PART I

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM

By ADRIANA SPADONI

BONI AND LIVERIGHT

PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.

_All Rights Reserved_

_First printing, December, 1919_

_Second printing, February, 1920_

_Third printing, April, 1920_

_Fourth printing, August, 1920_

_Fifth printing, February, 1921_

_Printed in the United States of America_

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Jean Norris came slowly down the Library steps, passed the Chemistry

Building, and took the worn path across the campus to the brush-lined

creek. The hot stubble burned through her white canvas shoes and fine,

gray dust powdered the mortarboard and black graduating gown she

carried over her arm. With one stride she crossed the trickle of water

and scrambled up the opposite bank.

"Lord!" She drew a deep breath of the shaded coolness and, taking off

the mortarboard, ran the tips of her fingers under the heavy plait of

pale brown hair. "Thank God this day is nearly over." She dropped to

the carpet of dead leaves under the scrub oak and, with her knees drawn

up to her chin and her arms clasped about them, looked out through the

lattice of green. With definite appraisal her gray eyes went slowly

from one building to another, out across the parched campus, past the

grateful green of the entrance oaks, to the strip of town beyond and

the Bay, glittering in the hot May sun. A tolerant smile flicked the

corners of her mouth.

It was over at last. The four long, interminable years had culminated

in a series of fitting ceremonies. All day streams of students had

flowed through the buildings, swept the campus, overflowed into the

town. Well dressed parents from San Francisco and country parents,

uncomfortable in their unusual clothes, had rushed helplessly about,

harassed by the necessity of remembering many directions, of being in

certain spots at certain moments, of not asking foolish questions and

so disgracing their children. Flustered and important, the graduating

class had appropriated the earth.

Through the throng, instructors and assistant professors had moved with

weary, anxious faces as if, in the graduating of each class, they heard

another hour strike in the clock of their lives. Committees, distinct

with colored badges, exhausted with importance, had misread hours and

locations, given directions in college vernacular so explicit that no

stranger could understand them, overlapped, performed one another's

duties, apologized, pretended it was all going smoothly. Everywhere

well-bred, managed confusion had exuded like a fog.

Exactly at twelve, in a silence so intense that even the sun hung

waiting in the zenith, the graduating class had wound its last solemn

pilgrimage across the campus. First the aged president, bent, as if in

scholastic humility, beneath the great weight of his Doctor's scarlet

hood. Then the guests of honor, sleek and prosperous men, followed by

the professors in order of their rank and departments, and finally

five hundred students, two by two, awed by the seriousness of what lay

before them.

To Jean it had seemed hours while the aged president piped of Life's

ideals, the security of college, the pitfalls of the world. Each May,

for twenty years, he had stood so, each year a little more bent, and

piped of the world beyond. Parents had furtively wiped their eyes and

students made heroic resolves.

Then, with a trembling gesture of his strengthless hands, he had

offered the graduating class to Life. One by one they had filed

up, received their diplomas and hurried back to their places under

scattered puffs of applause from relatives. It had seemed to Jean that

it would never end, but forever black gowned figures would be going

forward to get slender rolls of white paper.

In the general confusion of congratulations that followed, Jean had

caught sight of her mother, slipping unobtrusively away. She had not

expected her mother to seek her out, but there was something so small,

so self-effacing in the figure hurrying to take up again the endless

round of duties which the graduation had momentarily interrupted,

that Jean's eyes had filled with tears and she had escaped from the

chattering crowds as quickly as possible.

Now it was all over. The deserted campus lay silent in the late

afternoon sun, and the empty buildings rested from the ceaseless

chatter. So alive was the Future, waiting for the signal to start, that

when the clock, hidden in the woodbine of the Library tower, struck

four, Jean jumped to her feet, shook her shoulders as if freeing them

from the clutch of the years behind, and turned away.

"It may be peaceful--I suppose it is. But so's the grave."

As she came into the cool dimness of the Girls' Rest Hall, Patricia

Farnsworth rose from a hammock.

"Well, for the love of Mike, where have you been? I looked everywhere,

until I couldn't stand another minute."

"If you looked as violently as you appear to be doing this instant,

I don't wonder you didn't find me. Library--off the main line of

travel--only safe place to-day."

"Never thought of it. Gee, but I'm all in. I wouldn't graduate twice

for a thousand dollars."

Jean threw her cap and gown on a couch and stretched beside them.

"Well, twice wouldn't be so bad, if you did it just for yourself. But

when you insist on doing it for the whole class, Pat, of course----"

"Oh, shut up. Somebody's got to do the dirty work. Fond parents loose

their moorings and drift worse than sheep."

"'Moored sheep drifting!' Patsy, how on earth did you ever make Hoppy's

English?"

Pat giggled down to the depths of her stocky body. "'Moored sheep,'

is going some, but honestly they were worse. I told one bewildered

old party a dozen times if I told him once, that all exercises were

scheduled for out of doors and nothing was taking place in the

coal-cellar of North Hall. He had a perfect obsession on the cellar.

Wandered into it every time I turned my back."

"Well? How was he to know that everything was being managed--'with an

executive precision never before equaled in the handling of so large a

class'?"

"Get out. It's all right for you to talk when you wouldn't be on a

committee to oblige the President of the United States."

"I _would_ not. Of all the piffling rubbish! If you all feel as badly

as you pretend to do at getting out of the cage, why don't you just go

and get your diplomas and sneak away to weep in private? And if you're

not sorry to get out, and feel like this--this mess of jubilation, why

don't you say so? Conventional sentimentality! It makes my tummy turn

over."

"You ought to be all turned over and spanked, Jean. Some day you're

going to be found frozen stiff in your own logic."

"Pat Farnsworth, I wouldn't mind beginning instanter. I never was so

hot in my life. Me for tea. On a day like this my English grandparent

bellows for his tea."

"Bellow on, George III. I'll get it. I've been cooling off for an

hour." Pat started for the kitchen with the same vigorous efficiency

that ran her many committees, paused, and with an almost shy smile at

Jean, crossed to the front door and locked it. "We don't want any one

butting in, do we?"

Jean had risen and now she put her arm about Pat's shoulder.

"Oh, Patsy," she whispered, "when you're gone----"

"Don't Jean. Don't. Something will turn up. It must."

Jean's lips trembled. "When you say it like that I feel sure myself for

a minute. But----"

"Are Tom and Elsie going to stay _all_ summer?"

"Yes. This is the supreme chance of mummy's life to make herself

uncomfortable, and she won't lose it."

"Don't, Jeany. I hate you when you're bitter like that."

"I can't help whether you do or not. It's true."

Jean's arm dropped from Pat's shoulder and she stood frowning. "I have

never been able to make you understand, but nobody who hasn't lived

and breathed and petrified in Christian Duty for years could. It's the

wickedest, most hellish misconception the brain of man ever conceived

to make this rotten scheme of things rottener. It's done more harm in

the world than the Seven Deadly Sins put together. It----"

"Don't, Jean."

"You were brought up where religion was a kind of entrée, but with

mummy it's the whole meal from soup to fingerbowls. God lives right in

the house with us, and interferes in everything we do. Think of it,

Patsy. For thirty years, mummy hasn't eaten a meal she didn't cook

herself. That translation I'm going to do for Renshaw would give us a

couple of weeks somewhere. And are we going? No. Because Tom Morton,

who was some distant relative of father's, who's been dead for eighteen

years and whom mummy didn't love when he was alive, chooses to appear

from nowhere and dump himself and his fool wife and disgusting baby on

us, mummy conceives it her duty to stay all summer cooking for them,

and waiting on that idiot Elsie because she's going to have another. It

makes my soul shiver, it makes me so mad. And I know what will happen.

You talk about my logic. It's mummy who has all the logic in our

family. Because she's saddled with these she'll say she might just as

well have others, and we'll have every slab-chested old maid who comes

to summer-school and wants to get the best food in town for nothing.

Mummy will roast all July and August and say they were very nice people

as long as they don't turn her out of her own house."

"Can't you make her see that----"

"Make her see! What chance have I against God Almighty? You don't

understand the basis of the whole business. 'Whom the Lord loveth, He

chasteneth.' When He stops loving He stops chastening. So it's up to

the believers to get all the chastening there is."

"Don't, Jean. There must be more in it than that." Jean dabbed at her

eyes and crossing to the sink filled the kettle for tea.

"Well, maybe there is. But when you live with it you're too near to see

it. It's either that, all summer long, waiting for something to turn up

out of the blue, or going away to teach. Sometimes I don't know which

is worse."

"Now, Jean, we've hashed that over and settled it a million times. It's

ridiculous. After all you _are_ rather like mummy, you know. There are

millions of things to do when you've got ordinary intelligence, but

just because you loathe teaching you've picked it out as the one thing

that'll come your way. How about that translation? How do you know it

won't lead to something else?"

"Because I want it to so terribly hard, Patsy. I know, Pat, I suppose

I do rant, but I guess I've got what Dr. Harper calls 'The Imagination

for Pain.' I do want things so hard that I just can't imagine getting

them."

