PLAYTIME
December found Joan with dark, happy eyes intent upon the rose-colored phantasmagoria of existence, her worriment past. Donald was safe with Brian. It hurt her a little that he did not write.
"I think, girleen," said Kenny, intuitional as always, "that he fears to write, thinking of course you are still at the farm and would try to tempt him back. And I haven't a doubt he's set his teeth and vowed not to come to you until he's made good." As indeed he had.
After that, save for a wistful moment now and then, she seemed content, trusting Brian.
Unhappiness lay behind her like a forgotten shadow. After the loneliness and the dreams and the hills, her playtime too had come as Donald's had come to him in Brian's world of spring; and life was whirling around her, brilliant, breathless, kaleidoscopic and altogether beautiful, a fantastic fairyland that kept her dazzled and delighted.
It had no shadows for her wondering eyes; the shadows lay behind her. New York with its shops where with Ann she had gasped and laughed and colored and stared into mirrors, its lights, its crowds, its theaters, its opera where Max Kreiling sang and left her with a sob in her heart, its amazing Bohemia of success of which Kenny was a part, seemed to her but a never-ending sparkle of romance and kindness. She spent unwearied hours in Ann's studio, masquerading in a sculptor's smock and staring at clay and marble with eyes of unbelief. And she tarried for amazed intervals in the studio upstairs where Margot Gilberte plied Cellini's art, embedding pennyweights of metal in hot pitch that, cooling, held it like a dark and shapeless hand while Margot sculptured elfin leaves and scrolls upon it. Curious things came to the jeweler's desk where Margot worked; jewels cut and uncut, soft-colored sea-pebbles, natural lumps of greenish copper, silver and gold and brass (to Margot's eye there were no baser metals) malachite and coral and New Zealand jade. Joan handled them all with gasps of reverence.
"And this, Margot? How green it is!"
"A peridot for a dewdrop in a leaf of gold. And there, Question-mark, are the pink tourmalines I propose to use for rosebuds in this necklace of silver leaves."
"And blue sapphires!"
"They are for pools of sea-water in some golden seaweed and the pearls are for buds in some cherry leaves."
"What an odd frail little tool, Margot!"
"I made it myself," said Margot. "And now, cherie, if you don't run along to Madame Morny, Kenny will scold me."
She delighted Madame Morny with her willingness to work. She delighted Kenny with her willingness to play. Nothing tired her. Together they roamed to the quaint little restaurants of Bohemia; the Italian table d'hotes where Kenny was inclined to twinkle at the youthful art students who affected pretentious ties, the quiet old German restaurant that once had been a church, Chinatown where you ate unskillfully with chopsticks upon a table of onyx, and the Turkish restaurant where everything, Sid said, was lamb.
"Garry found it," he insisted. "I didn't. I'm glad I didn't, though a lot of the Salmagundi men go over there and like it. The art students too. Forty cents. Proprietor's the real thing—he wears a fizz."
"Fuzz, darlin'," corrected Kenny gently.
"Fez!" sputtered Sid in disgust. "Fez, of course. Everything's got lamb in it, even the pastry and the coffee. I swear it has! I—I hate lamb. Didn't know the Turks went in for it so much, did you, Kenny? Jan computed a table of lamb percentages on the menu and I felt like bleating. 'Pon my word I did. Menu's got a glossary and needs it. Pilaf—that's rice. Lamb's something else. No, pilaf's lamb, and rice is something else. Oh, hanged if I know. Lamb's lamb no matter how you spell it."
"Come along with us," suggested Kenny. His kindliness of late had startled more than one, accustomed to his irresponsible caprices.
"Please do!" said Joan; and Sid, delighted, and amazed as always, repudiated at once his hatred of lamb. It was nourishing, he recalled at once with a brazen air of sincerity, and the Turks disguise it in amazingly enticing ways.
Joan laughed.
"Sid," she said, "you're a dear, blessed fibber and we want you with us."
Her poise and adaptability were startling. Her simplicity won them all. To the girls who lived in Ann's studio building she seemed all laughter and happiness and breathless eagerness to please.
"She's just herself," said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds that were crowds, "She doesn't know that half the world is posing."
