” Pa,” said Joy, “would you let me sing Louise
to-day?—I—feel—just—like it!”
It was nine o’clock of a Monday morning; Joy had ridden up to town on an
early train and gone straight to her lesson. She had burst into the
studio, cheeks aflame, singing almost before she entered. Her scales had
gone well; her tones were carrying more point, and were delivered with a
resonance that made the windows vibrate. Pa was looking exhilarated; his
old eyes were almost shining.
“We shall make a Louise out of you!” he said now for the first time
since that first day. “As well as a tender Mimi and a piteous Butterfly
and a heart-torn Gilda! But not yet. There is no use in toying with
those airs for quite a while.”
“But I want to show you,” said Joy. “Please let me, Pa—I may never be
in Louise’s mood again!”
Pa threw up his hands and the accompanist played the two opening
measures. Joy abandoned herself to the ecstasy of the song . . . so
recently—she had been there herself. When the last blissful echo had
died away, she threw back her head and looked at Pa in triumph. He
looked back at her, and shook his head.
“Of course, you must remember that mood,” he said, “so that some day you
may sing it, and set people to dreaming of their first love. But you
must be able to take your moods out of your pocket, and hold them in
your hand. Do you see, my dear? If you give yourself up to the mood, it
gets out of hand—When one is thrilled oneself, one is rarely thrilling
one’s audience. Mind! Mind over all—or the result is artistic chaos.”
“I don’t want to sing so that people will think of my mind—” Joy
objected, rebellious. “No; but you must have yourself under control or
you cannot control your audience. Be blissful, or passionate, or
dreaming; but plan it out first; don’t rely upon the moment’s mood for
spurts of inspiration.”
She left the studio, her spirits more dashed than a newly-engaged girl’s
should have been over such a matter. The singer’s road was so long, so
hard—so nerve-racking—She whiled away the trolley journey to the
apartment in finding adjectives, none of which were sufficiently
comprehensive. Yet, remembering the way her scales had soared—and the
windows vibrated—the exultant sense of power that had been hers—the
voices within her were more contented lately, she liked to fancy—Yes,
music drew one on even while one despaired.
The apartment seemed changed. Had Jerry been house-cleaning in her
absence? There was more furniture in the hall than usual, furniture that
belonged in the reception room; and everything shone as if it had been
newly scrubbed. Ordinarily, while the apartment was not really untidy,
it bore an air of very light housekeeping. Joy poked her head inside the
reception room, and dropped the suitcase at what she saw.
A strange woman sitting on the comfortable sofa—a woman with very
blonde hair and a figure which would have been expansive if given a
chance by her potent corsets. An earringed, bejewelled woman, with dark,
hard hollows for eyes in a face whose pink and white layers gave her
skin an ironed-out look which trembled into telltale wrinkles and
creases in the neck. Jerry was standing before her—a changed Jerry in a
bright, bizarre gown of some rough green silk which clung to her like a
wet bathing-suit—her hair pulled back straight and confined by a ribbon
of the same bright silk—jade earrings lilting from her ears. Her face
was rouged; her lips a splotch of scarlet. She swayed lithely as Joy
stared, spellbound, and was saying, in a silken, rustling voice which
reminded Joy oddly of the dress she wore: “I am sure you will enjoy the
little frock, Mrs. Bowman. Florence Fay was in Saturday, and I am
creating one for her that is very similar.”
Joy felt her jaw dropping, and closed it with a click that made Jerry
turn swiftly on the toes of the cream-coloured sandals she wore on her
bare feet. “Mrs. Bowman” followed her glance, and lifted a jewelled
lorgnette to stare at Joy. “One of your models, Madame?” she asked, in a
voice as thick and flabby as her eyelids.
Jerry nodded languidly, with a swift, impinging wink at Joy.
“She’s just my colouring—better than the other,” the doughy voice went
on. Joy reacted from the blow by staggering back a step and tripping
over the suitcase. “I’d like to see her in some negligées—I’m looking
for just the right kind and I must say it’s hard to suit me in them.”
“Let me see,” Jerry wafted her hand to her forehead. “You do not wish
light colours, I take it.”
“You know I don’t.” The voice became stickily peevish, although the face
did not alter its bland, open look. “My figure is impossible in light
colors, you know that quite well.”
“Of course you are at your best in dark, which brings out your hair to a
vividness,” Jerry murmured. “I have in mind something all made up, which
is distinctly your negligée from the first moment one looks at it. But
should I even show it to you?” Her hands interrogated, “Florence Fay saw
it, and said she was almost sure she would want it for the bedroom scene
in ‘Making a Night of It,’ her new fall vehicle.”
“Oh—h, I _must_ see it!” Mrs. Bowman appealed, her neck working with
emotion. “I _must_, Madame Géry!”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders, a quick, theatrical gesture that threw her
gown into all sorts of new ripples and cadences. “Well, possibly there
is no harm in _showing_ it to you,” she conceded. “Pardon me for one
swift moment—” and she curved out into the hall, gathering Joy after
her. “Joy,” she whispered, a goblin grin disturbing her blobby lips,
“Joy—do you mind going and putting on that purple negligée Packy and
Twink sent, and coming back here to show her how she won’t look? Sorry,
but you peeked yourself into this!”
Joy went back to Jerry’s room fighting a wild desire to laugh
hysterically and completely. Would there ever be an end to the surprises
of this apartment? Sarah was sitting on the bed, hugging a decidedly
cross expression. A large, creamy pasteboard box which she had evidently
just done up, judging from the papers and string scattered about the
room, was lying beside her.
“Will you please tell me,” said Joy, “how long since Jerry has turned
modiste?”
“Oh, you’re back,” said Sarah brilliantly. “Have a good time? Is that
sunburn or rouge?”
Joy went to the closet for the negligée without replying. “That” was
nothing more or less than a hectic flush which had been on her ever
since Grant had left her on the train that morning. The ecstatic
distress of their first parting had keyed her up to almost fever pitch.
Her pulses had been pounding, her blood had mounted to her face, and
even the coldwater spray of that singing lesson had not succeeded in
bringing her back to normal. Her lips parted now in dramatic
recollection, as she slipped into the gorgeous purple brocade of Twink’s
settlement. It was beyond belief that there could be such rapture—
“I thought Jerry’d better play that off, too,” said Sarah. “She’s never
worn it, and she ought to be able to stick old Mrs. Messy in deep for
it.”
Joy snapped the clasp that held the thing together, and went down the
hall again. It was a wonderful negligée—it would make even “Mrs. Messy”
look like a fresh young twig of a girl. For although not yet a gnarled
old bough, one might call her considerable of a branch. How did models
walk? She took her cue from Jerry’s modulated ambulations, and swayed
into the reception room. “Mrs. Messy’s” lorgnette surveyed her.
“That negligée,” the voice soughed, “is mine. I have to have it. I
couldn’t even consider anything else—after seeing it.”
Jerry’s hands fluttered. “But, my dear Mrs. Bowman, Florence Fay——”
“I tell you I must have it! I’ll pay you twice as much as she would!”
“The works of art that I put out,” said Jerry smoothly, “as works of
art, contain in their price no relation to material or cost of labour.
