winter hung heavily on that year; february dragged itself to a close, choked with december snowfall, and spring looked bleak and far away. travelling even from new york to boston was horrible, and jerry did not come for a long time.
joy was alone in the apartment.
as she had foreseen, sarah’s querulous voice wavered in the halls. and in the kitchenette her kimono and curl papers tinted the atmosphere. and everywhere the tap of the pink mules or the sound of the rough plush of jerry’s voice seemed to be trembling in echo’s echo. . . . she asked félicie to spend the night with her as often as she cared to; but félicie didn’t care to very often. it was not that she was not fond of joy, as she explained; but it was so much trouble to move herself and all her things. félicie liked everything drawn up around her in waxworks precision of detail, just as she had arranged it at her home.
and so joy lived in an enforced solitude while considering what she was going to do. the heavy snowfalls were deadening to enterprise; the easiest thing to do was to stay in the apartment, which was hers for the present, instead of looking around for something else. sitting alone at the piano in the room which had so often sung with mirth, she found it hard to realize that she was the only one left in sarah’s and jerry’s flat. one little, two little, three little indians! one had gone; and then there were two. and now one more had gone; and there was only one. . . .
she had not seen jim dalton for a long time. when he had called her up, she had put him off with the excuse of work. she could not see him, because she felt that she wanted to see him too much. but she told herself with an easy surety that she was not in love with him; once back with pa graham she had fallen into the magic of music once more, magic that left no room for sentimentality, and that, she told herself, was all that her lapse had been; sheer sentimentality. but since the idea had occurred to her that she might suspect herself of being in love with him, she was uneasy about seeing him. and surely preventative methods were best!
yet she longed to see him, to tell him every little detail of the epoch-making trip to new york. looking back she clung to her part in it, and wanted jim—wanted him to exult with her over the great one’s approval. who was it who said he travelled faster who travels alone? there had to be someone to spur on the traveller—sometimes! and jerry had gone, and there was no one. félicie was frankly bored with music. and jim of her own exclusion stayed away, although his telephone calls did not diminish in number. . . .
one afternoon in march as she was walking down boylston street, she saw grant. he passed driving a car, the grey’s runabout, and by his side was a girl whose peachbloom face, even at a distance, was vaguely familiar. as she stared, the girl waved, smiling, and said something to grant, whose eyes were on the traffic. he swerved and brought the car into the curb, and joy came to them as miss dalrymple, the bryn mawr girl, leaned out expectantly.
“miss nelson!” she hailed her. “i didn’t know you were in boston!” joy interrupted as she started to present grant. “we’ve already met. i didn’t know you were in boston, miss dalrymple.”
the college girl explained that she was visiting a friend in her vacation, that it was her first visit in boston, and that she liked it very much. her eyes dwelt on grant in na?ve compliment at this last, and grant smiled appreciatively in return.
joy nearly smiled, herself. six months ago, and one would have thought she had ruined a life. now grant was looking better, and happier, than she had ever seen him; and he was regarding her with offhand friendliness. the girl at his side was really an exquisite thing, with clear, eager eyes like his own. joy knew that her own radiant eyes had been dulled, first by the experience of disillusionment, and then by monotonous routine. she knew that she was thin and pale from a life of irregular restaurant eating; she knew that the exquisite young thing at grant’s side gained colour by comparison; and she was glad. this could be a last picture that would wipe out all regret, in dreams of what might have been.
miss dalrymple was all exclamations over jerry’s marriage. “to think that it happened the very next day, and there we sat never suspecting what was going on! it’s the most romantic thing i ever knew!”
mabel had written joy twice; at first when she had been so upset over the unconventionality that marked this lancaster marriage, then later when she had seen them together and lost her shock, in joy at finding her brother in the heights she was beginning to fear would never be his.
