” Oh, dear! What if it should rain? Can you imagine anything worse than organdy in the rain? And yet if it doesn’t rain, can you imagine anything worse than to have on dark silk, at Harvard Class Day, with everyone else in organdy?” Thus Félicie, flattening her imperial nose against the window pane, a scowl menacing her untrodden brow, as the few clouds in the skies were menacing the calm of the June day.
Joy had been with Félicie and her aunt throughout the spring, a troubled spring of work and restlessness. The old wild longings that had once shaken her did not return. There was instead a dull, sick emptiness, which engulfed her work rather than allowing itself to be engulfed.
Few events had marked Joy’s calendar. Her father had made his long-anticipated visit, and found himself pleased with her environment as well as charmed by Pa Graham. Under Pa’s guidance Joy had worked herself into a position from which she could map out her progress for the next few years. “Nothing but death can stop me,” she told herself; and the words grew into a sort of refrain that twinkled into her mind at regular intervals, generally putting to rout some unwarranted flight of fancy.
Félicie had taken the spring at a pace that left faint smudges beneath her eyes, and an ever-so-little receding of the tide of colour on the cheeks that she boasted had never known a rouge-puff. It seemed as though she had been wound up and could not stop. Evenings when there was no excuse for going out, no especial festivity to attend, she would go to the movies, eat down a few thrills, leave early and dance late. Sometimes in the mornings, when her yawns were irrepressible, Joy would ask her why she never let down.
“My dear, you can’t stop going—you lose your grip!” she said, wide-eyed that the answer was not obvious.
“Losing your grip” was the one thing the Excitement-Eaters seemed to dread.
Now, Félicie was chafing between a watermelon-coloured organdy and a dark blue taffeta, both laid challengingly upon the bed.
“Why did I say I’d go, anyway?” she complained. “Of course, I want to go. It’s interesting, even if there are millions of relations and absolutely no cut-ins—but it isn’t worth it to have all this trouble about deciding!”
“If everyone usually wears organdy, why not chance it? They’ll all be in the same boat if it rains.”
This from Joy, as she combed her hair preparatory to donning organdy herself. Hal Jennings, the Harvardite who was taking Félicie to Class Day, had given her two tickets for the Stadium exercises and his club spread, and Joy had accepted Félicie’s invitation to share the tickets. She had never seen Harvard Class Day, and her anticipation was not dimmed by Félicie’s grumping. Félicie was always like that if she had to decide anything.
“Oh, I suppose so,” said Félicie, and retired to the closet to change; “but you know how it looks in the rain!”
When they were duly arrayed in filmy pink and blue, they presented themselves to Madame Durant for approval. She always liked to see Félicie before she went out anywhere, to criticize or approve her costume—usually to command changes, which was a sore trial to Félicie, as refutation into an ear-trumpet is as futile as it is disagreeable.
Madame Durant approved their “simple dresses” at first, then when they were ordered to “turn around,” remarked accusingly that she could see right through them, and they must each put on another good, thick petticoat.
Joy and Félicie exchanged glances of despair. If there is anything a girl hates, it is a good, thick petticoat. But the ear-trumpet ruled, and they retired to bolster themselves out. Since Joy had been associated with Madame Durant, she had made allowances for many of Félicie’s characteristics. When they were starting out of the door, the penetrating voice that deaf people often acquire recalled them. Those little light coats weren’t enough. They must take long, dark coats and umbrellas. Félicie started to crumple, then remembered her starched dress and compressed her emotion into a waver.
“It’s bad enough to go not knowing how the weather’s going to act, but to go dressed piebald!”
But they muffled themselves up properly, and with a final interlude of feeding the dog so that Madame Durant would not have it to do later, they were off. Félicie had refused to enter a street car in light things. “They’ll think we’re shop-girls just back from the Park, you know they will!” And so they had indulged in the formal luxury of a taxi.
“I suppose auntie was wise about those coats,” Félicie said; “but I do hate to encourage her in anything.”
“It seems so strange to have an older woman supervise one’s clothes,” said Joy. “I suppose that’s because my mother died when I was so little, and father never wanted anyone to take her place—he wouldn’t even have a housekeeper.”
“Most girls would have been pretty queer, living that way. You were lucky to have come through it all right.”
