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.