"Yes?" she said quickly, with a tight feeling at her breast.
He had a telegram in his hand.
"Joan, dear, can you bear to hear something? I—I know I am a weak fool, but some one must tell you, and Norah won't, and I would sooner die than give you any pain, but—Joan—"
His agitation and her own anxiety almost made her hate him.
"Tell me what there is to tell," she cried fiercely, and snatched at the telegram, and then recoiled from it as it fluttered away on the floor.
"No, don't!" she said the instant after, "I think I know it. Jack—"
"Yes, dear. That is it. Jack will never—Jack will never have your letter," and the musician put out his hand to her. She did not take it, nor heed him.
"It was a railway accident—they have not cabled much," he faltered; but she did not help him by a word or a look, and they stood silent for an interminable minute.
Then she spoke through her dry lips with a little forced laugh.
"What a pity I did not wait for the next mail," she said; "what a character for constancy I might have had!"
He had just time to put out his arm to catch her as she fell suddenly forward.
"It is extraordinary how quietly Joan has taken it," Norah said on the evening of the same day. "I often wonder if she does feel things as we do, or whether Mrs. Reginald Routh is not right about her after all. You know, she always did say that Joan's hatred of music meant a lack of heart; of course, that is putting it rather strongly, and I shouldn't call her heartless myself—because nobody is quite that; but still, she has been strangely cool about poor Jack, and she has not even mentioned the mourning. I should not be surprised if she did not wear black at all, she is so inclined to be eccentric. I am glad I wrote to Peter Robinson's in time for the post; I shall get the patterns to-morrow. I don't know when I have felt so upset, though of course it does not do to talk about it. I wish there were a piano here; it would do us both so much good, wouldn't it, dear?"
Digby looked at his wife's gentle face as she bent it over her needlework, and he counted the regular folds of her soft gray gown and the coils of brown hair round her head, and he made a few mental reflections on the marvellous nature of woman.
"I cannot conceive what it must be to live without the love of music," she went on unconsciously in her low tuneful voice. "Music is like religion in that way, I think; we may try to do without it when we are happy, but we want it terribly when the trials come. Now, whathasJoan to fall back upon to-night, do you suppose?"
"I don't know, but I will go and see," muttered the musician; he felt he had had as much as he could stand just then, and he took up his straw hat significantly. The old brown felt one had been gently but firmly suppressed soon after his marriage.
"What was that you said, Digby?"
"I will go and make her come down here to be cheered up. You are too tired to come, eh, childie?" said Digby; and he kissed her before he pushed open the creaking door and went out into the moonlight.
The butler said Lady Joan was busy in her boudoir and wished to be left undisturbed. But Digby managed to gain admittance a few minutes later, and he found occasion to add a few more reflections to his mental synopsis of woman.
"How nice of you to come, and what a cold creature you are! Come and sit near the fire; I waged a war with Mrs. Binks and had a wood fire lighted because I felt chilly, which shocked the conventional old thing very much indeed, because there never has been a fire lighted in here between spring-cleaning and Michaelmas, since the memory of man. But why should I listen to Mrs. Binks or any one else if I don't choose? At all events, it is nice and cosey, and I am going to tell you all my ideas. But tell me first why you came. What are you laughing at?"
She looked up at him sharply from the hearthrug where she had flung herself down to stir the fire, and he stroked his moustache hurriedly.
"I am not laughing, Joan. I came to take you back to Norah—to be cheered up."
"Oh. It was very kind of you—both. How is the baby?" said she, turning a log dexterously over on its side and making the sparks fly up the chimney and send a red glow over her face.
"The baby is—ah—quiescent. Mrs. Haxtell is not. I think on the whole you had better not go there for amusement. My family affairs are only funny from the outside just at present. I think you had better give me your new ideas instead. What have you been thinking about all day?"
"That is what I am going to tell you." She stood up and leaned against the mantelshelf, and looked over his head at the bookshelves on the wall. "First of all, I hated myself for a whole hour. I thought I had got outside myself and was looking at myself like—oh, like another woman would look at me, Norah for instance. And I didn't enjoy myself for that hour at all. I almost made up my mind to go abroad again; but it was lunchtime, and over the mayonnaise, which was particularly good to-day, I came to the conclusion that it was like running away, and everybody would say I had gone 'to get over it,' and I could not tolerate that for a moment, could I?"
"Of course not, no. I know I may smoke, mayn't I? And then?"
"Then—" she made an effort not to alter her voice, and exaggerated its pitch in the attempt, "oh, then it became very apparent from the attitude of all the servants that they had heard the news about—Jack. That is to say, Thomas spoke to me in a whisper at lunch, and never handed me anything twice, and the coachman never sent up for orders at all, and I only just stopped the maids in time from pulling down all the blinds, and Mrs. Binks has been drinking tea in the servants' hall in her black silk dress ever since three o'clock, and did not answer my bell until I rang the second time, and then she appeared with a clean handkerchief in her hand, and a face as long as a fiddle. Aren't servants fond of a tragedy? And am I very heartless to notice all these things, Digby?"
"Heartless? No," he said with emphasis, remembering what his wife had said in the inn; "and after lunch, please?"
"Oh, after lunch I went to sleep. And when I woke up I felt better. I was able to think without getting sentimental over it. Don't you see, it is like this. There isn't anybody."
"I don't understand," said the musician.
"I could hardly expect you to," she said dryly; "there is somebody for you. But for me there is nobody, and I am getting old, and I feel frightened sometimes. Remember, that is an admission. I don't know why I am telling you all this, because I want to get to the end. At all events, I had a sort of sensation that I had tried more than most women to gain something, and I had hopelessly missed it; so it was time to turn round and do something, as I should have to go on living all the same. Now, there were two courses open to me: one was to turn the literary cynic and write a novel in which I could vent my spite against my own particular Fate by personifying myself in an ill-used heroine, who talks epigrams from the moment she gets out of bed in the morning, and who loves to assure her men acquaintances that they may mention questionable topics before her if they like. And the other was to repent and do good works, and become the fashionable philanthropist, and tell the poor and fatherless that they have got to be improved in their condition whether they think they want improving or not. Guess which I chose! Oh, I do wonder if you will guess right;" and she dropped on her knees beside him and looked into his face.