My years of study and design, of creating lesser works of art—they set
the price. Mrs. Bowman, I do not change my values. For you, or for
Florence Fay, they remain the same. And since Miss Fay did not
absolutely reserve it, I might let you take it—although it is against
my custom to disappoint my patrons in a gown they have partially
optioned. The negligée is three hundred and fifty dollars, as it now
stands.”
Joy’s pose almost disintegrated at this. Although not the type of girl
who generally indulges in such remarks, she longed to ask Jerry if that
included her too. But Mrs. Bowman showed no sign of shock.
“Have it done up at once, and have the two boxes carried out to my car,”
she said in thick satisfaction.
When the door finally closed on Mrs. Bowman and the two boxes which
Sarah carried uncordially to the car, Joy turned to Jerry, who was
smoking swiftly:
“So this is what you meant, when you said you were going to take in
washing on the side!”
Jerry pulled off her green bandeau. “You pinned it on the wall that
time—It’s my only regular calling now. I hold these receptions four
times a year—in all of the four off-season intervals, when the stores
are marking down—the mid-summer sales are on now, you know—and the
newly and oozily rich, like our friend Mrs. Bowman, don’t want to demean
themselves by going to markdowns—yet want to go right on spending. It
gives ’em a thrill to come here to private exhibits of ‘advance models,’
where they get individual attention from a jazzy person who looks like a
double life. Isn’t my make-up temperamental?” And she waved her sandals.
“Jerry, I think you’re—wonderful. Were you—were you ever an actress?”
The downward quirk to Jerry’s mouth again. “No. I could have been,
couldn’t I?”
Joy was amazed at the depth of her disappointment. She had been
cherishing the exciting belief that that was Jerry’s “past,” for so
long.
“I like designing and sewing things together,” said Jerry; “it’s the
only kind of work I _do_ like. If I liked it better than having a good
time, I’d do it all the year around. As it is, whenever I see a dress of
good material marked down because of lack of style, I buy it—the same
with remnants of materials. Then from time to time I get an idea on a
way to change the dress so it will look like Irene Castle improved on. I
cut it all over, probably—drape it on Sal, who does an imitation of
Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works while I polish it off. So when the time comes
for me to call it a week and I phone announcements to my
patrons—telling each of ’em I’m especially calling _them_ instead of
sending ’em a printed slip—I have quite a little collection of
made-over mark-downs to parade. Sal shows ’em off well, too—that girl’s
got style—but if she ever was cast on a desert island without a
rouge-box and a marcel-iron and a few other little things I’d hate to
look at her. Put her in clothes, and she crashes through. An old friend
of mine used to say, and it’s true any way you look at it: ‘Without
clothes, you can’t get very far.’”
“But how about that purple negligée?”
“That was pure profiteering. I got into the mood of roasting the old
marshmallow; the negligée was handy, you dropped in—Say, tell me about
the visit. I haven’t half looked at you yet.”
They were in the living room, and Joy without answering went over to the
cellarette. With a leap, Jerry was there before her. “Listen here,
Joy—you’ve been without it for several days now. Don’t you think it’s a
good time to begin to stop?”
“Why? You drink three times as much as I do——”
“I’m hopeless. You’re not. You’ve just started in, and you can
stop—easily.”
Joy considered the lights and shadows of the glass in her hand. “I
wonder—if it’s really doing me any harm.” She drank it reflectively,
while Jerry went back to her seat with a shrug. “I—I cried a long time,
the first night down at the seashore. Jerry, do you suppose this had
anything to do with it?”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders again. Having made her appeal, she
evidently did not intend either to repeat or reinforce it. There was a
brief silence between the two, broken by Joy, who suddenly found that
she must pour forth the story of the week-end just passed; such glowing
wonder could not be bottled up within her. Jerry listened, first smoking
at her usual gait, but as the story wore on sitting with a fresh
cigarette unlit between her teeth. When Joy’s narration finally came to
an end, she bit into the cigarette.
“Well?” said Joy. It was the first time she had ever approached Jerry
with a serious matter, the first time men had entered their conversation
as anything but incidentals to a good time, and she did not know how a
hint of permanency would hit her.
“Well?” Jerry repeated. “What do you want me to say?”
“Say?” Joy’s look of breathless bliss crumbled as a toy balloon under a
pin prick. “Why—why, nothing, if you don’t want to. I’m sorry—if I
bored you about it. But you see—I owe him to you, in a way. Because I
never would have met Packy if I hadn’t come here, and I never would have
met him if it hadn’t been for Packy—I didn’t mean to bore you.”
Jerry lit another cigarette. “Look here, Joy, I don’t want to be a
thrill-dispeller or anything, but I can’t put on a quiver I don’t feel.
This thing may turn out all right, but at present quoting it sounds to
me like a bad case of beach and moon. The whole thing has dusted along
with that summer swiftness we all read about.”
“Oh, we realize it’s been swift,” said Joy, “and just to test ourselves,
we’re not going to see each other until Wednesday, when I am going to
meet him at the Copley for dinner.”
“Wednesday,” Joy murmured. “And to-day’s Monday. Oh, well, absence at
this stage of the game only makes you keener—you should have stayed
down there a week!”
“Bon soir—a week down there! I couldn’t stand that—not with his
mother!”
“I gather from what you said that his mother is a riot. Is he anything
like her?”
“Of course not—” Joy began indignantly, but the rise of recollection
checked denial. Grant ossifying at the idea of Paragon Park on
Sunday. . . . But anyone might do that. She rose, gathering conviction
about her as a Shakespearean actor whips his cloak about him before an
exit on a sounding phrase. “I can’t talk about it any more, Jerry. But
when you know, you know.”
And so for a day or two, things remained as static as unexploded
dynamite. Joy received a letter over which she wept ecstatic tears;
Jerry shrugged her shoulders at both the tears and the ecstasy.
On Wednesday evening, Joy came to her for inspection, sheathed in
defiance. “Do I look all right?”
Jerry was doing up a “little model” in one of her long cream paste-board
boxes. She snapped the string around and tied it without replying. Then
she said: “For the love of mud put on a veil or something to take the
edge off those eyes. It isn’t fair to hit a place like the Copley
looking like you do.”
“One should never wear a veil after six in the evening,” Joy retorted.
“So I even _look_ as if I were in love, do I?”
“You look—something,” said Jerry. “I haven’t got time to decide
what—Bring him back afterwards; Sal and I are going down to Sonntaug
with Baldy and his gang, so you’ll have it all to yourself.”
Joy thought, as she trolleyed to the door of the Copley, that Jerry was
peculiarly unresponsive about the wonderful turn things had taken. The
two days’ separation had made her nervous, and Jerry’s attitude did not
tend to make her less so. But she forgot her nervousness in the warm
tide of anticipation sweeping over her that she had not dared to allow
before.
In coming through the swinging doors, the first person she saw was Jim
Dalton, in the act of checking his hat. His recognition was as swift as
hers, and he came forward to meet her. “I was just thinking about you,”
he said without background. “I was wondering whereabouts Jerry’s
apartment was, because I wanted to look you up.”
“How long are you going to be in town?” she asked perfunctorily, as they
moved up the “Peacock Alley” of Boston, the long narrow way of chairs
and sofas facing each other, with a few stuffy people seated thereon,
all glaring at one another.
