“YOU LOVE ANOTHER MAN, JEAN”
It was two weeks later that Jean, paying her daily visit to the parish
house, found Joe sitting up in bed. The nurse was to leave the next
day, and Joe was impatient to be about again. The room had taken on a
brighter air from Joe’s convalescence. A light had been so arranged
by his bed that he could read and he had gorged himself with sporting
supplements which Paddock had collected for him. Life had begun to
interest Joe again. The philosophers of the diamond were already
speculating as to the disposition of players, great and small; strategy
boards were in session wherever “fiends” congregated, planning the
campaigns of the approaching season. Pittsburg’s chances of winning the
pennant were, even in December, a burning issue among men of apparent
sanity.
Jean drew off her coat and sat down near him. She had brought three
carnations and gave them into his hand to hold while she found a glass
for them.
“They’re nice flowers. Thank you, Jean.”
She moved about the tidy room, doing useless and unnecessary things to
satisfy her inner sense of duty. He did not know that her heart was
beating fast or that her hands trembled. She was almost as white as he
when she sat down beside him. There were many questions that he wished
to ask her, but he was not sure to what new ground of relationship his
recovery had brought them.
“I’ve given everybody a lot of trouble. Kind o’ tough turnin’ Father
Jim out of his own bed. He’s the real stuff, all right. I guess I’ll be
some time squarin’ this. He says”--he hesitated a moment and the smile
died away from his good-humoured mouth--“he--Father Jim says my boss
was out here.”
“Yes,” Jean replied. “Mr. Craighill came out here when you were sick
and sat right there beside you. He was very kind and has had things
sent out--many nice things to eat. The nurse has been giving them to
you; she didn’t know where they came from, probably.”
“How long ago did he come?” asked Joe, the apprehension showing in his
face, and she understood.
“That was when you were first sick. There was a chance that you might
never get well and you were delirious and kept talking about him and
calling for him. So Father Paddock telephoned him to come.”
“Where is he now?” Joe asked presently; and Jean met his eyes and
answered:
“I don’t know. I think he’s gone away somewhere.”
Joe shook his head weakly on the pillow.
“I guess I ought to be up and lookin’ out for him. I could always
handle him when he was bad. You better get Walsh on the job.”
“Mr. Walsh and Mr. Wingfield both understand. You needn’t trouble about
Mr. Craighill.”
“I guess Whiskers--that’s Wingfield--is all right,” remarked Joe
reflectively. “Wingfield and Walsh are good friends of the boss and I
guess they’ll look out for him. But he’s pretty fierce to handle when
he gets goin’.”
“You may be mistaken,” said Jean. “I don’t believe it’s that.”
“Well, he’s due all right. If Whiskers and Walsh are both lookin’ for
him he must be pretty bad. I say, Jean.”
“Yes, Joe.”
“You know what I did out there at Rosedale--followin’ you that way.
I guess I was sick then, and my head wasn’t right. It seemed kind o’
funny to be takin’ you a ride in _his_ machine with _him_. And the
widder, too. It was kind o’ funny, him and the widder bein’ out there.
I ain’t onto the widder but she’s a good looker all right. But the
Colonel--say, he’s frosted fruit. He ain’t got much use for me. I can
see it in his eye. But Sister Fanny--that’s Mrs. Blair--I’m strong for
her. She’s the human featherduster, all right, but she means good.
You know I never lived round rich folks till Mr. Wayne set me up as
chauffeur and moved me into the garage. Guess I might ’a’ been rich
myself if I hadn’t fell off the bus at Harrisburg and cracked my right
pipe. But say, Jean, I never tell the boss, but I can pitch with my
left arm just as good as the right. I got a new southpaw ball that
would worry the boys some if I went into the game again. But I told
Father Jim I would cut it out and hang on to chaufferin’, which ain’t
what you might think with the speed limit what it is, if he thought Mr.
Wayne needed me. You see I’m onto his curves and know how to handle
him.”
“Yes, Joe; I’m sure you have repaid him for his kindnesses to you.”
It was not easy to hear Wayne Craighill spoken of in this way. If
it had not been that she realized the depth of Joe’s fidelity and
devotion to Wayne she could not have stood it. For Joe saw in Wayne’s
lapses only the pardonable escapades of a young man of fortune whose
spectacular performances were free from the ignominy that attaches
to drunken outbreaks of the poor and obscure. Joe felt that he was
not saying the right thing; Jean’s inattention warned him to stop.
Her hands were clasped in her lap, and her lips had been shut tight
during his wandering recital. When she and Wayne had sat here in this
room with Joe between them she had resolved upon a course that would
abruptly change the channel of her life--that might blight and wreck it
irrecoverably. She had already made her purpose clear to Wayne and that
had been hard; and she had Joe to tell now and that was more difficult,
for while Wayne could understand what it meant to her, she knew that
Joe was incapable of understanding. She had brought herself by slow,
difficult steps to the high altar of duty and was ready now to make
confession and yield up her sacrifice.
“Joe, there’s something I must tell you. I’ve been waiting to tell you
until you were well enough to hear.”
“I’m all right, Jean; go ahead,” he said, turning so that he might see
her better.
“You know, Joe, that when I left you it was because I felt that we
had made a mistake, and that we could never be happy together. I was
honest about it; I felt that it would be a great sin for us to go on
living together when I found I didn’t care. I was young and so were you
and we had never thought about life seriously. You were the nicest,
manliest boy in our town, and you thought I was the nicest girl, so we
ran off and got married. It wasn’t necessary to run away, but it seemed
romantic and it was childish, like all the rest of it.”
“We were kids, all right,” murmured Joe.
