Charlotte had decided to go up with some puppy biscuits for Hans when she heard familiar sounds on the back-hall stairs announcing Tina’s descent—the blurred pattering, like hailstones on hard ground, of Tina’s two cocker spaniels, accompanied by the clatter of Tina’s own hurrying footsteps on the bare stairs.
“Came-eel!” she called, halting in the hall. “Came-eel! Where are you? Upstairs or down?”
“In my own room,” Charlotte called back.
A moment later Tina appeared, covered from her chin to her knees in a chicory-blue artist’s smock. She was still thin, but no longer emaciated. She no longer wore bangs to her eyebrows, nor side-curtains to her collarbone. Her hair was brushed softly off her forehead, and fell in pretty curves against her cheeks, barely covering the lobes of her ears. She held Hans in her arms, like a baby, on his back, paws up.
“Hans has been sick to his stomach again! All over that brocade chair! I’ll clean it up. But he can’t sit for his portrait any more today, poor sweet darling baby. Can he stay with you for a while?”
“Certainly. But I think he’ll be happier down cellar by the furnace in case he feels sick again. He’s such a sensitive little fellow it frightens him to be rushed out in a hurry.” Tina agreed and started for the cellar. “When you come back, I want to speak to you,” Charlotte added.
Five minutes later Charlotte announced, “Your father called up this morning. He said he was fine. He thought he might fly on and have dinner with us tonight.”
Across Tina’s face there passed a series of expressions in this order—pleasure, perplexity, suspicion, and finally terror.
“What’s the matter, Tina?”
“Why is my father coming?”
“Just to have dinner and see what sort of place you are staying in.”
“Then why didn’t he say so in his last letter? I know why he’s coming! I know! He’s going to take me home!” She threw herself down in the big chair nearby, and burst into violent crying for the first time in many weeks. “Oh, don’t make me go! Don’t make me! Don’t make me!”
As Charlotte held Tina in her arms, reassuring and comforting her, she thought, She wants to stay with me! By her own choice, Tina’s mine. She’s mine! She’s Jerry’s and mine!
29
THE CRUCIAL TEST
By the time J.D. arrived at six o’clock Charlotte had quieted Tina’s fears, dressed her with painstaking care in her sienna brown velvet dress, and persuaded her hair into its prettiest curves and curls. Tina ran into his arms, so excited at first that she was unconscious of her hair, her dress, her pumps with “grown-up” heels, and her long, sheer silk stockings. But when her father held her at arm’s length and exclaimed, struggling with a lump in his throat, “Well, well, can this be Tina?” she flushed with pleasure.
“Do I look nice?”
“You look lovely!” Why, Tina was pretty!
“Do you really like me?” Tina turned around slowly for him to see.
Looking over her head straight into Charlotte’s eyes, “I love you,” he said, through a blur of tears beyond his control.
Charlotte left them alone then. “Show him everything, Tina, from Hans’s portrait to Hans himself, and your mice and the cats, and put on a record later and ask him to dance. I’m going to my room to rest for the next hour. Cocktails at seven, Mr. Durrance.”
“Thank you, Miss Vale,” formally the “Mr. Durrance” whom she addressed replied to his hostess, while Jerry added in a lower tone, discarding all disguise, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
Tina always had dinner with Charlotte and June, unless there was a dinner party. There was no party tonight, but half a dozen sat down at the table. Charlotte had expected only June, but at three minutes before seven Nichols called up from Cambridge and asked if it would be all right if he should drop in for a bite. He’d just called the mater, and she was having one of her formal dinner-parties tonight. His car was at the door. He could be there in ten minutes if it was all right. Nichols’ ten minutes, Charlotte well knew, meant nearer half an hour, and she had wanted everything to be especially nice tonight. “Of course it’s all right, Nichols,” she replied.
“If there’s enough grub I might bring Chad along.” Chad was his roommate.
“Of course there’s enough grub.” There was only one extra squab. She’d have to tell the cook to cut it in two.
