Marjorie Benton Cooke

“ When Jerry went out of the room, Bobs said to Jane:
"Is Jerry trailing that Morton woman again?"
"He is painting her, as Melisande."
"Do you have to have her here all the time?"
"I don't see much of her. Poor Jerry has her."
"Poor Jerry likes her. Just when you begin to think that women are getting somewhere—being something fine and busy and loyal—then you run into an Althea, and smash goes the dream!"
"Dear, we can't change our natures in one generation, nor two, nor three. When we come back a few centuries from now, think what splendid creatures women will be!" ”

“ Am I accurate, Jane?"
"Quite," she said calmly.
"She is forced to take a mere job to buy food. Enter a brilliant but impoverished artist, with the job in his right hand. Heroine toils by day that she may create by night. Midnight oil, cold tenement room, you know. Abraham Lincoln stuff."
"Jane, while you were working for all of us, did you write, too?"
Jane nodded.
"Don't interrupt, Bobs. Enter hero—a great critic—a literary light. Reads heroine's work—hails her genius of the age—rushes her to publishers, who press gold upon her and accept her immortal opus!" ”

“ We have the bloodiest war in all times; we are primitive savages in our greed for lust and power, just as we are supermen in devising ways of exquisite, torturing death for our enemies. We are the age of the senses, my friend; we brook no denial of the flesh and its appetites."
"I understand what you mean; I know it to be true; but how can I have a part in life, when perforce, I am just an onlooker?" she asked earnestly.
"We will find a way. We must open the door of the nunnery, and lead Sister Jane into the world of deeds, of fight and lose, heartache and some rare joys. ”

“ Love gets you, torments you, numbs your brain, upsets your mind."
"He won't get me, Bobs. I'm on guard."
"Some of us go on guard too late, Jerry."
"Look here, old lady, it isn't like you to talk this sort of stuff. Buck up! Love isn't life; it's just one incident of it. Work is the real thing, you and I both know that, and matrimony plays the devil with an artist's work, so it's not for us." ”

“ For the first time, Jerry faced the fact that he had married a personality, not an automaton. The silent, efficient, machine Jane, of the old days, was not the real Jane at all, or else matrimony had changed her completely. He felt aggrieved. He could not see how he could have made such a mistake. From his present point of view, in fact, his marriage seemed to him like some fantastic act of a man in a fever. Had he, in order to protect himself from Bobs and Althea, married a woman more complex than either of them? ”

“ I've lived and watched and studied people. I don't know; how does any artist acquire what he gives out? It's like breath, you inhale atmosphere outside of you, make it part of your blood and tissue, exhale it something quite different—essentially yours!"
"And I've been living along with you, just thinking you were any woman."
"I am—just that—and I've written the story of any woman in the world to-day. Why didn't you like it, Jerry?" ”

“ Neither Bobs nor Martin showed any surprise at Jane's able expression of her thoughts on the subject, but to Jerry it was a revelation. She had a directness of attack upon an idea which he knew to be characteristic of her, but it suddenly piqued his interest.
"After all, the art ideal is the personal ideal done large," said Christiansen. "The artist can express only such truth as is the content of his own heart and mind."
"That's like your modern ethical religion; it puts it all up to you. God doesn't have to do a thing," protested Jerry. ”

“ Jerry mused. "Somebody ought to marry Bobs."
"She has the usual woman's excuse for marrying."
"What is that?"
"A lonely soul. I suppose men have it, too—a sort of isolation within the race, a pining to be set free from the torment of solitude. Bobs has an exceptional nature, so she is more than usually at the mercy of suffering; her needs are intensified."
"She has all sorts of ideas, you know, about freedom in love, the right to motherhood, and all the rest of it. That's what's the matter with her; she's got a lot of crank notions that won't work out."
Jane laughed. ”

