CHAPTER IV

WINT TO JOAN

Wint had lived very comfortably that winter, in Amos Caretall’s home, with old Maria Hale to take care of him. In the beginning, when Amos went away, he had protested at this arrangement. He told Amos he would go to a hotel, to a boarding house, hire a room somewhere.... He said he would not impose on Amos by living on his bounty.

Amos laughed at him and said Wint would not be living on any one’s bounty. “I aim to charge you board and keep,” he said. “And that’s velvet for me, because I’d keep the house going anyway. Got to, to keep old Maria. If I ever let go of her, somebody’d grab her in a minute.”

Wint knew it was Amos’s habit to keep the house open and Maria in it, even when he and Agnes were both away; so he accepted the proposition. The board which Amos required him to pay was nominal; and Wint wanted to pay more. Amos shook his head.

“First thing you want to learn, Wint, is never to pay a man more than he asks, for anything. He’ll think you’re a blamed fool.”

So Wint had been comfortable. Maria knew how to cook, she kept the house neat, she picked up after Wint’s disorderliness. And she mothered Wint as her kind know how to do.

He was comfortable, but he was lonely, desperately lonely. Wint was a convivial young man. He liked to be with people. He had never been much in his own exclusive company. Some one said that it is not good for man to be alone; but it is equally true that it is not good for a man never to be alone. Solitude is good for the soul. It gives an opportunity for a certain amount of thought, for taking stock of one’s self. If every one could be persuaded to an hour’s solitary self-consideration each day, the world would be bettered thereby. It is hard to deceive yourself. Wint found out the truth of this in his solitary evenings that winter. He found himself forced to face facts, and face them squarely; he found himself forced to recognize his own mistakes.

Thus his loneliness did him no harm; but it did make him uncomfortable. The fact that he was much alone resulted from two or three circumstances and causes. His father had cast him out; so he saw his father and mother not at all. And he had been accustomed to see them every day, all his life. It is true there had usually been little pleasure for him in these encounters. His father’s harshness, his mother’s garrulous tongue had irked and angered him. They had worked at cross-purposes, as families are apt to do. There had been little obvious sympathy and understanding between them. Nevertheless, Wint found that he missed them; that he missed his father’s overbearing accusations, and he missed his mother’s interminable talk. Once or twice, when he met her on the street, he stopped to talk with her; and he took a certain comfort from the flow of breathless reproaches which poured out upon him at these times. Mrs. Chase was as unhappy that winter as a mother must be when her son is set apart from her; but she was loyal to her husband, and reproached Wint for his disloyalty.

Wint missed Joan, too. He missed her enormously. There was never any doubt that Joan was half the world to him. He had longed for her desperately at times; he had wanted to go and abase himself before her. But he would not; he was strong enough to keep to his own path. And Joan kept to hers.

The fact that Wint and Joan were thus at odds made Wint an awkward figure in any group of young people, because Joan was almost sure to be there. He knew this as well as any one. So when Dick Hoover asked him to go to the dances, he refused because Joan would be there; and when Elsie Jenkins asked him to a card party, he refused again, and for the same reason. But he did not tell Dick and Elsie what this reason was. As a consequence, people stopped asking him to the festivities of Hardiston, and Wint was left solitary.

Solitary, and lonely. He was so lonely, that night of Elsie’s party, that he walked past her house for the sheer, hungry joy of looking in through her windows at the throng inside. He often walked about the town in the evenings, thus. Sometimes it was to pass Joan’s home.... And he did a deal of thinking, and of wondering; and he made a resolution or two....

When Joan spoke to him, asked him to come and see her, Wint experienced a strange revulsion of feeling. He was unhappy, and he told himself he would never go; and he went uptown and dropped in on B. B. Beecham and had that innocuous and idle talk with the editor, which never touched on his troubles at all. Nevertheless, Wint emerged from the _Journal_ office in a more cheerful frame of mind. People were apt to be more cheerful, and more optimistic, and more resolved, after talking with B. B. This was one of the virtues of the man.

Wint decided, after leaving B. B., that he would go and see Joan. Some time.... He decided he would not be in any hurry about it. Next month, perhaps, or next week, or in a day or two....

As might have been expected, the end of it was that he went to see her that night. For Wint was still half boy, with a boy’s impatience; and he had been lonely for Joan for so long. After supper, with the long evening before him, and nothing to do, he thought of going to Joan. He swore he wouldn’t go; but he wanted to, so badly. Why shouldn’t he? She had asked him. He wouldn’t and he would, and he wouldn’t and he would....

In the end, he decided to walk out to her home and see if he could see her, through the window. There was snow on the ground, it was fairly cold. He bundled up in overcoat and cap and filled a pipe and lighted it, and set out. He would just walk past the house, come back another way, go to bed.... That would do no harm.

