Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ But most of Aunt Sarah’s gift had. Who cared? Not Darcy. She had won her heritage of womanhood. Where, a few brief months before—and she could laugh now at the pangs and hardships of those months which were so small a price to pay for the results!—she had looked a worn thirty years old and felt like a sapless leaf, she now looked a budding twenty and felt like a baby with a drum.
Life was her drum.
All its stirring rataplan, however, could not quite drown out the grim voice of reckoning, which spoke with the accent of Sir Montrose Veyze, Bart., of Veyze Holdings, Hampshire, England. ”

“ Why should any man look at me? They don’t. They—they’re strictly neutral in their attitude. And women are—well—just tolerant and friendly. ‘Darcy’s such a nice girl.’ Where does that get you?” fiercely demanded the subject of it. “People don’t really know I’m alive. I might as well be a ghost. I wish I were. At least I’d scare ’em.”
“Don’t try to scare me,” returned the other. “Now list to the voice of wisdom. You complain that people don’t know you’re alive. Why should they? You don’t give out anything—warmth, color, personality. I’m not so sure you are alive. You’re inert.” ”

“ Vastly to her surprise and gratification, the neophyte arose on the following morning without severe symptoms of lameness. Here and there an unsuspected muscle had awakened to life and to mild protest over the resurrection. But on the whole Darcy felt none the worse for her experience. She began to surmise that she was one of that physically blessed class, a born athlete. If beauty, vigor, and health were to be achieved at no harder a price than this, they were almost like a gift of the good fairies. ”

“ Deeper than her beauty and abounding vitality there lies a more profound quality, the rare gift of giving graciously and naturally. It is Gloria Greene’s unconscious and intuitive mission in life to lend color and light and cheer to colorless, dim, and forlorn folk wherever she encounters them. That is why Darcy Cole was, at the moment, dribbling tears and aspirations for an immediate demise all over Gloria’s rare Anatolian rug. Not that Darcy really desired to die. She merely wished Gloria Greene to make life more practicable for her. ”

“ Probably Andy Dunne would kill her. She didn’t much care. Life wasn’t worth living, anyhow. She was through. The one pleasant impression of her whole disastrous gymnasium experience was the impact of her heel against that contemptuous chin.
She opened one eye. Andy Dunne was not where he should have landed as the result of the revolution which he had been performing when he whirled from her view. She opened the other eye. Andy Dunne was not anywhere. He had vanished into nothingness.
With all the sensation of a criminal, Darcy rose, dressed, and fled. She fled straight to Gloria Greene. ”

“ Holcomb Lee, justified of his prophecies, exulted over the fact to such a point that Maud Raines felt it her womanly duty to fix a quarrel upon him. Undismayed, Holcomb took Darcy out to dinner. (“Never, never, never in the world would I have accepted, Gloria,” that dangerous young person assured her mentor, “if Maud Raines hadn’t been so catty and sneery about Holcomb’s drawing me.”) And Miss Raines hastily drowned her trumped-up grievance in a flood of alarmed tears. Even matter-of-fact Paul Wood, Helen’s betrothed, was impressed to the point of admiring comment. ”

“ With more experience of men, Darcy would have known that this was the language of the highest type of admiration, but of nothing more. In her innocence she took it as a final confirmation of the scene she had witnessed in the studio.
“Gloria wants you to work, doesn’t she?” she asked shyly.
“Gloria’s such a tremendous worker, herself, that she thinks every one ought to be busy on some job all the time. Doesn’t she get after you? You look far too much of the lily-of-the-field type to meet her approval.” ”

“ Darcy proceeded in little, jerky gasps of eagerness. “Pretty. And well-dressed. And up-to-date. And smart. And everything! I’d sell my soul to the devil if he’d buy such a weakly, puny, piffling little soul, just really to live and be something besides a ‘thoroughly nice girl’ for one short year. ‘A thoroughly nice girl’! Yah!” said Miss Cole in a manner which, whatever else it might have been, was not thoroughly nice.
“That’s a rotten thing to say about any one,” agreed the sympathetic Gloria. ”

“ Darcy looked.
“How d’you like it?” demanded her instructor.
“N—not as well.”
“I should think likely. You lop.”
“I—I can’t help it.”
“Nonsense! You slump.”
Darcy’s lips slackened petulantly down at the corners. Like a flash, Gloria transfixed the offending mouth with two leveled fingers. “You peeve,” she accused.
Darcy continued to peeve. Also she sniffled. “Your chin is flabby,” pursued the inexorable critic. “Your mouth is fishy. Your eyes are bleary. Your skin is muddy. You walk like a duck, and you stand like a bag. And if you cry I’ll quit you here, now, and forever.” ”

“ Jacob Remsen has all the time in the world,” said Gloria calmly. “Time is the least of his troubles. He kills it at sight.”
“Don’t mind her, Miss Corey,” put in Remsen.
Darcy, noting the error in her name, wondered petulantly why Gloria didn’t introduce them in proper form. But her uneasiness and gaucherie presently dissipated before the cordial and winning simplicity of Gloria’s man. And, to her own surprise, she found herself volunteering a harmonic solution of the difficult change where he had blundered over the transition, and humming the melody while she played her version. ”

