It was after the Christmas holidays, which Joy had worked through with
no let-up save Christmas day at home with her father, that Pa announced
a change in schedule.
“You are working too steadily,” he said. “You never do anything else;
you will turn into a machine; then you will no longer be a girl, and the
warmth and glory of your appeal will be gone. Like that! Moreover, it
takes a fine shade of quality from your voice; I want you to use it as
an instrument, of course, but I think too much of how hard you have
worked, and how dull your skin and eyes are getting, when I hear you.”
“Do you really think I’m losing my quality?” Joy demanded.
He laughed. “There—do you see what you just said? That shows you are
turning into a little tuning fork, my dear. A _girl_ would have cried:
‘Are my skin and eyes _really_ dull?’ or at least looked in the mirror
in front of you.” Before her attitude of unrelaxed question, he grew
serious. “No, your quality is not as yet impaired in the slightest; and
you are soaring along so swiftly that I cannot believe you have been
with me for so few months. But a good teacher can see a fault pending
before it takes possession; and as I have so often remarked, I am a good
teacher. You need a change.”
“Are you going to send me home for a rest?” she asked in swift
antagonism.
“No. You are going to New York. Take some friends along with you if you
wish; stay at the Belmont, where all the _nice_ Bostonians stay when
they deign to turn their faces westward; go to the opera; go shopping;
in short, have not a rest, but a vacation.”
“New York!” she breathed. “Oh, Pa—do you really mean it?”
He nodded. “And I want you to sing for my baby.” He mentioned a name
that was a household word for glory of song, a name that shone high and
clear in the eminence where only the truly great stars remain, while
others tremble for a day and then are gone.
“Sing—for—her!” Joy gasped. “Oh, Pa, I couldn’t—not yet!”
“Little Joy—you will find as you go on, that the greatest ones will
always be the easiest and kindest before whom to sing. They know the
real elements, and can distinguish lack of training from lack of
endowment; and they know of how much value is encouragement, along the
weary ladder of the artist. I shall write her a letter, and she will
send you word at the Belmont when to come.”
As she thought it over, she could not remember when she had been so
excited. Jerry shared her anticipation, and announced that she was going
also; it was a good opportunity to select models for her next sale.
“We can get Félicie, too,” she said; “It’s about time she went over to
see Greg again.”
Neither voiced the mutual thought, that two of them going to New York
alone seemed incomplete. Félicie made a third—possibly a more
harmonious third than the other who had silently dropped from their
lives.
Félicie acceded to their plans, and Joy wrote her father for money for
the trip. His answering check and letter came when the three girls were
all in Jerry’s room, Jerry “toning up” several of Félicie’s costumes.
Joy read the letter with half her attention on Félicie’s bewitchingness
in a pale green velvet that shone dully like moonlight on an even lawn,
throwing out her colouring and features in rich relief. Suddenly a name
on the page caught her attention. She looked again and then read the
paragraph over slowly:
“I hope while you are in New York that you will see your cousin Mrs.
Eustace Drew, who was Mabel Lancaster. The Lancasters of whom you have
heard me speak; they were your mother’s cousins once removed, and we
have not kept up the relationship as she would have wished. I have
written Mabel that you are coming, and she will undoubtedly call on you
at the Belmont.”
She sat for a moment watching Jerry swirl the velvet on Félicie into
marvelous lines. Mabel Lancaster—who had come into Charlette’s for her
trousseau, with her brother, Phil Lancaster—of whom Jerry still thought
with unquenchable flame. Her first impulse was to show Jerry the letter,
share her surprise at this identification of New York cousins she had
heard her father mention so many times. Then she held herself back. What
if cousin Mabel would forget to call upon her—what if she wasn’t the
same one, after all—Joy had forgotten the married name Jerry had given.
So she tore the letter into tiny bits, and prepared for the trip with
excitement that grew to boiling point as she savoured the amazing
possibilities of the coincidence, if coincidence it was.
They took the midnight train, landing in New York in time for breakfast,
which they ate at Childs’ opposite the Belmont.
“Although even this place is getting too expensive,” Jerry grumbled.
