+and collar, which had at first given her qualms of uneasiness. There was
+a long cloth coat to match, and a hat of the costliest simplicity; and
+she was not used to traveling dressed as for a party. Now, however, she
+was grateful for her step-mother's insistence, with a gratitude which
+increased in proportion to the distance between them.
+
+"Always dress up on a train," was Effie May's sage counsel, "so that
+people will notice you're a lady, and treat you according."
+
+People had undoubtedly noticed, and she had been treated "according";
+and now toward her journey's end it was particularly agreeable to feel
+that among these fellow-travelers on pleasure bent she need have no
+qualms as to her personal appearance, at least. Underneath she might
+know herself to be plain, poor little Joan Darcy, an adventuress in
+search of a husband; but on the surface she was as affluent a young lady
+as ever rang for the porter to lower a shade that was within two feet of
+her hand.
+
+It may be premature to state that our heroine had already adjusted her
+future to her present pleasing environment; but the fact remains that
+when the train stopped at the station for which her subconscious mind
+had fortunately been listening, Joan was just in the act of moving Ellen
+Neal and her mother's furniture into a large Quaker house with a gambrel
+roof....
+
+Betty was waiting for her in a dog-cart; brown as a berry, with sleeves
+rolled up, and a bare, tousled head, quite a different young person
+already from the shy little girl who had been her slave at the Convent.
+
+"Hurry up, old Joie!" she called, wrestling with the cob, who rose on
+his hind legs to snort at the snorting engine, while a diminutive groom
+tried with frantic leapings to reach his head. "The Rabbit hates to
+stand! Run and get Miss Darcy's things, Jenks" (this to the groom) "and
+be quick about it, will you? You see," she explained as Joan climbed
+perilously aboard and was duly kissed, "when I left, Mother was two up
+and four to play, and it's the finals, and she's already got a leg on
+the cup. Great, isn't it? We'll have to gallop all the way to get there
+before it's over!"
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" asked mystified Joan. "A leg on the
+cup--!" Hitherto golf had not entered into her vocabulary; though she
+had gazed at it from afar, wondering at the strange ways men choose to
+waste their golden hours.
+
+"Why, the tournament, of course! Didn't I write you? We're deep in it.
+Where are your clubs, by the way?" She glanced at Joan's bag and
+parasol-case. "Oh, dear! Have you left them on the train?"
+
+"Clubs?--You mean golf-sticks?" asked Joan, with misgivings. "Why, I
+haven't any. I don't play golf."
+
+"_Don't play golf?_" cried Betty in genuine dismay. "What ever will you
+do with yourself here? And how on earth do you amuse yourself in
+Kentucky? Just ride?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Joan feebly, "we--we ride."
+
+Once, indeed, during a period of comparative affluence, the Major had
+possessed for a while a horse of the family type; and under his
+instruction Joan had occasionally mounted the complaisant beast and
+propelled it fearfully about back streets, feeling that something was
+due her Kentucky traditions. But suppose she were expected to mount, for
+instance, some such fire-eater as the Rabbit!
+
+"I don't believe I've brought my riding-clothes," she murmured hastily.
+
+"Goose! Why not? But I dare say Mother can fit you out with trousers,"
+said Betty, glancing casually at her friend's slim length of limb.
+"Mine'd be too short. With trousers and a sweater you'll be all right."
+
+Joan's eyes opened wide, but her mouth remained closed. After all, she
+was out for experience. If it included meeting a violent death while
+clad in trousers and a sweater, so be it.
+
+"Uncle Neddy'll find you a decent horse somewhere," Betty was running
+on. "He's awfully keen about your coming, Jo. I'm afraid you're going to
+have him on your hands a lot, especially if you don't play golf."
+
+Joan brightened. "Why? Doesn't he?"
+
+"Lord, no! Too much of a duffer. Likes to do lazy things, like riding,
+and fooling around in a canoe, admiring nature. With widows and such!"
+She made a face.
+
+"Widows?" Joan pricked an ear.
+
+"Grass or sod. It's all one to our Neddy," murmured his flippant niece.
+"Girls are not grown up enough for him, of course--Except you. He always
+did take notice when you were around. I remember. But then you were
+always more grown up than the rest of us, somehow." She gave her friend
+a glance full of the old shy admiration. "Do you know, you've gotten to
+be awfully pretty too. Perhaps it's all those grand clothes!"
+
+"Perhaps it is," smiled Joan, flushing.
+
+At school she had been the poor girl of her group, the one who had most
+often to borrow and least often to lend the simple fineries current
+among them for special occasions. Now under her friend's appraising eyes
+she was a little uncomfortable, wondering whether the dress she had on
+was perhaps a little too "grand" by comparison with Betty's plain linen.
+Linens she owned herself, but braided, embroidered, lace-inserted out of
+all recognition as such. It was a physical impossibility for Effie May
+to select anything plain. Under her manipulation, the merest shirt-waist
+became what the salesladies refer to majestically as a "bloose."
+Sartorially Joan was entirely in her step-mother's hands.
+
+"But Southern girls always do dress up a lot, don't they?" said Betty,
+innocently continuing her line of thought. "You ought to have seen the
+one the Ritters had visiting them last month! All ruffles, and parasols,
+and chiffon veils. Couldn't swim or go for a ride or do anything on
+account of her complexion. All she did was to dance and sit out in
+corners with people. It was disgusting!"
+
+"And didn't your uncle take notice even of _her_?" murmured Joan.
+
+"Oh, of course. She was as good as a widow, you see--she'd had so many
+affairs. The men simply flocked. Whenever she came on to the
+tennis-court she'd break up the game, and we could hardly find enough
+men to make up a foursome, they were all so busy hanging around. It was
+too queer! I never could see the attraction in rolling your eyes, and
+flashing your dimples, and dropping your r's like a colored servant,
+could you?--Not," she added hastily, "that _all_ Southern girls are that
+sort, Joie dear! You, for instance!"
+
+"I should hope not," murmured Joan; who had decided on the instant to be
+exactly that sort herself, so far as in her lay. It suited the
+elaborateness of her wardrobe; it saved her from golf and tennis and
+other amusements which bade fair to be terrifying in this sporting
+community--particularly the embarrassments of horseback riding. Joan was
+too much of an egotist to enter willingly into competitions where she
+had no chance to excel.
+
+No; the languid beauty was her role for the next few weeks; and she
+flattered herself that after several months of Louisville she ought to
+be able to drop her r's and roll her eyes and flash her dimples with the
+best, particularly if the audience were not too experienced in
+Southernism. In school theatricals she had always distinguished herself.
+Moreover, she had the advantage of a lifelong model to work from; for
+Richard Darcy was one of those sons of Dixie whose characteristics
+become more markedly Dixotic the farther they travel from base.
+
+Let the Ritters' guest look to her laurels!
+
+By way of preparation Joan got out her lip-stick and her powder-puff and
+did what she could to improve on nature, Betty watching her the while in
+amused respect.
+
+"I'm glad _I_ don't have to mess my face up with things like that," she
+commented frankly. "But I suppose when one goes in for a real complexion
+it's got to be taken care of."
+
+Joan murmured something explanatory about the ravages of a Southern sun;
+and so entered upon her brief and eventful career as a Kentucky beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Joan's respect for the sterner sex, never very exaggerated, was not
+increased by the avidity with which they swallowed, one by one, her
+inexperienced hook, bait and all. Evidently her fellow-men had very
+little use for nice, intelligent, modest young girls in comparison with
+the Brazen Hussie.... For Joan had no illusions about herself, either.
+She had joined, temporarily it is true, and for what seemed to her
+legitimate reasons, the order of the Brazen Hussies.
+
+She put into practice as many of her step-mother's precepts as she could
+recall, and found that they worked astonishingly well. She also
+cultivated a beauty-manner, modeling herself on a certain Louisville
+belle whose manoeuvers she had observed with interest. She became
+helplessly sweet and very, very feminine; and she smiled whenever there
+was an excuse for smiling. It was a new smile she had practised before
+the mirror; an intimate, confiding, personal affair that crinkled up her
+long eyes charmingly, and showed at least two thirds of her good white
+teeth. Eduard Desmond occasionally referred to these teeth as "pearls,"
+though they were hard and sharp and strong as a young squirrel's: Eduard
+being the sort of person who takes his similes ready-made out of poetry.
+
+Surprisingly enough, considering the sporting nature of the community in
+which she found herself, Joan heard a good deal of poetry during this
+visit. The moon happened to be full, and Longmeadow edged upon a river;
+one of those pleasant, cosy little streams that are designed by an
+all-wise Providence for canoes to float upon in summer evenings. By day
+other girls had their innings on golf-links and tennis-court (though
+even by day our heroine was not idle). But at night with the moon she
+came into her own. She made her canoe engagements days ahead, not too
+frequently with Eduard; and she came to the conclusion that just as
+infants at a certain stage must go through the teething period, so
+somewhat later they must go with equal painfulness through the poetry
+period. It gave her quite a motherly feeling toward her admirers; which
+fortunately she was able to dissemble.
+
+By contrast with the sportsmanlike young women of the community, Joan,
+in her frills and wide hats and small, beaded, high-heeled slippers,
+seemed to fill a long-felt want. Her role was by no means an
+uninteresting one. Occasionally in the course of events she got almost,
+if not quite, kissed; and she became expert in deflecting the course of
+inconvenient emotion.
+
+"It's suggestion does it," she wrote to her friend Mr. Nikolai. "Given a
+moon, fluffy ruffles, and the Kentucky-belle tradition--and they seem
+helpless, poor dears!"
+
+But perhaps it was not entirely the power of suggestion that made her
+success. Joan was enough of an artist to do whatever she did with a
+certain finish.
+
+Her difficulty, however, in the heady game she played, was to
+concentrate on the purpose in hand. At the end of two weeks, she began
+to fancy a slight diminution of cordiality on the part of both Betty and
+her mother, and she realized that her visit was growing longer than
+seemed usual. Other guests came and went, remaining only a few days
+before going on to the next engagement. Accustomed to the indeterminate
+visits of the South, she had not thought to set any definite time for
+her departure; but now she felt uncomfortably that the hour had come to
+bring things to a climax. She gave herself one more week at Longmeadow.
+Surely three weeks is a short enough time in which to provide oneself
+with a future and a husband!
+
+She was by no means counting without her host. From the day of her
+arrival Eduard had taken no pains to hide the fact that he considered
+her his especial property. While his manner was still that of one who
+would not willingly brush the bloom from off the peach, there had always
+been in it a disturbing hint, a slight flattering suggestion, that
+peaches are tempting even to the jaded appetite. Lately his air of
+possession had become, to Joan's amusement, decidedly tinged with
+jealousy. He viewed his more youthful rivals with no attempt at
+equanimity.
+
+Joan was aware that people were beginning to discuss the affair, and to
+watch her curiously. It put her on her mettle. She intended to satisfy
+their curiosity very shortly; but--she wished the thing might be managed
+without the necessity for so many tete-a-tetes.
+
+It was not that she did not like her future husband. On the contrary she
+liked him so well as to find herself a little shy with him. She
+preferred his attentions to take place against a background of society;
+as for instance, at a dance, when his eye could be as significant as it
+chose without alarming her; or at table, where under cover of the
+general conversation, they managed some moments of real intimacy.
+
+There was much to be said, thought Joan, for the French method of
+vigorously chaperoning young love up to the very threshold of matrimony.
+
+As it was, his foot seemed uncomfortably prone to rest on hers beneath
+the table; and once when he stooped to recover a dropped fan, his lips
+had brushed like a touch of delicate flame along the bare length of her
+forearm--But these indications of what was to come the startled girl was
+able to ignore as accidental. (She had decided, it will be recalled, to
+be if necessary a trifle Fast.)
+
+At last she steeled herself firmly to the necessity for tete-a-tetes,
+realizing that even so finished a performer as Mr. Desmond could not
+well manage a genuine proposal during the intricacies of the tango, or
+at dinner between the soup and the entree. There were certain
+accompaniments, she fancied, that made the idea of a proposal in public
+impracticable--Joan's imagination was frequently as useful to her as
+experience.
+
+She had managed to escape the perils of horseback riding by an inspired
+expedient. Duplicity, she found, came easily with practice.
+
+"Straddle a horse? Oh, honey, I couldn't!" she had murmured at her most
+Southern, when informed that there were no side-saddles in the
+Longmeadow stables.
+
+"Why," protested Betty, "there's not a side-saddle to be had this side
+of Kentucky, Jo--they're as extinct as the Dodo! And even if there were,
+papa would never allow one on any of our horses. You haven't your habit
+here, anyway. Do be sensible, dear. I'll let you ride the Rabbit!"
+
+Joan shook her head, regretfully but firmly. "If my father were to see a
+lady of his family straddling a horse, in trousers," she said, "I think
+he'd have a stroke!"--which was doubtless true.
+
+It was necessary, therefore, for Eduard's increasing desire for solitude
+to take the form of canoeing, or driving in the dog-cart without a
+groom; or preferably, strolling through a certain bit of near-by
+woodland.
+
+Here he liked to fling himself at his handsome length on the moss at
+Joan's feet, and read to her chosen bits out of the "Rubaiyat": a work
+much in favor at the moment, which would appear to have been translated
+by Mr. Fitzgerald for the express purpose of uttering Mr. Desmond's
+sentiments.
+
+Joan murmured "Um-m-m!" and "How true!" and "Exquisite!" in the right
+places; but she was not often listening to him. She was watching the
+play of light and shade on his fine, waving hair; she was studying more
+keenly than she knew the chiseled features, bearing those slight marks
+of manly dissipation which are for some reason never wholly displeasing
+to the young feminine eye; she was noticing the smallness of his hands,
+the really beautiful cut and quality of his clothes.
+
+What sort of person was he under the agreeable surface, this chosen
+husband of hers?
+
+An artist, people had called him: but Art in his case seemed not the
+exacting mistress she had fancied it. Or perhaps the artistic
+temperament required long periods of recuperative leisure.... She had
+decided that it was wiser not to fall in love, at least till after
+marriage: but she did choose that her husband should be the sort of
+person it was possible to fall in love with; well-bred, fastidious,
+cultivated, thoroughly a man of the world. All these Eduard Desmond was,
+and more. He had a real and unaffected taste for music, books,
+nature--for what Joan called to herself "the real things." It argued
+well for future companionship.
+
+There was, to be sure, the disability of what she thought of vaguely as
+his "habits." But there had been no sign of them in the two weeks she
+had lived in the same house with him; and even if he had not as yet
+completely overcome them, there was no reason why he should not do so
+later, with a watchful wife to help him. On the whole their chances for
+happiness together seemed quite as good as those of most people she
+knew, thought Joan, with unconscious cynicism.
+
+The material side of the arrangement did not occur to her. For all her
+calm calculations, Joan was not mercenary. All she asked was a place of
+her own in the world, a sense of permanence; she longed quite wistfully
+for a background that "stayed put." Romance was a thing she felt she
+could do without forever, in return for independence from her
+step-mother, and perhaps a little home of her own with a garden to it.
+She believed that to any man who would provide these few essentials she
+could be a faithful and a loyal wife.
+
+What would he expect of her in return? Would she have to go on all her
+life being Southern and winsome and alluring? Would he prefer her, after
+the honeymoon, say, to go in heavily for sports, like the women of his
+set? Or might she presently venture to be just herself again--just Joan,
+whatever that might be! The gayest of roles becomes a trifle wearing for
+everyday use.
+
+She sighed; and looking up from the Rubaiyat, he caught her eyes fixed
+upon him, wide and speculative.
+
+"What is the little girl thinking of?" he asked tenderly.
+
+She answered at once, with a return of her gay daring, "You--of course!"
+
+But under his intensifying gaze her own dropped, and he went on reading;
+in a voice that shook, however.
+
+"Now for it!" said Joan suddenly to herself. She dropped her hand
+negligently on the leaves, close to his.
+
+She resisted the temptation to jerk it back as soon as she was aware of
+its contact with another. Very slight the contact was, no more than the
+touch of a leaf. She pretended not to notice it; but the blood sang in
+her ears, her cheeks burned--she wished suddenly that he would take her
+hand, if he was going to; hold it tight....
+
+Heavens! What was happening to her? She _wanted_ the touch of his hand;
+she liked it! Did she care for him, then? Was this being in
+love--already?
+
+"Joan," he whispered. "Look at me!"
+
+The spell was broken. She jumped to her feet. "Come, we must be getting
+back," she said hurriedly. "It is late."
+
+"Ah, but how cold you are!"
+
+"Yes, I am, a little," she said innocently. "These woods are damp."
+
+But all the way home, beneath her relief, lingered a sense of annoyance,
+of disappointment.
+
+"What a prig I am," she thought disgustedly. "It would be all over now
+if I'd only--let him!"
+
+That night she wrote at unusual length to Mr. Nikolai. It was almost
+like writing to herself; and Joan frequently felt the need of seeing
+what she was about set down in black and white, for greater clarity.
+
+She had not meant to tell Mr. Nikolai of her imminent engagement till
+the thing was _fait accompli_; but she knew that everything would be
+settled by the time her letter reached him. She wanted to be reassured
+about her odd and unexpected emotion during the contact of her hand with
+Eduard Desmond's. Was it so, then, that people fell in love, just
+suddenly without any warning? And had the mind nothing to do with it
+whatever?
+
+For mentally she was not altogether pleased with herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The idea that Betty and her mother were eyeing her somewhat askance
+troubled Joan not a little. In her heart of hearts she preferred women
+to men, and believed their friendship more of a compliment. She would
+have liked to make a friend of Mrs. Desmond, had there been time,
+envying Betty's camaraderie with her mother; although Mrs. Desmond
+presented a golfing, bridge-playing, sporting type of motherhood quite
+new to her experience.
+
+There was a peculiar intimacy and freedom among all this group of
+people, who seemed to spend most of the year together either in
+Philadelphia or Aiken or Ormond or these long-established country-places
+surrounding the Longmeadow Hunt Club. It was like a curiously ramified
+family, in which husbands and wives seemed to have changed partners
+rather frequently, and were still in process of changing. It was Joan's
+first glimpse of a society in which married women hold the center of the
+stage rather than young girls, and she was just a little shocked by it.
+
+There appeared to be no age limit here. It was not so much that these
+women concealed their age, after the rather obvious fashion of Effie
+May, as that they simply ignored it. Even Mrs. Desmond, dignified and
+well-bred though she was, had a devoted attendant or two, spoken of
+casually by Betty as "mamma's flames," and during Joan's visit at least
+Mr. Desmond remained merely an abstraction. Conjugal affection was
+distinctly not the fashion in the Desmond circle.
+
+But this casualness of relations did not extend to the young girls. They
+had no such freedom as Joan was accustomed to in the South. Betty, at
+eighteen, was as carefully guarded as if she were still a child. She was
+not permitted to go into the city without a maid or an older woman; she
+neither drove or canoed alone with men, nor "sat out" with them at
+dances. And it did not occur to her to protest.
+
+"That sort of thing isn't good form," she explained once to Joan. "For
+us, at least--Of course with Southern girls it's different."
+
+But Joan began to suspect that even Southern girls were expected to hold
+in regard this one fetish they had elected to worship, Good Form; and
+that according to this standard she had already been condemned.
+
+At first the younger women had made some effort to include her in their
+various activities, golf, bridge, tennis. But latterly they had left her
+alone, not severely but tolerantly, as one dedicated to other pursuits.
+
+"Miss Darcy? Oh, she's from the South, you know--awfully busy with the
+men," she overheard one of them explain to a newcomer; and she had
+resented the remark keenly, not only for herself, but for the women of
+her adopted home, who at least are rarely "busy with the men" after
+marriage.
+
+The person who made this remark was a Mrs. Rossiter, a pretty, boyish
+creature, already divorced and remarried at thirty, and bearing her
+present conjugality rather lightly. She was on terms of great intimacy
+with the Desmond family, Eduard included; and Joan fancied that she
+might have been one of the "widows" mentioned by Betty as her uncle's
+chosen companions.
+
+But if it had been so, her day was done. Eduard had palpably no eyes for
+her now, and Joan could afford the generosity of admiring Mrs. Rossiter.
+She was so natural and frank, and so royally indifferent to others'
+opinion. Joan, who had a fatal propensity for acting as the people about
+her expected her to act, envied her this assurance, and wished that she
+could make friends with her.
+
+The truth was that the girl, despite her success, felt utterly lonely.
+She saw very little of Betty. Mrs. Desmond was an experienced hostess
+who made no attempt to regulate the comings and goings of her guests,
+and the girls made separate engagements. Even bedtime confidences had
+ceased, owing to the fact that when Joan came up to her room, Betty was
+usually asleep.
+
+But on the night of her illuminating afternoon in the woods with Eduard,
+Betty appeared to be waiting up for her. She came yawning into Joan's
+room to watch her friend undress, and established herself sleepily on
+the foot of the bed.
+
+"What a pity you can't wear your hair down all the time, Jo! Men adore
+hair, don't they? And yours has a regular patina on it, like old
+bronze."
+
+"Not greenish, I hope," laughed Joan.
+
+"No--sort of orangish. Dark, with an orange lining."
+
+"Betty! It sounds horrible!"
+
+"Well, you know very well it isn't.--May Rossiter thinks you are awfully
+clever to wear it that simple way, too, so straight and plain, when the
+rest of us stick out like mops. She says you're awfully clever about
+lots of things--too smart for the likes of us."
+
+"Does she?" Joan was a little startled and not quite pleased. She had
+not intended to give the impression of cleverness. It was out of her
+present role entirely. "I wonder what Mrs. Rossiter meant by that?"
+
+"Oh, men, of course," yawned Betty. "You see you've annexed a few of
+hers, which naturally makes her peevish."
+
+"Have I?" murmured Joan. "Who, for instance?"
+
+"Well, Uncle Neddy, for one."
+
+"Oh! So she _was_ one of his flames, then?"
+
+Betty sat up. "You mean to say you didn't know it? One of them! _The_
+one, my child! Surely you remember about his broken heart?--the married
+lady he was recovering from in Washington last year? Well, May's it. Of
+course I'm not supposed to know, being an _ingenue_--but our Neddy was
+frightfully gone on her, and she returned it, and the husband she had
+then got jealous (rather a bounder he was, not one of us, you know), and
+there was some sort of excitement, and she divorced him. Every one
+thought to marry Uncle Ned, of course. But instead she upped and married
+Mr. Rossiter! Joke on Neddy, wasn't it?"
+
+Joan's lip curled. "What a romantic love story! Why do you suppose she
+married that old Mr. Rossiter?"
+
+Betty shrugged in a worldly-wise manner. "Awfully rich, my dear. And
+Neddy isn't."
+
+"But they seem friendly enough still, she and Mr. Desmond?"
+
+"Oh, of course. Why not? It would be frightfully uncomfortable for the
+rest of us if they glowered and didn't speak and all that, like
+quarreling servants. And Uncle Neddy seems to be consoling himself!" She
+twinkled at Joan. "That evens things up, you see. But,"--she suddenly
+grew grave--"what do _you_ get out of all this, Joan? You couldn't
+possibly _like_ seeing so much of Uncle Neddy! He's such a--softy. And
+such a bore, too, with his art and poetry and stuff."
+
+"You mean," smiled Joan, "he's too mature for you, dear."
+
+"Too mature for you then, too! You're only a few months older."
+
+The other gave an unconscious sigh. "Oh, me--I'm different."
+
+Betty rounded upon her, "You certainly are! I've never seen such a
+change in any one as a few months have made in you! Sometimes I hardly
+recognize you for the Jo I used to know at school--so funny and larky,
+and yet paying no more attention to the boys we used to make eyes at
+over at the College than if they didn't exist."
+
+"College boys _don't_ exist," said Joan gravely. "They're like tadpoles,
+just a transition state. And rather disgusting."
+
+"Not half as disgusting as the Uncle Neds! Look here, Joan," Betty
+blurted out, "you're not--wanting to get married, are you?"
+
+Joan went as pale as the other was flushed. "No," she said in a low
+voice, "I'm not!"
+
+Betty heaved a sigh of relief. "There! That's what I told 'em." (She did
+not mention whom.) "The Ritters' guest was different. She _had_ to get
+married, because she'd been visiting 'round for years, and people were
+getting tired of it, and she couldn't pay for her clothes. But you, at
+your age, with all the beaux you must have! Why, you wouldn't touch
+Uncle Neddy with a ten-foot pole."
+
+Joan bit her lip. "Why not, Betty?" she asked, quietly. "What's wrong
+with your uncle? You mean--because he drinks?"
+
+Betty looked uncomfortable. She was more of an _ingenue_ than she
+thought, and found herself getting into deep water.
+
+"I don't know exactly," she confessed, "but there's _something_ wrong
+with him. I don't think he drinks; not more than everybody does, anyway.
+He's too fastidious--and I'd have noticed if he did. But there are other
+ways of being dissipated--aren't there?"
+
+"I see!" said Joan, wisely; though she saw with some vagueness. Chorus
+girls, she fancied, models, the artistic temperament, and all that....
+On the whole, she felt rather relieved.
+
+"That sort of thing ought to be easier to cure than drinking," she mused
+aloud, "if a man were happily married."
+
+"_If!_" repeated Betty. "The question is, could it be done? Well, thank
+Heaven, _we_ don't have to do it, anyway. I'd hate the job of keeper to
+Uncle Ned's roving eye!... Ugh, let's not talk about it! Years before
+you and I have to think of horrid things like marriage--Good night, you
+bad old flirt," she murmured, kissing her friend.
+
+Joan was left with the subtle impression of having been warned.
+
+The impression was repeated the next morning when Mrs. Desmond, meeting
+her on the stairs, remarked with a friendly pat of the arm in passing,
+"I do wish you'd teach Betty something of the fine art of keeping them
+guessing, Joan, It's quite wonderful the way you play them all off
+against each other, and so good for them--particularly Ned! He's rather
+spoiled, I'm afraid--used to monopolizing his favorites...."
+
+Evidently the Desmonds did not intend to take her affair with Eduard
+seriously. For the first time it occurred to her that this might be
+because they did not wish to. She was certainly not, to use Betty's
+significant phrase, "one of them."
+
+The girl's head lifted haughtily. She was a Darcy of Kentucky. Surely
+that was sufficient?
+
+Once in her childhood she had heard her father remark in a moment of
+especial grandiloquence that Darcys were entitled to the society of
+kings and queens; and Joan had never doubted the truth of the statement.
+Something within assured her that she would feel perfectly at ease with
+any kings or queens who chanced to cross her path. In fact the only
+people with whom so far she had not felt at ease were snobs and
+parvenues, under neither of which categories the Desmonds could be
+placed.
+
+Now she wondered suddenly to what she and her father owed this
+comfortable sense of lofty destiny. True, theirs was "an old Southern
+family"; but living in a part of the world that seems entirely populated
+by such families, this was no distinction. Darcys, she knew, had fought
+and died for their country whenever occasion offered, but so had quite
+simple people named Smith or Jones. She racked her brain to think of
+anything else they might have done for their country, or even for
+themselves. Genius had never made its appearance among them, nor wealth,
+nor even beauty, to any noticeable extent. They were rich in one thing
+only: self-esteem.
+
+Fortunately, however, Joan had her share of that; and upon further
+reflection she decided that "Darcy" was at least as distinguished a name
+as "Desmond." Doubtless their ancestors had been kings in Ireland
+together.
+
+The question of her poverty occurred to her for a moment, only to be
+dismissed as negligible. The Desmonds were too well-bred to be
+mercenary. Eduard was not rich himself; and if, as Betty intimated, his
+reputation was a trifle tarnished, he could not be too exacting in his
+demands. He could not expect youth, and charm, and wit, and a dowry as
+well! thought Joan complacently. No: Eduard would be getting quite as
+much as he gave....
+
+It was in rather a defiant mood that she appeared at dinner that night
+in a blue chiffon frock which the observant Eduard had pronounced his
+favorite; and though some people were expected afterwards for dancing,
+she deliberately accepted his murmured suggestion that they row up the
+river to see the last of the harvest moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+There had naturally been some discussion at the Convent as to the most
+desirable setting for proposals, the consensus of opinion being in favor
+of Miss Alcott's little water-scene between Amy and the faithless
+Laurie. Laurie, the reader will remember, is rowing Amy about in the
+romantic region of Chillon (still with regretful memories of Jo hovering
+in the background, however), when she catches him eyeing her with an
+expression which
+
+     "makes her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying
+     something:
+
+     "'You must be tired; rest a little and let me row,' etc.
+
+     "'I'm not tired, but you may take an oar if you like,' etc.
+
+     "Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the
+     offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face" (Joan
+     personally suspected that Amy belonged also to the order of the
+     Brazen Hussies) "and accepted an oar.
+
+     "'How well we pull together, don't we?' said Amy, who objected
+     to silence just then.
+
+     "'So well that I wish we might always pull together in the same
+     boat. Will you, Amy?' very tenderly.
+
+     "'Yes, Laurie,' very low.
+
+     "Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a
+     pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the
+     dissolving views reflected in the lake."
+
+This classic scene was not absent from Joan's mind as she seated herself
+and her blue chiffon recklessly in the prow of Eduard's canoe; though
+the details of stage-management troubled her somewhat. Suppose the
+proposer chose to kneel at the feet of the proposee--since there was no
+seat to share with her? And suppose the proposer lost his head (as might
+properly be expected of him) and embraced the proposee madly--what was
+to prevent so precarious a thing as a canoe from tipping over! It seemed
+to call for great presence of mind on the part of the proposee. Joan
+felt rather nervous.
+
+Mr. Desmond, however, let the opportunity pass. Perhaps he had not read
+"Little Women."
+
+Amid talk so casual that it might as well have been silence, they
+slipped along between the wide gray of earth and sky, afloat on a stream
+of silver. They came presently to an overhanging willow, where he tied
+the boat, and helped Joan ashore. He led her, with an air of one
+performing a ceremony, up a slight rise of land topped by a great
+beech-tree, whose widespread roots made a sort of armchair, after the
+hospitable fashion of beech-trees.
+
+"Queen Joan on her throne, viewing her domain," he murmured.
+
+He had not brought her to this place before, and she realized that he
+had been saving it for a special occasion. There was a view before her
+of shadowy, dreaming country, with a hint of stars to come, and
+sheep-bells tinkling in a distant field, and lights gleaming here and
+there from half-hidden houses.
+
+Eduard began to murmur softly:
+
+    "When the quiet-colored end of evening smiles,
+      Miles on miles
+    O'er our many-tinkling meadows where the sheep
+      Half asleep,
+    Wander homeward through the twilight, browse and crop
+      As they stop--"
+
+A sudden impatience seized Joan. How like him to arrange this setting,
+to bring things carefully to a climax, and then--to spout Browning at
+her!
+
+But she said, as he paused, "Beautiful! 'Love among the Ruins,' isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes--And I," he sighed, tapping himself on the chest, "I am the Ruins!"
+
+Despite the bombast of his tone, there was something in his sigh that
+struck her as genuine.
+
+She said consolingly, "At least you're a well-preserved ruin, very
+popular with tourists.... I wonder what makes you feel so particularly
+ruinous to-night?"
+
+"The fact that you're so damnably young," he muttered.
+
+She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those
+persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will
+disappear in time."
+
+"Exactly! And before you know it, my dear.
+
+     "'The nightingale that in the branches sang--ah, whence and
+     whither flown again, who knows!'
+
+"You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be
+back there, playing with the little boys and girls."
+
+"But if the boys and girls bore me--?"
+
+"Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with--?"
+
+Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to
+make other people--jealous."
+
+"You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her.
+
+"'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a
+moment, "or very natural, either--as my sister-in-law was very good to
+point out to me only this morning!"
+
+Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a passive but an
+active interest in her affairs!
+
+"Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like
+Betty. I know exactly what I am doing."
+
+He leaned toward her. "Do you? Do you, I wonder? Joan! Look at me! _Do_
+you know what you are doing--to me?"
+
+The darkness left only the white outline of their faces visible to each
+other. He struck a match, in order to see her better.
+
+For a moment she tried to meet his eyes. They frightened her even while
+they drew her. The blood began to sing in her ears, as it had when he
+touched her hand. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold
+her--and at the same time she wanted to run away and hide. Their long
+gaze seemed to let down some barrier within her, to loosen curious
+impulses.... Why did he not take her, and have done with it?
+
+"No," he muttered, as if she had spoken, "Come!"
+
+Her body made a helpless movement toward him....
+
+Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it.
+
+"I--I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a
+little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she
+wanted to get this queerly painful scene over.
+
+But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring.
+It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels
+which glittered in the dusk.
+
+"Oh!--oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never
+given her anything as splendid as this.
+
+"May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly.
+
+She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and
+pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner
+arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never
+have done.
+
+She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she
+had pictured it.
+
+"Wh--what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when
+I've got a perfectly good mouth!"
+
+After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....
+
+A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when
+the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly
+for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck
+of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She
+felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does
+not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices
+honor the event.
+
+The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back
+down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. For once Eduard found
+no poetry to suit the occasion. Joan, busy with her tumbled hair, hoped
+and even prayed that she might be able to slip into her room unobserved.
+She hurried nervously out of the dark boathouse, despite entreaties to
+wait, and was half way to the house before he caught up with her.
+
+"Oh, hurry!" she whispered. "They've all gone--every light in the house
+is out! It must be after midnight. Ned, what if they've locked the
+door?"
+
+"They haven't. My sister knows we're still out--trust her for that!"
+
+"But suppose she's waiting up for us?--Oh, Ned, whatever shall I say?"
+
+"You might tell her, Beautiful," he teased, "that I've had you up under
+the beech-tree, kissing roses into your cheeks and stars into your
+eyes!--though I think any one who saw you just now might suspect that
+without being told."
+
+She turned suddenly and clung to him. Something of Joan's independence
+had already slipped away from her, now that she had some one to cling
+to. "Ned, she doesn't like me! How am I ever going to win her over?"
+
+"Kiss her," he suggested promptly. "Kiss her as you've been kissing me.
+It couldn't fail!"
+
+"Don't tease!" She lifted serious, wide eyes to his, and he saw that
+they were wet. "Don't you know that I shall never, never in all my life,
+kiss anybody else as I have kissed you?"
+
+Touched, he drew her closer. She looked just then singularly childish
+and confiding. "Dear little girl, that thought herself so grown-up!" he
+whispered, his cheek on her tumbled hair.
+
+When she stirred in his arms he still held her. "What's the use of
+hurrying now, Beautiful? The fat's in the fire--and who knows when we
+shall have another night like this, all to ourselves?"
+
+But she would not stay. She felt, obscurely, that they had been engaged
+enough for one evening.
+
+She found herself at last safe in her room--'safe' was the word in her
+mind--sitting on the edge of her bed, staring down at her ruined finery
+with eyes which did not see it. Her knees felt queerly weak under her,
+her lips were bruised, her cheeks and throat and arms burned still with
+remembered kisses--She said to herself, like the old woman with a shorn
+petticoat, "Can this be I?"
+
+What had become of her powers of observation, her cool intelligence, her
+impersonal decision that it was wiser not to love the man you marry lest
+he be given power to hurt you? There was nothing impersonal left in her
+feeling for Eduard Desmond! The change had come as suddenly as a summer
+thunderstorm. At one moment she was waiting, nervous, a little afraid,
+for the event that she had brought to pass. The next, he and she seemed
+to have been thrown into a sort of vortex, where they clung to each
+other madly, desperately, as if to escape destruction. And she had been
+quite as frantic about it as the man....
+
+She thought, dazedly, that there was a good deal she would be able to
+tell the girls at the Convent now on the subject of proposals--yes, and
+Miss Louisa M. Alcott, too! Except that school-girls and literary old
+maids were not exactly the people with whom one would discuss such
+phenomena--
+
+They had fancied, she and Betty and the rest, that some sort of formula
+was necessary to the occasion, a definite question asked and answered, a
+more or less formal, "Will you, Amy?" and "Yes, Laurie." Foolish
+innocents! She and Ned had not exchanged a sensible word from the moment
+they found themselves in each other's arms. Yet the understanding
+between them was unmistakable. They were completely engaged--almost,
+Joan thought with a shiver, as good as married!
+
+This, then, was love. A very different thing from what she had expected!
+A beautiful, rather terrible thing.... The touch of Puritan in the girl
+made her wonder whether anything so beautiful and terrible could be
+quite nice.
+
+She slipped to her knees; not to pray, but simply to remember her
+mother. The vision of her mother always came better when she was on her
+knees--perhaps because of the old-time association of prayers with
+bedtime--and Joan felt a desperate need of her just then. She wanted to
+be assured that her mother understood, and had been through it all
+herself, and had come out of it--just her mother. She held out her
+jeweled bracelet childishly in the dark, as if for somebody to see. She
+knelt there tense, every nerve and fibre straining, whispering under her
+breath, "Mamma, are you here? Do you know?"
+
+But the vision failed her. She had instead the warmth of a man's breath
+on her closed eyes, the roughness of his cheek on her throat....
+
+She dropped her head in her arms and began to sob. She was very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was well into the middle of a fine blue and gold morning when Joan
+awoke, to find her coffee cold on the tray beside her bed. She had slept
+through even the entrance of the maid who called her; she who had
+expected not to sleep at all! An engaged girl, with her lover
+waiting--in the garden, perhaps, or down beside the river--their river!
+
+The happiness of the night before came to her with a rush, and with it
+an enormous sense of relief. The thing was done, accomplished!
+
+She ran to the window and peeped out eagerly, hoping he might be
+watching her window. But only the old gardener was in sight, pottering
+about among the roses. She blew a kiss from her finger-tips--whether to
+the gardener, the roses, or the sparkling water beyond she did not
+know--and began hurriedly to dress.
+
+Singing under her breath, she tripped down the stairs. The big, sunny
+house was very still. Joan, going from room to room, gazed about her
+appreciatively. Hitherto the house, the garden, the wide, pleasant
+countryside had all served merely as a background, of which she was
+vaguely aware as actors are of a suitable setting for the play they
+produce. Now she felt that she really had leisure to enjoy her
+surroundings, which were usually very important to Joan.
+
+She paused to examine a hunting-print, lingered over a fine etching,
+patted affectionately the soft, gay chintzes of the morning-room. What a
+relief after such an artificial house as her step-mother's! Nothing here
+in the least pretentious, no striving after periods, or artistry, or
+even originality, but everything good, well-chosen, used: luxury in
+abeyance to comfort; everywhere evidence of travel and culture, and the
+long habit of these things.
+
+Joan drew a breath of satisfaction. Just such a home she hoped to make
+for Eduard, though on a smaller scale, perhaps, and with the addition of
+a little beauty; since it takes more than wealth to provide that.
