“Say, Joy, can’t you practice your trilling with the door shut?” Sarah and Joy had met in the kitchenette, about four-thirty in the afternoon. Their encounters were always a matter of routine, and to-day they both happened to strike the same time to search for “afternoon tea.” Sarah had just come to light, and was yawning about in a wrinkled kimono, her hair done up in curlers, her face pettishly grey. There was something positively undressed about Sarah’s face at times like these. Joy had been uptown all day, first at Pa’s, then at her French and Italian lessons. Returning, she had been practicing a trill exercise, not aware that Sarah was arising a little later than usual.
“I’m sorry,” she said now, and chewed a cold English muffin—the kind one buys at the corner delicatessen. “I usually close the door when I practice, anyway. I didn’t think anyone was home.”
“It certainly is nerve-racking to live in the house with a singer,” Sarah complained. She had caught sight of her face in a mirror, which added to the drag of her voice. “Of course I know you have to practice and all that, Joy, but now that your voice has gotten so much bigger it carries everywhere—simply everywhere!”
“Glad to hear it, that’s what I’m after,” snapped Joy, and bit into another discouraged muffin. “It’s hard enough to work all the time without being picked on for it. To hear you talk, you’d think I sang all day.”
“Now you’re getting cross. I suppose singers have to be temperamental, though.” Receiving no response to this, Sarah twirled her infinitesimal braid and tried again: “It’s funny to see you try to be so earnest. No girl with the looks you know you have can stand the strain of the student’s life without weakening and breaking away once in a while. And you can’t tell me that you and that Jim Dalton go to concerts every time you leave here.”
“We never have gotten along well together, have we, Sarah? I think the best way for us to do is not to talk when we’re around each other, unless we can’t avoid it.”
Sarah stared at Joy, incredulous that the mist over the animosity of the two had at last blown away.
“I mean it,” said Joy, “I need every bit of my energy for my work. I can’t waste any of it on you. I’m sure you feel the same way about me. So, let’s not—waste any energy.”
Sarah, regarding her beneath incendiary brows, was just taking on energy. “It’s true we’ve never gotten on together. It started the first day you came and put Packy away in your reticule. You walked away with him, reticule and all. Packy was one of the best playmates I ever had—his hand and his pocket-book had well oiled connections. And now through you he’s queered himself, and will never blow around here again.”
“I always felt Packy was at the bottom of it. But I don’t care. I’ve done my next-best to get along with you, and you too have made somewhat of an effort, but we can’t get along—so let’s not waste any more energy.”
She walked out of the kitchenette, trembling. After a day of unmitigated, although varied, work, her nerves were rigid, and had given away at the first little jab.
So far, the fall had been one of steady labour, punctuated only by Sarah’s jeers and by the music to which she had listened with Jim. Galli-Curci had come, a marvel and a thrill.
And then, a little after that, they went to hear Frieda Hempel. If Galli-Curci’s voice was silver, Hempel’s was a rainbow shot with colours that danced or remained steadfast at will. Joy was powerless to compare the shimmering of her Proch’s Variations with the crystal joy of Galli-Curci in the same song. And the roguish dance of her “Fêtes Galantes,” where by winking she upset the Bostonians to such an extent that they made her repeat it. The stark tragedy of “The Linden Tree,” and “Home, Sweet Home,” at the end. Galli-Curci had played it for herself, and sung it gingerly, with such changes that Jim remarked: “Do you like ‘Home Sweet Home au naturel or ma?tre d’h?tel?’” “I don’t like it at all,” Joy had said; “I wish people wouldn’t keep singing it—it’ll fly to pieces any minute, it’s so used up.” But when Frieda Hempel sang it, it took the aspect of a new song—new in its charm, old in its universal appeal——Joy looked around her at the faces turned to the blue-velvet figure pouring forth the hackneyed words; there was not a face that did not have a tense, strained expression—hardly a person who was not winking back a tear or letting them come unashamed. “Home, Sweet Home,” at which the critics groaned. . . .
She and Jim did not look at each other until they were making their way out. Then Jim spoke. “Made you think—that the only important thing in life—was something we both are missing—didn’t it?”
“Oh, to move people like that!” said Joy.
The fall concerts set her to work more furiously than ever. She had not had the opportunity to compare her voice with others, to gain a proper perspective, before. Pa remarked that she was actually becoming musical in leaps and bounds; every week now showed a gain in voice, technique and musical understanding.
But little incidents like Sarah pricked; and when one was bending every part of one’s self to work, one had to be perfectly frank about elbowing little incidents aside. So she justified herself, the remainder of that day, for taking the stand on which she had walked out of the kitchenette. Sarah went out for the evening before Jerry had come back to the apartment, and did not come to tell Joy where she was going before she started, as had been the desultory custom. Joy was relieved. Then Sarah had accepted her suggestion. It would really be better for both of them.
