Joan and Co.

Left alone, Joan tried to review calmly the situation which had developed so unexpectedly and dramatically. She had acted quite on the spur of the moment. Indeed, looking back upon it she realized that it would have been impossible to have done what she did in any other way. Yet now that she had time to think it over, she regretted nothing. She had done a bold thing and she was proud of having done it. It left her with a sense of freedom. For once she had acted on her own initiative.

Neither, in spite of his attitude, was she discouraged. Of course he would look at it at first just as he had looked at it. That was due partly to the Western pride of which he rather boasted—the pride that made his father prefer to starve than accept a favor—and partly to the fact that he could not appreciate her position. He considered her only as an irresponsible young lady acting, perhaps, in a moment of sentiment. That was natural enough, even though it was disappointing. She had thought the last few weeks would have counted for more than that.

Still she placed a great deal of confidence in his gray eyes. Though his lips had stiffened, she had seen the eyes respond. She had seen them quicken at her suggestion in a way that startled her. Even as he left the room so abruptly she had seen them alive—as alive as the glint of sunlight on steel. It was as though they told the truth against his will; as though they were willing to accept her offer, though the lips refused. And the eyes were the soul, while the lips were merely the man.

They had brought the color to her face—those eyes. She had felt her cheeks burn. She could not quite explain that. Doubtless it was merely the excitement of the moment. It was a big thing she was reaching for—nothing less than a chance to get out of her prison. Leaning forward toward the flames, elbow on knee and chin in hand, she allowed her thoughts to take their own course for a moment. She saw the business started in some little factory tucked away in a far corner of the city. She was rather vague as to what the business was. That did not matter. All business was vague. She saw Devons at work there with his fine enthusiasm, and saw the little factory grow into a bigger one, and then into a still bigger. But principally she saw the man back of it, and felt the satisfaction of having herself a hand in his success. Perhaps it might even be possible for her to help in some practical way. She might be able to write letters for him. If she could do that—

“Good-morning, Joan.”

It was her mother who interrupted the pleasant reverie. She came in and took the chair in which Devons had lately been sitting.

“You are about early, my dear, are you not?” inquired Mrs. Fairburne.

“Am I?” Joan answered uncomfortably.

“It is only a little after eleven. However, I’m glad you are feeling so much stronger. And this—Mr. Devons—is he not almost himself again?”

Mrs. Fairburne arched her brows as she spoke.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Then?”

“He is going, soon,” replied Joan. “I—I wish you had come to know him better.”

“I!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairburne.

“He has had such a hard time of it all his life. And now—”

Joan hesitated as she saw her mother’s face grow blank. If it had not been for that she could have gone on quite naturally. She had grasped at this opportunity to tell her the whole story. It was still necessary because it was through her she must appeal to her father for funds, but the difference was that she must do it awkwardly and self-consciously now.

“He—he has always been handicapped because he had no money,” explained Joan.

“Really?”

It was surprising what effects Mrs. Fairburne managed to produce by the simple use of monosyllabic interrogations. Just at present it placed her on some distant pinnacle almost out of ear-shot.

“You see I knew his cousin Mildred in college. I learned through her what—it means to be like that. He has an invention—”

“He?”

“Mr. Devons,” explained Joan uneasily. “It has something to do with leather, and just because he hasn’t any capital he can’t use it.”

The girl paused a moment and looked to her mother’s eyes. Mrs. Fairburne merely waited. Yet in spite of lack of encouragement Joan tried to break through—tried because she felt so sincerely what she wished to say.

“So I told him I thought I could do something,” she ran on, quite out of breath. “I told him I’d get some money for him. Mother—can’t you help me?”

“You offered to supply him with funds?” gasped Mrs. Fairburne.

“So that he could get started.”

“And he accepted your offer?”

“No. He hasn’t accepted it. He said he couldn’t accept it.”

“That much is in his favor,” observed Mrs. Fairburne coldly.

“But if we made it easier for him—”

“My dear,” cut in Mrs. Fairburne, “the whole idea is absurd. I trust you will not go to your father with it. Let us keep it a secret between ourselves.”

“That means you’ll not help?”

“Joan! You disturb me. Really you must put the whole matter out of your head at once.”

“Then you think it would do no good to see father?”

“I am quite sure it would only shock him. He was quite against having this Mr. Devons in the house from the first. It was only upon the medical advice of Dr. Nichols that he consented at all. Now if he should learn—but, Joan, surely you are not considering such a thing?”

Joan rose. She shook her head wearily.

“I’m afraid you are right; he wouldn’t understand.”

“This affair has tired you, dear,” said Mrs. Fairburne. “I’m not at all surprised. You’d better go to your room and lie down a little. And I feel that the sooner Mr. Devons is able to leave—”

Joan smiled.

“You needn’t worry about his staying any longer than is necessary,” she observed. “I’m sure he finds us all very stupid.”

