CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It was a few minutes before seven when the maid showed Jean into the Allen living-room. A little girl rose from a hassock and stood looking at her quietly. Then she came forward and held out her hand.
"My mamma's not home yet, but I'm Puck."
Jean took the mite of a hand in hers. "And I am Mrs. Herrick."
"I know. I'm going to entertain you. Won't you sit down?" The brown of Gregory's eyes was softened to hazel in Puck's, but the spirit in them was his. "That's the nicest chair. My daddy likes it best." The tone was a childish treble of Margaret's, but the decision with which she pointed out that particular chair was the same with which Gregory in the end had always won over hers or Mary's suggestions. A lump rose in Jean's throat.
"Stop it," she whispered fiercely to herself. "You're in it now. You've got to see it through."
Puck had returned to the hassock, where she sat with her brows drawn, looking for a foothold in this, her first social struggle. As one grown woman to another Jean smiled and said:
"I think it's going to snow, don't you?"
Puck's face cleared and she smiled back at Jean, exactly as Gregory smiled, the light touching her eyes and then settling in her lips.
"I shouldn't be s'prised. I told Lady Jane that this morning." There was a pause, as if she were weighing a sudden decision. "Would you like to see Lady Jane? She's just back from the hospital."
"Indeed I should, if you're sure it won't hurt her."
"I don't believe it will, not for a few moments. I haven't put her to bed yet."
Safe with Lady Jane in her arms, the manner of hostess dropped away. Puck came close to Jean's chair, and turning up the filmy clothes in which Lady Jane was arrayed, pointed to a leg glaringly new and unscratched.
"It was a bad accident and she broke it, but my daddy said itmighthave killed her. She was lucky, wasn't she? My daddy took her to the hospital and they—they—imput—"
"Amputated?"
"Yes. They—ampt—they did that to the old leg and gave her a new one. But I don't let anybody touch her, except me and daddy. He loves Lady Jane too."
"I'm sure he does." Jean smoothed Lady Jane's lacy skirts with trembling fingers.
"Do youlikeher?" Puck asked it abruptly after a brief pause in which Jean fought to hold fast her belief that she had come to kill her own fear once and for all.
"I think she is one of the nicest persons I have ever met."
Puck dropped the subject and climbed to the arm of Jean's chair. "Tell us a story," she demanded, "we love stories."
Jean put her arm about the slight body and her own throbbed at the contact.
"What shall I tell you?"
"Well, I like Cinderella a whole lot and so does Lady Jane." She stopped, looked straight into Jean's eyes and added: "Mamma doesn't like me to have too many fairy stories, but my daddy tells me one when I've been good enough. Am I good enough now for Cinderella?"
"I'm sure you're quite good enough for Cinderella," and Jean plunged into the story before she yielded to the impulse to kiss Puck.
With additions of her own, highly pleasing to Puck, Jean wound the fate of Cinderella to its climax. The coach was ready and the Prince about to start on his quest, when the door opened and Margaret Allen hurried in.
"Oh, Mrs. Herrick, what must you think of me! Those impossible cross-town cars and there wasn't a taxi in sight. Did Puck give you my message?"
"Indeed she did, and she's been entertaining me beautifully. We've been——" In the nick of time Jean remembered—"having a lovely time."
Puck looked gratefully at Jean and slid from the chair.
"Now, Puck."
"Please, mamma, just till daddy comes. He'll be here awful soon now."
"Now, dear, don't tease." Margaret shook her head with gentle firmness.
"But, mother, maybe he'll let me stay to-night. He——"
"Puck, say good-night to Mrs. Herrick while I go and hurry Annie." She smiled at Jean. "You see, it really is pot-luck, including delayed dinner and family discipline."
Puck came and laid her hand in Jean's.
"It wasn't a lie, not a really lie, was it? Because wedidhave a lovely time."
"No, I don't think it was a lie."
"Next time you come, I'm going to ask my daddy first——"
But a key turned in the lock and Puck fled.
"Daddy!"
"Well, Pucklets!"
Jean knew that the man bent and lifted the child to his shoulder.
"And how goes it? Lady Jane had any fever to-day?"
Jean went quickly to the window. With the coldness of the glass against her forehead, she tried to think. The murmur of Margaret's voice directing Annie came from the kitchen. In the hall Gregory was hanging up his overcoat. Puck's high treble fluted in a string of words that conveyed nothing. Gregory had come home, back to this world of which he was the central pivot. The very air was changed, charged with a vigor that it had lacked. And she, an outsider, was closed in there with them. Jean gripped the window-shelf and waited.
