Part 14

He opened his mouth and closed it. His silence had suddenly changed colour. It was almost as if he had; and she read it as easily as if he had spoken. They were not so—careful—with Sarah as they might have been with “nice” girls. Jerry had diagnosed it—the key of their relationship with men was that the men acted as if they were among themselves. There had been just that careless oblivion, that utter lack of the protective instinct toward Sarah; and the idea of it was so horribly perverted that she gave a little shiver.

“Aha, shimmying?” said Dum-Dum, finding speech at last. “Music too much for you? Come on, let’s dance till the others get through.”

She looked at him so strangely that his inviting pose disintegrated and he toppled back. “That’s—_the first thing I’ve heard you say_. Must I take that—as the keynote to your character?”

He was regarding her with alarm and now spoke soothingly. “Oh all right; but it’s darn good music!”

“_Good music!_” She checked herself. After all, silence was preferable to talking in different tongues.

Jerry came back to them on feet that no longer lilted to the music, her face sagging white against the painted masks of the girls on the floor. Crawf followed with a defiant expression, and Jim came last.

“They don’t remember a thing,” said Jerry; “they’re perfect nitwits, the whole nest of ’em. Every waiter spilled a different description—the head waiter doesn’t even remember whether they were old or young.”

“It seems to be the custom here,” said Jim, “to forget things like that!”

“But the cash you forked out would have tickled their memory if there had been anything to tickle,” said Jerry.

“What can we do now?” Joy asked limply. Somehow she had felt that coming down here would solve everything—that it was going to end up smoothly, things would explain themselves and roll into place, just like the ending of a story.

The five stood in an indecisive little group, looking at each other. A waiter who had been darting his head around a corner to survey them at intervals now darted himself around and approached them with a velvet-covered but none the less insistent air. “If your party is not coming inside——?”

They left as indecisively, and drove home in amazement. It had not occurred to them that they would not be able to read the dark pages of this affair. The sensation of utter futility is new to youth, and momentarily stuns. Until they had followed up every avenue of investigation left them, they had evaded the wings of horror that had been hovering ahead. Now there was room for all that awfulness. They spoke in low tones, the situation becoming more hopeless as they discussed it. Jim said the publicity of the police was not to be desired; Crawf and Dum-Dum, abject almost to cringing by now, said that of course they would finance investigation through a private detective agency, which proposition was speedily approved by Jerry. Joy sat in the tentacles of a memory that added horror. _What were the last words she had ever said to Sarah?_ A practical request to keep out of her life, and she, Joy, would do the same. Under the calcium ray of this dreadful evening’s events, her words were conceited, selfish, ill-tempered—self-sufficient. If one only knew, when words were flying around, that those were the last words that person would ever hear from one’s mouth—how many things would remain unsaid!

A repressed goodnight to the two guilty youths, and leaving Jim, who was to go straight to the detective office. She and Jerry went to Sarah’s room of one accord, then wandered aimlessly through the empty-seeming apartment before going to bed. . . .

“She’ll turn up,” said Jerry; but her voice hung fire.

She did not turn up. Days thickened into weeks, with the detective bringing steady reports of investigation along a blank wall. Something that he had said on undertaking the case quivered in Joy’s memory.

“A missing-girl proposition is almost hopeless, you know, when twelve thousand disappear every year.”

“Twelve thousand a year—in this country!” she cried, and he nodded.

“So you see—it gets pretty difficult.”

It was a strange thing—this voidness that had been Sarah. When Sarah had been there, their lives were as separate as if they had been two strange boarders in the same boarding house. She had never found anything in common with Sarah; she had never tried to. She had disliked her, and not done her best to conceal this dislike. Now Sarah was gone, and her absence made no ripple in Joy’s life. How could she miss her absence, having never really felt her presence—having even suggested that they ignore each other’s presence? But her going left Joy with a queer feeling of self-hatred. Sarah had been a lonely figure, a drifter on the churning waters of excitement; a drifter with nothing upon which to cling, knowing no more than to keep her head above the rising tide. And Joy had faithfully imitated the performance related of certain people, who, some nineteen hundred years ago, had passed by on the other side.