“mabel always said he was awfully romantic,” the college girl was saying; “that explained his cynicism, for they say cynics are always really romantic—that’s the way they hide it. but did you ever hear of anything so sudden?”
joy’s eyes caught grant’s on that. “not—that turned out so well,” she said demurely.
miss dalrymple turned to grant. “you know, miss nelson’s cousin had her brother all picked out for me—when miss nelson walked in with the most fascinating girl you ever saw, who walked right off with him.”
“then i owe miss nelson—a very great debt!” said grant, with a smile that broke in the middle as he looked at joy and saw her amusement shrieking from beneath the sheltered surface of polite friendliness. the air was tingling with omissions, as joy said her good-byes and left them. their status was plain—an affair well along in interest and momentum.
the girl with the skin of peachdown and the wide, untroubled eyes was the logical mate for grant grey. each could give the other as nearly all that the other desired as was possible in an earthly union. it would be one of those unions that seemed eminently right—and it would even seem so to mrs. grey! joy laughed aloud at that last thought. the heart-caught-on-the-rebound sneer, on which so many girls inwardly feed while apparently they are smilingly urbane to their former suitors’ flames, never even occurred to her. it was a perfect union, while the union of her nature and grant’s would always have been imperfect at best.
inexplicably it made her feel the more lonely.
it was soon after that that a bulky letter arrived from her father, the contents of which threw her into the laughter of misgiving. it seemed that the lamkins had returned from an extensive trip south and west, and had spread throughout the length and breadth of foxhollow corners the glorified account of joy nelson’s gallivanting around noo york with perfectly impossible people, to one of which she seemed to be engaged “in a light way.” the rumour had swollen until it was reported that joy had been secretly married over in new york and had taken up her abode there permanently. of course her father had heard the last rumour first, and with businesslike precision had sifted it through to the lamkins and heard their representations of the “facts.”
“i am disturbed,” he wrote, “and ask you for verification before i take any steps in this matter. the town seems to be rolling tales of your new york escapades as a sweet morsel under its tongue. you told me nothing of any side of your new york visit that could be interpreted this way. it is not possible for the child of your mother to have done anything really wrong, but in new york you may have forgotten the obligations that the name of nelson puts upon you. after all, home people are the ones that will mean your life, when you finish your studying and come back to normal existence once more; and it does not do to antagonize them as you so evidently have the lamkins. it is a difficult thing for a father to be sole guardian of a daughter; there are so many questions a father alone cannot decide. i wish you would come home, and take up your music here, perhaps in the church choir.”
he ended the letter with the thought that he might come to boston soon, as he had never yet seen her environment there.
joy read the letter with mixed emotions which had culminated in the rather shaky laughter. how could she explain to her father that what the lamkins had heard had been a mere prank played for the benefit of the waiters and surrounding interested ones even as the lamkins? it was the sort of thing that he could never understand. and he spoke as though all her fiercely eager study were to end in nothing—“a normal life once more.” the church choir! she jumped up and poured forth a long cadenza, which enveloped the room in an exultation of sound. at the close she balanced two notes evenly, one against the other, tracing them up and down—when all at once her throat began to flutter, effort ceased, and she stood in rapt wonder, listening. her first real trill was born.
the church choir!
it was that afternoon, while she was hesitating over a reply to her father, that jim called her on the phone.
“do you realize how long it’s been since i’ve seen you, joy?” he asked.
she did. “i’ve been so busy——” she faltered. “and now that jerry is gone, i can’t very well entertain in the apartment alone——”
“then we can meet somewhere and go to dinner. meet me at the touraine, at half-past six. i must see you, joy.”
she went back to her letter in a more peaceful frame of mind. by now her sentimental lapse was well over, and she would be glad to see jim again. after all, he was the only real friend she had. she finally pushed the letter paper away from her. jim would advise her as to how she would reply. somehow he always knew what to do.
when she drifted into the touraine exactly five minutes late—jerry and sarah had taught her that system—men hate to wait and yet one must never be on time—jim came forward to meet her, and she found herself clinging to his hand for a longer space of time than is allotted to the usual formal clasp. all her past loneliness rose about her and seemed to choke her utterance, with something else that left her without speech.
