Part 5

“Well, it takes a large order, for me. You’ve interested me so far, but the rest, like our little argument, remains to be proved!”

“I’ve noticed,” said Joy, “that nowadays it’s the girl who always has to be interesting and ‘prove something’—the man’s duty seems mainly to sit by and be amused. If she can amuse him, he sticks around; if not, he drifts on to the next and resumes his attitude of expectant passivity. Am I right?”

“I’ll hand it to you for the line of Noah Webster’s specials, anyway,” he drawled. “Didn’t you know little girls shouldn’t use such long words?”

“Well, I don’t care, it’s true! I’ve noticed it everywhere I’ve ever been, except at Jerry’s. You—even you—have changed a little since we got down here.”

The smile left his face. “That’s what I get for trying to treat you as if you’d never seen Jerry’s.”

“Why—what on earth do you mean?”

Before her amazed directness he turned away his face. “I can’t understand you at all,” he muttered.

At the end of that dance, Betty came running up to her, a different man in tow. “You _must_ meet my brother Grant,” she panted; “and he wants to meet you, too!”

Laughing, the two shook hands, and Joy found herself looking into eyes of the richest blue she had ever seen. Betty’s brother was very tall, very brown, and either very quiet or temporarily overcome. And at the very first survey, Joy decided that he was by far the nicest looking man she had met since she came to Boston.

“She sings, and everything,” chanted Betty, “and Packy brought her, and he’s danced every dance with her so far, and it’s only fair he should dance a little with some of the rest of us, don’t you think? Come on, Packy!”

Packy, looking volumes, moved off with Betty. Left alone, the two looked at each other and laughed. “That’s the way she always is,” explained Grant. “Mind if we sit this out? I’ve been sailing all day, and was dragged here under protest.”

They sat out on the porch, under the stars, and talked of various indifferent things. He discovered that she had not been there before, and insisted on taking her down the Promenade to the beach. There they sat on the sand and talked again upon indifferent things. It was calm and cool with the water sipping in front of them and the music from the hotel faintly behind them. Joy found herself liking Grant Grey very much indeed for so short an acquaintance. There was something so boyish and straightforward about him, a something that was decidedly different from the men she had been meeting at Jerry’s. Even if they were only college boys, they had a great deal of slangy sophistication that “Grant” did not possess. Then, too, the way he treated her was less—the only fitting word she could think of was _hectic_—than the way she had been treated lately. His grave respect and quiet talk of sailing, boats and similar neutral subjects were especially welcome after the argument with Packy on the way down in the car. And when he did abruptly shift the conversation to personalities, it was done in such a way that she did not mind.

“You know—I never thought before that I’d enjoy talking to a girl so much.”

“I’ve enjoyed it, too,” she replied; and then they were both silent, looking ahead of them at the indifferent waters. Neither knew exactly what to make of the magnetic current that seemed to flow from one to the other, even in the simplest sentences that they spoke.

“I know now when it was,” said Grant finally, after a little silence had been growing.

“When what was?”

“When I felt the way I do, about you. When I first saw you come into the room with Packy.”

Joy felt herself growing warm. How had things come as far as this—in half an hour? She rose, and shook the sand from her skirts. “We must go in. I don’t know how many dances we’ve missed. I never lost track of the time so before.”

“Neither did I——” said the boy beside her as they faltered back over the way they had come.

At the door they encountered Packy, who had hailed them with reserved cordiality. “Where in blazes have you two been? The dance was over fifteen minutes ago and I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

They had not even noticed that the music had stopped. “All my fault, Packy,” said Grant. “I took her down to see the Promenade.”

And then the two stood looking at each other. “When may I see you again?” he asked.

Joy had been hoping for those words, but now that they had come, she was incoherent with relief. “I—why——” she stammered. Packy intervened while she hesitated.

“You’ve got your nerve, Grant—I’ll hand it to you. But I brought Joy down here—dost follow the trend of my remarks?”

Grant paid no attention to him. “So that’s your name—Joy? It—fits you.”

