Motley as were the dental company's patrons, Jean never entertained the
possibility of Stella's crossing the threshold, till her coming was an
accomplished fact. Luckily she happened to be elsewhere in the office
when the bell warned her that some one had entered, and she was able,
accordingly, to sight the caller with her admiring gaze fixed upon the
slave girl. Her own retreat was instant and blind, and by a spiteful
chance took her full tilt into the arms of Paul.
"What's up?" he demanded, holding her fast. "What's happened to you?"
She was dumb before his questions. He noticed her pallor and helped her
into the nearest operating-chair.
"There is a patient waiting," she got out at last.
"You're the first patient," he said; and brought smelling-salts,
which he administered with a liberal hand. "You girls eat a roll for
breakfast and a chocolate caramel for lunch, and then wonder why you
faint."
She finally persuaded him to leave her on her promising that she would
not stir till his return, and he went in her stead to receive Stella,
whom he brought to a room so near that almost every word was audible.
Stella had evidently visited the parlors before. She addressed Paul
familiarly as "Doc," spoke of other work he had done for her, and
lingered to make conversation after he had fixed an appointment. The
dentist's responses were cool and perfunctory, and in leaving she
chaffed him on having lost his old-time sociability.
He returned with a red face to find Jean outwardly herself.
"Better?" he said awkwardly.
"Much better."
Paul fidgeted with the mechanism of the chair.
"As long as you're O.K. now," he went on, "I'm not sorry you missed
that party. That's the worst of Grimes. He caters to all sorts. You
heard her talk, I suppose?"
"Yes."
He furtively studied her face. "I hope you don't think we're as
friendly as she made out?"
"Oh, no."
Paul looked greatly relieved.
"I bank a lot on what you think," he said. "You're the kind of girl who
makes a fellow want to toe the mark."
"Don't," she entreated, writhing under his praise. "You rate me too
high."
"Too high!" He laughed excitedly and caught her hand when she moved to
go. "You didn't mind my telling you?" Then, without awaiting a reply,
he blurted: "There's a heap more to say. I want to take you out of all
this--away from such riffraff as the girl you didn't see; I want--I
want you, Jean."
She tried to speak, but he read refusal in her troubled eyes and cut
her short.
"Don't answer now," he begged. "I didn't expect to tell you this so
soon. I don't expect you to say yes straight off. I'm not good enough
for you, Lord knows, but nobody could care more. Promise me you'll
think it over. Promise me that, anyhow."
She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she
strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only
one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's
intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse,
therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him
to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the
little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept.
It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind
the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently
slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore.
She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on
obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but
this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom,
Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of
this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly
at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of
biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing
actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful
chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She
devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one
of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she
dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a
safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her
three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even
more merciless dreams.
Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon
an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she
seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his
ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the
record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss
Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten
minutes of eleven now!
She evaded Paul, who was returning, caught up her hat, and telling
Grimes that she was too ill to work that day--which the big incompetent
sympathetically assured her he could see for himself--fled in panic
to the stairs only to behold Stella's nodding plumes already rounding
the sample show-case below. Fortunately she was mounting with head
down, and it took Jean but an instant to dart for the staircase to the
floor above, from whose landing, breathless, lax-muscled, yet safe, she
followed Stella's rustling progress to the dental company's door. When
she cautiously descended, the hall reeked with a musky perfume from
which she recoiled as from a physical nearness to the woman herself.
Luncheon brought Paul and questions which she answered, as she could,
from behind her closed door. He had no suspicion of the real cause
of her sudden leaving, ascribing her indisposition, as yesterday,
to insufficient nourishment, and joined his imagination to Mrs. St.
Aubyn's, and that of the proprietor of a neighboring delicatessen shop,
in the heaping of a tray whose every mouthful choked. It tortured her
to brazen out this deception, but unaided she could see no other way,
and advisers there were none. She might have confided in Amy, had the
need arisen earlier; but Amy was become a creature of strange reserves
and silences.
She left her room at evening and braved the galling solicitude of
the dining room. Mrs. St. Aubyn was for extracting her precise
symptoms, and led a discussion of favorite remedies, to which nearly
all contributed some special lore, from the librarian, who swore
by a newspaper cholera mixture, to the bankrupt, whose panacea was
Adirondack air. Paul refrained from the talk, perceiving that Jean
wished nothing so much as to be let alone. He was more silent than
she had ever known him at table, and she twice surprised him in a
brown study, of which Amy was seemingly the subject. Dinner over, he
brought about a tête-à-tête in an upper hall, a meeting made easy by
the boarders' summer custom of blocking the front steps in a domestic
group, of which Mrs. St. Aubyn, watchful of other clusters obviously
less presentable, was the complacent apex.
"I didn't trot out a remedy downstairs," he said, "but I've got one all
the same. It's a vacation."
"But--" Jean began.
"No 'buts' in order. I've got the floor. It's a vacation you need, and
it's a vacation you'll have. Grimes has arranged everything. You're to
have a week off, beginning to-morrow, and your pay will go on same as
ever."