"Doesn't say much for your imagination, no matter what Harper calls

it. But it isn't that. It's just conceit, not another thing. You're so

proud of that analytic brain of yours that you work it on everything.

The minute you get a glimpse of some happiness you drag it into that

mental laboratory and tear off its flesh, and you never stop until

you've busted the poor old skeleton to bits. Why can't you let things

go about with their clothes on?"

"I do."

"No, you don't. And when you do get it stripped it isn't any more of a

truth than it was with its clothes on."

Pat's color deepened and she looked away in genuine embarrassment, for

in the emotional reticence of their friendship they were oddly like two

men. At long intervals Pat's love and admiration forced her to try and

make Jean see things simply and clearly as she saw them herself.

"And it's such a lonely job, sitting there by yourself prying the

barnacles off every old oyster that's been struggling to hold its

clothes on ever since the world began."

The mixture of figures was too much for even Jean's very genuine mood.

"Oh, Patsy, you are the joy of my life. But I can't help it if I prefer

my oysters without their clothes on."

"Yes, you can. And I hate to think of you not getting every scrap of

joy there is in life. Sometimes it seems to me you just won't take

things when they're right under your nose. Sometimes, you make me feel

like a demented ant running about in a circle, and then again I know

I'm right. While you sit round waiting for Life, it's being lived all

round you. And yet, when you talk that way you make me feel as if you

were sitting away off on a cloud somewhere, playing on a golden flute,

while I'm down below leading a circus parade--beating a drum in a cloud

of dust."

Jean sputtered into her cup and put it down for safety.

Pat grinned. "Well, the figure may be mixed, but that is precisely the

way I feel. And I don't want you to sit up there always."

"But I will do things as soon as I get them to do. I can't pretend a

doll's alive when I know it isn't."

"But they'll always be dolls if you go at them like that."

"No, they won't, Patsy. There must be some real live things in the

world. And I'm going to get them. Even if I have to fall off my cloud

and break my golden flute."

Jean bent and for a moment Pat's arms clasped her. Then they stood

apart, smiling.

"All right. Go to it, old girl. Only yell in time so that I can get out

from under. I never expect to have more than one drum in my life and I

don't want it busted. You're no fairy."

When the dishes were finished they locked up, hung the key on its nail

outside among the wistaria, and went. At the corner of the street, Pat

turned toward the town, while Jean continued straight on toward the

foot of the hills.

From his comfortable rocker on the porch, Tom Morton looked up from the

evening paper.

"A great day, wasn't it?" His broad face beamed with unintelligent

good humor as he put down the paper preparatory to a chat. "You look

terribly important in that rig, Jean. Makes me feel like I don't know

how to write my name."

"Well, you won't feel like that much longer. It's the hottest rig ever

invented."

"You all did look kind of red round the gills. I say, Jean, who was

that girl that got the gold medal? Didn't look to me like she was

terrible smart."

"She stood higher than anybody else."

"Wasn't you due for something extra? Seems to me a girl that gets a job

helping a professor at his own work must be some bright."

"It's not really much of a job, just a few weeks."

"Graft, them medals, I guess, like everything else. There isn't a field

in this country to-day----"

But Jean had disappeared.

In the hall she almost collided with Elsie, trailing wearily from the

kitchen with a great bowl of salad. Elsie put down the bowl and caught

at her.

"Oh, Jeany! It was too wonderful. I never was so thrilled in my life!

I don't believe I _ever_ realized what college could mean before. If

I only had had the chance! When I heard that darling old man talking

about life--oh, Tommykins has just got to go when he grows up, if we

_starve_ to put him through."

"Can't be done without food, Elsie." By a supreme effort Jean succeeded

in speaking lightly, but when Elsie showed signs of being about to kiss

her, Jean escaped to the kitchen.

As she entered, Martha Norris emptied the creamed celery into a blue

willow dish, and wiped her damp forehead with her apron. Her mouth

drooped with fatigue but she smiled. Jean crossed the room quickly and

took her mother in her arms.

"Mummy, you're not going to have a bad headache?" She framed the small

face in both hands and looked down into her mother's faded eyes.

"Why, no, dear. It's just the heat and the excitement. It's been a big

day for me, Jean. Then I got a little late and that always flurries

me."

Jean drew her mother closer. "I'm not going to let you work like this

any more. You're going to take things easier now I'm through, whether

you want to or not."

"Now, Jeany, you know I'd be perfectly miserable idle."

"There's a lot of difference between idleness and this." Jean's hand

swept the hot kitchen and the stove covered with pans. "You slave and

what for? They don't even thank you."

Martha Norris laid her work-scarred hand on Jean's arm.

"You forget, dear--'Whatever ye do, do it all to the glory of God.' And

it means _everything_, just as it says, even washing pots and pans."

Jean's arms dropped and it seemed to her that the rigid little body

within stepped back almost with a sense of release. It was as if her

mother had stood so long alone, that any other expression must always

be a slight strain.

"Shall I serve the beef, mummy?" Jean picked up an oven cloth and moved

to the stove.

"No, dear. It'll spatter and your dress is as clean as when you put it

on. If you'll just cube up the cheese--I _am_ getting behind and it's

almost six now."

CHAPTER TWO

As Jean had predicted, the summer was a hard one. Martha Norris

insisted on taking summer students to board, closing every argument

against it with gentle insistence on her own preference.

"If you really want me to be happy, Jean, let me manage the house as

long as I can."

That she might some day be physically dependent on others was the one

fear that her deepest prayers had not been able to out-root. So Jean

yielded.

All summer the house was crowded. The long, hot days were followed by

long, monotonous evenings, filled with the complacent mediocrity of

the fat Tom, the whinings of the ill-trained Tommykins, the nagging of

Elsie.

The boarders ate hurriedly and had no topics of conversation except

the schools from which they came and the courses they were taking. For

the most part they were women past middle age, all driven by necessity

of one kind or another, always striving to get as much for as little

as possible. They seemed to Jean to have been cheated of something

and to be resentful, some fiercely and some in a timid way that was

pitiful. Most of them thoroughly hated their work, which they defended

in high-sounding phrases against the attacks of outsiders, and tore to

pieces among themselves.

When Jean hoped she would never have to teach, they looked at her

venomously and said it was a wonderful work for which few were

naturally fitted. They were like wax-works, most of them, rather

scarred and worn, wound up and kept going by the fear of a younger

generation, a newer output from the educational factories, who might

usurp their places.

The only bright spot was the translation with Professor Renshaw. Jean

buried herself for hours in the library and even succeeded sometimes in

escaping dinner on the ground that it was too far to go home and back

again in the evening.

But as the weeks passed and the work neared completion, she found it

difficult to keep the hope that every letter from Pat held out:

"Something will happen. It must. You see, Horace will rescue you yet."

"Tell him to hurry," Jean wrote back toward the end of August. "I feel

the walls of an ungraded country school closing about me."

With her mother, Jean never discussed the subject, for she knew that

every night, to the long list of blessings Martha enumerated and the

few favors she asked of Heaven, was added a petition that "a way would

be opened up to Jean." It made Jean furious to be prayed over and

sometimes she felt that having to teach would be almost compensated by

proving the inefficacy of prayer.

But when the release came, Jean forgot her anger, swooped down upon

Martha in the kitchen, took the paring knife from her hands, and

waltzed her mother about the room.

"Now, mummy, you've simply _got_ to stop. I _cannot_ divulge the

greatest news of the age while you pick worms out of an apple."

"There aren't any worms in these. I made Joe take those others back and

change them. It was robbery. Well, dear, what is it?"

"Mummy, you've got to promise to be excited. I'm just about ready to go

up in smoke."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. I'd tell the person I wanted to

excite what it was about. Did Dr. Renshaw double the check?"

"Better. Heaps."

"He's got more translation. I knew----"

"Oceans better than that."

"Well, I'm sure----" The clock struck five. Martha removed Jean's arms

gently but firmly from her shoulders and turned back to the table.

Jean laughed. "I suppose I shall have to let you enjoy it in your

own way. Go on and finish. Then wash your hands and sit down on the

hardest, most uncomfortable chair and I'll tell you."

"Don't be silly, dear. It doesn't matter what it is, I shall have to

have dinner on time to-night, won't I?"

"Yes, I suppose the animals would have to be fed even if the ark was

sinking."

Jean sat on the edge of the table and watched her mother trim the pie

edges, with sure, quick strokes and her whole attention. When Martha

closed the oven door, she glanced at the clock to be sure of the

moment. Before the astonishing news that Jean was about to divulge, the

pies might be forgotten. Jean laughed aloud.

"Now." Martha smiled as she took the chair Jean indicated. "The court

is in session."

"Well," began Jean, "I took that last lot up and he looked it through

in that dead-fish fashion of his without a word. He always does, sits

there and goggles as if he were just going to pounce on a mistake, and

all the time I know it's all right. I didn't expect him to say anything

nice, but I thought he might give me an opening and I had my little

speech all ready. 'If this has been satisfactory,' et cetera, but I

knew if he didn't say anything at all I could never get started. He

freezes me clear through."