“ Only I'm so glad you're pleased, and so relieved you aren't engaged to Miss Morton."
"Bobs, you goose——"
"I just couldn't stand it, Jerry, to have you married to just a rich woman."
"I'm not going to marry any rich woman, Bobs, you can count on that. They are all too full of themselves. The only woman I shall ever marry will have just one career."
"What, Jerry?"
"Her career will be Jerry Paxton! Selfish, if you like, but that is the only way I can ever get away with matrimony. I don't like marriage, I hate being tied down, you know how I hate it. ”

“ One is the child of my body and one is the child of my spirit. They are equally important to me; they are inevitable."
"I can't understand you, Jane. I thought your love for Jerry was the one passion of your life, but that doesn't sound like it."
"We are what we are, Jerry; you can't push back development. I can't unmake you as artist any more than you can unmake me. ”

“ Of all the arts, literature is the most exacting mistress. With some idea of the technique of painting, or music, coupled with a surface brilliance, you may paint or sing or play. With even less equipment, you may act; but to write, you must have lived, you must have suffered and known joy; you must be able to analyze people, to understand their motives, to love them. To write, you must have ideas and emotions. It is only when the sources of your own being run deep that you can bring up waters of refreshment for others. ”

“ Two days out of New York they slid into sunshine and warm winds. Life was one long, delicious playtime. To Jerry it was perfect, until he began to realize the limitations of a ship, and one man's ability, when pitted against that of two women of decision.
Mrs. Brendon made good her promise to sit for studies for the portrait, but a few days out at sea were enough to convince Jerry that the price of his freedom was not the completed portrait of Mrs. Abercrombie Brendon, but a completed romance. It looked as if Mrs. Brendon would keep him at sea until he proposed to Althea. ”

“ I don't," she answered bitterly.
"The most difficult thing I know is being a man."
"Why do we bother with it at all, when just a little plop out there in the fog would end it?"
"Would it, though?"
"Don't you think souls are ever allowed to rest? Do they plunge us into some new form the minute we leave the old?"
"It's the doubt about it that is salutary."
"If you go out, you're a coward. If you stay on, it's because you're afraid to go out," she cried.
"Even so. Therefore you come to grips with life, and prove yourself a good soldier."
"Like Jane," Bobs said. "Isn't she fine?" ”

“ Everything that enriches my life makes it more impossible for me to be dumb. Isn't that true with you, too, Jerry?"
"It's different with me; creation happens to be my job—my livelihood."
"So it must be mine, some day, although that isn't the ideal way. Earning a living by some other means, or having it provided and then creating what your spirit urges you to do, that's the ideal." ”

“ She stretched out on a chaise-longue in sheer physical delight.
"I feel like a turtle, a slow, lethargic turtle," sighed Jerry. "Why do mortals waste time in work, when Nature offers this nirvana?"
"It wouldn't seem nirvana without work."
"Jane, you have a practical turn of mind. You do not relax into the proper state of nature, naked and unashamed." ”

“ Jane, you're all right, but this is only the beginning. This is your first picture on the line," he said, holding up the letter.
"I know that there are many ways in which I fail as a wife—ways in which we are not harmonious—but that shield has two sides, Jerry, and my belief is that, since we did what we did, we can't expect perfection in our life together. We have to face certain grave lacks, and make the best of what we have." ”

“ But alas! Jerry did not look at events with the simple directness which characterized Jane. He believed that she spoke the truth, as far as she knew it. But it was outside the laws of human possibilities to Jerry that a man and woman could have such obviously intimate relationship without sex attraction as its cause and excuse. The whole thing smouldered in his mind.
He began to wonder whether Jane had felt jealousy when he had spent so much of his time with Althea Morton, before the baby came. He could not recall the least sign she had ever made of distress or protest. ”

“ Mrs. Abercrombie Brendon insisted upon giving a dinner for Jane, with fashionable and literary folk asked to meet her. She found herself a celebrity of sorts, complimented and deferred to. It amused her greatly, but the most interesting thing was Jerry's attitude. His early resentment at her conspicuous new position had resolved into a semblance of pride in her triumphs. The night of the Brandons' dinner she continually was reminded of his attitude the first night he introduced her as his wife, at Jinny Chatfield's studio party. ”