“But did I?” Joy wondered, as Félicie turned to peer out of the window at the smug blue sky. She had dismissed the subject.
“I’ve never been able to figure out why Harvard always gives such pepless parties compared to other colleges. I’d never mention it to a Harvard man, because you know it’s just as bad as discussing religion, you never get anywhere—but why do you suppose it is?”
“Never having been to a Harvard affair——”
“I shall die to-night, simply pass out, that’s all. I’m sunk when I think of it. I just will make Hal take me somewhere else, that’s all. In the first place everyone brings a girl and you know that’s wrong. It leaves absolutely no stags. That ruins everything right there.”
“Poor Harvard! Getting knocked for single-mindedness,” Joy murmured.
“That’s just what it is! At the Harvard-Yale game last fall, some Yale men, friends of Greg’s, came over and cut in on me at the tea dance afterwards—they really made the dance almost good—and the Harvard men were simply furious! They’ve just got their minds set on straight dances!”
“Oh, well, you can’t generalize. All Harvard men can’t be so resourceful that they enjoy having a whole dance with a girl.”
Before Félicie had this sifted down, the taxi-man drew up and informed them that they would have to walk from there.
The little clouds that had threatened like a baby’s playful fist in the sapphire laughter of the sky, were now striking blows of grey menace into the blue.
“Didn’t I know it would rain!” Félicie wailed. “Just look at that sky. Why do they have the Stadium exercises out-doors?”
Scattered lines of people hurrying to the Stadium; hundreds and hundreds of girls in all colours of organdy, with organdy hats—and spotless white slippers. Complacent mothers; excited fathers, trying not to look too proud; nondescript and sometimes awful people who would be lumped under the gross head, Relations; all urging their way to the Stadium. It seemed as if the world was at Harvard Class Day—the world, and its Relations. As they were led to their cold stone seats by a brick-cheeked youth who hid his admiration beneath a mask of “Harvard indifference,” a treble voice lifted itself out of the crowd.
“Why, Joy Nelson! Yes, it is! Hullo, Joy! It’s me—see?”
It was Betty Grey, in black and white organdy combined in sophisticated lines that made her look all of eighteen—Betty Grey, who threw herself over to where Joy and Félicie were installing themselves, and hung a charming wedge between two surging lines of people anxious to get to their places.
“I haven’t seen you for such ages, I thought you were dead or something! You know, how you always think people are dead or something, when you don’t see them!”
A struggle ensued behind, which failed to dislodge her while she met Félicie. “People seem to be pushing me, but they don’t mean it—I always say, judge a crowd kindly—this is my first Class Day, and I’m terribly excited! Have you been singing just lots this year?”
“Just lots,” Joy repeated gravely. “What have you been doing? And how is—everybody?”
“Oh, Grant’s all right. I haven’t done anything but flunk English History—there’s a girl visiting us who knows you and your cousin—oh dear, it feels as if everyone in the world was pushing me! I’ll see you later, what spread are you going to?”
And Betty Grey was swirled along out of sight.
“They’re starting,” said Félicie. “Look, all the classes march in.”
It was at that moment when Félicie forgot to look at the sky, that the rain came down—and in no pathetic Boston drizzle; it gave itself out in the quantities it had been holding back all day, generously making up for lost time.
All over the Stadium people stood up and umbrellas snapped open, spreading their inky mushroom caps over slim stems of organdy. “It’ll only last a minute,” said someone, and the word was passed along until the mushrooms bobbed to the repetition: “Only a minute—only a minute!”
“It’s going to be more than a minute,” said Joy, whose feet were getting wet. “I’m going out until it stops.”
“Through all that crowd! I’d rather sit here, as long as we have umbrellas.”
“Well, a cold doesn’t mean to you what it would to me. I’ll come back when it holds up”; and Joy plunged forward into the flock that was making its way to the nearest exit. Beneath the stone shelter of the Stadium she found herself but little better off. The ground trampled by hundreds of wet feet was soggy; dripping people shook themselves all around her. She turned to seek a dryer place, and knocked into a young man who was hastening by. They both drew back with apologies which faded into silence on their lips. It was Packy.
“Joy!”
“Why, hello, Packy.” She tried to speak naturally; he made no attempt, and stood staring down at her until they became aware of the enraptured gaze of two pink-organdied flappers, who were obviously regretting the fact that they had so much hair mattressed over their ears.
