Why Joan? Part 51

She pulled his ears. "You think because you're in love with me yourself that everybody else is, too! Stefan's about as much in love with me as he was with--baby Joan. It's simply grat.i.tude. Mother was very sweet to him always--I've heard her say that it had been her job, and not an easy one, to restore his faith in women. It seems that he was engaged once to marry a girl who quite understood about his Jewish blood. But when he took her down to the East Side in New York to see the old aunt who had brought him to America, she couldn't stand it. She broke with him, not because of any difference in religion, but because the aunt spoke Yiddish and wore a horsehair wig!--Mustn't she feel like a fool, now that he's become so famous?"

"Well, I don't know," said Archie doubtfully. "I'd kind of hate to have Yiddish and a wig in the family myself."

She looked at him in surprise. "Archie! I didn't know you were such a sn.o.b! So long as Stefan doesn't wear a wig or speak Yiddish, what does the aunt matter! And the funny part of it was that the aunt rather looked down upon poor Stefan because his father had married a Gentile!

So he came to regard mother and me as his only family.... Now run along to bed." She kissed him on his eyes, a caress that Archie loved. "I'm going to take a dose of valerian and have a good night's sleep. It _is_ exciting having your best friend drop down on you from who knows where!"

CHAPTER XLVIII

It proved exciting not only to Joan. Some years earlier the arrival of so distinguished a visitor unadvertised and unpressagented would have caused little more than a ripple, except perhaps among what Joan called the Intelligentzia. But now that _belles lettres_ were coming quite into fashion, the chance of knowing personally a friend of Tolstoi and Maeterlinck, whose articles appeared in all the more intellectual magazines, whose recent book of plays had been published simultaneously in five languages and censored off the American stage into every up-to-date home in the land, was one that could not be ignored.

The Russian servant, too, was a picturesque addition; a great, bearded fellow with eyes like a child, a tall sheepskin _papacha_ on his head, and his trousers tucked into wrinkled boots. This exotic apparition frequently opened the Blair door to visitors, and even waited on them at table, Sacha having without the aid of language won his way somehow to the rather uncertain heart of Ellen Neal; possibly because of his infantile appet.i.te for sweets. He followed his master about like a dog, and whenever Nikolai was in the front of the house, Sacha's broken English and sudden high laugh were frequently to be heard from the rear.

There were a good many callers at the Blair house in those days.

The Blairs, and incidentally their friend, also found themselves deluged with invitations, many of which Joan accepted. She rather enjoyed showing off her lion, whose simple dignity was quite impervious to lionizing. His social successes amused her by their unexpectedness; for Nikolai had no small talk and pretended to none. He paid his chance companions the compliment of believing them to be interested in whatever interested him; and very often they were.

Once, Joan, overhearing him enlarging to an audience composed of Archie, Emily Carmichael, and a particularly frivolous young divorcee of their acquaintance, on the Ostwald formula for happiness, felt called upon to come to the rescue; and received for once in her life a decided snubbing from her husband.

"Don't interrupt, Joan, please!--Mr. Nikolai's telling us something mighty interesting. Go on, sir--G=E^2+W^2--I didn't quite get you about the Huttengluck and the Heldengluck?"

"G," explained Nikolai, "is as you know Gluck (happiness). E stands for Energetics; meaning activity, health, ambition, etc. W stands for Widerwillig, one of those comprehensive words one finds only in the German, meaning everything that runs counter to happiness, all the by-products of activity--opposition, fatigue, trouble, etc. There are philosophers who hold that by reducing E (the activities of life) one also reduces W (the unpleasantnesses), thereby attaining happiness.

Renunciation, you understand;--the simple life, such as that of Diogenes, who threw away his one utensil, the cup, when he saw a man drinking satisfactorily out of his hand.

"But the danger is that in generally reducing the formula, G also is reduced, and may even become minus. At its best the happiness attained in this way is what Ostwald calls Huttengluck (hut-happiness). He advocates instead the Heldengluck (hero-happiness). Square, he says, both your Energetics and your Widerwillig, and the result will be a doubled happiness, robust, vital. In other words, live to the top of your powers, suffer to the top of your powers; and you will be able to enjoy to the top of your powers."

"Sure!" said Archie. "I see that. Me for Ostwald!"

The little divorcee remarked in an aside to Joan, "He certainly does make you think, this high-brow beau of yours! But I _like_ to think, sometimes."

It taught Joan a lesson. She recalled a sentence of Trevelyan's: "A man who has too much sense to overrate his own qualities will often make amends to his self-esteem by underrating his neighbor's."

She realized that she might have been making such a mistake herself. If, as she had complained, there was no real talk to be had in society, were not she and people like her responsible?

If a scholar such as Stefan Nikolai found it worth while to give of his best to simpler comprehensions, was it not pretentious and even ridiculous of a Joan Blair to "talk down" to them, tactfully adapting herself to their limitations while concealing yawns behind her hand? She had the grace to blush for herself....

The companionship of Joan and Nikolai was, as Louisville interestedly suspected, not an entirely intellectual one, however. Like all people who work hard with their heads (and Nikolai spent many hours at his desk daily, even in holiday seasons), he knew the full value of play, and had always been to Joan the most delightful of play-fellows. In her childhood he had often borrowed her for what they called "expeditions"--visits to circuses, zoological gardens, museums; boat-journeys, picnics--always to the surprise of Major Darcy, who regarded a child as a desirable addition to any family, something to be petted, and instructed, and even romped with in moderation, but by no means to be made a companion of.

