What passed forthwith between brother and sister Jean neither heard
nor particularly conjectured. Ways, means, and motives were for the
time being eclipsed by the tremendous fact that Julie called. That
she acquitted herself of this formality at an hour when the slightest
possible knowledge of the girl's habits would argue her absence from
Irving Place, roused in Jean only a vast relief. The mute pasteboard
was itself sufficiently formidable.
She was even more relieved that through some mischance, for which
Atwood, who went with her, taxed himself, her return call found Julie
out. Visiting-cards she had none, their urgent need having hitherto
never presented itself; but Atwood helped her pretend before the rather
overpowering servant that she had forgotten them, and, scribbling her
name upon one of his own, bore her off for an evening at the play.
Here, for the space of a week, matters rested, only to hatch a fresh
embarrassment in the end, beside which calls were trivialities.
This was no less than an invitation to dine, and to dine, not with
Mrs. Van Ostade and Atwood merely, but as one of a more or less
formal company--so Craig enlightened her--of the clever or socially
significant.
Jean heard these depressing explanations with a sick face.
"I can't go," she protested quickly. "Don't ask me."
"Can't!" he repeated. "Why not?"
"You know why. They're different, these people--as different from me as
if I were Chinese."
"What rubbish!"
"It's the truth. Perhaps later, when I've studied more, seen more, I
can meet them and not shame you--"
"Shame me, Jean! If you realized how proud I am--"
"Then don't put me in a position where you may feel anything but proud.
Don't make me go."
He reasoned with her laughingly, but without real understanding of her
reluctance.
"Besides," he concluded, "you can't decline. The dinner is really for
you."
Her cup of misery brimmed over.
"For me!"
"In a way, it's in honor of our engagement, even though it isn't known."
"Your sister wrote nothing of this."
"But she told me. She said she wanted you to meet some of our friends.
Don't be afraid of them, Jean. You're as clever as any of them, while
in looks not a woman Julie knows can hold a candle to you."
"But their clothes! Don't you see it's impossible? I've absolutely
nothing to wear."
The man flicked this thistle-down airily away.
"Dowds, half of 'em, Julie's crowd," he declared. "You don't need
anything elaborate. Just wear some simple gown that doesn't hide your
neck. Simple things tell."
"And cost," she added, smiling ruefully at his nebulous solution. "I
have never owned a dinner-gown in my life."
Atwood had an inspiration.
"Why, the studio is full of them," he cried.
"Your sister's--every one. Could I wear one of her dresses to her
dinner?"
"Hardly. What inferior intellects men have! But is there any objection
to your wearing one of _my_ gowns? None of the properties fit the
scheme of illustrations I've planned for that last novel, and I've
decided to have one or two things made. Now, if you'll choose the
material and bother with the fittings--"
Jean's laugh riddled this improvisation.
"I'll go if I must," she promised, "but I'll wear my own clothes. After
all, I know something about dressmaking."
Nevertheless, the dress problem was serious when she came to marshal
her resources, and she still vacillated in a choice of evils, when Amy
happened in with a fresh point of view and an authoritative knowledge
of the latest mode, which cleared the muddle magically.
"Put those away," she ordered, dismissing with a glance the
alternatives arrayed despairingly on the bed. "Wear white or a color,
and you'll have every old cat there rubbering to see how it's made.
Where's your black net?"
"Here," said Jean, producing it without enthusiasm. "It's hopeless."
"It is a sight by daylight," agreed Amy, candidly. "That cheap
quality always gets brown and rusty. But under gas it will never
show. Cut those sleeves off at the elbow and edge them with lace. The
forty-nine-cent kind will do, and you'll only need two yards."
Jean's spirits rebounded under this practical encouragement.
"I might turn in the neck about so much," she suggested, indicating an
angle by no means extravagant.
Amy snatched the garment away.
"Scissors!" she commanded decisively. "This yoke is coming out
altogether. Can't you see, Jean Fanshaw, that if you give your
shoulders a chance, people won't think twice about your dress? I'd
just give millions for your shoulders. The black will set them off as
nothing else could. If you want a dash of color, I don't know anything
smarter than a spray of pink-satin roses. Fred thinks I twist them up
almost like real."
Jean evaded the artificial flowers with tact, but otherwise let herself
be guided by Amy, under whose fingers the transformation of the black
net went forward rapidly.
