CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The dead year was buried in a flare of gold and scarlet. For a little while the gray sky hung low over the earth, and chill winds blew through the empty world. Then the gorgeous dead season was forgotten and winter settled in earnest.
Jean laid away the memory of summer. Again she met Gregory in the tea-room and they were happy in the isolation of the alcove. On Saturdays, when it snowed too heavily for tramping, they went to matinées and sat through many driveling plays. They rarely spoke of Margaret, but often of Puck, and now that this ghost was no longer hidden Jean was glad of the hot, lonely nights after Gregory's going. There was nothing that could hurt because there was nothing unknown.
The old feeling of power ran high in her. She was rapidly centering public interest in her work. Compared to the mighty tree which she and Mary had pictured in moments of enthusiasm, the Congress was a tiny root, but it was striking deep and in good soil. Jean was happy. She came sometimes to meet Gregory so radiant that even he, who had seen Jean in many radiant moods, was startled.
"You look like a Gloucester fishing boat under full sail," he said once, when Jean came hurrying up late for a matinée.
"Well, I can't say that you flatter."
"But a Gloucester boat is the finest thing that floats. It has wonderful lines, and when it comes down the bay with all sails set——"
"But tearing along Broadway to get to a theater! Besides it sounds horribly overpowering. Doesn't the thing ever sink?"
"Never."
Between the acts Gregory drew a Gloucester boat and Jean insisted that she was going to pin it up in her room where she could see it on waking and get the conceit knocked out of her for the day.
But in the mornings when she woke, warm under the blankets, with the sharp air pricking her face, she liked to lie looking at it until she could hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging and feel the heave of the sea under the keel. Standing in the prow, she and Gregory went out to sea, leaving behind the echoes of a waking world, the banging of doors, the rattle of the elevator, the running of bath water from the apartment across the light-well, the whir of coffee-grinders, gearing the world to working strength for another day. Her own power to slip away on these trips with Gregory amused Jean and she wondered if Martha felt the same physical sense of cutting loose, and going out into space, when she left her body crouching in the last pew and went up to talk to God.
Christmas and New Year passed and February came in a black rage of cold, that exhilarated or depressed to the breaking point. It depressed Gregory and he came to the office one morning of black cold, late in February, convinced of the uselessness of all things. Nothing mattered, neither happiness nor pain. If one did manage to seize a little happiness, it was only an interlude. What was the good of a few moments of exhilaration and the sense of personal power, when it went before you could make it really yours?
Gregory threw the mail about on his desk and lit his pipe. He felt old. He tore open the envelopes and sorted the contents and knew that he was going to go on doing this for the rest of his life. Margaret had been exasperatingly cheerful this morning, and as Gregory recalled the gentle sweetness of her voice as she had said, when she kissed him good-by: "There is all the success and prosperity we want rightnow, dear," he tore open the last envelope so violently that the letter within was torn in half. The incident loosened the tension and Gregory laughed at his own childishness as he laid the pieces together and read them.
He read them once. Then he read them again. He looked round at the walls, the floor, the water-cooler in the corner, and read it again. He got up and opened the window. The freezing air rushed in and, after a moment, the world adjusted itself. Things stopped spinning and came out of the blur, but still the impression persisted that it was a joke. Gregory brought the two pieces of the torn letter to the open window and read them for the fourth time.
He had won the Chicago contest. He had covered paper with lines and figures and sent it a thousand miles away, long ago, before the leaves turned. He had never let himself really hope and, for days together, had forgotten all about it. Even Jean had not mentioned it for weeks. The thought of Jean steadied him. Jean had always said: "You will win." She had never doubted, or, if she had, had hidden it under a seeming faith that had been a comfort, even if he had not always shared it.
Gregory reached for the telephone. How should he tell her? Should he read the letter itself, or keep her guessing? To be kept guessing made Jean angry and he did it sometimes to tease her. Gregory stood with his hand on the receiver, composing a beginning. But he would have to get to the point some time and he could hear Jean's: "Oh, Gregory!" Then they would go out somewhere and tramp for miles in the pitiless cold, because it would be absurd even to try to go through the day's grind. Gregory took the receiver from the hook.
Slowly he hung it up again. He went back and sat down at his desk. After a few moments he got up mechanically and closed the window.
He had won the contest. He was no longer the fairly successful architect, bitter, in lonely moments, at forgotten dreams. He was "made." Everything had changed the moment he tore the letter in anger at the sameness of things. There was no doubt about that. Nothing would be the same any more. He would have to live in Chicago. The building would take several years and he would have to be on hand all the time, if he was to get all there was to it. He would have to leave Jean. He would no longer be able to ring her up when he wanted to. There would be no more long walks. No more dusky hours at the little French roadhouse, hours when the need of parting drew them so near together, Jean would no longer be there in the background of his life, so that he always felt that he could reach out and touch her.
