When the train pulled out which carried his family into unknown country,
Jerry turned across town, determined to walk back to the studio and get
to work. He had scarcely closed his eyes the night before, and he felt
all edgy. Exercise and hard work was his prescription for himself. He
set off at a good pace, through a part of town he was unused to, hoping
that it would divert his thoughts. He made himself look at the shabby
old shops he passed--at the people on the street. He searched all their
faces for traces of such experiences as he was sampling, but they were
usually vacuous or hardened or only worried. He wondered if his face
mirrored his misery.
Jerry was a stranger to defeat. His life had been a happy-go-lucky
affair. Since the death of his parents, when he was a little boy, he had
known no acute sorrows. To be sure he had been poor, but he had not
minded that especially. The very small inheritance, left by his father,
had barely met the demands of his art education. But youth and health
and enthusiasm were his, and such success as he had achieved came easily
and naturally. So he had grown accustomed to believe that destiny held
in store for him pretty much what he wanted.
His marriage with Jane, entered into on the impulse of the moment, was
characteristic of the way his life had been ordered--or unordered. He
had drifted along, taking what he wanted with a sort of unconscious
selfishness as a central motive force. This was poor training for
disappointment or tragedy.
Arrived at the studio, he tried to paint, but he could not put his mind
on his canvas, so after an hour of labour lost, he gave it up. He
wandered about the empty house, where every spot, every room, spoke of
Jane and the baby. He could not bear it. He went to the club for lunch,
but the men at his table poked fun at his gloom so he left them in a
rage. He went to some picture exhibitions he had been meaning to see,
but they bored him. He dodged a fellow artist or two, because he didn't
want to talk. He tramped up the Avenue and through the Park.
Finally he gave up fighting his thoughts, he let them come. He had gone
over the scene with Christiansen thousands of times. Sometimes it ran
off in his mind as it had really happened. Sometimes he fell upon his
enemy and beat him, sometimes he even killed him, but always the scene
was dominated by Jane, who, for the first time in his acquaintance with
her, was deeply moved, shaken to the very depths of her being. He
realized it fully; it was the thing that frightened him. Jane was so
sure, so true to herself. If, thus aroused, she saw her relation to
Jerry in a new light, nothing on earth would keep her from severing that
relation. It must be that she loved Christiansen, for he, Jerry, had
never roused her so.
He thought back over the years, from the time she had applied to him for
work, up to now. The years of the silent, mysterious Jane, coming and
going like a silhouette against the screen of the studios. Her quiet
sense of power had been like a pillow for them all to rest on. What a
fool he had been not to see that power like that generated itself and
spread like electricity.
He went over the weeks before the pageant, when he had forced her into a
more personal relation with him. He recalled the really deep impression
she had made on him, on all the audience, the night of the pageant
itself.
For the first time he deliberately analyzed the motives that finally
ended in his proposal to her.
"Anything she does to me now serves me right!" was his final comment on
himself.
He laid aside any suggestion that she cared for him when she married
him; he knew she did not. In fact, it was her indifference to him, her
elusiveness, which had roused his senses--which had driven him to try to
reach her by clumsy physical means--but he had failed.
Jane said that she had met Christiansen at the pageant for the first
time, but was that the truth? Had he played some part in her life before
that? Was it probable that a man like Christiansen would have been
attracted solely by her performance of Salome--into such quick intimacy
as theirs? Suppose he, Jerry, had been used as a cat's-paw between them.
He flagellated himself for that suspicion. It was contemptible in the
light of what he knew of Jane.
Could poverty have driven Jane into marriage? She had lived for years
on what she made, apparently. She had no relatives, nor dependents.
Besides, he thought she would have disdained surrender, on those
grounds. It was a deeper reason than this, as she had said.
Worn out with his unusual self-scrutiny, he left the Park and went to
call on Mrs. Brendon. She was at home and welcomed him gaily. He
explained that Jane and the baby had deserted him and that he was a lone
bachelor in search of friends and comfort.