“Joy—I’ve wanted to see you for a long time—where can we go, so I can talk to you?”
They fell back to the lee of one of the entrances, where there was comparative calm.
“I never had the nerve—to call up again, after that night—but I wanted to see you—I’ve wanted to see you for a long time—to tell you what I thought of myself for acting the way I did.”
Packy had grown in the months that had passed since she had seen him. The gangly stripling with the restless, roving eye and the feet that were always beating out a syllable of jazz, was gone, leaving only reminiscences of himself. He had gathered composure, and his eyes had lost their look of seeking excitement.
“What have you been doing this year, Packy?” she asked involuntarily.
“Oh, that’s neither here nor there. As a matter of fact, I’ve been working.”
Working! Packy, the gilded one, with an income to keep him and his among the polo-labourers and golf-toilers!
“But—well, I’ve written I don’t know how many letters to you, Joy—and torn them up. Letters are rotten when you really want to say anything.”
They are distracted by a little girl, her organdy clinging to her in sodden folds, her improbable complexion fast fading to incoherency, as she came limping out of the rain to her mother who, firmly dry, had been standing against a pillar.
“Oh, mother, the rain has shrunk my shoes all up—I can’t hardly walk——”
“No-ra! You were out there, all this time? You’ve always heard about people who didn’t know enough to come in when it rained!”
“That good lady,” said Packy, “has described me complete. Last fall, I didn’t know enough to come in when it rained. I did know a few things, though, Joy. Can you believe that I could never have been such a cad—if I hadn’t been drunk?”
“I—can,” said Joy.
“I’ve thought it all over—I don’t know how many times—and I’ve thought it out. To go in back of the fact that I misjudged you—I misjudged Jerry and Sarah. Because we could act as freely at the apartment as though we were at our club—because they were on their own—and because you were with them, and on your own,—I thought—well, I didn’t quite think so at that—until I was drunk—and then I didn’t think at all.”
Insensibly they had retreated still farther from the crowd, and now stood in a muddy corner quite alone.
“I was in love with you, Joy, as much as I could ever be. I—I still am, I guess. It—seems to feel that way. I was always trying to puzzle out your status—just where you stood in the Jerry-Sarah household. But I didn’t understand, and so I lost you.”
“You—you needn’t blame yourself so, for not understanding,” said Joy; “almost anyone might have—I can see that now.”
“No—not any one who recognizes that we’re doing transitional stuff these days. I was coasting around on last century’s roller skates. They just hit the surface. Now they’re using ice skates, that go in a little. Oh, I’ve thought this all out—and got my ice skates!”
“What?” she faltered.
“Why, you know. We all know. Last century—no matter what men were—they were all that women had—so they took them and made the best of it. Now—no matter what the women of to-day are making of themselves—and a lot of women don’t exactly know what they’re making of themselves—they’re all men have—and we’re certainly not going to make the worst of it.”
Joy thought. This was a mean between the extremes of the discussion held at Fennelly’s between Greg and the two Princeton men. “Then you think it’s working around——”
“Yes—not in this generation, but eventually—things have got to work round to a better basis. Bye and bye the world’ll get straightened out—and it won’t go back to last century’s roller skates to do it, either. It takes time, and costs a lot on the way—it cost me you—anyway, it cost me an even chance for you.” He looked down at her serious face and quoted lightly—
“Might she have loved me? Just as well
She might have hated me, who can tell.
Where had I been now had the worst befell?
“Meanwhile—here we are sopping up the rain at Class Day—she and I!”
“Here I am keeping you from reuning with your class, you mean,” Joy supplemented. “I must say good-bye and let you go back. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have seen you now, Packy—to be able to remember you like this——”
“Then—then I can’t see you again,” he stated, in a quiet voice.
“It—wouldn’t do much good—would it?”
He bowed. At a distance, it looked like a casual leavetaking between two as casual acquaintances. “I—suppose not. Good-bye, Joy!” He took her hand for the briefest fraction of a clasp, and left her.
People were jerking their way back through the entrances, and she joined the fray. Out in the Stadium classes in gay costumes were walking into the field; the rain was extending a few moments of leniency.
