Part 10

"Sure. Bowling club, I mean. Everybody bowls in Harlem. We must think about the office, too. It's the women who make or break a dentist's practice, and sooner or later they find out how he lives and the kind of company he keeps."

After a reflective silence he frightened her by asking abruptly whether she remembered a loud girl who had come to the dental parlors for an appointment the day of her first illness.

"The chatty party who thought I wasn't sociable," he particularized. "Her name's Wilkes."

Jean remembered.

"Well, she came back," pursued the dentist, slowly. "I filled a tooth for her the next morning. She had a good deal to say."

She brought herself to look at him. If the past must be faced now, she would meet it like the honest girl she was. But Paul's manner was not accusing, and when he spoke again, it was of neither Stella nor herself.

"How much does Amy get a week?" he asked.

She told him, and he nodded as over a point proved.

"Would it surprise you to hear that she draws five dollars less? That does surprise you, doesn't it?"

"How do you know?"

"My drug-department patient told me long ago. I didn't think much about it at the time, for some girls dress well on mighty little; but when--well, the long and short of it is, that Wilkes woman knows Amy!"

Jean pulled herself together somehow. Amy's defense was for the moment her own.

"Need that condemn Amy?" she said.

"Of course not," returned Paul judiciously. "It might happen to you, or anybody. Perhaps she says she knows me. It's the way she came to know her that counts. The Wilkes girl got very confidential when I left her mouth free. She had tanked up with firewater for the occasion, and it oiled her tongue. I didn't pay much attention until Amy Jeffries's name slipped out, but I listened after that. I thought it was due you."

"And she said--?"

"She said a lot I won't rehash, but it all boils down to the fact that they both graduated from the same reformatory."

She must tell him now! White-faced, miserable, she nerved herself to speak.

"Paul!" she appealed.

He was instantly all concern for her distress.

"Don't take it so hard," he begged. "She isn't worth it."

"You don't understand. I--I knew."

"You knew what?"

"About the--reformatory. I once told you I met Amy in the country."

"I remember."

"Well," the confession came haltingly, "it was the refuge I meant. I met her at the refuge."

She waited with eyes averted for the question which should bare all. Instead, she suddenly felt Paul's caress and faced him to meet a smile.

"You _are_ a trump!" he ejaculated. "To know all the while and never give her away!"

He had not understood! Trembling like a reprieved criminal, she heard him go on to complete his self-deception.

"I was going to ask you to let Amy slide after we were married," he said, "but if you believe in her this much, I reckon she's worth helping. I don't suppose all refuge girls are of the Wilkes stripe."

The crisis past, she half regretted that she could not have screwed her courage to the point of a full confession, but this feeling was transitory. Paul rested content with his own explanations and talked of little else than their flat, and she, too, presently found their home-building absorbing.

A more minute inspection of the Lorna Doone, after the signing of the lease, revealed that the outer splendor had its inner penalties.

"Looks like a case of rob Paul to pay Peter, this trip," said the dentist. "Peter is the owner's first name, you know. The woodwork is cheap, the bathtubs are seconds, and the closets, as you say, aren't worth mentioning. I'll gamble the building laws have been dodged from subcellar to cornice. I hear he has run up a dozen like it, and every blessed one on spec. That's why we're getting six weeks' rent free. It's anything to fill the house and hook some sucker who hankers for an investment and never suspects the leases don't amount to shucks."

"Don't they?"

"Ours doesn't. Why, the man as much as told me to clear out when the building changes hands, if I like."

Jean looked round the bright little toy of a kitchen where they stood.

"I shan't want to leave," she said. "It already seems like home."

It seemed more and more a home as their preparations went forward. They were not supposed to enter into formal possession till late in August, but the complaisant owner gave Paul a key some weeks before and made no objection to their moving in anything they pleased. So it fell out that their modest six-rooms-and-bath in the Lorna Doone became in a way a sanctuary to which they went evenings when they could, and made beautiful according to their light.