They giggled all through the meal from sheer light-headedness at being
off together. The French waitress had brought them their griddle-cakes,
smiled at them in delight, and said as they left: “You act like all
young girls should—happy and gay.” This set them off with renewed
impetus, and after installing their luggage at the Belmont and as Jerry
said “spreading more around in the way of tips than we ate for our
breakfast,” they spent the morning going through the Fifth Avenue shops,
seeing all “the latest models” with an economical thoroughness that left
enraged saleswomen behind them. In the afternoon Félicie curled up for a
rest.
“I never sleep on sleepers, and if I don’t look my best, Greg will
notice it and say it’s because I’ve been running myself ragged in
Boston,” she explained, burrowing her head down under the covers, from
which came forth the muffled request: “Please don’t open any windows;
you know I can’t sleep where there’s too much air around; it distracts
my attention.”
Jerry had made arrangements for tea with two Princeton men, and Joy had
willingly consented to go with her. She was just in the mood for
squeezing the orange of her good time in New York dry.
They met the Princetonites in the lobby—two well-tailored youths, with
that sleek, parted-in-the-middle college expression. The taller of the
two, one Steve Mitchell, combed Joy up and down in one competent sweep
of the eyes, and annexed her, while the other, poetically called Harry
Hanigan, followed Jerry, who had done no more than greet them airily,
shove Joy at them just as airily, then make her way to the nearest door,
which fronted on the line of taxis.
“This place always acts as if it were the Methodist quarterly
conference,” Harry complained loudly. “Come on, Jerry; let’s put in a
little pep.”
He stepped with Jerry inside the swinging door, and pushed it, starting
off so fast they had to dart around with it in self-protection—or so it
seemed. A gentleman around forty, of a comfortable figure, had happened
to be entering the swinging doors on the other side, and he too was
forced to dart around for self-protection. But whereas his expression
was varied, Jerry and Harry seemed to be enjoying themselves. The pace
of the revolving doors increased; it almost looked as if the gentleman
of no longer comfortable proportions were running a marathon, while the
two-in-one on the other side sped over more merrily.
“Why—they’re doing it on _purpose_!” Joy exclaimed.
Her companions looked about them at the crowd of grinning bellboys
collecting, together with the scattering of guests who were pretending
not to watch while keeping tabs on every round. “I should think Harry’d
get sick of this; he’s done it in almost every hotel in New York,” he
said restfully, and waited. The pace slackened; soon the two wedged
themselves out of the pinwheel, and waited until, crimson-faced, the
third party in the proceedings flew out and bore down upon them.
“Awfully sorry, sir,” said Harry earnestly. “I got packed in with this
lady by mistake, and we were so confused we started whirling around—you
can see how that would be—and then I lost my head and lost count——”
The intent to kill was by no means abated in the eye of the flaming one.
With a hasty, “By George, Mary, we must catch the train; we’ve lost a
lot of time with this gentleman here!” Harry seized Jerry and drifted
through the revolving doors once more. No one went after them. Joy and
Steve found them by a taxi outside, Harry leaning up against it in a
Napoleonic attitude.
“Was that neat, or was it not?” he hailed them triumphantly. Steve
helped the girls into the taxi, pushed Harry inside, and said to the
man: “Drive to the Astor roof.”
“Where’s that?” the driver asked, turning a helpless expression upon
him.
“Why,—you drive to the Hotel Astor, and then just keep on driving up to
the roof.” Steve spoke sweetly, considerately, as one might to a child,
then climbed in and banged the door.
“Just for that, he’ll go the long way around,” Harry complained, peering
out at the meter as they started off.
“You have such cheap ideas, Harry!” said Dave. “Jerry knows us, of
course; but I was going to make Miss Nelson think we were millionaires.”
“Never mind—we’ll make the waiters at the Astor think we’re
millionaires. Not in the obvious way! But by the good old method of gas.
What do you say—are you game, Jerry?”
“The waiters don’t listen the way they used to,” Jerry objected.
“Oh, you haven’t been around with us for some time! Look here; I—-I’ll
be the Western magnate; I’ve got a whacking black cigar I’ve been
keeping just for this. Jerry, you look as though you could have come
from most anywhere; you’ll be my wife, and I probably picked you up in
some mining camp while I was getting rich, or something. See? Act with
that as a background. We’re the recent rich, that want anything that’s
high-priced or has a fancy name. Get it?”
“And I,” Steve contributed, “will be a New York crest-rider—gay young
rounder—look down on you of course, but keen to wangle the contract out
of you through this social means.”
“Contract! Oh, yes, there’s got to be a contract!”
