Gently Herrick's hand claimed hers and she did not withdraw it. The contact seemed only a finer communication, a surer speech than the clumsiness of words.
CHAPTER SIX
Soon after the first dinner with The Bunch, Herrick finished the series of articles and no longer came to the library. But often Jean found him waiting at the closing hour and they walked to the Ferry. Several times they had lunch in a little Mexican restaurant with a sanded floor and strings of red peppers hanging like stalactites from the ceiling. Jean always came from this place with the feeling of having been to another world and touched another life. And there was always the feeling of having shared this happy strangeness with Herrick.
On Sundays, sometimes Herrick called at the house for her, and sometimes she met him at the Ferry, and they went to Flop's. Martha made no comment, but Jean knew that after she had left the house, her mother cried, and because she never mentioned Herrick, Jean knew that Martha disliked him. In the studio Jean made a great effort to enter the spirit, for although she felt more and more strongly that Herrick, too, was bored, she clung to the belief that there must be some charm her own narrow training could not discover.
There was always the same enthusiasm about the same things. Whenever interest flagged they wound it up with the thin, red wine and with more and more cigarettes which they threw away partially smoked. Men and women made open love to each other and there was much kissing and imitation jealousy. Their insatiable need to be different had become a scourge, which drove them along the road of personal eccentricity. In the more or less worthy rebellion of their youth they had adopted Windsor ties and become Bohemians for life.
Through the remaining winter and early spring, Jean and Herrick continued to go less and less often, and in April stopped altogether. Now, on Sundays, they took long walks over the hills. They built driftwood fires in lonely coves and raced like children across the dunes. And always, Jean led the talk to Herrick's novel and the things he would write, so that these vague dreams took form between them. It was as if Jean, reaching down among the qualities he believed he had thrown away, found a small, discarded jewel. Together they polished it.
Jean's attitude hurt and flattered Herrick and the combination was fast binding him against his will. Remembering the hours he was alone with Jean on empty beaches and among silent trees, the knowledge that he had never kissed her made him hot with shame. Away from her, he marveled at his own control. But with her, a genuine peace for the most part held him, so that the control was not so great as it afterward appeared. In some strange way she herself stilled the storm she raised.
It was June, but a high fog had covered the sky all day. They had been walking since morning and now, in the late afternoon, came out through the trail that wound between the hills to the cliffs that edged the sea. Up from below long white arms tore at the cliffs, dropped, reached higher in new effort. While, farther out, the inexhaustible army of waves rushed in, line after line, flung themselves on the cliffs, sank back, rushed in again. Over it all the gray sky shut as if to keep the din from the ears of God. The world was strangely alone, shut in by itself, like a madman locked in his cell. Driven from infinity, rushing on to infinity, the wind tore by them on its ceaseless quest.
Herrick took her hand and they began to run to a little beach wedged between the cliffs. As they ran Jean was filled with a deep sureness, as if she could run so forever, swifter and swifter, never halting or stumbling, borne up by a strength within; a strength that was beating out against the whole surface of her body, in an effort to join the main current of all life, that touched her on every side.
At the foot of the bluff, Jean dropped to the floor of the cove, and for a moment Herrick stood above her. Deliberately he enjoyed the feeling of physical power it gave him to stand so, to feel his greater strength, to know that in spite of her superb body he could bend, lift and throw this woman into the sea. He could see her breast rise and fall under the thin waist, and the base of her throat throb with the breath that still came quickly after their swift run. For a moment, all the artist in Herrick rose in appreciation of the picture, the unity that bound Jean's body, the silent power of the gray cliffs yielding so little to the centuries of rage tearing at them, to the eternal, ever-changing sameness of the sea. There was much of them in Jean, so that, as he looked, he felt tired and worn. He went and sat down a little behind her, and drawing his knees to his chin, circled them with his arms.