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."
"How _can_ one 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 glory
Shall 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 crepe.
"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. "It _is_ so 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.