Why Joan? Part 20

Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman--and I suppose it does put him in a better light, too--But unfortunately the facts of the case are otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him--not that he suggested it, oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me--So I took up my residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable, Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting."

"And then?--" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind the scenes.

"That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany, painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter.

One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!"

"Don't laugh," said Joan hoa.r.s.ely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped the other's. "Oh, how can you bear to _speak_ to him?"

May Rossiter shrugged. "You don't suppose it lasts, you funny innocent?

Besides, though he did cost me a few illusions and some suffering and a reputation (what's a reputation among friends?), I owe Ned Desmond one very good turn. Jim Rossiter's the best husband of my acquaintance."

She leaned over swiftly and kissed Joan on the cheek.

"So you see you're not the only silly little simpleton who learns her ropes by tripping on them. Makes you feel better, doesn't it? Of course!

That's why I told you.... Look here, what's the use of wasting all this perfectly good candy? Jane's floors are above suspicion. Let's pick it up and take it downstairs and make a Roman holiday, shall we?"

Between them, with some laughter and a very real sense of comrades.h.i.+p, they restored Eduard's peace-offering to its basket. Then Joan remembered her bracelet.

"What shall I do with it?" she asked, aghast. "If I return it now, it will look--offended, as if I had taken him seriously!"

"Which would never do," Mrs. Rossiter was quick to agree. She examined the bracelet with interest. "Sapphires, emeralds, nice little diamonds--dear, dear! And a Chartier setting. Ned must have had it rather badly. He never gave _me_ anything so compromising! Keep it, of course," she advised cynically. "It's a nice bit of jewelry, and you may as well have something decent for a souvenir."

But Joan's hardihood was not equal to that.

"Well, then"--the other's eye sparkled with sudden malice--"why not give it to me for a parting present! Splendid! Fancy his expression when he recognizes his _gage d'amour_ glittering on my wrist, of all wrists in the world! And, believe me, he shall recognize it--What ho! Votes for Women!"

She laughed until she cried.

When Joan said good-by to Longmeadow some days later--not so soon as to give her departure the appearance of flight--she left trailing clouds of glory. The rumor had got about, thanks perhaps to Mrs. Rossiter, that the redoubtable Eduard had met his Waterloo at the hands of the Kentucky girl, which seemed not to detract from her popularity among Eduard's friends, male or female. She became quite legendary in the countryside.

Betty, fully restored to her earlier allegiance, parted from her with tears, and Mrs. Desmond made her promise to visit them soon again.

But it was a promise Joan knew she would not have the courage to keep.

And when she had waved her last gay farewell, and thrown her last kiss impartially out of the window to the group who had come into town to see her off, she settled back in the train which had brought her with such high hopes to her first failure, and said aloud, "Thank goodness that's over!"

"Pardon _me_--did you speak?" murmured a young man in the seat in front of her, turning round with a start; a wide-eared young man whom Joan recognized.

"Goodness!" she said in some dismay. "You seem to dog my footsteps, Mr.

Blair. There's no escaping you!"

"Looks that way, don't it?" he grinned apologetically. "I've been in Philadelphia on a big order--Landed it, too!" he added in irrepressible triumph.

"Which is more than I did," sighed Joan; and guessing from her expression that a jest was intended, Mr. Blair laughed long and loudly.

He was always very keen on the scent of a jest.

CHAPTER XIX

It was owing to this fortuitous train journey that one night, some weeks later, Mr. Archibald Blair found himself moving in what he considered very high society indeed. In the years when he had peddled papers on the street corners, or padded around with them on thin and st.u.r.dy legs of a Sabbath dawn, so that the world might have its news with its coffee and griddle-cakes for breakfast, Archie had amused himself and added to his mastery of his native tongue by reading an occasional account of a Galt House Ball.

"Social Event of the Season Magnificent Affair Given Last Evening To Mark The Debut into Society of" etc., etc.

And here he was himself, part and parcel of a Galt House Ball! It was quite amazing.

Archibald Blair was no sn.o.b; but to him, as to many another of the world's workers, "Society" represented a world apart, a sort of fairyland in which creatures of an order far superior to ordinary humans lived and moved and had their lovely being--feminine creatures, of course. About the male of the species he had no illusions. They were merely the same Charlies, Toms, and Georges one knew down town, and with whom one had played baseball or marbles or s.h.i.+nny, transformed by glad rags (the language is Archie's) into temporary black-tailed b.u.t.terflies.

