Part 12

Joy stole a look at Jerry, but her face was wreathed in smoke as she answered in lazy tones: “Well, come off the platform, old dear. I was only heaving a couple of sobs for Greg—that boy has a few brains that weren’t put in cold storage at Yale. Of course, _I’m_ glad you’re still on my side of the wall. Came around to make you shove aside anything you’ve started going for to-night and tack yourself on to a dizzy party.”

“I have a date for to-night, but he’s not a new man,” she ruminated. “Is it a good party?”

“I said, dizzy! A bunch of Williams men—they’ve cornered the world’s best jazz-fiends to beat a nasty measure—down at Croft Inn. Private party—we’ll have the whole place to ourselves. There are one or two other girls coming, some subdebs from Boston who are going to climb the waterspout or something, but they told me to get another girl. Like the noise of it?”

“I should say so! I was only going in town to dance with him alone. Give me a crowd every time! What’ll you wear?”

“Evening dress stuff, they say, which means the girls will and the men won’t.” She threw her cigarette stub at the wastebasket, and after a few waverings which Félicie watched tensely, it went in. “Well—we’ve got to go along. We’ll be around for you to-night, some time. Be ready!”

“Good-bye, Miss Durant,” said Joy, taking a last comprehensive look at the massed loveliness before her. She half wished that she were going that night. To see it drawn up in battle array!

“We must have a movie date some time,” Félicie smiled, but her smile was changed to a shriek as she followed them down the hall. “You didn’t close the door, and he got out! Oh, _Fizz_!”

She captured him in the lower entry and held him carefully away from the lace of her dress, his red tongue dangling, his little eyes peering pinkly from beneath his drying bangs, as she again speeded them on their way.

“Well, what did you think of the human jellyfish?” Jerry asked, as they made for their regular “taxi,” a Subway prepayment car.

“Jerry—I think she’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. But I don’t in the least get why she’s like a jellyfish.”

“Listen. If you’ve ever seen the animal, you know it’s flabby and yet you can’t pull it apart. That’s what she is.”

“I don’t know. Her arguments were pretty good; they’ve started me thinking.”

“Well, all I’ve got to say is this: I never saw anyone fill the flowing bowl—and drink it and have it left. And I don’t think she can pull it off any more than anyone else.”

Joy was a little more weary of work than she cared to admit, and found a welcome diversion in watching Jerry and Sarah prepare for the evening. Even the familiar spectacle of Sarah whitewashing her neck, back, shoulders and arms with liquid powder, was amusing. When they left, wrapping about themselves with conscious sumptuousness new evening cloaks that Jerry had recently evolved, she could not circumvent a sigh. After all—she was going from one extreme to the other.

She went to the piano and started playing the score of Faust, as Pa was now working her through the rôle of Marguerite. “Old fashioned, but it will teach you much,” he had said. It was all within her increased powers of vocalisation except the trill in the Jewel Song. When she sang and played exultantly through the score, she felt lifted to a zenith of mauve heights which trembled in ecstasy of tone—until her next lesson. She played now, supporting an even lusciousness of tone—

“Je voudrais bien savoir quel était ce jeune homme Si c’est un grand’seigneur, et comment il se nomme.”

The piano under her hands transmuted itself into a great orchestra; the walls of the room widened to the huge stage of the Metropolitan; and she, Marguerite, was standing with clasped hands savouring the wonder of love at first sight. She was glad that she was more slender than most of the vocalists who could essay the rôle; and no wig would be needed to cover her own golden hair.

The sharp ringing of the door bell cut in upon her dream, and stage and great orchestra vanished together with Marguerite-who-needed-no-wig. She went to the door with a feeling of irritation. Who——

A tall, brown figure, somewhat leaner and older looking. Eyes that were clear——

“_Grant!_” she cried.

With no more thought than a snowflake takes to melt, she was in his arms, and their lips met in a kiss that stopped and sighed, then began again.

