CHAPTER XXVI
JERRY’S DARK DAYS
JERRY, who had never been ill in his life, was now experiencing disquieting sensations which he was convinced pointed to an early and probably a painful death. He went about his work listlessly, and from being the cheerfulest person in Copeland-Farley, he became so melancholy that his fellow employees wondered greatly and speculated in private as to the cause of the change. Jerry encouraged the thought of death and blithely visualized the funeral at which Eaton’s pastor (chastely surpliced and reinforced by a boy choir) would officiate. He chose the rector of Christ Church because that gentleman had not been unmindful of his occasional attendance upon services (Jerry had courageously repeated his first timid visit), and had even made a memorandum of Jerry’s name and address, with a view to calling upon him. This attention clearly pointed to the rector as the minister predestined from the beginning of things to officiate at his funeral, a function about which he meditated much in a spirit of loftiest detachment.
A few people would be sorry when he died, but only a few. The boys at the store would contribute a wreath; they had done that for a drayman who had succumbed to pneumonia a short time before; and the people at his boarding-house would probably grace the last rites with their presence. Copeland would probably attend; he might even add dignity to the occasion by acting as pallbearer. One of the girl stenographers, whose lachrymose facilities had occasionally aroused his ire, would doubtless weep; she had cried when the drayman died, though her acquaintance with that person had been the most casual. Nan might attend the funeral, but he hoped to time his passing so that the funeral could be held on a market morning, thus giving her a good excuse for absenting herself. It would be a sad, pitiful funeral, with only a handful of mourners, as his only living relative was a cousin in Oklahoma whose exact address he had forgotten. The brief list of mourners included the billiard-marker at the Whitcomb. Jerry had once lent him five dollars, which was still carried as an open account and probably a permanent one; he meant to leave a memorandum of general forgiveness, including a release of the billiard-marker from any obligation to pay the five dollars. And he would bequeath him his best cuff-buttons to show that he had died with no hard feelings against him. The thought of the meager attendance and of the general gloom of the affair gave him the keenest satisfaction. No one would care particularly.
Jerry’s malady was one of the oldest that afflicts the human race. Jerry was in love; he was in love with Nan, though he would have stormed indignantly at any hint of this bewildering circumstance, this blighting, crushing fact. His first realization that this was the cause of his trouble fell upon him as he sat one evening in the hotel at Madison listlessly talking to a dry-goods drummer. Jerry was taking a run over Copeland-Farley territory to “jolly” the trade, carrying no samples and soliciting no orders, but presenting himself as the personal representative of the house, bent upon strengthening social ties only, and only casually glancing over the shelves to see how much Copeland-Farley’s competitors were selling. The dry-goods man, noting Jerry’s unwonted gloom, frankly attributed it to a love affair; and to find that his condition was perceptible even to the eye of a dry-goods drummer, for whose powers of discernment he had only the mildest respect, added considerably to Jerry’s melancholy.
Nan was not for him; he knew this; there had never been any doubt in his mind that Eaton and Nan would marry ultimately. Any speculations as to his own part in Nan’s life, beyond the boy-and-girl comradeship he had been enjoying, were vain and foolish; they were even disloyal to Eaton; they were an insult to Nan. Nan had intimated several times that Eaton was in love with Mrs. Copeland, but now that the black clouds had risen on his own horizon, Jerry knew the absurdity of this. Eaton had appeared unusually absent-minded of late, and this marked his friend as a man in the toils of love. Jerry knew the symptoms! Except for a passing attachment for a stenographer in a hardware house, who had jilted him for a red-haired bookkeeper, Jerry had never been in love. He had grieved over the hardware girl’s perfidy for two, perhaps three, days. But this was the real thing and a very different matter; he meant to win the martyr’s wreath by going to his death so heroically that no one would ever know how he had suffered.
Returning to town Saturday evening he checked his grip at a hotel and went to the theater, not for pleasure, but to lose himself among strangers and enjoy his misery. As he moodily surveyed the assembling audience a cold hand gripped his heart. Eaton, followed by Mrs. Copeland, Nan, and a lady he did not know, filed down to the second row where Eaton always sat.
Since Farley’s death Nan had attended no entertainments of any kind; she had refused to accompany Jerry to a concert only a fortnight earlier. Her presence at the theater with Eaton confirmed his worst suspicions. Their engagement would doubtless be announced in a day or two; he must steel himself against this and prepare to offer his congratulations. The comedy presented was one of the hits of the season, but its best lines and most amusing situations failed to evoke a smile from Jerry, who clutched his programme and stared at the back of Nan’s head. Nan was enjoying herself; from his seat on the back row he was satisfied of that, and he assured himself that he was glad of her happiness. At the end of the second act, he left and went to his room to spend a wretched night.
