“We could bathe in champagne now, if we felt like it,” said Jerry reflectively. “I’ve often thought I would, but I guess I was pretty well doused on the inside when I had the little idea.”
Joy watched it gurgle down the pipe and thought of the inferno that innocent-looking liquid could cause. . . . What it had caused in her own experience. . . . In the lights and shades of the mixture tumbling to the sewers where it belonged, she saw Jack Barnett’s face for a fleeting horror, that shifted to Packy’s, quite as terrible. And she saw Sarah. . . . And then they all blended together in a whirling mass, and flickered away. The bathtub was empty. . . .
“I’ve got to admit,” Jerry was saying, in rather an artificial voice, “that in spite of everything it makes me feel sort of ill to see all that joy-getter spilling itself away in such a casual fashion.”
Joy looked at her, and saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, her eyes bearing a strained expression. It had evidently been more of an effort for her than Joy had realized.
That Jerry could have stopped drinking altogether! Even to her inexperienced knowledge it seemed an impossibility. Jerry was staring into the bathtub again, with the hungry look of the street-gamin. . . . Joy turned away, and with her old-time quick sensitiveness, Jerry laughed and joined her.
“I don’t deny it isn’t hard at times and harder at others, old girl,” she said; “but there are things in everyone’s life that are hard not to do, and all the same one simply can’t do ’em!”
The day was unlike their old times together. On the surface, both girls were affectionate, and delighted to be with one another again; but below the surface everywhere intruded the man who had come between their friendship, changing everything irrevocably. Jerry was changed. For the better, one could not doubt; but nevertheless she was not the Jerry that Joy had known and loved. She was softer, with that new glow within her lighting everything she did or said. Her speech already showed meditation, her manner was more reposeful. Content and love were fast enfolding her into serenity—and, Joy thought, who wanted a serene Jerry?
Their conversation was strained, although voluble. Jerry’s bristled with mention of Phil, directly or indirectly. This stimulated Joy’s desire to talk of Jim; and the realization that she could not, that she had not Jerry’s excuse or right, brought effort into her responses.
They telephoned Félicie, and Jerry took them both to the Copley for dinner, over which they lingered. Félicie was wearing her usual look of unbroken loveliness, and arrayed for a Sixty Club dance in Brookline. Her attitude towards Jerry was frankly pitying, which abated none the less when she saw that Jerry’s attitude duplicated hers.
“It’s all right to act as if you’d pulled the moon down to earth, for a while,” she said tolerantly. “I know how these things come out. Pretty soon this one-man stuff will get monotonous. Monotony! Sooner or later you see it in all married life! And you’ll get monotonous to him, too! Husbands always get so husband-like when their wives begin getting always the same!”