BEEF TEA
Joan sat back in the machine by the side of Henriette, with a feeling
of tenseness amounting almost to exhilaration. The thing she was
daring thrust, into the background, for a few moments, that for which
she dared. In coming at all she had acted impulsively—had obeyed her
emotions rather than her intellect. There was nothing in Arkwright’s
note to justify the belief that Devons was really in any immediate need
of her. Rather, if the truth were told, she had seized this opportunity
as an excuse for satisfying a certain need in herself. She looked
forward to the possibility of actually making herself of some use as a
hope—a vague and stimulating hope.
As Charles left Washington Square and cut through to Sixth Avenue,
she leaned forward and, with eyes out of the window, stared at the
unfamiliar streets with all the sensations of a stranger in a foreign
city. She had only to turn a little way to the right or left off any
of the ordained avenues to find herself in a New York as new to her as
Cairo. Had she been put down alone here, it is doubtful if, without
much difficulty, she could have found her way home.
So they crossed beneath the Elevated to the hole in the wall and
stopped, as Henriette, with some timidity, exclaimed:
“But, Mam’selle—Charles, he has made a mistake, is it not?”
“I do not know,” answered Joan.
Yet Charles appeared confident enough as he opened the door. What lay
on the other side of that wall he did not know, but he could have taken
his oath it was here that, not long ago, he had landed Mr. Devons.
He pointed to the opening.
“It’s through there,” he said.
“Thank you,” nodded Joan. “You may wait for us.”
Joan herself led the way to the courtyard and she herself found the
number eight with her heart in her mouth. There was no bell, so she
rapped. Mrs. Roberts, on the first floor, came to the door and directed
her up the narrow stairs to Arkwright’s room, and, a moment later,
she found herself confronting the big fellow, somewhat at a loss to
explain intelligently her presence here, because as yet she had not
explained it intelligently to herself. But the moment she gave her
name, Arkwright seemed to understand.
“He’ll be glad to see you,” he said quietly.
“The doctor has been here?”
“Yes,” answered Arkwright, “and he said—why, he said the man hasn’t
been getting enough to eat.”
“But why not?” she exclaimed.
“It’s his own fault—his own bull-headedness. If he had only come to me—”
“There was no need for him to go to any one,” she broke in; “he had
money.”
“He did?”
“We—we are interested in the same business, so I know,” she explained.
Arkwright shook his head.
“I’ll give up trying to find a motive, then. Perhaps he just forgot
to eat. Anyway, he did not get enough, and then he caught cold, and
then—well, there he is. Want to see him?”
She hesitated. Then she answered steadily:
“Yes.”
So with Henriette by her side she followed Arkwright up another flight
and into the little room lighted with a single gas-jet. She had never
seen anything like it in her life outside a few dimly remembered scenes
on the stage. Even now as she stood there she felt as though in some
mad moment she had wandered over the footlights. Then the figure on the
bed lifted himself to his elbow and she saw the haggard face and the
two burning eyes, which she recognized as Devons’s eyes. Quickly she
crossed to the man’s side and held out her hand.
“You?” he gasped.
“You should have told me,” she answered.
“Told you what?” he demanded.
Arkwright stepped forward a moment.
“It’s all my fault,” he explained. “I sent her a note.”
Devons frowned, and then sank back wearily.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Arkwright,” he complained.
“Yes, yes. It was all he could do,” put in Joan. “And it’s what you
should have done. I don’t understand why—you are like this.”
“It’s only a cold. I’ll be up to-morrow.”
Devons was glaring at Arkwright again. The latter retreated out of
range.
“If you didn’t have enough money—”
“I had money enough,” he cut in.
“Then why didn’t you buy proper food?”
“You don’t think I’d waste the firm’s money on myself?”
“Oh, that was it!” she exclaimed, with a catch in her voice.
“If Arkwright—”
“Don’t blame him. There isn’t much use in blaming any one now. You must
get back your strength again. We—we must begin all over.”
“I’ll be up to-morrow, I tell you. Why, that machinery is waiting for
me.”
“Yes? Have you been obeying the doctor’s orders since he left?”
“You aren’t Nurse Ware,” he objected.
“I’m going to be even more strict.”
She turned back to Arkwright.
“What instructions did the doctor leave?”
Arkwright glanced at his watch guiltily.
“Jove, it _is_ time for his beef tea. I’ll go down and make it.”
“I’ll make it—please.”
“All you have to do is to boil some water and add a cube. I—”
“Please show me the range and find the cubes,” she ordered.
The range consisted of an alcohol stove and a tin dipper. Arkwright
lighted the wick for her and filled the dipper with water, and placed
the cubes convenient to her hand. Then it suddenly occurred to him that
he was no longer needed and he retreated somewhat awkwardly to the
door. He saw her slip off her wrap as she sat down before her work. The
sight of her slim neck and white arms took away his breath; then he met
her eyes.
“Thank you so much,” she murmured, as though politely excusing him.
“Only—only too happy,” he stammered.