+
+She thought to find him in the billiard-room, or perhaps in a certain
+little vine-hung balcony where they sometimes met. But both were empty.
+
+"Where's everybody this fine morning, Molly!" she asked a housemaid she
+met in the hall.
+
+"Gone over to play golf, like as usual, Miss--'cep'n Mr. Eduard," added
+Molly, (the pantry having eyes of its own). "He took the first train to
+town--no'm, I guess it was the second train. Anyway it was real early
+for Mr. Eduard to be up."
+
+"Oh," said Joan, blankly.
+
+Then it occurred to her why he might have felt the sudden need of
+running into town. Bracelets are all very well in their way, but they
+are, after all, noncommittal. She glanced down at her ringless hands,
+and laughed.
+
+The maid smiled, too, as if in sympathy. "That's an awful pretty
+bracelet you got on, miss," she was emboldened to say.
+
+"I like it myself, Molly," she confessed, holding it off at arm's length
+the better to admire it.
+
+She wondered how long it took to get into Philadelphia and back, if one
+were in a hurry....
+
+Presently some of the golfers came in, ravenous for luncheon. In a
+sudden accession of shyness, Joan hid her bracelet in her pocket. She
+surprised them by offering to go back with them later to the golf-links.
+
+"Perhaps I'll catch a golf-germ," she explained.
+
+"What, no engagement for this afternoon? Where's our Eduard?" murmured
+Mrs. Rossiter, who was one of the party.
+
+But Joan had learned long since to meet impertinence with a noncommittal
+smile.
+
+After an hour or so of polite attention to the game, however, her
+interest flagged. She knew that when Eduard got home he would come to
+look for her, and she had a sudden dread of their first meeting before
+others, under the observant eyes of May Rossiter in particular. She made
+an excuse of letters to write, and walked back through their favorite
+woodland, on the chance of his meeting her there. Eduard had rather an
+instinct for that sort of thing.
+
+But when she reached Longmeadow, there was no sign of him. Nor did he
+appear that night at dinner. No comment whatever was made upon his
+absence.
+
+Joan became uneasy. Surely it was very strange that he should leave her
+for so long a time just now, without explanation!
+
+An explanation offered itself that drove the blood out of her
+cheeks--His habits! What did Betty know about them? Men who drink do not
+always choose the bosom of the family in which to indulge their
+weakness. In the reaction of emotion upon an artistic temperament,
+anything might be happening!
+
+The thought roused in Joan one of her finest traits: an immediate
+response to any call upon her protection. That he had so soon failed her
+was no reason for her to fail him. She must try to understand, and
+wait....
+
+People dropped in after dinner, among them as usual Mrs. Rossiter; and
+Joan, chatting rather abstractedly with one of her admirers in a corner
+of the porch, caught fragments of conversation from the room within,
+between Mrs. Rossiter and her hostess.
+
+"So Ned's torn himself away at last?"
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven! The Arnolds have postponed their cruise three times,
+waiting for him. Why people put up with his shilly-shallying, I'm sure I
+don't know!"
+
+"Oh, Ned has his uses. They say Fanny Arnold.... But what do you suppose
+the Darcy girl...."
+
+Their voices dropped lower, and Joan heard no more....
+
+She felt for the moment absolutely numb. She was like a person who has
+been shot, without having time to ascertain where. All the pride in her
+gathered to meet this blow without flinching. People must not
+suspect--they must not suspect.
+
+She went on chatting, laughing, jesting.... He had gone away for good!
+Without a word to her, he had gone away. He had known last night that he
+was going, and that he would not come back. She, Joan Darcy, had been
+jilted. She, too proud to live on a stranger's bounty, had offered
+herself, unasked, to a man who did not want her!...
+
+Somebody begged her to sing, and brought a guitar. Hers was a slight
+voice, uncultivated, but with something about it, as about Joan, that
+attracted attention. People listened to her. She had that curious
+_elan_, that sense of being borne on some outside power, that comes to
+certain natures from the response of an audience.
+
+Joan touched heights that evening. To some brains, suffering is an
+incomparable stimulant. Even Betty, with the remembrance of certain wild
+orgies at school, when quiet Joan Darcy had amazed nuns and girls alike
+by a sudden transfiguration, had never gaged to the full her friend's
+possibilities. She sang for them daringly whatever came into her head,
+negro catches, rollicking Irish lilts, wicked little songs of the
+streets and alleys. Under Betty's urgings, she exhibited a talent for
+mimicry which had occasionally reduced the good Sisters almost to
+apoplexy.
+
+She showed them her father during a political campaign, addressing his
+constituency under the handicap of a cold in the head. One could see the
+Major's urbane periods, his mellifluous hand, his tossing topknot--She
+showed them the Mother Superior, called in to quell a dormitory riot,
+endeavoring while dodging pillows to maintain proper religious
+"detachment from place." As an encore she gave them Eduard Desmond,
+conducting a sunset _a deux_, with assistance from the poets--a bit of
+recklessness that brought shouts of joy from the audience, and produced
+in Mrs. Rossiter's mocking eye something like respect.
+
+"Joie, how _dared_ you!" cried Betty, breathless with laughter, as she
+went upstairs with her arm about her friend. "It was Uncle Neddy to his
+very hands; that way he has of touching people inadvertently, as if it
+were quite by accident. You ought to have seen May Rossiter's face!"
+
+"I did," said Joan grimly.--Something of the sustaining force had begun
+to leave her, and all she asked of life for the moment was to be left
+alone.
+
+But Betty was too delighted with her friend's triumph to be easily
+quenched. "It was like old times!" she cried. "Dear old times at school,
+when there weren't any men about to spoil things, and the nuns let go
+and had a good time like anybody!... Nobody here'll ever think of you
+again as just a flirt and a man-grabber! Why, do you know what that man
+who came in with Mrs. Jameson said? (He's a clever person, a professor
+or something.) He said to Mother, 'Mrs. Desmond, that girl's got a touch
+of genius!'"
+
+"Genius for what--making believe? Much good it does me," said Joan
+bitterly.... Would the other never go?
+
+Betty hugged her. "And to think we were afraid you'd take Uncle Neddy
+seriously! Oh, if he could only have seen you!--Jo, _I_ know why you
+were in such wild spirits to-night. I'm not going to ask any questions,
+because Mother made me promise not to. But you can't deny there is a
+sort of coincidence between the fact that you spent the evening up the
+river with him, and that to-day he's gone!--now can you?"
+
+"No," said Joan, "I can't deny that there's--a sort of coincidence."
+
+"Good-by forever! Good-by-yi-yi forever,'" warbled Betty after Tosti,
+somewhat infected by her friend's recent performances. "Fancy the
+Irresistible coming another cropper, and at the hands of a mere infant
+like you! I suppose I ought to be sorry for him, but I'm not. It'll
+teach him to keep his hands off _my_ friends, anyway!" she exclaimed
+vindictively.
+
+"I gather," murmured Joan with a pale smile, "that you did not
+altogether fancy me as an aunt?"
+
+"Rather not! I prefer you 'as is.' Plenty of aunts in the world, and not
+so many Joans."
+
+She went at last, leaving the heroine of the evening to a sleepless
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Morning did not bring the word from Eduard Desmond that Joan told
+herself must surely come; the explanation, the excuse, no matter how
+bald, which she might go through the form of accepting. Nor did the day
+following bring any message.
+
+On the third day, however, came a basket of candy, a superlative affair
+of blue straw, tied with wide blue ribbons and quite realistic
+forget-me-nots. Within was the expected communication:
+
+     I never say the ugly word "good-by," if I can help it,
+     Beautiful. Better to keep intact the memory of our last evening
+     together.
+
+     From my heart I thank you for what you have given me. Such
+     experiences do not come twice in a lifetime.--I have learned.
+
+     And you, sweetest of them all, what have you learned? At least
+     to remember me, I hope! EDUARD.
+
+Joan read this over and over, incredulously--The cruelty of it, the
+sheer, epicurean viciousness, appalled her. She said to herself, like
+the man in Hedda Gabler, "But people don't do such things!"
+
+Evidently they did, and escaped unscathed. She clenched her hands
+helplessly. Oh, to be able to tell her father! A rush of primitive
+feeling came over her, almost of blood-lust. She wanted vengeance on the
+man who had surfeited himself with her innocence, her youth, it seemed
+to poor Joan her very soul--and had made amends by sending her a box of
+candy! The candy seemed somehow a worse insult than the jewel he had
+given her. It mocked her with its triviality. Bon-bons in return
+for--what?
+
+With a groan she swept the offering off the table on to the floor; and
+treading confections underfoot at every step, she fled across her room
+to the shelter of her bed, where she flung herself face downward.
+
+WHY? WHY? was the despairing cry of her spirit. How had he dared to
+treat her so lightly? What had she done?
+
+The answer was not far to seek. With a shudder she remembered her
+careful study of the role she had chosen to play, her considered
+coquetries and sophistications, even her dressing, the display of silken
+ankles, of bared arm, her modest decolletage--all weapons she had
+employed not quite in ignorance. Precocious instinct and the comments of
+her step-mother had taught her much. She had deliberately, and for her
+own ends, joined the order of the Brazen Hussies--With this result!
+
+Joan faced her lesson squarely. But she felt sick, degraded, literally
+soiled. This was the sort of thing that happened to girls who "fell."
+
+She had, for all her reading, a quite hazy idea of what "falling" meant.
+For a frantic moment (it must be remembered that Joan's education had
+been conducted by religious ladies who paste decent tissue-paper skirts
+over offending illustrations in the physiology books)--she struggled
+with a nightmare horror that she had perhaps "fallen" herself, that such
+a degradation of the spirit might even have physical results....
+
+"No, no, _no_!" gasped Joan, "not when I hate him so! It's impossible!"
+
+For if, according to a rather touching convent theory, it is love alone
+which calls children into being, surely hate must have the opposite
+effect?
+
+Joan had not pursued this line of mental research to her usual lengths.
+Certain things, it appeared, such as miracles and the power of prayer
+and all phenomena embraced under the generic title of Love, were better
+taken entirely on trust.
+
+With ashen cheeks and a heart thumping with terror, Joan put her hands
+over her ears to shut out the sound of her own thoughts. It was the
+first time in her life she had come face to face with the meaning of the
+word "fear." And that the fear was childish, made it none the less real.
+Nineteen, not ninety, is the age of tragedy. There are few suicides
+among the old....
+
+She did not hear a rap twice repeated, nor the opening of the door.
+Somebody peeped in, saw the sobbing figure on the bed, the scattered
+bon-bons, the crumpled note on the floor. Then came a louder knock.
+
+Joan sat up, and cried in a panic, "Don't come in!"
+
+But Mrs. Rossiter chose to misunderstand her. "Did you say come in?" she
+inquired cheerfully. "I hope so, because nobody else seems to be at
+home, and I'm pining for company."
+
+She paused as Joan sank back in despair, hiding her ravaged face in her
+handkerchief.
+
+"What's the matter, dear? Headache?" she questioned kindly, adding with
+a glance at the overturned basket, "Too much candy, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes," gulped Joan, fighting for self-control "Too much candy!"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter selected a _marron_ from the floor with care, wiped it
+daintily, and began to eat. "This looks," she said, "like one of Ned
+Desmond's offerings. He's such an artist about everything! Who but he
+would have thought of selecting a basket to match your eyes?"
+
+Joan lay still, and hated her. She thought of several biting remarks she
+might make to this woman who had come to gloat over her; but
+unfortunately she could not yet trust her voice to utter them.
+
+"So you sent him away after all?" continued the voice smilingly, "Led
+him on, and made a fool out of our poor dear Ned, and then sent him
+about his business? Naughty Joan!"
+
+Something impelled the girl to utter frankness. She was done with
+acting. "I didn't, and you know I didn't," she gulped. "I accepted him.
+I was engaged to him!"
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+"Yes!--and then the next day he was gone."
+
+"Stole away," murmured Mrs. Rossiter amusedly. "That was rather crude of
+Eduard. He doesn't usually run to such lengths.... You mean he actually
+in so many words invited you to _marry_ him?"
+
+Joan covered her eyes again. "I suppose not," she said in a small,
+miserable voice. "No, he didn't. But he--he kissed me as if we were
+engaged, and I kissed him back!"
+
+"Oh," murmured the other. "You find engaged kisses so very different,
+then, from the other kind?"
+
+Joan cried indignantly, "I don't know anything about the other kind!
+I've never kissed a man before in my life."
+
+"No? 'More kissed against than kissing,' perhaps?"
+
+The girl lifted her chin as haughtily as it is possible to lift a chin
+that is quivering with held-in sobs. "I have never been kissed
+either--except on the hand or the ear or something, which doesn't
+count."
+
+"No, that hardly counts," agreed her inquisitor, looking at the girl
+quite curiously. "See here," she asked in another tone, "how old are
+you, Miss Darcy?"
+
+"Nineteen."
+
+"Hmmn! Younger than I thought. Still, a Southern girl--"
+
+"Can be just as decent as any other kind!" cried angry Joan. "Anyway,
+I'm only part a Southern girl. But I know! Lots of them are just as nice
+about such things as Betty, for instance."
+
+"Nice, of course," agreed Mrs. Rossiter. "And tremendously attractive.
+But just for that reason a little more--well, experienced, don't you
+think? We get our experience later, perhaps.... And you seemed
+particularly well-seasoned, able to take care of yourself, playing them
+off against each other like a little veteran. I've told Jane Desmond so
+more than once. She wanted to warn you--but I told her you knew the
+ropes."
+
+"I didn't," said Joan tremulously, "Warn me of what?"
+
+"Why, of Ned. She was afraid you might really land him. The wariest of
+fish takes the hook at last!"
+
+Joan winced at the remark, but she was too busy getting to the bottom of
+things to resent it.
+
+"Why did she object to my marrying him?"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter stared. "Good Lord! Well, because she's got a girl of her
+own, for one thing. Because she's married to a Desmond herself, for
+another. She knows the breed, poor Jane!"
+
+Light was breaking on Joan. "You mean--she objected for _my_ sake?"
+
+"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as
+a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to
+have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to
+marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!--No, no, Jane's not that
+sort."
+
+"Oh," said Joan faintly. She began to realize that instead of
+antagonism, it had been friendliness that watched her, motherly, anxious
+kindness, which she had been too blind to understand.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Rossiter," she cried tremulously, "I've been horrid!"
+
+"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect--men are. Votes for
+Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me,
+you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not
+altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He
+usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married
+women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or--well, the professional
+charmer."
+
+"Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!"
+
+"So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you
+know, dilettantes, non-eligibles--the bane of all good chaperones.
+'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of
+it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know
+the exact moment when one has attained the maximum--and to stop there'!
+Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan
+did not join her.
+
+After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had
+been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling her _marron_. She
+walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her
+voice had become rather shy.
+
+"Joan," she asked, "did you--care, my dear?"
+
+The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered.
+"How does one know?--I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I
+didn't want him at all, and sometimes--I did.--And now I wish my father
+would _kill_ him!"
+
+The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the
+worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have
+wanted--to kill my father."
+
+Joan forgot herself in sheer astonishment. "You!" she cried. "But I
+thought it was you who declined to marry him, even after you'd got a
+divorce to do it?"
+
+Mrs. Rossiter smiled queerly.
+
+"Did Ned tell you that?"
+
+Joan, much embarrassed, explained the Convent impression of Mr. Desmond
+and his broken heart.
+
+The other laughed. "So that's the idea he has allowed to get abroad?
+Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman--and I suppose it does put him
+in a better light, too--But unfortunately the facts of the case are
+otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him--not that he suggested it,
+oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the
+honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me--So I took up my
+residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable,
+Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting."
+
+"And then?--" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind
+the scenes.
+
+"That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany,
+painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter.
+One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!"
+
+"Don't laugh," said Joan hoarsely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped
+the other's. "Oh, how can you bear to _speak_ to him?"
+
+May Rossiter shrugged. "You don't suppose it lasts, you funny innocent?
+Besides, though he did cost me a few illusions and some suffering and a
+reputation (what's a reputation among friends?), I owe Ned Desmond one
+very good turn. Jim Rossiter's the best husband of my acquaintance."
+
+She leaned over swiftly and kissed Joan on the cheek.
+
+"So you see you're not the only silly little simpleton who learns her
+ropes by tripping on them. Makes you feel better, doesn't it? Of course!
+That's why I told you.... Look here, what's the use of wasting all this
+perfectly good candy? Jane's floors are above suspicion. Let's pick it
+up and take it downstairs and make a Roman holiday, shall we?"
+
+Between them, with some laughter and a very real sense of comradeship,
+they restored Eduard's peace-offering to its basket. Then Joan
+remembered her bracelet.
+
+"What shall I do with it?" she asked, aghast. "If I return it now, it
+will look--offended, as if I had taken him seriously!"
+
+"Which would never do," Mrs. Rossiter was quick to agree. She examined
+the bracelet with interest. "Sapphires, emeralds, nice little
+diamonds--dear, dear! And a Chartier setting. Ned must have had it
+rather badly. He never gave _me_ anything so compromising! Keep it, of
+course," she advised cynically. "It's a nice bit of jewelry, and you may
+as well have something decent for a souvenir."
+
+But Joan's hardihood was not equal to that.
+
+"Well, then"--the other's eye sparkled with sudden malice--"why not give
+it to me for a parting present! Splendid! Fancy his expression when he
+recognizes his _gage d'amour_ glittering on my wrist, of all wrists in
+the world! And, believe me, he shall recognize it--What ho! Votes for
+Women!"
+
+She laughed until she cried.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Joan said good-by to Longmeadow some days later--not so soon as to
+give her departure the appearance of flight--she left trailing clouds of
+glory. The rumor had got about, thanks perhaps to Mrs. Rossiter, that
+the redoubtable Eduard had met his Waterloo at the hands of the Kentucky
+girl, which seemed not to detract from her popularity among Eduard's
+friends, male or female. She became quite legendary in the countryside.
+
+Betty, fully restored to her earlier allegiance, parted from her with
+tears, and Mrs. Desmond made her promise to visit them soon again.
+
+But it was a promise Joan knew she would not have the courage to keep.
+And when she had waved her last gay farewell, and thrown her last kiss
+impartially out of the window to the group who had come into town to see
+her off, she settled back in the train which had brought her with such
+high hopes to her first failure, and said aloud, "Thank goodness that's
+over!"
+
+"Pardon _me_--did you speak?" murmured a young man in the seat in front
+of her, turning round with a start; a wide-eared young man whom Joan
+recognized.
+
+"Goodness!" she said in some dismay. "You seem to dog my footsteps, Mr.
+Blair. There's no escaping you!"
+
+"Looks that way, don't it?" he grinned apologetically. "I've been in
+Philadelphia on a big order--Landed it, too!" he added in irrepressible
+triumph.
+
+"Which is more than I did," sighed Joan; and guessing from her
+expression that a jest was intended, Mr. Blair laughed long and loudly.
+He was always very keen on the scent of a jest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+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 Debut 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, take _hold_ of 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, "Pardon _me_!"
+
+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 to _embonpoint_ had 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 debut 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 debutante 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 to _meet_ girls 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 Joan _sotto voce_ as 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, debutant?" 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 protege. 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 are _you_ doing
+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 see _what_ you 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 be _my_
+private 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. Pardon _me_!"
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+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's _your_ eary 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 protege.
+
+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 decolletage, 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 debutantes 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 little _distrait_, 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."
+
+"But _you_ don'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 the _contretemps_ of 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 Carmichael
+_pere_ and Carmichael _mere_, 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 protege 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 debutantes 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 quotation _verbatim_.
+
+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 protege 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+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 debut 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 aegis 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 debutante?"
+
+"Don't _wish_ to be a debutante?" 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 debutante 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? _Too_ old, 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
+never _did_ go 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 been _in_ the 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+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 debut, 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 of _vertu_ in 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 naive 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. "Yokes _are_ being 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 can _all_ have 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 been _too_ sweet 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 is
+_quite_ enough. 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 naivete 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 debutantes!"
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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 debutantes, 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 wif _hawses_?" he repeated, scratching his
+head. "Laws, Miss Joan, _I_ dunno! 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 to _you_, 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 protege. 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 debutantes.
+
+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 debutante 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+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 salary _and_ commissions--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 salary _and_ commissions! 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 debut 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!"
+
+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! Not _her_?" 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?"
+
+"They _are_ dark 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, _would_ you 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.
+
+"Pardon _me_!" he gasped. "I didn't mean--
+
+"I know--some girls like to be assisted," she said rather remorsefully
+(but after all a protege 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 and _en masse_ on
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+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 a _lady_ typist, 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 growing _embonpoint_ when 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 protege 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
+from _hors d'oeuvre_ to _creme de menthe_ without 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+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 I
+_never_ flirt 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 do
+_you_ care, 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 with _you_!" 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's _horrid_
+to 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 never _meant_ to
+gallop?'"
+
+Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into
+her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "_I_ shouldn'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! Mere
+_pis 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 chateau 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+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 Emily _en 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. "That
+_would_ be 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?
+
+("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 debutante 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--_you_ know! 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 protege, 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 protege 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+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. A
+_little_ more 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 any _reason_ for 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 simply _had_ to 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 debutante of the type that
+makes conversation an act of supererogation, and she was able without
+seeming to do so to keep her protege 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
+debutante 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 things _you_
+like, 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!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+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
+really _needed_ it." (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 allow _us_ to 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 on _my_ wife 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 her _metier_ was 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).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+It was in April that Archie Blair conceived the happy idea of purchasing
+an automobile, thus combining business with pleasure most practically; a
+modest secondhand affair of three good cylinders and one that missed,
+but it shone (Archibald being in the paint and varnish business) with a
+glossiness that advertised its owner afar off. And like the bicycle in
+the song, it was "built for two."
+
+Archibald had no wish to intrude; still, an automobile is an automobile,
+and it seemed to him that on a fine Spring evening almost any young lady
+might like to ride in one, even if accustomed to limousines.
+
+Joan first became aware of this acquisition one fine day when it
+appeared and reappeared and once again appeared passing the window where
+she sat reading. Three times, like Hector about the walls of Troy, it
+circled the block, smelling of its new paint and complaining loudly of
+its missing cylinder; and at last Joan, puzzled by this persistence,
+thought to glance at its driver. Clutching the wheel in a death grapple,
+taking his eye from the traffic only long enough for a hopeful glance at
+the house front as he passed, she recognized her friend in all the proud
+modesty of ownership.
+
+Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take
+a walk.
+
+"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk--or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!)
+"Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!--I was just hoping I'd run
+across you somewhere."
+
+"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.
+
+"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I
+will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily,
+and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.
+
+"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the
+temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for,
+and the One and Only beside him on its seat--who can blame the man?)
+"Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I
+don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I
+can't take my eye off the road yet--" (this as a family party narrowly
+escaped annihilation)--"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my
+shoulder?"
+
+"I won't mind your talking any way at all--so long as it's not about
+armadillos."
+
+Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"
+
+"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"
+
+But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings.
+People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?--Say, what
+if we go out in the real country somewhere!--not parks, where there's
+always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I
+can step on her tail and let her rip--eh?"
+
+The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an
+abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a
+gipsy pateran.
+
+Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution,
+and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the
+neigh of startled colts in the fields as they passed, the rush of the
+golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little
+engine.
+
+"Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two--" chanted Archie with a proud eye
+on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!"
+
+Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful
+hands--as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did
+its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust
+in their faces, trees and meadows passing in long green streaks, she got
+quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was
+a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her
+companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings.
+
+"Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down.
+
+He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes.
+
+"What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place.
+
+"I--didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice.
+
+Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be
+turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me
+how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?"
+
+"You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant.
+
+"Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air.
+"Whenever you like!"
+
+Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Phoebus
+driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one
+ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend
+Lizzie, with a silver dollar.
+
+But that night as he lay in bed, with an April rain making music on the
+roof above him, he told himself soberly that he must be careful. There
+had been moments to-day, especially with her hair blowing across his
+face, when a fellow almost forgot!... He conjured himself by all his
+gods to be a wise little ostrich and keep his head well tucked into the
+sand.
+
+And Joan, listening to the same soft rain, so full of suggestion and
+race memories and the call of the year, also reminded herself that she
+would have to be careful. She thought of his humble, adoring, happy
+eyes, and her heart smote her. This one was not quite as other men. To
+hurt an Archibald was a trifle beneath one's dignity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+The career of Lizzie (whose surname may perhaps be guessed by the
+intelligent reader) was short, and her end untimely; but even so she
+served her part in the inscrutable purposes of Fate.
+
+It came about in this wise.
+
+Archibald had formed quite a habit of calling for his lady, not only on
+fine afternoons after five, but sometimes in the balmy spring nights
+after dinner, when all the world meandered two by two, occupying the
+benches in the little park opposite Joan's house, and filling the roads
+with a streaming procession of motors and traps and buggies, of anything
+that went on wheels; even perambulators.
+
+Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering
+community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like
+any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau--particularly when it cost no
+effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the
+rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.
+
+Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance;
+dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at
+least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter brasswork than hers. If
+the chariot was not altogether worthy of the lady, it was through no
+fault of Archie's. Lizzie, like her owner, strove to please.
+
+Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon
+providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her
+specialty.--"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and
+ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little
+ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was
+evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and
+abetting him.
+
+But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not
+enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions.
+All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company,
+for as long as she was willing to grant it.
+
+His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would
+come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a
+saddle-horse, or a coach and four--at any rate with something more
+suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and
+if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the
+glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if
+not an opportunist.
+
+So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew
+into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even
+when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side
+of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the
+wilderness--a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than
+Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however:
+until the day that marked the passing of Lizzie.
+
+They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald
+driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they
+deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have
+been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less
+careful than usual.
+
+It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily
+panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second
+track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze
+full into the headlight of an approaching passenger train. He had not
+enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop
+where he was.
+
+"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into
+the track just ahead of the rushing engine.
+
+Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a
+frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out
+shriek after shriek.
+
+"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute
+I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."
+
+He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at
+thirty, forty, fifty--with a pop a tire blew out.
+
+"Get that door open," he shouted at Joan, above the hissing steam.
+"Don't jump till I say the word. Trying to make a flat place. You hear?"
+
+Joan nodded. There were deep gullies on either side. She glanced over
+her shoulder. The engine seemed almost on top of them--But Archie kept
+his eye on his mirror.
+
+"Can't make it," he said suddenly. "All ready? Now! Jump!"
+
+To the after mortification of her entire life, Joan could not move. She
+understood the necessity, her head was quite clear and calm, but her
+limbs refused her bidding.
+
+The next instant he had seized her, tossed her out like a bundle, she
+was falling--falling....
+
+There came a crash, the splintering of glass and iron.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long after she was able to, Joan dared not open her eyes. She fought
+back the coming of consciousness, tried not to think.
+
+She was on a moving something--a wagon perhaps, or a train. There was
+murmuring of voices near her. She strained her ears. The voices were
+strange.
+
+She wanted to pray, but could not remember God's name.
+
+She was lying on some sort of lounge--a leather lounge. She lifted her
+lids very, very slowly. She was in the smoking-compartment of a
+train--alone! Where was he? She tried wildly to sit up--to call out--
+
+And then something moved beside her on the edge of the couch. It was a
+head, a bowed, curly head which she recognized and which belonged to a
+figure that knelt beside her in an attitude of utter despair.
+
+"Oh, Archie, Archie!" she whimpered. "Then you _aren't_ killed!"
+
+The head jerked up. The next instant she was in his arms, her face
+against his. She was being kissed and kissed again--eyes, lips, cheeks,
+hair--whatever he could reach. She could not stop him. She did not try
+to stop him. Indeed there was something consoling, comforting in those
+frantic kisses, all wet with tears, and fiercely tender with the passion
+of one who has brought his treasure single-handed out of the jaws of
+death.
+
+"My God! My God! My God!" said Archibald; and nothing else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster
+about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed
+with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him
+amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He
+stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale,
+laughing face among the pillows--that face with which he had taken such
+amazing liberties.
+
+Joan in a _peignoir_, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder,
+looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the
+train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet
+his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she
+lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his
+emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched
+his hands hard.
+
+This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered
+composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had
+steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the
+thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had passed.
+
+"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong
+enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."
+
+He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated,
+looking everywhere but at Joan.
+
+"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't it _terrible_?"
+
+He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous,"
+perhaps--but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.
+
+"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at
+all?"
+
+He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."
+
+"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful
+anyway, for the new machine."
+
+He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."
+
+"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you--you can't afford
+another?"
+
+"Why, I guess the railroad company'd help to buy me another if I wanted
+it--the engineer didn't signal for that crossing. But--I don't. You
+see," he murmured, looking down, "there were--well, there were sort of
+associations with Lizzie."
+
+Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I
+do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to
+happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.--I'm sorry,
+Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."
+
+He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh,
+what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is
+what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of
+all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a
+woman than that!"
+
+"I think, and so does my father, that you took wonderfully good care of
+me! If it hadn't been for your nerve, your quickness.... Ugh!" she
+shuddered. "Dad says that not one man out of a thousand would have seen
+what to do in time to do it. In fact, he's waiting in the library to
+make you a speech before you go. Eloquence-with-gestures. Do you know, I
+never realized before that in some ways man is really woman's superior?
+You've got yourselves better in hand, your muscles do what you tell them
+to. It was a good lesson for me." She smiled up at him. His miserable
+eyes touched her, and she held out her hand. "Why, Archie! what makes
+you look so ashamed?"
+
+He ignored that friendly hand. "I'm thinking that if your father knew
+_all_ I'd done," he muttered, "he'd do something more to me than make a
+speech. Eloquence-with-gestures, all right! Gestures of the foot."
+
+Joan decided to take the bull by the horns. "You mean when I came to,
+and you--kissed me? Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely. ("There!
+Now the tooth is out," she thought.)
+
+"Because I was a damn fool," he groaned.
+
+Joan's lips twitched despite herself. "Really, you're not very
+complimentary!"
+
+But Archibald was beyond considerations of mere politeness. "Because I
+hadn't the decent horse-gumption to keep my feelings to myself! Had to
+go spilling 'em all over the place, insulting you with 'em!"
+
+There was a pause. "You care for me, then?" prompted Joan.
+
+Archie grinned, miserably. "Well, what do you think?"
+
+"I'm afraid you do."
+
+"You're dead right," he said.
+
+Another silence followed this admission, and then he rose to go. "I
+guess that'll be about all from me!--Only I want you to know, Miss
+Darcy, I--I never meant to do such a thing--I never knew I had it in me!
+Good Lord! When I saw you all crumpled up there in that gully, not
+moving at all, even when the train-gang came to pick you up--When I knew
+that I had done it, I--! And then you opened your eyes and looked at
+me.... Oh, hell, what's the use?"
+
+He turned blindly toward the door.
+
+She had to catch at his coat-tails to stop him. "Archie! Wait a
+minute.--I'm going to make you a speech myself. In the first place,
+Archibald Blair, your sort of 'feelings' wouldn't insult anybody. They
+couldn't! I'm proud to have you care for me, and I'd be glad, too, if
+only I could--But it's not as if you were asking anything in return, is
+it?"
+
+"Me?--_asking_? Good Lord, I'm not such a mutt as that!"
+
+"Some day you will be 'asking,' Archie dear--a worthier girl than I am,
+I know--and she won't think you a mutt at all!"
+
+He shook his head. "No, Miss Darcy. You've sort of spoiled ordinary
+girls for me."
+
+She cried honestly, "I hope not! Oh, I do hope not! Because I was going
+to beg you to stay friends with me--I need friends. And I _can't_ keep
+you if you're going to go on feeling that way!"
+
+"Sure you can," said Archie, his eyes lighting. "Just try me and see!
+I'll make one of the best little old pals you ever saw, if you'll just
+forgive the fool way I acted. Now that the steam's sort of blown off,
+we--we understand each other."
+
+"You're certain that we _do_ understand each other?" Her gaze met his
+squarely. "You're not going to expect things that can't ever be?"
+
+"No, ma'am," said Archie.
+
+Tears suddenly came into her eyes. There was a quality in this faithful,
+doglike devotion that made her feel ashamed. It deserved response; it
+deserved something better than mere affectionate gratitude. But that was
+all she found herself able to give.
+
+With a demonstrativeness rarer than he guessed, she caught his big hand
+in both of hers and held it for a moment to her cheek. When she let it
+go there was a tear on the back of it; which Archie, gazing at
+wonderingly, suddenly lifted to his lips.
+
+It was in acts like this, little untaught gestures of pure reverence,
+that the boy belied his slang and his big ears and his general
+clumsiness, and harked back to the age of chivalry, when a gentleman was
+not ashamed to dedicate himself to the service of his lady, and be her
+very perfect knight....
+
+After he had gone, Effie May wandered into Joan's room with a slight air
+of expectancy about her which the girl was too preoccupied to notice.
+
+"You're lookin' sort of white about the gills, dearie," she remarked.
+"Does the shoulder pain you?"
+
+"No. But something else does, and I don't know just what. Oh, Effie May,
+what's the matter with me, anyway?" she burst out. "Sometimes I think
+I'm not a human person at all, but just a big inflated Ego, floating
+around like an observation balloon, taking notes!"
+
+"Well, well, is that so?" murmured her step-mother, who had her doubts
+as to what an Ego might be. "I expect what you need for that floaty
+feeling, dearie, is a good dose of calomel--" and she hurried away to
+prepare it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+There is a certain period of the year when all its widely scattered
+children home to Kentucky as surely as bluebirds home to the hollow
+stumps in March. It is the season of the May race meet.
+
+All her life Joan had heard of the Kentucky Derby, and she looked
+forward to it with almost as much eagerness as her father. Derby Day
+means more to the Kentuckian than the running event that has become
+classic. It means the reunion in street and club and hotel-lobby of
+neighbors from the various towns of a State where neighborliness is
+cultivated to the point of a fine art; of men who have been boys
+together; of friends whose ways have drifted far apart (for your
+Kentuckian is a great wanderer), and who have years to make up over the
+clinking glasses. During the spring race meet, Louisville ceases to be
+merely Louisville, and becomes Kentucky, the great old mother-home that
+leaves its stamp upon its children even into the third and fourth
+generation.
+
+There is a good deal of sentiment about the Derby, a good deal of
+tradition; and there is as well a certain spirit of carefree, sporting,
+joyous _bonhomie_ whose like is not to be found perhaps on any other
+race-course in the world.
+
+Joan, who loved crowds, got much pleasure out of the streets at this
+time. She took appreciative note of self-conscious belles from up-State,
+in picture-hats and peek-a-boo blouses, with a predilection for wearing
+long-stemmed roses pinned to their belts. She noted the young farmers
+who accompanied them, big-shouldered, square-chinned, clear-eyed,
+crimson with the sun--a sturdy, virile type, clumsy in their
+country-made clothes, but with well-stuffed wallets bulging their hip
+pockets. There is no poverty in the farming regions of Kentucky.
+
+She learned to recognize the professional racing people, men in
+loud-checked clothes talking an incomprehensible jargon; shabby touts
+offering confidential tips to anybody who would listen; women wearing
+diamonds as large as peas, overdressed, coarse-voiced, not easily
+distinguishable from their sisters of the underworld, except that their
+men accompanied them openly.
+
+People of the larger world there were, too. The narrow streets were
+congested with great touring-cars bearing unfamiliar license tags; New
+York, Michigan, California. Once, hearing crisp Eastern voices at her
+elbow, Joan turned just in time to see some people she had met at
+Longmeadow disappearing into a hotel. For a moment her heart stood
+still. She thought Eduard Desmond was among them. But it proved to be
+another man, and Joan mingled hastily in the crowd, relieved that they
+had not noticed her.
+
+In all this preparatory excitement Major Darcy was, as his wife put it,
+"busy as a bird dog." There were kinspeople from the Bluegrass to be
+welcomed, cousins from Paducah, Maysville, Fayette County. Joan, who did
+not altogether share her father's enthusiasm for the ties of kinship,
+rather admired her step-mother's skill in side-stepping the Major's
+abounding sense of hospitality. Effie May had taken the precaution to
+fill her house with paper-hangers.
+
+"What a shame! You'll have to take your cousins and things to the hotel,
+Dickie, or put 'em up at the Country Club, won't you? If I'd only
+thought!--" she murmured innocently; but catching Jean's suspicious eye
+upon her, she winked.
+
+Joan returned the wink. She remembered her mother's patience under the
+constant influx of Darcy relatives. She had also seen the unfortunate
+Misses Darcy almost turned out of doors by the daily increasing numbers
+of their kith and kin. The bookcase in their parlor had become,
+surprisingly, a bed; and Miss Euphemia, the plump, as the one best
+fitted by nature for this ordeal, was spending her nights on a
+packing-box sparsely mitigated by pillows.--Not that the Misses Darcy
+complained, however. They were long inured to the hospitalities of Derby
+week.
+
+Effie May, indeed, was the only person of Joan's acquaintance who seemed
+unaffected by the general excitement over the Derby. She heard with
+apparent indifference that the Major had been able to secure a box
+directly opposite the judges' stand, and she declined to rise early
+enough to accompany him and Joan to Sunday morning breakfast at the
+Jockey Club, where enthusiasts met regularly to inspect and pass
+critical judgment on the offerings of the past week.
+
+"Lord, child!" she said once in answer to Joan's surprise at this
+indifference. "Horses ain't no treat to me. You see, they used to be my
+bread and butter."
+
+It was one of her few references to a past that rather intrigued her
+step-daughter.
+
+"Were both of your husbands turfmen?" asked the girl, curiously.
+
+Effie May gave a brief nod; and Joan did not somehow feel encouraged to
+further questioning.
+
+Derby Day dawned bright and sunny.
+
+"A fast track, Dollykins," cried the Major in great glee. "We ought to
+break a record to-day!"
+
+"That means the Long colt," said Joan learnedly. "The Camden entry's apt
+to prove a mud-hen."
+
+She had in the past week made an exhaustive research into the race-horse
+question. Breeding and pedigree, record and past performance, rolled
+trippingly from her tongue. Joan was what the theatrical profession call
+"quick study."
+
+The Darcys had been invited to go out to the tracks in the approved
+fashion, on top of a tallyho coach, tooled by Johnny Carmichael--who was
+not quite as sober as might have been wished. But his four-in-hand
+seemed aware of the fact, and took no ungenerous advantage of him.
+
+Effie May had awakened that morning with a bad headache, and proclaimed
+her intention of staying at home.
+
+"What! Not see the Derby run?" cried her husband incredulously.
+
+And when with a great shouting and tooting of horns the tallyho drew up
+under the porte-cochere, her determination weakened.
