CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Fenninger dinner was a success, and Jean waited all the next morning for Gregory to 'phone. She so thoroughly expected him to, and waited so impatiently, enjoying in anticipation certain shadings which she knew would delight him, that, late in the afternoon, when the alternative of calling him occurred to her, Jean could not do it. She did not like to feel this way, and told herself that her own interest had colored her perspective. There was no need for Gregory to rush to the 'phone as soon as he came back from his week-end with his family, when she would surely see him in the evening. Nevertheless, that night at dinner, when Mary asked her if she had heard from Gregory, Jean felt a relief out of all proportion to the explanation she had forced on her own logic.
"Funny, he didn't ring up."
Jean cracked a walnut with great deliberation. "I suppose he's extra busy."
"Not so busy as all that. Jean, you can say what you like, but he was angry. I imagine, in some moods; he would be awfully touchy, and evidently he was in one that night. But he'll never be able to resist long."
Jean picked the meat carefully from the shell and ate it slowly.
"Let's string him a bit first," Mary continued, "pretend we couldn't work Fenninger and then spring it on him. He'll smile, then gurgle and finally explode like a small boy."
Jean reached for another nut. "He is like a small boy, very often."
There was a silence, while Mary chose a bunch of raisins from the nut dish and ate them thoughtfully.
"It's a damn shame," she said suddenly, apropos of nothing.
Jean rose and pushed back her chair.
"Oh, lots of things are a shame," she returned flippantly, and they went into the living-room.
But when a week had passed without hearing anything from Gregory, Mary rang up his office. He was out of town. No, they did not know when he would be back, exactly, certainly not for another three weeks. He was at the Palmer place.
"Well I'll be darned!" Dr. Mary apostrophized the tip of her cigarette, and in acquiescence, the little ash-head fell off. "That's not like him one single bit. Not even if he was called away in a hurry. I wonder what——"
She did not see Jean for two days, but when she did, asked abruptly:
"Have you heard from Gregory yet?"
"No. Have you?"
"I rang up the office. He's gone to the Palmer place, will be gone for a month."
Under pretext of laying aside her things, Jean turned away.
"I suppose they rushed things at the end, one of the whims of the idle rich."
"That's no reason for his acting like a boor."
"Of course it isn't. But then he has."
"I don't believe it. There was something——"
"Didn't I tell you men were queer?" Jean spoke without turning. "They—they don't have reasons, not good ones, for everything they do. They——"
"Fiddlesticks! Maybe they don't know their own reasons, but they have 'em. Nobody, not even a man, switches round like that without some cause. Why, he's been coming here three and four times a week, and he's enjoyed it, too. I feel as if he belonged somehow, don't you?"
Jean was looking into the Park, to the trees, a sickly green with their coating of summer dust under the arc lights. But she could see Gregory lounging in the empty chair at the other end of the window, could see him very distinctly, his nervous hands on the dark tapestry of the arms, his head tilted back.
"Yes. He does seem to go with the place."
"Are you sure you didn't do anything? He looked awfully glum that night when I came in."
"I don't know. Maybe I did, but I can't think of anything." Jean continued to stare at the dusty trees. "Anyhow, if he's the reasonable being you insist he is, he'll get over being huffy, and then we'll know."
Mary laughed. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. But I'll confess that it annoys me. Doesn't it you?"
Jean faced into the room. "No. But then I have real annoyances to contend with."
"You've been at it again with Pedloe!"
"I certainly have. He's having a fit because I'm on the committee for arranging strike relief. Of course, personally, Mrs. Herrick, my sympathies are all for the strikers, but you understand that officially——' Round and round he goes like a frightened squirrel. Honestly, it's pitiful. He can't come out openly on either side. He's just as shackled by that $6000 a year salary as a convict with a ball and chain. What do you think he told me?"
Jean forced aside the figure of Gregory and put Dr. Pedloe in his place. Holding the head of the Charity Organization firmly before her eyes, she began walking up and down.
