Why Joan? Part 21

The Major turned and stared, really uncertain as to whether it could be himself who was thus addressed.

"It's Mr. Blair, Dad," explained Joan hurriedly, "who was so nice to me on the train; don't you remember?"

The Major still stared. But innate hospitality triumphed: and perhaps there was something disarming, too, in the wide-apart front teeth of Mr.

Blair, which, as Joan had previously observed, gave him an oddly innocent expression.

"Very well, young top!" he murmured courteously, "I surrender my daughter to your mercies."

The two danced away, Blair holding his prize as if he did not know quite what to do with her now that he had got her.

"For goodness' sake, take _hold_ of me!" she instructed after a moment.

"I feel as if I were about to float out of your grasp. I won't break, you know!"

Archie obediently held her tighter, murmuring, "Pardon _me_!"

He danced surprisingly well, as if he were really listening to the music, Joan thought. She did not trouble to talk to him, therefore.

"So that was your father," he said after a long and anxious silence.

"Why, he's a peach, hopping around like that at his age!"

"Rather more of a pear, don't you think? As to figure?" suggested Joan; for the Major's tendency to _embonpoint_ had increased remarkably since his marriage.

Blair threw back his head and gently roared. He was one of the people who always made Joan feel herself a wit of the first water.

Yet she was a little sorry he had come to-night. She had sent him the card to her debut ball by way of repaying an obligation. He had been very thoughtful on the train about getting her fruit and papers--almost too thoughtful; and had insisted, somewhat to Joan's embarra.s.sment, on paying for the two meals they had taken together in the dining-car. She did not care to remain in debt to a stranger; hence the invitation. But she had not, somehow, expected him to take advantage of it.

Since he was here, however, she must do what she could for him. She knew what it was to be a stranger in a gay throng.

"Do you know any girls?" she asked.

"Not to speak to--though I've seen some of the young ladies on the street, of course. This is the first time I've ever been out in Society," he explained simply.

"Yes? I'm a debutante too, you know. And how do you like Society, so far?"

"Fine, fine!" he told her. "Better even than I thought it was. Makes the movie pictures of it look sort of silly."

"You ought to go to the Horse Show next week if you find this sort of thing interesting. I hear it is to be something splendiferous!"

"I will," he a.s.sured her, earnestly.

"And now I'd better introduce you to some other people." She shook her head smilingly at a youth who was about to touch him on the shoulder.

After all, one owes something to the duties of hospitality. "Though really you don't have to _meet_ girls at a thing like this before you ask them to dance. I don't know the names of half the men I dance with."

"You don't?" he repeated incredulously, wondering what Miss Emma or Miss Grace would think of that! He decided not to tell them. "I reckon I'd rather be introduced first though, if you don't mind," he murmured--"I--I wouldn't know just what to call 'em."

Laughing, she stopped with the music, and on an impulse of sheer mischief guided him toward the exclusive young person who had once made her unhappy at the Country Club, one Miss Emily Carmichael. She was not too exclusive, it appeared, to come to the Darcy ball; which she did not seem to be thoroughly enjoying, however.

"Ask her to dance--she needs it," murmured Joan _sotto voce_ as they approached.

"Sure thing," replied Archibald; and as soon as Joan had p.r.o.nounced the formula: "Miss Carmichael, Mr. Blair," he said promptly, "Be pleased to have the pleasure of the next turn, Miss Carmichael."

Joan went off with another partner, chuckling. She felt that scores were even.

Blair's face fell at this desertion. "Oh, but say," he called after her, "can't I dance with you any more?"

"Whenever you like! Just come and tap my partner and carry me off as you did before. But," she added with a parting twinkle, "I don't believe I'd call him 'old top' again!"

Archibald flushed and understood. "All right," he said meekly. "I'll just call him 'Say,' instead."

He tapped her partner with some frequency after that, though not often enough to be annoying; and Joan also noticed amusedly that he danced a great deal with Miss Carmichael, who seemed quite willing. Exclusiveness was evidently in abeyance at a ball.