“Cer-tain-ly. A million dollar one. We’ve got to make this party as
doggy as possible. And Miss Nelson here can be my fiancée—I’ve dragged
her along to impress her with my importance—you’ll be typical New York
yearling, Miss Nelson, bored with anybody but your own set, bored with
business, furious at me for bringing you, try to get all the men at the
other tables to look at you, then turn ’em down with a haughty
stare—you know.”
Jerry stood up on the taxi, struggling with herself. “I am nothing if
not artistic,” she said; “and if I’m to be a
mining-camp-varnished-with-dollars-product, I shall look the part.”
“That’s one of your best points, Jerry,” approved Steve. “You do a thing
up right.”
She sat down again, barely in time before they drew up at the Astor and
poured forth. Joy caught her breath in an abortive laugh, as they
solemnly filed through the luxurious lobby, Jerry leading as usual. In a
few swift touches, Jerry had changed herself from the breezy mondaine
upon whom everything naturally looked right and leads to the harmony of
that elusive completeness that is style, to the woman who, with obvious’
means and as obvious a wish to look well, pathetically falls just short
of the mark. Her skirt sagged, ever so little, but still condemning
enough; the buttons on the coat of her duveteen suit were fitted loosely
in the wrong buttonholes; her hat was tilted back ingenuously, revealing
a wide expanse of forehead, and she had pinned her hair in here and
there so that the remains of its bobbed audacity had the appearance of
little ends that had messily strayed from their moorings. Her gloves
were partly unbuttoned, and one flapped as she walked. Even her walk had
changed—it was a businesslike stride, with “getting-there” written all
over her hastening back.
“Not a girl in a hundred would show she could look like that,” said
Steve, in critical approval, as he kept pace with Joy in behind. “No
wonder Jerry’s an institution that never fails.”
As they reached the roof Harry pulled out his cigar, a huge black affair
that he stuck in his mouth at an angle of forty-five degrees. With
cunning eye he marked out the head waiter and bore down upon him, thumbs
in his waist-coat pocket, twirling his fingers. “We want the best table
in the place,” he said, speaking through the cigar, at which the waiter
tried not to look. “No expense shall be spared!”
He swaggered as the waiter hastily led them to a corner table. Joy was
about to sink down, conscious that forks were being suspended in midair
all about them, when Jerry put in a word.
“I don’t like this table, Bill,” she said querulously. “I want to be out
in the middle where I can see everything that goes on, I do.”
“Waiter, did you hear my wife? What my wife says goes! Nothing’s too
good for her!” Harry turned fiercely upon the waiter, jerking his cigar
up and down in time to his words. The head waiter, all apologies,
conducted them to a more centrally located table, and beckoned to a
lesser menial, who helped install them. Jerry gave a bereft wail.
“Where’s the flowers! We haven’t got no flowers! Look, Bill, at that
table _there_ they got flowers!”
Her fingers pointed firmly to an adjoining table, all eyes of which were
already fixed upon them with that passionate interest that only
Americans display in the affairs of others.
“Now, Rosie, didn’t I tell you not to point at things with your
fingers?” Harry admonished in a penetrating lower tone.
“Well, a fork wasn’t handy; the man ain’t set the table yet,” Jerry
responded.
“Let us order,” interposed Steve in a suave, glossing-it-over tone, as
the waiter thrust the menu before them.
“Just rustle us the best tea on the premises, young feller,” said Harry
to the waiter, with a wave of the hand. “With all the fixin’s; see?”
Jerry interposed once more. “Say, Bill, I want a merring glass. Does
that come with the tea?”
“A meringue glacé,” said Steve smoothly to the by now distracted waiter.
“What kind does madame prefer?”
“Kind?” Jerry looked bewildered. “Is there different kinds? Can’t I just
have a plain merring glass?”
“A vanilla one, perhaps,” said Steve with a reassuring smile directed
first at her and then at the waiter. Then, as the waiter fluttered away,
leaving several around pouring water and adjusting the table, and others
poised near by with their ears cocked, Steve leaned across the table,
and addressed Harry in a loud, confidential tone:
“Rather a pleasant idea of yours, Mr.—er—Billings, to combine business
with afternoon tea.”
“Well, I hope your girl and my wife get to be real good friends,” said
Harry cordially. “I can remember when a million-dollar contract would
’a’ looked pretty big to me.”
