CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"I am certainly glad." Dr. Mary, as she came padding across the big living room, saw only Jean. "I thought you were a 'promiser,' and I loathe 'promisers,' almost as much as I do people who really forget me."
"No, indeed I did not forget you. I think it was because I remembered you so well that I didn't come. I got to thinking how busy you must be and—and——"
"You must have been rather busy yourself. The name they announced wasn't Norris. Is it you?"
For the first time she perceived Pat and looked inquiringly from her to Jean.
"Yes. The Herrick is for me. I was married shortly after I interviewed you. Did you read the interview? I didn't call you anything, although I assure you it was a temptation. You have Mr. Herrick to thank for that. He pruned down my finest flights."
"Sensible man. Oh yes, I read it. I thought of memorizing it, you worded it so much better than I ever did myself. But let's go into my den. I always like to have friendly chats in little rooms. Big places make me feel official."
"She's a dear," whispered Pat, as they followed the doctor to a small room at the end of the hall.
Deep in her leather chair, the doctor lit a cigarette and beamed at the two young women before her.
"Are you a newspaper woman too, Miss Farnsworth?"
"Nothing so exciting. A school teacher, and a country one at that."
"Let me congratulate and condole, may I, both at once?"
"You've taught, too!"
"Does that give me so completely away? Yes, I've taught, but it was many years ago, in an interim between college and medical when I was trying to earn money to put myself through."
"But you haven't forgotten."
"Not a thing. It makes me uncomfortable yet to think of some of the mistakes I made, the big opportunities I let get by. I suppose I did not have the right stuff in me for a teacher. I started so full of hope and plans, although I knew it was not to be my life work, but I let my enthusiasm die down. I let all kinds of small, personal things dull the edge."
"But it's so difficult to keep the edge sharp. Sometimes I think that living close to the earth and animals makes one like them."
"I don't know but that you're right. Only that never occurred to me then. Perhaps I went at things too violently, but when I couldn't wake them up, well—I just let them sleep."
"And they've been asleep ever since, at least mine have. I'm afraid I can never wake them up."
Pat's voice was grave with her deep interest and Jean glimpsed the scope of teaching as she had never before.
"Oh, yes, you can. Because you realize that there is something underneath; I didn't. I called it emptiness, when it was really desperate shyness and fear of new things, a kind of deep, perverted faithfulness to all they have ever known."
"I've thought that, sometimes—and then my light goes out again. I started a kind of library when I first went up, but all that the girls and women seem to care about—the men never read at all—are love stories, the sillier the better. Anything else is something going on away off in another world. It does not concern them and never will. Why, some of my people had, until recently, never even heard of suffrage or sex hygiene or minimum wages, and they don't care or understand when I try to explain. They accept their lives like the weather. To the men the crops are good or bad, and the women have good husbands or bad husbands and that's all. The boys and girls marry young and the babies begin coming right away. For a few years the children seem to be eager and interested and then, somehow, it leaks away. I've only been teaching two years but I can see it, as if I had been there a hundred. And I want to do something. I want to get those who come to me started right. Perhaps, even with little children of six or seven, if some of us could get the seed planted——"
Pat broke off, as if the physical strength for explanation had broken under the terrific weight of the indifference with which she was struggling. Jean looked at her and a coldness settled about her own heart. It was so real to Pat and so worth while, something into which she could pour the whole warmth of herself. Jean pictured the last woman whom she had interviewed, with a scheme for saving stray dogs; and Thompson's long harangue with the Art Department about the illustrations.
"You're right, absolutely right," Dr. Mary went on; "it is the century of the child. There's our biggest chance, especially for you younger women, and so few see it. But there's hope. After all, we are beginning to creep in this field. In the next ten years, I hope, we'll at least get on our knees. Maybe in twenty we'll be able to walk."
"It's so maddeningly slow."
"It's like creeping paralysis, only going the other way. We are not getting deader, but more alive, at the same speed. But if we hang on to our patience we'll get something done."
Pat leaned forward. "I wish you would speak at the next state institute. Maybe a few of us would get up on our knees a little sooner."
Dr. Mary laid her hand over Pat's. "Thank you. There's nothing that makes me feel so unworthy and humble and grateful as meaning something to other women. I love 'em, every one of them, the young, brave, fearless women. Society's been asleep for ages, but it's waking up. It needs us, in other ways than it thought it did, and we'll be there with the goods."
Jean drew deeper into her chair. At the motion Dr. Mary turned.
"I'm not even going to apologize, Mrs. Herrick, for absorbing all the conversation. You know what I am when I get started."
She grinned at Pat. "When Mrs. Herrick came to interview me, she didn't get a chance to say a thing. I talked all the time."
"It was the only real hour I've had in the whole newspaper business," Jean said slowly, "and I wish I had never come."
Pat started as if Jean had called to her for help and the little doctor said sharply:
"You don't like interviewing?"
"I despise it! It's the most futile, useless round of senseless rush that was ever invented to waste one's days. It means nothing at all to the one who does it or to any one else. It's just words, words, and more words."
For several moments Dr. Mary said nothing, but sat looking at Jean with an odd look in her small, bright eyes.
"If I am rude, you must pardon me, Mrs. Herrick, but why do you do it, if you feel that way?"
It was Jean now who was silent, but Pat knew that she was trying to find the right words for something that meant very much to her.
"Because," she said, at length, "I should go mad doing nothing at all."
Dr. Mary smoked her cigarette to the end in a silence that Pat recalled afterwards as one of the longest and tensest five minutes she had ever spent. Then the little doctor said in her brisk, off-hand fashion:
"If salary is no particular object to you, Mrs. Herrick, I could find a place for you here. We're starting so many things and are overworked as it is. We can't pay much, and as you have had no experience before, the committee may kick at giving anything. But I believe the laborer is worth his hire always, and have never found volunteer work satisfactory. If you would like to try for a couple of months—it's better all around to have it probationary—I can use you."
