CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Jerome Stuart grinned at the red-cap who rushed forward for his bag, at the transfer man to whom he gave his checks, to the taxi driver whom he beckoned, and finally, when he found himself sitting on the very edge of the seat as if, by so doing, he could force the vehicle more quickly through the traffic, at himself.
For a little over two weeks he had managed to stay away. And, although from the moment he had entered the train to return, he could not have told why he ever went, still less why he had stayed, he was proud of the achievement. He felt that he had acquired a power of self-control that no emergency of life could ever shake. He had fished and tramped and played tennis and, one evening, alone in his room, he had even tried to do some serious reading. At the memory of that evening, Jerome leaned against the cushions and laughed aloud.
"You poor, besotted idiot."
He might be fifty, sixty, a hundred. He might have a dozen daughters and a score of grandchildren. None of it had anything to do with his love for Jean Herrick. He had run away in a kind of perverted modesty, just as a child might refuse a longed-for present beyond its just expectations,
"It would serve you right if she had gone away and you couldn't find her."
But at the thought, Jerome perched on the edge of the seat again.
"Steady, old top, steady. If you go at things like this, you'll bungle the whole business. And then you will be in a fix. Besides, you know, you can't dash in and ask a lady to marry you, when she hasn't even the least idea you're in love. Cool down, grandpa, cool down."
Nevertheless when the elevator did not instantly answer his summons, Jerome ran up the four flights to his office.
In the middle of her dictation to Minnie, Jean heard his step and stopped. She sat, arrested, for what seemed an endless time, while Minnie chewed her pencil and stared at her own new patent leather pumps.
"The usual ending—to those three last—and that will be all for the present."
"Yes'm." Still chewing, Minnie went.
Jerome Stuart was back. In a few moments perhaps he would come in. He would come in with no memory of that last moment on the sidewalk in his manner, because that was the only way the old relations could go on. And she would meet him, with careless surprise at this return, two weeks sooner than he had expected. He would tell her of his vacation and she would report the lack of any exciting developments while he had been away. Perhaps he would suggest finishing the piers.
He would sit in that chair where she would have to face him, unless she deliberately turned her back. She would listen while he talked. Outwardly they would be the good comrades they had always been. But the man who had desired her would be there, too, and the woman who had sat on the roof and cried, who had appraised her flesh and estimated her power to rouse again his desire, would be there, too. Jean shuddered. She wished he would come now, instantly, and then decided to go before he could.
She had changed her mind for the tenth time, when Jerome's door opened, and her choice was gone. He was in the outer office, saying good morning to Minnie. He knocked and Jean rose, forced by some inner need, to meet him standing. "Come in."
"Back on the job, you see. How's the world got along in my absence?"
He was coming towards her, the outer man and the other, shifting places dizzily, coming straight towards her, lit by the glare of those moments when she had considered living with him in closest intimacy.
"You certainly do look like all outdoors." She had managed to say it.
"I feel like it. I'm afraid to breathe in case I use up all the air in poor old Manhattan at one swoop."
He took his usual place without offering to shake hands. Jean continued to stand. If she relaxed her muscles, the poise she had summoned would relax too, and Jerome Stuart would know that she had weighed her power to waken again his momentary passion.
Jerome wished that Jean would sit down. It made him feel that he had interrupted her in an important piece of work and that she was waiting for him to go. Besides, standing so, the strong sweep of body disturbed him, and his resolve to proceed slowly and carefully was shaken almost beyond control.
"So you haven't taken a vacation at all. Don't you intend to?"
"I don't know. I may." Jean looked away to her desk, covered with papers.
The first impression that she had given of pleasure at his return was gone. She was frowning slightly as if she found it a little difficult to accept this interruption.
She was so strong and self-reliant. She needed no one. The thing he had felt in her had been of his own imagining, it was a projection from within. This big woman, impatient to get at her work, had no need within her. The white softness of her flesh was a lie. She was alive in her brain only.
And he, in two short weeks had lived a lifetime.
For twenty-three years he had thought of himself as Alice's father. He had touched emotion only in relation to his child and her life. He had lived in the reflected glow of others' more intense emotions. And this woman, with her ill-concealed impatience for him to be gone, had dragged him down, in two weeks, in less, in one night, down into the rushing current, back to the very Purpose of Life. There she stood, waiting for him to go.
