CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jean never knew by what power she left the train at the right station, nor how she sat as usual for a few moments on Martha's bed and told her of the meeting. She had no memory of kissing Martha good-night nor coming to her own room.
But she must have done these things, because another day was creeping out of the east, and she still sat by the window, trying to think, but the motive power of her brain was dead. There was no explanation, no reason, no wonder at it. Analysis and explanation were the pipings of crickets, extinguished in a crash of thunder. There was only the thing itself. She loved Gregory Allen with a love that she had not known existed. It was a terrific wave, crushing upon her from the outside. It was so far beyond her will or control, that the thought of beating it back was drowned in its own flood.
All her life led to the moment when she had stood in the dark alone with him and been afraid. All her life she had been walking blindfolded to this point of blazing light. It reached back to the days when she had longed so passionately for something to happen, for something to smash the sordid monotony of dutiful acceptance. It held all the beauty to which she had clung so desperately. It had been the driving power of the wind over the hills, the lashing of the rain, the sparkle of the sun on the Bay. It had whispered its reality in the moving leaves, called loudly in the wash of the waves on the sand. It had always been there close, all through her lonely childhood, the dreary years of college, and in those long days in the open with Herrick. It had come close in the wrapping fog and the crackle of the beach fires in the little coves where she and Herrick had talked for hours with dead poets.
Jean buried her face in her hands. For in the dawn, creeping up the river, Herrick was coming toward her. In the motionless void between two days, he stood looking at her. And Jean knew that behind the fear that had dragged her to the gas-bracket above the bamboo table was the longing for Gregory's arms about her.
When the tips of the trees lit to gold, Jean rose and crept into bed.
It was almost three o'clock when Gregory let himself into the apartment, and the air of the place, closed for weeks, rushed at him as if it had been waiting. With the force of a physical blow it shattered the peace he had won in the long battle he had fought, alone in his office, after leaving Jean. He opened the windows slowly. Then he came back again into the living-room and the weary round began again.
He wanted Jean with the pent-up longing of years. He wanted her with a need from which there was no escape. He had always wanted her, from the first moment when he had come late to the appointment and Jean had explained the scheme to him in her brisk, business-like fashion. He had wanted her all through the summer, through every moment of it. Through the long talks alone, while Mary studied or slept in the room beyond. Through every gay dinner, and boring interminable week-end. He had wanted her desperately when he ran away to the Palmer place. And his need had thrust almost through his consciousness during those interminable hours coming back to her.
He had wanted her as she crossed the office only a few hours before, and he had wanted her terribly as she leaned across the table, the faith in her clear eyes flicking to life all the dreams that life with Margaret had killed.
And up in the reeking blackness shutting them in alone together, high in the air, with Jean across the room, blocked faintly in that same blackness, he had wanted her. And he had resisted. Against the current dragging him to the center of life, he had clung to his silly little rock of—what? No thought of Margaret had entered his mind. No fear or convention. Neither custom nor social rule had anything to do with this. Of what had he been afraid?
Gregory's forehead was damp, and he slumped low in his chair. He might have held her in his arms, crushed her resistance, kissed her to the ease of that gnawing hunger within.... What if she had resisted?... And she might not have resisted. She was no girl of eighteen, desired for the first time. She was a woman. She had been married, married to a libertine.
"Good God!" Gregory jumped to his feet. "I am rotten, rotten clear through."
But the pictures would not go. Their vividness tortured Gregory to motion and until dawn he walked a beaten path through the living-room, across the dining-room, back to the living-room through the hall. At five o'clock he threw himself on the couch.
He slept heavily until eight, then took a cold bath and prepared some coffee. He was at the office before nine. The desk was piled with a month's accumulation that had gotten beyond Benson, and Gregory was grateful that it had. He worked through without a break until four o'clock. Then he segregated the most pressing business, packed his portfolio and caught the Long Island Express.
Puck came hurtling down the path, screaming: "Daddy! My Daddy!" Margaret came, too, not hurriedly, but with just the right degree of welcome and surprise in her eyes. Her cool lips took the meaningless kiss that still passed between them on all their meetings and partings, for, with the death of all reality, they had grown wonderfully careful of these insincerities. She led the way to the house, while Puck capered beside him, and they had an early dinner.
Later, Gregory lit his pipe and wandered through the woods in the dusk with Puck, but often Puck jerked his hand and cried impatiently:
"Daddy, aren't you listening to Lady Jane?"
Gregory stayed until the following Wednesday. When he went back, Margaret and Puck went, too.