“It is practically certain, then, that we have underbid the—the
Standard Oil Company on this?” Steve demanded.
“Lemme tell you, young man, underbiddin’ don’t always mean you get a
million-dollar contract. Not by a jugful!”
“Bill, remember there is ladies present!” from Jerry.
“Rosie, we’re talkin’ in business terms now, an’ you can chew on that
piece of bread the waiter handed you, till we get through. Now lemme
tell you, young man, the fact is, the underbiddin’ don’t cut so much ice
as my private an’ personal opinions. I get hunches, that’s what I do;
an’ hunches is what made Bill Billings what he is to-day, if I do say
it.”
Joy could only watch, all her energies concentrated on stifling the
mirth that their antics were inspiring. The waiter brought their tea and
Jerry’s “merring,” which Jerry devoured with the aid of a spoon, a knife
and fork, using her roll also as a pusher now and then. Harry drank tea
from his saucer and discoursed on the grudge he bore the Standard Oil;
they were a bunch of cheap skates, and they would be a bunch of
soreheads to-morrow when they learned that Mr. Mitchell had nailed this
contract. “For it is yours, young man, for the asking; and yours is a
firm I would trust a lot further than that.” The people of the next
table had given up all pretense of eating or talking to each other, and
the table back of Joy was also avidly silent. She could not see them,
but she could feel the tense attention, and sense the vibrations of
vision that centered on their table.
Tea being over, Harry grew more expansive. “You going to step round to
the minister’s soon, you two?” he beamed benevolently. “Better not waste
any time. I married Rosie when she was sixteen—Told her then to stick
to me and she’d wear diamonds. I notice you stuck, old girl?”
“Now, Bill, you stop!” Jerry simpered. The head waiter was presenting
the check. Several other waiters who had added to their sense of
well-being were lined up in back of the head waiter. Steve started to
take the bill, but Harry intervened.
“Pay my way’s my motto,” he said, whereat Steve lost his composure for
the first time and gulped while Harry drew his rather thin wallet from
his pocket and carefully counted out what looked like a small amount
which he laid on the salver with the check. Steve recovered himself and
filled in the awkward pause by saying:
“Yes, we intend to be married as soon as Miss Nelson can get her
trousseau together. It’s already taken a year—as fast as she gathers a
few little things together, why, they go out of style, and then she has
to start all over again. It’s such a fearful ordeal for the poor
darling!”
They rose to go, Joy conscious of an acute sag in the waiter’s
expression as he took the salver and walked away with failing footsteps.
And then she turned and saw the table whose listening silence she had
been appreciating throughout that time. She stared in stupefaction. The
Lamkins; the Alfred Lamkins from Foxhollow Corners; pillars of the
church, two solid, well-buttressed souls, with four white-eyelashed,
shiny-nosed, unmarried daughters. All staring at Joy in that awful
delight experienced by small-town souls when they find their neighbours
doing something out of the ordinary.
“Why—there’s Joy Nelson!” said Mrs. Lamkin, in obviously manufactured
surprise.
“So it is!” chorused the four white-eyelashed things. “Hello, Joy!”
It was plain that they expected her to stop and speak to them, exchange
the usual banal what-are-you-doing-in-the-big-city of the out-of-towner,
and present her companions. It was just as plain that she intended doing
nothing of the sort, and with a confused nod of acknowledgement, her
head down, she almost ran past them to the elevator.
“Did you see that waiter wilt at my twenty-five cent tip, and all the
others melt away?” Harry chortled as they went down.
“Who were those people, Joy?” Jerry demanded, pulling her hat down and
her hair out.
“People from home.”
“Home-town stuff!” Steve cried. “You’re compromised forever now, Joy;
you’ll have to marry me now!”
“That’s not as bad as this fall, in at the Knickerbocker,” said Harry
reminiscently. “I had the waiter sure I was the Prince of Wales and
Steve here an escaped nobleman from Russia, conferring together about
starting royalty over here, when up blows Dick Lindley and another poor
egg, calling us by name and requesting the loan of some cash to get back
to Princeton!”
The blithe youths left them at the Belmont. “We’ve been lowbrow this
afternoon; we’ll be highbrow to-night,” said Steve. “We’ve wangled
Harry’s mother’s box at the opera.”
“Can Félicie Durant and Greg Stevens come along?” Jerry asked.