"If you were any ordinary clever woman, I should guess the first; but—" he paused and looked at the eager, scornful face, and smiled to himself, "no, that wouldn't do for you, Joan. And yet, neither would the other. I can't imagine you walking through the village in awful, hideous garments, carrying a rice pudding and a Bible. Oh, Joan, surelyyouare not going in for that self-indulgent bosh known as charity?"
"That is where you are so like a man!" She flung herself away from him, and began walking about the room and talking quickly. "You are right about the novel, yes. You see, if I were to write a book it would be so frightfully personal that I should have to take a pseudonym to begin with. And where is the satisfaction of jeering at your friends when they don't know you are doing it? But I don't know why you should take up the old, played-out notion of charity as the only alternative. Who wants to go about with Bibles and rice puddings? Nous avons changé tout cela, mon ami! Why, there is no such thing as charity left now; haven't you learnt that from Sir Marcus? It is philanthropy nowadays, my good sir, equally self-indulgent, of course, but more modern and ten times more entertaining. The Bible never need come in at all, and no one sees the rice puddings,they'reall managed by committees; all you have to do is to lend your name for the circulars of the league, and hold meetings over afternoon tea in your drawing-room, andtalk. That is all.Nowdo you see what I mean?"
"I gather that you mean to take up philanthropy as a new form of diversion; but I am afraid I do not quite recognize the full advantages of the scheme. I don't see—"
"Of course you don't," cried Lady Joan, cheerfully, "you have no cause to see.Idon't see the full advantages of married life, for instance. But I am really going to be serious now, so don't interrupt. In the first place, I am not going to be philanthropic in the country; that only means being hopelessly under the thumb of one's rector, or hopelessly at variance with him; besides, it is so mortally dull, and—I don't mean to be dull just now. So I am going up to Pont Street in October, and I shall organize a regular philanthropic campaign. Oh, I am going to have a fine time! I shall sing for concerts in the East End, I shall paint match-boxes and gridirons and send them to fancy fairs, I shall play with the children in the hospitals, and teach the children of Whitechapel—thank Heaven! no amount of philanthropy can ever spoil the children—I shall even give sumptuous receptions, at which we shall discuss the evils of the sweating-system and the possibility of distributing certain portions of bread and soup to the deserving poor during the cold weather. Who knows that I may not speak on a platform before long? There is always the bearing-rein to fall back upon, if all the others fail; or the prevention of cruelty to birds, now that wearing feathers is out of fashion; or compulsory vaccination, or hygiene and rational dress and other horrors which are so excellent for the poor. Think of my reputation, Digby! It will be so assured that even Mrs. Reginald Routh will not dare to cast a stone at me, and I shall be able to say just what I choose aboutanybody. Why, philanthropy, properly managed, is as telling as music! Won't it be glorious fun, Digby? Hey-day, what a noise I am making!"
He got up and stirred the logs in the low grate with his foot. She was lying on the sofa, looking at him.
"Well, have you nothing to say to my beautiful idea?" she asked presently.
The musician gulped at something in his throat.
"It is surprising," he began, with an attempt at his old impressive manner, "how difficult it is to make ourselves understood, especially in our most intimate relations."
"What are you talking about?" said Lady Joan.
"I mean," went on the musician, desperately, "that I don't know how to tell you all that is in my mind, dear. Perhaps it is best left unsaid. I don't know; but—when you ask me what I think of it, I can only feel that it is all sad, dreadfully sad. I'm afraid I have not made it very clear, have I?"
She moved her feet, and he came and sat down on the end of the sofa.
"Tell me what it is that is sad," she asked, shading her eyes with her hand.
"What you have been saying, that there isn't anybody," he said, and boldly moved the hand, and held it fast, and looked into her eyes.
"No more there is,—except you," she answered recklessly, and looked back at him for a moment.
Something surged up to his lips in the silence of the next few minutes, and he held his breath and tightened his grasp on the cold fingers before he said it. Then she pulled away her hand almost roughly, and spoke quickly.
"Do you know it is nearly eleven? Norah had a bad night with the baby last night, and you look awfully tired too. Hadn't you better be moving?"
So he did not say it after all.
"You have not told me what you think yet. I suppose you are only laughing at me," she said, when he bade her good-bye.
He found himself smiling in a conventional manner; he could not have said why.
"Oh, no, why should I? I think it is very wise of you," he said, opening the door to go out; "and when I tell Norah she will say 'Just like Joan!' Good-night."
And she answered down the stairs after him, "Good-night, and mind you tell Norah all about it!"
"I'll be hanged if I do," thought the musician, as he walked down the drive; and he congratulated himself all the way back on not having made a fool of himself.
"I'm sure I hope he won't," added Lady Joan to herself out loud, as the front-door banged. Then she walked unsteadily into her boudoir, and made up the fire, and sat down on the sofa, and looked dully into the flames. And presently she turned and hid her face in the cushions, and burst into tears.
Lady Joan went up to her town house at the end of the summer, but her philanthropic campaign was not a success. The field of philanthropy was overcrowded just then with people like herself, who had too little wealth and too much energy to be of any practical use to the great organizers of charity, who never wanted anything from their devotees but subscriptions and obedience; a reformer does not want to be interfered with by a penniless nobody who has independent views concerning his method of reform. And Lady Joan soon found that she was not in a set that troubled itself much about the suffering poor. The people she met in Digby's studio were mostly theoretical Socialists, who complained that the cause of Socialism was being ruined by the enthusiasts who tried to make it work before its principles had been properly disseminated among the people; and amongst her other friends were some who had a small and private charity of their own, but were so jealous of it when they had that she found it impossible to work with them; or else they were quite willing to use her house and her carriage and her time, if she would meekly give them all these without being allowed a voice in the arrangements or a particle of credit for what she did. And she found that as much sweating went on in the administration of charity as its administrators were in the habit of exposing in the slums; she met jaded gentlewomen in the employ of philanthropists, who spent their lives in addressing envelopes at something less than the market price, and footsore secretaries who walked the slums to verify the abuses which their chiefs were to denounce in the newspapers. She had never had a high opinion of philanthropy, but it was considerably lowered by her new experiences of it. She humbly offered to sing a ballad at a people's concert in the East End; but her offer was politely refused on the ground that several of the leading singers of the day had offered their services free for the same concert; and she was asked if she would dance the skirt dance instead, at a titled lady's 'At Home' for another charitable object. Sundry hard-working clergy came to hear of her estimable intentions, and wrote to ask her for subscriptions and to offer her district-visiting in their parishes; but as it was the æsthetic side of philanthropy alone that had attracted her, she declined their offers promptly and with a shudder.
