“I’M GOING BACK TO JOE”
“He’s in a bad way with pneumonia,” Paddock explained as he met Wayne
at the door. “He crept in here this morning before daylight with a high
fever and I put him to bed and got a nurse for him. He’s been out of
his head this afternoon and he has asked for you repeatedly. It is kind
of you to come. Miss Morley came to help with the cooking class and
she’s with him now, to relieve the nurse for an hour. Will you come up?”
Joe lay on Paddock’s own bed. The room was darkened and out of the
shadows Jean rose to meet them.
“He’s asleep now, but he has been asking for you. He said he had
something he wanted to say to you.”
“I will wait,” said Wayne.
He talked with Paddock a few minutes in the hall; there was little
question of Joe’s recovery, Paddock said, but both lungs were affected
and his temperature soared high. There were many sick in the town, and
many unemployed required help. Paddock’s smile had never been so sad
but he wore the air of a man of affairs and the joy of his work was in
his dark, homely face.
“Make yourself at home. If you can stay a little while it would please
the boy, if he should know you.”
The sick man’s harsh breathing alone disturbed the quiet of the room.
Wayne sat near the door, and it was some time before the figure on the
bed and Jean’s outline beyond, her hand resting lightly on the sick
man’s wrist, became clear to him. The ticking of a watch on the table
at Jean’s side reached Wayne fitfully; and once when she bent down to
see the time her head was caught in the lamp’s glow, and the purity of
her profile and her sweet, womanly solicitude touched him. He thought
of her rather than of the stricken man who lay between them.
Not since those dark days long ago when his mother lay ill in her
familiar chamber had he looked upon sickness. He recalled those days
now--the shielded lamp, the gloom, the silence, the waiting. And then
he recurred to his interview with Joe in the garage. That had been a
day of events, surely! And much had happened since. He experienced a
pang of guilt at his neglect of Joe, who had made the long and toilsome
journey to Ironstead to find refuge with Paddock. Life, clearly, was a
mixed business, an ill-rehearsed play, where no one knew his lines and
where the exits and entrances were all haphazard.
The sick man stirred and tossed restlessly. Jean was at once alert,
bending over him anxiously. Abruptly he began to speak, the words harsh
and indistinct, breaking from him in little moans; but the sense of
what he said as Wayne caught it was this:
“He can’t have you, Jean. He’s my friend, but he can’t take you away
from me.... He saw your picture in my room, but he doesn’t know about
us.... Don’t you be scared; I’m not goin’ to hurt you. I won’t follow
you any more.... I want to go back to the hills where we came from,
Jean. I want to see Golden Bridge and the place where we played when
we were kids. I want to see the men with black faces comin’ out of the
ground.... He’s the best friend I ever had but he can’t have you....
You go on and draw pictures of the breaker boys and the dirty Dago
babies. I’ll keep away from you.... Don’t you call strikes on me, Mr.
Umpire! I tell you my left arm’s all right. I’m pitchin’ the game of my
life; over the plate, every one of ’em. All right, give him his base:
you’re rotten, you’re rotten, I say.”
His voice died hoarsely in his throat and the room seemed quieter than
ever as he ceased. The ticking of the watch rose and fell; Jean was a
shadow, silent and vague as shadows are. Wayne had risen when Joe began
to speak, looking down upon Jean as she knelt clasping the sick man’s
hands. The nurse came softly in and heard Jean’s report of the hour.
“I will come again in the morning--or I will stay now,” said Jean.
“No; you can do nothing to-night. But to-morrow at the same hour I
should be glad to have you come again.”
“I shall be here,” said Jean.
“He will be better; he will get well,” the nurse whispered,
anticipating her question. “He is very strong and I’ve seen many worse
cases recover.”
“He didn’t know me,” said Wayne, when he was alone with Jean in the
hall.
“No--but he will be glad when they tell him afterward,” she replied,
and he saw that she had been crying.
“If you are going into town you will let me go with you--please?”
“Yes; I’m going at once,” she answered indifferently.
Below they found Paddock engaged in placing cots in the assembly room.
“Boarding house burned down and I’m going to take in a few of the boys.
You might lend a hand on these chairs, Craighill--pile ’em in the
corner--good! And you, Miss Morley, if you’ll show me what to do with
these blankets, we’ll soon have a grand dormitory.”
