Philip May stepped out of his peculiar social fiasco into the work of the next day. Released from his vain, guarded intimacy with the Otises, unfettered by any other distracting personal ties, he was free to apply all his thought and strength to the chosen field in which he felt himself master. And making his rounds from patient to patient, from hospital to office, often passing half the night in the operating-room, there was little left to recall him to the memory or regret of a trivial social defeat, save the figure of a girl passing him with averted gaze, and the furrow-browed old man who had drawn so close to him in his social seclusion that his bearing might have been called tenderness in a more demonstrative nature. His total aloofness from club and drawing-room life soon carried the story of his derided self-valuation beyond the gabble and concern of current gossip.
Even Jean Willard, after her first fierce sobbing regret had spent itself, striving to shrug down the painful memory of her impetuous part in it, asked herself wearily what it would matter—to anyone—a hundred years hence! Not much, truly. Infinity is wide and the gods do exquisitely fine work. But to Jean—then—much. It is never a question of a hundred years, or months, or weeks, or days hence—it is always a question of now, of to-day, with its storm and stress, its laughter and tears, its mistakes and achievements, its hopes and despairs. That alone concerns us. We cannot shift our burdens and responsibilities with a shrug. To earnest minds like Jean Willard’s, there is no such thing as resignation or indifference. Humanity climbs upward with a groan, and the history of individuals, as of nations, is the record of a few passionate moments of striving—of love or hate, of defeat or victory.
Who, questioned Jean, in her self-scourging, had constituted her his judge? Who was she that she had dared to hold the mirror to his face? In her bitter self-prosecution she forgot her instigating excuses; in trying to be just, she beat herself into seeing through his eyes. But quite oblivious to her mental captivity or the loss of her old independence of opinion, she began to think, to speak, through Philip May’s intuitively surmised tastes and distastes. Her friends found her changed, intolerant, hypercritical. She thought she was piercing through the familiar face of things down to their truth in relation to the whole world—and growing sadder in her knowledge. The dream being knocked from under her, the plunge into reality left her in that state of despairing pessimism common to all young people until they get their bearings, when they find that another view is never the whole view.
Everything and everybody within her range of observation, from the idiosyncrasies of her nearest to those of the scarcely noticeable Jewish passer-by, revealed another justifiable peg to hand Philip’s social apostasy upon. Nothing was too sacred or too low to escape her half-frightened scrutiny—and presently she found herself contorted into Philip May’s ally, a spy to all her own and her friends’ movements and motives. Formerly, she told herself cynically, she saw as through a glass—rosily; now, face to face. And she called it Revelation. But there was one phase of her stand which she fully appreciated. Where Philip May had found his excuse for withdrawal, she had found only another claim upon her loyalty. Philip May had taken a snap-shot at the unattractive face turned up to him, and looked away from it with frank and frigid disfavor. But the snap-shot being passed on to Jean, though she recognized the lineaments, she stood immovable beside it, passing over it her tender, protecting hand.
“I hate him,” she told herself when in this attitude of defiance.
But closer, more poignant than these impersonal inconsistencies battling within her, was the memory of his voice whispering to her across the night. It hushed all her old high voices, it crushed through the idealist to her imperfect humanity, it drew her as the pole the star, it made all else as the writing in the sand, and she followed, followed—till, setting her teeth in imagination, she saw the possible chivalrous motive behind his act, and turned intolerantly from its insufferable suggestion.
Moreover, her most strenuous effort to dismiss him from thought was wasted through the nature of their propinquity. If, in passing from his sight that night, she had put him out of her life, she might have laid the ghost of the memory. This, however, was denied her. Day after day they met on the doorstep as both were coming in or going out, day after day their eyes might have met as he stepped from his carriage and she came out of her front door. But, as if by mutual consent, they avoided the visual encounter, though Jean knew distinctly enough that his eyes had held her. And there was a charm of misery about these avoided encounters, which she, in another inconsistency, realized with relentless self-contempt. Though she gave herself up to the gospel of constant occupation, she could not separate herself from warring thought of him. The very walls of the house next door held a sinister attraction for her, as though his association with them had imbued them with something of his personality.
