CHAPTER TWO
As Jean had predicted, the summer was a hard one. Martha Norris insisted on taking summer students to board, closing every argument against it with gentle insistence on her own preference.
"If you really want me to be happy, Jean, let me manage the house as long as I can."
That she might some day be physically dependent on others was the one fear that her deepest prayers had not been able to out-root. So Jean yielded.
All summer the house was crowded. The long, hot days were followed by long, monotonous evenings, filled with the complacent mediocrity of the fat Tom, the whinings of the ill-trained Tommykins, the nagging of Elsie.
The boarders ate hurriedly and had no topics of conversation except the schools from which they came and the courses they were taking. For the most part they were women past middle age, all driven by necessity of one kind or another, always striving to get as much for as little as possible. They seemed to Jean to have been cheated of something and to be resentful, some fiercely and some in a timid way that was pitiful. Most of them thoroughly hated their work, which they defended in high-sounding phrases against the attacks of outsiders, and tore to pieces among themselves.
When Jean hoped she would never have to teach, they looked at her venomously and said it was a wonderful work for which few were naturally fitted. They were like wax-works, most of them, rather scarred and worn, wound up and kept going by the fear of a younger generation, a newer output from the educational factories, who might usurp their places.
The only bright spot was the translation with Professor Renshaw. Jean buried herself for hours in the library and even succeeded sometimes in escaping dinner on the ground that it was too far to go home and back again in the evening.
But as the weeks passed and the work neared completion, she found it difficult to keep the hope that every letter from Pat held out:
"Something will happen. It must. You see, Horace will rescue you yet."
"Tell him to hurry," Jean wrote back toward the end of August. "I feel the walls of an ungraded country school closing about me."
With her mother, Jean never discussed the subject, for she knew that every night, to the long list of blessings Martha enumerated and the few favors she asked of Heaven, was added a petition that "a way would be opened up to Jean." It made Jean furious to be prayed over and sometimes she felt that having to teach would be almost compensated by proving the inefficacy of prayer.
But when the release came, Jean forgot her anger, swooped down upon Martha in the kitchen, took the paring knife from her hands, and waltzed her mother about the room.
"Now, mummy, you've simplygotto stop. Icannotdivulge the greatest news of the age while you pick worms out of an apple."
"There aren't any worms in these. I made Joe take those others back and change them. It was robbery. Well, dear, what is it?"
"Mummy, you've got to promise to be excited. I'm just about ready to go up in smoke."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. I'd tell the person I wanted to excite what it was about. Did Dr. Renshaw double the check?"
"Better. Heaps."
"He's got more translation. I knew——"
"Oceans better than that."
"Well, I'm sure——" The clock struck five. Martha removed Jean's arms gently but firmly from her shoulders and turned back to the table.
Jean laughed. "I suppose I shall have to let you enjoy it in your own way. Go on and finish. Then wash your hands and sit down on the hardest, most uncomfortable chair and I'll tell you."
"Don't be silly, dear. It doesn't matter what it is, I shall have to have dinner on time to-night, won't I?"
"Yes, I suppose the animals would have to be fed even if the ark was sinking."
Jean sat on the edge of the table and watched her mother trim the pie edges, with sure, quick strokes and her whole attention. When Martha closed the oven door, she glanced at the clock to be sure of the moment. Before the astonishing news that Jean was about to divulge, the pies might be forgotten. Jean laughed aloud.
"Now." Martha smiled as she took the chair Jean indicated. "The court is in session."
"Well," began Jean, "I took that last lot up and he looked it through in that dead-fish fashion of his without a word. He always does, sits there and goggles as if he were just going to pounce on a mistake, and all the time I know it's all right. I didn't expect him to say anything nice, but I thought he might give me an opening and I had my little speech all ready. 'If this has been satisfactory,' et cetera, but I knew if he didn't say anything at all I could never get started. He freezes me clear through."
"The world wasn't made in a day, Jean."
"I know that. But I never could see why. If I could do a miracle at all, I'd have done a whopper."
Her mother's eyes filled with tears and Jean jumped down and knelt beside her.
"I'm sorry, mummy. I didn't mean to hurt you. It was cheap. Only that was such an endless ten minutes until he took a bundle of letters out of his pocket. He said he had something he thought I might be interested in, and then that human fossil actually pawed over those papers three distinct times and grunted and shook his head and wondered whether he'd lost it and began all over again while I stood wondering."
"That seems the usual method of announcing news among scholars." A sly smile twinkled in Martha's eyes.
"But honestly I nearly died. I was trembling like a leaf."
"Jean!"
"Worse. Shaking with ague. Then right out of the bundle he'd looked through a million times, he drew a letter and handed it over. The Mercantile Library in San Francisco wants a cataloguer and asks him if he knows one. The head librarian is a friend of his and he's recommended me. Do you hear, mummy Norris? I've got a job, got ajob."
For a moment Martha did not answer. She sat with her head bent and her tired hands at rest in her lap. Then she looked up and smiled.
"When do you begin?"
"I'm going over to see about it to-morrow."
"You're not absolutely sure?"
"Yes, I am. I'm going to be sure to-night even if I never get it."
"Now, Jean. You——"
"Don't, mummy, please don't. Don't tell me any more about patience and the right thing coming. I've got to get this or I'll die."
"It takes a lot to kill." Martha spoke quietly, and getting up, went over to the oven.
Jean felt as if a spring inside her had cracked and wondered why it was always so when she tried to talk to her mother. Outwardly Martha Norris was the least emotional person in the world but she managed to extract a lot of it from those near her. The most casual conversation usually ended in a tensity out of all proportion to its importance and left Jean with a sense of the futility of trying to make things different.
