LIGHT and vitality died out of the atmosphere for Darcy, with Gloria’s
exit. Divesting herself of the trappings of glory and hope and promise,
she resumed her workaday garb. The long mirror, endued with a sardonic
personality, watched her with silent but pregnant commentary. She did
not wish to look into it. But her will was weak. Hypnotic effluences,
pouring from the shining surface, enveloped and drew her. She walked
before it and surveyed herself. The effect was worse, by contrast, than
she could have imagined.
“Oh, you frump!” she whispered savagely. “You frazzled botch of a
frump!”
Glowing ambition faded to dull and hopeless mockery in her
disillusioned soul. She made a bitter grimace at the changeling in the
glass.
“Imbecile!” said she.
It was a surrender to grim facts. Suddenly she felt extremely languid.
The big couch in the peaceful, curtained alcove lured her. She plumped
into it higgledy-piggledy and curled up, an unsightly, humpful
excrescence upon its suave surface. Within two minutes, worn out by
stress of unaccustomed emotions, she was winging her airy way through
that realm of sleep wherein happiness is the sure prize of being, and
beauty is forever in the eye of the self-beholder.
Dream music crept into her dreams. Clearer and richer it grew until it
filled the dreams so full that they burst wide open. The dreamer
floated out through the cleft to a realization of the fact that
somebody beyond the draperies which secreted her was piping like Pan’s
very self, to an accompaniment of strange, lulling, minor chords. She
peeped out.
A tall, slender young man in clothes which seemed to Darcy’s still
sleep-enchanted eyes to fit him with a perfection beyond artistry, sat
at the piano, humming in a melodious undertone a song of which he had
apparently forgotten the words. One passage seemed to puzzle him. He
repeated the melody several times, essaying various harmonies to go
with it, shook his head discontentedly, and dashed away into Gilbert
and Sullivan.
In the midst of this the door opened. Gloria stood on the threshold. A
look of pleasure flashed over her face as she saw the player. A dozen
light, soft-footed steps carried her to him. She clasped her hands over
his eyes, let them slip to his shoulders, planted a swift, little kiss
on the top of his head, and stepped back.
“Jack!” she cried.
The man swung around, leaped to his feet, caught her by both hands, and
exclaimed:
“Well, _Gloria!_ It’s a treat to see you.”
“I’d begun to think you were never coming back. Where do you hail
from?”
“Oh, all over the map. But no place as good as this.”
He smiled down at her, still holding her hands. To a keen, thin,
sensitive face, with a mobile mouth and quiet eyes, the smile set the
final impression of charm. Instanter and before he had spoken ten
words, Darcy decided that he was the one man she had ever seen worthy
of Gloria Greene. And she was glad they had found each other.
“But where’s Darcy?” asked the hostess, looking about.
“Who?” asked her visitor.
“A little acquaintance whom I left here when I went out.”
The concealed girl sat up. “Here I am,” she announced shyly. “I fell
asleep.”
“Oh, then I’m afraid I waked you up with my silly hammering,” said the
man.
“N-no. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mind. I—I mean, I liked it,”
stammered the girl, falling into her usual acutely zero feeling in the
presence of the masculine gender.
“Then go and play it again, Jack,” commanded Miss Greene, “while I get
off my things. And then go away. You can come back for dinner. Miss
Cole and I have important things to talk over.”
“Oh, no! Please! I can come some other time,” protested Darcy in a
flutter of embarrassment. “I don’t want to drive Mr.—Mr.—-him away.”
“Mr. Jacob Remsen has all the time in the world,” said Gloria calmly.
“Time is the least of his troubles. He kills it at sight.”
“Don’t mind her, Miss Corey,” put in Remsen.
Darcy, noting the error in her name, wondered petulantly why Gloria
didn’t introduce them in proper form. But her uneasiness and
_gaucherie_ presently dissipated before the cordial and winning
simplicity of Gloria’s man. And, to her own surprise, she found herself
volunteering a harmonic solution of the difficult change where he had
blundered over the transition, and humming the melody while she played
her version. He accepted it with enthusiasm.
