Chapter 52

That was a particularly hot summer in the Sorshay Valley, and Cass and Jinny, keeping close, built up such a community of unimportant interests that he sometimes forgot that she had been away. And, save that she had the annoyance of diet and insulin injections, and had to be in bed by ten, they often forgot that she was ill. They were bound together by the discussion of Mayor Stopple’s political ideals, of why the chickens from the Superba market were so tough, and all the other epic insignificances of a pleasant life.

The long, serene Indian Summer was carnival. The hills were extravagant as with Chippewa head-dresses and the far smoke from Chippewa fires. The sky had the curious and innocent blue of the North Middlewest, and the air such cheerfulness that Jinny was filled with renewed joy and submitted to Cass an idea about one— just ONE—party with dancing till midnight.

“No cocktails, no midnight sun,” he said, “and don’t coax. You’re to be in bed by ten even if I have to carry you.”

She was only mildly sad about it, just enough to assert her non-existent independence, and he discovered that he had made a psychological advance. He did not worry about that sadness. Once, when she had complained that she “didn’t have much fun,” he had felt guilty, but now he reassured himself that most sick girls and most judges over forty do get along without much riotous fun.

Possibly both of them would yet grow up.

They walked beside the lake, with an autumnal sunset like a burning forest over the crinkled and lapping water, on which the rowboats stirred and whispered.

When they came home, Jinny was summoned to the telephone, and she returned from the call half-exasperated and half-amused, to hurl at Cass, “The persistence of the amorous male!”

“M?”

“That was Fred Nimbus, our radio friend. Jolly old Fred! Hears I’m much better—ready to be put into circulation, and would I like to have him call around some afternoon?”

They were side by side on the glazed chintz of the glider, on the screened porch. She reached for his hand, and she sounded frightened:

“When I think what his call probably means, I’m scared. Have I a reputation here for being a fast woman, merely because I—Well, I can see how I might. Have I?”

He lied as well as he could.

She had always been reticent about her feelings, but now she brought them out anxiously:

“I do want to try and tell you how—You’ve been waiting to have me say that I’m sorry for going off with Bradd. Haven’t you?”

“Well, if you want to.”

“And I am sorry, terribly sorry, for having hurt you. But I can’t honestly say I’m sorry I knew Bradd. He gave me the education— such a bitter education it was, but so thorough—that you’d had before I ever saw you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I told you once long ago—but you didn’t listen—that I’ve always been jealous of your experiences with Blanche and Chris.”

“Oh, not Chris!”

“Sure. She’s a woman of character. She may get you yet, and maybe that would be a very good thing for you. JUST LET HER TRY IT! . . . But it was your life with Blanche that maddened me. She shared your first love, your first wandering, your first house. You gave her your first eagerness. Even if you did come to hate her, you learned what it was all about with HER. But I’d never had anybody but you. How could I size up life, size up even you? I thought maybe with Bradd, it would be a new world. Well, it was. A horrible one, but thrilling. And then being with Bradd made me appreciate YOU.

“He’s so grasping—in his lively way. He takes so much that finally I saw that I’d always been taking from YOU, and not trying to give much. I will now. I will try. I’m poor in spirit now, but I will give what I have. But if I’ve learned that, how can I be sorry for anything that happened?”

“You’re not poor in spirit. You’re so rich—”

“And that’s the other thing—your worst fault. You praise me too much. You inform the world AND me that I’m the greatest beauty, the smartest draftsman, the slickest tennis-player since Leonardo da Vinci, and will I please show my paces. I can’t live up to it. When you advertise me so much, it makes me perverse; it makes me want to be vicious.

“But—All these words! I have no skill in them. I just wanted to say that I did have to learn about myself, and I know it almost killed me, as it hurt you, but you brought me back to life, you keep me living, you ARE my life.”

She cried a little, and in their kiss her love seemed to be utterly restored.

They had been living like brother and sister. He had not even hinted of love-making. He did not know whether he was fatuous or noble in not demanding his “rights.” With Jinny, he felt as much as ever that he had no rights, only privileges.

That night, with his breath in a harsh rhythm not so unlike sobbing, he went into her room, and in the bedside light she stretched out her arms with a passionate “Dear, dear love!”

He still did not quite believe it, but when he lay beside her, she murmured, “We’ve found each other again, sweet! I don’t know how I ever strayed. How could I? Now, I AM sorry, I am repentant, I do love you!”

Every bond of caution was broken. It was very sweet.

It was sweet until he realized that she had been cheating for generosity’s sake, that she could not really respond to him. She was trying to and failing, he was humiliated a moment. Then he was grateful. He said tenderly, “You’ve been brave and wonderfully kind. But you’re still shut off from me, aren’t you? You still haven’t got Bradd quite out of your system. Don’t be afraid to tell me. He still holds you?”