"Which means you're a wolf in sheep's clothing," she laughed.
"I feel like the sacrificial 'lamb,'" he replied, and marvelled that he
could talk so lightly.
"Well, there is nothing so good for husbands, I contend, as a dose of
absence. Men need unsettling, they get so rutty. Business, club, home,
ditto, ditto, ditto."
"I suppose it's also sauce for the goose?"
"Oh, yes. I hope Jane will get a beau and flirt with him abominably."
"Can you think of Jane flirting?"
"No, that's why I think she needs it. Jane takes life too seriously."
"It's rather a question about which is the better way to take it, don't
you think?"
"Life? Not a bit. Take it any way you like, but don't take it hard."
"I find I get a trifle bored with those of us who take it too lightly."
"That's a Janeism, Jerry."
He laughed at that. She ordered him home to dress and back for dinner,
and he accepted gratefully--glad of anything to kill time and keep his
mind off of his troubles.
He sat next Althea at dinner, and, for once, she failed to reproach him
for past misdemeanours and devoted herself to being agreeable. Several
parties were planned on the spot, and Jerry joined in with enthusiasm.
"It is nice to see you enjoying your vacation so much," Althea remarked.
"A broken heart worn on the sleeve is a sad sight, you know," he
replied.
He plunged with desperation into such diversion as his uptown friends
offered. He knew what was ahead of him in the night hours spent in the
studio. The first week passed somehow. His friends said Jerry had never
been so gay and such good company. Jerry could barely remember where
they went or what they did.
Bobs came in one night in the second week, about six o'clock, as Jerry
was deciding where to go.
"Hello, Jerry."
"Hello, Bobs."
"Got a date?"
"No. I was just trying to make up my mind what to do."
"I've invited myself to dinner. Let's get Mrs. Biggs to fix us up
something and have it here."
"Don't you want to go somewhere, where it's gay?"
"Noisy, you mean? No. Can't you stand it here?" she added.
"It's awful, Bobs," he admitted.
"I'll go talk to the Biggs; you light the fire and mix the cocktails,"
she ordered.
When she returned, he was lighting candles, brushing up the hearth, and
generally playing host.
"All's well, steak in the ice box, and plenty of other things. Jane
ordered things kept ready for you all the time, it seems. Just like her,
isn't it? I never knew any human being take so much thought for others
as Jane does."
"Yes, she does."
"I don't wonder you miss her."
He lifted such tragic eyes to her, that Bobs was startled.
"I've got to get used to missing her, Bobs," he said slowly.
"What do you mean?"
"I think I'm going to lose her," he broke off, unable to finish.
"You mean Jane has left you--for good?"
"She's gone to decide whether she will or not."
"Jerry, what's happened?"
"I've just got to talk to somebody, Bobs. I'm nearly crazy with this
thing."
"Go ahead; I'm safe."
"Jane doesn't love me; you know that, just as I know it."
"Well, she's been a good wife, hasn't she?"
"The best. But there's somebody she does care about."
"Martin Christiansen?"
"You saw it, too?"
"No. I was only afraid of it. They had so much in common. He gave her
all the consideration you did not."
"Oh, I know I've got no chance with him, but it doesn't make it any
easier!" he cried.
"How did you know about it?"
"They told me. Jane called me in--said there had been an accident--that
he had told her he loved her; she was all to pieces. I could see it, I
never saw her so upset."
"Poor Jane! But why did she go away?"
"She said she had to be alone, to make up her mind what she must do."
"How like her!"
"So she took Baby and Anna and went somewhere-- I don't know where."
He dropped his head into his hands, and Bobs said nothing. Her instinct
was to comfort him, but she fought it down.
"I've been in hell, Bobs," he groaned.
"So has Jane, and so has Christiansen," she exclaimed.
"I know--I know."
"You can't go on forever, Jerry, and escape."
He looked up at that.
