Why Joan? Part 5

Calloway for her mother.

It was the girl's first experience of the omnipotence of money; an experience which if it comes young enough will make a cynic out of a congenital optimist, which Joan was not.

To do the new Mrs. Darcy justice, she was an adaptable and, in her way, a tactful creature who had already in her admiration of the Major and his daughter, learned to modify her speech and behavior rather touchingly. And her frank delight with what she called "breaking into society," may have been rather disarming to society; or to such portion of it as found its way to the imposing house on Elmtree Street. She was extremely cordial to her guests, urging them to come often, to have more iced tea and cake, to take candy home to the children, to try the Major's cigars and whisky, for which he had an undoubted palate. If the women looked at her a little askance, the men were loud in her praises, and obeyed her urgings to come often.

Effie May, encouraged, began shortly to seek new worlds to conquer.

"Well, what next?" she demanded one night at dinner, after an afternoon of callers, stifling a wide pink yawn with the palm of a much beringed hand. "Your old families are all very well, d.i.c.kie boy, refined and cla.s.sy and all that--but, my G.o.d, they ain't exciting! Now are they?

Isn't there anybody in Louisville born since the Civil War?"

"If there is, I'm afraid I don't know it," admitted the Major, smiling indulgently. "You see the people who were young when I left are young no longer."

"So we've noticed," murmured his bride, making a companionable grimace at Joan. "But we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in the baldhead row, do we, girlie? You've got to find us something under sixty to pal around with, Hubby mine, that's all there is to it. See?"

One of her step-mother's most unbearable traits, to Joan, was her habit of calling the Major absurd comic-supplement pet names. But his dignity seemed not to suffer from it. In fact he expanded visibly under the treatment, like a dog whose ears are being tickled.

"Your commands are law, my angel," he said. "Just how would you suggest that I go about it?"

Effie May ruminated, while the two Darcys watched her--with, however, somewhat varying expressions. The Major appeared to be admiring, indeed gloating over, the appearance she made at the head of her bountifully appointed table, in a dress not n.i.g.g.ardly in its display of her bountifully appointed charms. His eye followed appreciatively the curve of her plump arm as it disappeared into enveloping laces.

Joan, on the other hand, watched her step-mother warily. There was something about the woman she could not fathom, for all her surface simplicity. She felt, beneath the other's careless, easy good-nature, a certain force, a driving power, in the grip of which she and her father were mere helpless puppets. Effie May would use them always for her own ends--whatever those ends might be. Why had she chosen to saddle herself, free and rich and independent as she was, with an impoverished gentleman and his grown-up daughter? Certainly at that age, thought Joan (Effie May was in the neighborhood of forty), people could not possibly fall in love! No, there was something mysterious about her step-mother....

"I have it," said the lady suddenly. "The Country Club! I see in the society column that everything nowadays is going on at the Country Club.

We'll have to join that."

"I believe," interposed Joan, flushing, "that people have to be invited to join a club, don't they, Father?"

"All right--We'll _be_ invited. Won't we, d.i.c.k.u.ms?" said the bride, with a ravishing smile in the Major's direction.

He rose to the occasion. "Certainly, my love," he replied.

And they were invited. At any rate, a week or two later found the Darcy family dining alone at the Country Club, among various other little table groups, all of whom seemed to know each other intimately.

To be in and not of this friendly a.s.semblage filled Joan with that most miserable of all sensations, crowd-loneliness. Even the Major wore a rather fixed and nervous smile, and mentioned to his wife and daughter at intervals that Louisville society had changed very much since he used to frequent it. Only Effie May seemed quite unperturbed, gazing about her smilingly, and tapping her slippered foot, and nodding her head in time to the music; meeting the curious glances which strayed in their direction with a frank interest of her own which might have seemed bold if it were not so like a pleased child's.

Joan, intercepting one or two of these glances, looked her step-mother over critically, and to her relief found her less flamboyant than usual.

She was dressed in white--"Handsome white, not girly-girly muslin like yours. I'm too stout for that," she had said wisely to Joan--The girl reflected that it is difficult to look vulgar in white. Mrs. Darcy was not appreciably different in appearance from many another rather overdressed matron there, even in the matter of rouge and touched-up hair.

As for her father--Richard Darcy would have been a distinguished figure in any a.s.semblage he chose to enter, with his six feet of gallantly carried avoirdupois, his finely modeled head, his gray mustache and imperial concealing a mouth that might otherwise have left something to be desired. He wore that night--and wore well--clothes of the palest gray flannel, with socks and buckskin shoes to match, and a gray stripe in his white tie, and a gray monogram embroidered upon the exquisite cambric of his handkerchief. This was the parent who a few weeks ago she had a.s.sociated irrevocably in her mind with spots and frayed collars!