+
+"Oh, do come on, Mrs. Darcy! The air will do you good, and we shan't
+have half as much fun without you!" cried several voices, for she was
+very popular with young people.
+
+She hesitated. Joan decided the matter.
+
+"Put on a heavy veil to shield your eyes from the glare," she suggested;
+and Effie May yielded. It was not often that her step-daughter asked for
+her society.
+
+They became part of a procession that had been filing steadily past the
+Darcy house since sunrise. Every vehicle in town and the surrounding
+country, horse-power or motor-power, was on its way to the races.
+Street-cars passed in a solid line, with passengers hanging to the
+straps, bulging out of the windows, crowding on to the roofs. There was
+a steady throng of foot-passengers, all heading in the same direction,
+which hailed the tallyho as it passed with shouts of greeting and good
+luck. The tallyho responded with tooting horns and waving parasols.
+
+It was a friendly, intimate, highly democratic gathering such as may be
+found only south of Mason and Dixon's line; never pushing or jostling,
+but good-naturedly determined to enjoy itself. At the gate humanity was
+packed in a dense, immovable mass as far as the eye could see, and Joan,
+descending from her elevation, looked at the crowd in mild alarm. But
+the cry arose, "Make way for the ladies!" and instantly a lane appeared
+as if by magic, through which she and her companions made royal
+progress, laughing at the personalities which greeted them as they
+passed.
+
+"Nobody ever minds what happens on Derby Day!" explained Emily
+Carmichael.
+
+Once in the box, the men of the party deserted in a body for the betting
+ring, and Effie May promptly hailed a messenger. Her interest in racing
+seemed to have revived.
+
+"Let's see your tips, girls--anything good?"
+
+She looked over their various lists in a business-like way, approving
+this, discarding that, displaying a knowledge that put Joan's recent
+learned discussions to shame.
+
+"Will-o'-the-Wisp, Satyr out of Firefly. Umm! Ought! to be worth taking
+a shot at. Who's up--Casey? No. Won't do! They'll can that crooked
+little jock yet--" etc., etc., while her companions eyed her with
+respect, and the messenger consulted with her laconically as with an
+equal.
+
+"You want to play 'em straight across the board, dearie;" she admonished
+Joan. "That's the only way to win. No piking!"
+
+But Joan declined to play them straight across the board, or in any way
+at all. For one thing she had brought no purse. For another she was far
+too busy with the people about her.
+
+Faces rose behind her in a packed mass to the top of the
+grandstand--women's faces for the most part; school-girls, nice old
+ladies, mothers of families (who occasionally fed their families under
+the casual shelter of a shawl), gum-chewing shop-girls, houris of every
+variety, respectable and otherwise, all chatting together with the
+utmost simplicity under the spell of a common interest. In the boxes,
+and on the clubhouse porch, were girls and women most of whom she knew,
+dressed as if for a garden party. Chiffons fluttered in the breeze,
+plumes waved, there were bared throats, and lace-covered arms, and
+dainty white slippers. Here and there appeared the more conventional
+tailored dress, looking almost conspicuous in its severity. For on Derby
+Day, Louisville harks back to a custom as old as itself, and frankly
+looks its loveliest.
+
+Just behind Joan in the front row of the grandstand sat a respectable,
+gray-headed little old woman with a bonnet tied under her chin, quite
+alone, who looked as staid and out of place as Ellen Neal would have
+done in these surroundings. But she had a professional-looking pair of
+fieldglasses at her eyes, and Joan noticed that her lips were constantly
+moving and muttering. The girl turned her back on the Derby to watch
+this odd figure.
+
+At first she thought the old creature was praying; but the syllables
+that reached her ears were not prayer.
+
+"Come on, you Will-o'-the-Wisp! Hop it, baby! 'Ata-boy! Step, darlin',
+step lively! Oh, you Will-o'-the-Wisp!"
+
+Joan saw that she was not merely watching the great race, she was riding
+it, with whip, and knee, and voice. And at a certain moment the girl saw
+that she had lost it. There was a shrug, a little despairing gesture of
+the glasses, and the muttering ceased.
+
+An explanation suddenly occurred to Joan. She nudged Effie May. "Look at
+this funny old soul behind us! She's evidently the mother of the jockey
+that's riding Will-o'-the-Wisp," she whispered.
+
+Effie May glanced briefly over her shoulder, and smiled. "Mother
+nothing! That's Texas Nell, who's been following the ponies since the
+day of Molly McCarthy. She's lost and won more money, I guess, than any
+woman in the business."
+
+A little later she suggested that they all adjourn to the Club House for
+refreshments; but Archie Blair had come with the promise of taking Joan
+down to the paddock later, and she decided to stay where she was.
+
+Archie, who seemed to know everybody, pointed out various celebrities
+who were present; fine old General Dutton, down from Lexington with his
+flock of famous though still unmarried daughters; Nick Sanders of the
+Pisgah neighborhood, who had just escaped conviction for manslaughter
+because of the unwritten law; Mrs. Kildare of Storm, a splendid-looking
+woman in mannish hat and driving coat, here to see one of her colts go
+to the post in the Derby--though of late years Storm was raising mules
+instead of race-horses.
+
+"A shame, too, when it's one of the oldest stud-farms in the State,"
+commented Archie. "Racing's on its last legs when people like the
+Kildares turn to breeding mules!"
+
+But racing did not appear to be on its last legs that day. The
+eagerness, the wild enthusiasm, above all the joyousness of the crowd,
+struck an answering chord in Joan. For the first time she really
+understood the devotion of Kentuckians to their State and to each other.
+It is never their work that endears a people to each other; it is their
+play. In a world that takes itself overseriously, Kentucky still knows
+how to play.
+
+She followed Archie presently down toward the paddock where the winner
+was to receive his ovation; but as they reached the foot of the
+staircase, suddenly there was the sharp explosion of a pistol. Instantly
+the crowd surged in the direction of the shot.
+
+Archie, placing her behind him, forged his way through the struggling
+mass to the nearest wall, where he stood her, breathless and disheveled,
+but undismayed.
+
+"Goodness! This is local color with a vengeance! What's happening? Do
+you suppose it's your man-eating friend from Pisgah?"
+
+"Just an old woman shot herself, they say," volunteered a friendly voice
+near by, "Cleaned out, I reckon!"
+
+One of the intuitions to which Joan was liable came to her. Glancing up
+at the grandstand, she saw the seat just behind hers was empty.
+
+"Oh, Archie! It's _my_ little old woman!" she cried pitifully. "Go and
+see, will you?--a shabby old thing with a bonnet tied under her chin."
+
+He hesitated. "I don't like to leave you here alone. Suppose somebody
+should speak to you?"
+
+"Then I shall most certainly speak back!" she said, and he reluctantly
+obeyed her wish. Indeed, with Archie, her wishes were apt to assume the
+form of commands.
+
+The gaiety of the scene was gone for Joan. She had got her glimpse of
+the grim reality that lies beneath. She was to have another glimpse of
+it.
+
+As she stood there, buffeted by the passing throng, she caught sight
+across the wide passageway of her step-mother, in conversation with
+somebody who for a moment she did not see. Joan started across to join
+her. Effie May's back was toward her, and not until Joan was within
+hearing distance did she notice the man to whom her step-mother was
+speaking. Then she stopped where she was, startled.
+
+He was a dissipated-looking creature, hardly better in appearance than a
+race-horse tout, flashily dressed, wearing a large diamond in his
+tie--altogether one of the least desirable types of those who follow the
+races. But he was not only talking with evident familiarity to Mrs.
+Darcy, he had taken hold of her arm. It came to Joan in a flash that the
+man was doubtless some relative, possibly her brother. What did they
+know of Effie May's family?
+
+Joan stood still and frankly listened.
+
+"No, no, you don't put that over on me, old girl," this person was
+saying in a low but carrying voice. "You're not going to slip away on me
+again _that_ easy!"
+
+Her step-mother's rejoinder did not reach Joan's ears, but she saw her
+glance round uneasily. Joan did not blame her for not wishing to be seen
+with her present companion. She quietly slipped behind the shelter of a
+pillar.
+
+"Married, eh?" repeated the man's voice. "Come, that's a good one! I'm
+from Missouri, I am. You'll be sayin' Calloway married you next. Oho! he
+did, eh? A bigger fool than I took him for! If that's the case--" his
+voice sharpened--"you must a' come in for a pretty good thing when he
+croaked. You'll have to come across, old sport. No going back on a pal!"
+
+The color suddenly went out of Joan's cheeks. She leaned against her
+pillar, feeling rather queer. She wished she were not there--and yet she
+listened.
+
+Effie May's voice reached her, speaking quite steadily, "Not one cent,
+Joe! You're no pal of mine. When I left you it was for good and all, and
+you know why!"
+
+"Humm! Well, we'll see what your new husband thinks about it, eh?"
+
+"No, you don't!" It was a sort of gasp; but instantly the voice steadied
+again. "You'll never lay eyes on my husband, Joe. He doesn't live here.
+I--I just happened to come over for the races."
+
+The man grinned. "That's easy enough! I seen you drivin' in with your
+swell friends, and sittin' in a box and all. Recognized you right away,
+too, for all that thick veil. You ain't the sort a man forgets easy,
+Ef," he leered. "Not when he's knowed you like I have! I'll get your
+name before you leave this stand, and then--Better come across, kiddo!"
+
+"I--let me go now, Joe! I'll think it over."
+
+The man chuckled. "Afraid somebody'll see you talking to me, eh? You can
+bet your sweet life you'll think it over, and damn quick, too! See?"
+
+His grip tightened on her arm. Effie May glanced this way and that,
+nervously. Joan stepped out from behind her pillar. After all, the woman
+was her father's wife! She must be protected....
+
+Just then she saw Archie coming, and hurried to him.
+
+"It was an old lady with a bonnet tied under her chin," he told her
+soberly. "She's dead."
+
+But Joan had no ears for the earlier tragedy.
+
+"There's a man frightening Mrs. Darcy," she said breathlessly, "he seems
+to be somebody she knows. He's--threatening her! Oh, Archie, what shall
+we do?"
+
+The meaning of it, the incredible sordid horror of the thing she had
+half learned, began to come home to her. Her father's wife!
+
+"Threatening!" Archie's jaw set. "Here, that won't do!"
+
+He strode forward, Joan following. They both heard the man say with
+leering distinctness, "It ought to be worth a _little_ cash to a loving
+husband to learn the sort of woman he's married up with, Ef, old girl!"
+
+Then Archie's hand fell on his shoulder.
+
+Joan never forgot the face her step-mother turned upon them--She made a
+desperate attempt to rally.
+
+"Why--why, dearie! is that you? A--an old friend of mine's been giving
+me a tip."
+
+"Get out," said Archie to the man. "Get out, quick!"
+
+"Hold on there, kid--So, you been robbing the cradle this time, Ef?" He
+grinned at her evilly. "Wait a minute, mister, there's a few things I
+might be able to tell you about this party--"
+
+"Nothing I don't know already," muttered Archie, his grip tightening.
+"You've got five minutes to get off the grounds before I tell the
+police. Blackmail's a penitentiary offense in this State."
+
+The man hesitated, looked at Archie's grim jaw, and went....
+
+Joan and her step-mother gazed at each other. The woman's face had a
+curious gray look under its perennial bloom, and she moistened her lips
+with a dry tongue.
+
+"You--you heard?" she said at last.
+
+Joan nodded. She could not speak.
+
+It was Archie who remarked quietly: "You'll want to be going home, I
+guess. I'll get a taxicab."
+
+Then sheer pity overcame the horror in the girl's mind. "Yes, Mother.
+Come home with me!" she murmured.
+
+For the first and last time in her life she had called her father's wife
+"Mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+"I guess you've got to have the whole story now, though it ain't a very
+pretty story to tell a girl," said Effie May wearily. "I don't know as
+your papa would much want you to hear it, Joan...."
+
+To the girl the whole episode seemed unreal, part of that strange day,
+with the holiday crowds, the brief, hectic excitement of the races,
+followed by the pistol-shot that meant the death of a ruined old woman.
+She could not believe that she, Joan Darcy, convent-bred, the daughter
+of reserved and fastidious people, could be actually participating in
+this impossible melodrama.
+
+"What my father would wish hardly matters now, I think," she said, more
+frigidly than she realized. "Please say what you have to say."
+
+All the way home her step-mother had wept, steadily and hopelessly, with
+ugly snuffling noises that took away what dignity there might have been
+in her grief. Joan, always helpless in the face of uncontrolled emotion,
+made no effort to comfort her. Her impulse of pity had already died into
+disgust. She could not look at that swollen, grayish face, of whose
+careful complexion tears made strange havoc.
+
+The woman sighed. "If only you weren't so young!--I suppose you think
+I'm a bad lot--bad as they make 'em. But I'm not. I never was. Oh, I
+know I've done things ladies don't do!--but then ladies ain't often
+asked to do 'em, dearie. You got to remember that."
+
+Joan shrugged, and resigned herself to hear what she was to hear.
+
+"I guess you know I wasn't born a lady, nor raised like one, though I've
+tried.... Well, never mind that!--Pa had a little cash-and-carry grocer
+store over to Indianapolis, and we lived upstairs, all of us in two
+rooms.... It was the dirt I couldn't stand, and the crowding. It ain't
+_right_ for a whole lot of children to live like that, all mixed in so!
+The others didn't seem to mind, but I was always sort of nice in my
+ways. Maybe because I was born before Mom took to the coke."
+
+"The what?"
+
+"Coke--dope, you know. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her
+going, poor Mom! and I'm glad she had it."
+
+"Was your mother an invalid?" asked Joan, a little startled by this
+breadth of tolerance.
+
+"Oh, no. But kids come along once a year regular, and she wasn't ever,
+so to speak, well. I made up my mind when I wasn't more than ten never
+to get myself in the fix Ma was in!... My two older sisters felt that
+way, too, I guess. They always had fellows, but not the sort that'd do
+to marry. Men like Pa, you know. No 'count--One of the girls worked at a
+dressmaker's, and sewed till her eyes were red all the time, and her
+shoulders stooped and she coughed. The other--well, the other didn't
+keep straight, dearie. Awful few of the girls I knew did keep straight.
+But Mame went into one of those houses--you know?--and had a lot of
+swell clothes, and jewelry and all. I remember all us younger ones used
+to envy her. But she didn't last long at it, and she died--horrible."
+
+Effie May's eyes were fixed on strange places, and the tragedy of the
+world was in them.
+
+"She used to be a pretty thing, Mame; and sweet, too.... Well, it seemed
+to me there ought to be _something_ better for a girl than marrying a
+man like Pa and slaving, or getting a good job like Jule's and slaving,
+or going wrong like Mame and slaving worst of all! Once when I was out
+delivering dresses for the dressmaker where Jule worked, I saw what I
+was looking for. Society women. Ladies.
+
+"That's what I'm going to be," I says to myself, "a Society woman! (I
+was about twelve then.) You don't have to work, you live in a fine house
+and wear swell clothes, and you can keep as straight as you like.
+
+"The others used to laugh at me, but Mom never did. She was real
+ambitious for her children, Mom was. 'You keep on thinkin' so and you'll
+get there,' she used to say. 'You're smart and pretty enough for
+anything!' And so I was, then!" Effie May gave a sigh.
+
+"A fellow come along presently that looked pretty good to me. I met him
+over to Casey's dance-hall, I remember, and from the first it was all up
+with him. He was better than the fellows I'd been running with; a good
+dresser, always flashing his roll--you know race-horse people used to
+make good money before the Pari-Mutuels--And when he wanted me to come
+over here to Louisville with him--well, it looked to be my
+chance--Imagine starting out to be a lady, in company with Joe
+Markheim!" said Effie May grimly.
+
+Joan exclaimed, "Not that dreadful-looking creature you were talking
+with to-day?"
+
+The other nodded. "Only he wasn't dreadful-looking then. He was real
+handsome--or he looked that way to me. You see I was only sixteen," she
+sighed. "Almost anything in pants that'd take me away from home would
+have looked good to me then, I guess!--But I talked to Mom about it, and
+she thought I'd better take a chance, too. So I went."
+
+The girl had begun to shiver a little. "You mean--you married him?"
+
+Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see
+he had a wife at the time."
+
+"He--betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan.
+
+"Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a
+chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us
+it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know.
+There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, and _her_ sort."
+
+"Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips.
+
+"My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you
+after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to
+him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate
+disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began
+to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man,
+when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd
+acted decent--I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when
+he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flushing, "but it was something
+no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through
+thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway."
+
+"Did--did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly.
+
+"Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told
+him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was
+a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair.
+'Wish I'd done it before!' says he--Don't you think that's a pretty good
+recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after
+living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"I suppose so," murmured Joan--The usual thing was happening to her. Old
+standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see
+things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness--though
+there were people who considered it her strength.
+
+"Calloway was pretty near to being a gentleman--not a born one, like
+your papa, dearie, but real genteel in his instincts, and he did a whole
+lot to make a lady of me. He always insisted on us having the best of
+everything, company especially. When he knew he had to die, poor
+boy!"--her lips trembled--"he says to me, says he, 'Here's your chance,
+old girl! Take the money, and go somewhere and make a fresh start,' he
+says. 'You'll do! You're good as any of 'em.' His very words, dearie!
+'You're good as any of 'em.'"--She wiped her eyes.
+
+"And so you came here?" prompted the girl.
+
+"Yes. I'd always liked the place. It seemed sort of friendly and
+homelike, and it's small enough so that your money counts for something.
+It wouldn't be lost, I thought, like in New York or Chicago--But I was
+kind of lonesome at first--always been used to having a man around--and
+I didn't know anybody. And then your mama died, and I saw my way clear.
+You didn't know I knew your mama, did you, dearie?"
+
+Joan was rather startled. She had not realized quite how early her life
+and her father's had been swept into the stream of this woman's
+ambition.
+
+"Well, I did. Not to speak to, of course. But I used to watch her out of
+my back windows, and think what a lady she was to be so poor, and wished
+I knew how to scrape acquaintance with her. And once she caught me
+watching her, and smiled up, just as sweet, as if she'd known me always
+and liked me. (Sort of the way _you_ smile, dearie, when you're real
+pleased.)--And when she died the idea came to me, all of a sudden, that
+I was the person to look after them she'd left."
+
+Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and began to weep again. "Oh,
+Gawd! Think of where I'd got to, and look where I'm at now!"
+
+Joan moved restlessly about the room, conscious of the ache of tears in
+her own throat. She pictured that child of the streets and dancehalls,
+poor little "Lightfoot Ef," as they called her, struggling to better her
+condition, sturdily trying to find some tenable place of her own in
+life, even as she, Joan, was trying--but under what hopeless handicaps!
+She thought of the cocaine-drugged mother with ambitions; of the evil,
+treacherous creature with whom the child had chosen to "take a chance";
+and it began to seem almost a miracle that Effie May should be what she
+was. Joan looked at her with something like respect.
+
+"But I heard you tell my father you had buried two husbands!" she said
+sharply. "If you really felt that you were 'good as any of them,'
+that--that you had practically been married--why didn't you make a clean
+breast of it all?"
+
+"Because I'm no fool!" gulped Effie May. "There are some things a man
+won't stand for--though God knows why _they_ should be so all-fired
+particular! And it seemed the only chance I'd ever get to marry a real
+gentleman. Besides, there was you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I
+could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do
+for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly
+flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house,
+with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and
+a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of
+the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the
+bed with her fists.
+
+There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman
+whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised.
+
+"If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a
+hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd
+ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could
+'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair."
+
+"Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised.
+
+"Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me--I don't know
+how. But I could 'a' kept _his_ mouth shut all right!--I was fixing him
+so he'd never tell...."
+
+In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant
+to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay
+farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby.
+
+She sat erect with a gasp. "It's _him_! For goodness' sake don't let
+your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching
+for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl.
+"Quick!--pull down those shades--there, that's better. Help me into a
+negligee--no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!--a pink one.
+Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my
+headache--don't forget, that's why we came home. There!--how do I look?"
+
+She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped
+in cologne hiding her swollen eyes.
+
+Joan, rather dazed, had assisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the
+triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe
+of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer
+desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She
+meant to go down fighting.
+
+There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort.
+
+"Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door.
+
+"Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan! _Are you going to tell him right
+away?_"
+
+"Not--right away," said the girl slowly.
+
+There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her
+hands, and kissed it....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it
+throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies
+in her control.
+
+At one moment her course seemed clear beyond the question of a doubt. It
+was unthinkable that her father should continue to recognize as his
+wife--her mother's successor!--a woman who had led an immoral life, who
+had earned the very money that supported them by living for years as the
+mistress of another man. Joan's cheeks burned with the thought.
+
+At the next moment, she wondered what her father would do without the
+woman. She had no illusions left regarding Richard Darcy. He had never
+in his futile life stood on his own two feet. He was one of the
+inefficients, who must be cared for. Now, weakened morally and
+physically by the habit of luxurious living, he was less able than ever
+to take care of himself. Age was coming upon him rapidly. In the
+struggle of life, he must go down utterly to defeat--Unless his daughter
+could help him; and so far his daughter had been unable even to help
+herself.
+
+The girl wondered, too, her heart sick within her, whether he would
+consent to give up the luxury he loved when he learned the shame that
+went with it.... Not that he would be able to forgive the woman! She
+knew his fixed standards, his pride of race, too well to expect of him
+any such magnanimity. The vulgarity of Effie May had been quite enough
+for him to swallow, as it was.
+
+Joan thought that if, knowing his wife's past and utterly despising her,
+he yet kept her because of material benefits, it would be a shame she
+personally could not bear. Better, perhaps, that he be not put to the
+test.
+
+And yet--in her mother's place, a woman of the town! (The girl was not
+able to make the fine distinctions in vice suggested by her
+step-mother.)
+
+There had to be considered, also, the fraudulency of continuing to
+inflict such a woman on society in the guise of a lady.
+
+The word brought back a rush of pity to Joan's heart. Effie May had done
+her best to be a "lady," poor creature, even to the extent of vainly
+trying to remodel her speech and her manners on those of her new
+family....
+
+Joan, very white and drawn about the lips, ordered her horse in the
+early morning and went for a long gallop, hoping to clear her brain.
+When she returned, with nothing decided, she found Archie Blair in the
+library waiting for her.
+
+She had never before been so glad to see him. It came upon her, with a
+rush of relief, that here was somebody with whom she could discuss her
+problem, whose advice she could ask. Archie knew! He was not very
+clever, perhaps, never subtle nor quick in his mental processes; but
+there was something sure about him, something utterly honest and
+dependable.
+
+Evidently he had given others the same impression.
+
+"Mrs. Darcy sent for me to come out and talk things over," he said
+gravely. "She wanted me to speak to you. She thought maybe I could make
+you understand better."
+
+"Sent for _you_? Why, but you've never been one of her friends. You've
+never even pretended to be!"
+
+"No," he said simply. "She isn't my sort, and she don't belong here.
+She's too flossy. But since she's here, I'm sorry for her--Now that you
+know, what are you going to do about it, Miss Darcy?"
+
+Joan laid her problem before him with a frankness she would not have
+believed possible. She told him about her father. Never before, not even
+to Stefan Nikolai, had she disclosed Richard Darcy quite as she had come
+to know him latterly. It was an analysis that would have looked too
+brutal set down in black and white.
+
+Archie listened thoughtfully, and with no appearance of embarrassment or
+consciousness that the conversation was unusual. There was something in
+his masculinity that never suggested sex.
+
+"I get you," he said at last. "You can't make up your mind whether to
+upset the apple-cart and ease your conscience, or keep your mouth shut
+and let everybody live happily ever after."
+
+Joan looked at him quickly. She had not expected quite such a lucid
+summing up of the situation from Archie. But he seemed unconscious of
+epigram.
+
+"Did I ever tell you," he asked irrelevantly, "about an old gentleman
+that took our room after--well, after my mother went away--and let me go
+on living with him because he said I was too small to make any
+difference? A queer old bird he was, drinking himself to death as fast
+as he could, but mighty good to me. It was him--he, I mean--who taught
+me to read, and started me going to night school, and got me my first
+job. When he was about half-lit he used to talk to me as if I was just
+his age, about all sorts of things, life and books and folks--and one of
+the things he used to say kind of stuck in my head. 'When in doubt,
+Archibald' (he was the only person I ever knew who called me all of
+it!), 'when in doubt, always be a little kinder than necessary....'
+Pretty good dope, I think."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+Then Joan said slowly: "Thank you, Archie! Yes, it is pretty good dope.
+And your old drunkard must have been a good deal of a man. You must tell
+me more about him some day."
+
+She gave her shoulders a little shake of relief.
+
+"Very well!--I won't upset the apple-cart. I didn't much want to,
+anyway!"
+
+Archie smiled at her widely. It was a smile that said, "I knew it!" and
+"Good girl!" and a number of other things that made Joan blush. She had
+come by insensible degrees to value rather highly the good opinion of
+her protege.
+
+"But there's one thing sure," he said, sobering. "You'll be wanting to
+get out of the apple-cart yourself!"
+
+That, too, Joan had faced in her long night's vigil. The question of her
+future was no longer hovering in space. It was here, immediate, urgent.
+She would have liked if possible not to spend another hour under the
+roof that had been supplied by the late Mr. Calloway.
+
+They discussed the matter of her living in every aspect.
+
+"You mean you haven't got a red cent to your name, Miss Darcy? Gee!"
+muttered Archie. "What was the old chap thinking of? Oil stocks! Might
+as well have put the money on the races." Even in his loyal mind the
+Major had undergone something of an eclipse.
+
+"Better, because then we could have seen it run," sighed Joan. "However,
+it's gone, and now I've got to get busy!" (Archibald's language was
+rather contagious.)
+
+She told him of her two alternatives. The stage he absolutely vetoed.
+
+"It's no place for a lady," he said stubbornly, and would listen to no
+argument. Joan suddenly remembered that his mother had been an actress.
+She did not pursue the question.
+
+"Newspaper work might do," he admitted. "A society reporter with the
+pull you've got ought to be worth some money."
+
+"A society reporter!--You mean I'd have to go to my friends' houses and
+publish what happens there? Oh, Archie, I'm afraid I couldn't do that."
+
+"Why not?" he said innocently. "They like it."
+
+But Joan persisted. "I'm willing to report _anything_ except society."
+
+"Murders? Police courts?" he suggested grimly.
+
+"Yes, if I must."
+
+"Well, I guess not!" said Archie.
+
+She laughed a little helplessly. "But, Archie, you veto everything I
+suggest! Really, you're not very helpful. Don't you understand that I've
+_got_ to earn my living, right at once? I'm unskilled labor. Beggars
+can't be choosers. You'd suppose nothing was good enough for me!"
+
+"And it isn't!... Gosh!" he said miserably--(she saw that his big hands
+were shaking)--"The idea makes me right down sick! A little delicate
+thing like you, out in the scramble with the rest of us--! I know what
+it is, you see. Bad enough for a fellow, sometimes. I know the things a
+working girl has to do and stand for. Honest to God, I'd rather see you
+married!" he groaned.
+
+Unselfish devotion could go no farther, and Joan knew it.
+
+She suddenly found herself on the verge of tears. She was tired out,
+mind, soul, and body. She would have liked to put her head down on his
+shoulder and simply cry till she was comforted. It was such a big, broad
+shoulder, so amply adapted to the bearing of burdens. She could make him
+happy, too, poor boy! One and all, people seemed to expect nothing of
+her but marriage--her father, Effie May, Stefan Nikolai, and now Archie.
+Perhaps they knew best. They were many and she only one. Temptation
+beset her--or was it inspiration? She did not know....
+
+Meanwhile Archie was elaborating his forlorn idea. "Isn't there
+_somebody_ who would do?" he urged. "Surely of all the fellows who've
+been hanging round, there ought to be one decent chap who'd give his
+head and ears to keep you out of this--to take you away from here
+himself?"
+
+Joan made her decision.
+
+"I think there is," she said tremulously. "Only--he won't say so."
+
+"The big mutt!" cried Archie--and then paused. Her expression, the
+significance of her voice, began to penetrate his humility.
+
+"You--_you're not joshing me_?" he gasped.
+
+Joan put out quick hands as though to ward him off, suddenly afraid of
+the glow she had kindled in his face.
+
+"Wait, Archie! I don't love you--you know that. Not as you love me, I
+mean. I don't believe I ever will love anybody that way. I--perhaps I'm
+not fine enough--But I do like you and trust you more than anybody else
+in the world. And so--if that's enough--If you want me--"
+
+"_Do I want you?_" Archie gripped the edge of his chair to keep himself
+anchored to _terra firma_. "Say, Miss Darcy, I--I--"
+
+"Don't you think," she suggested with a quivering smile, "that as we are
+about to become engaged, you might begin to call me 'Joan'?"
+
+At that, with a great cry of "JOAN!" he gave up hold on the chair and
+_terra firma_ together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sound of the overturned chair brought Effie May on a reconnoitering
+expedition to the upper landing of the stairs, which commanded an
+unsuspected view of the library. What she saw caused her to tiptoe away,
+smiling to herself a little sadly.
+
+"_His_ mouth's stopped all right--" she thought (with perfect
+truth)--"now that it doesn't matter!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+There were those, notably among the Jabberwocks, who felt that in
+availing herself of the age-old solution of handing her burdens over to
+a man to bear, Joan had rather hauled down her colors. Perhaps she felt
+so herself, after the first glow of relief was over.
+
+But if she needed solace, she got it in the radiant, incredulous,
+blissful attitude of Archibald. He could not believe the marvelous thing
+that had happened to him. A dozen times a day he was obliged to glance
+at the ring he had given her (a solitaire inevitably, small but of good
+water) to make sure that he was not dreaming.
+
+He began at once, following the example of the birds about him, to
+prepare for the coming event; "twigging" as Joan called it to herself,
+amusedly. He was as mysterious about it, and quite as obvious, as any
+robin darting about with a straw in its beak. He called her to the
+telephone frequently to ask such questions as how many drawers a
+"chiffoneer" ought to have; and when she asked him why he wanted to
+know, the reply was a joyous, "Never you mind!"
+
+He listened with the stealth of a Sherlock Holmes for any expressions of
+preference on her part, putting them secretly down in a note-book; and
+Joan grew afraid to mention any object, no matter how unlikely, for fear
+it would become part of the procession of packages which Ellen reported
+as filing daily past her door to the room upstairs.
+
+"A rocking-chair come this morning," Ellen would report. "Golden oak,
+all carved! Yesterday it was one them new-fangled electric-lamps with
+brass chain hanging down like fringe. Real tasty. The day before it was
+a statute."
+
+"Heavens, Nellen--Not a statue!"
+
+"Sure! A nigger woman brandishin' a spear. I poked a hole in the
+wrappin's to get a good look at it."
+
+(Joan had once unguardedly envied the Carmichaels their rare old
+bronzes.)
+
+She was touched but alarmed, and decided that she would better hasten
+the wedding if only to put a stop to this indiscriminate twigging.
+
+Others were almost as pleased with the engagement as Archibald; her
+father, for one, who had not expected quite so early a release from
+parental responsibility. Joan, while a creditable child, had proven a
+rather difficult one, especially since his marriage.
+
+"Not that it is quite such an--er--ambitious arrangement as I could have
+wished, Dollykins,"--(a ducal alliance would have been more in accord
+with Darcy inclinations). "But young Blair is an excellent fellow, an
+excellent fellow. And after all, in this world virtue is the thing that
+counts!" He appeared to indicate that in the next world things might be
+arranged more satisfactorily.
+
+Ellen was as proud of this unexpected _denouement_ as if it were an egg
+of her own hatching.
+
+"I didn't believe you had the gumption!" she said unflatteringly. "I
+thought you was too highminded to know a real man when you seen
+him.--And now, praise the day! you'll be needin' your mamma's furniture
+back again."
+
+"Oh, but, Nellen darling, what will you do without it?"
+
+"Me?" The old woman's face fell. "Why, I kind o' thought you'd be takin'
+me along with the furniture. Unless I'm too stiff and plain to be makin'
+you a fancy servant like you're used to nowadays!"--she tossed her head
+angrily.
+
+Joan hugged her. "I'd rather have you than all the fancy servants in the
+world, and you know it. But I thought you preferred being an independent
+modiste in lodgings. And then--you see, dear, I'm not quite sure whether
+Archie can afford a servant."
+
+She had not so far been able to bring him down from the clouds long
+enough to discuss ways and means.
+
+"Sho! He can afford _me_ all right. I'll save him money--And you don't
+suppose he's going to let you spoil them white hands of yourn with
+housework and cookin'? Not if I know Mr. Archie!..."
+
+The Misses Darcy were almost tearful with gratification, and received
+Archie with the sort of romantic respect younger girls accord to heroes
+of the matinee.
+
+"What did I prophesy?" cried Miss Virginia. "Only one season out, and
+already--! Such a beautiful name too,--'Mrs. Archibald Blair.' Not a
+Kentucky or Virginia one, of course. However, there _are_ other States,
+Maryland, or South Carolina, or even Massachusetts. Where did you say
+he was from, precious girl?"
+
+"Louisville."
+
+The sisters exchanged startled glances. "Louisville? But that's
+impossible. We do not know his people!"
+
+"He hasn't any people."
+
+It was Miss Euphemia who recovered herself first. "So much the better,"
+she murmured. "I mean--Not that one would wish them to have died, of
+course! But really, you know, in-laws--"
+
+"And so often I think a self-made man--" Miss Iphigenia took up the
+parable. "So many of our Southern families seem to run largely to girls
+nowadays. What I mean is, a little good red blood--"
+
+"Sister!" murmured two shocked voices. Everybody blushed.
+
+"I'm afraid Archie isn't even a self-made man, yet," smiled Joan,
+mentally struggling to fill in the gaps. "I shall have to help make
+him."
+
+"Ah, yes! A woman's touch, as dear papa used to say--"
+
+Joan reflected that the late Mr. Darcy must have known a good deal about
+the power of a woman's touch....
+
+Her friend Emily's congratulations were something on the same order,
+though more frankly expressed. There was a wholesome attitude of
+frankness always between the two girls.
+
+"I think it's dear of you, Joan," she exclaimed, "and so brave!"
+
+"Just why 'brave'?"
+
+Emily answered, despite embarrassment, "Why, to marry a man without
+antecedents, without position, and without money, seems to me very
+brave. I know I should never have the courage to do it, even if I cared
+for him. In fact, I should be mighty careful not to care for him!--But
+then I've never had your spirit of independence."
+
+"Perhaps because you've more to lose," said Joan quietly. "If either of
+us is brave, I think it's poor Archie."
+
+She often thought of her lover so; tenderly, even lovingly, but as "Poor
+Archie!..."
+
+Effie May was the only one of Joan's immediate environment who seemed to
+look with any doubts upon a situation she herself had largely brought to
+pass.
+
+"Look here, girlie," she said once abruptly. "You don't love that boy.
+At least you ain't in love with him--and there's a difference. Why do
+you do it, anyhow?"
+
+Joan, taken by surprise, was not immediately ready with her reply.
+
+"Is it because you want to get away from me?" asked the other.
+
+Still Joan was not ready to answer, and Effie May sighed. "You needn't
+have gone so far as that," she said, "I'd have fixed it for you
+somehow--I'm not going to forget what you've done for me, Joan. Not
+telling, treating me just as if--it was all right. You're a bigger woman
+than you know you are," she added, gravely. "I'll make it up to you some
+day, see if I don't."
+
+Joan gave her a quick, straight look. "If you mean money, Effie May, and
+I think you do, we'd better come to an understanding at once. I'm
+keeping my counsel about--about your affairs; I'm helping you commit a
+fraud, you know--entirely on my father's account. For myself--that's
+another matter. I appreciate your kindness, I know you have meant to do
+your best, but--"
+
+"But you're done with me?" finished the other.
+
+"Yes. I shall only see so much of you hereafter as is necessary to keep
+Father from suspecting anything. As for your money,"--the girl's voice
+shook--"neither I nor my husband will ever touch a cent of it under any
+circumstances. Do you understand? We do not forget how it was--earned."
+
+The other sighed again. "Well, dearie, don't forget that it _was_
+earned, good and plenty!--And I've done you one good turn already," she
+remarked _sotto voce_, as the girl turned away to greet her fiance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Joan and Archibald were married two weeks later, very quietly, before
+only her family, resisting all the Major's importunities to make an
+occasion of it. Nor would the girl accept a trousseau.
+
+"If I need any more clothes than I've got already, Archie will buy them
+for me. Won't you, old boy?" she said, slipping her hand into his.
+
+Archie, with the happy consciousness of a rapidly growing business and
+several years' savings in a Building Association replied proudly that he
+would.
+
+One comment she had missed on her engagement; Stefan Nikolai's. She had
+written to him at once (her first letter since his post-card advising a
+preliminary course in matrimony), saying in effect, "Now I hope you're
+satisfied!" But as no reply came, she reached the correct conclusion
+that he was on the wing again, with her letter following him from
+address to address, unread.
+
+Ten minutes after the little ceremony that left her no longer Joan
+Darcy, a cablegram was brought to her from London.
+
+"Wait. Coming. Nikolai."
+
+To which she replied with reckless extravagance:
+
+"Too late. Sorry. Come anyway...."
+
+Alone at last with her husband in a carriage (to which the negro
+yard-boy, feeling with the Major that something was lacking to the
+occasion, had generously attached one of his own shoes), Joan asked
+rather listlessly where he meant to take her. She had a conviction that
+it would be to Atlantic City, or to Niagara Falls.
+
+For Archie was everything that was most correct in the way of
+bridegrooms. His bulldog toes, his padded blue serge, his near-Panama
+hat, his very socks, were so palpably bought for the occasion that Joan
+felt that to match him she ought to be wearing dove-gray and a shrinking
+manner.
+
+But she did not feel particularly shrinking; merely relieved that the
+die was cast, and tired enough to be glad of the arm that stole
+tentatively around her.
+
+"What train are we catching, dear?" she asked.
+
+"No train at all.--Oh, Joan," he said tremulously, "I hope you won't
+mind! It's just for to-night--just a foolish idea of mine."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"Wait and see!"
+
+She waited rather apprehensively. She was a little nervous about
+surprises, since her father's recent effort in that line.
+
+But the carriage was traversing a street she knew well, and it presently
+stopped in front of the house where Ellen lived. There was still a tinge
+of afterglow reflected in its many-paned windows, and among the young
+feathery leafage of the old sycamore sparrows were preparing to go to
+bed. Two or three of the denizens of the lower floors were taking a
+breath of air on the doorstep. They stared at the carriage with
+interest.
