Jerry's awakening to Jane, as a personality to be coped with, brought with it a trail of perplexities. He had taken her for granted for so long that it was uncomfortable to get re-adjusted to her. He found himself gazing at her, when they were together, as at some stranger.
"Jerry, is anything the matter with me?" she asked one evening, finally aware of this scrutiny.
"No, of course not; why?"
"I find you staring at me so strangely all the time I'm with you. It makes me self-conscious."
"I beg your pardon."
"Is there something you want to ask me?"
"Has it ever occurred to you that we knew nothing at all about each other when we married?"
"Yes. That was one of the nicest things about us. We took each other for what we were, at the time, and asked no tiresome questions."
"Haven't you any curiosity about my past, Jane?"
"No. I married your present; I'm not concerned with anything else."
"That isn't a bit feminine."
"Then it must be masculine, so we agree on the stupidity of historic autobiography."
"I'm beginning to be interested in your past, Jane."
"Very masculine!" she retorted. "No use, Jerry; it's over and done with. I'm not even interested in it myself."
"Communicativeness is not a vice with you, I may say."
"That was why you married me, if you remember. You spoke of it specially the day of the wedding. I warned you then that 'the Man with the Dumb Wife' had a bad time of it, both while she was dumb and when she was not!"
"A reasonable amount of confidence between husband and wife is desirable, don't you think so?"
"I can't say that I do. Who is to decide what is a reasonable amount—the confidant or the confider? No one can be trusted to say just enough; I like reserve better, myself."
"Do you advocate our not talking at all?"
"Oh, no. About opinions, ideas, facts, by all means let us have an exchange—not personal history—soul deliveries—they take away all the mysteries."
"I suppose that is why I feel sometimes that I am married to you, but that you live in Mars."
"Poor Jerry! Would you like a babbling, cozy, confiding little wife?"
"I don't know that I'm quite up to the mysteries, Jane."
"Would you like to end our experiment, Jerry?" she said quickly.
"No; of course not. What put such an idea into your head?"
"I'm quite sure that I do not give you all you want, in our union."
"Oh, yes, you do, Jane," he said soothingly.
"I give you all you asked for when we married, but no one stands still; new demands grow subconsciously. So it has been with us."
"You mean I don't give you what you want?" he inquired.
"No."
"You want to end it?"
"No."
"What then?"
"If we have the intelligence to realize the situation, we must be able to meet it."
"But how?"
"I don't know yet. We must both consider it deeply."
With this, she closed the interview, and he felt as baffled as when he began it.
He went on with his study of her. She filled his mind. In the nursery she was a happy, twittering, foolish mother, adoring her baby. With him she was now a gay, bantering companion, now a dweller in Mars, with no apparent connection with the earth. With Christiansen she was a sexless challenge, calling to his mind with hers. Bobs transformed her into an affectionate big sister, interested in the doings of all the studio friends. He no sooner collected the data of one rôle, than she assumed another. Yet with all those ties, she kept an independent aloofness. Jerry felt that, any day, she might tie baby to her back and go forth, leaving them all, without a look behind. He decided that this was the secret of her fascination for them.
The more he thought about her, the more he wanted to know about those unaccountable mornings, what she did, where she spent her freedom. He decided to strike, in his position as assistant nurse, to see if that thwarted her sufficiently to bring a protest. He, therefore, announced that business would take him out of the studio in the early mornings for a week.
"Too bad to spoil your outings," he added.
"Oh, it won't. I'll arrange somehow."
"Those sacred mornings of yours cannot be interfered with, can they?"
"No."
"Why don't you invite me to walk with you some morning?"
"It's more important that you should look after baby."
"Thanks."
"After all, you've never shown any uncontrollable desire to walk with me. Before baby came you always walked alone."
He carried out his plan, with much discomfort to himself, for he hated early rising, but the ruse gained him nothing. Mrs. Biggs arrived and took his place. Not so much as a day was lost to Jane. By the end of the week, his irritation and his curiosity had grown to such a size that he was persuading himself that he owed it to himself to know where she went. After all she was his wife; he had a right to know what she was doing. So for two mornings when Jane went to the tenement room to write, Jerry sauntered along far enough behind her to escape detection. Both days he saw her disappear up the tenementstairs, and half an hour of waiting did not see her come down again. But Mrs. Biggs was at the studio. What could Jane be doing in that building?
The third day he was rewarded for his trouble. Shortly after she had entered the building he saw Christiansen arrive. He evidently whistled up the tube, for she came down at once and they went away, talking earnestly. Jane seemed excited. Jerry rushed around the corner and up the block. At the next crossing he came sauntering toward them.
"Oh, Jerry!" said Jane, surprised but unembarrassed.
"Good-morning, Mr. Christiansen," said Jerry shortly. "You're an early riser."
"Yes."
"Do you, like my wife, take your exercise at this hour?"
"Sometimes. I exercise all day. I always walk."
"Mr. Christiansen is going with me to do an errand," Jane said.
"Don't let me detain you," Jerry remarked.
"Wearein rather a hurry," said Jane unconcernedly.
They went on their way, leaving Jerry to a fine, old-fashioned, male rage. Here was a pretty how-de-do, where his own wife cavalierly dismissed him to go off with her lover. There was no shadow of doubt in his mind that Christiansen was in love with Jane, although, in spite of all the evidence, he could not reconcile it to himself that Jane was in love with Christiansen. But the tenement house, the rendezvous; what did it all mean? Then he went back home and ascended to the nursery.
"Has Mrs. Paxton a key to your apartment, Mrs. Biggs?" he inquired casually.
"Yes, sir. She has to have it to get into her room there. We keep it under the mat."
"Her room?"
"Yes, sir. Didn't you know she kept her old room with me? Oh, mebbe I shouldn't ha' told ye, sir."
"Oh—I suppose she must have told me; I've just forgotten it. Do her friends go there? She's never asked me."