A fine drizzle started up with the air of permanency as the Ivy orator finished his quips and Harvard-and-Its-Relations flocked from the Stadium to the Yard. Joy wondered as she looked at the faces of the girls passing by and then at their soiled-white-kid-feet, how many had found heart to enjoy the exercises in concern for their apparel which had to last through the dance that evening. Félicie had managed to keep fairly dry, with the aid of her coat and umbrella, and was in average spirits.
They met Hal Jennings at his hall, where he was vibrating between ten Relations, and joined the family board outdoors around a long table sandwiched in with many others beneath an awning. The crowd pressing about them was overpoweringly correct, and no one seemed to lose their gaiety although the rain came through the awnings and the walking underfoot was almost marshy by this time. Joy ate strawberries, her teeth chattering with cold, and tried not to show that she was minding a steady trickle down her back from a hole in the awning. She met several nice looking boys who came up to greet Félicie, each of whom told Joy that “it would have been an awfully pretty spread out here if it hadn’t rained” and soon dashed back to their Relations.
“I wish you were going to stay to the dancing, and meet them when they’re feeling right,” Félicie whispered. “Most of the Relations will have gone by then.”
When Joy was able to beat a retreat politely, Félicie and Hal came to the gate with her, and stood waving after her as she drove away in a cab. Never had Félicie’s loveliness been so breath-taking. Little dark rings of hair clung around her face, the damp air curling them into tendrils no Permanent Wave could duplicate; her lips were parted in the smile with which she could dazzle without bringing a wrinkle or cross line into the pink and white perfection of her skin. It seemed almost incredible that such wonder of nature could have so squandered itself on one girl. . . .
Wearied by the events of the day, Joy went early to bed after giving Madame Durant a sketch of the main events of the rain. Sleep came reluctantly; she was thinking over Packy’s words. “No matter what the women of to-day are making of themselves—they’re all we’ve got.” “Bye and bye the world’ll get straightened out—it takes time—and costs a lot on the way.” How Packy had changed from the casual, flippant, “jazz-hound” of only last fall. To think about things so——She had made an error common among girls—Because men of his type had never talked seriously to her, she had supposed that they never thought seriously.
It was true; these days were, must be, but transitional. Excitement-Eaters, dancers in the dark—all were part of the wheel of progress that seems to go back at times before it turns forward again. But “it takes time, and costs a lot on the way.”
It costs a lot, it costs a lot. Had she been asleep? She was still repeating those words in the quiescent darkness of the room. What had awakened her? The call of the telephone bell, a long shriek in the black space of the night, answered her question. Still half dazed, she stumbled to the door and into the hall. The telephone was on a little table outside the kitchen. She made her way sat down. “Hello.”
“Hello. Is this Brighton 7560?”
It was a man’s voice speaking, speaking hurriedly, as if something fearful was knocking behind every word, anxious to come out.
“Yes,” Joy steadied her voice. “Joy Nelson speaking.”
“Oh, Miss Nelson, is that you—Miss Nelson—I—we’ve had—this is Hal Jennings speaking, Miss Nelson—I’m at the River Hill hospital—we’ve had a—bad accident.”
The darkness swayed around Joy as blackness sways when one’s eyes are closed and one presses one’s eyeballs. “Félicie—what of Félicie!” she cried into the mouthpiece.
“She—she’s horribly hurt, Miss Nelson. We—we just brought her here. I thought you’d be able to know—to notify——”
“Not—not seriously hurt?” Joy gasped, pressing the receiver close to her ear against the frenzy to throw it and its horror far from her.
“They don’t know yet—but they say they don’t think so. I—I’d come right up here, if I were you, Miss Nelson.”
“I’ll be up as soon as I can get there!” she cried, and started to ring off; but his voice arrested her.
“I ordered a taxi sent down for you—it’ll be there any time now.”
She put down the receiver and dashed back to her room, where she hurled herself into her clothes, her brain a confusion of terrors which gave way to compelled calm as she finished dressing and put on her hat. She mustn’t lose her head. She mustn’t lose her head—no matter what had happened. She mustn’t wake Madame Durant—when she saw the doctors, she would know what to tell her, how best to soften the shock. She must notify Greg, and she did not know his address. Learning it took going through several of Félicie’s letters. Getting a sleepy Western union took more breathless moments. She finally sent the message: “Félicie injured in accident, is at River Hill Hospital. Come at once. Joy Nelson.” S............