Twice Jean's lips opened but the words would not come.
"Well, since silence gives consent, I take it that you will try it."
"I shall be very glad."
"Then it's settled. Let me see; I suppose you'll have to give the paper some kind of notice?"
"No. The managing editor never recognizes any such obligation when the work isn't satisfactory. And it's only the other way round. I'd like to begin with you right away."
"You can if you want to. It's your own affair. We're in the throes of the summer camp and two of our regular workers will be away for the next three months attending to that. How about next Monday?"
"Perfect," Jean said, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Now we'll have some tea."
Dr. Mary touched the bell and a few moments later a maid brought in the tea things. The doctor had a fund of stories, humorous, pathetic, all human, and she told them well. It was almost six when she rang for the maid to take away the cups and then it was too late to show Pat over the building.
"Never mind. You'll come again and very soon, and I shall not let you escape without explaining every detail."
She dropped Pat's hand and turned to Jean.
"Monday, then?"
"Monday." They smiled quietly as if they were sealing a contract.
Out in the street Pat drew a deep breath.
"Well! If you ask me, I recommend that as about the quickest thing I ever saw pulled off. You go up to introduce me, and come out with a new life work. I believe you've got it at last, Jean."
"I think I have, Pat. I feel as if something had clicked into place inside."
She stopped and looked at Pat with real fear. "Pat, suppose you hadn't come! I wouldn't have gone. I'd left it too long. I feel as if you'd rescued me from something and—as if you'd come just in time."
"Little trick of mine," Pat answered lightly, but her eyes clouded and she slipped her hand into Jean's arm and held it there.
They did not speak again until they were almost at the studio door.
"We used to think we knew an awful lot, didn't we, Jean?"
Jean nodded.
Upstairs they found Herrick. Pat's first impression was very much what Jean's had been the day Herrick had walked into the library and found her sniffing the grass. Of a big man, strong but rather lazy, with something frank and winning and clean about him, and nice eyes. And the next was surprise that he was so different from what she had pictured he would be, and that never would she have picked him out as the man Jean would marry.
"This is Pat."
Herrick came forward and they shook hands heartily.
"I am awfully glad. I've heard of you, you know, until I was almost jealous. When did you get in?"
"About half an hour before I 'phoned you," Jean answered.
Herrick turned to Jean.
"I wondered what the wonderful surprise was. I never could have guessed it."
Pat felt something in him change, but before she could be sure, he was talking pleasantly again.
Herrick went out and brought in things for dinner and they all cooked together. Pat and Jean did most of the talking but Herrick seemed to enjoy their reminiscences. From time to time, however, Pat caught a heaviness in his eyes as they rested on Jean, and she decided that there had been some slight quarrel before her arrival and that Herrick had not been able to forget it. In spite of his gentle manner and kind eyes, he might bear a grudge a long while.
The dinner was a jolly one. Jean looked as Herrick had not seen her look since they raced hand in hand, against the wind, over the hills. Half way through, Herrick turned to Pat.
"I think you'll have to come and live with us, Pat. You're a regular tonic." Under the gayety of his tone, Pat felt the resentment. She wondered what it was they had quarreled about and whether Jean had altogether forgotten it. It wasn't like Jean to forget anything that really mattered or, remembering, to pretend she did not.
"Oh, I can't flatter myself that I am responsible." Pat made no pretense of not understanding. "It is——"
She glanced at Jean and Jean nodded. They had decided to say nothing about Jean's new work until the black coffee was reached. Then Pat was to spring the surprise in the form of a toast, but now at Jean's nod, she continued:
"It's not my influence at all. Jean has a new job."
Herrick turned quickly. "Have you left the paper?"
"Yes. Thompson doesn't know it yet, but he will by to-morrow. If he makes a great row I'll get him one more interview so he won't be behind, but on Monday I take a real job."
"Doing what?"
"I'm going to work with Dr. Mary."
"At the Hill House?"
"Yes. I feel as if a hand had reached out from the blue and rescued me. I'm going to work."
Again Herrick's face changed so that Pat wondered whether she had been quite right about him in either of her estimates. He looked older, heavier and rather bored.
"Yes," he said quietly, "I think that is your work."
For a moment Jean and Herrick looked at each other.
"I think it is and I expect to be very happy in it."
"I hope you will."
Herrick filled all three glasses and cried gayly:
"To the Poor, God bless 'em."
Pat stayed ten days. Sometimes she went with Jean on cases and sometimes she was out all day on work of her own. But every evening the three met for dinner in the studio and afterwards Jean and Pat talked social and educational reforms. At first Herrick listened, not quite grasping the vital import of these things to them; then, one night, he asked Jean, with a lurking smile that annoyed even Pat, whether she really expected to make over the world.
"No," Jean answered shortly, "I don't; but I'm going to patch at it as long as I have strength in my body."
"The leopard won't change his spots, you know, no matter how many kind ladies dab at him with their social paints."
"Then they will be cut out or burned out," Jean said in such a still voice that Pat stared. But Jean and Herrick were looking straight into each other's eyes and did not notice.
"Poor leopard, he'll die under such treatment."
"I don't know that that would be such a loss to the rest of the animals if he did."
"No. I don't suppose it would," Herrick said after a pause, in a voice controlled only by the need to maintain a pretense before Pat.
Pat picked up the table of statistics she and Jean had been discussing and studied it closely. For a moment there was not a sound. Then Herrick went over to the couch with a book and Jean took up the argument again.
Herrick never joined the conversation after that evening but it seemed to Pat that he was always listening and she felt that Jean felt it too.