"Almost anything, from the way you look."
"He said that this strike, it's got fifty thousand women now and it may become sympathetic before it's over and take in hundreds, was essentially a struggle of Jewish workers. That the Hebrew Relief should supplement strike benefits. And that in the cases of others, Christians, well, he did not know just what they could do, but he was very sure that the Organization could do nothing. Why? Because the roots of the thing ramify so that some of our very heaviest subscribers are in the tangle, and he doesn't dare go against them."
"What's he want you to do? Resign from the committee?"
"Yes. He hinted around for an hour, hoping I'd help him out, I suppose, but I just sat and let him fidget. So in the end he came out flat and told me he could not stand for having me officially mixed up in it and I told him that I was not officially mixed up, that it was purely a question of personal belief,—you ought to have seen him at that,—and friendship for Rachael Cohen. He got off the strike then, quick, and began to hint that in other ways I did not measure up to Organized ethics. I always knew he was furious at those talks I gave last winter, but he never said anything before. He was quite worked up to-day, however, and finally put it just about as plainly as Tom did to Rachael. You know he gave her the choice between him, a decent home in the Bronx—and her people."
"Do I understand that Dr. Pedloe——"
"Scarcely. But he did intimate that in future he would be grateful if I would attend to my duties as per Organization and nothing else. I told him I would think it over and he almost fell out of his chair. He simply can't conceive of any one throwing up a perfectly good job 'with a certain position in this community, Mrs. Herrick.'"
"Are you going to?"
Jean walked the length of the room and back without answering. Then she came and stood before the doctor.
"Mary, I'm getting pretty sick of the whole thing. It's just one tangled mass of red tape. Here we are, literally hundreds, right here in New York—and think of the whole country—intelligent men and women, doing what? We feed a huge machine with our strength and brains, and what comes out of it? What are wedoing? What evils are we curing? What are we constructing? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. We are an obsolete institution. We are of no more use than the rudimentary fifth toe of a horse. And we're not even honest about it. That's the greatest danger. We pretend to ourselves and to society, that's too lazy to look into it, that we are tremendously important. We get out reports that look as if we were safeguarding humanity from all kinds of evil and imposture, and spend thousands in keeping alive the fact that Mrs. Jones got half a ton of coal last month. If we'd only be honest about it! But we pretend we're doing good. The whole business is a pitiful survival of the days when a kind lady went round in a pony cart and gave away red flannel."
"I know it. But most of us can only go on plodding in the road that's already made. We do what we can to broaden it or make it straighter, and then we die. But if you see another, Jean, get down on your knees, like mummy, and thank God."
"I have been thinking a lot lately about something I would like to try. I suppose you and the T.B.'s have stirred some sleeping ambitions. I don't know that in the end it would set the world on fire, but at least it would have the vigor of honesty. It won't be going round in a rut worn a mile deep by others. I want—hold tight, Mary—to gather together all the strength going to waste in women's clubs and harness it."
"Good Lord! Women's Clubs!"
"Go right on, Mary; there isn't a thing you can say that I haven't thought of. I know all about the fiddling little sections for doing fiddling, unnecessary things. I know all about the bickerings and miniature storms, every drawback to getting efficient action out of our sex. But—this isourcentury. It is our first real chance in history, and I don't know but what we're measuring up pretty well. I suppose there are a dozen bigger things one could do, but for some reason I want to get in on the ground floor of this."
"You want to start something all your own."
"That's it. I want to start something. I want to organize a body, local at first, but national before we're through with it, a kind of woman's congress to deal with all national questions that concern women. If we have problems we ought to settle them, not one little handful here and another there. And if we haven't, then let's stop ranting. I don't want a national representation of clubs that have separate interests. It's—well—'congress' is just as good a name as any other."
"Jean, I'd give a good deal to be fifteen or twenty years younger. I wouldn't let you get into this alone."