The next morning she was out before there were any signs of life in the apartment, which was quite customary. She stayed long uptown, as she attended an afternoon concert and then ate dinner alone at a cafeteria on Huntington Avenue. It was late when she finally let herself into the apartment. Jerry darted at her in the hall—a wild looking Jerry, hair roughed up until her head was one bristle.
‘Joy—for God’s sake—I thought you’d never come back. Do you know where Sal is?”
“Why, no, of course not. She hasn’t been with me. What’s the mat——”
“When did you see her last?”
“Why—yesterday afternoon.”
“She didn’t say where she was going?”
“No. I didn’t see her when she went out. What——”
“You didn’t even see her?” Jerry collapsed on the hall table, leaning against it with every sagging muscle, her freckles starting out hurriedly on her white face. “Listen—When I got in this A.M. I looked in her room to see if she was in yet. She wasn’t. It was pretty late, but I didn’t think anything about it and went to bed and slept like a fool. Went there when I woke up at nine-thirty and—she wasn’t there. Bed, room, everything just the same way it was last night. Her American Beauty evening dress the only one of her clothes gone—I looked last night to see what she’d worn, and that was missing—and now—it still is. Where is she?”
“You are sure she hadn’t come in—and gone out again——”
“In her American Beauty evening dress? That would mean she came in at three A.M. the soonest she could have come and I not heard her—and gotten up at nine at the latest she could have and I not heard her—and gone out in evening dress and not come back yet! It’s nearly nine now.”
Joy considered, putting down her music roll. “You don’t know who she went out with last night?”
Jerry shook her head. “If I’d only been home when she started——”
The shriek of the telephone scared them both out of their positions. “You answer,” said Joy, and together they shivered to the closet down the hall in whose privacy they had their telephone conversations. Jerry lifted up the receiver. “Hello, oh, hello, Davy. She isn’t here just now. Oh, that’s all right, we were going to that dance to-night. Do you know by any chance who Sal went out with last night? You do?” She wound the telephone cord around one finger and then watched it tighten as she pulled until the finger grew livid. “Oh, will they be around at the dance to-night? Oh, well—you needn’t bother. Oh, all right, only I haven’t put on my gingham yet, so don’t make the poor kid race all the way. See you later.”
She slammed down the receiver and turned to Joy. “That was Davy—he and Wigs were taking us to that Tech dance to-night, you know. He called up to say they were sending a Freshman who has a car, over to get us—they have to bone for some nine o’clock exam to-morrow till the last minute. Come on into my room till I get into something.”
“But what—who——” stuttered Joy as she followed her into the wilderness of clothes that was Jerry’s room, and watched her pull a glittering green sequin dress from the collection—“What did he tell you about——”
“He said he knew that Sal was going to the Toast and Jam last night—there was some big celebration there—with Crawf Harris and Dum-Dum Barnes, because they had asked him to come along too with a girl he had a date with, but he had theatre tickets and so they didn’t——”
“And now what are you going to do?”
Jerry raked her hair smooth with two military brushes, her latest idea. “Do? Why, go to that dance and get those damn little rounders to tell me what went on, where they left Sal, and so on—and believe me, there’ll have to be some fluent explaining!”
“I don’t understand.” Joy moved about around the debris of the room, too nervous to sit down. “But I—I can’t stay here, Jerry, while you——” She vanished from the room. When she returned some minutes later, she wore hat and coat. Jerry, who was swiftly puckering up a split in a silk stocking made by putting her foot in it too abruptly, jerked an inquiring eyebrow. “What in——”
“Jerry—I know you can look after yourself and do everything and always have; but nevertheless there are times—if we are unlucky enough to have those times—when a man is absolutely necessary—a man we can trust. I think this is one of those times—and I’ve telephoned Jim Dalton to come out here as quickly as possible.”
Jerry nodded. “I’m glad you did. It—it does look like one of those times—and Wigs and Davy wouldn’t be even up to zero on a proposition like this.”
The two girls sat waiting in a silence broken only once or twice.
“Of course—it may come to nothing.” This from Jerry. “There must be all sorts of reasons——”
“Oh, there must be reasons. But——” Joy could not throw off the horror that was settling upon her. “But—where else could she be, and why? She has no other girl friends—oh, Jerry! Why, of course—there’s Félicie Durant!”
“I called her up at noontime,” Jerry droned. “She hadn’t seen her for a week or so.”
The bell rang finally.
“Bet it’s the freshman; freshmen always are early”; from Jerry.
