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.