"Oh, no, sir; nobody comes there. A gentleman used to come, but that was before her marriage."
"Big man, gray-black hair?"
"Yes, sir, that's him."
"Baby been asleep all morning?" he forced himself to ask, casually, as if the other conversation was purely incidental.
"Yes, sir. He's a fine sleeper. My boy Billy, now—he was a poor one for sleep." Mrs. Biggs's reminiscences were addressed to space, because Jerry had not heard them. He walked downstairs and paced the studio, trying to make up his mind what to do; whether to bide his time, or to have the whole matter up for discussion the moment Jane returned.
He thought some of going to Bobs for advice, but he gave up that idea. He was so upset that he telephoned his model and broke the appointment. His mind was chaos; groping in it brought up nothing.
After what seemed an eternity of time Jane came in. He heard her stop in the hall to look over the mail. She glanced into the studio, expecting to see him at work.
"Hello, Jerry; model late?" she inquired.
"She's not coming."
"What a bother!"
"Will you come in here a moment, please?"
"Can't now; I hear baby crying."
"Baby can wait."
"No, my dear, time, tide, and baby cannot," she laughed and ran upstairs.
He felt this to be absolutely brazen. He could hear her upstairs laughing and talking to Mrs. Biggs and small Jerry, together with his son's crows of delight.
"Come on up, Jerry; he's awfully jolly this morning," she called over the balcony to him.
"No, thank you," he replied formally.
It added fuel to his blaze that she should take his acquiescence in the situation as a matter of course. He gloomed on for half an hour. Then she appeared with the baby. Jerry pretended to be engrossed in a magazine, and only glanced at his son when she presented him.
"Father is not hospitable this morning, Jerrykins," she remarked, and began a tour of the room, explaining everything to him as they reviewed it.
"This is the latest work of thy respected father, O bald one. Dost like the lady?" Small Jerry yawned and Jane laughed.
"Does art bore thee, my son? That would be a blow to thy humble parents."
The monologue went on and Jerry could have screamed with nerves. When she stopped behind him and remarked:
"Upside down, Jerry? Is this some new mental discipline?" he rose, flung the magazine across the studio and himself out of the door.
Jane looked upon this exposition of temper with some amusement and no concern.
"My son, can you ever grow up to be as little a boy as your father?" she asked smilingly.
When Mrs. Biggs came down she stopped at the door.
"Has he gone out?"
"Who? Mr. Paxton? Yes."
"I blabbed about the room."
"I don't understand."
"He ast me if you had a key," she went on, repeating the conversation, verbatim.
"Oh!" said Jane, a light beginning to dawn.
"I could ha' bit my tongue out...."
"That's all right. I may have forgotten to speak about the room; I don't remember."
"I thought mebbe he was mad. Men are so queer about things."
"No, he wasn't mad, I'm sure. It's all right, Mrs. Biggs. Nine o'clock to-morrow."
"Yes'm."
So that was why Jerry was under a dark cloud. He resented the secret about the room in the tenement.
"Jerrykins, I wonder if thy great-great-great-granddaughter will be able really to call her soul her own. Jerry could have a whole series of workshops, of which I knew nothing, and consider it his business only; but if my soul has one unexplored corner—my body one unexplainedresting place—I am no true wife! The times, my son, arealwaysout of joint," she added with a sigh.
Jerry stayed away all day and telephoned he would spend the night at the club. He came in the next morning just in time for his model, to find Jane coming in, too.
"Good-morning, Jerry," she said cheerfully.
"Good-morning."
"Hope you had a pleasant party."
"I did not."
She went upstairs and he into the studio. But at luncheon she precipitated the storm.
"Mrs. Biggs says you asked her if I had a key to her flat?"
"I did," defensively.
"Why not ask me, Jerry?"
"You were off with Christiansen!"
"But I came back in half an hour. Your impatience might have kept until then."
"May I ask why you find it necessary to rent a room in that tenement house?"
"Am I on the witness stand, Jerry, or is this a friendly interest in my doings?"
"I have a right to know why you have such a room."
"What right?"
"The right of your husband!"
"I don't know the sources of that right, Jerry, but I question it. The rights of a husband and wife, it seems to me, must be agreed on between them. I have never demanded an accounting of your time, or where you spend it."
"That's a different matter. A husband has his honour to look out for."
"Honour is the common possession of the husband and the wife, as I see it, Jerry. She looks after it, just as he does."
"When a woman keeps a room and receives her lover there, it's time her husband looked into it."
Jane's face seemed to contract with the control she put on herself.
"You must explain that, Jerry."
"I saw Christiansen go there this morning to meet you."
"Jerry, you were spying?"
"It's my business to know, I tell you. Christiansen has given himself airs around here long enough. He can't make love to you...."
To his utter silencing, Jane laughed. Not bitterly or angrily, but just amusedly.
"Jerry, if it were not so ridiculous, it would be insulting! The idea of Martin Christiansen loving me is so absurd as to need no denial. We have had not one second of sentiment between us. He has never been in my room at Mrs. Biggs's since I married you. As for the room, I keep it as a place to go to work, to think, to be by myself. I pay for it myself; it is my office, if you like—my studio. If this information is a trifle disappointing, Jerry, after the fine melodrama you seem to have worked up, I'm afraid it's your own fault," she said, smiling, and walked out of the room.
It seemed to Jane that this frank, entirely truthful explanation settled the matter of the tenement room once for all. But alas! Jerry did not look at events with the simple directness which characterized Jane. He believed that she spoke the truth, as far as she knew it. But it was outside the laws of human possibilities to Jerry that a man and woman could have such obviously intimate relationship without sex attraction as its cause and excuse. The whole thing smouldered in his mind.
He began to wonder whether Jane had felt jealousy when he had spent so much of his time with Althea Morton, before the baby came. He could not recall the least sign she had ever made of distress or protest. He determined to find out if she could be made jealous. It was his only weapon, so far as he could see. After much consideration, he asked Althea to sit for him, as model for a picture. She accepted with avidity, and the time was set in the afternoons, when Jane was about. Jerry saw to that.