Once, in an impetuous mood, she joined a Ladies' League for the supply of soup and bread to a select company of the deserving poor in a West End parish. There were more ladies altogether than there were afterwards recipients of their charity; and they all met weekly in one another's houses to organize their system of relief during the cold weather. The cold weather came along before the preliminaries were arranged. There were no gentlemen at these meetings until after the business had been transacted, when afternoon tea was brought in, and arecherchéreception followed. But the frost continued, and there seemed no prospect of the sufferers ever receiving their bread and their soup. Just before Christmas, it came to Lady Joan's turn to hold the meeting in her house. It took place in a dingy old library that day, and there was no reception afterwards, and no afternoon tea. Lady Joan herself moved three resolutions at the opening of the sitting: the first was that there should be no more meetings; the second, that all future business should be transacted by a committee of gentlemen only; and the third, that the charity, if given at all, should be administered to all sufferers, irrespective of character. All three motions were thrown out indignantly, and their proposer sent in her resignation the next day.
"Philanthropy is the selfish pastime of the great, and I was an owl to meddle with it," she said gloomily to Sir Marcus, who happened to be lunching with her one day about that time. Sir Marcus always came to see her whenever he came to town, and told her of his last letter to the papers, or his last effort to improve the condition of the working-man;—she had loved his boy, and she always listened without laughing at him; these were the two ideas he vaguely connected with her in his mind. Another man, a less easily impressed one, might have been killed by the suddenness of Jack's death; but Sir Marcus, although his infatuation for his scapegrace son had been the deepest attachment he had ever felt for any one, had been really more affected by the tragedy of his end than by his actual death; and so it came about that he was considerably aged by the shock, and yet was able to return again to his books and his hobbies.
"Philanthropy in town is all a mistake, my dear," he answered her, hotly; "it's nothing but a trumped-up job among the swells, that's what it is, of course. In my time, you know, before there were such a lot of them in the nursery, and when I was pitching my thousands right and left,—thatwas philanthropy if you like! But now philanthropists are merely commercial contractors,—you mark my words, my dear, commercial contractors running the whole concern for profit; and what good can come out of that, eh? Ah, you must come down into the country for morals; Londoners are the biggest thieves in existence."
"Not so bad as that, Sir Marcus," she remonstrated; "I don't think philanthropists are commercial contractors exactly, at least not the ones I've met. They are mostly egoists and mostly unbusinesslike, but not thieves, no."
"Isn't that what I said?" said Sir Marcus, testily. It was not; but she did not wish to risk her reputation with him, and she listened patiently while he poured out his own schemes for the education of the country laborer, or rather of the Murville laborer, until she repeated her first remark to herself with a yawn, and wrote round to Digby, after Sir Marcus had left, to come and tell her what to do next.
She had seen a good deal of Digby lately; he knew all about her ambitious schemes and her failure to carry them out, and he was eager to sympathize with her whenever she would allow him; while she accepted his sympathy as one who did not want it particularly, but liked to command it at will. And during the growth of his baby's teeth, which rendered both conversation and work difficult in the flat in Victoria Street, the musician often found his way to Lady Joan's house in Pont Street in the hours that he would otherwise have spent in writing music. It is true that he honestly tried for some time to write classical lullabies to his daughter in the pantry, that being the corner in the flat furthest removed from the nursery, while his wife sang her to sleep in the cradle to the homely ditty of "Hush-a-by-baby," and that he always nursed her when he was asked, and did not swear when he made her cry and was blamed for his clumsiness but after a time he made no objection when his wife sent him round to take her excuses and to dine alone with Lady Joan, until it became no uncommon thing for him to spend his evenings with her, while Norah stayed at home and nursed the baby. They were all three totally regardless of public opinion in the matter, though it might well have come to their ears that Norah was being very generally pitied by the musician's lady friends, not for her loneliness, but for her neglect of the treasure she seemed so unconscious of possessing, and that the musician was allowed to go scathless as he always was, and that Lady Joan was hated without exception. But the musician, who had done what he liked since his infancy, meant to go on doing it now in defiance of all the scandals that were about; and Lady Joan, for her part, always went out of her way to add to them if she could; while Norah only ignored them altogether, and smiled to herself, and so deceived every one who knew her, including her husband.
"Yes?" she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, when that lady remarked one day, during a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed to be in Pont Street, "it is very unfortunate he should miss you so often; but Joan has wanted him a good deal lately, and I have been only too glad, when baby has been fretful, to send him round to see her. There is such a platonic friendship between them, you know."
"Platonic, do you call it, Mrs. Digby?" said her visitor, with her accustomed smile. "Do you know, my dear Mrs. Digby, that from whatIknow of Plato,—and I attended all Mr. Digby's lectures on Plato and Schopenhauer, and their relation to music and Socialism, which was before you knew him, of course,—I don'tfancyhe would have countenanced such goings on in his ideal Republic? Of course you know best, and I should not dream of interfering between a wife and a husband; but I should certainly say myself, if I were asked, that that young woman's behavior in Pont Street is more fit for the Old Testament than for Plato. Perhaps you have not read any Plato, though?"
"No; only the Old Testament; and that I was obliged to do for myself, you see, because there were no lectures upon it," rejoined Norah, gravely; and she bore the swift scrutiny of Mrs. Reginald Routh without flinching. Mrs. Reginald changed the subject; it was the only thing left her to do, and she did it well.
"Of course I should not speak so strongly, dear Mrs. Digby, if I had not known your husband so well and so intimately before he met you at all. And perhaps if I had had your good fortune," here she glanced in a telling manner at the baby on Norah's knee, "and could have had a small soul to develop, I, too, should have become a womanly woman, with no desire for intellectual improvement. Ah, Mrs. Digby, you have in your child what we childless wives have failed to find in our search after wisdom. I frankly own that you are to be envied."
And she had her revenge, for Norah believed her.
Digby came in when she had gone.
"Joan has sent round for me to help her out of a difficulty. Any message, childie? I shall be back to dinner. And have you seen my warm gloves?"
"I mended them and put them in your drawer, dear. That's just like a man to be surprised at finding them in the right place! Oh, I wish you would write about the bath-room pipe—"
"Damn," said Digby, audibly.
"Don't, Digby. It really is important, because the wall is getting damp, and—"
"That doesn't matter, does it? I've moved the piano."
