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.