Why Joan? Part 32

Major Darcy was equally pleased with this compliment, which he characteristically accepted for himself.

"It is very gratifying to have old friends take one's child to their hearts in this fas.h.i.+on--very gratifying! There are no better people in the State than the Carmichaels, my dear. It is true that I have seen less of the Judge than I could have wished since my return--we were school-boys together. But I felt that soon or late there was bound to be some recognition. A fine fellow, and a most able lawyer! Yes, yes. And his wife--charming, charming! Though a trifle stiff for my fancy. A _little_ more suavity of manner. She was a Dillingham, you know. Her father represented us at one time at the Court of St. James."

"Oh! Is that why she's so airy?" commented Effie May. "Well, I don't mind airs if people have got a right to 'em, and n.o.body needs call on me who don't want to. I'm real glad you're getting in with that crowd, Joan. They're better than most 'old families'--they're still alive and kicking and right at the top. And you've done it all by yourself, too!

Parties don't seem to do no good with their kind.... That's what comes of being born a lady yourself."

Something both wistful and generous in this speech touched the girl.

"I had forgotten Mrs. Carmichael has not called on you, Effie May," she said quickly. "Of course that makes it impossible for me to accept their invitation. I'll tell Emily."

And neither the Major's hasty rea.s.surances or her step-mother's remonstrances sufficed to alter her decision. She declined Emily's invitation, and told her why.

"You're quite right, and Mother'd be the first person to tell you so,"

said Emily in instant approval. "I'll see what I can do. You know--" she hesitated--"it isn't that there's any _reason_ for her not to call. Of course everybody knows who your father is, and he's perfectly delightful, too! It's just--"

"I understand," said Joan quietly.

Emily put an arm around her. "My dear, I hope you do--This is such a small puddle that the big frogs in it take themselves rather seriously.

And it's changing lately. It used to be that in the South money or the lack of it meant almost nothing at all. Now it means a great deal--more, I fancy, than in places where there's more of it. It doesn't seem to take even one generation to make a gentleman nowadays--or what pa.s.ses for a gentleman. And so the old guard feel that they have to be especially wary, to make a decided stand, in order to retain their own ident.i.ty. They're horribly afraid of being--not exterminated exactly, but--"

"Mixed?" suggested Joan. "I remember you called me 'mixed' the first time you deigned to notice me."

"Not the first time--the second," laughed Emily, blus.h.i.+ng. "The first time was on the train, and you had flowers and a box of candy, and I hadn't.--The second time you were such a haughty little minx, with your Eastern airs and your lovely clothes, and so utterly unaware of my provincial existence, that I simply _had_ to snub you somehow!"

"Well!" gasped Joan. "That is exactly the way I felt about you!"

"And there we were bristling our hackles at each other like two strange puppy dogs, each waiting for the other to wag a tail. Anyway, I wagged first!" cried Emily, kissing her friend. "And I'm not going to lose you now, simply because my family hasn't been polite to your family."

"You couldn't!" said Joan rather shyly, kissing her in return....

As a result of this understanding, some days later the cards of both Judge and Mrs. Jonathan Carmichael appeared on the Darcy hall table (from which they were not removed until gray with age and exposure); to be followed by an even more unequivocal bit of pasteboard which informed Mrs. and Miss Darcy that Mrs. Carmichael would be at home on a certain afternoon in April from four until six.

Effie May's innocent joy in this trophy, and the frequency with which it figured in subsequent conversations, filled Joan with a combination of embarra.s.sment and satisfaction. She felt that she had at last done something to repay, in part, the obligation she owed to her father's wife....

She was not surprised to find Archibald at Emily's dinner. It was the first time she had seen him under quite such a strong social light, however, and she was a little nervous as to what the evening might bring forth. "The Sign of the Dirty Spoon," did not sound like the most reliable school of table manners.

He sat opposite her, between Emily and a debutante of the type that makes conversation an act of supererogation, and she was able without seeming to do so to keep her protege under a watchful eye.

But to her relief he neither swallowed his spoon nor grasped his fork with undue firmness, and seemed not at all perturbed by the variety of the silver implements beside his plate. Joan was quite mystified by his prowess; until she happened to notice that Emily also had him under a watchful eye. With each course Emily promptly and ostentatiously selected the proper implement, and Archie, after one glance out of the corner of an eye, followed suit. It was perhaps fortunate that Emily was his leader instead of the more impish Joan, who would have been impelled by sheer force of circ.u.mstance to attempt her fish with her coffee spoon.

