People who know life only on its surfaces were apt to pronounce Joan
Blair a rather hard young person. She would herself have admitted to a
certain hardness, secretly aware, however, that it was a trait she had
deliberately cultivated for protective purposes. Hers was one of the
unfortunate natures that are more attuned to the minor than the major
chords of life.
Once in her childhood she had confessed to her mother, with a burst of
sobbing, that she never expected to be entirely happy because of all the
stray dogs running about the world, hungry and lonesome. As she grew
older she discovered that it is not only the stray dogs who go hungry
and lonesome.
She often wondered impatiently why it was that every one with whom she
came into close contact seemed soon or late to develop a marked quality
of pathos: her futile father, the struggling Misses Darcy, gruff old
devoted Ellen, Effie May, Archie--and now more than all Stefan Nikolai.
Despite his renown, his wide experience, his phenomenal rise in life
from so handicapped a beginning, her friend seemed nevertheless to her a
rather tragic figure, belonging to nobody, product of two countries and
native of neither, without even a race to which he could claim complete
allegiance. For his mother had been a Christian girl of high birth,
outcast by her family because of her marriage with a Jew; who had been
in turn rejected by his own people because of her.
Both had been killed in a _pogrom_, one of those appalling man-hunts
that still take place in the Russian pale in the name of Christianity;
and his father's sister, escaping to a land where there are no
_pogroms_, had brought the child Stefan with her. It must have been a
forlorn boyhood for a sensitive, gifted, half-alien lad, none too
welcome in a poor and growing Jewish family of the slums; working his
brilliant way through school and university, only to meet a crushing
rebuff in this land of the free and equal at the hands of a girl who was
afraid to marry him.
Joan understood why her mother had taken the hurt and lonely youth into
her rare friendship. Aside from Nikolai's charm of companionship and her
gratitude to him, she felt it an inherited duty to "make it up" to him
for the sadness of his past. And where Joan gave, she gave
unstintingly....
She did not pursue her headstrong course without receiving faint
inklings now and then as to its effect upon the community. The warnings
began with Ellen.
"I ain't sayin' he's not a quiet, pleasant-spoken enough gentleman, as
free with his money as if he was a Christian--Most _too_ free, if you
ast me! What's he want out of it all? After all, a Jew's a Jew."
"Even if he happens to be a Unitarian?" (Nikolai, during his college
life, had chanced to adopt that creed.)
"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all
bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a
Jack-in-the-Box--You needn't laugh, Joie--you kin see it all in that eye
of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier
eye--! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way,
myself. Seems sort of shameless."
"Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself
to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good
deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on
behind it, the more it reflects--As witness my own," she added
complacently.
Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs.
Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in
her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and
lorgnon.
"You are looking very charming, dear child--one wonders at not seeing
you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town,
however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time."
Joan admitted the imputation.
"Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!--Still, Mr. Blair would
naturally be democratic in his point of view."
"Democratic? I think I don't understand."
The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect.
"Oh, these writing-people--it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't
it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous."
"It does not take a great deal of courage," said Joan, flushing, "to
continue my mother's friendship with the most brilliant man I know.
There even seem to be people who envy me the opportunity."
(This shot told, Mrs. Carmichael having been one of the first and most
eager to entertain the visiting celebrity.)
"Doubtless he is brilliant as a writer," she conceded. "That is his
profession. But even as a writer (I know nothing of him, of course,
otherwise!) do you consider him quite safe, my dear? Those plays, for
instance."
"Have you read them?" asked Joan bluntly.
"Why, not yet. I bought them, of course--one does. But one has so little
time for reading. I am told, however, that in one of them a child is
born practically on the stage. At least the characters converse about it
quite openly."
"Shocking of them," murmured Joan. "Those things should be managed by
means of asterisks. But it's so hard to find actors who play asterisks
acceptably."
Mrs. Carmichael's lorgnon busied itself. "I should be sorry," remarked
its owner, "to think that any friend of my daughter's would care to
encourage indelicacy, whether in literature or--or in life."
"Dear me, yes!--life is indelicate enough anyway, without our
encouragement, isn't it?" murmured Joan.
She felt, perhaps justly, that she had come out of this encounter with
the honors of war. But Joan could ill afford to make enemies....
The finish of Nikolai's book postponed itself from week to week. Spring
came, and early summer, that most witching of seasons in the middle
South, languid with the scent of magnolia-blossoms, gay with the bright
parasols and fragile muslins that flutter forth like butterflies at the
first touch of sun. With Nikolai to share it, the gray old town regained
something of its former glamour for Joan. She had many favorite spots to
show him--a quiet tree-arched street of patriarchal mansions in the
midst of warehouses, with all the charm and old-world dignity of a
London square; a certain secluded nook low on the bank of the slow,
yellow river, undiscovered save by an occasional working-girl and her
shirt-sleeved "gentleman-friend," with whom Nikolai conversed as
pleasantly as with old acquaintances. He had not the Major's elegant
distaste for the _canaille_.