"I've just got an order for a picture from the New Age Club," he remarked at luncheon, breaking a long silence.
"Oh, Jerry, now nice; I'm delighted."
"It's to go over the fireplace in the living-room."
"Good. I'm so glad; it's a big step forward, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a good thing."
"Have you decided on the subject?"
"Yes—sort of enchanted Maeterlinck forest with Melisande coming through the trees."
"Charming. Did you choose it?"
"No, the committee decided on it. I shall begin at once."
"Who will you have for Melisande?"
"Althea Morton."
"Of course; she will be fine. But will she pose?"
"She will," he replied with what he hoped was a mysterious smile. It was a trifle annoying to have her so pleased with the arrangement. "I'd be obliged if you would occasionally show yourself while she is here," he added.
"I will, if I'm at home. There's no disguising the fact, however, Jerry, that my absence causes no acute pain to Miss Morton."
"That's not the point. People talk," significantly.
"Let them."
"That may be your idea, but it's not mine."
"Jerry," she laughed, "this must be a new leaf! I'll look in on Miss Morton if you like, to see that the proprieties are observed."
When the sittings began, Jerry manœuvred constantly to have Jane about. There was no use trying to make her jealous, if she was not there to see the provocation. Besides, Althea needed a check, if they once began a flirtation; nothing would please her so much as annoying Jane, he knew that instinctively.
But Jane was enough to drive a machinating husband to despair. She was casual in her greetings to Miss Morton,discreet about entering the studio during posing hours. She always announced herself, so that it was impossible to be caught in a compromising position, or even a tender glance.
"For goodness' sake, Jane," he complained, "don't act as if she were posing for a nude. Walk right in when you want to come into the studio."
"I only come, by request, on behalf of the proprieties, you know. I don't wish to embarrass Miss Morton by seeming to protect her from you, Jerry."
"You act as if you thought you'd find me kissing her!" he exploded.
"You're welcome to kiss her, if it gives you pleasure and she does not object," replied Jane.
"Jane Judd, haven't you any sense of proprieties?"
"Yes, real proprieties, not surface trifles."
"You call kissing Miss Morton a surface trifle?"
"Distinctly; don't you?"
"I'd be interested to hear what you call the real proprieties," he said satirically.
"If you loved Miss Morton deeply and continued to live with me, I should say that the proprieties were outraged. That's a question of human relationship, you see. But kissing a silly woman who invites you to kiss her—pooh!—what's that?"
"I trust you don't pattern your own conduct on that belief?" hotly.
"I'm not a silly woman, little boy Jerry. I don't invite people to kiss me, because I don't like being kissed," she laughed.
Bobs came in for some tea and interrupted them in their enlivening discussion. When Jerry went out of the room, Bobs said to Jane:
"Is Jerry trailing that Morton woman again?"
"He is painting her, as Melisande."
"Do you have to have her here all the time?"
"I don't see much of her. Poor Jerry has her."
"Poor Jerry likes her. Just when you begin to think that women are getting somewhere—being something fine and busy and loyal—then you run into an Althea, and smash goes the dream!"
"Dear, we can't change our natures in one generation, nor two, nor three. When we come back a few centuries from now, think what splendid creatures women will be!"
"Lord, Jane, I don't want to come back!"
"I do—just to see my twenty-fifth great-granddaughter!"
"What gets me is that a man with brains like Jerry can endure that old sex stuff! Flattery, sentiment, adoration—bah!"
"Men can't change in a minute either, Bobs!"
"To live with a woman like you and waste one minute with Althea—well—it's weak minded, that's what it is."
"Most men don't want heroic qualities to live with, Bobs. They haven't even sensed this comrade idea of ours yet, the majority of them. They still like mastery, special privilege, their own code; after all, they're human!"
"I'm sick of 'em!" Bobs remarked.
"Bobs, you're too big a woman to let one man set you against all men. That isn't fair. We can't be againstthem, dear. We're just human creatures here in this complex world, trying to make life bearable—to make it constructive; we have to do it together, in affectionate fellowship."
"Give me time, old, wise Jane! But scold me and teach me, too. Let's go play with Baby."
"Baby's a man!" teased Jane.
"Bah!"
These were days of almost breathless anticipation for Jane. Christiansen was taking her to his publisher friend on the unfortunate occasion when they had encountered Jerry. The book had been in the firm's hands ever since. It seemed to Jane an eternity, in which she had not even Christiansen's encouragement, for he had disappeared on one of his frequent absences. He was at the sanatorium with his wife, Jane supposed. She went to her desk, in the white room, every morning, just the same, working over the notes for a new story which had been knocking at the door of her brain for a long time. The theme had sprung full-armed, as it were, from some remark of a character in the other book; she found that it had been developing all the time since its inception in that busy forge, the subconscious mind! The central character was a woman of a type unfamiliar to Jane, and yet, in the necromancy of imagination, she found she knew this girl like a twin soul. How she looked, what she thought, how she felt—it was all there in Jane's consciousness. It kept her mind off the fate of the other book to work at this new one. So she began it. Her habit of work stood her in good stead, and during her morning hours she actually forgot that herchance was being cast in a publishing house, on the Avenue, by a group of men she had never seen. Sometimes she despaired, other times she had full confidence. But if it came to pass that she should find a publisher and an audience—that she should be permitted to make, as her contribution, these transcriptions of life which joyed her so in the doing—could she ask one thing more of the gods?
The envelope with the imprint of the arbiters of her fate was brought her by Anna one afternoon as she sat in the nursery! Jerry was out and the house very still. She held the letter in her hand—her heart beating so that she could scarcely breathe. It seemed as if all those years of patient labour stood before her in a row, asking her to read their sentence, yet she did not break the seal.
"Baby boy," she said unsteadily to her son, "shall you care whether your mother is a woman of letters? Will you love her as well as 'just mother'?"