Jerome rose. If he stayed another minute he would tell her that he loved her. Or strike her. He did not know which.
"I'm afraid you're busy and I'm keeping you."
"No. I'm not busy—not specially. You're not keeping me."
If Jerome Stuart went before she had mastered the situation, it would forever hold its whip over her.
Jean sat down but Jerome stood where he was. This reversal of position brought him nearer, so that now he was close, looking down upon her.
"The Adirondacks must be lovely now."
"They are."
"You're back earlier than you intended, aren't you?"
"Yes."
Jean was smiling up at him.
Had Jerome Stuart always looked like that, or was it some quality the had brought back from the open? His gray eyes glowed with the same light that heralded dawn. His body radiated a spiritual fire which, Jean felt, would consume any obstruction upon which he chose to direct it. It was the Galahad quality she had imagined in Herrick, made manifest; the courage she had overestimated in Gregory, raised to the limit of human possibility. Jean began to tremble.
"I—Iamrather busy this morning—only it didn't seem exactly courteous to say so."
"Please don't be insincere—ever—with me, even in things that don't matter at all."
Jean rose. "Well then—I won't. Will you please—go?"
But Jean was too near. He could feel her in his arms as he had felt her every night, alone in the mountains.
"You're so hard—so terribly un-needing—and I need you so."
Jean's hands gripped the desk-edge, but she still managed to keep the smile in her eyes. She could hear Minnie typing in the next room and out in the hall the elevator clanked. It had been so still in the studio the night Herrick asked her to marry him. And the night that she and Gregory had stood silent, the air had been touched with frost and the stars had been so bright. It was hot now and the glaring August sun beat in under the awnings. The city roared away to vast distances, and even the small spot where she stood was filled with little clickings and bangings.
"Don't look like that, please. Forgive me. I won't offend again."
The words drew Jean back to the moment.
"Don't you mean—that you love me? That—you want—to marry me?"
"Mean it! Of course I mean it. More than I ever meant anything in all my life. Jean! Do you? Do you care too?"
His hands were on her now, holding her with assured possession. And suddenly Jean's eyes filled with tears.
"I don't know. I don't know what I feel. I want to care. I want you to love me. When you went away like that I was angry—and disappointed—and I thought of how I couldmakeyou care enough but something inside——"
Jerome's hands dropped. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"
The tears ran down Jean's cheeks. "Something inside is dead. I do care—every way—but that."
"Then you don't care at all. You're not a child. Don't you know what love means?"
Jean's head dropped until he could see only her quivering lips.
"Yes—I know."
After a long silence, Jerome said quietly: "Then, there's nothing else to say." He turned away.
He was going. In another moment there would be no bridge to the empty years ahead.
"Wouldn't it be enough—the rest, everything, friendship—interest——"
Jerome swung round. "Would those have been enough before—when you cared?" he demanded.
She stopped, almost touching him. "No, they wouldn't have been enough, then. I didn't know their value."
Her eyes were very gentle. Jerome turned away again and walked slowly over to the window. Jean stood where she was, waiting.
Could he take less? Could he? Know that there had been more, sense it in a thousand small, intimate ways that made his blood run hot at the thought. To feel it and never to share it. Or worse, to know it corpse-like, forever beyond his reach. That, or nothing of Jean at all.
He spoke without turning. "I don't know. Truly, I don't know. It doesn't seem as if I could. And yet—when I try to think of going on without you——"
He did not speak again or move, but stood with his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets. At last Jean went to him. At her touch on his arm, he looked up. His face was so white and fixed that Jean's hand dropped. It would have to be all or nothing to him.
"I—I hoped it would be enough."
"Why? You don't love me."
"I don't know why—only that I did hope."
Jerome's face quivered. "Why did you tell me, Jean, that you know what love is? If you hadn't—but now I will always know that you know. Why did I have to know?"
"Because," Jean said slowly, "I do care and I want your love, very, very much."
It was a long time before Jerome turned from the window again.
They stood so, looking quietly at each other and then Jean said, with a wistful smile:
"Shall we try it?"
After a moment an answering smile flickered in Jerome's eyes.
"I suppose this terrible knowledge of values is the price we have to pay for feeling at all—at our age."
"Perhaps it is worth it. I feel somehow—that it is."
"Do you, Jean? Do you really?"
Jean nodded. "I almost know it is," she whispered as Jerome drew her gently to him.
THE END.