Gregory jammed his pipe between his teeth and began walking up and down. Was there never a spot in life, never one short hour that was perfect? He saw the future that might have been, had he and Jean belonged legally to each other. Love, success, accomplishment. He and Jean—and Puck.
Gregory's face was drawn when he sat down at his desk again. He drove his mind through the day's work as if it had been a slave.
At four he closed his desk and went to meet Jean. She was already at their table, sitting partly turned to watch a group in the large room beyond. She was smiling, and when she caught sight of him the smile deepened.
"Do look at that old peacock over there. I have been watching her for the last five minutes and she's never stopped preening once."
He had come, still uncertain how he was going to tell Jean, and she asked him to look at an old woman. But he turned and then he laughed too.
"Well, what's happened exciting to-day?"
"Oh, nothing much. Nothing that will surprise you terribly."
Jean put down the teapot. "Gregory Allen, out with it!"
Gregory seized the alternative of banter, which had not occurred to him before.
"If I'm bursting, as you so impolitely suggest, it must be terribly important, and if it's terribly important you—you ought to guess it," he finished lamely.
"Now, Gregory, don't tease. Besides, I haven't an ounce of sense left. I've been struggling with a Tammany politician until I'm limp. What is it?"
Gregory took the cup she was holding to him. He felt that as long as the cup was in transit a choice was left open. But once it was beside his plate, he would be obliged to say, in the only way he had been able to frame it at all: "I've won the contest, and I have to go and live in Chicago. They want me there to talk over some slight changes by the middle of March and—I might as well stay on, because I'm going back there to live anyhow."
"Gregory, don't be silly. Please, what is it? I know it's good, because your nose is wrinkling up at the corners."
"It is good." Gregory put down the cup. "I've won the contest."
The old peacock cackled a shrill note and Gregory heard her say: "Just fancy, at her age, a deep pink, my dear, I——"
"Gregory—my dear...."
The blood rushed to Gregory's eyes so that Jean blurred to something white and shining, near but impossible to touch. He looked down.
"I shall have to go to Chicago. They've asked me to be there by the middle of March."
"Of course. Why, I'd want to take the next train and rush out, whether they'd asked me or not. Oh, Gregory! I always knew it but—I feel all wiggly inside."
Her hands moved to him across the cloth but Gregory's did not come to meet them.
"But I shall have to live there, Jean, for good; for several years anyhow. It will mean so many things. Here I should only be "that fellow who's building the Auditorium out in Chicago." I'm not young. I've got to get it all now, every scrap of it. I've got to, Jean. I've got to!"
Afterwards, Jean knew that in that moment she crossed a line and left something of herself behind forever. But now it must be the same as it had always been, until she was alone. If she yielded an inch, she would go plunging down into the emptiness.
"You do see, don't you?" Gregory's voice pleaded for her courage, but she did not answer, and he hurried on.
"If there were any other way, ... but there isn't. It will lead to all kinds of things. I've got to be there. Don't you see, dear?"
Why did he keep on saying that, over and over, as if she were a child? Why did he sit there, looking into his plate, as if he were hurting her only and against his will? Jean drew her hands back into her lap.
"Jean," he whispered, "Sweetheart, don't make it hard."
"I'm not going to. After all, you know,—Chicago's only eighteen hours away."
He looked up. "Well, I'll be damned! Do you know, Jean, I never thought of that?"
And he had not. It had seemed so final, such a complete upheaval of the present that he had pictured no thread running to the future. It would. Of course it would. Why shouldn't it? Jean would be the same. He would be the same. Each had his work. Their meetings would be farther apart, but freer. He would never have to leave Jean because he had promised to be home at a certain hour, nor invent explanations for Sunday tramps. In a way it would be more perfect, not less. And as soon as he had things going he would come back for a few days. Later he could come for longer. In summer, if he had a vacation, he would spend it with Jean.
"Jean, I'm coming straight round this table and kiss you."
"No, don't."
But he was already there beside her, and under pretext of adjusting the curtain, kissed her quickly. Jean wanted to strike him. Then he was back in his own place, talking again. All the first joy of his success rushed over him. Jean felt it, the hidden power that she had fanned with her belief and love. It was burning away her own forces and Jean felt cold.
They had a second serving of tea. The rooms emptied. Gregory was still talking, rushing away beyond her reach.
It was almost seven when she threw her crumpled napkin on the table and rose.
"I've simply got to go. Besides we could never get it all talked out, if we stayed until midnight."
"I know. I feel like a kid parading his bag of tricks. I believe I've been standing on my head for the last hour. Have I, Jean?" He was near, helping her on with her coat. His fingers touched her cheek. "Why didn't you set me right end up with a thump?"
"Oh, I adore small boys on their heads. I—I always want to do it, too." Jean wondered why he did not grip her shoulders and shake her back to consciousness, but he only laughed and they went out, past the groups of pretty waitresses resting now in the empty room.
