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

I

“I don’t see why you want to go to college,” said Muriel, “at all.”

Jane was taking lunch with Muriel. And Jane was very different. Her sleek brown pigtails had vanished, turned up in a knot on her neck beneath a big black hair ribbon. Her skirts were down to her boot tops and her dresses, though they were still made by Miss McKelvey, had a subtly young-ladyfied air. Jane was sixteen. It was September. Jane would be seventeen in May.

Muriel was sixteen, too, of course, and the seven black finger curls had been twisted into two, that hung down her back under a black hair ribbon, just like Jane’s, and she wore a thick, cloudy bang on her white forehead and her eyes were bigger and bluer than ever and her eyelashes longer and even more curly. She looked just like a postcard that André had sent Jane from the Tate Gallery in London last summer. “A typical Pre-Raphaelite,” he had written across it. Muriel looked almost as old as her second sister, Rosalie, thought Jane admiringly. It was the being pretty that did it. Being pretty made Muriel look old and Rosalie look young. Rosalie was twenty-one and about to become engaged, so Isabel said, to Freddy Waters.

Edith, the eldest, had married and was living in Cleveland, but had come back to her mother’s house to have her first baby. Jane privately sympathized with Muriel about it. It was awfully embarrassing to have Edith around, looking so large and queer, with great dark shadows under her big black eyes and grey hollows in her waxen cheeks, when only last Christmas she was the prettiest bride Chicago had ever seen, floating up Saint James’s aisle on old Solomon Lester’s arm, in a cloud of tulle and yards and yards of stiff gored satin, with a waist so tiny that she looked as if she’d break in two in the middle. Flora and Jane had been very much thrilled by the wedding. They had sat together in the sixth pew on the bride’s side, because Muriel was a flower girl.

Jane’s mother and Isabel had thought it was awfully funny to import old Solomon Lester to stand by his granddaughter’s side in that Episcopal chancel, when everyone knew that back in New York he was a pillar of the synagogue. Of course Edith had been on the altar guild for years, and she had no brother and her father was dead. Nevertheless, Jane’s mother and Isabel had thought it would have been better taste to have had a house wedding.

There she sat, at any rate, in a cerise silk tea-gown, at her mother’s right hand, languidly sipping her tea with lemon and looking quite as uncomfortable as she made everyone else feel. It was awfully hard on Rosalie, Isabel told Jane, to have her always in evidence when Freddy Waters came to call. And Isabel thought it was perfectly disgusting of her to go about to parties. She had a long story that Jane had never thought so terribly funny about her almost pulling the horse off his feet when she stepped into a hansom, right in front of Bert Lancaster, on her way home from one of Flora’s mother’s receptions.

Mrs. Lester, however, sitting comfortably behind her silver tea-tray, seemed sublimely unconscious that there was anything embarrassing in her presence. Isabel said that she positively encouraged Edith to go about everywhere and was continually seen in public, brazenly knitting on the most unmistakable garments, and talking of the baby in the most extraordinary way, as if it could be talked about⁠—as if it were really there. She didn’t do this in front of Jane and Flora and Muriel of course. Jane’s mother said it was the Jew coming out. They were very queer about family life.

Jane didn’t exactly see why you couldn’t talk about a baby before it was born, but obviously you didn’t, and it certainly made her feel very uncomfortable to look at Edith. There was something in the expression of Mrs. Lester’s big brown eyes, however, as they rested on her firstborn, that brought a lump into Jane’s throat. Something anxious and worried and somehow proud and tender, all mixed up. Fat, funny Mrs. Lester, who was almost as large as Edith this minute! Her napkin was always slipping off her lap and she had three double chins that cascaded down from her tiny mouth to her broad lace collar. It would seem awfully funny, Jane thought, if you were having a baby yourself, to know you must never mention it, when it would be all you would think about, all those long months.

“I don’t know why you don’t want to go to Farmington next year, Jane,” continued Muriel, “with Flora and me.”

Jane knew very well. She was very fond of Flora and Muriel⁠—why, she had known them in her perambulator! But she wanted to go to Bryn Mawr, just the same, with Agnes, and live for four years with her in Pembroke Hall in one of those double suites that looked so enchanting in the catalogue and study more French and English and, yes, get away from her family and postpone the awful day when she would have to stop being shy and make a début and go to dances with a lot of young men whom she didn’t know and compete with Flora and Muriel on their own field, which could never be hers, in a dreadful artificial race, over hurdles of cotillion partners, with an altar at the end of it and bridegrooms given away in order of excellence, like first, second, and third prizes in a public competition. Jane always thought of bridegrooms like that. That was just the way her mother and Isabel talked about them. Like something the panting bride took home and unwrapped and appraised at her leisure. Her mother and Isabel always weighed all bridegrooms’ qualities minutely in the balance and usually found them wanting. Jane knew all about bridegrooms.