"The world wasn't made in a day, Jean."

"I know that. But I never could see why. If I could do a miracle at

all, I'd have done a whopper."

Her mother's eyes filled with tears and Jean jumped down and knelt

beside her.

"I'm sorry, mummy. I didn't mean to hurt you. It was cheap. Only that

was such an endless ten minutes until he took a bundle of letters

out of his pocket. He said he had something he thought I might be

interested in, and then that human fossil actually pawed over those

papers three distinct times and grunted and shook his head and wondered

whether he'd lost it and began all over again while I stood wondering."

"That seems the usual method of announcing news among scholars." A sly

smile twinkled in Martha's eyes.

"But honestly I nearly died. I was trembling like a leaf."

"Jean!"

"Worse. Shaking with ague. Then right out of the bundle he'd looked

through a million times, he drew a letter and handed it over. The

Mercantile Library in San Francisco wants a cataloguer and asks him

if he knows one. The head librarian is a friend of his and he's

recommended me. Do you hear, mummy Norris? I've got a job, got a _job_."

For a moment Martha did not answer. She sat with her head bent and her

tired hands at rest in her lap. Then she looked up and smiled.

"When do you begin?"

"I'm going over to see about it to-morrow."

"You're not absolutely sure?"

"Yes, I am. I'm going to be sure to-night even if I never get it."

"Now, Jean. You----"

"Don't, mummy, please don't. Don't tell me any more about patience and

the right thing coming. I've got to get this or I'll die."

"It takes a lot to kill." Martha spoke quietly, and getting up, went

over to the oven.

Jean felt as if a spring inside her had cracked and wondered why it was

always so when she tried to talk to her mother. Outwardly Martha Norris

was the least emotional person in the world but she managed to extract

a lot of it from those near her. The most casual conversation usually

ended in a tensity out of all proportion to its importance and left

Jean with a sense of the futility of trying to make things different.

It was with a distinct effort that Jean put her arms again about her

mother.

"Now, mummy, I am going to get it. What's more, I'm going to move you

over to the city, into a place that won't be big enough for you to have

any duty to any relative of anybody's. So there. Now kiss me, like a

nice, obedient mother should."

Martha smiled, and standing on her tiptoes kissed her big daughter.

Jean went whistling from the room.

When she had gone Martha Norris closed her eyes for a moment and

a look of perfect faith and devotion flooded her. In such moments

she was beautiful, like some frail saint, glowing with the fire of

self-surrender, strengthened beyond the power of human understanding.

But no human being had ever seen Martha alone with her God.

The next morning Jean left the house early. The sun touched the Bay

to millions of glittering points, and beyond it, wrapped in a haze of

smoke and coming heat, the waiting city sprawled on her hills. Jean

could feel it, a magnet drawing her and all these strangers massed

together on the sunny deck.

As the boat neared the dock she went and stood in the stern and looked

back at the little town, a mere spot at the base of the Berkeley hills.

In her very definite sense of escape there was a touch of sadness. She

was like a person who, having escaped from a terrible catastrophe,

looks back from a point of safety and mingles with his sincere

gratitude, a regret for some small souvenir he has been unable to take

with him. She thought of Elsie in her dragging kimono waiting on Tom

at breakfast; of the dead, habitual kiss they would exchange when he

started to look for the job he never found; of Tommykins, bewildered

in his disordered world of alternate slapping and petting. And of her

mother, trotting about in her endless routine. She was sorry for them

all.

Waiting in the outer office of the Chief Librarian, Jean felt the

Future coming towards her, stepping swiftly through the stillness, a

stillness vibrant with accomplished purpose, the secure accomplishment

of many thousands of books. So sharp was the feeling that, when at

last footsteps moved behind the door marked "Private," Jean rose as

if about to face a mysterious force, made suddenly material for her

understanding.

"This is Miss Norris?"

The Chief Librarian stood before her. He was tall and thin and gray,

with long bony hands that looked as if they would always be cold. He

was like a new chisel, straight and narrow and sharp-edged. He waved

Jean back to her seat and took one himself. Then he sat, staring beyond

her, as if his progress through the silent realms of spirit had been

rudely halted by this collision with a corporeal body.

"You've done library work before?" The question came so unexpectedly

that Jean started.

"No." The monosyllable reverberated through the ordered stillness. She

felt as if she had thrown a stone at the Chief Librarian.

"Um." In the mental isolation of his daily life, this misfortune

arrested his pity. "I believe you did some Latin translation for Dr.

Renshaw?"

"Yes, the Odes of Horace."

"Promising--quite. But of course Horace is not library work." The tone

conveyed that this was not Horace's fault, however. "Still, in this

work you will find, Miss Norris, that every scrap of human knowledge is

profitable. I might almost say necessary. It is its wonderful variety,

roots in all fields, that makes our work so interesting."

"It must."

"Exactly. Now the question is, Miss Norris, would you be willing to

begin at the bottom, sorting? Cataloguing comes next, and then----"

But as if fearing that he was being carried away in an excess of

enthusiasm, he qualified. "Of course that is if we find it mutually

satisfactory."

"I should be willing to begin anywhere. And I have done a little

sorting and cataloguing. The library I used for Horace was in something

of a mess, and I had to straighten it out before I could begin."

"Exactly. But you will understand, Miss Norris, that no part of our

library is in a mess." The shadow of a smile touched his lips and was

gone. It was as if a cosmic joke, millions of miles off, had been

softly whispered to him. "And now, as I have a very busy morning, I

will hand you over to my assistant, Miss MacFarland."

He touched an electric button in the wall. With no preliminary sound

the outer door opened.

"Miss MacFarland, this is Miss Norris, recommended by Dr. Renshaw. She

will help at first with the new consignment."

His tone admitted Miss MacFarland to the depths of his official being.

She nodded.

"Will you come with me?"

Without waiting for Jean to answer she began moving noiselessly away on

her broad, rubber-soled shoes. She was very slight and gave an effect

of deep brownness. She wore a brown serge skirt and a brown silk waist

with a brown Scotch pebble pin. She had brown eyes that looked muddy

through the thick, myopic glasses, and a braid of dank, brown hair

framed her narrow face.

Through the big reading room, empty at this hour, Jean followed, down a

rear stairway, along a narrow cemented hall into a storeroom, dim with

a ground-glass window protected by an iron grating. Miss MacFarland

indicated the great number of packing cases by a nod as she wound her

way among them to a farther door. She might have been a guide in the

underworld leading the latest spirit to its appointed task. She opened

a door, and a sudden glare of morning sunshine filled the place.

"This is the room you will use for the present."

There were two large windows open now on a tiny strip of lawn that ran

along this side of the building. A redwood table and bench took up one

end of the room. There was nothing else in it except six huge packing

cases.

"I'll send you down an apron and sleeve protectors and have Timothy

unpack the cases."

She looked about to make sure she had forgotten nothing, and moved

toward the door.

"Is there any special rotation you want the cases opened in?"

Jean asked it to pretend experience more than from any idea of its

mattering. But she saw by the expression behind the thick glasses that

it did make a difference and that Miss MacFarland had forgotten to tell

her.

"I was going to tell Timothy, but perhaps I had better mark them."

From the pocket of her black apron she drew a piece of red chalk.

"The political economies are needed in a hurry and they are in this

crate. Then the histories, natural science, miscellaneous, fiction and

poetry. If you get into difficulties you can telephone up."

When she had gone Jean stood for a moment just where she was.

"Oh Patsy, a corpse has a sense of humor compared to a librarian! But

it's nine a week."

CHAPTER THREE

Every morning at eight Jean crossed the Bay and every night at six

she returned. The trains and the boats were always crowded, and very

shortly Jean came to know certain faces and to watch for them. She

liked to speculate as to what these people did, how long they had been

doing it and whether they liked it. When she had made up her mind

about a man or woman it always disappointed her to have to readjust

her deductions by catching scraps of conversation that upset her

theories. She often had to do this, however, because she was always

making sweeping generalizations based on tenuous details. There were

certain groups that came and went together, and although they seemed

to have no connection beyond this short trip twice a day, they always

looked eagerly for each other as if in dread of having to make the

journey alone. They resented ever having to sit anywhere except in

their usual places, and each group surrounded itself with a barrier of

self-centered interest that separated it from every other self-centered

group.

At first Jean ate lunch with Miss MacFarland and two other women

workers, but, as she wrote to Pat, it made her feel "like a mouse

nibbling at the edges of a book," and as soon as she could, broke the

arrangement, and took her lunch to a nearby park. Here in the seclusion

of a thick hedge, little birds came for crumbs and beyond the hedge,

unseen people crunched the gravel and Jean caught scraps of their talk,

unconnected bits, like scraps of patchwork.

