Part 3

“And living with us. I’ll give you my address before we kiss this brain-factory good-bye, and then you can let me know—at any time, understand?”

A shadow fell across the door. It was Sarah, who, completely jazzed out, came in with hardly a look, much less a salutation, for the two girls.

“Hello, Sal,” said Jerry comfortably. “I’m asking Joy to come down to Boston and live with us.”

Sarah wheeled with an incredibly swift motion, and looked first to one girl, then to the other. Then she spoke. “Oh—indeed!” she drawled; and the echo of her voice lingered forever in the air.

II

In a house that was a mass of Mid-Victorian odds and ends, retrospection of the dizzy whirl of Prom was unsettling. Nailed-down carpets, red velvet furniture with lace tidies, antimacassars and ponderous what-nots, cast a veil over jazz, jazzy flirtation, and jazzy routine of life—the sort of veil that enhances while deadening the sharpness of what it is thrown over. Time seemed to have halted some sixteen years ago in the Nelson household and rested with stationary breath among the old family portraits, with the death of Joy’s mother—a lovely, radiant mother, so everyone said, who would have been a sympathetic and understanding companion to her daughter during her girlhood.

Outside his business, which was very successful, Mr. Nelson lived in the gallant days of ’80’s and ’90’s, when the ordered world shone with smug serenity. He sat in his study and read back into Victorian times every evening. Joy had early learned to regard him as a figure remotely and theoretically pleasant, like Oliver Wendell Holmes or William James—a figure to be acknowledged and respected, but with whom she had little in common.

The only really beautiful thing in the house that time could not turn bizarre, was the grand piano that Joy’s mother had left behind. It stood in one corner of the high-ceilinged, wax-floored parlour, and Joy had played on it and sung with it ever since she had been so small that she had to be lifted on to the stool and held there while her baby fingers struck the loving keys and she crooned strange, tuneless accompaniments. Her mother had been a singer who had forgotten her voice when she met George Nelson . . . and Joy had been told that she was the latest of generations of wonderful voices. They rang in her mind and soul at times—hauntingly sweet, sweetly insistent. She was the heir of all the ages! All the beauty of their dead song was merged into her—what was she going to do with these riches? But when the voices became too insistent, Joy had always drawn back. She was queerly ashamed of “having a voice.” In Foxhollow Corners, people who did that sort of thing too much “got boring.” She wanted to be a real girl, to do the things real girls did, and to have a Prince Charming waiting at the end of the golden trail of girlhood.

And now the Prince Charming was no more. He was struck from her vision with rude completeness. There were moments when she mourned the loss of her ideal as a maiden mourns the loss of her innocence; but for the most part the vivid colouring of Prom shut out its dark hours. She had had a wonderful time at breakfast. Tom had gone to bed, and the stags were just starting on their second wind. They had piled into an automobile and gone rattling about the country, loudly singing “snappy” bits of ragtime in close harmony, waking everyone “in time for their morning’s work.” If Prince Charmings had gone from the world, there still was left the satisfactory substitute of high-hearted youth who would have a good time even if romance had died.

To come back to Foxhollow Corners was razing the mountain of delight that had been mounting higher and higher ever since she had left Foxhollow Corners. The girls were all so uninteresting. After Jerry’s plangency, they only contributed to the flatness of things. All they did was to embroider or go to the movies, or walk down town to see what was going on, under cover of a sundae. And those of the men who were not away all the year at college, had been put in their place by Tom as “a buncha fruits.”

And above all, there was nothing to do—absolutely nothing to do if you didn’t do it with the other girls. Joy played ragtime on the scandalized grand piano, and thought over Jerry’s words. . . . Life with Jerry, and studying singing from a real teacher! It was a thought with which to toy. Of course, when it came right down to it, she could not go. Jerry and Sarah were too different—the New Englander in her cried out against their careless ways, and shrank from the thought of being uprooted from her native soil. And when the New Englander would give way to the French strain that was her mother’s ancestors, and her blood danced in her veins at the thought of liberation from Foxhollow Corners—there was always the chilling consideration of what her father would have to say on the subject. He regarded her as something that could be put away or taken out at leisure—and for him to find that she was outside the limits he had given her, might prove revolutionary.