Something choked in Jean's throat, and the old feeling that she had had years ago in the clinic on the Hill, of gathering courage from this white-haired woman, swept over her.
"Sometimes, Mary, I feel as if all the women in the world, who can't get out somehow, were behind me, pushing me on."
Mary reached both hands to Jean's shoulders. "They are, Jeany—I believe they are."
"And sometimes, Mary, I wish to Heaven they'd let me alone."
With a laugh, Dr. Mary sank back into her chair.
"Well, they won't. Now, tell me all about it. It's got the T.B.'s beaten a mile."
"Not to-night. This is one of their pushing days, and I feel as if they had me just about over the edge. I'm all in, and anyhow, it's pretty vague yet."
So they smoked and talked of other things, but not again of Gregory nor why he had gone without a word.
It was close on twelve when Jean let herself into the apartment, and saw the light go suddenly out under Martha's door at the end of the hall. Jean tiptoed to the door and opened it.
"Mummy, I saw you do it this time."
"Well, dear, if I can't sleep, I didn't know that I was not allowed to read."
"Not without glasses. Did you go to the oculist's to-day?" Jean sat down on the side of the bed.
"I didn't have time to-day. I'll go to-morrow."
In the shaft of moonlight, Martha looked very small and frail. Jean bent and kissed her. "Please, mummy, don't put it off any longer. You do need them."
"Yes, dear. I'll go to-morrow. I really will. I promise."
It was not often that Jean came and sat on the edge of the bed, and it made Martha happy. She wanted to draw Jean down as if she were a little girl again, only she knew that Jean hated more emotion than the mood called for; so she only patted Jean's hands and smiled.
But to-night Jean would not have objected. She was tired to the point of being glad to feel the worn fingers on her own. For all the way home in the train, back and forth behind the plans for the congress, which the quarrel with Pedloe and Mary's faith had brought sharply to the foreground of her thoughts, had moved the thought of Gregory.
Why had he gone like that? Gone for weeks. What had it to do with the strange mood of the night he had sat so silent, at the window? Why had he looked at her like that when he had said: "Well?" Why had he said so strangely: "No, in that case, I can't."
"You're tired, dear."
"Yes. I guess I am. It's been a busy day and I had one of my periodic fights with Pedloe. Some day he's going to fire me, or I'm going to resign, and he'll be the most astonished thing alive."
"Remember, dear, once you thought this the most wonderful work in the world."
"I know. But I've outgrown it. It's such a useless round. It doesn't get anywhere."
Martha stroked Jean's fingers. "I wouldn't do anything hasty, if I were you. Lots of things straighten out if you give them time."
Jean smiled. "You don't know Brother Pedloe, mummy; a million years wouldn't straighten out the kinks in his soul. Besides, I guess he fits well enough. It's the whole institution that's worn out—a relic of twenty years ago. I feel as if I were in prison."
"Well, don't make any change hastily. Wait until you see clearly. You want things to come so quickly, Jean, and you want them so hard."
"I know." Jean slipped from the bed and leaned over the quiet face. "But not to-night, mummy. I want nothing in the world but my own comfortable bed."
Martha looked anxiously at her. "Pat was over this afternoon, to see whether you were dead or alive. She says she doesn't suppose she'll ever see you again until the building's up."
"I don't suppose she will."
"She's so proud of the baby, Jean, and he is a dear. Don't you think you could take an hour or two and run over? She would be so pleased. Pat loves you, Jean."
"I'll try. Maybe. Good-night, dear, and don't forget to wake me. Seven and not a quarter past. You will, won't you?"
"Yes, dear. Good-night. And try not to think of work, but go straight to sleep."
Jean promised and shut the door.
But the weight of Martha's unshakeable patience, of Pat's efficiency and unswerving love, of Gregory's life beyond her knowledge, all this settled security, this sureness of others, oppressed her, so that, even between cool sheets, the ordered round of daily intercourse seemed a difficult and intricate maneuvering among unknown quantities.
Why had Gregory gone like that?