“We’d better close the door,” said Grant. In the little pause while he preserved appearances by shutting them in the apartment, she put herself away from him, a little breathless, her hair slipping down about her shoulders.

“_What made me do that?_” she trembled; he was turning to her again, and she drew away farther and kept the distance between them while leaving the hall.

“Joy——” The living room gained, he had come up to her again and was stroking her hair. “I’ve thought everything all out—oh, I’ve thought of nothing else—and everything’s clear in my mind now. Darling—I want you to marry me just as soon as you can.”

She stared up at him without meaning, her brain a tumult of horror about which revolved the question: “_What made me do that?_”

“I’ve thought it all out—and now I know—I was a fool to judge you by anything but my own love. I—want you, Joy.”

She jerked her head, and his caressing fingers tore her hair. “Go away, Grant, go and sit down far away from me—so we can talk this out—impartially!”

“Impartially! What’s there to talk out—impartially? Joy—I don’t know what I was thinking of, that night. To even question you—after what we had been, to each other——It’s all come clear to me, in these weeks of being without you.”

“Let me hope for your sake—that it won’t take as long for you to get other facts in life clear to you—as it did, this!”

“I called you up before—and they said you were ill. Of course I knew that just meant you wouldn’t see me. So I waited—and took a chance on coming unannounced.”

“I _was_—ill. I would have seen you—I waited for you, after I was better——”

“Joy! You were really ill? Why didn’t you send for me?”

“Why would I have had to? Others—came without being sent for.”

With a hissing intake of breath she drew away from him again, putting the table between them.

“Why, Joy, what’s the matter, dear? You’re acting as if I were a wild beast.”

She moved to the piano and sat on the bench before it. “No, Grant—I’m merely—protecting myself against myself. When I saw you so suddenly—after I thought I’d never see you again;—sit down there a minute—I’ve got to get all this straight.”

He obeyed with a frown. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither—did—I. But now I do! Now I do!” She threw back her head, and looked at him impersonally. “Grant, you’ve come back too late. I’ve learned to do without you.”

He made an impatient motion as if to brush her words away. “Do you expect me to believe that—after what happened a minute ago?”

“That—is what helped me to see! I don’t think—I ever was really in love with you. It was infatuation—blind infatuation—or else—how could I have done—what I did just now! I haven’t missed you—except when I was idle; and when girls are idle they always have to be in love, or missing someone, or moping because they haven’t got anybody to miss—that’s the way girls seem to be made!”

“You only missed me—when you were idle,” he repeated as if it were the statement of a theorem he could not prove.

“Yes, and then I missed only _you_! I didn’t miss your spirit, your soul to mingle with my own—and so you see, I didn’t have the real, true longing for you!”

“Then you _did_ long for me!” He had left his seat and come to her; but she held up wavering hands.

“Passion—dressed up! I wonder how many people know it from love—before it is too late!”

“Joy, you’re morbid. It doesn’t do to analyze things so. You’ve been brooding here all evening over your old music; no wonder you see in such a light. When you marry me, everything will straighten out, and you won’t get yourself all wrought up over the piano all the time.”

“I see what you mean—and that’s another thing. If I married you now, I would have to give up my music.”

“Oh, not entirely, of course. You would always have it as a lovely gift, to take up now and then—but not as a god to slave before and give everything to——I’ve watched you, Joy, and that’s the way you are. I wouldn’t respect a man much, who let his wife peg on at the thing in a professional way, when he could take care of her himself.”

Joy laughed, almost stonily. “Apart from the fact that I don’t love you—I’m not ready to marry _anyone_ yet. Since I’ve last—seen you, I’ve made my decision. And I’m only standing on the threshold of my work! And I never—never could be happy to give it up now—even if I was in love——A girl waits for the man she loves to establish himself in his line of work, waits until he has gotten to the place where her partnership is possible. But judging by you, a man wouldn’t wait for me—wouldn’t wait until I got my head above water, and then let me carry on my work after marriage, as he carries on his.”

