Joan was not the judge of human nature she fancied herself if she
believed that a disparity in age would render gossip innocuous. The
disparity was not as apparent as she believed. Nikolai was, in his dark,
impassive way, a singularly handsome man, and the stories of his early
ghetto life and later experiences made of him a romantic figure to more
eyes than Joan's. In vain the Jabberwocks rallied around her to a girl.
In vain Effie May, whose shrewd ears heard usually whatever was to be
heard, even in her retirement, casually spread abroad the story of Mr.
Nikolai's devotion to the first Mrs. Darcy.
Joan's attitude was discouraging to her most loyal friends. She seemed
quite unaware that she was being defended and rallied around. It rather
relieved her when invitations began to dwindle in number; she was thus
saved the trouble of declining them. She entered into their growing
solitude _a deux_ with the same single-mindedness she had brought to
bear upon her frivolous period, her domestic period, and her brief
career of publicity; being one of those natures which can do only one
thing at a time, and that very hard.
When she thought about their relationship at all, it rather pleased her
to fancy that she was playing Mrs. Thrale to Nikolai's Dr. Johnson.
Unfortunately the people about her were for the most part unaware of
this classic relationship; and had they known of it would have doubtless
regarded it with one eye knowingly closed.
Much of the town's attention fastened itself upon Archibald. Scandals
there had been before this, even in its upper circles; but they had
maintained hitherto a decent surreptitiousness, had veiled themselves
beneath a more or less transparent cover of secrecy, until some climax
occurred in the way of pistol-shot or divorce-proceeding. The _tertium
quid_, acknowledged and accepted, was new to the experience of
Louisville; and very interesting.
Meanwhile Stefan Nikolai, all unconscious of the stimulus he was
offering to general conversation, spent all of his free hours with Joan,
having long since faced and discounted the risk of it so far as he was
concerned. The risk Joan herself might run appeared to his experience
negligible. He had never even in his youth attracted women as less
intellectual men attract them.
Doubtless even had he been aware of the town's talk it would not have
troubled him. For all his knowledge of humanity, he was no man of the
world, in the accepted sense of the term. He lived too much beyond it to
attach great importance to its opinion. In only one person he recognized
any right of criticism. That was Joan's husband, with whom long since he
had come to an understanding.
It is a pity that neither Joan nor Joan's world ever came to know of
this understanding, which would have added to the affair a distinct
flavor.
Mr. Nikolai had taken a small apartment, where Joan and her husband and
occasionally others dined with him, or dropped in for a glass of tea in
the Russian fashion and an hour of two of music afterwards. Nikolai,
true to the instinct of his race, never made even a temporary home
without music in it. He had, in addition to a piano, various instruments
collected in different lands, among them a balalaika upon which the
servant Sacha could sometimes be induced to play a shy accompaniment to
peasant ballads.
But Archie had never come there without Joan; and so one day when he
dropped in alone, ostensibly to "hear the Rooshian pick his banjo,"
Nikolai felt a surprise that he was careful not to show. His trained
eyes detected signs of distress in Archie which others, including his
wife, had failed to notice. The beaming smile did not conceal from
Nikolai a little anxious pucker between the brows, a nervous twitching
of the big freckled hands.
The writer was not unused to being taken into the confidence of troubled
people. It was one of the things that compensated for the enforced
solitude of his life, such an occasional glimpse into the secret hearts
of his fellow-men. It is an odd fact that writers and philosophers and
even poets, all people who live necessarily a little apart from their
kind, are frequently chosen as confessors by those who feel the need of
confession.
So Nikolai asked no questions, sure that a friendly silence and a good
cigar would produce results. Nor did he ring for Sacha and the "banjo."
At length Archie blurted out without preliminaries:
"Joan isn't happy, Mr. Nikolai. I guess you've noticed that! She hasn't
been for a long while. I'm not sure she ever was.--I s'pose I was a fool
to think a man like me could make her happy."
"It is a large order for any one human being to make another human being
happy, Blair."
"But you could have!"
Neither spoke for a few minutes. Nikolai made no pretense of not
understanding. Only a slight flush came momentarily into his face, and
left it paler by contrast. "I am not sure," he said at last. "But I
should have liked to try."
"Of course! I knew that when you cabled us to wait till you came--But
Joan don't know it yet. Funny, isn't it, when she's so smart? She thinks
you feel toward her like a cross between a teacher and a fond
father.--'Father'--my eye! She don't catch you lookin' at her sometimes
the way I do!"
"Do I--look at her?"
Archie nodded expressively. "I suppose I understand, because I'm in love
myself. And she don't"--he swallowed hard--"because she isn't."
"Not yet, perhaps," said the other slowly. "Give her time, my boy."
"Time? I've given her time." Archie heaved a great sigh. "Now I mean to
give her something else. I mean to give her a chance. She never really
had a chance before, Mr. Nikolai. I--I kind of got her off her guard,
when she was takin' the count. It wasn't sporting of me."