But the interior of the walls knew her no more—she had effectually barred herself out of them. The two old men, her friends, were cognizant of this, each in his own degree. Her uncle viewed her changed attitude with stern sadness, but in Joseph May’s silent heart a bitter animosity had arisen against the girl. He knew the kernel of justice within that garbled newspaper jeer, but how could she have known? And since this alone, this shadow of an alien hand, had been enough for her to condemn—then enough of her! He held her at arm’s length now, the girl who had been the darling of those long since forsaken hopes. In the beginning Jean had striven to bridge over the hiatus in her attentions by an added warmth of tenderness when they met, but, with a curious dignity of reticence, Joseph May chilled her into a stranger. He stood so close to his son in his part-deliberate, part-inevitable retirement, that a contemptuous thought in the latter’s direction included the old man in its sting. He declined to accompany them on their summer trip through the beautiful southern part of the State, although Daniel reminded him that he was breaking a promise.
“What I shall do there?” he asked, with a shrug. “I did enough traveling when I had to, with my pack on—.” The father of his son interrupted the reminiscence.
Upon the return of the Willards, the former relations between the two old friends were resumed, and almost nightly they might have been seen taking their stroll in the lingering light of the lovely summer evenings, sometimes accompanied by the slender girl, who often willfully shut her eyes to Joseph’s uncompromising distance of manner, conducting herself as though nothing had ever come between them. Thus a woman loiters on between the seen and the unseen, though only the seen, unbroken line is called her life.
That the flashing confusion of that Passover evening had left an ineffaceable impression in another conscience, Jean discovered one golden morning in early September while out shopping with Laura Brookman. They had about completed some order at Vickery’s when the salesman, knowing their artistic proclivities, asked them to step for a minute into the little picture-gallery at the back of the shop.
“Mr. Stephen Forrest has a few canvases on exhibition, and I think his work will interest you,” he said. “He is going abroad next week, and it’s a pleasure to see him at last getting the appreciation he deserves. Most of the pictures have been sold.” He ushered them into the soft glow of light, and left them.
There were not many, and all were studies of heads, but the peculiar power of character-insight displayed was smiting. Jean, lost in unbiased admiration before a subtle Chinese face, was abruptly dragged from her place by a compelling hand upon her arm.
“Come over here,” murmured Mrs. Brookman, excitedly, leading her before a tiny painting almost lost among the others. “When did you sit—or stand—for this? What does that expression mean?”
Jean stood before the proud, sad protest of her own face as Stephen Forrest’s inward light had seen fit to transfer her.
“What are you defying—what is it called? I must have that,” Laura declared, enthusiastically. “It is you in one of your most charming, unapproachable phases. I wonder if it is sold.”
“The picture is not for sale,” said a sudden cool, low voice behind them. Jean, recognizing it at once, did not turn, but Laura veered eagerly upon the delicate-visaged artist standing near.
“Are you sure?” she asked, doubtingly.
“Quite. It is mine.”
“Do you—then you can tell me what it is called?”
“‘The Jewess.’”
“Oh!” Laura’s eyes scanned it again with lightening vision. “And the attitude—I was wondering what she was defying.”
“Prejudice.”
“Ah!” Laura raised her lorgnon again.
Jean turned swiftly about. “I congratulate you,” she said, abruptly.
The blood surged to his brow. “For this?” he pleaded, indistinctly, designating the picture before them.
“I thank you for that. I congratulate you on the others. I wish you all success. Are you coming, Laura?”
Mrs. Brookman followed her into the street.
“Was that Stephen Forrest?” she asked, curiously, as they turned westward.
“Yes.”
“When did you pose for him—whose idea was it? Tell me about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It was done from memory.”
“How curt you are! What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing—only I’m dead tired.”
“Jean—I mean, perhaps we had better take the car.”
