the Neighborhood House, and gone to London for the summer to study
conditions in the East End. The house was theirs.
Gregory felt young and carefree as he touched the bell button, with the
one long and two short, that was his ring.
Enveloped in a kitchen apron, her hands covered with flour, Jean opened
the door.
"Why, how do you do?"
"How do you do? I thought I should find Dr. MacLean. She's not in?"
"No, I'm sorry, but she's just run over to London for a minute. Will
you leave a message?"
"If I may. Will you tell her, please, that you're the most glorious
thing in the world and I love you?"
The last words were buried in the warm smoothness of Jean's neck. She
turned her head and their lips met.
"Now, if you'll go and take off your coat and put on an apron you can
help me make some Martha Norris biscuits."
Gregory did as he was told, and they got dinner together. Afterwards
they went into the living-room where they had sat so often the summer
before, good friends, disturbed in no way by the presence of the little
doctor, and Jean wondered what power had arranged this summer, so far
beyond her dreams. Mary in London, Margaret and Puck in Maine, beyond
the reach of week-ends even. There was only Martha.
Deep in the leather chair, with Gregory's arms about her, his fingers
moving gently over her cheek and throat, Jean wished that Martha would
go away too. She wanted them all out of her life, every one, for the
next three months. Beyond that she did not think.
* * * * *
It was perfect. So perfect that Jean marveled and was humble. The days
themselves, the actual passing of time took on personality. As the
givers of happiness, the hours became conscious. They were servants
bringing gifts.
Jean's duties were light and she and Gregory spent a part of each day
together. The quiet tea-room was now a thing of the past, so far in the
past that Jean smiled whenever she remembered how homelike it had once
seemed. They had long, lazy afternoons on the sands of nearby beaches,
making comments on the human shadows that moved beyond their own
world of reality. They chattered like children or were silent as the
mood dictated. They had dozens of gay meals, like the first they had
prepared on the night that Margaret and Puck had left. And quiet hours
in the warm stillness of the summer nights, with the voice of the city
coming in echoes over the dusty trees of the Park. These were the best
of all. In those moments it seemed to Jean that their souls mingled,
and that the law of each human soul's separateness was set aside for
their benefit.
Hampered only by such demands as Jean felt to be her duty to Martha,
the weeks slipped by. Ringed about by their freedom, Jean felt that
their love was striking into a deeper and deeper reality. A quality of
peace and security enveloped it that she did not know had been lacking
before. Its roots went down below her personality, the accident of her
"Jeanness," down into the stuff of life itself. Often, when she and
Gregory sat silent, Jean felt that this love was not theirs at all;
they were the possessed, not the possessors.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The third week in August, Dr. Mary returned. She came without warning,
so that, late in the afternoon, when Jean came rushing in to start
dinner, she stopped, staring at the figure upon the couch with surprise
so intense that it deprived her of motion.
"Sunstroke, Jean?" Mary threw back the two braids of white hair, drew
the hideous blue dressing gown closer and put on her slippers.
"Mary!"
"The same. Come in and sit down, won't you?"
Jean smiled and managed to get her arms about Mary and hug her.
"Well, that's more like it." Mary paddled back to her couch and Jean
dropped beside her. "My, but it's good to be home again."
"We've missed you," Jean ventured and when she heard the ease of her
own tone, a little courage came back. "Now, begin at the beginning and
tell me the whole thing."
To her relief, Mary did. Jean listened with a fixed smile of
understanding, made the expected comments, laughed in the right places,
and waited for the one long and two short rings that meant Gregory.
While Mary disposed in scathing terms of all English Social Betterment
work, Jean wondered whether she had seen the fruit and vegetables that
must be waiting on the dumb-waiter and how to explain them. As far
as Mary knew, Gregory had dropped from their lives. And any moment,
it would come, the one long and two short, and she would have to say
something.
"I tell you, Jean, I thought there was no brand of human left alive,
who could make me despair of the race. But a middle class Englishman
does. He's insulated, absolutely insulated in his own righteousness. He
would rather----"
There it was, the one long and two short.
"Good Heavens! Jean, are you giving a party? I saw a whole box of
things on the waiter."
"No. It's only Gregory. I stumbled into him accidentally one day and,
now the family's in Maine, he comes to dinner sometimes."
"Well, I'll be darned. What was the matter with him? Did you ever find
out?"
"Never asked him," Jean remarked from the door. "I forgot all about it,
myself. I don't believe he ever thought it needed any."
"A regular homefest! Run along and open the door. I won't bother to
change my things."
Jean opened the door, but before Gregory could take her in his arms,
she stepped back with a warning look.
"You're much too early! I haven't even begun to get dinner." She
motioned to the living-room. "Mary," her lips formed.
"Hell!" Gregory almost said it aloud.
"Well, go into the other room and wait as patiently as you can," she
whispered.
Jean went into the kitchen. The table was strewn with the things for
dinner just as Mary had dumped them out. Jean's eyes filled with tears.
"I won't let it end, I won't, I won't." In the other room she heard
Gregory's well-feigned surprise and Mary's laugh.
Jean put on her apron and began to get dinner. Mary's anecdotes flowed
on like a river, breaking every now and then on the rock of Gregory's
laughter. After all, perhaps it did not make so much difference to him.
Last evening they had sat for almost an hour, silent, with their hands
linked across the intervening space between the chairs and Jean had
been wonderfully happy. Had he been happy, too? How did she know that
he had not been a little bored? Jean's eyes blurred and the tomato she
was peeling slipped into the sink with a plop.
"You fool. What do you expect? She _is_ interesting and he can't sit
there like a statue." Jean scooped up the tomato and threw it viciously
into the garbage pail.
"Jean! Oh, Jean, come here a minute," Gregory called. "Do it again for
Jean. It's a scream."
Mary twitched the dressing gown so that it trailed like a royal robe
and twisted the white hair into a knob not unlike a coronet.
"Mamie Horton, of Chicago, now Duchess Mary of Belfort, doing the East
End, visiting a family of eight living on three dollars a week." The
doctor's face froze into a mask of horror and she pointed dramatically
to what was supposed to be the laborer's dinner table. "Most
unhygienic. I will send you a case of shredded wheat to-morrow!"
"Never, Mary. That's too much. You've spoiled it."
"Well, it wasn't shredded wheat, but it was just as bad. Jean, I longed
for you. If there had been anything in thought transference you would
have hopped on the next boat. You think your committee is bad! You
ought to see real caste at the business. And worse than that are the
Mamie Hortons. Why, when I told a group of the reals and the pseudos,
at a luncheon, about the tenements, and how you had raised the money
and had the whole thing going in a few months, they stared at me, and
Horton actually said: 'Reahlly,' in that exasperating English voice
that means: 'You're a liar.' It takes a year to call a meeting over
there."
"I suppose she wouldn't believe the evidences of her senses if she saw
them. They're finished except a few last touches."
"Not really, Jean!"
"Infected, Mary! 'Not reahlly!'"
"Score! But, Jean, you don't mean they're all ready for tenants? I hope
they're not in yet."
"They will be in another week."
Dr. Mary bounced out of her chair. "Let's go out and see them."
"What? Now?"
"Yes, now. It won't take long. Gregory can call a taxi while I get on
my clothes. You don't know how I've come to love those things, Jean.
Whenever that cumbersome machine of 'British thoroughness' lumbered
over me I used to say,
"There's a land that is fairer than day,
Where things get done right away."
"What's the objection to going now? Won't the food keep?"
"If you've made up your mind, it doesn't matter whether the food keeps
or not. I don't suppose there is any reason not to go, except that you
ought to be tired."
"I almost died resting for the last five days. I could _walk_ there."
Jean went back to take off her apron and Gregory followed.
"It'll be better than staying here," he whispered, with his arms about
her. "And it was going to be such a nice evening."
Jean patted his cheek. "Never mind. We'll have a lot more. Now run
along and call a taxi."
Dr. Mary was indefatigable. She insisted on inspecting every floor and
getting the view from every side. And, in the end, she pronounced it
"a darn good job." But Jean did not feel it was "a job" at all. It was
a bit of her life and Gregory's. It was built of the hours they had
spent together. It was not an insensate thing. It was alive. She and
Gregory had created it. Her hand moved on the clean, white wall.
"You nice living thing. Make everybody well and don't let anybody die."
Jean smiled. It was somewhat like a prayer.
When there was nothing left but the solarium on the roof, they sat down
to rest on one of its green benches. In the afterglow, the East River
ran a stream of gold. The span of the bridges hung airy webs in the
heat-hazed air. Far below little tugs chugged up and down, whistling.
The gray of their smoke filtered through the gold, softening it to
filmy gauze. But across the river, on the workhouse island, a bell
clanged. From the last sunny spots, old men and women came reluctantly,
and the hideous red buildings swallowed them, one by one. Soon they
would all be asleep, the old men in their wards and the old women in
theirs. Perhaps in the night some would die quietly in their sleep.
In the morning the superintendent would look up the names on the
books, notify any relatives he could find, and send blanks to charity
organizations that there was room for a few more of the homeless old.
Not one of them had ever expected it to end like that. The race had
speeded faster and faster, beyond their strength. They had stumbled,
gone down, and been trampled under. Strong in the faith of their
own ability, she and Mary and Gregory, all the well-groomed men and
beautiful gowned women about them, went securely on. But what guarantee
had they that this strength would last forever? Each human being was
such a tiny obstruction, a mere grain of sand against the force of a
terrific current. Even in the small trickle of the stream which one
called one's own personal affairs, it was impossible to guide the
force. Here was the course of her summer twisted suddenly by an event
over which she had no control.
