Part 9

Jean's thoughts took a leap ahead to ways and means, and she drew a worn shoe farther beneath her skirt.

"You're sure I'll do?" she hesitated.

"You! I only wish you could see some of the procession who've answered our ad." Then, almost as if he read her mind, he added with unwonted bashfulness: "If I were in your place, I'd borrow Amy's black feather boa for your first call. It suits you right down to the ground."

She took the hint laughingly. There were more things than the boa to be borrowed for the conquest of Grimes. She was touched by Paul's transparent diplomacy, and glad that in his slow man's way he had at last perceived why their outings had ceased. So, by grace of Paul and Amy, it fell out before another week elapsed that the affianced lady assistant of the Acme Painless Dental Company left to prepare for her bridal, and Jean reigned in her stead.

The company's outworks on Sixth Avenue were a resplendent negro and a monumental show-case, both filled with glittering specimens of the painless marvels accomplished within. The African wore a uniform of green and gold, and all day forced advertisements into the unwilling hands of passers-by, chanting meanwhile the full style and title of the establishment in a voice which soared easily above the roar of the elevated trains overhead. Passing this personage, you mounted a staircase whose every step besought you to remember the precise whereabouts of the parlors, while yet other placards of like import made clear the way at the top and throughout the unmistakable corridor leading to the true and only Acme Painless Dental Company's door.

Entering here to the trill of an electric bell, you came full upon the central office, or, as the leaflets read, the elegant parlor, from which the operating-rooms led on every hand. In character this apartment was broadly eclectic. Jean's special nook, with its telephone, cash-register, and smart roll-top desk, was contemporary to the minute; yet in the corner diagonally opposed, a suit of stage armor jauntily bade the waiting patient think upon knights, jousts, and the swashbuckling Middle Ages. In still another quarter a languorous slave girl of scanty raiment, but abundant bangles, postured upon a teak-wood tabouret, backed by way of further realism with Bagdad hangings and a palm of the convenient species which no frost blights and an occasional whisk of the duster always rejuvenates. The chairs were frankly Grand Rapids and built for wear, though the proprietor's avowed taste ran to a style he called "Lewis Quince"; and the gilt he might not employ here he lavished upon the frames of his pictures, which, nearly without exception, were night-scenes wherein shimmering castle windows or the gibbous moon were cunningly inlaid in mother-of-pearl. In the midst of all this, now pacifying the waiting with vain promises of speedy relief, now pottering off into this room or that in as futile attempts to make each of several sufferers believe his blundering services exclusive--big, easy-going, slovenly, yet popular--moved Grimes.

Of the operating-rooms, which by no means approached the splendor of the parlor, the next best to Grimes's own was Paul Bartlett's, for Paul was a person of importance here. Of the four assistant dentists, he was at once the best equipped and the best paid, receiving a commission over and above his regular thirty-five dollars a week. The more discriminating of the place's queer constituency coolly passed Grimes by in Paul's favor, but the elder man was not offended. A month or so after Jean's coming he even offered his clever helper a partnership, which Paul unhesitatingly declined. He was ambitious for an office of his own, when his capital should permit, and he planned it along lines which would have fatigued his slipshod employer to conceive.

"It's all too beastly bad," he told Jean, in answer to her query why he did not accept Grimes's offer and insist on reform. "You'd simply have to burn the shop from laboratory to door-mat. To advertise as he does is against the code of dental ethics, and his practice ought to be jumped on by the board of health. Look at this junk!" he added, shaking an indignant fist under the nose of the slave girl. "Lord knows how many good dollars it cost, and yet we haven't got more than one decent set of instruments in the whole shebang. I reach for a spatula or a plugger that I've laid down two minutes before, and I find it's been packed off by old Grimes to use on another patient. As for sterilizing--faugh! You could catch _anything_ here. How he's shaved through so far without a damage suit euchres me."

"Yet I like him," said Jean.

"So do I. So does everybody. And he's getting rich on the strength of it."

"I'm getting rich on the strength of it, too," Jean laughed. "Next week I shall really be able to put money in the bank."

Better paid, better dressed, with easy work and not infrequent leisure to read, she felt that at last she had begun to live. Her position long retained a flavor of novelty, for the dental company's patrons were infinitely various and furnished endless topics of interest to herself and Paul. They usually went to and from Mrs. St. Aubyn's together, and as the summer excursion season drew on, their Sunday pleasurings began to flourish afresh. Sometimes Amy joined them, but more often she made labored excuses, and they went alone. Jean thought her more secretive and reserved than of old, and Paul, too, remarked a change.