“I’m afraid so. Though I detest him. He’s so ruthless. But maybe that made him a good teacher. Wouldn’t it be strange if he taught me to give, by his never giving anything! Then this miserable business—I know it was that now—it won’t all have been a waste. Can that be?”

“I think so. Jinny! If you’re ever moved by your own self, by your own desire, to come to me, I’ll be waiting. Will you, when you feel like it? Will you remember?”

“I shall remember.”

“And I won’t overpraise you any more.”

“Now look! You needn’t be a fanatic about it!”

They were cheerful at dinner, the next evening. Jinny voluntarily announced that there were times when she did not mind these messes of green vegetables.

“Not more than having your teeth pulled?”

“Not MUCH more,” she asserted.

After dessert—a bread-pudding in which Cass said there was merit, and Jinny said Yes, but not much else—Mrs. Higbee placed on the table a teapot-cover: no cups, just the pink quilted tent. They gaped at her, and she stood expressionless. They looked at the cover, and it was moving, by itself.

Jinny snatched it up, and beneath it was a little black kitten, all black, midnight black, cocky and independent and purring and kneading with its paws.

“It is—it IS Cleo!” cried Jinny. She put out her hand and the kitten rubbed against it, and glanced over at Cass for applause, in Cleo’s old familiar way.

Mrs. Higbee said indulgently, “It’s Cleo’s own granddaughter. I got her off the Prutts’ cook. Only, I feel like it’s Cleo herself. You can’t kill people like her, not for keeps.”

Jinny smoothed the kitten, while Cass wondered, “Is this an omen that even our Emily may return and we’ll have made the greatest human journey—in a circle back to the innocence with which we began?”

When Jinny set the kitten down, it stepped out gallantly across the cloth.

“You get right off that table, Cleo!” said Mrs. Higbee.

On that January evening, Roy Drover telephoned:

“Bradd Criley is going to be in town tomorrow, just for the one day, to see the Wargates. He’ll have an hour free, and he’s coming to my place for cocktails. I want you and Jinny to show up. Now don’t be a mule. Let bygones be bygones. Live and let live—”

Cass interrupted with a sharp, “I’ll do whatever Jinny says.”

It was at the peaceful time of the evening. Jinny was reading a new book filled with significant social trends and portents: Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. She was stroking the younger Cleo and, though she had become an absolute Trappist as regards candy, she gave the feeling that she was now and then confidently reaching for a bon-bon.

Cass studied her contentment, and he spoke reluctantly: “Jin, Bradd will be in town for a few hours tomorrow, and Roy wants us to come for cocktails with him.”

She stared. “I don’t want to see him!” Her violence betrayed that she was afraid to see him, that she longed to see him, that she had to see him.

“I guess he’s one fact we’d better face,” said Cass patiently.

In Dr. Drover’s sun-room, with its pea-green wicker chairs, there were eight people, all friends of Bradd, who with magnificent tact played his role of Home Boy Who Went to the City and Made Good but Will Never, Never Forget His Old Friends.

He kissed Queenie, Lillian, and Diantha on the cheek, and Rose on the mouth, but with Jinny Timberlane he shook hands cordially, exactly as he did with Jinny’s reticent husband.

It seemed to Cass impossible that he could either have loved or hated this fellow. He was too brisk, too obvious, too unfamiliar. This was another Bradd. Success and the great city had claimed him.

He was full of quips and of names which he considered famous. He let them know how chummy he had become with a stock-broker, an aviation magnate, a female columnist formerly a professional lady, but he was not blown with all this social grandeur. He kept yelling, “You don’t see any Park Avenue dames as handsome as Queenie,” and “Let me know when you hit town, Rose, and I’ll get ringside seats for the opera.”

After half an hour, Jinny said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to go home now.”

They shook hands with Bradd and with everybody else available. In the street, Cass said, “Well?”

“I know. Oh, darling, the man is a monkey, a monkey on a stick! I’m so glad I saw him, though. I never really saw him before. That charm-peddler! And I never really saw you before. Cass, I— Don’t you see what I’m trying to tell you?”

“Yes.”

She was so serious that it was not till dinner that she said, “And that was the WORST tie he had on. Like these colored pictures of vegetable soup. And I’ll bet he spent nine dollars for it. You’ll never wear a tie like that!”

Late at night he awoke to find her standing in his doorway, a moth against the light from the hall.

“I thought maybe you would come in and see me. I was very cold,” she said plaintively. “Couldn’t I crawl in your bed and get warm?”

Then, for her and his love for her, he gave up his vested right to be tragic, gave up pride and triumph and all the luxury of submerged resentment, and smiled at her with the simplicity of a baby.

“Dear Jinny!” he said, and she confided, “I’m going to get new storm-windows on my room, even if I have to put them up myself. I could, too! I’m the best storm-window fixer in this town. You’ll see!”