"I won't let it. I _will_ have the next four weeks."
"A penny, Jean. You look as if you were settling the affairs of
nations."
"I was doing what mummy calls 'guiding Providence.'"
"Too strenuous for summer, Jean. Leave it 'til winter."
"No. 'Now's the appointed time.' 'To-night the Lord may come.' Hence,
you and Gregory go home alone, Mary. I go to Jersey. I've had a
revelation."
Nor would Jean let Gregory go even to the ferry with her, but insisted
that he go back and hear more of the East End.
"But, dear, I want to see you terribly to-night. I want----"
He had dropped behind as they were following Mary out so that for a
moment he and Jean were alone. Jean smiled and shook her head.
"Can't be helped. I've got to go really. Besides it's--it's your
revelation too."
"I don't want any revelation. I want you," he added hotly.
"So do I, that's why I'm going." The words came in a low rush, and then
Mary was looking back to them.
But it was only when Jean actually stood with her finger on the button
of Pat's bell, that she realized how astonished Pat would be, and how
she had neglected Pat and the babies that summer. And once Pat had
known almost every thought that crossed her mind.
"I'm besotted, absolutely dippy, and I'd use God Almighty if I needed
Him."
The door opened and Pat herself stood gazing as if she doubted the
evidence of her senses.
"_Jean!_"
Two small naked figures, lurking in the shadow of the upper landing,
came tumbling down at their mother's cry and Jean was lost in a tangle
of arms and legs.
"Jean! It's Auntie Jean!"
"Jeanie, Frank!" Pat clutched at the waving legs, while Jean held them
closer and laughed across at Pat.
"At least they're glad to see me, Pat, and you've only shrieked 'Jean!'"
"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Herrick. Won't you come in? I was just
putting the children to bed."
"So I see. And we're going right on with the process." Jean hoisted
her namesake to her shoulder and started for the stairs, dragging the
rotund Frank by the hand.
When they were safely tucked in and Jean had recounted as much of
the old witch who was turned into a gingerbread house as she could
remember, and promised to come soon, "very, very soon, lots soon,"
Pat turned off the light and she and Jean went down to the cool
dark piazza. And then, for the first time, in her gratitude for the
darkness, Jean realized how deeply she hated to lie to Pat. She would
have given much to be able to throw both arms about Pat and say:
"Patsy, I want you to help me. I want you to take mummy out of the way.
I want this last month, free and beautiful for the most glorious thing
in my life. There is only one little month left, Pat, four short weeks,
and I want them so."
"I thought you were never going to come any more, Jean, and I was
beginning to get 'hurt,' like mummy."
"It wasn't because I didn't want to come." Jean looked out into the
moonlit garden. "But I've been terribly busy, and mummy hasn't been
well. The words left Jean with the feeling that something very deep
inside her had been ripped out.
"Mummy not well? Why, Jean, what's the matter?"
"I don't know, Pat. You know she never complains and would sit up in
her coffin to explain that she was perfectly well. But she isn't. I
want her to go away for a rest, but you know how likely she is to do
that. I can't go along, too."
"The summer has been a fright. Even Frankie got rather peaked last
month, and it takes a great deal to wear an ounce off him."
There was a short pause, and then Jean added, with an effort at a laugh:
"Perhaps she's just homesick for a little trouble or illness. Now if
Elsie lived in some nice quiet suburb and was going to have one of her
horrible babies, or Tom would cut off a leg, she'd pack up and be right
there on the dot."
"And you're so disgustingly efficient and healthy! Poor mummy, you were
never meant for her daughter. I say, do you suppose she would come over
here if I could develop something that doesn't have to show? I couldn't
turn pale or faint, not to save me, never did in my life, but I might
manage a general breakdown. Worry over the children and Big Frank's
raise in salary?"
Jean looked away. "Are you sure it would be all right? She loves the
babies and she would come in a minute, if she thought you needed her."
"Well, I do. I'll 'phone her to-morrow."
"She'll come--and thanks, Patsy."
Blurred by the porch screening, a small patient face looked quietly at
Jean. Jean got up quickly.
"Let's go inside, Pat. I believe it's cooler."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Gregory Allen had never intended to let three months pass without
telling Jean of his promise to go to Maine. But at first his going had
seemed a distant point, and then, as it crept nearer and nearer, the
right moment for the telling never came. Now, how could he say: "I am
going to Maine to-morrow for a month. I promised Puck when she was
ill." He had said nothing of the illness at the time. How drag out his
own state of mind on the afternoon he had had tea with Jean and lied to
her?
Gregory wished that Jean would say something, almost anything, to break
the silence. Not a soul seemed to be alive in the great building about
them. On the river occasional excursion steamers turned their dazzling
flashlights, lighting the room and Palisades to uncanny, whitish glow.
They were huge phantoms moving in the stillness. All the worlds of the
universe hung motionless in perfect adjustment. Jean sat utterly at
rest, so near him that by the smallest motion he could touch her. But
Gregory did not move.
"Did you ever feel anything so restful? It's positive, the silence, not
negative. _Listen_ to it. I could almost 'go into the silence' myself,
if I didn't have to shut my eyes and concentrate. If I could keep them
open and--and dissolve instead. I believe it would be rather restful."
"Do you?"
If he hacked at this peace with words he would force an opening through
which an opportunity might come, and Jean would know that he did not
want to go, except for his promise to Puck. But Jean drifted back
into the stillness again and it seemed to Gregory that she actually
dissolved into the unfathomable silence.
With a nervous gesture he rose at last.
"It's almost two o'clock."
Jean laughed. "Frightful. What will the hallboy think?"
But Gregory did not answer the laugh. He had yet to tell Jean, and now
there was no time to lead up to it. He had to say baldly: "I am going
away to-morrow."
Jean was smiling at him.
"There's no need to look so desperately serious about it, Mr. Allen, I
just mention it casually."
"It _is_ late, and I have to be up early." Gregory said and went into
the hall for his hat. "I'm going up to Maine to-morrow for a month and
I have several things to do before I go."
It seemed hours before he could pull against the force holding him
where he was and turn to Jean. She had followed him and was standing
near, the teasing smile still in her eyes. For a moment they looked at
each other and then Jean said:
"It will be glorious up there now, but--don't forget--the contest
closes the first of October."
In his relief Gregory took Jean's hands and bent cavalierly over them.
"Your command, Fair Lady, is obeyed. I promise not to forget." He did
not trust himself to kiss her again and went quickly.
Was there another woman in the world like Jean? The sanity of her love
made everything possible. In its light even the month ahead did not
loom so gloomily. There would be happy hours playing with Puck and
good, stiff work to finish the plans in time.
Jean stood for a long time in the hall and then went slowly back and
sat down by the window. Something had struck her violently and stunned
her power to feel. She saw it as distinctly outside herself, and at the
same time it was in some way connected with her. It was like a part of
her which Gregory's words had suddenly cut away.
There they lay separated from her, the deep peace and security of the
summer, the assurance of her own sensations, that wonderful clarity in
which she had seen their love and perfect understanding. And there had
been no understanding at all. The world that they both ignored, because
it was not a real world, was a real world to him. It was not only real
to him, but he must believe that it was so to her. Otherwise he would
have told her before.
Jean looked stupidly about the room. Last night she had come back
from Pat's and found Martha reading by the table. This morning, at
breakfast, Pat had telephoned, and she had helped pack Martha's few
things and taken her to the Tube. After that she had rung up Gregory
and they had stolen the afternoon together. It was only a few hours ago
that they had come in, the first time Gregory had ever been here.
It was all exactly like a game she had played when she was a child. It
had been a game of much elaborate preparation. It had required the most
violent upheavals of the doll's house, terrific cleaning and washing
of everything. Martha always made special cookies and Jean was given
ten cents for lemons and candy. Early in the morning of the day itself,
Jean began telephoning along the clothes-line to imaginary guests. But
no guests ever came to the party, because no children lived near, and
in the end Jean had always had her party alone.
At dawn, weary with the endless round, Jean went to bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mary had decided to stay on and work for an M. A. at Columbia. She was
busy choosing courses of study and quarreling with professors about
prerequisites, so Jean, by pleading extra work herself, managed to keep
away from Gramercy Park for the first days of Gregory's going.
In the morning she went to the office and at night she came back.
She tried to read and turned page after page with a detached sense
of accomplishment in which all understanding of the words was lost.
Finally, one night, when she had read from eight till eleven, and found
that it was not the same book she had been reading so dutifully for
days, Jean threw it across the room, and, standing defiantly in the
center of the floor, faced the thoughts that she had refused entrance
since the morning she had crept to bed in the gray dawn.
"Well? What are you going to do about it? What can you do about it? Why
is this any different from his going away for a week-end?"
With her hands in the side pockets of her skirt, Jean paced up and
down. It was the way she straightened tangles in her work, and the
familiar rhythm seemed to throw this problem to an impersonal distance,
beyond the haze of her own emotions.
"Well? What are you going to do? Are you going around always clouded
up in this tragedy? He isn't any more married now than he was in the
beginning, and you knew it from the very first. You knew he had duties
and obligations. You rather prided yourself on your logical attitude
toward them. You weren't being logical. You couldn't deny them because
they were right there in front of you. But the first minute you got a
chance to close your eyes, you shut them so tight that--that it's taken
an operation to open them."