“Let’s discuss names for awhile,” said Packy acidly. “We’ve nothing to do but ease back to Boston, and it’s only one-fifteen.”

“You have to go back to Boston at this hour?” cried Grant, incredulous.

“Certainly. Why not?” Joy was a little amused, thinking of the hours Jerry and Sarah accepted as a matter of course.

He towered over her, acute distress in every line of his face.

“Come on,” said Packy. “It’s only an hour’s run, Grant—less, at this time of night.”

He followed them to the automobile, still objecting to their ride. Joy got in the car and held out her hand. “Good-bye,” she said softly. He took her hand, forgetting to release it as he whispered: “Tell me your telephone number—quick!”

Packy was going around to get in at the other side, and in a heartbeat she had whispered the number. When Packy was installed, they had every appearance of finishing a casual leavetaking.

Once off, Packy refused to sulk unduly over the evening, instead taking a jocose attitude which was much more trying. “Well, Joy, I might have known you were like all the rest. Don’t you think, though, that you were crowding things—to run off on a nice little party like that with someone else, the first time I take you anywhere? And after all that whiffle all the way down about how _I_ couldn’t get away with it——”

Joy was stunned. She paused and weighed her words, searching for thoughts that would reach his point of view. “Coming down, you talked in a way that made me doubt whether I would ever go out with you again. Now, you are merely clinching my determination.”

To her stupefaction, he immediately grew humble. “Oh, Joy, I’ll swallow everything I said. You—you can’t blame me, though. I—I know so little about you—and I’m so crazy about you. Doesn’t that make absolutely no impression?”

“Why should it?” she asked wearily.

“That fellow Grant Grey isn’t lingering in your mind, is he? He’s all right, but O, so stiff, Joy. Typical Bostonese family—mother’s the Gorgon of the beach. Now listen—Joy—I may be crazy about you, but I’m willing to wait if there’s any danger about mixing the drinks. Yes, I’ll wait. I won’t say any more to-night—you can sleep all the rest of the way home, providing you don’t snore. A girl ought never to get so tired as you and Jerry and Sal—bound to snore when you get that way—nothing more unromantic.”

Joy counted every mile, she was so anxious to get back home and into her black walnut bed. When they finally drew up in front of the apartment house, she gave a sigh of relief. Packy laughed:

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’ve been rotten to-night, Joy—but next time I’m absolutely the genuine blue-ribbon Pomeranian. I told you—I can wait any reasonable length of time.”

He left her at the door of the apartment, and she flew in, eager to talk the evening over with Jerry. But they also had evidently motored afar for their party, and had not come in yet. She went to the cellarette and poured herself out a small “prescription,” making a wry face as she did so. Not long ago she would have recoiled at the idea of taking liquor. Now, ever since Sarah had first shown her how some drinks would brace her if she felt dead, and others would send her off to sleep if she had time to sleep some unexpected hour and couldn’t, she had come to look upon alcohol as a friend in need. Her father would think this horrible. And what would the family portraits think?—The thought trickled away as the liquor went down her throat, and she reviewed the events of the evening. Packy had been a great disappointment, adding to her growing cynicism about men. But were all men so—materialistic? She poured herself another glass, reaching for a more suitable phrase. Not materialistic, necessarily; rather, “of the earth, earthy.” Were they—all? She thought of Grant Grey, seeing again the clear eyes that seemed a reflection of his young boy’s soul. No, not all men were like Packy. A wave of feeling swept over her, so strong that she was left trembling. She must see Grant again—soon!

The wave passed, leaving her limp, a questioning almost of terror knocking at her pulse. _How could she feel so, about a man she had just met?_

III

” Look at that sailboat,” said Grant Grey.

“Yes,” said Joy contentedly.

The two were sitting on the piazza of the Grey’s summer home, which fronted the beach.

It had not been Grant who had finally called Joy up, but Betty, all thrills and eagerness. She asked Joy to come down for the week-end—“and Grant wants you to come, too!” she added, as if that settled it.

It had.

Sarah was frankly envious, Jerry rejoiced, at her invitation.

“You’ll get some rest,” said Jerry; “you never do here.”