It had turned warmer and snow was falling in great white flakes.
"I believe I'll walk. I'm not going home to dinner anyhow." Her courage was gone. She could not go down into that stifling Subway, talk nothings above the roar of the train, feel Gregory close among all those strangers.
"But it's going to be a regular blizzard. Look! It's getting thicker every minute."
Jean turned up her fur collar. "I don't mind. Maybe it's the last blizzard we'll have. I always wallow in the last blizzard. It's a kind of rite."
"Well, then, if I can't stop you...."
They were standing so close that Jean could feel his warm breath on her face. Muffled figures, bent against the driving snow, pushed by them and disappeared into the black hole of the Subway entrance. Automobiles shot noiselessly through the whirling whiteness. The world itself had changed.
"To-morrow then about four?"
"No, I can't to-morrow. I've got a meeting. Friday."
"All right." Gregory held out his hand, but Jean raised her muff to keep off the driving flakes and only smiled across it.
She went back to the office. They had all gone. There was a note tacked to the lid of her desk and Jean read it. She tore it up and threw it into the waste-basket but some of the pieces fell upon the rug and she bent to pick them up carefully. She opened a window, and covered one of the typewriters that had been left uncovered. Then she telephoned to Martha that she would not be home to dinner. Martha urged her not to work too late and Jean hung up the receiver.
Now she was alone, utterly alone, with the thoughts she had beaten back.
Gregory was going away. He was going out of her life for months at a time. Three short weeks and it would be as it had been before his coming—empty, work-filled days. Jean bowed her head on the desk.
"You fool, you fool, you helped to do it."
She had been so glad to give and give and give. Never to falter in her faith, or let his courage drop below the standard she had set for it. He had needed her and now he did not need her at all.
Jean slipped to the floor and clutched the cushion of the chair.
"Don't let me feel like this. Don't let me," she begged, but there was no answer. The reasonable machine of her universe held no God. It ran itself.
When she was sure that Martha would be asleep, Jean went home.
During the next two weeks they saw no more of each other than usual. Jean was busy, and Gregory had to leave things in order for Benson, who was to take on the office. Besides, it kept up the fiction of there being no big change. But on Tuesday, the day before he was to leave, Jean did not go to work.
It was a day of sparkling sunshine and hard snow, packed firm. They went into the country. They talked of little things, rested, made snowballs and glided, hand in hand, over the ice of a small pond. It was a day like many they had had.
It was almost dark when they stopped at the French roadhouse. There were no other guests, and Madam Cateau lumbered forward in her felt slippers to greet them as old friends.
"It is a long time that you do not come. I think you forget me. Then I remember and say—But the chicken they do not forget. Me, yes, but not the chicken." She shook with laughter and waggled her great red forefinger under Gregory's nose. "I am right? Yes? The chicken you do not forget. Two plates it was. Three, maybe?"
"Three at least. I wouldn't swear that it wasn't four."
"And to-night I have the same, with the mushrooms. Why do I make it this morning? It is not the right day. Le bon Dieu, maybe?"
She waddled off and Jean took a table close to the fire.
It was impossible that they were doing this for the last time. The fire burned with a deep glow. Outside the bare trees, ladened with snow, creaked in the wind that came creeping with the dark from hidden places. In the kitchen Madam Cateau scolded the waiter. Dishes rattled and finally the perspiring Gustave came running with the soup. It was rich and thick, and across the table, so near that she could see a tiny black speck on Gregory's white collar, he was eating it, smiling at her between spoonfuls, his face damp with the soup's heat and the reaction from the long walk in the cold.
When dinner was almost through, Madam plodded in again.
"The same room? Yes? Perhaps a smaller one is warmer."
"No. The same. Make a good fire. It will be all right."
They drank the coffee in silence and smoked, listening to the woman's feet plopping on the floor above. It was quiet in the kitchen now. A loosened shutter creaked and ashes fell softly in the grate. Upstairs the door closed. Madam came thumping down and they heard her settle with a grunt into her chair by the parlor stove.
They went upstairs. The room was just the same. They might have been away only an hour. The same colored print of Napoleon stared above the dresser; the same stiff, white tidies covered the chair seats. The same red and white counterpane spread over the bed, with its nosegay of red and white embroidered roses in the exact center. The curtains were drawn half down, but below, through the spotless panes, the field stretched bare and silent under a clean young moon. Gregory went over and pulled down the shades.
Jean took the plush rocker that Gregory dragged to the hearth. He sat on the floor, his head against her knees, and together they listened to the breathing of the fire, the whispering wind, and the branch scraping on the glass. Gregory drew Jean's hands down and held them against his lips.
The little noise outside died in the throb within. His lips pressed hot in her palms. With a sob, Jean bent and drew him into her arms.
In the morning they went silently back to the city while it was still early. The wind had risen in the night and blown the last snow from the branches. The trees cut thin and black in the new day.
Gregory was to come back in May.