Sometimes when they pa.s.sed each other she called out pleasantly, "Having a good time, debutant?" and he answered in the vernacular of the moment, "Fine and dandy!"

She said, during one of their brief turns together, "You seem to be getting on beautifully with that girl I introduced you to."

"Who? Miss Carmichael? She's all to the mustard, isn't she! Asked me to come and eat supper with her to-night."

"She did?" exclaimed Joan, surprised.

"Yes. You see I know her brother--put on gloves with him sometimes at the Y. M. C. A. And it seems he's told her about me," explained Archie.

"Oh!" Joan looked with new interest at his broad shoulders, his straight, supple back. She understood suddenly the lift and spring and untiring ease of his dancing, which was not grace exactly, but something just as good. He was an athlete. She began to feel quite pleased with her protege. With a little pruning as to speech and general behavior, he would make a rather presentable ballroom adjunct. His manner with women was really nice.

One other besides Joan watched Archie's progress with interest. At the door of the dressing-room Ellen Neal, in her Sunday costume of claret-colored serge with collar and cuffs of homemade Battenberg lace, gazed proudly out upon the scene of her nurseling's triumphs, having been unable to resist Mrs. Darcy's invitation to a.s.sist on so memorable an occasion. She had removed countless evening wraps and carriage slippers, a.s.sisted deftly, albeit with prim lips, at the powdering of countless backs and bosoms, and now followed with adoring eyes a certain slim blue figure that appeared and disappeared among the dancers.

"Land," she thought. "If her mama could only see her now! The swellest among the swell! And with a dress on her little back that cost that woman a hundred dollars, if it cost a cent. She's got as many partners as any of 'em--and why wouldn't she, then, I'd like to know?"

Archibald had promised to look her up during the evening, but boylike had forgotten the old friend in quest of the new. She forgave him for it, though she would have liked very much to exchange impressions with somebody. Her pride was bursting for utterance.

Presently he came and stood quite near her, with only the width of the corridor between them. His back was turned as he stood looking out over the ballroom floor.

"Sst" called Ellen. "Psst! Mr. Archie!" She dared not leave her post for fear people would come for wraps or powder, and find only a colored woman to wait on them, which would never do. (Ellen continued to regard the colored race as a cross between the monkey and the magpie, with leanings toward the magpie.)

"Psst! Hey there!" she called.

But Archie's mind was far away from Ellen Neal, and he did not hear her.

He was anathematizing Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishings at the moment for not having suggested white kid gloves to him. More than once his clumsy bare hand, struggle against it as he might, had come in contact with the delicate bare shoulder of one of his partners; and Archibald felt that if such a catastrophe should occur when he was dancing with Miss Darcy, the earth might just as well open and engulf him permanently. She would never forgive him--and indeed why should she?

A man ought to have known by instinct about those reverential gloves.

So he stood frowning out upon the ballroom, heedless of Ellen's hisses; and in this way the old woman happened to be the unnoted witness of a rather curious scene.

Mrs. Darcy came tripping down the corridor alone, for the moment, having been out to inspect preparations for supper. She did not believe in leaving so important a matter as supper entirely to the hands of paid a.s.sistants, no matter how well paid. She was resplendent in rose brocade and spangles, her small plump feet encased in cloth-of-gold, a little fishtail train of cloth-of-gold whisking behind her. Her hair positively glittered, it was so golden, and her face was overspread with a rosy bloom that always intrigued her step-daughter because of its unnatural evenness, as if she had not simply rouged, but dipped her face in a permanent elixir of youth that outdid youth itself. Joan had never caught her with her face bare, as it were, even at the most unlikely hours.

Mrs. Darcy paused at sight of a young man standing by himself, gazing out with a wistful frown at the gaiety before him; and her hospitable heart smote her. She tapped his arm with her fan.

"Kind o' lonesome?" she said. "Come on in and dance with me."

He turned with a start. His eyes took her in from top to toe, and suddenly narrowed. "No, thanks," he said curtly. "What are _you_ doing here, anyway?"