“No. You said you wanted to walk—to keep your figure within decent dimensions.” Her eyes traveled over her friend’s well-corseted form. “How stiffly you lace yourself in,” she observed, absently, as they walked on at a rapid pace.
“I haven’t your willowy ease, dear, I know, and I have to keep my weight and my hips down—or your eyes will be calling me ‘Jewess,’ from another light.”
Jean laughed shortly.
Laura stole a swift glance at her.
“What is the matter with you, Jean?” she begged, finally. “You have grown so moody of late I scarcely recognize you.”
Jean forgot to answer.
“Dear, I want to ask you something,” Mrs. Brookman began presently, a ring of stubborn purpose in her voice.
“Ask away, Laura.”
“You met a man at my house one night—”
“And that’s all.”
“No, it isn’t. And now that I’ve begun, you’re not going to silence me with your ‘that’s all’—it is difficult enough broaching a subject of this kind with you. What are you going to do with Theodore Hart? Oh, wouldn’t I like to shake you with that indifferent look on your face!”
“How can you feel so violent and talk so much—on such a warm day?”
“Very well. If you can no longer be direct with me—”
“I told you—I met a man at your house, and that’s all.”
“Not according to his view. What do you object to in him?”
“Him.”
“What can you see against him?”
“His face.”
“Oh, I know he’s not Apollo, but you have managed to care for some homelier people in your life—Paul Stein, for instance.”
“Paul is beautiful—to me. Don’t put his face in the same category with Theodore Hart’s.”
“What is so repugnant to you in Theodore Hart’s face?”
“The past.”
“Bosh! Every man has a past or two. Were you raised in a nunnery?”
“No. A man—my uncle, you know, raised me.”
“Too high, sweet, for comfort. And you know the best posterity is being made now from the power of riches. That is where the philosophy—the religion of mammonism comes in.”101
“Do you think so?”
“Great God, there you persist—”
“Don’t be so exaggerated in your exclamations; it’s blasphemous to begin with, and dreadfully Jewish to end with.”
Mrs. Brookman regarded the girl with a smile of curiosity. “Do you know you have said such things to me very often lately? What is it? Another effect of Philip May’s ridiculous act of disdain?”
Silence gathered around Jean’s heart and lips.
“You look exactly like that picture now. But to come back to our discussion. Leaving out what you choose to call his past, will you admit his desirability from every other point of view?”
“According to society’s valuation—yes.”
“Don’t forget that his connections are irreproachable, and in the matter of connections, esthetically speaking, a Jew or Jewess generally takes risks when she marries. And do you know the power of great wealth?”
“I have never tested it—I can imagine it, however. I admit it is a very tempting vision.”
“At last we come to the point. And you know it is yours—for a word.”
Jean slowly turned her eyes upon her friend. There was something so quietly hopeless in her gaze that the older woman felt the dew spring to her brow. “So you too are an advocate of these legalized prostitutions,” the girl said, wearily.
Mrs. Brookman’s burning cheek turned quietly gray. “How naïve,” she returned, with a forced laugh. “At that rate, half the young women of your acquaintance are—that’s a hateful word, Jean.”
“More hateful than the thing itself? Do let us call things by their right names, Laura. Oh, don’t imagine I condemn them in the gross. Some of them walk into it innocently enough—they know nothing different or better, poor, dear, little, happy things. It is only those who do know about whom I feel rather contemptuous.”
“Still hitching your wagon to a higher star!”
“I was born that way—brought up that way,” resisted Jean, passionlessly. “The copy-books used to say it was a good way.”
“Oh, the copy-books. But aren’t you afraid you may finally choose a falling star—and have a tumble—and get hurt?”
“Yes,” answered Jean, her lips closing like a seal over the word.
“It is better to choose a post—it is safer.”
“No,” answered Jean, quietly.
The spot of color burned up again in Mrs. Brookman’s cheek. “You put yourself above the plane of life,” she said, harshly. “You will come down—some day.”
“I hope not.”
“Oh, you hope not. Do you know what hope is?”
“I forget—it used to be in those stupid copy-books. It’s out of print now.”