It was with a distinct effort that Jean put her arms again about her mother.
"Now, mummy, I am going to get it. What's more, I'm going to move you over to the city, into a place that won't be big enough for you to have any duty to any relative of anybody's. So there. Now kiss me, like a nice, obedient mother should."
Martha smiled, and standing on her tiptoes kissed her big daughter. Jean went whistling from the room.
When she had gone Martha Norris closed her eyes for a moment and a look of perfect faith and devotion flooded her. In such moments she was beautiful, like some frail saint, glowing with the fire of self-surrender, strengthened beyond the power of human understanding. But no human being had ever seen Martha alone with her God.
The next morning Jean left the house early. The sun touched the Bay to millions of glittering points, and beyond it, wrapped in a haze of smoke and coming heat, the waiting city sprawled on her hills. Jean could feel it, a magnet drawing her and all these strangers massed together on the sunny deck.
As the boat neared the dock she went and stood in the stern and looked back at the little town, a mere spot at the base of the Berkeley hills. In her very definite sense of escape there was a touch of sadness. She was like a person who, having escaped from a terrible catastrophe, looks back from a point of safety and mingles with his sincere gratitude, a regret for some small souvenir he has been unable to take with him. She thought of Elsie in her dragging kimono waiting on Tom at breakfast; of the dead, habitual kiss they would exchange when he started to look for the job he never found; of Tommykins, bewildered in his disordered world of alternate slapping and petting. And of her mother, trotting about in her endless routine. She was sorry for them all.
Waiting in the outer office of the Chief Librarian, Jean felt the Future coming towards her, stepping swiftly through the stillness, a stillness vibrant with accomplished purpose, the secure accomplishment of many thousands of books. So sharp was the feeling that, when at last footsteps moved behind the door marked "Private," Jean rose as if about to face a mysterious force, made suddenly material for her understanding.
"This is Miss Norris?"
The Chief Librarian stood before her. He was tall and thin and gray, with long bony hands that looked as if they would always be cold. He was like a new chisel, straight and narrow and sharp-edged. He waved Jean back to her seat and took one himself. Then he sat, staring beyond her, as if his progress through the silent realms of spirit had been rudely halted by this collision with a corporeal body.
"You've done library work before?" The question came so unexpectedly that Jean started.
"No." The monosyllable reverberated through the ordered stillness. She felt as if she had thrown a stone at the Chief Librarian.
"Um." In the mental isolation of his daily life, this misfortune arrested his pity. "I believe you did some Latin translation for Dr. Renshaw?"
"Yes, the Odes of Horace."
"Promising—quite. But of course Horace is not library work." The tone conveyed that this was not Horace's fault, however. "Still, in this work you will find, Miss Norris, that every scrap of human knowledge is profitable. I might almost say necessary. It is its wonderful variety, roots in all fields, that makes our work so interesting."
"It must."
"Exactly. Now the question is, Miss Norris, would you be willing to begin at the bottom, sorting? Cataloguing comes next, and then——" But as if fearing that he was being carried away in an excess of enthusiasm, he qualified. "Of course that is if we find it mutually satisfactory."
"I should be willing to begin anywhere. And I have done a little sorting and cataloguing. The library I used for Horace was in something of a mess, and I had to straighten it out before I could begin."
"Exactly. But you will understand, Miss Norris, that no part of our library is in a mess." The shadow of a smile touched his lips and was gone. It was as if a cosmic joke, millions of miles off, had been softly whispered to him. "And now, as I have a very busy morning, I will hand you over to my assistant, Miss MacFarland."
He touched an electric button in the wall. With no preliminary sound the outer door opened.
"Miss MacFarland, this is Miss Norris, recommended by Dr. Renshaw. She will help at first with the new consignment."
His tone admitted Miss MacFarland to the depths of his official being. She nodded.
"Will you come with me?"
Without waiting for Jean to answer she began moving noiselessly away on her broad, rubber-soled shoes. She was very slight and gave an effect of deep brownness. She wore a brown serge skirt and a brown silk waist with a brown Scotch pebble pin. She had brown eyes that looked muddy through the thick, myopic glasses, and a braid of dank, brown hair framed her narrow face.
Through the big reading room, empty at this hour, Jean followed, down a rear stairway, along a narrow cemented hall into a storeroom, dim with a ground-glass window protected by an iron grating. Miss MacFarland indicated the great number of packing cases by a nod as she wound her way among them to a farther door. She might have been a guide in the underworld leading the latest spirit to its appointed task. She opened a door, and a sudden glare of morning sunshine filled the place.
"This is the room you will use for the present."
There were two large windows open now on a tiny strip of lawn that ran along this side of the building. A redwood table and bench took up one end of the room. There was nothing else in it except six huge packing cases.
"I'll send you down an apron and sleeve protectors and have Timothy unpack the cases."
She looked about to make sure she had forgotten nothing, and moved toward the door.
"Is there any special rotation you want the cases opened in?"
Jean asked it to pretend experience more than from any idea of its mattering. But she saw by the expression behind the thick glasses that it did make a difference and that Miss MacFarland had forgotten to tell her.
"I was going to tell Timothy, but perhaps I had better mark them."
From the pocket of her black apron she drew a piece of red chalk.
"The political economies are needed in a hurry and they are in this crate. Then the histories, natural science, miscellaneous, fiction and poetry. If you get into difficulties you can telephone up."
When she had gone Jean stood for a moment just where she was.
"Oh Patsy, a corpse has a sense of humor compared to a librarian! But it's nine a week."