"How did you two get chummy?" he asked abruptly, after one of Amy's declinations. "You're not at all alike."

"Chums are usually different, aren't they?" Jean said, her skin beginning to prickle.

"Not so much as you two. You're a lady and she--well, she isn't. Known her some time?"

"Yes."

"Where did you meet? You were certainly green to the city when you struck our house. Amy's an East Sider Simon-pure."

"It was in the country. Amy stayed in the country once."

"Shawnee Springs?"

"No, no. Another place."

"Was that where you knew Miss Archer?"

Jean turned a sick face upon him, but Paul's own countenance was without guile.

"I've overheard you and Amy mention her once or twice," he explained.

"Yes," she stammered. "We both knew her there."

"Out of breath?" he said, still too observant. "I thought we were taking our usual gait."

She blamed the heat and led him to speak of other things, but the day was spoiled. She debated seriously whether it were not wise to make a clean breast of her refuge history, but Paul's belief in her unworldliness had its sweetness, and the fit chance to dispel his illusion somehow had not come when Stella, for weeks almost forgotten, so involved the coil that frankness was impossible.

XV

Motley as were the dental company's patrons, Jean never entertained the possibility of Stella's crossing the threshold, till her coming was an accomplished fact. Luckily she happened to be elsewhere in the office when the bell warned her that some one had entered, and she was able, accordingly, to sight the caller with her admiring gaze fixed upon the slave girl. Her own retreat was instant and blind, and by a spiteful chance took her full tilt into the arms of Paul.

"What's up?" he demanded, holding her fast. "What's happened to you?"

She was dumb before his questions. He noticed her pallor and helped her into the nearest operating-chair.

"There is a patient waiting," she got out at last.

"You're the first patient," he said; and brought smelling-salts, which he administered with a liberal hand. "You girls eat a roll for breakfast and a chocolate caramel for lunch, and then wonder why you faint."

She finally persuaded him to leave her on her promising that she would not stir till his return, and he went in her stead to receive Stella, whom he brought to a room so near that almost every word was audible. Stella had evidently visited the parlors before. She addressed Paul familiarly as "Doc," spoke of other work he had done for her, and lingered to make conversation after he had fixed an appointment. The dentist's responses were cool and perfunctory, and in leaving she chaffed him on having lost his old-time sociability.

He returned with a red face to find Jean outwardly herself.

"Better?" he said awkwardly.

"Much better."

Paul fidgeted with the mechanism of the chair.

"As long as you're O.K. now," he went on, "I'm not sorry you missed that party. That's the worst of Grimes. He caters to all sorts. You heard her talk, I suppose?"

"Yes."

He furtively studied her face. "I hope you don't think we're as friendly as she made out?"

"Oh, no."

Paul looked greatly relieved.

"I bank a lot on what you think," he said. "You're the kind of girl who makes a fellow want to toe the mark."

"Don't," she entreated, writhing under his praise. "You rate me too high."

"Too high!" He laughed excitedly and caught her hand when she moved to go. "You didn't mind my telling you?" Then, without awaiting a reply, he blurted: "There's a heap more to say. I want to take you out of all this--away from such riffraff as the girl you didn't see; I want--I want you, Jean."

She tried to speak, but he read refusal in her troubled eyes and cut her short.

"Don't answer now," he begged. "I didn't expect to tell you this so soon. I don't expect you to say yes straight off. I'm not good enough for you, Lord knows, but nobody could care more. Promise me you'll think it over. Promise me that, anyhow."

She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse, therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept. It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore.

She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom, Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even more merciless dreams.

Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten minutes of eleven now!

She evaded Paul, who was returning, caught up her hat, and telling Grimes that she was too ill to work that day--which the big incompetent sympathetically assured her he could see for himself--fled in panic to the stairs only to behold Stella's nodding plumes already rounding the sample show-case below. Fortunately she was mounting with head down, and it took Jean but an instant to dart for the staircase to the floor above, from whose landing, breathless, lax-muscled, yet safe, she followed Stella's rustling progress to the dental company's door. When she cautiously descended, the hall reeked with a musky perfume from which she recoiled as from a physical nearness to the woman herself.

Luncheon brought Paul and questions which she answered, as she could, from behind her closed door. He had no suspicion of the real cause of her sudden leaving, ascribing her indisposition, as yesterday, to insufficient nourishment, and joined his imagination to Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and that of the proprietor of a neighboring delicatessen shop, in the heaping of a tray whose every mouthful choked. It tortured her to brazen out this deception, but unaided she could see no other way, and advisers there were none. She might have confided in Amy, had the need arisen earlier; but Amy was become a creature of strange reserves and silences.