“Heavens—pardon, that’s Jewish—but what a thing to say!”
“Well, what is hope?”
“Hope, Jean, is only winged, or, rather, blind desire. It has neither feet nor eyes. Use a more tangible argument.”
“Well, then, I will not. Is that enough?” Her quick, hot temper blazed momentarily in a flash of her eyes.
“Many fools have said that,” persisted Laura Brookman.
“Then I am one of many. Let me alone.”
“But they all came down—by and by,” the ironical voice pursued. “They started out glorious and free—as you—those fool girls. They said—as you are saying to yourself—somewhere in the world I shall meet some one who shall be all in all to me, who shall king it over me as I shall queen it over him—and all that romantic stuff—whose thoughts and hopes and aspirations and loves and desires shall be like unto mine as flowers sprung from the same seed are like unto each other—and we shall be one, as the Lord God is one, comprising all things. They went as far as to think the thing sacred—poor imbeciles. And some of them never met the other, and some of them found it all a delusion, and some of them found—just life.”
“And then?” Something clutched Jean by the throat as she listened—something passionately personal, unspoken, beneath the dreary generality of the spoken.
“And then they took the next best that came along—some soon, some later, some fighting it out to the vain end, but they all gave in finally. And some of them found it was best, not second best, but best.”
“Why?”
“Because there are other sides to a woman’s soul which need fulfilling—and fate proved kinder to them than it once seemed it ever meant to be. It’s not all a giving and having, this bundle of emotions called womanhood—it’s a being, too, and every woman is potentially other things besides a lover—a mother, for instance. And the sentimental regret is forgotten when she presses her cheek to her child’s, and she finds she has nothing to regret when she has provided her child with the wherewithal for all the complex needs of life, including a good father, who is also a good and loving husband, for whom, through a wise provision in the virtuous feminine make-up, she feels nothing but tenderness and loyalty. And then she understands that perhaps her dream went wrong for the sake of a wider plan.” Gradually the intense vibration in the voice had subsided till the sound was like a peaceful, monotonous lilt. She was gazing impassively ahead.
Suddenly she felt the girl’s distended eyes upon her. “For heaven’s sake, Jean,” she laughed, “don’t stare at me with that tragic face. Has the bottom fallen out of your sky? I was just talking highfalutin’ for the occasion—letting you know that there is generally some nameless first affair lying among the hic jacets102 of most hearts, so as to give you the courage of a sense of companionship—just giving you a little impromptu on the eternal theme—love with variations.” She laughed merrily. “Are you ready for the wedding to-morrow? My gown is a dream. I may send the carriage around for you first so as to give my lazy man a few minutes’ grace. What will you wear? Which hat did you choose?”
“My tan cloth. I took the black velvet hat with the plumes. Who will be there worth dressing for—Paul?”
“Paul? I suppose so—he and Dr. Thallman have grown quite intimate. I suppose some of the doctor’s confreres will be there, but I’m sorry, for your sake, that Theodore Hart is not acquainted.” She laughed a teasing laugh.
Jean carried an aching sense of its artificiality into the house with her. She carried it with her the next day to Dr. Thallman’s wedding, where they found Paul Stein waiting for them at the foot of the stairs before entering the already crowded, rose-breathing drawing-room. She found herself twisting the memory of his and Laura’s old college friendship and his long grind against poverty into the golden glamour which Charles Brookman had so successfully flung around her. The materiality of it all sickened Jean, even while she listened to the simple, earnest service which “maketh the bridegroom to rejoice with the bride.”103 She scarcely noticed when the ring was placed, the beautiful blessing spoken, the binding kiss given.
She was brought to earth by a sudden buzz of joyousness and the merry pressing forward to congratulate the smiling pair under the canopy of roses.
“Oh, Mrs. Weiss,” she laughed, stepping back. “I almost threw you. Won’t you stand in my place? I am going to wait with the less intimate. How well you are looking.” She slipped aside to let the pudgy old lady wedge herself in.