Passing by on the other side was glossed over nowadays as: “It isn’t any of my business.” Everyone did it about everyone. In this new analysis she wondered—-if she had not been passing Jerry by on the other side also. The answer rose automatically to her throat: “It isn’t any of my business.”

IX

It was after the Christmas holidays, which Joy had worked through with no let-up save Christmas day at home with her father, that Pa announced a change in schedule.

“You are working too steadily,” he said. “You never do anything else; you will turn into a machine; then you will no longer be a girl, and the warmth and glory of your appeal will be gone. Like that! Moreover, it takes a fine shade of quality from your voice; I want you to use it as an instrument, of course, but I think too much of how hard you have worked, and how dull your skin and eyes are getting, when I hear you.”

“Do you really think I’m losing my quality?” Joy demanded.

He laughed. “There—do you see what you just said? That shows you are turning into a little tuning fork, my dear. A _girl_ would have cried: ‘Are my skin and eyes _really_ dull?’ or at least looked in the mirror in front of you.” Before her attitude of unrelaxed question, he grew serious. “No, your quality is not as yet impaired in the slightest; and you are soaring along so swiftly that I cannot believe you have been with me for so few months. But a good teacher can see a fault pending before it takes possession; and as I have so often remarked, I am a good teacher. You need a change.”

“Are you going to send me home for a rest?” she asked in swift antagonism.

“No. You are going to New York. Take some friends along with you if you wish; stay at the Belmont, where all the _nice_ Bostonians stay when they deign to turn their faces westward; go to the opera; go shopping; in short, have not a rest, but a vacation.”

“New York!” she breathed. “Oh, Pa—do you really mean it?”

He nodded. “And I want you to sing for my baby.” He mentioned a name that was a household word for glory of song, a name that shone high and clear in the eminence where only the truly great stars remain, while others tremble for a day and then are gone.

“Sing—for—her!” Joy gasped. “Oh, Pa, I couldn’t—not yet!”

“Little Joy—you will find as you go on, that the greatest ones will always be the easiest and kindest before whom to sing. They know the real elements, and can distinguish lack of training from lack of endowment; and they know of how much value is encouragement, along the weary ladder of the artist. I shall write her a letter, and she will send you word at the Belmont when to come.”

As she thought it over, she could not remember when she had been so excited. Jerry shared her anticipation, and announced that she was going also; it was a good opportunity to select models for her next sale.

“We can get Félicie, too,” she said; “It’s about time she went over to see Greg again.”

Neither voiced the mutual thought, that two of them going to New York alone seemed incomplete. Félicie made a third—possibly a more harmonious third than the other who had silently dropped from their lives.

Félicie acceded to their plans, and Joy wrote her father for money for the trip. His answering check and letter came when the three girls were all in Jerry’s room, Jerry “toning up” several of Félicie’s costumes. Joy read the letter with half her attention on Félicie’s bewitchingness in a pale green velvet that shone dully like moonlight on an even lawn, throwing out her colouring and features in rich relief. Suddenly a name on the page caught her attention. She looked again and then read the paragraph over slowly:

“I hope while you are in New York that you will see your cousin Mrs. Eustace Drew, who was Mabel Lancaster. The Lancasters of whom you have heard me speak; they were your mother’s cousins once removed, and we have not kept up the relationship as she would have wished. I have written Mabel that you are coming, and she will undoubtedly call on you at the Belmont.”

She sat for a moment watching Jerry swirl the velvet on Félicie into marvelous lines. Mabel Lancaster—who had come into Charlette’s for her trousseau, with her brother, Phil Lancaster—of whom Jerry still thought with unquenchable flame. Her first impulse was to show Jerry the letter, share her surprise at this identification of New York cousins she had heard her father mention so many times. Then she held herself back. What if cousin Mabel would forget to call upon her—what if she wasn’t the same one, after all—Joy had forgotten the married name Jerry had given. So she tore the letter into tiny bits, and prepared for the trip with excitement that grew to boiling point as she savoured the amazing possibilities of the coincidence, if coincidence it was.

They took the midnight train, landing in New York in time for breakfast, which they ate at Childs’ opposite the Belmont.

