CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The third week in August, Dr. Mary returned. She came without warning, so that, late in the afternoon, when Jean came rushing in to start dinner, she stopped, staring at the figure upon the couch with surprise so intense that it deprived her of motion.
"Sunstroke, Jean?" Mary threw back the two braids of white hair, drew the hideous blue dressing gown closer and put on her slippers.
"Mary!"
"The same. Come in and sit down, won't you?"
Jean smiled and managed to get her arms about Mary and hug her.
"Well, that's more like it." Mary paddled back to her couch and Jean dropped beside her. "My, but it's good to be home again."
"We've missed you," Jean ventured and when she heard the ease of her own tone, a little courage came back. "Now, begin at the beginning and tell me the whole thing."
To her relief, Mary did. Jean listened with a fixed smile of understanding, made the expected comments, laughed in the right places, and waited for the one long and two short rings that meant Gregory. While Mary disposed in scathing terms of all English Social Betterment work, Jean wondered whether she had seen the fruit and vegetables that must be waiting on the dumb-waiter and how to explain them. As far as Mary knew, Gregory had dropped from their lives. And any moment, it would come, the one long and two short, and she would have to say something.
"I tell you, Jean, I thought there was no brand of human left alive, who could make me despair of the race. But a middle class Englishman does. He's insulated, absolutely insulated in his own righteousness. He would rather——"
There it was, the one long and two short.
"Good Heavens! Jean, are you giving a party? I saw a whole box of things on the waiter."
"No. It's only Gregory. I stumbled into him accidentally one day and, now the family's in Maine, he comes to dinner sometimes."
"Well, I'll be darned. What was the matter with him? Did you ever find out?"
"Never asked him," Jean remarked from the door. "I forgot all about it, myself. I don't believe he ever thought it needed any."
"A regular homefest! Run along and open the door. I won't bother to change my things."
Jean opened the door, but before Gregory could take her in his arms, she stepped back with a warning look.
"You're much too early! I haven't even begun to get dinner." She motioned to the living-room. "Mary," her lips formed.
"Hell!" Gregory almost said it aloud.
"Well, go into the other room and wait as patiently as you can," she whispered.
Jean went into the kitchen. The table was strewn with the things for dinner just as Mary had dumped them out. Jean's eyes filled with tears. "I won't let it end, I won't, I won't." In the other room she heard Gregory's well-feigned surprise and Mary's laugh.
Jean put on her apron and began to get dinner. Mary's anecdotes flowed on like a river, breaking every now and then on the rock of Gregory's laughter. After all, perhaps it did not make so much difference to him. Last evening they had sat for almost an hour, silent, with their hands linked across the intervening space between the chairs and Jean had been wonderfully happy. Had he been happy, too? How did she know that he had not been a little bored? Jean's eyes blurred and the tomato she was peeling slipped into the sink with a plop.
"You fool. What do you expect? Sheisinteresting and he can't sit there like a statue." Jean scooped up the tomato and threw it viciously into the garbage pail.
"Jean! Oh, Jean, come here a minute," Gregory called. "Do it again for Jean. It's a scream."
Mary twitched the dressing gown so that it trailed like a royal robe and twisted the white hair into a knob not unlike a coronet.
"Mamie Horton, of Chicago, now Duchess Mary of Belfort, doing the East End, visiting a family of eight living on three dollars a week." The doctor's face froze into a mask of horror and she pointed dramatically to what was supposed to be the laborer's dinner table. "Most unhygienic. I will send you a case of shredded wheat to-morrow!"
"Never, Mary. That's too much. You've spoiled it."
"Well, it wasn't shredded wheat, but it was just as bad. Jean, I longed for you. If there had been anything in thought transference you would have hopped on the next boat. You think your committee is bad! You ought to see real caste at the business. And worse than that are the Mamie Hortons. Why, when I told a group of the reals and the pseudos, at a luncheon, about the tenements, and how you had raised the money and had the whole thing going in a few months, they stared at me, and Horton actually said: 'Reahlly,' in that exasperating English voice that means: 'You're a liar.' It takes a year to call a meeting over there."
"I suppose she wouldn't believe the evidences of her senses if she saw them. They're finished except a few last touches."
"Not really, Jean!"
"Infected, Mary! 'Not reahlly!'"
"Score! But, Jean, you don't mean they're all ready for tenants? I hope they're not in yet."
"They will be in another week."
Dr. Mary bounced out of her chair. "Let's go out and see them."
"What? Now?"
"Yes, now. It won't take long. Gregory can call a taxi while I get on my clothes. You don't know how I've come to love those things, Jean. Whenever that cumbersome machine of 'British thoroughness' lumbered over me I used to say,
"There's a land that is fairer than day,Where things get done right away."
"There's a land that is fairer than day,Where things get done right away."
"There's a land that is fairer than day,Where things get done right away."
"There's a land that is fairer than day,
Where things get done right away."
"What's the objection to going now? Won't the food keep?"
"If you've made up your mind, it doesn't matter whether the food keeps or not. I don't suppose there is any reason not to go, except that you ought to be tired."
"I almost died resting for the last five days. I couldwalkthere."
Jean went back to take off her apron and Gregory followed.
"It'll be better than staying here," he whispered, with his arms about her. "And it was going to be such a nice evening."
Jean patted his cheek. "Never mind. We'll have a lot more. Now run along and call a taxi."
