Why Joan? Part 56

No, dear, I'm done. I took a long chance, and I took it once too often.

Nothing for it but to serve out whatever term they give me, and then come back and--show 'em." His set jaw quivered a little.

"'Serve out'--Archie! You don't mean _jail_?"

He nodded, still with his amazing quietness. "I want to. It's coming to me. And I'm young yet. You'll see!... But that don't mean _you're_ to be mixed up in it," he added, slowly. "When I go to the Pen, that lets you out, dear. You get your freedom. n.o.body will expect you to--to stay married to a criminal."

He was watching her closely, and she stared back at him. He had proposed the monstrous idea seemingly in all seriousness, as if it were one to which he had given long consideration.

"Don't talk that way!" she said, with sudden sternness. "Of course you are not to go to jail. I'll fix that somehow--I'll get the money."

But still she could not go to him, could not offer him any comfort. She was too stunned. This did not seem to her Archie, this quiet stranger who spoke so casually of penitentiaries and criminals and divorce.

They were glad when people came to interrupt them.

And people did come, in a steady stream. It seemed as if half the town had read that hastily suppressed news-item, and were determined that Archie Blair should not go to prison.

"It's most worth while getting into trouble to see how many friends you've got you never knew about!" he sighed.

The rescuers began with Effie May, check-book in hand and panting with distress, so upset that she had forgotten to rouge her face; and it ended with Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnis.h.i.+ng, who intimated that if a couple of thou' at the usual rate of interest would be of any use to Archie, they were his.

The offer that perhaps touched him the most deeply came from the Misses Darcy.

"We happen to be at the moment temporarily embarra.s.sed for funds,"

explained Miss Iphigenia, at her stateliest, (and looking curiously like her Cousin Richard). "But it will be a simple matter to arrange another mortgage on our house. Dear papa did so frequently, I remember. And of course in a--an accident of this sort--Why, my dear boy, that is what houses are for!"

But to all these suggestions Archie was able gratefully to explain that his wife had already arranged matters. For as soon as she collected her numbed faculties, she had telegraphed to Stefan Nikolai, and he had replied within the hour: "Draw on me to any amount."

"There," she remarked to the weeping Ellen. "That's the Jewness coming out in him, just as you said it would!..."

Ellen did all the weeping that was done in the Blair household during this crisis. The shock seemed to have quite broken her, so that it was the mistress who had to comfort the servant.

"I'd ought to have known," she wailed, "with him lookin' so peakid and all! But I thought it was--something else. Oh, why couldn't he have _told_ me? I could have kep' the bills down more, had pot-roasts instead of fancy-cuts, and hearts--you know how tasty beef-hearts can be, Joan, when I set my mind to 'em! 'T aint as if I wasn't an old hand at makin'

things do. But you always had such rich ways, just like your father. And I let it fool me.... Oh, the poor boy, the poor, scairt, lonesome boy, tryin' to go ahead all by himself!"

Joan's heart ached for her husband, too, as much as a heart can ache that seems turned into stone. She felt physically numb all over, except in her brain, and that worked mercilessly as ever--merciless not only to him but to herself. She did not hesitate to put the blame where much of it belonged.

"I have been utterly selfish, one of the vampires that sap a man's strength, his ability, his very decency, and give nothing in return.

Yet--does any one but a fool yield to vampires?"

She tried to make for him every excuse he had not made for himself.

"It was all for me, to give me what he thought I wanted, the things my friends have. He could not bear to deprive me of anything."

Yet he had deprived her of the thing she valued most in life: her pride.

He had committed the sin unpardonable. He had, as the English put it, "let her down." She, Joan Darcy, in whom pride was the dominant trait, pride of race, of intellect, of character--she was the wife of a defaulter, a common thief!

Despite people's marked kindness and consideration toward her, she fancied she knew what they were saying: "An extravagant wife. A woman who neglected her home and her husband."

But of the charge of extravagance at least she was able to acquit herself. The iron of poverty had entered too early and too deep into her soul for that. She knew that dressing, for instance, cost her far less than it cost any woman of her acquaintance. She had always made taste and skill take the place of money there, and in other ways. Much that was unusual in her little house she had done herself, staining walls, painting woodwork, covering furniture. Where her neighbors employed several servants, she did very well with one; and if she left much of her household management in Ellen's hands, it was because she knew them to be more experienced than her own.

