Adriana Spadoni

“ She often wondered how Jerome would stand the loneliness of Alice's marriage and sometimes, for a moment, Alice's going so eagerly out to the happiness Jerome's loving care had made possible, seemed cruelly selfish, until Jean thought of Martha and smiled. How imperceptibly one's viewpoint glided from youth to age, and how alike was all youth and how alike all age. In middle life the wandering paths of youth met, and when one reached that spot, one picked up the waiting burden of loneliness and understanding and staggered away with it, groaning or smiling according to one's pride. ”

“ Jean said slowly, "and I wish I had never come."
Pat started as if Jean had called to her for help and the little doctor said sharply:
"You don't like interviewing?"
"I despise it! It's the most futile, useless round of senseless rush that was ever invented to waste one's days. It means nothing at all to the one who does it or to any one else. It's just words, words, and more words."
For several moments Dr. Mary said nothing, but sat looking at Jean with an odd look in her small, bright eyes.
"If I am rude, you must pardon me, Mrs. Herrick, but why do you do it, if you feel that way?" ”

“ The world was strangely alone, shut in by itself, like a madman locked in his cell. Driven from infinity, rushing on to infinity, the wind tore by them on its ceaseless quest.
Herrick took her hand and they began to run to a little beach wedged between the cliffs. As they ran Jean was filled with a deep sureness, as if she could run so forever, swifter and swifter, never halting or stumbling, borne up by a strength within; a strength that was beating out against the whole surface of her body, in an effort to join the main current of all life, that touched her on every side. ”

“ As she rested against the pile of cushions Herrick had arranged, and watched the quick western twilight blot the world to night, Jean felt as if for the twenty-four years of her life she must have been fast asleep. All about her men and women had been loving and hating and misunderstanding and hurting each other, and she had been studying books like a child. She had used up much energy and bitterness longing for the moment when she would get out into life and earn her own living, make one of the army that fought its way back and forth each morning and night on the boats. ”

“ Hour after hour Jean sat, staring out to the river, stifled by the fact of death, that great ending containing within itself all the ends of one's smallest acts.
Where was Martha now? Was there nothing anywhere of that patient little figure that had trotted so busily through its daily rounds? Were all the habits and preferences one built up through the years, but things of flesh? Was there nothing left anywhere, in any form, of that gigantic faith? Did man impose upon himself this sentence of life? Summon himself from nowhere, to struggle for a moment, and go back to nothingness again? ”

“ Again Gregory felt the silence of the street about them, then the clatter of the taxi as it stopped at his signal; and the dizzy moment when Jean had said quietly: "Gramercy Park." It was Jean who had said it. Again Gregory felt the reverence and gratitude that had stilled his passion through that dark, silent ride.
Love had meant to her what it had meant to him and he had gloried in her honesty. She had brought back the courage that the weary round of years with Margaret had almost killed, and kept it alive. She had been glad of his success. ”

“ Jean had a sensuous delight in the contrast of leaving the office behind her, the waiting room never empty, the staff of extra helpers, the jangling 'phone, and then—this other world with Gregory. The place had once been a brownstone mansion, with carved staircases and pendulous chandeliers of crystal. Heads of baby angels looked down from the cornices and the shadows of stately men and women seemed always to lurk in the corners, aloof and disdainful, but curious of this new generation that smoked and talked immoderately on all subjects, at fragile tables, painted in strange colors. ”

“ Sometimes she left the office in the middle of the afternoon and went home to face and conquer the terrible emptiness, and sometimes she walked in the night until she could scarcely stand, and it was there waiting for her. Gradually in the depth of the emptiness, something formed, a shadow-shape that Jean could neither annihilate nor grasp. It was as if, in her going, Martha had left a door open behind her, a narrow crack through which Jean could neither see clearly, nor quite close. And the thought of death began to sift down through life, absorbing its reality. ”

“ Philip came often to dinner, and soon Jean accepted his boisterous manner. It so fitted the man's nature that it was perfect in its way, like the capers of a puppy. It was only when Philip, in his unconsciousness of the fitness of things, capered before others, as he had on the night of her arrival, that one objected to his clambering over strangers. Jean saw nothing humorous in Philip's performances, but when she could, pretended an amusement that delighted Nan. Still, she always felt that in these moments Catherine was watching and was never quite deceived. ”

“ Through the lonely dinners, and long evenings in the studio, Herrick worked himself into a fury that urged him on and held him back. His anger spread from The Kitten to Jean, to all women. He was sick of them, weary of the power they had always had over him. He loathed the women who had yielded to him and the women who had not. He hated his own inability to live his life independent of them. If no woman had ever crossed his life, interfering in its plan, destroying the dreams he had dreamed in those last years of the Connecticut farm, he would long ago have written something worth while. ”