Edith’s, now, had been rich and of very good family⁠—for there were very good families in Cleveland, who had moved there, years ago, from the East. But he looked very frail⁠—Jane’s mother thought almost consumptive⁠—and Edith didn’t need the money and would certainly miss living in a large city and find it hard to get on without her mother, who had always been so indulgent. Even Freddy Waters, who was not a bridegroom yet, but, according to Isabel, soon would be, had been scrupulously balanced on jeweller’s scales. Jane, facing Rosalie’s unconscious face across the luncheon table, knew perfectly well that Freddy was awfully clever and a divine dancer, but hadn’t a cent to bless himself with and had thrown himself at the feet of every rich girl in Chicago for the last seven years. Jane’s indifferent mind was crowded with snapshot biographies like that of every actual and potential bridegroom in town. And she did want to go to Bryn Mawr and get away from the family and live with Agnes and study some more French and English. It seemed a great deal simpler.

She had taken her preliminaries last spring and passed them well enough and Agnes had reserved a double suite in Pembroke Hall and her father had said explosively on one memorable occasion, “Oh, hell! Let the kid go!” But her mother and Isabel had never consented.

It was partly because of Agnes, of course, whom her mother and Isabel had never grown to like, though she was turning out to be awfully clever and had passed her preliminaries with an amazing number of high credits and might be the Middle-Western Scholar and could write essays that Miss Milgrim thought were very unusual. Agnes had actually taken a job last summer, on her father’s paper, though she was only seventeen. Jane thought it was very wonderful of her, but it seemed to be the last nail in her coffin as far as her mother and Isabel were concerned.

“A young girl in a newspaper office!” Mrs. Ward had said. Considering the tone in which it was uttered, the comment had sufficed.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without Muriel for a year,” Mrs. Lester was saying, “now Edith is gone.” Her eyes lingered pensively on Rosalie as if she sensed an approaching farewell. Her three dark-haired daughters were very dear to Mrs. Lester.

“And Flora’s mother has only Flora,” said Jane sympathetically.

A little gleam of cynicism shone in Edith’s melancholy eye.

“I dare say she’ll be glad to have her out of the way.”

“Flora’s getting old enough to notice,” sighed Mrs. Lester.

“Freddy saw her lunching alone with him at the Richelieu last Wednesday,” said Rosalie. And added with perverse pleasure, “They were having champagne.”

Mrs. Lester clucked her dismay. But it was no news to Jane. She had heard Isabel telling all about it at the dinner table on Thursday night.

“Bert Lancaster ought to be ashamed of himself,” said Mrs. Lester.

“She’s old enough to know better,” said Rosalie pertly. “How old is she, Mother?”

“She was married,” said Mrs. Lester dreamily, “the year that Edith had scarlet fever. I couldn’t go to the wedding. That makes her about thirty-eight.”

“She doesn’t look it,” said Edith. “She’s an amazing woman.”

“Bert’s thirty-five,” said Rosalie meditatively. “He told me so himself.”

“I admire her husband,” said Mrs. Lester, “for the way he takes it.”

“Mother!” said Rosalie and Edith at once. And Rosalie continued, “How can you admire him? He’s a perfect dodo!”

“He has been very much tried,” said Mrs. Lester, “these last three years.”

“He might die,” commented Edith hopefully. “He’s awfully old.”

“He’s not sixty,” said Mrs. Lester. “He’ll have to die soon to do any good.”

“Mother!” said Rosalie again. “Bert’s simply mad about her.”

“Now,” said Mrs. Lester, with meaning. “Men are all alike,” she sighed irrelevantly, as she rose from the table. “Except yours, Edie.” She put her arm around Edith as they passed through the door.

The Lesters’ living-room was awfully like the Lesters. Mrs. Lester liked comfort and the girls liked gaiety. The entire house was both comfortable and gay. It was also untidy, for Mrs. Lester was a terrible housekeeper. Her servants never stayed a minute and never seemed to pick up anything while they were there. Jane’s mother said she didn’t wonder, with the demands that were made upon them. The Lesters had lots of company and meals at all hours, and the girls, so Jane’s mother said, had never been taught to do for themselves. Jane had often seen Muriel step out of a lovely new dress and leave it lying on her bedroom floor, and her upper bureau drawer was a sight. There was hair in her comb and soiled handkerchief everywhere. Jane had been taught to be very careful about combs and soiled handkerchiefs.

