Joan and Co.

Joan sat back in the machine by the side of Henriette, with a feeling of tenseness amounting almost to exhilaration. The thing she was daring thrust, into the background, for a few moments, that for which she dared. In coming at all she had acted impulsively—had obeyed her emotions rather than her intellect. There was nothing in Arkwright’s note to justify the belief that Devons was really in any immediate need of her. Rather, if the truth were told, she had seized this opportunity as an excuse for satisfying a certain need in herself. She looked forward to the possibility of actually making herself of some use as a hope—a vague and stimulating hope.

As Charles left Washington Square and cut through to Sixth Avenue, she leaned forward and, with eyes out of the window, stared at the unfamiliar streets with all the sensations of a stranger in a foreign city. She had only to turn a little way to the right or left off any of the ordained avenues to find herself in a New York as new to her as Cairo. Had she been put down alone here, it is doubtful if, without much difficulty, she could have found her way home.

So they crossed beneath the Elevated to the hole in the wall and stopped, as Henriette, with some timidity, exclaimed:

“But, Mam’selle—Charles, he has made a mistake, is it not?”

“I do not know,” answered Joan.

Yet Charles appeared confident enough as he opened the door. What lay on the other side of that wall he did not know, but he could have taken his oath it was here that, not long ago, he had landed Mr. Devons.

He pointed to the opening.

“It’s through there,” he said.

“Thank you,” nodded Joan. “You may wait for us.”

Joan herself led the way to the courtyard and she herself found the number eight with her heart in her mouth. There was no bell, so she rapped. Mrs. Roberts, on the first floor, came to the door and directed her up the narrow stairs to Arkwright’s room, and, a moment later, she found herself confronting the big fellow, somewhat at a loss to explain intelligently her presence here, because as yet she had not explained it intelligently to herself. But the moment she gave her name, Arkwright seemed to understand.

“He’ll be glad to see you,” he said quietly.

“The doctor has been here?”

“Yes,” answered Arkwright, “and he said—why, he said the man hasn’t been getting enough to eat.”

“But why not?” she exclaimed.

“It’s his own fault—his own bull-headedness. If he had only come to me—”

“There was no need for him to go to any one,” she broke in; “he had money.”

“He did?”

“We—we are interested in the same business, so I know,” she explained.

Arkwright shook his head.

“I’ll give up trying to find a motive, then. Perhaps he just forgot to eat. Anyway, he did not get enough, and then he caught cold, and then—well, there he is. Want to see him?”

She hesitated. Then she answered steadily:

“Yes.”

So with Henriette by her side she followed Arkwright up another flight and into the little room lighted with a single gas-jet. She had never seen anything like it in her life outside a few dimly remembered scenes on the stage. Even now as she stood there she felt as though in some mad moment she had wandered over the footlights. Then the figure on the bed lifted himself to his elbow and she saw the haggard face and the two burning eyes, which she recognized as Devons’s eyes. Quickly she crossed to the man’s side and held out her hand.

“You?” he gasped.

“You should have told me,” she answered.

“Told you what?” he demanded.

Arkwright stepped forward a moment.

“It’s all my fault,” he explained. “I sent her a note.”

Devons frowned, and then sank back wearily.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Arkwright,” he complained.

“Yes, yes. It was all he could do,” put in Joan. “And it’s what you should have done. I don’t understand why—you are like this.”

“It’s only a cold. I’ll be up to-morrow.”

Devons was glaring at Arkwright again. The latter retreated out of range.

“If you didn’t have enough money—”

“I had money enough,” he cut in.

“Then why didn’t you buy proper food?”

“You don’t think I’d waste the firm’s money on myself?”

“Oh, that was it!” she exclaimed, with a catch in her voice.

“If Arkwright—”

“Don’t blame him. There isn’t much use in blaming any one now. You must get back your strength again. We—we must begin all over.”

“I’ll be up to-morrow, I tell you. Why, that machinery is waiting for me.”

“Yes? Have you been obeying the doctor’s orders since he left?”

“You aren’t Nurse Ware,” he objected.

“I’m going to be even more strict.”

She turned back to Arkwright.

“What instructions did the doctor leave?”

Arkwright glanced at his watch guiltily.

“Jove, it is time for his beef tea. I’ll go down and make it.”

“I’ll make it—please.”

“All you have to do is to boil some water and add a cube. I—”

“Please show me the range and find the cubes,” she ordered.

The range consisted of an alcohol stove and a tin dipper. Arkwright lighted the wick for her and filled the dipper with water, and placed the cubes convenient to her hand. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he was no longer needed and he retreated somewhat awkwardly to the door. He saw her slip off her wrap as she sat down before her work. The sight of her slim neck and white arms took away his breath; then he met her eyes.

“Thank you so much,” she murmured, as though politely excusing him.

“Only—only too happy,” he stammered.

