Joan and Co.
man who wanted to marry her. She was too good for them all, including
himself.
Looking at the proposition calmly—which meant leaving out of the
question for the moment all such personal considerations as the fact
that he wanted her, reason or no reason, like the devil—he realized
that he could offer her no sufficient consideration that would justify
him in expecting that she should want to marry him. Neither his social
position nor his prospects held any advantage over her social position
and prospects. In fact they were identical. For all those things she
might just as well stay where she was. If he were a Rockefeller, or she
the daughter of poor but honest parents—but there is not much sense in
speculating about what is not. There was just as much chance of his
making himself a billionaire as there was of Fairburne going broke.
A man to win her would have to bring her something she did not have
already. Offhand the only type he could think of was some foreign duke
or lord with a couple of million acres and a chest plastered over with
various orders, and a trunk full of crown jewels. But if ever he saw
anything of the kind snooping around he would nail him. He would pummel
him to within an inch of his life if he went to jail for it. He used to
find considerable relief in picturing himself about that task.
Barring the nobility, what in thunder could a man bring her? There were
serious moments when Dicky Burnett searched his soul for an answer to
that question. With the need of her came the need of doing something
for her—the need of making himself of use to her. And the serious part
of it all was that he could find no way. That her love should call
back to his love—that it should be as simple as this—he never even
considered. He was not that worthy of her. She was too fine, too rare,
too wonderful to allow an ordinary man to conceive anything so rash.
He labored under no delusions about himself. He was decent and he was
honest and he loved her. That was all. There were a thousand men who,
if ever they had the chance to learn her as he had, could say the same.
He was neither better nor worse than these others who in their turn
might come along. Any man who did not love her after knowing her would
be an ass.
These were some of the things that he wished to tell her. She must not
think it was necessary to avoid him; to hide from him like a hunted
rabbit. So when, on the sixth day, he called at the house and received
his stereotyped refusal, he went back to the Harvard Club, instead of
going on to keep his engagement for tea with the Henshaws, and in the
seclusion of the library sat down and wrote her a letter. He was not
especially skillful at that sort of thing. He wrote bluntly in a bold
hand, with his thoughts bent upon what he wished to say rather than any
grace of composition.
Dear Joan [he began]: I want very much to see you. Won’t you please
let me in next time for just a few minutes? If you’re afraid because
you think I’m going to bother you with telling you some more that I
love you—why, I promise I won’t. I don’t mean by this I promise not
to love you. I couldn’t very well promise that, because I do. And
that goes on just the same whether I see you or not, so it needn’t
make any difference one way or the other, need it?
I have been wandering round town all alone for pretty nearly a week
now, and I’m getting mighty homesick. That’s what Hollister says—it
is just plain homesickness. Ever have it? You feel like a cat in a
strange garret, and wander around without any stopping-places. Even
when I go home, the house has a foreign look, as though a whole lot
of things were missing, even though you can’t find anything gone.
I guess it’s you that’s missing at home and everywhere I go. I didn’t
realize until now how much I must have carried you round with me in
my mind. Even dear old dad, who doesn’t pay much attention to my
affairs because he doesn’t think they amount to much, looked up at
dinner the other night and said, “Where’s Joan?”
I’ve told him a little about you. I couldn’t help it.
And every so often, wherever I am, I give a start myself and say,
“Where’s Joan?”
I miss not _seeing_ you even though I know you’re all right. After
all, remembering any one isn’t like seeing her. I know perfectly well
your hair is black and just how it’s going to look when I do see it;
but that isn’t the same. Queer, but it isn’t. And that’s true of your
eyes and nose and mouth and all the rest of you. I want to look at
you again and, even if you don’t love me, there’s no harm, is there?
I won’t take any of you away by doing that. There’ll be just as much
of you left.
I want to hear your voice too—even if you tell me things I won’t like
to hear. And I want—oh, I just want to see you, Joan. Won’t you tell
his nibs at the door to let me in?
_Please._
Of all I told you last time, I want you to remember this most! that
I’m always within reach if you need me for anything. Lord knows, I
can’t think of much I could do. I wish I might.
Good-bye, Joan.
DICK.
P.S. If you don’t see me to-morrow, I’ll believe it was you who was
run over. D.
It helped some just to write to her.
CHAPTER VIII
DICKY CALLS
Joan had been staying a great deal in her room for the past week. It
was partly upon the advice of Dr. Nichols, and partly upon the advice
of her mother and father; but it is very doubtful if their superior
knowledge would have had quite as much weight as it did if Joan herself
had not welcomed the internment. To be sure, the shock had been
considerable; but after the first temporary and purely normal reaction
came a second reaction, which was not correctly diagnosed either by her
parents or the physician. Nichols, looking merely at her heightened
color and brighter eyes, feared hysteria. Mrs. Fairburne took it to
be disappointment at the many social engagements Joan was forced to
cancel. She tried hard not to blame any one for the situation; but upon
several occasions she observed darkly to her husband:
“All I can say is that some one was stupid to allow such a
misfortune—at the height of the social season.”
