 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
II
Harry's week passed. They drove about the dreaming
lanes or idled in cheerful inanity upon lake or lawn.
In the evening Roxanne, sitting inside, played to them
while the ashes whitened on the glowing ends of their
cigars. Then came a telegram from Kitty saying that
she wanted Harry to come East and get her, so Roxanne
and Jeffrey were left alone in that privacy of which
they never seemed to tire.
"Alone" thrilled them again. They wandered about
the house, each feeling intimately the presence of the
other; they sat on the same side of the table like honeymooners;
they were intensely absorbed, intensely happy.
The town of Marlowe, though a comparatively old
settlement, had only recently acquired a "society."
Five or six years before, alarmed at the smoky swelling
of Chicago, two or three young married couples, "bungalow
people," had moved out; their friends had followed.
The Jeffrey Curtains found an already formed "set" prepared
to welcome them; a country club, ballroom, and
golf links yawned for them, and there were bridge parties,
and poker parties, and parties where they drank beer,
and parties where they drank nothing at all.
It was at a poker party that they found themselves a
week after Harry's departure. There were two tables,
and a good proportion of the young wives were smoking
and shouting their bets, and being very daringly mannish
for those days.
Roxanne had left the game early and taken to perambulation;
she wandered into the pantry and found
herself some grape juice—beer gave her a headache—
and then passed from table to table, looking over shoulders
at the hands, keeping an eye on Jeffrey and being
pleasantly unexcited and content. Jeffrey, with intense
concentration, was raising a pile of chips of all colors,
and Roxanne knew by the deepened wrinkle between his
eyes that he was interested. She liked to see him interested
in small things.
She crossed over quietly and sat down on the arm of
his chair.
She sat there five minutes, listening to the sharp intermittent
comments of the men and the chatter of the
women, which rose from the table like soft smoke—and
yet scarcely hearing either. Then quite innocently she
reached out her hand, intending to place it on Jeffrey's
shoulder—as it touched him he started of a sudden,
gave a short grunt, and, sweeping back his arm furiously,
caught her a glancing blow on her elbow.
There was a general gasp. Roxanne regained her
balance, gave a little cry, and rose quickly to her feet.
It had been the greatest shock of her life. This, from
Jeffrey, the heart of kindness, of consideration—this
instinctively brutal gesture.
The gasp became a silence. A dozen eyes were turned
on Jeffrey, who looked up as though seeing Roxanne for
the first time. An expression of bewilderment settled
on his face.
"Why—Roxanne—" he said haltingly.
Into a dozen minds entered a quick suspicion, a rumor
of scandal. Could it be that behind the scenes with
this couple, apparently so in love, lurked some curious
antipathy? Why else this streak of fire across such a
cloudless heaven?
"Jeffrey!"—Roxanne's voice was pleading—startled
and horrified, she yet knew that it was a mistake. Not
once did it occur to her to blame him or to resent it.
Her word was a trembling supplication—"Tell me,
Jeffrey," it said, "tell Roxanne, your own Roxanne."
"Why, Roxanne—" began Jeffrey again. The bewildered
look changed to pain. He was clearly as
startled as she. "I didn't intend that," he went on;
"you startled me. You—I felt as if some one were attacking
me. I—how—why, how idiotic!"
"Jeffrey!" Again the word was a prayer, incense
offered up to a high God through this new and unfathomable
darkness.
They were both on their feet, they were saying good-by,
faltering, apologizing, explaining. There was no
attempt to pass it off easily. That way lay sacrilege.
Jeffrey had not been feeling well, they said. He had
become nervous. Back of both their minds was the
unexplained horror of that blow—the marvel that there
had been for an instant something between them—his
anger and her fear—and now to both a sorrow, momentary,
no doubt, but to be bridged at once, at once,
while there was yet time. Was that swift water lashing
under their feet—the fierce glint of some uncharted
chasm?
Out in their car under the harvest moon he talked
brokenly. It was just—incomprehensible to him, he
said. He had been thinking of the poker game—absorbed—and
the touch on his shoulder had seemed like
an attack. An attack! He clung to that word, flung
With the impact of his hand it had gone, that—nervousness.
That was all he knew.
Both their eyes filled with tears and they whispered
love there under the broad night as the serene streets of
Marlowe sped by. Later, when they went to bed, they
were quite calm. Jeffrey was to take a week off all
work—was simply to loll, and sleep, and go on long
walks until this nervousness left him. When they had
decided this safety settled down upon Roxanne. The
pillows underhead became soft and friendly; the bed on
which they lay seemed wide, and white, and sturdy beneath
the radiance that streamed in at the window.
Five days later, in the first cool of late afternoon,
Jeffrey picked up an oak chair and sent it crashing
through his own front window. Then he lay down on
the couch like a child, weeping piteously and begging
to die. A blood clot the size of a marble had broken
in his brain.
| Tales of the jazz age | |