Mrs. Weiss grasped her arm. “You like my bonnet?” confided the fat, coaxing voice, while the fat, comfortable hands folded themselves in white-gloved comfort over the fat, comfortable stomach. “You see, I got no daughter to tell me, and my Sam—what he knows about bonnets? He says, ‘Ma, you’re a peach,’ and he kisses me, and that settles it. I only bought it yesterday—on aggravation. I told my milliner to put regrets in it, but she used her own conveyance and put a feather in instead. And you really think I look nice in it so, Miss Willard?”
A girl behind Jean giggled and the latter had some ado to keep her own lips in order. “It is truly a very pretty bonnet,” Jean pleasantly assured her.
“And you got good taste, too,” nodded Mrs. Weiss, approvingly, her eyes traveling over the exquisite grace of the girl’s toilet. “Wait a minute—I want to tell you that that baker Schwab is out of work again. The Sisterhood is tired of finding places for him what he don’t keep. But say, Miss Willard, four little children, and that schlemielich104 wife of his who is too proud to work because she was educated in a cemetery!”
“We’ll have to find something for him,” said Jean, lightly. “You and I’ll take a tramp among the bakers to-morrow morning.”
“Oh, yes, take a tramp! You know how old my legs is, my dear? Seventy-two yesterday. They don’t go like they used to, but I guess they’re always good for one tramp more. All right, you come get me to-morrow morning then. Ain’t it the bride looks sweet?”
The cooing, contented voice moved on.
Jean met the merry eyes of a tall, slender young woman, unmistakably a Gentile, whom she recognized as Miss Goyne, an old classmate and intimate friend of the bride.
“Wasn’t she quaint?” laughed Miss Goyne, in low-voiced delight.
Jean thought Miss Goyne’s euphemism delicious, and laughed responsively. “She’s a dear old soul,” she said.
“It is so interesting,” the girl babbled on, with bright eyes. “You know Cecile and I are old schoolmates, but after we left school our social ways separated somewhat, though Cecile and I would not give each other up for the world. And I am always so interested in everything she tells me about her friends.”
Unconsciously, there was that in her tone which suggested the “citizen” speaking of the “stranger.” Jean felt it, and a little amused smile, born of a memory of just such a smile on Philip May’s lips, showed a tiny edge of her teeth. Miss Goyne thought her quiet. But she also found hers the most attractive personality present, and being slightly acquainted with her, decided to attach herself to her during the “interesting” occasion.
“Oh,” exclaimed the girl below her breath, “there is Dr. May. Do you know him? I think—” She paused to bow. “He is looking straight at us. I think he is so distinguished-looking, don’t you? I met him at the Otises’—Dr. Otis, you know—and we all thought him so charming until that horrid newspaper article appeared.”
“And then you ceased to find him charming?”
“Well, you know how it is. We think very little of a man who is ashamed of his religion, of course. We all respect you so much and think it is lovely of you when you keep up the forms and everything.”
“That is nice of you,” said Jean, pleasantly. She knew that “condescending” or “consistent” would have better expressed her acknowledgment of the girl’s estimate, but graciously chose the more gracious epithet.
“We were so surprised,” confided Miss Goyne, gently. “You see he has none of the characteristics—”
“Caricaturistics,” corrected Jean, with a soft laugh in her eyes.
“What? Oh!” She hesitated, smiled vaguely in response to Jean’s playful smile, but was saved any further interpretation by a sudden swaying sensation which separated them abruptly.
The next instant the house was shaken like a rat in the clutch of a terrier, chandeliers swung violently from side to side, bells jangled, windows and porcelain rattled, dogs barked wildly in the street. . . . The swaying subsided. It had lasted exactly seventeen seconds—a lifetime of mortal terror, as many of the unconscious appeals to the Great Unknown testified. Jean found herself in the doorway, her hand upon Philip May’s arm, his hand over hers.
“You were frightened,” he said, quietly, his eyes upon her pale face.
“An earthquake always frightens me,” she said, in a trembling voice.