With that Joan retired to her room, but not to lie down. She had not spoken in anger. She meant, however, exactly what she said. To a man like Devons how other could her world appear but a stupid little world filled with stupid people? He had been here a month now with an opportunity to study her and her parents in the intimate setting of their daily lives. He had watched them at the petty routine of their complacent and guarded round of dining and card-playing, the opera or the theater. He had seen the uneventful days follow the uneventful hours with the assurance that this would continue indefinitely. In the meanwhile the great live city all about them, the city where men and women grew through struggle, scarcely reached their consciousness. Even when they glanced over their morning and evening papers, they read as at a play. If by any chance the city was brought closer to them—as in the presence of Devons—they resented it as an intrusion.

It was in this life they wished to fix her. They meant for the best. She knew that. For them it spelled safety. But they did not take into account her great need—the need born of Youth—which is not for the safe things, but the venturesome things. It is only because of Youth that the world dares go on. It is in Youth that men go to sea in boats; that men go to war; that men search the far places. And some part in this is given to women—if only the waiting part.

Looking from her window, Joan felt the call—the call of the bold and the blessed unwise. It flushed her cheeks and stiffened her muscles and bred strange thoughts in her. Once again she was back in the midst of life with Devons, helping him in the clash with reality. It gave new meaning to the little side street in front of her which led to the broad avenue, which in turn led to all the thousand and other streets—big and little—which make New York. Though for the moment it seemed as though she had been balked utterly in her desires, she felt a sense of fresh courage. She had made her proposal to her mother quite without result and knew that under those circumstances it was futile to go to her father. That left her no one to whom to turn—but Dicky.

No one but Dicky! She caught her breath at the inspired suggestion. After all, Dicky was some one. In his way he was very much some one. Whenever she wished to think of him at his best, as she did now, she went back to that picture of him standing by her machine on that eventful afternoon when she left Delmonico’s. He had bared his head and said simply:

“I’d rather you felt you had some one—always ready—to call on.”

Though she was never sure in some things that Dicky meant what he said, she had believed with her whole heart that he meant this. As she drove off and left him there, she was very glad he had spoken so, though it seemed scarcely probable then that ever it would be necessary for her to call upon him. She had even wished that it might be necessary because she thought it might please him, and she had desired then as never before to please him in some way.

Now here was her opportunity, and his opportunity, and Devons’s opportunity. She knew little about Dicky’s business except that he had an office downtown with his father, whom she had heard spoken of vaguely as a manufacturer. She knew little because it concerned Dicky little and her less. She could not have named the source of income of a half-dozen of her many friends. Some of them went downtown in the morning and some of them did not. It would have been difficult for her to separate them into even this broad division. It was assumed they all had ample means, and she gave no further thought than that to their affairs.

It was assumed Dicky had ample means. That meant he had sufficient to do whatever he wished. So that to ask him for that mysterious symbol of money termed “capital” was not to ask him for anything very much. It involved no great sacrifice on his part and it need be nothing but in the nature of a loan.

She lunched in her room that day because she wished to avoid seeing Devons again until she had something definite to tell him. Then she dressed with a little more care than usual because she knew Dicky had a weakness for such things, and if she was going to ask a favor of him it was no more than right that she should do in her turn what she could to please him. So she allowed Henriette to do as she pleased, and whenever Henriette was given that privilege she produced extremely charming results. This afternoon she chose a crêpe-de-chine of African brown that had touches of orange in the waist and girdle. The skirt of a panier effect went no lower than the top of Joan’s trim ankles, affording a piquant contrast of grandmother’s time and to-day.

Dicky came at three-thirty, and the moment he laid eyes on her he was conscious of a change in her attitude, which to him was most encouraging. It was as though she were really glad to see him again. When she offered her hand, it was not merely a social convention, but as a friend might offer her hand. He took into account, too, the fact that she was dressed as though ready to go out once more. It gave him the courage to present without delay his mother’s invitation.

“Have you any engagement for Thursday afternoon?” he asked as soon as they were seated.

“No,” she answered hesitatingly. “I have not been making any engagements at all.”

“This is a very particular one,” he assured her. “It is from mother to come to tea at the house.”

“Your mother? It is sweet of her to ask me,” she replied. It brought home to her, as a rather curious truth, the fact that she had never happened to meet either Mr. or Mrs. Burnett. But in the younger set one did not often meet the elders unless they entertained. And unless they had daughters, they did not entertain much.

“You will come?” he asked earnestly.

“Why, yes, Dicky,” she agreed, as though searching for a meaning.

“I told her a little something about you,” he explained.

“There is so very little to tell about me,” she laughed uneasily.

“There’s a great deal,” he contradicted. “More than a man could tell in a book.”

“On Thursday, then,” she concluded as though to check further parley along this line.

But he could not at that moment be checked so abruptly.

“I told her how beautiful you were and—that you would not marry me.”

“You told her that?” she gasped.

Dicky nodded.

“She came to my room and asked.”

“I—I suppose she thinks me horrid, then.”

“No,” he smiled. “Only she does not understand it. That’s why I want her to meet you—so she will understand.”

“Dicky!” she exclaimed with a choke in her voice.

“As soon as she knows you, she will realize how much too good you are for me,” he went on seriously.

“It isn’t so!”

“You will see. She is very wise in her quiet way—that mother of mine. You will like her.”