“let’s not eat here,” said jim; “there’s something so public about this place. everyone just seems to come here to look everyone else over.”
out in the evening air, speech returned to her, and they bridged the time they had not seen each other by a few sentences while walking through those strange cross-alleys that only boston can boast until they came to a cobble-stoned street that comprises part of the city’s modest chinatown, and “counted out” on the different restaurants facing them. a fa?ade of ornate gilt with curtained windows won the count, and they were soon in a little stall away from the bright lights of the central room.
the order given, joy told the complete story of the new york trip, with the loneliness jerry’s leaving her had brought. “what shall i do?” she concluded. “if father comes down here, he’ll find me living alone in the apartment—which he certainly would not like.”
“joy, you know that you can’t stay in that place alone,” said jim. “that’s one reason why i insisted on seeing you to-night—i wanted to find out your plans.”
“jerry wants me to stay in it till july—and it’s so much easier for me in every way—especially practicing—than if i boarded anywhere——”
jim shook his head. “this félicie durant you speak of, who lives in brighton with her great-aunt—perhaps she could persuade her aunt to rent jerry’s apartment, and then keep you as a boarder. if you suggest that scheme to her, she might think of offering to take you in with them even if they didn’t care to move.”
“that is—a good suggestion,” she said uncertainly. she was in that state of mind where she hated to take any steps, make any plans.
“if that fails, you’ll have to apply to the students’ union for lists of recommendable places,” he added with quiet finality.
“oh, is that what one does?” she felt foolishly incompetent. “how did you know?”
“i’ve been making inquiries myself. i knew you were alone there, and that you couldn’t stay that way.”
joy felt an embracing peace, the peace of decision in which jim always enveloped her. “jim,” she said suddenly, “what have i ever done—or been, except a foolish girl—that you should be so good to me? at the very first, you did—more than i can ever repay—and then you went on—always helping me, in ways that really were help—and understanding so well—sometimes better than i understand myself!”
jim looked at her across the table, and the keen friendliness dropped from his eyes, all at once; leaving them naked. involuntarily joy turned away her face. when his voice came, it was quiet, with a new current bearing it along.
“it is because i have understood so well—that i’ve never told you what i must tell you now. the brakes won’t hold—i think i have loved you, joy, from the time your lip quivered when you told me to take you back to tom.”
a pause while the chinese waiter took away their dishes. of all moments to bring in his tardy self!
joy started to speak, to falter her way with lips suddenly tender, but he was looking away from her now and beyond.
“i think you ought to know, joy—that i love you more than anyone else in this world. you—you mean life to me.”
there was no wild heart-beat trembling in her being as she heard his words, nothing but peace and a great content. “oh, jim!” she said in a little voice, then waited for his eyes to meet hers. . . . it had not come within the halo of dreams nor in the area of the disturbing thrills of youth—it came in a golden calm. jim was the perfect knight, of whom she had dreamed in the days when she supposed one had but to wait and the knight would come a-riding; the perfect knight, with spotless shield and shining armour. the shield was his spotless life, making him more than worthy of her; the armour was the white strength of his soul and his body with which he had defended her at all times, since the very first.
then weirdly, unaccountably, across the even rhapsody of her meditation came a voice from the chapels of memory; a voice full, perfectly poised, with each word as flawless as if it had been engraved on a cameo.
“love comes down to a hearth-fire, after marriage; and we who sing are not content with hearth-fires. remember that always, little one; we who sing are not content with hearth-fires.”
only that second of recollection before jim’s eyes met hers, and joy chose her fate. she urged her eyes away from him, with a sick little shiver; and keeping them fixed on some distant point, she said in a voice so slight it almost slipped away before it struck the hearing: “jim—please—don’t!”