“ Thus appareled, Darcy quite esteemed herself as an athlete. She could already feel her muscular potentialities developing beneath the rough, stimulant cloth. She thought lightly of the various apparatus awaiting her in the “shop”; playthings of her coming prowess. She would show Mr. Andy Dunne what an apt and earnest devotee of the vigorous life could achieve. Thus uplifted she went forth with a confident smile to meet the man who, for weary months, was to fill a large part of her life. ”

“ Darcy took a short, gaspy breath—it was all she could get—and advanced upon her unwitting victim.
The apparition had just succeeded in its aerial enterprise with the ulster when it became aware of a mute appeal at its elbow. It turned. It saw a girlish face, suffused with a wonderful warmth of color, clear, steady eyes, with an irresistible plea in them; lips that looked both firm and soft and were tremulous at the comers with what might be fear, but seemed much like mirth, and two perfectly gloved little hands stretched out in welcome. No possible doubt about it ”

“ To a keen, thin, sensitive face, with a mobile mouth and quiet eyes, the smile set the final impression of charm. Instanter and before he had spoken ten words, Darcy decided that he was the one man she had ever seen worthy of Gloria Greene. ”

“ All that could reasonably be done to furbish it up against the young master’s return, old Connor, Jacob’s inherited man, had faithfully attempted: the house’s face was at least washed, and its linen, so to speak, fresh and clean. But a home long unused becomes musty to a sense deeper than the physical. Entering, young Mr. Remsen felt a chill descend upon his blithe spirit. ”

“ Oh, this is most awfully important!”
“Do?” rippled the girl. “I took sarsaparilla.”
“Darcy Cole, formerly Amanda Darcy Cole,” said Gloria solemnly. “Come to my arms. I hereby declare you a full Fellow of the Institute of Life, free of its brotherhood, equipped to come and go in all its ways unafraid and unembarrassed by any complication. Blessed are those who are not too meek, for they shall take their own share of the earth without waiting forever to inherit it. Go forth and take yours. You’ll like it.” ”

“ Harmon had refrained from mentioning to Gloria the other prospective visits.
Behold, then, on the fateful 17th of October, Miss Darcy Cole, a one-day bride of fancy, swinging down the long platform of the Grand Central Terminal with fifteen minutes to spare for the nine o’clock train. In her hand was a ticket to Weirs, and a small green slip entitling her to seat No. 12 in the parlor car “Chorea.” In her eyes was a twinkling and perilous light, and in her heart a song of sheer, happy bravado. ”

“ He’ll bear a charmed life, just to plague you,” retorted her friend with conviction. “You bloodthirsty little beast!” she added.
“The worst I wish him,” said Darcy tearfully, “is an honorable military death.”
“Oh! Is that all! You’d have to go into deep mourning.”
“That’d be better than suicide. And I can’t see anything else for me to do if he lives through. I won’t confess to that Maud-cat! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”
“I don’t blame you. But when are you to be married?”
“Uncertain. That’s the advantage of having a fiancé at war.” ”

“ What Jack Remsen saw was that the girl was like the pinkest of the bridesmaid roses when she blushed, though a sweeter, warmer pink. “Didn’t I go to Montreal, then?”
“No. Though you may have to, later. There’s some legal formality to be gone through yet before we can be married.”
“Oh, then we’re still engaged.”
“Indeed, yes! Don’t think you’re going to get out of it so easily. The legal papers are in Montreal. So, instead of being married on the 16th, as we had planned, we’ve had to wait, and you’ve brought me up here, on your way to Montreal.” ”

“ Kentucky cherishes a legend concerning the potency of its moonshine whiskey which is said to be such that one drink of it will inspire a rabbit to spit in the eye of a bulldog. Desperation will produce much the same psychological effect in the soul of woman. There, in monocle and whiskers, was Darcy’s bulldog. ”

“ CHAPTER VI HAD Andy Dunne’s surmise been laid before Darcy, it might have brought sorely needed encouragement to her soul as the regenerative process went on. True she had presently passed the first crisis which athletic regimen develops for the untrained, and which is purely muscular. She no longer swung to and fro, a helpless pendulum, between the agonies of apprehension and the anguish of action. The steady exercise was telling in so far as her muscles were concerned; she had still to face the test of discipline. In this second and sterner crisis, Andy Dunne could help her but little. ”

“ What would you expect? Do you think it’s going to smile at you when you scowl at it, and stop its own business and gaze on you adoringly and say, ‘Much obliged to you for being alive’? It isn’t that kind of a world, Miss Amanda Darcy Cole.” The owner of the despised first name winced. “I never thought of that,” she murmured.
“Thinking is going to be part of your education from now on. You can’t begin too soon.”
“I’m ready,” said the girl meekly. “Do you want me to begin with my voice? Shall I take singing lessons?”
“Oh, it’s got to go a lot deeper than that,” was Gloria’s grim reply. ”

“ Meanwhile Gloria was putting her to the test of the severest judgment by asking her flat-mates:
“Don’t you think Darcy looks well?”
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so likewise is the lack of it. Having become habituated to regarding their junior partner as aesthetically and femininely negligible, the other girls failed to appreciate the vital changes that were in progress. Miracles, set under our eyes, do not arrest us. Otherwise we should all stand about in stupefaction watching trees grow.
“She looks healthy,” granted Maud indifferently. ”