He smiled his ready smile at her. She made him happy; he was ready to admit that. With an unsteady hand she opened the letter and forced herself to read:
"My dear Mrs. Paxton:"We have taken rather more time than usual for the consideration of your book since it is a first book of a new author. We were so anxious that the fact that Martin Christiansen had brought you to us should not influence our judgment, that we subjected your work to a most rigorous examination."We are happy to say that we think you have written a book of rare distinction, of clear thinking and sure characterbuilding. It will give us great pleasure to publish it in the list of our spring books. We do not hope that it will be a 'best seller,' Mrs. Paxton, because in this country, artistic distinction, alas, is not an easily marketed commodity; but we consider it a privilege to have our imprint on a book of this quality."Will you come in at your convenience to sign the contract?
"My dear Mrs. Paxton:
"We have taken rather more time than usual for the consideration of your book since it is a first book of a new author. We were so anxious that the fact that Martin Christiansen had brought you to us should not influence our judgment, that we subjected your work to a most rigorous examination.
"We are happy to say that we think you have written a book of rare distinction, of clear thinking and sure characterbuilding. It will give us great pleasure to publish it in the list of our spring books. We do not hope that it will be a 'best seller,' Mrs. Paxton, because in this country, artistic distinction, alas, is not an easily marketed commodity; but we consider it a privilege to have our imprint on a book of this quality.
"Will you come in at your convenience to sign the contract?
"Most sincerely yours, etc."
Jane laid her head against the foot of her son's bed, so deeply moved that she could not stir. Her joy was so great that it flooded her with a sense of consecration to a higher task. It was a fine devotional moment, to be put beside the other great moment of her life, when her son was laid in her arms.
She thought of Jerry, then; what it would mean to him. She would not wait to give him the book, she would share the precious secret with him this very day; it might be like a new marriage sacrament between them.
Then came the realization of Martin's joy at her fulfilment. She hurried to the telephone and called his club, leaving an urgent message for him to come to her if he should come back to town during the day.
She ran upstairs again to Baby, and explained it to him, every step of the long way to now. She laughed and made merry as she talked and Baby gurgled his appreciation. Then they discussed the future. She built up dreams of success and fame that rivalled even the visions that had come to Baby on his journey out of nowhere to here.
She heard the bell ring below and she flew downstairs, reaching the door almost as soon as Anna, in the hope that it was Martin.
"Oh, Jerry, I thought you were Martin!" she exclaimed.
"Sorry to be such a disappointment."
"Oh, you're not; I want to see you, too."
"Much obliged."
He went into the studio and she followed.
"I'm sorry I've irritated you Jerry, but I'm terribly excited, and not quite myself."
"What's happened?" quickly.
"The biggest thing that ever happened to me—next to Baby."
"You're in love with Christiansen!"
"Jerry, you foolish thing, no! It's something I've done."
"Go on. I'm prepared for the worst. Have you gambled away all our money, or have you killed somebody?"
She faced him, her eyes anxiously seeking his.
"Jerry, it's a serious thing. I've wanted to tell you for a long time; it may make a big difference in our life together."
"Jane, what is all this?" he demanded curtly.
Jerry sat down on the couch, by the fire, and Jane stood looking down at him. She was trembling at the excitement of the moment.
"We haven't talked much of our inner selves, Jerry, and it's a little hard to begin—especially as this goes away back to the beginning of the time I came to the studio. Did you ever wonder why I took the work you offered?"
He nodded. She interested him now. She stood in that still way of hers, with the folds of her dull, blue gown hanging straight and close. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining; she was like a crystal ball which centred all the light and feeling in the room.
"I had to make a living so that I could go on with my real work, so I took the first thing that offered."
"What was your real work, Jane?"
"Writing. I always had a consuming desire to write—to express myself. I've always been rather silent—spoken words are so dangerous—but written words, they're like winged birds that I nurse in my heart. When I free them, they fly so far, so sure."
She stopped suddenly, aware that she had never spoken freely to him. His attention was concentrated on her.
"My mother thought I had a gift when I was a girl;no one else knew of my ambition. But when my father and mother were dead, I came to New York, with almost no money and some funny, childish little stories, to make a great name for myself."
She laughed at that, but it hurt Jerry. He did not smile at all.
"Almost the first editor who saw me told me I had no talent. He said I must take a position that would support me; then I might write until I learned how."
"So you took my job?"
"Yes; it was all I was fitted to do. It didn't matter what I did, anyway. My real life was at night, when I wrote."
"What did you write, Jane?"
"Everything. Stories, essays, poems, tons of things."
"Where did you sell them?"
"I didn't sell them. Nobody ever saw them—not until Martin came."
"How did he know about them?"
"I told him, that first night I met him, at your pageant. He asked me what I did and for some reason I told him. He asked me to see some of my things and he liked them, rather, only he saw that I needed to live—that I could not really write if I sat outside of life and speculated about it. He literally opened up a new world to me. He took me about, to the theatre, to hear music. He got me interested in the big problems of now; he made me hungry for all the experiences I had been starved for."
Jerry leaned out toward her.
"That's why you married me, Jane?"
She turned and looked at him, as if he were calling her out of a trance.
"Yes, that was why. I wanted a child," she said simply.
Jerry threw himself back on the couch and laughed at that—laughed stridently.
"Do you mind, Jerry?" she asked in surprise.
"Mind? Oh, no! It's amusing to hear that you've been gobbled up, as a possible experience, a stimulus, as it were, to a lady's literary expression. I really owe you to Christiansen, don't I?"
"Does it seem a meaner motive than yours, in marrying me, Jerry?"
"Go on with the story," he said, ignoring her question.
"There isn't any more. Martin advised me, criticised my work, helped in every way. This winter I have finished a book."
"Finished a book? Why, when did you do it?"
"Mornings—on my mysterious errands that vexed you so. I kept my old room at Mrs. Biggs's, and went there to work."
