Why Joan? Part 34

And Joan, listening to the same soft rain, so full of suggestion and race memories and the call of the year, also reminded herself that she would have to be careful. She thought of his humble, adoring, happy eyes, and her heart smote her. This one was not quite as other men. To hurt an Archibald was a trifle beneath one's dignity.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

The career of Lizzie (whose surname may perhaps be guessed by the intelligent reader) was short, and her end untimely; but even so she served her part in the inscrutable purposes of Fate.

It came about in this wise.

Archibald had formed quite a habit of calling for his lady, not only on fine afternoons after five, but sometimes in the balmy spring nights after dinner, when all the world meandered two by two, occupying the benches in the little park opposite Joan's house, and filling the roads with a streaming procession of motors and traps and buggies, of anything that went on wheels; even perambulators.

Joan rather enjoyed being part and parcel of this murmuring, meandering community. She liked to feel in touch with the people about her, like any Miss Gracie or Miss Ella with a beau--particularly when it cost no effort. She had but to lend her company, and Archibald would do the rest. He asked no more from her than her presence.

Each time he came for her, Lizzie had acquired some new elegance; dust-covers, a side-mirror, a voice that sounded like a Packard's, at least. Not a car on the road exhibited brighter bra.s.swork than hers. If the chariot was not altogether worthy of the lady, it was through no fault of Archie's. Lizzie, like her owner, strove to please.

Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her specialty.--"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and abetting him.

But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions.

All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company, for as long as she was willing to grant it.

His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a saddle-horse, or a coach and four--at any rate with something more suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if not an opportunist.

So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the wilderness--a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however: until the day that marked the pa.s.sing of Lizzie.

They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less careful than usual.

It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze full into the headlight of an approaching pa.s.senger train. He had not enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop where he was.

"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into the track just ahead of the rushing engine.

Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out shriek after shriek.

"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."

He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at thirty, forty, fifty--with a pop a tire blew out.

"Get that door open," he shouted at Joan, above the hissing steam.

"Don't jump till I say the word. Trying to make a flat place. You hear?"

Joan nodded. There were deep gullies on either side. She glanced over her shoulder. The engine seemed almost on top of them--But Archie kept his eye on his mirror.

"Can't make it," he said suddenly. "All ready? Now! Jump!"

To the after mortification of her entire life, Joan could not move. She understood the necessity, her head was quite clear and calm, but her limbs refused her bidding.

The next instant he had seized her, tossed her out like a bundle, she was falling--falling....

There came a crash, the splintering of gla.s.s and iron.

Long after she was able to, Joan dared not open her eyes. She fought back the coming of consciousness, tried not to think.

She was on a moving something--a wagon perhaps, or a train. There was murmuring of voices near her. She strained her ears. The voices were strange.

She wanted to pray, but could not remember G.o.d's name.

She was lying on some sort of lounge--a leather lounge. She lifted her lids very, very slowly. She was in the smoking-compartment of a train--alone! Where was he? She tried wildly to sit up--to call out--

And then something moved beside her on the edge of the couch. It was a head, a bowed, curly head which she recognized and which belonged to a figure that knelt beside her in an att.i.tude of utter despair.

"Oh, Archie, Archie!" she whimpered. "Then you _aren't_ killed!"

The head jerked up. The next instant she was in his arms, her face against his. She was being kissed and kissed again--eyes, lips, cheeks, hair--whatever he could reach. She could not stop him. She did not try to stop him. Indeed there was something consoling, comforting in those frantic kisses, all wet with tears, and fiercely tender with the pa.s.sion of one who has brought his treasure single-handed out of the jaws of death.

"My G.o.d! My G.o.d! My G.o.d!" said Archibald; and nothing else.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

Two days later he came to see her, with a good deal of court-plaster about his face, and limping on a sprained ankle; and found Joan in bed with a wrenched shoulder, otherwise unhurt. Effie May convoyed him amiably upstairs and left him there, to his intense perturbation. He stood sheepishly beside the door, hardly daring to look at the pale, laughing face among the pillows--that face with which he had taken such amazing liberties.

Joan in a _peignoir_, with her hair in a great braid on either shoulder, looked more like the little girl he had first seen weeping alone on the train, than the composed young lady of ballrooms and horse shows. Yet his awe of her was not lessened. On the contrary. Once before, when she lay thus helpless before him, he had forgotten himself. Suppose his emotions were to form the habit of running away with him? He clenched his hands hard.

This timidity on his part did much to restore her own shattered composure. She had been rather dreading this interview to which she had steeled herself. Better to get it over and done with, however, since the thing was inevitable. She could not quite ignore what had pa.s.sed.

"You might come closer," she suggested. "I really don't feel strong enough to-day to converse with you through a megaphone."

He seated himself gingerly on the edge of the chair she indicated, looking everywhere but at Joan.

"Oh, Archie!" she cried, suddenly tremulous, "wasn't it _terrible_?"

He started. "Terrible" was not the word in his mind. "Outrageous,"

perhaps--but by no means terrible! "W-what?" he said.

"Why, the accident! Poor, poor Lizzie! Was there anything left of her at all?"

He found his voice. "Oh, Lizzie? Well, not much except her license tag."

"Her poor precious little license tag!... Well, that will be useful anyway, for the new machine."

He shook his head. "I guess there isn't going to be any new machine."

"Oh!" she flushed with quick sympathy. "You mean you--you can't afford another?"