Jerry found on his desk Monday morning a note from Eaton, written several days earlier, asking him to join his theater party and go to the club later for supper. His sister had come down from Cleveland to make him a visit, Eaton explained, and he wanted Jerry to meet her. For an instant the world was the pleasant, cheerful place it had been in the old days before love darkened his life. Eaton was still his friend; but only for a moment was the veil lifted. The clouds settled upon him again, as he grasped the motive behind Eaton’s friendly note—as though at any time in their intercourse there had been the ghost of a motive back of anything John Cecil Eaton had ever done for him except a perfectly transparent, generous wish to be kind to him! But the coming of the sister (who had never, so far as Jerry knew, visited Eaton before) could only mean that Eaton wished to introduce Nan to her as a prospective member of the family. And, proud of his logic, Jerry reasoned that he was to have been given an opportunity to offer his own congratulations.
For a week Jerry kept away from the market-house; Nan knew he had been out of town, and, failing to see him, would assume that he was still away. He could not face her; it would be a merciful thing if he never saw her again. Eaton he would avoid; his friend must never know of his hopeless passion. Nan and Eaton must begin their married life wholly ignorant that he had ever looked upon Nan as anything more than a good friend. Phrases out of novels he had read assisted him in the definition of his attitude toward her and Eaton. “Unworthy of the woman he loved,” and “climbed slowly, painfully, to the sublime heights of a great renunciation.” He was unworthy; he had known that all along; and he would give her up to his best friend with a beautiful magnanimity. The fiction with which he was familiar had not lacked in noble examples of just such splendid sacrifice. If death failed to end his misery, he would live on, sadly, but manfully, and on every anniversary of their meeting on the river bank, he would send her a rose—a single beautiful rose—always exactly the same, and it would puzzle her greatly and make her wonder; but she would never guess that it was from one who had loved her in the long ago.
He had made no sign to Eaton, not even to acknowledge the theater invitation; and when one day he ran into the lawyer in the bank lobby he was about to pass him hurriedly when the familiar “Ah, Jerry!” arrested him. He swallowed hard; it was not easy to meet his friend with the air of sweet resignation and submission to inexorable fate that he had been cultivating.
“An overdraft?” Eaton suggested in his usual tone. “Nothing else could account for your woeful countenance! I didn’t know you were in town. Just in, I suppose, from a flight into the remoter recesses of the Commonwealth.”
“Well, I’ve been back a few days,” Jerry confessed reluctantly; “but I’ve been too busy to come around. I meant to call you up about that invitation; I didn’t get it until after the show.”
“We missed you; I had wanted you to meet my sister. In fact, I’d rather prepared her for the meeting—led up to it, warned her of your native flavor. She’s still with me. You’re working yourself to death; it’s in your eye. Can’t you come up Tuesday night and dine with us? I’ll see if we can’t get Mrs. Copeland and Nan to come in. They’ve been seeing something of Florence. You’ve seen Nan—”
“No; I haven’t seen her,” Jerry replied, a little resentfully, as though Eaton ought to know why Nan had become invisible so far as Jeremiah Amidon was concerned.
“She’s another victim of overwork,” Eaton remarked carelessly, but behind his glasses there was a gleam of humor. “Not quarreling, I hope? I confess that at times Nan is a trifle provoking, but she means nothing by it. You must give the benefit of all doubts to a girl who is just emerging from a severe ordeal—settling herself into a new manner of life. It’s wonderful; really amazing how she’s coming on. We shall be dining at seven. Please don’t make it necessary for me to explain a second scorning of my hospitality to my sister. She’d begin to think you a myth, like Jupiter and the rest of the immortals.”
“Thanks; I’ll be there,” Jerry answered solemnly. Then he watched Eaton’s retreating figure shame-facedly. He was acting abominably toward Eaton.
The Pembrokes had gone to Florida for the spring months, and Eaton had taken their house that he might indulge in a round of dinners and a ball that proved to be the season’s smartest event. These social activities Jerry had taken as another sign of Eaton’s approaching marriage. And Jerry had resented, as an attack upon his personal rights, Eaton’s transfer from the rooms where he had always been so accessible, to the big house where visitors were received by the Pembrokes’ butler—a formidable person who, he fancied, regarded him with a hostile eye.
Jerry presented himself at the hour appointed, wearing the crown of his martyrdom, which, if he had known it, was highly unbecoming. As he had walked around the block twice to prepare himself for the ordeal, he was late, and stood uncomfortably in the drawing-room door, quite unnoticed, while the sister (whose back he distrusted) finished a story she had been telling. But spying him, Eaton rose and greeted him cordially.
“Florence, Mr. Amidon; my sister, Mrs. Torrington, Jerry.”