Cots and bedding had been brought out from town and these were opened
and distributed; Wayne, glad to be doing something, did the heaviest
lifting. Jean, moving about silently, unfolded and placed the blankets.
Some of the men to be sheltered were already coming in, receiving
Paddock’s cordial greeting as they appeared at the door.
“That will do beautifully,” beamed Paddock, surveying the lines of
cots with satisfaction. “Thank you very much. Joe will be all right.
He’s as hard as nails and a mere congestion of the lungs can’t hurt him
particularly. Good of you to come, Craighill. Sorry I can’t give you
both something to eat, but we had a fine line of hungry fellows to-day
and they cleaned me out.”
The minister stepped into the crisp white night for his last words
with them. He was not a deep searcher of souls, but this man and woman
puzzled and interested him greatly. He noted their fine height, their
vigorous, free walk; and knowing much of both their lives he was moved
to pity for them.
On the long journey into the city they spoke little. Jean was
preoccupied and Wayne was glad to be silent. What had Joe and Jean been
to each other? Whatever the relationship it had meant much to the young
man, as proved by his incoherent murmurings. Jean and Wayne had the car
to themselves much of the time, but she did not speak except to answer
his occasional questions.
“It is late; you will miss your dinner. If you will go to the house I
can telephone Mrs. Craighill to have supper ready for you.”
“Oh, no; they will give me something at the boarding house. My
grandfather is there and he will be troubled if I don’t come.”
“Mr. Gregory is here again?”
“He comes and goes. I think I ought to tell you that he is preparing to
press his claim against Colonel Craighill in that Sand Creek matter.
I have urged him not to, but he is old and ill and I sometimes think
his mind is unsettled. I ought to take him away. As long as I’m here he
has an excuse for coming. I ought to give up my work, and take him back
home--to our own home at Denbeigh.”
“It’s an unfortunate matter--the whole business. My father’s interest
in the Sand Creek Company is very small. He has nothing to do with the
management of the company.”
“That’s where the trouble comes in. It’s not the business side of it
any more; it’s the feeling grandfather has that it was a personal
matter between him and your father. He insists on looking at it that
way.”
“I think there’s a real claim. I will see what I can do with the
officers of the company. It will be no trouble whatever,” he said,
roused at the prospect of serving her.
“Please do not! I don’t think that would satisfy grandfather at all.
He wants the offer of a settlement to come from Colonel Craighill. I
appreciate your kind feeling about it, but please do nothing; it would
not help.”
A Russian woman with a shawl wrapped round her head entered the car
dragging a child of three by the hand. The little boy, planted on a
seat directly opposite Jean, fixed his great, wondering eyes upon her.
“The poor little dear,” she murmured; “I’ve been wanting just that
type, but now it doesn’t seem quite fair to try to catch him.”
She drew from the pocket of her long coat a small memorandum book and
a lead-pencil stub and began sketching. The mother stared and frowned,
not quite understanding, but Jean was all intent on the white, wistful
face opposite, and Wayne, watching her, marked her earnestness, her
complete absorption. She had snatched off her gloves in her haste
and he picked them up and unconsciously smoothed them as he watched
her hand fly over the paper. The lurching car did not trouble her;
she finished one sketch and began another, tearing the first sheet
from the pad and thrusting it into her pocket. Finally, she held this
second attempt up and inspected it, turning it so that Wayne might
see. It was his first glimpse of any of her work and he was amazed
at her cleverness; her few bold strokes had brought the sad little
face to paper; the folded baby hands were there, with pathos in their
tiny clasp. Jean thrust it away in her coat and crossed the aisle to
speak to the mother, who supplemented her scant English with smiles of
appreciation as the stranger praised her child. A little later as the
mother left the car Wayne dropped a silver dollar into the baby’s hand.
“You must always pay a model for sitting. What are you going to do with
the sketch?”
“Oh, I have use for it. Maybe you will see it again some day.”
They transferred to another line to complete the journey to Jean’s
boarding house. Wayne had expected to leave her at the door. He was
surprised when she asked him in.
“I would like to see you a moment, Mr. Craighill, if you can wait.”