These expeditions renewed themselves now in modified form. The two were constantly to be met with in the most unexpected places--tramping about the parks in the rain, making tea over a gipsy fire by the roadside, climbing, their pockets bulging with books and apples, to the top of a certain hill whence miles of wild rolling country were to be seen, and the city behind them was as if it had never been. Joan had no longer to enjoy the Beauty of the World alone. The hill became their favorite haunt; and all through the open winter they climbed to its top almost daily, where in the shelter of the cliff they built themselves a little fire and sat, their backs to the world, reading and munching apples, and talking, talking endlessly.

Joan never felt that any subject bad been exhausted between them. It seemed to her that the thoughts of a lifetime had been acc.u.mulating in her mind, waiting for him to pa.s.s judgment upon them; and to him it was no less than a miracle to watch her brain expanding, enlarging, visibly blossoming under the nourishment he supplied.

Perhaps her brain was not the only thing Nikolai loved to watch about Joan. He usually managed to seat himself a little behind her, out of her range of vision, so that his own might rest where it chose, un.o.bserved.

But he asked no more; having learned of life to practise the Huttengluck which he did not preach.

Sometimes Archie made a third on these expeditions; for he had developed a great enthusiasm for Joan's famous friend, and occasionally neglected business to sit at the feet of wisdom. Not often, however. Business had reached a point where it declined to be neglected (the depression of 1913 was at hand); and besides Archie, despite their affectionate welcome, felt rather _de trop_ with the pair.

"I'm no high-brow, and there's no use pretending I am," he confessed once to Emily Carmichael. "But that don't keep me from appreciating high-brows when I see 'em. It's as good as a correspondence-course in literature to hear those two go on. I'm as much out of it, though, as if they were talkin' the French language--which they sometimes are, at that!"

"Archie," asked Emily, hesitating, "are you never the least little bit--jealous?" Her friendship for Joan was too unquestionable for the remark to sound feline.

He laughed. "Me jealous? What for? I've got her, haven't I? And he hasn't, poor chap! Glad to share what I can."

It happened that at the same time this conversation occurred--it was a chance meeting down town, and Archie, always the soul of hospitality, had invited Emily to join him in a cup of hot clam-broth at a soda-fountain--that the pair on the hilltop were not indulging in either literature or the French language. Joan, ensconced upon a bed of leaves with her back against the sheltering cliff and her face warm with fireglow, remarked dreamily:

"Stefan, how have I ever managed to live here so long without you?"

His smile did not reach his eyes; those beautiful, speaking, somber eyes which reflected in them so much of the history of his race. He said, "And how shall you manage when I am gone again?"

She turned quickly to look at him. Something in his voice troubled her.

"Gone--Why, Stefan, you're not thinking of going soon?"

"My book has made great progress here. It is a pleasant place for writing--I have nearly finished."

She gave an exclamation of something like anger. "You said you were going to stay 'as long as possible.' And after all it was only to finish another book!"

"Not quite 'only,' Joan."

"Then," she demanded impatiently, "why do you talk about going? I am still here, whether the book is done or not! Are you tired of me already?"

"What do you think?"

"Have you become such a gipsy that you can't stop anywhere more than a few months?"

"I wish," he said soberly, "that I might put my roots into this hillside like a tree, and never, never stir again, except to the winds, and the sap in my branches, and the seasons as they come and go--"

"And me beside thee singing in the wilderness?" she smiled, as he did not continue. "Say you'd need me here somewhere, even if you were a tree!"

"Every tree has one bird who lives in its branches. I should keep a nest safe for you, my dear--you and your Archie." He broke off. "But I am not a tree, merely a Wandering Jew to whom the time must come again to wander."

"But why, why? It is not as if you belonged anywhere else!"

"Nowhere else in the world, nor yet in Picardy,"

he said. "I have always meant, when I grew old, to come to wherever you may be, and settle down, and grow up again with your children. But it seems the time is not yet. I am--not old."

"You? of course not! You're not even fifty, are you?"

"No," he sighed, "not even fifty. Oh, to be eighty or thereabouts, with the dross burnt out and only the spirit left, free--!"

"I'd hate you to be all spirit, Stefan! Such an uncomfortable, unnatural person to play with: like one of those cherubim, with only wings and no _de quoi_ at all.--(You remember the miracle that happened once, when the Sistine Madonna said to the little angels in the picture with her, '_a.s.saiez-vous, mes enfants._' And they answered, '_Mais, Madame, nous n'avons pas de quoi!_'--) I never could understand people wanting to be old." She made a restless movement. "Perhaps you've had enough out of life to satisfy you, but me--Why, I feel as if I had not yet begun to live!"

"Nor have you," he said quietly.

"_Why_, Stefan!" she demanded, facing him. "Why don't I begin, then?

Surely enough has happened to me, more than to most people. I fling myself into whatever comes along with all my heart. And yet--I don't seem to be there at all! It is as if the real me were looking on at somebody else who struggles and amuses herself and suffers. I'm tired of looking on, tired!"