Teddy woke to a brilliant August sunshine, and that calling of marsh
birds which is not song. He woke with a start and with terror. He was
still on the bench, though turned over on his side, and with the pistol
in view. He needed a minute to get his wits together, to piece out the
meaning of the blackened walls, the sagging floor, and the sunlight
streaming through the rent in the roof. A hole that had once been a door
and another that had once been a window let the summer wind play over
his hot face, bringing a soft refreshment.
Dragging himself to a sitting posture, his first sensation was one of
relief. "I'm alive!" He hadn't done the thing he had planned last night!
Merciful sleep had nailed him to the bench, keeping him motionless,
unconscious. The pistol had lain within reach of his hand, and was there
still; it could do duty still, but for the moment he was alive. Had he
ever asked God for help or thanked Him when it came, he would have gone
down on his knees and done it now; but the habit was foreign to the
Follett family. He could only thank the purposeless Chance, which is the
god most of us know best.
But he was glad. Twelve hours previously he had not supposed it possible
ever to be glad again. It _had_ been a nightmare, he reasoned now, or,
if not a nightmare, it had been thought out of focus. He hadn't seen
straight and normally. It was as if he had been drunk or mildly insane.
He recalled experiences during naval nights ashore, at Brest or Bordeaux
or Hampton Roads, when, after a glass or two of something, his mind had
taken on this fevered twist in which all life had gone red.
Bickley had read this from the lines of his profile. "Forehead slightly
concave; mouth and chin distinctly convex; tends to act before he
thinks." The other traits had been satisfactory, indicating pluck,
patience, fidelity, and cheerfulness of outlook.
The cheerfulness of outlook asserted itself now. Since he was alive on a
glorious summer morning, the two great assets of a man, himself and the
outside world, were still at his command. Nevertheless, he didn't blink
the facts.
"I'm not a thief--but I took the money. They're after me, and they
mustn't get me. I'll shoot myself first; but I don't have to shoot
myself--yet."
He would not have to shoot himself so long as he was safe, and safety
might take many turns. The abandoned, half-burnt sty in which he had
found refuge was a fortress in its very loneliness. Close to the road,
close to Jersey City, not very far from Pemberton Heights, it had
probably no visitor but a toad or a bird or a truant boy from
twelvemonth to twelvemonth.
His chief danger was that of being seen. The door and the window were
both on the side toward the road. By avoiding the one and ducking under
the other, he could move, but he could move very little. That little,
however, would stretch his muscles and relieve the intolerable idleness.
The idleness, he knew, would be irksome. By looking at his watch, which
had not run down, he found it was six o'clock. The six o'clock stir was
also in the air. Motors had begun to dash along the road, and market
garden teams were lumbering toward the big town. He was hungry again,
but with his seven doughnuts still in the bag he couldn't starve to
death.
By getting on the floor he found a peephole just above the level of the
grass through which he could see without detection. This must be his
spying place. Unlikely as it was that anyone would track him to this
lair, he must be carefully on the lookout. What he should do if
threatened with a visitor was not very clear to him. There being no exit
except by the door, and the door being toward the road from which a
visitor would naturally approach, there was no escape on that side.
Escape being out of the question, there would only remain--the other
thing. The other thing was always the great possibility. He hadn't
abandoned the thought of it; he had only postponed the necessity. He
would live as long as he could; and yet the necessity of the other thing
would probably arise. If it arose, he hoped he should get through it by
that tendency which he recognized in himself as clearly as Mr. Bickley
had read it from his profile--to act before he thought.
With this as a possibility, he got down to his peephole, put the pistol
near him on the floor, and began on his doughnuts. For breakfast, he
allowed himself three, keeping the rest for his midday needs. When
darkness fell he would steal out and buy more. He could do this as long
as his money held out, and before it was spent something would probably
have happened. What that something would be he did not forecast. He was
in a fix where forecasting wasn't possible. The minute was the only
thing, and a thing that had grown precious.
