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."