Joan spent an afternoon in Peggy's dressing room during a matinee and came home with moist, excited eyes.
"Think, Peggy, think!" she exclaimed. "Once long ago that was my mother's life."
Peggy kissed her and rummaged for cigarettes. Joan's eyes rested upon her pretty face with troubled indulgence.
"Oh, Peggy," she pouted. "Why do you smoke?"
"Because," said Peggy honestly, "I like it. Does it shock you, dear?"
"It did at first," admitted Joan. "And even now I shouldn't care to smoke myself. But then when that old painter Kenny likes so came here with his wife, and her hair was so white and her face so kind, and she smoked like a chimney—"
"Joan!"
"She did," insisted Joan. "Well, then, Peggy, I just stayed awake that night and thought it all out. Peggy, do all painters' wives smoke? I mean—" she flushed and stammered.
Peggy's eyes were demure and roguish.
"You ridiculous child!" she said. "Who's the painter?"
Joan turned scarlet and bit her lip.
"And what, sweetheart," begged Peggy with ready tact, "did you think out?"
"If you smoke," said Joan, "because you really want to, Peggy, it's all right. But if a girl smokes just to—to appear startling and make men look at her, then it's all wrong!"
Peggy kissed her.
"Joan, dear," she said, "you've the most amazing intelligence in that small head that I ever met. Hum. If I'm not mistaken that's Kenny at the door. He never stops ringing until he's sure you know he's there."
Joan raced away to change her dress.
With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely. Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away from her. Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and understanding.
"Kenny," she said under her breath, "I suppose you know you're in love with your ward?"
Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy's professed belief in the transiency of feminine love. After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of concentration upon one. Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and masculine; women were meant to be faithful.
Now he stared at the girl's saucy face with a startled flush.
"Peggy!" he said, "you little wretch!"
It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret.
Joan's first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications.
Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and there a glint of silver. The soft full skirt floated out above her silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and arms. Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her frantic wail:
"Oh, Peggy, Peggy! I can't go. They forgot the sleeves."
She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and troubled.
"Kenny, should I?"
"Should you what, dear?"
"Dance when—when Uncle—"
"If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen," said Kenny gently, "then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop them. You were kind and merciful while he lived. Even he, dear, would not ask more."
"If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced half the floor off the studio," put in Ann, "I shall be offended. I dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance."
Joan laughed and kissed her.
The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight.
"She is beautiful!" said Jan.
"Beautiful, of course," said Somebody. "Any girl in Kenny's life would be beautiful or she wouldn't be there."
As for Kenny, his path was pleasant, as it always was. If a waving arm was not bidding for his attention, it was a laughing hail or a hearty hand upon his shoulder. His bright dark face sparkled with the zest of popularity.
Joan thought him as care-free as a boy.
"We dance in the club gallery," he told her, smiling at the look of wonder in her eyes.
"And the paintings and sculpture?"
"A members' exhibition. The sculptured lion staring from his pedestal at us is Jan's. Look at the superb muscle play of his flank! The midsummer woods—see, how well the lad has painted air!—is Garry's. And my pine picture's over there."
"And Sid?"
Kenny danced her the length of the gallery. A white line of sculpture gleamed on either side behind a rail of brass.
"Down here," he said. "I saved it for the last. The beggar's painted—me!"
It was Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid's portrayal.
Joan clung to his hand in delight.
And was it all Bohemia, she asked.
Ah! admitted Kenny twinkling, there you had him. Bohemia, he fancied, was always wherever you yourself were not. The men and women who did big things were too busy for picturesque posing. Bohemia, as legend read it, had to do with rags and dreams and ambition without effort, a shabby, down-at-heel pretension that glittered without gratifying. The Bohemians of to-day were the failures of to-morrow. And the crowd who lived at the Holbein Club lived, loved, worked and died much in the fashion of less gifted folk. If there was a Bohemia of success, however, it danced here to-night.
But, girleen, the music was urging! And who could resist the sweet wild delirium of a violin's call? Certainly not an Irishman intent upon a moonbeam imprisoned in a girl's bright hair. But one sound sweeter!
