Through the dim corridors, the silent hallsOf Yesterday, the nuns move, whisperingTheir rosary. Without, a robin callsA drowsy blessing to his little mate,For it is late,And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer.And Christ is there.Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory—!Et verbum caro factum est, they sing,And lo! the years are as a day to me.I kneel among the quiet ones againTo lay the pain,The joy of life, where light and shadow meetAt Jesus' feet.
Through the dim corridors, the silent hallsOf Yesterday, the nuns move, whisperingTheir rosary. Without, a robin callsA drowsy blessing to his little mate,For it is late,And chapel aisles are filled with peace and prayer.And Christ is there.
Ah, dreams that haunt these keys of ivory—!Et verbum caro factum est, they sing,And lo! the years are as a day to me.I kneel among the quiet ones againTo lay the pain,The joy of life, where light and shadow meetAt Jesus' feet.
Some time earlier, during the period when girl-emotions translate themselves into verse as naturally as bird-emotions translate themselves into song, Joan had composed these lines, with the odd prescience that frequently came to her when she "took her pen in hand." She had stepped aside from a heated game of handball one day to jot them down; and her play-fellows, evincing no particular surprise, had murmured to each other, "Leave Joan alone. She's writing Poetry." For poetry is as much a part of convent school-life as is handball.
Now she was back among "the quiet ones" again, fulfilling her own prophecy, come to lay her burden of pain and joy, if not at Jesus' feet, at least in the safekeeping of his handmaidens. In her plain black frock, such as convent girls wear, with her hair down in a braid and a small apron tied about her waist, to protect her skirt from embroidery-floss, the nuns found it hard to believe it was Joan Blair who had come back to them out of the world, and not Joan Darcy. Only this was a Joan who played harder than her younger self had ever played, entering into the gaiety of the school, the basket-ball, the charades, the skating-matches, the fancy-dress impromptus, with a feverish eagerness which saddened the good ladies to see. Strange, vivid, restless young creature—what she had learned of life in the short while she had been away from them! Love, motherhood, and loss—the loss that is saddest of all losses to women, be they wives or maids orreligieuses. While they in their silent corridors and hidden gardens had listened to month after quiet month rung away by the bells, praying, dreaming, working; tending the young life about them into blossom, sometimes carrying with candles one of their number back to a still place beyond the children's playground, sometimes—not often now—receiving into their ranks one who had done with the world's ways even before she came to know them. Truly "the quiet ones," blessed with the peace of those who resign their wills to the will of God.
Joan, gazing into their serene, pure, almost childlike faces, envied them from her heart; but, being Joan, she asked herself wonderingly how they could be so sure it was the will of God to which they resigned themselves. Intelligent, fine-natured women, deliberately turning their backs on life, deliberately closing eyes and ears to what went on in the street just outside their cloister, lest it distract them from contemplation of their immortal souls—Joan shook her head sharply; and putting a veil over her hair, slipped into the chapel, where a voice behind the cloister-screen was repeating the rosary of the Sacred Heart:
"Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, burning with love for us,Inflame our hearts with love for Thee."
"Oh, sacred heart of Jesus, burning with love for us,Inflame our hearts with love for Thee."
The beautiful voice rose and fell in almost passionate cadence, as if it were pleading. It ceased abruptly; and another, older voice took up the words, with mystic tenderness. There was a faint fragrance in the place—indeed throughout the old building—of incense and dying roses, which Joan always called to herself "the odor of sanctity." It came back to her sometimes poignantly in the most unexpected places.
A very old lay-sister, in a white coif and shoes that creaked a trifle, pottered about among the statues of the saints, arranging small lamps and vases of flowers, always dropping as she passed the altar a business-like little curtsey. Now and then a child with a veil over her head would slip in at the door, and genuflect, and sink to her knees for a moment's prayer. Sunlight streamed in, multi-colored, through ruby and purple and amber glass, across the white marble Christ who stood with hands outstretched and head bowed, suffering little children to come unto Him....
Joan, who had been reading Rénan (a fact which would have certainly caused her expulsion from that place had it been known), quoted to herself:
"In our bustling civilization, the memory of the life of Galilee has been like the perfume of another world."
"In our bustling civilization, the memory of the life of Galilee has been like the perfume of another world."
It seemed to her one of the true miracles that it should indeed have persisted through our bustling civilization, through persecution and indifference, through crass hysterical religiosity, even to this day; if only in such places as her convent school, and little country churches here and there, and in the homes of the very poor. That lovely, pastoral, gentle life of Galilee, exquisite as the name itself—who could not have been good in Galilee?
"If Archie had lived then, he would have followed Christ," thought Joan suddenly. "Followed him, and fought for him, too. And he'd never have let the Jews get hold of him!"
It was the first time she had thought of her husband in many days....
Archie's letters came with faithful regularity, but he was one of the personalities who do not carry well by letter. He informed her that he missed her, but she was not to hurry home on his account; that Ellen was keeping down the grocer-bill nicely; that the new man he had put on the road wasn't doing well and he thought of putting Johnny Carmichael in his place; that one of the water-pipes had burst and made a spot on the wall, but nothing to fret about; and that if she needed more money be sure to let him know. Or words to that effect.
Archie, somehow, was never quite in the picture. She was better able to reconstruct her lost girlhood without him.
And Archie understood. It was he who had suggested the Convent when Joan's doctor admitted himself dissatisfied with her condition, her slow return to normality.
"You've got a peculiarly sensitive nervous organism to deal with here," the doctor said. "It takes very little to throw such natures off the balance. You say she never speaks of her babies at all? I don't like that! I'd rather have her crying about all over the place."
"So would I," said poor Archie. "Then she'd cry on me, and I could comfort her. Now I don't dare!"
"I wouldn't," advised the doctor, frankly. "Better let her alone."
So Archie, out of the wisdom of his love, wrote secretly to the nuns and asked them to invite her to the Convent for awhile; and because of the tragedy involved, the good ladies waived their rule of never permitting married women to live in the community. They welcomed her casually, as if her coming were no strange thing, gave her work to do, made her useful running errands and taking the smaller girls about; for in a religious community no one is ever idle. And Joan proved Archie's wisdom by gradually losing her tenseness, her frantic clutching at amusement, and growing daily in strength and poise until at last she was able to enjoy again solitude and thought, two things of which she had for some time been afraid.
Indeed, Archie's experiment was almost too successful; for the simple, orderly routine of the Convent was so soothing to her that she dreaded the idea of leaving it. Days slipped into weeks; and still she postponed the thought of going back to her empty house, to Effie May's uncontrolled mourning, to that nursery which had been so happily prepared for the little occupants who never occupied it.
She was frightened sometimes to realize how utterly she seemed able to forget her husband when he was not with her. If Archie was rather frightened, too, he never admitted it, even to himself. After all, Joan was his wife; and in his simple creed wives were bound to love their husbands, else how could they remain wives?