“Sing it,” he urged. “I like your voice—what little you let us hear of
it.”
Instantly Darcy stiffened up inside and stammered a refusal. She didn’t
mean to be ungracious to this sunny and inspiriting young fellow. It
was just her unhappy consciousness of a cramped and graceless self.
Remsen took it with matter-of-fact good humor.
“I’m sure you do sing, though,” he called back as his hostess finally
evicted him. “I’m going to send you that song.”
But he didn’t look at her, she noticed, as he said it. Why should he,
indeed, when Gloria was in the room? For that matter, men never looked
at Darcy. And here was her grievance against the scheme of things
exemplified anew.
“There it is,” she complained, waving an awkward arm toward the door
through which Mr. Jacob Remsen had vanished. “That’s what I’ve been
trying to tell you about.”
“Jack?” puzzled her hostess. “Why, what’s wrong with Jack?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied the girl wearily. “But—did you notice what he
did when he left?”
“Offered to send you some music. I thought it was quite polite. Jack’s
always courteous.”
“Oh, _courteous!_ He didn’t even _look_ at me.”
“Well, why—”
“That’s it! Why? Why should any man look at me? They don’t.
They—they’re strictly neutral in their attitude. And women
are—well—just tolerant and friendly. ‘Darcy’s such a _nice_ girl.’
Where does that get you?” fiercely demanded the subject of it. “People
don’t really know I’m _alive_. I might as well be a ghost. I wish I
were. At least I’d scare ’em.”
“Don’t try to scare me,” returned the other. “Now list to the voice of
wisdom. You complain that people don’t know you’re alive. Why should
they? You don’t give out anything—warmth, color, personality. I’m not
so sure you _are_ alive. You’re inert.”
“I haven’t anything to give,” mourned the accused.
“Why? Because you’ve wasted it. You’ve had beauty; good looks, anyway.
You have let that die down to nothing. One thing only you’ve kept up,
and that ought to be an asset. You’ve got a voice. Do you ever use it
for other people?”
“I don’t like to sing before people.”
“There you are! Always thinking of your little self. You give nothing
to the world, yet you think yourself ill-used because—”
“What does the world give me?” broke in the aggrieved Darcy.
“Nothing for nothing. What would you expect? Do you think it’s going to
smile at you when you scowl at it, and stop its own business and gaze
on you adoringly and say, ‘Much obliged to you for being alive’? It
isn’t that kind of a world, Miss Amanda Darcy Cole.” The owner of the
despised first name winced. “I never thought of that,” she murmured.
“Thinking is going to be part of your education from now on. You can’t
begin too soon.”
“I’m ready,” said the girl meekly. “Do you want me to begin with my
voice? Shall I take singing lessons?”
“Oh, it’s got to go a lot deeper than that,” was Gloria’s grim reply.
“You’ll begin by taking _living_ lessons. Do you know what that means?”
“I’m not sure I do. It sounds awfully hard,” faltered the other.
“It is. Go home and think it over. Come back here to-morrow at this
time and get your orders.”
“Yessum,” said Darcy, folding her hands with assumed docility.
Gloria regarded her with suspicion. “It isn’t going to be any joke,”
said she with severity.
“No’m,” assented Darcy with a still more lamblike expression. But her
eyes twinkled through it.
“Oh, well, if you want to take it that way,” observed the actress. “But
_I’d_ advise you to save your high spirits for the time when they’ll be
needed.”
In the seclusion of the hallway Darcy drew out Exhibit A and sought
inspiration from the charming face which Holcomb Lee had surrounded
with gallant and admiring suitors in the illustration.
“If it can be done,” said Darcy to the picture with the solemnity of a
rite, “I’ll do it.”