The Swing of the Pendulum by Adriana Spadoni

Late in December the rains set in. Heavy gray clouds hung low over the city's hills, pressing all the joy and color from life, flattening the world to a monotone of black umbrellas.

At New Year there was an interval of pleasant weather and then more rain, steady, deliberate, endless rain. The street cars were crowded with damp people, all trying to keep as far as possible from each other, all peevish and nervous under the strain. Gutters broke and streams of water ran everywhere. The streets were rivers of thick, black mud and buildings reeked with the odor of woolen clothing drying in steam heat. From the middle of January to the middle of February the world woke in the morning to rain and went to bed at night with the rain steadily pouring in long, gray lines from the leaden sky.

Against the background of the rain, Jean's days ran together in a blur. She created a false enthusiasm and, under this self-imposed stimulus, got so many words on paper. Sometimes she wondered how long she would be able to keep it up. She thought now more and more often of Pat steadily plodding in her mountain school, and of her mother, trotting through each day's task, every crevice of her life filled with the knowledge that she could do no more than she was doing, nor do it better. Most of all she thought of Dr. Mary, buoyant and vital among her people, holding to her purpose and working toward it surely. She wondered whether Dr. Mary would remember her if she went.

There had been no mention at all of the night that Herrick had stood long at the window with his face in his arms. The thing that had been killed had been decently buried, so decently buried that it might never have existed at all. Herrick worked spasmodically on a short story, but he rarely worked in the evenings. They often went to the theater, and at long intervals to Flop's. Once Jean had quite enjoyed herself and they had gone again the following Sunday, but the out-of-town visitors had gone away and it was duller, more noisy, less sincere than ever.

Through the four worst Sundays of rain Herrick wrote and when he had finished went over the result with Jean. They haggled each point with a desperate show of interest. When Jean said a scene did not ring true, she explained very elaborately and carefully and Herrick listened and argued and in the end usually agreed. Jean often thought of Robert as some one who had died far away in the jungle.

In March the fury of the rain lessened, wore itself out in a succession of damp, drizzling days almost harder to stand than the steady downpour. Then the hills stood out once more softly green and clear against the blue sky. With the coming of spring, Herrick gave up his pretense of winter. The unfinished short story went into the waste basket. Jean was glad and the tension of her nerves relaxed.

It was a lovely day in May, when Jean's work brought her close to home about one o'clock and she decided to do the writing in the studio instead of going back to the noisy office. As she opened the door she pushed back an envelope of the gray paper that Pat used. Jean pounced on it and without waiting to take off her things, tore it open. There were only a few sentences on a half sheet:

"Will be down on the sixteenth.

"Train gets in about three. Don't meet me or upset your day in any way.

"Leave the key where I can find it. I like doormats best."

Pat was coming.

For the moment Jean could grasp nothing else. Pat was coming. She would be here in that very room. They would talk. It was years since they had talked. No, not years. Not quite two yet, since she and Pat had sat together and swung their feet from the sink board of the Girls' Rest Hall, and she had been almost hysterical because there was nothing in the world but teaching. Jean's eyes filled with tears and she dabbed angrily at them.

"You old fool! What do you expect? To feel the same always? No doubt Pat feels older and has changed a lot too."

But the idea of Pat's having changed frightened Jean. Pat must not have changed. She must be just the same sane, practical, efficient Pat. She would be. And she was coming, coming on the sixteenth and the sixteenth was to-day.

The next moment Jean was pounding out her interview on the machine. It was done in a space of time unsurpassed even by the concentration of Mr. Thompson. Jean sent a messenger with it to the office and began cleaning the studio. By half past two the place was so clean that Jean could not find another thing to do, not even rearrange for the fourth time a vase of roses. She took a book to the window seat and sat down.

"Now you compose your mind and act like a rational human. She won't get here any sooner if you flutter about like a demented hen. 'Flutter like a demented hen' -- it must be the effect of Pat's coming!"

By sheer will Jean succeeded in sitting still, but no effort could keep her attention on the print. Her thoughts got away from her and ran back down the months, fetching up in days she and Pat had spent together; in graduation day, that seemed so many years behind her; and courses they had taken together, that for some reason seemed closer now, than when she had taken them.

In the glow of Pat's coming, forgotten things became recent and clear, while recent things seemed unreal and far away. In this inversion, the past winter, with the strained atmosphere between herself and Herrick, blurred into a memory of some very disagreeable period she had lived through long ago. Perhaps that unobtrusive, ever present third presence that had moved so silently between them through the long weeks of rain, and against whom she was ever on her guard, was not so real as she had fancied. She had accepted the thing she did not want to believe and believed it for fear of being a coward in not facing it.

"I'm an idiot, and a conceited one at -- -- "

"Haven't a doubt about it, old girl. Didn't I always say so?"