“ A long, rainy Sunday inaugurated Christiansen's visit. A cold, damp fog blew in off the Sound, and an open fire proved a comfort. Jerry went off to paint, Bobs disappeared, and Jane found herself alone with Christiansen, in the first intimacy they had known for months.
"How goes the adventure?" he asked.
"Merrily."
"You are glad you started on it?"
"Oh, yes."
"You would be," he granted.
"Why would I be?"
"You belong to the 'Friends of Fate,' as some poet called them. Some of us struggle against Fate, some of us make it an ally. You would do that." ”

“ Woman, the pack animal; woman, the slave; woman, the mother, dragged by many births; woman, old, bent, heavy with age.
"What do you think of it?" sneered Bobs.
"I think it is wonderfully done, and bitter, bitter, bitter."
"It's truth; of course it's bitter."
Jane turned and left her without another word. She felt that a terrible thing had happened to the girl's soul. She hated Jerry for his careless blundering.
"Will she come?" he asked, on her entrance.
"Yes."
"Good for you, Jane."
That evening a veritable trunk of flowers, with a note, came to Jane from Mrs. Brendon. ”

“ Jerry said, as he handed her that account.
"I don't like the publicity part," she sighed, and added as she read, "Oh, this is ridiculous, I won't have it."
"My dear, you'll find that advertising is the most important thing in art these days. This kind of thing is nuts and ale to your publishers."
"But, Jerry, how can it be? All this silly, untrue stuff about my private life."
"That's what they want. The D. P. care much more for your private life than it does for your work. The more they know—or think they know—about it, the more willing they are to buy what you have to sell." ”

“ Bobs and the nurse laughed at this tragic tale.
"I like him better than I did at first, though. He has nice hands," Jane admitted.
Bobs inspected the hero again.
"I think he's a duck of a bambino," she said. "He looks quite human."
"Well, I should hope so," said his mother indignantly.
"This room looks like a garden, Jane."
"Isn't it lovely? Jerry is beggaring himself. All the dear people in the studios, the Brendons, even Althea, sent a tribute. And Martin sends flowers every day. I find I love being a part of this smooth mechanism. I like the things the nurse feeds me, and my importance. ”

“ If I married a woman with a career of her own, with the independence and egotism which come to women with careers, why— Lord, Bobs, I'd end by murdering her!"
"You're the most selfish human being in the world, Jerry!" ”

“ They all went into dinner, laughing. But Jane's observing eye marked signs of weariness and feeling in Martin's face. He was his usual, spontaneous, interested self to the casual onlooker, but in moments when the others were talking, she caught him off guard, mask down.
Bobs and Jerry fell into a discussion over a line which Bobs quoted from Jane's book.
"But I don't agree with Jane's hypothesis, that every life is an end in itself, because it cannot be lived again: that the personal reaction to life, expressed in art, is of value, because it is individual." ”

“ Jane said. "I believe your personality to be an asset that will never happen again, that you must live the fullest, freest life possible, so that you may be a normal, clear-sighted eye, and see truly."
"It puts a whole new emphasis on the individual, doesn't it?" Martin mused.
"It seems to me slightly lacking in a sense of humour, [Pg 259] but that is not an unusual fault in women, I am told," smiled Jerry tolerantly.
"We think that is a fault of men," said Bobs. "Nobody with a real sense of humour could go on raving against women in careers as you do, Jerry." ”

“ Swear to yourself this is a temporary aberration, and be true to yourself, Paxton."
"Well, if I don't turn out to be my own best self with Jane, and Bobs, and now you after me, I haven't any best self! My own opinion is that I'm probably a rotten second-rater."
"Not even the greatest artists are first-rate all the time, Jerry," Jane urged. ”