And then one morning at breakfast while she was fidgeting over her prunes, her father himself threw the bomb of revolution across the table:

“Joy, my child, I have been made executor of a will.”

Joy looked up vaguely from her prunestones.

“An old friend who may, or may not, have known that it would be inconvenient for me to go to California at this time. Yes, the estate is in California—I shall have to leave the first of the month.”

“How long will you be gone?” Joy asked, and a little fever of excitement began to burn within her.

“I’m sure I cannot prophesy—these affairs are sometimes indefinite in the extreme.” He frowned over his soft-boiled egg, and the fever within her quickened, as she began to vision the possibilities of this departure.

“Were you—were you thinking of taking me with you?” she asked, with no desire warming her voice.

“It would not be particularly desirable. I know that fathers do take their daughters unchaperoned upon trips with them, but I should prefer not to have you with me. I may have to be travelling constantly”—he heaved a sigh—“and I would not know where or with whom to leave you. Yet that question faces me here as well. I could not leave you alone in this house. And there are no relations nearer than your New York cousins.”

Joy’s blood was pounding. The New Englander in her rejoiced that she was not to be torn from her own shores to Pacific sea lines; and the gay little French strain sang that here was her chance that might never be heaped so invitingly before her again! She opened her mouth to speak, but the prunestones in front of her balked the phrase trembling upon her lips. They looked so solid—so unchanging. How could she taste the savour of opportunity, surrounded by prunestones?

And while she hesitated—a little whistle of ragtime in the street outside caught her ear and tickled it. It was only a few bars of syncopated lure—but it dislodged the speech trembling in her throat.

“Father—I don’t see why I—why I couldn’t go to Boston and study music for a little while. You know I have had no one since Miss Bessie—and I do think it would be nice to polish off my singing with some real Boston teachers—don’t you? I could just go down when you went away—and then decide what to do, when you came back.”

It was out; and now her fever was mingled with chills. Why had she even proposed such a thing? Her father with bent brows was looking through his egg—beyond.

“Your mother studied singing in Boston,” he said at last, in a voice so calm that Joy’s mouth hung open, emotion suspended; “she lived at a Students’ Club. I suppose that is what you would do.”

“I suppose—I suppose it is!” Joy echoed, while the New Englander within her whispered: “Of course it is!” and the venturesome French blood sang: “See how far you’ve come with him—go a little farther and tell him about Jerry!”

But, lost in the marvel of his consideration of her project, she dared not venture further.

As far as Mr. Nelson was concerned, the subject was settled. Joy was to go down to Boston for a month or two, and he wrote to the Students’ Club where her mother had stayed, for a room for her. Her mother’s old teacher could not be located, and nothing daunted by this nor the fact that it was late in the season to find any teacher, he procured a name and address from “Miss Bessie,” Joy’s old teacher at the school.

And so suddenly, mechanically, things had been decided, from a fragment of ragtime whistled on the street. Joy was to leave Foxhollow Corners, New England—arrangements went forward without her aid or volition. Her father received notice from the Students’ Club that it was crowded, but that she would be well taken care of at one of their annexes. It was a letter that left him calm in the assurance that Joy would be well chaperoned; a letter that plunged Joy into gloom. The days leaped ahead with preparation to the day of her scheduled departure. It was early in June; she did not want to leave Foxhollow Corners, when she came right down to it. A little while longer, and the boys would be home from college, the gay season of Foxhollow Corners would be ushered in—but her ticket had been bought, her father superintending every detail; and he even rode with her as far as Boston.

She arrived at the Students’ Club Annex late in the afternoon. She thought it was rather a dingy looking place, as she established her things in the faded green room which the lady-who-ran-things informed her she was very lucky to get—and the girls she passed in the none-too-fragrant hallway, certainly lacked tang.

Then when she was left alone in the room, adventure suddenly pricked her. At last she was in Boston—all by herself—responsible to no one—well, practically to no one——. And she had Jerry’s address in her bag.