Even the family had somehow become subordinate to that. In the
strangeness of his night, he seemed to have traveled away from them. A
man clinging to a spar on the ocean might have had this sense of
remoteness from his dear ones safe on shore. Since they were safe on
shore, that would be the main thing. Since his mother and sisters could
come and go in Indiana Avenue, he could wish them nothing more. That was
the all-essential, and they had it. Want, anxiety, grief, "and no Teddy
coming home in the evenings," were trifles as compared with this
priceless blessing of security.
So he settled down amid filth and slime and the debris of charred wood
to watch and wait and cling to his life till he could cling to it no
longer.
Later that morning, Mrs. Collingham motored from Marillo to see Hubert
Wray's much-discussed picture, "Life and Death," in a famous dealer's
gallery in Fifth Avenue. It had hung there a week, and though the season
was dead, it was being talked about. Among the few in New York who care
for the art of painting, the picture had "caught on." The important
critics had honored it with articles, in which one wrote black and
another white with an equal authority. The important middlemen had come
in to look at it, saying to one another, "Here's a fellow who'll go
far--_en voilà un qui va faire son chemin_." The important connoisseurs
had made a point of viewing it, with their customary fear of expressing
admiration for the work of a native son. From the few who knew, the
interest was spreading to the many who didn't know but were anxious to
appear as if they did.
Junia's introduction to the picture had caused her some chagrin. She had
not ranked Hubert among the important family acquaintances, and when he
came down to Collingham Lodge, for a night or two, as occasionally he
did, she presented him to only the more negligible neighbors. "A young
man Bob met in France," was all the explanation he required.
But in dining out recently she had been led in to dinner by a man of
unusual enlightenment, with whose flair and discernment she liked to
keep abreast. To do this she was accustomed to fall back on such scraps
of reviews or art notes as drifted to her through the papers, bringing
them out with that knack of "putting her best goods in the window" which
was part of her social equipment. Books and the theater being too light
for her attention, she was fond of displaying in music and painting the
_expertise_ of a patroness. She could not only talk of Boldini and
Cezanne, of Paul Dukas and Vincent d'Indy, but could throw off the names
of younger men just coming into view as if eagerly following their
development.
Her neighbor's comments on the new picture, "Life and Death," at the
Kahler Gallery were of value to her chiefly because they were up to date
and told her what to say. "A reaction against the cubists and
post-impressionists in favor of an art rich in color, suggestion, and
significance," was a useful phrase and one easy to remember. But not
having caught the painter's name, she felt it something of a shock when,
with the impressiveness of one whose notice confers recognition, her
escort went on to remark: "I'm going to look up this young Hubert Wray
and ask him down to Marillo. You and Bradley will be interested in
meeting him."
Junia's chagrin was inward, of course, and arose from the fact of having
had a budding celebrity like a tame cat about the house, not merely
without suspecting it, but without keeping in touch with the thing he
was creating. At the same time, she couldn't have been the woman she was
had it not been for the faculty of tuning herself up to any necessary
key.
Her smile was of the kind that grants no superiority even to a man of
unusual enlightenment.
"You can't imagine how interested I am in hearing your opinion of the
dear boy's work, and so I've been letting you run on. He happens to be a
very intimate friend of ours--he comes down to stay with us every few
weeks--and I've been watching his development so keenly. I really do
think that with this picture he'll arrive; and to have a man like you
agree with me delights me beyond words."
It was also the excuse she needed for calling Hubert up. More than two
months had passed since her meeting with Jennie, and the twenty-five
thousand dollars was still lying to her credit at the bank. She was not
unaware of a reason for this, in that Bradley had told her of old
Follett's death, and even a "bad girl" like Jennie must be allowed some
leeway for grief. But Follett had been nearly two weeks in his grave,
and still the application for the twenty-five thousand didn't come.