She liked to tell Miss MacFarland about these unseen people, draw

pictures of the comedies and tragedies beyond the hedge, because Miss

MacFarland always listened so politely and looked so puzzled. Her thick

brown eyes searched vaguely for the point of the story, and Jean knew

it was only because the cataloguing was well done, that Miss MacFarland

did not consider her a lunatic.

But as the weeks passed and the newness of the work dulled to a routine

of writing the names of books on cards and putting numbers after them,

Jean began to wonder whether in time, she, too, might not come to look

vaguely for the point of a story, and prefer to drink strong tea in a

stuffy room. At first the idea amused her and she elaborated it in a

whimsical letter to Pat, but with the coming of the winter rains, the

whimsy died, and the vision of herself in broad-toed shoes and black

silesia sleeve protectors, began to follow her home every night. Now

the crowds on the boat were damp and peevish and, when the boat docked,

each scuttled for his own shelter, indifferent to the others.

But it was on wet Sundays that Miss MacFarland persisted beyond Jean's

power to dislodge. Then Tom lounged all day in smoking jacket and

slippers, dropping into brief slumber in his chair, while Tommykins

cut up the colored supplement of the day's paper on the floor. Martha

prepared elaborate meals and went to St. Jude's in the early morning,

at four in the afternoon and eight at night. Between cooking and

church, she read the lives of Anglican saints, alone in her room.

With the lighting of the street lamps on these wet Sunday nights, the

town sank into the stillness of death. Only once, during the evening,

did the silence ever part, to let the worshipers from evening service

slip through. With soft padding of rubbered feet, a few figures slipped

by the window, stealthily, as if afraid of desecrating the holiness of

the Sabbath by any motion of their bodies.

At exactly five minutes before ten, Martha came cool-skinned from the

dampness. If Jean was in bed, Martha always sat for a few moments on

the edge. They never had anything particular to talk about, because

nothing ever happened in the interim of her absence. But in these

visits, Martha would strip bits of the sermon from their religious

setting and offer them off-hand to Jean's intelligence. She never urged

Jean to go to service, but Jean knew that in this simulated comradeship

on the bed, her mother was trying to keep her in touch with "holy

things," to counteract in a small part the godlessness of her days.

And sometimes it made her want to cry; the little figure, carefully

stripping away the phrases that annoyed, and trying to link up some

old, dead form with the rush of life, was so alone in all that meant

most to it. Alone with God and unaware of loneliness. So content with

nothing.

It was after a particularly depressing Sunday in January that Jean came

back to work on Monday morning with so fixed a certainty of becoming in

the end like Miss MacFarland, that not even the relief of an unexpected

blue sky after days of rain, and respite of lunch in the park had

been able to dispel it. Now, in mid-afternoon, she stood by the open

window, waiting for Timothy with a fresh supply of books. It was one of

those perfect days between rains when sunshine filters clean air, and

cool little breezes lurk in the shade. The narrow strip of lawn below

the window sent up a spicy sweetness that made Jean resent the walls

about her, three more hours of cataloguing and all the restrictions

that hemmed one in against one's will. The air had a livingness in

it that mocked any gratitude for these few moments she was free to

enjoy it. Looking up at the fleecy tufts of white clouds drifting in

the blue, Jean felt as a very poor person feels watching the wasteful

extravagance of the rich. Something in her called to the perfect

freedom of the little clouds, the inexhaustible blueness in the sky,

the tingle in the air. She felt stifled, held by something she could

not see, kept from something she had never had.

Jean was decidedly cross. She wondered whether, if she told Miss

MacFarland she was ill and wanted to leave earlier, because it was

such a lovely day, the thick brown eyes would bore into the truth, and

what would happen if they did? Would Miss MacFarland ever forgive an

assistant who wanted to stop working because there were little white

clouds in the sky?

"Oh Lord!" Jean leaned out the window, drawing deep sniffs of the damp

earth.

"Miss Norris."

Jean jerked back quickly and the blood flooded under her fair skin at

the sight of the Chief Librarian standing beside her.

"Miss Norris, this is Mr. Herrick. Franklin Herrick of the Sunday

_Times_."

He beckoned to some one still in the shadow of the storeroom and the

next moment a tall man with a young face and thick fair hair stood

looking at Jean. Jean never knew afterwards whether it was her own

embarrassment or not, but in that first glance at Franklin Herrick

she had a strange impression of receiving a very distinct picture of

something naturally indistinct. He gave a feeling of great physical

strength and yet looked as if he would always be too lazy to use it.

His eyes were clear, deep blue and far apart, as if he went through

life seeing very clearly. But the lower part of his face was heavy and

his mouth contradicted his eyes. It was soft and full and not at all

hidden under a small, close-cropped mustache. There was something large

and curved and whitish about this tall man standing before her, with

the faintest touch of amusement in his eyes, that made Jean think of

the big gulls that circled over the ferryboat night and morning. She

bowed slightly and wished she could stop blushing.

"Mr. Herrick is doing some special work and will need Division Z 21,

which I understand is not yet catalogued. If you have no objection he

might work down here, as Miss MacFarland tells me you are on Z 21 now

and it would save him time."

The Chief Librarian spoke in a dry, thirsty tone and with fixed pauses,

so that one got the impression of hearing the punctuation. And although

he asked permission, his tone conveyed that Franklin Herrick would work

in the basement whether it were convenient to Jean or not.

"That will be all right. I began Z 21 Saturday." Jean felt compelled

to say something and at the same time the uselessness of saying it.

"There's a small table in the storeroom. I'll have Timothy bring it in."

"Oh, no, please don't do that. It's not necessary--unless you prefer

it."

Franklin Herrick spoke rapidly in a high, thin voice. It caught and

held Jean's attention as the tinkle of a small bell would have done,

if unconsciously she had been expecting a gong. She raised her eyes

and looked at him, her own embarrassment gone. Herrick understood.

Extraordinarily sensitive to the impression he made, especially on

women, he knew that the thin quality of his voice had destroyed his

first impression of strength. The feminine timbre of his voice was a

trial to Herrick and always made him feel at the mercy of the person

who noticed it. He had tried for years to deepen the tone and usually

made a conscious effort at a first meeting. But for some reason,

coming on this big, fair woman sniffing the air, had made him feel as

though he knew her, linked them in mutual understanding against the

Chief Librarian and made them seem like old acquaintances. The little

incident annoyed him intensely.

He crossed to the table and appropriated one end by pushing back the

books in a business-like fashion.

"I do not need much space and this will do. I shall probably be through

in a day or two."

At the same instant Timothy appeared whistling, with a truckload of

books. At sight of the Chief Librarian he checked the whistle, just as

Jean had stopped sniffing, so suddenly that even the Chief Librarian

turned and looked curiously.

Jean's eyes met Herrick's, and they smiled. When Herrick smiled at a

woman he seemed to include her in something very intimate, something

fine and delicate, a little beyond words. In some way it shamed Jean

for the surprise she had felt at the quality of his voice. It was as if

she had shown surprise at some physical defect.

"If there is anything that Miss Norris cannot do for you, if you will

just ring that bell." The Chief Librarian looked vaguely about, lost in

a world not his own, and went.

Separated by the length of the table, Jean and Herrick stood looking

after him. Then, simultaneously, they looked at each other.

Jean laughed.

"He made me feel as if I were doing something disgraceful."

"Worse. Something not quite nice." Franklin Herrick chuckled. When

Herrick laughed his voice was higher and thinner than when he spoke,

but when he chuckled there was something warm and young about it.

Herrick had discovered this very early in life and rarely laughed

aloud. When women first heard Franklin Herrick chuckle they usually had

an impulse to touch him, which impulse they called maternal or were

afraid of according to their past experience. Jean, however, had no

impulse to touch him, but she noticed the chuckle and liked it.

As she took her place at the table and watched Herrick cross the room

for a chair, she felt that the set of his shoulders, the texture of

his clothes, the very motions of his body as he lifted the chair, were

not external, but expressed something within the man, just as the

deft motions of Martha's hands expressed her indefatigable obedience

to the drudgery of small things. And Jean liked the thing they

expressed. Without defining it in words, she felt that it was something

indestructibly young and buoyant and clean. It belonged with his eyes

and not at all with the rather heavy lines of his chin and throat.

With a smile, Herrick drew forward a pile of books, and in a moment was

hard at work. But only the surface of his brain was concerned with his

notes. He knew that, from time to time, Jean glanced at him, and that,

for some reason, she had changed her first estimate of him. Vibrant to

any criticism, Herrick resented the implication that there had been a

readjustment, and yet delighted in the result. For Jean looked as if

she usually made up her mind instantly from trifles and seldom changed.

She looked stronger and spiritually simpler than any woman he had ever

met, as if she had been born and raised in wide spaces and carried the

standards of the mountains with her. He could not picture her large,

white hands ever trembling, nor her clear, gray eyes clouding with

indecision, but he was sure that if he let the least hint of this

sureness into his eyes, her fair skin would flush.

It was almost five when Herrick slipped the notes into his pocket and

pushed back his chair.