+
+"None of 'em know about us yet," reassured Archie in a whisper. "Just
+bluff it out." Aloud he said to one of them (it was the lady who
+expertly curled feathers): "Do you know whether Mrs. Neal is in, Mrs.
+Higgs? We've come to see her."
+
+"I don't know as she is, Mr. Archie," replied the other, her eyes taking
+avid note of Joan's smart tailor-made dress and traveling hat. "But I
+know she's expectin' company all right, 'cause I been smellin' comp'ny
+cookin' all day! Go right up and make yourselves to hum," she urged,
+with the never-failing hospitality of her class.
+
+Archibald led his wife up the dim, curved stairway that had doubtless
+known the reluctant feet of many another bride before her, and opened
+Ellen's door with a key.
+
+"Yon _are_ honored," murmured Joan. "I didn't dream that Ellen had got
+to the point of trusting gentlemen with her latch-key!"
+
+"Look!" said Archie proudly.
+
+The room was gay with flowers, truly a bridal bower; and in its center
+stood the old round walnut table she had known all her life, much
+battered by the kicking of her own youthful toes, set for two, and laden
+with delicacies. There was a small but magnificent wedding-cake, there
+was chicken-salad, crisp pink tongue, pickles, chocolates of Joan's
+favorite brand, and resting in a pail of ice-water, its neck swathed in
+a napkin, a bottle of champagne.
+
+"Cinnamon-rolls keeping hot in the warmer, butter in the ice-box
+right-hand side, and I'm only to light the jet under the coffee-pot, and
+leave it to bubble ten minutes--" murmured Archie, as one reciting a
+well-conned lesson.
+
+Joan's listlessness suddenly disappeared. She hugged him.
+
+"What a perfectly _beautiful_ wedding-supper!" she cried. "Was it your
+idea, or Ellen's?"
+
+"A sort of combination, I guess. She thought you might feel more
+homelike here with your mother's things, and I--well, it's my home too,
+you see!--So you don't mind?"
+
+"Mind!" she winked hard to keep the tears back. "Archie, let's have
+pancakes, too!" she cried.
+
+They had pancakes. They also had eggs, in the scrambling of which
+Archibald was quite expert. Afterwards they washed the pans and dishes
+together, with two of Ellen's aprons tied around their necks, amid much
+merriment.
+
+"I had no idea married life was so pleasant!" she sighed. "Archie, let's
+always do our work like this, together!"
+
+"Work?" he picked up one of her hands and examined it reverently. Joan
+had rather beautiful hands, sensitive and lithe, delicately white, with
+rosy palms and finger-tips. "I'll let you play at work now and then," he
+said soberly. "But work is for us men, my Joan, not for our women!"
+
+"It's fortunate the cooks and housemaids of the land don't agree with
+you," she teased; "or perhaps they do, and hence the servant problem!"
+
+Later, they locked Ellen's door and put the key under the mat, and went
+up a flight higher. Joan entered Archie's room with some curiosity. To
+her, people's environment spoke a clear language; and sometimes she
+realized, with a little shock, that she knew nothing at all of the man
+she had married.
+
+It was a long, low attic chamber, whose ceiling sloped cosily down over
+casement windows with wide sills. There was a fine fireplace, marred,
+however, by a small stove showing evidences of occasional culinary
+efforts.
+
+The results of Archie's twigging were very apparent; notably the
+golden-oak rocking-chair, the "chiffoneer" surmounted by the bronze lady
+with a spear. But she was more interested in the things which had
+belonged to him.
+
+As Ellen had told her, the place was littered with books, shelves,
+tables, and even window-sills. Joan examined these eagerly. There was a
+very shabby Shakespeare in a good edition, an old pocket Emerson, a new
+Rubaiyat, a brand-new "Alice in Wonderland" (which made her smile); but
+it was no scholar's library. Archie's tastes were not what he would have
+called "high-brow." The works of Marie Corelli and Conan Doyle
+predominated, with several school geographies and histories, and various
+treatises on the psychology of salesmanship. She found something rather
+touching in this collection of books, remembering that he had referred
+to it as his college career.
+
+She looked next for his pictures, those other sure indications of the
+inner man. But there were none, except the small photograph of herself
+in its elaborate frame, with a little vase attached holding fresh
+flowers.
+
+"Archie!" she protested, laughing, "I look like a Madonna in a shrine!"
+
+"One of those namby-pamby parties with a dinner-plate behind her head?
+Never saw one of them that could touch you!" he pronounced candidly.
+
+"I fear your correspondence-course has been neglecting Art," she
+murmured. "There was a fellow named Botticelli who did some very neat
+little things in that line. But come now, surely you've got some other
+pictures hidden away somewhere? No naughty ballet-girls kicking up their
+limb-legs? No bareback ladies? Or Parisiennes exhibiting wicked garters?
+Honest Injun?"
+
+He grinned sheepishly. "I did have," he admitted. "But I sort of lost my
+taste for 'em when you gave me that picture of you."
+
+She kissed him.
+
+"That's a prettier compliment than the little vase of flowers before my
+picture, dear!..."
+
+Archie had been standing at the door, watching her progress around his
+room with eyes that were almost incredulous. His room!--and she in
+it!... He felt that if he opened a window she might flutter out again,
+back into the world from which she came. Once, when he was very small,
+he had found a belated autumn butterfly in the street, and brought it
+home, and put it on a geranium-plant he had in the window, hoping it
+might like to spend the winter there. But in the morning it lay dead
+against the pane. Archie remembered that butterfly now, and shivered.
+She saw him.
+
+She ensconced herself in the largest and shabbiest of his three chairs
+and patted the arm of it invitingly. "Come over here, and let's really
+talk!" she commanded.
+
+He obeyed. "What shall we talk about?"
+
+"Tell me about your mother," said Joan.
+
+He told her what he could remember. It was not much except a voice--a
+soft English voice; and the feeling of arms that held him close; and
+quite clearly the sound of sobbing beside his pillow whenever he woke
+suddenly at night.
+
+"Nothing was ever heard from her after she left you here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Money came once or twice to the landlady for my board--this
+was a boarding-house, then. But after a few months it stopped coming."
+
+"And haven't you _any_ idea what became of her?"
+
+"She died, of course," said Archie simply. "Or she'd have come back for
+me. There were people who thought--" he swallowed hard--"that she left
+me here on purpose, and never meant to come back. That isn't so. I don't
+know much about her, but I do know that she loved her child. You, can't
+fool a kid about that!... And there were people who thought she killed
+herself. But I don't somehow believe she was a quitter. What do _you_
+think?"
+
+He had taken a photograph out of his pocket, and handed it to Joan, who
+studied it closely. Despite the unbecoming "fringe" and jersey of an
+earlier day, it was a lovely face she saw, without a hint of folly or
+weakness or worse. The chin was firm as Archie's, the features strong as
+they were delicate. The face was still rounded and soft with youth, yet
+out of it looked a pair of haunted eyes.
+
+"No, your mother was no coward," she said with conviction. "But she was
+a very unhappy woman. And Archie--she was a lady!" The look of race
+seemed to her unmistakable.
+
+He drew a great breath. "I think so, too," he said gladly, "I've always
+thought so. That's how I dared--" Suddenly, passionately, he drew her up
+into his arms. "Oh, my Joan, do you see why I wanted you here in my own
+home? It's all the home I've ever had. Anything that's happened to me
+has happened here. I've lain here at night trying to be a man when I was
+nothing more than a kid. I've sat here listening, listening--Oh, for
+years I used to think I heard my mother coming up the stairs to get me,
+long after I was old enough to know she never would! And sometimes I
+thought--Do you believe in ghosts?"
+
+"Yes!" said Joan. "Ghosts of people that love us and want to help--"
+
+"That's what I mean! And that's why I wanted to stay on in this room,
+where--she could find me. It's a horrible thing not to belong anywhere,
+nor to any one, like any little fyst dog in the streets. I've never said
+this before--"
+
+"I know!" whispered Joan.
+
+"And now that I do belong to some one, I wanted my room to know it. I
+wanted--in case there _were_ any ghosts--"
+
+"I know," whispered Joan again, her lips against his.
+
+There was a taste of salt on them, and she held him close and closer,
+this great, lonely child who should never be lonely again. If, as she
+had warned him, she was not capable of offering deep love, Joan could at
+least offer deep understanding, which perhaps is rarer....
+
+And presently as she held him so in the quiet of his old room, with the
+house settling into drowsiness about them, and the sycamore tapping its
+friendly signal on the roof close above their heads, Joan's identity
+seemed to be slipping, merging, into that of some one else. She ceased
+to be Joan the girl. She felt, in that strange moment of transition,
+partly the wife, and partly the mother; but most of all the woman, whose
+mission is to give.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+There is, among the wives and mothers of what the
+
+Misses Darcy were wont to call the polite world, a general conspiracy of
+silence on the subject of honeymoons. The theory is allowed to go
+unchallenged that a honeymoon is invariably a period of bliss and
+romance unalloyed; the conspirators apparently subscribing to the ideas
+of the stoical parent who teaches his child to swim by throwing him
+unexpectedly into the water. If he manages to keep afloat, well and
+good; if he drowns, regrettable; if he comes out alive but with a
+shrinking cowardice with regard to water that never afterwards leaves
+him, perhaps it is no concern of his parent's. And again, perhaps it is.
+
+Joan and Archibald Blair returned from their honeymoon not quite as
+close friends as when they embarked upon it. Joan's manner had gained a
+certain kindliness, a gentle consideration that was akin to sympathy;
+whereas Archie, with puzzled eyes and a smile that beamed rather
+uncertainly, almost evinced his desire to propitiate by rolling over at
+her feet and holding up four paws to heaven. (Which was no way to
+propitiate our heroine.)
+
+Honeymoons, however, do not last indefinitely; and by the time Ellen
+Neal and her furniture and the results of Archie's "twigging" were moved
+into a certain modest house that simply cried aloud to be purchased (on
+the installment plan), Archie had grown almost accustomed to the sight
+of the One and Only seated at his breakfast table _en negligee_, pouring
+out his coffee, with a preoccupied word from him now and then as she
+glanced through the morning paper. (It was characteristic of that
+household that Joan was the one who read the morning paper.) He kissed
+her whenever he liked without asking leave; and in return she rumpled up
+his hair deliciously, and called him "Goose!", and reminded him to bring
+oranges from downtown because the neighboring grocery had such poor
+ones.
+
+Joan entered upon the domestic role with her usual thoroughness.
+
+At first she had been rather afraid of the expenditure the purchase of a
+house involved. It sounded to her too much like the large and not very
+practical ideas of her father. But when Archie pointed out to her that
+even day laborers managed to own their cottages, thanks to
+building-associations, and that purchase on this plan was merely a way
+of saving money, she yielded without undue reluctance. After all, there
+was not only his salary to be relied upon, but his commissions,
+dependent upon his own energy, which seemed boundless. Like many poor
+girls, she was quite ignorant of the value of money. Beyond the
+purchasing power of a concrete sum, say one thousand dollars, money
+meant nothing to her at all. Ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand
+dollars--they seemed very much the same.
+
+The house was its own best advocate; one of the charming English cottage
+types that are beginning to make home life not only comfortable but
+dignified for the small householder in our American cities. The
+neighborhood was excellent, one of the pretty green courts she had long
+ago coveted; and there was a small garden artfully arranged into vistas
+and quite an air of privacy by means of shrubbery, and overlooked by a
+secluded porch whose coolness seemed like paradise to Archie, hurrying
+to it out of the hot city.
+
+The garden was his part of the establishment; and there he might be
+observed any morning shortly after sunrise, digging, pruning, whistling
+tunelessly between his teeth, with one eye on a window whence would
+presently issue the drowsy voice of Joan, calling, "Good-morning out
+there, Adam!" Then with a rush Adam would disappear from his garden,
+leaving spade or hose where he happened to drop them, lest Eve need
+assistance with buttoning a blouse or tying a shoe.
+
+It was a glorious time for Archie. He was almost painfully happy.
+
+The Jabberwocks and others took a good deal of critical interest in
+Joan's house. She had always been suspected of being a little odd, and
+her house proved it indubitably. At a period when Louisville was
+graduating out of the green-wall-and-mission-furniture period, through
+Coloniality, into a more catholic appreciation of possessions which
+express the personality of the possessor, Joan's house was still rather
+a shock to all preconceived notions of decoration. There was none of the
+white woodwork and panelled severity which sounded the correct and most
+recent note. Joan's woodwork and walls were alike a soft, practical
+gray--"Soot-color," she explained placidly--and the plaster had been
+left rough-cast. Against it, instead of the accepted pictures of the
+day, hung two or three rare prints, a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and
+a fine strip of Persian embroidery. On the floor were black skin rugs. A
+green vine, growing out of an ancient yellowed marble jar, wandered at
+will across one wall and up the brick of the chimney-place.
+
+"You got that idea in Italy," commented one visitor.
+
+But the undoubted charm of Joan's house was that she had taken no ideas
+from anywhere. She simply had about her the sort of things she liked.
+There were ferns growing in the window-sills, and no curtains whatever
+except two lengths of heavy pumpkin-colored silk which might be drawn
+across the panes at will, but rarely were.
+
+"People will be able to see in when the lamps are lighted," protested
+her step-mother.
+
+"What of it? They won't see much over those ferns," said Joan, "and I
+always love to peep in at lighted windows myself, don't you? Haven't you
+ever noticed how much nicer the houses in this part of the world look
+when they're undressed for the summer? Personally, my taste has never
+run to lingerie in household decoration."
+
+Effie May, who was nothing if not receptive, went home and meekly took
+down her point-lace curtains.
+
+What troubled Louisville most about the Blair house was its lack of a
+dining-room. There was no chamber held sacred to the rites of
+nourishment, with chairs sitting primly against the wall and a center
+table with a centerpiece upon it, bearing a fernery or--what was more
+recently affected by the really up-to-date--a dish containing imitation
+fruit. ("So much smarter than the real kind," explained her neighbor,
+Mrs. Webster, who had quite a taste for the correct in art.) There was
+no sideboard for the display of wedding-silver, no china-cabinet
+containing the best glassware in glittering serried rows. What was the
+use of having nice things, thought many a troubled housewife, if they
+were to blush unseen in pantries?
+
+But Joan did not understand, and frankly said so, why in a small house
+one room should be set aside for use only three times a day. She needed
+the extra wall space for her books. Besides if there was a dining-room
+people seemed to feel obliged always to eat in it, instead of in the
+garden or the porch, or on a table drawn close to the window, where one
+might look out into the world while one ate, as in a pleasant
+restaurant.
+
+"I'm like the Irishman," she remarked, "who said that he was glad he
+didn't like strawberries, because if he did he'd have to eat them, and
+he hated the damn things.--Try having your meals served about in
+different places, and see if you haven't a better appetite for them!"
+
+Even the admiring Jabberwocks felt that this was carrying oddity to the
+extreme. They always took strangers, however, to see Joan's little
+house, and incidentally Joan herself. Mr. Nikolai had sent her recently
+several Mandarin costumes, unique in the history of Louisville for
+domestic wear, in which she appeared comfortable, piquante, and quite
+exotically feminine.
+
+"Fancy! Trousers on a bride! And at such a time, too," murmured the
+ladies of the neighborhood among themselves.
+
+But as Effie May pointed out to the Major, himself a trifle shocked by
+this eccentricity of costume in a lady of his family, "She's slim enough
+to wear 'em, Dickie, and those full silk pants are certainly becoming to
+the feet. Wish I had some myself--Don't you worry," she added, chuckling
+over the Major's expression, "I haven't! Pantaloons weren't meant for
+the pincushion style of figger."
+
+Archibald, of course, found the Mandarin costume adorable. He would have
+found any costume of Joan's adorable, even a Mother Hubbard, or its
+lineal descendant, the bungalow-apron.
+
+Altogether, Joan had a rather happy aftermath to her honeymoon. "The
+pasture-time," she called it, during which she was as placid and content
+as a cow in a clover-field. For the first and possibly the last time in
+her life she was quite free from worry. That was one of the things
+Archie took completely out of her hands. He would have liked to take
+everything out of her hands that might be irksome to her--her thinking,
+her very sleeping and eating, had it been possible. But worry at least
+was something he could take upon his own broad shoulders.
+
+Her personal allowance and the allowance he made her for household
+expenses were paid regularly into her account--an arrangement Joan had
+insisted upon, despite his protest.
+
+"Why should you be bothered with the paying of bills, darlingest?"
+
+"But I _love_ to pay bills, Archie," she had replied, rather piteously
+to one who had known anything of the earlier Darcy _menage_. "It's a
+real pleasure to get them all out of the way before the tenth of the
+month!" And it was a pleasure she attended to religiously, even after
+she began to grow a little lax and indifferent about other household
+matters. There were to be no "Indians" in the annals of the Blair
+family.
+
+Joan had never been so sluggish mentally as in these first months of
+married life; yet she felt almost abnormally normal, close to the great
+heart of existence, at one with the physical world about her, content
+with the content of a cog which fits well into the wheel where it
+belongs.
+
+Long afterwards some would-be cynic asked her whether she believed that
+marriage _per se_ was an experiment which paid.
+
+"Yes!" she answered without hesitation. "If only for the moment when you
+tell your husband that he is to have a child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Her father took a satisfaction in Joan's house and husband and general
+condition of modest prosperity which surprised and rather touched the
+girl. It was as if he found in her well-being a justification of
+something that needed justifying. "I may have my weaknesses," his manner
+seemed to say, "but observe how well I have provided for my child!"
+
+He dropped in almost daily for his afternoon julep on the shaded porch
+that overlooked her garden. Effie May had the tact rarely to accompany
+him, and Joan found herself seeing more of her father than she ever had
+under his own roof.
+
+"I don't know just what it is, my dear," he once said, musingly.
+"Possibly the familiar furniture, or the presence of Ellen Neal (quite a
+fair cook, Dollykins, though her manner leaves something to be desired).
+But somehow in this little establishment of yours I always feel as
+if--well, as if Mary were about somewhere." He sighed sentimentally. "I
+feel as if she might at any moment sit down beside us and take out a bit
+of sewing. She was rarely without sewing, you remember?"
+
+"I remember." Joan patted his hand, a demonstration rare with her. "I am
+glad you feel that way, Father. Mother always does seem very close to
+me--especially just now." An odd feeling of sorriness for her
+step-mother came over Joan. "You are sure," she asked on an impulse,
+"that Effie May does not object to your coming here so much without
+her?"
+
+"Object? To my visiting my daughter under her own vine and figtree? It
+would hardly be within her province to object," he commented regally.
+"But, as it happens, she is the one who frequently suggests my visits.
+She quite understands that under the--er, the happy circumstances--you
+cannot come much to us, not caring naturally to appear any more often
+than is necessary in public." The Major adhered rigorously to every
+tenet of the old school.
+
+He had recently presented his daughter with a low, comfortable phaeton
+of the sort which, as he explained, the gentlewomen of his day were
+accustomed to drive; and Pegasus was learning to adapt herself demurely
+to the role of a family horse. Joan found this phaeton a great
+convenience for shopping and marketing and her rare visiting (she saw
+very little of her friends that summer); and in the evening she and
+Archie went for long drives about the parks, covering less ground than
+they had covered in the ill-fated Lizzie, but making up for this by a
+more intimate knowledge of what they passed.
+
+"It's good to go slowly enough now and then to see the wayside flowers,
+and smell the fern, and hear the bird-calls, isn't it?" she said once as
+they jogged along.
+
+"Sure it is! Now and then," replied Archie guardedly. A rising young
+business man of the present time could hardly be expected to find
+phaetoning an exhilarating means of locomotion. But "anything goes just
+now," as he said to himself, happily.
+
+He was not able to take as many of these drives with her as he should
+have liked. The cares of business were beginning to sit upon him with
+increasing heaviness. "A man's business has got to grow with his
+family," he was fond of saying, importantly; and Joan was left alone
+sometimes, even on Saturday afternoons and after supper in the
+evenings--those periods sacred in these our States to the uses of
+domesticity.
+
+But she did not complain. She was even, secretly, a little glad, for she
+had always enjoyed being alone. There were so many books to be read,
+letters to be written, thoughts to be thought in which Archie, for all
+his loyal efforts, could not quite share; and there was her music. One
+of her step-mother's several wedding presents had been a small grand
+piano, as companionable to Joan in this "pasture-time" as a dog is to
+some women.
+
+Archibald, too, loved music. He frequently urged her to play and sing,
+and was as proud of her rather indifferent performances as a _maestro_
+of a star-pupil. But he had an innocent, disconcerting habit of patting
+time with his foot, or bursting into the air at unexpected moments in a
+large, booming tenor that never by any accident quite found the key.
+Music was one of the things Joan found herself unable to share with her
+husband.
+
+She objected sometimes to his growing preoccupation with business, on
+his own account. He began to look a little thin and fine-drawn; the
+typical American husband, she told him reprovingly.
+
+"You're neglecting your exercise, Archie dear! You never go to the Y. M.
+C. A., or play around with the boys any more."
+
+"Got something better to do," he beamed at her.
+
+"Goose! But it isn't good for a man never to have any fun at all. 'All
+work and no play'--"
+
+He took her in his arms. "Fun! What do I want with fun?" he exclaimed
+quite fiercely, lifting her face to his. But before their lips met, he
+let her go.
+
+"No rough stuff," she heard him admonish himself under his breath.
+
+He kissed her hand instead....
+
+The Darcys too, were spending rather a quiet summer. Now that they had
+no debutante daughter in prospect, their names figured leas prominently
+in the social column. With his growing avoirdupois, the Major appeared
+to be abandoning the one-step in favor of the easy-chair, which was to
+be found in greater perfection at home than at the Country Club. If his
+bride regretted this lapse into settledness, she showed no signs of it.
+Her avoirdupois, also, was getting rather out of hand, despite constant
+attention to massage and sporadic attempts at dieting.
+
+"It ain't how _much_ I eat, seems like--it's _what_ I eat," she said
+once plaintively to Joan. "Everything tasty turns to flesh on me; and
+God knows, I hate a poor table!"
+
+But Joan realized that it was not entirely physical inhibitions which
+were retiring the Darcys from the social arena. Her step-mother had
+delicacy enough to understand that her place was not among Joan's
+acquaintance, now that the girl had discovered her history. Joan liked
+her the better for it. She was punctiliously careful to invite Effie May
+to her house at frequent intervals, and always accepted such invitations
+as the other offered in return. The Major, never observant, was quite
+unaware that the relations between his wife and daughter had suffered
+any change. As he once remarked impersonally, "You and my wife would
+naturally find very little in common, excellent creature though she is.
+Why should you, indeed? Your antecedents, your early environment, have
+been entirely different. And as one grows older, those are the things
+that really matter," he added, with a complacency that sat rather oddly
+upon him in the circumstances--On the whole, Joan began to feel
+distinctly sorry for her step-mother.
+
+The older people came sometimes to take her for long automobile drives
+into the State; expeditions which Joan enjoyed thoroughly. Her father's
+imperturbable good manners and Effie May's amiability made them
+excellent traveling-companions, proof against all hazards of the road;
+tire trouble, bad going, even delayed and poor meals. And they both
+treated Joan with a new consideration, oddly wistful on the woman's
+part, to which she responded gratefully.
+
+It shamed her somehow to see how kind the world was to her nowadays; as
+if, in following the line of least resistance, she had done something
+very commendable indeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+These long automobile rides familiarized her as nothing else could not
+only with the State but with her father. She came to understand and
+share his peculiar, proprietary interest in the lovely Kentucky
+countryside. He pointed out to her its beauties of wood and hill and
+pasture like the owner of some vast estate exhibiting it to visitors,
+with a frank and pardonable pride. It is a habit of mind not unusual to
+the native of certain localities--notably Virginia and Maryland and
+Kentucky; but in her wandering, unimportant old father it seemed to Joan
+a little piteous, as if he had sunk his small identity into that of his
+great State, content to make its history his history, its glory his.
+
+"Here," he would say reverently, "is the spot where we made our final
+victorious stand against the Indians. Sacred ground, my daughter!"
+Or--"This is the place where our women went down to the spring for
+water, risking their lives, bless their hearts! because the men could
+not be spared from the defense of the stockade. You should thank God
+that you are a Kentucky woman!" He sometimes forgot in his enthusiasm
+that she had not been, so to speak, born to the purple--though that
+fact, as he once explained to her, was merely an accident, due to a
+certain miscalculation of dates.
+
+Joan came to realize in this new intimacy with her father that his
+futility was owing in large part to circumstances over which he had no
+control: notably the times in which he lived. He had been born a little
+too late or perhaps a little too early. There is no need for men of his
+type in the piping times of peace; but had his prime chanced to occur
+during some convulsed period of the world's history, it is conceivable
+that Richard Darcy might have rendered a great account of himself. He
+was a born leader of men, with unfortunately little opportunity to
+exercise his talent. During the only war that came within his range of
+vision (our late unpleasantness with Spain), he had chanced to be
+involved with certain trusting friends in a financial situation so acute
+that the affairs of the nation had been obliged to stand aside until he
+extricated himself; by which time, to his lasting regret, the war was
+over.
+
+He had, of course, no right to his title. It had simply accrued to him
+as titles often do accrue to men of his type, particularly in the South;
+partly by inheritance, growing as he grew, beginning with a modest
+lieutenancy in the State Guards, which had been his one and only taste
+of the career for which he had been created. He never spoke of himself
+as "Major"; but from the habit of years he had perhaps come to think of
+himself so, accepting the unsought honor gracefully as he accepted
+whatever else came his way, whether of good or evil.
+
+It is a pity that he could not have fallen asleep, say, at twenty, in
+his clean, brave youth; and awakened in the month of August 1914, ready
+for the day's work....
+
+The Darcys and Joan were running home after a long trip in the Bluegrass
+one evening, slipping along without lights in the glow of an October
+aftermath, when at the turn of an unfrequented lane they came suddenly
+upon a crowd of people collected about a bridge. The chauffeur brought
+the car to an abrupt stop. It was at once surrounded by several men with
+handkerchiefs tied over the lower parts of their faces.
+
+"What the devil--" cried Major Darcy.
+
+"Highwaymen!" gasped Joan.
+
+A man with a pistol in his hand said laconically, "No, we ain't
+highwaymen, lady. We wasn't expectin' comp'ny, but sence you've come,
+you'll hev to stay. Set right where you are and don't look. We'll be
+through this job in a minute."
+
+"Nonsense! Let us pass at once," said the Major indignantly. "Drive on
+over the bridge, James!"
+
+"Better not, James," drawled the laconic one. "We're usin' that bridge
+ourselves just now."
+
+The chauffeur hesitated, walling his eyes in fright. Joan, who was
+seated beside him, reached for the ignition switch to start the engine,
+but turned on instead the lighting-switch. The sudden glare of the
+headlights revealed some twenty or thirty roughly dressed men of the
+farmer class, and in their midst, bound hand and foot with rope, a
+cowering negro.
+
+"My God! It's a lynching," quavered Effie May.
+
+The Major had by this time collected his startled wits.
+
+With a sudden oath he jerked open the door and got out.
+
+"What are you up to here, men? Don't touch me, sir!"--this to one who
+had laid a hand on his sleeve.
+
+There was a quality in her father's voice that sent a thrill through
+Joan. She had never heard it before. The man removed his hand.
+
+"We're just stringin' up a nigger for the best of reasons," he
+explained. "'Tain't no business of yourn, stranger."
+
+"I'll make it my business," said Richard Darcy sternly. "You're not
+going to disgrace this State while _I_ am here!"
+
+The effect was histrionic; and yet Joan realized that her father was not
+blustering. He meant it.
+
+There came a wail from beyond that made her shiver, the cry of a man in
+mortal terror. "I ain't never done it, 'fore Gawd I ain't never tetched
+that woman. Oh, Boss! O-o-oh, Boss!" It was like the cry of a damned
+soul to God. "_Don'_ you let 'em git me!"
+
+There was an agony of hope in the appeal, as of one who sees at hand
+unexpected deliverance.
+
+The Major responded to it, speaking in quiet reassurance as she had
+sometimes heard him speak, years ago, when she had wakened out of some
+nightmare in the little bed beside her parents'.
+
+"All right, boy. They shan't get you,"
+
+He strode through the crowd, putting men out of his way right and left.
+In sheer surprise they let him pass till he reached the negro, who
+cringed to him, catching at his hand.
+
+Then a voice cried out, "Here, we're wastin' time. Muzzle the old boy!"
+
+The Major turned and stared magnificently in the direction of his voice,
+nettled by the term "old boy."
+
+"Evidently," he remarked, "the gentleman does not know who I am!"
+
+Joan was seized with an hysterical desire to laugh. At such a moment the
+bombast of it was too much. Suppose they should inquire
+minstrel-fashion, "Well, then, Mr. Johnsing, who _are_ you?"
+
+But the crowd was not as used to her father as she was. They hesitated,
+impressed by his hauteur, his fine clothes, the waiting limousine. They
+stirred uneasily. A voice near her murmured, "Mebbe it's the Governor!"
+
+Richard Darcy took instant advantage of the impression he had created,
+and began to speak. It was not the first time she had heard him make a
+speech, for he was frequently called upon to aid some friend in turning
+the tide of political battle. The Major, indeed, had rather a reputation
+for assisting his friends into office--It was typical of Joan that she
+listened critically despite her thumping heart; that she watched what
+she could see of the faces about her, picked out by the lights of the
+car; that she missed no expression on the gray, working features of the
+negro, darting wild glances about him like a newly caged wolf she had
+seen once at the Zoo, frantically eying the people who stood to stare at
+it.
+
+Her father's voice poured out in a golden flood, running the gamut from
+anger to gentle suasion. It was the voice of the natural orator, which
+depends very little for its effect upon words. Once, passing a negro
+church, Joan had heard just such a voice rising and falling within, and
+though not a word of the sermon reached her, after a few moments she had
+been almost ready to sway and moan with the congregation as it muttered,
+"Yas, good Lawd!" "Be mussiful to us po' sinners" "Come, Jesus, come
+down and take me home!"
+
+Some such effect began to be visible on the Major's audience. There were
+stirrings and murmurings that suggested applause. He rose to them. The
+eloquence that lies so close under the skin of Southern-born
+men--certainly of all Southern-born men of Irish stock--came to the
+surface and flowered. He showed this handful of rough farmers what it
+should mean to them to be natives of so great and glorious a
+commonwealth ("'Commonwealth'--what a splendid word, my friends!");
+wearing in her bosom all the riches of the earth, nourishing at that
+bosom a race of supermen ("And superwomen, my friends! superwomen!");
+carrying in her womb the greatness of the country's future.
+
+"Statesmen we give to the world--law-makers, not lawbreakers! Soldiers
+we give, not midnight marauders and assassins!" (If he borrowed freely
+from a certain greater Kentucky orator who speaks only with his pen, the
+Major was unaware of plagiarism.) "Show me the fools who say Kentuckians
+are lawless? We make our laws as we need them, gentlemen--and we obey
+them! Perhaps the greatest of our laws is this: 'Never kick a dog when
+it is down.'" His voice sank to a warm and personal friendliness. "I ask
+you, gentlemen--is there any dog more down than the negro? It is not his
+fault that he is here where he is no longer wanted. It is not his fault
+that he brought with him when he came the ways and the intelligence of
+the jungle. It is ours, perhaps, that he has kept them. We shall never
+tame the negro by proving ourselves savages!--My friends, you and I here
+in Kentucky pride ourselves on breaking our horses and our dogs by means
+of kindness. Shall we do less for our unfortunate black brother?"
+
+A voice in the crowd remarked, "_You_ can claim kin with him ef you want
+to, Jedge--_I_ ain't!"
+
+A ripple of laughter greeted this sally, and Joan's tension relaxed. She
+felt intuitively that a crowd which laughs does not kill.
+
+While he spoke, her father had more than once caught her eye over the
+heads of the others, urgently, meaningly. Now he nodded to her. Joan
+suddenly caught the message he was trying to convey.
+
+"He wants us to go to him. Quick, James! Start your engine. Quietly!"
+
+In his nervousness, however, the chauffeur started the car with a jerk,
+and many faces moved in their direction. The Major turned on the full
+tide of his voice, and rose to his climax.
+
+"My friends," he asked solemnly, "have you thought to take into your
+hands the privilege of the Most High, who saith, 'Vengeance is mine'?
+Perhaps you have called vengeance 'justice'? Even so there is a finer
+thing than justice. There is mercy. And there is something we may give
+even greater than mercy--something to which each of us poor souls has a
+human right. I refer, gentlemen, to the benefit of the doubt.
+
+"Some day every one of us here present--who knows how soon?--must stand
+before the Judgment Seat, cowering as this wretch is cowering now. And
+what we dare to ask then will be perhaps not justice, nor even
+mercy--but simply the benefit of the doubt."
+
+Tears came into Joan's eyes. It seemed to her that for a moment her
+father had forgotten his purpose there, and was speaking not for another
+but for himself....
+
+His mind, however, had not left the business in hand. After a slight and
+telling pause, he said in his ordinary conversational voice, "Now I am
+going to take this negro with me, gentlemen, if you don't mind. I have
+at hand a safe conveyance, as you see. I pledge you my word to deliver
+him in person to the sheriff of this county."
+
+He beckoned to Joan.
+
+The spell was broken, and pandemonium reigned. "Look out--he's makin' a
+get-away!"
+
+"Aw, what's the use? Leave him go!"
+
+"By God, it was _my sister_--"
+
+"Let me at him"--
+
+"The gen'leman's right, I tell you!"--
+
+And penetrating all a laconic drawl, "Stranger, leggo that nigger, and
+leggo quick."
+
+Joan, on tiptoe, saw her father's head and beckoning hand above the
+crowd.
+
+"Go on, James!" she said tensely. "Never mind if you run them down--"
+
+"Stop!" gasped Effie May. "Don't you see those pistols? They mean to
+shoot!"
+
+The terrified James did not know which to obey.
+
+"Here, give me the wheel," ordered Joan. "Be quiet, Effie May!" Into her
+mind came scornfully one of her father's sayings, "The canaille are
+invariably timid."
+
+Effie May suddenly screamed again. "They're going to _shoot_!"
+
+And as if at a signal for which they had been waiting, two shots barked
+out.
+
+The Major, still finely erect, thrust the negro behind him, and at the
+same moment Joan sprang out of the car to go to his defense; two
+instinctive acts which proved them father and child, and also proved
+indubitably the Darcy right to pride of race.
+
+His steady voice reached her again as she struggled through the milling
+crowd; "You poor fools, look to what your folly has already led you!
+You've shot the wrong man. You've shot _me_!"
+
+There was a second of appalled silence. Then a man muttered "Golly!" and
+turned and fled. His panic was contagious. One after another, by twos
+and threes, the lynchers melted hastily away. When Joan reached her
+father he was seated on the ground, leaning for support against the
+bridge railing, alone except for the shackled negro.
+
+He still had command of the situation. "Take my penknife, Dollykins, and
+set this boy free so that he can run," he ordered.
+
+Joan cut the ropes, sick with relief. He was so calm that she thought he
+must have been bluffing the crowd.
+
+"Dad! Dad! You're not really hurt, then?"
+
+He smiled up at her. "Not hurt, my child. Killed," he said, dramatic to
+the last....
+
+The negro did not run. In return for his defender's heroism, he
+performed a small act of heroism himself--not so small either, perhaps,
+considering that his life depended upon what use he made of the next few
+hours.
+
+"I'll tote him to de car, lady," he offered, pantingly; and delayed
+further to give the paralyzed chauffeur instructions as to where to find
+the nearest doctor.
+
+Joan sat on the floor of the limousine with her father's head in her
+lap, only half aware of his labored, fluttering breath, of the blood
+upon her dress, of her step-mother's wild pleadings with him just to
+look at her, just to say one word to his Effie May, who loved him--
+
+She was strangely exalted. Her mind seemed to have slipped into a region
+of consciousness where things were made suddenly clear to her, troubling
+questions answered, doubts set forever aside.
+
+"A gentleman," she kept repeating to herself. "A gentleman!"
+
+It seemed to her in that moment a great thing to have been born a
+gentleman, even if one became nothing more; to know that whatever the
+fortunes of life, one would be able to meet them gallantly and unafraid,
+because of a something within stronger than personal will or habit: the
+sum of the wills and habits of many ancestors. She was sorry for the
+_canaille_, the Effie Mays, who had no such inner power to rely upon....
+
+As they carried him into a doctor's office, Richard Darcy's eyes opened.
+They passed the face of his frantic wife unseeing, and came to rest upon
+Joan in some anxiety.
+
+"You all right, Dollykins? Must not allow--mere trifle like
+this--upset--"
+
+"Nothing shall upset me, Father," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Children so necessary--family traditions--"
+
+She bent close to him. "My son is going to be proud to carry on the
+family traditions, dear."
+
+His face cleared. "Good girl!" There was a little bubbling breath. "I
+promised Mary--"
+
+But Joan never learned what promise it was that he had made, and
+doubtless broken, to his Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+Joan herself, like other self-reliant people, sometimes made promises
+which she was unable to keep. She had made such a one to her father.
+Despite her best efforts, the fact and manner of his death did manage to
+upset her, disastrously.
+
+The day came not long afterwards when for hours, years, they seemed to
+her, Joan was aware of nothing but pain, and of the fact that miserable,
+terrified Archie must somehow be got out of the way before she lost
+control of herself. She thought that when she could get enough breath to
+do it, she would ask him to go down town and bring her some ice-cream or
+something; but when she did open her lips they emitted, entirely without
+permission, a queer sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a croak.
+
+"Goodness! This is no way for a gentleman to behave," she said to
+herself oddly; and must have spoken aloud, for the voice of Ellen Neal
+responded.
+
+"There, there, my lamb! Yell all you want. You ain't no gentleman, thank
+goodness! but just a poor little girl who's got a right to holler all
+she likes. That's _one_ right the men-folks ain't going to deny us and
+get away with it--not them!"
+
+Ellen as she spoke glared truculently at the doctor. It was not the
+first accouchement at which she had assisted, and at such moments she
+became feministic almost to the point of violence. Even Archie found it
+safer to remain out of reach of her accusing eye.
+
+But long, very long afterwards, Ellen herself admitted him once more to
+the Presence, for the sake of the burden he carried--a subdued, queerly
+gentle Ellen, with all the acerbity gone from voice and manner, and in
+its place something rather beautiful. It was motherhood that glowed in
+her, had any one cared to notice; motherhood come by vicariously, as
+Ellen Neal came by all the loveliness in life.