"Daddy, Mrs. Herrick likes Lady Jane too."
They were almost at the door. Without turning, Jean felt the man stop, Margaret had not told him.
Jean turned and stood with her hands hanging quietly at her sides. Puck clinging to him, Gregory crossed the threshold. It was Jean who spoke first.
"Indeed I do like Lady Jane."
Jean felt that she was throwing the words to him, aiming blindly and hoping that he would catch them. For the smile with which he had listened to Lady Jane's symptoms was still in his eyes, as if consciousness had been killed at that moment.
"Of course. Doesn't everybody love Lady Jane?"
He had caught the words. Across the child they looked at each other.
"This is a surprise."
Jean felt as if they were playing a game. A thousand things that she had wanted to tell him during these weeks rushed to her mind. She felt childish and excited, like Puck. "Yes——" She had intended to say something about meeting Mrs. Allen yesterday, to enlighten Gregory as much as she could, but she found herself facing the words "Mrs. Allen" and she could not go on.
Then Margaret entered, trying to sum up in a rapid glance the measure of her success in proving to Gregory that important people like Jean Herrick thought her worth while cultivating. But there was no surprise in Gregory, and Jean felt that Margaret was annoyed. She had set her little stage and the actor wouldn't play.
"Come, Puck, have you said good-night to Mrs. Herrick?"
Puck cast one long, beseeching look at her father, but for once he failed her. Without seeing her pleading, he bent and kissed her good-night.
"Good-night, Puck; sleep tight."
Puck's shoulders straightened. There was forced politeness but no friendliness now in her eyes as she held out her hand to Jean.
"Good-night, Mrs. Herrick."
Jean wanted to drop on her knees, put her arms about Puck and explain straight into those stern, hurt eyes.
"Good-night," she said, and without another word, Puck marched out of the room.
"Come, Mrs. Herrick, I'm afraid everything is spoiled as it is." Margaret led the way to the dining-room and they sat down in a silence that Jean felt was never going to be broken. When Margaret spoke, Jean turned to her gladly.
"I've been thinking all day about what you told us yesterday and I'm getting more excited every moment. Why, it's perfectly tremendous, that idea of a woman's congress, something bigger than women have ever done before. Mrs. Herrick is planning a general woman's congress, Gregory, to deal with women's problems all over the country."
Gregory Allen did not answer. Margaret bit her lips with vexation and then hurried along to cover the breach of his rudeness.
"Won't you tell me some more about it, Mrs. Herrick? You presented so many new points, even in the Garbage Disposal, that I know I didn't get half of them clear. As I understand it, all the clubs with civic divisions already formed, will come together in a central body right away? Don't you think that's a great idea, Gregory?"
Under pretext of passing him the crackers, Margaret made a last effort to draw him in. Jean's anger vanished in pity for her. She was like a bright moth buzzing helplessly against a silent, bronze Buddha.
What thousands of meals they must have had like this, Margaret's enthusiasm pricking at his silence!
Jean had not wanted to talk about the Congress at all, but now she plunged in, before Gregory could answer.
Beyond their voices Gregory sat, catching a phrase now and then that interrupted the trend of his thought but did not turn it. Nothing was real but the fact that Jean had come back into his days. Through no action of his own, she was sitting at his table. He had closed a door of his life and Fate had opened it.
"Don't put a pergola on the Auditorium."
In the past weeks Gregory had heard Jean's last words until sometimes it had seemed to him that he would go mad. They were such ridiculous words to have marked the end.
And here she was. So close that almost without a motion he could reach and touch her hand—the firm, large hand that he could see without looking at it—crumbling the bread beside her plate. With his eyes on his own plate, he could see the outline of her throat, the even throb of the strong pulse that beat at the base. Night after night, during the last ten weeks, he had shut it away, forced it out of his vision and gone on reading, while across the table Margaret sat embroidering clothes for Puck.
He had closed and locked a door. Margaret had opened it. His brain beat in a chaos of anger and gratitude and pity for Margaret.
"Gregory, just listen to this." They had reached the dessert without Gregory's noticing that the maid had brought things or taken them away, and without his uttering a word. Margaret's patience had reached its limit, and she turned to him now with the same controlled impatience with which she disciplined Puck.
