Why Joan? Part 55

"Neutral?" cried the daughter of Richard Darcy. "Neutral? Have you ever seen a pit-terrier jump on a respectable little poodle-dog out in the front yard protecting his household--and were you able to remain _neutral_? I know my country better than that!"

In keeping up with Joan's new activities, the town quite forgot to look at her askance.

Nikolai, too, was making of the war a personal matter. He wrote that he, with other writers in New York, was financing a hospital unit with which he intended to go to France in any capacity where he would be useful. He had been in his youth, among other things, a student of medicine.

"Isn't it fine, Archie?" she cried, thrilling to this letter. "Oh, if we could only do something ourselves! I'd like to send him a contribution for his unit, anyway. May I?"

Archie hesitated. "How much, dear?"

Joan flushed. It was the first time he had failed to give her without question whatever she asked of him.

"Sorry to have to ask," she said, rather stiffly. "But I've given the last cent I had to the Red Cross. Could you spare me fifty dollars, say, and take it out of my next allowance?"

Archie silently got out his check-book.

It troubled her to notice in him something almost like apathy toward the war. The startling headlines, the growing report of horrors, even the eleventh-hour miracle of that stand upon the Marne, moved him to no more than a preoccupied attention. He appeared to concern himself far more with the uncertain state of the stock-market, which he studied a.s.siduously. Joan could not accustom herself to the idea of an Archie commercialized: interesting himself at such a crisis in the world's history merely with money.

An explanation at last dawned upon her. "My dear," she accused him one day, "I believe you've been speculating!"

"Who--me? Oh, every man speculates, sweetheart. Business itself is a good deal of a speculation nowadays. Nothing to worry your precious head about, though."

"Would you like me to economize, Archie, more than I usually do?" she asked.

"Oh, no. You're never extravagant. A little more or less can't matter."

Preoccupied though he seemed, he was never too preoccupied to show her the special consideration and gentleness she had noticed ever since Nikolai left.

"As if he were trying to comfort me!" she thought uneasily. Her queer outburst of nerves with Stefan was something she never allowed herself to think of. She did not quite understand it; and Joan dreaded things she could not understand.

Archie seemed to be developing nerves himself of late. When the doorbell or telephone rang suddenly, he jumped as if he had been touched; and he went to his office almost every evening, coming home late and very tired.

"You're working too hard, old boy," protested Joan. "I'll be glad when the treasurer of your company feels well enough to come back from Saranac and take his old job again."

"He's back now. I expect to turn the books over to him in a few days."

"Good! I'm glad of it."

"Are you?" asked Archie, rather queerly.

"Of course!--though it means less salary, doesn't it? What do we care?

We had enough before. You know, dear, money simply means _nothing_ to me, so long as the bills are paid."

"I know," he said soberly.

Perhaps if she had been less obsessed with the war, Joan might have been better prepared for what was coming....

One day, on her way home from the Red Cross rooms, she bought herself an early edition of an evening paper, and was looking over the headlines when she came across the following:

SHORTAGE DISCOVERED BOOKS OF MOORE AND COMPANY IN HANDS OF EXPERT

Farther down, aghast, incredulous, she read the name of her husband.

When she reached home, he was already there. Johnny Carmichael and Ellen were with him, both talking at once. They stopped as Joan came bursting in.

"Archie! This can't be _true_?"

He had risen to go to her. Now he sank back in his chair, nodding.

"I been tellin' him he's got to git out while the gittin's good,"

muttered Ellen Neal, her language consorting oddly with the tense fear in her face. "Here's plenty of money"--she held out a battered pocket-book. "He can hop on the L. & N. train as it pa.s.ses Fourth Street. They ain't a minute to waste! The main thing's to git him away before they--take him!"

"She's right!" insisted Johnny Carmichael, stuttering with excitement.

"Once he's out of the way, my father'll get everything fixed. He's closeted with Moore now. We've stopped that beastly article in the paper--lots of people won't have seen the first edition. Father's taken on the case--Mrs. Blair, you've got to make Archie _wake up_!"

But Joan could not speak.

Archie rose to his feet again. He seemed invested with a new, quiet dignity. He put a hand on each of their shoulders.

"I'm not going to run, of course," he said. "Thank you just the same.

Now cut along, will you? I want to talk to my wife."

CHAPTER LII

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 a.s.sociation!"

He laughed. "Swallowed up so long ago I'd forgotten I ever had any....