She left her room at evening and braved the galling solicitude of the dining room. Mrs. St. Aubyn was for extracting her precise symptoms, and led a discussion of favorite remedies, to which nearly all contributed some special lore, from the librarian, who swore by a newspaper cholera mixture, to the bankrupt, whose panacea was Adirondack air. Paul refrained from the talk, perceiving that Jean wished nothing so much as to be let alone. He was more silent than she had ever known him at table, and she twice surprised him in a brown study, of which Amy was seemingly the subject. Dinner over, he brought about a tête-à-tête in an upper hall, a meeting made easy by the boarders' summer custom of blocking the front steps in a domestic group, of which Mrs. St. Aubyn, watchful of other clusters obviously less presentable, was the complacent apex.

"I didn't trot out a remedy downstairs," he said, "but I've got one all the same. It's a vacation."

"But--" Jean began.

"No 'buts' in order. I've got the floor. It's a vacation you need, and it's a vacation you'll have. Grimes has arranged everything. You're to have a week off, beginning to-morrow, and your pay will go on same as ever."

"This is your doing."

"No," he disclaimed; "it's Grimes's. I only told him it would do you more good now than in August. It was due you anyhow."

"But I'm not sick," she protested. "I can't let you think I am. It's not right to deceive--"

"The question now before the house," Paul calmly interposed, "is, Where do you want to spend it? How about Shawnee Springs?"

"No."

"Thought not. You never mention the Springs as though you pined to get back. Ever try Ocean Grove, where the Methodists round up?"

"No."

"Then why don't you? There's more fun in the place than you'd think. They can't spoil the ocean, and Asbury Park is just a stone's throw away whenever the hymns get on your nerves. I mention Ocean Grove, because Mrs. St. Aubyn's sister has a boarding-house there--Marlborough Villa, she calls it--where she'll take you cheap, coming now before the rush. I'll run down Sunday and see how you're making out."

He had an answer for every objection, and in the end Jean let herself be persuaded, although to yield here seemed to imply a tacit assent to other things she was wofully unready to meet. The future stretched away, a jungle of complexity. Perhaps the sea, the real sea she had never beheld, for Coney Island did not count, would help her think it out.

Early the following morning the dentist saw her aboard the boat.

"You'll not mind if I come down?" he asked.

She smiled "No" a little wanly, but he went away content. Sunday would be crucial, she foresaw. He would press for his answer then, and she----Perhaps the salt breeze would shred these mists.

But neither the breeze, full of the odor of sanctity, which cooled encamped Methodism, nor the secular, yet not flagrantly sinful, atmosphere of the twin watering-place, had aided much when the week-end brought Paul to solve the riddle for himself.

Many things allied in his favor. In the first place, Jean was unfeignedly glad to see him, as the agitated veranda rockers of Marlborough Villa bore witness. In a world which she had too often found callous, Paul Bartlett, for one, had proved himself a practical friend. She felt a distinct pride in him, too, as he withstood the brunt of the veranda fire; a pardonable elation that, in a social scheme overwhelmingly feminine, she led captive so presentable a male.

Again, Paul was tactful in following up his welcome. His only concern Saturday evening, and throughout Sunday till almost the end, was seemingly to give her pleasure. Sometimes she played the cicerone to her own discoveries: now a model of Jerusalem, its Lilliputian streets littered with the peanut shucks of appreciative childhood; the pavilion where free concerts were best; the bathing-beach where the discreetly clothed crowd was most diverting; or a little lake, remote from the merry-go-rounds and catch-penny shows, which she secretly preferred to all. Or Paul would display the results of his past researches. He knew an alley in one of the great hotels, where she had from him her first lesson in the ancient game of bowls; a catering establishment whose list of creams and ices exceeded imagination; and a drive--Sunday morning this--past opulent dwellings, whose tenants they commiserated, to an old riverside tavern overhung by noble trees.

Sundown found them watching the trampling surf from the ramparts of their own sand-castle, which Paul, guided by her superior knowledge of things mediæval, had reared. The transition from sandcastles to air-castles was easy, and presently the man was mapping his future.

"Grimes wants me to renew our contract," he said. "It runs out October first, you know. But I think it's up to me to be my own boss. I've got what I needed from the dental company--practical experience. If I stay on, I may pick up some things I don't need, just as the other fellows finally drop into old Grimey's shiftless ways. I don't want to take any of his smudge into _my_ office. He can keep his gilt gimcracks and his slave girl and his bogus armor. A plain reception-room, but cheerful, I say; and an operating-room that's brighter still. Canary or two, maybe; plants--real plants--and fittings strictly up to date. Electricity everywhere, chair best in the market, instruments the finest money will buy, but _out of sight_. No chamber of horrors for me! As for location, give me Harlem. I know a stack of folks there, and I like Harlem ways. I've even looked up offices, and I know one on a 'Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street that just fills the bill. Well, that's part of the programme."