Devons in the meanwhile was closing his eyes for a moment, then opening
them again, then closing them again, because it was only so that he
could bring himself to believe that she was really here. If he looked
at her steadily for any length of time she grew hazy and he felt
there was danger of her disappearing altogether. Henriette, in the
rear, served in a way as a sort of anchor, but in the shadow he could
scarcely make her out. But Joan was beneath the gas-jet so that if he
did not look overlong he was sure of her.
Her back was toward him and he was rather glad of that. Had she faced
him he would not have dared open his eyes at all. For she seemed to him
now even more radiantly beautiful then ever before, and before there
was nothing whatever beautiful enough with which to compare her. So
that though he continued to try to blame Arkwright for his colossal
nerve in being the direct means of getting her down here, it was a
difficult thing to do consistently, because he was so glad to have her
there.
And yet she did not belong here. In the midst of his joy he told
himself that over and over again. The moment he removed his eyes from
her and looked about at her surroundings she made him feel ashamed.
Every sordid detail grew more sordid. The stark paper on the walls and
the wooden chairs taunted him. They forced him into a contrast with the
clean, good taste of what she had offered him in her home. His battered
old dress-suit-case in the corner thrust itself forward as though
trying to humiliate him. And remembering the dainty china upon which
his meals at her home had been served, he frowned at the tin dipper,
before which she sat watching, like a chemist, for some delicate
reaction.
Then he saw her rise and remove the dipper of steaming water and put in
the cube and look about for a spoon.
“You’ll have to use a pencil,” he said.
She objected to so unprofessional a method, but if he had no spoon
there was nothing else to be done. To-morrow she would come prepared.
She stirred it carefully and brought it to his side. He rose on his
elbow and drank it—as bitter and unpalatable a beverage as a man could
well swallow. She had forgotten to add salt, for one thing. It tasted
of tin, for another. It was too hot, for a third. But had it been
hemlock and she had offered it, he would not have hesitated.
“Now,” she said, “you ought to sleep.”
“With you here!”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Not yet,” he pleaded. “Do you mind just—sitting there?”
She brought the chair to his side and sat down.
“I don’t want to scold you now,” she began, “but don’t you see how
foolish you’ve been?”
“There was so much to be done, all at once,” he explained.
“And you tried to do it all by yourself.”
“There was no one else.”
“There was I. Why, I—I’ve been doing nothing all this while.”
“You did your share when you made everything possible.”
She shook her head.
“I can’t claim credit even for that. But please don’t talk. Please—just
listen.”
So while he lay there flat on his back cursing to himself the weakness
that made it necessary, she told him of her preposterous plan. He would
need some one in the office as a sort of bookkeeper, and though she did
not know very much about bookkeeping she could learn and perhaps could
help in other ways.
“For one thing, it seems to be necessary for some one to make sure that
you take care of yourself.”
“If it hadn’t been for this cold—” he started to explain.
“If you had eaten properly you wouldn’t have caught cold,” she cut him
off. “There is not the slightest use in the world to argue about it.”
He was at a distinct disadvantage. In the first place, it is difficult
to hold your own in an argument when lying prone even if you have all
the right on your side. Again, though he was trying his level best
to appear normal there was between his eyes a pain so sharp that at
moments it made him blind. Finally, it seemed inevitable that, once she
made up her mind, she should have her way in whatever she desired.
If one were to direct her at all it must be in some earlier stage.
He tried to go back a little to find where he was at fault, but that
involved too much effort.
Besides, the one big, white fact, that made every other fact appear
petty, was that now, at this moment, she was here. Yesterday, last
night, and all to-day, until Arkwright had come up, he had lain here
alone fretting over lost time in a fashion that threatened to double
and treble the toll of wasted hours. And he had thought if only he
could see her for a second—just catch a glimpse of her passing on the
street—that all the strength would come back into him.
“I think I had better read to you,” she decided. “Perhaps it will help
you not to think.”
The only thing she could find was a textbook on chemistry, so she
picked up that and began at page one. It was not very interesting, but
that was so much the better. She plunged ahead in a low monotone, and
mispronounced frightfully many of the words she met. But she kept on,
conscious that his eyes were upon her. She kept on and on paying no
attention to the meaning of the text—kept on and on, until she heard
him breathing slowly and naturally. As soon as his eyes closed, she
stopped and waited a moment, ready to begin again if they opened.
Then she rose and moved on tiptoe to the table. She took the pencil and
scribbled a note upon a piece of blank paper she found. It read simply:
I shall be here at ten to-morrow.
JOAN FAIRBURNE
She slipped this into the book and placed it on the chair near the bed.
Then moving toward the door she beckoned Henriette to follow.
At Arkwright’s suite below, she paused and knocked again.
“I must leave him with you now,” she announced as he appeared. “But
I shall be here in the morning. He is to have his beef tea every two
hours.”
He nodded and escorted her to the machine. He watched it scoot away
beneath the Elevated toward Washington Square.
“Good Lord!” he gasped, “if I thought anything like that would run over
me I’d take a chance.”