"Naturally! It has to be. People like that seem to develop a sort of protective instinct which guards them from any possible contact with vulgarity until such time as they shall have accumulated enough refinement to be immune. Not for them the company of any chance newcomer like Mrs. Webster! They have to be careful."
"But shouldn't you think they'd have a sort of fellow-feeling for the new arrivals?"
"Dear me, no! What's the good of attaining a pinnacle if you're going to share it with somebody who might push you off?"
Mrs. Webster's pursuit of Joan was not entirely opportunism. There was a good deal of admiration in it, mixed with a sort of malice which the larger nature had difficulty in comprehending. Joan found herself entered most unwillingly into an undignified petty rivalry with her neighbor. If she entertained some of her friends at luncheon without Mrs. Webster, the other instantly retaliated by giving a luncheon herself without Joan, sending in dessert and decorations afterwards to press home the point. If the Blair house in Spring put out new awnings, the Webster house erupted not only into awnings but into flower-boxes as well, with a corresponding air of triumph in its mistress. If Joan received some invitation which the other did not, there arose between them a slight, unmistakable coolness; whereas, if the contrary occurred, Mrs. Webster became modest and cordial again.
Yet when this unpleasant rivalry lay dormant, the two had many a friendly, neighborly time together over their sewing and their gardening; and once when Joan was taken suddenly ill the other showed herself genuinely kind, quick with womanly help and sympathy.
Joan could never quite make up her mind whether it was the pettiness of Society which makes the Mrs. Websters, or the Mrs. Websters who make the pettiness of Society. In any case, she lost what little taste she had for a purely social career. It was not good enough.
And so she turned the pent-up energies of her nature into those activities which are summed up nowadays under the general title of Clubwork. Investigations, commissions, agitations of all sorts came in for their share of her attention. She soon created for herself quite a following of less daring spirits, among them Emily Carmichael and others of the Jabberwock group who had graduated from the cocoon. It became known that whenever young Mrs. Blair undertook a thing, it went with a rush, not so much through her own efforts as through those of her henchmen. She was recognized in club circles, despite her youth, as something more valuable than a mere worker; she was an executive—All of which fed her vanity and her sense of usefulness; and left somewhere within her an aching void of dissatisfaction.
Suffrage-work came nearer filling this void than had anything else, and that, it must be confessed, for a rather ignoble reason. It gave her a chance to make speeches. In the back of her mind, with the very real conviction that the ballot is a necessity which women are unjustly denied, lurked also the suspicion that the world is already aware of the fact without any further need of agitation. Nevertheless she continued to agitate, because she liked to exercise an ability which otherwise might have remained forever undiscovered—There is no pleasure in life equal to that of employing skillfully the talents that have been given us.
She made the discovery of her gift quite by accident. At some woman's meeting, a lady who was to have spoken on the subject of the Federal Amendment failed to appear, and Joan, who had recently read up on the matter (it may be remembered that she was what the actors call "quick study"), volunteered to take her place, meaning simply to give the gist of the matter and thus relieve a harassed chairman. But when she found herself on the platform facing interested and expectant faces, something happened that had occasionally happened before when she "play-acted" for the girls at school. Joan left herself, and became a part of the audience.
She listened to her voice going on and on, with amused approval. It was a voice rather like her father's, carrying and flexible, and peculiarly rich in its intonations.