"But it is coming through into the nursery, Digby."
"Oh, all right. I'll do it when I come in."
"Mrs. Reginald has been here."
"I know; that's why I haven't. What did she say?"
"She seemed to think that you and Joan were enacting an Old Testament episode without the sanction of inspiration."
"What awful cheek!"
"Oh, she only meant to be friendly, I think. She seemed to admire baby."
"Deuced clever woman, Mrs. Reginald. I'll write about the pipe when I come in."
He was with Lady Joan for about two hours, and it was quite dark when he left her house. They had reached that stage in their intercourse when conversation is rather difficult, but companionship is a matter of course. They did not discuss the arts now, nor the ethics of Socialism, nor the position of woman. None of these things seemed to matter half so much to them as his prospects of getting fresh pupils, or her choice of a dining-room paper. And sometimes they did not speak at all, though their silence was never an embarrassed one. This afternoon there had been more than usual to talk about, for she had resolved to give up her visions of philanthropy and was thinking of going abroad, and he had been trying to dissuade her, purely in his character of adviser, without letting her see that he hoped she would remain in London. He was beginning to realize how much he liked coming to see her, and how great a relief it was to escape from the people who had claims upon him, and for whose bath-room pipes he was legally responsible, to some one who had no claim upon him, and whose bath-room pipes were in consequence so much pleasanter to superintend. And he walked down the doorsteps slowly, with a feeling that he had not persuaded her to remain, and that he was a fool not to have used the only methods of persuasion that he would like to have used, and that might have gained his point. There was a weary vista before him of endless letters to the plumber, of endless commonplace conversations with his wife, of endless unfulfilled ambitions, everything that chokes the energy of the artistic enthusiast who has been married long enough to lose his first illusions, and not long enough to learn to do without them. He was in the mood to be exasperated by a triviality, and he swore beneath his breath when a man with a beard stumbled against him in the portico.
"Digby!" shouted the man with the beard, in a voice that made the passers-by stop and look.
The musician recoiled, and stammered something. He said afterwards that the fateful truth flashed upon him in a second of time, but in reality he stood there for some moments while the existence of the man before him slowly worked its way to his brain. And with the realization of Jack's existence came the realization of something he had been trying for six months to hide from himself. Jack's return from the dead meant—good heavens! what did it not mean to him now?
And to Joan also?
"You—you must not go into her suddenly like this; it might kill her, the shock, don't you know," he found himself saying, in a kind of dream, when the first hurried and incoherent words of greeting had passed between them. Joan was all he was thinking of just then, Joan and the last six months of uninterrupted friendship. Yet Digby was not a bad man, nor a malicious one exactly; but his old affection for his brother, which had always depended more on habit than on natural affinity, had been rudely broken by his supposed death, and it was not easy to revive it again now, nor was it made easier by a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to demand that he should rather have stayed away altogether. Why had Jack chosen this moment to come back? A few years back the musician would have found an occasion for moralizing in the strange conflict of feelings within him.
"I—I feel quite queer myself," he said, making an effort to grasp his brother's hand more warmly; "why on earth didn't you let us know that the wrong man—that the other man was killed? You always did imagine that we knew all about you without your troubling to write to us, Jack. Never was so surprised in my life,—delighted, I should say. But what does it all mean?"
"Eh, what? Why, don't you see, I thought it was all bally rot to write and explain that they had cabled my name instead of Jack Rackstraw's, because I meant to come over that next mail. And then, when I got another berth offered me with an elegant screw, I reckoned I 'd take it and go on being dead for a space, rather a scheme, don't you twig? And besides, I thought if I lay low till next fall Joan might find out she cared for me a bit more than she calculated, eh? Hasn't it been hard work, though, just sitting tight and not hearing from her! Now, fire yourself, Digby, and let me freeze on to that bell."
"But look here, old man," urged the musician, desperately, "let me go in first and explain. You go round to Norah and wait till I come for you. These—these shocks are too much for women; they can't always stand them; women can't, you know. Surely you must see the folly of frightening her—"
"You old woman, Digby; what by all that's holy are you playing at? Joan's not that sort; besides, if you'd been away three years, old chap, I guess you'd run the risk of seeing a girl turn pale for you. Eh? So clear out."
He twisted the musician round with one touch of his hand, and flew up the steps. But quick as he was, Digby was quicker still, and sprang before him at the top of the steps, panting, and hardly knowing what he did. Jack seized him by the arm in slowly dawning amazement.
"'Pon my word, if Joan's half as frightened as you look now, I shall begin to believe itisa shock to meet some one who's supposed to have kicked. You want a drink, old man, and if you don't go and get it now I—"
"I know, I 'm going, I am really, Jack. It's purely for your own good I am speaking; why should it matter to me? But you're such an unsuspecting chap, and I don't want to see you made a fool of; and look here, Jack, I'm a brute to suggest it, I know, but women are fickle, as all the world knows, and she thought you were dead, and after all no one could blame her if—don't you see?"
There was a sudden pause then, and a loosening of the strong grip on his arm, and the musician began to feel something of the brute he had been so ready to avow himself.
"Of course, I'm not insinuating that there's some one else, I don't know his name if there is; but knowing their nature as I do, I think it's wiser not to—not to give them a clean bill of constancy always—eh? At all events, how would it be for me to meet you at the flat when I've sounded the ground a bit with Joan? It would only make a delay of half-an-hour or so, and—my dear fellow!"
Jack had caught him by the coat in a sudden paroxysm of nervous fury, and Digby found himself half throttled and pinned against the stone wall of the portico, while a loud peal from the door-bell resounded through the house.
"You brute—you! Why do you want to keep me from her? If you were any one else standing between her and me I would wipe the floor with you. There—clear out, can't you? Oh, hang it, I've been half crazed to meet her all day, and now—that devilish suggestion of yours—ah! can't you go, you?"
Digby shrank back as he felt himself free. There were steps coming along the hall inside, and he curbed himself to speak carelessly as he turned away as if to leave.
"Poor chap, I forgive you when I think of the hash you are going to make of it. You weren't born to deal with wily women, and when to-morrow comes, ah!—"
After all, when the man opened the door, it was Digby who entered the house. A man with a short beard was walking rapidly down the street.
"What is it? Anything wrong?" asked Lady Joan, quickly.