Jean stopped before the window and leaned with both hands on the sill,
frowning into the night.
"He would have gone on living his life and so would you, and you would
have done your work, too, if you had never met at all. Yes, you would,
and so would he." The corners of Jean's lips twitched, for always
before, when she had thought of Gregory's home, she had thought of it
as something he had acquired by accident, not as something that he had
made, an expression of himself. "We _do_ mean something to each other,
something terribly real, but it won't be real, if you begin to mess it
up with jealousy. That's what it is--jealousy. You know that nothing in
the world could have dragged _you_ out of town this summer and you're
mad and hurt and jealous clear through. There! Put that in your pipe
and smoke it whether you like the flavor or not."
Jean began walking again. She went very carefully through the summer,
picking up the happy hours from the scattered heap into which Gregory's
going had shattered them, and built them anew.
"The trouble was that you never recognized the conditions; all you did
was to ignore them, until you came to believe they weren't there."
Again and again Jean dragged this fact forward from the background into
which it was always slipping. "You never mentioned his wife or Puck and
you slopped it all over with 'delicacy and broad-mindedness.' You were
afraid, that's what you were, whether you knew it or not."
Jean came to a halt again in the middle of the room.
"Now, Jean Norris, from now on you're going to face things as they are.
You are _not_ going to ignore the existence of his wife, or of Puck.
You're either going to--or quit."
But the idea of quitting was so ridiculous that Jean laughed out loud.
At the end of the week she wrote a long, cheerful letter to Gregory and
went to have dinner with Mary.
Gregory answered by return mail. He said he was working on the plans,
which were getting along, but he was so sick of them he didn't know
whether they were good or bad. He never mentioned the country nor how
he passed his time when he was not working. Only at the very end there
was a line clear across the paper of extremely thin and wobbly columns,
under which he had printed: "These are the other boarders. Christian
Scientists."
Jean kissed the letter and tore it up. "I don't want to take to
'carrying it in my bosom.'"
A week later Jean came home early one night, after a cheerful evening
with Mary, to find Martha quietly mending under the lamp.
"Why, mummy Norris!" Jean took Martha's sewing and laid it on the
table. Squatting on her heels, she grinned with mock reproof. "Why,
Mrs. Norris, may I ask? Did I tell you you could come home?"
Martha's eyes twinkled. "You may be a very important person in the
outside world, Jeany, but you're my baby yet, and I think I'll come
and go a few years longer without asking permission. Besides, Pat is
all right and has a thousand times more sense than you have and is far
better able to look out for herself." Martha pointed to the mending on
the table.
"It's not inability, mummy, it's a question of belief. It's an economic
principle. Why should I mend stockings when I ought to be resting
my mammoth brain for further world efforts? And if I could make you
understand, think of the extra pennies some poor woman might earn."
"Economics! Fiddlesticks!"
"All right! I'll bring you home a brochure to-morrow on Conserving
Mental Waste. Maybe you'll believe it when you see it in print."
"You'll never make me believe it's good economics or anything else,
to wear stockings like those." Martha held up a pair run from heel to
knee, with a great gap at the toes.
"And you'll never make me believe it isn't a wicked waste of time to
mend them like that." Jean seized a pair from the neat pile. "You can't
tell which was the original thread and which was the mend."
"I suppose it would be all right if I mended them so they would hurt
your feet. After all, Jean, logic is not your strong point, whatever
you or your brochures may say."
Jean hugged her. "I'm rather coming to that belief myself, mummy. What
time did you get back?"
"About five. I didn't suppose you came home to dinner, but----"
"Mummy, is there some sherbet in the ice-box?"
"I----"
"_Is there some mousse in the ice-box?_"
"There is."
"And is it pineapple? Answer me!"
"I rather think I did make pineapple."
"What's the matter with my logic, now?"
Martha laughed and picked up the mending. "It's not the same thing at
all, but you'll only talk me down anyhow. So go and get the sherbet. I
believe I'll have some, too."
While they ate it Martha talked of Pat and the children and for some
reason Jean felt that life was safe and sure again. There could be
nothing very terrible in a world where little children said the
delightful things that Pat's babies did, where women like Mary kept
their belief and enthusiasm undimmed, and the Marthas thoughtfully
made pineapple mousse as a surprise.
Four weeks to the day, Gregory wired that he would be back and to keep
Sunday for a walk. The world was a nice place, a very nice place,
indeed.
Sunday was a day of blue haze and golden sun.
"It was made expressly for us; I ordered it," Gregory declared, as he
and Jean swung along, under arching maples that were just beginning to
turn crimson, with here and there a brilliant scarlet leaf among the
green. The fences were buried under honeysuckle and wild blackberries.
The summer was passing in one last passionate abandonment of giving.
The bare brown earth, freed from the burden of crops, like a woman
released from family cares, went back to its youth. The air was pungent
with the sting of sun-warmed loam. The old world frolicked in a second
love.
Gregory felt that he was physically leaving the dismal month through
which he had just passed, behind him. He strode along and knew in every
nerve that Jean was there beside him, just as strong and unwearying as
he, stepping step for step with him. He had thought of her so, very
often in the last four weeks, even when he was wading out into the
breakers with Puck perched on his shoulders, beating his chest with her
small, hard heels and shrieking with delight.
Gregory seized Jean's hand and they shot down the green-roofed lane.
Terrified birds winged with shrill calls into the blue and an old cow,
chewing her cud in a quiet corner, lumbered away to safety. At the end
of the lane, Gregory stopped unexpectedly and Jean spun round him like
a top at the end of a string.
"Gregory! Whatever's struck you?" In the circle of his arms Jean got
back her breath.
"The earth and you, a most intoxicating combination."
Between each word Gregory kissed her. Jean rested against his clasped
hands. "Well, don't make me drunk too. One's enough."
"Do I make you drunk, Jeany?" Gregory whispered and leaned to the white
hollow of her throat. But Jean suddenly dodged under his arms and stood
off, laughing at him.
"All right. But I'll make you answer me later."
The color ran under Jean's skin and then Gregory laughed.
"But I am so awfully glad to see you, Jean. I've got to take it out in
something."
"So am I." They were now in step again. "I missed you terribly." Jean
paused and added, looking off over a brown field to the right. "You're
lots better at drawing than at writing, Gregory. You didn't tell me a
thing. How's Puck and all the wobbly row of Christian Scientists?"
"You ought to have seen her. She did her best, but Lady Jane hasn't
the right kind of eyes and they wouldn't close." He bubbled over in
amusement. "You can't speak to Divine Mind with your eyes open, it
seems, and so Puck has to stay out."
Jean visioned Margaret going "into the silence," for evidently she
belonged, and wondered which of the wobbly columns she was.
"Is everybody in it?"
"Everybody. It was a regular epidemic. If I had stayed up there another
week, First Principle would have got me sure."
Suddenly Gregory realized that they were talking about Puck and
Margaret and his life in that other world. He wondered how it had
begun, but before he could think back, Jean was asking:
"I suppose that means an end of economics and uplift generally? I
imagine Divine Mind isn't a thing one shares with garbage or child
labor."
"Hardly. 'Full realization' is a terribly absorbing state."
It was strange to be talking like this to Jean. But it was a relief. He
had always felt that Jean understood, but it was nice not to have to
think ahead always, to loosen the curb once in a while.
"Better than Montessori or garbage anyhow."
"Heaps."
They spoke no more of Puck or Margaret but both felt that something,
somewhere, had changed. What had seemed perfect before was a little
more perfect now.
Gregory told her of the plans, the final week of work, and how he had
mailed them at the last possible moment.
"And if I win, I'm going to see that along with the valuables buried
under the corner stone, goes a picture of the one who made it all
possible."
"Who might that be?"
Gregory did not answer.
"Me?"
He nodded. His hand claimed hers.
"I shall have to have one taken then, and I've never had one since I
was old enough to rebel."
"Oh, no, you won't. I'm going to draw it myself."
"What will I look like? Please don't make me in two sections, like
Mary."
"You're like this." Gregory sketched a tower. It was the square Roman
tower, but the top was blurred. Jean pointed to the blur.
"What is _that_?"
"_That_ is a ray of sunshine."
"Silly," Jean whispered, and kissed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The dead year was buried in a flare of gold and scarlet. For a little
while the gray sky hung low over the earth, and chill winds blew
through the empty world. Then the gorgeous dead season was forgotten
and winter settled in earnest.
Jean laid away the memory of summer. Again she met Gregory in the
tea-room and they were happy in the isolation of the alcove. On
Saturdays, when it snowed too heavily for tramping, they went to
matinées and sat through many driveling plays. They rarely spoke of
Margaret, but often of Puck, and now that this ghost was no longer
hidden Jean was glad of the hot, lonely nights after Gregory's going.
There was nothing that could hurt because there was nothing unknown.
The old feeling of power ran high in her. She was rapidly centering
public interest in her work. Compared to the mighty tree which she and
Mary had pictured in moments of enthusiasm, the Congress was a tiny
root, but it was striking deep and in good soil. Jean was happy. She
came sometimes to meet Gregory so radiant that even he, who had seen
Jean in many radiant moods, was startled.
"You look like a Gloucester fishing boat under full sail," he said
once, when Jean came hurrying up late for a matinée.
"Well, I can't say that you flatter."
"But a Gloucester boat is the finest thing that floats. It has
wonderful lines, and when it comes down the bay with all sails set----"
"But tearing along Broadway to get to a theater! Besides it sounds
horribly overpowering. Doesn't the thing ever sink?"