She turned up the gas in a dingy parlour whose shabby upholstery
retained the vague conglomerate odours of boiled vegetables. The place
was hot and he threw open his coat but she did not ask him to sit down.
She closed the door and stood beside it, as though to emphasize the
brevity of the interview.
“I must tell you something--something you have a right to know. I ought
to have told you at your house the other morning, but I could not do
it then. It pleased me--I may as well tell you that; it can make no
difference now--I was pleased that you wanted my friendship, that you
asked me to help you. It flattered me, I suppose, but I knew at once
that it was all wrong. I had known from the first time you spoke to me
and even after we met again at the parish house, that we must not know
each other. It was all wrong, very wrong. And to-day you heard what Joe
said. He was delirious and didn’t even know who we were; but what he
said about me had a meaning. We were born in the same town--up there at
Denbeigh. His father and mine both worked in the anthracite mines; we
went to school together; I went to the high school, but Joe had to stop
and go to work. When I was eighteen we ran off and were married by a
minister in Scranton. I think he really loved me and I was fond of him,
but I had been better educated than Joe. He was a miner, but had quit
that to play baseball. He was a good player, they said, and could make
more money travelling about than by working in the mines. But it was
a mistake, our marrying, and I saw at once that it wouldn’t do. After
three months I wrote to him while he was away that I would not live
with him--that it was all ended. My grandfather got a divorce for me--I
know now that was wrong, too. Joe did nothing to prevent it; but after
I came to Pittsburg last fall I began meeting him, and he would follow
me sometimes. He had taken it hard, poor Joe! And I was anxious to go
on with my studies--that was the real trouble; and Joe didn’t know or
care about those things. He used to laugh at my pictures and say they
were very pretty; but he was never unkind to me. He was a good boy--a
clean, upright boy; and I brushed him out of my life as you would sweep
dust out of a room. It was not right--it was not right--it was not
right!”
She stood rigidly against the wall, her plain, long coat thrown open
and disclosing her simplest and cheapest of gowns. When she had spoken
to him in his father’s library of the nobility of labour it had been
with an exultance that thrilled him; she had told him this pitiful
little story in hurried whispers, dry-eyed but with uplifted head.
“I am glad you told me; but you are taking it hard now because Joe is
so ill. You have no right to accuse yourself; you and Joe are wholly
different; your marriage was a boy-and-girl affair and utterly unfit.
The law has freed you, as it should free people who make such mistakes.
You have the ambition and ability to do something in the world. Joe is
a good boy but he could never tiptoe up to you. You did only the right
thing,” Wayne ran on glibly. “Your life is your own to do with as you
like: you would have no right to throw it away or waste it.”
The unreality of a situation in which he was weighing right and wrong
for another was not lost on him; and he was fully conscious that his
words made no impression on her. She was intent with her own thoughts
and her eyes rested upon him unseeingly. She had hinted before at
reasons why they should not know each other, but he had assumed that
these were chiefly his own reputation and the divergent paths to which
they were born. But he knew now that she was a divorced woman; she had
been the wife of a coal miner, a ball player, his own servant. These
facts swept in review before him and he met them with full gaze, giving
full value to every point. She was young, and they exercised on each
other an attraction with which it might be possible to trifle; and yet
no evil thought came into his heart. She had opened the slender book
of her life to its marred page; her life, like his, had failed at the
start; but into this knowledge he read a new kinship between them.
He attempted to reason her out of her position and failed.
“It was wrong; it was a great sin,” she persisted.
Suddenly he stood at her side and seized her hands.
“Jean! Jean! You are a free woman. You mean all there is in the world
to me of purity and goodness and sweetness. I need you! I need you! And
I believe you need me. Let us begin our lives again, Jean. I will be so
good to you; I will love you so much--so much.”
But she flung open the door behind her.
“You must go,” she said, with averted head; “you must go!”
“But you are wrong; oh, you are very wrong, Jean! You care; I know you
care. I want you to belong to me,” he whispered.
“I have my own duty; I see it clearly now. I have been wicked and
selfish. I thought only of myself when I left Joe; and if he should die
now it would be my fault, my sin.”
Her distress was great and the tears coursed down her cheeks. Then she
threw up her head in the way he loved. Her lips trembled but there was
no mistaking her words.
“I’m going back to Joe; I’m going back to him.”