+
+"See, my lamb," she murmured, bending over the bed. "Open them pretty
+eyes and look who's here! Come close, Mr. Archie, and show her the
+present you've brought her. Quiet, now!--she ain't up to much. It's a
+surprise, Joie. Open your eyes and look!"
+
+It was a surprise, indeed. Joan, by great effort, managed to focus her
+gaze on Archie's burden. She shut her eyes quickly, and opened them
+again. They were still there; not one, but two little wrinkled, fuzzy
+heads.
+
+"Can you beat it?" demanded Archie, shakily, "Some little present, eh?"
+He held them out to her.
+
+Joan's lips moved, twitching. "From a Friend," was what she said; and
+Archie, recognizing a jest on sight, let out such a roar of joy that the
+twins awoke with pin-prick wails, and a nurse came running, and he was
+thrust once more into outer darkness.
+
+There a message was brought to him. "Your wife says why don't you
+telegraph President Roosevelt about it?"
+
+And literal Archie did so....
+
+But this was the last laughter heard in the house of Blair for many a
+weary week. Twins require more strength for their bearing and rearing
+than Joan, taken so unawares, was able to provide. The Major's final act
+of gallantry cost a good deal in the way of human life, which may, or
+may not, have been of more value than the life he saved.
+
+Afterwards, when she was able to think again, Joan sometimes wondered
+whether his death was not perhaps an even more futile thing than his
+life had been; yet she would not have had it otherwise.
+
+His widow had caused to be erected to his memory the finest granite
+monolith obtainable for money, bearing the inscription, "Greater love
+hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends";
+and Joan, after her first startled distaste for the grandiloquence
+passed, was able to appreciate how deeply the memorial must gratify the
+proud spirit of a Darcy, if it lingered near enough to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+    Through the dim corridors, the silent halls
+    Of Yesterday, the nuns move, whispering
+    Their rosary. Without, a robin calls
+    A drowsy blessing to his little mate,
+    For it is late,
+    And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer.
+    And Christ is there.
+
+    Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory--!
+    _Et verbum caro factum est_, they sing,
+    And lo! the years are as a day to me.
+    I kneel among the quiet ones again
+    To lay the pain,
+    The joy of life, where light and shadow meet
+    At Jesus' feet.
+
+
+Some time earlier, during the period when girl-emotions translate
+themselves into verse as naturally as bird-emotions translate themselves
+into song, Joan had composed these lines, with the odd prescience that
+frequently came to her when she "took her pen in hand." She had stepped
+aside from a heated game of handball one day to jot them down; and her
+play-fellows, evincing no particular surprise, had murmured to each
+other, "Leave Joan alone. She's writing Poetry." For poetry is as much a
+part of convent school-life as is handball.
+
+Now she was back among "the quiet ones" again, fulfilling her own
+prophecy, come to lay her burden of pain and joy, if not at Jesus' feet,
+at least in the safekeeping of his handmaidens. In her plain black
+frock, such as convent girls wear, with her hair down in a braid and a
+small apron tied about her waist, to protect her skirt from
+embroidery-floss, the nuns found it hard to believe it was Joan Blair
+who had come back to them out of the world, and not Joan Darcy. Only
+this was a Joan who played harder than her younger self had ever played,
+entering into the gaiety of the school, the basket-ball, the charades,
+the skating-matches, the fancy-dress impromptus, with a feverish
+eagerness which saddened the good ladies to see. Strange, vivid,
+restless young creature--what she had learned of life in the short while
+she had been away from them! Love, motherhood, and loss--the loss that
+is saddest of all losses to women, be they wives or maids or
+_religieuses_. While they in their silent corridors and hidden gardens
+had listened to month after quiet month rung away by the bells, praying,
+dreaming, working; tending the young life about them into blossom,
+sometimes carrying with candles one of their number back to a still
+place beyond the children's playground, sometimes--not often
+now--receiving into their ranks one who had done with the world's ways
+even before she came to know them. Truly "the quiet ones," blessed with
+the peace of those who resign their wills to the will of God.
+
+Joan, gazing into their serene, pure, almost childlike faces, envied
+them from her heart; but, being Joan, she asked herself wonderingly how
+they could be so sure it was the will of God to which they resigned
+themselves. Intelligent, fine-natured women, deliberately turning their
+backs on life, deliberately closing eyes and ears to what went on in the
+street just outside their cloister, lest it distract them from
+contemplation of their immortal souls--Joan shook her head sharply; and
+putting a veil over her hair, slipped into the chapel, where a voice
+behind the cloister-screen was repeating the rosary of the Sacred Heart:
+
+    "Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, burning with love for us,
+     Inflame our hearts with love for Thee."
+
+The beautiful voice rose and fell in almost passionate cadence, as if it
+were pleading. It ceased abruptly; and another, older voice took up the
+words, with mystic tenderness. There was a faint fragrance in the
+place--indeed throughout the old building--of incense and dying roses,
+which Joan always called to herself "the odor of sanctity." It came back
+to her sometimes poignantly in the most unexpected places.
+
+A very old lay-sister, in a white coif and shoes that creaked a trifle,
+pottered about among the statues of the saints, arranging small lamps
+and vases of flowers, always dropping as she passed the altar a
+business-like little curtsey. Now and then a child with a veil over her
+head would slip in at the door, and genuflect, and sink to her knees for
+a moment's prayer. Sunlight streamed in, multi-colored, through ruby and
+purple and amber glass, across the white marble Christ who stood with
+hands outstretched and head bowed, suffering little children to come
+unto Him....
+
+Joan, who had been reading Renan (a fact which would have certainly
+caused her expulsion from that place had it been known), quoted to
+herself:
+
+     "In our bustling civilization, the memory of the life of
+     Galilee has been like the perfume of another world."
+
+It seemed to her one of the true miracles that it should indeed have
+persisted through our bustling civilization, through persecution and
+indifference, through crass hysterical religiosity, even to this day; if
+only in such places as her convent school, and little country churches
+here and there, and in the homes of the very poor. That lovely,
+pastoral, gentle life of Galilee, exquisite as the name itself--who
+could not have been good in Galilee?
+
+"If Archie had lived then, he would have followed Christ," thought Joan
+suddenly. "Followed him, and fought for him, too. And he'd never have
+let the Jews get hold of him!"
+
+It was the first time she had thought of her husband in many days....
+
+Archie's letters came with faithful regularity, but he was one of the
+personalities who do not carry well by letter. He informed her that he
+missed her, but she was not to hurry home on his account; that Ellen was
+keeping down the grocer-bill nicely; that the new man he had put on the
+road wasn't doing well and he thought of putting Johnny Carmichael in
+his place; that one of the water-pipes had burst and made a spot on the
+wall, but nothing to fret about; and that if she needed more money be
+sure to let him know. Or words to that effect.
+
+Archie, somehow, was never quite in the picture. She was better able to
+reconstruct her lost girlhood without him.
+
+And Archie understood. It was he who had suggested the Convent when
+Joan's doctor admitted himself dissatisfied with her condition, her slow
+return to normality.
+
+"You've got a peculiarly sensitive nervous organism to deal with here,"
+the doctor said. "It takes very little to throw such natures off the
+balance. You say she never speaks of her babies at all? I don't like
+that! I'd rather have her crying about all over the place."
+
+"So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could
+comfort her. Now I don't dare!"
+
+"I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone."
+
+So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and
+asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the
+tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting
+married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as
+if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her
+useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a
+religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom
+by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement,
+and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to
+enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some
+time been afraid.
+
+Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple,
+orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded
+the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed
+the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's
+uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily
+prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it.
+
+She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to
+forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather
+frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan
+was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their
+husbands, else how could they remain wives?
+
+"She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive.
+"We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."
+
+"Humph! and what about you? I suppose you ain't had a good deal of a
+shock yourself?" muttered the old woman, savage with sympathy. "Wasn't
+you bringing home toys and truck every day of the world, trains and
+dolls and I don't know what all--and them not a week old yet? Your top
+chiffoneer drawer's full of toys this minute."
+
+"Better give them away to the children in the neighborhood before she
+sees them."
+
+"No such thing! I'll be savin' 'em for the next," said Ellen,
+stoutly....
+
+Oddly enough, Joan was presently restored to her husband and her duty
+through the medium of no less a person than Eduard Desmond.
+
+She was chaperoning some of the younger girls in town one day, when she
+met him on the street. She was surprised by the encounter, for she had
+not known he was in Washington; and she bowed uncertainly, expecting him
+to be a little embarrassed.
+
+But he stopped, and held out his hand with evident pleasure. "Mrs.
+Blair! you?" he exclaimed. "What wonderful luck brings you to
+Washington? and where are you stopping?"
+
+Joan briefly explained.
+
+"Then," he said with a notable accession of eagerness, "Mr. Blair is not
+with you?"
+
+Some long-slumbering imp of malice awoke and stirred in Joan. His
+expression as he looked her up and down was unmistakable. Evidently
+matrimony had detracted nothing from her in his eyes. On the contrary.
+
+"No, Mr. Blair is not with me," she replied demurely. "I am on a
+vacation. Why should one carry a husband about on a vacation?"
+
+This was Longmeadow language, the native tongue of Mr. Desmond.
+
+"Why, indeed?" he murmured. "And when am I to come to see you?"
+
+"I'm not sure you are to come at all. We're not allowed masculine
+callers at the Convent, I think; are we, dear?" she asked the young girl
+nearest to her.
+
+"Oh, yes, Mrs. Blair!--on Wednesday afternoons, if they're brothers or
+cousins or anything like that," replied the child shyly.
+
+Eduard smiled. "I am not a cousin or a brother--fortunately--but perhaps
+I may be called 'something like that!'--Next Wednesday afternoon, then?"
+
+"I'm not really sure that I shall be able to see you," she demurred.
+
+"I am!" replied Eduard calmly; and, lifting his hat, he passed on.
+
+He proved himself a true prophet. Joan could not deny herself the bitter
+satisfaction of seeing at what a small fire she had managed so to scorch
+her young wings.
+
+He had been waiting half an hour in the convent parlor when she came to
+him, however; and half an hour in a convent parlor is an ordeal few
+forget. It was a large, bleak room divided midway by a grille, on the
+inner side of which sat a lay-sister, knitting. The other side was left
+for the reception of male relatives and connections; and a tongue-tied,
+uneasy lot they were, slipping about on the horsehair sofas, staring
+furtively at the undecorative saints who adorned the walls, conducting
+their conversation obviously with a view to the other side of the
+grille.
+
+"For heaven's sake, get me out of this!" murmured Desmond as Joan
+approached. "I feel as if the eye of God were on me constantly!"
+
+"It's only the eye of Sister Veronica," reassured Joan, "and more her
+ear than her eye, I fancy."
+
+"You don't mean that she can hear what we are saying, in there?"
+
+"I've been told there's a sounding-board concealed about this room
+somewhere. It may not be true, of course; but it's wonderful how much
+does get back to the Convent from the parlor."
+
+Eduard shuddered. "There's goose-flesh up and down my spine! Do come out
+for a walk somewhere."
+
+She shook her head, smiling. "Can't be done! But of course you haven't
+anything to say to me that Sister Veronica shouldn't hear."
+
+"Haven't I, just?" he muttered.
+
+The imp of malice stirred in her again. She asked softly, "What, for
+instance?"
+
+He gave her a quick look, glanced toward the grille, and plunged, albeit
+in a very low voice.
+
+"For one thing I want to tell you how lovely you've grown!"
+
+"Louder, please?" said Joan, "I missed that."
+
+He repeated it, with additions. "And you need not pretend you did not
+hear me, either, you witch. What's happened to you, Joan? I always knew
+you'd be a wonderful creature some day, but already!--Those exquisite
+shadows under the eyes, the hollow of your cheek, your lips--What I'd
+give to paint you now, my dear! Only that it would waste our time
+together. How much time have you, by the way? For me, I mean?"
+
+"You find me improved, then?" she enquired, demurely.
+
+"Improved! I find you--never mind what I find you! There's a subtlety, a
+fascination--But I can't express it."
+
+"There must be a subtlety indeed if _you_ can't express it," she
+commented; and added, "How is Mrs. Rossiter?"
+
+If she expected to disconcert him, she was disappointed. He informed her
+at length as to the health, appearance, and conjugal felicity of Mrs.
+Rossiter.
+
+"They're actually pulling it off," he said interestedly. "They're making
+a go of it. I've always had the theory that once a divorcee always a
+divorcee--the old-fashioned gentlewoman is more to my taste. Divorce
+always seems to me so--so unnecessary--But in this case it appears I am
+mistaken, and nobody is happier to admit it. They positively fancy each
+other, Philemon and Baucis, all that sort of thing!--By the way, I had
+no idea you had made such friends with May. You gave her my bracelet, it
+seems. Cruel of you, Joan!"
+
+"Did it hurt your feelings?" she murmured, dimpling.
+
+"Oh, frightfully. How did you have the heart? She positively gloated
+over me."
+
+"Father would never have allowed me to accept anything so handsome from
+a passing acquaintance. One had to do something with it, you see, so--"
+
+"Passing acquaintance!" he interrupted, reproachfully. "Surely I was
+more to you than that? Our evening under the beech-tree--shall I ever
+forget it?"
+
+Joan, paling a little, remarked, "Sister Veronica appears interested."
+
+"Damn!" muttered Eduard, and shortly took his leave. But first he gave
+her a note from Mrs. Desmond urging her to dine with them on any evening
+she cared to name.
+
+     "Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no
+     heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of
+     us, a family party."
+
+Joan hesitated.
+
+"Of course we all realize that you are not in a mood for gaiety," said
+Eduard with a sympathetic glance at her black. "But I _must_ see you
+somehow!--and among old friends, who understand--"
+
+To ward off any mention of things that hurt, she hastily agreed to dine
+with the Desmonds on the following Saturday.
+
+Sister Veronica, (who happened to be quite deaf) wondered what could
+have occurred to give the poor child such an expression of--not exactly
+pleasure. It was more like triumph. She would have made no sense of what
+Joan was muttering under her breath, Salome-wise, as she left the
+parlor: "Off with his head! Oh, off with his head, _and step on it_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Not only the older girls, but more than one of the nuns, made some
+excuse to come into Joan's little room when she was dressing that
+Saturday evening. The rumor had gone forth that their charge was
+beginning to take interest in worldly affairs again, and the good ladies
+congratulated each other. While they themselves had forsworn the
+pleasures of the world, they were quite aware that for some these had
+their uses, if only as an anodyne. They took, too, a quite feminine
+pleasure in Joan's frock, a simple black chiffon with transparent
+sleeves, which she had cut out a little at the neck to make it suitable
+for the evening.
+
+"I suppose," said the Reverend Mother, making her turn round and round
+for inspection, "that this is what they call in the world a decollete
+basque, is it not? And very becoming, too! Only"--she added with the
+frank conventual innocence that occasionally startled Joan, "does not
+such a display of the person tend to encourage lust of the eye, my
+child?"
+
+Joan laughed a little. "Let us hope so, Mother!" she murmured. "We
+strive to please"--a remark which the old lady trusted that she had
+misunderstood.
+
+Her striving on that occasion was by no means in vain. There seems
+something peculiarly alluring to the masculine taste (as women of the
+oldest profession in the world are quite aware) about black. Joan, with
+nothing to relieve her somberness except a cluster of white gardenias at
+her breast, would have held the gaze of any man who saw her as surely as
+she held that of Eduard and of Betty's father, who had hitherto not
+known his daughter's friend and openly regretted his missed opportunity.
+She was one of the women whom motherhood, even denied and thwarted
+motherhood, gives a momentary poignant beauty, of the sort that Leonardo
+loved to paint. Betty's father was indeed so regretful of his missed
+opportunity that it was with some difficulty Eduard secured the
+tete-a-tete upon which he had counted.
+
+"At last!" he sighed when he had finally manoeuvered her into the
+conservatory to admire orchids. "I began to think this was going to be
+another wasted hour, like my ghastly experience of the monastic
+life.--Do you realize, my dear, that I am entitled to a little praise
+and comforting on your part?"
+
+"Just why?"
+
+"Why? Why, because of the discretion, the magnanimity, in fact the utter
+damn-fool quixotism of my late conduct! At Longmeadow, you know. Leaving
+you--when I might have stayed!"
+
+Joan was rather startled. She had not expected him to carry the war into
+the enemy's country to such an extent as this.
+
+"That makes twice," he murmured, leaning over her, "that I've let you go
+unscathed, my dear. When you left school--and when you came back to me.
+But--Fate is too strong for us. You're not expecting me, I hope, to let
+you go a third time?"
+
+"In just about five minutes," she smiled, glancing at her wristwatch.
+"I've ordered my taxi for ten o'clock."
+
+He gave a little exclamation, and caught her hand. "Don't pretend to be
+so cool and indifferent, you witch! I know you better than that.
+You--cool and indifferent! Have I forgotten that night under the
+beech-tree? Have you?"
+
+Joan suddenly blazed out at him, white with anger. "No! I've not
+forgotten that. Nor afterwards."
+
+"Afterwards?"
+
+"Will you be good enough to tell me in plain language what was your idea
+in running away?"
+
+He eyed her appreciatively. He liked a touch of temper in a woman. It
+gave them a zest your amiable creatures lack.
+
+"Why, Beautiful, what else as a man of honor could I do? A thing like
+that doesn't stand still, you know! The flare dies out--or it goes
+further. Our flare would not have died out."
+
+Her lip curled. "And as 'a man of honor' it never occurred to you that
+we might preserve our flare, as it were, in marriage?"
+
+He sighed ruefully. "Oh, yes, it did! That temptation, too, I had to
+fight. For you see, my dear, I don't believe in marriage. I've seen too
+much of it (vicariously). Believe me, it preserves no flares! It
+quenches them. The thing's as fatal as death--though not, thank God, as
+inevitable! I will not put a relation I value to a test it will not
+bear," he explained, evidently in earnest. "What!--tie a creature of
+spirit and fire like yourself to the duty of forever loving one man,
+obeying one man, giving yourself into his hands to break at his leisure?
+Can you think of any surer way of killing love than to make a duty of
+it? 'Duty'--the most hideous, cold, Puritanical word in our hideous,
+cold, Puritanical language! The French put it better. _Devoir_ suggests
+something that is by no means cold. Therefore, dearest girl"--he kissed
+her hands--"let me pay you my _devoirs_ always, and be sure that I shall
+never trouble you with anything so unpleasant as a 'duty.'--Why, suppose
+I had taken you then, bound you hand and foot to me by law--think how
+bored we should be with each other already! It would be from me you
+would be taking a vacation, instead of from the unfortunate Blair."
+(Joan winced.) "As it is--"
+
+"Well?" she prompted, veiling her eyes. "As it is--Eduard?"
+
+He drew her toward him with little inarticulate murmurs. She took a
+fleeting glance at the face approaching hers. It was flushed, the eyes a
+trifle glazed as if he had been drinking. He breathed hard.
+
+"How unbecoming it is to them!" she thought, but without resisting. (The
+reader who happens to like Joan would do well to skip this paragraph. It
+is not our heroine at her best.)
+
+"As it is," said Eduard rather hoarsely, "we have each other for all
+time, my Beautiful! Nothing to bind us, nothing to hold us, except our
+sacred--er--"
+
+"Flare?" prompted Joan, helpfully.
+
+But he was not paying his usual attention to words just then. He lifted
+her face to his, and closed his eyes the better to savor what was
+coming....
+
+An unexpected sound caused him to open them again. It was laughter,
+issuing from the very lips he was about to enjoy; not hysterical,
+nervous laughter such as might have been pardoned under the
+circumstances, but cool and sweet, and unimpassioned as the tinkling of
+ice in a pitcher.
+
+"You're not really trying to warm it up and serve it over again?"
+protested Joan, as she extricated herself from his embrace. "How absurd!
+I thought you were too much of an artist for that. And at your age,
+too!"
+
+She sauntered back to the others, still laughing over her shoulder. He
+did not follow.
+
+Which may be said to have been the end of Eduard Desmond, so far as this
+chronicle is concerned....
+
+But it was also the end of what Joan had disloyally spoken of to him as
+her vacation. The word stuck in her memory, and she was ashamed of it.
+Her heart yearned toward Archie.
+
+The nuns bade her a delighted farewell; and all the way home she made
+amends for her long neglect of him by thinking of her husband
+constantly. By contrast with Eduard's smooth hair, his slim hands, and
+well-modulated, expressive voice, Archie appeared to her the very
+epitome of manliness. She idealized his defects into beauties, big ears,
+clumsiness, and all. She remembered with a thrill how easily he carried
+her upstairs when she was tired, how he went tiptoeing squeakily about
+the house in the morning for fear of waking her, whispering in tones
+that would have roused the dead--Blessed, funny old Archie! She could
+hardly wait for the sight of him.
+
+Yet when she did see him, through the car-window, watching the platform
+for her appearance as tensely as a terrier watches a rathole, Joan
+shrank back with a faint gasp. He was looking quite appallingly dapper,
+with shiny new shoes and a Derby hat--an article of wear not designed
+for people with badly adjusted ears; and his mouth hung slightly open in
+his eagerness, showing the infantile front teeth, through which issued
+(she could almost hear it) a sort of a tuneful hissing, as was his way
+in moments of emotion, just to show that he was not nervous or excited
+in the least.
+
+Joan shrank back, the last person to leave the train. And as she passed
+a mirror, catching a glimpse of her pale face within it she whispered
+piteously, "Oh, Joan Darcy, what have you done?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+For the modern woman there lies, fortunately, a life between the two
+extremes of domesticity and frivolity, both of which Joan had tried and
+found wanting. Or rather she had not found domesticity wanting so much
+as temporary--a period of tranquil suspense, as it were, leading up to
+an inevitable climax which had somehow failed to come off. Even had her
+babies lived, it is to be doubted whether Joan could have long satisfied
+herself with domesticity pure and simple; and she could no more resume
+it now than a cocoon may be resumed by a former occupant which has
+sprouted wings.
+
+As for frivolity, plenty of that offered itself to a young matron with a
+charming house and a husband who was generally spoken of as a rising
+young business man. ("Rising," Archie certainly was; he had to be, to
+keep up with his rising expenditures.)
+
+But Joan asked perhaps too much of frivolity. She had been heard to
+remark that "nothing made the social game possible except flirtation and
+real talk; neither of which were to be had in Louisville by people who
+valued their reputations"; a rather sweeping comment, of the sort which
+soon made Joan's tongue a trifle over-famous. Simple, unexacting folk
+who liked a good dinner with a game of cards afterwards for modest
+stakes, and now and then a little dancing with each other's spouses,
+just to keep in touch with the new steps, began to be rather afraid of
+young Mrs. Blair. And Joan was equally afraid of them. She had a morbid
+suspicion that dullness might be catching.
+
+There was something appalling to her, too, in what has been somewhere
+called "the infinite littleness of social life." It seemed to have a
+strangely flattening effect upon its devotees--promoting some, demoting
+others, all to the same unstimulating level, while the wheels within
+wheels shifted and reformed kaleidoscopically. These wheels within these
+wheels puzzled Joan. "Climbers," such as her step-mother, she was able
+to understand and even to sympathize with. It seemed to her quite
+natural and thoroughly American for water to seek a higher level than
+its own. That was merely progress, merely self-respect made visible. To
+"get on" appeared a quite legitimate ambition; but to "get in"--that was
+another matter. Snobbery, that word of many interpretations, meant to
+Joan the extreme form of self-confessed vulgarity.
+
+"If it were friends they were after, I could understand," she said to
+Emily Carmichael. "Everybody wants friends--we're all lonely. But you
+have got to select your real friends one at a time, not in assorted
+clumps, like bananas. And one's real friends so rarely happen to be
+friends with each other--you've noticed that? Why this passion for
+organizing ourselves into group-formation, anyway?"
+
+"For purposes of offense and defense," explained Emily. "So that we may
+leave the Mrs. Websters out, and let the Joan Darcys in, of course."
+
+They had been discussing Joan's near neighbor, a well-bred,
+sweet-mannered, adaptable young woman who had recently laid siege to the
+town, and with whom Joan was forming one of those propinquity
+friendships which are destined not to last. None of Mrs. Webster's
+friendships appeared to last. She had used acquaintance after
+acquaintance gracefully as a stepping-stone to higher things, leaving,
+however, not a single enemy behind her. It was the fashion in the
+various circles through which she had passed to say how charming Mrs.
+Webster was, even after she seemed done with them. And now, through
+Joan, she was laying tactful but so far unsuccessful siege to the
+Jabberwocks; cleverness (in moderation) having become quite the smart
+thing nowadays.
+
+"It is not our massive intellects which attract her, however," commented
+Emily. "It is--well, modesty forbids me to say just what it is. The sign
+_verboten_ is to some natures as a red rag to a bull. They simply must
+have it to play with."
+
+"Well, but why should anybody be _verboten_ to Kathy Webster?" defended
+Joan. "She's charming, and perfectly intelligent, and unmistakably a
+lady--which is more than one can say with confidence of some of our most
+indefatigable social leaders. Look at Mrs. Gunther, for
+instance!--didn't you tell me her father used to deliver meat at your
+door out of his own cart?"
+
+"Excellent meat it was, too. Father says we have never had a decent
+butcher since."
+
+"And lo, what house more exclusive than theirs?"
+
+"Naturally! It has to be. People like that seem to develop a sort of
+protective instinct which guards them from any possible contact with
+vulgarity until such time as they shall have accumulated enough
+refinement to be immune. Not for them the company of any chance newcomer
+like Mrs. Webster! They have to be careful."
+
+"But shouldn't you think they'd have a sort of fellow-feeling for the
+new arrivals?"
+
+"Dear me, no! What's the good of attaining a pinnacle if you're going to
+share it with somebody who might push you off?"
+
+Mrs. Webster's pursuit of Joan was not entirely opportunism. There was a
+good deal of admiration in it, mixed with a sort of malice which the
+larger nature had difficulty in comprehending. Joan found herself
+entered most unwillingly into an undignified petty rivalry with her
+neighbor. If she entertained some of her friends at luncheon without
+Mrs. Webster, the other instantly retaliated by giving a luncheon
+herself without Joan, sending in dessert and decorations afterwards to
+press home the point. If the Blair house in Spring put out new awnings,
+the Webster house erupted not only into awnings but into flower-boxes as
+well, with a corresponding air of triumph in its mistress. If Joan
+received some invitation which the other did not, there arose between
+them a slight, unmistakable coolness; whereas, if the contrary occurred,
+Mrs. Webster became modest and cordial again.
+
+Yet when this unpleasant rivalry lay dormant, the two had many a
+friendly, neighborly time together over their sewing and their
+gardening; and once when Joan was taken suddenly ill the other showed
+herself genuinely kind, quick with womanly help and sympathy.
+
+Joan could never quite make up her mind whether it was the pettiness of
+Society which makes the Mrs. Websters, or the Mrs. Websters who make the
+pettiness of Society. In any case, she lost what little taste she had
+for a purely social career. It was not good enough.
+
+And so she turned the pent-up energies of her nature into those
+activities which are summed up nowadays under the general title of
+Clubwork. Investigations, commissions, agitations of all sorts came in
+for their share of her attention. She soon created for herself quite a
+following of less daring spirits, among them Emily Carmichael and others
+of the Jabberwock group who had graduated from the cocoon. It became
+known that whenever young Mrs. Blair undertook a thing, it went with a
+rush, not so much through her own efforts as through those of her
+henchmen. She was recognized in club circles, despite her youth, as
+something more valuable than a mere worker; she was an executive--All of
+which fed her vanity and her sense of usefulness; and left somewhere
+within her an aching void of dissatisfaction.
+
+Suffrage-work came nearer filling this void than had anything else, and
+that, it must be confessed, for a rather ignoble reason. It gave her a
+chance to make speeches. In the back of her mind, with the very real
+conviction that the ballot is a necessity which women are unjustly
+denied, lurked also the suspicion that the world is already aware of the
+fact without any further need of agitation. Nevertheless she continued
+to agitate, because she liked to exercise an ability which otherwise
+might have remained forever undiscovered--There is no pleasure in life
+equal to that of employing skillfully the talents that have been given
+us.
+
+She made the discovery of her gift quite by accident. At some woman's
+meeting, a lady who was to have spoken on the subject of the Federal
+Amendment failed to appear, and Joan, who had recently read up on the
+matter (it may be remembered that she was what the actors call "quick
+study"), volunteered to take her place, meaning simply to give the gist
+of the matter and thus relieve a harassed chairman. But when she found
+herself on the platform facing interested and expectant faces, something
+happened that had occasionally happened before when she "play-acted" for
+the girls at school. Joan left herself, and became a part of the
+audience.
+
+She listened to her voice going on and on, with amused approval. It was
+a voice rather like her father's, carrying and flexible, and peculiarly
+rich in its intonations.
+
+"It doesn't really matter much what I say," thought Joan, listening to
+herself; "it's how I say it. If I drop my voice a note here, they ought
+to frown." (They did.) "Now I'll have them smile a little, perhaps
+chuckle. After I stop, no applause, I think--just a nice, thoughtful
+silence." (All of which came faithfully to pass.)
+
+When she stepped down from that platform, her reputation as a public
+speaker was made. Thereafter she delivered speeches whenever and
+wherever she was asked, to the incredulous delight of Archie.
+
+"Say, come over and hear the wife do her little spiel to-night!" he
+would urge upon all his acquaintance. "It's a treat!--stands right up
+and hands it to 'em hot off the reel, without a note or anything. You
+can see her little old brain workin' while she talks--and lookin' pretty
+as a picture all the time!"
+
+His pride in her was such that he presented her with a successor to
+Lizzie, a more pretentious member of the Lizzie family, in fact, in
+which to get about to her numerous committee meetings.
+
+"Of course we can afford it," he said in answer to her demur. "Haven't
+all your friends got automobiles? Well, then!"
+
+Joan accomplished much in the way of by-product to this satisfaction of
+her vanity. Her youthful charm and her good breeding got her a hearing
+frequently where more strenuous representatives of the cause had failed;
+and through her many hitherto uncertain lambs were gathered safely into
+the fold. On one occasion, to her astonishment, Joan discovered the
+three Misses Darcy in her audience, wearing expressions of shrinking
+alarm. But if they had come--not to scoff, they were too polite for
+that: let us say to deprecate,--they remained to join.
+
+"I declare it's _shameful_ the way we women have been treated all this
+time!" cried Miss Iphigenia afterwards, truculently signing the card
+which made of her a suffragette. "I'd no idea! Not allowed a word in
+edgewise, the gentlemen spending all the money and making all the laws,
+ordering us about like we were so many white slaves--"
+
+"I don't recall that darling mama was ever treated in just that way by
+dear papa?" interjected Miss Virginia, uncertainly.
+
+"Pooh! Exceptions," snorted Miss Iphigenia (if one so gentle could be
+said to snort). "Exceptions can be made to prove anything, can't they,
+Joan? Why, we haven't even had a say-so as to whether we should marry or
+not. Simply had to sit back and say 'Thank you, sir!' to any gentleman
+who was kind enough to ask us!"
+
+Here Miss Virginia was able thoroughly to concur. "And if nobody _was_
+kind enough to ask us--Oh, my dears, I begin to think that if we could
+have had the ballot in time--!"
+
+"What's more," cried Miss Iphigenia, inspired, "I mean to bring our Susy
+to hear you the next time you make a speech, Joan. Yes, I do! If they
+try to keep her out, we shall say she is there as our maid. If we are
+all to be allowed to vote about things, colored and white alike, it's
+time for the colored women to be taught how!"--Which Joan justly
+regarded as a signal victory.
+
+But at the same time she chuckled inwardly over the mental vision of an
+audience of colored lady voters, swaying to and fro with occasional
+unctuous shouts of, "Bress us, dat's so! Um, yas, my Lawd! Come down,
+come down and gadder us sinners into de fold!"
+
+Occasionally, in the pursuance of her various public successes, Joan was
+thrown into contact with people whom she classified under the heading of
+Intelligentzia. There were plenty of these in Louisville, thinkers and
+students and writers, a growing number of names which were rather better
+known away from the city than in it. But of these Joan fought a little
+shy. She cared more for books than for the making of them, had no wish
+to peep behind the scenes for fear of losing her illusions. She got the
+impression, too, that professional thinkers and writers were so busy
+observing and interpreting the life about them as to have somehow lost
+human touch with it. And Joan was nothing if not a humanist. She had a
+youthful horror of being classified among the _bas bleux_.
+
+"Men do so hate a bluestocking," she said once pensively to her friend
+Emily.
+
+"Men? Well, what of that? Yours doesn't!--and you don't want anybody
+else's men, do you?"
+
+"None that I have seen so far," admitted Joan. "But you never can tell.
+They say it's in the dangerous thirties that we really begin to sit up
+and take notice--Anyway, I shall _never_ be married and settled enough
+to relish the idea of men running away from me as if I were something
+catching!"
+
+So she continued to avoid, rather than to cultivate, the company of the
+Intelligentzia, thereby denying herself her birthright.
+
+And at twenty-five, a leading citizeness of her community, with
+engagements so thick on her calendar that there was barely time for an
+occasional meal at home, she woke every morning with the thought, "If
+something doesn't happen to-day, I shall scream!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+At that stage of life, something usually does happen....
+
+Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized
+with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that
+Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it.
+The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of
+autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like
+homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone
+unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind.
+
+     "We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the
+     slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the
+     Beauty of the World."
+
+"How _can_ one enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly
+of herself....
+
+Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a
+little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother
+had once made an English version of it:
+
+    "Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,
+      (Byushky, byu),
+    Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,
+      Smiles thy mother, too.
+
+    "Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,--
+      (Byushky, byu).
+    Blood and tears and fear and glory
+      Shall I know through you.
+
+    "But to-night thou art my small one,
+      (Byushky, byu),
+    With the moon to bless thy slumber,
+      And thy mother, too."
+
+Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and
+accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.
+
+She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately
+done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not
+safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who
+occasionally entertained musicians--But she was mistaken. It came from
+her own house.
+
+She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her
+slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside.
+Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile
+of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.
+
+Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting,
+exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have
+called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.
+
+But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the
+tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted
+yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it
+because you are too happy?"
+
+Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a
+f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just--Mother used to
+sing that song, you know."
+
+"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little--One is never
+a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."
+
+"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look
+at you!"
+
+He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in
+foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard,
+and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impassive face. They
+met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to
+melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both
+hands.
+
+"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!--And how handsome you are! I had
+forgotten that."
+
+He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.
+
+"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"
+
+"You have never been a grown-up married woman before."
+
+"I see! You mean that we've become the same age now?" She looked at him
+more closely. "And we have! Why, Stefan, you're nothing like as old as I
+used to think you!"
+
+"I never have been," he smiled. "I rather fancied you might discover
+that fact some day. But--you wouldn't wait, my dear." He turned to some
+packages on the top of the piano. "Have you become too grown-up and
+married to like presents?"
+
+The brief moment of awkwardness passed before Joan was quite sure it had
+been there. She clapped her hands. "Presents--for me? Oh, and for Ellen
+Neal, and even for Archie, whom you don't know! Stefan, how dear of
+you!"
+
+"Your people are my people," he said. "Also, I wish to propitiate them
+into allowing me the freedom of your company, you see."
+
+"Then you're going to stay for some time?" she cried, delightedly.
+
+"As long as I am allowed to--'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the
+hunter home from the hill'--"
+
+"Till he begins to feel an itching in his wanderfoot again," said Joan,
+making a little face at him. "I know you!"
+
+At that moment Ellen came in to light the lamps. "Oh, you've come, Miss
+Joan, have you? I thought it was about time! Mr. Archie'll be home
+before long," she said primly, and was about to withdraw when Joan cried
+to her, "Nellen, have you seen Mr. Nikolai?"
+
+"Sure I have. How else did you s'pose he got into the house? I'm puttin'
+a place on the supper-table for him," she replied, tossing her head.
+
+With years Ellen's temper did not become less difficult; but Joan was at
+a loss to account for its present manifestation.
+
+"Of course you are," she murmured soothingly. "But I don't believe
+you've seen the lovely present he's brought you all the way
+from--Shanghai, is it, this time?"
+
+Ellen drew near, fascinated by the shimmering length of purple crepe.
+"Silk! For me? Shucks, what would I be doin' with stuff like that? It's
+much too fine for the likes of me!"
+
+"Nothing is too fine for the likes of you," replied Nikolai, with quiet
+sincerity.
+
+"Why, you'll be perfectly grand in it, Nellen, with the Battenberg
+collar and cuffs!"
+
+She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept
+such things off a gentleman."
+
+"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," reassured Joan, keeping a
+straight face.
+
+But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of
+her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"
+
+"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each
+time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety
+of her sheepfold."
+
+"That's because you are what she calls a 'for'ner.'"
+
+"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it
+in their hearts to trust a Jew."
+
+"But you're only half a Jew!"
+
+"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without
+bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."
+
+He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long
+string of them with pearls between, and a tassel of pearls at either
+end.
+
+She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned
+more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her
+aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring
+out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"
+
+"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they
+are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them--The
+sapphires are better."
+
+She patted his hand. "It _is_ so nice to have somebody about again who
+notices whether I have eyes or not!"
+
+"Surely your Archibald notices?"
+
+"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate,
+like praising something of his own, you know."
+
+Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be
+in--I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"
+
+She gave him a quick glance. "I wonder what you mean by that?"
+
+But Nikolai did not explain. He said instead, "I am sorry you have no
+children."
+
+She stiffened. Among her friends it had come to be understood that
+children were best not mentioned to Joan. There was a hidden bruise
+which time seemed to have left unhealed.
+
+Nikolai, however, chose not to heed the warning of her expression.
+
+"A home without children in it," he added, "seems to us wandering folk
+only half a home."
+
+Joan stood up, a hand at her throat. "What do you think," she said in a
+stifled voice, "it seems to us who are not wandering folk?..."
+
+In three questions Stefan Nikolai had discovered about the Blair
+household all and more than he wanted to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door and Archie
+came in; a weary, cheerful Archie, not quite so dapper as of old, but
+rather the better for that, perhaps.
+
+"Hello, darlingest!--'Late as usual.' There--I said it first! Things do
+sort of pile up on a person. Why, look who's here? Wait! I know you--"
+he extended an eager hand of welcome to the man who rose to greet him.
+"I'll bet my hat it's Joan's pal, the author. Guessed you, didn't I?
+Only you said he was an old chap, Joan!--Well, well, well! Welcome to
+our city. I thought you were projickin' round, as the darkies say, in
+Mesopotamia or Timbuctoo or some such spot. Gee, it's been good as a
+geography lesson just to read the postmarks on your letters, sir! You've
+come to stay with us, of course? Hotel--nonsense!"