It was a precious experience. Such wise planning it involved! Such ardent scanning of advertisements, such sweet toil of shopping, such rich rewards in midsummer bargains! They did not appreciate the magnitude of their needs till an out-of-the-way store, which fashion never patronized, put them concretely before their eyes in a window display. In successive show-windows, each as large as any of their rooms at the Lorna Doone, this enterprising firm had deployed a whole furnished flat. Furthermore, they had peopled it. In the parlor, which one saw first, a waxen lady in a yellow tea-gown sat embroidering by the gas-log, while over against her lounged a waxen gentleman in velvet smoking-jacket and slippers--a most inviting domestic picture, even though its atmosphere was somewhat cluttered with price-marks.

"That's you and me," said Paul, tenderly ungrammatical.

Jean was less romantically preoccupied.

"I'd quite forgotten curtains," she mused. "They'll take a pretty penny."

Thereupon the dentist discovered things which he had overlooked.

"We must have a bookcase," he said. "That combination case and desk certainly looks swell. What say to one like it?"

"Have you any books?"

"I should smile. I've got together the best little dental library you can buy."

"Then you'll keep it at your office," decided Jean, promptly. "When we have a library about something besides teeth, we'll think about a case."

The shopkeeper's imaginative realism extended also to the other rooms. Real fruit adorned the dining-room buffet; the neat kitchen was tenanted by a maid in uniform, whom they dubbed "Marie" and agreed that they could do without; while in one of the bedrooms they came upon a crib whose occupant they studiously refrained to classify.

"But for kitchenware," said Paul, abruptly, "the five-and-ten-cent stores have this place beaten to a pulp."

With this, then, as a working model, to which Paul was ever returning for inspiration, they made their purchases. It was, of course, his money in the main which they expended, but Jean also drew generously on her small hoard. They vied with each other in planning little surprises. Now the dentist would open some drawer and chance upon a kit of tools for the household carpentering, in which his mechanical genius reveled; or Jean would find her kitchen the richer for some new-fangled ice-cream freezer, coffee-machine, or dish-washer which, in Paul's unvarying phrase, "practically ran itself." They derived infinite amusement also from the placing and replacing of their belongings--a far knottier problem than any one save the initiate may conceive, since the wall spaces of flats, as all flat-dwellers know, are ingeniously designed to fit nothing which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker produce. Luckily they discovered this profound law early in their buying, though not before Paul, adventuring alone among the "antique" shops of Fourth Avenue, fell victim to an irresistible bargain in the shape of a colonial sideboard which, joining forces with an equally ponderous bargain of a table, blockaded their little dining room almost to the exclusion of chairs.

Half the zest of all this lay in its secrecy; for although the boarding-house suspected a love affair,--and broadly hinted its suspicions,--it innocently supposed their frequent evenings out were spent at the theaters. Quite another theory prevailed at the Lorna Doone, however, as Jean learned to her dismay one Sunday when she was addressed as "Mrs. Bartlett" by the portly owner, whom they passed in the entrance hall.

"Oh, they've all along taken it for granted we're married," said Paul, carelessly. "I thought it was too good a joke to spoil."

Jean did not see its humor.

"We must explain," she said.

"And be grinned at for a bride and groom! What's the use? It will be true enough two weeks from now."

She privily decided that she would undeceive the owner at the first opportunity, but the chance to speak had not presented itself when far graver happenings brushed it from her thoughts as utterly as if it had never been.

XVII

Amy had, in fairness, to be told as August waned. To Jean's suggestion that very likely either the stenographer or the manicure would be glad to share the room of the three dormers, she replied that she could easily afford to keep it on by herself while she remained.

"It won't be for long," she vouchsafed airily. "In fact, I'm going to be married myself."

Jean's arms went round her instantly, the restraint of months forgotten.

"And you've never breathed a word!" she reproached.

"No more have you," retorted Amy, glacial under endearments.

"I know, I know. But you have seemed so different. You have kept to yourself, and I thought--"

"You thought I wasn't straight," Amy took her up bitterly as Jean hesitated. "I knew mighty well what was in your mind every time I got a new shirt-waist or a hat."

"You weren't frank with me."

"I couldn't be."

"I don't see why."