“Women who advance such arguments are liable to forget that their business after marriage should be quite different from before,” he said in a low tone.

She looked at him with unembarrassed eyes. “Supposing I recognised that. Supposing I said, I will be Domesticity itself after I am married. But I still require you to wait several years for me—as I must attain the perfection for which I am aiming, or my soul will always yearn after it, and I will never be content? What then?”

He did not speak. She turned and played a few chords on the piano. “I’m nineteen years old—nearly twenty. Say you wait three years and a half for me—until I’m twenty-three. Would you do that?”

“Joy, you’re talking perfect rot. To wait over three years—to waste the best years of our life we might be having together——”

“Stop a minute. I will be only twenty-three then. You will be only twenty-five. That is an age at which most young people nowadays think themselves lucky to start—and so would you if you didn’t have your own little inherited income through no effort of your own. Only three years and a half, Grant! Would you do it?”

“You know perfectly well you’re asking too much for any man. Be reasonable, Joy. What has gotten into you to make you talk like this? It seems to me that after I have fought out my problem, and come to you like this, there might be a little something expected of you.”

She smiled, faintly amused. “Since you had decided, you thought there was no more to it—but you see, Grant, all that time I was going through experiences and thoughts—that have made me see that as far as I’m concerned—_there’s no more to it_.” She rose, her gesture spelling dismissal. “So you wouldn’t wait—three years and a half, or whatever it might be. I think that shows, Grant, that your love was about the same as mine.”

Mesmerized by the finality of her tone, he started to the door, but stopped halfway. “Am I to believe—that you are always going to take this stand—be this way?”

“Please do believe it. I am not drunk with music—I shall always take this stand with you—because, you see, I don’t really love you, and I suppose that—makes all the difference!”

He gained the door, and stood looking back. She was regarding him with parted lips, cheeks darkly flushed, a little pulse beating in her temple, her hair blanketing her shoulders in folds of gold. “And please,” she articulated in a thin thread of sound—“please forget me—very quickly!”

“Forget you——” The words escaped him in a sort of wonder. They stood motionless, eyes fixed upon one another, and into the faces of each there stole an impatient bewilderment. They had leaped to the peaks of poetry and youth’s dreams for a few lambent hours, and now the peaks were far away again. Veiled in the clouds of awakened scepticism and analysis, the peaks were higher than before, and their aspect had forever changed.

A tremor passed in the air between them. Knifing across it came the stab of the doorbell—anticlimax of everyday routine cutting the wheels of drama from under. Few can stand the swift descent. Joy hesitated, then came forward. Grant hastily captured his hat, which had rolled to the hall floor some time ago, and stood brushing off the dust of which there was a disgraceful amount.

As the door swung open both fell back in different reactions. Jim Dalton stood on the threshold.

“Good evening, Miss Nelson,” he smiled. “I——” His glance travelled past her to Grant.

“This seems to be Miss Nelson’s evening at home,” Grant said evenly. “Good-bye, Joy.”

She watched him signal for the elevator, still brushing the dust from his hat. Grant would probably be a masculine replica of his mother when he was her age——

Jim did not speak until the elevator had sunk from sight. “I was—passing by—and saw the sixth story light on—so I took the chance of interrupting a party.”

“There was no party, as you see,” Joy answered. Her resentment against this man had long since died—had died with her regard for Grant—and instead she felt something she told herself was not quite positive enough to be pleasure. “Do come in; I think it was very nice of you to take this chance. You see,” she continued as she led the way to the living room for the second time in that half hour, “you see. I have had no chance—to thank you for anything.”

“I hate to be thanked,” he said quickly. “There’s no more futile feeling than teetering on one’s toes through anything like that—it makes one feel like such a fool—and then simpering, ‘Oh, please don’t mention it!’ Oh, please, Miss Nelson, don’t make me say that!”