"Oh!" said Jerry, with colour slowly rising.
"Yes; simpler than you thought. The day you met Martin and me, he was taking me to a publishers' office. This is their letter to me."
She gave it to him and he read it through carefully. When he looked up she saw that he was excited.
"Do I congratulate you? Is that what a man does who suddenly finds himself possessed of a wife with a well-developed career?"
"I'm sorry you hate it so, Jerry."
"Hate it? Not at all. But it is a bit upsetting to know that you've been fooled about some one for years."
"I offered to tell you, the day we were married, but you refused to listen; you said you would take my ambitions and ideas on faith, if I would yours."
"Well, but I didn't know you had a secret like this up your sleeve."
"I risked your secrets, too, Jerry."
"There's nothing for me to do but to get used to it. I suppose you can't be induced to give it up now."
"Could you be induced to give up painting?"
"I'm not a married woman with a child."
"But you are a human being, with something to express, aren't you?"
"I suppose so."
"So am I. Being a woman, the fact that I am married, that I have a child, gives me more to say. Everything that enriches my life makes it more impossible for me to be dumb. Isn't that true with you, too, Jerry?"
"It's different with me; creation happens to be my job—my livelihood."
"So it must be mine, some day, although that isn't the ideal way. Earning a living by some other means, or having it provided and then creating what your spirit urges you to do, that's the ideal."
"But you had that before you married me, according to your story."
"Yes. But I had nothing vital to say."
"But if I provide the vitality and the livelihood," bitterly.
"Jerry, that is the only unfair and unkind thing I ever heard you say."
"I'm sorry, Jane, but all this is rather a blow, you know. I don't believe in women having careers after they are married. I always said I would never marry a woman artist."
"Granted that you have been deceived in me, Jerry. Whether that is your fault or mine is of no importance. Have I made you a reasonably satisfactory wife, considering the kind of marriage we made?"
"I suppose so."
"No, that's not fair. Do I make your home comfortable?"
"Of course."
"Do I protect your working hours?"
He nodded.
"Do I nag or ask questions, or complain about things?"
He shook his head.
"Am I extravagant?"
"Good Lord! Jane, you're all right, but this is only the beginning. This is your first picture on the line," he said, holding up the letter.
"I know that there are many ways in which I fail as a wife—ways in which we are not harmonious—but that shield has two sides, Jerry, and my belief is that, since we did what we did, we can't expect perfection in our life together. We have to face certain grave lacks, and make the best of what we have."
"I suppose that's fair."
"We've got a difficult situation on our hands. I don't know whether it would be easier or harder if we loved each other. But all I ask of you is to go step by step with me in the matter, and try to keep an open mind. Don't talk about my career; I don't want a career. I just want to say what I think and feel, as my contribution. I want to do it, so that it does not take an iota of my time or interest from you or Baby; is that unreasonable?"
"It sounds all right."
"But, Jerry, you mustn't begrudge it to me, like that! Can't you just say to yourself: 'Now this isn't working out any theory; it hasn't anything to do with feminism; it's just a knot for us two to untie?' We've got to keep our tempers sweet and our minds aired to do it, Jerry, but won't you try it out with me?"
"It sounds easy and reasonable to you, Jane, but what you're asking me to do is to shed all my inherited ideas and my own convictions on this subject of woman's function and place."
"My dear, inherited ideas ought to go; they're not worth giving storage room, and convictions that are change-proof are dangerous possessions!"
"That's your point of view!"
"It is yours on most subjects. If you prove to me that it is not your point of view on this subject, I shall certainly respect it, and also try to change it."
"You don't leave me any alternative," he said, veering from the point. "You spring this thing on me, and say: 'Now—make the best of it!'"
"I'm sorry you feel that way about it. There is, of course, a perfectly obvious alternative—that we should separate."
"You mean you would go that far, rather than let this writing business go for a few years until Jerry is five or six?"
"I can't get into your mind when you hold it shut, Jerry. I've put every effort and hope of my life into laborious toil for seven years to prepare myself for this work. You speak of 'this writing business' as if it were some whim of the moment. It is serious, Jerry. I believe in myself. I have something to say that no other human being in the world will say, and I've learned how to say it. Other women, similarly equipped physically, might have produced Jerry, but no other woman could have produced that book."
"Then you think the book is more important than Jerry?"
She kept her control with difficulty; he was so wantonly hurting her.
"I think I am here to produce both. One is the child of my body and one is the child of my spirit. They are equally important to me; they are inevitable."
"I can't understand you, Jane. I thought your love for Jerry was the one passion of your life, but that doesn't sound like it."
"We are what we are, Jerry; you can't push back development. I can't unmake you as artist any more than you can unmake me. The only difference is that I don't want to."
"You knew what I was when you married me."
"But how am I different from the person you married, Jerry? I'm what I was yesterday; nothing has changed inour lives; we will work and play and eat and sleep to-morrow as we did yesterday; why do you feel so upset about me?"
"But can't you see that you're a stranger to me? You aren't the kind of woman I thought you were!"
"But do you think I'm a less desirable companion because I've proved that I have a gift that you did not suspect? I am adding something as a contribution to our common life, not taking anything away."
"That's still to be proved."
"Why, no, Jerry, it has been proved! I've been proving it ever since we married. The only difference is that yesterday you didn't know it—to-day, you do."
"It's my knowing it that makes the difference; you said yourself that it might make a difference in our life together!"
"Yes, but I meant a change for the better. I thought you might be a little proud of me—that I'd won a long, hard fight—that you might hold out your hand to me and say: 'Good for you, Partner; now we'll march along together with a new, common interest!'"
"I'm sorry to be such a disappointment, Jane. I'm not playing up at all, but this thing has knocked me over. I've got to think it out." He fumbled for his words.
"Of course, that's what we must both do."
"I do think it's great that your book is accepted," he added lamely.
