The car drew up in front of a large red sandstone house just off Fifth Avenue in the fifties, which brought a whistle from Jerry. “Say, Joy—what are you getting us into? The nearest I’ve been to this sort of stuff is the movies!”
It did not add to their composure to have a butler admit them, to be elevatored to one floor to take off their wraps and elevatored to another floor to meet Mabel. They were ushered into a drawing-room, which seemed to Joy’s eyes full of people whose faces were obscured in the candlelight which was the only illumination affected. Mabel came forward to greet them, a little overplump without the coat and glossing-over sables, but very attractive in warm rose, her only jewelry a single pink pearl hanging at the end of a platinum and diamond chain. Joy noticed these details automatically, her attention focussed on Jerry, who, since she had entered the room, had taken on a manner entirely foreign to her make-up as Joy knew it. She was the easy, gracious grande dame from the lilt of her walk and assured poise to the cultured cadences of the voice that Joy had often likened to rough plush. She had slipped into it as readily as one slips into another garment.
Joy could not know, as the East-Side gamin answered Mabel’s friendly greeting with a few well-chosen words of appreciation at her inclusion in the dinner, that poor little Jerry had assumed the atmosphere of the successful designer at Charlette’s, when she was conferring with a desirable patron. She only marvelled, then looked beyond. A man nearing forty, and plumpness; a girl with a complexion of peachdown, pleasantly irregular features, brown hair folded back straight without a crinkle or wave from a high white forehead; and behind these two—a taller man, whose face was above the range of the candlelight.
“Miss Dalrymple, Miss Nelson—and my husband, Mr. Drew—” The two who barred the way fell apart, and Joy was facing the man who had given Jerry the power to dream. “Phil, this is your new cousin.”
Weary blue eyes that settled on her without interest; a dark, beautiful face with hard lines carving manliness into it and softer marks etching bitternesses around the eyes and mouth; a man who, even Joy could sense, had been too inquisitive of life and found nothing worthy of his young curiosity. She fell aside and looked back at Jerry, still the grande dame, exchanging greetings with the first two. Jerry was never pretty; she could not sink to that level; and to-night she was at the height of her fascination. No one could wear bobbed hair quite like Jerry; it fluffed around her face, adding to the shimmering lights of expression; those lights that always seemed dancing to the surface, yet which by not being transmuted into speech and action, lent her subtlety, which is the essence of charm.
She came through to them, stately, gracious, with always that moonshine of charm flickering in her face. “My brother, Mr. Lancaster,” said Mabel at her elbow. Jerry looked up—and vivid colour, moonbeams, grande dame and all, were struck from her face as if an artist had wiped everything from his painting but the formless features. A long moment she hung thus, one thin hand which she had put out before lifting her head, fluttering without volition. Then with a gasp almost heard in the suspended quiet, she took shape again. Star-shine lurked itself into her face, and she threw back her head, bringing on the grand dame again in double-barreled force. Valiant! Joy thought; valiant! And stole a look at him. There she had the great surprise of the evening. He was taking Jerry’s hand, a bit lingeringly; smiling at her with interest—but without recognition!
“You look very much like someone I met a long time ago,” he said.
“A very long time ago?” murmured Jerry in the richest of her plush tones.
“Oh, very. At least two years—which means it was war times, and those times seem hundreds of years behind us now.”
“There you go, Old Crow’s-feet!” Mabel was hanging on his arm and smiling up at him. She brought the others into it with an explanatory quirk: “These returned war heroes think everyone forgets pretty quickly, but we don’t, do we?”