“Although even this place is getting too expensive,” Jerry grumbled.

They giggled all through the meal from sheer light-headedness at being off together. The French waitress had brought them their griddle-cakes, smiled at them in delight, and said as they left: “You act like all young girls should—happy and gay.” This set them off with renewed impetus, and after installing their luggage at the Belmont and as Jerry said “spreading more around in the way of tips than we ate for our breakfast,” they spent the morning going through the Fifth Avenue shops, seeing all “the latest models” with an economical thoroughness that left enraged saleswomen behind them. In the afternoon Félicie curled up for a rest.

“I never sleep on sleepers, and if I don’t look my best, Greg will notice it and say it’s because I’ve been running myself ragged in Boston,” she explained, burrowing her head down under the covers, from which came forth the muffled request: “Please don’t open any windows; you know I can’t sleep where there’s too much air around; it distracts my attention.”

Jerry had made arrangements for tea with two Princeton men, and Joy had willingly consented to go with her. She was just in the mood for squeezing the orange of her good time in New York dry.

They met the Princetonites in the lobby—two well-tailored youths, with that sleek, parted-in-the-middle college expression. The taller of the two, one Steve Mitchell, combed Joy up and down in one competent sweep of the eyes, and annexed her, while the other, poetically called Harry Hanigan, followed Jerry, who had done no more than greet them airily, shove Joy at them just as airily, then make her way to the nearest door, which fronted on the line of taxis.

“This place always acts as if it were the Methodist quarterly conference,” Harry complained loudly. “Come on, Jerry; let’s put in a little pep.”

He stepped with Jerry inside the swinging door, and pushed it, starting off so fast they had to dart around with it in self-protection—or so it seemed. A gentleman around forty, of a comfortable figure, had happened to be entering the swinging doors on the other side, and he too was forced to dart around for self-protection. But whereas his expression was varied, Jerry and Harry seemed to be enjoying themselves. The pace of the revolving doors increased; it almost looked as if the gentleman of no longer comfortable proportions were running a marathon, while the two-in-one on the other side sped over more merrily.

“Why—they’re doing it on _purpose_!” Joy exclaimed.

Her companions looked about them at the crowd of grinning bellboys collecting, together with the scattering of guests who were pretending not to watch while keeping tabs on every round. “I should think Harry’d get sick of this; he’s done it in almost every hotel in New York,” he said restfully, and waited. The pace slackened; soon the two wedged themselves out of the pinwheel, and waited until, crimson-faced, the third party in the proceedings flew out and bore down upon them.

“Awfully sorry, sir,” said Harry earnestly. “I got packed in with this lady by mistake, and we were so confused we started whirling around—you can see how that would be—and then I lost my head and lost count——”

The intent to kill was by no means abated in the eye of the flaming one. With a hasty, “By George, Mary, we must catch the train; we’ve lost a lot of time with this gentleman here!” Harry seized Jerry and drifted through the revolving doors once more. No one went after them. Joy and Steve found them by a taxi outside, Harry leaning up against it in a Napoleonic attitude.

“Was that neat, or was it not?” he hailed them triumphantly. Steve helped the girls into the taxi, pushed Harry inside, and said to the man: “Drive to the Astor roof.”

“Where’s that?” the driver asked, turning a helpless expression upon him.

“Why,—you drive to the Hotel Astor, and then just keep on driving up to the roof.” Steve spoke sweetly, considerately, as one might to a child, then climbed in and banged the door.

“Just for that, he’ll go the long way around,” Harry complained, peering out at the meter as they started off.

“You have such cheap ideas, Harry!” said Dave. “Jerry knows us, of course; but I was going to make Miss Nelson think we were millionaires.”

“Never mind—we’ll make the waiters at the Astor think we’re millionaires. Not in the obvious way! But by the good old method of gas. What do you say—are you game, Jerry?”

“The waiters don’t listen the way they used to,” Jerry objected.

