Joan and Co.
Yet it could not have been so far that she had gone. Between a sleep
and an awakening which to him was no longer than a heart-beat, he had
without effort compassed the distance which lay between them. In the
old days such things had been done, he knew, with the aid of magic
carpets. But he had no such aid. Besides, these were not the old days.
He was living in very modern times and in the most modern of all modern
cities.
Glancing up from the bed, he saw in the door, what at first looked to
be a framed picture. It might have been one of those old masterpieces
with the vague title “Portrait of a Young Lady,” which leaves one
eager to know a great deal more about the young lady than history
vouchsafes. So she stood for a moment, and then with some uncertainty
moved into the room. Devons tried to sit up. He was awkward about it,
and she hurried to his side.
“Please don’t!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I’m so sorry for you!”
The beautiful eyes endorsed the assertion. She appeared so genuinely
pained that he did not understand.
“For me?” he replied.
The sight of his bandaged shoulder and his helplessness so dramatized
the accident that for a second it was more vivid to her than it had
been at the moment it occurred.
“I suppose the fact that you’re—you’re alive is something to be
thankful for,” she faltered on.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad to be alive, if that’s what you mean.”
“You’ve suffered a great deal?”
“None at all, to speak of,” he replied.
“Then you’re not uncomfortable—now?”
He smiled a little.
“In most ways I’m more comfortable than I ever was in my life.”
She looked skeptical. It was difficult for her to believe that, with
the evidence of her two eyes.
“I’m afraid you’re just trying to take away the blame from me,” she
returned.
“Blame—for what?” he demanded.
“For—for the accident. After all, if it had not been for me you would
not have been injured.”
“It’s just as true that if I hadn’t tried to cross the street without
looking, this wouldn’t have happened,” he declared.
“But if Charles had been more careful!”
“Or if I had been more careful! Or if I had taken a different street!
Or if I had delayed anywhere along the route thirty seconds! I wonder
if we know any more about such things than that either they happen or
they don’t.”
“You feel like that?” she exclaimed, as though she found relief in the
notion.
“I haven’t thought very much about it,” he admitted. “But when you
stop to figure out the blame you have to go back further than just
the second before. And if you do that, where are you going to stop?
If something had turned out a little differently for either of us ten
minutes before—”
She started. It sent her thoughts back to Dicky. It was he who had
detained her at Delmonico’s. Perhaps, then, it was he who was to blame!
“Or an hour before,” he went on. “Or a day or a month or a year. I was
born on Friday, but supposing I had not been born until Saturday?”
It was her seriousness that urged him to follow his fancy through to
so grotesque a conclusion—her seriousness and a desire to make her
accept the situation more lightly.
“That sounds like fatalism,” she said.
“Does it?”
He was unaware that he was unfolding any particular philosophy. He had
given little study and less thought to such abstract subjects. His work
had all been along distinctly more concrete and material lines.
She had taken the chair by his bed, and her nearness stimulated him
like wine.
“At any rate,” he went on, “we might as well call it that and let it
go. The major point seems to be that here I am.”
And there she was. Here was another point which until this moment he
had not considered. All this while she had been in the house, and he
had never given that a thought. She would probably have visited him
yesterday had he asked for her.
“Do you ever hear from Mildred’s folks?” he inquired.
It was the expression about her mouth that recalled to him that brief
former association with her.
“Yes,” she nodded. “But I have to write at least three letters to get
one back. I have a feeling that, merely because I was the one to—to
tell them, they blame me.”
“That is possible,” he admitted. “But surely you don’t blame yourself?”
“Sometimes I think I might have done something to prevent it.”
Devons flushed. There had been times when he had thought as much
himself. He had wondered why, with all her wealth, she had not relieved
Mildred of part of the burden of her poverty. Yet he knew that it was
more than doubtful if Mildred would have allowed it—any more than
he himself would have allowed anything of the sort from one of his
classmates. It had always been said of the Devonses that they would
starve before accepting a favor. His father was like that. On his
little hundred-acre farm he was as cocky as a lord on country-wide
estates.
“You could have done nothing,” he assured her, with a sense of pride.
“But why should she be like that—when I wanted to help?”
“It’s in her blood,” he replied.
“It wasn’t quite fair,” she protested. “She was always eager to do what
she could for me. She helped me in my studies.”
“Yes.”
“And when I wanted—in the only way I could—”
She checked herself. His eyes were meeting her eyes.
“What you gave her at the end was what she wanted,” he finished for
her. “Your sympathy and friendship.”
“But the other—”
“Money?” he asked bluntly.
“It sounds crude to put it that way,” she objected. “But it might have
prevented the end.”
“Perhaps.”
“So—why wouldn’t she let me?”
“It would be difficult to make you understand,” he said. “And yet, if
you had been in her place I’m pretty sure you’d have felt exactly as
she felt.”
She shook her head.