“i—won’t,” he said, in a voice that did not alter. “i—i knew it was—hopeless, joy, before i spoke; and i shall not bother you about it again; but i wanted you to know, while i was able to see you—you have not let me see you for so long.”
“jim—i’m so sorry——” she cried, against the destruction that was descending upon her soul so lately filled with peace.
“sorry! sorry is—an awful little word. i didn’t want to make you—sorry. i just wanted you to know—i would have been a conceited ass indeed if i had thought you could—care for me.”
“it’s not that.”
the words were clipped out in an even, glassy tone, as hard as a window-pane and as easy to break or see through. but the shutters were down behind, for the one who most wanted to see. . . .
jim did not bring the subject up again until they were at the door of the apartment.
“please don’t let anything i’ve said worry you, joy. and—we still are friends—aren’t we?”
“oh, yes, jim!” she cried, and then fell silent, ashamed.
“this world would indeed be an empty place for me—if anything should happen to that friendship.”
he took her hand, and she knew in a bitter little rush how much she wanted to have his arms around her—to feel again encompassing her the peace that she had destroyed. pale as the novice who goes to her vows, she took her hand away and left him.
she sat at the piano, striving to drown the turbulence within her by a glory of sound. with shaking, silver lips, she tried to form the words of the jewel song—she should be able really to sing it now—for to-day had come her first trill! “all passes; art alone endures.” she was so wise not to have allowed the sentiment of the moment to overpower her. it was just such moments that were responsible for the “mute, inglorious pattis” of the world.
the trill came, neat and exquisite. then haltingly—
“je ris—de me voir—
si belle—”
her voice limped into silence. . . .
she left the piano. this loneliness was getting on her nerves. she would see félicie to-morrow. yes, to-morrow was coming—and she could not wait to have pa hear that trill!
on hearing joy’s proposition, félicie consulted her great-aunt, but neither of them wished to leave their eminently satisfactory lodgings in brighton.
“it’s awful for you to be alone, though, joy,” she said. “auntie suggested that you come and stay with us—she’s deaf, you know, so she won’t mind your practicing, if you don’t mind living in the little room off the kitchen——i’d take you in with me, but there’s really no room, the way everything’s fixed.”
having decided to accept this enthusiastic invitation before it had been issued, joy surprised félicie by being pleased with the offer of the little room near the kitchen. “of course, i’d pay board,” she said, “and take my meals out.”
“well, all right,” said félicie, “only auntie will be annoyed if you don’t eat with her. she’s lonely, now that i go out so much of the time.”
they left the situation to be fought out with “auntie,” and joy wrote jerry of her decision to leave the apartment as soon as she could get her things together.
jerry replied by bursting in upon joy one morning in the first chill days of april, while joy was poaching a dejected egg in the kitchenette. a new radiant jerry, all softness and winsome, assured charm that is the gain of those who are exorbitantly loved in return for their own great love. she danced over the apartment in pretended high spirits at being back, and then packed her clothes in a rush of concentration that betrayed her haste.
“this is the first time i’ve been away from him—and i didn’t know i was going to feel like this!” she confessed.
“there’s just one thing, though. you have no use for the wine-closet, i take it?”
joy had not taken a drink since the night she watched the effect of it from the sofa, with wigs and davy babbling in her ear.
“then,” said jerry briskly, “we might just as well do a little government-agent work.” at joy’s look of astonishment: “oh, i never drink now. there’s—too much else to think about. phil and i smoke together—but that’s as far as we go. seems funny when i think in idle moments how i’ve taken it down all my life and now have just dropped it off without—much—effort. but somehow, you don’t feel like the good old stuff when you’re in love. there’s something about it——”
they took the liquor case by case to the bathroom where they became carried away by an orgy of opening bottles and watching their contents gurgle into the tub.