"Thank you, Jerry," she said, and turned to go upstairs, but not before he had seen the tears in her eyes—the first tears he had ever seen Jane shed.
A fairness of judgment was so essentially a part of Jane's equipment that she forced herself to be Jerry for the next few days. She knew him so well, she knew the way his mind worked, because she brought to bear not only her experience in living with him, but her imagination, too. She felt for his distress, even while she marvelled at it. She tucked away for future use this revelation of the diametrically opposed methods by which men and women attack problems. Had it been a more tangible thing, Jerry would have faced it more sanguinely, but in this realm of intellectual mazes and psychological reactions where she lived, poor Jerry was lost. He groped about, perplexed, indignant.
Two days after her confession about the book, he took up the matter again.
"Now that there is no more secret about your writing, can't you manage to do it at home?" he said.
"The point is that I do it better away from home. There is no place here where I can be safe from interruption. The telephone rings, Baby cries, I cannot concentrate."
"I do my work here."
"Yes, I admire your concentration very much, and envy you it," she said.
"I must say, it isn't always convenient for me to stay in all morning, because somebody has to watch the kid."
"I'm sure that's true, because I so often want to go out for things in the afternoon. As soon as we can afford it we must get a nurse for him, so that we both will be freer."
"After all, the baby is your first duty."
"If your present arrangement is a canker in your mind, Jerry, we must change it, of course. I have greatly appreciated your fair-mindedness about it."
"If I paint in the afternoon, I often have things to attend to in the morning."
"I've never known you to go out in the morning on business, Jerry."
"I have more to attend to than I used to."
"Very well, I will arrange it."
Jane spent an hour rearranging the household schedule, so that Anna could replace Jerry in the morning. Baby slept nearly all the time she was out, so it was just a matter of having some one within call, in case he waked. Good-natured Anna agreed to the new scheme and the next day, as Jane started off, she remarked to Jerry:
"There is no need of your staying in any more. Anna will look after Jerry."
"Very well," he said coldly.
So far as Jane knew, he never went out on the urgent business. After a late breakfast he read his paper in the nursery, just as usual, and little by little Anna faded out of the picture, and when Baby waked up, he and his father had a fine romp until Jane's return. They never mentioned it again and she smiled to herself at his calm assumptionthat he was free to come and go, so he stayed. If only she could make him apply that rule equally to both of them!
The contract on her book was signed and the advance paid her. It marked the first goal in her path. It seemed to her a big sum, ignorant as she was of the standards in her new market. Her first impulse was to hurry to Jerry with her prize and display it, but something held her back. He had not asked anything about the book. He had not asked to read it, he had not mentioned the contract or its terms. His silence hurt her deeply, so she kept her own counsel. Jerry was having great difficulty in getting his money for the last portrait he had painted, of the impecunious wife of a rich man, and the family funds were getting low, so it was with joy that Jane nursed the knowledge of her own reinforcements.
Chance played into her hands, for Jerry, always careless in regard to money, drew a check and was promptly notified by the bank that their account was overdrawn.
"Have you been drawing out any unusual amounts at the bank?" he said testily, after reading the letter.
"No."
"Damned cashier must be wrong."
"Why?"
"Says we're overdrawn."
"Let's look at the check book," she said.
Inspection showed that the cashier's statement was accurate.
"Very awkward. I can't pry a check off of Mrs. Beaufort. She's got to cheat it out of old Beaufortsomehow, she tells me. That New Age Club check isn't due until the picture is installed."
"It's all right. I'll deposit the advance on my book."
"The what?"
"I got an advance from the publishers on my book."
"Well, you're not going to put that into our bank account."
"Certainly I am; why not?"
"Because I can support this family without it."
"Jerry, that is a very ungracious remark."
"I can't help it. You do what you like with the money you make, but you're not to help support me."
"Does it occur to you that I feel just the same about it? You've been perfectly fair about money ever since we agreed to both draw from one common account, but you can't deprive me of the pleasure of contributing to that common account. Why, Jerry, it's the only fun of making it!"
"You put it away for Baby, or do anything you like with it, but I can't stand your paying household bills with it."
"You are practically saying that I cannot do anything I like with it."
"Good Lord! There's no pleasing you!"
"I don't want you to please me. I only want you to admit that it is our house and our baby and our money, and I feel just as much pride in doing my part toward joint expenses as you do. It's my right to share it, when I can, as well as my greatest pleasure. Put yourself in my place and you'll see it."
He heaved a deep sigh of outraged manhood without any other reply. Jane promptly deposited her check, and his only comment was a silent one. He used what money he had sparingly and drew no personal checks while her money was being used. When Mrs. Beaufort's check finally arrived he said sardonically:
"Here's my little contribution to the family resources. Not so big as yours, but still perfectly acceptable."
"Jerry, Jerry, it isn't that you are jealous of my work and my pay that makes you so bitter against them?"
"Jealous?" he laughed, "not at all. It is no doubt a safeguard to have a rich wife."
But that controversy was ended, because when his check was deposited there was no more chance for mine and thine, so the subject was never opened up again.
These days of Jerry's irritation were difficult to bear, but Jane controlled her temper, knowing that only her cool head and judgment would carry them through this crisis.
Bobs came in to dinner with them one night in the thick of the difficulty. Jerry was sarcastic and bitter at the expense of women, so that finally Bobs turned on him.
"What's the matter with you, Jerry? I thought matrimony had tamed you!"
"On the contrary."
"Come on up to date, Jerry. It's lonesome back there where you are."
"He isn't back there at all, Bobs; he walks right along abreast of his times, in actuality, but he insists that he is still in the past," said Jane, laughing.
"Jane knows all about me," he said jeeringly.
"She ought to—she has to live with you."
"Have you heard our latest news?" he inquired.
She shook her head.
"New genius in the family."
"You mean Baby?"
"Oh, Jerry, please," said Jane.
"No; Jane."
"I've always known Jane was a genius," said Bobs.
