Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster
about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed
with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him
amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He
stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale,
laughing face among the pillows--that face with which he had taken such
amazing liberties.
Joan in a _peignoir_, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder,
looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the
train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet
his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she
lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his
emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched
his hands hard.
This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered
composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had
steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the
thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had passed.
"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong
enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."
He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated,
looking everywhere but at Joan.
"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't it _terrible_?"
He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous,"
perhaps--but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.
"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at
all?"
He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."
"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful
anyway, for the new machine."
He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."
"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you--you can't afford
another?"
"Why, I guess the railroad company'd help to buy me another if I wanted
it--the engineer didn't signal for that crossing. But--I don't. You
see," he murmured, looking down, "there were--well, there were sort of
associations with Lizzie."
Joan understood. Her flush deepened. "I suppose you feel about her as I
do about Peggy," she said quickly. "My first horse! If anything were to
happen to her, I'd never feel the same about another.--I'm sorry,
Archie! We've had great fun out of the little car."
He shook his big shoulders as if trying to rid them of some burden. "Oh,
what does the machine matter?" he said roughly. "What gets my goat is
what you must be thinking of me, what your father must be thinking! Of
all the dod-blasted he-idiots! Not to be able to take better care of a
woman than that!"
"I think, and so does my father, that you took wonderfully good care of
me! If it hadn't been for your nerve, your quickness.... Ugh!" she
shuddered. "Dad says that not one man out of a thousand would have seen
what to do in time to do it. In fact, he's waiting in the library to
make you a speech before you go. Eloquence-with-gestures. Do you know, I
never realized before that in some ways man is really woman's superior?
You've got yourselves better in hand, your muscles do what you tell them
to. It was a good lesson for me." She smiled up at him. His miserable
eyes touched her, and she held out her hand. "Why, Archie! what makes
you look so ashamed?"
He ignored that friendly hand. "I'm thinking that if your father knew
_all_ I'd done," he muttered, "he'd do something more to me than make a
speech. Eloquence-with-gestures, all right! Gestures of the foot."
Joan decided to take the bull by the horns. "You mean when I came to,
and you--kissed me? Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely. ("There!
Now the tooth is out," she thought.)
"Because I was a damn fool," he groaned.
Joan's lips twitched despite herself. "Really, you're not very
complimentary!"
But Archibald was beyond considerations of mere politeness. "Because I
hadn't the decent horse-gumption to keep my feelings to myself! Had to
go spilling 'em all over the place, insulting you with 'em!"
There was a pause. "You care for me, then?" prompted Joan.
Archie grinned, miserably. "Well, what do you think?"
"I'm afraid you do."
"You're dead right," he said.
Another silence followed this admission, and then he rose to go. "I
guess that'll be about all from me!--Only I want you to know, Miss
Darcy, I--I never meant to do such a thing--I never knew I had it in me!
Good Lord! When I saw you all crumpled up there in that gully, not
moving at all, even when the train-gang came to pick you up--When I knew
that I had done it, I--! And then you opened your eyes and looked at
me.... Oh, hell, what's the use?"
He turned blindly toward the door.
She had to catch at his coat-tails to stop him. "Archie! Wait a
minute.--I'm going to make you a speech myself. In the first place,
Archibald Blair, your sort of 'feelings' wouldn't insult anybody. They
couldn't! I'm proud to have you care for me, and I'd be glad, too, if
only I could--But it's not as if you were asking anything in return, is
it?"
"Me?--_asking_? Good Lord, I'm not such a mutt as that!"
"Some day you will be 'asking,' Archie dear--a worthier girl than I am,
I know--and she won't think you a mutt at all!"
He shook his head. "No, Miss Darcy. You've sort of spoiled ordinary
girls for me."
She cried honestly, "I hope not! Oh, I do hope not! Because I was going
to beg you to stay friends with me--I need friends. And I _can't_ keep
you if you're going to go on feeling that way!"
"Sure you can," said Archie, his eyes lighting. "Just try me and see!
I'll make one of the best little old pals you ever saw, if you'll just
forgive the fool way I acted. Now that the steam's sort of blown off,
we--we understand each other."
"You're certain that we _do_ understand each other?" Her gaze met his
squarely. "You're not going to expect things that can't ever be?"
"No, ma'am," said Archie.
Tears suddenly came into her eyes. There was a quality in this faithful,
doglike devotion that made her feel ashamed. It deserved response; it
deserved something better than mere affectionate gratitude. But that was
all she found herself able to give.
With a demonstrativeness rarer than he guessed, she caught his big hand
in both of hers and held it for a moment to her cheek. When she let it
go there was a tear on the back of it; which Archie, gazing at
wonderingly, suddenly lifted to his lips.
It was in acts like this, little untaught gestures of pure reverence,
that the boy belied his slang and his big ears and his general
clumsiness, and harked back to the age of chivalry, when a gentleman was
not ashamed to dedicate himself to the service of his lady, and be her
very perfect knight....
After he had gone, Effie May wandered into Joan's room with a slight air
of expectancy about her which the girl was too preoccupied to notice.
"You're lookin' sort of white about the gills, dearie," she remarked.
"Does the shoulder pain you?"
"No. But something else does, and I don't know just what. Oh, Effie May,
what's the matter with me, anyway?" she burst out. "Sometimes I think
I'm not a human person at all, but just a big inflated Ego, floating
around like an observation balloon, taking notes!"
"Well, well, is that so?" murmured her step-mother, who had her doubts
as to what an Ego might be. "I expect what you need for that floaty
feeling, dearie, is a good dose of calomel--" and she hurried away to
prepare it.