"Your marriage to Jane was the most selfish, cowardly thing any man ever
did, and you've got to pay for it sooner or later!"
"Why, Bobs, I...."
"Don't let's talk about it. I know you, Jerry. I know why you married
Jane, and you never gave her part of it one thought. If she's found a
great, big, fine man, like Christiansen to really love her, I hope
you'll stand out of the way and take your medicine, like a man."
"I didn't force her to marry me! What did she do it for?"
"That's her affair, but now the point is that she has lived up to her
contract like a soldier. She's borne the slight you've put on her
without one protest. She's a magnificent, full-grown woman, tied to a
selfish, old-fashioned, little boy-man, and it's ridiculous."
"I think I get your estimate of me accurately."
"It's time for you to take stock, Jerry. You've had the opportunity of
your life and you haven't made good. You don't understand Jane, nor
appreciate her, nor care anything about her."
"That's a lie, Bobs; I love her better than anything in the world!"
Jerry's voice rang out in the big, still room like a rifle shot. Bobs
stared at him, and his eyes blazed back at her. She rose and went over
to him and held out her hand.
"I beg your pardon, old man; I had no idea you cared."
He wrung her hand for a second, and turned away from her.
"I wish you could help me a little to understand her," he said huskily.
"With all my heart, Jerry," she answered.
She took his arm and led him over to the couch, where they sat down side
by side.
"I know we started out wrong. Everything you say about the way I married
her is true. I guess you know as well as any one what a selfish brute
I've always been."
"The thing is, how can you get Jane back?" Bobs broke in quickly.
"I haven't a chance in the world, Bobs! I know what kind of a chap
Christiansen is. What hold have I got on her?"
"Little Jerry."
"Oh, but that isn't fair," he said in the very words Christiansen had
used.
"We're dealing with facts now--not philosophy. Jane loves that baby
better than anything in the world; that is the only thing you've got to
work on."
"How can I work on that?"
"You've got to win her love, Jerry."
"But what is there for her to love in me?"
"You've got to make something."
"But, Bobs, she's deciding it now. It's too late for me! I've lost my
chance. I tell you if she walked out of here, with the Bald One, and
went away to marry him, I don't think I could bear it! Just as Jerry Jr.
and I were getting to like each other! I gave him his bath the night
before he went away, Bobs, and he liked it."
Two big tears ran down Jerry's nose and dropped off into his lap, but he
paid no attention to them.
"Maybe she'll give you time, Jerry. I think she ought to have this
chance to be alone and decide, but she may not decide to do anything
right away."
"Bobs, you know Jane will do it right off, the minute she decides,
whatever it is. I know it, too. No, I guess you're right; I've had my
chance and I've missed it. I'll pay for it the rest of my life, I know
that."
"I'm sorry, old man; we all get it sooner or later," she said.
"Oh, Bobs, I understand now. Forgive me," he said brokenly, turning to
her.
Billy Biggs came in with a "scuse me." He came to Jerry and offered him
an envelope.
"For you, Mr. Paxton," he said.
Jerry tore it open, read it, gave it to Bobs.
"Good God!" he said, and started off upstairs, as fast as he could run.
Bobs read and re-read the message. Then she went to the kitchen.
"Put some dinner on for Mr. Paxton at once, Mrs. Biggs. The baby is sick
and Mrs. Paxton has sent for him. He's going on the 7.30 train."
"The baby! Oh, Miss Bobs!" began Mrs. Biggs, but Bobs was gone.
She ran up to Jerry's room, where he was hurling things into his bag.
"Your dinner is on the table. Go eat it. I will pack the bag. You must
keep up your strength, Jerry. You may be up all night."
"All right," he said, and obeyed her.
Half an hour later she saw him off.
"Good luck, old man."
"I'm afraid to go, Bobs," he said brokenly, "but it's something to do!
Good-bye. God bless you."
"And you, and Jane, and Baby!" she cried after him.