CHAPTER IV
§ 1
The following summer was one of the hottest on record in New York City. The thermometer persistently hung around ninety, and the newspapers gave daily accounts of deaths and prostrations. Thousands of East-siders sought Coney Island and the cool beaches to spend their nights upon the sands. Thunderstorms brought but temporary relief. Jeannette, slowly regaining strength and energy, declared she had never known so many violent thunderstorms in the space of one short summer. She hated the vivid, blinding darts and the cracking ear-splitting detonations. She could reason convincingly with herself that there was but the minutest atom of danger, yet the menacing crashes never failed to bring her heart into her mouth and make her wince.
She had been in bed four weeks since the Sunday Roy had dined with the family, and she had fainted at the table. The doctor, when he arrived, had declared, after careful examination, that several ligaments had been torn from the bone, and the muscles of her back had been badly strained. She had been tightly bandaged with long strips of adhesive tape, and put to bed in her mother’s room, where she had lain for a month, rebellious and raging, at the mercy of a horde of disturbing thoughts.
Roy sent flowers, a box of candy, magazines. He wrote her long letters in a boyish hand in which he boyishly expressed his concern for her condition, his earnest hope of her speedy recovery, his tremendous devotion. It was for the last that she eagerly looked when she unfolded his scrawled pages. But his words never seemed to satisfy her wholly; they were never vehement enough. She longed for something more vigorous, aggressive, violent.
At the end of ten days he begged to be allowed to come to see her. There was no reason why he shouldn’t, Jeannette reflected, but she could not bring herself to the point of asking her mother to arrange for the visit. She did manage to say, with a light air of ridicule, one morning, when Mrs. Sturgis brought her breakfast tray to her bedside:
“Roy’s got the nerve to want to come to see me.”
“Why don’t you let him, dearie,—if you’d like it? He seems a right nice young fellow, and you could put on your dressing sacque, and Alice could do your hair.... I’ll be home to-morrow,—all day, you know. It would be quite right and proper.”
But the girl only made a grimace.
“That kid! That rah-rah boy! ... He thinks he’s got an awful case.”