"And that?" asked Joan as they glided away again among the dancers.
Kenny threw back his head and his eyes laughed.
"A robin singing in a blackthorn!"
Joan smiled at the boyish sparkle of his face. He was so charmingly, so irresponsibly young and gay.
His Bohemia of success she found a startling triumph.
"Joan's horribly disturbed," Ann telephoned in the morning. "As her guardian you'll have to settle a number of infatuated young men. The telephone's been ringing all morning. I think it's a case of 'The line forms on the right, gentlemen, on the right!'"
Kenny faced the problem with his fingers in his hair.
"Who's bothering her?" he demanded bluntly.
"The Art Students' League," said Ann demurely, "the Federation of Arts, National Society of Portrait Painters, Architectural League, Watercolor Society, Authors' League and the Prince who thinks he's a playwright."
"He's a piece of cheese!" said Kenny in intense disgust. "What did Joan think of him?"
"She said she didn't like him nearly so well as the art student who plays a banjo in the orchestra because he needs the money. Peggy knows him."
"That was wholesome," admitted Kenny. "But I don't think much of him either. He has absolutely no right when he's playing a banjo commercially to recognize the girls on the floor. I'll be over to lunch."
It was a nerve-racking hour for Ann. Kenny, pensive, ate but little. He seemed very sorry for himself and eyed Joan with melancholy tenderness. When at last the dreadful subject was broached, Ann stoutly defended everybody.
Frantic, Kenny pushed back his plate and began to stride around.
"Sit down," said Ann. "You're making everybody nervous. Of course you don't blame Joan. And of course you can't blame—"
"I'm not blaming anybody," sputtered Kenny. "That club is a hot-bed of shallow-minded, impressionable, fickle-minded boobs. I can see plainly that we'll have to be married to-day. To-morrow at the latest."
"Kenny, please!" said Joan and the conflict began.
Finding the year still strongly in her mind, he surrendered with a sigh, hurt and unhappy, remembering his vow that Joan's happiness should be the religion of his love.
"Oh, you dear foolish people!" cried Ann in despair. "Why don't you announce your engagement in the Times and discourage the line once and for all?"
"Of course!" said Kenny and looked at Joan.
"I shouldn't mind at all," said Joan, coloring.
Whereat Kenny called up the Times office, and the Holbein Club went mad with delight. Jan, without meaning to, got very drunk and shocked himself, and Margot made the ring. She did not know why Kenny wanted the golden circlet barred crosswise like a frail ladder. Nor why he insisted upon a cluster of wistaria set in amethysts.
Even then misgivings sent him to Ann in a panic of conscience.
"Am I ungenerous?" he demanded. "Perhaps Joan should have had a year of utter freedom. You know what I mean, Ann. To come and go as she pleases and with whom she pleases. She's so young." He flushed.
"Joan wouldn't have it different," said Ann, touched by the boyish wistfulness of his eyes. "She clings to you. And she's as shy and unspoiled as the day you brought her here. This flurry of admiration to her means nothing at all. She's unhappy with strangers."
Kenny knew it was true and marveled.
"I would like to be generous," he admitted with an effort. "But I can't. It's the simple truth, Ann, I can't. Even the thought of her liking other men—bothers me."
December was fated to hold for him another startling anticlimax. It came one snowy morning when he had slept even later than usual, dreaming of an iridescent balloon that climbed higher and higher with Joan peeping radiantly over the edge until at the peal of the telephone bell it disappeared entirely.
Joan's voice instantly dispelled his irritation.
"Mavourneen!" he exclaimed. "Up already! And you danced half the night."
"It's eleven o'clock," said Joan. "Besides, I couldn't sleep. I've been thinking. Remember, Kenny, when you read the will and I said that Donald should have the farm?"
"Yes," said Kenny, somewhat mystified. "I remember."
"If he's going to study and work his way through college, I don't think he'd want it, do you?"
"No, dear, I doubt if he would. What's in your mind, girleen?"
"Oh, I'm so glad you think so too! Kenny—"
"Yes?"