She looked at Jane, saw her distress, and flew to the rescue.
"Has she put something over on you, Jerry?"
"Yes, she's written a book."
"Written a book?" said Bobs, in italics.
"I intended not to tell any one until it was published, but since Jerry has seen fit to tell...." Jane began, flushed and angry.
"Jane! how wonderful! What is it about?"
Jane shrugged her shoulders.
"Jerry, what's it about?" Bobs demanded.
"I don't know—I haven't read it."
"Haven't read it? Why not?"
"She hasn't asked me to."
"Why, Jerry! I thought you didn't want me to," exclaimed Jane.
"Let me tell you one thing, Jane Judd, I'll not leave this house until I have a copy in my hands. I'd rather read a book by you! Why, Jane, you old sphinx, how could you do it? Tell me the whole thing."
"She won't tell you a word. I had to drag it out of her," Jerry remarked.
"Very well, you tell me," Bobs ordered.
Jerry smiled.
"It's quite a drama. The first act set is little town. Heroine in pigtails, yearning with ambition to be George Sand or George Eliot or some of the great female scribblers. Encouraged by doting mother, she writes essays on Spring. Act two, plays in the great, cruel city. Heroine, orphaned and penniless, comes to fight for fame. Like the poor match-girl, she knows hunger and cold, while she peddles her works—in vain. Am I accurate, Jane?"
"Quite," she said calmly.
"She is forced to take a mere job to buy food. Enter a brilliant but impoverished artist, with the job in his right hand. Heroine toils by day that she may create by night. Midnight oil, cold tenement room, you know. Abraham Lincoln stuff."
"Jane, while you were working for all of us, did you write, too?"
Jane nodded.
"Don't interrupt, Bobs. Enter hero—a great critic—a literary light. Reads heroine's work—hails her genius of the age—rushes her to publishers, who press gold upon her and accept her immortal opus!"
He paused to inspect Jane, who smiled at him.
"Go on with act three. That's only two acts," cried Bobs.
"Act three isn't written yet. It develops story of insignificant husband, formerly brilliant but impoverished artist, and the chie-ild."
"Well, well, well!" said Bobs. "I never was so excited.I always knew you'd create something, Jane, and now...."
"May I call attention to her other creation—Mr. Jerry Paxton Jr.?" said Jerry.
"He's important, but anybody can have a baby and so few people can write books!" said Bobs.
"You women! I reverse it! Anybody can write a book, but so few women can have a son like Jerry. That's the set of volumes I wish her to complete."
"No, no more human volumes, Jerry, until we have ample means. Printing and binding and bookshelves are so costly for human volumes. Besides, one must be so careful what one writes in them."
"I suppose I have something to say about that," he said angrily.
"Certainly. I supposed I was expressing your conviction, too, Jerry, that only the best that love can give, only the largest opportunity, could excuse bringing children into the world."
Bobs looked from one to the other of them, trying to analyze Jerry's anger.
"Jane's right. Most parents would have a hard time defending themselves, if their children came to them with the question, 'Why did you do this to me?'"
"You talk an awful lot of nonsense, you two," said Jerry, flinging out of the room.
"What's the matter with him?" Bobs asked.
"He's bitterly opposed to my writing."
"He's jealous; I know him."
"He doesn't think it's that. I only just realized to-nightthat he was hurt because I hadn't offered him the book. I was hurt because he didn't ask for it," she added.
"Men are a trial!" Bobs said, and dismissed them for the more congenial topic of the book. They talked it over for hours, and when Bobs left she had a typed copy in her arm. She called a good-night to Jerry, who came downstairs and tried to be agreeable. He insisted on walking home with her. While he was gone, Jane pondered deeply, and came to a decision. When he returned she was still in the studio. She had a pile of manuscripts in her hands, and she came toward him.
"Jerry, would you—will you read it?" she asked him gently.
"Thanks. I was going to ask you if you had a copy," he replied with effort.
She smiled a good-night and slipped off upstairs to bed. At three o'clock she woke to see the light still shining in the studio. She went to the balcony and looked down. Jerry sat, under the light, reading absorbedly, with sheets of script scattered about him like a troubled sea.
Jane lay awake until she heard Jerry tiptoe up to his room, in the early morning. It gave her an excited sense of satisfaction that, however much he opposed her confessed profession, the thing she had created held him spellbound. The artist in him could not withstand good workmanship. Or perhaps he found her ideas interesting. She could scarcely wait until morning to hear his verdict—and at the same time she dreaded it. She was tempted to go to his room now, and demand it, so that she might sleep.
She had suffered deeply through his facetious recital of her story, it was not until she understood that he was hurt by her neglect to offer him the book that she could force herself to forgive it. How they stumbled about in the dark, missing each other! Was it so in better regulated marriages? Did men and women really ever truly understand each other?
Jane pondered the question as to whether the initial dissimilarity between them was being widened by the engulfing current that was sweeping woman on so rapidly into new waters of unrest. If this storm was carrying her into any more than a temporary separation of interest from man's, then it meant destruction and the need of rebuilding. Men seemed to be blaming women with theunrest in the world to-day. Jerry voiced a grievance against them as trouble makers. It was like blaming the sea for its attraction for the moon—accusing the sun for sailing through its orbit. A force—generated who knows how or where?—had been set in motion. Call it education, industrial and economic freedom, or what you will, it had happened. Women could not start it—could not stop it. Nor could men.
Ours is an age of conflict, of rapid change, taking place in our knowledge and all about us. The conflict is psychological as well as material. Take one small detail of our machinery. In Jane's own lifetime had come a total revolution in man's method of transportation. Subways, elevated trains, automobiles, aeroplanes. How swiftly must the individual readjust himself. He has within him, intensified, the struggle and the discoördination which is taking place in the large social group. He has to meet the crisis of accepting daily new truths, while he is bound, even tortured, by traditional convictions.