She was tired after her journey—but the fever of enterprise was burning high within her now. And while it burned—she’d better act!

She left the Students’ Club Annex with footsteps that repudiated the ground in their swift urge. What she had been fitfully dreaming of for so long, was now close at hand.

Jerry’s address was on the other side of the town. After a struggle with the street-car system, she landed in front of a Beacon Street apartment house near the city limits, and was informed by the elevator boy that Jerry lived on the sixth floor. Details of a strange journey lower one from fever pitch, and as Joy stood staring at the door of the apartment, after she had pressed the bell, she was tempted to turn and run. She was certainly a fool—yes, a fool, to come here. Why, Jerry would have forgotten all about her by now. Why hadn’t she considered that before?

Just as she was turning to make a dash for the stairway, the door opened a crack and a tossed head peered cautiously around it. “Who—Joy Nelson!” The door swung open to reveal Jerry in purple satin kimono and pink mules. “Joy Nelson! My God, I’m glad to see you! Come in here!” She pulled her inside, and banged the door. “How long have you been in Boston? You don’t know how I’ve kicked myself that I let you go off without getting your address—just like me——” She was leading her through the long, narrow hall, and they now came into a tiny little reception room, daintily furnished in rose and gilt, but without the fragile, uncomfortable chairs that usually go with such a setting. Jerry installed Joy on the luxurious sofa, and then switched on the lights, as rose silk curtains were lowered over all the windows.

“I’m glad you remembered me,” said Joy.

“Remember you? Didn’t I tell you you were the only girl I ever liked. That’s quite a declaration of devotion, if you know me——But now tell me everything. How long have you been down here, etc.?”

“I came to-day. Father had to go to California—and he let me come down here to study singing. I felt lonely over at the Students’ Club place, so I thought I’d come and see you.”

“Come and see me!” Jerry echoed. “I asked you to come and stay with us! You mean to say you’ve eased yourself down as far as Boston and then are planning to stay at some Students’ dive? What did I tell you to think over?”

Adventure was knocking at Joy’s pulses. “Oh—why—I never thought you were serious,” she faltered. “Because we don’t know each other very well—and everything——”

“What’s and everything?” Jerry asked. “Why board at a bum place where you can have only certain hours to practice and have to live by rules with a lot of lame ducks—I know the kind of girls in those places, their idea of jazz is Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes—when you can come here with us?”

There was a silence. Joy had not told her real reason. Of course, Jerry had not said so, but Joy felt certain that there was no chaperone in this apartment. And that was what would make it impossible for her father ever to give his consent to her staying there. . . .

“Of course I’m selfish in this,” said Jerry, “even if it seems to sound that I’m just looking at it from your side. But just Sal alone here with me is getting on my nerves. Not to slam her unnecessarily, but—three is a lot better than two.”

Joy thought: Father was en route to California. And suddenly she knew she had been thinking about this, beneath everything else, all along. Not that she meant to deceive father. But he was on his way to California, and it would take about six days for a letter to reach him, and how could he forbid at long distance, anyway—especially when things might be represented quite nicely? The New Englander in her had left in disgust. And the Southerner in her was laughing—_she_ had been thinking this out all along!!!

“I—I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Jerry,” she said. “I’ll stay here with you a little while—if you really want me—just a little while—and I’ll pay you the money that father gives me for my board.”

“Sal and I get pretty rocky sometimes,” said Jerry reflectively; “a regular income will fit in O. K. But a little while has got to stretch out, Joy.”

Before she realized that things had been decided, she was being transported down the hall, with Jerry telling her that she could send for her luggage. “You don’t mind having the maid’s room, do you? It’s just called the maid’s room—we never have been known to have a maid—we chew on delicatessen delicacies when we don’t bum our meals.”

The maid’s room was striking to incoherency. It had started out with some uncompromising black walnut furniture which had certainly been compromised. The room had been recklessly done over in swift black and white effects, behind which the solid furniture pieces lurked and frowned. Just as Jerry dashed over to lift the black and white striped shades, a bell rang loudly and she struck a despairing pose: “And me not fully out of bed yet!” she wailed.