"Because," she wavered, melted now, "because you are you, so strait-laced and--and strong. I've always been afraid to tell you just how things stood."

"Afraid, Amy? Afraid of me!" Jean felt keenly self-reproachful. "I am horribly sorry. Heaven knows I haven't meant to be unkind. I've found my own way too hard to want to make things worse for anybody else, you above all. You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then be your old self, the Amy who made friends with me in Cottage No. 6. Who is he? Any one I know?"

"You've met him."

"I have! Where?"

Amy's color rose.

"Remember the night you struck New York?"

"Perfectly."

"And the traveling man who jollied you?"

"Yes."

"Well," she faltered, "he's the one. His name is Chapman."

Jean was too staggered for a prompt response, but Amy was still toiling among her explanations.

"You mustn't think anything of his nonsense that night," she went on. "It was only Fred's way. He's a born flirt. You couldn't help liking him, Jean, if you knew him."

Jean met her wistful appeal for sympathy, woman-wise. Words were impossible at first. By and by, when she could trust herself to speak, she wished her happiness.

"Does he--know?" she added.

Amy's fair skin went a shade rosier.

"My record, you mean? Nobody knows it better. Don't you--don't you catch on, Jean? He was the--the man!"

"He! You've taken up with him again! The man who saw your stepfather send you to the refuge and never lifted a finger--"

"Don't!"

"Who let his child--"

"Stop, I tell you!" She barred Jean's lips passionately. "You see! Is it any wonder I couldn't bear to tell you? I wish to God I'd never said a word."

Jean stared blankly at this lamb turned lioness.

"Forgive me," she begged. "Perhaps I don't understand."

"Understand! You!" She laughed hysterically, "Yet you're going to be married! If you loved Paul Bartlett, you'd understand."

"You must not say that."

"Then don't say things that hurt me. Understand! If you did, you would know that it would make no difference if he was rotten clear through. But he's not. Fred never knew about the baby. He cried when he heard--cross my heart, he did. He said if he'd known--but what's the use of digging up the past! He is trying to make up for it now. He's been trying ever since we ran across each other again. It was in the cloak department he caught sight of me," she digressed with a pale smile. "I was wearing a white broadcloth, sable-trimmed evening wrap, and maybe he didn't stare! He couldn't do enough for me. That's where the new clothes came from. I could have had money if I'd wanted it--money to burn, for he makes a lot; but I wouldn't touch it. It would have looked--oh, you see for yourself I could not take money. You don't sell love, real love, and God knows mine is real! I've never stopped loving him. I never can."

She, too, it appeared when she grew more calm, aspired to be mistress of a flat.

"Though not at the start," she continued. "Fred wants to board at first. He says I've had work enough for one while. I said I shouldn't mind that kind of work, but he is dead set on boarding, till I've had a good long rest. Fred can be terrible firm. But by and by we're to keep house, and you'll be able to tell me just what to do and buy. You will, won't you, Jean?" she ended anxiously. "You'll stick by me?"

"Yes," Jean promised.

"And you'll come to see me--afterward? Say you'll come."

"Yes, I'll come."

"And you won't let Fred suspect that you've heard about--about everything? I want him to see that I know a girl like you. I've talked to him about you, but I've never let on that you're a refuge girl yourself. Promise me you will be nice to him!"

"I'll try."

Amy kissed her fervently.

"This makes me awful happy," she sighed. "I think a heap of you, Jean. Honest, I do. You come next to Fred."

As a proof of her affection she presently bought a wedding gift of a pair of silver candelabra which she could ill afford, and which Jean accepted only because she must. These went to flank Grimes's gift--for he was party to the secret now--a glittering timepiece for their mantel, densely infested with writhing yet cheerful Cupids, after the reputed manner of his admired "Lewis Quince." Mrs. St. Aubyn's contribution was a framed galaxy of American poets: Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Walt Whitman, the last looking rakishly jocular at the Brahminical company in which he found himself thus canonized.

