Years of Grace · Part III · III · Chapter 3 3 1 (1/2)

I

“They say it wasn’t a stroke,” said Isabel, “but of course it was.”

“Mrs. Lester told me it was acute indigestion,” said Mrs. Ward.

“And Rosalie told me it was brain fatigue,” said Isabel.

“I don’t know what Bert Lancaster’s ever done to fatigue his brain,” said Mrs. Ward.

Jane laughed, in spite of her concern for Muriel. They were all sitting around the first October fire in Jane’s little Lakewood living-room. Her mother and Isabel had motored out from town to take tea with her and they were all discussing, of course, Bert Lancaster’s sudden seizure at the Commercial Club banquet the night before.

“It must have been awful,” said Isabel, “falling over like that, right into his own champagne glass, in the middle of a speech.”

“They say he was forbidden champagne,” said Mrs. Ward. “Dr. Bancroft’s wife told me that the doctor had warned him last winter that he must give up alcohol.”

“Have some more tea, Isabel,” said Jane.

“I oughtn’t to, but I will,” said Isabel. At forty-one Isabel was valiantly struggling against increasing pounds. “No sugar, Jane.” She opened her purse and taking out a small bottle dropped three tablets of saccharine into her cup.

“Of course he’s pretty young for a stroke,” said Mrs. Ward.

“He’s fifty-five,” said Isabel. “He was fifty-five the third of August.”

“It’s frightful for Muriel,” said Jane.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Ward. “Perhaps it’s providential. Of course if he’s disabled⁠—”

“If he lives, he will be,” said Isabel. “Sooner or later. If you have one stroke, you always have another.”

“Well, he may not live,” said Mrs. Ward. “He can’t have any constitution to rely on after the life he’s led.”

“What do you think Muriel would do, Jane?” asked Isabel. “Do you think she’d really marry Cyril Fortune?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane.

“She was off at the Scandals with him when it happened,” said Mrs. Ward. “They paged her at the theatre.”

“You mark my words,” said Isabel, taking a piece of toast and scraping the buttered cinnamon off it, “whenever Bert Lancaster dies, Muriel will marry the man of the moment the day after the funeral. Not that I think she’s really in love with Cyril. I never thought she was in love with Sam or Binky or Roger or any of them.”

“Not even with Sam?” said Mrs. Ward.

“Not really,” said Isabel with conviction. “Rosalie always said she wasn’t. I think Muriel is really just in love with herself. It keeps up her self-confidence to have a young man sighing gustily around the home. But just the same, if Bert Lancaster dies tonight, I bet she marries Cyril Fortune before Christmas.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Ward. “Muriel would do everything decently. She’d stay in mourning for at least a year. She’d have to show the proper respect for her son’s sake.”

“They’ve sent for young Albert,” said Isabel, “to come home from Saint Paul’s.”

“Well, I hope Muriel behaves herself while he’s here,” said Mrs. Ward severely. “He’s fifteen and he’s old enough to notice.”

“That’s just exactly,” said Isabel dreamily, “what you used to say of Flora.”

“Well, she was old enough to notice,” said Mrs. Ward, “but I doubt if she ever did. Lily Furness had a curious magnetism. Somehow she always made you believe the best of her.”

“Flora simply adored her,” said Jane suddenly. “I adored her, myself.”

“Just the same,” said Mrs. Ward, “she had no principle.”

“You don’t know,” said Jane. “Perhaps she went through hell. You can’t help it if you’re not in love with your husband.”

“Every wife with principle,” said Mrs. Ward firmly, “is in love with her husband.”

“Mamma!” cried Isabel. “Don’t be ridiculous! How many wives are? But what I say is, even if you’re not, you don’t have to take a lover⁠—”

“No,” said Jane, “of course you don’t. But I can see how you might.”

“Don’t talk like that!” said Mrs. Ward sharply. “I don’t know where you girls get your ideas! When I was your age I wouldn’t even have said those words⁠—‘take a lover’! And you two sit there talking as if it were actually done!”

“But it is done, Mamma,” said Isabel. “Not very often, of course, but sometimes. Lily Furness did it, even in your day. And you know, in your black heart, that you’re wondering whether Muriel hasn’t gone and done it in ours.”

“I am not!” said Mrs. Ward indignantly. “I shouldn’t think of making such an accusation against Muriel. All I say is, she isn’t very discreet. She gets herself talked about. There’s been a lot of gossip about Muriel. And everyone knows that where there’s so much smoke, there’s bound to be some fire.”

“Well, what do you think you’re saying now?” said Isabel. “What are, or aren’t you, accusing Muriel of this minute?”

Mrs. Ward looked slightly bewildered.

“I don’t like the way young people speak out nowadays,” she said. “And I don’t like your attitude toward wrongdoing. You and Jane are both perfectly willing to condone whatever Muriel has done. At least, in my day, we all made Lily Furness feel she was a guilty woman. We took the marriage vows seriously.”