He was talking away from the subject, and she made no further attempt to express her gratitude; words on anything touching that night came with difficulty. He was not looking at her with such persistency that she remembered that her hair was still flowing down her back, scattering hairpins hither and yon. She anchored her arms to her sides against the involuntary hands-flying-to-hair-motion. That would spell a self-conscious guilt. No, she would leave it that way, and he would think she was wearing it unconfined because she had just washed it, or thought it was good for it, or _something_.

“I am going to say something very frank now,” he began, transferring his gaze to her. This time her hands almost did fly to her hair. _Was he going to speak of it?_ He continued: “I want to tell you that I know you don’t like me, and never have, and this dropping-in to-night is going to be my positively last appearance. To tell the truth—I wasn’t just passing here at all; I came out on purpose. I had to see you again—to see if you were really all right now—I haven’t seen you since your convalescence, you know. But now that I have—and you’re looking better than I’ve ever seen you—I’m not going to bother you any more by popping around.”

Joy laughed, which rather spoilt the effect of his speech. “You talk as though you were in the habit of shadowing me!”

“Well—once or twice I did take that upon myself—and I know what you must have thought of my officiousness. I didn’t have the right, which I have now assumed really does belong to someone.”

“You mean—Grant? Oh, no.” She brushed the subject aside. “I never disliked you, Jim; I just hadn’t made room for you in my mind.”

She did not realize that the change in his face was partly due to the fact that she had called him by his first name; she was so accustomed to slipping into colloquial terms on short acquaintance, since she had been with Jerry.

“You mean—that you have ‘made room for me in your mind’—now?”

“Why—yes. I didn’t know it, but I have. The reason I didn’t know it—was probably because I never think of you as a man. I think of you as a friend—who once was a friend indeed to me.”

He did not speak for a short space.

“There are very few girls whom I should care to have as friends. Most girls simply can’t achieve the atmosphere, the uncoloured give-and-take of friendship,—but I have always felt that you would be different.”

“Don’t put it all on the girl!” Joy laughed. “There are men with whom it is just as impossible to establish an—an uncoloured atmosphere.”

“Maybe they have been led to think that’s the only atmosphere that can exist between a man and a girl, by their experience with girls.”

“I wonder why it is,” she mused, “that sooner or later the blame always comes back to us.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you defend your sex; girls so often think it’s a good line to be witty about girls. When ever I hear a girl say she doesn’t like other girls, I look for something wrong with her.”

“You’re _always_ lecturing!” she cried. “Ever since I first met you, you’ve lectured about something!”

He laughed. “I certainly take a long way around saying that I would like you as a friend!”

“I said the same thing myself, a long while ago; so let’s stop arguing about friendship between man and woman, and be it!”

Their minds were not on their argument. Joy was thinking how rushed, or distracted, “or something,” she must have always been, not to notice before how good looking he was. But of course he wasn’t tall, and tall men were “her type.” “He’s a blond, and I’m a blonde,” she told herself. “We’re not the ‘opposites that attract,’ but we can be good friends, just the same.”

If he could have read her thoughts, he would have used them as further proof for his argument; but since one of Joy’s greatest assets was the power of preserving a sweet, listening attitude no matter what went on beneath, he was kept busy, thinking up general subjects to discuss with this anomaly among the girls, one who did not take the initiative in conversation.

When he rose to go, they felt as if they were very old friends already, having matched opinions, likes and dislikes for nearly an hour.

“Remember, this isn’t your last appearance,” said Joy.

“Remember!——You’re musical, aren’t you? You told me at that dance that you were studying music here in town. Well—what do you say we take in some concerts together? And the Symphony—that’ll be fun if only to watch the audience. Would you care?”

“I’m awfully afraid I shan’t know enough to appreciate the Symphony,” she hesitated. “But I know it would be a good thing for me, and I’ll go with you if you’ll promise not to know too much about it.”

