Before Jane went to bed a telegram came from Miss Garnett saying she
would take them, so she had no need of anxiety on that score. The
morning proved gray and cold. Breakfast was a silent affair.
Baby was the only cheerful member of the party which started for the
station in a taxicab. He was so absorbed in the experience in hand that
he provided a topic of interest.
"He's keen on taxicabs; this is his second one and see how he takes to
it!" said Jerry.
"Mebbe he's going to be a 'chauffer,'" suggested Anna.
So with trivialities they managed to keep up appearances until Jerry was
to leave them.
"Will you write to me, Jane?" he asked, bending over her.
"No, but I will send for you the minute I am sure of myself. We shall
not be far away and we are to be comfortably housed in a place I know,
so don't worry about us. Have a good holiday and forget us, Jerry."
"That's a good idea," he remarked.
He kissed his son, shook hands with Anna. Then, as the engine bell
sounded, he laid his hands on Jane's shoulders and looked into her eyes
for a long second. Then he was gone. He left in Jane's mind an
impression of an appeal he would not let himself make in words.
They found Miss Garnett's cottage just as Jane remembered it. There was
something soothing about going back to it, as if she had slipped out of
the years that had come since, into that other girlish self. She
recalled her mother's pleasure in the holiday. How she wished that her
frail spirit might come to visit them, and fall victim to small Jerry's
charms.
Even Miss Garnett looked the same. She was the sort of dried-up creature
which shows no age. She did not remember Jane, but she was interested in
the baby. They were the only boarders, as it happened, so no one could
be disturbed by the boy. They had two big, sunny rooms, with the balcony
out of one of them, on which Jerry Jr. could sleep. It was comfortable
and independent, the two things Jane desired.
The first day was spent in getting unpacked, settling Baby's routine.
Jane gave her full attention to all these practical details before she
so much as let her mind wander toward the problem she had come here to
consider.
With the second day their regime was inaugurated. Late breakfast for
Jane, an hour with Baby, bathing him herself, playing with him in the
sun. A long walk while he slept. Leisurely luncheon--more Baby--a rest
for all of them; then more walk, with Baby in his carriage, or a drive.
It was not until she had been there several days that Jane remembered
about her book. She smiled at the thought of how tremendously important
it had seemed to her only a week ago to have a book published, and yet
for days she had forgotten it.
"Living, living is the important thing," she said aloud, with the swift
after-thought that it was Martin who had taught her that philosophy,
Jerry who had given her the thing itself.
She went over every minute of her life with the two men, for in her
thoughts they occupied places side by side. Her first reaction against
her marriage with Jerry had passed. She saw it clearly as practical and
unlovely but not as sin. Passion had had no place in her experience or
her thoughts at the time of her marriage; it had certainly not been the
moving force for Jerry, either.
She felt that Baby justified her somewhat. She had refused none of the
responsibilities imposed upon her by her union with Jerry.
But, on the other hand, as she had said to him before Martin, her soul
and her senses had found no common speech.
Intellectually she examined herself in relation to Jerry and found
herself guilty. She had kept secret, between herself and Martin, the
really big impulse of her life. Through a childish fear of ridicule, she
had deliberately shut him out of the inner chamber of her thoughts and
hopes. Was this fair?
To be sure, he had not shared with her his inner thoughts and ambitions.
He had not sought to bring her into any closer mental relationship with
him. Was he, too, held back by fear of her laughter?
When she looked into her mind, it was flooded with Martin. He was in
every nook and cranny of it. He invaded it like an army with banners.
Her whole growth and development had been so accelerated by him that it
seemed as if she had stood in one spot always until he arrived. No
wonder she had not turned to Jerry for companionship when she had been
swallowed up, as it were, in the microcosm which was Martin
Christiansen.
But when it came to the world of the senses, she had spoken the absolute
truth when she told Jerry that she had never once thought of Martin with
sentiment--in the ordinary sex sense of that word. He was
master-counsellor, god, but never man-mate. So the moment of his passion
had come upon her like a lightning flash, rending the heavens, levelling
her house of life to the grounds, leaving her naked and terror-struck.
