Why Joan? Part 38

The girl had begun to s.h.i.+ver a little. "You mean--you married him?"

Effie May gave her a queer look. "Well, yes. As near as I could. You see he had a wife at the time."

"He--betrayed you, then?" gasped Joan.

"Oh, no, dearie, I knew. So did Ma. But we thought I'd better take a chance.... You see, things like that depend on how you're raised. To us it was almost the same as being married. Not like poor Mame, you know.

There's a whole lot of difference between a kept woman, and _her_ sort."

"Is there?" said Joan with stiff lips.

"My, yes! Sometimes if the man sees you're straight, he marries you after a while.... But Joe didn't. I'm sure I don't know why I stuck to him as long as I did, except, that I'm sort of an affectionate disposition and don't like to change," she ruminated. "And then he began to play in pretty bad luck, too, and that's not the time to leave a man, when he's down and out. I guess I'd have been sticking yet, if he'd acted decent--I ain't going to tell you what he asked me to do once when he got on his uppers," she said, darkly flus.h.i.+ng, "but it was something no gentleman would have proposed to a woman who'd stuck to him through thick and thin for years! That's when I left him for Calloway."

"Did--did Mr. Calloway marry you?" asked Joan faintly.

"Sure he did! Just before he died. He got religion, and the priest told him he ought, so as he could leave me his money without any fuss. He was a good old sport, that priest! And so was Calloway. Never turned a hair.

'Wish I'd done it before!' says he--Don't you think that's a pretty good recommendation for a woman, when a man's willing to marry her after living with her for fifteen years?" she asked wistfully.

"I suppose so," murmured Joan--The usual thing was happening to her. Old standards receded. Inevitably, irresistibly, she was beginning to see things through the other's eyes. This was Joan's great weakness--though there were people who considered it her strength.

"Calloway was pretty near to being a gentleman--not a born one, like your papa, dearie, but real genteel in his instincts, and he did a whole lot to make a lady of me. He always insisted on us having the best of everything, company especially. When he knew he had to die, poor boy!"--her lips trembled--"he says to me, says he, 'Here's your chance, old girl! Take the money, and go somewhere and make a fresh start,' he says. 'You'll do! You're good as any of 'em.' His very words, dearie!

'You're good as any of 'em.'"--She wiped her eyes.

"And so you came here?" prompted the girl.

"Yes. I'd always liked the place. It seemed sort of friendly and homelike, and it's small enough so that your money counts for something.

It wouldn't be lost, I thought, like in New York or Chicago--But I was kind of lonesome at first--always been used to having a man around--and I didn't know anybody. And then your mama died, and I saw my way clear.

You didn't know I knew your mama, did you, dearie?"

Joan was rather startled. She had not realized quite how early her life and her father's had been swept into the stream of this woman's ambition.

"Well, I did. Not to speak to, of course. But I used to watch her out of my back windows, and think what a lady she was to be so poor, and wished I knew how to sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with her. And once she caught me watching her, and smiled up, just as sweet, as if she'd known me always and liked me. (Sort of the way _you_ smile, dearie, when you're real pleased.)--And when she died the idea came to me, all of a sudden, that I was the person to look after them she'd left."

Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and began to weep again. "Oh, Gawd! Think of where I'd got to, and look where I'm at now!"

Joan moved restlessly about the room, conscious of the ache of tears in her own throat. She pictured that child of the streets and dancehalls, poor little "Lightfoot Ef," as they called her, struggling to better her condition, st.u.r.dily trying to find some tenable place of her own in life, even as she, Joan, was trying--but under what hopeless handicaps!

She thought of the cocaine-drugged mother with ambitions; of the evil, treacherous creature with whom the child had chosen to "take a chance"; and it began to seem almost a miracle that Effie May should be what she was. Joan looked at her with something like respect.

"But I heard you tell my father you had buried two husbands!" she said sharply. "If you really felt that you were 'good as any of them,'

that--that you had practically been married--why didn't you make a clean breast of it all?"

"Because I'm no fool!" gulped Effie May. "There are some things a man won't stand for--though G.o.d knows why _they_ should be so all-fired particular! And it seemed the only chance I'd ever get to marry a real gentleman. Besides, there was you."

"Me?"

