Why Joan? Part 26

3. Humility.

4. Vulgarity--under which heading she included everything her step-mother did, or said, or thought, or wore, or was. Yet she did not quite dislike her step-mother.

This exhaustive survey left her with the impression of a hypercritical, overconfident, extremely unpleasant young ego, which intended to get as much out of life as possible with as little given in return, and which so far had got about what it deserved. She was glad that no one of her acquaintance was clever enough to see her quite as clearly as she saw herself.

Except, of course, Mr. Nikolai: and he did not count.

There was something odd about Stefan Nikolai's att.i.tude toward his fellow-men. He seemed to regard humanity as if it were a vast picture puzzle which it was his privilege to take apart and put together again for his amus.e.m.e.nt. He asked nothing of any piece of the puzzle except that it fit eventually into the spot where it belonged. Joan had a comfortable feeling that he would presently find her spot for her in case she failed to find it for herself. But she preferred to find it for herself, if possible.

His letter in response to the one in which she informed him of her impending engagement to Eduard Desmond had confirmed her faith in his uncanny insight. She did not realize how vividly her untrammeled descriptions made people and conditions about her known to a student of human kind. If she always saw things more clearly herself after she had set them down in black and white, the clarity doubtless extended to other vision.

He wrote from Russia, where he had been living for a while among the mouzhiks in order to understand how mouzhiks live. His curiosity about such things was insatiable.

"I also have a wish to see how Tzars live, since it is an order that is pa.s.sing," he added casually. "But I fear for one of my race that will be difficult. Mouzhiks have less reason to fear us Jews than have Tsars."

Then he went off at one of his usual tangents, and described to Joan briefly the theory of vaccination. "It is a question of phagocytes, you understand. Metchnikoff's idea is that when a disease manifests itself a certain number of phagocytes detach themselves from the blood to fight it. The stronger the virus injected of that disease, the greater the number of phagocytes formed; and it is the presence of these detached phagocytes after the virus has run its course that render the patient immune from further attack."

("What," wondered bewildered Joan, "is the man talking about? It sounds like a medical almanac!")

But as there was usually some method in Mr. Nikolai's tangents, she read on. At the end of the last page he enlightened her, and disposed of the affair with Eduard Desmond in two sentences.

"By this time you will be recuperating from your first love-attack.

Severe, doubtless, but so much the better. More phagocytes!"

It was his only reference to her revelations with regard to Eduard Desmond. Evidently to the scientific mind love in its various manifestations was merely a form of mal-ease to which humanity is subject.

Joan sincerely hoped that enough of the phagocytes had been released by the innoculation to render her immune from further attack forever.

CHAPTER XXIV

Social life, in a small American city that prides itself upon traditions of social life, may be as absorbing, if not as profitable, as that in any of the world's great capitals--perhaps more absorbing. For while it is possible in Paris, Rome, London, New York, to disappear at will out of the current and no questions asked, such a procedure would be as impracticable in one of the self-sufficient societies of our South or East as for a diving duck to remain ad libitum in the bottom of the duck-pond. He may remain, to be sure, even until he drowns; but his corpse need not expect a welcome when it returns to the surface, nor will there be any attempts to resuscitate him. It behooves a socially-inclined duck to hug the company of his fellows.

Joan was caught up presently into a whirl of little events which effectually precluded introspection and even thought. Dance followed dance; there were teas, luncheons, dinners--above all Bridge, which was just beginning to oust euchre from a society that must have its gambling, even if the stakes be merely cut-gla.s.s fern dishes. The time was not yet, in the South at least, when gentlewomen appeared at card parties purse in hand; but certain hostesses, notably our Effie May, soon learned to offer prizes that made attention to the game worth while. Mrs. Darcy's Bridges were invariably successful.

There began to appear, even among the freshest of the debutantes, an expression described by Joan to her friend Nikolai as the Bridge Face--an eager, grim look of do-or-die, which Joan did not find becoming. (Perhaps this was because she herself never learned to play the game, except with her hands.)

A wave of interest in things equestrian followed the Horse Show for a time, too, and Joan was one of several who rode out two or three days a week with a riding-master on hired horses, feeling very picturesque and Kentuckian. She was determined never to be caught napping again as she had been at Longmeadow.

Effie May also signified her intention of joining the equestriennes, and actually appeared on two occasions in a habit which fitted her as its cover fits a pincus.h.i.+on. But her misery was so apparent, though silent, that Joan presently advised her to give it up.

"I guess I never was intended for a horseback rider," she admitted with a sigh. "No, I'm not exactly scared, dearie--who'd be afraid of old trained sheep like them? You ought to have seen the trotters Calloway used to drive! Nothing ever come too fast for Calloway. But somehow it's different when you're on top of 'em, with nothing to hold on by. And then those bones in front. It was something fierce!"

She exhibited to the puzzled Joan certain injuries to her person which made her efforts at equestrianism seem nothing short of heroic.

"But why not go without bones in front, as I do?"

