Dancers in the Dark. Dorothy Speare
pale, and somehow she felt weak and worn out. And her heart kept right on pounding in this extraordinary manner——
“Hurry up with your old tools, Sal,” Jerry commanded. “I’m going to make Joy into such a riot she’ll knock ’em all cold.”
While Sarah completed the vital matter of fixing her face, Jerry did things to Joy’s dress. First, she pulled out the baby sleeves that adorned it. Then she put it on Joy, and took down the back until Joy’s back was conspicuous by its presence.
“Jerry——” her victim remonstrated—“there’s nothing holding me up but these straps—what if they should give way?”
“Court plaster,” mumbled the oracle, her mouth full of pins, and proceeded to rummage forth a supply from one of the boxes scattered about the room. “That’ll keep your dress stuck on whether the straps stay or leave.”
When Jerry had quite finished with her, Joy looked in vain for telltale signs of alteration. “Why, Jerry! Jerry—anyone would think——” she looked again at the “creation” into which her sweet, simple and girlish gown had been evolved—” anyone would think you were—a regular dressmaker.”
Jerry’s red lips curved into a grin. Ordinarily, when Jerry laughed, one thought of the wine of good-fellowship, and the spirit of youth that knows no age, but this time one was uncomfortably conscious of the redness and wideness of her lips, which seemed to stretch into the grin of a street urchin. There was a gamin echo to her short, faint laugh, as she threw the sewing things back into their box.
“I used to do—a lot of sewing. Come on and let me daub your face up.”
The intoxication of make-up is an insidious vintage known to more girls than mere man can ever believe. Few are they who, having seen themselves glorified by the art of rabbit’s foot and cunning pencil, which presents those too-familiar features in a new, glowing charm, can resist waving the fairy wand again and yet again, until experiment becomes deep-seated habit. Joy did not know, as Jerry set to work upon her, how she was going to come to depend on the fairy wand. As she worked, Jerry threw out words of wisdom.
“The whole point is to get everything so you think it’s slightly underdone. It never will be. And otherwise someone always spots it, and then you never get credit for anything.”
When she was completed, Jerry pushed her to the mirror and then stood, hands on hips, surveying her work. Joy was dumb. From the chill white of her dress came the warm white of her shoulders, skilfully dusted with some Phantom powder; and from all this neutral colour flashed the vividness of her face. Her cheeks were a rich rose; the blue of her eyes was darkened and intensified, her lashes sweeping over them, black and long. Her lips were a blazing scarlet, shaped in a perfect Cupid’s bow. They fascinated her. She could not look at her hair, nor her eyes, nor her dress, very long; she had to look at those lips. They seemed almost sinful. It didn’t seem right that lips should be so red.
“Well, Angel of Joy—have you fallen in love with yourself?” Jerry demanded.
Joy wet her lips, then remembered that they were painted, and was completely at a loss. “I—I certainly look—much better. But somehow I don’t like the idea.”
“Why not?” Sarah snapped, rubbing off a little of her bloom on one side. She did not appear to be especially pleased with Joy’s transformation.
“Well—somehow—you know, bad women and everything use paint and this stuff so much——”
“They put it on raw,” panted Jerry, who now in one short moment had slipped on her scanty evening dress and was jumping into her stockings. “Nine-tenths of the rest of us try to be artistic about it.”
“But you—you don’t use it, do you, Jerry?”
Again the gamin grin, as Jerry stamped on her slippers and raked her hair through with a comb. “No, it’s not my style. But I used to do—a lot of making-up.”
They made Joy walk downstairs ahead of them, as they “wanted to see her pulverize Jack.” And pulverize him she did. He was standing over by the mantel-piece as they came into the living-room, and his suddenly-fired eyes seemed to leap out and engulf her. She was not conscious of anyone else in the room, as she came forward shakily, a little smile quivering on her scarlet lips. His eyes were devouring her from the tip of her silver toe to the top of her golden hair. He took one step toward her——
And then Tom came dashing up to break the spell.
“For the lova fried tripe, what have you done to yourself, Joy?”
His amazement was scarcely complimentary. Jerry giggled, and Sarah tittered. Joy tossed her head, and held her coat out to him. He enveloped her in it with an almost indecent haste, and they left for the gym, she feeling Jack Barnett’s glance still hot upon her.
On the way over, Tom sputtered a little; but when she descended upon him, in the gym, all objections vanished in unwilling admiration. She was so distractingly lovely that he could no longer cavil at such means to such an end.
For the first time in her life, Joy realized that she was beautiful; and as had been the case with womankind from time immemorial, that knowledge gave her power. She not only knew that she was beautiful; she knew that she was by far the most beautiful girl there. She knew this by sidelong glances the other girls cast at her, by the things she saw being murmured behind ostrich-feather fans; by the critically indignant way in which the matrons were regarding her. Up to this time she had never been able to elicit more than a friendly beam. She smiled beguilingly at the men she had met before, and they clustered about her; and always new ones who wanted to meet her, were being brought up. Prom began in a blaze of glory; she was achieving the envied distinction of being able to dance hardly a step without someone cutting in; and almost always she was surrounded by a group disputing as to who had cut in first. Boys who had scarcely noticed her before now besieged her with attentions, informing her with undergraduate modesty that they were “giving her a rush.” One of them asked her to the next house-party; several asked her to ball games; and many wanted to know where she lived and if she ever ran down to New York or Boston, and if so, when would she have a whirl with them?
She accepted everything indiscriminately. This at last was Life. She was a real belle—the kind one reads about in novels; the only kind that was ever interesting as a heroine. And through it all, her blood was thumping in her veins in queer little jerks and starts—waiting for the hero. He had been standing against the wall with the other stags—looking at her continually—and as yet he had danced with no one. She felt as if she had to talk with him, to hear his voice and see his smiling, tender eyes bent on her, before she was really awake. All this excitement was making her feel as if she were moving in a dream—except that her feet hurt her in a most undream-like fashion.
And now a disturbing thing happened. A man who had danced with her a great deal, she remembered, both that afternoon and the evening before, cut in on her. His name was Jim Dalton; he was a good looking boy of medium height, with blond, wavy hair plastered back in an attempt to make it look straight, and clear blue eyes that had a disconcerting habit of looking frankly into one’s own. Joy had rather liked him until she had learned that he was that unpardonable thing, a man who was “no one around college.” He was a nonentity—at least, he did not shine in any branch of college activities. Joy was too new to college ways to realize that there was nothing deplorable in this; that in so large a college there had to be the back-bone, the unknown quantities who made up “the college type”; she only knew that even Tom, because of his bustling, busy ways, was an important and committee’d man; and she was being rushed by the big man of college; and the Jim Daltons didn’t matter.
So when he cut in on her, she merely smiled mechanically, and as mechanically allowed her weary feet to be guided into a little corner away from the thickest press of the stags.
“What have they done to you?” he demanded, looking at her make-up and through it until she would have blushed if she could have.
“What do you mean?” she said coldly.
“I