But it was Jim. Just the sight of him made Joy a little more calm. He was the sort of person to whom one turned naturally; he gave out that “quiet strength” which is too often imposed upon to carry the burdens of others. A few swift questions, more or less hysterical answers, and the story was before him. A moment, and Jerry found the generalship taken away from her as Jim gave orders of procedure. He had not completed mapping out their line of action when the freshman arrived, a freshman who looked rather stunned to find instead of the described pair of girls in evening dress, a girl in street clothes, with a man, and one lone girl with pale face, fiery eyes, and bobbed hair, who was wrapped in a velvet cloak from which protruded a peacock fan—a girl who treated him, doggone it! like a regular chauffeur. She might at least have come in front with him and left the two street-clads by themselves; but no, they all sat in back, whispering until he hauled his car into place at the end of a moderately long line in a narrow Boston street. Then, and then only, did the girl with the bobbed hair condescend to speak to him.
“Do you happen to be familiar with Dum-Dum Barnes and Crawf Harris?”
“Not too familiar,” he replied cautiously. “They’re Seniors.” Then, as they made no move to disembark: “Aren’t you coming in?”
“That’s as might be,” drawled that bobbed-haired girl. “You can go in and see if Crawf and Dum-Dum are there. If they are, you can tell ’em to come out here Q. E. D.—if not, come out and tell us Q. E. D. As for Wigs and Davy—if they’ve got there yet, why, you can tell ’em I’m located here.”
He went off, muttering “Gotcha,” more than ever convinced that she thought he was a chauffeur. When he returned five minutes later, the three were in the same rigid expectancy in which he had left them, with that continued stillness which denotes an uninterrupted absence of conversation. The freshman cleared his throat. Decidedly there was something very cagey about this whole affair.
“I—well, I can’t locate Crawf and Dum-Dum,” he said. “They’re Seniors, you know; I don’t know them very well; and everyone’s dancing in the dark in there, so I can’t make out. Wigs and Dave don’t seem to have gotten there yet——”
“Then we’ll come in—I can see in the dark better than any other way,” and one by one the three climbed from the car. The freckled faced girl turned to him with a sudden, grandiloquent sweep. “Thank you very much for the use of your car, sir. I shall mention you favourably in my next letter to the Transcript.”
The three were gone, and the freshman, after a bewildered grunt, drove off to the Copley, where a party of his own kind awaited him. Not for him as yet the Tech fraternity dances.
As they entered the hall, Joy caught her breath. Never before had she seen such a spectacle. Three wide rooms were given up to dancing—the orchestra playing in the hall—sole illumination, the dim one that filtered from the hall into two of the rooms, and as for the third, it remained in blackness relieved only by ghostly dresses clasped to white shirtfronts. The three stared from the doorway for a moment of silent fascination. It was like some hazy, voluptuous dream—feverish music, quickening the throbbing of desire—the little sigh of figures interlocked, moving in time to the throb, in the dripping black velvet of the dark. It was something one might have imagined in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.
“Barbaric,” Joy murmured as she caught Jim’s eye and knew she was flushing—flushing under the music, which quickened the uneven pulse of memory.
“No—not barbaric,” said Jim. “Barbarians are—more direct.” He turned to Jerry. “Do you see them yet?” She shook her head, eyes straining after the dancers. “That freshman had no initiative. He ought to have——” He strode over to the orchestra, spoke to the boy at the piano. A few more bars, and the music stopped, the pianist tapping on the drum for quiet.
“I am asked to announce,” he said shrilly, “that Mr. Barnes and Mr. Harris are wanted in the hall.”
The music took up its beat, and the dancers in the dark, who had barely stopped, began again.
“I should have thought of paging them, only I’m so rattled,” said Jerry. “Thank God for Jim.”
He came back to them; through another opening into the hall charged two lads with question and not much else on their wide young faces. Jerry stepped forward and spread her fan in front of them, an excellent substitute for buttonholing, as they drew up with a start.
“Hullo, Jerry,” said one. The other said nothing; he was presumably Dum-Dum.
“This is them,” said Jerry, with a jerk of the fan. “You two, this is Miss Nelson and Mr. Dalton. And we want to know right now where Sal Saunders is.”
Dum-Dum opened his mouth and closed it.
“Did—didn’t she get back?” Crawf demanded, jaw hanging loosely. “You aren’t stringing us, Jerry? Trying to get a rise?”
“Nix!” Jerry snarled, her wide lips curling back from her teeth. “Where did you leave her?”
Crawf looked at Dum-Dum, whose speechless countenance gave forth no help. “Why—why—we—I——Haven’t you heard a word from her? Don’t you know where she is?”
“We do not,” said Jim. “And you two, since you are the last two known to be with her, are responsible.”
&ldqu............