"No," she told herself, puzzling the thing over, "we have simply cut our coat according to other people's cloth--And how was I to know?"

It is the cry of many a startled wife whose husband has tried to keep on his shoulders the burden two should share: How was I to know?

She was comforted to think that no tradespeople at least were suffering from their catastrophe; she owed not a dollar in the world.... Here Joan winced, recalling her determination that there should be no "Indians" in the annals of the Blair family. Archie, in order that she might pay bills promptly, had allowed her to pay them with other people's money!

His own att.i.tude was incredible to her. He seemed not particularly ashamed, nor even down-cast; if anything, rather relieved that the strain was over. The enormity of the thing he had done did not appear to impress him. He was more like a man who has bet too heavily at the races, but means to show himself a good loser. For the first time Joan considered seriously the mystery surrounding his birth. Emily Carmichael had been right--it was "brave" to marry a man of such doubtful antecedents. Who knew what handicaps were his to fight, what heritage of moral obliquity?

There was after all a certain safety in good birth, she thought--forgetting that traditions and fine breeding had not sufficed to keep her own father from a slight moral obliquity, such as had permitted him to speculate with trust-funds. (Of the Major's earlier misadventure she never learned.)

And then a sudden rush of reaction came over her. Archie--and moral obliquity! It was as impossible to a.s.sociate the two as to a.s.sociate a fine dog with treachery. He had simply, for her sake, chosen to take his long chance and abide by the consequences. An act more gallant, more blindly, foolishly, needlessly sacrificial, had never been laid upon the altar of love. And yet--she could not forgive him for it.

"It must be because I do not care for him," she told herself stonily; and was glad in her heart that his children had not lived.

CHAPTER LIII

But if she could not offer Archie the tenderness he craved, she gave him at least all the other a.s.sistance in her power. Her executive ability stood them both in good stead.

It was she who interviewed Mr. Moore, far more successfully than Judge Carmichael had done, persuading him not only to hush the matter up but to retain Archie in his employ. "If I can afford to take another chance on him, surely you can?" she insisted; an argument which the dazzled old gentleman found quite unanswerable.

Within a week she had procured an excellent tenant for the house, furnished, with privilege of sale at a month's notice. She had disposed of her little car at a good price, and placed Pegasus for the time being in the Carmichael stable.

"I can't sell her, of course, nor give her away--it would be like selling or giving away Ellen Neal! But if you'll just ride her, Emily, and play with her sometimes? She's used to a good deal of attention."

"I'll probably spoil her to death," promised Emily, deeply touched by this first sign of sentiment she had seen in her friend during that tragic time.

Joan moved about her pretty house, cleaning, packing, getting things in order for the tenant, as calmly as if she were not leaving it forever.

Even in the nursery she was perfectly composed, until she came upon the toys Ellen had hidden there. Then she locked the door for awhile, and neither Emily nor Ellen dared go to her.

"But what are we going to do ourselves?" moaned Ellen, rocking helplessly to and fro in her kitchen. All her self-reliance had deserted her. She was suddenly an old woman.

"I haven't decided yet, dear. One thing at a time," replied her mistress, steadily....

But in the end it was Archie who decided.

He had acquiesced without comment in all Joan's arrangements. Only once had he protested. It was when she telegraphed Stefan Nikolai for the money.

"Not that, Joan--not that, _please_!" he said, with a quick flush. "I'd rather go to the Pen than that--Really, the Pen will be quite a rest for me," he added, piteously.

"Nonsense!" she replied; and he said no more.

But for all his acquiescence, he did not seem to be numbed by the thing, as Joan was. Though she often heard him walking up and down his room at night, and suffered for him, at times he appeared almost happy.

"I can't get over how _good_ people are!" he said once. "Think of Mr.

Moore being willing to take me back! Not as manager, of course--the boys wouldn't be wanting to take orders from me yet awhile. Nor I couldn't expect to handle money. But he sent for me, and said I was the best salesman he'd ever had, and offered me the old job back on a commission basis! Pretty nice, what?"