So Tina sat between her two gods-among-men that night at dinner. The first time Nichols saw Tina, he had taken pains to be nice to the poor scrawny lame duck which Charlotte had picked up somewhere and brought in out of the wet. All the nephews and nieces had followed suit.
Nichols had continued to be more than just nice to Tina. He found it amusing to treat her as a bona fide young-lady-friend of his for whom he had a decided penchant. Tina realized it was all a sort of game, but that a grown-up Harvard graduate would condescend even to notice her was enough to place him on a pedestal. Next to her father, Nichols was her ideal, Tina had recently confided to Charlotte.
Tina’s expression was radiant tonight. So, too, was Jerry’s, Charlotte noticed in swift, passing glances. His face had that same peculiar scintillating quality that it used to have in Italy. Tonight there was nothing about him to suggest a dog between shafts pulling a cart.
Jerry and Nichols found much in common. J.D.’s voice was as animated as his expression, as he and Nichols leaned toward each other discussing the effect of the steel age on architecture. June also was obviously making an effort to appear intelligent to this attractive father of Tina’s. Charlotte said little, just sat there quietly basking in the glow of the present moment, as proud of the impression Jerry was making on these two supercritical members of the family as if he belonged to her. Well, those three words he had just said over the top of Tina’s head vested in her a right to some of the joys of ownership.
After dinner several of June’s friends dropped in, and Charlotte withdrew to the library across the hall with J.D. and Tina. Her mother had always kept the library closed in the winter, because it was difficult to heat, but now a crackling cannel coal fire burned in the iron grate which Charlotte had installed in the fireplace.
Tina usually went to bed at nine o’clock. Tonight it was nearly ten when Charlotte noticed her nodding, and remarked that she thought it was time for Hans, who Tina held in her arms, to be tucked in. Tina kissed her father goodnight and goodbye without tears and went upstairs, still holding the quivering Hans, followed by the two spaniels, and Charlotte in the rear.
“I always go up and get her started when I’m home,” Charlotte had explained when she rose. “I hope you don’t think I’m spoiling her, Mr. Durrance.”
“Of course not, Miss Vale. But don’t stay too long. I’ve ordered my taxi for eleven and I have several business matters to discuss with you.”
“How long are you going to call her Miss Vale, Daddy?”
“What should I call her?”
“I don’t know.” She considered it for a moment, then appealed to Charlotte. “Would it sound funny if Daddy should call you my name for you, Camille?”
“I think it would sound very nice, indeed,” laughed Charlotte, flushing as genuinely as if J.D. were as new an acquaintance as he appeared.
“All right,” instantly he responded. “Don’t stay upstairs too long, Camille.”
When Charlotte returned, J.D. was standing by the mantel looking down into the fire. She stopped outside the door a moment and watched him unobserved. His face had lost its animation; the anxious lines had returned. The sinuous melody of a tango was issuing from the living room now, muffled by shuffling feet. Without saying a word, Charlotte approached the mantel, coming to a standstill at the other side of the fireplace from J.D. He raised his head and looked at her, the anxious lines disappearing into the tender smile which stole across his features.
He shook his head slowly. “You’ve done a wonderful job for Tina,” he said, sighing deeply.
“Why so sad about it?”
<
br /> “Do you remember the last time we met, you referred to Sara Crewe?” Charlotte nodded. “And you said I was the nice rich old gentleman, though I was neither rich nor old?” Again Charlotte nodded. “Well, now you’re the nice rich old gentleman, though you’re neither old nor a gentleman.” He paused and again smiled. “Indeed, you’re young and lovely and a woman in the prime of life.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Your job with Tina is finished. It’s time for Tina to go home now.”
“To go home! What do you mean? Doctor Jaquith says it would be the worst thing in the world for Tina to go home now.”
“Well, it’s time for her to leave here. She can’t lean on you always.”