Unless a pretext could be found for keeping Bob in South America, he
would soon be on his way homeward, and she, Junia, was growing anxious.
To be face to face with Hubert would give her the opportunity she was
looking for.
He met her at the street entrance to the Kahler Gallery, conducting her
through the main exposition of canvases to a little shrine in the rear.
It was truly a shrine, hung in black velvet, and with no lighting but
that which fell indirectly on the vivid, vital thing just sprung into
consciousness of life, like Aphrodite risen from the sea foam. But, just
sprung into consciousness of life, she had been called on at once to
contemplate death, eying it with a mysterious spiritual courage. The
living gleam of flesh, the marble of the throne, and the skull's charnel
ugliness stood out against a blue-green atmosphere, like that of some
other plane.
Junia was startled, not by the power and beauty of this apparition, but
by something else.
"You've--you've changed her," she said, with awed breathlessness, after
gazing for three or four minutes in silence.
"You mean the model?"
She nodded a "Yes," without taking her eyes from the extraordinary
vision.
"You've seen her?" he asked, in mild surprise.
"Just once."
"The figure is exact," he explained, "but I did have to make changes in
the features. It wouldn't have done, otherwise."
"No, of course not."
More minutes passed in silent contemplation, when she said:
"I thought there was more of the gleam of the red in amber in the hair.
This hair is a brown with a little red in it."
"I got it as nearly as I could," he felt it enough to say. "The shade
and sheen and silkiness of hair are always difficult."
After more minutes of hushed gazing, Junia made a venture. She spoke in
that insinuating, sympathetic tone which in moments of tensity a woman
can sometimes take toward a man.
"You're in love with her--aren't you?"
He jerked his head in the direction of the nude woman.
"With her? That model? Why, no! What made you think so?"
Junia was disconcerted.
"Oh, only--only the hints that have seeped through when you didn't think
you were giving anything away."
He said, with some firmness:
"I never meant to give that away--or to hint that it was--that it was
love--a _rouleuse_ of the studios, whom any fellow can pick up."
Junia felt like a person roaming aimlessly through sand who suddenly
stumbles on gold. There was more here than, for the moment, she could
estimate. All she could see were possibilities; but there was one other
point as to which she needed to be sure. It was conceivable that the
thing might have been painted long ago, before Bob's departure for South
America, in which case it would lose at least some of its value for her
purpose.
"When did you do this, Hubert?"
"Oh, just within the last few weeks."
This was enough. With her usual swiftness of decision, she had her plans
in mind.
"What are you asking?"
He named his price. It was a large one, but her balance at the bank was
large. It could be put to this use as well as to another.
"I'll take it," she said, after a minute's consideration, "if you could
let me have it within a few days."
Not to betray the eagerness he felt, he said that it would give him
publicity to keep it on view as long as possible.
"It will be almost as much publicity to have it on view at Marillo."
And in the end he agreed that this was so.
He walked back to the studio as if wings on his feet were lifting him
above the pavement. It was the seal on his success. "Sold to a private
collector" would be a bomb to throw among the dealers, who had been
taking their time and dickering. It was more than the seal on this one
success; it was a harbinger of the next success. And with this thing
behind him, the next success was calling to him to begin.
He already knew what he should begin on. It was to be called, "Eve
Tempting the Serpent." He was not yet sure how he should treat the idea,
but a lethargic semihuman reptile was to be roused to the concept of
evil by a woman's beauty and abandonment. The thing would be daring; but
it couldn't be too daring, or it would bring down on him the
recrudescent blue-law spirit already so vigorous through the country. He
couldn't afford a tussle with that until he was better established.
But he had made some sketches, and had written to Jennie that he should
like to talk the matter over on that very afternoon. She had written in
reply that, at last, she would be free to come. For the first few days
after the funeral she had been either too grief stricken or too busy;
but now the claims of life were asserting themselves again and she was
trying to respond to them. He must not expect her to be gay; but she
would grow more cheerful in time.