“Where’s Sarah?” Joy questioned.

“Sal? Asleep,—this is one of the days when we stoke up energy for the times to come.” The bell rang again. “Oh, what periwinkle has the nerve at this hour——”

“I’ll go,” and Joy started through the hall again. But Jerry pushed her aside as they reached the reception room.

“I might as well slide it open first as last,” she said, and marched down to the door, purple kimono flying in the breeze, pink mules clicking on the hardwood floor. She jerked open the door, and two young men almost fell in.

“Shiver your timbers, Jerry! If you aren’t always up to the meanest tricks,” complained the first to recover, a pink-faced youth with an expansive grin and inquisitive, cocky ears. “Here I lean up against your door—only solid thing I’ve met to-day that would stand up against me—and Packy leans on _me_,—and then you come and take it right away—take away our only—only and sole means of support!”

Packy, a tall, gangly stripling with a roving eye, looked past Jerry to where Joy was standing, while chanting solemnly: “How are we, Jerry? We thought we’d drop by—drop in—for a few minutes’ bicker. Twinky has been inhalin’ ’em down right an’ left, an’ things are gettin’ a bit sticky over at the hall——Wait till I slip you the glad tale! Who’s the houri?”

“Friend of mine, come to live here,” said Jerry shortly. “Joy, these are two gay young college boys. You can tell that just to look at ’em.”

Packy and Twinky, by this time abreast of Joy, were looking at her in about the most open admiration she had ever seen. “What’d you say her name was? Joy?” questioned Packy. “One of the best I’ve heard in a long time. Has she got any other good names?”

They breezed into the nearest room which opened from the hall—a room which took Joy a matter of weeks before she had assimilated every last luxurious and clever detail. In the first place, the room was so large as to be startling in an apartment. The beautiful grand piano in the corner gave her a quick start of pleasure. But despite the piano, the room was distinctly not a music room. Remove the piano, Joy thought, and it looked as if one had walked into a men’s club. The huge fireplace, the capacious lounge in front of it, the comfortable chairs, the smoking sets, the magazines on the table, the card tables pushed against the wall—she found herself commenting inwardly that there was only lacking a billiard table.

Twinky sat down on the lounge, while Packy helped himself to a cigarette. “Doggone, Jerry, I wish you’d treat yourself to a new thingumawhich,” he complained, “that purple jiggum is so old it’s shiny.”

“Silk generally shines, young sweetheart,” retorted Jerry, also taking a cigarette and inhaling thirstily as she sat down, giving the purple jiggum a jerk.

“Well, I’m sick of it anyhow. I’d set you up to a new one if it wouldn’t look so naughty.”

Jerry’s thin nostrils twitched sardonically. “When you drop in on me like this, you can’t expect to find a Paris knock-out,” she observed. “I never keep anyone waiting, anyhow. Well—why this little call?”

“It’s Twink, the drunken idiot. Twink, tell your tale.”

They looked over to the lounge. A gentle snore was their response.

“There, what did I tell you?” demanded Packy.

“You’ve told us nothing,” Jerry snapped, taking another cigarette, having exhausted her first in a few long pulls. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to the story, while you were about it.”

“Well, you know it’s nighing unto Commencement over in Cambridge. You know, Class Day and all that sort of thing. Of course I realise that our Harvard parties are mere incidents in a crowded life to you, but you at least know it’s existent—what?”

“Go on, Packy,” spat out Jerry, with some smoke; “quit trying to impress Joy with your English. If I had that line, I’d bury it instead of airing it.”

“Well,” pursued Packy, equably: “Twink’s family are all parked here for the great event. And what does Twink do, but do what you see he has done. Ergo, etcetera. I got him away from the enveloping wet, and brought him over here to shake it. You can see ’twon’t take long. But there is nowhere in all Cambridge he can hide from that family, and the hotels in Boston are such darn public places. It isn’t as if Twink wasn’t well known.”