It was because the Jerry type of man did not see that this discoördination ramified into every corner of our lives—that it is religious, social, political, as well as material and domestic. But boy-man that he was, he recognized it only where it struck home quickest to him, in his sex life, in his marital relations. He could not realize that this was not the basis of the whole unrest and therefore to be laid at woman's door—that it was only reaction from an universal discoördination.
She had tried to work this out in her book; she had striven with all her power to get above this seething,boiling, electrified whirlpool that we call life, to find purpose in it—direction and ultimate calm. She wanted to drive home her conviction that, whether we swim with the torrent or against it, we must do it together—men and women—adjusting and readjusting.
Dawn came. She heard Anna stirring below, before she dropped asleep. Jerry was still asleep when she left the house. She was relieved that she did not have to meet him, in the disorganized condition of mind and body in which she found herself after her sleepless and perturbed night. She took a brisk walk before she went to her work, and compromised by setting herself to revision rather than creation.
When she came into the nursery on her return, she found Jerry there. At sight of her he put the baby down quickly on the bed, and came toward her, with a look on his face she could not fathom.
"Jane, why, Jane...." he began and stopped. He held out his hand and she laid hers in it, while he still stared at her in the most intense way.
"I can hardly believe it—I couldn't lay it down."
"I'm so glad. I came and peeped at you at three o'clock and I was so excited that I couldn't sleep any more after that. I wanted so to know what you thought about it."
"I almost came in to wake you up, but I thought I'd just take the rest of the night to think it over."
"You—liked it?"
"No. I think you've done it wonderfully. I couldn't believe that you could do it," he broke off. "I supposethe whole truth is that I don't know you at all, any more than if we met last night."
"Oh, you know some of me, Jerry. You couldn't know what I kept secret."
"How did you learn all that, in that book?"
"Well, I've read a great deal of other people's wisdom. I've lived and watched and studied people. I don't know; how does any artist acquire what he gives out? It's like breath, you inhale atmosphere outside of you, make it part of your blood and tissue, exhale it something quite different—essentially yours!"
"And I've been living along with you, just thinking you were any woman."
"I am—just that—and I've written the story of any woman in the world to-day. Why didn't you like it, Jerry?"
"Because I don't like what you say—we've gone over it so often."
"It wasn't convincing to you, then?"
"I don't know. I was mainly interested in how you were doing it. I'm going to read it again and see if what you say is really sense."
She laid her hands on his shoulders.
"Jerry, promise. Read it with an open mind. Pretend you haven't any prejudices in the matter and give me a chance."
He laughed, then sobered quickly.
"This business is terribly upsetting, Jane. I'm all in. I'm going for a walk before lunch. By the way, the announcement is in the morning papers," he added as he left.
She seized theTimesand ran through the book advertisements. There it was:
"'Wisdom Hath Builded Her a House,' by Jane Paxton. A remarkable book by a new author, ready May 15th."
She read it over and over with a beating heart. She carried it over to Baby and showed it to him. He reached for it, with apparent interest.
"Sonny boy, this is about your little sister. She was born of your mother, just as truly as you were. Will you love her and be proud of her? She already knows and loves you."
The telephone called her and Martin's voice answered her question.
"You've seen the announcements?"
"Yes, yes—and you?"
"I've only just read it. I'm so thrilled—I feel as if I could sing or cry."
"Dear child! I could not come to tell you my congratulations, because I must go away again this afternoon, so this is my compromise."
"I never was so happy, Martin."
"Oh, that is right; I'm happy, too, and I prophesy again a fine future for you, Jane Judd."
"My dear master!"
"Master? Humph, not I!"
"I told Jerry. He read the book last night."
"Oh? What does our Jerry say to that?"
"He's very upset. He hates careers for married women—he doesn't want me to have one—but he sat up all night to read the book."
Martin's laugh interrupted her.
"Thank Heaven, his artist instinct is quite unrelated to his mind!"
She laughed at that.
"He is impressed with my artistry but he dislikes my ideas."
"Dear soul, you've got a problem there, but I know your faculty for solving them."
"It's easier in books than in life, Martin."
"Yes, but the satisfaction is greater."
"I'm so used to the thought of my work, that I had never foreseen what a bomb it would explode among my family and friends."
"Well, here's to a big, public explosion and subsequent fame. My thoughts will be with you."
"Thanks, dear friend, come back to us soon."
Bobs arrived, breathless with haste, at this moment.
"No sleep, nor food, nor work in my house since I got home last night!" she cried.
"Bobs, you dear."
"Jane, you...."
Then without rhyme or reason, she flew into Jane's arms, clung to her, weeping bitterly. Jane held her close, her own eyes full of tears. When Bobs found her composure she held her friend away from her, and looked into her wet, tender eyes.
"You've said it all, Jane, like a prophet among women. I've learned it, and my soul has dried up with bitterness, but you've kept sweet. The world will listen to you—even men will listen," she said.
"Bobs, you dear old fraud, such loyalty and devotion and character as yours do not grow out of a soul-soil of bitterness. You've helped me with that book almost more than anybody else."
"How, Jane?"
"By being a good soldier!"
"Jane, I haven't cried in years and if you say another word like that, I'm going to cry again."
Jerry came in and Bobs turned to him her tear-stained face.
"Have you read it?"
"Yes."
"You know what you've done, then?"
"What I've done?"
"Yes. You've married a woman and an artist, so much bigger than yourself, that you've got to spend all your time growing big enough to live with her!"
"Oh, Bobs, dear. You must forgive her, Jerry," Jane protested.
He shook his head slowly and said with a sort of solemnity:
"I know she speaks the truth!"
"Jerry, don't!" Jane exclaimed in distress.
"I've got to see this situation and you and me from all sides now, Jane. It means too much to us all, for me to go on blundering with my eyes shut."
"It must be my eyes that are shut, because it seems so simple to me; we know the truth about each other now and I've come one step nearer to you, by reason of my art."
"I hope so, Jane," he said earnestly.