"No, no, nothing. Only I feel as though I had been persuading you against your will and for my own selfish reasons, and I came back to say so. There is nothing to keep you in England—nothing. Why not go abroad—to-morrow?"
"Oh. Is that all? How stupid of you to come back and look tragic just for that. And as if I should not go without waiting for your permission, Monsieur! Why, I have just been making out a route. Come and look."
He followed her finger mechanically with his eyes as she traced it over the map, and he made a great effort to compose himself. She exhausted France and Germany before she noticed his silence, and then she pushed away the Baedeker suddenly, and leaned back to try and see his face. He was standing a little behind her.
"I wish you'd say something, Digby. You look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I have," he answered quietly, without taking his eyes from the top of her head.
"Whose was it?" she asked, half puzzled, half amused.
"My brother Jack's. He is in London."
He did not see that the color fled from her face, nor that she gasped a little as though she had a difficulty in breathing. What he saw was that she slowly turned round on her chair and looked to him beseechingly.
"Is—it—true?" she asked in a hushed tone. The dull anguish of it lent a fierceness to his purpose.
"I have spoken to him. Would to God it were not!"
It did not seem strange to her that he should say so, nor that he did not come and stroke her hair as he so often did when she fancied herself in trouble. She crossed her arms on the top of the chair, and laid her cheek on them.
"I've always known that he must come back. Jack could never be dead," she murmured in a hopeless tone of voice; "he is overflowing with life, crude, arrogant life. Why did I believe them when they said he was dead?"
"Perhaps you wished to believe it," said the musician.
When he found the silence that followed no longer endurable, he moved a little nearer to her, where he could see the fierce movement of her shoulders and the curls on the back of her neck.
"Shall we resume our conversation?" he said, and touched the Baedeker.
"How can we? I must wait a little, see Jack, no, no, not see him, but—but write to him—if it is possible he never had my other letter? Why has he come back to torment me just when I was beginning to feel happy? And—oh, drop that book, can't you? Don't you understand that I cannot go abroad now?"
"Why not?"
"Because, oh, how dense you are! Even if I can get away from Jack, and I feel as if I never should be free again, but even supposing I can break his heart and leave him, how can I go away and be by myself interminably? You don't know me if you think that would do me any good."
"I don't think so. I did not suggest your going alone. You don't knowmeif—you think I could let you go."
She raised herself slowly on to her elbows and covered her eyes with her hands. He was looking down at the scarlet cover of the Baedeker.
"What do you mean?"
"What I have said. You don't want to see Jack. I will take you away from him. Will you come?"
She did not speak, and a shiver passed swiftly down her frame.
He came nearer to her.
"I believe you like him still," he said, with a curious smile.
She raised her head, and clenched her fists, and laughed harshly. She, too, looked at the scarlet cover of the Baedeker.
"I should hate him—if he were worth it. But I have never loved him."
"Then answer my question. Will you come?"
She moistened her lips and tried to speak clearly.
"We were so happy as it was. Can't it go on?"
"No, it cannot go on. If you were a man you would not ask that. Will you come?"
She closed her eyes, and tried not to hear the singing in her ears, and thought he would come and touch her. But he did not move at all.
"You are frightened, are you not?" he said.
"Of you? No, I don't think I am frightened of you."
He came so near then that she felt his warm breath on her neck.
"Not of me, oh, no. But, all the same, you are frightened, or else you would not hesitate."
He turned away again, and she dropped her hands quickly from her eyes.
"You are not going?"
"Not if you wish me to stay," he said, and folded his arms and waited.
"I do want you to stay—give me time to think, Digby—I—"
A cab rattled past the house outside, and as the sound died away, she rose slowly and with difficulty from her chair and looked at him. And he came and supported her on his arm, and drew his fingers up her throat and round her face to her forehead, and back again to her chin, and so forced her to meet his eyes.
"I will come," she said.
The Squire sat making calculations in his study, as he did nearly every day of his life. There was nothing in his appearance to denote that anything unusual, least of all anything exceedingly pleasant, had occurred to him. And yet, it was only that morning that they had told him Jack was alive and was coming home the same evening. Perhaps it was that, like Digby, he found it hard to revive an affection that had ceased to be part of his life six months ago; or, more likely still, he felt in some vague way or another that Jack had come back to life on purpose to produce some unpaid debts for his father to settle. Sir Marcus never dissimulated, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that his joy in his son's resurrection did not wholly compensate for the trouble that was certain to be a consequence of it.
So he sat making calculations as usual, though his wife felt bound to go into hysterics in the drawing-room, and the rest of the family were trying to erect a shaky evergreen arch in the garden, with "Welcome home!" nailed on it in evergreen letters. They were making a good deal of noise over it, too, and the calculations did not get on, in consequence. They related this time to rabbits, to the number imported yearly from abroad, and the inadequate number reared in the home country itself, and Sir Marcus was making them with the object of writing a letter to the county paper, suggesting rabbit culture as a lucrative employment for the British villager. According to Sir Marcus, the British villager had an immense amount of time on his hands. Not that his interest in the duck culture was in any degree on the wane, but the county paper had refused to insert any more of his letters about the Murville ducks and the enormous profits that the Murville laborer was said to realize from breeding them; and so the Squire had been only too glad to take up the question of tame rabbits, which was being tentatively ventilated by a neighboring Squire in another village. Sir Marcus never did anything tentatively, however; so he began by talking rabbits at every man he met in the village street; and as every man he met, owing to his own former persuasions, was a ducker, that worthy generally received his recommendation of this new animal with something like distrust. The duckers of Murville could not understand any article of commerce that did not lay eggs, and although they obediently ate the few samples that the Squire sent round to them for their Sunday dinners, yet they did so with much condescension, and no little suspicion that they were being coaxed into liking a new food that must be inferior because it was cheap. The Murville laborer had retained some of his independence, in spite of being the property of a Radical overlord.
"Tell ye what it is, George," said Tom Clarke, the biggest ducker in the village, as he sat smoking one evening in the newly built club in the main street, "I be altogether flustered along o' them new fancies of the Squire, I be. What be rabbits, hey, man? Can ye tell me that, now? Ye be oop at the Manor all day, along o' the Squire hisself, so ye ought to know for sure."
The handy man shook his head dumbly, which was his usual form of reply, and the one that his hearers generally preferred; and Tom Clarke continued his ruminations for the benefit of any of the members present who might be inclined to listen to him.
