CHAPTER TWELVE
From the chaos of chance emotions, pleasure snatched at random, Herrick settled down into the calm order of a life directed by a fixed purpose. He was going to write the novel. It was all mapped out. He and Jean had settled it through the long, peaceful afternoons of their two-weeks' honeymoon at the Portuguese ranch in the Marin Hills. Spurred by Jean's interest, Herrick had seen the thing clearly and they had worked up an excitement about it that had given Herrick an exquisite sense of power, youth, achievement. Her belief filled him with the conviction that it was all he had ever needed.
The cool little kiss that had so disappointed Herrick on the night he had asked Jean to marry him, delighted him now that he realized the almost incredible depths of Jean's shy purity and ignorance. She was like no woman he had ever known. Herrick was surprised at himself and grateful to Jean for this surprise. The most precious thing, in Herrick's scheme of life, was a new sensation and that he now had.
For the present he was content to have Jean's eyes light as he worked out some intricate detail of his hero's life, or spoke with firm purpose of the thing he meant to do next, as soon as this one "that had haunted him for years" was out of the way. The breathless way she would say: "That's great. Now go and get it down before you forget it," made him want to take her in his arms and crush her until he hurt even her strong body. But deeper than the delight of doing it, was the sensuous delight in his own restraint. He asked none of the passionate response of other women. This almost frightened surrender was enough. The other would come, and of its own accord. The light in Jean's eyes and the quick catch that came into her voice when they talked of the full years ahead, was a promise. No fire could burn on the surface like that. Secure in his untried strength, Herrick was very gentle and tender. He was going to write many fine books and he was going to tend that spark in the calm gray eyes of his wife until it blazed at his will.
Watching him, Jean was happy too. She had justified her own faith. Looking back after almost two months of marriage, Jean saw what a blind faith it had been. She had known nothing whatever of him. She had found him among people she despised. Her mother had mistrusted. She remembered the Sunday she had sat under the scrub oak and recalled her mother shrinking from her father's touch, and farther back than that the hot shame that had held her at the hungry groping of Herrick's first kiss. There was nothing of that in his touch now. He liked to draw her to the arm of his chair as she passed and rub his cheek softly against her shoulder, and when he kissed her Jean always felt that it was somehow a little rite that something very pure and deep in him was offering to her.
Jean had not given up her work on the paper, because she did not wish to be a dead weight on Herrick and had definite ideas about the economic independence of women, and because she knew that housekeeping, as she and Herrick were content to live, would take up very little of her time. They had made few changes in the studio except to transform a rubbish closet into a kitchenette and to make an extra bedroom of the storeroom at the end. Otherwise it was as bare and "monk-like" as in the days when Herrick had lived alone. Shortly after they were married, Jean had told him how like a monk's cell she had thought it, the night they wrote her first interview. Herrick had laughed, but suddenly his eyes had misted and he had drawn Jean close and held her so for a moment.
Martha Norris disliked the studio almost as much as she did the haphazard order of their lives, and for this she blamed Jean. Deep in her heart she liked Herrick no better than she ever had, nor could she yet see the Divine purpose in making him Jean's husband. But, since he was her husband, it was Jean's duty to weave about him those iron bands that Martha called "making a home." Instead, more than half the time they ate in restaurants. Jean called at the office for Herrick, or they met somewhere and ate strange food in not overclean places. Once in a while they brought chops or steaks in with them and fried these over the gas. Martha made many indirect inquiries, but she never heard of a meal that took more than fifteen minutes to cook. To buy cheap underclothes and throw them away when they wore out, as Jean now did, as well as Herrick, savored to Martha of license. It reached beyond economics and touched morality. It was not far removed from their decision not to have children. On this subject Martha and Jean had talked only once, but Martha had prayed half the night about it.
