Why Joan? Part 49

Joan walked slowly and listened. For all the simplicity of the air and accompaniment, it was an artist who sang, and he sang in Russian.

She was hungry for music. It was one of the things she had deliberately done without of late, p.r.o.nouncing it to herself for some odd reason "not safe." She thought the voice came from the house of a neighbor who occasionally entertained musicians--But she was mistaken. It came from her own house.

She opened her door, and stood there staring into the twilit room, her slim grace outlined against the golden rain of falling leaves outside.

Stefan Nikolai gazed at her over the top of the piano with a quiet smile of welcome, and finished his song. Joan burst into tears.

Had Archie been there, he would have rushed to the rescue, comforting, exclaiming, asking questions; and these methods failing, he would have called anxiously upon Ellen and the bottle of valerian.

But Archie was not there.... Nikolai went on playing softly, until the tears had spent themselves. Then he said as if they had parted yesterday: "I came to see why you no longer write to me, my dear. Is it because you are too happy?"

Joan began feverishly to light lamps and candles. "You must think me a f-fool, Stefan!" She was dabbing at her eyes. "It's just--Mother used to sing that song, you know."

"I know. She learned it from me when you were very little--One is never a fool to weep, Joan. It is only the fools who do not weep."

"Now," she cried, turning in the lamplight. "Stand there and let me look at you!"

He stood where she bade him, a slim, erect, very distinguished figure in foreign-cut clothes, with a rather Mephistophelian close clipped beard, and singularly black eyes, eloquent in an otherwise impa.s.sive face. They met her gaze now so tenderly, so caressingly, that something seemed to melt in her heart which had long been pent there. She held out both hands.

"Ob, Stefan, Stefan! I am so glad!--And how handsome you are! I had forgotten that."

He laughed a little, and bent over her hands, kissing them lightly.

"Why, you've never been so formal as that before!"

"You have never been a grown-up married woman before."

"I see! You mean that we've become the same age now?" She looked at him more closely. "And we have! Why, Stefan, you're nothing like as old as I used to think you!"

"I never have been," he smiled. "I rather fancied you might discover that fact some day. But--you wouldn't wait, my dear." He turned to some packages on the top of the piano. "Have you become too grown-up and married to like presents?"

The brief moment of awkwardness pa.s.sed before Joan was quite sure it had been there. She clapped her hands. "Presents--for me? Oh, and for Ellen Neal, and even for Archie, whom you don't know! Stefan, how dear of you!"

"Your people are my people," he said. "Also, I wish to propitiate them into allowing me the freedom of your company, you see."

"Then you're going to stay for some time?" she cried, delightedly.

"As long as I am allowed to--'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill'--"

"Till he begins to feel an itching in his wanderfoot again," said Joan, making a little face at him. "I know you!"

At that moment Ellen came in to light the lamps. "Oh, you've come, Miss Joan, have you? I thought it was about time! Mr. Archie'll be home before long," she said primly, and was about to withdraw when Joan cried to her, "Nellen, have you seen Mr. Nikolai?"

"Sure I have. How else did you s'pose he got into the house? I'm puttin'

a place on the supper-table for him," she replied, tossing her head.

With years Ellen's temper did not become less difficult; but Joan was at a loss to account for its present manifestation.

"Of course you are," she murmured soothingly. "But I don't believe you've seen the lovely present he's brought you all the way from--Shanghai, is it, this time?"

Ellen drew near, fascinated by the shimmering length of purple crepe.

"Silk! For me? Shucks, what would I be doin' with stuff like that? It's much too fine for the likes of me!"

"Nothing is too fine for the likes of you," replied Nikolai, with quiet sincerity.

"Why, you'll be perfectly grand in it, Nellen, with the Battenberg collar and cuffs!"

She muttered, mollified, "I don't know as a single woman ought to accept such things off a gentleman."

"It's all right if her chaperon says she may," rea.s.sured Joan, keeping a straight face.

But when the old woman had gone, she said to her friend, "I'm ashamed of her, Stefan! I can't think what gets into her cranky old head!"

"It is always so at first. I have to win her confidence afresh each time. I think the faithful soul regards me as a wolf menacing the safety of her sheepfold."

"That's because you are what she calls a 'for'ner.'"

"It's because I am a Jew. Few really practising Christians can find it in their hearts to trust a Jew."

"But you're only half a Jew!"

"You might as well say 'only half a negro,'" he remarked without bitterness. "It is the blood that counts, not the amount of it...."

He had brought her the gray sapphires he once promised her, a long string of them with pearls between, and a ta.s.sel of pearls at either end.

She exclaimed with pleasure, "What an exquisite jewel!" (She had learned more about such things than in the days when she secretly scorned her aquamarine because it was not set in diamonds.) "How the pearls bring out the color of the stones, and how wonderfully they match, Stefan!"

"Do they?" He looked critically from the stones to her eyes. "Yes, they are darker now than the aquamarine. Shadows have come into them--The sapphires are better."

She patted his hand. "It _is_ so nice to have somebody about again who notices whether I have eyes or not!"

"Surely your Archibald notices?"

"If he does he never mentions them! He would think it rather indelicate, like praising something of his own, you know."

Nikolai smiled, gravely. "That is a very safe state for a husband to be in--I hope you do not take advantage of it, Joan?"

She gave him a quick glance. "I wonder what you mean by that?"

But Nikolai did not explain. He said instead, "I am sorry you have no children."

She stiffened. Among her friends it had come to be understood that children were best not mentioned to Joan. There was a hidden bruise which time seemed to have left unhealed.

Nikolai, however, chose not to heed the warning of her expression.

"A home without children in it," he added, "seems to us wandering folk only half a home."

Joan stood up, a hand at her throat. "What do you think," she said in a stifled voice, "it seems to us who are not wandering folk?..."