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? A............