"Rabbits beats me altogether, I be bound to own. They bain't poultry, and they bain't butcher's meat neither. What be they, anyhow? The Squire be a proper kind gentleman for sure, but when he takes up with them okkard new fancies what no one can't explain, it be proper hard to know how to treat 'un. Why, George man, when the parson was readin' of the Litany, Sunday past, and come to the 'kindly fruits of the earth,' I thinks to myself, 'that's rabbits, that is,' and I shuts my mouth tight, I does! And me what's never missed sayin' and singin' all the prayer-book allows 'un to do, this forty year that I've sat in the choir up agin poor Jack Priest's tablet. 'T ain't as though I be an unreligious body what sings an' don't pray, as I've known some do; but there's never a Amen that I don't take part in, and there bain't a trap in the service as can catch me now, allays allowin' for the reply to the tenth commandment what were put in by the devil or the chapel people, and caught on by the parsons accidental, so to speak. So you see how a man be upset all along o' them beasts, if ye can call a thing a beast what eats like string."
Mrs. Tom Clarke, in spite of the cookery lectures that had been given in the Club on Wednesday evenings, by an expert from London, who had evolved strange dishes from herring heads and mutton bones with the aid of a patent portable stove, still preferred to cook her husband's food in her own way, and this generally consisted in putting it into a saucepan from which the duck's food had just been extracted,—a process which had the effect of making everything taste alike; so it was certainly probable that the Squire's rabbit had not had a fair chance in that cottage, at all events.
But in spite of the opposition he was receiving from his most faithful adherents, Sir Marcus still sat patiently, and made his calculations for his new letter to the papers. He had already written to two or three members of Parliament for statistics, and had received replies from the House of Commons which he folded on his writing-table with the address uppermost, and in which they mostly referred him to Whitaker; and he had caused a slight disruption at the luncheon table, only that day, by wanting to know the good of the expensive education he had given his children if it turned them out ignorant of rabbits. The children were wishing just then that their father's new hobby had not happened to possess him in the Christmas holidays, and Lady Raleigh had taken the precaution of telling her cook to jug the hare and make it as unlike a rabbit as possible, so that dinner might pass off more peaceably than luncheon had done.
"I must have Joan down;shewould sympathize," murmured Sir Marcus, laying his pen down, and reading the first sentences he had written of his letter. "Splendid woman, Joan, never laughs at my little ideas, and takes such an interest in them. Shows what intelligence can do for a girl. She'd have made Jack realize the responsibilities of existence, she would. Devil take my head, why is it swimming so this afternoon?"
The letter did not get on very fast, there was too much similarity between its sentiments and those he had so often expressed before; it looked rather as though he were adapting an old letter by scratching out "duck" and substituting "rabbit," for he found himself writing that the feathers and eggs alone of one rabbit more than repaid the cost of rearing it.
"Digby used to come down and see me oftener than he does now," said Sir Marcus, laying down his pen again and passing his hand across his brow. "I don't like his being away so long, and the dear little boy too; why don't they come and see me? Got a wife? Oh, to be sure, yes; my memory don't seem so strong as it was, somehow: to be sure, a wife, yes. Nice little thing, very; wonder if she would know how many we get yearly from Holland? My hand gets more tired than it used, though it wouldn't do to say so; people are so ready to talk about an old man breaking up before he's out of the sixties. Why, I walked up from the post-office in eight minutes and a half this morning; I can beat the youngsters now, eh? I wish Joan would come and catch hold of this accursed letter, it keeps drifting so far away. I always wonder what made her take Digby; funny fellow, Digby. What am I saying? It's Jack who is her husband, isn't it? I've been writing too much to-day, that's what it is. I'm only a little queer, but—I wish Joan would come and finish my letter for me. Why won't Digby bring her down now? Let's get hold of the whiskey; that's what I want to set me straight, of course. What nonsense they are talking; men don't fall to pieces when they are sixty-four. I can walk with the best of them, eh, Joan, my dear?"
There were three people destined for Murville Manor in the 6.45 from Euston that evening. Two of them were in separate third-class smoking carriages at the end of the train; the other sat in a first-class compartment. They were Digby, and Jack, and Lady Joan, all summoned by the same telegram, and all obeying the summons unknown to each other, and with the greatest speed possible. The two brothers, singularly enough, each spent the greater part of the two hours' journey in reading and re-reading a letter, which was written, in both cases, in a thick, rather illegible handwriting. The musician, as he took his from the already opened envelope, gave a half-conscious look round the carriage before he read it. It dated from the day before, and had no heading to it:—
"I think on consideration that the new form of diversion you proposed to me the other night would not work so well as we thought. So I am not going to entertain it any longer. You will probably blame me for my vacillation; but then, you should not have established a precedent for vacillation in the 'Relton Arms,' four years ago. After all, there is nothing left but the book; and I am going to be away, and alone, until I have written it. Don't be alarmed. I am not going to soak it with my own experiences."Joan."
"I think on consideration that the new form of diversion you proposed to me the other night would not work so well as we thought. So I am not going to entertain it any longer. You will probably blame me for my vacillation; but then, you should not have established a precedent for vacillation in the 'Relton Arms,' four years ago. After all, there is nothing left but the book; and I am going to be away, and alone, until I have written it. Don't be alarmed. I am not going to soak it with my own experiences.
"Joan."
His younger brother, in the other carriage, did not look at any one when he took his letter from his breast-pocket and unfolded it. It was very limp, and looked as though it had been unfolded many times before. It was dated two days earlier:—
"My dear Boy,—I am a cad, and I hate myself for what I have done to you. It is quite the meanest thing I have done in my life. Please believe that I did not authorize Digby to come and tell you for me, last night; he wanted to spare me the unpleasantness, I suppose, of confessing to you that I was a brute. But I am a brute, all the same; I should only be a worse one if I were to marry you now. I haven't the least right to expect you to grant me a favor, but I shall be glad if you will take this as final."Joan Relton."
"My dear Boy,—I am a cad, and I hate myself for what I have done to you. It is quite the meanest thing I have done in my life. Please believe that I did not authorize Digby to come and tell you for me, last night; he wanted to spare me the unpleasantness, I suppose, of confessing to you that I was a brute. But I am a brute, all the same; I should only be a worse one if I were to marry you now. I haven't the least right to expect you to grant me a favor, but I shall be glad if you will take this as final.
"Joan Relton."
