With Bobs and the Chatfields away, and his uptown friends believing him
to be off on a cruise, Jerry settled himself to long-neglected work, but
nothing went well. He was out of work habits, he missed his intimates,
he descended into the depths of discouragement and despair.
It was on a day of gloom within and gloom without that he set every
canvas in the studio in a row before him. He went slowly from one to
another and studied them all. Into this funereal stock-taking Jane
entered. The deep distress on his face stopped her.
"What's the matter, Mr. Paxton?"
"Jane Judd, why do you suppose I ever thought I could paint?"
"Has anything happened?"
"These have happened! Look at this collection of wax-works! Bad drawing,
no style, paint put on with a squirt gun."
"There is nothing like taking a good square look at what you have been
doing, to make you mend your ways," she said, but he was not listening.
He was enjoying his despair.
"I'll smash the whole lot of them. I never want to see them again!" He
struck a wet brush across the nearest one, but Jane seized his arm.
"Don't do that."
"I can't live in the room with them."
"All right. Send them up to the storage room."
She began to move them off and stack them against the door. Jerry threw
himself down on the couch, moodily. He scarcely noticed when the
janitor, answering Jane's summons, carried them all off to the top
floor.
"Now you've got a clean slate you can begin again," Jane said, and went
about her work.
"I shall give it up. I'll never paint again."
She made no comment, but she smiled to herself. She knew "her children,"
as she called them.
"Can't you stop fussing around, and come and talk to me?"
"I have work to do."
He came to the door of the bedroom.
"What work?"
"I'm going to clean this room."
"Why do you bother with us, Jane Judd?" he inquired.
"I have to make my living."
"But you can do _anything_."
"Go away, now, I'm going to make a dust," she smilingly suggested.
He obeyed, but she heard him walking the studio, up and down. Presently
he came to the door again.
"Couldn't you find something to do in the studio? I'm so desperately
lonesome to-day."
Her own heart had prompted that phrase too often to let her smile at it.
"All right, in a few minutes. I'll find some mending to do."
After a while she came into the studio, and sat down by the big window,
her sewing basket beside her. Jerry watched her quiet directness of
movement. He noted the straight line of her back, the bend of her dark
head outlined against the gray sheets of rain outside. Her sombre gown
was relieved by a splash of red, gold, and blue Chinese embroidery,
which she was mending.
"I'm always wondering lately, what you are thinking about, Jane Judd,"
he said.
"At this moment, I am thinking that it was careless to let this
beautiful thing be torn."
"I didn't mean to intrude."
She bowed without reply.
"I'm going to make a study of you. It's interesting, that gray window,
the rain and all."
He set up an easel and got a board ready.
"I've never known anybody to be as still as you are. It's a positive
talent.... There's no sense in your doing your hair that way. Ever since
the night of the pageant I have wondered how you could bear to make
yourself plain. How can you?"
"My looks don't count. I have no time to spend on myself."
"Holy Ananias! hear this woman! Is she human?"
She smiled, not looking at him, but lifting her head and smiling into
space. They were silent for a while. She felt his complete absorption in
his work, this big little boy who half an hour earlier had sworn he
would never paint again.
"You're work atmosphere for me, Jane Judd. I should engage you by the
week, to just sit in my studio. How would you like that?"
"I would not consider it, thanks."
"Why not?"
"I have many things to do."
"I think being inspiration to a painter would be more desirable for a
woman than just looking after studios."
"I think doing her own work, whatever it is, is the most important thing
for a woman."
"Heavens! Jane Judd, are you one of these 'woman's rights, right or
wrong' preachers? You aren't a suffragette, and a freewomaner, are you?"
"Yes."
"Have we nourished a bomb in the studios all these years? Don't get me
started on the woman question. I'm a regular cave man."
"All right, I won't get you started."
"It was a great mistake to begin giving woman an education. It has
messed things up dreadfully."
"For women, you mean?"
"No, for men."
"Oh."
"You don't think that matters?"
"Not especially. The progress of the world is what matters, isn't it?
Change is always uncomfortable."
"You've got everything to gain; we're the only losers, so no wonder
you're reconciled to it."
"No, we'll all gain by a fairer adjustment. It is just as uncomfortable
for women, now, as it is for men. After all, how can it help but be,
since we live our lives together, since our main interests are one."
"But we aren't going on living together! Men are getting sick of it. If
women don't let up on these demands we are going to stop marrying them
altogether."
Jane tried not to laugh.
"What about the demands men have always made on women?"
"Those were natural demands."
"Habitual, you mean.
"We can run the world very well indeed without this army of half-baked
females, thank you."
"Can you? That's an interesting discovery. What method have you invented
for populating the world you can run without us?"
"Don't talk about it. It always makes me mad!"
"All right," Jane agreed sweetly.
"I suppose you pride yourself on keeping your temper."
"No. But people who have anything to win never profit by losing their
tempers."
"You don't look like a female freebooter. You're the arch-type of
womanly woman. At this moment, you look like the priestess of the home."
He wondered at the slow flush that came up over her neck and face, the
strange yearning look that was gone before he half saw it. He painted
on, speculating about her, while Jane fought for composure.