“H’m,” said Jerry. “Of course if you think my friend and I enjoy having one of those dissolute college boys parked on our lounge sleeping it off——”

“Twink will make it all right with you,” he interposed; “and I’ll make it righter yet. You wait and see!”

“Waiting’s the worst thing I do,” Jerry responded; “but I don’t care—it’s a deal. You can sit here and watch by his bedside. Joy and I have got to dress.”

“Joy doesn’t need to dress. She can sit here and hold my hand, can’t you, Joy?”

Joy refused this entreaty, and she and Jerry left him among the magazines. In the hallway Jerry shot her a swift glance.

“Nice start-off your visit’s getting,” she said. “But we take things as they come; life’s too complicated any other way.”

Joy laughed. “There’s a lot in what you say. I never thought of it that way before—but that’s a pretty good philosophy of life.”

She went to telephone the Students’ Club. She had taken the momentous step; already things were beginning to whirl; and the guilty feeling in her excitement was growing fainter. Jerry was like one of Barrie’s characters—a law unto herself. A week of this—a week only—would be an unforgettable experience!

Much later, she went back into the living-room to find Jerry in a vivid green georgette, giving Packy a manicure across one of the little card tables. Twinky was sitting up, looking a little the worse for wear, throwing in a word of conversation now and then.

“Here comes the houri back again,” said Packy, waving one shining-nailed hand at her. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Joy. You don’t mind, do you?”

“He really has, you know,” said Twink. “He’s been handing Jerry a noise about it ever since I can remember.”

“Is it a fact you’ve come to Boston to study singing?” Packy inquired.

“Sing us a song, will you?”

“Go ahead, Joy,” said Jerry, putting away the manicure tools. “It’ll keep ’em quiet, anyway.”

Joy went over to the piano. “What kind of songs do you like?”

“Slushy ones,” said Twink promptly, to which Packy echoed: “Yes; the kind you can sit back and dream about.”

Joy played a few chords. The piano responded to her touch almost like a human being. Jerry evidently had kept it in tune, and the action suited her. She noticed these details automatically, as her voice floated out in an old college song. Her voice was rich with a promise that made one yearn for its fulfillment; but Joy did not even know enough about singing to know her faults, or to care. There were three verses, and when she had ended, there was a little silence in the room. Twink was the first to speak. “Some voice,” he said comfortably. “Got Melba and all the rest of the what-do-you-call-’ems trilling for help ’sfar’s I’m concerned.”

“You usually have to pay good money and sit in a stiff-backed chair to hear anything like that,” Packy contributed.

Jerry jumped up, tossing back her hair, which had fallen around her eyes. “You two have got to go now. I must talk to Joy—and Twink’s family will be sending out a search-warrant. So long!”

“All right for you,” complained Packy, going over to the piano as Twink obediently climbed forth from the recesses of the lounge. He stood looking down at Joy’s lovely white face, his leisurely eyelids not quite so far down over his eyes as was their habit. “I told you I’d fallen in love with you,” he said swiftly, “and I thought I meant it then, but now I realise I’ve never really meant anything before. I’ve fallen for you so hard that it’s no idle jest. You did it, you know. You should never sing like that to a fellow.”

Joy looked up at him with parted lips through which no words came. This was what one called “slinging a line.” But didn’t he do it well!

“You’ve got to see me soon,” he said. “You’ve got to go to the Harvard-Yale baseball game first. After that—there’ll be lots of other things. I’ll call you up.”

They were gone, and she turned to Jerry with comment which crumbled as she saw Jerry’s intent attitude. She was standing by the fireplace with her foot on the fender, her freckles puckered into concentration.

“Of course you must realize the voice you have,” she said slowly. “It’s gold—gold clear through. Raw gold, of course—but gold. It’s the kind of voice which, if I had, I would go through hell’s seventy furies to train and refine until I was at the pinnacle of my possibility—which means the top of the world. You’ve got everything to put you there.” She stopped with a sigh. “We’ll turn in now, and talk it over to-morrow.”

“Sarah?” Joy questioned as they went down the hall.

“Sal? She’ll sleep right through till to-morrow—she’s been run pretty ragged lately.”