Joan and Co.

Joan had been staying a great deal in her room for the past week. It was partly upon the advice of Dr. Nichols, and partly upon the advice of her mother and father; but it is very doubtful if their superior knowledge would have had quite as much weight as it did if Joan herself had not welcomed the internment. To be sure, the shock had been considerable; but after the first temporary and purely normal reaction came a second reaction, which was not correctly diagnosed either by her parents or the physician. Nichols, looking merely at her heightened color and brighter eyes, feared hysteria. Mrs. Fairburne took it to be disappointment at the many social engagements Joan was forced to cancel. She tried hard not to blame any one for the situation; but upon several occasions she observed darkly to her husband:

“All I can say is that some one was stupid to allow such a misfortune—at the height of the social season.”

The first time he heard this, Fairburne squared his shoulders a trifle, as though considering that he himself might be involved in the general accusation.

“Not you, of course, my dear,” she hastened to assure him; “but some one.”

Yet Charles was not discharged. Then apparently the fault lay between Devons and Fate. Anyhow, it was more or less immaterial.

Perhaps it was just as well for the peace of mind of all concerned that it was not generally known that Joan really was enjoying one of the most interesting experiences of her life there in the privacy of her room. Certainly to have informed Dr. Nichols that she felt every sense to be more alert than formerly would have contributed nothing to science; to have explained to her parents that she was enjoying as a luxury the privilege of calling her time her own would not have left them any the wiser; to have confessed to Dicky that she felt even a certain relief from him would not have done a particle of good in that direction. Half the joy of her joy lay in the fact that it was a very intimate and personal and secret joy.

As soon as she learned, through Dr. Nichols, that there was not the slightest element of danger in Devons’s condition; that in all probability the man, with good care, would leave in better condition than he came, it was as though she had found an opportunity.

“As a matter of fact,” Nichols had told her, “you can credit yourself with having saved his life.”

“How?” she asked doubtfully.

“The man hasn’t been getting enough to eat,” Nichols informed her.

“Not enough to eat?” It sounded like an absurd statement.

“He tells me he has been living on a diet of black coffee and tobacco.”

“But why should one do that?” she inquired.

“Because,” answered Nichols, “it is very inexpensive. Of course he could have invested the same amount of money to better advantage in some other type of food-stuff, but it’s doubtful if he would have got as much comfort out of it.”

“Then he must be very, very poor.”

“I gather he is.”

So here, in a way, was the case of Mildred all over again. With a difference. The difference was that Devons—well, it did make a difference that he was—he. At best, there is less opportunity for a woman to be of assistance to another woman than to one of the opposite sex, even in an impersonal way. The response is less keen. It does not touch the same depths.

Not that she was in the slightest sentimental about it. She was absolutely normal. Even the excitement of the situation was normal. Nichols to the contrary, her attitude was not even remotely associated with hysteria, or with mawkish sentimentality. It had more to do with what she had vaguely described to Dicky at that last meeting as “the big adventure.” It was as though this man Devons had made a breach in the high wall surrounding her and offered her opportunity to venture a little way beyond into the quick life that men and women led outside—the life that treated men and women like men and women and not like daintily dressed dolls.

Devons had gone hungry! There was nothing, perhaps, in that to make any one envy him; and yet, it stood for something. At least, that had intensified the hours to him. He had been like a harp with the strings drawn too taut, drawn almost to the breaking point; but she had been like a harp with the strings sagging. Of the two it would be easier to play the taut strings. After all, it might be better to be hungry than surfeited. The very hour that she had sat with listless interest before the delicacies at Delmonico’s, he had been wandering, dazed and hungry, through the snow. It was a question who was in the worse plight.

That was only a detail, anyway. But how it dramatized the same safe, uneventful streets through which she rode in her snug machine! And how curious that, as though in response to her cry, this should be brought to her in her own home.

Was there some truth in that strange doctrine of fatalism—that our lives are mapped out for us ahead and that, however remote the possibility may seem, we must travel the foreordained road?

Staring from her window at night, she wondered with quickened breath. Looking back, her meeting with Mildred may have been significant. She had come upon her quite by chance, and through her had met Devons. At the time it had seemed the most trivial and commonplace of incidents; yet, if that had not been, it is probable that Devons would have been sent off out of her life to a hospital. She had brought him here and insisted upon his remaining because of Mildred. It was significant, too, that on that very afternoon she had not ridden back with Dicky—that she was alone at the appointed moment.

Poor Dicky! She was rather sorry that it had been necessary to involve him. If only he had not said what he did say, she would have turned to him now. She would have liked to discuss the whole question with him. She supposed it was possible even now; only—well, she was afraid he would not understand. She was afraid it might trouble him. And in a sense she felt responsible for his peace of mind. She should have foreseen what might come of their relations. Only, she had never thought it possible for him to be as serious as he had seemed when he spoke. Even if he imagined himself in love with her, she thought she would recognize it as pure imagination. It was as natural for Dicky to fall in love, in fancy, with any woman with whom he might be thrown in contact any length of time as it was for him to breathe. He had confessed several previous romances to her.