"Through?" The brusqueness of Jean's tone annoyed him, for he had

decided to stay and talk for a few moments, and the indifference in her

question made him feel that Jean had shut a door he was about to push

a little open.

"Yes. For the present. But I shall have to put in some licks to-night."

He picked up a volume and looked inquiringly at her. "I don't suppose

there would be any objection to taking this out, even if it isn't ready

for circulation yet?"

"I don't know. It is against the rules."

"Perfectly good reason for taking it then."

"Just let me have it a moment. I'll make out a slip and number it."

He returned it with the look of one submitting to a foolish respect

for childish rules and Jean felt like Miss MacFarland as she wrote

Herrick's name and the name of the book on a pink slip. Herrick put it

into his pocket.

"Thanks. It will help a lot having this. You can picture me digging my

way through it in the small, wee hours, Miss Norris," he added as he

took his hat and this time turned to the door.

The assumption that she would think of him at all annoyed her, and kept

him in her memory almost constantly for the next two days. Jean laid

this to the interruption of the usual routine. Having the mechanical

intervals of Timothy's appearance broken by the unexpected advent of

a newspaper man, who turned the rules of the library about, gave her

several contradictory impressions of himself and ended by making her

feel like a child, naturally stood out sharply in her day's work. So

for two days Jean continued to think about Herrick and to be annoyed

because she did.

On Thursday Herrick appeared suddenly about noon. He was in a great

hurry. He returned the book, and took another, which he handed to

Jean to note as she had done before. He seemed preoccupied and made

no effort at conversation. It was evidently an afterthought that he

turned on the threshold and called back:

"Paper goes to press to-day. Haven't time to breathe."

Jean had wondered at his altered manner, but his explanation seemed to

accuse her of having shown it. She gave the slightest possible nod to

acknowledge that she had heard him and went on with her work.

On Friday Herrick did not come. Jean wondered whether he was through

with his work now that the paper had gone to press, and just what

special duties going to press involved. It sounded interesting and

much more vital than anything connected with a library. An incongruous

picture of the Chief Librarian rushing something to press tickled her

fancy.

On Saturday, Herrick appeared directly after lunch.

"Well, back again." Something in the tone, the look that accompanied

them, showed that he had missed coming, and now entered again into a

congenial atmosphere. It seemed to throw them a long way forward in

mutual understanding.

"Going to press must be a ferocious business." Jean smiled across the

table and made no effort to pretend work. When Jean smiled, something

cold in her face melted.

"It is. I always feel as if I had been caught in a cyclone, carried

violently round in a circle and deposited in the spot I started from.

You see there's the same pother every week, and we're always caught in

the same rush. Newspaper work's a rotten grind, anyhow."

"To outsiders it always sounds nerve-racking excitement. What on earth

would you do if you had to catalogue books all day?"

"That is pretty bad." Herrick's eyes softened as they always did when

he was making a woman understand his understanding.

Jean felt that without meaning to she had told this stranger a great

deal about herself. Almost as if she had told him of her mother, of

Tom and Elsie and Tommykins and the long, interminable Sundays. She

flushed. Instantly the understanding vanished from Herrick's eyes and

he shrugged indifferently.

"I suppose anything we have to stick at feels the same way."

"Did you get your work done the other night?" Jean asked it after a

pause in which she wondered what she could say that wouldn't sound as

if she had been thinking about him.

"Oh yes, indeed. But it was a hard pull. If you knew me better, Miss

Norris, you would congratulate me on that achievement." He looked like

a mischievous boy expecting to be punished.

Jean smiled in sympathy. "What on? Sticking to a disagreeable job till

it's done?"

"Well, put that way, it does sound rather bald. But you see The Bunch

was having a blow-out and little Franklin had to stay in his attic and

work. Maybe if you knew what The Bunch can do in the way of highjinks,

even you'd be sorry for me."

"Maybe I would. Are they such terribly enticing affairs?"

"Oh, sometimes we get a bit rowdy, but usually we're perfectly

harmless--just conversation and music and food and meeting each other.

We're congenial and interested in the same things, and keep each other

from getting into a rut. Sometimes when one of us goes away or comes

back, or sells a picture or an article, we have an extra celebration.

That's all."

"It sounds--awfully interesting."

Herrick leaned across the table and said in a boyish, hesitating

fashion:

"We do have some pretty good times. If you think you'd care for it, I'd

like immensely to bring you round some evening."

"I'd love to." Jean was a trifle breathless.

"Some of us have made good and some of us are--popularly nobodies.

There's Matthews and Harcourt, landscape, and Fletcher has done some

fine things in bronze. Tolletson's in drama production and Freeman,

Gerald Freeman, is going to be heard of with short stories. Maybe you

know his stuff. He had a story in _Scribner's_ last month. Then there

are the girls, none of them are exactly famous yet; and the rest of us

just jog along."

But Jean had stopped listening at Gerald Freeman's name. She had read

the story and sent it to Pat. Its delicate subtlety had haunted her

for days. And now she was being asked to meet him and others like him.

She was being asked as if it were a favor to the big man with the kind

eyes, sitting across the table. Jean tried to keep the excitement out

of her voice as she answered.

"Yes, I read that story. It was so very--perfect."

"Yes. His things are that, those half elusive, dream things. They

always make me think of small, finely carved ivories."

"I should like to meet him very much."

"Well, Freeman himself isn't here now. He's getting too famous to stay

long in one spot, but--there's the rest of us."

Jean felt that she had been rude in her special interest and added

quickly: "I'd be just as pleased meeting 'the rest of us.'"

"Then we'll settle it right now. Saturday's the best night. The

unfortunates don't have to get up early, and we generally have more

hilarity than just the usual nightly dinner. Could you come to-night?"

"I'm afraid I can't to-night."

Jean had never wanted to do anything so much in her life, but she could

not picture herself ringing up her mother and saying that she would not

be home to dinner.

"It is rather short notice. How about next Saturday? Have you that

free?" Herrick saw that she wanted to come and wondered why she

couldn't.

Under her pleasure that the invitation had not been postponed

indefinitely, Jean had an almost irresistible desire to laugh at the

idea of her having any night that was not free.

"Yes. Next Saturday's all right."

"Then I'll call for you about seven?"

"I don't live on this side."

The difficulties of meeting some one at seven, when she would be

through by half past five, occurred to her, and she wondered where

girls met men and how she could pretend this was not as new and

exciting a situation as it was.

"Great. You get through about five, don't you? I'll call here and we'll

find some way to kill the time between."

"Fine." Jean made the monosyllable as comradely as she could, and

flattered herself that she had carried it off very well.

Herrick turned to the books and in a few moments was hard at work.

Jean's confusion had delighted him, and destroyed the slight annoyance

he had felt at being carried away by such a foolish impulse as to

ask her at all. It would be delicious to watch the reactions of this

shy woman in the sophisticated world of The Bunch. He decided to say

nothing about her beforehand, and enjoy to the full their surprise

when he appeared,--a little late, he would see to that--with Jean in

tow.

"She'll hit them like a blast of north wind. I shouldn't wonder if

Kitten doesn't actually shiver."

The prospect of watching The Kitten shiver pleased Herrick immensely.

CHAPTER FOUR

Exactly at half past five Herrick came. The thick hair had been freshly

cut, and he wore a suit that Jean had not seen before. He looked young

and very happy and full of joy in life. As they came down the library

steps and joined the after-matinée crowds, it seemed to Jean that

Herrick stood out from other men, bigger, cleaner, stronger. There was

something in him, burning below the flesh, that whitened and sharpened

him, so that the lines which were sometimes dull and heavy when he

bent intently over the books across the table, were now finely cut. He

walked beside her as if he were walking lightly on springy ground, and

the memory came back to Jean how, the first time she had seen him, she

had thought of a gull, a strong, white gull, poised in flight. It was

impossible to believe that it was only two weeks ago, and that she had

seen him, in all, not more than seven or eight times.

Herrick made no effort at conversation as they threaded their way

through the crowds. He was not at all sure of his ground with Jean,

for his first interest had deepened in the two weeks to an intensity

that surprised him. To be interested in a woman who was not obviously

pretty, whose life lay well within the circle that The Bunch called the

Outland, who made no effort to attract him, who never, by the slightest

feminine trick, tried to rouse his interest, a woman who had been

through college and was earning her own living and yet had something

cloistered about her. She piqued Herrick's curiosity. One by one he

had seen his small efforts drop like spent arrows against the wall of

her sincere but unemotional interest.

"She's either the most subtle thing that God ever made, or else----"

Herrick did not know what else. But he would find out.

When they had left the more crowded streets behind, Herrick stopped and

looked at his watch.

"It's only six, and it's not much good getting to Giuseppe's before

seven. What shall we do? Go round to Chinatown and have tea, or would

you like to go up to Flop's studio? He's the father of The Bunch, you

know, and maybe you'd feel as if you knew him better if you saw some of

his stuff first."