“I’m working here now, so I expect to be here right along. May I come
and see you?”
“I don’t know.” She could not tell him about Grant—But what other
excuse was there?” “I—I really don’t know—you see, I’m so awfully busy
all the time.”
She had forgotten how keen his eyes were. They were now boring into hers
until she cast hers down. “I am coming up sometime, if I may,” he said,
“and if I can’t see you, I’ll see Jerry, and talk about you with her.”
They had come to a halt by an empty sofa, and now, as Joy looked at him
in a hope that if she looked long enough she could think of something to
say, Grant came swiftly up to them from the lobby.
“Good evening, Joy,” he said quietly.
“Oh—Grant—have you met Mr. Dalton—” There was no particular reason
for being confused, and showing it, but she was and did. Grant’s
demeanor, while not rude, bordered on the glacial as he bowed, then
stood waiting for Jim to go. Jim looked from one to the other, a swift,
earnest look.
“I’ll see you again, Miss Nelson,” he said, and with a negligent nod to
Grant, was gone.
The two went into the dining room in silence. It was only after they had
ordered, that Grant spoke.
“Who is that fellow, Joy—where did you meet him and what did he mean
when he said he’d see you again?”
Joy put down the roll she had been fingering. In the first keen
disappointment over the flatness of their meeting, his words bit like
acid. “I met him at a Prom this spring,” she said, striving to keep a
pleasant and normal tone. “The only other time I have seen him was at
the dance last week. I ran into him by accident here. That is all.”
The waiter brought their first course, and Grant began to talk of
impersonal matters. Why, oh, why, had they chosen such a place as this
for their first meeting? Joy thought. He had not once looked at her—the
way he had always looked at her, before.
When the waiter had taken their plates away, they met each other’s eyes
steadily for almost the first time that evening, and Grant’s face
softened. “You look rather tired to-night, Joy darling,” he said.
“Whatever on earth have you been doing to yourself? You work too hard on
your singing.”
“Oh, no, Grant—I’ve been neglecting it really—I’ll have to work much
harder to get it where I want it——”
“You sing well enough for me already—and after you belong to me, you’ll
not have to peg away at it any more.” He attacked his salad; the subject
was closed as far as he was concerned.
She was gazing at him wide-eyed. “You mean you wouldn’t want me to—oh,
of course—you—wouldn’t.” She moved her fork in and about her salad
aimlessly. Her mother had forgotten her voice—when she had met the man
she loved. She had forgotten it, in the rapture of _belonging_ to
him—that phrase had such an unpleasant sound. And the generations
before her mother had forgotten their voices for those they loved. She
was the result; and all the repression of generations lay within
her—simmering. She gave Grant a sudden alive, direct glance. This was
the man she loved and she had not forgotten her voice. How could this
be? He must teach her—teach her to forget—and not make her so vaguely
unhappy over such immaterialities as Jim Dalton.
“Hi, Joy! Cheerio, old dear!” She jerked her head up from contemplation
of nothing to see Davy Carter and Wigs Smith, Jerry’s and Sarah’s most
competent playmates, with some other youths, hailing her boisterously
while passing to a table close by. She managed a smile from her
abstraction, and fell to pushing her fork about again.
“You seem to have an unlimited supply of casual young men
acquaintances,” came from across the table in a voice that weirdly
reminded Joy of Mrs. Grey’s chill blue eyes.
“Grant, what a silly attitude to take!” she exploded. “There are
nineteen years in which you have not known me. It certainly would be
strange if in that time I had met no other men——”
She realized just that fatal fraction of an inch too late, that she had
said the wrong thing, and stopped, leaving the appeal in mid air, where
it stayed. His face had queerly altered, and the air tingled with
silence.
“Let’s go,” he said finally, in an even tone; “that is, if you do not
care to eat any more.”
She had eaten practically nothing throughout the dinner; but it was so
different from the day when they had both lost their appetites!
As they came through the dining room, Joy collided with a
showily-dressed woman who was entering with a large, greasy-looking man.
There had been sufficient room for them both to pass, but Joy’s mind had
been far away. The woman drew back and raised a monocle upon her.
“Oh—it is one of Madame Géry’s models!” rolled out an unforgettably
doughy voice. “How fortunate—will you tell Madame Géry, my dear, that I
am coming Saturday instead of to-morrow?”
Joy nodded and made her escape, walking swiftly, battling an insane
desire to shriek with laughter and startle the inmates of the Copley out
of their stodgy repose. Grant kept his silence on ice as they left the
hotel and he signaled for a taxi. When he helped her into the machine
that finally drew up, Joy burst forth with the hysterical giggles she
had been fighting.
“Will you please stop laughing long enough to tell me your address?”
Grant asked, in the same tone with which he told the driver where to go,
when she gasped out the number. What nonsense—Grant knew her address.
Everything was getting to be nonsense—
They rode for some minutes with no sound but Joy’s laughter. Grant spoke
at last. “Did I hear right? Did that—that woman say you were—a model?
Is that true, Joy?”
“No—yes,—that is,—well, I was once in a manner of speaking—” She
went off again into what sounded like perfect carillons of laughter.
“Joy—can’t you control yourself any better than this—don’t you know
how you are hurting me?”
She was suddenly quiet. “You are hurting me, too, Grant. I don’t know
what’s happened—but something has—and everything is so awful that I
can’t seem to believe that it used to be so wonderful.” She started to
sob in pitiful little hiccoughs. He made no move to comfort her, but
stared ahead of him in the taxi.
“You’re right, Joy—something has happened. I saw Packy this week—and
he said certain things about you that made me pound the everlasting
daylight out of him. Knowing you—and everything that had passed between
us—naturally I called him a liar and rammed his words back in his
throat.”
Joy had stopped sobbing; her hysterics were shocked out of her. “What
did he say about me?” she cried sharply. “What did he say about me?”
“He told me—what kind of girls you were living with and the kind of
life you led—from man to man instead of from hand to mouth is the way
he put it——”
The numbness of utter bewilderment possessed her. In a choked silence
she listened to his voice droning over the rattle of the taxi.
“And then—I come to meet you—and find you talking with a man—who
seems to think he knows you pretty well—a man who as good as told Packy
and me what to do with ourselves, the other night down at the dance, as
if he owned you—and then a bunch of would-be speeds that I happen to
know are no living good, hail you as a boon companion—call out to you
in a way no girl should be spoken to in a public dining-room——”
“Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to
God!” Joy murmured. A nebular recklessness, as if she were moving in a
dream, had settled upon her. “Go on—you haven’t reached the part where
I became a model!”
“Joy, for God’s sake, don’t make this any worse by being flippant. You
must be frank with me for once and tell me what to think. I never asked
any questions about you—but now I have the right to know.”
Their taxi came to a scrunching stop in front of the apartment house,
and there was an enforced silence while he paid the man and they
journeyed up to Jerry’s apartment. In the living-room they faced each
other, pale and vibrant.
“You say, ‘be frank with me _for once_,’” Joy panted; “I’ve never told
you anything about my life, it is true; but that’s only because there
wasn’t—time. I’ll tell you the story of my life now—just as fast as I
can. But first—oh, Grant—don’t you love me any more—not the smallest
bit?”