"It's a treat to have something to do," Amy avowed, declining aid. "I
get awful lonesome over at our boarding-place. You never have time
any more to run in, and, excepting Saturday afternoon and Sunday, I
don't see anything of Fred. This is his busiest time, he says. Fred's
a crackerjack salesman. Last month he sent in more orders than any man
the firm ever put on the road. He just seems to hypnotize customers,
same as he did me. I know you would like him, too, Jean, if you would
ever come over while he's home. He spoke about that very thing the
other day. He said it looked as if you were trying to dodge him. He
wanted me to ask you to go down to the Coney Island opening last
Saturday, but I was afraid you'd say no and hurt his feelings, so I
told him you were sure to be at your art school. I was glad afterward
you didn't come, for we met Stella Wilkes."
The name failed to stir Jean as of old.
"I don't fear Stella now," she said.
"I do," Amy rejoined. "It gives me the creeps to be anywhere near her.
Fred says he can't see why. Men are queer that way. She came up to us
on the Iron Pier, where we were having beer and sandwiches, and in
spite of all my hints, he asked her to have something, too. She told
us she was singing in one of the music-halls down there, and nothing
would do Fred but we must go that night and see what her voice was
like. She spotted us down in the crowd and waved her hand at us as bold
as you please. I was so mad! Fred didn't care. He thought she had a
bully voice. It did sound first-rate in 'coon songs,' and I really had
to laugh myself at some of her antics when she danced a cake-walk.
Wouldn't it be a queer thing if she got to be well known? Fred says
there's no reason why she shouldn't earn big money, and he's a dandy
judge of acting. You ought to hear him spout some of the speeches from
'Monte Cristo.' We always go to a show Saturday nights, when he's
home, and generally Sundays to sacred concerts and actors' benefits. I
wouldn't go Sundays if the rest of the week wasn't so dull. If I only
had a flat, it would help pass the time away. I tease Fred for one all
the time. Maybe I can pretty soon. He's to have Long Island and North
Jersey for his territory, and that will bring him home oftener nights.
Haven't you a better drop-skirt than this?"
"Drop-skirt?" The transition caught Jean daydreaming over a contrast
between Amy's drummer and an illustrator not unknown to fame.
"This one is so scant it spoils the whole dress," explained the critic.
"I always said so."
"I know; but it's the best I have. Does it matter so much?"
"Matter!" Amy mourned over the offending detail with artistic concern.
"There's nothing I'm so particular about. A drop-skirt like this would
spoil a Paquin gown, or a Redfern, let alone a--a--"
"Rusty black net?" Jean prompted. "Aren't you forgetting my wonderful
shoulders? Nobody is to look at anything else, you know!"
Amy ignored the implication.
"It won't be so funny if they do," she reproved. "I do wish I had
something to lend you, but since I left the store, I never wear black.
Fred likes lively colors. Isn't there anything at the studio you could
borrow?"
There was, though Jean forbore to mention it. As certain as her need,
was the knowledge that from the third right-hand hook of the studio
wardrobe depended its easy satisfaction. She had told Atwood with
almost rebuking emphasis that she must wear her own clothes, but in
the befogging nervousness which the bugaboo of the dinner wrought,
the temptation to make use of at least this discarded trifle of Mrs.
Van Ostade's plenty assailed her with waxing strength, till success
or failure seemed to hang on her decision. The garment had its
individuality, like most things belonging to Julie, who, Atwood said,
had her own notions of design; but Jean told herself that it need not
be flaunted.
To assure herself whether, after all, she might not be overrating its
importance, she wore the silken lure home under her street-dress the
evening of the dinner. This candid course was most efficacious. In the
light of the miracle it worked, consistency troubled her no more than
Amy. Its influence transcended the material; it fortified her courage;
and when at last the admiring maid brought word that a gentleman
waited below, she gave a final glance mirrorward, which was almost
optimistic, and went down for Craig's verdict with starry eyes.
No faintest premonition prepared her to confront in the dim-lit room,
not Craig, but Paul.
The dentist took an uncertain step toward her.
"I had to come, Jean," he said defensively. "There hasn't been a
more miserable cuss in the city. I--" Then, seeing her clearly under
the flare of the gas-burner nearest the door, which her hand sought
instantly, he stood a moment, wide-eyed and mute, in fascinated survey
of her unwonted garb. No tribute to its effectiveness could be more
sincere. As if it spoke for her like a symbol, answering a question
he could no longer put, he made a simple gesture of renunciation, the
pathos and dignity of which sounded the very well-springs of her pity.