"This is your doing."
"No," he disclaimed; "it's Grimes's. I only told him it would do you
more good now than in August. It was due you anyhow."
"But I'm not sick," she protested. "I can't let you think I am. It's
not right to deceive--"
"The question now before the house," Paul calmly interposed, "is, Where
do you want to spend it? How about Shawnee Springs?"
"No."
"Thought not. You never mention the Springs as though you pined to get
back. Ever try Ocean Grove, where the Methodists round up?"
"No."
"Then why don't you? There's more fun in the place than you'd think.
They can't spoil the ocean, and Asbury Park is just a stone's throw
away whenever the hymns get on your nerves. I mention Ocean Grove,
because Mrs. St. Aubyn's sister has a boarding-house there--Marlborough
Villa, she calls it--where she'll take you cheap, coming now before the
rush. I'll run down Sunday and see how you're making out."
He had an answer for every objection, and in the end Jean let herself
be persuaded, although to yield here seemed to imply a tacit assent
to other things she was wofully unready to meet. The future stretched
away, a jungle of complexity. Perhaps the sea, the real sea she had
never beheld, for Coney Island did not count, would help her think it
out.
Early the following morning the dentist saw her aboard the boat.
"You'll not mind if I come down?" he asked.
She smiled "No" a little wanly, but he went away content. Sunday would
be crucial, she foresaw. He would press for his answer then, and
she----Perhaps the salt breeze would shred these mists.
But neither the breeze, full of the odor of sanctity, which cooled
encamped Methodism, nor the secular, yet not flagrantly sinful,
atmosphere of the twin watering-place, had aided much when the week-end
brought Paul to solve the riddle for himself.
Many things allied in his favor. In the first place, Jean was
unfeignedly glad to see him, as the agitated veranda rockers of
Marlborough Villa bore witness. In a world which she had too often
found callous, Paul Bartlett, for one, had proved himself a practical
friend. She felt a distinct pride in him, too, as he withstood the
brunt of the veranda fire; a pardonable elation that, in a social
scheme overwhelmingly feminine, she led captive so presentable a male.
Again, Paul was tactful in following up his welcome. His only concern
Saturday evening, and throughout Sunday till almost the end, was
seemingly to give her pleasure. Sometimes she played the cicerone to
her own discoveries: now a model of Jerusalem, its Lilliputian streets
littered with the peanut shucks of appreciative childhood; the pavilion
where free concerts were best; the bathing-beach where the discreetly
clothed crowd was most diverting; or a little lake, remote from the
merry-go-rounds and catch-penny shows, which she secretly preferred
to all. Or Paul would display the results of his past researches. He
knew an alley in one of the great hotels, where she had from him her
first lesson in the ancient game of bowls; a catering establishment
whose list of creams and ices exceeded imagination; and a drive--Sunday
morning this--past opulent dwellings, whose tenants they commiserated,
to an old riverside tavern overhung by noble trees.
Sundown found them watching the trampling surf from the ramparts of
their own sand-castle, which Paul, guided by her superior knowledge
of things mediæval, had reared. The transition from sandcastles to
air-castles was easy, and presently the man was mapping his future.
"Grimes wants me to renew our contract," he said. "It runs out October
first, you know. But I think it's up to me to be my own boss. I've got
what I needed from the dental company--practical experience. If I stay
on, I may pick up some things I don't need, just as the other fellows
finally drop into old Grimey's shiftless ways. I don't want to take
any of his smudge into _my_ office. He can keep his gilt gimcracks
and his slave girl and his bogus armor. A plain reception-room, but
cheerful, I say; and an operating-room that's brighter still. Canary
or two, maybe; plants--real plants--and fittings strictly up to date.
Electricity everywhere, chair best in the market, instruments the
finest money will buy, but _out of sight_. No chamber of horrors for
me! As for location, give me Harlem. I know a stack of folks there, and
I like Harlem ways. I've even looked up offices, and I know one on a
'Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street that just fills the bill. Well, that's
part of the programme."
Jean was roused from visions of her own.
"I know you'll succeed," she said.
"That's part of the programme," he repeated; then, less confidently:
"The other part includes a snug little flat just round the corner,
where a fellow can easily run in for lunch. I don't mean a bachelor's
hall. I mean a _bona-fide_ home, with a wife in it--a wife named Jean!"
He was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited in
the dusk, and the home he offered had its appeal. Marriage would
solve many problems. She would be free of the grinding struggle for a
livelihood, which the stigma of the refuge made dangerous. She would be
free of the fear of such vengeance as Stella could wreak. If the need
arose, it would be a simple matter, once they were married, to tell
Paul the truth of things. His love would make light of it. As for her
love----But what was love? Where in life did one meet the rose-colored
dream of fiction? Love was intensified liking, and Paul, as has been
recorded, was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited
in the dusk.
Yet, even then, recurred a still undimmed picture wherein, against
a background of forest birches, there shone an indubitable hero of
romance.