“Félicie’s over with us, and I said we’d do something to-night with
them.”
“Félicie Durant can come anywhere with me where I can look at her,” said
Harry; “if she’ll keep her mouth shut. Still going around with Greg
Stevens, is she?”
“Greg Stevens—” Steve repeated; “not Princeton?”
“Nope—Yale—managed most of the teams there, and all that sort of
flutter. He’s all right, though. Don’t take more than an hour now, you
two!”
They found Félicie still sleeping in a breathlessly stuffy room, as she
had not even turned off the heat.
“Well, Joy, what do you think of our Princeton specialties?” Jerry
asked, turning on the lights and pulling the covers from Félicie’s face.
“Lovely. I can’t tell which one is talking when I close my eyes. But of
all places I’ve been to around Boston—why did I have to come to New
York to run into some home-towners!”
“That is one thing about New York—you’re always running into people you
know, in the wrong places. Wake up, Félicie! You’ve only got an hour to
get dressed, and we’ve a box at the opera!”
Félicie, after a struggle with herself, arose with an injured
expression. “I was awake all the time—you needn’t have spoken so loud.
I haven’t slept hardly a wink. Just as I was falling asleep someone
called Joy on the phone—Madame Somebody’s maid, or something, who said
Joy was to come at four to-morrow, she would send her car.”
It was characteristic of Félicie that she had not even recognised the
great name that brought Joy to a standstill and drew a whistle from
Jerry.
“Perhaps we’ll hear her to-night,” said Jerry. “Don’t lose your nerve,
Joy; you’ll sing circles around her some day. Go and run a tub and do
some scales—they won’t be heard over the tub if you close the door.”
“I hope you’re not running a tub for _me_,” Félicie objected; “too many
baths are bad for me, I’m funny that way.”
Strange anomaly—the Félicie who had everything about her as neat as a
bee-hive, but slept in sealed rooms and disagreed with baths!
An hour later they admitted they were fit to sit in anyone’s box at the
opera. Félicie was almost bewilderingly lovely in pale green velvet;
Jerry was audacious and stunning in low-cut purple with cerise ostrich
feathers; Joy wore a cloth-of-gold that Jerry had ripped from an old
model of hers and put together in a few simple lines.
“With your hair,” said Jerry, looking her over in professional pride,
“that get-up’s a knock out.”
Joy found herself wishing that Jim was going to see her, instead of the
Princeton youths.
“Wait till we hit the diamond horseshoe!” Jerry was saying. “Although
we’re probably higher up than that.”
“I wish I had some diamonds to wear,” Félicie sighed. “I do love
diamonds so.”
“If you’d give in to Greg, you might have one,” Jerry suggested.
“One about the size of a pin-point! I couldn’t stand that. Men don’t
half appreciate what it means to a girl to have a ring that she won’t
have to be ashamed of. When I get one, I want a good one, as long as
it’s a thing I’ll have to wear all my life.”
“Oh, so you’ve thought up another argument now for not getting married
for four years,” said Jerry.
“Now you’re picking on me again!”
The ring of the telephone announcing that their escorts awaited them
downstairs interrupted here, and they sailed down after a mere ten
minutes for last rites of re-powdering, going over one’s hair, and
general touching up.
Gregory Stevens was as dark as Félicie, scarcely more than an eager boy,
and very much in love, as Joy saw and could have seen if she had not
been told. They ate at the Belmont, and throughout dinner Félicie and
Greg carried on a low-toned conversation, refusing to be drawn into the
general chatter. They reached the opera late, and Joy lost herself in a
heaven of sound oblivious to the whispering all about her. The first
grand opera she had ever heard; small wonder that she could not come out
of her trance between the acts, to enjoy the sensation of being a
beautiful girl sitting in a box at the Opera. A little before the end
Harry pulled her back to the world of Excitement-Eaters by whispering:
“Come on, we don’t want to be caught in this mob; we’re going somewhere
to dance.”
Surprised dumb that they could leave the greatest of music quivering in
mid-air, she followed them as they streaked out and lost the time they
had gained in debate of where to go. Steve voted for the “Bré Cat;”
Jerry downed that with a sniff; “Princeton’s playground!”