But even while he tried to tell himself this was what he meant to do, he knew that he would not come back without seeing Joan--if the thing were possible. And when he got to the house, he saw that it was possible. The shades were up at the sitting-room window; he could see her, reading before the fire. She was alone.

So Wint went reluctantly up the walk from the street, and he hesitated at the steps, and then he went up the steps, stamping, and knocked at the door. He heard Joan stirring, inside. Then the door opened, and Joan was there before him. The light behind her shone through her hair; her eyes were dark and steady.

The light fell on his face, and she said quietly: “Hello, Wint. I’m--glad you came.”

Wint took off his cap, and held it in his hand. She thought he looked very like a boy. He said nothing; and Joan moved a little to one side and bade him come in. He went in, like a man walking in his sleep, and she shut the door behind him. Wint stood in the hall as though he did not know what to do. He wanted to run; but the door was shut.

She said: “Take off your coat.” So he did, and laid it on a chair in the hall, and put his cap on top of it. Joan told him to come into the sitting room; and he said huskily:

“All right.”

So they went in and sat down together before the fire. And Wint wished he had not come. He crossed his legs one way, then he crossed them the other. He folded his arms, he folded his hands in his lap, he cleared his throat, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He did not look at Joan; but Joan watched him, and by and by she smiled a little, and her smile seemed like a caress upon his bent head.

Wint said abruptly: “Your people all right?”

“Yes,” Joan told him.

He muttered angrily that that was good; and silence fell upon them again. He twisted in this silence, like a caterpillar on a pin. He was immensely relieved when Joan spoke at last.

“What shall we talk about, Wint?” she asked steadily. “Do you want to talk about your--fight? What are you doing?”

“No,” he said dourly, staring at the fire.

Joan watched him, not resenting his sullenness, because she had understanding. After a little, she said gently: “I saw your mother the other day.”

Wint shot a quick glance at her. He could not help it. “That so?” he asked.

Joan nodded, and she smiled a little wistfully. “Yes. She misses you. She and your father....”

“They haven’t told me so,” said Wint morosely.

“Have you talked with them?” she asked.

“No. My father--” For the life of him, he could not stifle the choke in his voice. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

“You couldn’t, of course,” she agreed, and she looked at him sidewise. “Of course, if you went to them, your father would think you were trying to make up. You couldn’t do that.” There was an anxiety in her eyes; the anxiety of the experimenter. Wint went by contraries. Joan knew quite clearly what she wanted; she wanted him to go to his father. Was this the way to lead him to make the first move?

She was frightened at what she had done when he looked at her angrily. “See here,” he said, “do you want me to go to him? Do you think I ought to?” She was so frightened that she could not speak; but she nodded. Wint barked at her:

“Then why don’t you say so? I’m sick of having people make me do things by telling me not to.”

“I wasn’t trying to--make you do it, Wint,” she said; and she was almost pleading.

“You were; and you know it,” he told her flatly. “Weren’t you, now? Secretly trying to make me....”

Joan could not lie to him. “Y-Yes,” she said.

“Then come out with it,” Wint demanded; and he got up and stamped about the room, and words burst from him. “Joan,” he exclaimed, “I’ve been a fool, and I know it. Am one still, I suppose. Hate to be preached to and told what I must do, and mustn’t. You know that. Result is, I’m always in trouble. Jack Routt, best friend I’ve got, does me more harm than my worst enemy--just trying to keep me straight. I’ve always known it, in a way. Knew I was a fool. But I’ve been just contrary enough to refuse to be preached to. That’s the way I’m made. Only, for God’s sake, don’t you start trying to manage me.” He hesitated, groping for words, and his voice was suddenly weary and lonely as he said: “You ought to be able to talk straight to me, Joan.”

She did not answer for a moment; then she said simply: “I’m sorry, Wint. I was wrong.”

That took the wind out of him. He had hoped she would argue with him. He wanted an argument, wanted a hot combat of words; he was full of things that he wanted to say. To show her.... Justify himself to her. But you can’t argue with a person who agrees with you. He sat down as abruptly as he had risen, and stared again at the fire.

Joan asked, after a time: “Are you sure Jack Routt is really your friend, Wint?”

“Of course,” he said, looking at her. “Why not? What do you mean?”

“I don’t like him.”

He laughed. “A girl never likes a man’s friends. Jack’s all right. He’s a prince.”

“Is he?”

“Sure he is.”

Joan said no more about Routt. She spoke of other things, trivial things; and for an hour she and Wint managed to talk easily enough without touching on forbidden ground. It was not till he got up to go that they spoke seriously again. She had helped him on with his coat. At the door, he faced her; and he asked:

“Joan, d’you really think I ought to--patch things up at home?”

She answered him straightforwardly: “Yes, Wint.”

He looked past her, eyes thoughtful; and at last he held out his hand. “Well, good night,” he said. “Maybe I will.”

They shook hands, and he went out and tramped swiftly back to Amos’s house. There was a bounding elation in him; his head was among the stars.