The other, moved, laid a hand on his knee. In moments of emotion the
foreign blood showed in such slight demonstrativeness. But Anglo-Saxon
Archie stiffened, and the hand was at once removed.
"She's too fine for me, you see," he went on. "Too sort of delicate.--I
read somewhere that china vases and brass vases couldn't float down a
stream together without the china ones getting smashed (though why vases
would be floating down a stream anyway, _I_ don't know!). But I'm brass,
you see, and she's china. I thought it might be all right after the
twinnies came. I still think it might have been, if they--" Again he
swallowed hard.
Nikolai nodded.
"Their hearts are wild
As be the hearts of birds, till childer come."
But, my dear boy, you speak as if the twinnies had exhausted the
available supply!"
Archie's eyes dropped. Then he lifted them again in a frank gaze. "I
almost lost her, sir. Do you think I'd put her through a thing like that
again? God!--her little frantic hands clutching at us! And her voice,
hoarse as a fierce animal's--!" He jumped up and crossed to a window,
where he stood with his back to Nikolai, his face working.
After a moment the other followed, and this time Archie did not stiffen
under his touch.
"So," said the Jew, "in your love you would deny her the woman's
privilege of suffering?"
"Yes! Suffering on account of me--yes! Every time. It ain't fair, women
having to stand the whole business. If I could help, if I could bear one
single pain of it--But I can't."
"No," said Nikolai, his lips twitching despite the sadness about them.
"No, I am afraid you can't. But--"
"And it's not," interrupted Archie, reverting doggedly to his theme, "as
if I were the right man, you see!"
They were silent again.
"You are so afraid of losing her that you will not give her children,"
mused Nikolai presently. "And yet if I understand you you are willing to
lose her--otherwise?"
"To the right man," said Archie directly. "To you--Because I think you
are the right man. She's been more contented since you've been here than
I ever knew her to be. Of course you're twice her age, but that don't
count with brainy people. And you could give her everything I can't--not
just _things_; you know what I mean! Travel, education, all that. She's
in your class, sir, not mine.--Will you do it?"
Nikolai looked rather bewildered. "Do what, Blair?"
"Oh, I don't know. Be nice to her all you can, read poetry to her, get
her to care for you. Make love to her, if you want!--You can bet I
wouldn't say that to many men--" he laughed forlornly--"but you're
different, somehow. I can trust you."
"Thank you." Nikolai's face lit with a very charming smile. "Yes, I
think you can trust me--And in case your scheme were successful, if I
should prove to be 'the right man'--what about you?"
"Oh, me? Why, I'd just naturally fade out of the landscape."
"How do you mean?"
"There're lots of ways. A cramp in swimming, or an accident when you're
cleaning a gun, or a dose of the wrong medicine--"
Nikolai's brows met sharply. "You mean suicide?"
"Sure! Why not? It's done every day, and done so the insurance companies
can't prove a thing, too."
Nikolai rose and stood beside him. "You, who say that you love her," he
said sternly, "you who cannot bear that she should suffer even to obtain
happiness--you would condemn her to a lifetime of grief and remorse? You
might perhaps deceive others. Do you think you could deceive Joan? Happy
or not, you know that she cares for you, Blair!"
The other's face softened. "Why, yes, I reckon she does, in a way. Once
when I had a bad cold and she was scared for fear it was going to run
into pneumonia she was awfully upset. I guess you're right," he mused.
"It wouldn't do for me to do that. Why, her father's death almost killed
her, and he was a mighty worthless old scamp, and she knew it, too!
Joan's a deeper feeler than you'd think--Say, I might do something to
make her get a divorce?" he suggested, brightening.
"What, for instance?"
"Oh, other women,"--he made a face of distaste. "I'd hate it--a low
woman certainly does get my goat! Still--"
Nikolai smiled. "Do you think you could deceive Joan about that, either?
You might succeed in hurting her, perhaps; but she would not admit it.
Joan is proud."
"Lord, don't I know it? Proud as Lucifer! No, I've got to think of
something to do that wouldn't be any reflection on her," he mused, "and
yet that she wouldn't stand for. Actionable, as the lawyers say--"
Nikolai burst out laughing, and taking Archie by the shoulders shook him
to and fro.
"My dear boy, I fear I cannot enter into this nefarious little plot of
yours. I am not going to make love to your wife--I should not know how!
Nor yet am I going to lure her from you with poetry and fine words.
But--" he added, sobering, "I think with you that she has not yet found
herself. There, perhaps, I can help. I can at least offer her my own
recipe for happiness."
"You mean that formula thing?" said Archie doubtfully.
"No formula, Blair. Simply--work."
The other's face fell. "Joan never has been one of those idle society
girls you read about," he said, defensively. "Sewing, and housekeeping,
and civics, and suffrage, and going around giving advice to the
poor--She's tried 'em all, Mr. Nikolai."
"And found them all other people's work, not hers.--But, Blair, I must
warn you," he added gravely, "that when she does find her _metier_ you
are in far more danger of losing her to it than to--me, for instance."
"No danger of losing what you haven't got," sighed Archie.