Everything was finally in place at the Lorna Doone, and with the actual beginning of their lease-hold Paul moved his personal chattels from Mrs. St. Aubyn's to the flat, and slept there nights. This was the twenty-fifth of August. A week later Jean climbed the Acme Painless Dental Company's sign-littered stairway for her last day's service. She was a little late, owing to a fire which had impeded traffic in a near-by block, and the morning's activity at the parlors was already under way. She busied herself first, as usual, at her desk, sorting the mail which the postman had just left. In addition to the office mail there were personal letters for Grimes and the various members of the staff, which she presently began to distribute, reaching Paul's operating-room last of all.

The dentist was at work, but he glanced up when she entered and sent her a loverlike look over his patient's head. No creature with eyes and a reasoning brain could have misread it, and the occupant of the chair, who had both, squirmed to view its object; but Paul threw in a strategic "Wider, please," and held the unwilling head firmly to the front.

"Chuck them anywhere, Jean," he directed, his glance dropping to her hand.

Her obedience was literal; the next instant the letters strewed the rug at his feet. With the enunciation of the name, the patient twisted suddenly from Paul's grasp, and Jean found herself staring full into the malignant eyes of Stella Wilkes.

Paul first found voice.

"We'll go on, Miss Wilkes," he said, his gaze still intent upon the tragic mask, which was Jean.

Stella waved him aside.

"Hold your horses, Doc," she rejoined coolly. "I've met an old friend."

"Do you know each other?" It was to Jean he put the question.

Stella answered for her.

"Do I know Jean Fanshaw!" Sure of how matters stood between these two, sure also of her own rôle in the drama, she sprang from the chair and bestowed a Judas kiss upon Jean's frozen cheek. "Do I know her! Why we're regular old pals!"

Freed somehow from that loathsome touch, Jean stumbled to her desk. Patients came and went, the routine of the office ran its course; her share in the mechanism got itself mechanically performed; yet, whether she sped or welcomed, plied the cash-register, receipted bills, or soothed a nervous child, some spiteful goblin at the back of her brain was ever whispering the shameful tale which Stella was pouring out in that inner room. Those lies would be past Paul's forgetting, perhaps even past his forgiving, say what she might in defense. His look at Stella's kiss had been ghastly. What was he thinking now!

Then, when her agony of suspense seemed bearable no longer, came Stella, her pretense of friendship abandoned, her real vengeful self to the fore.

"I guess we're square," she bent to whisper, her face almost touching Jean's. "I guess we're square."

She vanished like the creature of nightmare she was, but the nightmare remained. Paul would demand his reckoning now. He would come and stand over her with his accusing face and ask her what this horror meant. She could not go to him, she felt, or at least unless he sent. But throughout that endless forenoon the dentist kept to his office, though twice there were intervals when she knew him to be alone. Her lunch hour--and his--came at last. She lingered, but still Paul delayed. At last, driven by an imperative craving to be done with it, she hurried to his room and found it empty. Grimes told her that he had seen Paul leave the place by a side door. The news was a dagger-thrust in her pride. Of a surety, now, he must seek her.

Between five o'clock and six, a dull hour, he came, woebegone and conciliatory.

"For God's sake, clear this up," he begged. "Haven't you anything to say?"

"A great deal, Paul. But first tell me what that woman said about me."

"You heard."

"But what else?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing!" The thing was incredible.

"Only that you'd probably be glad to explain things yourself."

At that half her burden fell. Stella's cunning had overreached itself. She had thought to rack her victim most by forcing her to betray herself, but she had reasoned from the false premise that Jean had a truly shameful past to conceal.

"Glad," she repeated. "Yes, I am glad. I should have told you some day, Paul. It's a long story."

The door opened to admit a caller with a swollen jowl.

"To-night, then?" said the dentist, hurriedly.

"Yes," she assented. "I will tell you to-night."

"At the flat?"

"Yes; at the flat."