Effie May grinned. "Ever see me without a corset, hon? And you never will! No woman of my weight should ever be seen in public in her natural figger, not even in her coffin. Say, Joan, promise me you won't let the undertaker lay me out without a corset on!"

Joan promised--of which promise more anon.

She herself shortly became the riding-master's best pupil, a fact in which her father took great pride.

"A matter of inheritance, doubtless," he said modestly. "As you know, Dollykins, I am a believer in the power of inheritance."

And though he declined himself to join in the exercise (possibly not wis.h.i.+ng to put too great a strain upon the power of inheritance), his Christmas present to his daughter was a beautiful little gaited saddle-mare, especially selected, trained, and--such was his intimation--bred for her use by a horse-raising cousin in the heart of the Bluegra.s.s.

It was a docile, friendly creature, christened by its donor "Pegasus,"

in order not to lay too much emphasis on its s.e.x (the Major was rather nice in such matters). And it soon learned to nuzzle Joan for sugar and follow her about the yard like a big dog, looking quite injured and surprised that she did not take it into the house with her. In her delight and grat.i.tude, Joan almost forgot to wonder whether the horse-raising cousin had been paid for Pegasus, and by whom.

The possession of a horse automatically increased her acquaintance with human nature, introducing her to an element of Louisville society hitherto unknown to her except at a distance--the negro. Mrs. Darcy employed, with the exception of a chauffeur and a yard-boy, what she designated as "white help." She, like Ellen Neal, had an inherent distrust of a black skin. But wherever there is a good horse may also be found, drawn by an irresistible affinity, all the male negroes of the vicinity.

Joan, advised and a.s.sisted by the chauffeur, the yard-boy, and innumerable colored acquaintances from the alley, soon learned more about horses and horsemans.h.i.+p than could have been taught her in all the riding-schools in the world. Pegasus was brought up literally by hand.

The yard-boy proved himself particularly adept, though how he came by so much knowledge of horse-flesh in his eighteen ragged years of cutting gra.s.s and whitening front steps and was.h.i.+ng windows, was a puzzle to Joan. She asked him once.

"Huccom I knows how to do wif _hawses_?" he repeated, scratching his head. "Laws, Miss Joan, _I_ dunno! Hucc.u.m I knows how to chaw terbacca, or to w'istle thoo my teef? Reck'n I was jes' natch.e.l.ly bo'n dat-away."

She wondered what, with the gradual disappearance of the horse, would become of his friend the negro. Perhaps both, like the Indian, were doomed soon to become a legend in the land....

Richard Darcy formed quite a habit of dropping in at the stable himself to give Joan the benefit of his advice and inexperience; and his att.i.tude toward their colored visitors was a source of never-failing interest to her. He treated them with an off-hand casualness quite impossible to his daughter, to whom they were a race apart, to be pitied and dealt with gently. The Major dealt with them anything but gently. He bullied them, swore at them, ordered them around as if they were still goods and chattels, and apparently they loved him for it. One and all they sprang to his least suggestion, from the humblest alley-rat of the neighborhood to the haughtiest chauffeur--and there is nothing haughtier in the world than a colored man in livery. At the same time, they felt quite free to confide in him the most intimate details of their private lives; and they asked without reserve for anything of his that took their fancy. His cigars, his small change, the very clothes on his back, were not sacred from their requisition.

"Please, Major, gimme two-bits?" one of them would suggest tentatively.

"What do you want two-bits for, you infernal beggar?"

"To buy me a drink with, please, suh. My th'oat's dusty."

"A d.a.m.n good reason for a d.a.m.n impudent request," Richard Darcy would grumble, his hand going into his pocket.

Once Joan heard a dressy youth, who was at the moment rubbing a special polish onto Pegasus, remark: "Dat's a mighty fine tie you-all's wearin'

dis mawnin', suh. Gimme hit?"

"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" cried the Major.

"Gimme hit when hit's done worn out, den?"

"D'you think I've nothing better to do than watch my clothes for signs of wear so that I may present them to _you_, you ugly rascal? I will not!"

But some days later Joan recognized on the negro's neck the tie in question, which appeared to have worn out with unprecedented rapidity.

From signs like this Joan came to the conclusion that there existed between Richard Darcy and the negroes something of the same affinity as between the negro and the horse. They were all part together of a day that has pa.s.sed. It was another of the records of the old South for which she was constantly looking; and a far finer, truer relation it seemed to her than the mistrust and dislike which independence has latterly fostered between the races. She recalled that her father had never in his life spoken of his family's servants as "our slaves," but always as "our people." To him all negroes were still "our people"; a responsibility and a charge, to be kept in order, bullied perhaps, but protected, too, because of their great need of protection. And to all negroes, if to no one else in the world, Richard Darcy was a great man, one of the masters.

She tried to express something of this idea once to Archie Blair, who was always so eager to follow her mental excursions that she sometimes made the mistake of believing he did follow them. But for once he disagreed with his oracle utterly.

"n.i.g.g.e.rs are the curse of the South," he announced. "Always have been and always will be."