Amy had, in fairness, to be told as August waned. To Jean's suggestion
that very likely either the stenographer or the manicure would be glad
to share the room of the three dormers, she replied that she could
easily afford to keep it on by herself while she remained.
"It won't be for long," she vouchsafed airily. "In fact, I'm going to
be married myself."
Jean's arms went round her instantly, the restraint of months forgotten.
"And you've never breathed a word!" she reproached.
"No more have you," retorted Amy, glacial under endearments.
"I know, I know. But you have seemed so different. You have kept to
yourself, and I thought--"
"You thought I wasn't straight," Amy took her up bitterly as Jean
hesitated. "I knew mighty well what was in your mind every time I got a
new shirt-waist or a hat."
"You weren't frank with me."
"I couldn't be."
"I don't see why."
"Because," she wavered, melted now, "because you are you, so
strait-laced and--and strong. I've always been afraid to tell you just
how things stood."
"Afraid, Amy? Afraid of me!" Jean felt keenly self-reproachful. "I am
horribly sorry. Heaven knows I haven't meant to be unkind. I've found
my own way too hard to want to make things worse for anybody else, you
above all. You believe me, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then be your old self, the Amy who made friends with me in Cottage No.
6. Who is he? Any one I know?"
"You've met him."
"I have! Where?"
Amy's color rose.
"Remember the night you struck New York?"
"Perfectly."
"And the traveling man who jollied you?"
"Yes."
"Well," she faltered, "he's the one. His name is Chapman."
Jean was too staggered for a prompt response, but Amy was still toiling
among her explanations.
"You mustn't think anything of his nonsense that night," she went on.
"It was only Fred's way. He's a born flirt. You couldn't help liking
him, Jean, if you knew him."
Jean met her wistful appeal for sympathy, woman-wise. Words were
impossible at first. By and by, when she could trust herself to speak,
she wished her happiness.
"Does he--know?" she added.
Amy's fair skin went a shade rosier.
"My record, you mean? Nobody knows it better. Don't you--don't you
catch on, Jean? He was the--the man!"
"He! You've taken up with him again! The man who saw your stepfather
send you to the refuge and never lifted a finger--"
"Don't!"
"Who let his child--"
"Stop, I tell you!" She barred Jean's lips passionately. "You see! Is
it any wonder I couldn't bear to tell you? I wish to God I'd never said
a word."
Jean stared blankly at this lamb turned lioness.
"Forgive me," she begged. "Perhaps I don't understand."
"Understand! You!" She laughed hysterically, "Yet you're going to be
married! If you loved Paul Bartlett, you'd understand."
"You must not say that."
"Then don't say things that hurt me. Understand! If you did, you
would know that it would make no difference if he was rotten clear
through. But he's not. Fred never knew about the baby. He cried when
he heard--cross my heart, he did. He said if he'd known--but what's
the use of digging up the past! He is trying to make up for it now.
He's been trying ever since we ran across each other again. It was in
the cloak department he caught sight of me," she digressed with a
pale smile. "I was wearing a white broadcloth, sable-trimmed evening
wrap, and maybe he didn't stare! He couldn't do enough for me. That's
where the new clothes came from. I could have had money if I'd wanted
it--money to burn, for he makes a lot; but I wouldn't touch it. It
would have looked--oh, you see for yourself I could not take money.
You don't sell love, real love, and God knows mine is real! I've never
stopped loving him. I never can."
She, too, it appeared when she grew more calm, aspired to be mistress
of a flat.
"Though not at the start," she continued. "Fred wants to board at
first. He says I've had work enough for one while. I said I shouldn't
mind that kind of work, but he is dead set on boarding, till I've had a
good long rest. Fred can be terrible firm. But by and by we're to keep
house, and you'll be able to tell me just what to do and buy. You will,
won't you, Jean?" she ended anxiously. "You'll stick by me?"
"Yes," Jean promised.
"And you'll come to see me--afterward? Say you'll come."
"Yes, I'll come."