Mrs. Torrington, a tall, dark woman in her early thirties, graciously assured him that she had delayed her departure from town until he could be produced for her edification.
“I guess you wouldn’t ’a’ missed much,” said Jerry, hating himself at once for that unnecessary a, from which he had honestly believed himself permanently emancipated. He shook hands with Mrs. Copeland and then with Nan—without looking at her. The butler announced dinner, and he found himself moving toward the dining-room beside Mrs. Torrington. In her ignorance of the darkness in which he had immersed himself, she treated him quite as though they were in the habit of meeting at dinners. It was to his credit that he saw at once that she was a superior person, though he did not know until later that, as the wife of a distinguished engineer, she was known in many capitals as a brilliant conversationalist, with a reputation for meeting difficult situations. On the way down the hall she spoke of Russia—she had been telling a Russian story at the moment of his appearance—and her manner expressed a flattering assumption that he, of course, was quite familiar with the social life of the Russian capital.
It was the most informal of dinners; Jerry found himself placed between Mrs. Torrington and Mrs. Copeland, which left Nan at Eaton’s right. This arrangement had not been premeditated, but he saw only the darkest significance in Nan’s juxtaposition to Eaton. She seemed unwontedly subdued, and averted her eyes when their gaze met.
“This is the nicest party you’ve had for me, Cecil,” Mrs. Torrington was saying,—“cozy and comfortable so everybody can talk.”
Jerry hoped they would talk! (He was watching Mrs. Torrington guardedly to see which fork she chose for her caviar.) Eaton was unusually grave; Mrs. Copeland seemed preoccupied; Jerry’s heart ached at the near presence of Nan. But at a hint from Fanny, Mrs. Torrington returned to her experiences abroad, and soon had them all interested and amused. Jerry quickly fell victim to her charm; he had never before met a woman of her distinction and poise. Even her way of speaking was different from anything he had been accustomed to—crisp, fluent, musical. Her good humor was infectious and she quickly won them all to self-forgetfulness. Mrs. Copeland described an encounter she had witnessed between a Russian and a Frenchman in a Roman pension where she had once spent a winter—an incident that culminated in a hasty exchange of wine-glasses across the table.
“Ah, Jerry,” remarked Eaton casually; “that leads us naturally to your pleasing adventures down the road. Florence, if you urge Mr. Amidon he will tell you of most amazing experiences he has had right here at home in the pursuit of food.”
Mrs. Torrington’s fine eyes emphasized her appeal. They would all tell of the worst food they had ever eaten, she said; she had spent years collecting information.
“You may lapse into the vernacular, Jerry,” Eaton added encouragingly; “we will all understand that you are falling into it merely in a spirit of realism.”
“This is tough,” said Jerry, turning to Mrs. Torrington. “Your brother has told me a hundred times to cut out those stories.”
“That was only after he had heard them all! And he has been boasting that he could persuade you to tell them to me. Please! I want to add them to my collection.”
“Well, you understand this isn’t my fault—” he began....
They were still demanding more stories after the dessert plates had been removed. He had so far yielded to their friendliness that he appealed occasionally to Nan, and finally asked her to tell one of Farley’s stories about the river, which he said he had forgotten. They remained at table for their coffee to avoid disturbing the good cheer that now prevailed.
“Mr. Amidon is up to my highest expectations,” Mrs. Torrington remarked when they rose. “I’ll stay another week if you’ll give just this same party again!”
“We’ve missed you at the farm,” said Mrs. Copeland, as Jerry seated himself beside her in the library. “And I was just beginning to feel that we were acquainted! But, of course, you’ve been away. I heard that from Mr. Copeland.”
As she mentioned Copeland, she smiled gravely.
“Well, I have been away, and we’re busier than usual just now,” he replied, realizing that something had happened in her relations with Copeland to make possible this careless reference to him. “I guess Mr. Copeland is working harder than any of us,” he added warmly.
“Oh, we’re all happier when we’re busy,” she said lightly.
“Not smoking, Jerry?” asked Eaton, proffering cigars.
“I’ve quit,” Jerry replied, remembering that he had given up smoking in his general abandonment of the joys of life.
Mrs. Copeland left him, making it necessary for him to join Nan, who had moved a little away from the circle they had formed before the fireplace.
“It’s too bad you don’t tell your friends about your troubles,” she remarked after a moment’s silence. “So many things have happened that you ought to be very cheerful.”
“I haven’t been feeling very well,” he answered doggedly.
“You do look utterly fagged out,” she retorted. “But if I were you I wouldn’t cut all my friends.”
“I haven’t cut anybody,” he replied. “I guess I know when to drop out. I want everybody to be happy,” he said plaintively, feeling his martyr’s crown pinching his brow.