So he went back to the studio to lunch and to wait for her coming. Till
she had ceased coming he hadn't known how much the daily expectation of
seeing her had meant to him. The very occasions on which she had, as he
expressed it, played him false had brought an excitement which he would
have been emotionally poorer for having missed. He could not go through
the experience often; he could, perhaps, not go through it again. But
for that test he was apparently not to be called upon. She was coming.
She knew what she was coming for. The very fact that she had written
meant surrender.
And that, indeed, was what Jennie had been saying to herself all through
the morning. Now that there had been this interval, she knew that her
latitude for saying "Yes" and acting "No" was at an end. If she went at
all, she must go all the way. To go once more and draw back once more
would not be playing the game. She was clear in her mind that the day
would be decisive. As to her decision, she was not so sure.
That is, she was not sure of its wisdom, though sure what she would do.
She would do what she had meant to do more than two months earlier.
There was no reason why she shouldn't, and the same set of reasons why
she should. Not only were the money and release imperative, but Hubert
meant more to her than ever. His sympathy through her sorrow had touched
her by its very novelty. He had written, sent flowers, and kept himself
in the background. Bob would have done more and moved her less, for the
reason that doing all and giving all were in his nature. The rare thing
being the most precious thing, she treasured the perfunctory phrases in
Hubert's scrawl of condolence above all the outpourings of Bob's heart.
Nevertheless, she treasured them with misgivings. The consciousness of
being married had acquired some strength from watching the effect of her
father's death on her mother. She had known, ever since growing up, that
her father and mother had been unequally mated. It was not wholly a
question of practical failure or success--it was rather that the balance
of moral support had been so shifted between them that the mother had
nothing to sustain her. "Poor momma," had been Jennie's way of putting
it, "has to take the burden of everything. She's got us on her
shoulders, and poppa, too." And yet, with Josiah's death, some prop of
Lizzie's inner life seemed to have been snatched away. She was not
weaker, perhaps, but she was more detached, and stranger. To her
children, to her neighbors, she had always been strange, always
detached, but now the aloofness had become more significant. With Josiah
alone she had lived in that communion of things shared which leads to
understanding. Now that he was gone, something had gone with him,
leaving Lizzie like an empty house.
Jennie was thrown back on what Bob had repeated so often: "You're the
other half of me; I'm the other half of you." Whether it came through
some impulse of affinity, or whether it was the chance of
conscientiously living together, Jennie wasn't sure; but it began to
seem as if in the mere fact of marriage there was a naturally unifying
principle. To go against it was, in a measure, to go against the forces
of the universe; and though she had only been nominally married to Bob,
she was preparing to go against it. Had she been a rebel at heart, it
would have been easier; but she was docile, loving, eager to be loved,
with nothing more daring in her soul than the wish to live at peace with
the world she saw round her.
Bob's letters were disturbing, too. In the way of a happy future, he
took everything for granted. He reasoned as if, now that they had gone
through a certain form together and signed it with a parson's name, she
had no more liberty of will than a woman in a harem. Little as she was
rebellious, she rebelled against that, preferring an element of chance
in her love to a love in which there was no choice. Bob wrote as if her
love was of no importance, as if he could love enough for two--did, in
fact, love enough for two--so that the whole need of loving was taken
off her hands.
I feel, as if my love was the air and you were a plant to grow
in it. It's the sunshine to which your leaves and blossoms will
only have to turn.
"That's all very well for him," she said, falling back with a grimace on
the language Gussie brought home with her from vaudeville shows, "but I
ain't no blooming plant."
Hubert's love, she thought at other times, was like a rare and precious
cordial, of which a few drops carefully doled out ran like fire through
the veins. Bob's was a rushing torrent which, without saying with your
leave or by your leave, carried you away. She preferred the cordial, of
which you could take up the glass and put it down according as you
wanted less or more; but, on the other hand, when there was a flood
which, without asking your permission, poured all over you, what were
you to do? She knew what she meant to do; but it was the difficulty of
doing it and facing that terrific tide which made her stand aghast. If
Bob would only let her alone....
