The search for the place in the country proved to be rather jolly. They
would start off early in the morning, sometimes with luncheon in a box,
more often depending upon the chance inn to supply their wants. Jerry
found Jane a comfortable companion. If it suddenly rained, or if they
were late getting lunch it never made any difference to her, and he was
ashamed to admit that it did to him. She showed a sort of heroic
disregard of any physical disability. She walked for miles and refuted
any suggestion of weariness. He admired this in her as extravagantly as
all aesthetes admire Spartan qualities.
Jane, on her side, delighted in Jerry's whole-hearted boyishness. He was
like a kid on a holiday. He would have taken every house they looked at,
regardless of size or rent, if she had not prevented him. Some feature
about each one seemed to him irresistible.
After weeks of prowling in all directions out of New York, they found
_it_. On the Sound, in Connecticut, they discovered a little Colonial
house, all shut away, in its own grounds, by high hedges and iron gates.
A charming, many-windowed little house it was, and Jane's heart went out
to it. It answered almost all of their requirements as to space and
equipment.
"This is it, isn't it, Jane?" Jerry asked her.
"It's more than we intended to pay."
"Oh, well, I expected to pay more than we intended to. You like it, and
I can paint here, so let's settle it."
"I should be happy here; this house speaks to me," she said.
So it was decided that it was to be theirs from June to October. They
chatted happily over it all the way back to town. These summer
excursions had brought them closer together than ever before, but with
the summer plans settled, and Jane apparently the same as ever, Jerry
fell back into his habit of playing about with Mrs. Brendon and Althea.
Jane went almost daily to her workshop. She did not always write;
sometimes she sat and made baby clothes, thinking long, long thoughts.
The room soothed her like a cool hand. In the afternoon she rested, and
often she and Bobs went for a walk together. She told no one of her
hopes.
Martin Christiansen had gone away on one of his frequent journeys and
she missed him. He was the most stimulating influence in her mental
life, and she begrudged his absences. He wrote her sometimes, wonderful
letters, strong and full of flavour like his own personality.
Bobs turned off the avenue one day, just as Jerry stepped out of
Althea's motor. She deliberately waited for him to overtake her.
"Hello, Jerry."
"Hello, Bobs."
"Why doesn't she bring you to your own door? It's an outrage that she
makes you walk two blocks."
"Oh, I still walk a little, just out of regard for my figure," he said,
nettled at her tone.
"What on earth do you see in her, Jerry?"
"She's a very attractive woman, my dear. Also her motors and her opera
box are very comfortable. Also she makes a fuss over me every minute. I
don't get that at home, you know. Even you get your claws ready when I
appear!"
"Jerry, you're an awful cad!"
"Thanks."
"What do you give her to pay for these comforts?"
"Oh, I keep her vanity fed, that's my part."
"What kind of lap dog are you, Jerry, a spitz?"
"You can't talk to me like that!" he said angrily.
"I'd hate to tell you what I really think of you, and what all your old
friends down here think of you, if calling you a lap dog offends you."
"The virago is not a becoming role, Bobs," he said, and left her.
He was so angry that he breathed hard. He didn't care what she thought
of him, or what any of them thought but he was furious that she had
spoiled his mood of exhilaration. He had just gotten a portrait
commission from one of Althea's friends, at a luncheon, and he felt that
the world was a ball for his tossing.
"What's the matter with Bobs?" he asked Jane that night.
"_Is_ something the matter with her?"
"She's as bitter as an old scold," he complained.
"I think she has been deeply hurt through some late experience," Jane
replied. He glanced at her quickly, but her eyes were on her work, so he
detected no sign that she knew what that experience was.
In late May Jane's preparations for their hegira were completed. The
first day of June they moved to the country. It happened that the spring
was late so that the early flowers and the June roses all came along
together. They found the gardens a riot, with crimson ramblers running
over the hedges and a Dorothy Perkins trellis in full flower.
"It really is enchanting," Jerry exclaimed as they drove up to the door.
They found everything in readiness. Windows were open, beds made,
flowers in the vases, logs laid on the hearth. Mrs. Biggs and Billy were
installed in charge of the kitchen department.
"Oh, Miss Judd, ain't it grand in the country?" cried Billy.
She nodded and patted his shoulder. When his mother called him away she
said:
"I hope you won't mind Billy."
"Mind him--why should I? You get such strange ideas of me."
Days of perfect weather followed, when the garden and the sea called
every moment.
"It is only by sheer force of will that I am getting our belongings
unpacked," said Jane, as they lingered after lunch on the veranda.
"Hang our belongings! Get your hat and come for a ramble. This day is a
gift, it will never come again."
She picked up her hat and staff.
"Lead off," she smiled.
"Ten minutes for my cigarette," he begged.
She stretched out on a _chaise-longue_ in sheer physical delight.
"I feel like a turtle, a slow, lethargic turtle," sighed Jerry. "Why do
mortals waste time in work, when Nature offers this nirvana?"
"It wouldn't seem nirvana without work."
"Jane, you have a practical turn of mind. You do not relax into the
proper state of nature, naked and unashamed."