“I wish _we_ could get away,” Sarah grumbled; “I get so sick of summer in the city.”

“Why don’t you go somewhere for a few weeks?”

Jerry shrugged her shoulders, and knocked the ashes off her cigarette. “No funds, as the banks tell me constantly. I have to stick around town and do a little work once in awhile.”

“Work!”

Jerry laughed. “It’s time I took in washing on the side again. I am not a young lady of independent means.”

Sarah gave forth a groan. “Oh, dear, Jerry, are you going to start again?”

“Must, my lady, the situation spells must, if I am to continue to buy our delicatessen breakfasts. At times, food seems scarcely worth while to me.”

“It seems to me,” said Joy, “that we are pretty extravagant for people having no visible income.”

“How?” demanded Sarah. “We hardly ever buy any meals except breakfasts——”

“But look at the stuff we drink and pass around—so far as I can see, keeping the cellarette filled is as expensive as running a free bar——”

“Little one,” Jerry drawled, “our cellarette is endowed. Some day when I have a lot of time I’ll take you around to the wine closet and tell you the names of who has contributed to which. To send a case of spirits to a young lady was ever a delicate mark of attention. We had a wonderful collection this spring, and before the first of July—don’t you remember the cases and cases of supplies that were pouring in around then? We have to go easy on those Prohibition allotments, though. The donors collect on them every once in so often.”

Joy realized that she was learning something new every day. She travelled down to the Grey’s in a rather sombre frame of mind. Her father had returned home and she had just escaped his descending upon her on the way by business necessity which had made him haste on through and write her, wishing her to return as soon as she could. She had written him that she was at a critical period in voice-placing and did not want to leave her teacher just now, especially when she was so lucky as to have him in Boston during the summer. It was true, she was going through a critical period in voice placing. In spite of her irregular hours, under Pa Graham’s magical touch and through the scales she practised regularly, her voice was coming forth in a way that now bewildered her, now filled her with an exultant sense of power. But the moments of exultation were few and far between. It was baffling to let loose one pure, golden note, and while yet tingling from the joy of it, to follow it with half a dozen that were edgy, or swallowed, or had a thread in them—there seemed to be no end to the variety of ways one could defeat tone production. She had just achieved sufficient grasp in the art of singing to know how little she knew, and instead of discouraging her as it might have at first, she was lured on and stimulated to further endeavour. She was right not to leave Pa,—but she knew that was not the real reason she had signified her wish to remain in Boston. Was it this boy—this boy whom she had seen only once? She ought to know by this time how transient her fancies were. But this was so different from her other affair. She knew more about men now.

Betty met her at the station in a little runabout, and had driven away the flurry in Joy’s brain with her eager chatter. Grant had been intending to come to the station, too, she informed her; but at the last minute Mrs. Grey had found a number of things for him to do. Grant humoured mother a lot. Betty didn’t believe in it; encourage mothers too much, and they’ll expect everything of you.

It had been a shock to meet Mrs. Grey. She was the woman who surveyed Joy so critically the night of the dance. A tall, large woman, with independent demeanor, marcelled white hair and snapping eyes still almost as blue as Grant’s. She was gracious, but far from cordial. Very little appeared to escape the scrutiny of those eyes, and she made Joy feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Joy remembered what Packy had said: “Mother’s the Gorgon of the beach;” she decided that Packy had great descriptive powers. Mrs. Grey inspired the “what-have-I-done-anyway” feeling in one. Mr. Grey was only a shade more approachable. He seemed to consider Joy Betty’s age, to be talked to as such at convenient moments, and ignored as such most of the time.

Immediately upon arriving, Joy had had to dress for dinner, which was an absurdly formal meal for a beach house, and then after dinner the whole family had gone for a moonlight sail. She had no moment alone with Grant, and both were silent most of the evening, acutely conscious of each other’s presence, while Betty chattered and Mr. and Mrs. Grey admired the light effects of the moon on the water, and spoke of art and science and other impersonally interesting subjects to which none of the three young people listened.