The station for Murville village was two miles away from the Manor House, or from any human habitation of importance; and as the train slowly steamed away from it to-night, the three passengers whom it had brought from town, unknown to each other, were the only three whom it had deposited on the platform. They found themselves standing together near the exit, and there was an awkward moment of recognition while they fumbled with cold fingers for their tickets. Digby had apparently lost his altogether; Lady Joan had hers ready, and passed out swiftly; and Jack promptly gave up the wrong half of his and passed out after her, in spite of the station-master's expostulations.
"Stupid of George to be late," observed Jack in the road outside. He was clearing his throat a good deal, and looking up the road with a great show of concern.
"It was odd that we should all catch the same train," she said, stamping her feet, and coughing with unnecessary violence; "I suppose you have not been down before?"
"No; they only knew of my arrival in time to cable to me that my father was dying," he said, with a queer mixture of humor and bitterness; "life is very rum sometimes, isn't it?"
"Always," she said fervently, and shivered among her furs. They both looked up the road then, and prayed for the advent of George and the cart. Digby's irritated tones could be heard from within, concerning his missing ticket.
"I say, won't you let fly for the fire in the booking-office till George comes? I reckon you're cold some," began Jack again, awkwardly.
"Oh, no, please don't trouble about me," she replied politely, as though she had just been introduced to him for the first time.
Digby came out and joined them.
"He's always late," he began, in a high-pitched tone, also looking up the road with a great show of interest.
"He is a countryman, you see," said Lady Joan, with gravity.
"And the mother has been at him for six years," added Jack.
They discussed the handy man, without a suspicion of a smile, for some minutes longer, and they continued to look up the road, and back at the clock in the station, and anywhere except at each other, until the welcome sound of wheels at last drew near, when they all flung themselves upon the handy man, without mercy, and robbed him of his few wits at once.
"How is your master, George?"
"Yes, how is Sir Marcus, George?" added Joan, anxiously.
"Aye, how be the Squire, for sure, poor gentleman?" chimed in the solitary porter from behind.
"And what on earth possessed you to bring the luggage cart, George?" added Digby, wrathfully.
The handy man slowly dismounted from his seat, and made a desperate effort to say what was required of him.
"He be proper bad, he be; leastways so the cook told me when I come by the larder window with the sprouts, or I should say the celery for dinner it was, an' Lady Raleigh, she would have it as it were too slippy to bring the dog-cart, notwithstandin' as it bain't the cart what falls down, but the animal for sure, an' he won't last till mornin', poor gentleman, though the best London doctor come down by the five-forty o' purpose to have a last look of him, what went far towards killin' of 'im off in my thinkin'. An' the luggage is to be sent on afterwards, if ye please, Mr. Jack; an' Tom Clarke he says as how he means to put off his visit to his sister, what's married into the grocery business at Reading, till he be sure how things means to turn out, cos he says he bain't a-goin' of to miss a choreal funeral, what hasn't been for nigh upon thirty—"
"Go to the horse's head, George," said Digby, sternly, and he turned to hand Lady Joan into the cart; "it is not very comfortable, I am afraid, but Jack and I will walk on, which will give you more room."
Lady Joan drew back and hesitated a little.
"You had better come too, hadn't you?" she said; "it would be much quicker, and—"
"Aye, sir, there be room and to spare," put in the porter, encouragingly; "you've only got to put your arms round one another all tidy an' comfortable like, an' there ain't no fear o' tumbling out. Bless ye, sir, there be as many as six together in a cart like this on market days, all as safe and as pleasant as can be."
"An' there bain't no time to lose, Mr. Digby," added George, from the horse's head; "leastways, the end might come while we be gossipin' here, and the Lord grant him a peaceful—"
"Come and take the reins, George," interrupted Lady Joan, suddenly mounting the cart without any assistance at all, "and get in quickly, you two; there's loads of room, of course."
They began by sitting stiffly on the edge of the seat, as far away from each other as possible; but the first plunge forward of the restive pony nearly tipped up the seat and sent them all backwards, and a parting admonition from the friendly porter followed them up the road.
"Hold on tight to the lady, sirs; that be the only way of doin' it," he bawled at the top of his voice; and although it was an attitude that none of the three would have chosen at that moment, they were compelled by common prudence to follow his advice; and they completed the drive in silence, sitting on the narrow seat of the little rickety cart, with their arms locked together, and their hands unavoidably clasped.
The Squire's letter to the papers was never finished, and nobody ever told him how many rabbits were imported annually from Holland. It was a question he repeatedly asked of those around him on the last night of his life, though he varied it, when Joan and his two sons arrived, by wanting to know when Jack was going to be married.
"Soon, quite soon," Lady Joan whispered to him reassuringly, and she put her hand in Jack's to confirm the delusion. Jack knew it was a delusion, and did not press it; he had come to understand her at last.
They stood together in the library, a week after the Squire's death, on the eve of her departure for Relton.
"I was a fool ever to think you could care for me," he said sadly. The circumstances of the week they had spent together, since their meeting at the station, had completely dissipated their first feelings of awkwardness. They were almost on the dull footing of a brother and sister, who have very little in common, but who have learnt the trick of companionship.
"I let you think I did. It was my fault, as I told you before. Hadn't we better let it drop?" she said brusquely. "Oh, heavens! how old I am beginning to look," she added, as she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass over the mantelshelf.
"It is only because you are tired," he said, looking at her.
She laughed.
"At least you are truthful," she said, carelessly; "tell me you are not wild with me, Jack. I have treated you abominably, haven't I? If only you were not so provokingly good-tempered about it, I should feel much better, I think. I always did hate whipping a dog that didn't howl. Ah, you don't understand a bit! I believe I am rotten all through, and that is why I have dished my life so effectually. And I'm not a bit sorry, and I mean to have a good time still. Hey-day! But tell me you're not wild, Jack."
"Oh, that's all straight now. And it's much worse for you, don't you know," he said, stumbling on the truth in his slow way; "I shall do all right; don't you fret yourself about me. I ought to have known I shouldn't do for you. Digby will take you to the station, eh?"
"I am going alone," she answered abruptly, and went out into the porch, where most of the family had come to see her off. Owing to some mismanagement on the part of the handy man, who, having been the most important man in the village since the Squire's death and funeral, had completely neglected his usual work ever since, the pony needed shoeing on this particular afternoon, and Lady Joan could not be driven to the station in consequence. She persisted in her determination to walk alone, and Digby remained in awkward silence while his escort was being freely pressed upon her by his unconscious relations. Poor Lady Raleigh, more inconsequent than ever in the midst of her grief, kissed her convulsively, and poured out a confused medley of entreaties into her ear.