“Come with me,” he murmured. “Let me get you something—”
“No, no. Thank you. I am all right.” She drew her hand from his and turned away.
“Well,” laughed a familiar voice above the hysterical hubbub, while Paul Stein’s long arms stretched above several lower heads and drew her into a corner, “that was a close call, friend o’ mine.”
“They always seem to be,” she answered, through pale lips.
“I’m not speaking of the shake-up, but of what would have proven a shake-down on your head of that bust over the door if Dr. May hadn’t caught it in time. Come, get some color into your face again; it’s all over, and everybody’s safe. Listen, the musicians are triumphing over our fear. Shall I get you something to drink?”
“No; please don’t notice me, Paul. Talk away, there’s a dear fellow.”
“I was just wondering what was the reason of his, Dr. May’s being here, and had about concluded it was mere professional etiquette, Thallman being, or having been, his father’s physician—but now I see it was only to save your precious head. Some one behind me—I think it was that delightfully ubiquitous Sam Weiss—was pointing him out to some girl as ‘the Jew who would be Gentile,’ quite in the spirit in which the Gentiles flogged him through the press, and so saved Weiss his vengeance—I hope. If you’d turn your head, Jean, you’d see how he seems to outman every other man present. Candidly, my inclinations yearn toward him. I’m ashamed to say it, in that he hath done what he hath done—because, though, in the eye of the world, when a man sins he punishes himself only, yet when a Jew steps aside he drags the whole race after him, and we are always answered with our own old clan cry, ‘Responsible one for the other.’ There, I’ve talked you back into some likeness of yourself. Now our distinguished subject of conversation and Dr. Sutherland, I believe, are offering their congratulations and—actually taking leave, after a necessary attendance of half an hour. Shall we speak to the Thallmans now?”
As they moved forward, Jean was startled by Philip May’s flashing, deliberate gaze straight into her eyes. It mastered her completely. She could not regain her old attitude of defiance toward him. She tried to tell herself that her womanish yielding to its magnetism was due to the fact that he had put out his hand to save her head from a possibly ugly blow.
“I should have gone back and thanked him after Paul told me,” she said to herself, hours afterward, when alone. “Now it is awkward. And then we’re not on speaking terms. Besides, he would have done it for any one else. Yes, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he did it for me. It’s stupid and gauche not to acknowledge it. I must. I will. Still, perhaps there’s no necessity—he doesn’t know that I know. But I do know. Oh, dear, I hate to be in his debt, and a mere ‘thank you’ would have—. I—I could write him a note.”
She hid her eyes, trembling at the thought of putting herself in communication with him, not realizing the longing at the bottom of her reluctance.
“One can be as short and formal as one wishes in a note,” she assured herself, and seated herself before her desk. She began at once:
DR. PHILIP MAY,
DEAR SIR,—
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, bluntly, with flushed cheeks and stern brows. “What then? Dear Dr. May? That need not mean that he is ‘dear’ to me—not at all. It is only the usual impersonal address to an acquaintance.”
She began again:
DEAR DR. MAY,
I did not know until later that you had saved me from what might have proven a serious accident. I wish to thank you for it now.
Yours truly,
Thursday. Jean Willard.
“Nasty little thing,” she apostrophized, reading it over, and her eyes filled. Nevertheless she sent it.
He received it the following day as he was about to leave his office. He smiled gently over its simplicity.
“Poor little girl, she thought she had to—and it was a wrench,” he reflected, appreciating to the full the girlish dignity of the few cold phrases. “Not a superfluous word. Shall I answer it? Certainly.”
But it was not so easy a matter as he supposed. An honest answer would have proven a virtual avowal of love—a mad, grotesque proceeding which only flashed through his brain. To answer her in her own spirit was impossible. He chose a non-committal mean, and wrote:
DEAR MISS WILLARD,
Your thanks were unnecessary. I merely put up my hand. It is always ready to do you a service.
Yours truly,
Friday. Philip May.
Jean read it in dreary hopelessness. And the long autumn days went by.