+
+The two shook hands warmly. Despite the breeziness of her husband's
+manner, Joan detected in it a respect which pleased her. This was no
+mere family friend Archie was welcoming to his city; it was Mr. Nikolai,
+the Author. She loved his little boyish bursts of hero-worship.
+
+"Look at my beautiful present," she said, slipping her hand through his
+arm and exhibiting her necklace. "You've got a present, too. It's like
+Christmas!"
+
+Archie was pleased as a child with his gift, a lacquer box surmounted by
+an ivory monkey which, when a handle was turned, reached down into a box
+and lifted out a cigarette.
+
+"Ain't they a wonderful little people, though, the Japanese?" he
+demanded originally. "Who but them would have thought of such a trick?"
+
+"'They!' dear," murmured Joan.
+
+"'They,' then," he repeated, unabashed. "Can't be grammatical till I've
+had my supper. I'm dead beat."
+
+It was not the first time of late that Archie had come home "dead beat,"
+though he did not often admit it. The treasurer of his company was ill,
+and Archie, upon whom Mr. Moore was growing to depend for many things,
+had volunteered to undertake the treasurer's work in addition to his
+own. But he had not the same gift for finance as for salesmanship, and
+took little joy in his new honors; except for the additional increase in
+his salary. Joan, to whom money meant nothing so long as she could pay
+her bills promptly, was rather troubled by the growing mercenariness of
+her husband. He seemed to be always thinking in terms of dollars and
+cents.
+
+But Archie lost his unwonted air of fatigue during dinner in his
+interest in the tale of Mr. Nikolai's travels. Nikolai had the writer's
+gift of accumulating odd experiences, so that even Ellen lingered unduly
+about the table. Archie was enthralled.
+
+"Isn't it just as good as a geography book to hear him?" he demanded
+several times. "To think of the natives of Yezo tattooing blue mustaches
+on the girl-babies to make sure they'll catch a husband! Ho, ho, that
+tickles me! There's a tip for Cousin Virginia, Joan."
+
+Here Ellen, who had been making her fourth unnecessary round with the
+potatoes, suddenly spluttered and retired to her pantry.
+
+("The ice," remarked Nikolai to Joan, "is beginning to break.")
+
+"I've always thought," mused Archie, "that I'd like to see the world a
+little myself some time. Armadillos on their native heath, Esquimaux
+eating tallow candles, the Latin Quarter in Paris whooping it up--things
+like that. But now," he finished with a happy glance at his wife, "I'm
+glad enough to be allowed to stay just where I am."
+
+"Who wouldn't be?" murmured his guest. "With such a charming home--"
+
+"You ought to have been here when my garden was growing," said Archie,
+highly gratified. "If I do say it myself, there's not a farmer
+in the State raises better bib-lettuce than I do. As for our
+asparagus--yum-yum! Simply melts in the mouth."
+
+The other looked at him very kindly. "Was that also one of your earlier
+dreams--to be a farmer?"
+
+Archie nodded. "It's always seemed to me about the finest thing a man
+could do, if he were able to--live on the land as he was intended to,
+raise what he needs to eat and a little more for his friends; chickens
+and pigs and a cow, and perhaps a little blooded stock if he could
+manage it--" He broke off with a faint sigh.
+
+"Why, dear," cried his wife, surprised, "I never suspected you of these
+bucolic ambitions!"
+
+"I reckon most men have 'em, if they'll own up to it--don't they, Mr.
+Nikolai? Look how all boys love to dig in the dirt!... But you needn't
+worry, darlingest. I'm never going to take _you_ off and bury you in the
+country. I know better than that!"
+
+It was late when Nikolai rose to leave them, declining an urgent
+invitation to occupy their guest-room.
+
+"No, I must get back to the hotel and relieve Sacha's mind. If I do not
+he will certainly set out to find me, and as he has no language but
+Russian, that might lead to complications."
+
+"Who," demanded Joan, "is Sacha, pray? Have you been stylish enough to
+set up a valet?"
+
+"It is Sacha who appears to have set me up. I had occasion once to do
+him a kindness, and he thereupon attached himself permanently to my
+person. There is no creature on earth so grateful as a grateful
+Russian."
+
+Joan took him by the arms and made him sit down again. "Not a foot do
+you stir till you tell us all about it!" she proclaimed, scenting a
+story.
+
+"About what? Sacha? Well!--In a village where I stopped for awhile a
+young mouzhik had been very badly beaten and thrown into prison to await
+trial, and things promised to go rather badly with him. So--"
+
+"Wait a minute. _Why_ had he been beaten?"
+
+"For murder," said Nikolai calmly.
+
+His audience gasped.
+
+"Only the murder was not successful," he continued, "Sacha was
+unfortunately interrupted before he had completed the job."
+
+"Unfortunately!"
+
+"Yes. The headman of the village had taken Sacha's little sister against
+her will, and the boy did what he could to avenge her. The law is not of
+much use in such cases--to peasants, at least. The night before I left,
+some of his friends liberated him from the village jail, and brought him
+to me. Their trust in the power of learning is piteous. They demanded
+that I take him away with me to America. That was a little difficult
+without a passport, but I managed to smuggle him over the border."
+
+"How?" demanded Archie, round-eyed.
+
+"In my trunk," replied Nikolai, as if this were an everyday occurrence.
+"I had arranged with a carter to drive me and my luggage early the next
+day to the railroad. Instead, he drove me to the border, fortunately not
+very far distant. My luggage was almost smothered by the time we got
+there, however, despite the air-holes we had bored in the trunk. Poor
+Sacha!"
+
+"But did nobody examine your luggage?" asked Joan.
+
+Nikolai shrugged. "As I told you, in Russia there is great respect for
+learning--also for roubles. I am not without friends in high places.
+Such officials as I encountered quite understood that a man of learning
+like myself would naturally travel with a heavy trunkful of books,
+ventilated by air-holes--But I have been warned that it will not be safe
+for me to return to Russia. Thanks to this episode, in connection with
+recent writings of mine, I am no longer _persona grata_ there." He
+shrugged again.
+
+Archie's eyes were round. "Whew!" he commented. "That's what I call
+life! Sounds like Michael What's-his-name, the Courier of the Czar!"
+
+"I assure you," murmured Nikolai, "that I am anything but a courier of
+the Czar!..."
+
+Later, when they had gone upstairs, Joan came upon Archie examining her
+string of sapphires, with an expression that puzzled her. It was grave,
+and not very happy.
+
+"Dear," she said suddenly, "would you for any reason rather not have me
+accept this present from Stefan? It is very handsome, I know. But he is
+a rich man, my oldest friend, and he has been giving me things of this
+sort ever since I was a baby."
+
+He turned on her a look of pure astonishment. "Not accept it! Why,
+sweetheart, I'm tickled as I can be that such a beautiful thing should
+be given to you. It looks like you, too, somehow, as if it had been
+specially made for you. I was only wishing--" he sighed faintly--"that I
+could give you things like this myself. And those Mandarin coats, and
+laces and all he sends you, and--oh, life generally! You ought to see
+the world, Joan, like he does. Maybe you can," he added hopefully, "as
+soon as I get a little ahead."
+
+She hugged him. "Why, you old goose! you're always giving me beautiful
+things. My pretty engagement-ring, and the house, and the new Lizzie,
+and--You see Stefan doesn't have to provide me with dresses and three
+meals a day, and put up with all my whims and megrims."
+
+"I'll bet he wishes he did!" exclaimed Archie, with one of his
+occasional flashes of insight.
+
+She pulled his ears. "You think because you're in love with me yourself
+that everybody else is, too! Stefan's about as much in love with me as
+he was with--baby Joan. It's simply gratitude. Mother was very sweet to
+him always--I've heard her say that it had been her job, and not an easy
+one, to restore his faith in women. It seems that he was engaged once to
+marry a girl who quite understood about his Jewish blood. But when he
+took her down to the East Side in New York to see the old aunt who had
+brought him to America, she couldn't stand it. She broke with him, not
+because of any difference in religion, but because the aunt spoke
+Yiddish and wore a horsehair wig!--Mustn't she feel like a fool, now
+that he's become so famous?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Archie doubtfully. "I'd kind of hate to have
+Yiddish and a wig in the family myself."
+
+She looked at him in surprise. "Archie! I didn't know you were such a
+snob! So long as Stefan doesn't wear a wig or speak Yiddish, what does
+the aunt matter! And the funny part of it was that the aunt rather
+looked down upon poor Stefan because his father had married a Gentile!
+So he came to regard mother and me as his only family.... Now run along
+to bed." She kissed him on his eyes, a caress that Archie loved. "I'm
+going to take a dose of valerian and have a good night's sleep. It _is_
+exciting having your best friend drop down on you from who knows where!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+It proved exciting not only to Joan. Some years earlier the arrival of
+so distinguished a visitor unadvertised and unpressagented would have
+caused little more than a ripple, except perhaps among what Joan called
+the Intelligentzia. But now that _belles lettres_ were coming quite into
+fashion, the chance of knowing personally a friend of Tolstoi and
+Maeterlinck, whose articles appeared in all the more intellectual
+magazines, whose recent book of plays had been published simultaneously
+in five languages and censored off the American stage into every
+up-to-date home in the land, was one that could not be ignored.
+
+The Russian servant, too, was a picturesque addition; a great, bearded
+fellow with eyes like a child, a tall sheepskin _papacha_ on his head,
+and his trousers tucked into wrinkled boots. This exotic apparition
+frequently opened the Blair door to visitors, and even waited on them at
+table, Sacha having without the aid of language won his way somehow to
+the rather uncertain heart of Ellen Neal; possibly because of his
+infantile appetite for sweets. He followed his master about like a dog,
+and whenever Nikolai was in the front of the house, Sacha's broken
+English and sudden high laugh were frequently to be heard from the rear.
+There were a good many callers at the Blair house in those days.
+
+The Blairs, and incidentally their friend, also found themselves deluged
+with invitations, many of which Joan accepted. She rather enjoyed
+showing off her lion, whose simple dignity was quite impervious to
+lionizing. His social successes amused her by their unexpectedness; for
+Nikolai had no small talk and pretended to none. He paid his chance
+companions the compliment of believing them to be interested in whatever
+interested him; and very often they were.
+
+Once, Joan, overhearing him enlarging to an audience composed of Archie,
+Emily Carmichael, and a particularly frivolous young divorcee of their
+acquaintance, on the Ostwald formula for happiness, felt called upon to
+come to the rescue; and received for once in her life a decided snubbing
+from her husband.
+
+"Don't interrupt, Joan, please!--Mr. Nikolai's telling us something
+mighty interesting. Go on, sir--G=E^2+W^2--I didn't quite get you about
+the Huettengluck and the Heldengluck?"
+
+"G," explained Nikolai, "is as you know Gluck (happiness). E stands for
+Energetics; meaning activity, health, ambition, etc. W stands for
+Widerwillig, one of those comprehensive words one finds only in the
+German, meaning everything that runs counter to happiness, all the
+by-products of activity--opposition, fatigue, trouble, etc. There are
+philosophers who hold that by reducing E (the activities of life) one
+also reduces W (the unpleasantnesses), thereby attaining happiness.
+Renunciation, you understand;--the simple life, such as that of
+Diogenes, who threw away his one utensil, the cup, when he saw a man
+drinking satisfactorily out of his hand.
+
+"But the danger is that in generally reducing the formula, G also is
+reduced, and may even become minus. At its best the happiness attained
+in this way is what Ostwald calls Huettengluck (hut-happiness). He
+advocates instead the Heldengluck (hero-happiness). Square, he says,
+both your Energetics and your Widerwillig, and the result will be a
+doubled happiness, robust, vital. In other words, live to the top of
+your powers, suffer to the top of your powers; and you will be able to
+enjoy to the top of your powers."
+
+"Sure!" said Archie. "I see that. Me for Ostwald!"
+
+The little divorcee remarked in an aside to Joan, "He certainly does
+make you think, this high-brow beau of yours! But I _like_ to think,
+sometimes."
+
+It taught Joan a lesson. She recalled a sentence of Trevelyan's: "A man
+who has too much sense to overrate his own qualities will often make
+amends to his self-esteem by underrating his neighbor's."
+
+She realized that she might have been making such a mistake herself. If,
+as she had complained, there was no real talk to be had in society, were
+not she and people like her responsible?
+
+If a scholar such as Stefan Nikolai found it worth while to give of his
+best to simpler comprehensions, was it not pretentious and even
+ridiculous of a Joan Blair to "talk down" to them, tactfully adapting
+herself to their limitations while concealing yawns behind her hand? She
+had the grace to blush for herself....
+
+The companionship of Joan and Nikolai was, as Louisville interestedly
+suspected, not an entirely intellectual one, however. Like all people
+who work hard with their heads (and Nikolai spent many hours at his desk
+daily, even in holiday seasons), he knew the full value of play, and had
+always been to Joan the most delightful of play-fellows. In her
+childhood he had often borrowed her for what they called
+"expeditions"--visits to circuses, zooelogical gardens, museums;
+boat-journeys, picnics--always to the surprise of Major Darcy, who
+regarded a child as a desirable addition to any family, something to be
+petted, and instructed, and even romped with in moderation, but by no
+means to be made a companion of.
+
+These expeditions renewed themselves now in modified form. The two were
+constantly to be met with in the most unexpected places--tramping about
+the parks in the rain, making tea over a gipsy fire by the roadside,
+climbing, their pockets bulging with books and apples, to the top of a
+certain hill whence miles of wild rolling country were to be seen, and
+the city behind them was as if it had never been. Joan had no longer to
+enjoy the Beauty of the World alone. The hill became their favorite
+haunt; and all through the open winter they climbed to its top almost
+daily, where in the shelter of the cliff they built themselves a little
+fire and sat, their backs to the world, reading and munching apples, and
+talking, talking endlessly.
+
+Joan never felt that any subject bad been exhausted between them. It
+seemed to her that the thoughts of a lifetime had been accumulating in
+her mind, waiting for him to pass judgment upon them; and to him it was
+no less than a miracle to watch her brain expanding, enlarging, visibly
+blossoming under the nourishment he supplied.
+
+Perhaps her brain was not the only thing Nikolai loved to watch about
+Joan. He usually managed to seat himself a little behind her, out of her
+range of vision, so that his own might rest where it chose, unobserved.
+But he asked no more; having learned of life to practise the Huettengluck
+which he did not preach.
+
+Sometimes Archie made a third on these expeditions; for he had developed
+a great enthusiasm for Joan's famous friend, and occasionally neglected
+business to sit at the feet of wisdom. Not often, however. Business had
+reached a point where it declined to be neglected (the depression of
+1913 was at hand); and besides Archie, despite their affectionate
+welcome, felt rather _de trop_ with the pair.
+
+"I'm no high-brow, and there's no use pretending I am," he confessed
+once to Emily Carmichael. "But that don't keep me from appreciating
+high-brows when I see 'em. It's as good as a correspondence-course in
+literature to hear those two go on. I'm as much out of it, though, as if
+they were talkin' the French language--which they sometimes are, at
+that!"
+
+"Archie," asked Emily, hesitating, "are you never the least little
+bit--jealous?" Her friendship for Joan was too unquestionable for the
+remark to sound feline.
+
+He laughed. "Me jealous? What for? I've got her, haven't I? And he
+hasn't, poor chap! Glad to share what I can."
+
+It happened that at the same time this conversation occurred--it was a
+chance meeting down town, and Archie, always the soul of hospitality,
+had invited Emily to join him in a cup of hot clam-broth at a
+soda-fountain--that the pair on the hilltop were not indulging in either
+literature or the French language. Joan, ensconced upon a bed of leaves
+with her back against the sheltering cliff and her face warm with
+fireglow, remarked dreamily:
+
+"Stefan, how have I ever managed to live here so long without you?"
+
+His smile did not reach his eyes; those beautiful, speaking, somber eyes
+which reflected in them so much of the history of his race. He said,
+"And how shall you manage when I am gone again?"
+
+She turned quickly to look at him. Something in his voice troubled her.
+"Gone--Why, Stefan, you're not thinking of going soon?"
+
+"My book has made great progress here. It is a pleasant place for
+writing--I have nearly finished."
+
+She gave an exclamation of something like anger. "You said you were
+going to stay 'as long as possible.' And after all it was only to finish
+another book!"
+
+"Not quite 'only,' Joan."
+
+"Then," she demanded impatiently, "why do you talk about going? I am
+still here, whether the book is done or not! Are you tired of me
+already?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"Have you become such a gipsy that you can't stop anywhere more than a
+few months?"
+
+"I wish," he said soberly, "that I might put my roots into this hillside
+like a tree, and never, never stir again, except to the winds, and the
+sap in my branches, and the seasons as they come and go--"
+
+"And me beside thee singing in the wilderness?" she smiled, as he did
+not continue. "Say you'd need me here somewhere, even if you were a
+tree!"
+
+"Every tree has one bird who lives in its branches. I should keep a nest
+safe for you, my dear--you and your Archie." He broke off. "But I am not
+a tree, merely a Wandering Jew to whom the time must come again to
+wander."
+
+"But why, why? It is not as if you belonged anywhere else!"
+
+     "Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"
+
+he said. "I have always meant, when I grew old, to come to wherever you
+may be, and settle down, and grow up again with your children. But it
+seems the time is not yet. I am--not old."
+
+"You? of course not! You're not even fifty, are you?"
+
+"No," he sighed, "not even fifty. Oh, to be eighty or thereabouts, with
+the dross burnt out and only the spirit left, free--!"
+
+"I'd hate you to be all spirit, Stefan! Such an uncomfortable, unnatural
+person to play with: like one of those cherubim, with only wings and no
+_de quoi_ at all.--(You remember the miracle that happened once, when
+the Sistine Madonna said to the little angels in the picture with her,
+'_Assaiez-vous, mes enfants._' And they answered, '_Mais, Madame, nous
+n'avons pas de quoi!_'--) I never could understand people wanting to be
+old." She made a restless movement. "Perhaps you've had enough out of
+life to satisfy you, but me--Why, I feel as if I had not yet begun to
+live!"
+
+"Nor have you," he said quietly.
+
+"_Why_, Stefan!" she demanded, facing him. "Why don't I begin, then?
+Surely enough has happened to me, more than to most people. I fling
+myself into whatever comes along with all my heart. And yet--I don't
+seem to be there at all! It is as if the real me were looking on at
+somebody else who struggles and amuses herself and suffers. I'm tired of
+looking on, tired!"
+
+"Who isn't?" he said musingly. "We want to be in the thick of the fray,
+people like you and me, even if it kills us. But--we can't choose. A
+good deal is chosen for us before we're born--the color of our hair, the
+shapes of our noses" (he smiled and sighed), "doubtless the kinks in our
+brains--Come, the fire is out, and if I allow you to take cold, Ellen
+Neal will surely banish me from Eden with her flaming sword."
+
+As they walked briskly home in the early February twilight, she said
+after a long silence, "See here, Stefan, if you really are going when
+your book is finished, let's not waste any more time going about to
+silly parties and all that. You only do it to please me, and I only do
+it to show you off. Why should we pretend any longer?--Let's be together
+as much as we possibly can without bothering about anybody else! Shall
+we?"
+
+He looked rather startled.
+
+"I mean," she continued calmly, "to make no more engagements at all; and
+you needn't either--unless you wish to?"
+
+"I shall not wish to."
+
+"I thought not! There's really nobody here you care about talking to
+except me, is there? And there's nobody in the world I'd willingly waste
+a word on if you were about. So there, that's settled!" she said with a
+little breath of satisfaction. "It's a good thing you're old enough to
+be my father, Stefan, or I suppose people would begin to talk about us.
+Still," she added, "I'm glad you're not eighty!"
+
+Meeting her candid, clear, affectionate gaze, Nikolai managed to summon
+up a smile of his own that was quite grandfatherly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Joan was not the judge of human nature she fancied herself if she
+believed that a disparity in age would render gossip innocuous. The
+disparity was not as apparent as she believed. Nikolai was, in his dark,
+impassive way, a singularly handsome man, and the stories of his early
+ghetto life and later experiences made of him a romantic figure to more
+eyes than Joan's. In vain the Jabberwocks rallied around her to a girl.
+In vain Effie May, whose shrewd ears heard usually whatever was to be
+heard, even in her retirement, casually spread abroad the story of Mr.
+Nikolai's devotion to the first Mrs. Darcy.
+
+Joan's attitude was discouraging to her most loyal friends. She seemed
+quite unaware that she was being defended and rallied around. It rather
+relieved her when invitations began to dwindle in number; she was thus
+saved the trouble of declining them. She entered into their growing
+solitude _a deux_ with the same single-mindedness she had brought to
+bear upon her frivolous period, her domestic period, and her brief
+career of publicity; being one of those natures which can do only one
+thing at a time, and that very hard.
+
+When she thought about their relationship at all, it rather pleased her
+to fancy that she was playing Mrs. Thrale to Nikolai's Dr. Johnson.
+Unfortunately the people about her were for the most part unaware of
+this classic relationship; and had they known of it would have doubtless
+regarded it with one eye knowingly closed.
+
+Much of the town's attention fastened itself upon Archibald. Scandals
+there had been before this, even in its upper circles; but they had
+maintained hitherto a decent surreptitiousness, had veiled themselves
+beneath a more or less transparent cover of secrecy, until some climax
+occurred in the way of pistol-shot or divorce-proceeding. The _tertium
+quid_, acknowledged and accepted, was new to the experience of
+Louisville; and very interesting.
+
+Meanwhile Stefan Nikolai, all unconscious of the stimulus he was
+offering to general conversation, spent all of his free hours with Joan,
+having long since faced and discounted the risk of it so far as he was
+concerned. The risk Joan herself might run appeared to his experience
+negligible. He had never even in his youth attracted women as less
+intellectual men attract them.
+
+Doubtless even had he been aware of the town's talk it would not have
+troubled him. For all his knowledge of humanity, he was no man of the
+world, in the accepted sense of the term. He lived too much beyond it to
+attach great importance to its opinion. In only one person he recognized
+any right of criticism. That was Joan's husband, with whom long since he
+had come to an understanding.
+
+It is a pity that neither Joan nor Joan's world ever came to know of
+this understanding, which would have added to the affair a distinct
+flavor.
+
+Mr. Nikolai had taken a small apartment, where Joan and her husband and
+occasionally others dined with him, or dropped in for a glass of tea in
+the Russian fashion and an hour of two of music afterwards. Nikolai,
+true to the instinct of his race, never made even a temporary home
+without music in it. He had, in addition to a piano, various instruments
+collected in different lands, among them a balalaika upon which the
+servant Sacha could sometimes be induced to play a shy accompaniment to
+peasant ballads.
+
+But Archie had never come there without Joan; and so one day when he
+dropped in alone, ostensibly to "hear the Rooshian pick his banjo,"
+Nikolai felt a surprise that he was careful not to show. His trained
+eyes detected signs of distress in Archie which others, including his
+wife, had failed to notice. The beaming smile did not conceal from
+Nikolai a little anxious pucker between the brows, a nervous twitching
+of the big freckled hands.
+
+The writer was not unused to being taken into the confidence of troubled
+people. It was one of the things that compensated for the enforced
+solitude of his life, such an occasional glimpse into the secret hearts
+of his fellow-men. It is an odd fact that writers and philosophers and
+even poets, all people who live necessarily a little apart from their
+kind, are frequently chosen as confessors by those who feel the need of
+confession.
+
+So Nikolai asked no questions, sure that a friendly silence and a good
+cigar would produce results. Nor did he ring for Sacha and the "banjo."
+At length Archie blurted out without preliminaries:
+
+"Joan isn't happy, Mr. Nikolai. I guess you've noticed that! She hasn't
+been for a long while. I'm not sure she ever was.--I s'pose I was a fool
+to think a man like me could make her happy."
+
+"It is a large order for any one human being to make another human being
+happy, Blair."
+
+"But you could have!"
+
+Neither spoke for a few minutes. Nikolai made no pretense of not
+understanding. Only a slight flush came momentarily into his face, and
+left it paler by contrast. "I am not sure," he said at last. "But I
+should have liked to try."
+
+"Of course! I knew that when you cabled us to wait till you came--But
+Joan don't know it yet. Funny, isn't it, when she's so smart? She thinks
+you feel toward her like a cross between a teacher and a fond
+father.--'Father'--my eye! She don't catch you lookin' at her sometimes
+the way I do!"
+
+"Do I--look at her?"
+
+Archie nodded expressively. "I suppose I understand, because I'm in love
+myself. And she don't"--he swallowed hard--"because she isn't."
+
+"Not yet, perhaps," said the other slowly. "Give her time, my boy."
+
+"Time? I've given her time." Archie heaved a great sigh. "Now I mean to
+give her something else. I mean to give her a chance. She never really
+had a chance before, Mr. Nikolai. I--I kind of got her off her guard,
+when she was takin' the count. It wasn't sporting of me."
+
+The other, moved, laid a hand on his knee. In moments of emotion the
+foreign blood showed in such slight demonstrativeness. But Anglo-Saxon
+Archie stiffened, and the hand was at once removed.
+
+"She's too fine for me, you see," he went on. "Too sort of delicate.--I
+read somewhere that china vases and brass vases couldn't float down a
+stream together without the china ones getting smashed (though why vases
+would be floating down a stream anyway, _I_ don't know!). But I'm brass,
+you see, and she's china. I thought it might be all right after the
+twinnies came. I still think it might have been, if they--" Again he
+swallowed hard.
+
+Nikolai nodded.
+
+    "Their hearts are wild
+    As be the hearts of birds, till childer come."
+
+But, my dear boy, you speak as if the twinnies had exhausted the
+available supply!"
+
+Archie's eyes dropped. Then he lifted them again in a frank gaze. "I
+almost lost her, sir. Do you think I'd put her through a thing like that
+again? God!--her little frantic hands clutching at us! And her voice,
+hoarse as a fierce animal's--!" He jumped up and crossed to a window,
+where he stood with his back to Nikolai, his face working.
+
+After a moment the other followed, and this time Archie did not stiffen
+under his touch.
+
+"So," said the Jew, "in your love you would deny her the woman's
+privilege of suffering?"
+
+"Yes! Suffering on account of me--yes! Every time. It ain't fair, women
+having to stand the whole business. If I could help, if I could bear one
+single pain of it--But I can't."
+
+"No," said Nikolai, his lips twitching despite the sadness about them.
+"No, I am afraid you can't. But--"
+
+"And it's not," interrupted Archie, reverting doggedly to his theme, "as
+if I were the right man, you see!"
+
+They were silent again.
+
+"You are so afraid of losing her that you will not give her children,"
+mused Nikolai presently. "And yet if I understand you you are willing to
+lose her--otherwise?"
+
+"To the right man," said Archie directly. "To you--Because I think you
+are the right man. She's been more contented since you've been here than
+I ever knew her to be. Of course you're twice her age, but that don't
+count with brainy people. And you could give her everything I can't--not
+just _things_; you know what I mean! Travel, education, all that. She's
+in your class, sir, not mine.--Will you do it?"
+
+Nikolai looked rather bewildered. "Do what, Blair?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Be nice to her all you can, read poetry to her, get
+her to care for you. Make love to her, if you want!--You can bet I
+wouldn't say that to many men--" he laughed forlornly--"but you're
+different, somehow. I can trust you."
+
+"Thank you." Nikolai's face lit with a very charming smile. "Yes, I
+think you can trust me--And in case your scheme were successful, if I
+should prove to be 'the right man'--what about you?"
+
+"Oh, me? Why, I'd just naturally fade out of the landscape."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"There're lots of ways. A cramp in swimming, or an accident when you're
+cleaning a gun, or a dose of the wrong medicine--"
+
+Nikolai's brows met sharply. "You mean suicide?"
+
+"Sure! Why not? It's done every day, and done so the insurance companies
+can't prove a thing, too."
+
+Nikolai rose and stood beside him. "You, who say that you love her," he
+said sternly, "you who cannot bear that she should suffer even to obtain
+happiness--you would condemn her to a lifetime of grief and remorse? You
+might perhaps deceive others. Do you think you could deceive Joan? Happy
+or not, you know that she cares for you, Blair!"
+
+The other's face softened. "Why, yes, I reckon she does, in a way. Once
+when I had a bad cold and she was scared for fear it was going to run
+into pneumonia she was awfully upset. I guess you're right," he mused.
+"It wouldn't do for me to do that. Why, her father's death almost killed
+her, and he was a mighty worthless old scamp, and she knew it, too!
+Joan's a deeper feeler than you'd think--Say, I might do something to
+make her get a divorce?" he suggested, brightening.
+
+"What, for instance?"
+
+"Oh, other women,"--he made a face of distaste. "I'd hate it--a low
+woman certainly does get my goat! Still--"
+
+Nikolai smiled. "Do you think you could deceive Joan about that, either?
+You might succeed in hurting her, perhaps; but she would not admit it.
+Joan is proud."
+
+"Lord, don't I know it? Proud as Lucifer! No, I've got to think of
+something to do that wouldn't be any reflection on her," he mused, "and
+yet that she wouldn't stand for. Actionable, as the lawyers say--"
+
+Nikolai burst out laughing, and taking Archie by the shoulders shook him
+to and fro.
+
+"My dear boy, I fear I cannot enter into this nefarious little plot of
+yours. I am not going to make love to your wife--I should not know how!
+Nor yet am I going to lure her from you with poetry and fine words.
+But--" he added, sobering, "I think with you that she has not yet found
+herself. There, perhaps, I can help. I can at least offer her my own
+recipe for happiness."
+
+"You mean that formula thing?" said Archie doubtfully.
+
+"No formula, Blair. Simply--work."
+
+The other's face fell. "Joan never has been one of those idle society
+girls you read about," he said, defensively. "Sewing, and housekeeping,
+and civics, and suffrage, and going around giving advice to the
+poor--She's tried 'em all, Mr. Nikolai."
+
+"And found them all other people's work, not hers.--But, Blair, I must
+warn you," he added gravely, "that when she does find her _metier_ you
+are in far more danger of losing her to it than to--me, for instance."
+
+"No danger of losing what you haven't got," sighed Archie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+People who know life only on its surfaces were apt to pronounce Joan
+Blair a rather hard young person. She would herself have admitted to a
+certain hardness, secretly aware, however, that it was a trait she had
+deliberately cultivated for protective purposes. Hers was one of the
+unfortunate natures that are more attuned to the minor than the major
+chords of life.
+
+Once in her childhood she had confessed to her mother, with a burst of
+sobbing, that she never expected to be entirely happy because of all the
+stray dogs running about the world, hungry and lonesome. As she grew
+older she discovered that it is not only the stray dogs who go hungry
+and lonesome.
+
+She often wondered impatiently why it was that every one with whom she
+came into close contact seemed soon or late to develop a marked quality
+of pathos: her futile father, the struggling Misses Darcy, gruff old
+devoted Ellen, Effie May, Archie--and now more than all Stefan Nikolai.
+Despite his renown, his wide experience, his phenomenal rise in life
+from so handicapped a beginning, her friend seemed nevertheless to her a
+rather tragic figure, belonging to nobody, product of two countries and
+native of neither, without even a race to which he could claim complete
+allegiance. For his mother had been a Christian girl of high birth,
+outcast by her family because of her marriage with a Jew; who had been
+in turn rejected by his own people because of her.
+
+Both had been killed in a _pogrom_, one of those appalling man-hunts
+that still take place in the Russian pale in the name of Christianity;
+and his father's sister, escaping to a land where there are no
+_pogroms_, had brought the child Stefan with her. It must have been a
+forlorn boyhood for a sensitive, gifted, half-alien lad, none too
+welcome in a poor and growing Jewish family of the slums; working his
+brilliant way through school and university, only to meet a crushing
+rebuff in this land of the free and equal at the hands of a girl who was
+afraid to marry him.
+
+Joan understood why her mother had taken the hurt and lonely youth into
+her rare friendship. Aside from Nikolai's charm of companionship and her
+gratitude to him, she felt it an inherited duty to "make it up" to him
+for the sadness of his past. And where Joan gave, she gave
+unstintingly....
+
+She did not pursue her headstrong course without receiving faint
+inklings now and then as to its effect upon the community. The warnings
+began with Ellen.
+
+"I ain't sayin' he's not a quiet, pleasant-spoken enough gentleman, as
+free with his money as if he was a Christian--Most _too_ free, if you
+ast me! What's he want out of it all? After all, a Jew's a Jew."
+
+"Even if he happens to be a Unitarian?" (Nikolai, during his college
+life, had chanced to adopt that creed.)
+
+"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all
+bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a
+Jack-in-the-Box--You needn't laugh, Joie--you kin see it all in that eye
+of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier
+eye--! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way,
+myself. Seems sort of shameless."
+
+"Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself
+to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good
+deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on
+behind it, the more it reflects--As witness my own," she added
+complacently.
+
+Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs.
+Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in
+her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and
+lorgnon.
+
+"You are looking very charming, dear child--one wonders at not seeing
+you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town,
+however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time."
+
+Joan admitted the imputation.
+
+"Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!--Still, Mr. Blair would
+naturally be democratic in his point of view."
+
+"Democratic? I think I don't understand."
+
+The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect.
+"Oh, these writing-people--it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't
+it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous."
+
+"It does not take a great deal of courage," said Joan, flushing, "to
+continue my mother's friendship with the most brilliant man I know.
+There even seem to be people who envy me the opportunity."
+
+(This shot told, Mrs. Carmichael having been one of the first and most
+eager to entertain the visiting celebrity.)
+
+"Doubtless he is brilliant as a writer," she conceded. "That is his
+profession. But even as a writer (I know nothing of him, of course,
+otherwise!) do you consider him quite safe, my dear? Those plays, for
+instance."
+
+"Have you read them?" asked Joan bluntly.
+
+"Why, not yet. I bought them, of course--one does. But one has so little
+time for reading. I am told, however, that in one of them a child is
+born practically on the stage. At least the characters converse about it
+quite openly."
+
+"Shocking of them," murmured Joan. "Those things should be managed by
+means of asterisks. But it's so hard to find actors who play asterisks
+acceptably."
+
+Mrs. Carmichael's lorgnon busied itself. "I should be sorry," remarked
+its owner, "to think that any friend of my daughter's would care to
+encourage indelicacy, whether in literature or--or in life."
+
+"Dear me, yes!--life is indelicate enough anyway, without our
+encouragement, isn't it?" murmured Joan.
+
+She felt, perhaps justly, that she had come out of this encounter with
+the honors of war. But Joan could ill afford to make enemies....
+
+The finish of Nikolai's book postponed itself from week to week. Spring
+came, and early summer, that most witching of seasons in the middle
+South, languid with the scent of magnolia-blossoms, gay with the bright
+parasols and fragile muslins that flutter forth like butterflies at the
+first touch of sun. With Nikolai to share it, the gray old town regained
+something of its former glamour for Joan. She had many favorite spots to
+show him--a quiet tree-arched street of patriarchal mansions in the
+midst of warehouses, with all the charm and old-world dignity of a
+London square; a certain secluded nook low on the bank of the slow,
+yellow river, undiscovered save by an occasional working-girl and her
+shirt-sleeved "gentleman-friend," with whom Nikolai conversed as
+pleasantly as with old acquaintances. He had not the Major's elegant
+distaste for the _canaille_.
+
+Through his trained eyes, Joan began to note again certain picturesque
+touches which had charmed her when first she came to Louisville; a
+primitive, two-wheeled cart bobbing along a crowded street, drawn by
+mules hitched tandem-fashion, on one of which a dusky muleteer perched
+sidewise, singing. "That might be Spain," said Nikolai. Or perhaps two
+mulatto women, dressed in the extreme of fashion even to rouge and
+face-veils, greeting each other with lifted, outflung hand--a gesture as
+savage and typically African as if they were only a few weeks out of the
+jungle, instead of a few generations--Joan found that with Nikolai it
+was possible to do a good deal of traveling right at home.
+
+Meanwhile the scandal of their association grew and spread; and at last
+Emily, distressed at the magnitude of the storm of which her friend was
+the center, decided to interfere. Not with words, however. Long social
+experience had given her tact, if not wisdom.
+
+Thereafter it began to be noticed that Mrs. Blair and her distinguished
+friend were not to be seen so often alone together. There was usually a
+third on their expeditions, and frequently a fourth, whenever Archie
+could be pressed into service.
+
+"Now that I've got some one to talk to myself, I don't feel so in the
+way," he confessed naively.
+
+Emily formed a habit of dropping in at the Blairs' in the early
+afternoon (just at the finish of writing hours), so that she had
+naturally to be included in any plans that were afoot.
+
+"I don't know what's come over you, dear," remarked Joan once, half
+laughing. "You're positively rushing me nowadays!--or is it Nikolai? I
+begin to suspect you of designs upon Stefan."
+
+"And why not? He's perfectly eligible. We old maids have to keep a
+weather eye out, you know--But how do you know it isn't Archie I'm
+pursuing?" asked Emily calmly. "I appreciated him long before you did,
+you know."
+
+"Emmy, Emmy, such indelicacy!" sighed Joan. "And him a married party,
+too! What would your mother say?"
+
+"I'm feeding her Shaw lately in broken doses. She's prepared for almost
+anything--You don't really mind my trailing you about this way, do you,
+Joan?" she asked, sobering. "I love hearing you two talk. Am I in the
+way, if I just keep quiet as a mouse?"
+
+"Mind? Of course not!" Joan kissed her. "You and Stefan are my two
+dearest friends, and I _love_ to have you friends with each other.
+Besides, he says you have an 'interesting mind,' my dear. Welcome to our
+city!"
+
+So Emily continued to make a courageous third in their walks and talks
+and studies; accepted by Nikolai with his usual courteous friendliness,
+and by the gossips with feelings which were not unmixed.
+
+"It's the husband's doings--he's awake at last!" declared one faction.
+
+"Men are so fickle. He's had a good deal of her--and Emily Carmichael is
+looking particularly well this year. Poor Joan!" murmured the other
+faction, composed of her more intimate acquaintances.
+
+Joan's feelings on the matter were also not unmixed. She loved Emily;
+her presence was always a pleasure; she had assuredly nothing to discuss
+with Nikolai that could not be discussed before so devoted an audience.
+And yet--
+
+Stefan came to take the other girl's company so much for granted that
+one evening, when Joan suggested a row up the river for their next day's
+outing, it was natural enough for him to say, "That sounds charming! and
+I think Miss Carmichael will enjoy it, too."
+
+This innocent remark produced surprising results; as surprising to Joan
+as to himself. She jumped to her feet. "Look here, Stefan! If you want
+Emily so much, why don't you take her by yourself?" she cried, and
+bursting into tears she fled from the room.
