CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
A little before dawn Jean got up. The narrowness of the couch, the heat of the sheets, the motionless air of a scorching day cramped her. She tried to hold her mind with unaccustomed attention to the details of dressing, but everything was different, the walls, the feel of the room, the furniture, even the toilet articles that she had had for years. They no longer formed part of an unnoticed background, but stood out as distinct points, drawing her attention. They thrust themselves into her consciousness, as familiar things do when seen again after a long absence or a serious illness. Between yesterday and to-day something had happened so that the person who was handling the comb and brush, moving the clothes from one chair to another, turning on the bath water, was different from the person who had done these things yesterday.
When Jean thought of Philip gripping her shoulders, disgust rushed over her in scorching waves that left her cold and quivering with anger. All night she had grown hot and cold at the memory. She had gotten up to escape it but now as she dressed she felt it stronger even than she had during the night. The thing was not a grotesque exaggeration of the darkness, but a reality persisting into the light. And as she put on her clothes she tried not to know that she was doing it hurriedly, covering from some need to her own peace, the white arms and neck.
She never wanted to speak to Philip again, nor see him, nor hear of him. The thought of Catherine creeping back to bed, her gray hair in two plaits down her back, sickened her. Catherine, stealing about catlike in the night, and Philip weak and angry in his baffled desire, and she, Jean, so far from desire and jealousy and need like this, all mixed up in this unclean situation. Jean felt that she would never be able wholly to free her shoulders from Philip's clutching fingers, or forget the things he had said. She would never again be exactly the same person who had opened the front door and found Philip on the landing, Philip, with his flat jokes, his heavy, flabby body, his grotesque caperings.
"For a few years you will be a woman yet."
Jean's face flamed. She wanted to go downstairs and out of the house and never come back. She did not want to see Catherine, and yet, if she went out at this extraordinary hour of the morning, the need of an explanation, or some reference to it, would bulk between her and Catherine when next they met. And for her own sake and Catherine's they must pretend. They would drag through breakfast together. Perhaps Catherine would even refer in some way to Philip, as if their coming in late at night had disturbed her. She would do it casually and well, better than Jean could meet it.
The sun touched the tips of the flagpoles on tall buildings, and another day crept out from night.... It was not true. None of it was true. And yet, the words sounded as clearly in her ears now as they had when Philip had hurled them at her. "You've got it in you, the call of a woman to a man."
Nothing personal, nothing her own, part of her conscious choice. But something hidden, impersonal, something that she shared with all the pitifully weak victims of lust and their own senses.
The breakfast bell sounded. Jean went slowly across the room and opened the door. She stepped into the hall and heard Catherine come out from her room below. She stepped back and closed the door quietly.
When she was sure that Catherine had gone, she went downstairs. The stairs and the hall had the same quality of strangeness as the familiar toilet articles and her own attic. As Jean took her usual seat at the table, the quiet dining-room seemed to retreat and Jean felt physically smaller in it. And as she closed the front door, the whole house seemed to be whispering about her. She turned and looked up at the mellow red bricks with cool spots of ivy grown window boxes, the white curtains of Catherine's windows, up to her own attic. The whole house was strange, inimical, self-righteous in its aloofness, as if she had betrayed its trust.
It would be impossible to go on living there. She could not stand living under pretense to Catherine and, besides, Philip would no longer come. It was the nearest thing he had to a home and it had been his long before she came. And if Philip stayed away, something would go out of the days for Nan, and Nan had so little. Nan's life seemed emptier than ever now, when Jean thought of it in relation to Philip, all possibility of love and warmth centered on the fat body slouching away into the night.
Jean stayed at the office only long enough to attend to the most important matters and left before noon. The rest of the day she spent looking for a place to live. But it was difficult to find. She walked all that day and all the next and the next, going home long after the dinner hour, when she was sure she would not meet Catherine. And then, on the fourth day, she found it, a four-room apartment, a penthouse on the roof of a quiet, middle-class apartment house in Old Chelsea. High above the street, it perched on a secluded corner of the roof, and faced the Jersey shore.
Jean scarcely looked at the rooms as she followed the caretaker and even while the latter was still pointing out the usefulness of a drop-table in the kitchen, Jean was back in the little living-room, facing west, just where the widest space between distant factory chimneys opened to the Jersey shore. The roar of the city below rose in a pleasant murmur that gave an added feeling of peace and a deep security, as if nothing dangerous or violent, no matter how it tried, could ever reach up to this sun-drenched peace. For the first time in five days Philip's hold loosened and he slipped back into a roaring vortex that could not reach her.
That night Jean went home to dinner. She had determined to wait up in case Catherine was not there, but Catherine was, and they had an uncomfortable meal during which Jean made repeated efforts to introduce the subject of her moving and could not. At last she said abruptly, just as they both rose and Catherine moved toward the living-room as if afraid Jean was going to suggest the lawn,
"I've taken an apartment, Catherine."
She waited a moment for some comment, but none came. She could scarcely throw the statement at Catherine and walk out of the room, so she began to describe her wonderful new home upon a roof. But Catherine's silence made her uncomfortable, and she stopped as suddenly as she had begun.
As if she had been waiting for Jean to clear away this ornamentation of enthusiasm, Catherine said:
"When are you going?"
"This week, I think."
"I suppose that means we will not see you again."
"Not if it rests with me." Jean fancied that Catherine smiled, but it was too dark to see. If Catherine was going to be nasty, there was really no obligation to consider her any longer. Jean went on toward the hall, but Catherine's next statement stopped her.
"I suppose Nan will be the next. She's getting the home-bug, too—and she has a tremendous respect for you."
"I don't see how even Nan's energy could keep house and work with the hours she has."
"Nan might give up her job—if the home-bug gets bad enough. Philip is always suggesting that she keep house for him and Nan only needs a starter. Funny, isn't, how fashionable it's getting—to want a home? Do you remember those old teas at your place that winter? Perhaps we've all gone as far as we can."
Jean resisted the longing to switch on the lights and say, "I'm sorry, Catherine. It was the last thing that would have entered my mind. I've been happy here with you, but it's best for me to go." Instead she moved away across the living-room, for she felt that Catherine's eyes were actually touching her in the murky light.
"Perhaps we've gone so far we're coming clear round on the other side again—if you're right about it's being fashionable to want a home."
There was a faint noise as if Catherine were laughing. "I'm not accusingyouof any such weakness, but Nan would like it. There have been times when Nan has been perfectly frank about it, and I recognize the symptoms coming on. Besides—Philip wants one—and Nan would do anything for—'Philly.'"
"I don't believe that Philip really wants a home."
"Don't you? Perhaps you're right. It would be tragic, wouldn't it—if he meant all he says about a home—because there's something undeveloped and silly about Philip that would keep—any woman whom he might care about from caring for him."
"I don't think that Philip is silly," Jean said quietly.
"Perhaps not. But he makes a good bluff at it then."
In spite of the darkness, Jean felt something moving between them, just as she had felt it, without understanding, on the night she had hooked Catherine before the concert.
"Perhaps he does. But then, I think that men, as often as women, make pretenses and—hide behind them."
"I don't doubt that, but they don't put it over—any better than most women do."
As Catherine passed and went quickly out of the room, Jean wished that she had not forced her to that last. Catherine's voice had trembled so.
The next morning when Jean came down, the maid said that Miss Lee had gone on her vacation.
On Friday Jean had her things taken from storage and by Saturday night, her new home was in order. Jean cooked her own dinner and ate it on a small table in the shadow of the house, where she could watch the sun sink over the Jersey hills.