“Every one ought to be allowed to help every one else in any way one
can,” she declared. “I—I don’t know what else we’re living for.”
“I guess most of us don’t ask that. We just plug ahead,” he smiled.
“Have you been in town since you graduated?”
“Since fall,” he answered.
He offered no further details. It was impossible for him to conceive
that his personal affairs could be of any interest to her.
“Mildred told me how hard you work,” she went on. “This must have
seriously interfered with your business.”
“It hasn’t,” he assured her.
The naked truth was that, if anything, it had been a Godsend to him.
What would have become of him in another day? Sawyer might have
offered something; but even then there would have been an intervening
week before pay-day. The chances seemed to be that he would leave his
bed stronger and more fit than he had been in a decade.
“If you have any business letters to write—won’t you let me write them
for you?”
“I haven’t any.”
“You’re—you’re going to be like Mildred?”
There was a curiously pathetic note in her voice. It was almost
childlike in its plaintiveness.
“I’m telling you the truth,” he answered quickly. “My plans were at a
standstill. They hadn’t worked out as I expected.”
“Are you a fatalist about such things too?” she asked.
He thought a moment.
“I guess I might as well be,” he answered.
Her eye caught the magazines on a table near the bed.
“If I can’t write for you, I can read to you. Have you any reason to
offer why I shouldn’t do that much?”
“No,” he replied frankly. “I’d like to have you.”
“Would you like to hear anything in particular?”
“Nothing in particular,” he answered.
So she picked up a magazine and selected a story at random. She read
very well, but after all that was more or less beside the point. What
he was really interested in was her and the fact that she was sitting
here within arm’s length of him. It was quite the nearest he had ever
come in personal contact to any one as supremely beautiful as she. And
he realized that she was an integral part of all these surroundings he
was so enjoying. It was odd that Arkwright had neglected to include
something of the sort in the plans for his house. Something of the sort
was necessary in the plans of any house assuming to be more than a mere
shelter. If it took money to turn the blue-prints into masonry, after
that it took something like this to turn the masonry into a home. It
had been rather stupid of Arkwright to ignore so important a detail. He
must call his attention to it when he next saw him.
Devons watched her eyes, and her moving lips, and the velvet softness
of her cheek, and her shell-like ear, and the curve of her neck, and
her tender hands. And all those things set him to dreaming along new
lines. And the dreams stiffened his lips. And the dreams made him fret
a little that he was so tied up.
Suddenly she closed the magazine.
“That was a very good story, wasn’t it?” she smiled.
“A very good story, indeed,” answered Devons. “Thank you.”
“You’d like me to read another to-morrow?”
“I’d like nothing better,” replied Devons.
“Then I’ll come up—about this time,” she promised him.
From that moment he began to look forward to this time to-morrow.
CHAPTER VII
A LETTER
Dicky Burnett called at the Fairburne house every afternoon following
the accident, and was informed daily by the functionary at the door,
whom up to now he had rather liked, that “Miss Fairburne begs to be
excused from seeing any one to-day, sir.”
Of course there was nothing further he could do about it, although at
the moment he always conceived some such wild plan as knocking down the
innocent butler and making his way past him. But in the end he merely
left his card and meekly retired.
Joan did not give him a chance. If it had only been a case of
scrimmaging his way to her side, or of scaling a wall or surmounting
any other kind of natural barrier, he would at least have had the
satisfaction of a struggle, even if he failed to reach her. But to
be foiled by nothing more tangible than the lady’s formal refusal,
made still more negative when voiced through a second party (an
inconsequential stick of a second party whom he felt perfectly sure he
could have thrown down the stone steps), was not to give him a show.
He was willing to admit that she must have suffered a good deal of a
shock. It is unpleasant enough at best to run down any one, and to
a woman of her delicate sensibilities it must have been unnerving.
He understood, however, that it was wholly the fellow’s fault. He
understood further that the man was not seriously injured, and she
had certainly done everything in her power to offset the damage. If
the fellow had any sense of appreciation he ought to consider himself
fortunate in being established in the same house with her. He would get
run over himself for the opportunity.
By the end of the fourth day Dicky felt that she, if not her victim,
should have fully recovered. In fact, he was certain of it.
Yet she canceled all her social obligations, and persisted in refusing
to see him. That was not like her. And nothing that went before
explained it.
He had, to be sure, asked her to marry him and she had refused. But
surely she did not think that he was cad enough to make a scene about
that. She knew him well enough to know that he was not the kind to wave
his arms in the air and make himself disagreeable just because she was
obliged to tell him she did not love him. He had hoped up to the last
moment. Good Lord, a man who loved her as he loved her could not be
blamed for that! When, that afternoon at Delmonico’s, he had told her
of his love he had told her true. With all there was in him, he loved
her. With a great deal more than he had ever suspected was in him, he
loved her. Because of this he had hoped to the end, though he knew the
odds were a thousand to one against him. They would be that against any