“I take the marriage vows seriously. Mamma,” said Jane gently. “But I can understand the people who break them. At least,” she added doubtfully, “I think I can. I think I can understand just how it might happen.”

“Anyone could understand how it might happen in Muriel’s case,” said Isabel. “Bert’s a perfect old rip. There’s a certain poetic justice in the thought of him, standing in Mr. Furness’s shoes⁠—”

Mrs. Ward rose with dignity from her chair.

“Come, Isabel,” she said, “I’m going home. I’m not going to listen to you girls any longer. I only hope you don’t talk like this before Robin and Stephen. It’s a woman’s duty to keep up her husband’s standards.”

Jane and Isabel burst into laughter.

“Robin and Stephen!” exclaimed Isabel. “Imagine either of them on the loose!”

“They keep up our standards,” said Jane, as she kissed her mother. Mrs. Ward still looked a trifle bewildered.

“Put on your heavy coat,” said Jane, as they all turned toward the door. “Don’t let her catch cold, Isabel.”

“I won’t,” said Isabel. “Mind that rug, Mamma. The floor is slippery.”

“You girls think I’m just an old lady,” said Mrs. Ward, as Jane opened the front door. “I wish you’d both remember that I took care of myself for about forty-five years before you thought you were old enough to give me advice.” She climbed, a little clumsily, into the waiting motor.

“Give my love to Papa,” said Jane. “And Isabel⁠—when you telephone Rosalie, ask if there’s anything I can do for Muriel.”

“I will,” said Isabel. “There probably will be. Muriel never does anything for herself.”

The car crunched slowly around the gravel driveway. Jane watched it to the entrance. Curious, she thought, the gap between the points of view of different generations. The facts of life were always the same, but people thought about them so differently. New thoughts, reflected Jane, about the same old actions. Was it progress or merely change? Sex was a loaded pistol, thought Jane, thrust into the hand of humanity. Her mother’s generation had carried it carefully, fearful of a sudden explosion. Her generation, and Isabel’s, waved it nonchalantly about, but, after all, with all their carelessness, they didn’t fire it off any oftener than their parents had. What if the next generation should take to shooting? Shooting straight regardless of their target. As Jane entered the front hall, the telephone was ringing.

She stood still, suddenly, on the doormat. That might be Jimmy, she thought instantly, and despised herself for the thought. Jane hated to think that she had been back in the Lakewood house for three weeks and that, in all that time, the telephone had never rung without awakening in her unwilling brain the thought that it might be Jimmy. For Jimmy had never telephoned. He had vanished completely out of her life that morning in the La Salle Street Station. At first she had been only relieved to find that the voice, whosever it was, trickling over the wire, was not his. Jane had been firmly determined to discipline Jimmy for that outrageous refusal to lunch with Stephen on the day of his arrival. But, as the days passed and she did not hear from him, her relief had been subtly tempered first with curiosity then with concern, and, at last, with indignation. Jimmy ought to have telephoned. It was rude of him not to. She had really felt, after those intimate hours on the back platform of the Twentieth Century, that she meant something to Jimmy, that he really liked her, that he was depending on her for support and diversion during his visit to Chicago. And then⁠—he had not telephoned. By not telephoning he had made Jane feel rather a fool. For Jimmy had meant something to her, she had really liked him. Of course he was irritating and she had known he was not to be counted on, but still⁠—she had thought that she had read an honest admiration in his ironic eyes, she had felt that he was a very amusing person, she had even wondered just what she had better do in case Jimmy’s honest admiration became a trifle embarrassing. She had solemnly assured herself, on her arrival at Lakewood, that if she were firm and pleasantly disciplinary she could, of course, handle Jimmy, who was a dear and Agnes’s husband, but not very wise, perhaps, and obviously in the frame of mind in which he could easily be led astray by the flutter of a petticoat. And then⁠—he had not telephoned.

“Mrs. Carver,” Miss Parrot’s pleasant voice called down the stairs, “Mr. Carver wants you on the wire.”

Jane walked to the telephone in the pantry.

“Yes, dear?” she said.

“I can’t get out for dinner this evening,” said Stephen. “Muriel wants me to come up and talk business with her. It seems Bert was just advising her about some investments when he was stricken. She’s got some bonds he wanted her to sell immediately.”

“Of course go, dear,” said Jane quickly. Stephen would be very helpful to Muriel. Everyone turned to Stephen when in trouble. And Muriel had no one to advise her except Freddy Waters, her volatile brother-in-law. Unless you counted Cyril Fortune, who was a young landscape gardener recently rumoured to have lost twenty thousand dollars in a flyer in oil. He wouldn’t be much to lean on in a financial crisis.

“I’ll be out on the ten-ten,” said Stephen. “Don’t be lonely.”

“I won’t,” said Jane. “I’ve got letters to write. Give my love to Muriel.”

