Joan, in yielding to family pressure temporarily, had by no means given
up the idea of what she had learned recently to call her economic
independence--a subject discussed frequently, if not very fruitfully, by
her friends the Jabberwocks, who preached rather more radically than
they practiced.
"You see," as they explained when reproached by Joan with inconsistency,
"we believe in that sort of thing, of course! but it isn't as if we
really _needed_ it." (Which was likewise the Jabberwockian attitude
toward suffrage.)
Joan, however, not only believed in economic independence, but needed
it--as she reminded herself at gradually increasing intervals. She was
in danger, and knew it, of going over to Mammon. She had found it far
easier than she expected to live along from moment to moment, accepting
life as it came, enjoying the surface without questioning the depths.
The habit of mere material luxury is an insidious thing that fastens
upon one unaware; and Joan had all her father's taste for the good
things of life.
She had begun to form many little extravagant ways, such, for instance,
as wearing silk stockings under her heaviest shoes, using a towel only
once before casting it aside, having her hair shampooed down town when
she was perfectly able to do it herself in her own bathroom. Not very
reckless extravagances, perhaps, from the point of view of her new
friends; but the sort of thing which the Misses Darcy observed with
something like awe.
"I often think that if dear papa had been able to allow _us_ to be less
careful--"; sighed Miss Virginia. "But of course in our day a silk
stocking was a silk stocking."
"Indeed it was! Do you remember the lovely pair Aunt Sara Miggs brought
from abroad when she made the grand tour? White they were, Joan; and
when they began to get a little yellow with washing, she gave them to
me; and when I'd had plenty of use out of them, they were dipped pink
for Sister Euphie; and by the time Sister Virgie got them they had
become black."
"With age?" asked Joan, rather startled.
"Oh, no, dear. With dye."
"Where are the stockings of yester-year?" murmured the girl. "You can't
buy good old family standbys like that nowadays, not at any price.
Nothing but these miserable sleazy affairs that run if you look at
them--the cowards!"
The Darcy ladies exchanged puzzled glances.
"Cowards--stockings?" repeated Miss Iphigenia. "I'm afraid I don't quite
see the connection--"
"There isn't any--don't mind me! And really it's quite a distinction to
wear cotton ones nowadays," hurriedly said Joan, who hoped sincerely
never to possess a cotton stocking again in all her life. And at the
same time planned to earn her own living in any honest fashion
available, no matter how lowly! Inconsistency was not a fault with which
she had the right to twit her fellow Jabberwocks....
But she never quite forgot her destination in the pleasures of the
wayside. She did a good deal of quiet investigating, in a desultory way.
Teachers, librarians, bookkeepers, stenographers, all came under the
head of skilled labor, as she soon discovered, and required a course of
training--which Joan's step-mother would have to provide. It put these
professions out of the question.
There were various small establishments in Louisville conducted by
acquaintances of hers, those "ladies in reduced circumstances" of which
every Southern town is full; tea-rooms, hat-shops, lingerie-shops, and
the like--a state of affairs which gave Major Darcy acute distress.
"Imagine the daughters of my old friend Colonel Dinwiddie selling
bibelots to any vulgarian who has the effrontery to purchase them! What
can their brothers be thinking of?" he would groan. "Of course you will
be careful never to enter the shop, my dears! The poor ladies shall not
be embarrassed by having to wait on _my_ wife and daughter, at least."
But aside from her father's peculiar but not unique point of view, these
ventures required capital; which again put them out of the question.
She heard now and then of certain well-paid positions in connection with
social service of various sorts; but these again seemed to require a
special training, or a special aptitude, which Joan did not believe
herself to possess. The very words "social service" had to her a
chilling, impersonal, busybodyish sound, almost as ugly as
"philanthropy." She was not of those to whom a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet. "Charity" sounded to her Christian, and warm, and
friendly; but she dreaded to offer "philanthropy," or "social service"
to the unfortunate almost as much as she would have dreaded to receive
such things. She decided that her _metier_ was not good works.
Clerks in stores, she learned, do not for the most part earn a living
wage. They are expected evidently to live at home, or to supplement
their salary in some other fashion (just how Joan was not sure, but she
entertained uneasy suspicions). By the time they become expert--heads of
departments, buyers, chief milliners, etc.,--they are of course more
than economically independent. But in the meanwhile....
It was the meanwhile that troubled Joan. When she broke with her family,
she intended to do so with a magnificent completeness.
Only two alternatives seemed open to her inexperience; the stage and
journalism. She weighed them one against the other without being able to
come to a decision. Joan was rather fond of making her own decisions,
and had all the impatience of her nineteen years with mature advice. But
at length she consulted Stefan Nikolai.
"Please write me by return mail," (she commanded), "which you think
would offer me the most advantageous career, the stage or journalism."
He obeyed on a post-card marked Christiania (his postmarks were
frequently the only indication of his whereabouts):
"I should suggest the usual course in matrimony as a preliminary to any
career."
Joan stamped her foot over this banality. It was something she might
have expected from a man of her father's generation, but hardly from
Stefan Nikolai. Particularly when he knew about Eduard, and must
certainly realize that her interest in man as a sex was over!
Useful she still found them as dancing partners, to be sure, as
providers of candy and flowers and theaters, even to a certain extent as
companions, since one cannot very well sit about after nightfall
conversing with women, if only for appearance' sake. One or two she
might admit to her friendship, provided they remain sufficiently "in
their place," like Archie Blair. But as lovers, husbands! Never again.
Fortunately, sufficient phagocytes had been released to take care of
that.
Hers was an attitude of mind which if generally entertained would, she
realized, mitigate against the welfare of the race; but judging from the
people about her, it would never be generally entertained--particularly
in Kentucky, and in Springtime.
It is a season when matters of pairing off that may have hung fire
throughout the winter are apt to come rapidly to a climax. Each Sunday
paper brings forth its batch of Spring engagements; and Joan herself was
under the pleasing necessity of chilling off two of her admirers in
quick succession. One was a youth of the fireside-companion type, who
innocently fancied that there might be room for one more under the
hospitable Darcy roof. The other was the blond young man who had been
Joan's first partner, and who, having danced her successfully through
the season, saw no reason why he should not dance her successfully
through life.
They met with small mercy at her hands. "Off with his head!" murmured
Joan cheerily to herself on each occasion, thinking of a certain evening
under a beech-tree by the light of the gibbous moon....
These two unfortunates were not the only ones in her life who were to
suffer vicarious atonement for the sins of Eduard Desmond (and obscurely
of Richard Darcy as well).