“Oh, you think I’m too indulgent? I don’t intend to keep it up. I’ve talked it over with Doctor Jaquith. Please sit down.” He obeyed. Charlotte also sat down, facing him. “I know all these special tutors and special privileges aren’t good preparation for life. But it’s only for this year. Next fall I hope Tina can attend some day school, and later go away to school where she will get good training in art. She has real talent you know. Surely Doctor Jaquith told you we’re only waiting till Tina is physically stronger to begin treating her like a normal girl? He doesn’t think she’ll be firmly established until next fall. Didn’t he tell you my plan to take her to Europe for six months?”
“Yes, he mentioned it.”
“Listen, Jerry.” She lowered her voice to a confidential pitch and leaned toward him, her eyes shining. “I want to start in March and take the southern route, stop off at Gibraltar, drop in at Majorca and climb up some of those darling little hanging gardens, have dinner at the Café de Paris at Monte Carlo, then go on down to Italy, take a car and spend a week or so in the vicinity of Ravello. I thought we’d do a lot of tramping. There’s an old Benedictine abbey I’d love to show her not far from Ravello—”
“But, Charlotte—”
“I won’t neglect the sights she ought to see—cathedrals, museums, and picture galleries, if that’s an objection you’re going to make.”
“It isn’t! Listen to me, Charlotte, please. The fact of the matter is, things have gotten pretty bad with me lately financially. Even Beatrice and Muriel have had to take jobs that are uncongenial.”
“Why, I thought you understood! I thought Doctor Jaquith had made the business basis of our arrangement clear to you.”
“Yes, he did, but that was only till next summer. No self-respecting man could allow such generosity to go on indefinitely.”
“That’s the most conventional, pretentious, pious speech I ever heard you make in your life, Jerry!” exclaimed Charlotte, her cheeks flushed. “Why, I simply don’t know you!”
Jerry leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “But I can’t go on forever taking, taking, taking from you, and giving nothing, darling,” he pleaded.
Her anger vanished. “Oh, I know! Forgive me, Jerry. It’s your pride, that’s all.” Her voice was as tender as if he were a little boy. “Just your silly, foolish pride. Let me explain. You will be giving. Don’t you know that ‘to take’ is a way ‘to give’ sometimes—the most beautiful way in the world if two people love each other? Besides, Jerry, you’ll be giving me Tina. Every single day I’ll be taking, taking, taking and you’ll be giving, unless of course, you let your precious little false god Pride interfere.”
“But, Charlotte, the chief reason that looms before me why Tina shouldn’t stay has nothing to do with my earning power and my pride, which,” he added gently, “you so beautifully protect.”
“Has Isobel begun to resent me?”
“Oh, no! Isobel blesses you every day of her life. You’ve lifted an enormous burden from Isobel’s shoulders. In fact, Isobel believes you actually are an answer to prayer, sent by God Himself in response to her fervent pleadings when Tina first went to Cascade.”
“Is it because of something Tina has said, then? Don’t you think she’s happy here?”
“Happy! I’ve never seen such a demonstration of happiness in my life, and as to what she said to me—she confessed to me upstairs that she thought she loved you almost as much as she did me!”
“Then what is the reason?”
“You are! Until today I didn’t realize how much of yourself you’re giving Tina. Here you are, a lovely woman in the prime of life, as I said, being monopolized by a child. Why didn’t you marry Livingston?” he broke off. “I’ll tell you why. I came along and ruined him for you, and now my child comes along and claims all your attention, when you ought to be giving it to friends of your own age, and so perhaps run across some man, some day, who will make you happy.”
“So that’s it!” Charlotte exclaimed, in a low tone charged with reproach. “That’s it! ‘Some man who will make me happy’!” she repeated with all the scorn of which she was capable. “Well, I certainly have made a great mistake! Here I have been laboring under the delusion that we were so in sympathy—so one—that you knew without being told what would make me happy. And you come up here and talk about ‘some man’! And how too bad it is that your child should monopolize my time! Evidently you don’t know anything at all about how a woman feels, or anyhow how this woman feels! Apparently you haven’t the slightest conception what torture it is to love a man, as I’ve loved you,” she brought out shamelessly, “and to be shut out—barred out—from all the things in his life important enough to worry him or to make him suffer! To be forever just and outsider and an extra!”
