CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the middle of November, Herrick struck a snag in his work. The first five chapters had gone well. He had brought Robert up from the farm, taken him through college and plunged him into a big mining scheme in South America. He had drawn well the narrowness of Robert's home and the longing for opportunity.
But now Robert balked. He sat down in the Brazilian jungle to which Herrick had led him and refused to move. Hour after hour Herrick struggled and honestly tried to wake him from the permanent sleep into which he had fallen without warning. But Robert would not wake. Herrick's nerves tightened. He wanted and did not want to consult Jean. He had never asked her advice about the psychology of his people, only about the arrangement of incidents, or the vividness with which he had succeeded in portraying them. To ask help in this was a confession of his inability and Herrick's vanity refused.
And deep in Herrick's consciousness, beyond the point of self-acknowledgment, was the fear that Robert was not asleep. Robert was dead, dead beyond the power of revivifying. Until now Robert's reactions had been Herrick's own. But from now on Robert must be himself, and Herrick could not flesh the skeleton of this strenuous young engineer, toiling away alone in his jungle, with no nearer stimulus than a board of directors fifteen thousand miles away.
Evening after evening Herrick sat at the machine and covered pages with useless words. His fingers moved mechanically, although he tried to focus his attention on Robert. But the thoughts running at the back of his brain pushed Robert further and further beyond the border of his interest, and, finally, one evening in the middle of November, Robert dropped over the horizon altogether and Herrick knew that he had finished with him forever. His fingers lay idle on the keys and he stared into space.
In the dressing-room Jean was changing into a house-dress. Herrick did not like her to curl up on the couch in her working clothes and she always changed to please him. In a few moments she would come through the door quietly, take a book and make herself comfortable among the pillows. She had done this for four months now. Every evening they had sat so, Jean beyond touch across the room, but where he could look up and see her. Every evening for four months he had sat almost the whole distance of the room away from this big, calm, gray-eyed woman. Herrick smiled. Soon the real winter would set in. The rain would beat on the attic roof and the wood-fire crackle in the grate. There would be long Sundays impossible out of doors. Would Jean expect him to sit through these too, driving that mummy forward in his senseless progress? Herrick's smile deepened.
Coming through the door, Jean caught the smile, and answered it. Then, passing the work-table without speaking, she took a book and dropped among the pillows. It was Hunter's "Poverty." She did not open it immediately, but lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes, stretching her arms above her head in a way she had when she was tired. Completely relaxed she lay there, her throat and bare arms white on the dark blue background of the cushions. The smile withered on Herrick's face, and his fingers closed tightly, but he did not move. At last Jean drew a long breath that swelled the deep breast, stretched, and reached for her book. Herrick rose, ripped the paper from the machine, tore it into fragments and threw them in the waste-basket. Then he covered the typewriter and came towards the couch. Jean sat up.
"Why, Begee, what's the matter?"
It was the name that they had evolved from one of Herrick's little games. It stood for a contraction of baby and genius. Jean had hit on it accidentally and Herrick had insisted on keeping it.
He came over to the couch and sat down. He did not sit very near Jean, because in a little while Jean was going to move of her own accord. Now that he had so suddenly murdered his pretense he knew exactly what he wanted.
"Jean, we're all wrong about Robert. He isn't a man at all. He's a machine."
Jean laughed. "He is not. He's nothing of the kind. He's not the least bit mechanical. You've fleshed and blooded him beautifully."
"Maybe I have since I've given him my own. But he's an ass, just the same."
"He isn't and I won't have you abuse him. He's a real man and a particular friend of mine."
"Well, I can't say much for your taste, then. I'd like to punch his head. He'd bore me to death in ten minutes. Maybe, if you're so keen about him, you'll accompany him on that neat little stunt he's about to pull off.Ihave no desire to go to Peru with the creature."
"I'd love to, but you know perfectly well that I can't put a thing together except the ambitions of ladies who rescue cats. Getting Robert through the next six months of his life wouldn't bore me. It would overwhelm me."
"It'll swamp me—if I try."
"Begee!"
"Absolutely. He's behaved pretty well up to now because I understand him. But I don't understand how it feels to tramp through a jungle with nobody but natives you can't talk to, and sit all alone in a tent, through wonderful moonlight nights, smoking pipes and being happy. I never sat alone in a tent under tropic moonlight and I don't want to, with nothing but a pipe. I'd go raving mad."
"Nonsense. If you'd wanted to build bridges instead of write novels, you'd have done just the same."
"But I didn't want to build bridges. What's the good of them anyhow, messing up a perfectly good jungle? It's a fool point of view, that everlasting conquering difficulties and improving things."
"You know you don't mean that." Jean was looking at him now, with the smile gone from her eyes. No more than Martha did she like to hear the things she cared for derided. Instantly Herrick saw that he had gone too quickly to his goal.
"I tell you what, Jeany, if we get that bridge built we'll have to give Robert some incentive. We'll let him meet Dora before he does it instead of after. It'll make her better, too, eliminate any possibility of her loving him for anything but himself. How does that strike you? She can't fall in love with his achievements, if he hasn't any."
"But that isn't the way we've mapped it out. Robert was going to get it all done and offer it to her. It's just what he would do. If you go and change it round you make him another kind of man. Maybe that other kind of man wouldn't get the bridge——" Jean broke off suddenly.
"The bridge built at all. Is that what you mean?" Herrick finished for her.
"Yes, I suppose I do. You see——" Jean frowned in her effort to get exactly the right words. It seemed somehow very important that she should get them just right, "The way we have it fixed now, Robert is one kind of man and Dora is one kind of girl, and they're going to be awfully happy. But if you change him she wouldn't be happy with that kind of man. He'd be just the kind that would want to trail her through the jungle after him. You will have to change her, too."