She found herself wishing that her mother could see him now--she would be so proud of him!...

To her own appearance Joan gave little consideration. She had discovered that the great advantage of good clothes is that you no longer have to think about them. She was quite unaware of the value in contrasts she afforded--her small, dark, smoothly combed head lifted proudly on its long neck, the awkward grace of her thin young body, the pale oval of her face lit by surprisingly vivid eyes, of the sort that are dreamy and shadowed until excitement turns them into soft blue fire. She was excited that night, a little frightened. She did not smile at all, but there was that about her lips--sensitive, wistful, faintly drooping--that made more than one person who glanced at the Darcy table wonder what the smile would be like if it came.

When the dancing began, Effie May's exuberance could no longer contain itself.

"This is something like!" she cried. "This is what I call life! Come on, d.i.c.k--'Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!'"

"But," protested the Major, "it is some time since I have waltzed, my love--"

"Never mind, you'll waltz with me! Anybody can dance with me. The boys used to call me Lightfoot Ef--Oh, but you'll have to get a partner for Joan, first, of course; I forgot we had a family along."

The girl flushed, aghast at the thought of her father whirling in the midst of that whirling throng. "No, no, Effie May, please--!" she urged.

"Let's just sit here quietly and look on."

The other laughed aloud. "Naturally! That's what we've come to a dance for, to sit against the wall and look on--Nonsense! Go and find your child a partner, d.i.c.k, and hurry back. My feet just won't keep still."

She was humming gaily in time with the orchestra.

The Major, gazing a little blankly at the crowd of strangers before him, obediently went forth to do her bidding, and Effie May seized the occasion to give a little womanly advice.

"Don't you fret, Joan--remember there's as many young fellows in the world crazy to know girls as there are girls crazy to know them. And dearie"--her voice sank to a friendly whisper--"warm up to 'em a little, can't you? Jolly 'em along. Hot air, you know, talk! No matter what you say, just keep talking. That don't-touch-me, b.u.t.ter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth air may be all right with the nuns and the old families but it won't go down with the men. Believe me, dearie!

I know."

It was a well-meant effort, which had the effect of congealing the already subdued Joan into something resembling a marble effigy.

The Major shortly returned, bearing urbanely in his wake a blond young man who seemed not too unwilling.

"I want you to meet my wife, sir," he was saying. "I want to have the pleasure of presenting you to my daughter. Fancy the coincidence, my dears--this gentleman turns out to be the son of an old schoolmate!"

Effie May welcomed them with enthusiasm. "Good for you! I had my money on you, d.i.c.k.u.ms! Five minutes, and the son of a schoolmate! It's a record!--Ta-ta, young people! Enjoy yourselves," was her valedictory as she whirled the Major away, waving her hand over his shoulder.

Joan stared aghast at the blond young man, who said, "She is an awfully jolly sort, your mother, isn't she?"

"Very jolly," agreed Joan faintly. "But she's not my mother."

"Oh!"

A silence fell. He seemed to be waiting for her to break it. She gulped, and said in a firm voice, "Did you come to ask me to dance?"

The young man indicated politely that such was his intention.

"You couldn't very well help yourself, could you?" she remarked, and suddenly burst out laughing--rather hysterical laughter in which the young man joined embarra.s.sedly.

"Of course if you'd rather talk--" he murmured.

Joan jumped to her feet. "Oh, but I wouldn't! I'd rather do _anything_ than talk--no matter what I say, just talk, warm up to 'em, hot air--I mean," she explained desperately, "I'm much too shy to talk!"

"You don't sound very shy."

"I know--they're the worst sort, the ones who hide it."

They commenced silently to dance. Presently he confessed, "I'm rather--shy, myself."

"Goody!" she exclaimed with relief. "Then we needn't bother to talk at all."

They parted quite reluctantly when a whistle blew for the "circle"--a useful innovation for breaking up relations, by whose aid Joan found herself exchanging partners at intervals throughout the evening without finding herself too long on the hands of any. She blessed the inventor of the circle. Youth and a pair of winged feet came to her rescue, and she forgot her strangeness in sheer joy of motion. The people she danced with that night were not men; they were as trees walking, for all the personal memory she kept of them.

But when the music finally thumped itself out, and Effie May, a trifle blown and moist about the brow, again resumed charge of her scattered family, saying, "Well, dearie, you've had a pretty good time, haven't you?"--Joan was able to answer with some surprise that she had.

"Dancing," commented the Major, puffing, "is a very healthful exercise; indeed, an esthetic exercise. The Greeks practised it, as I recall, extensively, even in their riper years. My love, with a little experience I think I shall easily master that step you call the fox trot."