CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Although for the last year Dr. Pedloe had objected to many things that Jean had done, he really was proud of the energy and magnetism that made her district better known than all the other districts combined. He had rather enjoyed reproving Jean, but had never considered removing her. Now, when he understood that she had not only thought of leaving, but was about to leave, he offered to raise her salary. Nothing else occurred to him.
"It's nice of you, and I appreciate your appreciation of what I have tried to do, but really, Dr. Pedloe, it is not a question of money, at all. I have just outgrown it. I am not making any criticism, but I feel stifled. I want a bigger coat. The old one is too tight."
To refer to the elaborate organization of which he had been the head for fifteen years, as an old coat possible to outgrow in six, annoyed and amused him.
"Really, Mrs. Herrick, I don't see where you are going to find a fitting garment. Expanding—er—coats are rather tricky garments."
The remark pleased him and he smiled.
"I have found one." Jean outlined her idea of a Woman's Congress, in time to grow to national proportions.
"It will take years, Mrs. Herrick."
"It may. And then, again, it may not."
"In the meantime it will be just as suffocating as anything else."
"That's where we don't agree. It's constructive. We shall be building towards something, slowly, no doubt, but surely. We shall not be—patching uselessly."
Dr. Pedloe's smile vanished. "I wish you every success, Mrs. Herrick. No doubt we can still be mutually helpful. If there is anything I can do, please believe that the patched coat is at your disposal. I understand that you wish to sever your connection by the end of the month?"
"I should like to very much. We are going to try and get into running order as a definite organization before the summer vacation takes every one out of town, and be ready to plunge in head first in the fall."
"I see."
"But of course, if you have no one in mind for my district, or would like me to stay on a few weeks to break in my successor——"
"I don't believe, Mrs. Herrick, I need to trespass on your new interest to that extent. I have in mind Miss Carlisle, of Upper West. She is much more fitted by experience and temperament for your district than for her own simple one. I have been wanting to put her in a larger field for some time."
"Then perhaps——"
Dr. Pedloe nodded. "I don't mean to suggest—but if you care to assume your new duties before the end of the month, I should not want you to feel that we stand in your way. You are taking Miss Grimes with you? Then Miss Carlisle might come down for a couple of days, shall we say the beginning of the week, to get a general idea of your office system. Would that be perfectly satisfactory?"
"Oh, quite. It's very kind of you to be so considerate."
Dr. Pedloe rose, his dignity saved. "Perhaps I shall call upon your organization some day for a return favor."
Jean wanted to wink at him, but she held out her hand.
"We shall be more than glad."
They shook hands, and Dr. Pedloe turned to his desk as if, in the half hour's talk, mammoth duties had accumulated. Jean let herself out.
Down on the sidewalk she stood still and laughed until she realized that people were staring.
"He did it, got it in by the tail, but got it.Fired, by Gosh!"
She could scarcely keep from telling Ben as he took her up in the elevator to her own office, or Miss Grimes, who was the only one in. But the former would have been so puzzled and the latter so indignant, that she refrained. Besides, only two people could get the full flavor, Mary and Gregory. She was going to have tea with him at half past four, and there was not a spare moment before that. Mary would have to wait.
In the privacy of her own office, Jean stood in the middle of the floor and stretched her arms to the spring air pouring in at the open window.
"It's going to be another glorious summer. A perfectly ripping summer."
Then she turned to work and refused to think of anything else until the clock struck four. On the first stroke she closed and locked the desk.
Usually Jean reached the tea-room first. She liked it so. She liked to be there a few moments ahead, to listen to the hum of women's voices, catch scraps of conversation from a world of other interests, and then, to look up and see Gregory cutting through it straight to her. It set her apart, made her a direct choice in a concrete way that never failed to make her heart give an extra throb.
But to-day Gregory was already there. He was sitting with his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand. With his free hand he traced idle designs on the tablecloth. At the sight of Jean he rose and drew out her chair, letting his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders, which was the only caress the publicity allowed. But as he took his own place again, Jean saw the worried look in his eyes. Gregory rarely came troubled to tea, and when he did, it took only a few moments to drive it away. Sometimes she liked him to be a little tired, for the joy of dissipating it.
"Well, how did things go to-day?" It was their stock beginning, but to-day there was a forced interest in the tone that struck through Jean's gayety.
"Great! I've been fired."
"That's a good cause for gratitude." For a moment they smiled in understanding of their own viewpoint. Then the tea and muffins came and Jean began to describe Dr. Pedloe's disapproval of her and all her works. Gregory listened and his eyes appreciated the points as Jean made them. But he offered no comments of his own and suddenly Jean wondered whether he was listening at all. Gregory never sat attending in that absent way. Fear crept on Jean, but she pushed it aside. If it were something serious he would tell her. But nothing very terrible could have happened in the twenty-four hours since she had seen him. His work was going well and he was pleased with the designs for the contest. Still he sat there, crumbling the muffin which he made no pretense of eating. Jean went on with the telling, but her own interest lessened.
Across the table, Gregory believed he was listening with the outward show of interest he always felt. But there was no real interest in him. For Puck was sick. She had been ailing for several days, and this morning the doctor had come, and after he had looked at Puck and talked a little with Margaret, he had telephoned for a nurse. Gregory's nerves were still taut with the anxiety of waiting for the doctor to come from Puck and tell him what was the matter. Like all persons unused to illness, he wanted the relief of a specific name. It localized the danger and brought the enemy into the open. He had steeled himself to anything, for Margaret's excited helplessness had ended in a burst of hysteria and he knew he would have to face it alone. Then the door of Puck's room had opened and the doctor beckoned to him. Puck's fever-bright eyes looked at him without recognition, and Gregory knew that if Puck died he would remember her always like that, so small in her white bed, with no smile of welcome for him, and unconscious of Lady Jane by her side.