"Never."
Between the acts Gregory drew a Gloucester boat and Jean insisted that
she was going to pin it up in her room where she could see it on waking
and get the conceit knocked out of her for the day.
But in the mornings when she woke, warm under the blankets, with the
sharp air pricking her face, she liked to lie looking at it until she
could hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging and feel the
heave of the sea under the keel. Standing in the prow, she and Gregory
went out to sea, leaving behind the echoes of a waking world, the
banging of doors, the rattle of the elevator, the running of bath water
from the apartment across the light-well, the whir of coffee-grinders,
gearing the world to working strength for another day. Her own power
to slip away on these trips with Gregory amused Jean and she wondered
if Martha felt the same physical sense of cutting loose, and going out
into space, when she left her body crouching in the last pew and went
up to talk to God.
Christmas and New Year passed and February came in a black rage of
cold, that exhilarated or depressed to the breaking point. It depressed
Gregory and he came to the office one morning of black cold, late in
February, convinced of the uselessness of all things. Nothing mattered,
neither happiness nor pain. If one did manage to seize a little
happiness, it was only an interlude. What was the good of a few moments
of exhilaration and the sense of personal power, when it went before
you could make it really yours?
Gregory threw the mail about on his desk and lit his pipe. He felt
old. He tore open the envelopes and sorted the contents and knew that
he was going to go on doing this for the rest of his life. Margaret
had been exasperatingly cheerful this morning, and as Gregory recalled
the gentle sweetness of her voice as she had said, when she kissed him
good-by: "There is all the success and prosperity we want right _now_,
dear," he tore open the last envelope so violently that the letter
within was torn in half. The incident loosened the tension and Gregory
laughed at his own childishness as he laid the pieces together and read
them.
He read them once. Then he read them again. He looked round at the
walls, the floor, the water-cooler in the corner, and read it again.
He got up and opened the window. The freezing air rushed in and, after
a moment, the world adjusted itself. Things stopped spinning and came
out of the blur, but still the impression persisted that it was a joke.
Gregory brought the two pieces of the torn letter to the open window
and read them for the fourth time.
He had won the Chicago contest. He had covered paper with lines and
figures and sent it a thousand miles away, long ago, before the leaves
turned. He had never let himself really hope and, for days together,
had forgotten all about it. Even Jean had not mentioned it for weeks.
The thought of Jean steadied him. Jean had always said: "You will win."
She had never doubted, or, if she had, had hidden it under a seeming
faith that had been a comfort, even if he had not always shared it.
Gregory reached for the telephone. How should he tell her? Should he
read the letter itself, or keep her guessing? To be kept guessing made
Jean angry and he did it sometimes to tease her. Gregory stood with his
hand on the receiver, composing a beginning. But he would have to get
to the point some time and he could hear Jean's: "Oh, Gregory!" Then
they would go out somewhere and tramp for miles in the pitiless cold,
because it would be absurd even to try to go through the day's grind.
Gregory took the receiver from the hook.
Slowly he hung it up again. He went back and sat down at his desk.
After a few moments he got up mechanically and closed the window.
He had won the contest. He was no longer the fairly successful
architect, bitter, in lonely moments, at forgotten dreams. He was
"made." Everything had changed the moment he tore the letter in anger
at the sameness of things. There was no doubt about that. Nothing would
be the same any more. He would have to live in Chicago. The building
would take several years and he would have to be on hand all the time,
if he was to get all there was to it. He would have to leave Jean.
He would no longer be able to ring her up when he wanted to. There
would be no more long walks. No more dusky hours at the little French
roadhouse, hours when the need of parting drew them so near together,
Jean would no longer be there in the background of his life, so that he
always felt that he could reach out and touch her.
Gregory jammed his pipe between his teeth and began walking up and
down. Was there never a spot in life, never one short hour that was
perfect? He saw the future that might have been, had he and Jean
belonged legally to each other. Love, success, accomplishment. He and
Jean--and Puck.
Gregory's face was drawn when he sat down at his desk again. He drove
his mind through the day's work as if it had been a slave.
At four he closed his desk and went to meet Jean. She was already at
their table, sitting partly turned to watch a group in the large room
beyond. She was smiling, and when she caught sight of him the smile
deepened.
"Do look at that old peacock over there. I have been watching her for
the last five minutes and she's never stopped preening once."
He had come, still uncertain how he was going to tell Jean, and she
asked him to look at an old woman. But he turned and then he laughed
too.
"Well, what's happened exciting to-day?"
"Oh, nothing much. Nothing that will surprise you terribly."
Jean put down the teapot. "Gregory Allen, out with it!"
Gregory seized the alternative of banter, which had not occurred to him
before.
"If I'm bursting, as you so impolitely suggest, it must be terribly
important, and if it's terribly important you--you ought to guess it,"
he finished lamely.
"Now, Gregory, don't tease. Besides, I haven't an ounce of sense left.
I've been struggling with a Tammany politician until I'm limp. What is
it?"
Gregory took the cup she was holding to him. He felt that as long as
the cup was in transit a choice was left open. But once it was beside
his plate, he would be obliged to say, in the only way he had been able
to frame it at all: "I've won the contest, and I have to go and live
in Chicago. They want me there to talk over some slight changes by the
middle of March and--I might as well stay on, because I'm going back
there to live anyhow."
"Gregory, don't be silly. Please, what is it? I know it's good, because
your nose is wrinkling up at the corners."
"It is good." Gregory put down the cup. "I've won the contest."
The old peacock cackled a shrill note and Gregory heard her say: "Just
fancy, at her age, a deep pink, my dear, I----"
"Gregory--my dear...."
The blood rushed to Gregory's eyes so that Jean blurred to something
white and shining, near but impossible to touch. He looked down.
"I shall have to go to Chicago. They've asked me to be there by the
middle of March."
"Of course. Why, I'd want to take the next train and rush out, whether
they'd asked me or not. Oh, Gregory! I always knew it but--I feel all
wiggly inside."
Her hands moved to him across the cloth but Gregory's did not come to
meet them.
"But I shall have to live there, Jean, for good; for several years
anyhow. It will mean so many things. Here I should only be "that fellow
who's building the Auditorium out in Chicago." I'm not young. I've got
to get it all now, every scrap of it. I've got to, Jean. I've got to!"
Afterwards, Jean knew that in that moment she crossed a line and left
something of herself behind forever. But now it must be the same as it
had always been, until she was alone. If she yielded an inch, she would
go plunging down into the emptiness.
"You do see, don't you?" Gregory's voice pleaded for her courage, but
she did not answer, and he hurried on.
"If there were any other way, ... but there isn't. It will lead to all
kinds of things. I've got to be there. Don't you see, dear?"
Why did he keep on saying that, over and over, as if she were a child?
Why did he sit there, looking into his plate, as if he were hurting her
only and against his will? Jean drew her hands back into her lap.
"Jean," he whispered, "Sweetheart, don't make it hard."
"I'm not going to. After all, you know,--Chicago's only eighteen hours
away."
He looked up. "Well, I'll be damned! Do you know, Jean, I never thought
of that?"
And he had not. It had seemed so final, such a complete upheaval of the
present that he had pictured no thread running to the future. It would.
Of course it would. Why shouldn't it? Jean would be the same. He would
be the same. Each had his work. Their meetings would be farther apart,
but freer. He would never have to leave Jean because he had promised to
be home at a certain hour, nor invent explanations for Sunday tramps.
In a way it would be more perfect, not less. And as soon as he had
things going he would come back for a few days. Later he could come for
longer. In summer, if he had a vacation, he would spend it with Jean.
"Jean, I'm coming straight round this table and kiss you."
"No, don't."
But he was already there beside her, and under pretext of adjusting the
curtain, kissed her quickly. Jean wanted to strike him. Then he was
back in his own place, talking again. All the first joy of his success
rushed over him. Jean felt it, the hidden power that she had fanned
with her belief and love. It was burning away her own forces and Jean
felt cold.
They had a second serving of tea. The rooms emptied. Gregory was still
talking, rushing away beyond her reach.
It was almost seven when she threw her crumpled napkin on the table and
rose.
"I've simply got to go. Besides we could never get it all talked out,
if we stayed until midnight."
"I know. I feel like a kid parading his bag of tricks. I believe I've
been standing on my head for the last hour. Have I, Jean?" He was near,
helping her on with her coat. His fingers touched her cheek. "Why
didn't you set me right end up with a thump?"
"Oh, I adore small boys on their heads. I--I always want to do it,
too." Jean wondered why he did not grip her shoulders and shake her
back to consciousness, but he only laughed and they went out, past the
groups of pretty waitresses resting now in the empty room.
It had turned warmer and snow was falling in great white flakes.
"I believe I'll walk. I'm not going home to dinner anyhow." Her courage
was gone. She could not go down into that stifling Subway, talk
nothings above the roar of the train, feel Gregory close among all
those strangers.
"But it's going to be a regular blizzard. Look! It's getting thicker
every minute."
Jean turned up her fur collar. "I don't mind. Maybe it's the last
blizzard we'll have. I always wallow in the last blizzard. It's a kind
of rite."
"Well, then, if I can't stop you...."
They were standing so close that Jean could feel his warm breath on her
face. Muffled figures, bent against the driving snow, pushed by them
and disappeared into the black hole of the Subway entrance. Automobiles
shot noiselessly through the whirling whiteness. The world itself had
changed.