Through his trained eyes, Joan began to note again certain picturesque
touches which had charmed her when first she came to Louisville; a
primitive, two-wheeled cart bobbing along a crowded street, drawn by
mules hitched tandem-fashion, on one of which a dusky muleteer perched
sidewise, singing. "That might be Spain," said Nikolai. Or perhaps two
mulatto women, dressed in the extreme of fashion even to rouge and
face-veils, greeting each other with lifted, outflung hand--a gesture as
savage and typically African as if they were only a few weeks out of the
jungle, instead of a few generations--Joan found that with Nikolai it
was possible to do a good deal of traveling right at home.
Meanwhile the scandal of their association grew and spread; and at last
Emily, distressed at the magnitude of the storm of which her friend was
the center, decided to interfere. Not with words, however. Long social
experience had given her tact, if not wisdom.
Thereafter it began to be noticed that Mrs. Blair and her distinguished
friend were not to be seen so often alone together. There was usually a
third on their expeditions, and frequently a fourth, whenever Archie
could be pressed into service.
"Now that I've got some one to talk to myself, I don't feel so in the
way," he confessed naively.
Emily formed a habit of dropping in at the Blairs' in the early
afternoon (just at the finish of writing hours), so that she had
naturally to be included in any plans that were afoot.
"I don't know what's come over you, dear," remarked Joan once, half
laughing. "You're positively rushing me nowadays!--or is it Nikolai? I
begin to suspect you of designs upon Stefan."
"And why not? He's perfectly eligible. We old maids have to keep a
weather eye out, you know--But how do you know it isn't Archie I'm
pursuing?" asked Emily calmly. "I appreciated him long before you did,
you know."
"Emmy, Emmy, such indelicacy!" sighed Joan. "And him a married party,
too! What would your mother say?"
"I'm feeding her Shaw lately in broken doses. She's prepared for almost
anything--You don't really mind my trailing you about this way, do you,
Joan?" she asked, sobering. "I love hearing you two talk. Am I in the
way, if I just keep quiet as a mouse?"
"Mind? Of course not!" Joan kissed her. "You and Stefan are my two
dearest friends, and I _love_ to have you friends with each other.
Besides, he says you have an 'interesting mind,' my dear. Welcome to our
city!"
So Emily continued to make a courageous third in their walks and talks
and studies; accepted by Nikolai with his usual courteous friendliness,
and by the gossips with feelings which were not unmixed.
"It's the husband's doings--he's awake at last!" declared one faction.
"Men are so fickle. He's had a good deal of her--and Emily Carmichael is
looking particularly well this year. Poor Joan!" murmured the other
faction, composed of her more intimate acquaintances.
Joan's feelings on the matter were also not unmixed. She loved Emily;
her presence was always a pleasure; she had assuredly nothing to discuss
with Nikolai that could not be discussed before so devoted an audience.
And yet--
Stefan came to take the other girl's company so much for granted that
one evening, when Joan suggested a row up the river for their next day's
outing, it was natural enough for him to say, "That sounds charming! and
I think Miss Carmichael will enjoy it, too."
This innocent remark produced surprising results; as surprising to Joan
as to himself. She jumped to her feet. "Look here, Stefan! If you want
Emily so much, why don't you take her by yourself?" she cried, and
bursting into tears she fled from the room.
Nikolai stared blankly at Archie.
"Will you tell me _what_ I have said?"
For once the other was the first to understand.
"Don't you see?" he replied with his patient smile (and there is nothing
sadder to see in life than patience on the face of a young man). "It's
come about just as I thought it would, Mr. Nikolai. She's--she's jealous
of you. That's all."
* * * * *
That night Stefan Nikolai, usually very regular in habit, sat so late by
his open window that the servant Sacha emerged at intervals to
investigate.
"Is Excellency ill, that he neither sleeps nor reads?"
"Not ill, Sacha. Go to bed."
There was a lilac-tree blooming below the window, and the scent of the
young summer came in to him, flooding his heart, his senses--
The servant appeared again.
"Has Excellency sadness?"
"Not sadness, Sacha. I think--it is happiness."
"And yet he sighs?"
Nikolai stirred, and got to his feet.
"That is because our wandering begins again. The book is done. In a few
days we go."
The servant took an eager step toward him. "Not alone?"
Nikolai started. He had forgotten, as so many forget, the watching eyes
of those who serve us. "Certainly, alone!" he said sharply. "Am I not
always alone?"
Sacha's eyes dropped. "In my country," he suggested gently, "when we see
a woman which we need, we take her."
The other smiled. The two had been through much together. "And if she
chances to belong to some one else?"
"Then"--with an eloquent thrust of the hand--"we kill!" But seeing that
the hint was unlikely to bear fruit, he added dispiritedly, "Excellency
is not, however, a peasant. Sometimes to be a peasant is good."