CHAPTER XXIX
“YOU LOVE ANOTHER MAN, JEAN”
IT WAS two weeks later that Jean, paying her daily visit to the parish house, found Joe sitting up in bed. The nurse was to leave the next day, and Joe was impatient to be about again. The room had taken on a brighter air from Joe’s convalescence. A light had been so arranged by his bed that he could read and he had gorged himself with sporting supplements which Paddock had collected for him. Life had begun to interest Joe again. The philosophers of the diamond were already speculating as to the disposition of players, great and small; strategy boards were in session wherever “fiends” congregated, planning the campaigns of the approaching season. Pittsburg’s chances of winning the pennant were, even in December, a burning issue among men of apparent sanity.
Jean drew off her coat and sat down near him. She had brought three carnations and gave them into his hand to hold while she found a glass for them.
“They’re nice flowers. Thank you, Jean.”
She moved about the tidy room, doing useless and unnecessary things to satisfy her inner sense of duty. He did not know that her heart was beating fast or that her hands trembled. She was almost as white as he when she sat down beside him. There were many questions that he wished to ask her, but he was not sure to what new ground of relationship his recovery had brought them.
“I’ve given everybody a lot of trouble. Kind o’ tough turnin’ Father Jim out of his own bed. He’s the real stuff, all right. I guess I’ll be some time squarin’ this. He says”—he hesitated a moment and the smile died away from his good-humoured mouth—“he—Father Jim says my boss was out here.”
“Yes,” Jean replied. “Mr. Craighill came out here when you were sick and sat right there beside you. He was very kind and has had things sent out—many nice things to eat. The nurse has been giving them to you; she didn’t know where they came from, probably.”
“How long ago did he come?” asked Joe, the apprehension showing in his face, and she understood.
“That was when you were first sick. There was a chance that you might never get well and you were delirious and kept talking about him and calling for him. So Father Paddock telephoned him to come.”
“Where is he now?” Joe asked presently; and Jean met his eyes and answered:
“I don’t know. I think he’s gone away somewhere.”
Joe shook his head weakly on the pillow.
“I guess I ought to be up and lookin’ out for him. I could always handle him when he was bad. You better get Walsh on the job.”
“Mr. Walsh and Mr. Wingfield both understand. You needn’t trouble about Mr. Craighill.”
“I guess Whiskers—that’s Wingfield—is all right,” remarked Joe reflectively. “Wingfield and Walsh are good friends of the boss and I guess they’ll look out for him. But he’s pretty fierce to handle when he gets goin’.”
“You may be mistaken,” said Jean. “I don’t believe it’s that.”
“Well, he’s due all right. If Whiskers and Walsh are both lookin’ for him he must be pretty bad. I say, Jean.”
“Yes, Joe.”
“You know what I did out there at Rosedale—followin’ you that way. I guess I was sick then, and my head wasn’t right. It seemed kind o’ funny to be takin’ you a ride in his machine with him. And the widder, too. It was kind o’ funny, him and the widder bein’ out there. I ain’t onto the widder but she’s a good looker all right. But the Colonel—say, he’s frosted fruit. He ain’t got much use for me. I can see it in his eye. But Sister Fanny—that’s Mrs. Blair—I’m strong for her. She’s the human featherduster, all right, but she means good. You know I never lived round rich folks till Mr. Wayne set me up as chauffeur and moved me into the garage. Guess I might ’a’ been rich myself if I hadn’t fell off the bus at Harrisburg and cracked my right pipe. But say, Jean, I never tell the boss, but I can pitch with my left arm just as good as the right. I got a new southpaw ball that would worry the boys some if I went into the game again. But I told Father Jim I would cut it out and hang on to chaufferin’, which ain’t what you might think with the speed limit what it is, if he thought Mr. Wayne needed me. You see I’m onto his curves and know how to handle him.”
“Yes, Joe; I’m sure you have repaid him for his kindnesses to you.”
It was not easy to hear Wayne Craighill spoken of in this way. If it had not been that she realized the depth of Joe’s fidelity and devotion to Wayne she could not have stood it. For Joe saw in Wayne’s lapses only the pardonable escapades of a young man of fortune whose spectacular performances were free from the ignominy that attaches to drunken outbreaks of the poor and obscure. Joe felt that he was not saying the right thing; Jean’s inattention warned him to stop. Her hands were clasped in her lap, and her lips had been shut tight during his wandering recital. When she and Wayne had sat here in this room with Joe between them she had resolved upon a course that would abruptly change the channel of her life—that might blight and wreck it irrecoverably. She had already made her purpose clear to Wayne and that had been hard; and she had Joe to tell now and that was more difficult, for while Wayne could understand what it meant to her, she knew that Joe was incapable of understanding. She had brought herself by slow, difficult steps to the high altar of duty and was ready now to make confession and yield up her sacrifice.
“Joe, there’s something I must tell you. I’ve been waiting to tell you until you were well enough to hear.”
“I’m all right, Jean; go ahead,” he said, turning so that he might see her better.
“You know, Joe, that when I left you it was because I felt that we had made a mistake, and that we could never be happy together. I was honest about it; I felt that it would be a great sin for us to go on living together when I found I didn’t care. I was young and so were you and we had never thought about life seriously. You were the nicest, manliest boy in our town, and you thought I was the nicest girl, so we ran off and got married. It wasn’t necessary to run away, but it seemed romantic and it was childish, like all the rest of it.”
“We were kids, all right,” murmured Joe.
