The rescuers began with Effie May, check-book in hand and panting with distress, so upset that she had forgotten to rouge her face; and it ended with Mr. Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing, who intimated that if a couple of thou' at the usual rate of interest would be of any use to Archie, they were his.
The offer that perhaps touched him the most deeply came from the Misses Darcy.
"We happen to be at the moment temporarily embarrassed for funds," explained Miss Iphigenia, at her stateliest, (and looking curiously like her Cousin Richard). "But it will be a simple matter to arrange another mortgage on our house. Dear papa did so frequently, I remember. And of course in a—an accident of this sort—Why, my dear boy, that is what houses are for!"
But to all these suggestions Archie was able gratefully to explain that his wife had already arranged matters. For as soon as she collected her numbed faculties, she had telegraphed to Stefan Nikolai, and he had replied within the hour: "Draw on me to any amount."
"There," she remarked to the weeping Ellen. "That's the Jewness coming out in him, just as you said it would!..."
Ellen did all the weeping that was done in the Blair household during this crisis. The shock seemed to have quite broken her, so that it was the mistress who had to comfort the servant.
"I'd ought to have known," she wailed, "with him lookin' so peakid and all! But I thought it was—something else. Oh, why couldn't he have told me? I could have kep' the bills down more, had pot-roasts instead of fancy-cuts, and hearts—you know how tasty beef-hearts can be, Joan, when I set my mind to 'em! 'T aint as if I wasn't an old hand at makin' things do. But you always had such rich ways, just like your father. And I let it fool me.... Oh, the poor boy, the poor, scairt, lonesome boy, tryin' to go ahead all by himself!"
Joan's heart ached for her husband, too, as much as a heart can ache that seems turned into stone. She felt physically numb all over, except in her brain, and that worked mercilessly as ever—merciless not only to him but to herself. She did not hesitate to put the blame where much of it belonged.
"I have been utterly selfish, one of the vampires that sap a man's strength, his ability, his very decency, and give nothing in return. Yet—does any one but a fool yield to vampires?"
She tried to make for him every excuse he had not made for himself.