“we could bathe in champagne now, if we felt like it,” said jerry reflectively. “i’ve often thought i would, but i guess i was pretty well doused on the inside when i had the little idea.”
joy watched it gurgle down the pipe and thought of the inferno that innocent-looking liquid could cause. . . . what it had caused in her own experience. . . . in the lights and shades of the mixture tumbling to the sewers where it belonged, she saw jack barnett’s face for a fleeting horror, that shifted to packy’s, quite as terrible. and she saw sarah. . . . and then they all blended together in a whirling mass, and flickered away. the bathtub was empty. . . .
“i’ve got to admit,” jerry was saying, in rather an artificial voice, “that in spite of everything it makes me feel sort of ill to see all that joy-getter spilling itself away in such a casual fashion.”
joy looked at her, and saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, her eyes bearing a strained expression. it had evidently been more of an effort for her than joy had realized.
that jerry could have stopped drinking altogether! even to her inexperienced knowledge it seemed an impossibility. jerry was staring into the bathtub again, with the hungry look of the street-gamin. . . . joy turned away, and with her old-time quick sensitiveness, jerry laughed and joined her.
“i don’t deny it isn’t hard at times and harder at others, old girl,” she said; “but there are things in everyone’s life that are hard not to do, and all the same one simply can’t do ’em!”
the day was unlike their old times together. on the surface, both girls were affectionate, and delighted to be with one another again; but below the surface everywhere intruded the man who had come between their friendship, changing everything irrevocably. jerry was changed. for the better, one could not doubt; but nevertheless she was not the jerry that joy had known and loved. she was softer, with that new glow within her lighting everything she did or said. her speech already showed meditation, her manner was more reposeful. content and love were fast enfolding her into serenity—and, joy thought, who wanted a serene jerry?
their conversation was strained, although voluble. jerry’s bristled with mention of phil, directly or indirectly. this stimulated joy’s desire to talk of jim; and the realization that she could not, that she had not jerry’s excuse or right, brought effort into her responses.
they telephoned félicie, and jerry took them both to the copley for dinner, over which they lingered. félicie was wearing her usual look of unbroken loveliness, and arrayed for a sixty club dance in brookline. her attitude towards jerry was frankly pitying, which abated none the less when she saw that jerry’s attitude duplicated hers.
“it’s all right to act as if you’d pulled the moon down to earth, for a while,” she said tolerantly. “i know how these things come out. pretty soon this one-man stuff will get monotonous. monotony! sooner or later you see it in all married life! and you’ll get monotonous to him, too! husbands always get so husband-like when their wives begin getting always the same!”
jerry laughed. “better take the plunge like a shot the way i did, félicie. then you’ll have no time to think up objections. monotony! the way i used to live—the way you’re living now—is the real monotony. continually seeing one side only of large numbers of young men—one party after another—oh well, there’s no use wasting my flow of english on the subject.”
there was no use. a youth with an attitude of cultivated boredom and repressed correctness, came in for her, and she left them “wishing she could stay, but you see how it is.”
“she never looks eager,” said joy; “you wouldn’t think she valued a good time so highly.”
“no, not eager; just smug,” said jerry tersely, and they talked of other things.
jerry the excitement-eater was dead, that was plain. joy had always wished to see that side of her dispensed with. then why did this change, this miraculous, softening change, stir irritation within her, throw a breach between them?
she could not fathom the reason until she took jerry to the eleven o’clock and told her good-bye. there, with a farewell look at jerry’s brilliant face, enhanced by the beloved freckles, it came to her in a rush. she was jealous—jealous both ways! before, she had been jealous of phil lancaster only for taking jerry from her; now, she was jealous of jerry herself, for the world in which she lived, the world upon which joy had turned her back. . . .
she did not sleep well that night. disturbing thoughts pressed urgently about her, and would not postpone their hearing.
it was a powerful force that had led jerry to stop drinking, to drop her excitement-eating ways without regret. to pit oneself against such a force—to eliminate it from one’s life—was an undertaking at the mysterious door of which joy paused and shivered. . . .