“I—I don’t know what I love, Joy. Help me—help me to get back to where
we were two days ago!”
Standing there, his eyes imploring her, he looked like a pathetic little
boy. Joy’s tenderness came back suddenly, with a rush. “Grant,
dear—what’s all this about, anyway?” and she took a step toward him.
And then as the gravitation of two bodies who like to speak of such
affairs as of the heart or soul, hung imminent—a breath more, and the
questioning would have rested in each other’s arms—Grant stumbled over
something on the floor. There was a sound of glass shattering to shivery
bits,—and the gravitation shattered. He stooped to reclaim the damage
he had chanced to wreak—and straightened up again. They were standing
by the sofa. On the floor by the head of the sofa was a bottle, a bottle
of unmistakable denomination, surrounded by three friendly looking
glasses that gave forth the impression of having lived through much. It
was one of those glasses, strayed from its brothers, that Grant had
rendered incapable of further service.
There was a busy silence in the room. Joy found herself thinking dryly
that it must have been Sarah who had left those there; Jerry would never
have been quite so more than careless. Grant slowly turned and looked
about him—at the clubroom furnishings—and back down at the bottle with
those three evil witches of glasses:
“Joy,” he said, his breath making patchwork of his voice; “tell me what
Packy meant—tell me what he meant!”
“I don’t know _what_ he meant!” she cried. “You have to tell me just
what he said——It’s true I am living here with two girls who are
neither Cabots nor Lowells——”
“That’s—quite—evident.” His eyes were again visiting different pungent
details of the room. “And how in the name of all that’s fitting—did you
happen to come here?”
She wanted to beat her fists against the air—against the wall that was
rising between them. She tried to speak, but the full tide of what she
had to say clogged her utterance. “I—why—I can’t explain—at a moment
like this! At a moment like this! There’s too much to tell!”
He was moving away from her—moving away down the room. With the sharp
needle-prick of incredulity she watched him go.
“Joy”—his voice was a long way off, like the echo of a vanished
heart-beat—“I—must—think. I’ve—got—to—think.”
Still incredulous, she stood motionless, watching.
“I’ve got to—think!”
And she was alone in the big living-room.
V
” What kind of girls you were living with and what kind of a life you
lead—from man to man instead of hand to mouth——”
Joy had turned the words over in her whirling brain all night. One thing
alone was certain; she must see Packy, find out what he meant—what
Packy had insinuated about herself in particular—what he knew, about
Sarah and Jerry——
Jerry came in about ten o’clock in her favourite purple satin and pink
mules, first poking a freckled nose around the door to see if she was
awake. “Didn’t disturb you last night because I thought if there was any
sleep to be had, you ought to have it,” she announced.
She regarded Jerry from beneath tired eyelids, with a sick feeling of
disloyalty. Jerry was the best friend she had; she knew that;—and yet,
she knew just as surely that she could not picture Grant meeting her.
What could Packy have meant——Watching Jerry’s unconscious face, she
could not bring herself to repeat Packy’s quoted words—to tell Jerry
anything of what had passed.
“Why don’t you try and sleep some more?” Jerry was saying, after a keen
scrutiny of her. “You look dead, and you’ve got nothing on hand this
A.M.—it’s just as well to hang off when you can.”
Joy fell back into bed, and Jerry pulled down the black and
white-striped shades before tiptoeing out. From the first moment that
she had known Jerry, she had liked her. Jerry had never been anything to
Joy but an unselfish, true friend. If it had not been for Jerry, the
glory of music that Pa was unfolding to her would never have been hers.
If it had not been for Jerry, she would never have met Grant—never have
known. . . . But now—now, what did she owe Jerry? Grant had said, he
had to—think. How long—how long would he—think?
She had had only a few hours of fitful slumber—something that Jerry had
divined with one solicitous glance. Jerry had gone out and left her
without trying to talk, which might fully have awakened her. What had
Packy meant? She sank into a comatose state from which, contrary to the
will of her weary brain, she fell into a heavy sleep.
About four o’clock, she woke with a raging headache. Jerry had closed
the windows, as the room faced on a court and was noisy in the daytime,
and the air was envelopingly turgid. She dressed slowly, realizing as
she became more awake that she had not really eaten for more than
twenty-four hours. To ransack the kitchen at this time of the day was
hopeless, she knew. There was no solution but to walk down to the
nearest dairy lunch, which was quite a distance.
Hatted for the street, she passed through the hall, giving a fleeting
look to the living-room before leaving the apartment. Sarah and Jerry
were “rolling the bones” on the floor, with Wigs and Davy and several
other youths in full cry.
“Honey, what am them?”
“Oh, babe—what will the harvest be?”
“Shine out, little seven!”
“Root, hog, or die!”
Wigs caught sight of Joy as she was about to leave, and sang out: “Oh,
Jo-oy! What d’you mean, going to dinner at the Copley with Boston’s
Best? We saw you getting gay in there with Whosis—sitting up just like
you were at a funeral and all that!”
“Come on in!” invited Davy. “Chance to make your everlasting
fortune—never saw good coin change hands so fast——”
She made her escape hastily. _What had Packy meant!_ The kind of life
she led—from man to man instead of from hand to mouth——At the Dairy
lunch, over some poached eggs, she reflected that it was rather hand to
mouth to-day.
It was nearing evening as she paid her check and started to walk back.
There could be no explanation of Packy’s words except that he had
deliberately lied. Yet that did not sound like Packy. Fast and flippant
he undoubtedly was, but she could not picture him lying about a girl.
Suddenly, as she approached the apartment house, her heart came up in
her mouth. Surely that was Packy’s car in front—and Packy himself in
the act of stepping into it. She waved her veil at him wildly. If he
should drive away now just as the solution to her questionings presented
itself——But he saw her, and jumped out again as she came up to him.
“Joy! What doggone good luck. Jerry said she didn’t know where you’d
gone or when you’d come back——”
“I think it’s good luck, too,” she said quietly. “I have a lot of
questions to ask you.”
A window banged six stories up, and Jerry shrieked above them: “That
you, Joy? Come on up—there’s somebody to see you!”
“That blond ninny who bumped into Grant and me at the dance that night,”
Packy elucidated.
Jim Dalton! Life was too full of complications. She had as much as told
him so—“I told him I was too busy to see him,” said Joy.
“Come on—we’ll go riding,” said Packy, and called up to Jerry—“Joy’s
coming riding with me—better tell her company not to wait.”
“Where are you going?” Jerry cried, hanging her head farther out of the
window.
“Where are we going?” Joy repeated, as he hesitated.
“Down the Shore Road a ways!” he answered finally, and Jerry’s face
disappeared.
“Hang Jerry—she acts like a regular old chaperone,” he grumbled as he
helped her in the car.
“According to what you think of me, I need one,” she retorted. They were
well under way before he replied, in a cool, even tone:
“Pretty crude, Joy—that’s not like you. I suppose Holy Boy Grant has
been spilling a lot of chatter in your shell-pink ear.”
“Then you _did_ say something to him! Packy—how could you do such a
thing!”
The small, pitiful voice evoked a quick glance from him. “How couldn’t
I, you’d better say. May I remark in passing that he certainly didn’t
leave the ground long untrampled. Came up late last night, did he? I had
to nurse myself along a bit before I staggered about and got under way.”