"She's had an awful shock," he reminded Ellen, who was growing restive. "We've got to give her plenty of time to get over it."
"Humph! and what about you? I suppose you ain't had a good deal of a shock yourself?" muttered the old woman, savage with sympathy. "Wasn't you bringing home toys and truck every day of the world, trains and dolls and I don't know what all—and them not a week old yet? Your top chiffoneer drawer's full of toys this minute."
"Better give them away to the children in the neighborhood before she sees them."
"No such thing! I'll be savin' 'em for the next," said Ellen, stoutly....
Oddly enough, Joan was presently restored to her husband and her duty through the medium of no less a person than Eduard Desmond.
She was chaperoning some of the younger girls in town one day, when she met him on the street. She was surprised by the encounter, for she had not known he was in Washington; and she bowed uncertainly, expecting him to be a little embarrassed.
But he stopped, and held out his hand with evident pleasure. "Mrs. Blair! you?" he exclaimed. "What wonderful luck brings you to Washington? and where are you stopping?"
Joan briefly explained.
"Then," he said with a notable accession of eagerness, "Mr. Blair is not with you?"
Some long-slumbering imp of malice awoke and stirred in Joan. His expression as he looked her up and down was unmistakable. Evidently matrimony had detracted nothing from her in his eyes. On the contrary.
"No, Mr. Blair is not with me," she replied demurely. "I am on a vacation. Why should one carry a husband about on a vacation?"
This was Longmeadow language, the native tongue of Mr. Desmond.
"Why, indeed?" he murmured. "And when am I to come to see you?"
"I'm not sure you are to come at all. We're not allowed masculine callers at the Convent, I think; are we, dear?" she asked the young girl nearest to her.
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Blair!—on Wednesday afternoons, if they're brothers or cousins or anything like that," replied the child shyly.
Eduard smiled. "I am not a cousin or a brother—fortunately—but perhaps I may be called 'something like that!'—Next Wednesday afternoon, then?"
"I'm not really sure that I shall be able to see you," she demurred.
"I am!" replied Eduard calmly; and, lifting his hat, he passed on.
He proved himself a true prophet. Joan could not deny herself the bitter satisfaction of seeing at what a small fire she had managed so to scorch her young wings.
He had been waiting half an hour in the convent parlor when she came to him, however; and half an hour in a convent parlor is an ordeal few forget. It was a large, bleak room divided midway by a grille, on the inner side of which sat a lay-sister, knitting. The other side was left for the reception of male relatives and connections; and a tongue-tied, uneasy lot they were, slipping about on the horsehair sofas, staring furtively at the undecorative saints who adorned the walls, conducting their conversation obviously with a view to the other side of the grille.
"For heaven's sake, get me out of this!" murmured Desmond as Joan approached. "I feel as if the eye of God were on me constantly!"
"It's only the eye of Sister Veronica," reassured Joan, "and more her ear than her eye, I fancy."
"You don't mean that she can hear what we are saying, in there?"
"I've been told there's a sounding-board concealed about this room somewhere. It may not be true, of course; but it's wonderful how much does get back to the Convent from the parlor."
Eduard shuddered. "There's goose-flesh up and down my spine! Do come out for a walk somewhere."
She shook her head, smiling. "Can't be done! But of course you haven't anything to say to me that Sister Veronica shouldn't hear."
"Haven't I, just?" he muttered.
The imp of malice stirred in her again. She asked softly, "What, for instance?"
He gave her a quick look, glanced toward the grille, and plunged, albeit in a very low voice.
"For one thing I want to tell you how lovely you've grown!"
"Louder, please?" said Joan, "I missed that."
He repeated it, with additions. "And you need not pretend you did not hear me, either, you witch. What's happened to you, Joan? I always knew you'd be a wonderful creature some day, but already!—Those exquisite shadows under the eyes, the hollow of your cheek, your lips—What I'd give to paint you now, my dear! Only that it would waste our time together. How much time have you, by the way? For me, I mean?"
"You find me improved, then?" she enquired, demurely.
"Improved! I find you—never mind what I find you! There's a subtlety, a fascination—But I can't express it."
"There must be a subtlety indeed ifyoucan't express it," she commented; and added, "How is Mrs. Rossiter?"
If she expected to disconcert him, she was disappointed. He informed her at length as to the health, appearance, and conjugal felicity of Mrs. Rossiter.
"They're actually pulling it off," he said interestedly. "They're making a go of it. I've always had the theory that once a divorcée always a divorcée—the old-fashioned gentlewoman is more to my taste. Divorce always seems to me so—so unnecessary—But in this case it appears I am mistaken, and nobody is happier to admit it. They positively fancy each other, Philemon and Baucis, all that sort of thing!—By the way, I had no idea you had made such friends with May. You gave her my bracelet, it seems. Cruel of you, Joan!"
"Did it hurt your feelings?" she murmured, dimpling.
"Oh, frightfully. How did you have the heart? She positively gloated over me."
"Father would never have allowed me to accept anything so handsome from a passing acquaintance. One had to do something with it, you see, so—"
"Passing acquaintance!" he interrupted, reproachfully. "Surely I was more to you than that? Our evening under the beech-tree—shall I ever forget it?"
Joan, paling a little, remarked, "Sister Veronica appears interested."
"Damn!" muttered Eduard, and shortly took his leave. But first he gave her a note from Mrs. Desmond urging her to dine with them on any evening she cared to name.
"Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of us, a family party."
"Betty is abroad," wrote Mrs. Desmond, "and I know you have no heart for gaieties just now, so there will be only the four of us, a family party."
Joan hesitated.
"Of course we all realize that you are not in a mood for gaiety," said Eduard with a sympathetic glance at her black. "But Imustsee you somehow!—and among old friends, who understand—"
To ward off any mention of things that hurt, she hastily agreed to dine with the Desmonds on the following Saturday.
Sister Veronica, (who happened to be quite deaf) wondered what could have occurred to give the poor child such an expression of—not exactly pleasure. It was more like triumph. She would have made no sense of what Joan was muttering under her breath, Salome-wise, as she left the parlor: "Off with his head! Oh, off with his head,and step on it!"
Not only the older girls, but more than one of the nuns, made some excuse to come into Joan's little room when she was dressing that Saturday evening. The rumor had gone forth that their charge was beginning to take interest in worldly affairs again, and the good ladies congratulated each other. While they themselves had forsworn the pleasures of the world, they were quite aware that for some these had their uses, if only as an anodyne. They took, too, a quite feminine pleasure in Joan's frock, a simple black chiffon with transparent sleeves, which she had cut out a little at the neck to make it suitable for the evening.
"I suppose," said the Reverend Mother, making her turn round and round for inspection, "that this is what they call in the world a décolleté basque, is it not? And very becoming, too! Only"—she added with the frank conventual innocence that occasionally startled Joan, "does not such a display of the person tend to encourage lust of the eye, my child?"