In the weeks since her first visit from Christiansen, a new world had
opened for Jane, a new infection swept through her blood. Cooper Union
had opened up one field, Union Square another. She had joined a class
in New York University for a historic study of Woman, her biologic and
economic aspects, her accomplishments and her ambitions. She talked to
people everywhere, these days. She made friends with a group of girls in
the class, and invited them to her room.
Once a week, or oftener, Christiansen took her somewhere with him, to
hear some music, to see a play, or to meet some interesting people.
Their friendship had developed until it was the very centre of her life,
but it brought with it the usual toll. It loosed all the wants of her
nature; needs and demands she had not dreamed of sprang into being, into
urgency. She wanted love, children, a mate. The old intellectual
satisfactions were gone, swept away on the tide of these new emotions.
No thought of Martin Christiansen entered her head, in this relation.
She thought of him as one of the gods, high above, upon remote peaks,
descending now and then to help and inspire some stumbling mortal, even
as he had rescued her. She knew him as the perfect friend, and as such
she valued him.
It was the confluence of all these causes which made her drop her mask
for a second, when Jerry called her high priestess of the home.
"I had a letter from the Bryce Cricket to-day. She sent her love to
you," he said, changing the subject.
"Thanks. She writes you, does she?"
"Yes, the little idiot."
"Are her parents back yet?"
"They all come next week."
"You begin the portraits then?"
"I suppose so."
"Miss Morton is very lovely, you will like painting her."
"Women are a great bother, Jane Judd," he sighed.
"Like men."
He laughed at that, and stood back to view his work.
"This is good. It has a sort of haunting quality, that is yours."
The door was flung open, and Bobs rushed in.
"Jerry, you are home!" she cried, both hands out.
"Bobs! Welcome back! My eye, it's fine to see you. I nearly died of
loneliness."
"Did you? Did you miss me?"
"Rather. Ask Jane."
"Oh, good-morning, Jane Judd," Bobs said.
Jane greeted her, rose, gathered her things, and went into the bedroom.
"Jerry, how well you look. Did you have a good time?"
"So-so."
"You came back sooner than I expected you."
"Yes--I wanted to get to work."
"Are you engaged to Miss Morton?"
"Nonsense! Of course not."
"Oh, I'm so glad," with a deep sigh.
Jane passed through on her way out, nodding good-bye to them.
"How was the Philadelphia show, Bobs?"
"Good. I got a first."
"What? And you stand here babbling about my doings when you got a first?
Why, bless your old heart, I'm crazy about it!" he cried.
She came and put her two hands on his shoulders, looking into his face.
"Are you glad, Jerry?"
He put his hands over hers.
"I'm delighted. I'm proud of you."
She leaned her forehead against his coat. He felt her body shake, as she
tried to swallow the sobs.
"What is it, honey-girl? What is the matter?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Only I'm so glad you're pleased, and so relieved you
aren't engaged to Miss Morton."
"Bobs, you goose----"
"I just couldn't stand it, Jerry, to have you married to just a rich
woman."
"I'm not going to marry any rich woman, Bobs, you can count on that.
They are all too full of themselves. The only woman I shall ever marry
will have just one career."
"What, Jerry?"
"Her career will be Jerry Paxton! Selfish, if you like, but that is the
only way I can ever get away with matrimony. I don't like marriage, I
hate being tied down, you know how I hate it. If I married a woman with
a career of her own, with the independence and egotism which come to
women with careers, why-- Lord, Bobs, I'd end by murdering her!"
"You're the most selfish human being in the world, Jerry!"
"No, I'm like the majority of men, only I say it out and the rest keep
it dark."
"But you can't pick out the person you intend to love, Jerry. It doesn't
happen that way. Love gets you, torments you, numbs your brain, upsets
your mind."
"He won't get me, Bobs. I'm on guard."
"Some of us go on guard too late, Jerry."
"Look here, old lady, it isn't like you to talk this sort of stuff. Buck
up! Love isn't life; it's just one incident of it. Work is the real
thing, you and I both know that, and matrimony plays the devil with an
artist's work, so it's not for us."
"Jerry, you--you beast!" she choked, and ran out of the room.
He stood where she left him, startled, sorry, angry. Bobs, his old pal,
his fellow worker; he loved her dearly. He would not hurt her for the
world, nor would he marry her. Must he always be in this tumult, this
state of unrest? What was there in him which gave all the women he knew
the idea of his pursuit of them? How was he to guard against this
misunderstanding of his motives? A portrait painter could not manage a
love affair with every woman who sat for him.
This was the culminating moment of his weeks of loneliness, his
discouragement about his work, his fury at having constantly to
extricate himself from tender situations which he did not make. Bobs's
revelation made him feel a brute, a cad, but he could not marry Bobs; he
did not want to. How could he protect himself from himself?
With an apologetic tap at the door, Jane entered. "Sorry, I forgot my
bag," she said.
He confronted her squarely, looked her in the eyes and spoke, almost as
if driven by some power not himself.
"Miss Jane Judd," he said earnestly, "will you marry me?"