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.