Dr. Mary was indefatigable. She insisted on inspecting every floor and getting the view from every side. And, in the end, she pronounced it "a darn good job." But Jean did not feel it was "a job" at all. It was a bit of her life and Gregory's. It was built of the hours they had spent together. It was not an insensate thing. It was alive. She and Gregory had created it. Her hand moved on the clean, white wall.
"You nice living thing. Make everybody well and don't let anybody die."
Jean smiled. It was somewhat like a prayer.
When there was nothing left but the solarium on the roof, they sat down to rest on one of its green benches. In the afterglow, the East River ran a stream of gold. The span of the bridges hung airy webs in the heat-hazed air. Far below little tugs chugged up and down, whistling. The gray of their smoke filtered through the gold, softening it to filmy gauze. But across the river, on the workhouse island, a bell clanged. From the last sunny spots, old men and women came reluctantly, and the hideous red buildings swallowed them, one by one. Soon they would all be asleep, the old men in their wards and the old women in theirs. Perhaps in the night some would die quietly in their sleep. In the morning the superintendent would look up the names on the books, notify any relatives he could find, and send blanks to charity organizations that there was room for a few more of the homeless old.
Not one of them had ever expected it to end like that. The race had speeded faster and faster, beyond their strength. They had stumbled, gone down, and been trampled under. Strong in the faith of their own ability, she and Mary and Gregory, all the well-groomed men and beautiful gowned women about them, went securely on. But what guarantee had they that this strength would last forever? Each human being was such a tiny obstruction, a mere grain of sand against the force of a terrific current. Even in the small trickle of the stream which one called one's own personal affairs, it was impossible to guide the force. Here was the course of her summer twisted suddenly by an event over which she had no control.
"I won't let it. Iwillhave the next four weeks."
"A penny, Jean. You look as if you were settling the affairs of nations."
"I was doing what mummy calls 'guiding Providence.'"
"Too strenuous for summer, Jean. Leave it 'til winter."
"No. 'Now's the appointed time.' 'To-night the Lord may come.' Hence, you and Gregory go home alone, Mary. I go to Jersey. I've had a revelation."
Nor would Jean let Gregory go even to the ferry with her, but insisted that he go back and hear more of the East End.
"But, dear, I want to see you terribly to-night. I want——"
He had dropped behind as they were following Mary out so that for a moment he and Jean were alone. Jean smiled and shook her head.
"Can't be helped. I've got to go really. Besides it's—it's your revelation too."
"I don't want any revelation. I want you," he added hotly.
"So do I, that's why I'm going." The words came in a low rush, and then Mary was looking back to them.
But it was only when Jean actually stood with her finger on the button of Pat's bell, that she realized how astonished Pat would be, and how she had neglected Pat and the babies that summer. And once Pat had known almost every thought that crossed her mind.
"I'm besotted, absolutely dippy, and I'd use God Almighty if I needed Him."
The door opened and Pat herself stood gazing as if she doubted the evidence of her senses.
"Jean!"
Two small naked figures, lurking in the shadow of the upper landing, came tumbling down at their mother's cry and Jean was lost in a tangle of arms and legs.
"Jean! It's Auntie Jean!"
"Jeanie, Frank!" Pat clutched at the waving legs, while Jean held them closer and laughed across at Pat.
"At least they're glad to see me, Pat, and you've only shrieked 'Jean!'"
"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Herrick. Won't you come in? I was just putting the children to bed."
"So I see. And we're going right on with the process." Jean hoisted her namesake to her shoulder and started for the stairs, dragging the rotund Frank by the hand.
When they were safely tucked in and Jean had recounted as much of the old witch who was turned into a gingerbread house as she could remember, and promised to come soon, "very, very soon, lots soon," Pat turned off the light and she and Jean went down to the cool dark piazza. And then, for the first time, in her gratitude for the darkness, Jean realized how deeply she hated to lie to Pat. She would have given much to be able to throw both arms about Pat and say:
"Patsy, I want you to help me. I want you to take mummy out of the way. I want this last month, free and beautiful for the most glorious thing in my life. There is only one little month left, Pat, four short weeks, and I want them so."
"I thought you were never going to come any more, Jean, and I was beginning to get 'hurt,' like mummy."
"It wasn't because I didn't want to come." Jean looked out into the moonlit garden. "But I've been terribly busy, and mummy hasn't been well. The words left Jean with the feeling that something very deep inside her had been ripped out.
"Mummy not well? Why, Jean, what's the matter?"
"I don't know, Pat. You know she never complains and would sit up in her coffin to explain that she was perfectly well. But she isn't. I want her to go away for a rest, but you know how likely she is to do that. I can't go along, too."
"The summer has been a fright. Even Frankie got rather peaked last month, and it takes a great deal to wear an ounce off him."
There was a short pause, and then Jean added, with an effort at a laugh:
"Perhaps she's just homesick for a little trouble or illness. Now if Elsie lived in some nice quiet suburb and was going to have one of her horrible babies, or Tom would cut off a leg, she'd pack up and be right there on the dot."
"And you're so disgustingly efficient and healthy! Poor mummy, you were never meant for her daughter. I say, do you suppose she would come over here if I could develop something that doesn't have to show? I couldn't turn pale or faint, not to save me, never did in my life, but I might manage a general breakdown. Worry over the children and Big Frank's raise in salary?"
Jean looked away. "Are you sure it would be all right? She loves the babies and she would come in a minute, if she thought you needed her."
"Well, I do. I'll 'phone her to-morrow."
"She'll come—and thanks, Patsy."
Blurred by the porch screening, a small patient face looked quietly at Jean. Jean got up quickly.
"Let's go inside, Pat. I believe it's cooler."