He started to speak, but she went right on. “When I thought there was a chance for me to squeeze into your real life, and be able to talk to you occasionally on some allowable basis, I was terribly happy, and fool enough to think you were happy too.” Again he started to speak. “No; wait till you hear what a still bigger fool I was. Why, when Tina wanted to come home with me and stay, it was like a miracle happening—like my having your child; and I allowed myself to indulge in the fancy that both of us loving her, and doing what was best for her together, would make her seem actually like our child after a while. But no such fancy has occurred to you, I see! Again I’ve been just a great big sentimental fool! It’s a tendency I have!”
She shrugged, her lips curling in self-derision, rose, and began attacking the open fire, thrusting the poker viciously into the smoldering hunks of coal, making new cracks and fissures out of which fresh flames spurted and sputtered. When she straightened and turned around, Jerry was standing facing her. She started to speak again.
“Wait a minute,” he interrupted, and he took hold of both her arms just above her elbows. Pinioning them to her sides he held her straight in front of him an arm’s length way. His strength had often been a source of surprise to Charlotte. Never had Elliot held her helpless.
Jerry was not angry, simply very much in earnest. “Now I know!” he said, looking straight into her eyes. For a moment she thought he was angry because she had hurled such reproaches at him. But she was mistaken. “Now I know you care,” he said. “I wasn’t sure why you were doing all this for Tina. I was afraid it might have been out of pity, or compassion, or for some high altruistic principle of Jaquith’s. But there was no note of pity in your ridicule of me just now, thank God, nor compassion, nor altruism. You spoke from the depths of your own outraged feelings, and now I know you care. You care! You still care!” he reiterated. “I need no other proof than your scorn and derision—your sharp claws digging into me, trying to hurt me because I’d hurt you. So genuine! So like you! So like the wildcat in you I know and love and adore. Oh, everything shall be as you wish about Tina, and everything else too, for now I know, I know!”
Charlotte’s indignation died down almost as quickly as it had burst into flame.
“Forgive me, forgive me, Jerry,” she said, “for now I know, too.” The proof of her knowledge was not alone his assurance about Tina, but his obvious joy. His voice, eyes, and whole expression were exultant. As she gazed back at him, a film of something like adoration replac
ed the sparks of anger that had flown up and flashed in her eyes. “Please let me go now,” she said gently.
But he didn’t let her go nor relax his stiffened wrists. Even the muscles of his face and neck were taut, as if it required all the strength he possessed to hold her way from him.
“It won’t die—that something between us,” he said. “Do what we will—ignore it, neglect it, starve it—it just won’t die. Its resolve to live is stronger than the strength of either of us—than both of us put together. It’s impossible to kill it. Oh Charlotte—” He slipped his hands slowly down her ams to her wrists.
June and her friends were still dancing in the living room, they had changed the tango record. Now the primitive rhythm of a rumba filtered through the half-open door. As Charlotte gazed at Jerry, she saw that indescribable change come over his face which had always filled her with a sense of joy. His expression lost its tenderness, his mouth its gentle lines. She felt again the old sense of joy. But she mustn’t give in to it. The beat of the rumba grew louder. Jerry leaned nearer. If she let him kiss her now, all her resolutions would be swept away. Her breakwaters were not yet strong enough to withstand any such wave as she knew was rising in them both. “Let go of me,” she said, her voice a command now, pulling away with all her strength and twisting her wrists this way and that. There was a brief struggle.
Then suddenly Jerry dropped her hands. “Oh, all right, all right,” he murmured, turned on his heel abruptly and crossed the room, halting before the booklined wall. He stood there with lifted head as if studying the titles of the books on a shelf a little above his eyes.
After a moment Charlotte followed him. “Listen, Jerry,” she said earnestly addressing his back. “Doctor Jaquith knows about us. When he let me take Tina he said, ‘You’re on probation.’ Don’t you know what he means? I’m on probation because of you and me. He allowed this visit of yours, but it’s a test. If I can’t stand such tests, I’ll lose Tina in time. And we’ll lose each other. Don’t you see? Oh Jerry, please help me.”
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