“Oh, you haven’t been around with us for some time! Look here; I—-I’ll be the Western magnate; I’ve got a whacking black cigar I’ve been keeping just for this. Jerry, you look as though you could have come from most anywhere; you’ll be my wife, and I probably picked you up in some mining camp while I was getting rich, or something. See? Act with that as a background. We’re the recent rich, that want anything that’s high-priced or has a fancy name. Get it?”

“And I,” Steve contributed, “will be a New York crest-rider—gay young rounder—look down on you of course, but keen to wangle the contract out of you through this social means.”

“Contract! Oh, yes, there’s got to be a contract!”

“Cer-tain-ly. A million dollar one. We’ve got to make this party as doggy as possible. And Miss Nelson here can be my fiancée—I’ve dragged her along to impress her with my importance—you’ll be typical New York yearling, Miss Nelson, bored with anybody but your own set, bored with business, furious at me for bringing you, try to get all the men at the other tables to look at you, then turn ’em down with a haughty stare—you know.”

Jerry stood up on the taxi, struggling with herself. “I am nothing if not artistic,” she said; “and if I’m to be a mining-camp-varnished-with-dollars-product, I shall look the part.”

“That’s one of your best points, Jerry,” approved Steve. “You do a thing up right.”

She sat down again, barely in time before they drew up at the Astor and poured forth. Joy caught her breath in an abortive laugh, as they solemnly filed through the luxurious lobby, Jerry leading as usual. In a few swift touches, Jerry had changed herself from the breezy mondaine upon whom everything naturally looked right and leads to the harmony of that elusive completeness that is style, to the woman who, with obvious’ means and as obvious a wish to look well, pathetically falls just short of the mark. Her skirt sagged, ever so little, but still condemning enough; the buttons on the coat of her duveteen suit were fitted loosely in the wrong buttonholes; her hat was tilted back ingenuously, revealing a wide expanse of forehead, and she had pinned her hair in here and there so that the remains of its bobbed audacity had the appearance of little ends that had messily strayed from their moorings. Her gloves were partly unbuttoned, and one flapped as she walked. Even her walk had changed—it was a businesslike stride, with “getting-there” written all over her hastening back.

“Not a girl in a hundred would show she could look like that,” said Steve, in critical approval, as he kept pace with Joy in behind. “No wonder Jerry’s an institution that never fails.”

As they reached the roof Harry pulled out his cigar, a huge black affair that he stuck in his mouth at an angle of forty-five degrees. With cunning eye he marked out the head waiter and bore down upon him, thumbs in his waist-coat pocket, twirling his fingers. “We want the best table in the place,” he said, speaking through the cigar, at which the waiter tried not to look. “No expense shall be spared!”

He swaggered as the waiter hastily led them to a corner table. Joy was about to sink down, conscious that forks were being suspended in midair all about them, when Jerry put in a word.

“I don’t like this table, Bill,” she said querulously. “I want to be out in the middle where I can see everything that goes on, I do.”

“Waiter, did you hear my wife? What my wife says goes! Nothing’s too good for her!” Harry turned fiercely upon the waiter, jerking his cigar up and down in time to his words. The head waiter, all apologies, conducted them to a more centrally located table, and beckoned to a lesser menial, who helped install them. Jerry gave a bereft wail.

“Where’s the flowers! We haven’t got no flowers! Look, Bill, at that table _there_ they got flowers!”

Her fingers pointed firmly to an adjoining table, all eyes of which were already fixed upon them with that passionate interest that only Americans display in the affairs of others.

“Now, Rosie, didn’t I tell you not to point at things with your fingers?” Harry admonished in a penetrating lower tone.

“Well, a fork wasn’t handy; the man ain’t set the table yet,” Jerry responded.

“Let us order,” interposed Steve in a suave, glossing-it-over tone, as the waiter thrust the menu before them.

“Just rustle us the best tea on the premises, young feller,” said Harry to the waiter, with a wave of the hand. “With all the fixin’s; see?”

Jerry interposed once more. “Say, Bill, I want a merring glass. Does that come with the tea?”

“A meringue glacé,” said Steve smoothly to the by now distracted waiter.

“What kind does madame prefer?”

“Kind?” Jerry looked bewildered. “Is there different kinds? Can’t I just have a plain merring glass?”

