"Yes, indeed, large teas where celebrities and semi-celebrities are handed about with the cake. Alice adores them, drags Sidney to almost every one, 'to keep his social viewpoint broad,' and nags me to death to go too."
"I take it that you don't often oblige."
"Not if I can escape, although, as teas, they are the best of their kind. Catherine Lee's a hustler and she does manage to root out talent. She gets her business tied up with her social life and so, when she wants anything, she can generally put her finger on some frequenter of the teas who can get it for her."
Jean laughed, and together they went out into the street.
"To-morrow then? And Mike Flannery."
"To-morrow."
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The machinery of the house on Grove Street moved smoothly and Jean was more physically comfortable than she had been at any time since Martha's death. And although, at first, she sensed very keenly in the lives of these women the undercurrent of loneliness that had drawn them together, and the accidental nature of their intimacy, in time, she accepted it without analysis. It would have been tragic if they had been conscious of it, but Jean was sure that Catherine alone ever felt a quality of chill in this perfect freedom of which they were so proud, and without definitely wording it, felt, in this perfection of adjustment, the harmony of indifference.
Philip came often to dinner, and soon Jean accepted his boisterous manner. It so fitted the man's nature that it was perfect in its way, like the capers of a puppy. It was only when Philip, in his unconsciousness of the fitness of things, capered before others, as he had on the night of her arrival, that one objected to his clambering over strangers. Jean saw nothing humorous in Philip's performances, but when she could, pretended an amusement that delighted Nan. Still, she always felt that in these moments Catherine was watching and was never quite deceived. Nor was she sure that her kindly tolerance of his horseplay deceived Philip. Often, before a more than usually outrageous effort, Philip seemed to single her out with a defiant glance as if to say, "There goes your stupid pretense of dignity. It isn't worth keeping." He was always talking about the "big, simple realities" and urging marriage and babies, but he knew no women outside the household and seemed quite content. He laughed at Catherine's affection for Tony, a musical protégé of recent discovery, thereby annoying Jean greatly, until she discovered him making Tony promise not to tell who had given him the new suit. He did not want Tony to tell, but he would have liked the house to find out. He often did things like this and then resented it when no one knew. He annoyed Jean without interesting her, but at the end of a month she found she had summed him up more definitely than any other member of the house—he had big impulses, small thoughts and no will at all. After Jean had reached this decision her manner changed toward him. She treated him with greater patience and at times with respect.
In the evenings, Jean had many appointments to organize working women's associations or speak at meetings. The idea of a national Congress of women, which after attaining the dimensions of a group of civic leagues, had lain dormant in the bitter loneliness of Jean's personal life, woke again. A certain quality of excitement and vigor was gone from Jean's conception of it but she accepted the change. She knew that no plan would ever have the same keenness as in the days before Gregory's going. Something had gone out of her then, and now all purpose was calm and subdued, like the staid friendships of middle life against the idealization of youth. She never willingly looked back to Gregory's letter. But she no longer viewed it as a terrible pit into which her life had dropped. It was a wall dividing the past from the present; turning her back upon it Jean faced the future. And the surest measure she had of her reward was the feeling that came again into the earth and sky and hills. Now, on the out-of-town trips she had sometimes to take, she found the old, living, personal spirit in the earth come back. It was as if, in the days of her loving, the earth had withdrawn its unneeded comfort. Now, the old, old earth, kind and understanding, came back into its own.