He stood looking down at her with a smile that consulted only her

preference, and showed none of his own eagerness that she should choose

the latter. When Franklin Herrick was trying to break through the

reserves of a woman, he looked like Sir Galahad going to battle. It

always filled the woman with a rush of tenderness, and a longing to

stand for something fine and real in his life.

"Besides, I'd like to show you some of Flop's stuff for its own sake,

and we won't get a chance after dinner, when the whole Bunch is there.

We are a noisy lot, Miss Norris. You must be prepared for anything."

"Oh, I can make a lot of noise myself. And I'd like awfully to see the

pictures."

"This way, then. We'll go down through The Coast, if you don't mind.

It's quicker."

His tone apologized for the street into which he turned, in a way that

made Jean want to laugh at the idea of her needing protection, and at

the same time delighted her. She had never been in this part of the

city before, and she looked about her with interest.

Skirting the edge of Chinatown, beyond the boundaries of the big

bazaars, they touched the poorer fringe of the Latin quarter, where

dirty black-eyed babies tumbled in dark doorways, and tired women

with bundles of food under their shawls hurried by, dragging hungry,

screaming children by the hand. Here the narrow streets struggled up

steep hillsides, as if in a forlorn hope of reaching quiet above.

Everywhere was dust and noise and the harsh voices of men screaming at

each other in the rough Sicilian dialect.

Then down through the sordid section that lies between the White World

and the Yellow, where mean, gray houses cling hopelessly together, like

the poor for comfort and outcasts for respectability. Where the tides

of Barbary Coast wash the world beyond, Herrick paused. Then he plunged

in.

It was early and The Coast had not yet come to life, but to Jean it

was filled with the rumblings of the swelling tide. A drunken sailor

lurched from a dance-hall. A mechanical piano ground out a popular rag.

A painted woman with sodden, indifferent eyes looked from a window and

laughed shrilly. Other women, powdered to a deathly whiteness, turned

to stare after Jean and Herrick. Their eyes were sometimes scornful,

sometimes curious. When they brushed close to Jean she felt herself

turn a little cold and sick.

Once when she was a small child, while playing in the garden Jean had

accidentally plunged her foot through the planking of an unused well

and had felt the cold blackness sucking up. For months after she had

had a terror of that end of the garden, and could feel the bottomless

blackness drawing her. Now the same feeling reached out from these

painted women, and Jean drew a little closer to Herrick. There was

something horrible and black and hidden, the same black oozing mud

that lay at the bottom of the old well. These men and women who moved

and talked like herself and Herrick were down there, crawling about.

She drew nearer still to Herrick. For the first time he touched her,

slipping his hand under her elbow.

"We'll soon be out of it."

Then he began to talk of his work at the library. He had another week

of it before he would be through.

"And I'll be glad of it in many ways. If I had to go on much longer

digging that dry rot out of books I'd quit my job."

"But in a way you put life in it, rearrange it, make it your own."

Herrick laughed. Like the echo of a memory Jean's repugnance to that

high, thin laugh returned. But it seemed trivial now that she really

knew him.

"There's nothing to make one's own in the whole business. It hasn't any

permanence. Not a scrap of reality. It is not _my_ work."

Herrick had said this so often that he believed it, and his voice was

bitter with reproach. "You see it's not so bad so long as you don't

want with your whole soul to do something else. It's the knowing and

not being able to get at it that's hell."

Jean remembered her hatred of teaching and the misery of that last

college year. And she had only known what she hated and not at all what

she wanted. What was it that this man wanted so much that the thought

of it changed his voice and made him seem suddenly older? She longed to

ask, but felt that he had expected her to understand and she did not

want to fail him. The next moment he answered it himself.

"Several years ago I mapped out a novel and I've never had time to

start it. I can't work sneaking moments. I'd have to have a straight

sweep--and so I don't start it. But it gnaws there just the same."

"'Gnaws.' That's exactly what things do when they have no outlet."

He turned quickly. "Do you write, too?"

"No."

"But there's something you want to do. You couldn't understand if there

weren't."

Jean shook her head. "It's mostly concerned with not wanting to do

things. I have no special talent."

"How do you know? Have you tried anything?"

The irritation at her modesty was flattering. Jean flushed.

"No. But I have no faith in hidden genius. I'm twenty-four, you know,

and it would have showed before this."

Herrick felt that she would have confessed to thirty-four just as

readily. Her frankness repelled him.

"I don't know about that. I don't believe that we all instinctively

know what we want to do. Most of us have to live some time and be hurt

a lot before we find out very much about ourselves."

"I suppose we do," she said humbly.

Herrick thrilled at the note in Jean's voice. But he went on in the

same serious way as if he were being forced almost against his judgment

to let Jean into his confidence.

"For years the longing to get things down on paper haunted me, but I

only knew that I was miserable and felt stifled. It wasn't till I came

to the city, here, that the puzzle suddenly fitted into place." He

stopped and made a quick sweeping gesture with both hands. "Wouldn't it

be great to get all this, all the heat and noise and mud and life, to

get the whole hot, seething pain on paper! God, what a picture!"

Something came into Jean's throat and hurt.

"It would be glorious." She felt that Herrick had been granted a

fineness of spiritual vision she could never hope for. It coarsened her

that she had seen only the dirt and squalor of the vice, while the man

beside her had grasped something beneath that linked it up with reality

even as they both knew it, a kind of cosmic unity too finely toned for

her ears.

"You must do it. You _must_. Don't let an impulse like that die. It's

worth any sacrifice, anything. Can't you really get at it?"

Herrick looked quickly away. "Perhaps," he said shortly, "some day, if

the conditions are right, I may."

He did not take Jean's arm again and in a few moments they came to an

old loft building with a dark, yawning entry.

"Here we are." They turned into the blackness, and Jean felt it close

about them.

"It's a rickety old hole, but Flop would suffocate any place else.

Perhaps I'd better take your hand. The stairs aren't all they might be

and you don't know where the broken places are."

Jean gave him her hand and they went up through the blackness together.

At the bottom of the last short flight they stopped.

"Flop usually lights the lantern. He must have forgotten. Just wait

a moment." He left her and ran lightly up ahead. Jean could not see

him, but she could feel him looming above her on the landing, and hear

the low rustle of his clothes as he felt hurriedly through them for a

match. She had never before been so alone with a man.

"Oh, shucks!"

The word dropped on the tensity of Jean's mood like a drop of ice

water. She wished he had said "damn." It was like hearing a lion say

"Tut!"

"I guess I'll have to lead you. I haven't a match and there are none on

the ledge. Flop must be out."

They went up the few remaining steps, along a narrow hall to a door at

the end of a passage. Herrick turned the handle and stepped back to let

Jean enter. But Jean did not move.

"Oh," she cried softly. And again: "Oh."

"I'm glad you like it," he whispered after a moment, and drew her

gently across the threshold and closed the door.

Every cent that Flop had made for the last three years, and much that

he had borrowed, had gone to the fitting of this room. The walls were

of gray, satin-smooth eucalyptus. Soft, worn rugs lay before great

couches piled with pillows. Along the west wall, wide windows ran the

length of the room, from the rough stone fireplace to the glass door

that opened on a tiny iron balcony. All the windows were shaded now

with heavy green curtains run on silken ropes. The afterglow of a

scarlet sunset came in rose and pale gold through the curtain openings,

and lay in pools of light on the dull rugs.

Herrick's hand took Jean's without pressure, so that it seemed part

of the quiet beauty of the room, and they crossed to the window. The

hills beyond the Bay etched themselves in faint purple and amethyst on

the paling sky. They stood silent, looking out across the low roofs,

to the Bay, with its wall of hills and the white ferryboats moving

majestically in the dignity of distance.

At last Jean turned back to the room.

"One could do great things here," she said slowly as if thinking aloud,

unconscious of Herrick's presence.

"Yes. One could do great things, _if_ one were happy."

The emphasis drew her attention and she looked at him.

"Isn't he happy? It doesn't seem possible, quite, to live in a room

like this and not be happy."

"Flop? I don't know. As happy or unhappy as every one else, I suppose."

Herrick's eyes sought the Bay again. She was impossible as a grown

woman. She was more like a boy, with her annoying way of looking

straight into his eyes, and her silly, impersonal interpretations.

No doubt she thought that all Flop needed was a room like this, and

twenty-four hours a day, to paint masterpieces. And Herrick thought of

all the love and hate, the reckless joy and pain that had been born and

killed among the soft rugs and old tapestries and small, pure marbles.

"I don't know that it matters so much, after all, whether we are happy

or not, as long as we are _alive_."

Jean spoke with difficulty, for Herrick's sudden turning away made her

feel that she had really known him only two weeks, and knew nothing

whatever of his life. In the shadow of the green curtains, his face

looked whiter and the soft curve of his lips hard, as if he were

remembering something that hurt very much. A tremendous necessity

to comfort him swept Jean into speech, to make him see that nothing

mattered except being alive as he must be, not hampered and swaddled

with the crowding of uncongenial personalities. She contrasted Herrick

with his ability and definite ambition and friends, with the long, dead

evenings and the killing Sundays with Tom and Elsie and her mother.