"Why, yes, dearie. I'd never had any children, and I always thought if I could have I'd like 'em all to be girls, that I could dress up, and do for, and bring up nice.... Oh, Gawd, Gawd!" she moaned, suddenly flinging herself across the bed, face down. "Here I am in a grand house, with a limousine, and servants of my own, and a husband like a king, and a young lady daughter in society, and me giving parties to the pick of the land!... And now to go down again, back to the gutter!" She beat the bed with her fists.

There was something appalling in the utter abandonment of this woman whom Joan had never before seen otherwise than cheerful and poised.

"If I'd never gone to the races! Oh, Gawd! If I'd never gone! I had a hunch. I knew I'd meet up with that skunk Joe again somewheres, and I'd ought to have kept out of his way! There isn't a soul in this town could 'a' told on me unless it was that boy Blair."

"Archie?" repeated Joan, surprised.

"Yes," she sobbed. "He spotted me the first time he saw me--I don't know how. But I could 'a' kept _his_ mouth shut all right!--I was fixing him so he'd never tell...."

In her abandonment Effie May might have said rather more than she meant to say, if at that moment a great honking of horns and shouting of gay farewells had not announced the return of the tallyho from the Derby.

She sat erect with a gasp. "It's _him_! For goodness' sake don't let your papa catch me like this!" She flew to her dressing-table, reaching for cold cream, powder, rouge. "Keep him off," she besought the girl.

"Quick!--pull down those shades--there, that's better. Help me into a negligee--no, no, not that green one, for heaven's sake!--a pink one.

Now some perfume. Tell him he must be very quiet because of my headache--don't forget, that's why we came home. There!--how do I look?"

She leaned back languidly in a chaise-longue, with a handkerchief dipped in cologne hiding her swollen eyes.

Joan, rather dazed, had a.s.sisted at these hasty rites, marveling at the triviality of a mind which could turn in one second from the catastrophe of a wrecked life to considerations of vanity. And then the sheer desperation of the thing struck her. Effie May was not done yet. She meant to go down fighting.

There was something in the girl that always responded to gallant effort.

"Good luck," she said queerly, and went to the door.

"Wait!" gasped the woman. "Joan! _Are you going to tell him right away?_"

"Not--right away," said the girl slowly.

There came a little rush behind her. Effie May had caught up one of her hands, and kissed it....

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The girl had a difficult problem before her. She wrestled with it throughout a sleepless night. She felt like Fate, with human destinies in her control.

At one moment her course seemed clear beyond the question of a doubt. It was unthinkable that her father should continue to recognize as his wife--her mother's successor!--a woman who had led an immoral life, who had earned the very money that supported them by living for years as the mistress of another man. Joan's cheeks burned with the thought.

At the next moment, she wondered what her father would do without the woman. She had no illusions left regarding Richard Darcy. He had never in his futile life stood on his own two feet. He was one of the inefficients, who must be cared for. Now, weakened morally and physically by the habit of luxurious living, he was less able than ever to take care of himself. Age was coming upon him rapidly. In the struggle of life, he must go down utterly to defeat--Unless his daughter could help him; and so far his daughter had been unable even to help herself.

The girl wondered, too, her heart sick within her, whether he would consent to give up the luxury he loved when he learned the shame that went with it.... Not that he would be able to forgive the woman! She knew his fixed standards, his pride of race, too well to expect of him any such magnanimity. The vulgarity of Effie May had been quite enough for him to swallow, as it was.

Joan thought that if, knowing his wife's past and utterly despising her, he yet kept her because of material benefits, it would be a shame she personally could not bear. Better, perhaps, that he be not put to the test.

And yet--in her mother's place, a woman of the town! (The girl was not able to make the fine distinctions in vice suggested by her step-mother.)

There had to be considered, also, the fraudulency of continuing to inflict such a woman on society in the guise of a lady.

The word brought back a rush of pity to Joan's heart. Effie May had done her best to be a "lady," poor creature, even to the extent of vainly trying to remodel her speech and her manners on those of her new family....

Joan, very white and drawn about the lips, ordered her horse in the early morning and went for a long gallop, hoping to clear her brain.

When she returned, with nothing decided, she found Archie Blair in the library waiting for her.