Years of Grace · Part I · I · Chapter 1 1 1 (2/2)

“See you after lunch,” said André, cap in hand. “If you could manage to come over about half-past two we could paint the first set. Mother told me to ask you to tea.”

Jane only smiled and nodded, but she walked into the study hall in a thrill of anticipation. Tea with André. His mother had asked her. She wouldn’t tell her mother. She would just go. Jane’s eyes were dancing behind her lowered eyelids as ancient Miss Milgrim read the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer over the bowed heads of the assembled school. She was almost laughing aloud as she rose for the morning hymn. Her thin little voice shrilled up to Heaven’s gates in purely secular ecstasy.

“Rejoice, ye pure in heart!

Rejoice, give thanks and sing!

Your glorious banner raise on high

The cross of Christ, your King!”

She was going to tea with André.

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice, give thanks and sing!”

André was waiting for her on the steps of the Saint James Apartments at half-past two. He wore a funny navy-blue beret on his sleek black hair and he was spinning a top. No other Chicago boy of sixteen ever spun a top and Jane had never seen any other beret. That was the kind of thing that André did that made Flora and Muriel think that he was sissy. Jane wished he wouldn’t. She liked to spin tops herself and the beret was most becoming. Still, there was no sense in willfully laying yourself open to mockery. Flora and Muriel had no idea how nice André really was.

They went upstairs in the elevator and André’s mother opened the front door. André’s mother had only one servant and that one was often out. The children entered the little crowded living-room. There were lots of books in it, filling the walls from floor to ceiling. Not nice volumes in neat, uniform sets of sombre leather, as in Jane’s own father’s library or in Flora’s grandfather’s, but all sorts and sizes of books in all kinds of variegated bindings, some quite dilapidated, set haphazard on the shelves. There were some sets, of course. A long line of bound Punch, for instance, and many more Arabian Nights than Jane had ever known there were, and a red row of nearly thirty volumes by Guy de Maupassant. Jane had never heard of him.

André’s mother had been reading in the big green Morris chair in the bay window that looked down Rush Street, all the way to the river. The book still lay in the chair seat. It was a French book, called Madame Bovary. André’s mother saw Jane looking at it.

“You’ll like that book, Jane,” she said, “when you’re older.”

That was the way André’s family always spoke of books. Just as if they were people living in the world with you, nice friendly people, whom you were bound to meet some day and get on famously with when you finally knew them.

Jane followed André into his little bedroom. His paints were all set out on a table with some sheets of Bristol board.

“I saw Bernhardt do Camille in Paris, last summer,” said André eagerly, “And I remember all her sets. We can make ours just the same.”

Jane sat down beside André at the little table, feeling a little flushed and excited to think that this was really André’s very own room. She had been in it several times before, of course, but it made her feel that funny way inside every time. André was very near her, just across the paint water. He went on talking about Sarah Bernhardt most enthusiastically, but there was something about his very enthusiasm that made Jane think that perhaps he was feeling funny too. Terribly happy and excited and just a little nervous, as she was herself. But then they fell to discussing colours and later to painting and André grew lost in his work, as he always did, and Jane applauded him and was very much interested and greatly surprised when André’s mother stood in the doorway and said it was half-past four and time for tea.

Jane had never known anyone who had tea, regularly, every day, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, except André’s family. Jane’s mother had it on Wednesdays, when lots of ladies came to call, and now that Isabel was home from school, she had it on Sundays, too, for hordes of young men in frock coats, who came early and lingered late. The last of them usually stayed to supper and hymn-singing around the Steinway upright in the parlor.

But those teas were parties, with candy and three kinds of cake and funny fishy little sandwiches that Minnie made meticulously in the pantry. The tea-table was always set with the silver tray and the silver tea-set and lots of little Dresden plates and embroidered napkins and Jane’s mother and Isabel were always all dressed up in their best bib and tucker, sitting primly behind the teakettle, never dreaming of eating anything until the doorbell rang.

André’s tea was very different. His mother presided nonchalantly from the depths of the Morris armchair over a gold and white china tea-set and there was nothing to eat except very thin slices of bread and butter and a plate of sponge cake, untidily torn to pieces. That sponge cake, André’s mother explained as Jane’s eyes widened at the sight of it, was a spécialité de la maison. It seemed you couldn’t cut it without spoiling it. A funny kind of cake, Jane thought, to serve for tea. But very good.