"Mrs. Herrick believes that there are spiritual forces, just as real as physical ones, like gravity and cohesion and all that, that are going to waste because nobody has tried to channel them. Isn't that right, Mrs. Herrick?"
Gregory was looking up now. Like a humming-bird Margaret flitted aside to let the stronger force sweep him into the current.
"Yes, I believe that what we call personality is almost a concrete thing. You can feel it, just as you can feel any force. It seems to me there is a lot of this vital undercurrent in women."
And Gregory felt again the hall, packed with Jewish workers, and Rachael leaning from the edge of the platform.... "How is Rachael?"
Jean wondered whether the words she was trying to grasp would ever come within reach. Margaret looked with a puzzled frown from one to the other. But she didn't care much what he said as long as he said something.
"Rachael won the strike. But it took all the strength she had."
"You see, Gregory, I am not the only woman who believes in women." Jean was grateful to Margaret for fluttering back.
"Evidently not."
"When we really get started we might have a special meeting to give the men a chance to apologize. How would that do?"
Margaret covered her triumph with flippancy, as if only by condescending to Gregory's interest could she keep him from lapsing again. Jean visioned an evening at this level and knew she could not face it. She glanced at her wrist-watch and then at Margaret.
"Do you really have to?"
"I'm afraid I do."
Jean pushed back her chair.
"I know you warned me. But won't you come soon again? I know how busy you are and so I'm not going to set a day. Just ring up any time, if you don't mind the informality. Perhaps, between us, we can convert him."
Jean moved into the living-room to get her things and Margaret followed.
Gregory stood where he was. In a few moments Jean would be gone. The maid would clear the things. He and Margaret would be sitting in their usual places in the living-room. He would pretend to read to still Margaret's comments on Jean. Jean's rumpled napkin lay beside her plate. It seemed to belong intimately to her, although it had a large embroidered "A" in the corner. It was a possession of Jean's and she had gone a long way away and left it behind. She would never come back. Gregory was positive of that. Why had Jean come? He did not know. But she would never come back.
Gregory went into the hall and took his hat and overcoat from the cupboard. Margaret's voice was insisting that Jean "ring up any time." Jean was not answering.
Gregory came back into the dining-room with his overcoat on. Margaret's surprise escaped in a swift glance, and then a smile of triumph lit her eyes. She had won after all. She had forced Gregory from his usual indifference to their guests into at least a semblance of what Margaret called "common social decency." It was true that he did not look over-gracious at the thought of escorting Jean home, but it was more than he ever did for Frances or Mabel.
"Really, there's not the slightest need. I'm going straight down——" Jean tried to remember what she had told Margaret she had to do, or whether she had told her anything.
"I'm going down anyhow. I've got some things to do at the office."
Margaret followed to the elevator and they dropped from her world together.
Outside Jean turned to Gregory.
"There is no need, really."
Her voice almost begged him not to come.
"I have to go to the office."
Without a word they began to walk, straight ahead, although that was not the direction of the Subway station. Myriads of stars looked down from a black, cold sky and the bare trees along the pavement creaked in a rising wind. A few people hurried by, but the street was almost deserted. Just before they came to the end, where it swerved into a more brightly lighted one, Gregory stopped.
"Jean, why did you come?"
His voice was harsh, and Jean felt the rigidity of his body, although they were almost a foot apart, and he did not touch her at all. She tried to turn her eyes away. If she did not look at him she could lie. But the desperate need in his drew her back.
"I had to. I had to know."
"You—didn't know?"
Jean shook her head.
"But you know, now?"
"Yes. I know."
There was a long silence in which all the tangle and pain of the last weeks were swept away. In the next block a taxi rattled to a stop before one of the huge gray stone apartments. A noisy trio got out and went laughing across the sidewalk. That was another world, with noise and confusion and aimless talk. In the world closing tighter and tighter about them there was no noise, no confusion, no aimless talk. It was still, filled with a depth of understanding beyond the reach of words.
The chauffeur slammed the door, mounted, and the taxi came swaying and rattling toward them. Gregory signaled and it lurched to a stop at the curb. With her hand still in his, Jean moved toward it. She got in and Gregory stepped in after her.
"Where to, sir?"
"Gramercy Park," Jean said quietly, and Gregory closed the door. He took her in his arms and kissed her to weakness.
"It had to be, Jean, from the beginning."
"I know." Jean drew closer in his hold.