“Weisenrebber’s,” Harry’s suggestion, was voted down as “too rough;”
Jerry declared she positively would not go to any of the hotels, she
could get the same thing in Boston. Steve groaned, and said he supposed
they’d have to fork out fifty dollars or so for a table at the Frolic;
Félicie and Greg cried out in swift protest that they wanted to go
somewhere quiet.
“I tell you what,” said Harry: “let’s slum uptown. There’s a place up
around Columbia with good music—Fennelly’s, or something. Come on,
we’re off!”
No one knowing enough about the place to object, they piled into a taxi
and worked their way uptown, Félicie and Greg following alone in
another. The first four were well established at the uptown dancing
palace before Félicie and Greg joined them. Félicie’s colour was
heightened almost to a dark purple flush; Greg was pale, his features
standing out sharply. They sat down at the table without a word, and
stared vaguely at the dancers.
“You two ought never to go to the opera,” said Harry sweetly. “It’s got
you all—wrought—up.”
“Not the opera,” said Greg, each word sheared off almost before it came.
“We’ve been discussing the modern girl.”
“I don’t want to talk about it any more,” Félicie’s pouting lips
twitched out. “I’m so nervous now I could just scream!”
“We’ve ordered for you,” said Steve as the waiter brought up some soft
drinks. “Do you think opera is as crazy as I do? Come on, Harry; let’s
do our favourite scene from Madame Butterfly. Ladies and gentlemen, this
is an actual transition from part of this famous opera.” He rose,
pouring some gingerale into a glass, singing solemnly: “Will you have
some more whiskey?”
“Thank you!” sang Harry in response, taking the glass and draining it.
They sat down looking for appreciation; but Joy and Jerry were regarding
the two who still sat without a flicker of attention to anything.
“Well, what is there about the modern girl that brings on this run-over
attitude?” Harry inquired, ignoring Steve’s warning eyebrows.
“The modern girl,” said Greg, “is selfish to cruelty. I think
that—carries the situation in a nutshell.”
“Is the modern girl any more selfish than the modern man?” said Joy
quickly, anxious to alleviate the mauve tints of Félicie’s face. “I
haven’t noticed it, if it’s so.”
“Oh, now we’re in for deep discussion!” Harry proclaimed joyously. “I do
love deep discussions in frivolous places!”
“From my point of view, the man as he is to-day is the result of the
modern girl,” said Greg, turning to Joy.
“If she is selfish, so selfish that she wishes to have everything, while
giving nothing in return, so selfish that she looks upon the world as
her debtor—she must mold the man’s attitude toward her. And men can no
longer regard her with the chivalry and reverence in which men held
women when women made the sacrifices that made the name of woman
something to be worshipped.”
“But we’re sick of being worshipped!” cried Félicie, whose silence had
been fading to lavender. “The viewpoint you have is the viewpoint of the
last century and so on—men dividing women into two classes—” She
stopped, and Jerry took up the sentence:
“Félicie wants to say—two classes—good and bad; good to be worshipped
and do all the work and have a generally poky time; bad to be despised,
but taken around and having the whirl their good little sisters missed.”
“And why boast that the old-fashioned distinction has disappeared?” Greg
thrust forth. “Nowadays the line has vanished. Good and bad comport
themselves alike. The ‘good’ girl—so-called—refuses to undertake any
of the responsibilities that for centuries have made her sheltered and
protected. She paints her face more recklessly than her sister on the
street. She aims to out-demi the demi-mondaine in her dress. She does
not disdain to use any weapon, no matter how blood-stained, to bring men
to her feet; and then she leaves them there. The old-fashioned girl gave
a man the mitten. This new girl never kills them off; she must have
strings to her bow; she keeps them dangling around her as long as is
humanly possible. And then she turns around and says: ‘Men aren’t as
chivalrous as they used to be!’” He looked around at them, with almost a
sneer. “No wonder things are happening nowadays that a few years ago you
couldn’t have believed possible!”
Joy, clutching at her throat, was conscious that her nails were biting
into the skin. She was back at her first Prom—last spring. She saw
herself standing in front of a mirror gazing in fascination at her white
shoulders, her blazing cheeks, her painted lips. Again she beard Jim
Dalton telling her what he thought of her appearance. Had she been in
some way responsible for what had happened? “You’re ripping me all to
pieces.” . . . The words leaped up at her from the stagnant channels of
that memory. She drew in her breath so sharply that it caught in her
lungs.
