Why Joan? Part 33

"Cowards--stockings?" repeated Miss Iphigenia. "I'm afraid I don't quite see the connection--"

"There isn't any--don't mind me! And really it's quite a distinction to wear cotton ones nowadays," hurriedly said Joan, who hoped sincerely never to possess a cotton stocking again in all her life. And at the same time planned to earn her own living in any honest fashion available, no matter how lowly! Inconsistency was not a fault with which she had the right to twit her fellow Jabberwocks....

But she never quite forgot her destination in the pleasures of the wayside. She did a good deal of quiet investigating, in a desultory way.

Teachers, librarians, bookkeepers, stenographers, all came under the head of skilled labor, as she soon discovered, and required a course of training--which Joan's step-mother would have to provide. It put these professions out of the question.

There were various small establishments in Louisville conducted by acquaintances of hers, those "ladies in reduced circ.u.mstances" of which every Southern town is full; tea-rooms, hat-shops, lingerie-shops, and the like--a state of affairs which gave Major Darcy acute distress.

"Imagine the daughters of my old friend Colonel Dinwiddie selling bibelots to any vulgarian who has the effrontery to purchase them! What can their brothers be thinking of?" he would groan. "Of course you will be careful never to enter the shop, my dears! The poor ladies shall not be embarra.s.sed by having to wait on _my_ wife and daughter, at least."

But aside from her father's peculiar but not unique point of view, these ventures required capital; which again put them out of the question.

She heard now and then of certain well-paid positions in connection with social service of various sorts; but these again seemed to require a special training, or a special apt.i.tude, which Joan did not believe herself to possess. The very words "social service" had to her a chilling, impersonal, busybodyish sound, almost as ugly as "philanthropy." She was not of those to whom a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. "Charity" sounded to her Christian, and warm, and friendly; but she dreaded to offer "philanthropy," or "social service"

to the unfortunate almost as much as she would have dreaded to receive such things. She decided that her _metier_ was not good works.

Clerks in stores, she learned, do not for the most part earn a living wage. They are expected evidently to live at home, or to supplement their salary in some other fashion (just how Joan was not sure, but she entertained uneasy suspicions). By the time they become expert--heads of departments, buyers, chief milliners, etc.,--they are of course more than economically independent. But in the meanwhile....

It was the meanwhile that troubled Joan. When she broke with her family, she intended to do so with a magnificent completeness.

Only two alternatives seemed open to her inexperience; the stage and journalism. She weighed them one against the other without being able to come to a decision. Joan was rather fond of making her own decisions, and had all the impatience of her nineteen years with mature advice. But at length she consulted Stefan Nikolai.

"Please write me by return mail," (she commanded), "which you think would offer me the most advantageous career, the stage or journalism."

He obeyed on a post-card marked Christiania (his postmarks were frequently the only indication of his whereabouts):

"I should suggest the usual course in matrimony as a preliminary to any career."

Joan stamped her foot over this ba.n.a.lity. It was something she might have expected from a man of her father's generation, but hardly from Stefan Nikolai. Particularly when he knew about Eduard, and must certainly realize that her interest in man as a s.e.x was over!

Useful she still found them as dancing partners, to be sure, as providers of candy and flowers and theaters, even to a certain extent as companions, since one cannot very well sit about after nightfall conversing with women, if only for appearance' sake. One or two she might admit to her friendship, provided they remain sufficiently "in their place," like Archie Blair. But as lovers, husbands! Never again.

Fortunately, sufficient phagocytes had been released to take care of that.

Hers was an att.i.tude of mind which if generally entertained would, she realized, mitigate against the welfare of the race; but judging from the people about her, it would never be generally entertained--particularly in Kentucky, and in Springtime.

It is a season when matters of pairing off that may have hung fire throughout the winter are apt to come rapidly to a climax. Each Sunday paper brings forth its batch of Spring engagements; and Joan herself was under the pleasing necessity of chilling off two of her admirers in quick succession. One was a youth of the fireside-companion type, who innocently fancied that there might be room for one more under the hospitable Darcy roof. The other was the blond young man who had been Joan's first partner, and who, having danced her successfully through the season, saw no reason why he should not dance her successfully through life.

They met with small mercy at her hands. "Off with his head!" murmured Joan cheerily to herself on each occasion, thinking of a certain evening under a beech-tree by the light of the gibbous moon....

These two unfortunates were not the only ones in her life who were to suffer vicarious atonement for the sins of Eduard Desmond (and obscurely of Richard Darcy as well).

CHAPTER x.x.xI

It was in April that Archie Blair conceived the happy idea of purchasing an automobile, thus combining business with pleasure most practically; a modest secondhand affair of three good cylinders and one that missed, but it shone (Archibald being in the paint and varnish business) with a glossiness that advertised its owner afar off. And like the bicycle in the song, it was "built for two."

Archibald had no wish to intrude; still, an automobile is an automobile, and it seemed to him that on a fine Spring evening almost any young lady might like to ride in one, even if accustomed to limousines.

Joan first became aware of this acquisition one fine day when it appeared and reappeared and once again appeared pa.s.sing the window where she sat reading. Three times, like Hector about the walls of Troy, it circled the block, smelling of its new paint and complaining loudly of its missing cylinder; and at last Joan, puzzled by this persistence, thought to glance at its driver. Clutching the wheel in a death grapple, taking his eye from the traffic only long enough for a hopeful glance at the house front as he pa.s.sed, she recognized her friend in all the proud modesty of ownership.

Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take a walk.

"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk--or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!) "Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!--I was just hoping I'd run across you somewhere."

"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily, and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.

"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for, and the One and Only beside him on its seat--who can blame the man?) "Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I can't take my eye off the road yet--" (this as a family party narrowly escaped annihilation)--"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my shoulder?"

"I won't mind your talking any way at all--so long as it's not about armadillos."

Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"

"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"

But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings.

People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?--Say, what if we go out in the real country somewhere!--not parks, where there's always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I can step on her tail and let her rip--eh?"

The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a gipsy pateran.

Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution, and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the neigh of startled colts in the fields as they pa.s.sed, the rush of the golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little engine.

"Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two--" chanted Archie with a proud eye on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!"

Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful hands--as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust in their faces, trees and meadows pa.s.sing in long green streaks, she got quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings.

"Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down.

He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes.

"What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place.

"I--didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice.

Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?"

"You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant.

"Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air.

"Whenever you like!"

Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Phoebus driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend Lizzie, with a silver dollar.

But that night as he lay in bed, with an April rain making music on the roof above him, he told himself soberly that he must be careful. There had been moments to-day, especially with her hair blowing across his face, when a fellow almost forgot!... He conjured himself by all his G.o.ds to be a wise little ostrich and keep his head well tucked into the sand.