+
+Nikolai stared blankly at Archie.
+
+"Will you tell me _what_ I have said?"
+
+For once the other was the first to understand.
+
+"Don't you see?" he replied with his patient smile (and there is nothing
+sadder to see in life than patience on the face of a young man). "It's
+come about just as I thought it would, Mr. Nikolai. She's--she's jealous
+of you. That's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Stefan Nikolai, usually very regular in habit, sat so late by
+his open window that the servant Sacha emerged at intervals to
+investigate.
+
+"Is Excellency ill, that he neither sleeps nor reads?"
+
+"Not ill, Sacha. Go to bed."
+
+There was a lilac-tree blooming below the window, and the scent of the
+young summer came in to him, flooding his heart, his senses--
+
+The servant appeared again.
+
+"Has Excellency sadness?"
+
+"Not sadness, Sacha. I think--it is happiness."
+
+"And yet he sighs?"
+
+Nikolai stirred, and got to his feet.
+
+"That is because our wandering begins again. The book is done. In a few
+days we go."
+
+The servant took an eager step toward him. "Not alone?"
+
+Nikolai started. He had forgotten, as so many forget, the watching eyes
+of those who serve us. "Certainly, alone!" he said sharply. "Am I not
+always alone?"
+
+Sacha's eyes dropped. "In my country," he suggested gently, "when we see
+a woman which we need, we take her."
+
+The other smiled. The two had been through much together. "And if she
+chances to belong to some one else?"
+
+"Then"--with an eloquent thrust of the hand--"we kill!" But seeing that
+the hint was unlikely to bear fruit, he added dispiritedly, "Excellency
+is not, however, a peasant. Sometimes to be a peasant is good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+
+The storm which burst in August, 1914, had the effect of blotting out
+smaller storms into nothingness. It brought in its wake different things
+to different natures: to some apprehension, sheer personal terror, to
+others the quickening sense of high adventure, to others yet sick
+disillusionment with a world that was still capable of such gigantic
+folly.
+
+To Joan, in the dead blankness that followed the departure of her
+friend, the great war seemed strangely like a godsend. It was as if she
+had cried in desperation to Providence. "What next?" and Providence had
+answered, "This!"
+
+Perhaps she was not the only woman to whom the sudden extraneous demand
+for all that was in her came as a godsend.
+
+She flung herself head, hand, and heart, into the organization of relief
+work. As the Germans pursued their incredible way through Belgium, it
+seemed to her that every frantic mother, every maimed child, every
+desperate father, the very roofless houses and ruined orchards, cried
+aloud upon her, Joan Blair, for help. She could not understand why
+others did not seem to hear the cry, how those about her could pursue
+the usual course of life unheeding--Joan was one of the first Americans
+to declare war upon Germany.
+
+But those about her heard better than she realized. Gradually as the
+change came, it came. Hers was not the only blood in the old border
+State to thrill to the call of drums. And as in the earlier days, while
+the men got down their firearms to clean them, the women rolled up their
+sleeves and settled down to work.
+
+Under the impetus of Joan and others like her, Bridge quickly gave way
+to bandage-making, the click of unaccustomed needles drowned the chatter
+of clubrooms and tea-table, and the Jabberwocks in a body abandoned the
+pursuit of culture for a course in hospital assistance. "So that we
+shall be ready by the time our own boys need us," explained Joan.
+
+"But, Mrs. Blair, you ought to curb those firebrand sentiments of
+yours!" protested Judge Carmichael to her after one of her public
+utterances. "It is enjoined upon us Americans to be strictly neutral."
+
+"Neutral?" cried the daughter of Richard Darcy. "Neutral? Have you ever
+seen a pit-terrier jump on a respectable little poodle-dog out in the
+front yard protecting his household--and were you able to remain
+_neutral_? I know my country better than that!"
+
+In keeping up with Joan's new activities, the town quite forgot to look
+at her askance.
+
+Nikolai, too, was making of the war a personal matter. He wrote that he,
+with other writers in New York, was financing a hospital unit with which
+he intended to go to France in any capacity where he would be useful. He
+had been in his youth, among other things, a student of medicine.
+
+"Isn't it fine, Archie?" she cried, thrilling to this letter. "Oh, if we
+could only do something ourselves! I'd like to send him a contribution
+for his unit, anyway. May I?"
+
+Archie hesitated. "How much, dear?"
+
+Joan flushed. It was the first time he had failed to give her without
+question whatever she asked of him.
+
+"Sorry to have to ask," she said, rather stiffly. "But I've given the
+last cent I had to the Red Cross. Could you spare me fifty dollars, say,
+and take it out of my next allowance?"
+
+Archie silently got out his check-book.
+
+It troubled her to notice in him something almost like apathy toward the
+war. The startling headlines, the growing report of horrors, even the
+eleventh-hour miracle of that stand upon the Marne, moved him to no more
+than a preoccupied attention. He appeared to concern himself far more
+with the uncertain state of the stock-market, which he studied
+assiduously. Joan could not accustom herself to the idea of an Archie
+commercialized: interesting himself at such a crisis in the world's
+history merely with money.
+
+An explanation at last dawned upon her. "My dear," she accused him one
+day, "I believe you've been speculating!"
+
+"Who--me? Oh, every man speculates, sweetheart. Business itself is a
+good deal of a speculation nowadays. Nothing to worry your precious head
+about, though."
+
+"Would you like me to economize, Archie, more than I usually do?" she
+asked.
+
+"Oh, no. You're never extravagant. A little more or less can't matter."
+
+Preoccupied though he seemed, he was never too preoccupied to show her
+the special consideration and gentleness she had noticed ever since
+Nikolai left.
+
+"As if he were trying to comfort me!" she thought uneasily. Her queer
+outburst of nerves with Stefan was something she never allowed herself
+to think of. She did not quite understand it; and Joan dreaded things
+she could not understand.
+
+Archie seemed to be developing nerves himself of late. When the doorbell
+or telephone rang suddenly, he jumped as if he had been touched; and he
+went to his office almost every evening, coming home late and very
+tired.
+
+"You're working too hard, old boy," protested Joan. "I'll be glad when
+the treasurer of your company feels well enough to come back from
+Saranac and take his old job again."
+
+"He's back now. I expect to turn the books over to him in a few days."
+
+"Good! I'm glad of it."
+
+"Are you?" asked Archie, rather queerly.
+
+"Of course!--though it means less salary, doesn't it? What do we care?
+We had enough before. You know, dear, money simply means _nothing_ to
+me, so long as the bills are paid."
+
+"I know," he said soberly.
+
+Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the war, Joan might have been
+better prepared for what was coming....
+
+One day, on her way home from the Red Cross rooms, she bought herself an
+early edition of an evening paper, and was looking over the headlines
+when she came across the following:
+
+                SHORTAGE DISCOVERED
+     BOOKS OF MOORE AND COMPANY IN HANDS OF EXPERT
+
+Farther down, aghast, incredulous, she read the name of her husband.
+
+When she reached home, he was already there. Johnny Carmichael and Ellen
+were with him, both talking at once. They stopped as Joan came bursting
+in.
+
+"Archie! This can't be _true_?"
+
+He had risen to go to her. Now he sank back in his chair, nodding.
+
+"I been tellin' him he's got to git out while the gittin's good,"
+muttered Ellen Neal, her language consorting oddly with the tense fear
+in her face. "Here's plenty of money"--she held out a battered
+pocket-book. "He can hop on the L. & N. train as it passes Fourth
+Street. They ain't a minute to waste! The main thing's to git him away
+before they--take him!"
+
+"She's right!" insisted Johnny Carmichael, stuttering with excitement.
+"Once he's out of the way, my father'll get everything fixed. He's
+closeted with Moore now. We've stopped that beastly article in the
+paper--lots of people won't have seen the first edition. Father's taken
+on the case--Mrs. Blair, you've got to make Archie _wake up_!"
+
+But Joan could not speak.
+
+Archie rose to his feet again. He seemed invested with a new, quiet
+dignity. He put a hand on each of their shoulders.
+
+"I'm not going to run, of course," he said. "Thank you just the same.
+Now cut along, will you? I want to talk to my wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+
+Always afterwards, in thinking of that nightmare time, Joan remembered
+with a stab of remorse that when he held out his arms to her she had not
+gone to them--He did not make the mistake again.
+
+In the hour they had together before others came, he made things as
+plain to her as he could. The sum was not large as defalcations go.
+Moore and Company would not suffer for it--they were a rich firm; and
+later when he had served out his term he would be able to pay them back.
+This he repeated over and over.
+
+The trouble had commenced with the purchase of the house. It was too
+ambitious. Archie, struggle as he might, had begun shortly to fall
+behind with the payments, and had borrowed more money on it to meet
+them. (Joan recalled signing the papers, which meant nothing to her;
+merely "business.") Somehow, what Archie made never went quite far
+enough. Not through her fault!--this, too, he insisted upon again and
+again. How was she to guess how things were, so long as her own and the
+household allowances were paid to her regularly?
+
+"Oh, but why didn't you _tell_ me?"
+
+"A fellow don't like to admit that he's bitten off more than he can
+chew, till he's sure."
+
+So he had tried a little speculating, and won; a little more, and won
+again. (It was at this time that he bought Joan her modest automobile.)
+After that, the story is too trite to need repeating. There came the
+depression of 1913, later the cataclysm of the war; and Archie with the
+finances of Moore and Company at his disposal. He lost, heavily, and
+borrowed to protect himself; recovered enough to replace his borrowings;
+went in deeper--and was caught with no means of making good some
+$15,000.
+
+"Our house?" suggested Joan, trembling.
+
+"Mortgaged up to the eaves. Our equity in it wouldn't be a drop in the
+bucket."
+
+"What about your stock in that Building Association!"
+
+He laughed. "Swallowed up so long ago I'd forgotten I ever had any....
+No, dear, I'm done. I took a long chance, and I took it once too often.
+Nothing for it but to serve out whatever term they give me, and then
+come back and--show 'em." His set jaw quivered a little.
+
+"'Serve out'--Archie! You don't mean _jail_?"
+
+He nodded, still with his amazing quietness. "I want to. It's coming to
+me. And I'm young yet. You'll see!... But that don't mean _you're_ to be
+mixed up in it," he added, slowly. "When I go to the Pen, that lets you
+out, dear. You get your freedom. Nobody will expect you to--to stay
+married to a criminal."
+
+He was watching her closely, and she stared back at him. He had proposed
+the monstrous idea seemingly in all seriousness, as if it were one to
+which he had given long consideration.
+
+"Don't talk that way!" she said, with sudden sternness. "Of course you
+are not to go to jail. I'll fix that somehow--I'll get the money."
+
+But still she could not go to him, could not offer him any comfort. She
+was too stunned. This did not seem to her Archie, this quiet stranger
+who spoke so casually of penitentiaries and criminals and divorce.
+
+They were glad when people came to interrupt them.
+
+And people did come, in a steady stream. It seemed as if half the town
+had read that hastily suppressed news-item, and were determined that
+Archie Blair should not go to prison.
+
+"It's most worth while getting into trouble to see how many friends
+you've got you never knew about!" he sighed.
+
+The rescuers began with Effie May, check-book in hand and panting with
+distress, so upset that she had forgotten to rouge her face; and it
+ended with Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing, who intimated that
+if a couple of thou' at the usual rate of interest would be of any use
+to Archie, they were his.
+
+The offer that perhaps touched him the most deeply came from the Misses
+Darcy.
+
+"We happen to be at the moment temporarily embarrassed for funds,"
+explained Miss Iphigenia, at her stateliest, (and looking curiously like
+her Cousin Richard). "But it will be a simple matter to arrange another
+mortgage on our house. Dear papa did so frequently, I remember. And of
+course in a--an accident of this sort--Why, my dear boy, that is what
+houses are for!"
+
+But to all these suggestions Archie was able gratefully to explain that
+his wife had already arranged matters. For as soon as she collected her
+numbed faculties, she had telegraphed to Stefan Nikolai, and he had
+replied within the hour: "Draw on me to any amount."
+
+"There," she remarked to the weeping Ellen. "That's the Jewness coming
+out in him, just as you said it would!..."
+
+Ellen did all the weeping that was done in the Blair household during
+this crisis. The shock seemed to have quite broken her, so that it was
+the mistress who had to comfort the servant.
+
+"I'd ought to have known," she wailed, "with him lookin' so peakid and
+all! But I thought it was--something else. Oh, why couldn't he have
+_told_ me? I could have kep' the bills down more, had pot-roasts instead
+of fancy-cuts, and hearts--you know how tasty beef-hearts can be, Joan,
+when I set my mind to 'em! 'T aint as if I wasn't an old hand at makin'
+things do. But you always had such rich ways, just like your father. And
+I let it fool me.... Oh, the poor boy, the poor, scairt, lonesome boy,
+tryin' to go ahead all by himself!"
+
+Joan's heart ached for her husband, too, as much as a heart can ache
+that seems turned into stone. She felt physically numb all over, except
+in her brain, and that worked mercilessly as ever--merciless not only to
+him but to herself. She did not hesitate to put the blame where much of
+it belonged.
+
+"I have been utterly selfish, one of the vampires that sap a man's
+strength, his ability, his very decency, and give nothing in return.
+Yet--does any one but a fool yield to vampires?"
+
+She tried to make for him every excuse he had not made for himself.
+
+"It was all for me, to give me what he thought I wanted, the things my
+friends have. He could not bear to deprive me of anything."
+
+Yet he had deprived her of the thing she valued most in life: her pride.
+He had committed the sin unpardonable. He had, as the English put it,
+"let her down." She, Joan Darcy, in whom pride was the dominant trait,
+pride of race, of intellect, of character--she was the wife of a
+defaulter, a common thief!
+
+Despite people's marked kindness and consideration toward her, she
+fancied she knew what they were saying: "An extravagant wife. A woman
+who neglected her home and her husband."
+
+But of the charge of extravagance at least she was able to acquit
+herself. The iron of poverty had entered too early and too deep into her
+soul for that. She knew that dressing, for instance, cost her far less
+than it cost any woman of her acquaintance. She had always made taste
+and skill take the place of money there, and in other ways. Much that
+was unusual in her little house she had done herself, staining walls,
+painting woodwork, covering furniture. Where her neighbors employed
+several servants, she did very well with one; and if she left much of
+her household management in Ellen's hands, it was because she knew them
+to be more experienced than her own.
+
+"No," she told herself, puzzling the thing over, "we have simply cut our
+coat according to other people's cloth--And how was I to know?"
+
+It is the cry of many a startled wife whose husband has tried to keep on
+his shoulders the burden two should share: How was I to know?
+
+She was comforted to think that no tradespeople at least were suffering
+from their catastrophe; she owed not a dollar in the world.... Here Joan
+winced, recalling her determination that there should be no "Indians" in
+the annals of the Blair family. Archie, in order that she might pay
+bills promptly, had allowed her to pay them with other people's money!
+
+His own attitude was incredible to her. He seemed not particularly
+ashamed, nor even down-cast; if anything, rather relieved that the
+strain was over. The enormity of the thing he had done did not appear to
+impress him. He was more like a man who has bet too heavily at the
+races, but means to show himself a good loser. For the first time Joan
+considered seriously the mystery surrounding his birth. Emily Carmichael
+had been right--it was "brave" to marry a man of such doubtful
+antecedents. Who knew what handicaps were his to fight, what heritage of
+moral obliquity?
+
+There was after all a certain safety in good birth, she
+thought--forgetting that traditions and fine breeding had not sufficed
+to keep her own father from a slight moral obliquity, such as had
+permitted him to speculate with trust-funds. (Of the Major's earlier
+misadventure she never learned.)
+
+And then a sudden rush of reaction came over her. Archie--and moral
+obliquity! It was as impossible to associate the two as to associate a
+fine dog with treachery. He had simply, for her sake, chosen to take his
+long chance and abide by the consequences. An act more gallant, more
+blindly, foolishly, needlessly sacrificial, had never been laid upon the
+altar of love. And yet--she could not forgive him for it.
+
+"It must be because I do not care for him," she told herself stonily;
+and was glad in her heart that his children had not lived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+
+But if she could not offer Archie the tenderness he craved, she gave him
+at least all the other assistance in her power. Her executive ability
+stood them both in good stead.
+
+It was she who interviewed Mr. Moore, far more successfully than Judge
+Carmichael had done, persuading him not only to hush the matter up but
+to retain Archie in his employ. "If I can afford to take another chance
+on him, surely you can?" she insisted; an argument which the dazzled old
+gentleman found quite unanswerable.
+
+Within a week she had procured an excellent tenant for the house,
+furnished, with privilege of sale at a month's notice. She had disposed
+of her little car at a good price, and placed Pegasus for the time being
+in the Carmichael stable.
+
+"I can't sell her, of course, nor give her away--it would be like
+selling or giving away Ellen Neal! But if you'll just ride her, Emily,
+and play with her sometimes? She's used to a good deal of attention."
+
+"I'll probably spoil her to death," promised Emily, deeply touched by
+this first sign of sentiment she had seen in her friend during that
+tragic time.
+
+Joan moved about her pretty house, cleaning, packing, getting things in
+order for the tenant, as calmly as if she were not leaving it forever.
+Even in the nursery she was perfectly composed, until she came upon the
+toys Ellen had hidden there. Then she locked the door for awhile, and
+neither Emily nor Ellen dared go to her.
+
+"But what are we going to do ourselves?" moaned Ellen, rocking
+helplessly to and fro in her kitchen. All her self-reliance had deserted
+her. She was suddenly an old woman.
+
+"I haven't decided yet, dear. One thing at a time," replied her
+mistress, steadily....
+
+But in the end it was Archie who decided.
+
+He had acquiesced without comment in all Joan's arrangements. Only once
+had he protested. It was when she telegraphed Stefan Nikolai for the
+money.
+
+"Not that, Joan--not that, _please_!" he said, with a quick flush. "I'd
+rather go to the Pen than that--Really, the Pen will be quite a rest for
+me," he added, piteously.
+
+"Nonsense!" she replied; and he said no more.
+
+But for all his acquiescence, he did not seem to be numbed by the thing,
+as Joan was. Though she often heard him walking up and down his room at
+night, and suffered for him, at times he appeared almost happy.
+
+"I can't get over how _good_ people are!" he said once. "Think of Mr.
+Moore being willing to take me back! Not as manager, of course--the boys
+wouldn't be wanting to take orders from me yet awhile. Nor I couldn't
+expect to handle money. But he sent for me, and said I was the best
+salesman he'd ever had, and offered me the old job back on a commission
+basis! Pretty nice, what?"
+
+"Shall you take it?" she asked, curiously. She herself could not have
+faced disgrace with any such meekness.
+
+"Take it? Why, I jumped at the chance!"
+
+Joan flushed.
+
+"Archie," she said suddenly, "do you realize that there's a war going on
+over there in Europe! Do you realize that there is need in France for
+every able-bodied man that's got a life to spare?--Have you thought of
+that?"
+
+She was startled by the change in his face. The veins stood out on his
+forehead, and his hands clenched. "Have I thought of it? God, girl, what
+else do you suppose I've been thinking about the past year? I'd give the
+soul out of my body to slip away from this--this grab-bag, and get into
+a good clean fight--Those damned baby-killers! Gosh!--fight? Just give
+me a chance at that dachshund of a Kaiser with my two bare hands!
+But"--he made the little gesture that she realized was becoming
+characteristic of him--a gesture of renunciation--"I've got to stay here
+now. There isn't any money in soldiering."
+
+Her flush deepened. "Money! I never want to hear the word again. Haven't
+you had enough to do with just 'money,' Archie?"
+
+"Not on your life," he said doggedly. "I've got to make a heap of it
+before I'm through. Fifteen thousand dollars!--That reminds me," he went
+on in another tone. "You say they need able-bodied men over there--don't
+they need women, too? D'you suppose your friend Nikolai could find
+something for you to do in that unit of his?"
+
+He caught the sudden gleam in her eye.
+
+"That would please you, wouldn't it?" he said quietly. "Of course it
+would mean hard work, dangerous work, too, perhaps--but it's a great
+chance for you, for anybody! To sort of help make history.... Mr.
+Nikolai was talkin' to us once about those two kinds of happiness,
+Huettengluck and Heldengluck--remember? Well, I don't believe you're the
+sort to be satisfied with any Huettengluck--nor I wouldn't want you to
+be. Take your chance, Joan--and don't lose it." His voice shook a
+little. "I'd like mighty well to have somebody of my name mixed up in
+this war somehow!"
+
+She put her hand on his--almost her first demonstration of tenderness
+since the shock came; but the gleam had already died out of her eyes.
+
+"That's dear of you, Archie--fine and generous. But if your place is
+here, mine is, too. I am not going to desert you. How can you think such
+a thing? I mean to be a better wife to you than I have been. We've got
+to start again, and start right. I want to help you...."
+
+And then inexplicably, unbelievably, the worm turned. His nerves had
+strained too far. He shook off her hand as if it burned him.
+
+"Help!" he said roughly. "Help? A hell of a lot of help _you_ are! Going
+around like a martyr, with a don't touch-me, how-dare-you look on your
+face, as if I'd done the thing just to spite you! My God! A woman with
+any guts to her--"
+
+"_Archie!_"
+
+"Oh, yes, that shocks you--such a fine lady as you are," He seemed to be
+working himself up, like a woman in hysterics. "So grandly indifferent
+to money, too!--just so's you've got enough of it. Who spent the money,
+anyway?--tell me that! Was it me, who haven't bought myself so much as a
+new pair of pants in three years?"
+
+She stared at him, mutely. "_So this_," she thought, "_is the real
+man!_" His ears, his great, coarse hands--they meant something after
+all.
+
+Her white look drove him into a further frenzy. "Oh, yes, glare at me,
+if I'm good enough for you to glare at!--Let me tell you something--if
+it's on my account you're staying, you needn't. That's all! It's a
+_wife_ a man wants at a time like this, not any marble image, not any
+tragedy-queen! Not any noble character that watches him out of the
+corner of her eye, and if he's real good--pats him on the hand! I've had
+enough of that!--Go on with your friend Nikolai," he cried violently.
+"Try him out for six months or a year, and if he suits, and you don't
+want to come back here--by God, you needn't!"
+
+"Archie," she said, trembling in every limb, "I shall leave your house
+to-morrow."
+
+"Good!" he cried. "Good! And I'm going to beat you to it!"
+
+He strode to the kitchen door and flung it wide. "Come here, Ellen Neal,
+and bear witness that I'm leaving this house first."
+
+The front door banged behind him....
+
+The two women stared at each other.
+
+"Was that--was that _Mr. Archie_?"
+
+"Yes," said Joan, still trembling, "it was!--Come upstairs and help me
+pack my trunk."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+
+There is little to be said here about Joan's experiences in France. The
+story of those is better told in her own remarkable letters, which began
+shortly to appear in certain magazines; and in the book that followed.
+
+Stefan Nikolai had found her shelter with a friend of his, Lady
+Arbuthnot, a clever old Englishwoman whose long horse-face and charming
+voice and odd combinations of tweed skirt and evening blouses were known
+and loved in every institution of mercy about Paris. Under Lady
+Arbuthnot's guidance Joan found use for not only her Red Cross training
+but for everything else she had, whether by gift or acquirement.
+Singing, story-telling, "play-acting," letter-writing, even dancing, all
+seemed as important a part of her equipment as the regulation sewing,
+bandage-making, and cookery. She tried an inexperienced hand at washing
+dishes and scrubbing floors. She also tried her hand at mending
+shattered nerves and even broken hearts; and at none of these things was
+she entirely unsuccessful. There was a certain power of concentration in
+Joan that made failure unlikely in whatever she undertook.
+
+It was a wonderful time to her. She never got nearer the trenches than
+Paris; but there the trenches came to her, with all their horror, their
+sordid hideousness, their sheer, soul-stirring grandeur. She saw
+shattered men struggling back to life that they might offer it again,
+with eagerness; she saw philanthropists living in comfort on money that
+had been obtained to feed starving refugees; she saw girl-children, who
+had been forced to bear German babies, loving those babies with a
+passion of maternity piteously beyond their years. Priests labored side
+by side with panders; women of the great world, such as Lady Arbuthnot,
+shared bed and board and ceaseless effort with W. C. T. U. workers from
+Kansas, with missionaries out of China, with ex-courtesans from the
+Paris streets, with those most sheltered of all aristocrats, the women
+of the upper French bourgeoisie.
+
+It was humanity with all barriers down, all contacts clean and clear.
+And Louisville, Kentucky, seemed as far away and negligible as the
+planet Earth may seem to possible dwellers on the moon.
+
+Sometimes she had word from there--not often, for Ellen Neal was no
+letter-writer, and even Emily Carmichael's loyalty had been strained by
+Joan's unexplained desertion of her husband in his trouble. Once her
+cousin Miss Iphigenia Darcy wrote, and from her letter Joan gathered
+some impression of the effect of her sudden departure from Louisville.
+
+     In my day girls were taught that their first duty was to the
+     _Home_, married or not. But I daresay this is a very
+     old-fashioned notion, and with all those poor, unfortunate
+     French needing help--Sister Euphie and Sister Virgie and I have
+     frequently discussed offering our services. It is strange to
+     have a war going on without any Darcys in it! (You haven't the
+     _name_, you see, although a _true Darcy_ in every other
+     particular.) However, it does not seem the place for
+     _unmarried_ ladies just now, with so many men lying about in
+     the hospitals not fully clothed, and those unfortunate Belgian
+     victims (you know what I mean)! As I tell everybody, "Advanced
+     young matrons like Joan are the ones really needed over there."
+     But you know how narrow people are, my dear! I sometimes think
+     our city is growing a little _provincial_.
+
+Joan smiled and sighed over this communication; and then forgot it.
+
+From Archie she had no word, except an occasional line or two with the
+money-order that came regularly on the first of each month, and was as
+regularly returned. The magazine connections Stefan Nikolai had made for
+her provided what money she needed, and she had not yet sufficiently
+forgiven Archie to be willing to accept anything from him.
+
+At first she wrote to him, not so much from any sense of duty, as from
+pity. She did not forget what had passed between them, she made no
+attempt to ignore the fact that he had failed her utterly in every way.
+But she no longer had time to brood upon her own affairs. In the vortex
+of life where she now found herself, personal troubles seemed somehow to
+disappear into the common whole. Constant association with others'
+sorrow developed her quality of sympathy to an almost painful extent;
+and though she knew that Ellen Neal was making Archie comfortable enough
+in the old rooms on Poplar Street, his loneliness, his humble
+acquiescence in disgrace, hurt like a bruise on her heart. So she wrote
+to him, impersonally but kindly.
+
+Since he so rarely replied, however, her letters gradually ceased.
+Evidently Archie, like many others, found it difficult to forgive where
+he had wronged. Joan shrugged--a little gesture she had learned from
+Nikolai--and dismissed her husband as much as possible from her mind.
+
+There was much else to occupy it: not only in the way of work but of
+pleasure. Paris, even in her grief, did not forget the human necessity
+for pleasure, nor did Stefan Nikolai. She saw rather less of him than
+she had expected to, for he was frequently absent for weeks at a time on
+unexplained journeys, about which Joan had learned to ask no questions.
+But whether he was near her or not, she was always conscious of his
+enveloping care, his devoted watchfulness. He gave her, too, many
+friends besides Lady Arbuthnot.
+
+Once Sacha, always left on guard over Joan during these absences of
+Nikolai's, betrayed the fact that his master had gone into Russia. Joan
+taxed him with it when he returned.
+
+"Russia is not safe for you, Stefan!--you told me so yourself."
+
+"Surely you would not have me at such a time seek only places of
+safety?" he smiled.
+
+"Why can't you stick to the hospital work you came over for, instead of
+gallivanting about all over the place?" she demanded, with a petulance
+that concealed anxiety.
+
+"One goes where one is useful," he replied quietly. "There are many who
+know more about medicine than I, but few who know more about
+Russia--except in Germany, perhaps! My countrymen are very susceptible
+to the spoken word."
+
+It was his only explanation of his frequent disappearances; but Joan,
+understanding that wars must be won not only on the battlefield, uttered
+no more protests, and made the most of her friend when she had him.
+
+For the first time in her life, she came near to the innermost meaning
+of the word happiness. It was not the placid content of her
+"pasture-time," nor the feverish, half-guilty ecstasy which had come to
+her for a brief hour through the unworthy medium of Eduard Desmond. It
+wrapped her round warmly like the consciousness of some beloved
+presence--which indeed it was, though Joan for once did not quite dare
+to analyze the sensation. She only knew that here, among strangers
+speaking a strange tongue, she was for the first time in her experience
+utterly at home. And she was curiously at the top of her powers. In that
+atmosphere, nothing seemed impossible of accomplishment. There was a
+sense of personal possession and being possessed--"By Paris," she told
+herself; but in her heart another name echoed.
+
+Unaware, the great experience, the thing for which she had blindly
+groped, had come upon her; not with a sudden leap to which her nature
+leaped in response, but with a slow, quiet, irresistibly gathering
+force, like a great stream that bore her upon its breast, without
+volition, without struggle, toward some bourne of which she had no
+knowledge. And no fear.
+
+Joan might have said with Browning:
+
+    "Let us be unashamed of soul ...
+    Is it in our control
+    To love or not to love?"
+
+It is always the body that suggests shame; and the body had ever been a
+negligible part of Joan's make-up. She felt as independent of it now as
+if she were already spirit, floating about in space--always with this
+certainty of meeting there another spirit, however, and mingling with
+it.
+
+This spiritual mingling was a matter she never discussed with
+Nikolai--the only thing in the universe, perhaps, which they did not
+discuss. Theirs was an understanding too close for words, and beyond
+words.... But sometimes, when Joan remembered that she had once feared
+love, believing it one of those things that are better done without, she
+smiled to herself; an inner, brooding smile that gave the final touch of
+the chisel to her features, and made her much sought by painters.
+
+Paris seemed more than usual that year the rendezvous for people who had
+won distinction in the arts and sciences, and who came to render their
+patron city in her hour of need what assistance was in their power.
+Among these people Nikolai was made welcome with an eagerness, and even
+a deference, which delighted Joan, and a little surprised her; for his
+simplicity made it easy to forget that he belonged among famous folk as
+a matter of right.
+
+On his account, perhaps a little on her own as well, Joan also was
+welcomed by them. She was not at all abashed by the company of
+greatness, having inherited from Richard Darcy the naive conviction that
+the best was good enough for her; and moreover she found among them the
+keen power of enjoyment that invariably accompanies high mental
+development. She had long since suspected, and now proved, that only
+thinking people know how to play.
+
+It was a great relief to her, just then, to be with strangers who
+accepted her entirely at face-value, with neither curiosity nor demand.
+An unquestioning, simple freedom prevailed in these upper reaches which
+Joan fancied might be dangerous enough (unless it had the effect of
+putting people, as it were, on honor). Nobody enquired whether she had a
+husband, for instance, or where he was. It seemed quite sufficient that
+she was the young friend of Stefan Nikolai; "_Spiritosa e simpatica_,"
+as a certain great Italian tragedienne pronounced her. Their relations
+were taken as a matter of course. The two were always included together
+in whatever plans were afoot, and Joan noticed other such companionships
+among them which passed equally unquestioned. She was nominally under
+the care of Lady Arbuthnot; but that widely experienced noblewoman
+displayed a carelessness of chaperonage that would have caused hair to
+rise on the head of, say, Mrs. Carmichael.
+
+Joan was at perfect liberty to spend with her friend every hour that
+either could spare from the day's duties, and did so. "Why not?"
+appeared to be the attitude of a company which concerns itself more with
+matters of the spirit than of the flesh....
+
+In Louisville speculation was once more rife and lurid, sharing interest
+only with the war headlines and with Joan Blair's latest letter to the
+magazines.
+
+"We appear to have been nourishing Genius in our bosom unawares!"
+remarked the Jabberwocks to each other; not altogether pleased, as is
+the immemorial way of friendship.
+
+"I don't know why you were unaware," commented Emily Carmichael,
+quietly. "She has always shown every earmark of genius, even to
+neglecting the best husband that ever lived!"
+
+The Jabberwocks exchanged surprised and meaningful glances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+
+Into the busy abstraction of Joan's Paris life came presently one of her
+step-mother's rare letters. It was a round, childish, yet curiously firm
+scrawl written on lavender paper (Effie May having abandoned pink
+effects in honor of her widowhood), which for some reason brought home
+to Joan her father's little city so clearly that she could almost smell
+it; a distinctive summer smell compounded of hot asphalt, blossoming
+ailanthus trees, and a suggestion of the glue-factory.
+
+     Folks here are making bets as to whether you ever mean to come
+     back again,
+
+(wrote Effie May).
+
+     And why should you? is what I say. I keep thinking how pleased
+     Major would be to have you hobnobbing with lady earls and
+     famous characters and high life generally. It's just where you
+     belong, and so did he.
+
+     Archie comes to see me real often, and he don't look so poorly
+     as he did at first. He's got him up a regiment, mostly Y. M. C.
+     A. fellows and a few old boys with stummicks and bald heads,
+     and I hear they drill real cute. He goes horseback riding a
+     good deal with the Carmichael girl, too, and I guess it does
+     him good. Ellen says he seems more peckish for his meals.
+
+(Here Joan laid down the letter, thoughtfully. "Emily!--Well, why not?
+She always did like him. I'm glad," she mused. She certainly was not
+going to begrudge her husband the freedom she asked for herself.)
+
+     Ellen comes in every day to look after things for me, now that
+     I'm laid up. She don't like me any better than she used to, and
+     I expect she just thinks it's a family duty, but I'm glad to
+     have her anyhow. I keep nigger help now, the white ones being
+     so hard to get, and I'm not the hand with them your father was.
+     I never saw any one get as much out of niggers as Major
+     could!--out of white folks, too, for that matter, couldn't he?
+
+     Of course I'm not so sick as the doctors make out (they got to
+     earn the money somehow), but it's hard to sleep sitting up this
+     way, and sometimes at night I get to thinking. So I made a
+     will. I knew you'd never touch Calloway's money with a ten-foot
+     pole, but I thought maybe you wouldn't mind seeing it got spent
+     right. I want it to go to one of those shelters you told about
+     in the magazine, for little French girls with babies and no
+     husbands. Seems only fair, when I've had more than my share of
+     husbands and no kids.
+
+     Paris seems awful far away, and I guess I better let you off
+     that promise you made me to see that I didn't get laid out with
+     no corset on. They probably couldn't get a corset on me now,
+     anyway, I'm that fleshy. Not that I'm ordering me a coffin for
+     anytime real soon, dearie! but sometimes at night a person gets
+     to thinking.
+
+Joan was rather startled by this letter, and sent for Nikolai.
+
+"What do you make of it, Stefan? That part: 'It's hard to sleep sitting
+up this way'--what does it mean?"
+
+"I am afraid," he said gravely, "it means something serious--Advanced
+heart-disease, probably. A woman of her weight would be liable to it."
+
+Joan gave an exclamation of dismay. In that moment she discovered that
+she not only did not dislike Effie May; she was fond of her. The thought
+of never again seeing the vulgar, cheery, friendly soul was unexpectedly
+distressing.
+
+"Poor woman!--all alone there with her 'nigger help!' and Ellen sourly
+doing her duty--Or is it _my_ duty?" She was not thinking entirely of
+Effie May.... "Stefan"--her face blanched. "She was my father's wife.
+She tried her best to be a mother to me. I owe her a good deal. Has the
+time come to repay it? Does this mean--Oh, Stefan, do you think this
+means I ought to go back? I've been so happy here, so useful! For the
+first time in my life I have felt that I really 'belonged.' These people
+who are doing things--"
+
+She gazed at him beseechingly. It gradually dawned upon her that what
+she dreaded so to leave was not these people who were doing things, not
+that larger, freer life to which Nikolai had given her the key; not even
+the Spirit that met her Spirit there in space. It was Nikolai himself,
+the man, the comrade--the lover.
+
+Her whole being seemed to rush out to meet the need that suddenly gazed
+at her from Nikolai's eyes....
+
+"Stefan," she said very low, "_must_ I go back?"
+
+For a moment he did not answer. Then he said, his voice not quite under
+control "You expect me to decide that for you? My dear, you ask too
+much."
+
+He took his hat and left; but Joan knew that he had decided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked up and down the _quai_ for an hour or so before the gangway
+was drawn in. Joan always afterwards remembered what they said, as one
+recalls the least syllable of the dying. There was a sense of finality
+about this parting, against which she struggled in vain.
+
+She filled her eyes with him as if she had never seen him before, and
+would not again. She noted little physical details which had hitherto
+escaped her--the fine cameo cutting of his features, the long,
+sensitive, expressive hands, the air he shared with many Europeans of
+belonging to an older, more finished race than her own. In his calm
+impassivity there was a suggestion of Slavic fatalism, combined with the
+tragic patience of the Jew. Only his eyes smoldered with an unquenchable
+spark that flamed to hers.
+
+She knew that the Romance which had always eluded her was here at her
+side, in the person of this perfect comrade, this shadowy, insistent
+influence in her life which was about to withdraw into the shadows
+again. Perhaps she understood, too, that Romance to remain Romance must
+be elusive. Seized and held, it changes into something else. Yet she
+tried to cling to it.
+
+"You will be right here waiting on this spot when I come back, won't
+you, Stefan?--For I _will_ come back," she exclaimed as he did not
+answer. "Say that you know I will!"
+
+"I know that you will do whatever seems to you right."
+
+She made a mutinous face at him. "That's more than I know! I'm much more
+likely to do whatever seems to me nice--Oh, Stefan, why will you persist
+in believing in me always, no matter how badly I behave?" Lightly as she
+spoke, her eyes were fixed on him, telling him consciously what her lips
+could not utter.
+
+He answered at one of his usual tangents. "Do you not know that every
+splinter of a genuine Cremona violin vibrates to the bow on as true a
+tone as did the unbroken instrument?"
+
+"You mean--Mother," she said. "Oh, but I'm not all Cremona! I think
+there's a good deal in me of the fiddle Nero played while Rome burned.
+It's not _fair_ to be expected to live up to a self-sacrificing mother!
+If you don't, you have failed her; if you do, she gets the
+credit--Besides, I'm needed here just as much as I am in Louisville.
+More! Not only these poor people need me, but--you do, Stefan."
+
+She had brought it into the open at last, the one thing which they had
+never yet discussed in their discussions of everything under the sun;
+that eternal human question of Thou-and-I. She was a little frightened,
+dreading yet eager for the answer.
+
+It was long in coming. Nikolai understood the crisis they had reached.