Betty came in while Joy was undressing, her eyes dancing with excitement. “Joy—mother thinks Grant’s crazy about you—I heard her tell father. Do you think so? It would be so screaming! He never gets that way!”

“I think so? Why, Betty——”

“Well—can’t you always tell when a man’s crazy about you? I can!”

Joy laughed hysterically. “Maybe I haven’t had as much experience as you, Betty,” she suggested.

After Betty had gone, something happened that terrified her. For no concrete reason she burst into tears, and the more she cried, the more hysterical she became at the thought that she was crying with no apparent reason. Of course, she was very much excited. And her nerves were pretty raw, and she had not had the usual “prescription” with which to deaden them. But it couldn’t be because she had no recourse to alcohol that she felt this way. That was the way only awful people got, and after they had been drinking for years and years and years! She finally fell into a tear-tinted slumber, from which she awoke barely in time for breakfast.

And now she and Grant found themselves miraculously left alone. Betty had gone to play tennis with some friends, and to Joy’s stupefaction, Mr. and Mrs. Grey had motored up to town together. And so the two sat on the piazza, still wrapped in an anticipatory silence.

They watched the sailboat out of sight, then Grant turned to her. “I say—let’s get away from everything. Let’s take the roadster and some lunch and go way off into the country—will you?”

There are few perfect days in life that stand out golden, untarnished, with no flaws or worrisome little details to bar the way of loving memory; but that Saturday was one for Joy. As they rode far into the country, past orchards and immaculate white New England farmhouses, the hours seemed to be resting motionless, while they talked aimlessly and with long, happy silences, shyly sitting as near together as they dared. Time, as well as everything else, had gone away and left them alone.

They ate beside a pebble-hindered brook, with tall trees gossiping above them. There were not even mosquitoes to hum their way through the rainbow haze in which the two were lingering. A large and elaborate repast had been put up for them, but Joy could not eat. He, too, seemed to find difficulty in raising any enthusiasm over the luncheon, and looked at her instead. Finally they gravely repacked the almost unimpaired repast, then looked at each other over the basket. Because they were young and American, they laughed.

“It’s too hot to eat now,” said Grant, recovering hastily; “we’ll take out the basket again later, when we get hungry.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” said Joy, with dancing eyes.

It was so peaceful by the brook; she had not realised how the hectic life in the apartment had been wearing upon her. She closed her eyes with a little shiver of ecstasy. “Let’s stay here a little while,” she said. “It’s nice under the trees.”

“I was just going to suggest that,” said Grant. “We think the same in almost everything, don’t we?”

How many millions of lovers have “thought the same”—lovers are distanced in tastes, likes and dislikes, ideas and ideals, as the poles are distanced one from the other!

“Yes,” said Joy dreamily. By now they had passed into the “you and I” stage. They drifted into what they thought was a discussion of modern education; but he was telling her about his years at Harvard. He had just graduated; Packy’s class.

“But Packy and I never ran together much,” he said. “Packy is a natural-born fusser; I’ve always been more or less of a woman-hater.”

“They say woman-haters are really the most romantic,” said Joy lightly.

“Well, they usually have the highest ideals; that’s what makes ’em dislike most women. I had almost impossibly high ideals; so high that I was getting afraid I’d never meet her.”

Silence. A twig fell from a tree, and the two started.

“I said,” said Grant, looking up at a patch of sky through the branches while Joy plucked a blade of grass into tiny bits; “I said—I _was_ getting afraid I’d never meet her.”

A throbbing stillness in the woods; then Joy spoke breathlessly. “So—was I,” she said.

A blue-jay shrieked discordantly from near by, and with a hitch, they resumed more general subjects. Somehow, when one talks about ideals, one always gets personal.

“Girls nowadays don’t encourage men to look up to them,” said Grant. “There isn’t the respect there used to be—and the girls don’t seem to miss it.”

“Some girls miss it,” said Joy; “but what can they do about it? If they object, and try to bring back past conditions, they are labelled old-fashioned, slow, stiff,—and let alone. Respect and what men consider a good time can no longer be combined.”