Devons in the meanwhile was closing his eyes for a moment, then opening them again, then closing them again, because it was only so that he could bring himself to believe that she was really here. If he looked at her steadily for any length of time she grew hazy and he felt there was danger of her disappearing altogether. Henriette, in the rear, served in a way as a sort of anchor, but in the shadow he could scarcely make her out. But Joan was beneath the gas-jet so that if he did not look overlong he was sure of her.

Her back was toward him and he was rather glad of that. Had she faced him he would not have dared open his eyes at all. For she seemed to him now even more radiantly beautiful then ever before, and before there was nothing whatever beautiful enough with which to compare her. So that though he continued to try to blame Arkwright for his colossal nerve in being the direct means of getting her down here, it was a difficult thing to do consistently, because he was so glad to have her there.

And yet she did not belong here. In the midst of his joy he told himself that over and over again. The moment he removed his eyes from her and looked about at her surroundings she made him feel ashamed. Every sordid detail grew more sordid. The stark paper on the walls and the wooden chairs taunted him. They forced him into a contrast with the clean, good taste of what she had offered him in her home. His battered old dress-suit-case in the corner thrust itself forward as though trying to humiliate him. And remembering the dainty china upon which his meals at her home had been served, he frowned at the tin dipper, before which she sat watching, like a chemist, for some delicate reaction.

Then he saw her rise and remove the dipper of steaming water and put in the cube and look about for a spoon.

“You’ll have to use a pencil,” he said.

She objected to so unprofessional a method, but if he had no spoon there was nothing else to be done. To-morrow she would come prepared. She stirred it carefully and brought it to his side. He rose on his elbow and drank it—as bitter and unpalatable a beverage as a man could well swallow. She had forgotten to add salt, for one thing. It tasted of tin, for another. It was too hot, for a third. But had it been hemlock and she had offered it, he would not have hesitated.

“Now,” she said, “you ought to sleep.”

“With you here!”

“Then I’ll go.”

“Not yet,” he pleaded. “Do you mind just—sitting there?”

She brought the chair to his side and sat down.

“I don’t want to scold you now,” she began, “but don’t you see how foolish you’ve been?”

“There was so much to be done, all at once,” he explained.

“And you tried to do it all by yourself.”

“There was no one else.”

“There was I. Why, I—I’ve been doing nothing all this while.”

“You did your share when you made everything possible.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t claim credit even for that. But please don’t talk. Please—just listen.”

So while he lay there flat on his back cursing to himself the weakness that made it necessary, she told him of her preposterous plan. He would need some one in the office as a sort of bookkeeper, and though she did not know very much about bookkeeping she could learn and perhaps could help in other ways.

“For one thing, it seems to be necessary for some one to make sure that you take care of yourself.”

“If it hadn’t been for this cold—” he started to explain.

“If you had eaten properly you wouldn’t have caught cold,” she cut him off. “There is not the slightest use in the world to argue about it.”

He was at a distinct disadvantage. In the first place, it is difficult to hold your own in an argument when lying prone even if you have all the right on your side. Again, though he was trying his level best to appear normal there was between his eyes a pain so sharp that at moments it made him blind. Finally, it seemed inevitable that, once she made up her mind, she should have her way in whatever she desired. If one were to direct her at all it must be in some earlier stage. He tried to go back a little to find where he was at fault, but that involved too much effort.

Besides, the one big, white fact, that made every other fact appear petty, was that now, at this moment, she was here. Yesterday, last night, and all to-day, until Arkwright had come up, he had lain here alone fretting over lost time in a fashion that threatened to double and treble the toll of wasted hours. And he had thought if only he could see her for a second—just catch a glimpse of her passing on the street—that all the strength would come back into him.

“I think I had better read to you,” she decided. “Perhaps it will help you not to think.”

The only thing she could find was a textbook on chemistry, so she picked up that and began at page one. It was not very interesting, but that was so much the better. She plunged ahead in a low monotone, and mispronounced frightfully many of the words she met. But she kept on, conscious that his eyes were upon her. She kept on and on paying no attention to the meaning of the text—kept on and on, until she heard him breathing slowly and naturally. As soon as his eyes closed, she stopped and waited a moment, ready to begin again if they opened.

Then she rose and moved on tiptoe to the table. She took the pencil and scribbled a note upon a piece of blank paper she found. It read simply:

I shall be here at ten to-morrow.

Joan Fairburne

She slipped this into the book and placed it on the chair near the bed. Then moving toward the door she beckoned Henriette to follow.

At Arkwright’s suite below, she paused and knocked again.

“I must leave him with you now,” she announced as he appeared. “But I shall be here in the morning. He is to have his beef tea every two hours.”

He nodded and escorted her to the machine. He watched it scoot away beneath the Elevated toward Washington Square.

“Good Lord!” he gasped, “if I thought anything like that would run over me I’d take a chance.”