“But when it was done and we were married I saw how serious it was and I saw the mistake, too. Just to live on with you, and to work for you while you were working for me and to go on that way till we died—I saw right away, Joe, that wouldn’t do. And there was the fear of children coming—you know what the children of the poor in mining towns are like, and the thought of that was a terror to me, Joe. I don’t think you ever understood how I felt about that. And more than anything else I realized that I wanted to go on with my work—that it meant more to me than you did, Joe. I’m speaking of these things because it’s only square to myself that I should go over them for a minute. You were as kind as could be; you cared—cared as I did not and could not.”
“Oh, I know that, Jean—I know it. But let’s not talk about it—it’s no use talking about it.”
“We must talk of it—or I must, and I want to do it now. You never did one thing that was not right. You were a good, clean, honest boy and you would never have done anything to hurt me. It was I who hurt you. You were generous and kind and I was selfish and hard. I saw only my own happiness and the chance of doing something in the world for myself. And I put you away from me as though you had done me some great wrong—or as though you had been a bit of ribbon I didn’t want any more. A woman has no right to treat a man that way when he has never harmed her or done any dishonourable thing—when he is kind and gentle as you were. It seems a long time ago that it all happened, and I supposed you didn’t care any more. But after I came here and began seeing you again I saw that you had not forgotten and that it hurt you deeply. I suppose I never felt quite right about it. It felt like a fraud on people who thought I had never been married, but I told the friends I made here—Mrs. Blair and Mr. Paddock. I suppose that in my heart I knew all the time that I had done wrong. I had set myself up as better than you were, and I had broken my oath to you; the law could never make that right, but I never understood it until that evening I came here first and saw you sick, and other people taking care of you.”
The old ache had come into his heart. It had never hurt him so much as now and in his weakness the tears stole down his cheeks, but he shook his head wearily on the pillow.
“It’s all over; I’m sorry I bothered you and that I ran after you that day in the snow-storm, but I guess I wasn’t quite right in my head then. It was this sickness coming on. But it’s all done, and you don’t need to trouble about it, Jean.”
“But, Joe,” and she bent nearer and took his hand, his big battered hand, with his fingers twisted and bent by mine labour and the punishment of the ball field; caressed it and went on in the same low tone with which she had begun. “It isn’t over, Joe. I’ve talked to Mr. Paddock about that. He says the court’s making me free and giving me my name again doesn’t really count. You know how good and kind and gentle he is, but he was very firm about that. He said I had sacrificed my duty to my ambition—that was the way he put it—and now, Joe——”
And this was the hardest thing for her to say; it was bending her neck again to the yoke from which she had been free; and there was a pain in her heart that was not for herself but for him, for he had been the sufferer; it was he that had cared. But she knew, as she believed he could not, how impossible it would be for them to find the lost path in which they had begun to walk together. He would take what she offered without knowing at how great a cost she gave it, and her mind leaped on at a bound across the long years before them to the end of their lives. She saw her hopes for her work crumble into dust, and the world of beauty which the dawning consciousness of her powers had illumined before her, the joy of success, the stimulus of applause, the acquaintance of people who would appreciate her skill—all these things she would sweep away by a word and forget that they had ever been her dreams or that life had ever held anything better for her than being Joe’s wife, and living on with him, and eating the bread won for her by the hand that lay there in hers. Suddenly, before she could finish and tell him she would go back to him and renew the broken tie, she felt his clasp tighten and she took it that he understood and that this was his acceptance of what she meant to offer. She did not look into his eyes at once and she hoped he would not speak, for anything he could say would only cause her pain.
“Jean.”
“Yes,” she said bravely.
“It’s no good, Jean. I can’t let you do that; we quit, and if that was wrong we can’t fix it now. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’ll be out o’ here and all right pretty soon. And I ain’t goin’ to drag you down. You talk about doin’ me a wrong, but that’s no reason why I should do you a bigger one. We meant well when we started out, but it would never have been any good. Don’t you feel sorry about it—it’s all right, Jean. It’s like the good girl you are to offer to take me back, but it’s all done and over. I want you to be happy and go on with your work; but I’m not goin’ to be a dead weight on you. We ain’t for each other, Jean.”
He dropped her hand, as though the matter were concluded; but what he had said was not a release, it only sent her back to the beginning of her task.
“You love me, don’t you, Joe—just as you always did?”
He turned his head away and did not answer.
“And if you do, I owe it to you to go back to you. I had no right to throw your love away after I had taken it and pledged you mine. The only way I can make it right—the only thing there is to do—is for me to come back.”
He was silent a long time and when he turned toward her he asked slowly:
“Do you love me—do you care for me, Jean, even a little bit, as you did when we were married?”
In the long silence that followed she did not see the tears that brightened his eyes; but he drew himself up slowly, drawing the pillow under his arm for support.
“You don’t care any more, Jean. You didn’t care when you left me and got the divorce; and you don’t care now. But that’s like all the rest; it’s past and over. Maybe sometime I won’t care any more either. You love another man, Jean, and that’s all right, too. He’s my friend and he’s been kinder to me than anybody else ever was. He needs you—I guess you know that. And it’s all right, Jean, it’s all right.”
The mention of Wayne had filled her heart with wild tumult, and she made no reply. Joe knew the truth: that she did not care for him, and that if she had ever cared greatly she would not have left him. She could not lie to him; for duty cloaked in deceit would be only false and ignoble.
The nurse came in, ending the interview. On her way out Jean asked for Paddock, but he was in the city. So she went back to her boarding house with a troubled heart.