"To-morrow then about four?"
"No, I can't to-morrow. I've got a meeting. Friday."
"All right." Gregory held out his hand, but Jean raised her muff to
keep off the driving flakes and only smiled across it.
She went back to the office. They had all gone. There was a note tacked
to the lid of her desk and Jean read it. She tore it up and threw it
into the waste-basket but some of the pieces fell upon the rug and she
bent to pick them up carefully. She opened a window, and covered one of
the typewriters that had been left uncovered. Then she telephoned to
Martha that she would not be home to dinner. Martha urged her not to
work too late and Jean hung up the receiver.
Now she was alone, utterly alone, with the thoughts she had beaten back.
Gregory was going away. He was going out of her life for months at
a time. Three short weeks and it would be as it had been before his
coming--empty, work-filled days. Jean bowed her head on the desk.
"You fool, you fool, you helped to do it."
She had been so glad to give and give and give. Never to falter in her
faith, or let his courage drop below the standard she had set for it.
He had needed her and now he did not need her at all.
Jean slipped to the floor and clutched the cushion of the chair.
"Don't let me feel like this. Don't let me," she begged, but there was
no answer. The reasonable machine of her universe held no God. It ran
itself.
When she was sure that Martha would be asleep, Jean went home.
* * * * *
During the next two weeks they saw no more of each other than usual.
Jean was busy, and Gregory had to leave things in order for Benson, who
was to take on the office. Besides, it kept up the fiction of there
being no big change. But on Tuesday, the day before he was to leave,
Jean did not go to work.
It was a day of sparkling sunshine and hard snow, packed firm. They
went into the country. They talked of little things, rested, made
snowballs and glided, hand in hand, over the ice of a small pond. It
was a day like many they had had.
It was almost dark when they stopped at the French roadhouse. There
were no other guests, and Madam Cateau lumbered forward in her felt
slippers to greet them as old friends.
"It is a long time that you do not come. I think you forget me. Then
I remember and say--But the chicken they do not forget. Me, yes, but
not the chicken." She shook with laughter and waggled her great red
forefinger under Gregory's nose. "I am right? Yes? The chicken you do
not forget. Two plates it was. Three, maybe?"
"Three at least. I wouldn't swear that it wasn't four."
"And to-night I have the same, with the mushrooms. Why do I make it
this morning? It is not the right day. Le bon Dieu, maybe?"
She waddled off and Jean took a table close to the fire.
It was impossible that they were doing this for the last time. The
fire burned with a deep glow. Outside the bare trees, ladened with
snow, creaked in the wind that came creeping with the dark from hidden
places. In the kitchen Madam Cateau scolded the waiter. Dishes rattled
and finally the perspiring Gustave came running with the soup. It was
rich and thick, and across the table, so near that she could see a tiny
black speck on Gregory's white collar, he was eating it, smiling at her
between spoonfuls, his face damp with the soup's heat and the reaction
from the long walk in the cold.
When dinner was almost through, Madam plodded in again.
"The same room? Yes? Perhaps a smaller one is warmer."
"No. The same. Make a good fire. It will be all right."
They drank the coffee in silence and smoked, listening to the woman's
feet plopping on the floor above. It was quiet in the kitchen now. A
loosened shutter creaked and ashes fell softly in the grate. Upstairs
the door closed. Madam came thumping down and they heard her settle
with a grunt into her chair by the parlor stove.
They went upstairs. The room was just the same. They might have been
away only an hour. The same colored print of Napoleon stared above the
dresser; the same stiff, white tidies covered the chair seats. The
same red and white counterpane spread over the bed, with its nosegay
of red and white embroidered roses in the exact center. The curtains
were drawn half down, but below, through the spotless panes, the field
stretched bare and silent under a clean young moon. Gregory went over
and pulled down the shades.
Jean took the plush rocker that Gregory dragged to the hearth. He sat
on the floor, his head against her knees, and together they listened to
the breathing of the fire, the whispering wind, and the branch scraping
on the glass. Gregory drew Jean's hands down and held them against his
lips.
The little noise outside died in the throb within. His lips pressed hot
in her palms. With a sob, Jean bent and drew him into her arms.
In the morning they went silently back to the city while it was still
early. The wind had risen in the night and blown the last snow from the
branches. The trees cut thin and black in the new day.
Gregory was to come back in May.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Spring was late, but when it came, it came with a rush. In a day, the
trees swelled in buds and blades of grass pricked the frozen earth.
Jean woke one morning, late in April, to the feeling of a new force in
the world and in herself. It was as if she had been walking through a
tunnel, and now, unexpectedly, stepped into the light. Time had somehow
slipped its leash; it no longer strained behind but ran forward. Jean
jumped out of bed and went through the morning exercises that she had
neglected for weeks. Raising and lowering herself on her toes, she drew
in deep breaths of the spring air and with every breath the last two
months receded, the future brightened, until, her whole body glowing,
Jean came to a final halt, planted firmly on both feet.
She entered the dining-room humming, so that Martha, who was shirring
eggs in the kitchen, poked her head through the swing door, as if she
expected to see a stranger.
"Why, Jean!"
"Why, mummy!"
Martha smiled. "All the problems in the universe must be solved this
morning."
"Not exactly. But I confess they don't seem quite so hopeless. I guess
it's the spring. Who could be altogether miserable on a morning like
this? In the spring tra la!"
Martha went back to the eggs. Such a sudden change of mood was beyond
her, for it was weeks since Jean had come humming to breakfast and,
although Martha had said nothing, she had worried. But there had been
nothing to worry about, since Jean could hum because the sun shone and
the earth-smell came through the open windows. Martha wondered why
intelligent people gave way to moods, when they must know what a little
thing in the end would dispel them.
At the office Jean found a letter from Gregory. It was the longest she
had had and the writing of it had stretched over a week.
"It's the only way to do," Gregory wrote, "because if I don't, things
pile up to tell you until there are so many I can't tackle them
all. Sometimes I want to get right on the train and come over, when
something very good happens. And it's just the same when something bad
happens, so you see I want you pretty much all the time."
At this point, Jean rang for Josephine Grimes and told her there would
be no dictation ready until eleven. When Josephine had gone, Jean
locked the door.
"I don't care if it is silly. I have to be sensible enough the rest of
the time."
Jean came back to the desk and read and re-read Gregory's letter until
she felt that they had been together through the days of its writing.
They were interesting days, filled from morning until night with new
impressions and new people.
"At first it felt queer and unreal, to have millionaire pork packers
and mayors and things like that consulting my convenience. I felt
about the way Puck does, just before Galatea comes to life. Not that I
want to convey that a pork packer is like a Greek statue. It felt like
this----"
Here followed a marginal drawing of himself standing before a group of
pedestals at various angles of motion, but the flagstone on which he
stood was anchored at the four corners with the words, _I did win the
contest_.
"I'm afraid I'm getting too cocky about winning, as if I had done it
all by myself, when it was you, more than half. Yes, it was, and you
needn't smile as I am positive you are doing, and insist it was all my
great ability. Of course I have ability, tons of it. Does that satisfy
you? But when I look back now on the hopeless, dreamless creature you
rescued, I want--well, I never claimed to be any good at words, and
even drawing fails me here. I want you close. I want your arms round
me and that glorious cool hair hiding all but your eyes. Why do you
come so often, dear, just at dawn, and wake me that way, as you did
that first morning at Morrison's? It was just about a year ago, wasn't
it? Maybe that's why I've been thinking of them lately, or maybe it's
because you came every morning last week. You shameless, brazen----"
Here was the figure that he usually drew instead of writing her name,
the Roman tower with the shaft of sunlight across the top.
The division for that day stopped here and the next was about some
changes in the plans that he had decided to make. The description was
brief and technical but Jean knew the old design so well that she could
reconstruct it without an effort. Evidently he had been interrupted,
for he broke off short and when he began again it was about Puck. Puck
was delighted with Chicago and as far as he could judge it was because
she would never again have to be nice to Squdgy.
"I believe Squdgy was your Dr. Fenninger and my Amos Palmer to her.
I hadn't any idea that she really disliked him so much. Funny little
entities children are, changing right under your eyes every minute.
Sometimes she looks like this and the next day she's this."
Jean's lips quivered. How closely he must observe Puck! It hurt in a
way and yet it made her very tender, too.
There was no direct mention of Margaret but in the last division,
written the day before, Gregory said that she need not think New York
was doing everything. Chicago had an institution, a group rather, whose
motto was The Ultimate End.
"So what's the good of fiddling with any little by-products of social
uplift or religion? Fascinatingly logical, isn't it? You dive straight
at The End. It's the weirdest yet, a lot more simple than garbage or
the Divine Mind."
And Jean could see Margaret, slim and blonde and graceful, diving to
The Ultimate End.
There was only one sentence more.
"From the way things look now, I believe I can make it before the
fifteenth. So 'put your house in order.'"
Jean folded the letter and laid it in the drawer with the others. Then
she called Miss Grimes and dictated steadily for two hours.
Ten days later, Jean took down the receiver to hear Gregory's familiar:
"Hello! You see I made it."
"So I see. But where are you?"
"At the Grand Central, where you will be in about ten minutes--unless
you want me to come over."
"No. I'll come down."
Afterwards they laughed, but at the time there had seemed nothing else
to say.
* * * * *
Gregory stayed three days. Two of his business appointments and one of
Jean's took part of their time, and made it impossible for them to go
to Morrison's as Jean had hoped they would be able to do. But she tried
not to think of it, and held firmly to what they had.