What surprised her even more than Archibald's table manners was his conversation; a flow, a positive torrent, which poured on in a constant stream, pausing only for the extreme exigencies of mastication, and not always then. In the intervals of her own talk, Joan caught occasional bits of this monologue. During the soup course it apparently concerned itself with the South American armadillo, habits and habitat. During the dessert it still appeared to linger about the armadillo.

Now and then Emily cast a puzzled glance across at Joan, and the debutante on his other side had long since been reduced to "Oh, really?"

and "I can hardly believe that!" But the armadillo went on and on.

Joan had not suspected him of a concealed pa.s.sion for natural history.

She could hardly wait for dinner to be over to investigate this new development. But she had to call him to her side in so many words before he ventured to join her. His eyes had been upon her most of the evening, removing themselves hastily whenever they caught hers; but he did not wish to intrude. It was quite sufficient for him to be in the same room with her.

She began at once, "Why and whence the armadillo, Archie? You sounded like a University Extension lecture!"

"Did I?" he grinned. "Was it all right? There were some things I forgot to tell 'em. About the--"

"Never mind!" said Joan hastily. "What I want to know is how you came by the armadillo, anyway?"

"I'm taking a correspondence course," he confessed.

"In--in armadillos?"

"No, in conversation," he said seriously. "Subjects of General Discussion Suitable for Social Gatherings. I thought, seeing as I'm going out in society so much these days, I ought to work up a different line of talk than a fellow needs in business. The sort of things _you_ like, you know--not learned, exactly, but sort of high-brow.--Books and all.--They send us out a subject once a week. 'All about the North Pole'

it was once. 'The Infant in Portraiture,' another time. Last week it was 'The Armadillo and Its Ways.' Great scheme, ain't it?"

"Stupendous!" murmured Joan. "But, Archie, suppose you meet a fellow-student at some--er, social gathering who happens to be pursuing the same line of cultivation? Mightn't that be rather embarra.s.sing?"

"Give me away, you mean? What's the dif? I would give him away, too, and we'd have something to talk about! Anyway, to know all about something's a mighty fine idea, even if you don't get a chance to tell folks."

Joan did not smile. She realized that here, manifesting itself no matter how uncouthly, was the true spirit of research, a thing which she respected above all other impulses of the human brain.

She said softly, "Keep on with your correspondence course by all means!--only, Archie, don't talk about it to other people, will you?

They might not understand."

He gave her a quick little grin of comprehension. "Not on your life! It don't pay to wise people up to what a b.o.o.b you are.--Except you. I guess you know, anyway!"

CHAPTER x.x.x

Joan, in yielding to family pressure temporarily, had by no means given up the idea of what she had learned recently to call her economic independence--a subject discussed frequently, if not very fruitfully, by her friends the Jabberwocks, who preached rather more radically than they practiced.

"You see," as they explained when reproached by Joan with inconsistency, "we believe in that sort of thing, of course! but it isn't as if we really _needed_ it." (Which was likewise the Jabberwockian att.i.tude toward suffrage.)

Joan, however, not only believed in economic independence, but needed it--as she reminded herself at gradually increasing intervals. She was in danger, and knew it, of going over to Mammon. She had found it far easier than she expected to live along from moment to moment, accepting life as it came, enjoying the surface without questioning the depths.

The habit of mere material luxury is an insidious thing that fastens upon one unaware; and Joan had all her father's taste for the good things of life.

She had begun to form many little extravagant ways, such, for instance, as wearing silk stockings under her heaviest shoes, using a towel only once before casting it aside, having her hair shampooed down town when she was perfectly able to do it herself in her own bathroom. Not very reckless extravagances, perhaps, from the point of view of her new friends; but the sort of thing which the Misses Darcy observed with something like awe.

"I often think that if dear papa had been able to allow _us_ to be less careful--"; sighed Miss Virginia. "But of course in our day a silk stocking was a silk stocking."

"Indeed it was! Do you remember the lovely pair Aunt Sara Miggs brought from abroad when she made the grand tour? White they were, Joan; and when they began to get a little yellow with was.h.i.+ng, she gave them to me; and when I'd had plenty of use out of them, they were dipped pink for Sister Euphie; and by the time Sister Virgie got them they had become black."

"With age?" asked Joan, rather startled.

"Oh, no, dear. With dye."

"Where are the stockings of yester-year?" murmured the girl. "You can't buy good old family standbys like that nowadays, not at any price.

Nothing but these miserable sleazy affairs that run if you look at them--the cowards!"

The Darcy ladies exchanged puzzled glances.