"There is nothing to worry about, but I will be frank with you, there is a lot to look out for. Your child is one of the finest samples of modern, high-strung baby nerves that I have seen in a long while. That fever doesn't amount to anything and she will be up in a few days. It won't be necessary for me to come again, so I will tell you now, keep her back. She is too old for her years already. She has inherited a rather hysterical nervous tendency, but she's got a will of iron too. She rarely cries, does she? No, I thought not. If she threw things around and had what old-fashioned parents used to call 'a bad temper,' she would let off the steam that way. But she doesn't. We grown-ups forget all about our own childhood. There, I guess that's all. Keep her back. Don't reason with her too much. She thinks too hard, anyhow. A little of the plain old-style faith in what mother says or father says is wonderfully restful, like believing in God when we grow up. See that she has other children to play with, and keep an eye on her yourself. We men so often think that children are—any woman's special province."
Gregory had sat on beside Puck's bed until the nurse came. And for the first time since they had put Puck, a wailing mite, into his arms, he had felt helpless, inadequate, lost in the problem of the small person, so distinctly a bit of himself. And of Margaret....
He had come to meet Jean, full of the need to talk about this, to get a little of her sanity. But now, sitting opposite her, he could not do it. It belonged so completely to the world outside their world. How could he tell any one, Jean least of all, this fear that Puck might grow up like her mother? For the first time, tea with Jean was an effort, held something of the same quality that the forced cheerfulness of dinners with Margaret had. As he crumbled his muffin and listened, Gregory tried to be just. It was not fair to Jean to drag his worries into their hour, but the effort to keep them out tangled his already too complex world almost to breaking.
Jean watched the nervous working of his fingers and her fear grew. Something must be very wrong. Her longing to comfort him struggled with her pride against asking a confidence he might not wish to give. At last pride went to defeat.
Jean covered his hand with hers.
"What is it, Gregory? You look worried to death."
Her touch assured him sympathy. He would tell her. What? Ask her to understand all that Puck meant to him? Show her a part of his life that she did not touch at all?
"Out with it." The forced gayety of the tone rasped. He wanted to withdraw his hand. Where was the boasted intuition of feminine love? Why didn't Jean know what he wanted to tell her? The firm fingers pressed his, as if to give him courage. He looked up. Jean was waiting with a calm strength in her eyes. What on earth did she think was the matter? The situation became suddenly overtuned and ridiculous. Gregory pushed back his chair and rose.
"Nothing, really. Have I been such an awful bore? I'm sorry, but I'm terribly tired. I was up all night."
"Why?"
Jean's eyes, on a level with his own, demanded the truth. Gregory felt trapped and angry.
"Oh, that damned contest. I've been working for the last two weeks on the wrong tack." He held her coat and Jean turned to slip her arms into the sleeves.
What a silly she had been! As if any man ever lost a night's sleep and was the same the next day. After all, she was rather like Martha sometimes. Jean smiled to herself.
As he turned up the collar of her coat, Gregory's fingers brushed her cheek. She turned her head and kissed them swiftly.
"Well, rub it out and do it over again, because you know you'regoing to win."
Gregory met the nurse in the hall. She carried Lady Jane in her arms and smiled reassuringly.
"She is ever so much better. She had a fine sleep and woke with no fever at all. She asked for you."
Puck was propped up with pillows, her eyes fastened on the door waiting for Lady Jane. At the sight of Gregory she wriggled with delight.
"Well, Pucklets, all better?"
He sat down on the side of the bed and put an arm about her. Lady Jane was forgotten. Puck reached up and stroked his cheek. It was an old gesture of Margaret's, and brought back sharply the days of his brief engagement when, sitting on the arm of Margaret's chair before the library fire, with the slender grace of her pressed near, he had wanted sometimes to crush her to him. But always she had seemed to sense the ferocity of his mood and to stave it off by this gentle stroking of his cheek, as she might have quieted her pet Angora. Gregory drew a little beyond the reach of Puck's touch, and she nestled to him.
"Quite all well, Puckie, sure?"
Puck nodded. "I got all better when I went to sleep. I can get up to-morrow, can't I, Miss Burns?"
"I don't know about that, but very soon, if you're a good girl and don't talk to father too much."
"I won't." Puck's lips snapped as if she were never going to say another word and the nurse went out laughing.
Gregory's hold tightened. He had always thought of Puck as another self, very small and feminine, but still a great part of himself. Now he knew that she was Margaret, too. And something else, beyond them both. She was herself. She was a part of his experience, his reaction, his fate. And yet her own experience, her own reaction, her fate could never be his. Sitting with his arms tight about Puck, who soon fell asleep, Gregory felt the terrible isolation of every living soul. No one could ever reach another. He and Margaret were worlds apart. They had never really touched at all. They had created Puck and Puck was distinctly herself and apart. She would grow up and marry and have children of her own....
Gregory put Puck back on the pillow and tiptoed from the room. Annie was just bringing in the soup. In a few moments he and Margaret were eating, and Margaret was retailing the misfortunes of the Burns family, which had forced pretty Gertrude Burns to take up nursing.