“If you could see me! I go—and sit through it—and sometimes I feel like jumping out of my seat—but most of the time I’m vaguely bored. We’ll go together, and maybe combined we can get what we should out of it.”

After he had gone, she went back and sang through the score of Marguerite as if she had had no interruption a little over an hour and a half ago. A little over an hour and a half—had so short a time passed since she had seen Grant, had decided so much, had let so much go out of her life? She could not evoke even a shiver over the blotting out of that vista of her dreams, nothing but a little impatient frown. Things had no right to get so dead, after having been so alive.

Lovely girl, that Félicie Durant; even if Jerry did call her a jellyfish. Her arguments were clear—to marry now when she had four good years before her which marriage could not replace——Her voice hesitated on a measure. It sounded almost like her argument with Grant—three years and a half from her life at this time, which marriage could not replace——

“Oh, but that’s different,” and her voice caught up with the piano accompaniment and spun heart-satisfying melody—

“Je ris—de me voir Si belle—en ce miroir——”

VIII

“Say, Joy, can’t you practice your trilling with the door shut?”

Sarah and Joy had met in the kitchenette, about four-thirty in the afternoon. Their encounters were always a matter of routine, and to-day they both happened to strike the same time to search for “afternoon tea.” Sarah had just come to light, and was yawning about in a wrinkled kimono, her hair done up in curlers, her face pettishly grey. There was something positively undressed about Sarah’s face at times like these. Joy had been uptown all day, first at Pa’s, then at her French and Italian lessons. Returning, she had been practicing a trill exercise, not aware that Sarah was arising a little later than usual.

“I’m sorry,” she said now, and chewed a cold English muffin—the kind one buys at the corner delicatessen. “I usually close the door when I practice, anyway. I didn’t think anyone was home.”

“It certainly is nerve-racking to live in the house with a singer,” Sarah complained. She had caught sight of her face in a mirror, which added to the drag of her voice. “Of course I know you have to practice and all that, Joy, but now that your voice has gotten so much bigger it carries everywhere—simply everywhere!”

“Glad to hear it, that’s what I’m after,” snapped Joy, and bit into another discouraged muffin. “It’s hard enough to work all the time without being picked on for it. To hear you talk, you’d think I sang all day.”

“Now you’re getting cross. I suppose singers have to be temperamental, though.” Receiving no response to this, Sarah twirled her infinitesimal braid and tried again: “It’s funny to see you try to be so earnest. No girl with the looks you know you have can stand the strain of the student’s life without weakening and breaking away once in a while. And you can’t tell me that you and that Jim Dalton go to concerts every time you leave here.”

“We never have gotten along well together, have we, Sarah? I think the best way for us to do is not to talk when we’re around each other, unless we can’t avoid it.”

Sarah stared at Joy, incredulous that the mist over the animosity of the two had at last blown away.

“I mean it,” said Joy, “I need every bit of my energy for my work. I can’t waste any of it on you. I’m sure you feel the same way about me. So, let’s not—waste any energy.”

Sarah, regarding her beneath incendiary brows, was just taking on energy. “It’s true we’ve never gotten on together. It started the first day you came and put Packy away in your reticule. You walked away with him, reticule and all. Packy was one of the best playmates I ever had—his hand and his pocket-book had well oiled connections. And now through you he’s queered himself, and will never blow around here again.”

“I always felt Packy was at the bottom of it. But I don’t care. I’ve done my next-best to get along with you, and you too have made somewhat of an effort, but we can’t get along—so let’s not waste any more energy.”

She walked out of the kitchenette, trembling. After a day of unmitigated, although varied, work, her nerves were rigid, and had given away at the first little jab.

So far, the fall had been one of steady labour, punctuated only by Sarah’s jeers and by the music to which she had listened with Jim. Galli-Curci had come, a marvel and a thrill.