Always afterwards, in thinking of that nightmare time, Joan remembered
with a stab of remorse that when he held out his arms to her she had not
gone to them--He did not make the mistake again.
In the hour they had together before others came, he made things as
plain to her as he could. The sum was not large as defalcations go.
Moore and Company would not suffer for it--they were a rich firm; and
later when he had served out his term he would be able to pay them back.
This he repeated over and over.
The trouble had commenced with the purchase of the house. It was too
ambitious. Archie, struggle as he might, had begun shortly to fall
behind with the payments, and had borrowed more money on it to meet
them. (Joan recalled signing the papers, which meant nothing to her;
merely "business.") Somehow, what Archie made never went quite far
enough. Not through her fault!--this, too, he insisted upon again and
again. How was she to guess how things were, so long as her own and the
household allowances were paid to her regularly?
"Oh, but why didn't you _tell_ me?"
"A fellow don't like to admit that he's bitten off more than he can
chew, till he's sure."
So he had tried a little speculating, and won; a little more, and won
again. (It was at this time that he bought Joan her modest automobile.)
After that, the story is too trite to need repeating. There came the
depression of 1913, later the cataclysm of the war; and Archie with the
finances of Moore and Company at his disposal. He lost, heavily, and
borrowed to protect himself; recovered enough to replace his borrowings;
went in deeper--and was caught with no means of making good some
$15,000.
"Our house?" suggested Joan, trembling.
"Mortgaged up to the eaves. Our equity in it wouldn't be a drop in the
bucket."
"What about your stock in that Building Association!"
He laughed. "Swallowed up so long ago I'd forgotten I ever had any....
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. Nobody 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' Furnishing, 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 embarrassed 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 attitude 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 associate the two as to associate 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.