“But when it was done and we were married I saw how serious it was and
I saw the mistake, too. Just to live on with you, and to work for you
while you were working for me and to go on that way till we died--I saw
right away, Joe, that wouldn’t do. And there was the fear of children
coming--you know what the children of the poor in mining towns are
like, and the thought of that was a terror to me, Joe. I don’t think
you ever understood how I felt about that. And more than anything else
I realized that I wanted to go on with my work--that it meant more to
me than you did, Joe. I’m speaking of these things because it’s only
square to myself that I should go over them for a minute. You were as
kind as could be; you cared--cared as I did not and could not.”
“Oh, I know that, Jean--I know it. But let’s not talk about it--it’s no
use talking about it.”
“We must talk of it--or I must, and I want to do it now. You never
did one thing that was not right. You were a good, clean, honest boy
and you would never have done anything to hurt me. It was I who hurt
you. You were generous and kind and I was selfish and hard. I saw
only my own happiness and the chance of doing something in the world
for myself. And I put you away from me as though you had done me some
great wrong--or as though you had been a bit of ribbon I didn’t want
any more. A woman has no right to treat a man that way when he has
never harmed her or done any dishonourable thing--when he is kind and
gentle as you were. It seems a long time ago that it all happened, and
I supposed you didn’t care any more. But after I came here and began
seeing you again I saw that you had not forgotten and that it hurt you
deeply. I suppose I never felt quite right about it. It felt like a
fraud on people who thought I had never been married, but I told the
friends I made here--Mrs. Blair and Mr. Paddock. I suppose that in my
heart I knew all the time that I had done wrong. I had set myself up as
better than you were, and I had broken my oath to you; the law could
never make that right, but I never understood it until that evening I
came here first and saw you sick, and other people taking care of you.”
The old ache had come into his heart. It had never hurt him so much as
now and in his weakness the tears stole down his cheeks, but he shook
his head wearily on the pillow.
“It’s all over; I’m sorry I bothered you and that I ran after you that
day in the snow-storm, but I guess I wasn’t quite right in my head
then. It was this sickness coming on. But it’s all done, and you don’t
need to trouble about it, Jean.”
“But, Joe,” and she bent nearer and took his hand, his big battered
hand, with his fingers twisted and bent by mine labour and the
punishment of the ball field; caressed it and went on in the same low
tone with which she had begun. “It isn’t over, Joe. I’ve talked to Mr.
Paddock about that. He says the court’s making me free and giving me my
name again doesn’t really count. You know how good and kind and gentle
he is, but he was very firm about that. He said I had sacrificed my
duty to my ambition--that was the way he put it--and now, Joe----”
And this was the hardest thing for her to say; it was bending her neck
again to the yoke from which she had been free; and there was a pain
in her heart that was not for herself but for him, for he had been the
sufferer; it was he that had cared. But she knew, as she believed
he could not, how impossible it would be for them to find the lost
path in which they had begun to walk together. He would take what she
offered without knowing at how great a cost she gave it, and her mind
leaped on at a bound across the long years before them to the end of
their lives. She saw her hopes for her work crumble into dust, and
the world of beauty which the dawning consciousness of her powers had
illumined before her, the joy of success, the stimulus of applause, the
acquaintance of people who would appreciate her skill--all these things
she would sweep away by a word and forget that they had ever been her
dreams or that life had ever held anything better for her than being
Joe’s wife, and living on with him, and eating the bread won for her by
the hand that lay there in hers. Suddenly, before she could finish and
tell him she would go back to him and renew the broken tie, she felt
his clasp tighten and she took it that he understood and that this was
his acceptance of what she meant to offer. She did not look into his
eyes at once and she hoped he would not speak, for anything he could
say would only cause her pain.
“Jean.”
“Yes,” she said bravely.
“It’s no good, Jean. I can’t let you do that; we quit, and if that was
wrong we can’t fix it now. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’ll
be out o’ here and all right pretty soon. And I ain’t goin’ to drag
you down. You talk about doin’ me a wrong, but that’s no reason why I
should do you a bigger one. We meant well when we started out, but it
would never have been any good. Don’t you feel sorry about it--it’s all
right, Jean. It’s like the good girl you are to offer to take me back,
but it’s all done and over. I want you to be happy and go on with your
work; but I’m not goin’ to be a dead weight on you. We ain’t for each
other, Jean.”
He dropped her hand, as though the matter were concluded; but what he
had said was not a release, it only sent her back to the beginning of
her task.
“You love me, don’t you, Joe--just as you always did?”
He turned his head away and did not answer.
“And if you do, I owe it to you to go back to you. I had no right to
throw your love away after I had taken it and pledged you mine. The
only way I can make it right--the only thing there is to do--is for me
to come back.”
He was silent a long time and when he turned toward her he asked slowly:
“Do you love me--do you care for me, Jean, even a little bit, as you
did when we were married?”
In the long silence that followed she did not see the tears that
brightened his eyes; but he drew himself up slowly, drawing the pillow
under his arm for support.
“You don’t care any more, Jean. You didn’t care when you left me and
got the divorce; and you don’t care now. But that’s like all the rest;
it’s past and over. Maybe sometime I won’t care any more either. You
love another man, Jean, and that’s all right, too. He’s my friend and
he’s been kinder to me than anybody else ever was. He needs you--I
guess you know that. And it’s all right, Jean, it’s all right.”
The mention of Wayne had filled her heart with wild tumult, and she
made no reply. Joe knew the truth: that she did not care for him, and
that if she had ever cared greatly she would not have left him. She
could not lie to him; for duty cloaked in deceit would be only false
and ignoble.
The nurse came in, ending the interview. On her way out Jean asked for
Paddock, but he was in the city. So she went back to her boarding house
with a troubled heart.