“I’m sure I shall like her,” she replied.

Then for a few minutes the conversation turned to other things—to trivial things as he tried to be entertaining. As she listened and smiled, she kept wondering if after all it was going to be possible for her to ask of him what she had planned to ask. At one moment it did, and at the next it did not. Though she did not know it, this abstraction was reflected in her eyes, and he, keenly alert to every passing change in her, noted this. So in the end it was he who put the question to her. He paused abruptly in his light talk and asked:

“What are you worrying about, Joan?”

She started. This was her opportunity, and yet she shied away from it.

“I’m not worrying, Dicky,” she answered.

“But there’s something on your mind.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Something you don’t want to tell me about?”

“Something I do want to tell you about,” she returned.

“Then—”

“It’s something I want to ask you to do.”

“Fine!” he exclaimed.

“Only I don’t know how to ask.”

“The way to ask is to ask,” he suggested.

“But I’m afraid—oh, Dicky, if you think it queer of me, or if you don’t want to do it, you’ll be frank?”

She leaned forward impulsively with her hands clasped before her.

“I can’t conceive myself as not doing anything you may ask,” he replied.

“No matter how unusual it is?”

“No matter what it is.”

“You’ll promise to use your own judgment and not do it—just because of me?”

“I’ll promise beforehand to do it.”

“Then, Dicky,” she said, blurting it out at once, because the longer she talked about it the less courage she had,—“Then, Dicky, I—I want you to loan me some money.”

It took away his breath for a moment.

“Money!” he gasped.

It was as absurd a request on the face of it as though she asked for bread.

“And,” she went on, “it’s something mother doesn’t approve of.”

Dicky gave a low whistle.

“At least that sounds interesting,” he admitted.

“It’s business,” she explained hastily. “I’m going to be a sort of silent partner.”

“Business?” he asked suspiciously.

He thought of the market. He had heard of women who played stocks on a margin—the easy victims of unscrupulous operators. It was not like Joan to do a thing of that nature.

“How much do you want?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe five thousand; maybe more,” she hurried on.

“Right,” he nodded. “When do you want it?”

“Perhaps within a week.”

He nodded again.

“I’ll get it for you.”

“Of course it’s only a loan,” she said.

And here Dicky thought a moment. He did not want to make it a loan. If she borrowed the money and lost it—as at the moment it seemed to him more than probable she would—he did not choose to have her left with the worry. On the other hand, he saw no practical way of giving it to her. This brought him to the question of just what her object was, anyway, in wanting to try to make money. Still he did not like to ask her. It was a delicate matter.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, “why don’t you let me in on the deal?”

“You?”

“I don’t want to know the details,” he assured her. “I’d rather not know them. You can act as the promoter and I’ll furnish the capital. Then we can go divvies on the profits.”

“You mean that, Dicky Burnett?”

“Certainly. I’ll be just another silent partner.”

“And you don’t even want to know what I’m going to do with the money?” she asked, with warming eyes.

“No,” he answered. “Then I won’t be tempted to give you good advice.”

“Dicky,” she exclaimed, “you’re—you’re a peach!”

Different people place, of course, different values upon money. But as far as Dicky was concerned, he received right then and there adequate return on his prospective investment. It may have been an expensive luxury and one he could not afford every day, but that had nothing to do with intrinsic values. It was worth the money just to see the honest admiration in her eyes—to grasp the hot hand she impulsively extended to him.

“You’re so good, Dicky,” she added. “You kind of make me ache.”

“It’s a bargain, then?” he asked, with his head swimming before her.

“A bargain,” she agreed.

“Joan & Co.,” he repeated to himself. “Sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”

“It ought to be Dicky & Co.”

“No, because it’s your proposition. I have a notion it’s rather going to please Dad to learn I’ve gone into business for myself.”

“He must know?”

“In some ways it’s rather essential,” he admitted. “But he needn’t know any more than that. You—you don’t need a bookkeeper or anything, do you?”

“No,” she answered. “There aren’t any books yet.”

“You might keep me in mind for the position,” he suggested.

“I’d be glad if there was something of the sort for me to do,” she said.

He shook his head.

“You mustn’t let this take all your time. You aren’t going downtown at ten in the morning?”

“I’m afraid it won’t be necessary.”

“If it should be, I hope the company fails.”

“No, no, you mustn’t say things like that.”

She looked so genuinely concerned that he smiled.

“There’ll have to be directors’ meetings every so often, anyway,” he reminded her.

“Yes?”

“Once a week,” he suggested. “I think Delmonico’s would be a good place.”

“All right, Dicky,” she consented.

So within five minutes he secured an extra dividend of at least one hundred per cent. He was beginning to realize that this bade fair to be one of the best investments of his life.

She was still standing, and her eyes strayed often to the door.

“I think we’d better adjourn now,” she said.

“Very well,” he assented. “Until when?”

“Until I tell you.”

“But there’s Thursday.”

“I won’t forget.”

“That, however, is not a business meeting.”

He took her hand again, though he had no particular warrant for it.

“Here’s good luck to Joan & Co.,” he concluded, as he pressed it.

“Especially the Co.,” she smiled.