+He knew that it was his to put out his hand and hold her, to keep
+forever in his life this one gift of the gods he craved, the fulfilled
+hope which had been his beacon through many a lonely year. Once before
+because of a mistake in judgment he had lost her, to her own
+unhappiness. There must be no more mistakes in judgment.
+
+But the habit of truth in thought and word was too great for him.
+
+"No," he said at last, "I do not need you."
+
+He saw her wince.
+
+"I do not need you," he repeated steadily, "and you do not need me,
+Joan. People like us get on quite well alone. Better, perhaps. It is not
+good for us to be too happy--Besides, what we already have of each other
+cannot be affected by time or space. You know that? The rest--is
+extraneous. Tell me this: Have you ever in any important moment of your
+life forgotten me, have you ever failed to be conscious of my presence,
+no matter what the distance between us?"
+
+She looked deep into the luminous eyes fixed upon hers.
+
+"Never, Stefan. Even in my unthinking school-days, even in that strange
+time after I lost my babies and could not write to you, I have counted
+upon you always. Everything that has come to me, good or bad, big or
+little, I have shared with you in my thoughts. Only--I did not realize
+it."
+
+"That," he said quietly, "is marriage. Your mother realized it. She knew
+when you were only a child of the tie between us--But she and I thought
+that I must keep away from you until the accident of time corrected
+itself. You see we have been sent into this incarnation rather far
+apart."
+
+"You kept away too long, Stefan!"
+
+"I know. But what does it matter?" He spoke half to himself, with his
+little shrug. "This manifestation or the next--we shall not be apart
+always."
+
+"No, no!" she cried, catching at his hand. "That is too ethereal, too
+mystic for me--I can't bear it, Stefan! I want the people I love with me
+_now_, in this 'manifestation,' as you call it, where I can talk with
+them, and touch them, and hold on to them--I am not all spirit. I
+thought I was, but--I'm not. Oh, my dear, aren't you human _at all_?"
+
+He did not reply; and Joan, looking at him through swimming tears, saw
+that it was because he could not.
+
+She dropped his hand. "Forgive me!" she whispered. "I will try to climb
+up to you--since you will not come down to me.... But you must help me."
+
+"I will help," said Nikolai.
+
+They spoke a little later of Archie, who had been all the while at the
+back of their thoughts. Both knew it was to him she was returning,
+rather than to her step-mother.
+
+"You expect too much of him, Joan--you always expect too much of people.
+Try to take them as you find them. He is one of the many who think
+better with their hearts than with their heads."
+
+She commented with a faint smile, "My step-mother once told me that
+there was nothing in the world so dangerous as what she called
+'bone-headedness.'"
+
+"Exactly!--especially to the bone-headed--Your Archie is no fool,
+however. There are perhaps fewer convolutions in his gray matter than in
+ours, that is all. He has made mistakes with his head, and will again.
+But with his heart--never."
+
+"You are not condoning," she asked slowly, "what Archie has done?"
+
+He answered after a little pause, "To me there seems nothing
+unforgivable, nothing utterly vicious, except selfishness. There is no
+self in Archie Blair. Not enough self."
+
+Joan told him then reluctantly of something she had never before
+mentioned: her final incredible scene with her husband. She was
+curiously ashamed of that scene, as though it were she who had betrayed
+herself, instead of Archie. "Should you not call that a mistake of the
+heart?"
+
+But Nikolai did not appear to be particularly shocked by it. "I had no
+idea," he commented, "that Blair was so good an actor."
+
+"An actor!--You think that scene was not genuine?"
+
+"I think, in fact I know, that your husband would hesitate to sacrifice
+nothing to what he believed your happiness; even your respect--I love
+that man," he said simply. "And so do you, Joan. Otherwise he would have
+been powerless to hurt you."
+
+Her eyes widened. She asked, as so many before her have asked, "Is it
+possible to love--two people at once?"
+
+"Two? A dozen--a hundred! Does a mother love two children at
+once?--Surely that depends upon the stage of the soul's development."
+
+"But always one best," she said quite fiercely.
+
+"Always one best," he repeated....
+
+The parting had come. Staring at him desperately, she saw in his eyes a
+depth of pain and loneliness that made her own for the moment
+insignificant. So much of his life was done; so much of hers, after all,
+only beginning.
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she cried in a sort of bewilderment. "What is it
+all about? Is there a purpose somewhere in this muddle of things? Why do
+you say it is not good for people like us to be happy, when others go to
+the end of their days in calm security? I do not want any--wicked
+things, Stefan! I only want to be with you always. To take care of you
+if you are sick, to mend your clothes, and make you comfortable,
+and--love you. I want us to grow old together, not alone. Oh, my dear,
+all your life you have been alone; and I can't bear it!--What is the
+good of this thing that has waked in me at last, if I am not to use it?"
+
+"You are," he said steadily. "Emotion to be safe must, _must_ translate
+itself into action."
+
+"But how, how? By doing for others, you are going to say--but it's such
+a thankless task, Stefan! A red-blooded woman like me to take to
+altruism, as some take to drugs!--Why must some of us live so intensely,
+so consciously, only to be denied again and again the fulfilment that we
+crave? Sinking our lives into those of lesser people, always of lesser
+people!"
+
+He answered gently, "'_Car je suis le Cobzar._'--It is time you
+understood.... You know what a Cobzar is?"
+
+She shook her head; and he told her.
+
+"In the more remote Magyar villages, news of the world comes to the
+people by means of a sort of minstrel who is called the Cobzar. He is to
+them not only newsbringer, but historian and poet and philosopher as
+well. He is treated with respect, they reward his singing with food and
+wine and a place beside the fire, for it is an honor to be born a
+Cobzar. But not always a happy honor, Joan. People do not listen to
+singing that comes out of an empty heart. It is the Cobzar's duty to
+tell them the story of themselves, and that is only the story of
+himself, wrought into many forms. Their fears and joys, their failures
+and their suffering and their hopes--he must be part of it all, and yet
+apart, that he may not only understand but watch, remembering always his
+mission to bring life to the knowledge of those who live."
+
+He quoted for her then some lines which Joan never forgot:
+
+    "Aime-moi, parce que j'ai besoin de ton amour pour mes chansons,
+    Va t'en, parce que j'ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons,
+    Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons,
+      Car je suis le Cobzar."
+
+The water widened between them....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+
+All during her homeward journey Joan had the feeling that she was waking
+slowly from a long dream; such a dream as ether gives, more vivid than
+reality itself but impossible of recapture. As he came literally nearer,
+Archie grew to be the dominant figure in her thoughts rather than
+Nikolai, though Nikolai was always there; Archie under the new light her
+friend's parting words had shed upon him. It mortified her to realize
+that another, almost a stranger to him, should have read her husband
+better than she did. It occurred to her, too, that with Nikolai she had
+not left behind her all Romance. A man who was capable of such a
+sacrifice as Archie Blair's could not be entirely commonplace. Her eyes
+had been suddenly opened.
+
+Perhaps this was part of the help Nikolai had promised.
+
+Indeed, her sentiments toward her husband became rather puzzling, being
+composed so far as she could decipher them of a desire to comfort him
+for the loss of herself, combined with a desire to be comforted by him
+for the loss of Stefan....
+
+Her fellow-travelers eyed Joan with more than the usual interest she
+invariably excited among strangers; but to no avail. It was a time when
+what few barriers exist on shipboard at best went down in the sharing of
+a common peril, the menace of the submarine. Not so with Joan, however.
+She seemed unaware of friendly advances or invidious criticism: wrapped
+in a curious aloofness, from danger and from her fellowman alike. Nor
+was it an aloofness that would pass.
+
+She had her great renunciation to make, and faced it; a renunciation
+which took the most difficult form, of dedication. Loneliness was upon
+her, not loneliness as she had known it before, a groping restlessness,
+a dissatisfaction. There was nothing left to grope for. She knew quite
+well now what she wanted, had always wanted, and might never have; but
+she knew, too, that on this solitary road of life, the warm human clasp
+of hands is something, the warm human touch of lips.... Thinking of
+Archie as Nikolai thought of him, her heart seemed to be stretching,
+literally expanding, with growing-pains; so that there might be room in
+it for two--or for a dozen, a hundred, as he had promised.
+
+And presently she was able to return in spirit to the first night of her
+marriage, when for a little interval of time she had lost Joan the
+individual, and become simply the woman, whose mission is to give....
+
+She had thought so much of her husband that she was quite prepared to
+find him waiting at the dock for her, yellow boots, Derby hat, and all.
+But he was not there, nor yet at the station in Louisville, though she
+had wired him from New York the date and hour of her coming.
+
+Only two of the Misses Darcy were there to meet her, in Effie May's
+limousine, their manner nicely adjusted between melancholy, importance,
+and the _empressement_ due a distinguished relative returning from
+foreign parts.
+
+"Yes, my dear, she is low, very low! Restoratives have to be
+administered constantly," sighed Miss Virginia. "What a charming hat!
+Paris, I suppose? I always have maintained that the French touch--So
+that is why Sister Iphigenia is not here to meet you. We three take
+turns at watching with her. Your husband comes every night, and Ellen
+Neal makes herself useful, though why she should, with two nurses--No
+expense spared, of course. So pleasant to be able to die in such luxury,
+isn't it? She has been watching for you every day--seemed to be quite
+certain you were coming, even before she had your cablegram."
+
+Joan interrupted this lugubrious chatter to ask the immediate
+whereabouts of Archie. The sisters exchanged uneasy glances.
+
+"Cousin Effie May happened to mention that he was out riding this
+afternoon. Doubtless he had made some engagement before your letter
+came, or I am sure--" Miss Euphemia nudged her visibly into silence.
+
+"I see," said Joan, flushing a trifle....
+
+If Effie May was as "low" as reported, she showed little sign of it. She
+welcomed Joan in her usual loud and cheery tones, magnificent in a new
+lavender tea-gown, as pink-cheeked and carefully coiffed as ever. At her
+elbow was a box of chocolates.
+
+"I knew that letter'd fetch you!" she chuckled. "Sort o' pitiful, wasn't
+it? People were mighty surprised to hear you were coming back. But not
+me. You're not so hard-shelled as you try to be, girlie!"
+
+Like the Misses Darcy, she displayed immediate interest in the Paris
+hat.
+
+"Chick as it can be," she pronounced approvingly. "I certainly am glad
+you're not high-brow enough yet to neglect your looks. No woman on earth
+is smart enough to be able to wear a hat that don't become her."
+
+"There's a love of a hat in my trunk for you," laughed Joan, a weight
+lifting from her heart. (She decided that her hasty and dangerous
+journey had been a wild-goose chase so far as her step-mother was
+concerned. This was not her idea of a death-bed interview.) "A black
+crepe poke with a white lining, Effie May. Paris still does her mourning
+'chickly'--poor Paris!"
+
+The invalid's eye gleamed. "I might be trying it on when the doctor
+comes.... Oh, yes, dearie, he's taking notice!" Her several chins
+quivered with mirth. "But nothing doing. My heart's in the grave with
+Major--And Calloway," she added, dreamily. "I been thinking about the
+two of 'em so much lately that I declare I get 'em sort of mixed in my
+mind!"
+
+She made Joan sit down beside her and tell her at once all about Paris,
+and how many noblewomen she had met, and what they wore, and whether it
+was true that Frenchmen took more notice of married women, even of
+middleaged ones than of girls.
+
+"Paris is the burg for me!" she sighed.
+
+But in the midst of Joan's liveliest recital, her head dropped suddenly
+forward and she fell asleep. It was the other's first intimation that
+she had not come after all upon a wild goose chase.
+
+She sat for a moment looking at this woman who had tried to be a mother
+to her, with her absurd golden head and beringed, puffy hands. Then,
+following an impulse rare with her, she stooped and kissed the painted
+cheek very tenderly. It was a pity that Effie May did not know.
+
+She slipped away to the telephone and called up the Carmichael house.
+The maid told her that Miss Emily was at home.
+
+("So _she's_ not out riding with him!" thought Joan.)
+
+Emily appeared politely surprised by her friend's arrival.
+
+"Yes, Archie tells me how ill your step-mother is. I am so sorry! You
+say you will be here some time before you go back? I shall hope to see
+you, then."
+
+"I hope you may," replied Joan even more politely, "but unfortunately I
+shall be very busy.... Look here, Emily Carmichael, what's the matter
+with you anyway? Come right over here and explain."
+
+Emily came.
+
+When the two had had their talk out and parted, tear-stained but
+reconciled, Joan went once more to the telephone and called up her
+husband.
+
+His familiar voice over the wire gave her an unexpected thrill. She had
+forgotten how big and warm it was, even when he sang out of tune.
+
+"Archie," she asked directly, "why weren't you at the station to meet
+me?"
+
+He stammered out some rather breathless excuse.
+
+"Yes, I know all about that--Emily told me that she often gets you to
+exercise Pegasus for her when she hasn't time. But why to-day
+particularly, when you knew I was coming?"
+
+His voice was under better control now. "Why, you see, I didn't think it
+would look well for us to be seen together just now--"
+
+"Wouldn't look well!"
+
+"Why, no, Joan. You've got a pretty good case of abandonment--I left the
+house first, you know--but if we were to be seen together the minute you
+get home, sort of friendly-like, it might get to the ears of the Judge
+and prejudice him. When the whole thing's settled, of course, then--"
+
+Joan gasped.
+
+"What do you mean," she interrupted, "by a case of abandonment?"
+
+"You wouldn't care to bring suit on any other grounds, would you!" he
+asked anxiously. "The fact is I'm afraid you couldn't, Joan. There
+_aren't_ any other grounds."
+
+"Oh," she said blankly. "I understand.... Well, my dear, I'm sorry you
+feel that you can't come and say at least hello to me--'sort of
+friendly-like.'"
+
+"So am I," he answered, gently....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Joan wandered back to her step-mother's room, feeling queer and dazed.
+She had never before realized that anything other than death might be
+irremediable.
+
+During all her months in Paris she had not even contemplated the
+possibility of divorcing Archie. She was blindly content with things as
+they stood, and it had not occurred to her that Archie might be
+otherwise, that he had seriously meant, for his own sake, perhaps, the
+suggestion he had once made to her. She was so used to doing his
+thinking for him.
+
+Divorce!--that refuge of the foolish, the frail, those so lacking in
+pride as to be willing to confide their failures to the world!
+
+"It is so--so unnecessary," she protested aloud, wondering vaguely why
+the phrase was familiar to her. Then with a start she recognized it as
+one of Eduard Desmond's.
+
+The hot blood rushed into her face. Did they--Emily, Effie May, even
+Archie himself--believe her capable of the sort of thing Eduard Desmond
+meant? Dropping one husband to take on another--or perhaps taking on
+another without dropping the first? Was this the interpretation that had
+been put upon her life abroad, her precious companionship with
+Nikolai?--She shivered. No wonder Archie had not cared to come to see
+her!
+
+For once the thought of Nikolai was of no comfort to her. She put it
+from her almost with horror. It seemed to her that their relationship
+was irreparably smirched, degraded, by the touch of profane hands....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She hoped that Effie May had awakened from her doze, so great was her
+need just then of the shrewd, tolerant, entirely human counsel of her
+step-mother.
+
+But Effie May had not awakened; nor did she wake again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+
+The funeral did great credit to the Misses Darcys' experience in such
+affairs. A crowded, beflowered church bore witness to the fact that
+Darcy was still a name to be reckoned with in the community. Not only
+the best people were there in quite sufficient numbers, but many of
+those lesser folk whose duties bring them happily into touch with the
+best people; milliners, modistes, clerks in the better shops, and so
+forth.
+
+As Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing remarked to Miss Murphy of
+the Silks: "Such a loss to trade, ain't she?"
+
+Among these humbler friends not a few genuine tears were shed, however,
+for Effie May had scattered her kindness impartially.
+
+Joan, in solitary state as chief mourner, with the Misses Darcy sadly
+rustling in the pew behind her, was conscious of many curious glances
+turned her way. Perhaps her husband was the only person there whose eyes
+never turned in her direction. She was glad of her heavy veil, through
+which she might study him unobserved.
+
+He sat just opposite among the other pall-bearers, grave and quiet, with
+the odd dignity still about him which had come at the time of his
+disgrace. She noted new lines in his face, an unexpected touch of gray
+in his boyish, curling hair. The ears, the freckles, the great, clumsy
+hands were still much in evidence; but somehow Archie had lost forever
+his slight touch of the ridiculous. Declining to run away from disgrace,
+facing his music, humbly but unafraid, it occurred to Joan that her
+husband was approaching rather nearly her own and her father's standard
+of gentlehood.
+
+"Blessings brighten," she reminded herself, grimly, "as they take their
+flight!..."
+
+She came presently under the soothing spell of the old cathedral, a
+shabby, not very beautiful edifice left stranded in a neighborhood no
+longer its own, but whose pews still bore the names of the town's first
+citizens, gentlemen who had been her father's boyhood playmates, and
+whose fathers had worshiped there with his father. Oddly enough,
+considering how little time she had spent within its walls, the echoing
+dimness of it gave Joan her first sense of home-coming. This old house
+of God, that had witnessed so many ends and so many beginnings of human
+endeavor, had gathered into itself the heart of a city.
+
+A warm heart, it was, thought Joan; despite those speculative glances
+fixed upon her. She recalled people's kindness to Archie in his trouble,
+their quick response to any call upon their sympathy, their willingness
+to give every stranger his chance. She remembered their invincible
+hospitality, whether in wealth or poverty; the ardor with which they
+entered into the interest of the moment, be it work or play, their
+generous admiration for any fellow-citizen who made a success in the
+world. A warm heart, she thought, and a loyal one.
+
+She understood in that moment why it was that the people of this little
+city rarely drifted too far away to come back again. Just as the human
+body claims in the end its six feet of earth for a resting-place, so
+must the human spirit claim its bit of the world for a resting-place, a
+Neighborhood. The tragedy of a wandering life such as Nikolai's was, she
+saw, in its detachment from common human interests, from a Neighborhood.
+Better a tree, with its roots in friendly soil, as he had once said.
+
+Cast her out though it might, Joan knew that her Neighborhood was here,
+here among her father's people....
+
+A trolley-car clanged past, and the challenge of the peanutman came
+cheerfully in at the open door. "Pop-corn, Lady? Yere's your fine fraish
+roasted peanuts, right off the hopper!"
+
+The little lads in the choir stirred restlessly to this voice of the
+summer outside. "Lead, Kindly Light," they warbled in a piercing young
+treble, with now and then the Bishop's robust tones added in a
+hospitable effort to make the thing go.
+
+Joan's irrepressible fancy recalled the last occasion on which she had
+heard this noble anthem. It was at the Country Club, where some
+irreverent wag was playing it in rag-time; and Effie May had danced to
+it merrily, Lightfoot Ef with her indulgent Major. Joan wondered whether
+Lightfoot Ef might be remembering, too, and smiling perhaps in her
+coffin....
+
+But out at the cemetery her queer sense of elation vanished. Here, in
+the shadow of her father's monolith, with Mary's modest headstone on one
+side, a yawning grave on the other, at her feet two mounds so small as
+hardly to be noticed, the aloneness of the human soul suddenly smote her
+with such force that she could not stand under it. Was she never to know
+again that human touch of hands and of lips? Was her only neighborhood
+after all to be this quiet city of the dead?
+
+She went quite dizzy and might have fallen, but for the quick arm that
+supported her; whose in that bitter moment she neither knew nor cared.
+But she was not surprised to find herself presently alone in a carriage
+with Archie.
+
+"I guess I oughtn't to have done this," he apologized, when he saw that
+she could listen to him. "I just didn't think--out there. I'll go as
+soon as you feel better, dear. Where do you want the driver to take
+you!"
+
+"Home," she said. It was no more than a whisper.
+
+"You mean to Mrs. Darcy's house? Won't that be pretty gloomy for you
+just now? Better let him take you to your cousins'--or to Miss Emily's.
+How would that be? I know she'd he mighty glad to have you."
+
+Joan gathered herself together for an effort. It seemed to her, faint as
+she was, that much depended upon this moment. But for once her eloquence
+failed her. She could only repeat that she wanted to go home.
+
+Archie understood her trembling better than her speech, perhaps. He,
+too, began to tremble.
+
+"I--I haven't got any home now, Joan. Only the old attic-room in Poplar
+Street--"
+
+She cried out, painfully, "Archie! don't you _want_ me any more?..."
+
+In his arms at last, her face pressed roughly against the familiar
+roughness of his coat, words returned to her. She quoted her husband's
+sole adventure into poetry:
+
+    "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."
+
+Archibald did his faithful best to laugh; but the effort was not
+successful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So it happened that they were received from a funeral as they had once
+been from a wedding, into the portal of an ancient, friendly mansion
+whose stairway still creaks to the tread of ghosts and broken people,
+with now and then a happy footstep to remind it of its youth. And there
+Ellen Neal, mounting stiffly and wearily with the aid of the curving
+bannister, was hailed by a loud whisper from the floor above.
+
+"Hsst! Come on up and look who's here."
+
+A radiant Archie led her to his door, and exhibited the One and Only,
+clad in his bathrobe, curled up asleep upon his bed.
+
+"Humph!" gulped Ellen through her tears. "I _knew_ that woman'd manage
+to fix things somehow!" Which was a final reluctant tribute to the force
+of kindness that had been Effie May.
+
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS LATER
+
+
+A distinguished, foreign-looking gentleman with pointed gray beard got
+off an interurban car in the vicinity of Louisville, and stood gazing
+about him uncertainly. It was not the suburban neighborhood he had
+expected to find, but a distinctly rural one. Here and there smoke was
+visible above the tree-tops, but the only house within sight was a small
+farm-cottage of red brick, which had doubtless stood there among its
+gnarled fruit-trees at a time when the turnpike that passed it was a
+postroad leading from the metropolis of Middletown (now half a hundred
+houses strung along the pike) to the little port of Louisville on the
+Ohio.
+
+There was a big chimney at either end, in the picturesque but
+impractical early fashion, and a bricked-up terrace across the front
+overflowing with simple flowers: petunias, snapdragon, larkspur. Upon
+the lawn grazed a rather stiff-kneed thoroughbred, apparently under
+convoy of a pair of infants. One of these, the smaller, got about on all
+fours with astonishing rapidity, and seemed imbued with the spirit of
+investigation. The other, slightly larger, was extremely black as to
+color and extremely capable as to manner.
+
+"Tek keer, you Steffum!" Mr. Nikolai heard this one admonish. "Don't you
+go so near his mouf, you heah me? Dat hawss could snap you up jes' as
+easy as nippin' off a dandelium!"
+
+The visitor leaned over the fence in sudden interest, "Can you tell me,
+young person, whether Mrs. Blair lives here?"
+
+At sound of his voice the investigatory infant, in an excess of
+hospitality, rose to its legs and teetered eagerly toward him, only to
+come to earth at Mr. Nikolai's feet. Nothing daunted, however, it gazed
+up at him from this lowly position with a mixture of Archie's grin and
+the droll, blue, wistful twinkle of Joan.
+
+"Dar you goes, Steffum!" cried the guardian, in hot pursuit. "Dirtyin'
+up anodder clean dress so's Miss Ellen gwinter whup me good--He's always
+a-fallin' over on his face dataway," she complained, while maternally
+repairing damages with the skirt of what appeared to be an only garment.
+"I b'lieve he goes and does it a-purpose!"
+
+"To gain experience, perhaps?" suggested the visitor.
+
+"I reck'n," assented the other, doubtfully. "Yassuh, Mis' Blair she
+_libs_ heah, but she's playin' on de type-writer dis mawnin'. Will I run
+an' tell her comp'ny is came?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Not if she is playing on a
+typewriter."
+
+"Mr. Archie, _he_ libs heah, too, when he ain't a trabelin' on de
+railroad train," volunteered the black one, "He's out behine, makin' him
+a little house to put a hawg in. Heah him?"
+
+Mr. Nikolai nodded. There was a good deal of intermittent hammering and
+whistling going on in the background.
+
+"You need not announce me, thank you. Perhaps my namesake will lead me
+to him?"
+
+He held out a forefinger to the younger Stefan, who examined it, found
+it good, and clasped a trusting fist about it. So linked, the two moved
+off at a pace suitable to experimental footsteps.
+
+In this slow progress they presently came upon a somewhat nondescript
+figure at work in a potato-patch. It wore blue jeans overall trousers,
+surmounted by what had once been a leghorn picture-hat, from which
+straggled a lock or two of sparse gray hair.
+
+Mr. Nikolai stared at this figure for a puzzled moment; and then burst
+out laughing.
+
+"Why, Ellen Neal! I did not recognize you as a farmerette."
+
+"Land sakes!" She sat down abruptly among the potato-plants, whether out
+of surprise or for purposes of concealment it is impossible to state.
+
+But her welcome when it came was for once not grudging. Perhaps she
+recalled a certain timely offer of help; or perhaps this graybeard, with
+his slight, tired stoop and his lined eyes, no longer seemed to her a
+menace to the sheepfold. Be that as it may, her greeting was not outdone
+in warmth even by Archie's.
+
+"I've simply _got_ to tell Joan!" cried Archie. "She'll never forgive me
+if I don't interrupt her just this once."
+
+"Not when it is coming like that," forbade Nikolai, listening to the
+rapid click of a typewriter from the house beyond. "Neither battle,
+murder, nor sudden death must be allowed to interfere with a flow of
+thought that is coming a hundred words to the minute."
+
+"Well, I suppose you know," conceded the husband, reluctantly--
+
+An hour later, however, Ellen took matters into her own hands. She
+appeared at the kitchen door (dressed, Nikolai was flattered to observe,
+in a costume of purple crepe with Battenburg touches), and loudly rang a
+dinner-bell.
+
+"That'll fetch her! Joan ain't ever too much up in the clouds to hear a
+dinner-bell; and I don't mean to have my jelly-omelette kep' waitin' on
+no flows of thought," she remarked.
+
+Joan came out to them, a little untidy as to dress and hair (why is it
+that the Muse can never be pursued in perfect neatness?) and moving
+vaguely, as if half in a dream. There was a faint vertical wrinkle
+between her brows which was new to Nikolai, but her pallor had given
+place to warm tan, and both face and figure showed a slight suggestion
+of fullness, a little matronly poise that was more charming than her
+Botticelli _maigre_ had been.
+
+As she passed her son, she swooped down upon him and lifted him with a
+fine free swing onto her shoulder.
+
+"Hi there, old Dirt-in-the-Face! Where's your Dada?"
+
+Mother and child made a memorable picture as they approached, the long
+lifting lines of the woman's body, her laughing face upturned to the
+boy, who straddled her shoulder unafraid of his high position, chuckling
+and kicking fat legs as she tickled him.
+
+The two men who loved Joan exchanged a sympathetic glance. "Mine!" said
+each in his heart; the one triumphantly, the other with the little shrug
+that was habitual to him.
+
+Not until she was close upon them did she realize who waited for her
+there beside Archie. She stopped short. Then, without a word, she put
+down her child and went to Nikolai and kissed him.
+
+If that kiss, so impulsive and without self-consciousness, was like a
+stab in Nikolai's heart, he did not show it. She had not dared to kiss
+him when they parted.
+
+There came back to him in that moment an echo of a certain prophesy he
+had once made to Archie: "I must warn you that when she does find her
+_metier_, you are more in danger of losing her to it than to me."
+
+Was she lost to both of them, already?...
+
+"Oh, but Stefan, dear, how tired you look!" ("And how old!" her thought
+finished.) "You've been working too hard over there!"
+
+"One does. It seems the least one can do."
+
+"Too much work and not enough exercise," pronounced Archie, casting a
+semi-professional eye over him. "Nothing ages a man so quick as to let
+his muscles sag on him--but you brainy people always forget you've got
+muscles except in your heads. I'll have to make you hoe the garden and
+put on the gloves with me now and then, like I do Joan."
+
+"No wonder she is able to hoist fat sons about as if they were
+feathers!" commented Nikolai.
+
+It was a happy luncheon they had together, and a garrulous one. The
+Blair family talked all at once, including the youngest, who had three
+words at his command and liked to practice them. Ellen also joined
+freely in the conversation as she waited upon them. Nikolai was the only
+quiet one, seeming content to look and listen.
+
+He had to hear all about the finding of the Farm, as Archie called his
+two acres and a cottage. When the reunited Blairs had been looking about
+for a place they could afford to live in--"And raise a family," added
+Archie happily--they had come across the little place, weed-grown and
+deserted, and rented it for almost nothing.
+
+"The chickens and the garden alone practically pay the rent," boasted
+Archie, "and this summer I'm going to set up a hog. Real money in hogs,
+Mr. Nikolai! Of course the house is pretty old-timey and plain,"--he
+indicated the low ceilings and deep-set, many-paned windows--"but Joan
+likes old-timey things. She says this is a country cousin to that old
+place I used to live in on Poplar Street. Says a house without any
+ghosts in it is as uninteresting as a house without any books in it."
+(Archie was always fond of quoting the sayings of his Joan.)
+
+"You do not miss people?" Nikolai asked her, recalling how easily the
+young American had made her place in what is perhaps the most finished
+society in the world.
+
+"I have no chance to. We have neighbors enough--nice country women who
+exchange patterns and recipes and cuttings with me, and even a book now
+and then. If I want another sort, it is easy enough to run into town--or
+even on to New York, now that I've the excuse of publishers to be seen!
+And lately the town has begun to come out to me. Not at first. Emily and
+the others had a good deal to say about the folly of burying oneself in
+the country. You see this is not Country Club or golf-course country.
+But now I notice that they're glad enough to come whenever I ask
+them--or even when I don't!--Oh, the peace of it, Stefan! At night you
+can positively hear the silence."
+
+    "Amid the darkness that we feel is green,"
+
+he said.
+
+She nodded. "And no formal callers to interrupt, and no ridiculous
+competitions with Mrs. Websters--I think people are more themselves in
+the country, somehow. Kentucky people, at any rate. Your Kentuckian does
+not run quite true to type herded in masses."
+
+"Hear the wise authorine!" beamed Archie.
+
+"Perhaps that is true of all Anglo-Saxons," she went on, unheeding.
+"They need to get their roots into the soil."
+
+"Not only of Anglo-Saxons, Joan--of Semitic people, of all people, I
+think," said Nikolai. "Humanity began in a garden, if we may believe our
+myths. And with all races the dream of the ultimate Paradise is a
+garden."
+
+"Why don't you put some roots out yourself?" asked Archie, eagerly.
+"There's a lot of good land about here for sale cheap. Why don't you buy
+some and settle down near us?"
+
+"Oh, do!" urged Joan. "What a splendid idea!"
+
+He looked from one to the other, the slight flush that had risen to his
+face dying away.
+
+"Thank you," he said quietly. "Thank you, my friends. Perhaps--some
+day."
+
+Joan remembered that he had spoken once of his intention to settle down
+near her and grow up with her children, "when he was old enough."
+
+Surely, she thought (quite unaware of any cruelty in her thought) he was
+old enough now!
+
+Her eyes had been making their usual running commentary on the
+conversation, quick blue flashes, grave or merry or reassuring, that
+always spoke to Nikolai more clearly than her words. But presently he
+noticed in them a return of the preoccupation, the vague dreaminess,
+that had been about her when she first appeared.
+
+"Your mind is at that typewriter," he accused her suddenly.
+
+"Of course it is," complained Archie. "She'd be at the thing all day
+long, if I didn't drag her out in the fields occasionally to work!"
+
+"Archie thinks writing is not work," she interpolated, "merely an
+elegant way of passing a lady's leisure, like embroidery or
+crocheting!--But I'm not always as bad as this, Stefan," she apologized.
+"It's just that a crisis is on the way, and thoughts seem to come faster
+than I can get them down.--Luckily for you I've got a public now to
+spill them onto, instead of you!"
+
+"Do you find the public as responsive?"
+
+"_Does_ she!" cried the proud husband. "Letters in every mail, and
+requests for autographs--why, she's a public character! The other day in
+a street-car--Tell him what happened the other day in the street-car,
+Joan."
+
+She pulled his hair, laughing. "Ain't I the most wonder-fullest
+boy?--Well, the other day in a street-car, Stefan, a perfectly strange
+man came up to me and said, 'Aren't you the Mrs. Blair who writes? Say,
+what business have _you_ got knowing how scared a man is of his grown
+son? You're only a girl.'"
+
+"I congratulate you," said Nikolai. "Yes, that is response. Taking the
+world into your circle of intimates--that is the thing that makes the
+game worth while for people like you and me."
+
+"Don't include me with yourself," she protested in quick deprecation.
+"I'm not and never shall be 'literary.' Human nature is all I'm after,
+Stefan. Villains who won't stay villains; heroes with fatal flaws of
+character; good, fine, noble natures who spread havoc all about
+'em--that's the sort of thing I want to do; never 'literature'!"
+
+He smiled, nodding. "Spoken like a true Cobzar!--But at that rate you'll
+find it difficult to escape literature, my dear." He rose to leave,
+against protests. "No, no, I have no intention of sharing honors with a
+Climax. Let me come back to-morrow, when the crisis is out of her
+system. I know how that is!"
+
+"You always know how things are," murmured Joan gratefully, pressing his
+hand....
+
+Archie walked with him to the car-station.
+
+"You think she's looking well, sir?" he asked as soon as they were out
+of earshot.
+
+"Better than well, Blair. Content."
+
+The husband sighed with satisfaction. "I think so myself--though of
+course it's the kid who's done that, not me--Mr. Nikolai, I've got to
+talk to you on business. How big a hurry are you in for that money you
+lent me?"
+
+"None at all," answered the other pleasantly. "I've accumulated a good
+deal of moss for such a rolling-stone--a racial trait, perhaps! Take
+your time. You've already paid me more than half, I think."
+
+"Joan's book did most of that, not me," admitted Archie, flushing.
+"Though of course I'm going to pay her back."
+
+"Don't," said the other.
+
+"_Don't!_ Why not?"
+
+"Our only hold upon such as Joan is--our need of them."
+
+Archie ruminated upon this in silence. "I get you," he said at last.
+"Let 'em think we're sort of helpless, like--like children, eh? But it's
+pretty hard accepting money from a woman!"
+
+"Why? When we have consented to accept life itself from a woman--Where
+there is love there is no debt, Blair!"
+
+"I guess that's right," said Archie slowly. "What's mine is hers of
+course; and so what's hers is mine--But speaking of the war--"
+
+It happened that they had not been speaking of the war at all, though it
+hung in the background of their talk, grim and menacing, as it hung in
+the background of all talk just then.
+
+"Yes, Blair?"
+
+"We're getting into it at last, thank God! And as soon as we do, I'm
+going."
+
+"Of course," said Nikolai.
+
+Archie turned to him eagerly. "You think I've got a right to go?"
+
+"So much of a right that I've come out here largely to see how I can
+help you--Of course you know," he added after a moment's hesitation,
+"that anything I have will go some day to my namesake Stefan?"
+
+"Say, that's great!" cried Archie, beaming. "That makes me mighty easy
+about the future! And the present's all right, too. I'm pretty sure of
+getting a commission, and Joan makes more money than I do now. The thing
+that's been troubling me is wondering how _you'd_ ever get paid back....
+I'm pretty tall for the trenches," he explained. "And I seem to get sort
+of careless when I'm excited--the Irish coming out on me, I reckon. The
+chances are against my coming back. And in that case all you'd get would
+be--Joan."
+
+A silence fell.
+
+"And the kid, of course--He's a pretty nice little fellow," Archie added
+tentatively. "I don't suppose he'd be much of a--drawback?"
+
+"On the contrary," said Nikolai. "I think he might be considered
+interest on the investment!"
+
+Archie laughed with relief.
+
+"I tell you, it makes me feel pretty comfortable to know that whatever
+happens to me they'll be safe! And to know that you'll be taking care of
+her, sir. She needs a good deal of taking care of, too--though she don't
+know it. Thinks she's as independent as a little pig on ice. But they're
+none of 'em independent, Mr. Nikolai--take it from me! They've got to be
+humored, and teased, and exercised, and petted--and the smarter they are
+the more petting they need. This high-brow business seems to leave
+people sort of lonesome in their hearts--you know what I mean?"
+
+"Yes," said Nikolai, "I know what you mean--I shall accept your legacy
+gladly, Blair, if I am here to accept it. But--I am going to the war,
+myself. Not into the trenches, no. Into Russia."
+
+Archie protested as Joan had. "But I thought Russia was not safe for
+you!"
+
+"It is not. Nor for anybody else just now. There is something brewing
+there. You will see. And I think perhaps I can do a little something for
+both my countries, the new and the old. That is why I have come to
+America; to arrange my affairs, and to--say good-by."
+
+"I get you," said Archie, simply, and held out his hand. His face had
+fallen. "Gee, supposing neither of us comes back? What will she do
+then?"
+
+Nikolai gravely smiled. "Listen!" he said.
+
+Through the hush of the still afternoon came to their ears, faint but
+distinct, the steady clicking of a typewriter.
+
+"That is what she will do, my friend, with us or without. She has
+graduated from you and me--from herself as well. She has turned from men
+to Man; and of him the supply is inexhaustible."
+
+Archie sighed, a little jealously. "You gave her that! You've given her
+almost everything she values, sir, haven't you?"
+
+"Not quite everything, Blair."
+
+Archie's eyes brightened. He remembered then the thing the other had not
+given her: their boy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a scene that etched itself upon Nikolai's memory as he stood
+there waiting for his car, one of those pictures the heart carries with
+it into far places, and forever; the pleasant, homely cottage among its
+flowers and gnarled apple-trees, children's voices prattling about, the
+smell of cooking pickle in the air, Archie's cheery, retreating whistle,
+and dominating all the eager clicking of a typewriter.
+
+His eyes followed the broad shoulders of the younger man, swinging along
+the road to the brisk, martial tread all young men have learned
+latterly.... Nikolai's life had thrown him into contact with all phases
+of the human problem, low and high. He knew how inextricably the two are
+mingled. Heroism, self-sacrifice, he had found in the most unlikely
+places, and thrilled to them as a fighting nature thrills to the drum.
+It hurt him to realize that the finest heroism, the most exquisite
+sacrifice, must always be hidden things, hidden often even from the eyes
+of him who sacrifices. Archibald Blair, failure in all that the world
+finds important, would have called himself undoubtedly a poor stick.
+Only to the occasional eye did he loom a hero.
+
+Nikolai looked after him sadly, listening to the steady click of that
+typewriter. At last he quoted to himself, with a shrug,
+
+    "Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes chansons."[1]
+
+Between them, he knew, they would manage to serve Joan's needs to the
+end.
+
+
+THE END
+
+[Footnote: 1 "Die, for I have need to sing of death in my songs."]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Why Joan?, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly
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