Joan and Co.

It was this same Thursday, too, that Joan came to the house to tea. She came at four o’clock looking radiant. It was a proud moment for Dicky when he introduced her to his mother because he knew Joan was justifying in every detail the most enthusiastic description of her he had ever given. It was difficult to understand how it was possible for Joan to grow any younger than she always was, but she looked younger; it was difficult to understand how she could look any fresher than she always did, but this afternoon she accomplished in some way that feat also. For one thing her eyes were wider open than they sometimes were, and instead of merely listening in a half-amused, half-critical fashion, she herself dominated the conversation. This, to be sure, relegated him more or less to the background, but he was content to have it so.

It was quite evident that in some mysterious way the older woman and the younger woman formed an instant liking one for the other. Dicky had expected each to admire the other and, given time, had anticipated a formal friendship, but it was as though in minutes they spanned months. The moment their hands clasped and their eyes met, the two seemed to have come to some sort of an agreement. It puzzled him. Beyond the fact that they were two women and each in her way quite perfect, they had no common bond between them. He had been rather afraid that his mother, in her old-fashioned way, might not be able at once to penetrate to the woman in Joan, and he had suspected that Joan, in her turn, might be at first confused by his mother’s quaint frankness. But before he knew it, here they were seated at their tea in front of the fire, talking so directly one to the other that he was more or less on the outside.

This, because of the subject-matter, was more or less embarrassing. There were moments when if possible he would have fled. Because in less than five minutes his mother had revealed her one weakness and dragged in him, Dicky, and the adventures of his infancy and early youth as the major topic. How it happened, Lord knows. At the beginning he tried to switch her off. It was entirely useless, because it was apparent that she was being aided and abetted by Joan herself. The latter even rebuked him openly.

“Dicky,” she said, when once he endeavored to turn the subject to the weather, “Dicky, it is not polite to interrupt like that.”

“I know, but—”

She turned her back upon him and gave his mother her cue.

“So he came to the head of the stairs in his nighty—”

His mother, thus encouraged, went on. Nothing could have been more puerilely inane than that episode of how Dicky at the age of four came downstairs one evening in that garb and entertained two of his father’s business friends who had come to talk over very important matters. It seems that his father did him up in an overcoat, put him in a chair, and made him an ex-officio director of the proposed company.

Of course one such yarn inevitably led to another. Before the close of the afternoon Joan was in possession of a first-hand report of most of the fool things he had ever done up to the time he went to college. The only feature upon which he could congratulate himself was that at this point the narrative inevitably ended, although he could not say as much about all the fool things.

And yet, when it came time to go, Joan actually told his mother with all evidence of sincerity that she had thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon.

“And,” she added, “you’ll let me come again and hear more?”

“There isn’t any more,” put in Dicky.

“I’m sure there is,” she smiled.

“If you keep on I’ll get your mother in a corner some day,” he threatened.

“I’m afraid anything she might tell of me would only bore you,” she returned.

“You don’t know how much she might make up.”

Mrs. Burnett appeared disturbed.

“Dicky,” she protested, “every one of those things was true.”

“I know they were and he knows it too,” Joan sided with her, taking her hand. “Some day soon I may run in quite informally, may I?”

“You’ll always be welcome here,” answered Mrs. Burnett.

There was something in her voice that made the girl look up, not at her, but at Dicky. But he, inhospitably enough, was apparently only anxious to help her leave. So, suddenly, she kissed Mrs. Burnett on the cheek and went out with him.

In the car she proceeded to scold.

“I don’t think you treat your mother as nicely as you should,” she declared.

“You mean I shouldn’t throw her downstairs!” he exclaimed.

“You know what I mean. She is very fond of you, Dicky.”

“You speak as though there was something unnatural about that.”

“And she is very proud of you. At times it was almost as though she were talking about Napoleon.”

“You oughtn’t to blame me for that,” he protested.

“I’m not blaming you, only you might try—”

“She wouldn’t at all approve of me if I were really like Napoleon,” he broke in.

“In some things, perhaps not,” she hastened to admit. “I shouldn’t myself. But in some other things—”

“I am,” he flattered himself.

As though to prove it he drew from his pocket the check for five thousand. He handed it to her with every evidence of satisfaction. She merely rolled it into a little tube and placed it in her muff.

“I shall send you a receipt for this,” she said.

That was all—at a point when if encouraged in the slightest he would have told her by what a nice bit of strategy—the strategy of the pumpkin pie—he had secured this for her. He did not, however, volunteer the story, and a few minutes later he was on the whole glad. He doubted if it would have impressed her as humorous. He doubted next if it really was humorous. After all he had meant what he said and his father had meant what he said, and Joan had meant what she said. It had been a serious transaction.

At the house she did not ask him in as he hoped she might. Instead she merely smiled an au revoir to him as they stood in the open door with Jeffrey near her at attention. He might not have thought much about this, if at that moment, in glancing over her shoulder, he had not seen coming down the broad stairs in the rear the figure of a young man with his shoulder in bandages. The fellow met his eyes and paused. So for a second they faced each other, questioning, wondering.

Joan turned from Dicky at the door to Devons on the stair behind her and then back to Dicky, with a feeling that the situation was tense out of all proportion. For a moment she was confused and uncertain. She did not know quite what to do. But Dicky did. His eyes came back to hers and from them it would have been impossible to say if he had seen Devons or not.

“Let me know when you want me again,” he said.

“Thank you, Dicky,” she exclaimed.

With that he turned and went down the steps. With that, swinging his stick lightly, he went down the street and around a corner.