"And you won't let Fred suspect that you've heard about--about
everything? I want him to see that I know a girl like you. I've talked
to him about you, but I've never let on that you're a refuge girl
yourself. Promise me you will be nice to him!"
"I'll try."
Amy kissed her fervently.
"This makes me awful happy," she sighed. "I think a heap of you, Jean.
Honest, I do. You come next to Fred."
As a proof of her affection she presently bought a wedding gift of a
pair of silver candelabra which she could ill afford, and which Jean
accepted only because she must. These went to flank Grimes's gift--for
he was party to the secret now--a glittering timepiece for their
mantel, densely infested with writhing yet cheerful Cupids, after
the reputed manner of his admired "Lewis Quince." Mrs. St. Aubyn's
contribution was a framed galaxy of American poets: Bryant, Emerson,
Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Walt Whitman, the last
looking rakishly jocular at the Brahminical company in which he found
himself thus canonized.
Everything was finally in place at the Lorna Doone, and with the actual
beginning of their lease-hold Paul moved his personal chattels from
Mrs. St. Aubyn's to the flat, and slept there nights. This was the
twenty-fifth of August. A week later Jean climbed the Acme Painless
Dental Company's sign-littered stairway for her last day's service.
She was a little late, owing to a fire which had impeded traffic in a
near-by block, and the morning's activity at the parlors was already
under way. She busied herself first, as usual, at her desk, sorting
the mail which the postman had just left. In addition to the office
mail there were personal letters for Grimes and the various members of
the staff, which she presently began to distribute, reaching Paul's
operating-room last of all.
The dentist was at work, but he glanced up when she entered and sent
her a loverlike look over his patient's head. No creature with eyes
and a reasoning brain could have misread it, and the occupant of the
chair, who had both, squirmed to view its object; but Paul threw in a
strategic "Wider, please," and held the unwilling head firmly to the
front.
"Chuck them anywhere, Jean," he directed, his glance dropping to her
hand.
Her obedience was literal; the next instant the letters strewed the
rug at his feet. With the enunciation of the name, the patient twisted
suddenly from Paul's grasp, and Jean found herself staring full into
the malignant eyes of Stella Wilkes.
Paul first found voice.
"We'll go on, Miss Wilkes," he said, his gaze still intent upon the
tragic mask, which was Jean.
Stella waved him aside.
"Hold your horses, Doc," she rejoined coolly. "I've met an old friend."
"Do you know each other?" It was to Jean he put the question.
[Illustration: "Do you know each other?"]
Stella answered for her.
"Do I know Jean Fanshaw!" Sure of how matters stood between these two,
sure also of her own rôle in the drama, she sprang from the chair
and bestowed a Judas kiss upon Jean's frozen cheek. "Do I know her! Why
we're regular old pals!"
Freed somehow from that loathsome touch, Jean stumbled to her desk.
Patients came and went, the routine of the office ran its course; her
share in the mechanism got itself mechanically performed; yet, whether
she sped or welcomed, plied the cash-register, receipted bills, or
soothed a nervous child, some spiteful goblin at the back of her brain
was ever whispering the shameful tale which Stella was pouring out in
that inner room. Those lies would be past Paul's forgetting, perhaps
even past his forgiving, say what she might in defense. His look at
Stella's kiss had been ghastly. What was he thinking now!
Then, when her agony of suspense seemed bearable no longer, came
Stella, her pretense of friendship abandoned, her real vengeful self to
the fore.
"I guess we're square," she bent to whisper, her face almost touching
Jean's. "I guess we're square."
She vanished like the creature of nightmare she was, but the nightmare
remained. Paul would demand his reckoning now. He would come and stand
over her with his accusing face and ask her what this horror meant.
She could not go to him, she felt, or at least unless he sent. But
throughout that endless forenoon the dentist kept to his office, though
twice there were intervals when she knew him to be alone. Her lunch
hour--and his--came at last. She lingered, but still Paul delayed. At
last, driven by an imperative craving to be done with it, she hurried
to his room and found it empty. Grimes told her that he had seen Paul
leave the place by a side door. The news was a dagger-thrust in her
pride. Of a surety, now, he must seek her.