"You won't take anything to heart, dear, that Jack has said to you? He doesn't mean anything he says, you know, so you must believe him when he says he loves you as much as ever. He tells me it is all right, so I am not going to say anything about it; but of course you'll look on this as your home until he marries you, won't you, dear? And I assure you Jack cannot bear to be away from you a single hour, but he does like to stay in his home best, so you won't think anything of his not walking to the station with you. Of course Digby is only too pleased to go with you, and all the fields about here are crowded with dangerous bulls, and if you are not quick you will lose the train, and they never keep it for you at these country stations, you know. So you must have Digby, of course. And you are sure you understand about dear Jack? You mustn't listen to him, that's all; he says heisso fond of you still, dear boy."
"Do have Digby, Joan; he doesn't leave till to-morrow, and he only hangs about the place doing nothing, and it will take him out for an hour." This from Helen.
"I am sorry to disappoint everybody," said Lady Joan, in her clearest, most composed tones; "but if I did lose the train, Digby would not be of the least use to me in producing another one; and I'm afraid I am not nearly unselfish enough to burden myself with his company for the good of the community; so good-bye, sir;" and she gave him a straight look out of her eyes as she held out her hand. It was the first time she had spoken directly to him since they had parted that night in Pont Street, and he avoided her eyes.
"Good-bye. They seem very anxious to burden you with my presence, don't they?" he said, with a forced laugh; "all luck to the book."
"Thanks. I will send it to you in instalments for criticism."
He was the last to remain in the porch, watching her across the fields; and there was not a criminal in the kingdom with whom he would not gladly have changed places at that moment.
"I shall go up to-night, I think, and surprise Norah," he muttered presently. There was a dull consolation in the idea of meeting the woman who had acquired the habit of being glad to see him; and he felt a little better when he packed his bag upstairs.
The baby was in bed when he walked into the flat, and Norah was having her solitary meal in the dining-room.
"Why are you here to-night?" she asked him, as he held her to him more closely than usual. There was a gleam in the eyes he had almost despised lately for not being more observant, but he did not notice it as he kissed her softly. "So Joan went away to-day, did she?" she added.
"Joan? Did she write to you?" he asked quickly.
"Oh, no. But I knew," and she nodded at him.
"How did you know, wise woman?" he said playfully.
"Because you have come home, of course," she replied, and laughed outright. He laughed too; but there was not a pleasant ring in his merriment and it was short-lived.
"What has come over you, childie?" he said, beginning to feel vaguely alarmed.
She had disengaged herself from his arms, and was walking away to the window.
"Oh, nothing. Only it is a pity you leave your coats about. I should never have known if you had not been so careless. At least, I fancy I have known all the winter," she added dreamily, as if to herself.
"Known what?" he asked in a voice he did not seem to recognize. But he knew; and he felt rather worse than when he had stood in the porch that afternoon, watching Joan over the fields. "What a hellish sport marriage is!" he added in a bitter undertone.
She heard him, and came back to his side.
"Digby."
"Well? I don't want you to touch me, if you would rather not," he said roughly, and did not look at her.
"I want to tell you," she went on softly. "I found Joan's letter, and I read it as a matter of course; I thought it was about—oh, never mind what. That was the day you went down to Murville; and I could not speak to you then. It has been so dreadful waiting for you to come back, Digby. Are you not going to look at me, now you have come?"
He turned round bewildered, and saw her eyes full of tears.
"Good God, Norah, do you mean you can know that, and—?"
"Yes, dear. I think I know more than you. I think I know how you have been feeling lately, and all the winter. But I did not know it was as bad as this, and when I read that letter—do you know how I felt? I think I must tell you, Digby; I have had something to bear too, you know. I felt first that something terrible had come between you and me, something that wanted pushing away with all my might; and I couldn't do it alone, Digby, and you—you were not there to help me. And then—I only felt sorry for you. I have just longed for you to come back that I might put my arms round you and comfort you, and tell you that I knew. Digby, don't turn away like that."
"But—it is inconceivable—do you know what you are saying? Do you know that if that letter had not been written, I should have—?" He paused, for he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. But she sprang away from him suddenly, and stood in front of him in the middle of the room, with her hands clasped at the back of her head, and a blaze of triumph in her eyes.
"No, no, not that!" she cried; "never that! I knew it could not be. If I had thought you capable of that, should I be speaking to you now like this? Do you think women are such fools then?Iknow,sheknew—that you were not capable of it, that you never meant it, that it was one of your queer impulses that make me love you so madly, and that she can never forgive in you.Thatis why she wrote you that letter.Thatis why you are mine now, mine, mine, mine!"
The musician fell in love more thoroughly that afternoon than he had ever fallen in love before.
He fell in love with his own wife.
"We must have Joan up to stay with us; she could write nicely at the table in the dining-room, couldn't she?" said Norah, when they began to talk rationally again. They felt wonderfully fond of Joan this evening.
"Oh, do you think so? I fancy she'll be all right down at Relton for the present," he answered. He was feeling that he could do with his wife for a good long time now.
"It's just as you like, dear. And do you know, baby is so wonderfully good now she has nearly all her teeth, that I believe you would find the study quiet enough to write music in. It has been very uncomfortable for you lately, hasn't it?" said she.
"Oh, it's been all right. And I don't think I want to write music much. I say, do you think baby will take to me now?" said he.
Then she laughed, and he demanded the reason of her merriment.
"I was thinking how Joan once said that I should never be able to understand your nature, and that you would be wounding me half-a-dozen times a day," she explained, and laughed again.
"How absurd of her," he cried, and roared with laughter himself; "but then you know, childie, Joan has always been possessed with the idea that we were not born for each other."
"Could anything be more ridiculous?" said Norah; and they broke into a fresh peal of laughter, without any apparent reason for it.
A distant wail from the nursery summoned her presently, and Digby was left alone in the dining-room. He smoked two cigarettes in silence, with a complacent smile, and he delivered himself of his favorite exclamation as he rolled up a third.
"Good heavens!" he said out loud; "if it were not for habit what chance would there be for marriage? Next time I see Joan, I'll—"
But there he stopped.