A mile flashed by them while Joy thought desperately: His profile bent
over the wheel looked hard and even cruel. He had admitted talking to
Grant as calmly as he would have admitted sending her a box of candy. He
seemed to be in a repressed state below the level of which anything
might be lurking.
“I—I want to know—just what you told him,” she said at last, after
coining and discarding many different methods of putting the question.
“What did he tell you?” Packy countered, eyes on the road ahead.
“He told me—he told me that you told him—that I led a man-to-man
existence——”
“Yes, and for once you overdid the thing,” he said smoothly. “I told
you, I could wait any reasonable length of time; but I wasn’t corked up
to the extent of standing by and smirking while you paraded Old Maid
Grant around under my nose. You ought to have had more sense of
proportion, Joy, than to go outside your line like that. And jealousy,
my dear girl, is a little item you absolutely glanced over.”
“What do you mean?” cried Joy, the wind tearing the words out of her
mouth almost before they came. “What right have I given you to be
jealous?”
“That’s absolutely ruled out as beside the point.” Still that level
voice, although the speed of the car had increased to a breathless,
horrible race that left no room for analysis. “You’ve got me so I don’t
know whether I’m drinking booze or water—and I don’t propose to have
you meanwhile carrying on a nice, pink-and-white little time with our
mutual friend Grant. It gets me—see?”
“But—I don’t see yet why you were cad enough to go and tell him such
lies about me——”
“Lies!” His lips twisted back from his teeth in silent mirth. “That’s
what he said. The funny part of the whole thing is that I told the
truth.”
“You can’t mean what you’re saying. You must have been drinking before
you came to-day——”
“Now listen, Joy—you had me buzzing for awhile there—I didn’t know
exactly where to place you. Of course, living with Jerry and Sal gave me
a fairly good idea——”
“Idea _of what_?” she screamed. “_That’s what_ I want to know—that’s
what I’ve been asking you. What did you say, when you told Grant what
kind of girls I was living with?”
“I was about to say,” his even tones went on, “that you pulled the
innocent gag fairly well, but a little too frequent. I can stand just
about as much, Joy—after which, off come the brakes and away we skid!”
He turned and looked at her swiftly. His eyes were bloodshot, and they
glittered. She shuddered and shrank away from him to the farthest corner
of the car. The last time she had seen eyes with that look in them—it
had been at Prom—Jack Barnett, standing unsteadily against the wall.
Miles whirled past—while she cowered against the door of the car and
thought with such intensity that her hands and feet felt as if they were
turned to ice. He was drunk. She should have known before they started.
What could she say, to persuade him to turn back—and failing that, what
was there she could do?
A veering turn into a crossroad brought a protest. “What are we leaving
the Shore Road for? Is this the way back?”
“This is not the way back. I’m not going to take you back until I’m good
and ready—and the devil only knows when that’ll be!”
Her agonised scream vibrated above the roar of the motor. “Packy! Take
me back! You must! You——”
“Save—your—breath!” was jolted back to her, and then he laughed—a
long laugh that began and ended in his throat.
No more time to think, now—she knew what she must do. Her hands crept
out to the knob of the door. Mechanically she looked back and saw a car
in the distance—a car that she was dimly conscious had been following
them for some time. She could open the door in one second, jump out in
another—and before Packy could get back to her, the other car would be
upon them——
She turned the knob; Packy saw her at the same minute. With a growl he
lurched towards her and seized her by one arm. She struggled violently,
and he took his hand from the steering wheel and pulled her back into
the seat again.
It all happened in one of those seconds of eternity. While they
struggled, the car, still going at white-hot speed without a hand at the
wheel, careened from the road and was stopped by a tree.
A jarring crash which made one aware of every little bone and ligament
shivering one’s body; the eerie sensation of flying through space;
then—nothingness.
* * * * *
Pain—nothing but pain—and floating in a dizzy white world full of
needles that pricked and hummed—a strange white world in which there
was no time to open one’s eyes and look, because of the pain. Agony so
fearful that it seemed as if the very universe must be
cracking—everything above and beyond must be coming to an end—and yet
the white world hummed on, and the needles sang.
Always pain—agony so deep that when it became less, the memory of it
threw her into agony again.
Joy opened her arms and looked around. The white world was gone—she
could see familiar pieces of black walnut furniture. And with the white
world and humming needles had gone her pain, leaving her so weak she
felt as if she scarcely could open her eyes.
Jerry was sitting at the foot of the bed—a pale Jerry, with eyes large
and black as inkwells, her freckles standing out in bold relief. Joy was
childishly pleased to have sound travel forth from her mouth: “Jerry?”
Jerry jumped up and came to the side of the bed. “Joy! Hullo, old girl!”
Before her wide, relieved grin Joy essayed a colorless smile which
merely dragged her face into little white wrinkles. “Some—smash, wasn’t
it?” she quavered, anxious to show that she was in possession of her
senses. “How long have I been this way?”
“Too darn long,” said Jerry sternly. “Rotten company when you’re
unconscious, I’ll say that for you, Joy. Well, got to call up the
doctor—I said I’d let him know when you were ready to sit up and eat.”
“Eat!” Joy murmured in objection; but Jerry was gone. It was too much
trouble to lie and think. She fell asleep.
When she awoke, Jerry was standing by her bedside rattling a spoon in a
glass of milk. “Do you think it’s any bouquet to a doctor to fall
asleep, and stay that way all the time he’s here?” she demanded merrily.
“Anyway, he says to all outward appearances you aren’t dying yet. He’ll
be around again to-morrow A.M.”
Joy paused in drinking. “What—happened, Jerry? You haven’t told me
yet.”
Jerry’s teeth shut down on each other. “I’ll tell you the whole darn
tale to-morrow. To-day you’d go to sleep in the middle of it.” She
pulled down the blinds and in the darkness of the room, Joy fell into a
thick, dreamless space from which she brought herself up with a start.
It was morning; chinks of glory were pouring in through the blinds; and
all at once she felt hungry and almost vigorous. Jerry was asleep on the
chair by the foot of the bed, but as Joy stirred, her eyes popped open
and she bounced up.
“What ho!” she exclaimed, dashing for the door. “You have the look of a
real breakfast in your eye!”
Joy did not talk much until the “real breakfast” was downed. Then she
leaned back on her pillows expectantly. “Now, Jerry—please tell
me—everything that happened. I gather from investigation that none of
my bones are broken—but what did happen to me? How did I get back here?
And what happened to Packy?”
Jerry pulled out her cigarette case. “Mind if I have at it? The doc
would kill me for doing this here, but I’m so fuzzy since this
happened——Packy, allow me to snort, got off nobly with a bump on the
eye. The nasty little garter snake! You see, Joy, Jim Dalton and I were
pursuing you in a taxi at ten dollars per sneeze, all the way.”
“Jim Dalton!”
“Right. He horned in on the craps, and by the way, after a round or two
he began taking away everybody’s cash, so the taxi bill might not have
made him as sad as it would have made me—and pretty soon Sal and Wigs
and the gang faded off down town to get a club sandwich, but I stuck
around and so did this Dalton bird. He had never played about with me at
all, so I took a somersault when he began to mention you in an offhand
way. Said he had seen you a couple of onces, and wanted to again
sometime.”