André’s father came in just before the bread and butter was finished. Mr. Duroy was a little grey-haired Frenchman, with wise brown eyes that glittered behind his pince-nez eyeglasses. The glasses balanced precariously on his aquiline nose and he was continually taking them off and waving them about as he talked. They were fastened to his coat lapel with a narrow black ribbon, which made him look very unlike other men. A shred of scarlet silk was always run through his buttonhole. Jane never knew why.

He talked a great deal and so did André’s mother. But not at all as Jane’s family did. Never about people. People you knew, at least. This afternoon he was talking very excitedly about something called the Dual Alliance and a Frenchman named Alexandre Ribot who was President du Conseil, whatever that might be, and seemed to be doing something important about France and Russia. Mr. Duroy had a great deal to say about Mr. Ribot, though he didn’t seem to know him. The only people that Jane could ever remember hearing her family talk about whom they did not know were Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. And these gentlemen never provoked her mother and Isabel to utterance. Her father occasionally made statements about them that always passed unchallenged, André’s mother, now, had views of her own on Mr. Ribot. Jane and André didn’t talk at all, but before she knew it the clock struck six and Jane realized that she should have gone home long ago. She rose a little shyly. Jane never knew just how to leave a party.

“I must lend you Camille,” said André and plucked the book, in a yellow paper cover, from off the bookshelves. “La Dame aux Camellias” was printed on the outside. “Mother is going to help me do a good translation. See if you don’t like it.”

Jane privately hoped that she knew enough French to read it, with a dictionary.

“André will walk home with you,” said André’s mother.

And indeed it was very dark. Jane didn’t know what her mother would say, if she were home. Of course she might be out with Isabel. They were very busy these days with parties and dressmakers.

The street lamps were flickering on their tall standards as they stepped out on Chicago Avenue. The drugstore windows across the street in the Kinzie flats glittered with yellow light. Great green and red and blue urns of coloured water glowed behind the glass.

“Pure colour,” said André. “Pure as light.”

He took her arm as they crossed the car tracks. Jane held her elbow very stiff and straight but she felt a little thrill run right up her arm from where his fingers rested on her coat sleeve. He was looking at her face and he was very near her, but Jane didn’t turn her head. When they reached the further curbstone he dropped her arm, at once. Jane felt awfully happy.

“I’ll try to find those pictures of Bernhardt for you,” said André. “They’re around somewhere in an old copy of Le Théâtre. If you could copy them for the puppet⁠—”

“I’d love to,” said Jane. “I can make her hair of ravelled yarn.”

“Golden brown,” said André, “and very fuzzy. She has beautiful hair.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Pine Street was very empty and very quiet. A hansom cab went by, the horse’s feet clapping sharply on the cedar block pavement. A belated errand boy whizzed past on a bicycle. He trilled his bell shrilly for the Superior Street corner. Jane was thinking how dark and straight her pigtails were. Her hair was so fine that it didn’t show for much, except just after a shampoo. She wished, terribly, that she had Flora’s red-gold tresses. Or Muriel’s seven black finger curls. Or this Bernhardt’s golden-brown fuzz, that she had never seen and André so admired.

He took her arm again for the next crossing.

“I know you’ll copy her beautifully,” he said. And Jane felt happy once more. Warm and glowing, deep down inside.

When they reached her house, André lingered a moment on the pavement, under the big bare elm tree.

“I⁠—I had a lovely time,” said Jane.

“You’ll read the play?” said André. “And come again tomorrow?”

Jane nodded. There was a little pause. André moved about a bit. The street was very dark. The street lights were on the corners.

“Will you⁠—will you dance the Halloween cotillion with me at dancing-school?” said André.

Jane’s heart leaped up in ecstasy.

“Oh,” she said softly, “I⁠—I’d love to.”

“All right,” said André. “That’s fine.” He lingered a moment longer. “Well⁠—good night,” he said, taking off the beret.

Jane ran up the front steps and rang a peal of triumph on the doorbell. She skipped up and down in the vestibule waiting for the door to open. Unconsciously she hummed a fragment of her father’s morning song.

“Life is a joke that’s just begun!” she carolled, as Minnie stood on the threshold. The words, at the moment, had for her no meaning. She was just singing.