Joan laughed a little. "Let us hope so, Mother!" she murmured. "We strive to please"—a remark which the old lady trusted that she had misunderstood.
Her striving on that occasion was by no means in vain. There seems something peculiarly alluring to the masculine taste (as women of the oldest profession in the world are quite aware) about black. Joan, with nothing to relieve her somberness except a cluster of white gardenias at her breast, would have held the gaze of any man who saw her as surely as she held that of Eduard and of Betty's father, who had hitherto not known his daughter's friend and openly regretted his missed opportunity. She was one of the women whom motherhood, even denied and thwarted motherhood, gives a momentary poignant beauty, of the sort that Leonardo loved to paint. Betty's father was indeed so regretful of his missed opportunity that it was with some difficulty Eduard secured the tête-à-tête upon which he had counted.
"At last!" he sighed when he had finally manœuvered her into the conservatory to admire orchids. "I began to think this was going to be another wasted hour, like my ghastly experience of the monastic life.—Do you realize, my dear, that I am entitled to a little praise and comforting on your part?"
"Just why?"
"Why? Why, because of the discretion, the magnanimity, in fact the utter damn-fool quixotism of my late conduct! At Longmeadow, you know. Leaving you—when I might have stayed!"
Joan was rather startled. She had not expected him to carry the war into the enemy's country to such an extent as this.
"That makes twice," he murmured, leaning over her, "that I've let you go unscathed, my dear. When you left school—and when you came back to me. But—Fate is too strong for us. You're not expecting me, I hope, to let you go a third time?"
"In just about five minutes," she smiled, glancing at her wristwatch. "I've ordered my taxi for ten o'clock."
He gave a little exclamation, and caught her hand. "Don't pretend to be so cool and indifferent, you witch! I know you better than that. You—cool and indifferent! Have I forgotten that night under the beech-tree? Have you?"
Joan suddenly blazed out at him, white with anger. "No! I've not forgotten that. Nor afterwards."
"Afterwards?"
"Will you be good enough to tell me in plain language what was your idea in running away?"
He eyed her appreciatively. He liked a touch of temper in a woman. It gave them a zest your amiable creatures lack.
"Why, Beautiful, what else as a man of honor could I do? A thing like that doesn't stand still, you know! The flare dies out—or it goes further. Our flare would not have died out."
Her lip curled. "And as 'a man of honor' it never occurred to you that we might preserve our flare, as it were, in marriage?"
He sighed ruefully. "Oh, yes, it did! That temptation, too, I had to fight. For you see, my dear, I don't believe in marriage. I've seen too much of it (vicariously). Believe me, it preserves no flares! It quenches them. The thing's as fatal as death—though not, thank God, as inevitable! I will not put a relation I value to a test it will not bear," he explained, evidently in earnest. "What!—tie a creature of spirit and fire like yourself to the duty of forever loving one man, obeying one man, giving yourself into his hands to break at his leisure? Can you think of any surer way of killing love than to make a duty of it? 'Duty'—the most hideous, cold, Puritanical word in our hideous, cold, Puritanical language! The French put it better.Devoirsuggests something that is by no means cold. Therefore, dearest girl"—he kissed her hands—"let me pay you mydevoirsalways, and be sure that I shall never trouble you with anything so unpleasant as a 'duty.'—Why, suppose I had taken you then, bound you hand and foot to me by law—think how bored we should be with each other already! It would be from me you would be taking a vacation, instead of from the unfortunate Blair." (Joan winced.) "As it is—"
"Well?" she prompted, veiling her eyes. "As it is—Eduard?"
He drew her toward him with little inarticulate murmurs. She took a fleeting glance at the face approaching hers. It was flushed, the eyes a trifle glazed as if he had been drinking. He breathed hard.
"How unbecoming it is to them!" she thought, but without resisting. (The reader who happens to like Joan would do well to skip this paragraph. It is not our heroine at her best.)
"As it is," said Eduard rather hoarsely, "we have each other for all time, my Beautiful! Nothing to bind us, nothing to hold us, except our sacred—er—"
"Flare?" prompted Joan, helpfully.
But he was not paying his usual attention to words just then. He lifted her face to his, and closed his eyes the better to savor what was coming....
An unexpected sound caused him to open them again. It was laughter, issuing from the very lips he was about to enjoy; not hysterical, nervous laughter such as might have been pardoned under the circumstances, but cool and sweet, and unimpassioned as the tinkling of ice in a pitcher.
"You're not really trying to warm it up and serve it over again?" protested Joan, as she extricated herself from his embrace. "How absurd! I thought you were too much of an artist for that. And at your age, too!"
She sauntered back to the others, still laughing over her shoulder. He did not follow.
Which may be said to have been the end of Eduard Desmond, so far as this chronicle is concerned....
But it was also the end of what Joan had disloyally spoken of to him as her vacation. The word stuck in her memory, and she was ashamed of it. Her heart yearned toward Archie.
The nuns bade her a delighted farewell; and all the way home she made amends for her long neglect of him by thinking of her husband constantly. By contrast with Eduard's smooth hair, his slim hands, and well-modulated, expressive voice, Archie appeared to her the very epitome of manliness. She idealized his defects into beauties, big ears, clumsiness, and all. She remembered with a thrill how easily he carried her upstairs when she was tired, how he went tiptoeing squeakily about the house in the morning for fear of waking her, whispering in tones that would have roused the dead—Blessed, funny old Archie! She could hardly wait for the sight of him.
Yet when she did see him, through the car-window, watching the platform for her appearance as tensely as a terrier watches a rathole, Joan shrank back with a faint gasp. He was looking quite appallingly dapper, with shiny new shoes and a Derby hat—an article of wear not designed for people with badly adjusted ears; and his mouth hung slightly open in his eagerness, showing the infantile front teeth, through which issued (she could almost hear it) a sort of a tuneful hissing, as was his way in moments of emotion, just to show that he was not nervous or excited in the least.
Joan shrank back, the last person to leave the train. And as she passed a mirror, catching a glimpse of her pale face within it she whispered piteously, "Oh, Joan Darcy, what have you done?"
For the modern woman there lies, fortunately, a life between the two extremes of domesticity and frivolity, both of which Joan had tried and found wanting. Or rather she had not found domesticity wanting so much as temporary—a period of tranquil suspense, as it were, leading up to an inevitable climax which had somehow failed to come off. Even had her babies lived, it is to be doubted whether Joan could have long satisfied herself with domesticity pure and simple; and she could no more resume it now than a cocoon may be resumed by a former occupant which has sprouted wings.
As for frivolity, plenty of that offered itself to a young matron with a charming house and a husband who was generally spoken of as a rising young business man. ("Rising," Archie certainly was; he had to be, to keep up with his rising expenditures.)