“I told him I was too busy to see him,” Joy interpolated, trying to
struggle to a sitting posture. Jerry raised a restraining hand.
“Take it from one who has flown about on the four winds, Joy—he’s all
right. He played a hunch to come up that night, and he might have saved
your life for all you know.”
Joy fell back on the pillows. “Oh, all right—but go on.”
Jerry smiled. “Don’t interrupt and I’ll spill it fast——Just at that
moment dear little Packy blew in on one of the stiffest breaths I’ve
come near since the first of July. Wanted to know where you were, why
you weren’t there, etcetera, and I told him to go to and stay put. He
paced out banging the door in good old ten-twenty-thirty style, and
Dalton passed the remark that he’d seen the angel messing around you
before and didn’t like the way he parted his hair. I took a glim out of
the window with some small idea of drowning Packy’s pretty car with a
bucket of varnish there happened to be handy, when you breezed up and
stood talking to him with all the life in the world. I knew there was a
nice speedy wind out which would muffle Packy’s breath, so I hove up the
window and bade you come in out of the wet. But no—you would go
a-riding, and I was all for letting you go, but Dalton got a taxi while
I was still bandying words with you, and told me to put on my old grey
bonnet and trot along with him. I trotted!” She took a long breath.
“God, Joy, that was a ride! I had netted the info that you were going
out on the Shore Road, but there was always the chance you’d change your
minds, and we had one whirl getting you into view! Some joy-ride—cheery
for me no end—with Dalton bickering along with himself to the effect
that he wouldn’t let that fellow take you out alone with as enthusiastic
a breath as he was exhibiting—my only recreation was making up five
different stories which I told the taxi-boy, about the car we were
streaking after—which made him put on all speed and sizzle along,
anyhow.”
“I saw your car,” said Joy, “or else I wouldn’t have tried to jump.”
“Oh—so that’s what brought about the smash!”
Jerry whistled. “Joy, when I saw the car hit the tree——No matter; and
we certainly paid Packy off. We picked you up—or rather Jim did—and
put you in the taxi—and Packy was rolling about with only an eye gone
wrong—so Jim put him to sleep beside his car, which was all in, too,
from the looks of it; and came back home—leaving Packy to his own
devices, as the saying is. Not a peep has been heard from him; he must
have come to and slapped the car into shape, or there’d at least have
been a squib in the papers.”
“Now you’ve gotten to me,” said Joy.
Jerry suddenly sobered, dropping the light tone she had been using to
gild the narrative. “You’ve had a little—concussion of the brain. I
don’t know whether the doctor wanted me to tell you or not—but he says
you’ll be all right in a couple of weeks, so I don’t see why you
shouldn’t have the straight facts.”
“Concussion.” Joy considered her state. “Oh, yes—that’s what football
athletes are always getting, aren’t they?”
“That’s right—the idea’s the same,” said Jerry. “You tackled a tree,
instead of a person.” There was a slight pause, and Jerry said briskly:
“Mr. Grant Grey has called up once or twice. I told him you were ill,
but I guess he thinks it’s only a stall.”
“Oh—Grant——” She dismissed the subject as a triviality that could be
attended to at any time. “My father, Jerry—you haven’t let him know
about me, have you?”
“No, I didn’t. I would have, if the doctor had given me any reason to;
but he said that you would be all right and if you by any chance should
start sliding, it wouldn’t be sudden—your father could be reached in
time. I sort of thought you wouldn’t want him to know.”
“I wonder—what would have happened.” Joy tried to imagine her father’s
arrival in the apartment; his meeting with Sarah and Jerry; his hearing
the no doubt picturesque recital of her accident that Jerry would
render. The arrival of the doctor put a stop to this conjecture, which
was not a sufficiently pleasant line of thought to be reopened at any
other time.
The days of convalescence that followed were long, with somber
colouring. She missed her music; Grant did not call up again; the days
had dreadful emptinesses that called out for Grant . . . or for her
music. Sarah was almost unbearable to live with. Before, the
incompatibility of the two had not been so noticeable, when Joy had been
out or busy with her music most of the day; in the evenings, if they
were together, there were always men around to distract their attention.
But now Joy’s enforced stay in the house, threw them together a little
more often; just that little more that is too much. Sarah made no bones
of the fact that she nourished deep rancour against Joy for her
accident, which she considered “all Joy’s fault, anyway.” As a result of
the accident, Packy presumably would not put in an appearance at the
apartment again; thus ran Sarah’s grievance, which she poured upon Joy
instead of sympathy. It did not seem as if Sarah cherished a genuine
affection for any human being, man or woman; and the more one knew of
her, the more horrified one became at the hard, glassy surface which
appeared to be impenetrable.
But there was Jerry who, an untiring nurse and a companion who never
failed in interest, stayed constantly with Joy, turning down all
invitations with an iron hand. The uneasiness that had always been
there, moulded into form by Packy and Grant, was glazed over for a time.
All Joy’s knowledge of and regard for Jerry spoke more coherently than
unsubstantiated inference.
The two weeks set by the doctor had not quite passed when, one
afternoon, Joy tired of lying in bed. She felt perfectly well; there was
no reason why she shouldn’t get up and walk as far as the living-room.
She did not admit to herself that the cellarette was her real objective;
but it had been a long time since she had taken a prescription. Sarah
was out on one of her eternal tea dates; Jerry had vanished somewhere.
She slipped into her little blue crepe kimono and pattered down the
hallway, exultant in the power to walk so much and so healthily.
She swung around the door of the living-room and in before she saw that
someone was already there—Jerry, talking to Jim Dalton. They were both
standing at the door, so that she almost rushed into them, then stood
still in surprise.
Girls in fiction or plays who are surprised in negligée are always
“distractingly lovely” in silks or satins, with hair becomingly flowing.
But real girls in negligée, unless they know they are going to be
inspected, are quite a different matter. Joy’s hair was strained back in
tight braids from a face which, without rouge, was as thinly white as
skim-milk. The ribbons of her night gown had had their colour laundered
out of them; her kimono was—well, it was a kimono, not a negligée, nor
lingerie, nor a tea gown. All this, and more, her thoughts touched upon
in the first still moment.
Jim was the first to find his voice. “I’m glad to see you’re able to be
around, Miss Nelson,” he said calmly. “You won’t have to go back; I was
just leaving.”
Jerry went down the hall to the door with him, while Joy went into the
living-room and sank down on the lounge. It was uncanny, the way that
man had understood her, had spoken in a matter-of-fact voice and relaxed
her, and left without making a point of leaving. She realized, as she
lay among the pillows, that she could not have reached her room again
with any degree of certainty; he had tactfully forestalled her; very
thoughtful, for a man.
Jerry came back into the room, smoking in a desultory manner. “I didn’t
think I’d tell you, Joy, because I know you don’t like him—but that boy
has been here every blooming day since you’ve been sick, to find out how
you were at first-hand—while your Grant has stalled at phone distance.
I hate to say anything about a man I’ve never met, Joy, but Grant
listens to me like a flat tire.”
Joy giggled nervously.