The whole manner of this life was hectic and a little illicit, but she made no comment. In the hours of lonely agony that she had spent on Jean's wedding day, she had laid out her plan, and even finding that it was the worst possible would not have swerved her a hair's breadth from it. Nothing should ever come between her and Jean. She would accept Herrick and try to like him, and this she did to the best of her ability. She listened with interest when Jean told her of the work Herrick was planning to do, and cooked all day Saturday getting the dinners she served with so little apparent effort every fourth Sunday. Jean understood and was filled with a softer love and truer sympathy for her mother than the other guessed.
Martha only knew that, as weeks slipped by, this marriage of Jean's was not weaning her big daughter away as she had expected and feared so terribly. On the contrary, it seemed to draw them more closely together in many ways. Jean often stole an hour from work and dropped in unexpectedly. Then they had tea, and if there were any of the little tea cakes that Jean loved, she always took some home for Herrick.
As for The Bunch, they seemed to have passed quite out of Jean's life. Sometimes she met one of them by accident, and twice she and Herrick had gone, at Flop's insistence, to an extra "blow-out." But Herrick had been as bored as she, and they had not gone again.
When they had been married a little over three months, Herrick began the novel. It was to be the life story of a man who had beaten his way up from just such beginnings as Herrick's, and who finally achieved fame and fortune as a great engineer. The man's name was Robert, and Jean and Herrick spoke of him as of some one who lived with them.
Every night they hurried back from dinner to "keep the appointment with Robert." From eight until ten Herrick wrote. He insisted that he could not write a line unless Jean was curled up in her favorite place on the couch. From time to time he would stop, and as soon as she became conscious that the machine was no longer clicking, Jean would look up and smile. Herrick liked to make Jean look up and smile.
Watching Herrick at work evening after evening, Jean felt that life was a very simple matter if one used one's common sense and went straight ahead doing the thing that was best and right. If people spoiled their lives and got less than they might have had, it was because they were either like The Bunch, grabbing feverishly at every passing illusion, afraid that they might miss something; or else they were like Martha, refusing and denying, which, after all, was only another kind of fear. In these days of greater nearness to her mother, Jean sometimes wondered whether Martha had not really wanted happiness so much that she had been afraid to take it.
Jean spent many happy hours listening to the click of Herrick's machine and laying down the laws of life. Fear was the thing to be afraid of. She was very clear and definite in her own mind about this. Fear was the great paralysis. But there was no need for any one to be paralyzed unless he wanted to be. Of these speculations and certainties she wrote to Pat, and Pat wrote back asking the color of Herrick's eyes and saying she was too busy to philosophize about fear or anything else and would "save all that" until she saw Jean, if that happy day ever came, now that Jean was so busy leading her double life. Pat always insisted on referring to Jean's newspaper work as one life and her "man job" as another life.
Herrick liked this and used to stop work sometimes to come and sit close to Jean on the couch and demand:
"Am I your 'man job,' Jean?"
When Jean said he was, Herrick insisted that she put the stamp of her workmanship on it, which meant that Jean was to kiss him. When she had kissed him he would go back to the machine and work steadily. He was always making up little games like that, and after Jean had gotten over the first sense of foolishness, she had come to like them.
Jean was quite honest with herself and with Herrick when she said that he was her real work. She had no delusions about the newspaper. It was much better than the library and infinitely better than teaching, but she was not a born newspaper woman. She had not again found a Dr. Mary or any one who approached her. It was only because her personal life was full in those first months that some of the interest overflowed into her routine, and Jean was able to interview dull people and whip their mediocre purpose into some kind of life. The atmosphere of the office she loathed, with its terrific rush and confusion, and was never able to work up a proper respect for the wonderful concentration of Mr. Thompson.
She often thought of Dr. Mary and her promise to go to the Hill House. Twice she asked Herrick to go with her on a Sunday afternoon, but Herrick had begged off.
"We work hard all the week, Jeany, and taking tea and settling the affairs of nations strikes me as too strenuous for our one day of rest. And, besides, I want you all to myself."
Jean was disappointed but said nothing. She decided to go and see the little doctor the first chance she had. But, somehow, the chance did not come, and finally, when six months had gone by, she was ashamed to go.