But Joan asked perhaps too much of frivolity. She had been heard to remark that "nothing made the social game possible except flirtation and real talk; neither of which were to be had in Louisville by people who valued their reputations"; a rather sweeping comment, of the sort which soon made Joan's tongue a trifle over-famous. Simple, unexacting folk who liked a good dinner with a game of cards afterwards for modest stakes, and now and then a little dancing with each other's spouses, just to keep in touch with the new steps, began to be rather afraid of young Mrs. Blair. And Joan was equally afraid of them. She had a morbid suspicion that dullness might be catching.
There was something appalling to her, too, in what has been somewhere called "the infinite littleness of social life." It seemed to have a strangely flattening effect upon its devotees—promoting some, demoting others, all to the same unstimulating level, while the wheels within wheels shifted and reformed kaleidoscopically. These wheels within these wheels puzzled Joan. "Climbers," such as her step-mother, she was able to understand and even to sympathize with. It seemed to her quite natural and thoroughly American for water to seek a higher level than its own. That was merely progress, merely self-respect made visible. To "get on" appeared a quite legitimate ambition; but to "get in"—that was another matter. Snobbery, that word of many interpretations, meant to Joan the extreme form of self-confessed vulgarity.
"If it were friends they were after, I could understand," she said to Emily Carmichael. "Everybody wants friends—we're all lonely. But you have got to select your real friends one at a time, not in assorted clumps, like bananas. And one's real friends so rarely happen to be friends with each other—you've noticed that? Why this passion for organizing ourselves into group-formation, anyway?"
"For purposes of offense and defense," explained Emily. "So that we may leave the Mrs. Websters out, and let the Joan Darcys in, of course."
They had been discussing Joan's near neighbor, a well-bred, sweet-mannered, adaptable young woman who had recently laid siege to the town, and with whom Joan was forming one of those propinquity friendships which are destined not to last. None of Mrs. Webster's friendships appeared to last. She had used acquaintance after acquaintance gracefully as a stepping-stone to higher things, leaving, however, not a single enemy behind her. It was the fashion in the various circles through which she had passed to say how charming Mrs. Webster was, even after she seemed done with them. And now, through Joan, she was laying tactful but so far unsuccessful siege to the Jabberwocks; cleverness (in moderation) having become quite the smart thing nowadays.
"It is not our massive intellects which attract her, however," commented Emily. "It is—well, modesty forbids me to say just what it is. The signverbotenis to some natures as a red rag to a bull. They simply must have it to play with."
"Well, but why should anybody beverbotento Kathy Webster?" defended Joan. "She's charming, and perfectly intelligent, and unmistakably a lady—which is more than one can say with confidence of some of our most indefatigable social leaders. Look at Mrs. Gunther, for instance!—didn't you tell me her father used to deliver meat at your door out of his own cart?"
"Excellent meat it was, too. Father says we have never had a decent butcher since."
"And lo, what house more exclusive than theirs?"
"Naturally! It has to be. People like that seem to develop a sort of protective instinct which guards them from any possible contact with vulgarity until such time as they shall have accumulated enough refinement to be immune. Not for them the company of any chance newcomer like Mrs. Webster! They have to be careful."
"But shouldn't you think they'd have a sort of fellow-feeling for the new arrivals?"
"Dear me, no! What's the good of attaining a pinnacle if you're going to share it with somebody who might push you off?"
Mrs. Webster's pursuit of Joan was not entirely opportunism. There was a good deal of admiration in it, mixed with a sort of malice which the larger nature had difficulty in comprehending. Joan found herself entered most unwillingly into an undignified petty rivalry with her neighbor. If she entertained some of her friends at luncheon without Mrs. Webster, the other instantly retaliated by giving a luncheon herself without Joan, sending in dessert and decorations afterwards to press home the point. If the Blair house in Spring put out new awnings, the Webster house erupted not only into awnings but into flower-boxes as well, with a corresponding air of triumph in its mistress. If Joan received some invitation which the other did not, there arose between them a slight, unmistakable coolness; whereas, if the contrary occurred, Mrs. Webster became modest and cordial again.
Yet when this unpleasant rivalry lay dormant, the two had many a friendly, neighborly time together over their sewing and their gardening; and once when Joan was taken suddenly ill the other showed herself genuinely kind, quick with womanly help and sympathy.
Joan could never quite make up her mind whether it was the pettiness of Society which makes the Mrs. Websters, or the Mrs. Websters who make the pettiness of Society. In any case, she lost what little taste she had for a purely social career. It was not good enough.
And so she turned the pent-up energies of her nature into those activities which are summed up nowadays under the general title of Clubwork. Investigations, commissions, agitations of all sorts came in for their share of her attention. She soon created for herself quite a following of less daring spirits, among them Emily Carmichael and others of the Jabberwock group who had graduated from the cocoon. It became known that whenever young Mrs. Blair undertook a thing, it went with a rush, not so much through her own efforts as through those of her henchmen. She was recognized in club circles, despite her youth, as something more valuable than a mere worker; she was an executive—All of which fed her vanity and her sense of usefulness; and left somewhere within her an aching void of dissatisfaction.
Suffrage-work came nearer filling this void than had anything else, and that, it must be confessed, for a rather ignoble reason. It gave her a chance to make speeches. In the back of her mind, with the very real conviction that the ballot is a necessity which women are unjustly denied, lurked also the suspicion that the world is already aware of the fact without any further need of agitation. Nevertheless she continued to agitate, because she liked to exercise an ability which otherwise might have remained forever undiscovered—There is no pleasure in life equal to that of employing skillfully the talents that have been given us.
She made the discovery of her gift quite by accident. At some woman's meeting, a lady who was to have spoken on the subject of the Federal Amendment failed to appear, and Joan, who had recently read up on the matter (it may be remembered that she was what the actors call "quick study"), volunteered to take her place, meaning simply to give the gist of the matter and thus relieve a harassed chairman. But when she found herself on the platform facing interested and expectant faces, something happened that had occasionally happened before when she "play-acted" for the girls at school. Joan left herself, and became a part of the audience.
She listened to her voice going on and on, with amused approval. It was a voice rather like her father's, carrying and flexible, and peculiarly rich in its intonations.
"It doesn't really matter much what I say," thought Joan, listening to herself; "it's how I say it. If I drop my voice a note here, they ought to frown." (They did.) "Now I'll have them smile a little, perhaps chuckle. After I stop, no applause, I think—just a nice, thoughtful silence." (All of which came faithfully to pass.)
When she stepped down from that platform, her reputation as a public speaker was made. Thereafter she delivered speeches whenever and wherever she was asked, to the incredulous delight of Archie.
"Say, come over and hear the wife do her little spiel to-night!" he would urge upon all his acquaintance. "It's a treat!—stands right up and hands it to 'em hot off the reel, without a note or anything. You can see her little old brain workin' while she talks—and lookin' pretty as a picture all the time!"
