CHAPTER TWENTY
A few moments before three-thirty the next afternoon Jean tidied her desk, settled Miss Grimes with enough work for the rest of the day, and drew out some notes she had made for Gregory Allen.
At a quarter to four she laid the notes aside and looked at the clock. At four she verified the time by the big clock in the Metropolitan Tower.
"Rather rude, to say the least."
At four-thirty she rose impatiently, moved to the outer office, changed her mind and came back again to her desk.
"It costs a nickel and takes two minutes to 'phone. If he's that kind of a person, I don't want him mixed up in the thing at all. He needn't have answered my note if he isn't interested."
Jean looked over the notes again, and when she laid them aside for the second time it was almost five.
"Well, I'll be darned. If——"
The outer door opened, a man's voice asked for Mrs. Herrick and Josephine Grimes appeared. He stood close behind her. Without waiting to hear whether he was to be received, he stepped into the room.
"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, but I hope it hasn't been too inconvenient." The tone implied, however, that it would not trouble him very much if it had.
Jean wanted to say that it had been very inconvenient, but in view of the fact that he had arrived, she said she was glad he had not been detained altogether and sat down again at the desk. Gregory Allen took the chair opposite and stretched out his feet, as if he were used to making himself as comfortable as he could. He was a tall man, about forty, with thick, dry, brown hair, full of reddish lights, and red-brown eyes. His face and neck and hands were tanned as if he were a great deal in the open, and the hands were long, bony and nervous. They seemed to express something hidden deep in the rather slouchy figure, under the ready-made suit that looked rumpled, although Jean saw that it was really quite new. His shoes were not well shined and his tie did not strike the note of the tanned skin and reddish hair.
He made no further explanation of why he had been detained and sat silent, waiting for Jean to begin. Jean wished he would say something to give her a better clew to his mental makeup, but as he didn't she plunged in.
"I don't know, Mr. Allen, how much you know about conditions among the poor, or whether you are specially interested in them. I think you would rather have to be, to take any joy in this work at all, there are so many restrictions."
Jean spoke as if she were handling an obstinate committee member, and Gregory Allen smiled behind his eyes. But the smile did not come through. Accustomed to classifying people in terms of architecture, he decided that Jean was like a tower, an old Roman tower, rugged, firm on its base, built for a purpose and for the accomplishment of it. Whatever charm there might be would come from perfect accord between form and purpose. He nodded.
"Not so much a restriction in finances," Jean went on, "but restrictions imposed by the condition of the tenants. You see, the plan is this: thousands of people, right here in Manhattan, die yearly for lack of air and sunlight. Literally thousands of incipient cases of tuberculosis, and those in the earlier stages, die because of their living conditions, die needlessly. There is all the sunlight and air in the universe right here. It is only a question of being able to get it."
Jean paused, but Gregory Allen said nothing. He did not know how many people died in New York for need of air and sun, but now that he thought of it, supposed quite a number. Jean seemed very positive about it, and he saw no reason to comment.
Jean felt like shaking him, and, turning slightly away, made aimless lines on the desk blotter as she continued.
"There is also a lot of vacant land, doing no good to anybody, just where we want it. The problem is to get it, but, of course, you would not be concerned with that, but only to put up a building for the sole use of families in which there is any one either with, or threatened with, tuberculosis. I don't want a contractor who thinks that anything is good enough for the poor. And I don't want an architect who doesn't grasp the spirit of it, either."
He might just as well get the situation straight to begin with.
Gregory Allen wondered whether Jean always enunciated her purposes so emphatically, rather as if she were firing small shot at a target. She was decidedly like a Roman tower, part of a fortification. Amplifying his own figure, he scarcely noticed Jean's pause for his comment, nor did he notice the frown as she continued.
"And in addition to this, the building must be as beautiful as it can be made, beautiful even to details that may seem finicky, in tone and line and tint. These people, besides being stricken in body, have been cramped in soul, too, most of them, until they don't know there is any beauty in the world. Or, worse, they don't believe that it is for them. As one woman told me, not long ago: 'there ain't no free beauty nowhere.' Well, we are going to give it to them, all we can possibly give. It will take a lot of time and there's not a cent in it. It will lead to nothing else. It is just a gift, the most beautiful gift you can make, within the bounds of our funds."
"What are the bounds?"
"I don't know yet."
A smile darted from Gregory Allen's eyes to his lips, and settled there. During his student days at the Beaux Arts, a grisette had told Gregory that his smile flitted like "un petit oiseau" over his face and then flew out of his mouth. Jean did not call it "a little bird" but she liked it.
"Of course we can't go ahead without rime or reason, but we don't have to stick too close to reason either. They are to be as beautiful as possible, allowing for reductions if we don't raise quite as much as we hope, and extension if we do. That's possible, isn't it?"
"Certainly. I take it there is to be a minimum of beauty below which you will not sink, but you're going to leave the roof off and soar as high as you can."
"Exactly." Jean laughed, and Gregory added a ray of sun slanting across the tower. There was a pause. Was he interested, or wasn't he?
"Well," she demanded at last, "does it appeal?"
Gregory Allen looked at her sharply. He wondered whether, sometimes, she did not pose a little. If he had not been interested by Jean's first note he would not have come, would not have answered the note, probably.
"Of course. That's why I came, to talk over the details. I made a hurried sketch after your note, just a ground floor plan, but I don't think now it will do." He drew a blue-print from his pocket and smoothed it on the desk. "This, followed out, would give plenty of light and sunshine, but there wouldn't be much beauty about it."
There she had sat wondering why he had come, and all the time he had this blue-print in his pocket!
"He's too simple to be out alone, or else a dyed-in-the-wool egotist who expects every one to read his thoughts."
Jean was still concerned with the problem as she bent over the plan, following the line of Gregory's pencil while he explained.
"You see, it's not much more than an improved tenement, this way, a well-ventilated, all-outside-rooms box." He tore the print across and threw the pieces into the waste-basket. "I'll work up something else and let you know as soon as——"
The door opened and Dr. Mary rushed in.
"Found it, the only place in New York worth living in. Got it, moved into it, maid goes with the furnishings, and dinner's almost ready. For Heaven's sake, hurry up!"
Then Gregory Allen came into range of the doctor's near-sighted eyes, and she stopped.
"Mary, let me present Gregory Allen, who is going to draw plans for the T.B.'s. Mr. Allen, Dr. MacLean."
Dr. Mary offered both hands. "One's for manners, the other for gratitude."
"Mary, you couldn't possibly have found an apartment in one day." Jean turned to Gregory. "Dr. MacLean only arrived from California yesterday. She has never lived in New York and didn't know what part of town she wanted."
"Can't be done. Impossible. I know. Once every three years my wife finds our apartment impossible and we house hunt."
Gregory smiled hispetit oiseausmile and Dr. Mary accepted him on the spot.
"All right. Then I include you in this evening's dinner. Come and see for yourself. Can you?"
"I shall be delighted."
Dr. Mary in the lead, they left the office.
Gregory felt as if he were on a mischievous adventure.