"Rubbish, Jean. That's the psychology of a girl of sixteen. Do you suppose love depends on whether a man builds a bridge or not?"
"That isn't the point, Begee, and it's not the same thing at all. Whether he built the bridge or not, under those difficult conditions, depends on the man he is."
"Oh, Jean, you're a baby. Carrying out that logic then, ifInever finish the novel, I am another man. And you'll have to get made all over yourself. Would I be a different man to you?"
Jean looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. Then she raised her eyes to Herrick's:
"Yes. You would be different."
"Why? Why would not finishing the novel make me any different?"
"Because, if you had never wanted to do it and never started, or couldn't do it, that would be different. But you have always wanted to, for years and years it's been haunting you. You can do it and you have started it. So, if you stopped now, because you've got into a hard place, it would mean that you hadn't the grit to go on. It would be just plain cowardly. You'll be afraid of the pain and trouble of the effort."
"Well, what of that? What's so specially fine in not being afraid of pain? What's so horrible in being a coward? A coward is often a man who sees values more clearly than the mob. What's so noble in beating after something that won't make you any happier when you've got it? That's all courage is, striving after something difficult or impossible to get."
Herrick came closer and laid both hands on Jean's shoulders.
"It's just a lot of words, Jean, handed down till we swallow them whole, this babble about courage and strength and getting the best of things. Words, words, that's all. The measure of all this courage is a measure of effort, not of accomplishment. According to that theory, a baby that beats its head against a stone wall is brave."
Jean sat silent, held by the same terrible necessity of getting the right words.
"No, it is not just blind fighting. It isn't beating after something that you think's going to make you happy. It's seeing clearly and not being afraid of being unhappy."
"Not being afraid of being unhappy? What else is there to be afraid of? What else matters?"
"Being the best self you have, the very, very best."
"Is it?" His hold on her shoulders tightened, and he said, more to keep that look on her face than for any further interest he had in the subject:
"And this best? There is never any doubt about it? It is always perfectly clear what it is?"
"Of course it's always clear—if we're honest."
"And every one knows what this wonderful 'best' in himself is and goes trotting on alone and grabs it?"
"Extremist! No one trots right along and grabs anything. You know what I mean, Begee. Life's like a story or an editorial. You don't go on blindly putting down words without knowing what you're aiming at. You know the points you want to make and you make them. You have your climax before you begin."
"Good Lord! Do you believe that?"
"Yes. I think I do. I know it sounds terribly high-falutin but lots of things do when you really get them in words. Life isn't just a jumbled mess. It must make for something. If it isn't a road we build going along, what on earth is it?"
Herrick's hands dropped from Jean's shoulders.
"It's a pendulum. That's all it is, at the best. That's all, Jean. We swing through the arc, back and forth, from one higher point to another and through all the lowest points between. When we reach one end of the arc we are pushed back and do it all over again, and after a while the arc grows shorter, and we hang there at the will of—what? Fate or chance or our own limitations."
"Oh no, Begee, no. No. You're tired and you don't really believe it yourself. It's a corking good image and we'll get it into the novel somewhere, only Robert won't say it. But as philosophy, it doesn't swing. I'mnothung on a wire by Fate or anything else and when I get to the end of my arc Icango higher. Which may be bad mathematics or physics or whatever it is, but it's good sense and gets things done in this world."
Jean laughed as she laid hold of Herrick's shoulders and shook him gently.
"It's you who are the baby. That's what you are. A baby that gets a spiritual tummy-ache every time he strikes a snag."
Jean was very near now, smiling into his eyes, and Herrick could feel the cool, firm strength of her.
"Am I?"
"Certainly, not a doubt of it. A baby that can scarcely walk. But never mind, when he gets to the end of his arc, mother'll come and push him along. Mother's a grand pusher and she adores it."
"Is she?" Herrick's voice broke and he groped for Jean with trembling hands. "Prove it—prove it." His breath came hot against her cheek as he seized her in his arms and crushed her mouth against his.
"Wake up, wake up," he panted, and through the anger and nausea that seemed to be dragging her out of consciousness, Jean heard him. Years afterwards she could recall the feel of each word as if it were a stone that was hitting her, and the feel of Herrick's unshaven chin against hers.
With all her force she tried to push him away. But, blind with his long suppression, Herrick only held her closer. Not till the edge of his hunger dulled did his hold loosen. Taking Jean's chin in his hand, he turned her face up. Instantly his arms dropped.
For a moment Herrick refused to believe the look in her eyes. Then a wave of anger swept over him, flooding his face and neck to a deep red.
"Well, we're married, aren't we?"
"If that's marriage, no." Jean stepped back out of range of this thing that had taken every scrap of her self-respect and ripped it off as if it were a cloak, that had held her, against her will, at its own pleasure. "Don't you ever kiss me like that again—ever. Do you hear?"
Herrick said nothing. He went over to the window and leaned his forehead on the cold glass. He had acted like a brute, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He had shocked Jean, but that didn't matter, either. It didn't matter whether she was shocked or needed shocking or didn't need it. Nothing in the whole world mattered at all.
Slowly Jean came and stood beside him.
"Please, Franklin," she said in a low hurried tone, "don't kiss me like that ever again. I hate it."
"All right." Herrick spoke from his folded arms without looking up.
Jean stood where she was for a moment and then went back to the couch. She took up her book and tried to read, but the words made no sense. Herrick still stood at the window and the typewriter was covered on the desk.
It was as if a murder had been committed in the room.