His pride in her was such that he presented her with a successor to Lizzie, a more pretentious member of the Lizzie family, in fact, in which to get about to her numerous committee meetings.
"Of course we can afford it," he said in answer to her demur. "Haven't all your friends got automobiles? Well, then!"
Joan accomplished much in the way of by-product to this satisfaction of her vanity. Her youthful charm and her good breeding got her a hearing frequently where more strenuous representatives of the cause had failed; and through her many hitherto uncertain lambs were gathered safely into the fold. On one occasion, to her astonishment, Joan discovered the three Misses Darcy in her audience, wearing expressions of shrinking alarm. But if they had come—not to scoff, they were too polite for that: let us say to deprecate,—they remained to join.
"I declare it'sshamefulthe way we women have been treated all this time!" cried Miss Iphigenia afterwards, truculently signing the card which made of her a suffragette. "I'd no idea! Not allowed a word in edgewise, the gentlemen spending all the money and making all the laws, ordering us about like we were so many white slaves—"
"I don't recall that darling mama was ever treated in just that way by dear papa?" interjected Miss Virginia, uncertainly.
"Pooh! Exceptions," snorted Miss Iphigenia (if one so gentle could be said to snort). "Exceptions can be made to prove anything, can't they, Joan? Why, we haven't even had a say-so as to whether we should marry or not. Simply had to sit back and say 'Thank you, sir!' to any gentleman who was kind enough to ask us!"
Here Miss Virginia was able thoroughly to concur. "And if nobodywaskind enough to ask us—Oh, my dears, I begin to think that if we could have had the ballot in time—!"
"What's more," cried Miss Iphigenia, inspired, "I mean to bring our Susy to hear you the next time you make a speech, Joan. Yes, I do! If they try to keep her out, we shall say she is there as our maid. If we are all to be allowed to vote about things, colored and white alike, it's time for the colored women to be taught how!"—Which Joan justly regarded as a signal victory.
But at the same time she chuckled inwardly over the mental vision of an audience of colored lady voters, swaying to and fro with occasional unctuous shouts of, "Bress us, dat's so! Um, yas, my Lawd! Come down, come down and gadder us sinners into de fold!"
Occasionally, in the pursuance of her various public successes, Joan was thrown into contact with people whom she classified under the heading of Intelligentzia. There were plenty of these in Louisville, thinkers and students and writers, a growing number of names which were rather better known away from the city than in it. But of these Joan fought a little shy. She cared more for books than for the making of them, had no wish to peep behind the scenes for fear of losing her illusions. She got the impression, too, that professional thinkers and writers were so busy observing and interpreting the life about them as to have somehow lost human touch with it. And Joan was nothing if not a humanist. She had a youthful horror of being classified among thebas bleux.
"Men do so hate a bluestocking," she said once pensively to her friend Emily.
"Men? Well, what of that? Yours doesn't!—and you don't want anybody else's men, do you?"
"None that I have seen so far," admitted Joan. "But you never can tell. They say it's in the dangerous thirties that we really begin to sit up and take notice—Anyway, I shallneverbe married and settled enough to relish the idea of men running away from me as if I were something catching!"
So she continued to avoid, rather than to cultivate, the company of the Intelligentzia, thereby denying herself her birthright.
And at twenty-five, a leading citizeness of her community, with engagements so thick on her calendar that there was barely time for an occasional meal at home, she woke every morning with the thought, "If something doesn't happen to-day, I shall scream!"
At that stage of life, something usually does happen....
Joan, coming home from a late committee-meeting one afternoon, realized with a sort of pang, as she turned into the court where she lived, that Indian summer had come and almost gone without her being aware of it. The golden rain of leaves falling about her, the oddly wistful smell of autumn smoke in the air, gave her a twinge of something like homesickness; of sorrow because so many such evenings had come and gone unnoticed. Words of Fiona McLeod came to her mind.
"We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the Beauty of the World."
"We are a perishing clan among the sons of God, because of the slow waning of our joy, of our passionate delight, in the Beauty of the World."
"Howcanone enjoy the Beauty of the World alone?" asked Joan suddenly of herself....
Through the windows of some near-by house came a man's voice singing a little Russian lullaby that she had not heard in many years. Her mother had once made an English version of it:
"Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,(Byushky, byu),Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,Smiles thy mother, too."Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,—(Byushky, byu).Blood and tears and fear and gloryShall I know through you."But to-night thou art my small one,(Byushky, byu),With the moon to bless thy slumber,And thy mother, too."
"Hush, my dear one, hush, my baby,(Byushky, byu),Smiles the moon upon thy cradle,Smiles thy mother, too.
"Cossack art thou in thy dreaming,—(Byushky, byu).Blood and tears and fear and gloryShall I know through you.
"But to-night thou art my small one,(Byushky, byu),With the moon to bless thy slumber,And thy mother, too."
Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.
She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately done without of late, pronouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who occasionally entertained musicians—But she was mistaken. It came from her own house.
She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside. Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.
Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting, exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.
But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it because you are too happy?"
Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just—Mother used to sing that song, you know."
"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little—One is never a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."
"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look at you!"
He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard, and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impassive face. They met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both hands.
"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!—And how handsome you are! I had forgotten that."
He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.
"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"
"You have never been a grown-up married woman before."
"I see! You mean that we've become the same age now?" She looked at him more closely. "And we have! Why, Stefan, you're nothing like as old as I used to think you!"
"I never have been," he smiled. "I rather fancied you might discover that fact some day. But—you wouldn't wait, my dear." He turned to some packages on the top of the piano. "Have you become too grown-up and married to like presents?"
The brief moment of awkwardness passed before Joan was quite sure it had been there. She clapped her hands. "Presents—for me? Oh, and for Ellen Neal, and even for Archie, whom you don't know! Stefan, how dear of you!"
"Your people are my people," he said. "Also, I wish to propitiate them into allowing me the freedom of your company, you see."
"Then you're going to stay for some time?" she cried, delightedly.
"As long as I am allowed to—'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill'—"
"Till he begins to feel an itching in his wanderfoot again," said Joan, making a little face at him. "I know you!"
At that moment Ellen came in to light the lamps. "Oh, you've come, Miss Joan, have you? I thought it was about time! Mr. Archie'll be home before long," she said primly, and was about to withdraw when Joan cried to her, "Nellen, have you seen Mr. Nikolai?"
"Sure I have. How else did you s'pose he got into the house? I'm puttin' a place on the supper-table for him," she replied, tossing her head.
With years Ellen's temper did not become less difficult; but Joan was at a loss to account for its present manifestation.
"Of course you are," she murmured soothingly. "But I don't believe you've seen the lovely present he's brought you all the way from—Shanghai, is it, this time?"