With the shock of it had come a vision of what love might be. With it
had come a pitiless revelation of what her union with Jerry was. It was
this cataclysm of her whole world that made her run away into solitude
to try and get herself together.
She tried again and again to reconstruct the scene with Martin--to try
to recapture her sensations of the moment she was in his arms. Had it
been rapture, or only surprise? Had it been a surge of gratitude to him
because he loved her? After all, he was the first man to say his
devotion to her. Jerry had made no protestations of love; she had
expected none. Were not her feelings, at the moment, those of any woman
when she is told for the first time that she is loved?
She thought of herself as Martin's wife, living with him in all the
daily intimacies of marriage; she found that her mind, here, turned
swiftly away to their mental association. It was always Jerry she saw
shaving, Jerry she heard singing in his bath. She could not manage the
transfer successfully at all, she found.
Then she tried to conceive of her life devoid of Martin. If she were
still married to Jerry, and Martin was gone for good, what then? It
seemed like saying "could you be comfortable without your right hand?"
Some days she bitterly regretted the death of the unknown Mrs.
Christiansen which had precipitated this climax. It was so much easier,
the old way, with Jerry and Martin both in her life. Again she was glad
it had all turned out so, glad that Martin loved her, wanted her. Glad
that she had to face a decision about Jerry.
There was one unescapable knot, no matter how she untangled the skein.
She could not argue away the baby. He constituted Jerry's biggest hold
upon her. For if Jerry had not given her love, he had given her
something in its place which had aroused the one great passion in her
nature. She loved Jerry Jr. with every throb of her heart.
Wasn't this mother love enough? It had filled her life so far. It was,
with Jane, fierce and absorbing. Man and woman love had so many
elements, so many complexities, such possibilities of tragedy and
sorrow. Would she not better cling to what she had and let the rest go
by? So she told herself one day, only to cry out the next: "No, no; that
is the old nun Jane! I want it all--all."
Divorce was ugly to her. She forced herself to vision all its details.
Explanations to their friends--arrangements about the child. She
computed its effect upon little Jerry, torn between loyalty to his
father and his mother, spending his time, now with one parent, now with
the other. Growing up to a contempt for marriage, perhaps, or worse yet,
contempt for his mother and father who publicly admitted their failure
to keep their contract.
She tried to get Jerry's point of view in the situation by reversing it.
Suppose that Jerry had told her that he wished his freedom, in order to
marry Althea. How would she have met that demand? It gave her a pang to
think of going away, with Baby, to some strange place, to try to make a
new life for themselves. There would still be Martin in her life; who
would be left to Jerry, if she left him? Would he turn to Bobs, who
still loved him? She knew he would never succumb to Althea's plans.
Would Martin's love for her, and her love for him--if she did love
him--make up for all this havoc?
Could she, by any process, so divorce herself from old habits and
associations as to decide this step with reference to her one self only?
She had been saying to herself for years that she had a right to every
rich experience life could offer, she had been greedy for more and more.
But was there such a thing as continence? In order to get away from that
despised word "self-denial" she looked upon the thing as a matter of
spiritual health. If overeating was destruction to the body tissue, was
greediness for experience also destruction to the soul stuff?
Day after day she pondered these questions as she tramped around the
lake, or as they drove through the still, silver-gray forests, where the
only hint of spring was an occasional whiff of arbutus as they passed.
Jane found great peace and help from those straight, slim trees. They
were so unfettered, so upstanding, so sure. She repeated over and over:
"Hast thou ne'er known the longings--
Ambitions vain desires--
The hope, the fear, the yearning
Which mortal man inspires?"
She gathered into her being all the calm of Nature, strength from her
out-of-door life, wisdom out of silence and Baby's talk, but yet she
could not bring herself to send for Jerry. She knew that both of these
men were suffering, as they waited for her answer; she wanted not to
hurt them, and still--she hesitated.