Between five o'clock and six, a dull hour, he came, woebegone and
conciliatory.
"For God's sake, clear this up," he begged. "Haven't you anything to
say?"
"A great deal, Paul. But first tell me what that woman said about me."
"You heard."
"But what else?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing!" The thing was incredible.
"Only that you'd probably be glad to explain things yourself."
At that half her burden fell. Stella's cunning had overreached itself.
She had thought to rack her victim most by forcing her to betray
herself, but she had reasoned from the false premise that Jean had a
truly shameful past to conceal.
"Glad," she repeated. "Yes, I am glad. I should have told you some day,
Paul. It's a long story."
The door opened to admit a caller with a swollen jowl.
"To-night, then?" said the dentist, hurriedly.
"Yes," she assented. "I will tell you to-night."
"At the flat?"
"Yes; at the flat."
Spurred on by her unrest, she reached the Lorna Doone before Paul had
returned from his evening meal, and found the flat in darkness. She was
relieved that this was so. It would give her a quiet interval in which
to turn over what she meant to say. She entered the little parlor and
seated herself in an open window where a shy midsummer-night's breeze,
astray from river or sound, stole gently in and out and fingered
her hair. It was wonderfully peaceful for a city. The sounds from
below--the footsteps on the pavement, the cries of children at play
under the young elms lining the avenue, the jests of the cigar-store
loungers, the chatter of the girls thronging the soda-fountain at the
corner druggist's, the jingle of bicycle bells, the beat of hoofs,
the honk of occasional automobiles, even the strains of a hurdy-gurdy
out-Heroding Sousa--one and all ascended, mellowed by distance to
something not unmusical and cheerily human. She realized, as she
listened, that the city, not the country, this city, this very corner,
this hearth which she and Paul had prepared, was at last and truly home.
Presently she heard Paul's latch-key in the lock and his step in the
dark corridor.
"You here?" he called tonelessly. "Better have a light, hadn't we?"
"It is cooler without," she answered. Even though her explanations need
not fear the light, she thought obscurity might ease their telling.
With no other greeting, the dentist passed to the window opposite
hers, slouched wearily into a chair, and waited in silence for her to
begin.
Jean told her story in its fullness: her tomboy girlhood, the hateful
family jars, the last quarrel with Amelia, her sentence to the
refuge, her escape, return, riot-madness, and release, and the inner
significance of her late struggle for a living against too heavy odds.
She told it so honestly, so plainly, that she thought no sane being
could misunderstand; yet, vaguely at first, with fatal clearness as,
ending, she strained her eyes toward the dour shadowy figure opposite,
she perceived that she had to deal with doubt.
"Do you think I am holding something back?" she faltered, after a long
silence. "Must I swear that I've told you the whole truth?"
The man stirred in his place at last.
"I guess an affidavit won't be necessary," he returned grimly.
She endured another silence impatiently, then rose proudly to her feet.
"I'll say it for you," she flashed. "This frees you of any promises
to me, Paul. You are as free as if you had never made them. Go your
own way: I'll go mine. It--it can't be harder than the one I've come.
Good-by."
He roused himself as she made to leave.
"Hold on, Jean," he said, coming closer. "I guess we can compromise
this thing somehow."
"Compromise! I have nothing to compromise."
"Haven't you?" He laughed harshly. "I should say--but let that pass.
Of course, after what's turned up, you can't expect a fellow to be so
keen to marry--"
"I've told you that you are free," she interrupted.
"But I don't want to be free--altogether. We could be pretty snug here,
Jean. The parson's rigmarole doesn't cut much ice with me, and I don't
see that it need with you. They think downstairs we're married. That
part's dead easy. As for Grimes and the rest--"
She had no impulse to strike him as she had the floor-walker. Waiting
in his folly for an answer, the man heard only her stumbling flight
along the corridor and the jar of a closing door.