Ellen drew near, fascinated by the shimmering length of purple crêpe. "Silk! For me? Shucks, what would I be doin' with stuff like that? It's much too fine for the likes of me!"
"Nothing is too fine for the likes of you," replied Nikolai, with quiet sincerity.
"Why, you'll be perfectly grand in it, Nellen, with the Battenberg collar and cuffs!"
She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept such things off a gentleman."
"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," reassured Joan, keeping a straight face.
But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"
"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety of her sheepfold."
"That's because you are what she calls a 'for'ner.'"
"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it in their hearts to trust a Jew."
"But you're only half a Jew!"
"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."
He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long string of them with pearls between, and a tassel of pearls at either end.
She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"
"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them—The sapphires are better."
She patted his hand. "Itisso nice to have somebody about again who notices whether I have eyes or not!"
"Surely your Archibald notices?"
"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate, like praising something of his own, you know."
Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be in—I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"
She gave him a quick glance. "I wonder what you mean by that?"
But Nikolai did not explain. He said instead, "I am sorry you have no children."
She stiffened. Among her friends it had come to be understood that children were best not mentioned to Joan. There was a hidden bruise which time seemed to have left unhealed.
Nikolai, however, chose not to heed the warning of her expression.
"A home without children in it," he added, "seems to us wandering folk only half a home."
Joan stood up, a hand at her throat. "What do you think," she said in a stifled voice, "it seems to us who are not wandering folk?..."
In three questions Stefan Nikolai had discovered about the Blair household all and more than he wanted to know.
At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door and Archie came in; a weary, cheerful Archie, not quite so dapper as of old, but rather the better for that, perhaps.
"Hello, darlingest!—'Late as usual.' There—I said it first! Things do sort of pile up on a person. Why, look who's here? Wait! I know you—" he extended an eager hand of welcome to the man who rose to greet him. "I'll bet my hat it's Joan's pal, the author. Guessed you, didn't I? Only you said he was an old chap, Joan!—Well, well, well! Welcome to our city. I thought you were projickin' round, as the darkies say, in Mesopotamia or Timbuctoo or some such spot. Gee, it's been good as a geography lesson just to read the postmarks on your letters, sir! You've come to stay with us, of course? Hotel—nonsense!"
The two shook hands warmly. Despite the breeziness of her husband's manner, Joan detected in it a respect which pleased her. This was no mere family friend Archie was welcoming to his city; it was Mr. Nikolai, the Author. She loved his little boyish bursts of hero-worship.
"Look at my beautiful present," she said, slipping her hand through his arm and exhibiting her necklace. "You've got a present, too. It's like Christmas!"
Archie was pleased as a child with his gift, a lacquer box surmounted by an ivory monkey which, when a handle was turned, reached down into a box and lifted out a cigarette.
"Ain't they a wonderful little people, though, the Japanese?" he demanded originally. "Who but them would have thought of such a trick?"
"'They!' dear," murmured Joan.
"'They,' then," he repeated, unabashed. "Can't be grammatical till I've had my supper. I'm dead beat."
It was not the first time of late that Archie had come home "dead beat," though he did not often admit it. The treasurer of his company was ill, and Archie, upon whom Mr. Moore was growing to depend for many things, had volunteered to undertake the treasurer's work in addition to his own. But he had not the same gift for finance as for salesmanship, and took little joy in his new honors; except for the additional increase in his salary. Joan, to whom money meant nothing so long as she could pay her bills promptly, was rather troubled by the growing mercenariness of her husband. He seemed to be always thinking in terms of dollars and cents.
But Archie lost his unwonted air of fatigue during dinner in his interest in the tale of Mr. Nikolai's travels. Nikolai had the writer's gift of accumulating odd experiences, so that even Ellen lingered unduly about the table. Archie was enthralled.
"Isn't it just as good as a geography book to hear him?" he demanded several times. "To think of the natives of Yezo tattooing blue mustaches on the girl-babies to make sure they'll catch a husband! Ho, ho, that tickles me! There's a tip for Cousin Virginia, Joan."
Here Ellen, who had been making her fourth unnecessary round with the potatoes, suddenly spluttered and retired to her pantry.
("The ice," remarked Nikolai to Joan, "is beginning to break.")
"I've always thought," mused Archie, "that I'd like to see the world a little myself some time. Armadillos on their native heath, Esquimaux eating tallow candles, the Latin Quarter in Paris whooping it up—things like that. But now," he finished with a happy glance at his wife, "I'm glad enough to be allowed to stay just where I am."
"Who wouldn't be?" murmured his guest. "With such a charming home—"
"You ought to have been here when my garden was growing," said Archie, highly gratified. "If I do say it myself, there's not a farmer in the State raises better bib-lettuce than I do. As for our asparagus—yum-yum! Simply melts in the mouth."
The other looked at him very kindly. "Was that also one of your earlier dreams—to be a farmer?"
Archie nodded. "It's always seemed to me about the finest thing a man could do, if he were able to—live on the land as he was intended to, raise what he needs to eat and a little more for his friends; chickens and pigs and a cow, and perhaps a little blooded stock if he could manage it—" He broke off with a faint sigh.
"Why, dear," cried his wife, surprised, "I never suspected you of these bucolic ambitions!"
"I reckon most men have 'em, if they'll own up to it—don't they, Mr. Nikolai? Look how all boys love to dig in the dirt!... But you needn't worry, darlingest. I'm never going to takeyouoff and bury you in the country. I know better than that!"
It was late when Nikolai rose to leave them, declining an urgent invitation to occupy their guest-room.
"No, I must get back to the hotel and relieve Sacha's mind. If I do not he will certainly set out to find me, and as he has no language but Russian, that might lead to complications."
"Who," demanded Joan, "is Sacha, pray? Have you been stylish enough to set up a valet?"
"It is Sacha who appears to have set me up. I had occasion once to do him a kindness, and he thereupon attached himself permanently to my person. There is no creature on earth so grateful as a grateful Russian."
Joan took him by the arms and made him sit down again. "Not a foot do you stir till you tell us all about it!" she proclaimed, scenting a story.
"About what? Sacha? Well!—In a village where I stopped for awhile a young mouzhik had been very badly beaten and thrown into prison to await trial, and things promised to go rather badly with him. So—"
"Wait a minute.Whyhad he been beaten?"
"For murder," said Nikolai calmly.
His audience gasped.
"Only the murder was not successful," he continued, "Sacha was unfortunately interrupted before he had completed the job."
"Unfortunately!"
"Yes. The headman of the village had taken Sacha's little sister against her will, and the boy did what he could to avenge her. The law is not of much use in such cases—to peasants, at least. The night before I left, some of his friends liberated him from the village jail, and brought him to me. Their trust in the power of learning is piteous. They demanded that I take him away with me to America. That was a little difficult without a passport, but I managed to smuggle him over the border."
"How?" demanded Archie, round-eyed.