Spurred on by her unrest, she reached the Lorna Doone before Paul had returned from his evening meal, and found the flat in darkness. She was relieved that this was so. It would give her a quiet interval in which to turn over what she meant to say. She entered the little parlor and seated herself in an open window where a shy midsummer-night's breeze, astray from river or sound, stole gently in and out and fingered her hair. It was wonderfully peaceful for a city. The sounds from below--the footsteps on the pavement, the cries of children at play under the young elms lining the avenue, the jests of the cigar-store loungers, the chatter of the girls thronging the soda-fountain at the corner druggist's, the jingle of bicycle bells, the beat of hoofs, the honk of occasional automobiles, even the strains of a hurdy-gurdy out-Heroding Sousa--one and all ascended, mellowed by distance to something not unmusical and cheerily human. She realized, as she listened, that the city, not the country, this city, this very corner, this hearth which she and Paul had prepared, was at last and truly home.

Presently she heard Paul's latch-key in the lock and his step in the dark corridor.

"You here?" he called tonelessly. "Better have a light, hadn't we?"

"It is cooler without," she answered. Even though her explanations need not fear the light, she thought obscurity might ease their telling.

With no other greeting, the dentist passed to the window opposite hers, slouched wearily into a chair, and waited in silence for her to begin.

Jean told her story in its fullness: her tomboy girlhood, the hateful family jars, the last quarrel with Amelia, her sentence to the refuge, her escape, return, riot-madness, and release, and the inner significance of her late struggle for a living against too heavy odds. She told it so honestly, so plainly, that she thought no sane being could misunderstand; yet, vaguely at first, with fatal clearness as, ending, she strained her eyes toward the dour shadowy figure opposite, she perceived that she had to deal with doubt.

"Do you think I am holding something back?" she faltered, after a long silence. "Must I swear that I've told you the whole truth?"

The man stirred in his place at last.

"I guess an affidavit won't be necessary," he returned grimly.

She endured another silence impatiently, then rose proudly to her feet.

"I'll say it for you," she flashed. "This frees you of any promises to me, Paul. You are as free as if you had never made them. Go your own way: I'll go mine. It--it can't be harder than the one I've come. Good-by."

He roused himself as she made to leave.

"Hold on, Jean," he said, coming closer. "I guess we can compromise this thing somehow."

"Compromise! I have nothing to compromise."

"Haven't you?" He laughed harshly. "I should say--but let that pass. Of course, after what's turned up, you can't expect a fellow to be so keen to marry--"

"I've told you that you are free," she interrupted.

"But I don't want to be free--altogether. We could be pretty snug here, Jean. The parson's rigmarole doesn't cut much ice with me, and I don't see that it need with you. They think downstairs we're married. That part's dead easy. As for Grimes and the rest--"

She had no impulse to strike him as she had the floor-walker. Waiting in his folly for an answer, the man heard only her stumbling flight along the corridor and the jar of a closing door.

XVIII

Yet, an hour later, Paul came seeking her at Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and, failing, returned in the morning before she breakfasted. Unsuccessful a second time, and then a third, he wrote twice, imploring her not to judge him by a moment's madness.

Jean made no reply. Moved by the eloquent memory of Paul's many kindnesses and with the charity she hoped of others for herself, she did him the justice to believe him better than his lowest impulse. But while she was willing to grant that the Paul who, in the first shock of her revelation, thought all the world rotten, was not the real Paul, she would not have been the woman she was, had his offense failed to bar him from her life. Her decision was instinctive and instant, requiring no travail of spirit, though she could not escape subsequent heart-searchings whether she had unwittingly laid herself open to humiliation and a scorching shame that the dentist, or any man, could even for a moment have held her so cheap.

Necessity turned her thoughts outward. The marriage plans had all but devoured her savings, and while she was clothed better than ever before, she lacked ready money for even a fortnight's board. Immediate employment was essential, yet, when canvassed, the things to which she might turn her hand were alarmingly few. After her experience with Meyer & Schwarzschild, she was loath to go back to her refuge-taught trade except as a last resort, while department-store life, as she had found it, seemed scarcely less repellent. At the outset it was her hope to secure somewhere a position like her last, but the advertisements yielded the name of only one dentist in need of an assistant, and this man had filled his vacancy before she applied. Thereafter she roamed the high seas of "Help Wanted: Female" without chart or compass.