Jean was roused from visions of her own.

"I know you'll succeed," she said.

"That's part of the programme," he repeated; then, less confidently: "The other part includes a snug little flat just round the corner, where a fellow can easily run in for lunch. I don't mean a bachelor's hall. I mean a _bona-fide_ home, with a wife in it--a wife named Jean!"

He was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited in the dusk, and the home he offered had its appeal. Marriage would solve many problems. She would be free of the grinding struggle for a livelihood, which the stigma of the refuge made dangerous. She would be free of the fear of such vengeance as Stella could wreak. If the need arose, it would be a simple matter, once they were married, to tell Paul the truth of things. His love would make light of it. As for her love----But what was love? Where in life did one meet the rose-colored dream of fiction? Love was intensified liking, and Paul, as has been recorded, was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited in the dusk.

Yet, even then, recurred a still undimmed picture wherein, against a background of forest birches, there shone an indubitable hero of romance.

XVI

Jean shrank from the congratulations of the boarding-house and the office, and they decided at the outset to keep their engagement to themselves.

"Not barring your mother, of course," Paul amended. "To play strictly according to Hoyle, I expect I ought to drop her a line. What do you think?"

"It won't be necessary," Jean said.

The dentist sighed thankfully.

"Glad to hear it. The chances are she'd say no, straight off the bat, if I did. Letter-writing isn't my long suit. What will you say about a proposition like me, anyhow?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Least said the better, eh?"

"I mean I'm not going to write."

"Not at all?"

"Not till we are married. I will write home then."

Paul whistled meditatively.

"Mind telling why?" he queried. "Can't say that this play seems according to Hoyle, either."

Jean's real reason was rooted in a fear that Mrs. Fanshaw's erratic conscience might be capable of a motherly epistle to Paul, setting forth the refuge history. So she answered that she and her family were not in sympathy, and was overjoyed to find that Paul thought her excuse valid.

"I know just how you feel," he said. "My governor and I could never hit it off. But about writing your mother: we'll need her consent, you know. You're still under twenty-one."

"I come of age September tenth."

"But we want to be married the third week in August."

"We can't," said Jean; and that was the end of it.

This postponement notwithstanding, it seemed to her that she fairly tobogganed toward her marriage. Even before her return to work, Paul notified Grimes of his intention to shift for himself after October and leased the office of which he had told her. With the same energy, of which he gratefully assured her she was the dynamo, he promptly had her hunting Harlem for the little flat, just around the corner, of his imaginings. For so modest a thing, this proved singularly elusive, and it took a month of Sundays, besides unreckoned week-day explorations, before they lit finally upon what they wanted, in a building so new that the plumbers and paper-hangers still overran its upper floors.

The "Lorna Doone" was an apartment house. The prospectus said so; the elevator and the hall service proved it. Mere flats have stairs and ghostly front doors which unseen hands unlock. Mere flats have also at times an old-fashioned roominess which apartments usually lack; but as Paul, out of a now ripe experience with agents and janitors, justly remarked, they have no tone. This essential attribute--the agents and janitors agreed that it was essential--seemed to him to exhale from the Lorna Doone with a certainty not evident in many higher-priced buildings whose entrances boasted far less onyx paneling and mosaic. Besides tone or, more correctly perhaps, as a constituent of tone, this edifice had location, which Jean was surprised to learn was a thing to be considered even in this happily unfashionable section.

There was Harlem and Harlem, it appeared; and taught partly by Paul, partly by the real-estate brokers, she became adept in the subtle distinctions between streets which seemingly differed only in their numerals. For example, there was a quarter, _the_ quarter to be accurate, once called Harlem Heights, which now in the full-blown pride of its cathedral, its university, and its hero's mausoleum, haughtily declared itself not Harlem at all. They had scaled this favored region in their quest, admired its parks, watched the Hudson from its airy windows, and hoped vainly to find some nook their purse might command; but they had to turn their steps from it at last. This glimpse of the unattainable was a strong, if not controlling, factor in their final choice.

"We can't be hermits and live in a hole," Paul argued. "I know a big bunch of people here already, and we'll soon know more. We've got to hold up our end. Nice name we'd get in our club if we didn't entertain once in a while like the rest."

"Our club!" she echoed. "We're to join a club?"