"In my trunk," replied Nikolai, as if this were an everyday occurrence. "I had arranged with a carter to drive me and my luggage early the next day to the railroad. Instead, he drove me to the border, fortunately not very far distant. My luggage was almost smothered by the time we got there, however, despite the air-holes we had bored in the trunk. Poor Sacha!"
"But did nobody examine your luggage?" asked Joan.
Nikolai shrugged. "As I told you, in Russia there is great respect for learning—also for roubles. I am not without friends in high places. Such officials as I encountered quite understood that a man of learning like myself would naturally travel with a heavy trunkful of books, ventilated by air-holes—But I have been warned that it will not be safe for me to return to Russia. Thanks to this episode, in connection with recent writings of mine, I am no longerpersona gratathere." He shrugged again.
Archie's eyes were round. "Whew!" he commented. "That's what I call life! Sounds like Michael What's-his-name, the Courier of the Czar!"
"I assure you," murmured Nikolai, "that I am anything but a courier of the Czar!..."
Later, when they had gone upstairs, Joan came upon Archie examining her string of sapphires, with an expression that puzzled her. It was grave, and not very happy.
"Dear," she said suddenly, "would you for any reason rather not have me accept this present from Stefan? It is very handsome, I know. But he is a rich man, my oldest friend, and he has been giving me things of this sort ever since I was a baby."
He turned on her a look of pure astonishment. "Not accept it! Why, sweetheart, I'm tickled as I can be that such a beautiful thing should be given to you. It looks like you, too, somehow, as if it had been specially made for you. I was only wishing—" he sighed faintly—"that I could give you things like this myself. And those Mandarin coats, and laces and all he sends you, and—oh, life generally! You ought to see the world, Joan, like he does. Maybe you can," he added hopefully, "as soon as I get a little ahead."
She hugged him. "Why, you old goose! you're always giving me beautiful things. My pretty engagement-ring, and the house, and the new Lizzie, and—You see Stefan doesn't have to provide me with dresses and three meals a day, and put up with all my whims and megrims."
"I'll bet he wishes he did!" exclaimed Archie, with one of his occasional flashes of insight.
She pulled his ears. "You think because you're in love with me yourself that everybody else is, too! Stefan's about as much in love with me as he was with—baby Joan. It's simply gratitude. Mother was very sweet to him always—I've heard her say that it had been her job, and not an easy one, to restore his faith in women. It seems that he was engaged once to marry a girl who quite understood about his Jewish blood. But when he took her down to the East Side in New York to see the old aunt who had brought him to America, she couldn't stand it. She broke with him, not because of any difference in religion, but because the aunt spoke Yiddish and wore a horsehair wig!—Mustn't she feel like a fool, now that he's become so famous?"
"Well, I don't know," said Archie doubtfully. "I'd kind of hate to have Yiddish and a wig in the family myself."
She looked at him in surprise. "Archie! I didn't know you were such a snob! So long as Stefan doesn't wear a wig or speak Yiddish, what does the aunt matter! And the funny part of it was that the aunt rather looked down upon poor Stefan because his father had married a Gentile! So he came to regard mother and me as his only family.... Now run along to bed." She kissed him on his eyes, a caress that Archie loved. "I'm going to take a dose of valerian and have a good night's sleep. Itisexciting having your best friend drop down on you from who knows where!"
It proved exciting not only to Joan. Some years earlier the arrival of so distinguished a visitor unadvertised and unpressagented would have caused little more than a ripple, except perhaps among what Joan called the Intelligentzia. But now thatbelles lettreswere coming quite into fashion, the chance of knowing personally a friend of Tolstoi and Maeterlinck, whose articles appeared in all the more intellectual magazines, whose recent book of plays had been published simultaneously in five languages and censored off the American stage into every up-to-date home in the land, was one that could not be ignored.
The Russian servant, too, was a picturesque addition; a great, bearded fellow with eyes like a child, a tall sheepskinpapachaon his head, and his trousers tucked into wrinkled boots. This exotic apparition frequently opened the Blair door to visitors, and even waited on them at table, Sacha having without the aid of language won his way somehow to the rather uncertain heart of Ellen Neal; possibly because of his infantile appetite for sweets. He followed his master about like a dog, and whenever Nikolai was in the front of the house, Sacha's broken English and sudden high laugh were frequently to be heard from the rear. There were a good many callers at the Blair house in those days.
The Blairs, and incidentally their friend, also found themselves deluged with invitations, many of which Joan accepted. She rather enjoyed showing off her lion, whose simple dignity was quite impervious to lionizing. His social successes amused her by their unexpectedness; for Nikolai had no small talk and pretended to none. He paid his chance companions the compliment of believing them to be interested in whatever interested him; and very often they were.
Once, Joan, overhearing him enlarging to an audience composed of Archie, Emily Carmichael, and a particularly frivolous young divorcée of their acquaintance, on the Ostwald formula for happiness, felt called upon to come to the rescue; and received for once in her life a decided snubbing from her husband.
"Don't interrupt, Joan, please!—Mr. Nikolai's telling us something mighty interesting. Go on, sir—G=E^2+W^2—I didn't quite get you about the Hüttengluck and the Heldengluck?"
"G," explained Nikolai, "is as you know Gluck (happiness). E stands for Energetics; meaning activity, health, ambition, etc. W stands for Widerwillig, one of those comprehensive words one finds only in the German, meaning everything that runs counter to happiness, all the by-products of activity—opposition, fatigue, trouble, etc. There are philosophers who hold that by reducing E (the activities of life) one also reduces W (the unpleasantnesses), thereby attaining happiness. Renunciation, you understand;—the simple life, such as that of Diogenes, who threw away his one utensil, the cup, when he saw a man drinking satisfactorily out of his hand.
"But the danger is that in generally reducing the formula, G also is reduced, and may even become minus. At its best the happiness attained in this way is what Ostwald calls Hüttengluck (hut-happiness). He advocates instead the Heldengluck (hero-happiness). Square, he says, both your Energetics and your Widerwillig, and the result will be a doubled happiness, robust, vital. In other words, live to the top of your powers, suffer to the top of your powers; and you will be able to enjoy to the top of your powers."
"Sure!" said Archie. "I see that. Me for Ostwald!"
The little divorcée remarked in an aside to Joan, "He certainly does make you think, this high-brow beau of yours! But Iliketo think, sometimes."
It taught Joan a lesson. She recalled a sentence of Trevelyan's: "A man who has too much sense to overrate his own qualities will often make amends to his self-esteem by underrating his neighbor's."
She realized that she might have been making such a mistake herself. If, as she had complained, there was no real talk to be had in society, were not she and people like her responsible?
If a scholar such as Stefan Nikolai found it worth while to give of his best to simpler comprehensions, was it not pretentious and even ridiculous of a Joan Blair to "talk down" to them, tactfully adapting herself to their limitations while concealing yawns behind her hand? She had the grace to blush for herself....