"If I were any more relaxed mentally or physically than I am at this
minute, I would fall to pieces," she answered lazily.
"Jane, I am really getting to like you very much," he said, his eyes
upon her fine repose.
"Is that luck, or a calamity, I wonder?"
"Jane Judd, you ungrateful feline, come along to the sea. I may push you
in for that remark."
So it happened that because of their absolute isolation and dependence
upon each other, they began to be acquainted. Only a few of the summer
people had arrived, so they met no one on their walks. To Jane it was a
time of great peace. She was doing her work now, when she merely kept
herself in health. For the rest, life hung suspended, until October.
Jerry was happy, a charming companion. As she wrote Christiansen: "Life
is wonderful to me now. I am like the bee, garnering the very heart of
summer days, flowers, and sunshine, to put into my work."
Jerry began to paint her in the garden where she spent many hours at her
sewing. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they were speechless. When she
sat for a long time silent, and he spoke to her, she lifted eyes to him
with an expression which he could not fathom. He knew, though, that it
was something elemental, primal; that if he could catch it on his
canvas, every man and woman who looked at the picture would get that
thrill which it gave him--would know that they had glimpsed woman, the
creator.
"Jane," he said one day, "you're so comfortable."
"Am I?"
"I think that's why I married you."
"So many men marry for that reason."
"Jane, Jane, how you do prick my bubbles of conceit. They snap around me
all the time."
"It's quite unintentional," she smilingly protested.
"So much the worse. Just how conceited do you think me, Jane?"
"I've known one man _more_ conceited."
"Jane, did I say you were comfortable?"
"I don't want to be _too_ comfortable. That's dull, don't you think?"
"Don't worry about being dull."
She sewed for a while, and he painted.
"You're getting very handsome," he remarked casually.
"Why not? I'm well, and so content."
"Are you contented, Jane?"
"Like a cat in the sun. I have a saucer of cream three times a day, and
a coloured ball to play with."
"And only a puppy, named Jerry, to bother you?"
"I don't mind him. I just stretch and yawn when he barks at me," she
laughed.
"I'll paint you with long slits in your eyes, if you don't look out," he
threatened.
One day Jane spoke of Bobs and her hope that she would come and stay
with them.
"Ask her by all means, but I doubt if she will come. She has it in for
me."
"She needs rest and normal living. She's all nerves on edge. She's done
a big piece of work, enough to wear any one out."
"She has lots of talent."
"She has genius, Jerry."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"I would. Martin Christiansen says this 'Woman' group is a masterpiece.
He ranked her with Manship and the best of the young sculptors."
"What do you know about young sculptors?"
"Not much. I've been studying sculpture this winter, especially the
moderns, with Bobs."
"What do you think of them?" he asked curiously.
"They interest me extremely. I supposed that I did not respond to
sculpture, but these modern men are expressing thought, not merely form.
I have spent hours with the Rodin figures at the Metropolitan--hours of
refreshment."
"Is Christiansen going to make a critic of you?"
"No. He couldn't. I have no critical sense at all. I only respond to the
things I understand, or the things I vision spiritually, without
understanding."
"Have you interested yourself in painting, too?"
"Yes. Bobs and Mr. Christiansen both say that I react to the right
things for the most part. But I'm hopeless when it comes to some of the
old masters. Rubens, for instance. How I do hate his obese people! I
don't care how well he can paint, because I hate what he paints."
"There's hope for you, Jane, if you admit at the start that you are a
heretic."
"I have to tell the truth. I am not clever enough to bluff."
"So you think that Bobs is a genius."
"Yes. I feel that she has the divine fire."
"Has she sold anything this winter?"
"I think not."
"How does she get along?"
"Borrows the rent, eats around with anybody who has food. When she sells
something she will repay it two-fold."
"Poor old Bobs! Ask her down by all means."
"She's splendid, I think."
"But you wouldn't like to live as she does."
"I would not care, if my spirit were growing as hers is."
"You'd miss your cream, Kitty, and your sunny garden."
"Yes, but the whole world would gain by my loss."
"I wonder if that is a comfort?" Jerry mused. "Somebody ought to marry
Bobs."
"She has the usual woman's excuse for marrying."
"What is that?"
"A lonely soul. I suppose men have it, too--a sort of isolation within
the race, a pining to be set free from the torment of solitude. Bobs has
an exceptional nature, so she is more than usually at the mercy of
suffering; her needs are intensified."
"She has all sorts of ideas, you know, about freedom in love, the right
to motherhood, and all the rest of it. That's what's the matter with
her; she's got a lot of crank notions that won't work out."
Jane laughed.
"What's the matter?"
"I was wondering if you had considered Bobs's ideas seriously enough to
damn them so finally."
"No, I haven't. I have no patience with them."
"'Where ignorance is bliss,' says Jerry!" Jane teased.
He was putting away his painting things, from which he looked up and
flushed.
"Look here, Jane, don't treat me like the little boy who upset the jam!"
"Don't talk like him, then, little boy Jerry," was her smiling answer.