It was probable, then, that this was just another. She should have held to that. But somehow it was difficult. She had not laughed when he told her of his love. If she had given way to her emotions the chances are she would have cried. She had found some new quality in his eyes and his voice. Then she liked the way he stood square-shouldered when she told him the naked truth. And actually, she had felt a sense of possessing something rare and wonderful in the loyalty that prompted him to his offer.

“I want you to feel you have some one always ready to call on.” So the ladies of romance used to receive an oath of allegiance from their knights.

Then to-day a note from him had come which she had read with misty eyes. It was so direct and uncomplaining that it tightened her throat. There was a great deal about Dicky that was likable. She could be with him more than with any other man she knew, if only he would not talk about love; because love meant something entirely different from anything Dicky dreamed. It had to do with life. It had to do with—adventure. It had to do with big, earnest things, with real things, with heart-breaking things, perhaps. All of which Dicky knew nothing about.

But, after reading his note twice, she sent down word to Sparrow that she would be at home that day to Mr. Richard Burnett. If Sparrow felt a certain sense of relief, it would be nothing surprising, because the last time he had given his message to the man he had hesitated about holding the door open as wide as usual.

Dicky did not come until after four, which was unfortunate, because she had a very important appointment at four-thirty, and told him so almost at once.

“You’re going out?” he inquired hopefully.

“No,” she replied with some embarrassment.

He concluded then that a milliner or something of the kind was coming to the house; and that, if one looked far enough ahead, was encouraging, because it suggested that she was preparing to go out again.

So he sat down and talked with her about this thing and that very rationally and good-naturedly, as he might have done a week ago. In many ways he seemed more himself than he had for several weeks, because she realized now that for some time he had not been exactly normal.

Then he gave a new turn to the conversation by observing:

“It must be mighty dull for you to be shut up in the house, Joan.”

And she answered, speaking the truth, “Only it isn’t, Dicky.”

“But what do you do with yourself all day?”

That was a difficult question to answer directly. From his point of view she supposed she was not doing very much, because most of the interest of these days came from within herself. And she could not very well let him into the secret of her thoughts. So she answered:

“I don’t think I could make you understand, Dicky. Only truly it isn’t stupid.”

He looked up with a frown.

“You don’t give me credit for understanding much of anything, do you, Joan?”

“It isn’t that,” she tried to reassure him. “Only—supposing I don’t understand myself very well?”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Then—”

“Oh, we’ll only get mixed up again if we go on like that,” he interrupted. “Tell me something about this fellow you ran over.”

She looked frightened.

“I didn’t run over him.” She shuddered. “Don’t make it any worse than it is.”

“Well, you started to.”

“There’s a big difference.”

“I suppose there is,” he admitted. “Who is he?”

“Oh, I hope some day you can meet him. You’d like him, Dicky.”

“Perhaps.”

“He’s a Technology man and—”

“He’s what?”

“Technology.”

Dicky appeared concerned.

“I didn’t know that. Some one told me he was a ’bus driver.”

“Why, Dicky, he’s a wonderful fellow. He has invented something. Only he’s very, very poor.”

“Inventors always are,” he nodded.

“And he has tried so hard to make his way. He—he was almost starving when—”

She did not like to fill in the ellipsis.

“When you partly ran over him,” he suggested.

“It’s nothing to make fun about,” she warned.

“Go on.”

“And I’d met him before. I knew a cousin of his at college.”

“You did?”

“She was wonderful, too.”

“Runs in the family?”

“They are from out West.”

“Anywhere in particular out West?”

“From Montana.”

“Just Montana?”

He was laughing at her now, and she resented it—resented it with more genuine feeling than she would have thought possible. Her lips closed firmly.

“I shan’t tell you anything more about him,” she decided.

“Now, look here—” he protested, making his feet in some alarm.

“No, I mean it,” she replied.

“I was only fooling, Joan. I didn’t know—”

He was studying her face. She was in dead earnest. He knew that. He always knew when she was in earnest.

“Good Heavens, Joan—” he began.

But she had risen too, and was holding out her hand.

“You must excuse me now,” she said. “It is almost half-past four.”

Dicky caught his breath.

“You’re going—back to him?” he demanded.

It was a foolish thing for him to say. He realized it the moment the words were out of his mouth. He saw her toss up her head—saw her look the princess.

“Must I account for my movements to you?” she asked.

“You know better, Joan,” he cut in quickly. “Only—”

“Good-bye,” she insisted.

He took her hand.

“I don’t care where you’re going or who it is you’re going to see; but you’ll let me call again?”

“Do you think you’ve made yourself very agreeable?”

In holding her hand he held an advantage. She could not very well leave until he let go.

“Next time—” he began.

“Oh, all right, Dicky; I’ll try you once more. Please let me go.”

So he let her go, and in an instant she had vanished—none too politely.

Sparrow opened the door. Dicky wondered if it would not be well to inform the man of her promise to admit him again, in case she herself forgot. Then other thoughts crowded in upon him, and he went down the steps in a kind of daze.