"Excuse me for butting in," he added. "I can see now it was no use."
Jean put out her hand. The mystery of her dead affection--she could not
call it love--for this man was never more baffling. The woman she was
seemed as far removed from her who pledged herself to Paul, as that
girl in turn was remote from the mutinous rebel of Cottage No. 6; but
the dentist's gesture, his words, his shabbiness--so different from the
half-dandified neatness of old--touched her where a direct appeal to
their common past would have found her flint.
"It was no use in the way you mean, Paul," she said gently. "But sit
down. I am sorry if you have been unhappy."
Whereupon an inconceivably subdued Paul Bartlett sat down beside her
and with a gush of mingled self-pity and remorse poured the tale
of his manifold sorrows into an absorbed and--her wrongs, her sex
considered--sympathetic ear. Life had fared ill with the dentist. He
had not been able, he said, to swing the enterprise of the new office
quite as he had hoped. The location was all right, the equipment was
all right, but for some reason, perhaps the election-time flurry,
perhaps because he himself may not have pushed things as he did
when feeling quite up to par, patients had not flocked his way. The
hell he had been through! To know there wasn't a more up-to-date
office in Harlem, not one that paid a stiffer rent, and yet, for a
month, six weeks, two months, to see almost nobody drift in except
"shoppers"--Jean would remember their sort!--who haggled over dinkey
little jobs such as amalgam fillings, or beat him down on a cheap plate
to a figure that hardly paid a man to fire up his vulcanizer--well,
he'd sooner handle a pick and shovel than go through that again.
"But it's better now?" she asked.
"Shouldn't have showed my face here if it wasn't," Paul retorted,
with a flicker of his old spirit. "The luck changed just when I'd
about decided to go back to Grimes. Yes, I'm doing so-so. Nothing
record-breaking, but I'm out of debt."
"I'm very glad."
"Thanks," he said gratefully. "You've no call to be, God knows! When
I think--but what's the good? I've thought till I'm half crazy. Just
to look into the little place at the Lorna Doone queers a whole week
for me. It stands about as it did, Jean. All the time the pinch was
hardest, I had to carry the flat, too--empty. I couldn't live there,
and nobody else wanted it. I missed my chance to clear out when the
building changed hands--I tumbled just too late, not being on the spot.
The new owners would make trouble, and I've had trouble enough. I just
_can't_ sell the things--leastways some of them--and I thought perhaps
you--they're really yours, you know--perhaps you--No? Well, I don't
blame you. If folks were only living there, I guess I'd feel different.
I would sublet for a song."
Amy's consuming desire flashed into Jean's mind to relieve a situation
too tense for long endurance, and Paul thankfully made note of the
drummer's address. This mechanical act seemed to put a period to
their meeting and both rose; but although they shook hands again, and
exchanged commonplaces concerning neither knew what, the man continued
to imprison her fingers in an awkward solemnity which, more sharply
than words, conveyed his sense of a bitter, yet just, finality.
So occupied, Atwood's hurried entrance found them.
"I'm late, very late," he said from the hall, at first seeing only
Jean; "but the cab-horse looks promising, and the driver says--I beg
your pardon!"
Acutely conscious of a burning flush, which Paul's red-hot confusion
answered like an afterglow, Jean made the presentation.
"Bartlett--not Barclay," Paul corrected Atwood's murmured greeting,
with the footless particularity of the embarrassed.
"I beg your pardon," said Atwood again.
"Often mixed, those two names, Bartlett and Barclay," babbled the
dentist, with desperate stage laughter. "Half the people who come to my
office call me Barclay. Feel sometimes as if it must be Barclay after
all. Dare say Barclay is as good a name--that is--"
Jean stilled the parrot cry with an apology for running off, and the
trio passed down the steps together. Atwood glanced back curiously as
they whipped away.
"Who is Mr. Bartlett--not Barclay?" he smiled.
"A dentist I knew when I worked for the Acme Company," she answered,
and then, with a generous impulse added, "He was very kind to me once
when I needed kindness."
"So?" Atwood's interest livened. "Then I have double reason not to
forget his name. I don't dare picture what Julie's thinking," he went
on, peering at a jeweller's street-clock. "We're undeniably late. But I
have the best excuse in the world. Guess!"
Jean tried, but found her wits distraught between the scene just past
and the trial to come.
"No; tell me," she entreated.
He drew a full exultant breath.
"It's the Joyce-Reeves commission," he said. "I received the order
to-night."