During these two days the feeling Jean had so often experienced in the
past, of having to beat through an outer covering to get at the real
Gregory underneath, was gone. At moments, Jean felt as if some subtle
atomic process had taken place, regrouping the elements of the man,
without changing them in their nature, but re-combining them in such
a way that the effect produced was quite different. But it was not a
permanent feeling, or rather, it was true only at times. In the close
hours of the second afternoon, which they spent at Madam Cateau's,
there was no room for analysis in the content that held them, and Jean
felt that Gregory had never been away at all. But coming back, he told
her of a possible commission, the first that had come through his new
connection, and Jean felt the difference again sharply. And simply
because it was a change, Jean resented it until her sense of justice
and humor conquered. She had always known and believed Gregory had it
in him to do big things and now that he was proving it she had a queer
feeling of hollowness inside.
"You're going to be disgustingly successful, Gregory. You ooze it
already."
"Do you mean that I really act conceited?" He asked it with such desire
to be answered honestly that Jean laughed.
"I didn't say that. Of course you don't. But you--let me see how to put
it. Here, give me a pencil, maybe I can draw it."
Gregory watched with a grin while Jean constructed figures unknown to
geometry.
"Words are clumsy, I grant, but those things! Which is the 'is' and
which the 'was'?"
"That's the 'was.' It's one of the Egyptian pyramids, with curlycues.
Those are the moods when the spirit inside got away from you."
"And the 'is'?"
"That's a geometric eagle."
"With the curlycues become audible in one horrible screech."
"That isn't his mouth open. It's his under-beak where the pencil
slipped."
"That's better. You had me quite scared." Gregory took back the paper
and pencil and Jean's hands with them. "For which I am going to punish
you."
Again and again, in the soft dusk, under the budding elm, he kissed
her, and then he held her close and they did not speak at all.
When they began walking again they were serious.
"You see, Jean, you don't really know how it feels, because you never
quit on the game as I did. I did honestly believe that it was all over
for me and that I was never going to get anywhere. I felt like a little
cog in a huge machine, whose place could be taken by any other little
cog just as well. That's a damnable feeling. I felt at the mercy of
whatever power kept the machine going."
"But we are all cogs, in a way."
"Look out. You'll be an Ultimate Ender yet."
"Is being a cog the ultimate end of everything?"
"Something like it. We are all specks in a cosmos that's more
complicated than a Chinese puzzle. You reincarnate and reincarnate for
millions of cycles, and when you get through you're only a sphere with
a face in the middle. Did you know that? Your spiritual you, when it's
been perfected through a billion æons is going to be a kind of gas bag
with features in the center. The latest discoveries in all occultism
prove it."
Jean laughed. "I believe I'll stop off half way. The Ultimate End
doesn't appeal to me."
"I'll stop off in that place, too,----" Gregory did not finish, and
Jean did not ask him what he had been going to say. Hand in hand they
walked along, until they came in sight of the brightly lit station.
"It's been a glorious afternoon, hasn't it?"
Jean nodded.
On the next night, which was the last of Gregory's stay, they had
dinner at The Fiesole. Jean did not want to go there, but when Gregory
proposed it, she could think of no good reason and so they went.
Gregory filled their glasses, and across the raised rim of his, smiled
to Jean.
"Amos Palmer!"
"To the Turkish lanterns and Japanese wind-bells!"
And Rachael. Should she say it? It was such a long, long time ago. Jean
did not know whether Gregory remembered that the night he had told her
of Amos and the pergola, was the night they had gone to Rachael's. What
a big thing it had seemed at the time and now it was so little. Was the
course of all human relationships just that--a series of steps, from
one desperate need, to a temporary peace, and then on to another need?
Did one never come to a lasting peace, a flat, restful spot with no
more steps? Or did one just step off at last into nothingness?
"What is it? Are you yearning for Japanese wind-bells and an electric
pergola?"
"Was I looking like that?"
"Rather abstracted, Jeany. And----" Gregory was on the point of
adding--"and this is our last night," but changed it. They both knew
that well enough. So he said: "And besides it's rude."
"I was just wondering whether she has outgrown the pergola yet or
whether Amos is still happy."
"I don't know. I saw in some paper not long ago that an English Duke
was one of the guests on a yachting trip with Mr. and Mrs. Amos Palmer.
From what I know of the Duke's reputation--Good-by wind-bells and maybe
Amos."
They kept the talk at this level until they had almost finished dinner.
Then, in spite of their efforts to hold the mood, it slipped from them.
Brief silences fell, which were hastily dispelled as soon as either
one could think of something to say, sufficiently unimportant. But
they came again, until at last Jean made no effort to escape them, and
Gregory sat rolling breadcrumbs in the old way and frowning into the
tablecloth.
He did not know when he could come again. The months ahead were going
to be busy ones and he would have to snatch an interlude when he could.
And yet, going without the definite point of a return, left these days
unfinished. He wished Jean would ask him.
But Jean said nothing. If Gregory knew he would tell her and if he did
not know she did not want to be told that this, for which she would
wait alone, week after week, as she had waited, was to be left to
chance, thrust into an unfilled moment.
"Let's walk to the station, up Second Avenue and across, I haven't been
down this way for ages." There was an hour yet before train time and
Jean knew that she could not sit here, filling the lessening hour with
nonsense and silences.
"All right." Gregory signaled the waiter and paid the bill. He was
disappointed, but what had he expected? He did not know. He only knew
that he had not thought of spending their last hour sauntering among
pushcarts. But if that was enough for Jean----And he succeeded so well
that Jean's heart grew heavier and heavier and she kept back the tears
only by a desperate effort.
But when the reality of separation detached itself in a concrete crowd,
in long lines waiting before the ticket windows, the starter booming
the trains through a megaphone, and the red-cap who hurried up for
Gregory's grip, Jean's pride slipped beyond her hold. She stared ahead
and her lips trembled. His arm slipped under hers and drew her closer.
"Jean," he whispered. "Jean, dear." His fingers closed about her bare
wrist above the glove.
The hand of the huge clock jerked itself forward another minute. And
there was nothing to say. Less than if they had been strangers. With
another jerk, the hand touched ten. Gregory dropped Jean's arm. Without
a word he hurried through the gate and it closed behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The summer passed. Once in September Gregory came on a flying business
trip and left the next day.
Winter closed early with a jealous grip, and Jean worked as even she
had never worked before. She managed committees, lobbied bills, spoke
at meetings and drove her plans through all opposition.
Dr. Mary was busy with her final thesis. Evening after evening Jean and
Martha sat reading quietly as they had done in the old days, and Martha
was happy.
Just before Christmas Gregory came unexpectedly, solely to see Jean.
They went out to the French roadhouse where he had ordered dinner by a
wire to Madam Cateau.
It was a Christmas dinner. The table was already laid in their old
room, when he threw open the door and ushered Jean in with a flourish.
"Merry Christmas."
He closed the door and would have taken Jean in his arms, but the look
in her eyes stopped him.
"Why, Jean, what is it?"
For Jean stood staring at the table and fighting desperately not to cry.
"I--thought----"
Jean turned and buried her face on his shoulder.
"What is it, dear? Can't you tell me?"
Jean fought fiercely to stop, but she wanted to shriek, to laugh, to
let down utterly, to sob out all the hurt, the suppression of the last
ten months, close in Gregory's arms. And all the time, at the back of
her brain, her burning eyes pressed into Gregory's coat, she saw the
gay little table with the wine glasses and the white chrysanthemums and
the ridiculous turkey, with the foolish paper frills about its brown
legs.
Gregory held her gently, stroking her hair and wondering what had
happened. For he had expected Jean to be as surprised and delighted as
he had been when the idea occurred to him.
Slowly Jean's nerves relaxed and the sobs lessened. She must be happy
now, while they were together. In a few hours Gregory would be gone and
if she spoiled these hours there would be nothing, not even the memory,
in the months ahead.
Jean raised her head and smiled. Gregory smiled too with a warm little
feeling deep inside for this sudden, unexpected weakness.
"Whatever was the matter, Jean girl?"
"Nothing--only--I was wishing--we could have--Christmas and--we've got
it."
Gregory laughed so that down in the kitchen Madam Cateau heard and
laughed, too.
"Of all things to cry about! Because you get something you want. I'm
glad it doesn't affect me that way." He punctuated the words with
kisses and then, lifting her bodily, carried her across the room and
put her down at the table, a little out of breath with the effort.
"You're no feather-weight, Lady of My Dreams. Or maybe I am hungry."
It was a good dinner and Gregory enjoyed it, although they had to hurry
at the end to get back to the city in time for him to catch his train.
Jean waited behind the iron grill until the train pulled out and
she could no longer distinguish Gregory waving his hand from the
Observation. Alone she turned into the months ahead.
Weeks of waiting, snatching, losing, waiting again. Years broken
by flying visits, some longer, some shorter. No calm, no peace, no
sureness. Their lives would touch, run close for a few hours, a few
days at most, and part. No foothold, no smallest spot their own, no
door they could close against every one but each other. And it would
always be like this. The happiness of the moment must be clutched,
until the force of the holding almost strangled it to death, just as
to-day's dinner had done.
It would go on and on. Their meetings would grow more and more the
result of circumstances, be wedged in the unfilled places between the
world's demands.