“A vanilla one, perhaps,” said Steve with a reassuring smile directed first at her and then at the waiter. Then, as the waiter fluttered away, leaving several around pouring water and adjusting the table, and others poised near by with their ears cocked, Steve leaned across the table, and addressed Harry in a loud, confidential tone:

“Rather a pleasant idea of yours, Mr.—er—Billings, to combine business with afternoon tea.”

“Well, I hope your girl and my wife get to be real good friends,” said Harry cordially. “I can remember when a million-dollar contract would ’a’ looked pretty big to me.”

“It is practically certain, then, that we have underbid the—the Standard Oil Company on this?” Steve demanded.

“Lemme tell you, young man, underbiddin’ don’t always mean you get a million-dollar contract. Not by a jugful!”

“Bill, remember there is ladies present!” from Jerry.

“Rosie, we’re talkin’ in business terms now, an’ you can chew on that piece of bread the waiter handed you, till we get through. Now lemme tell you, young man, the fact is, the underbiddin’ don’t cut so much ice as my private an’ personal opinions. I get hunches, that’s what I do; an’ hunches is what made Bill Billings what he is to-day, if I do say it.”

Joy could only watch, all her energies concentrated on stifling the mirth that their antics were inspiring. The waiter brought their tea and Jerry’s “merring,” which Jerry devoured with the aid of a spoon, a knife and fork, using her roll also as a pusher now and then. Harry drank tea from his saucer and discoursed on the grudge he bore the Standard Oil; they were a bunch of cheap skates, and they would be a bunch of soreheads to-morrow when they learned that Mr. Mitchell had nailed this contract. “For it is yours, young man, for the asking; and yours is a firm I would trust a lot further than that.” The people of the next table had given up all pretense of eating or talking to each other, and the table back of Joy was also avidly silent. She could not see them, but she could feel the tense attention, and sense the vibrations of vision that centered on their table.

Tea being over, Harry grew more expansive. “You going to step round to the minister’s soon, you two?” he beamed benevolently. “Better not waste any time. I married Rosie when she was sixteen—Told her then to stick to me and she’d wear diamonds. I notice you stuck, old girl?”

“Now, Bill, you stop!” Jerry simpered. The head waiter was presenting the check. Several other waiters who had added to their sense of well-being were lined up in back of the head waiter. Steve started to take the bill, but Harry intervened.

“Pay my way’s my motto,” he said, whereat Steve lost his composure for the first time and gulped while Harry drew his rather thin wallet from his pocket and carefully counted out what looked like a small amount which he laid on the salver with the check. Steve recovered himself and filled in the awkward pause by saying:

“Yes, we intend to be married as soon as Miss Nelson can get her trousseau together. It’s already taken a year—as fast as she gathers a few little things together, why, they go out of style, and then she has to start all over again. It’s such a fearful ordeal for the poor darling!”

They rose to go, Joy conscious of an acute sag in the waiter’s expression as he took the salver and walked away with failing footsteps. And then she turned and saw the table whose listening silence she had been appreciating throughout that time. She stared in stupefaction. The Lamkins; the Alfred Lamkins from Foxhollow Corners; pillars of the church, two solid, well-buttressed souls, with four white-eyelashed, shiny-nosed, unmarried daughters. All staring at Joy in that awful delight experienced by small-town souls when they find their neighbours doing something out of the ordinary.

“Why—there’s Joy Nelson!” said Mrs. Lamkin, in obviously manufactured surprise.

“So it is!” chorused the four white-eyelashed things. “Hello, Joy!”

It was plain that they expected her to stop and speak to them, exchange the usual banal what-are-you-doing-in-the-big-city of the out-of-towner, and present her companions. It was just as plain that she intended doing nothing of the sort, and with a confused nod of acknowledgement, her head down, she almost ran past them to the elevator.

“Did you see that waiter wilt at my twenty-five cent tip, and all the others melt away?” Harry chortled as they went down.

“Who were those people, Joy?” Jerry demanded, pulling her hat down and her hair out.

“People from home.”

“Home-town stuff!” Steve cried. “You’re compromised forever now, Joy; you’ll have to marry me now!”