“That’s a very fluent argument, Greg,” Harry was saying: “I’m surprised
and pleased to see an Eli whose brains weren’t lost under the training
table. All the same, I think you’re on the wrong tack. As Jerry says,
the old-fashioned girl was poky. I couldn’t stand her alone for five
minutes; she’d drive me to drink.”
“Maybe, but she wouldn’t drink with you,” grinned Steve.
“That’s just it, Harry!” said Joy. “An old-fashioned girl bores men
nowadays. So what stimulus have we for being old-fashioned?”
“It’s one of those vicious circles,” said Greg. “But the girls are
responsible in the first place—they can’t get away from it. They have
fooled the men into thinking they’re more attractive this way.”
“Well, they are,” Harry persisted. “I wouldn’t go back to the
Clinging-Vine Age for marbles. When I go to see a girl, I want to have a
good time with her—and as far as I can see, if the gallants in other
times ever did get to see a girl, all they did was sit and twiddle their
thumbs.”
“You didn’t hear any complaints from anybody,” said Greg undaunted.
“Nobody realized they were having what we could now term a dull time. I
tell you things are getting too complicated. There are too many new
inventions for having good times. We just dash from one new sensation to
the next. When a man goes to see a girl nowadays, what do they do? Do
they sit in the parlor and talk, do they go out into the kitchen and
make fudge? They do not. They duck the family, and step into his or her
father’s Rolls-Royce or Ford and ride seven or seventy miles to the
nearest place that has the best dance music or they go to the movies,
during which they laugh and talk and say: ‘Why did we come? We could
have done this at home and not be bored by a rotten show;’ but they go
next time just the same; or if they stay home for once, they gather a
large bunch around them and turn on the home jazz variety. Is this true
or isn’t it?”
“Well, I fail to see how you can slide all that off on the girl,” said
Jerry. “What’s the use of all this moralizing stuff? You know you like a
good time as well as the rest of us. To crab at people who are enjoying
themselves is a sign of the aged.”
“Look at us to-night,” said Greg. “Here we are paying I-don’t-know-what
per couvert to sit in an uninteresting place and watch the world’s most
ordinary potpourri, the personnel of a public dance hall, canter around
on a bum floor——”
“And listen to you crab. I admit it’s awful,” said Jerry, rising. “Come
on, Harry. Greg probably won’t dance after his oration, but I intend to
see if it _is_ a bum floor.”
They slid away, and Greg looked at Félicie. The lines in his face
quivered into softness until he looked like a hungry, wistful child.
Félicie’s colour had died to a brilliant flash in either cheek; her
loveliness was almost aching in its intensity. “I’m sorry, Félicie,” he
said gently. “Shall we dance?”
Steve and Joy looked after them as they joined “the world’s most
ordinary-looking potpourri.” “He seems like a fine fellow,” said Steve;
“but what’s eating him, anyway? Won’t she marry him? He ought to be
glad.”
“Well, he doesn’t seem to be,” said Joy rather shortly.
“All this haste to get married while you’re young is idiotic,” said
Steve, with an air of settling the subject. “If he says the modern girl
is selfish because she doesn’t want to let herself in for the cares and
risks of marriage until she has an everlasting good time out of her
youth, he’s talking rot. The modern girl’s got a sane argument, and it’s
the same one I’d use for myself. Marriage clips your wings, whether
you’re a man or a girl, and there’s no use getting into it before you’ve
had enough of high-flying!”
Joy said nothing. It was the same argument she had used for herself.
Marriage was not for her, until the wings of her power had grown so that
she could soar with that impediment. But Félicie’s case was different.
She was in love—supposedly. And Greg’s face——
“Come on and twirl a measure,” said Steve, “if you’re not above mingling
with the Too-Much-Perfumed.”
“Too-Much-Perfumed?” she echoed as they went out on the floor.
“Yes—I always think of that in these places—don’t you get the scent on
different couples as they whiff by us? I always think of the common herd
as perfuming themselves heavily. So, instead of calling ’em the Great
Unwashed, I call ’em the Too-Much-Perfumed.”
It was about two when they returned to the Belmont. The girls undressed
quickly, saying little. No one brought up the subject of Greg’s
harangue. Jerry said that she would sleep with Félicie, so that Joy
could have the single room and sleep as late as possible into the day.
“I know you’ve got to have sleep back of your voice,” she said, “so go
to it, old girl. I’ll make Félicie open one window.”