She would fill her days, fuller and fuller, to keep the thought of
Gregory away. She would do bigger and bigger things, and people would
speak more and more admiringly of her. While she struggled not to
wonder when Gregory was coming again!
Or he might never come again. An accident in the lives of either might
separate them forever. Gregory might be called to the ends of the earth
and she could not follow. He would go with Margaret and Puck and she
would remain behind.
They would grow older. They would hold to the small, common interests
of each other's lives by an effort. A little while, and they would no
longer talk of this person and that without elaborate explanations.
Gregory's little sketches of people she did not know would grow
meaningless. Their lives would run two paralleled streams, mingling
only in the moments snatched together. And what would these moments
hold? No shared interests, no mingled hopes. Their hands and lips would
cling, on to the very end, because something in Gregory would always
call and something, beyond her brain or will, would always answer.
The white face of a clock peered at Jean through the snow. It was
almost twelve. After all, she would have to go home some time.
* * * * *
The holidays passed and a new year began. Jean took long walks through
the snow and believed, sometimes, when she came back tired and hungry,
that she had left the tangle behind. There were moments when, whipped
by the cold to an almost drunken ecstasy of health, the old sureness
returned. Her love and Gregory's was clean and big, like the open,
eternal as the earth.
But the snow went.
It grew warm again on the upland, cool in the hollows, as on the days
she and Gregory had stolen two springs before. Jean battled to hold her
peace but it slipped from her as the grass pricked the earth again and
buds swelled on the branches.
She proposed a national campaign to awaken interest in other states,
and link the women of the country in a common bond. But, while she
listened to the applause that greeted her first suggestion, she heard
beyond it the wailing gramophone wrapping the rebellious Mattie and
her mother in sensuous peace. She worked until far into the night on
this new project, but the old apple trees rustled in the orchard and
dogs barked from farm to farm across the fields. She went to special
luncheons to meet important people, but Uncle John was always there,
eating his porridge in the blue willow bowl. And at night, when she
lay alone in the dark, too weary with the crowded days to sleep, there
was always a baby's dark, fuzzy head and wet, groping lips. Jean
tried to push it away, but it would not go. In the morning, when the
coffee-grinders set the world in motion, it was always there, smiling
and pummeling with its fists.
And in the end, Jean let it have its way.
It came and went with her, at home, in the office and to Mary's.
Jean thought of Amelia Gorman and the gray house on the windy hills. If
she had a child, nothing ever again could shut her off from the current
of life. It was the only real thing in all the world. It was the past
and the future down to the end of time.
Jean weighed the price. A child of hers and Gregory's against a
national congress of strangers. Any one of a dozen other women could
manage that, but her job, her very own job, no one else could do.
Before the miracle of her own power Jean was humble.
A strange new softness came over her, so that Martha wondered, but Mary
referred to it outright, one night during her last week in New York
when they sat talking before the open window as they had not done for
months, with Madame la Marquise budding to youth before them.
"Jean Herrick, I wish to goodness you'd stop looking like a large
blonde angel, just about to fly beyond mortal ken. It makes me feel a
hundred years old, and as if I hadn't accomplished a single thing the
whole time I've been here."
Jean laughed. "I'm sorry that I look like such a foolish thing as a
large, blonde angel, but I'd rather you felt a hundred than I, Mary."
"But I'm not stuck on it myself, Jean."
"Then don't. It's all in the mind, anyhow. No one needs to grow old."
"Piffle. There's a lot of rubbish talked like that these days. There's
no need to grow grumpy and useless, but, after all, we can't turn
back the hands of the clock. We do grow out of one possibility into
another--and they don't come back either."
Jean shrank a little, as if Mary had touched the glowing spot inside.
"Then--live every possibility up to the hilt and take the next."
"Logical and doubtless true. But I wish you wouldn't look so much as if
your next was an ascent straight into Heaven. It makes me feel old--and
a little lonely, Jean."
"Don't, Mary; please don't, I don't want you to feel like that."
"Oh, it's not as bad as all that. But, really, Jean, I never did think
of the difference in our ages until lately. We always seemed to be
walking along at the same gait, but these last few weeks you look as if
you had been doing it out of politeness, and if you really wanted to
you could pick up your skirts--and run forever."
"I do feel like that, Mary; exactly as if I had wings."
Dr. Mary looked up, but the joke on her lips did not come. There was a
short pause and then Jean said:
"Mary, I'm going to tell you something that I believe I've wanted to
tell you for a long time."
And she did, looking out over the Park while Dr. Mary sat silent.
Jean went back to the beginning, to the sense of a fuller world because
Gregory was in it. Calm and unashamed, she spared nothing.
"I was glad when you went away, Mary. It was wonderful having this
place, like a home all our own. And then you came back." Jean smiled,
thinking of the tragedy of the discovered vegetables, and how miserable
she had been.
She told of sending Martha away, of Gregory's going to Maine, and of
her own readjustment toward Margaret and Puck; of Gregory's winning the
contest, his removal to Chicago and of the long months since, trying to
hold intact the beauty of their love, through hurried meetings, flying
trips, moods of forced gayety clutched tight against the force of
circumstance always tearing them apart. And the terrible white light of
logic illuminating the end.
"It will come, Mary; it must. I can see it like a wall, standing there
at the end of--one year, two, five perhaps. But--it will end."
For the first time Jean's voice shook. Nor was Mary's steady as she
said, after a long pause:
"But you've _had_ it, Jean. Nothing can take it away."
Jean shook her head. "I know, Mary. But that's like the rubbish that's
talked about not growing old. It's the theory of those who have never
had a thing--that the memory of it can be enough."
Dr. Mary winced and lit a cigarette. "Maybe it is."
"When you've had a thing and--it goes--you have two pains, because the
memory and the happiness hurts as much as not having it any more. And
then--there's a third--the nothingness of everything else. That's the
worst, that awful, dead emptiness, where nothing counts and you just go
on because there's not even the will to stop. And the terrible, empty
future."
"But he isn't dead, Jean. And you have your work. You can write, and
even if you can't be always together, there----"
"I know. Those things are a lot when they're a part, but they're
nothing at all when they're all. I have less even than Margaret has.
Yes, less even than that. She has the shell and I have the kernel,
but the kernel has to have its own shell or it dies. No marriage
certificate in the world could make her really his wife, but no
blindness in the world can keep our love what it is really--like this.
I don't believe that society invented marriage because a man wanted to
keep one woman as his property or because women wanted to be supported.
They were just groping blindly to keep love alive, to bind it fast,
that biggest, freest thing in all the world, and keep it safe for
itself."
"Well, they've made a sad mess of it."
"I know. They didn't mean to build a prison, but they have. Some day
there will be no state or church locking people in--but there will
always be walls around real love--like ours. It makes its own and grows
stronger and stronger behind them. And when it can't, it just withers
and dies and--there's nothing left. I can't have it that way, Mary, I
can't. I can't watch it grow less, and I know it will--and I can't shut
it out forever. There is only one way, Mary--I want a child--terribly."
Dr. Mary dropped her cigarette so that it smoldered into the rug and
burned a small, black hole.
"But, Jean----"
"I know, Mary. I've thought it out--everything, every single thing.
I won't lose my job, because, of course, I shall give it up. I'll go
away. I shall have to lie, right and left and all the time. I shall lie
to the world and I shall lie to mummy. That will be the hardest, lying
to mummy. But it would kill her, and I don't want to hurt mummy, but
I am not going to let her stop my life, withhold the biggest thing in
it. No one has a right to do that. It is _my_ life and _my_ job, Mary;
the job of every woman when she really loves a man. And nothing else
matters."
The little doctor gulped twice, and rapped out:
"Then go ahead and have it."
Jean slipped to the floor and laid her head on the other's knees.
"Mary, do you think--I'm--very----"
"No, Jean, I don't. I'm--I'm green with envy."
The tears ran down the doctor's cheeks and she made no effort to wipe
them away.
After a while Jean looked up.
"I'm going to write to Gregory and tell him. I don't want to see
him--till he knows."
Dr. Mary snuffled. "Here endeth the Congress."
Jean smiled. "Mary, a dozen other women can run the Congress and I
don't give a whoop who goes on with it. Josephine Grimes can take it
over if she likes."
Through the tears the blue eyes twinkled.
"Jean, you're the--most glorious--fool in the world--and I'd like to
shake you."
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"How do you like it?" Margaret turned, looking back over her shoulder
to Gregory. Her fair hair and white shoulders rose from a swathing of
cloudy fabric that showed now palest pink, now mauve, now faintly blue.
"It's ripping!"
Waltzing slowly the length of the dusky room, she moved with a flower
lightness, a spirit-like unreality that touched the artist in him.
"You look like an orchid come to life in the depths of a forest."
Margaret stopped and swept him a curtsey.
"Thanks. To affect one's own husband like that is an achievement."
Gregory smiled. This new manner of Margaret's, half flirtatious, half
cynical, amused him.
"Then what will happen to old Burnham? He'll be downright dizzy."
"Don't be coarse, Gregory. I don't like it. Besides, you know I do it
for you."
"Oh, I'm not jealous. Not a bit."
"You may laugh, but it _is_ good business. Weren't you asked to join
The Meadow Club after our last dinner?"
"I was."
"Well?"
"I thank you." Gregory doffed an imaginary hat and swept a bow. "What
have you in mind this time?"
"Don't be silly. Besides, it's every hostess's duty to look as well as
she can."
"You've done that. Maybe Burnham will resign in my favor and I'll be
president of the Architectural Society of America."
