CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
At the end of the week Miss Burns left and in a few days Puck was running about the house as usual. The only reminder that something had changed somewhere in his world, were the advertisements of summer resorts that littered Margaret's desk. The doctor had ordered "bracing air, salt water and everything as unlike the city as possible." So Gregory rented their own bungalow on Long Island to Benson for the summer and tried to be patient with Margaret in her search. She finally decided on a small boarding house in Maine, as far from civilization as she could get, where there were other children for Puck to play with. Margaret did not expect to enjoy the summer and measured her devotion to Puck by the degree of her own discomfort.
Puck was not told until it was necessary to pack Lady Jane's things. Then she was hysterical with excitement at the idea of going "a long, long way on a boat." She invested Maine with all the magic details of Gregory's bed-time stories. But when she found that he was not coming with them, her joy died as suddenly as if it had been turned off with a spigot.
"I don't want to go 'a long, long way on a boat' without my daddy." She squared her shoulders and looked quietly at Margaret.
"But it's too far, dear. Daddy has to stay and work for us and we mustn't tease him."
"I don't want my daddy to stay and work for us."
"But, Puck, it's a lovely place, with the great big green sea rolling in almost to the house and little boats to go out in when it's calm."
"I don't want the sea to roll into the house, and who'll take me out in the little boats?"
"The man will. He takes all the children every day."
"I don't think I want to go."
Margaret did not argue the matter further and went on packing the trunks. Puck, however, stopped all preparations and sat with her brows drawn in a frown exactly like Gregory's, hugging Lady Jane.
She did not run to meet Gregory that night and through dinner scarcely spoke. Gregory watched her anxiously. At half past eight, without being told, she went to get ready for bed.
"What's the matter with Puck?"
"I had to tell her this afternoon that you can't come with us."
Gregory put down the evening paper. "I suppose you exaggerated it's being a long way, and she thinks she's going to the ends of the earth?"
"You needn't be rude. Please remember that it will be no particular pleasure taking a nervous child on a sea trip alone."
"Damn!"
Margaret bit her lip. "If you could control your temper until we're out of the way, it would help. I have had about all I can stand with her and finding the place and settling the details."
Gregory was ashamed of his outburst. After all, Margaret could not help being herself and he was sorry for her in an impersonal way.
"But I wish you wouldn't talk so much about her nerves. A baby scarcely six. You'll make her so."
"I don't think you can tell me anything about Puck that I don't know. Remember, I am with her all day, not just at night in time to tell her stories. If any one excites and makes her nervous, it's you. Remember, you never hear the versions of those stories she gives Lady Jane."
Margaret had used this shaft so often that the barb had dulled. "Well, she's not going to have any of them for some time."
Puck's bare feet pattered along the hall and she entered ready for her bed in her little white pajamas, that buttoned up the back out of her reach. Gregory buttoned them and swung her into his lap.
"Where's Lady Jane? Is she too tired for a story to-night?"
"Lady Jane don't feel like stories to-night."
"Dear me! She's not sick, is she?"
"No, she's not sick, really. But she isn't very happy."
Across Puck's head, Margaret made warning signs to Gregory to drop the subject, but his hold only tightened and he rubbed his chin on Puck's soft hair.
"That's too bad, Puckie. What's she unhappy about?"
Puck herself had been warned not to mention Maine but nothing had been said about Lady Jane. And Lady Jane was desperately unhappy, almost as miserable as Puck herself.
"I—don't—think—she wants to go to—Maine."
"Oh, she'll like it after she gets there. Especially if you take Priscilla and Dorothy along too."
"They don't want to go either."
"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do. You go along with mother on Monday, and then, if you want Lady Jane or Priscilla, I'll bring them when I come."
Puck jerked upright in his arms. They looked at each other. Slowly Puck smiled. Gregory smiled back. With his hands on the slight shoulders, he looked into her eyes.
"I can't come up with you and mother, Pucklets, but I'll come later, before the summer is over and stay a whole month."
There was a pause during which Margaret wondered why men were so annoying. Without a doubt, Gregory had intended to come up, but it was just like him to give no one the satisfaction of knowing it.
"I think, daddy, I'll take Lady Jane and Priscilla. You couldn't take care of them very well, could you?"
"I think that would be better. I don't quite understand about their food," he added, remembering suddenly that Lady Jane and Priscilla were in the stage of being babies for the last two weeks.
Puck cuddled into his arms with a deep sigh of relief. Her tottering world was stable again.
"Tell me about Pergameleon," she demanded, and Gregory obeyed with the garbled version that passed for the story between them.
A week later he saw them off on the boat and came back to Gramercy Park to have dinner with Jean.
It was going to be a happy summer.
After much deliberation Dr. Mary had taken a second year's leave from the Neighborhood House, and gone to London for the summer to study conditions in the East End. The house was theirs.
Gregory felt young and carefree as he touched the bell button, with the one long and two short, that was his ring.
Enveloped in a kitchen apron, her hands covered with flour, Jean opened the door.
"Why, how do you do?"
"How do you do? I thought I should find Dr. MacLean. She's not in?"
"No, I'm sorry, but she's just run over to London for a minute. Will you leave a message?"
"If I may. Will you tell her, please, that you're the most glorious thing in the world and I love you?"
The last words were buried in the warm smoothness of Jean's neck. She turned her head and their lips met.
"Now, if you'll go and take off your coat and put on an apron you can help me make some Martha Norris biscuits."
Gregory did as he was told, and they got dinner together. Afterwards they went into the living-room where they had sat so often the summer before, good friends, disturbed in no way by the presence of the little doctor, and Jean wondered what power had arranged this summer, so far beyond her dreams. Mary in London, Margaret and Puck in Maine, beyond the reach of week-ends even. There was only Martha.
Deep in the leather chair, with Gregory's arms about her, his fingers moving gently over her cheek and throat, Jean wished that Martha would go away too. She wanted them all out of her life, every one, for the next three months. Beyond that she did not think.
It was perfect. So perfect that Jean marveled and was humble. The days themselves, the actual passing of time took on personality. As the givers of happiness, the hours became conscious. They were servants bringing gifts.
Jean's duties were light and she and Gregory spent a part of each day together. The quiet tea-room was now a thing of the past, so far in the past that Jean smiled whenever she remembered how homelike it had once seemed. They had long, lazy afternoons on the sands of nearby beaches, making comments on the human shadows that moved beyond their own world of reality. They chattered like children or were silent as the mood dictated. They had dozens of gay meals, like the first they had prepared on the night that Margaret and Puck had left. And quiet hours in the warm stillness of the summer nights, with the voice of the city coming in echoes over the dusty trees of the Park. These were the best of all. In those moments it seemed to Jean that their souls mingled, and that the law of each human soul's separateness was set aside for their benefit.
Hampered only by such demands as Jean felt to be her duty to Martha, the weeks slipped by. Ringed about by their freedom, Jean felt that their love was striking into a deeper and deeper reality. A quality of peace and security enveloped it that she did not know had been lacking before. Its roots went down below her personality, the accident of her "Jeanness," down into the stuff of life itself. Often, when she and Gregory sat silent, Jean felt that this love was not theirs at all; they were the possessed, not the possessors.