CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The others had already arrived when Catherine, Jean and Philip took the three vacant seats on the center aisle. From her box, Mrs. Dalton, resplendent in black lace and diamonds, recognized the arrivals and waved graciously.
"Thinks she's slumming, I suppose. We're a cross between Mott Street and Society. What do you suppose she'd do if I fingered my nose at her?"
"I haven't the least idea. Why don't you try and find out." Since the tea, Jean often considered Philip's foolish suggestions amiably.
But before he could say anything more, Alice leaned across the vacant seat.
"Who on earth is this one for? We've been guessing for the last five minutes."
"Why waste so much energy? Whoever it is will probably be here in another five and then——"
Standing in the aisle, Jerome included the entire row in a welcoming nod, took the vacant seat and looked inquiringly at Alice.
"Any objections, kiddie?"
"Daddy Stuart, you are the most annoying male thing in captivity."
"Now, Alice, if you will think back, slowly, carefully and logically—a most difficult performance for you, I own, you will remember that I never actually said I would not come."
"You nice old fake—I don't care why you came as long as you're here. Everything's going to be wonderful to-night, I feel it in my bones."
"Perhaps it will be beyond me altogether."
"Never mind. I'll take care of you. Don't applaud on your own initiative and stop the moment I do."
"Oh, you're not going to be burdened with the responsibility. I've arranged to be tutored through this already."
"You have, have you? Well! Soyouwere in the plot, too." Alice leaned to Jean again.
"Not exactly. I——"
"You're both as bad, one as the other. Manage it yourselves." The laugh was more a caress than a sound, as Alice turned to Sidney.
"Thanks." Jerome faced Jean, fully, for the first time, and then, almost instantly, picked up his program and began to study it carefully. For, in that passing glance, Jean had detached herself from the background of bright light, evening dress and subdued chatter into which his first general impression had plunged her, and stood apart, unfamiliar and strange. Jerome read the program through once, and then again, giving meticulous attention to each selection, but, as if there were a magnet beside him, the change in Jean kept drawing him away.
What was it? Jerome was used to the transformation of evening dress which he insisted reduced all women to a common denominator. But Jean was not at all reduced to a common denominator. Nor was she herself. She was and she wasn't, in an annoyingly confused fashion that made Jerome feel, if he kept his eyes long enough on the program, that Jean was exactly the same, except that she wore a low-cut light dress instead of the everyday high-cut dark one. But at his faintest move to verify this by a direct glance, she was somebody else altogether.
Jerome picked out certain numbers and considered these especially. He must turn and get this thing reduced to a phrase and so eliminate it. The concert would last for at least two hours and a half, and he could not sit there staring at his program and wondering why Jean Herrick was and wasn't Jean Herrick. He wanted to look at Jean, but he did not want Jean to look at him.
Then Catherine spoke and Jean leaned across Philip to answer. Her back was to Jerome, and without moving he glanced up sidewise.
There was the same heavy knob of hair, low on her neck. The same threads of gray, which Jean might easily have concealed but never did, ran through the thick mass into the tight wad. The same bone hair-pins inserted in exactly the same way. It was an unbecoming way to do her hair, ugly even in office clothes, and preposterous with a low-cut gown. Jerome studied the tight wad with puzzled intensity. He had an idea that the solution lay here somehow. He had heard Alice say that a woman's character showed in the way she did her hair and the sweeping assertion had amused him as Alice's large generalizations always did. But perhaps Alice was right. Surely such a fashion of doing one's hair was more than an exterior detail. It shrieked aloud of lack of taste, of a sense of fitness, of indifference to accepted standards. It stood for a kind of density or conceit in a way. It was a glaring discord, just as if Jean had brought her black leather wallet or worn her white chamois gloves, or carried a fountain pen concealed in the chiffon. Jerome's eye ran along the row of seats in front. That was it, that impossible wad of hair screwed into a cumbersome knob. It was so incongruous that it might well strike one, a man especially, used to taking in a woman's appearance as a whole, as something quite wrong, wrong enough to make a distinct impression. Relieved, and amused at his own interest, Jerome's eyes returned to Jean.
And then, he was suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of Jean's neck and shoulders, of the soft, white velvet of the skin, the warm smoothness of the flesh, the firm muscles molded in curves that called to every tingling nerve of his fingertips. It seemed to Jerome an interminable time that he sat so, conscious to the depths, of that velvet whiteness. Until Jean moved and released him.
The green and gold curtain drew back and Tony, clutching his violin as if it were a weapon of defense against the staring enemy, advanced to the footlights. From her box, Mrs. Dalton made comforting signals, and J. William himself, a meager black and white figure just behind her, clapped his thin, cold hands in encouragement.
Jean leaned back. Jerome could feel her relaxed, lost completely from the first notes. Jerome moved, so that in no way did he touch even the wooden arm of Jean's seat, and tried to listen. But he heard only the opening measures, and, after that, did not know that Tony was playing at all.
This was not the Jean Herrick with whom he had worked so pleasantly. It was another woman. That Jean Herrick made no demand apart from intellectual sympathy. While this—something in the very fiber of the woman, akin to the soft velvet of her skin, those definite curves, called to him. He had never even thought of Jean's age or whether she were good looking. Although if any one had asked him he would have said she had a fine face. But her body had never entered his thought at all. He might have known, if he had considered it, that her flesh would be firm and white, her muscles well molded, but ... Jerome drew still farther away. He did not want to touch her now. Instead there was a distinct repulsion, as if Jean had offered him a caress uninvited.