The first time he heard this, Fairburne squared his shoulders a trifle,
as though considering that he himself might be involved in the general
accusation.
“Not you, of course, my dear,” she hastened to assure him; “but some
one.”
Yet Charles was not discharged. Then apparently the fault lay between
Devons and Fate. Anyhow, it was more or less immaterial.
Perhaps it was just as well for the peace of mind of all concerned
that it was not generally known that Joan really was enjoying one of
the most interesting experiences of her life there in the privacy of
her room. Certainly to have informed Dr. Nichols that she felt every
sense to be more alert than formerly would have contributed nothing to
science; to have explained to her parents that she was enjoying as a
luxury the privilege of calling her time her own would not have left
them any the wiser; to have confessed to Dicky that she felt even a
certain relief from him would not have done a particle of good in that
direction. Half the joy of her joy lay in the fact that it was a very
intimate and personal and secret joy.
As soon as she learned, through Dr. Nichols, that there was not
the slightest element of danger in Devons’s condition; that in all
probability the man, with good care, would leave in better condition
than he came, it was as though she had found an opportunity.
“As a matter of fact,” Nichols had told her, “you can credit yourself
with having saved his life.”
“How?” she asked doubtfully.
“The man hasn’t been getting enough to eat,” Nichols informed her.
“Not enough to eat?” It sounded like an absurd statement.
“He tells me he has been living on a diet of black coffee and tobacco.”
“But why should one do that?” she inquired.
“Because,” answered Nichols, “it is very inexpensive. Of course he
could have invested the same amount of money to better advantage in
some other type of food-stuff, but it’s doubtful if he would have got
as much comfort out of it.”
“Then he must be very, very poor.”
“I gather he is.”
So here, in a way, was the case of Mildred all over again. With
a difference. The difference was that Devons—well, it did make a
difference that he was—he. At best, there is less opportunity for a
woman to be of assistance to another woman than to one of the opposite
sex, even in an impersonal way. The response is less keen. It does not
touch the same depths.
Not that she was in the slightest sentimental about it. She was
absolutely normal. Even the excitement of the situation was normal.
Nichols to the contrary, her attitude was not even remotely associated
with hysteria, or with mawkish sentimentality. It had more to do
with what she had vaguely described to Dicky at that last meeting
as “the big adventure.” It was as though this man Devons had made a
breach in the high wall surrounding her and offered her opportunity to
venture a little way beyond into the quick life that men and women led
outside—the life that treated men and women like men and women and not
like daintily dressed dolls.
Devons had gone hungry! There was nothing, perhaps, in that to make
any one envy him; and yet, it stood for something. At least, that had
intensified the hours to him. He had been like a harp with the strings
drawn too taut, drawn almost to the breaking point; but she had been
like a harp with the strings sagging. Of the two it would be easier to
play the taut strings. After all, it might be better to be hungry than
surfeited. The very hour that she had sat with listless interest before
the delicacies at Delmonico’s, he had been wandering, dazed and hungry,
through the snow. It was a question who was in the worse plight.
That was only a detail, anyway. But how it dramatized the same safe,
uneventful streets through which she rode in her snug machine! And how
curious that, as though in response to her cry, this should be brought
to her in her own home.
Was there some truth in that strange doctrine of fatalism—that our
lives are mapped out for us ahead and that, however remote the
possibility may seem, we must travel the foreordained road?
Staring from her window at night, she wondered with quickened breath.
Looking back, her meeting with Mildred may have been significant. She
had come upon her quite by chance, and through her had met Devons. At
the time it had seemed the most trivial and commonplace of incidents;
yet, if that had not been, it is probable that Devons would have been
sent off out of her life to a hospital. She had brought him here and
insisted upon his remaining because of Mildred. It was significant,
too, that on that very afternoon she had not ridden back with
Dicky—that she was alone at the appointed moment.
Poor Dicky! She was rather sorry that it had been necessary to involve
him. If only he had not said what he did say, she would have turned
to him now. She would have liked to discuss the whole question with
him. She supposed it was possible even now; only—well, she was afraid
he would not understand. She was afraid it might trouble him. And in
a sense she felt responsible for his peace of mind. She should have
foreseen what might come of their relations. Only, she had never
thought it possible for him to be as serious as he had seemed when he
spoke. Even if he imagined himself in love with her, she thought she
would recognize it as pure imagination. It was as natural for Dicky
to fall in love, in fancy, with any woman with whom he might be thrown