Jane liked their living-room, however. The walls were covered with emerald-green silk and hung with oil paintings in great gold frames. The paintings were mostly landscapes, but there was a copy of a Murillo Madonna over the fireplace. Jane’s mother and Isabel thought it was awfully funny that the Lesters’ hearth should be dominated by the Christ-child. The furniture was rosewood, upholstered in bright green brocade and there was a grand piano in the corner. Muriel’s music was always scattered all over it, gay popular tunes that Jane loved to hear her rattle off when she had Flora and Jane and some boys in for a chafing-dish supper after their evening dancing-class. This afternoon Rosalie’s embroidery was strewn all over the rosewood sofa, and the morning paper, with the social column turned out and a copy of Town Topics and one of the Club Fellow lay on the floor by Edith’s easy chair, and Mrs. Lester’s compromising knitting was on the marble-topped table. All but two balls of blue and white worsted that had rolled under the sofa. A little fire was smouldering on the hearth and Jane thought that all the untidy litter made the large, luxurious room look very homelike and comfortable as if people lived in it and loved it. But Jane picked up the two balls of worsted and wound up the yarn.

Muriel sat down at the piano and began to play “Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay,” singing, as her hands rattled over the keys,

“A sweet Tuxedo girl you see,

Queen of swell so‑ci‑e‑ty,

Fond of fun as fond can be,

When it’s on the strict Q.T.!”

Edith and Rosalie and Jane all joined uproariously in the chorus.

“Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!

Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!

Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!

Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!”

“That song,” said Mrs. Lester comfortably, as she picked up her knitting, “will always make me think of the World’s Fair.” The celebrated Columbian Exposition had been running all summer down in Jackson Park. Muriel slipped easily into “After the Ball,” the great band hit of the season. She sang the popular parody with pathos, as she played,

“After the Fair is over, what will Chicago do

With all those empty houses, run up with sticks and glue?

I’d rather live in Brooklyn (somebody’d know me there)

Than to live in Chicago, after⁠—the⁠—Fair.”

“We ought to go out there again some night for dinner,” said Rosalie, “before it gets too cold.”

Muriel stopped playing.

“Let’s go this week,” she said. “Let’s go tomorrow night.”

“Let’s have a party,” said Rosalie.

“Whom do you want to ask?” asked Mrs. Lester. “Besides Freddy.”

This was just like the Lesters. No sooner said than done.

“I don’t care,” said Rosalie. “Let Muriel have some kids. It’s her last fling. School begins next week.”

“Flora,” said Muriel promptly, “and Jane, of course, and Teddy Stanley⁠—he’s just crazy about Flora⁠—and Bob Withers for me and⁠—when does André get home, Jane?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane. And she really didn’t. He hadn’t said in his last letter from Paris. Jane hadn’t seen André for three months.

“He’s got to be back for school,” said Muriel. “I’ll give him a ring.”

“You’re not going, are you, Edith?” said Rosalie hopefully. Edith looked a little undecided. “It’s a tiring trip.”

Edith was still looking undecided when the Lesters’ new butler appeared in the door.

“Miss Jane Ward?” he asked hesitatingly. He hadn’t been there long enough to know Jane’s name. “You’re wanted on the telephone, miss.”

Jane got up in astonishment. She was very seldom wanted on the telephone anywhere. A call in someone else’s house was very exciting. Muriel went with her out into the back hall.

“Hello,” said Jane.

It was André’s voice. She knew it immediately. It wasn’t quite the same, though. A little huskier and deeper. It made Jane feel very queer to hear it. André really sounded like a man.

“Yes. It’s me,” she said ungrammatically.

“Who is it?” asked Muriel.

“I called up your house,” said André. “They said you were over at Muriel’s.”

“Yes. I am,” said Jane rather unnecessarily.

“I⁠—I want to see you,” said André.

“Who is it?” asked Muriel, again.

“When did you get back?” said Jane politely.

“This noon,” said André.

“Well,” said Jane, “why don’t you come over?”

“Over to Muriel’s?” inquired André. His voice seemed a little doubtful.

“Oh, no,” said Jane quickly. “Over to my house. I’ll go home.”

“All right,” said André. “How⁠—how are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” said Jane.

“Well,” said André, “I’ll be right over.”

“All right,” said Jane. She hung up the receiver.

“Who was it?” asked Muriel.

Jane turned to face her. She was laughing a little. She didn’t know why.

“It was André,” she said.

Muriel began to giggle.

“I thought you didn’t know when he was coming home.”

“I didn’t,” said Jane, and started for the door into the front hall.

“Where are you going?” asked Muriel.

“Home,” said Jane. “He’s coming over.”

Muriel seemed to think that was natural enough.

“Ask him to come tomorrow,” she said.

Jane was putting on her hat.

“All right,” she said. She was at the front door before she remembered her manners. She went straight back into the living-room, and shook hands with Mrs. Lester.

“I had a lovely time, Mrs. Lester,” said Jane. Mrs. Lester looked a little bewildered, but Jane didn’t stop to explain. It certainly wasn’t necessary. As soon as she reached the hall she heard Muriel giggling about it in the living-room.

“Is Isabel in?” asked Jane, as soon as Minnie opened the front door.

“No,” said Minnie.

“Is Mamma?” asked Jane.

“No,” said Minnie again.