"There's no reason that you shouldn't be some day, if you go about it
right. It has to have a president, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely essential." Gregory chuckled and switched on the lights. In
this mood of helping-wife Margaret was delightfully naïve.
"Well, I'm doing my part. If you do yours----"
"There's no knowing to what heights I may not climb."
"But you can't get anything without some trouble in this world. You've
got to work for it, in every way." Margaret spoke as if she were
enunciating a divine decree, and moved with stately coldness to the
door.
"Very well. I'll work to-night. You've put me next to Phyllis Henshaw,
haven't you?"
"Yes. And it's Gothic Cathedrals. She's mad about them lately. That
ought to be easy for you."
"I can take that trick with my eyes shut."
"But don't make her feel that you know more about it than she does. Let
her talk. She loves to."
"I'll remember."
"And please get dressed. The Phillips always come too early and you're
not even shaved yet."
Margaret floated away and Gregory went into his dressing-room.
This was to be the last and most important of the Allen dinners which
Margaret had begun early in the winter. The guest of honor was to be
James Burnham, President of the Architectural Society, with eight
lesser luminaries. It would be a success because these dinners of
Margaret's always were a success. Sitting beside some eminent man,
whose conversation she could not follow, Margaret reached her climax.
As wife and companion, she was one being, as hostess another. In the
act of presiding over a dinner table, Margaret found a clarity of
vision that kept her in safe paths. Men whom Gregory admired and for
whose good opinion he was anxious, never refused an invitation to one
of Margaret's dinners.
As he dressed Gregory smiled to think what a chasm lay between the
first dinner and this. Graceful and surefooted, Margaret had scaled
the social cliffs, picking with unerring instinct the right spots. The
dinner to-night was to mark the apex.
And it did. Looking about the table, at the soft lights, the exquisite
flowers, the well-gowned women and alert men, Gregory felt that only
a sketch of the Taj Mahal would do it justice. While he talked Gothic
Cathedrals he drew one mentally and sent it to Jean. The subdued
abundance, restrained success, the perfect balance of personal
accomplishment and concealed consciousness of it, rose in delicate
spires and minarets against a background of inexhaustible possibility,
Eastern in its opulence.
On Margaret's right sat James Burnham, white-haired and charming, but
knowing to a hair's weight what it meant for any hostess to secure him.
Yankee in the shrewd appreciation of his own value, Southern in the
charm of its concealment, and Latin in his attitude to all women, the
famous man bent to Margaret with undivided attention. Margaret vibrated
in harmony to his note. Her eyes sparkled and she had the manner of a
beautiful woman withholding an advance she perfectly understood and had
full power to reciprocate. Gregory looked on amused, while he followed
instructions and let Phyllis Henshaw rhapsodize among the Gothic
arches. He speculated about Margaret as if she were a stranger, and
wondered why men with wives like that were ever jealous of them.
Coffee was served in the living-room, a method of Margaret's for
redistributing her guests. By the new adjustment, Phyllis Henshaw fell
to James Pelham and Gregory could not help smiling at Margaret when he
caught her eye. Skill like this amounted to an art. From time to time
he glanced at the white-haired president, listening with a mechanical
smile to the Gothic ravings and wondered whether any man, except
perhaps a Jesuit diplomat, could have achieved his purpose better. At
the first opportunity, Gregory edged his own partner to the rescue, and
then realized that he, too, was weaving a pattern of the evening to
Margaret's design. He had an almost irresistible impulse to call across
the room to her:
"Is this the way you want it? Or have I made a mistake?"
There was neither bridge nor music, and yet most of the guests stayed
until almost twelve. It was even a little after before Phyllis Henshaw
kissed Margaret effusively and assured her that it had all "been simply
perfect." When the front door closed behind them, Margaret dropped into
a chair and yawned.
"People can say what they like, but there's absolutely no other way to
do it. A dinner is the only thing."
"Q. E. D."
"But next winter I'm going to do it a little differently. We won't
begin quite so early in the season--now that I know who's who. We won't
give more than six either. That's enough to cover all the people that
really matter."
"A kind of inverse ratio? In time, at that rate, we'll have to eat
alone."
"I suppose that's awfully clever; but, really, I'm too tired to follow."
Gregory realized that he was being petty. For the evening had been
just as much of an accomplishment, in its way, as Bobby Phillips'
engineering miracles in the Orient, or the Auditorium itself, for that
matter.
"It was all right, Margaret, and I'm sure if Burnham wrote sonnets he'd
be sitting up at this minute."
A dreamy smile touched Margaret's lips. "He's perfectly fascinating.
I don't wonder women fall for him." She moved toward the door. "I let
Nellie go to bed, Gregory, so you put out the lights. And please don't
make your usual racket in the morning. I'm all in."
Gregory finished his cigar and then went upstairs. He stopped for a
moment in Puck's room as he always did. She was sound asleep. Lady Jane
sat stiffly on a chair. Of late, Puck often forgot to take Lady Jane to
bed. Puck was growing up. Gregory laid Lady Jane softly on the coverlet
and tiptoed out.
Bunched on the dresser was the last mail that he always had sent up
from the office when he left too early to get it. He tossed it aside,
picked up Jean's with a thrill of pleased surprise, for Jean usually
wrote once to his twice and he had not yet answered the last, and made
himself comfortable to enjoy it.
Gregory read the letter from the abrupt beginning, "I want to talk to
you, dear," to the ending "that's all," and laid it down. There was
no haze to be cleared away by a second reading, no doubt of Jean's
meaning, no possible misunderstanding. Into the three pages Jean
had compressed the wonder of their love, the nuances of its beauty,
the impossibility of continuing like this. She made no claims nor
recognized any on her own part. Only, she could not go on. She stated
it as simply as she might have said: "I cannot meet you to-morrow. I
have a meeting."
Before the simplicity of Jean's mind, Gregory was helpless. With one
clean blow, Jean had cut away all the elaborate superstructure of
ordinary human intercourse. The scaffolding was stark before him.
Step by step, Gregory went back over the past year. There had been
hours of longing that not even his work had stilled. Days when Jean
had moved beside him, enjoying his triumphs, memories that had helped
him through temporary difficulties. She was always there, more or less
vivid, according to his need. The visits to New York he had planned
weeks ahead. The Christmas dinner he had snatched at the risk of
business loss. The perfect walk through the snow to Madam Cateau's; the
tenderness of Jean's tears; the gay meal and Jean's cheery smile as the
train pulled out; his pride in Jean's courage; desperate moments of his
own rebellion, stifled in shame before her greater strength.
And all the time, Jean had been beating against this "ugliness." It had
been one thing to him, another to her. He did not know her. Perhaps he
had never known her.
He went back to the night he had come in with Puck to find Jean
standing by the living-room window, and the storm that had raged in him
through that intolerable hour of Margaret's chatter and the need that
had driven him to leave the house with Jean. Again Gregory felt the
silence of the street about them, then the clatter of the taxi as it
stopped at his signal; and the dizzy moment when Jean had said quietly:
"Gramercy Park." It was Jean who had said it. Again Gregory felt the
reverence and gratitude that had stilled his passion through that dark,
silent ride.
Love had meant to her what it had meant to him and he had gloried in
her honesty. She had brought back the courage that the weary round of
years with Margaret had almost killed, and kept it alive. She had been
glad of his success. Again he felt her leaning to him across the table
and heard her say:
"It is only eighteen hours away."
It was Jean who had said it, just as she had said: "Gramercy Park."
And now she said, just as quietly and simply: "I can't go on."
Cold damp broke out on Gregory's forehead.
She could not go on.
She wanted it to stop. She would fill her days without reference to
him. He would fill his with no thought of her. He would make no more
flying trips to New York. Never again. Not even once more, unless----
Gregory rose. If he did not get up now and move he would always sit
there, staring at the three pages covered with the clear black writing,
on the table beside him.
Jean with a child. A child of hers and of himself. She had weighed the
price and was willing to pay. The fences that society had put up, Jean
was willing to throw down. The conventions they had scorned in secret,
Jean would scorn openly. Unconfused by all the little noises of the
world, Jean heard the clearest call and answered.
"She doesn't realize what it would mean. She----"
The last sentence of the letter moved before him.
"I have thought it all out, dear, and I know. It's the one thing
against everything else, the one thing that counts against all the
things that don't."
Gregory's chin dropped to his breast and he walked up and down like an
old man.
Jean with a child. A child of hers and his. Jean and their child,
alone, one thousand miles away. Another human being, part of himself,
just as Puck was a part.
Another Puck. The best of Jean and of himself, a fearless little Puck,
whom he would see at long intervals, scarcely know, whom he could
not acknowledge, but who would always be near, tearing at his heart,
claiming his love. Gregory's lips went white.
"My God," he whispered, "I wish I had never seen you."
Then he began walking again, up and down, up and down.
The stars were white in the morning sky when he went back and sat down
once more beside the table. He put the three sheets of Jean's letter
carefully together and tore them across many times. Then on a single
sheet he wrote:
"I am not brave enough. I haven't the courage. I cannot pay the price."
He took the torn bits of Jean's letter and his own and went out. He
dropped his into the green box on the corner. The chill wind of dawn
seized Jean's and carried them away.
He closed the front door softly and went slowly up the stairs, past
Puck's door and Margaret's, back into his own room. The pen was still
wet with ink. Gregory opened the window and threw it into the street.
In a few moments an early milk wagon clattered along and scrunched it
into the dust.