"'To see Life clearly and see it whole,'" quoted Jean, and her voice

shook slightly with the force of her own conviction.

The blood rushed into Franklin Herrick's eyes, and he shook his head

as if to clear them from the mist. Again he felt that Jean was eluding

him, slipping away from the niche in which he had just placed her. But

this time she was flitting ahead of him, tantalizing in her promised

capacity to feel. He wanted to put his hands on her strong shoulders

and force something into those clear gray eyes, filled now with

confusion at her own unusual enthusiasm.

"We'll straighten out all the philosophy of the world some other

night," he said abruptly. "But now I want to show you Flop's latest.

And, whether he's happy or not, it's great stuff."

Herrick brought the canvas from the easel, propped it on a table and

lit a small bronze sconce, which he held so that the light fell on the

picture and on Jean's head.

From the shadow of a dusky, smudged wood, the nude figure of a woman

stood out with startling whiteness. At her feet a little brook ran over

white pebbles. There was a feeling of moonlight among the trees, as if

somewhere a full moon were shining in the warm night. But the little

brook, deep in the heart of the wood, was cold, and the woman longed

and at the same time dreaded to enter it. The warm blackness of the

trees held her, like the embrace of an unseen lover. But the cool voice

of the brook called steadily and one felt sure that in the end she

would go. She was bent a little forward as if listening to the brook,

so that the curves of her slim body, the small, white breasts, partly

veiled in the red-gold hair that fell about her shoulders, leaned into

the darkness.

"She's alive," Herrick whispered, and going to the canvas passed his

hand lightly from the red-gold hair to the small, white feet deep in

the damp grass.

The blood flooded Jean's face. Instantly Herrick was angry with

himself, but the call had been too strong. He covered his anger with

surprise as he looked quietly at Jean.

"Come. I want to show you the rest of the things, too."

Holding the sconce high, he moved about the room, pointing out his

favorites among Flop's work.

Jean followed, making flat comments on the things he showed her. She

wanted desperately to go back to the first picture, and discuss it in

a rational manner, for there was nothing in it to shock or repel. It

was too perfect for that. Again she felt that she had been crude and

childish, just as she had been about the painted women and the sordid

ugliness of The Coast, and that she had fallen short of Herrick's

estimate and disappointed him. She wanted to say something, but did

not know in what words to open the subject nor how to make Herrick

understand without. Slowly they made the rounds of the studio and came

again to the glass door opening on the balcony. Herrick put out the

light.

"It's only a quarter to and it won't take five minutes to get there.

Shall we stay here or go and wait for the rest in the restaurant?"

"I'd rather wait here."

Jean hoped that some opportunity would offer to correct what must be

Herrick's impression of her, but none came. Herrick sat silent.

As she rested against the pile of cushions Herrick had arranged, and

watched the quick western twilight blot the world to night, Jean felt

as if for the twenty-four years of her life she must have been fast

asleep. All about her men and women had been loving and hating and

misunderstanding and hurting each other, and she had been studying

books like a child. She had used up much energy and bitterness longing

for the moment when she would get out into life and earn her own

living, make one of the army that fought its way back and forth each

morning and night on the boats. And all the time the real thing was

not that at all. The real thing was human relationship, the relations

between men, and between women, and between women and men. There

were thousands of sensations and cross currents and impressions.

There was ambition, not vague ambition like hers, but a focused force

like Freeman's and Harcourt's and Herrick's. There was struggle and

disappointment and the pain that so evidently Herrick had known, and

Flop too, not the petty annoyance of Elsie's whining, but sweeping

pain that left one bigger. There was loneliness even in a glorious room

like this and pleasant interludes of chance meetings with kindred souls.

The wonderful romance of friendship gripped Jean. From the ends of the

earth two people, of different tradition, it might be of different

race, met accidentally and their lives forever after were different.

From the silent dark streets below, all the personalities of all the

thousands she had never seen, came close and touched her, so that she

felt that in some hidden way she was being influenced by every one of

them. There was nothing in life insignificant, nothing unimportant,

nothing unrelated to the whole.

Every one was bound to every one else by achievement and encouragement

and understanding. Each of these was a definite thing, like a thread,

made up of millions of minute strands, passing glances, chance

handclasps, too fine to be caught and held in words and yet each so

strong that it could bear the weight of many disappointments.

And there was the web of the whole with its radiating threads of the

bigger social relationships, made from these fine, thin filaments of

everyday occurrences.

She thought of herself and of Pat, of Tom and Elsie and her mother,

each weaving his own pattern. Pat wove carelessly with whatever thread

came to hand, singing as she wove, while Tom and Elsie fought over the

threads that broke under their ceaseless nagging and left the pattern

torn and frayed. And Martha, so sharply did the figure of a weaver

present itself to Jean, that she saw as clearly as if her mother had

been there, the patient figure sitting before its loom, weaving only

the dark gray threads, gently thrusting aside with small, tired hands

the golds and reds. And so vital did the need come to Jean of choosing

the best threads, weaving the most glorious pattern she could, that

she clenched her hands and whispered aloud:

"I will do it. I will."

"Do what?" Herrick bent to her and took both hands in his.

Jean laughed. "Did I really say it aloud?"

"You certainly did, whatever it was that you _will_. What is it?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't put it into words. It was just the feel of being

up here above all those dark streets and--and----"

"'And all about with wings the darkness stirred.' Was that it?"

"I expect it was."

Herrick jumped to his feet and swung her to the floor beside him.

"My, but you're strong!"

They stood smiling for a moment. Then he moved to the door.

"We'll be late after all. But I guess I was dreaming too."

CHAPTER FIVE

Through the crowd waiting for tables, Herrick pushed his way and Jean

followed closely. Greasy waiters rushed about with great platters of

spaghetti, increasing the noise and confusion by their violent gestures

and frantic efforts to serve every one at once. As Jean and Herrick

made their way among the small tables that took up three-quarters of

the long room, people looked at them and made comments which came

to Jean in broken sentences of no meaning. Suddenly the air of the

Marseillaise rose above the din. Instantly the crowd waiting about the

door pushed forward, and those already seated got on chairs and craned

their necks toward the end of the room.

Herrick bent to Jean. "Don't be frightened. We're really not a bit

dangerous."

Jean did not have time to answer before they passed through the outer

rim of the crowd and came into a cleared space before a long table,

from which the deafening din arose. Mounted on a chair, a fat man, in a

khaki hunting suit and an enormous Windsor tie of peacock blue satin,

was bellowing a song set to the tune of the Marseillaise. The burden of

the song was, "Bring on the Food! Bring on the Food!" A girl in a dull

green crêpe dress that hung from the shoulders like a kimono, stood in

the center of the table and carried the air high above the rest in a

shrill soprano. The men and women about the table beat time with forks

and spoons.

As Herrick and Jean came forward the man in khaki saw them, stopped,

appraised Jean in a glance, and silenced his chorus with a wave of his

fat hand.

"I hereby fine him, Franklin Herrick, twenty-five cents for tardiness,

said fine to be paid in United States silver coin, not later than ten

o'clock this evening, and to be used for the sole purpose of aiding the

complete debauch of The Bunch."

He jumped down and came forward with both hands outstretched in

generous welcome. He appropriated Jean, separated her from Herrick and

swept her into the empty chair between a pudgy woman in a black skirt

and soiled white waist, and a heavy-browed young man who did not move

or glance at Jean as she took the place. With a wave that included the

entire table, Flop announced:

"Jean, Jean Norris, and on with the dance!" He seemed to find this

funny, and laughed immoderately. A tall, very thin man next to the

pudgy woman bent forward, leered at Jean for a second in maudlin

earnestness, and then yelled:

"We want Jean! We want Jean!"

The table took it up, and all down the length, glasses were raised and

they drank to Jean in the sour, red wine. Across the table, from what

was evidently his accustomed place next to the girl in the green crêpe,

Herrick smiled reassuringly. The girl had come down from the table

at Flop's introduction of Jean and sat with her elbows on the cloth

and her chin in her palms, staring at Jean, with no acknowledgment

of the latter's existence in her eyes. Now that she looked at her

more closely, Jean saw that the woman was not really young, only

her smallness made her seem so. Her blue eyes were netted with fine

wrinkles and the skin of her hands was faintly withered. The youngest

thing about her was her neck, beautifully modeled, and her black hair

which was thin but wavy. Jean was just wondering whether the woman was

expressing a genuine mood, or resenting a stranger, when the pudgy

woman said in a reassuring tone:

"You mustn't be afraid of us. We say and do anything that pleases us,

but really we're not the least bit dangerous."

"But I'm not. Not the least bit. Do I look so--so green, that I need

protection?" Jean smiled, but this insistence that there was nothing to

fear, annoyed her.

The woman thrust her face close to Jean's and scrutinized her

carefully. "An azalea! That's it, an azalea! Listen, listen, all ye

present, I've got it. Azalea, that's her Bunch name."