But, then, Bob couldn't let her alone. He himself would have argued that
you might as well ask a man to let a hand or a foot alone while it is
aching. At the minute when Jennie was thinking these thoughts as she
flitted about the house, he was seated at an open hotel window on the
Santa Thereza hill above Rio de Janeiro, looking down on an iridescent
city creeping round the foam-fringed edges of a turquoise sea, and
saying to himself: "I'm watching over you, Jennie. I'm here, but my love
is there and fills all the space between us. I came away and left you
exposed to all sorts of trouble. I shouldn't have done that; I'm sorry
now I did. I thought that if we were married the rest would take care of
itself; but I see now it couldn't. You're having a harder time than I
ever supposed you'd have, and you're having it all alone; but my love is
with you, Jennie, and the worst can't happen while it protects you.
Dangers will threaten you, but you'll go to meet them with my love
closing you in, and something will ward them off."
"I wish he'd stop thinking about me like that."
Jennie's reference, while she stood at the mirror putting the last
touches to her costume, was to this same thought as expressed in the
letters she received from South America. Its appeal to her imagination
was such as to create an atmosphere wrapping her about as a halo wraps a
saint. She couldn't get away from it. In going to meet Hubert, as she
would do in a few minutes, it would go with her, an embarrassing witness
of the sin against itself.
For the minute, the action of her mind was twofold. She was making this
protest as to Bob and was also giving minute attention to her dress. Not
only was it her first appearance in public since her father's funeral
but it was a moment at which the victim must be neatly decked for the
altar. Having no money to spend on "mourning," she had put deft touches
of black on a last year's white summer suit, to which a black hat thrown
together by Gussie, with the black shoes and stockings already in her
possession, added their mute witness that she was grieving for a
relative. Having, moreover, the native _chic_ which counts for most in
the art of dressing, she was one more instance of the girl of the
humbler walks in life who, by some secret of her own, confounds the
product of the Rue de la Paix.
She was to leave for the studio as soon as her mother got up from her
early-afternoon rest. The early-afternoon rest had become a necessity
for Lizzie ever since the day when Josiah had been laid away.
"You'll call me if Teddy rings," she had stipulated, before lying down,
and Jennie had promised faithfully.
As to Teddy's message, nominally sent from Paterson, Lizzie had betrayed
a skepticism which the three girls found disconcerting. She said
nothing, but it was precisely the saying nothing that puzzled them. When
they themselves grew expansive over the things they would buy with the
money Teddy was going to make, the mother's faint smile was alarming. It
was alarming chiefly because it combined with other things to produce
that effect of strangeness they had all noticed in her since their
father died. Though they couldn't define it for themselves, it was as if
she had renounced any further effort to make life fulfill itself. She
was like a man on a sinking ship, who, after casting about as to how he
may save himself, knows there is no choice left but to go down, and so
becomes resigned. Having thrown up her hands, Lizzie was waiting for the
waters to close over her. Jennie was thus uneasy about her mother, as
she was uneasy about Bob, uneasy about Hubert, and, most of all, uneasy
about herself.
By the time she was ready she heard Lizzie stirring in her bedroom. It
was the signal agreed upon. She was free to go, which meant that she was
free to turn her back on all her more or less sheltered past and strike
out toward a terrifying future. She felt as she had always supposed she
would feel on leaving her home on her wedding day; and she would do as
she had decided she would do in that event. She would go without making
a fuss, without anything to record that the going was different from
other goings, or that the return would be different from other returns.
She would make her departure casual, without consciousness, without
admitted intentions. She merely called to her mother, therefore, through
the closed door, that she was on her way, and her mother had called out
in response, "Very well." This leave-taking making things easier--all
Jennie had to do was to gulp back a sob.