The companionship of Joan and Nikolai was, as Louisville interestedly suspected, not an entirely intellectual one, however. Like all people who work hard with their heads (and Nikolai spent many hours at his desk daily, even in holiday seasons), he knew the full value of play, and had always been to Joan the most delightful of play-fellows. In her childhood he had often borrowed her for what they called "expeditions"—visits to circuses, zoölogical gardens, museums; boat-journeys, picnics—always to the surprise of Major Darcy, who regarded a child as a desirable addition to any family, something to be petted, and instructed, and even romped with in moderation, but by no means to be made a companion of.
These expeditions renewed themselves now in modified form. The two were constantly to be met with in the most unexpected places—tramping about the parks in the rain, making tea over a gipsy fire by the roadside, climbing, their pockets bulging with books and apples, to the top of a certain hill whence miles of wild rolling country were to be seen, and the city behind them was as if it had never been. Joan had no longer to enjoy the Beauty of the World alone. The hill became their favorite haunt; and all through the open winter they climbed to its top almost daily, where in the shelter of the cliff they built themselves a little fire and sat, their backs to the world, reading and munching apples, and talking, talking endlessly.
Joan never felt that any subject bad been exhausted between them. It seemed to her that the thoughts of a lifetime had been accumulating in her mind, waiting for him to pass judgment upon them; and to him it was no less than a miracle to watch her brain expanding, enlarging, visibly blossoming under the nourishment he supplied.
Perhaps her brain was not the only thing Nikolai loved to watch about Joan. He usually managed to seat himself a little behind her, out of her range of vision, so that his own might rest where it chose, unobserved. But he asked no more; having learned of life to practise the Hüttengluck which he did not preach.
Sometimes Archie made a third on these expeditions; for he had developed a great enthusiasm for Joan's famous friend, and occasionally neglected business to sit at the feet of wisdom. Not often, however. Business had reached a point where it declined to be neglected (the depression of 1913 was at hand); and besides Archie, despite their affectionate welcome, felt ratherde tropwith the pair.
"I'm no high-brow, and there's no use pretending I am," he confessed once to Emily Carmichael. "But that don't keep me from appreciating high-brows when I see 'em. It's as good as a correspondence-course in literature to hear those two go on. I'm as much out of it, though, as if they were talkin' the French language—which they sometimes are, at that!"
"Archie," asked Emily, hesitating, "are you never the least little bit—jealous?" Her friendship for Joan was too unquestionable for the remark to sound feline.
He laughed. "Me jealous? What for? I've got her, haven't I? And he hasn't, poor chap! Glad to share what I can."
It happened that at the same time this conversation occurred—it was a chance meeting down town, and Archie, always the soul of hospitality, had invited Emily to join him in a cup of hot clam-broth at a soda-fountain—that the pair on the hilltop were not indulging in either literature or the French language. Joan, ensconced upon a bed of leaves with her back against the sheltering cliff and her face warm with fireglow, remarked dreamily:
"Stefan, how have I ever managed to live here so long without you?"
His smile did not reach his eyes; those beautiful, speaking, somber eyes which reflected in them so much of the history of his race. He said, "And how shall you manage when I am gone again?"
She turned quickly to look at him. Something in his voice troubled her. "Gone—Why, Stefan, you're not thinking of going soon?"
"My book has made great progress here. It is a pleasant place for writing—I have nearly finished."
She gave an exclamation of something like anger. "You said you were going to stay 'as long as possible.' And after all it was only to finish another book!"
"Not quite 'only,' Joan."
"Then," she demanded impatiently, "why do you talk about going? I am still here, whether the book is done or not! Are you tired of me already?"
"What do you think?"
"Have you become such a gipsy that you can't stop anywhere more than a few months?"
"I wish," he said soberly, "that I might put my roots into this hillside like a tree, and never, never stir again, except to the winds, and the sap in my branches, and the seasons as they come and go—"
"And me beside thee singing in the wilderness?" she smiled, as he did not continue. "Say you'd need me here somewhere, even if you were a tree!"
"Every tree has one bird who lives in its branches. I should keep a nest safe for you, my dear—you and your Archie." He broke off. "But I am not a tree, merely a Wandering Jew to whom the time must come again to wander."
"But why, why? It is not as if you belonged anywhere else!"
"Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"
"Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"
he said. "I have always meant, when I grew old, to come to wherever you may be, and settle down, and grow up again with your children. But it seems the time is not yet. I am—not old."
"You? of course not! You're not even fifty, are you?"
"No," he sighed, "not even fifty. Oh, to be eighty or thereabouts, with the dross burnt out and only the spirit left, free—!"
"I'd hate you to be all spirit, Stefan! Such an uncomfortable, unnatural person to play with: like one of those cherubim, with only wings and node quoiat all.—(You remember the miracle that happened once, when the Sistine Madonna said to the little angels in the picture with her, 'Assaiez-vous, mes enfants.' And they answered, 'Mais, Madame, nous n'avons pas de quoi!'—) I never could understand people wanting to be old." She made a restless movement. "Perhaps you've had enough out of life to satisfy you, but me—Why, I feel as if I had not yet begun to live!"
"Nor have you," he said quietly.
"Why, Stefan!" she demanded, facing him. "Why don't I begin, then? Surely enough has happened to me, more than to most people. I fling myself into whatever comes along with all my heart. And yet—I don't seem to be there at all! It is as if the real me were looking on at somebody else who struggles and amuses herself and suffers. I'm tired of looking on, tired!"
"Who isn't?" he said musingly. "We want to be in the thick of the fray, people like you and me, even if it kills us. But—we can't choose. A good deal is chosen for us before we're born—the color of our hair, the shapes of our noses" (he smiled and sighed), "doubtless the kinks in our brains—Come, the fire is out, and if I allow you to take cold, Ellen Neal will surely banish me from Eden with her flaming sword."
As they walked briskly home in the early February twilight, she said after a long silence, "See here, Stefan, if you really are going when your book is finished, let's not waste any more time going about to silly parties and all that. You only do it to please me, and I only do it to show you off. Why should we pretend any longer?—Let's be together as much as we possibly can without bothering about anybody else! Shall we?"
He looked rather startled.
"I mean," she continued calmly, "to make no more engagements at all; and you needn't either—unless you wish to?"
"I shall not wish to."
"I thought not! There's really nobody here you care about talking to except me, is there? And there's nobody in the world I'd willingly waste a word on if you were about. So there, that's settled!" she said with a little breath of satisfaction. "It's a good thing you're old enough to be my father, Stefan, or I suppose people would begin to talk about us. Still," she added, "I'm glad you're not eighty!"
Meeting her candid, clear, affectionate gaze, Nikolai managed to summon up a smile of his own that was quite grandfatherly.