"Do you know Jan's cousin, the pretty girl who's a model? I know that doesn't sound at all as if it had anything to do with the farm but it has. Jan's cousin said—I hardly know how to tell you, Kenny. I don't think I like telephones. If I could see your face—"
"I'm wearing my guardian's face!"
"Oh!"
"And evidently it isn't popular."
"I like you—different. Jan's cousin said that she could get me a great deal of work if I wanted it—posing for head and shoulders—"
"Joan!"
"Oh, dear!" wailed Joan. "That was a guardian's voice. Please wait, Kenny."
"I'm waiting."
"I'm going to keep the farm and give Don the rest of the four thousand dollars. … Did you say anything, Kenny?"
"No. … No, I was just clearing my throat."
"I've only spent a little of it yet. From now on I want to earn my living like Peggy and Ann and Margot and all the others. I'll still have plenty of time to study and practice. I wonder I didn't think of it before. It was selfish when I had the farm and Don not even mentioned in the will. I suppose I didn't think of it because here things seem to happen so—so fast. I'm always in a whirl."
"Yes," said Kenny sincerely. "Things do happen fast."
She waited his approval and was the first to speak, a wondering hint of reproach in her voice.
"Kenny, please say something!"
"To be truthful, dear," said Kenny in a queer voice, "you've taken my breath away. I'm thinking—just thinking."
"It's fair—"
"Yes, dear, it's fair enough."
"You don't disapprove? Oh, I hope you won't. It will make me so happy to help Don through college."
"It will make you happy!" said Kenny and sighed.
"Ann had so many, many things to say against it. She said she was trying to see it all with your eyes—as a guardian. But I told her you're hardly ever—a guardian. And your Bohemia is democratic, isn't it? And painters are respectable and worthy men and nothing like so flighty as you read. You've said so yourself. And I like to work. And there are so many charming girls who are models and Jan's cousin is a Vassar girl—" In her eagerness to convince him she lost her breath.
"I'll come for you at Madame Morny's at four," Kenny told her, sick at heart. "And then, dear, I'll tell you exactly what I think."
And when he had rung off, he sat down weakly and laughed, his laugh unmusical and sad. The dreadful, dreadful irony of it! How could he deny her? How could he? He who had surrounded her with women friends, talented and independent, who believed in the gospel of work! He liked her generosity. He liked her willingness to work. He blessed the dear, selfless instincts of her heart, his eyes moist and tender. And yet … and yet! Kenny laughed again. He had hidden his own money in the fireplace to send through college a runaway youth he had never seen!
On the way home from Madame Morny's in a taxi, for the snow had become a blizzard, he made one final desperate effort to break her resolution. It was futile. Again she was passionately eager to please him. Again he found it a problem that involved her happiness and peace of mind. Again, with his heart sore, be kissed her and surrendered to her wishes with a sigh.
But he found the work for her himself with the older painters.
"Kenny, I'm so glad you asked me to bring mother's trunks with me," Joan told him. "Aranyi has asked me to pose in the gold brocade."
Something sharp stabbed at Kenny's heart.
"I meant them," he said with a sigh, "for costume dances, but Aranyi paints the texture of things with marvelous skill."
By the end of the month Joan's work day was full and he was seeing her less than he had, save at night. Garry begged her to pose for him, carried his case to Kenny and met with blank refusal.
"I'm sorry, old man," Kenny finished inexorably, "but nothing under forty need apply. You, my son, are particularly flighty and fickle. Just now you happen to be raving about Peggy, but every pretty face, I've noticed, makes you forget the one before."
And Garry, who had been trying to marry Peggy for a year and was by no means as uncertain and mercurial in his affections as Kenny would have him believe, stared with eyes intelligent and reminiscent.
"Well," he said softly, "I'll be jiggered. That's the limit!"
"Be jiggered!" Kenny told him shortly. "And have done with it."
Garry raised his eyebrows and departed. And Kenny, reverting to one of his old frantic minutes, walked the floor. He had accepted portrait commissions that would keep him busy for months; for the ragged money he had hidden in the fireplace had made his need of work imperative. Otherwise he himself could have painted Joan in the gold brocade and in all the others.
What had the money in the fireplace done for him? It had doomed him to work apart while other men painted the golden shadows in her hair.