“ In that passionate, throbbing emptiness she seemed as unconscious of him as if he were one of the gray cliffs. She was as far away and impersonal as the wind sweeping indifferently over the friendly little grasses.
In obedience to his unspoken wish, Jean turned.
"It's the sounds," she said, as if Herrick must have been following her thoughts. "If there weren't any sounds in Nature, pagans would never have invented a God. It's so impossible to imagine a silent Force creating a world where the wind shrieks and the sea roars and you can almost hear the earth breathe. ”

“ Here in the seclusion of a thick hedge, little birds came for crumbs and beyond the hedge, unseen people crunched the gravel and Jean caught scraps of their talk, unconnected bits, like scraps of patchwork.
She liked to tell Miss MacFarland about these unseen people, draw pictures of the comedies and tragedies beyond the hedge, because Miss MacFarland always listened so politely and looked so puzzled. Her thick brown eyes searched vaguely for the point of the story, and Jean knew it was only because the cataloguing was well done, that Miss MacFarland did not consider her a lunatic. ”

“ Jean shook her head. "I know, Mary. But that's like the rubbish that's talked about not growing old. It's the theory of those who have never had a thing—that the memory of it can be enough."
Dr. Mary winced and lit a cigarette. "Maybe it is."
"When you've had a thing and—it goes—you have two pains, because the memory and the happiness hurts as much as not having it any more. And then—there's a third—the nothingness of everything else. That's the worst, that awful, dead emptiness, where nothing counts and you just go on because there's not even the will to stop. ”

“ Herrick laughed. Like the echo of a memory Jean's repugnance to that high, thin laugh returned. But it seemed trivial now that she really knew him.
"There's nothing to make one's own in the whole business. It hasn't any permanence. Not a scrap of reality. It is not my work."
Herrick had said this so often that he believed it, and his voice was bitter with reproach. "You see it's not so bad so long as you don't want with your whole soul to do something else. It's the knowing and not being able to get at it that's hell." ”

“ How drag out his own state of mind on the afternoon he had had tea with Jean and lied to her?
Gregory wished that Jean would say something, almost anything, to break the silence. Not a soul seemed to be alive in the great building about them. On the river occasional excursion steamers turned their dazzling flashlights, lighting the room and Palisades to uncanny, whitish glow. They were huge phantoms moving in the stillness. All the worlds of the universe hung motionless in perfect adjustment. Jean sat utterly at rest, so near him that by the smallest motion he could touch her. ”

“ Was there another woman in the world like Jean? The sanity of her love made everything possible. In its light even the month ahead did not loom so gloomily. There would be happy hours playing with Puck and good, stiff work to finish the plans in time.
Jean stood for a long time in the hall and then went slowly back and sat down by the window. Something had struck her violently and stunned her power to feel. She saw it as distinctly outside herself, and at the same time it was in some way connected with her. It was like a part of her which Gregory's words had suddenly cut away. ”

“ And even while he promised—she knew now what had been Franklin's mood as he stood beside her—desire, throttled to control until the effort whitened and sharpened his face to the Galahad look.
Jean's head drooped.
And with Gregory, no open honesty like this, but smothering secrecy that she had tried to glorify.
To love, honor and obey, till Death do you part.
To seal the truth openly before all, as Alice was doing. In all her life she would never have a memory as this would be to Alice. ”

“ Jean's duties were light and she and Gregory spent a part of each day together. The quiet tea-room was now a thing of the past, so far in the past that Jean smiled whenever she remembered how homelike it had once seemed. They had long, lazy afternoons on the sands of nearby beaches, making comments on the human shadows that moved beyond their own world of reality. They chattered like children or were silent as the mood dictated. They had dozens of gay meals, like the first they had prepared on the night that Margaret and Puck had left. ”

“ Herrick, without answering, drew farther back into the cove. He turned from Jean to the open grayness, and a terror of its immensity forced through every effort to keep it out. In the whole world there was nothing but loneliness, an actual, positive, palpable loneliness, as gray and chill as the sea, as all pervading as the boom of the surf far out on the rocky bar. ”

“ Gregory declared, as he and Jean swung along, under arching maples that were just beginning to turn crimson, with here and there a brilliant scarlet leaf among the green. The fences were buried under honeysuckle and wild blackberries. The summer was passing in one last passionate abandonment of giving. The bare brown earth, freed from the burden of crops, like a woman released from family cares, went back to its youth. The air was pungent with the sting of sun-warmed loam. The old world frolicked in a second love. ”