“That’s the girls’ side, I suppose. But a man’s position is hard, too. No man wants to fall in love with a girl who is unattractive to other men. Probably you would call that sheep-like, but it’s something we can’t help. And the popular girls nowadays, the girls that men run after, are spoiled by that very quality that makes them popular. Betty says I’m awfully stuffy—but most of them seem to me hard—flippant—and—well, unreserved. Do you see what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Joy, amazed at his putting into words the half-formed thoughts that had been sifting through her brain ever since she had begun to observe boys and girls together, which had been at an early age, as with most small-town girls.

“It seems,” Grant went on, “it seems almost as if girls were trying to break down every difference that exists between them and men—smoking and drinking are only two examples——”

She winced. Vaguely conscious of her unrest, he turned to her with an impulsive gesture. “The only reason I’m saying all this is because it’s so wonderful to find a girl like _you_ nowadays——”

“Oh, I don’t think things are as bad as all that!” she said. He sensed her withdrawal, and they left the Modern Girl to return to Modern Education.

They started back when the sun began to gleam redly through the trees. The way seemed shorter than coming, and they talked more, whirling through a world of fiery golden sun. Before they had even thought of opening the luncheon basket, they were back at the beach house where Betty with an accusing face awaited them on the piazza.

“We’re back,” said Joy. The sun had gone, and everything seemed suddenly grey and flat.

Betty came dashing down to them. “Do you call this nice, to go off and leave me for a whole day?” she demanded, pouting. “Lucky mother and father haven’t got back yet. And now you’ll have to hurry like everything to get ready for the dance!”

They realized that she was in evening dress.

“Oh, yes, there’s a dance to-night,” said Grant intelligently.

“There usually is, Saturday nights at the club house,” Betty retorted with fine sarcasm appreciated by no one but herself. “I’m not going to wait for you two—here comes my man now and there’s a wonderful orchestra!” She waved to her “man,” a gentleman about town, possibly all of seventeen, who was boiling up the driveway in a racer, and ran off to meet him.

Joy and Grant looked at each other. “I had forgotten all about the dance,” said Grant.

“Let’s not go!” It was Joy who spoke impulsively. “I—I dance so much up in town—and it’s so beautiful just here, by the sea——”

But the golden day had faded, the perfect moment passed. “We ought to go,” Grant considered. “Mother would think Betty and I weren’t entertaining you very well. Besides, there are some duty dances I’ve got to work off, that mother’s been after me about for a long time.”

Joy bowed her head. What was this feeling of impending distress—it must be only that the sun had set!

“We’ll get dressed,” said Grant, “and then we can decide whether it’s too late to go or not.” He met her eyes with a twinkle in his. “I dress—very slowly!”

“I’ve torn my evening gown—and it will take me a long time to mend it!” Joy returned with a laugh, and they separated.

Joy dressed as slowly as she dared. Her head was aching—two days now without her prescription. Was that why she felt so depressed? She had brought the same blue evening dress, and when the work was over, even to her anxious eyes she had never shone more gorgeously. The only question was color. Her face was temporarily red from driving in the wind; but she knew it wouldn’t stay, and it would leave her pale and dragged looking, as she had been lately most of the time. Which was preferable; to put on some rouge and run the risk of looking conspicuously painted until the wind-burn died down, or to omit the rouge and face the certainty of looking ghastly later?—She put on some rouge.

When she finally went down, about nine o’clock, Grant was on the piazza. She stood in the doorway and looked at him, as he came towards her. Why couldn’t all boys be like Grant—Grant, with reverence and purity shining in those clear blue eyes——

“I was hoping you’d wear that dress,” he was saying. “It’s the one you wore the first time I ever saw you——”

The first time already seemed impossible ages away.

“That’s why I wore it,” said Joy, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Neither kept the other in doubt by word or look. They looked now—and then, because they were human, they went and ate a fairly good meal from the lunch basket. Now there was no excuse for not starting to the dance—but still they lingered.

“I never heard you sing, you know,” said Grant. “Can’t you sing after eating—or will you sing to me before we go?”