“It isn’t easy for Jim to come, either,” Jerry added. “He takes the trip
way out here after he gets through working every day.”
“It’s none of Jim Dalton’s business,” said Joy. “He doesn’t have to
come; I wish he wouldn’t. I barely know him, and he keeps turning up and
acting as if he were my father or something.”
“Or something!” Jerry repeated derisively. “No—you’ve got a wrong slant
on him. Of course, if you look at it that way, he _is_ being a bit
outside the works—but when you think it over, the knights of old they
talk about who beat it to the rescue of dames in distress, didn’t always
stop to decide whether it was any of their business.”
A bitter resentment swept over Joy—resentment that it had been Jim
Dalton and not Grant who had followed them on that ride; that it had
been Jim and not Grant who had come to see how she was. “Jerry!” she
cried suddenly. “Did you know that Grant had left me?”
Jerry had been watching her smoke rings space themselves to the ceiling,
but turned swiftly. At her look of blank interrogation, Joy repeated:
“Grant has left me! I—I don’t think he’s ever coming back!” Then she
stopped, with a tearing intake of breath.
There was an interval while Jerry’s smoke rings turned to curlicues and
gargoyles, and Jerry remained seemingly lost in admiration of her skill.
Finally, Jerry spoke.
“Of course, Joy, I don’t know the facts of the case—but he’ll come
back. I’d stake ten to one on it. He’ll come back—I tell you he will!”
“I’m waiting——!” said Joy.
And she waited—through a week that turned hope to hopelessness. She
dared not leave the apartment for fear the telephone would ring. She
told herself that he was not coming; yet she sat in the living-room, a
book on her lap, or sat at the piano touching keys into strange
harmonies . . . waiting.
Gradually life began to resume its accustomed gait at the apartment.
Jerry had curtailed all parties during Joy’s convalescence, but now was
off again. It was nearing fall; people were coming back into town; the
telephone jangled constantly. Joy lacked the energy to join any of these
parties, and the evenings were very lonely; as she had not gone back to
Pa Graham’s as yet, her days also were long and purposeless.
And so a week had passed on leaden wheels. And one evening about
ten-thirty when she heard a babble of voices in the living-room, she
made up her mind to dress and annex herself to the crowd.
The music of popping corks and carefree laughter assailed her ears as
she came into the room. There were three men, not counting one that
Sarah had taken to a comfortable, cosy corner and to whom she was archly
whispering. Jerry was standing by the piano, looking over some popular
songs with a short, chunky youth who could make the keys jingle in
strange, barbaric dissonances that made up an irresistible syncopation
which seemed to intoxicate more than the contents of the cellarette. The
ever-present Wigs and Davy hailed Joy, pressed a “tall one” upon her,
and sat her on the sofa.
“I knew you couldn’t stand Boston’s Best for a steady diet,” said Wigs.
“You struck the right time, too, Joy; Jerry’s gotten herself quite
tightly edged to-night, a thing that never happens as you know, and
since we’ve got the wine and women, she’s going to favour us with song.”
The chunky boy at the piano was shaking out some bars of eerie ragtime.
Jerry turned, swaying, hands on hips. Her eyes were shining with almost
polished rays; they wandered over the room in an impersonal,
professional smile. It was doubtful if she saw Joy at all. Her lips
parted in an avid, gamin grin, and hardly opening her teeth, she jutted
forth the words of the song:
“I wanted some men and I sought them
I made myself up like a doll
The other girls, oh, how I fought them!
They handed it to me for gall—
I wanted some men and I’ve got them
Turned down five bids for dinner last night
But somehow they’re not what I thought them
And somehow I know it’s not right.”
The fiery, vivid personality that was Jerry’s leaped out through
scarcely a motion as she sang, insolently, through her teeth, her red
lips always curved into that goblin grin. She was swinging into the
chorus now, a chorus of dizzying syncopation the notes of which she
followed not at all, speaking the words with a little drag at
inconsequential moments—
“Ten men down—and more to go—
Other girls get them—if you are slow—
This life is short
So don’t get caught
You’ve got to have strings to your bow!”
“No sense to words of any popular songs nowadays,” complained Davy. “But
Jerry puts ’em over—she’s the Queen of the Cabaret Artists.”
Joy had never heard Jerry sing before, except from a distance at the
Prom. It was a rich voice, thick and uneven and even harsh in places;
but she had “put it over.” She did not need any voice at all, with that
audacity and insolence. There was loud applause, mingled with the
popping of more corks. The chunky youth deserted the piano, complaining
that it was “devilish dry work.” Jerry came over to the lounge.
“Hello, Joy,” she said lightly. “Come to join the happy family? Everyone
was bored as blazes to-night until we started opening them up, and now
everyone thinks they’re bright as the morning sun, which is still a long
ways off from to-night, I’ll tell anyone.” She teetered slightly
standing before them. Jerry “tightly edged,” was fascinating as ever,
but not a pleasant sight.
“I can make up words as good as that old song,” said Sarah from her
corner. Her head had slid to her companion’s shoulder, but she bobbed it
up as she sang:
“Mazie had a man an’ he left her flat
If she’d had more than one he’d not had nerve to do that.”
“Fine! Let’s all make up pop’lar songs,” cried Davy, thumping out a
staccato time with his feet and humming some blue lines of uncertain
origin.
“Pop-u-lar songs,” corrected Wigs, with academic zeal. “’Shamed of you,
Davy, ignoring your shyllables that way.”
“None of your business whether I cut silbles when I see ’em or not,”
Davy retorted. “Always was ’ristocratic. Can’t help way was made——”
“Should help cruelty to inan-imate objexsh. Poor little shyllables can’t
hit back.” Wigs became tearful over his chivalry in defending helpless
objects. Davy remained gay, taking a glass Jerry had just filled, from
her hands while chanting—
“O my name’s July an’ I gotta thirst
O babe, share de whiskey or you shore will burst.”
“Some poet!” said Jerry, and tipped the contents of the glass on to his
collar, as he started to lift it to his lips. She poured herself another
glass, while he rose and tore off the dripping mass that had been his
collar, shrieking another stanza:
“De whiskey am frisky in its lawful place
Babe, leave some for me or I’ll slap your face.”
“Shay—whaddyouthinkthisish—blooming musical comedy?” And Wigs wept
again.
Sarah’s little comrade in the corner was announcing that Sarah had
“passed out”; the chunky pianist stopped drinking long enough to say
that Sal was a rumhound and never knew when to stop; there seemed to be
no end to Wigs’ flow of tears; Davy was chanting a new verse in which he
could only get as far as “O Babe——” and then he would have to begin
over. Jerry was laughing stridently at Davy between gulps of port wine.
It was the worst to see Jerry so——But Sarah was the farthest
along—she lay back on her cushions now without motion, her hair that
was usually so exquisitely arranged, loose in loops about her face, her
mouth sagging open ever so slightly.
Watching the sight before her, Joy felt a nauseation that she had ever
touched liquor herself. Wigs’ tears reminded her sickeningly of her own.
She had been living in a daze; but the daze had worn off. To-night was
the finishing touch. Packy may have been despicable, but his words about
Jerry and Sarah at this moment seemed to be justified.