He was not used to thinking of women in this way. Unrestrained emotion had never played any part in his life. Other men might have moments of physical surprise like this, but he had never had them. He felt unclean and at the same time, as if the fault were not his. Jean had done something, tricked him, taken him at a disadvantage.
When Alice's hand on his arm catapulted him back to reality, he found that Tony had played entirely through the first division of the program and disappeared.
"Aren't you glad you came? Isn't he wonderful?" Alice was pinching him in her enthusiasm.
"Yes ... of course ... yes, he's wonderful."
"Then apologize like a little man and confess that you've been bigoted and silly and will never be so obstinate again."
"I ... apologize."
"Forgiven. Now apologize to Mrs. Herrick."
Jerome turned reluctantly to Jean, and away again, without speaking. For Jean was staring straight before her, and although he could not see her eyes, he knew they were full of tears.
Jean Herrick crying! What reserves of emotion she had! What reactions he had never glimpsed!
The applause was tumultuous now but Tony did not come back. After a short interval, Peter Poloff, all very black hair and violent gestures, appeared and fussed about, having the piano moved this way and that. At last it was arranged to suit; he perched on the edge of the stool, pulled up his cuffs, and crashed down upon his instrument in pitiless technique.
Jerome drew deeper into his chair and made no effort to listen. If he did not get this matter straightened in his own mind before the concert ended, he felt that to-morrow and the next day and always after, whenever he spoke to Jean, he would see, under the high-cut, ugly clothes she wore to the office, those calling curves and that white flesh.
But he had settled nothing when, with a final crash, Poloff extricated himself from the keyboard, received the applause with exaggerated bows, and, most patently jealous of Tony, walked off the stage.
Jerome picked up his program and so escaped Alice's claiming enthusiasm. But he knew every pressure of Jean's fingers. He felt her move as if she were going to speak to him and hoped she would not. He did not want Jean to speak to him yet.
Then Philip whispered something and she leaned away. The buzzing of Philip's voice continued until Jerome wanted to reach across Jean and strike him. To his taut nerves it was like the sting of a pestiferous insect. When he felt that it was beyond his silent endurance, it stopped and Jerome wanted more than anything else for it to continue, anything to keep Jean from turning to him yet. But when she did not, only settled quietly in her seat, waiting for Tony to come again, Jerome was angry. And then Tony was back for the last time. From sun-soaked vineyards across the sea, the music called in folksongs and old dances of the people. The simple, plaintive things stirred Jean to the depths, interpreted all the inexpressible beauty in the sky and sea and earth and human love. Jerome knew that her lips were quivering and his own were parched and dry.
Not a sound broke the stillness until Tony drew the bow in the last note. Then a clapping and stamping forced him back again and again, until, forgetting his pose of grown-up artist, Tony stamped his foot in childish rage and shook his head. There was no mistaking that. The audience rose laughing and went out.
A few moments later they were all together on the street, and Myra Cohen was explaining about "eats" at her studio to which they had promised to go en masse.
"But you must come, Mr. Stuart; please don't break the party, it's been too utterly lovely." With one eye on Gerte and Felix, who already showed signs of starting off by themselves, Myra made a last effort. "Please, Miss Stuart, won't you make him, and you, Mrs. Herrick?"
"Don't count on me. But Mrs. Herrick is a miracle worker." Alice shrugged her incompetence before Jean's superior influence, and as Myra dashed away to intercept Gerte and Felix, she and Sidney moved after them. "Put it over," she called back to Jean, "and you'll go down in history with my thanks."
Jean looked at Jerome with understanding. Neither did she want to go to the studio and eat unhealthy messes until weird hours. But she had no good excuse.
"It really won't be a long affair, and you can leave when you want."
"Sorry. But I can't. To-morrow I leave early for that St. Louis convention and have a dozen things yet to do."
Jean smiled. "I wish I had one half-as-good as that. But I guess I'll have to go."
Jerome did not answer the smile. Jean thought he looked annoyed for some reason and offered no further suggestion. With a short "good-night" he left. When she turned she found only Catherine and Philip waiting.
"What's the matter with your friend?" Catherine demanded.
"A good excuse. Twice as good as I'd need myself to escape."
Catherine stopped. "You don't have to go, if you don't want to."
"Please don't desert us," Philip said, with the genuine courtesy that was his at unexpected moments. "It won't be the same, at all."
"Flattered, I yield." Jean swung to step beside him.
But at the corner of the street, Catherine brought them to a sudden halt. "Excuse or no excuse, I'm dead tired and hereIquit."
She left them staring after her.
"I don't believe Catherine's well," Jean said, troubled, as they started again. "Sometimes lately, she looks so terribly tired."
Philip did not answer.
Three times in the few hours remaining before dawn, Jerome awoke, each time to full and instant realization of the thing that had happened. It was incredible, ridiculous, disgusting. Each time Jerome reached this conclusion, he turned over, thumped his pillow to momentary coolness and forced sleep. But each time, before he quite succeeded, a small, shamed relief crept over him, that he would not be seeing Jean again before he left and that he was to be away three weeks.