They did not fool him for a moment. When he caught a familiar and surprised eye belonging to one of them, which he did more than once, he grinned and winked. In return, the owner of the eye called out, "Why, h.e.l.lo, Arch!" or, "Glad to see you, Blair!" in very friendly fas.h.i.+on, for Archibald was a popular youth among his acquaintance.

But they did not introduce him to their girls.

Archie was not chagrined. On the rare occasions when he took Miss Emma from the cas.h.i.+er's desk, or Miss Grace, the prettiest office stenographer, to a dance-hall, he was careful himself about whom he introduced to them. Fellows were often well enough with fellows, when they wouldn't do for one's lady-friends. Girls had to be choosy. (Again the language is Archibald's.)

He stood alone on the edge of the whirling throng with a pleased, unconscious smile on his face, watching for the girl he had come to see, wondering if it would be all right if he asked her to dance. In the society he had hitherto frequented--or rather sampled, and found not altogether satisfactory--a fellow danced only with the girl he had taken with him, or perhaps, if it had been arranged beforehand, with the partner of some friend, who in turn danced with his partner. Here things seemed to be done differently. A line of young men hovered on the edge of the dancers, and every now and then one would swoop in amongst them and seize the lady of his choice away from her partner seemingly by main force, a sort of modern Rape of the Sabines.

"Gee!" said Archibald to himself, watching. "Gee! But that takes a nerve."

However, life on the whole does take a nerve, as he had long since discovered.

He had, he supposed, as good a right to try it as the rest. The engraved card of invitation was in his pocket--n.o.body had taken it from him at the door. His broadcloth tails were as long and as neatly fitting as anybody's--the invitation having arrived at a fortunate time when the order he had landed in Philadelphia made it possible to buy himself a hitherto unnecessary dress suit. It is true that he had used up almost a box of lawn ties before he could get the proper touch to his bow, and even now the result should have proved indubitably that he was not a necktie drummer. He made a mental note to ask his friend Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnis.h.i.+ng at Morehouse's what he could do to keep the blamed thing from riding up on him. Still, his final view of himself in the washstand mirror had not been discouraging.

"Some boy," he had murmured to himself, in the absence of a less partial critic.

So now he tensed the muscles of his jaw, and waited his chance, nervously.

How wonderful they were, these slim, delicate creatures whirling by, with their white arms and backs, their tiny feet slippered in silver and gold, their soft laughter, their eager, luring eyes smiling over the shoulders of the fortunate youths who embraced them! Archibald grew quite dizzy with the scene, and stood at gaze as certain dazzled mariners may have gazed upon the Lorelei, to their undoing.

"This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay dance-hall in town that could touch it.

Other connoisseurs more experienced than Archibald Blair have looked with delight upon a Galt House Ball--and will look no more, alas! Along the broad corridor behind the ballroom picked experts were wont to congregate early in every season to inspect Louisville's latest contribution to the beauty of the race, comparing points and conformation, cla.s.s, speed, and endurance, as knowingly as such things are later discussed at Churchill Downs. Indeed, Louisville may be said to be, in some matters, a city of experts. The youth who sells you your cigar, the newsie who provides you with an evening edition, should without a moment's hesitation be able to tell you the name of two things on demand: the Derby winner and the season's beauty.

So Archibald was in a measure prepared for what he saw. Antic.i.p.ations of it had kept him awake at night. His trouble was in the midst of so much loveliness to fix his ravished attention upon the finding of one face.

When he found it at last, however, his eye did not again wander. He was a young man whose head rarely contained more than one idea at a time--a fact which perhaps accounted for his growing success in the selling end of the business.

He let her pa.s.s the first time out of sheer pleasure of the sight of her in motion. Joan was wearing, as she usually wore nowadays, an odd shade of blue, very much the color of the orchids at her waist. In the hand on her partner's arm she carried another bouquet, of violets; and the second time she pa.s.sed she had exchanged this for a third, of pink roses. From which it may be gathered that Louisville was at last waking up to the attractions of our heroine.

Archibald wished suddenly that he had sent her a bouquet himself, but decided that she might have thought it "fresh."

"Unless I was to send it just 'From a Friend'?" he thought, his eye brightening.

She had changed partners on each appearance, as well as bouquets; and the third time she was dancing with a portly gentleman who one-stepped so majestically, so benignly, that their pa.s.sage down the room was a sort of royal progress.

"Why, the gay old guy!" thought Archibald, surprised; and decided that this was the moment for his grand coup. Girls like that should not have to dance with parties old enough to know better.

He stepped up to the couple as he had seen others do, and slapped Major Darcy on the back, remarking with the excessive nonchalance which is the result of nervousness, "So long, old top! Back to the tall timbers for you."