She rose and left, ignoring Davy’s pleas for her to stay, and the fact
that her departure threw Wigs into a fresh fit of tears. Jerry was still
remarking that the evening was young and tender—and Joy had no doubt
but that they would all drink until they were unable to move.
In the morning she got up early and packed her things—a decision born
of the night hours, which did not change its colour in the rays of the
sun. She was going home. Her visit had stretched itself far beyond its
first designated limits. Her father could not understand why she had not
come long since. She would go back to the Mid-Victorian house and face
the family portraits—feel the protection of the four walls of the
ancestral mansion around her—enjoy the peace and security of the little
town.
A thought held her up, as she was folding a sweater. What of her
singing? To leave Boston would be to leave Pa Graham. She had been
subconsciously assuming that her music would always go on, but—how?
In a very few minutes she had dressed for the street and was hurrying
out of the apartment. No one was stirring, but it was nine o clock, and
she knew Pa would be in his studio. If she could only get there before
his first lesson——
There is something about the personal quality of singing, and the
reverence the teacher inspires as the embodiment of that great art, that
draws the confidence. If singing teachers could tell half the stories of
the lives of their pupils!
Pa was alone playing in the great studio, and came forward with
delighted welcome: “Back again, my prima donna! Are you ready and eager
for work once more?” Before her white wistfulness he paused. She stood
looking around the room, at the busts of Mendelssohn and Beethoven; at
the shrine to “Patti—the thing that happened once” in the far corner;
at the photograph of Sembrich of the golden voice supreme, with loving
greetings to Pa written across the face; the piles of music on the
pianos——A sob arose to her lips. “Oh, Pa!” she said. “If you could
only understand! Everything—has left me!” Days of waiting, of patient
tears, brought a swift little rush of words: “I haven’t even a
heart—any more.”
Pa took her hand gently and led her to a chair. Then he stood before
her, stroking his short little beard, his old eyes very soft under his
bent brows.
“Child—your heart may break—it’s the way of young hearts every once in
a while—but there is one great soul that will remain true as long as
you are true, and that is the soul of music. An older and wiser spirit
than mine has said: ‘All passes; Art alone endures.’ With you, all else
may pass, but the soul of music will unite itself with your own, always
weaving its tendrils more closely into your being. Just now it may seem
a cold comfort in your desolation—but it is a thing that ripens as the
years go on—always faithful—_always providing you are faithful_.”
A quick little silence in the room. Joy lifted her head. “I want to,
Pa—I want to turn to my music, so much—but how can I—do anything more
with it—when I feel as if everything in my heart was burned and dead!”
He smiled. “Youth is tragic—every once in a while. Look you, Joy—you
came this morning half determined to tell me you weren’t coming to me
again—but you are. What would you do, else? Your impulse to love, let
us say, has been awakened, then—diverted. Note, I do not say snuffed
out, for that is an impossible thing. The impulse is still there—and if
you turn it to music, spending it royally in terms of energy and power
in work at your art, instead of in terms of love, you will be content,
and you will become one of the greatest artists the world has known. You
will interpret life to hundreds of thousands, through the transmutation
of your life into work. ‘All passes; Art alone endures.’” He took a few
quick turns about the room, then brought himself up with a jerk. “I do
not want you to sing to-day; you have been with tears too recently;
besides, I have a lesson. Go away, and think over what I have said. You
will have some decisions to make. For if you come back to me, there will
be no more half-toned effort such as the desultory summer work we have
done.”
“Desultory summer work,” Joy gasped. “Why, I practised regularly——”
“Practice! An hour and a half a day. That is the most you can do with
your voice. But there must be hours of silent study. No matter what one
may say of Geraldine Farrar now, she was, is and will remain a very
great artist. It does not drop on one like the gentle rain from Heaven,
after a few years of hour-and-a-half practice. That girl worked ten
hours a day in her years of study. Lilli Lehmann said she never had such
a worker. You have the voice—yes. Now you require solfège, through
harmony and counterpoint, French, Italian and German complete, other
languages to pronounce—you are but at the threshold of your toil. Oh,
when I see you before me, with practically everything to learn, the days
don’t seem long enough—the years don’t seem long enough!” He quieted
down and looked at her. A great deal had descended upon her at once, but
she felt no sense of oppression at the program outlined; rather, she
felt as if energy were pouring in upon her, energy to accomplish
anything he said. She rose, inhaling a long breath as she did to sing
on, feeling her ribs swell out, with the sense of power that it never
failed to give her.
“It’s true, Pa—I did come in here half with the idea of leaving you. I
didn’t know what I would do. But you have decided me. There’s no need of
my thinking over what you said. I’ve decided now. You never told me all
this before, about how I would have to work, because I wasn’t ready for
it—isn’t that so? I am now—and thank you.”
His eyes glinted beneath his brows. “I’ll not let you decide here. Go
away as I told you, and then come back. At Jerry’s, your atmosphere will
not be so—musical, and you can make an unbiased decision.”
“No—I want to decide now—before I go back to Jerry’s——”
“You speak as if Jerry might influence you the other way. Jerry loves to
mind her business with strict impartiality, but if she ever overstepped
her limits she would only urge you to strive as she might have. That
girl has the makings of a diseuse of the first water.”
She left the studio in the gilded bubble of youth’s ambition. All the
voices and urges within her seemed this morning to have crystallized
themselves into one refrain: “_No work is too hard if it reaches towards
perfection!_” How could she have thought she could leave Pa?
She had forgotten—Jerry, Jerry, the mystery—about whom Pa seemed to
know more than she, Joy, who lived with her.
What could she do? What was she to think? Where could she turn, in this
perplexity?
Jerry was sitting in her room—a pale, seedy-looking Jerry in the
familiar purple kimono, staring dully at the half-packed trunk. She did
not turn as Joy came in.
“So you’ve—decided to go,” she said in a funny, hard little voice that
wavered at the end.
All the resentment and doubt that had been torturing Joy, was dispelled
by the sight of that desolate figure and those few wry little words.
“Jerry!” she cried. “I—I thought about it this morning—but I—I
couldn’t!”
Jerry’s lashes flickered, but she remained sitting in the same position,
knees drawn against her chin, pink mules flapping in front of her. “It
never wandered into my bean until just now, when I came in and
saw——But I’ve been boiling the idea down—and I think you’d better.”
“Jerry!”
“You aren’t happy here; I—I guess you never have been. I’ve never done
anything but harm to you from the first moment I knew you. God knows I
didn’t mean to, but it seems my good intentions always make the
smoothest kind of boulevards for the joy-riders in hell.”
Jerry broke the silence that followed her last speech. “Joy—I’ve never
told you about myself. Get comfortable now, because I’m going to ladle
out the whole story.”
Joy was at the threshold of the Blue Room, of what she had always wanted
to know. And now that she was so near, she drew back. “Oh, no,
Jerry—please don’t tell me anything you’d rather not talk about—and
you’ve often said you’d rather not talk about that——”
“I also said I’d tell you sometime when I felt like it. Now gets the
vote. I should have told you right at the start—but I didn’t, because I
didn’t want to go into it. Now I’ve got to.”
“Well, if you must tell me—I’m comfortable,” said Joy in a small voice,
sitting down on one of the black walnut chairs which had been remodeled
with black-and-white-striped cushions.