Divorce was ugly to her. She forced herself to vision all its details. Explanations to their friends—arrangements about the child. She computed its effect upon little Jerry, torn between loyalty to his father and his mother, spending his time, now with one parent, now with the other. Growing up to a contempt for marriage, perhaps, or worse yet, contempt for his mother and father who publicly admitted their failure to keep their contract.
She tried to get Jerry's point of view in the situation by reversing it. Suppose that Jerry had told her that he wished his freedom, in order to marry Althea. How would she have met that demand? It gave her a pang to think of going away, with Baby, to some strange place, to try to make a new life for themselves. There would still be Martin in her life; who would be left to Jerry, if she left him? Would he turn to Bobs, who still loved him? She knew he would never succumb to Althea's plans. Would Martin's love for her, and her love for him—if she did love him—make up for all this havoc?
Could she, by any process, so divorce herself from old habits and associations as to decide this step with reference to her one self only? She had been saying to herself for years that she had a right to every rich experience life could offer, she had been greedy for more and more. But was there such a thing as continence? In order to get away from that despised word "self-denial" she looked upon the thing as a matter of spiritual health. If overeating was destruction to the body tissue, was greediness for experience also destruction to the soul stuff?
Day after day she pondered these questions as she tramped around the lake, or as they drove through the still, silver-gray forests, where the only hint of spring was an occasional whiff of arbutus as they passed. Jane found great peace and help from those straight, slim trees. They were so unfettered, so upstanding, so sure. She repeated over and over:
"Hast thou ne'er known the longings—
Ambitions vain desires—
The hope, the fear, the yearning
Which mortal man inspires?"
She gathered into her being all the calm of Nature, strength from her out-of-door life, wisdom out of silence and Baby's talk, but yet she could not bring herself to send for Jerry. She knew that both of these men were suffering, as they waited for her answer; she wanted not to hurt them, and still—she hesitated.
CHAPTER XXXIII
When the train pulled out which carried his family into unknown country, Jerry turned across town, determined to walk back to the studio and get to work. He had scarcely closed his eyes the night before, and he felt all edgy. Exercise and hard work was his prescription for himself. He set off at a good pace, through a part of town he was unused to, hoping that it would divert his thoughts. He made himself look at the shabby old shops he passed—at the people on the street. He searched all their faces for traces of such experiences as he was sampling, but they were usually vacuous or hardened or only worried. He wondered if his face mirrored his misery.
Jerry was a stranger to defeat. His life had been a happy-go-lucky affair. Since the death of his parents, when he was a little boy, he had known no acute sorrows. To be sure he had been poor, but he had not minded that especially. The very small inheritance, left by his father, had barely met the demands of his art education. But youth and health and enthusiasm were his, and such success as he had achieved came easily and naturally. So he had grown accustomed to believe that destiny held in store for him pretty much what he wanted.