As Jane turned from the telephone she heard the whirr of a motor. That would be the children coming home from school. The car called for them at the playground every afternoon at five. Jane was always afraid to let them walk home alone through the traffic. The country lane on which her house had been built, fourteen years before, had long since become a suburban highroad. As she entered the hall again, they burst in at the front door. The cocker-spaniel puppy tumbled down the stairs to meet them.

“Mumsy!” called Jenny. “Oh, there you are! I’ve made the basketball team and I need some gym shoes!”

“I’m going to take my rabbits to school for the Animal Fair!” cried little Steve.

“Can I ask Jack and Belle to come out on Saturday?” said Cicily. Jack and Belle were Isabel’s seventeen- and thirteen-year-old son and daughter. No weekend was complete without them.

“When can we get the gym shoes?” said Jenny.

“I need a cage for the rabbits,” said little Steve.

“I’ve got to have the gym shoes by Monday, Mumsy,” said Jenny.

“Do you think I could make a cage out of a peach crate?” said little Steve.

“Hush!” said Jane. “Pick up your coat, Jenny, and hang it in the closet. Steve⁠—your books don’t belong on the floor.

“Yes, Cicily, you can telephone Aunt Isabel tonight and ask them.”

“Mumsy, where can I find a peach crate?”

“Be quiet!” said Jane. “Now go upstairs, all of you, and wash! If you get your homework done before supper, I’ll read King Arthur stories to you tonight. Daddy’s not coming home.”

The children clattered up the staircase. Jane walked into the living-room with a sigh. They were terribly noisy. They never seemed to behave like other people’s children. She sat down at her desk and began to look over the afternoon mail. An invitation to dine in town with Muriel before an evening musical⁠—that would be off, now, of course. A bill from the plumber for repairing the faucets in the maid’s bathroom. A note from the chairman of the Miscellaneous Committee of the Chicago Chatter Club asking her to write a funny paper on “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” for the December meeting. A note from the chairman of the Literary Committee of the Lakewood Woman’s Club, asking her to write a serious paper on “Oriental Art” for the Spring Festival. A bill from the Russian Peasant Industries for smocking Cicily’s and Jenny’s new winter frocks. A notice from the Lakewood Village Council, announcing that Cleanup Week began on Monday next. A note from Steve’s teacher, suggesting that she see that he spend more time on his arithmetic. An advertisement of a Rummage Sale for the benefit of Saint George’s Church. A bill from the Lakewood Gas and Coke Company for the new laundry stove. A notice that her report would be due as chairman of the Playground Committee at the annual meeting of the Village Improvement Society next Wednesday night.

Jane pushed the mail into a pigeonhole. She felt she could not bear to cope with it. She felt she could not bear to cope with the winter that lay before her. Which was, of course, ridiculous. Jane knew that it would be just like all other winters⁠—fun enough, when you came to live it. But always in October, reestablished in Lakewood after the break of the Eastern summer, Jane wondered why she and Stephen chose to live just the way they did. Lakewood was good for the children, of course. No longer country, not much more rural than the Pine Street of her childhood, but better than Isabel’s town apartment, nicer, even, than Muriel’s smart city residence overlooking the lake.

Still⁠—suburban life was pretty awful. Narrow, confining, in spite of the physical asset of its wider horizons. Jane rose from her desk and walked to a western window. The sun was setting over the Skokie Valley. An October sunset, red and cold, behind her copper oak woods, beyond the tanned haystacks in the distant meadows. A western sunset, violent and vivid, glorifying the flat swamps with golden light, setting the tranquil clouds in the wide, unbroken sky aflame with rosy fire. The Skokie always looked like that, on autumn evenings. It was lovely, too, on winter nights, a snowy plane beneath the sparkling stars. In the spring, when the Skokie overflowed its banks and the swamps were wet and the moonlight paled the pink blossoms of the apple tree at the foot of the garden, it was perhaps most lovely of all. Jane was lucky to live there⁠—lucky to have that picture to look out on, always, outside her window. Still⁠—

Jane watched the burnished sun sink slowly beneath the flat horizon, the low clouds lose their colour and turn darkly purple, the high clouds flame with pink and pure translucent gold. Then they, too, faded into wisps of grey. The western sky was lemon-coloured now. A crescent moon was tangled in the oak boughs.

Jane turned back to her desk and stood looking at the illuminated quotation from Stevenson that hung over it in a silver frame⁠—the work of Jenny’s hand in the sixth grade of the Lakewood Progressive School, a gift of last Christmas.

“To make this earth, our hermitage,

A cheerful and a changeful page,

God’s bright and intricate device

Of days and seasons doth suffice.”

“What a damn lie!” thought Jane, and turned at the sound of a step in the doorway. Jimmy Trent, his hat in his hand, his fiddle-case under his arm, stood smiling at her on the threshold. The children had left the front door open, of course. He had come in quietly⁠—

“Hello!” said Jimmy. “How’s every little thing?”

“Jimmy!” said Jane. “Come in! Sit down. I’m awfully glad to see you!”