"Azalea! Azalea!" Above the noise, Flop's bass bellowed and he beat the

table in a frenzy of approval, as if he could not have endured another

moment without knowing the right name for Jean. Through the uproar,

Herrick's smile reached like a cool touch. They drank Jean's baptism

in the sour, red wine and the next moment the interrupted arguments

were going on more violently than before. The name was adopted with

voracious enthusiasm and complete indifference.

Rather exhausted by the suddenness of the proceeding, Jean drew back

and tried to separate the mass before her into its elements. She

wondered which were Harcourt and Tolletson and whether they had been

"baptized" in wine. She scanned the faces along the opposite side,

where Herrick was now listening with a frown to the girl in green; and

then, as no one claimed her attention, leaned a little forward. There

was a heavy-set young man with a swarthy skin, who talked with an

Oxford accent and made Jewish gestures: a middle-aged man, with sleek

hair and a Van Dyke, which he was continually stroking with a very

white hand. He seemed to carry on his side of the argument with the

swarthy person, in a series of grunts and inner explosions, as if his

opinions were so violent that they erupted before he could bind them

in words. There was also a woman with gray hair framing a young face

and sad, kind brown eyes. She seemed interested, but said little, and

Jean liked her. And there was a pale, tall girl, with black eyes and

hair, who smoked cigarettes faster than the two men beside her could

roll them, and who stared in smoldering hate at these men when she had

to wait, as if they had mortally injured her. Jean laughed quietly to

herself, but instantly the woman beside her turned.

"I'm not so sure 'Azalea' was right. You sound exactly like a dove when

you do that, a deep-breasted, soft, blue dove--Paloma. I believe that's

it! I say----"

"Oh, no, please don't. I like the other one better. But I do want to

know something. Which is Mr. Harcourt and which is Mr. Tolletson?"

"Harcourt and Tolletson? My dear, they never come, that is, hardly

ever. Harcourt lives in London and Tolletson spends most of his time

in Paris. Mathews lives in bourgeoise respectability in the country

with a legal wife and baby. They were Bunchers somewhere in the Dark

Ages. Some of us wouldn't know them if we met them on the street, only

down underneath, you know, we're kind of proud of them, and keep their

names alive. Then, they have been known to come within the memory of

man. Makes 'em feel more successful to measure the distance they've got

away, I suppose."

"Oh!" Jean felt as if the woman had stripped something from her rudely,

but that she must cover this rudeness from some deeper need to herself.

After all, Herrick had not promised that these men would be there. She

had jumped to that conclusion herself.

"But the rest of us do something every now and then, in a small way,"

the other went on, with an understanding glint in her eyes that made

Jean flush. "Oh, never mind, it wasn't rude, not a bit. Most every one

who comes first, expects to see them, and it's rather funny watching

the efforts not to ask point blank. Not many are as frank as you. Do

you see that black and white thing, smoking like a chimney, and looking

as lively as a mummy? That's The Tiger--mad about Flop for the last six

weeks, frightful length of time for either of them. He's disciplining

her with Magnolia, that big, sleepy porpoise he's kissing. The Tiger

and Magnolia write poetry, damned good, too, some of it, but they never

bother printing it. Magnolia'd like to, but it's the only trick The

Tiger's got--pretending she doesn't care for money or fame, and 'Nolia

has to live up to the standard. The human skeleton next to me's Vicky

Sergeant; he has no Bunch name because we couldn't find a fruit or

animal he looked like. That girl in green next to Franklin is Vicky's

wife. We call her The Kitten--for various reasons. And of course you

know Franklin's Boy Blue."

"Why Boy Blue?"

The woman laughed. "Don't ask me. Ask The Kitten. She named him long

ago. I think it has something to do with always losing sheep."

At this moment, the now almost drunken Vicky claimed her and Jean

looked up, to find The Kitten's eyes just turning away, and a scowl of

anger on Herrick's face. The fingers crumbling his bread tightened and

then he said something to The Kitten that made her drop the match, with

which she was about to light her cigarette, and stare at him. After a

moment she began to laugh as if the full force of the thing had come to

her gradually. With a shrug, Herrick left his place and wedged a chair

between Jean and the dumpy woman.

"I'm afraid we didn't get a very good night. They're all rather keyed

up. They are sometimes."

The impersonal criticism in his voice linked him with the charter

members who never came, separated him from The Kitten and the noisy

enthusiasm that glittered like veneer over what Jean instinctively felt

was real boredom and disillusion. It drew her to him and she said in a

low tone:

"Who's The Kitten?"

He hesitated, and then answered in the same low tone:

"An unhappy woman with claws that tear herself and every one else who

gets too near, and she's in the devil of a mood to-night. Poor Kitten,

she will never learn."

Jean looked across the table with more pity in her eyes than she

realized, until The Kitten's laughter ceased suddenly, and leaning to

Jean, she said:

"Don't be too sweet to Boy Blue, Azalea. He can't stand azaleas. I saw

him get disgustingly drunk once, just because the room was hot and

there was a big bunch of azaleas in it. Don't you remember, Boy?"

"I can't say that I do, Kitten," Franklin answered quietly. "But you

remember such a lot of things."

"Dozens, Boy, dozens."

Herrick refused to continue the conversation and, with a remark that

included Jean, entered the discussion going on at the end of the

table. While she tried to catch the drift of the talk, Jean felt The

Kitten's eyes on her and knew that the woman saw her effort to pretend

unconsciousness of them. This lasted only a few moments, for, with an

elaborate yawn, The Kitten left the table. No one made any comment on

her going and Vicky was lost in assumed jealousy of the dumpy woman who

was flirting clumsily with Flop.

The argument was a technical one and soon beyond Jean's depth, for

she knew nothing at all of painting or artists. But from time to time

Herrick appealed to her on a point about which the rankest layman would

have an opinion, so that Jean felt in him a keener social sense and

greater natural kindliness than any of the others seemed to possess.

When the argument became too intricate for even Herrick to include her,

she leaned back, now much more at ease, and sensing a faint, possible

charm, which had at first been quite lost under the gaucherie of manner.

The Outlanders, as The Bunch called the rest of the world, had thinned

a little, but there were still many tables filled with starers toward

the big table in the center. It was evidently the attraction of this

rather dirty restaurant, and Jean judged that the proprietor would

rather feed The Bunch for nothing than have them transfer their

patronage. And for this freedom, this effortful emancipation from the

social code that passed as originality and genius, he charged The

Outlanders high. This too they appreciated. It gave value to the thing

they bought.

"After all," Jean decided, "I suppose I do look like a baby let out

alone without its nurse. I've never met any people worth while knowing

in my life, or any one out of the beaten track. And because these tie

their neckties across instead of down and make a lot of noise, I feel

superior. I've certainly never painted a picture or written a poem and

I didn't know there was anything the matter with Maeterlinck at all.

Jean Norris, you're a cocky fool."

She was recalled from this philosophizing by Herrick's touch upon her

shoulder.

"Dreaming again?" His voice was wistful, not this time as if he wished

to share her dreams, but as if he envied her the power to dream. Jean

thought that his eyes were very tired and his face rather pale, as she

looked up. "Well?" he smiled down at her. "Were you really so far away?

Come back, won't you, please?"

It was a sincere request, and as Jean followed to the street, she felt

that Herrick was often alone among these people and she thought she

understood now why he had not tried to do the novel.

On the sidewalk Flop stood in the center of the group debating what

to do with the rest of the night. When Herrick and Jean joined,

Flop turned to her with his manner of having just been struck by an

illuminating thought.

"We'll leave it to Azalea. Which would you rather do, go down to

Ramon's and drink mescal, he's just got some from Mexico, or do the

Coast? There's a dancer at Frank's worth seeing."

"I'm afraid I can't do either. The next boat won't get me home till

after one, as it is."

"Nonsense. Nobody ever goes home while there's anything else to do. 'We

won't go home till morning!'"

The others took it up, and the silence of the empty street echoed to

the old song. Jean wondered whether Flop was always singing his wants

like this, and glanced at Herrick.

"Let's beat it, if you really want to," he whispered, and almost before

she knew it, they had turned down a side street. For a block the voices

of The Bunch followed. They did not know that Jean and Herrick had

slipped away.

"If there's anything more dull than drinking mescal, it's going to

Frank's. I don't see what on earth Flop finds in it."

Jean liked his annoyance. Again she felt that they were linked in

understanding against the others. She had meant to ask him about

Harcourt and Mathews, but now it seemed unnecessary.

They walked in almost total silence through the dark streets lined with

closed warehouses that sent out a mingled odor of fruits and vegetables

exotic to Jean in its newness. Often the black bulk of empty crates

forced them into the cobble paved road-bed, thick with dust and fruit

rinds and withered greens. Once, in common consent they stopped to

listen to hundreds of crated pigeons, cooing softly behind closed doors.

"You _are_ like a dove. She was right for once. A big, calm dove," he

said, and they went on silent as before.