“That’s very sweet of you, Jerry. The policeman at the market asked Saturday what had become of you. Your absence seems to have occasioned remark, though I hadn’t noticed it myself.”
“I didn’t suppose you would,” he said, with an effort at bitterness that was so tame that she laughed.
“Of course, if you’ve lost interest, it’s all right. I never meant to bore you. And I’m not complaining. But you haven’t been kind to Mr. Eaton. I suppose it never occurred to you that he’s taken a good deal of pains to be nice to you. And just now, just now,”—she added, lowering her voice,—“we should all be as good to him as we can.”
He frowned at this. If she and Eaton were in love with each other, he saw no good reason why he should be sorry for either of them.
“If I had a chance I could tell you some things,” Nan continued, “but I suppose it’s just as well to let you read about them in the papers.”
His spirits sank; he had been scanning the society columns daily expecting to see the announcement of her engagement.
“When I’m an old, old woman and living all alone with my chickens somewhere, I suppose you may come to see me again and tell me about your troubles.”
“I won’t,” he replied with a smile he meant to be grim, “because I’ll be dead.”
She regarded him with knit brows, puzzled, slightly disdainful.
“Just when things were a little hard for me, and I have been much troubled because one of the kindest friends either of us ever had or could have—”
She shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and rebuke and indignation were mingled in the glance she bent upon him.
“I guess we’re not talking about the same thing,” he said huskily. “You know I mean to do the square thing, Nan.”
He was so pathetic that she changed her tone, sorry that she had been so hard on him.
“I think you do—usually, Jerry.”
“And I’ll be out to-morrow night if you’re going to be at home,” he suggested timidly, her reproach still upon him.
“Well, if you’re not too tired, or ill, or anything, and can’t think of anything else to do, come along,” she said.
Mrs. Copeland called to Nan that it was time to go. They had come in on the interurban, but Eaton announced his intention of taking them home in the Pembroke car.
“There’s no use of my living in all this borrowed splendor unless I use it. Jerry, please keep the fire burning till I get back.”
Nan’s smile as she gave him her hand conveyed an apology for her harshness and sent his spirits soaring.
“I hope,” remarked Mrs. Torrington, as they heard the car leave the door, “that you know how fond my brother is of you. You’ve been a great resource to him; he’s mentioned you often in his letters. You know Cecil and I are very close, unusually so; and it breaks my heart to see him—” She waved her hand with a gesture that expressed the futility of explanations.
She was taking him for granted as her brother’s friend, not a mere beneficiary of his big-heartedness. He was aware of something spacious in her nature; she would brush little things away with a sweep of her eloquent hands. A wonderful woman was John Cecil’s sister. She was addressing him as though he were a gentleman, a man of her own world, instead of the miserable ingrate he knew himself to be.
“She’s lovely, quite adorable,” Mrs. Torrington continued, as though speaking of matters they had often discussed before. “I’ll say quite frankly that I’d been afraid to meet her after what he had written.”
Jerry sat silent, wondering. Nan had left him mystified. He did not know what Eaton’s sister was talking about unless it was his love for Nan.
“I shall be leaving in a few days; my husband’s business calls him to China. I want you to keep an eye on Cecil; don’t let him be alone too much,” she went on. “A man with a sorrow like that in his heart oughtn’t to be alone. I came here on purpose to see just how the land lay; I suppose you understand that.”
He muttered incoherently, touched by her assumption of his sympathy, her direct, intimate appeal.
“I felt that I could speak to you quite frankly,” Mrs. Torrington continued. “No one else seemed quite so accessible, no one really quite so close to him.”
“Of course, he has a lot of friends,” said Jerry humbly, and anxious to respond to the demand this fascinating woman was making upon his generosity.
“She’s going back to her husband; of course you know that.”
There was a degree of indignation in her tone, as though the person of whom she spoke was doing an unpardonable thing.
Jerry felt himself shrinking; his hands clutched the arms of his chair as it dawned upon him that it was Mrs. Copeland—not Nan—of whom Eaton’s sister was speaking. He was struck with fear lest she should read his thoughts as he realized how dull, how utterly selfish and contemptible, had been his apprehensions.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Torrington, “that a man as fine as Cecil is doomed to just this kind of calamity.”
“I thought maybe it would be Nan,” he faltered. “I know he likes Nan, and he’s done a lot for her.”
Mrs. Torrington had been staring musingly into the fire. She turned toward him absently, and then, catching his meaning, her eyes widened with surprise.
“Nan,” she repeated slowly; and then, in her usual brisk tone, “A man like Cecil can’t be passed on from one affair to another so easily. And, besides,”—she smiled her charming, irresistible smile,—“that child is in love with you, you silly boy! It’s in her eyes! That’s the one hopeful thing about the situation—that together you two will take good care of him!”