Dancers in the Dark. Dorothy Speare
Most providentially, there had been a very good boarding school in Foxhollow Corners, at which she had been a day pupil. And during the war there had been too much Red-Crossing to do, too much to keep her nose to the grindstone at Foxhollow Corners, to think of the travel that the enterprise of service might have meant to her. And this was her first Prom, and all the girls at home were green, simply green. Tom had taken some of them in times past and probably would continue to vary his program thus. “Don’t encourage the girls too much,” was his motto.
The first day of Prom had passed in a shimmer. The girls were, for the most part, strange, exotic creatures—something of Sarah’s vintage—but the men were of varied types. It was odd, Joy reflected, that such different boys should all, or nearly all, ask the same type of girl. There was one man—one particular man—Joy was at the age where there always had to be one particular man in her dreams—and this man seemed to have stepped right out of them made to order. In the first place, he was the best looking man she had ever seen—tall and very dark, with eyes that, when he smiled, grew tender. Tom had said that he was “a big man in college,” a star at football, and a “regular all-around prince.” His name was Jack Barnett, and although he had no girl at Prom, all the girls seemed to know him. He had cut in on Joy several times, and she still tingled from the thrill of it. Every girl knows the taking-stock preliminary to sleep after a dance. “Did he mean that? Or was he only handing a line. Did I show too much that I liked him? And is it his move now, or mine?” Joy lost herself in a dream that the football hero had cut in on her again and wouldn’t let anyone else dance with her.
She was awakened by a queer thumping noise. Pushing open her eyes, through a just-alive-to-the-world haze she saw Jerry doing handsprings about the room. Determined not to appear surprised at anything more, she sat up in bed and surveyed her with a thin glaze of calmness.
“Ow!” said Jerry conversationally, as she knocked up against a trunk and came to a full stop. Then, sitting up and rubbing her elbows: “Oh, hello; you awake? Hope I didn’t disturb you, or anything. I’m waking myself up; I’ve found this is the best way to keep me going, when I haven’t had any sleep.”
“Do you mean to say that you haven’t had any sleep at all?”
“Right the first time! We just got back—had a blow-out, of course, and now it’s too late to take in any classes!” Jerry began to change her raiment. “Look at that——” and she pointed to the bed. Sarah lay on it, evening coat and all, just as she had fallen.
“Why,” said Joy, “she almost looks as if she had fallen asleep before she landed there.”
Jerry executed a pas seul, stepping through a hatbox with careless ease. “You hit your head on the nail that time! She always passes out that way—got no more starch in her throat—she’ll have to come out of it, too, because our little playmates who are blowing us to this Prom will be here soon, and they’ll get noisy if we don’t put in a swift appearance.” She came up to the still figure on the bed, and shook it. Joy admired the vivid red of her cheeks. There was no artificiality about Jerry. Her face was fairly blazing; and what was more remarkable after a sleepless night, her eyes were very bright. On second inspection, they were even shiny. After a prolonged shaking, Sarah fell limp from her hands.
“Why! She acts as if she were dead,” said Joy.
“Dead!” exclaimed Jerry with a short laugh. “Dead or—Sal Saunders! I’d like to wring your neck—maybe that would bring a squawk!”
There was a faint stir. “That you, Jerry?”
“Yes, it’s me, and you’ve got to get off the downy. Do you expect me to ring for the cracked ice, or what?”
Sarah rose to a sitting posture and started to flop back, but Jerry’s arm shot forward and propped her up.
“Where do you think you are,” Jerry continued; “in New York? We’ve got to get down in ten minutes! Go and stick your head under the shower.” She pushed her out of the door. Returning, her gleaming eye lit on Joy. “It’s enough to make me weep, to see you. Why, you look just as well as you did last night.”
Joy pulled on her stockings without replying, as appropriate repartee did not occur to her at the moment.
“You know,” Jerry continued, running a comb through her hair, “you’re one of the best looking girls I’ve seen for I’d hate to say how many years—but the trouble is, you don’t put yourself together with any enthusiasm—you don’t drape yourself accordingly. Looks don’t count nowadays unless you’ve got push, too.”
“Just what do you mean?” Joy was almost completely at a loss.
“Use ’em! Use your face, eyes—your hair—your figure—you’ve got good clothes, too—you just need a little push, that’s all!”
Joy went to look at herself in the mirror. Her beauty was not tangible, and she had never made an inventory of its assets and liabilities. It was not so much her hair, which had started to be light brown and rippled into purest gold, the inimitable shade that less fortunately endowed women are prone to be catty about, or her complexion which needed none of Sarah’s artifices, as it was her eyes and the expression they lent her face. It seemed as if her name had marked her; her eyes, the colour of summer skies with the laughter of the sun caught up in them, bathed her face in radiance.
Most pretty girls never tire of admiring what the mirror gives back to them, but Joy had not had enough admiration in her life to assure her of the necessary self-appreciation. She put an experimental hand on Sarah’s tools. There was blue shadowing to go beneath the eyes, and sticky black stuff to make one’s lashes look like an advertisement of Lash-Brow-ing——
“Don’t put on any of that stuff now!” said Jerry. “Wait till evening, and I’ll help you.”
Joy began to comb her hair, singing lightly one of the songs the orchestra had played the evening before.
“I was so young—you were so beautiful—
I knew you couldn’t be true-ue—
Each time I looked at you my heart grew sad—
’Twas then I realized why men go mad—
You made me give you all the love I had—”
She stopped, suddenly aware of the other girl’s riveted attention. Jerry’s careless, carefree attitude had slipped away entirely, as she stood listening, her eyes lancets of concentration, her upper teeth pulling in her under lip.
“Where have you studied singing?” she demanded, her voice an imperative flick.
“Just a little—at the school I went to,” said Joy. “Why, what’s the matter? I——”
“Your mother must have sung, then, or someone in the family. It’s the sort of voice that sounds as if it had been bred in the family for generations—it has, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, and gotten a little stale in being handed down,” said Joy uncertainly. She was not sure whether Jerry was making fun of her or not. People who thought they could sing were awful bores, and she had no intention of being that sort of a bore.
“I mean it. How long since you’ve done anything with it?”
“I’ve never done anything with it.” Joy was a little impatient by this time. “My teacher was the kind who said ‘Can anything improve upon God?’ So you can get an idea of how hard I worked.”
“Sing something—don’t muffle it up the way you were doing.”
Sarah created a hiatus by stumbling in at that moment. She seemed to be fairly awake by this time, but cross and unlike her usual self. On Jerry’s good-natured “Brace up, old girl,” she turned and almost snarled; “Just because I haven’t got an asbestos lining like some people!”
“That’s your error, old dear,” Jerry retorted. “Stepped through your hat, a while back; guess I’ll take a reef in it while you slap on your kalsomine.”