Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  '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 ahke,' she sighed irrele antly, as she rose from the table. 'Except yours, Edie.' She put her arm around Edith as they passed through the door.

  The Lesters' Hving-room was awfully like the Lesters. Mrs. Lester Hked comfort and the girls hked 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 handkerchiefi.

  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 mosdy landscapes, but there was a copy of a Murillo Madonna over the fireplace. Jane's mother and Isabel thought it was awfully fiinny 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 comer. 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 yam.

  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 U'uxedo giri you sec, Queen of swell so-ci-e-ty. Fond of fun as fond can be, When it's on the strict Q,.T.!'

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

  *Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ayl Ta-ra-ra-ra Boom-de-ay! Ta-ra-ra-ra Bocm-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 (soraebody'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 to-morrow night.*

  'Let's have a party,' said RosaUe.

  '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 Andre 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 Andr^ 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 httle 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 anyv^'here. A call in some one else's house was very exciting. Muriel went with her out into the back hall.

  'Hello,' said Jane.

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

  'Yes. It's me,' she said ungrammatically.

  'Who is it?' asked Muriel.

  'I called up your house,' said Andr^. 'They said you were over at Muriel's.'

  'Yes. I am,' said Jane rather unnecessarily.

  'I — I want to see you,' said Andre.

  'Who is it?' asked Muriel, again.

  'When did you get back?' said Jane politely.

  'This noon,' said Andr^.

  'Well,' said Jane, 'why don't you come over?'

  'Over to Muriel's?' inquired Andr6. His voice seemed a little doubtful.

  'Oh, no,' said Jane quickly. 'Over to my house. I'll go home.'

  'All right,' said Andre. 'How — how arc you?'

  'Oh, I'm fine,' said Jane.

  'Well,' said Andre, '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 Andre,' 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 to-morrow,' 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 hving-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 Hving-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.

  'Minnie,' said Jane confidentially, 'I'm going to have a caller.'

  Minnie looked very much surprised.

  'It's Andr6,' said Jane. 'When he comes just take him into the library and say you will tell me. And, Minnie,' said Jane almost pleadingly, ^dorCt call up the stairs.'

  This display of formahty Jane felt she owed to Andre's changed voice. She had been thinking of it ever since she had heard it. Andre must be very different. Andre had been away three months. Andre must have met lots of other girls, English ones and French ones, too, over in Europe. Still — he had telephoned her just as soon as he had arrived. Jane

  still laughed a little, excitedly all to herself, when she thought of that.

  She ran up the stairs and hurried into her bedroom. She took off her Uttle sailor hat and went up to her bureau and began to do over her hair. She parted it very neatly and pulled it down over her forehead in front and pinned up the braid under the black hair ribbon and wished, terribly, that she had a curly bang like Muriel's. Then
she pulled her belt two holes tighter over her white shirt waist and looked critically at her figure in the mirror. Her waist was all right. It was really just as small as Muriel's. It was smaller than Flora's. The door-bell rang just as she arrived at that comforting decision. She took a clean handkerchief out of her upper bureau-drawer and put three drops of German cologne on it and tucked it in her belt.

  Minnie appeared at the door. She was smiling all over.

  'He's come,' she said. 'He looks awful big.*

  Jane ran down the stairs feeling very much excited. She glanced at herself once more in the mirror under the hat-rack and then passed on to the library door. Andre was standing on the hearth rug. He ^zW look awfully big, and somehow broader about the shoulders. His coat sleeves were just a litde short for his arms. As soon as he saw Jane he broke into a beaming smile.

  'Hello, Jane,' he said.

  Jane was smiHng, too, all over. She walked quickly over to him and held out her hand. His closed completely over it He didn't let it go immediately.

  T'm awfully glad to see you,' he said.

  His voice was certainly very different. And his cheeks, though just as red, looked just a little darker and harder. Jane realized, with a sudden blush, that Andr^ had begun to

  shave. She almost felt as if she oughtn't to have noticed a thing like that.

  'Won't you sit down?' said Jane politely.

  'Won't you?' said Andre with a smile.

  Jane suddenly realized that she hadn't. They both laughed, then, and sat down side by side on the sofa near the hearth.

  'I think we might have the fire,' said Jane a little doubtfully. Isabel had it, always, when she had callers. 'It's not very cold, but it makes the room look nicer.'

  Andre jumped up again and struck a match and lit the paper under the birch logs.

  'I love this room, anyway,' said Andre. 'It looks just like you.'

  Jane flushed with pleasure. She loved the room, too, but she thought it looked just like her father. It was very different from the yellow drawing-room across the hall. It was quite small and the walls were covered with black-walnut bookcases with glass doors, behind which the leather-covered volumes of her father's hbrary glowed in subdued splendour. Over the bookcases were four steel engravings, one of George Washington and one of Thomas Jefferson and one of Daniel Webster and one of Abraham Lincoln — the four greatest Americans, her father always said. On the mantelpiece was a mahogany bust of William Shakespeare. 'The Bard of Avon' was carved in a ribbon scroll on its little pedestal. The sofa by the fire was covered in dark brown velvet and there were two big leather chairs and a revolving one, that Jane used to like to swing on when she was Httle, behind the big green baize-topped desk of black walnut. Near the desk was a globe on a black-walnut standard, with a barometer hanging over it. That was all there was in the room except a big branching rubber tree in the one west window. Just now the September sun was slanting obliquely in across Pine

  Street, striking the glass bookcase doors, making them look just a little dusty, and the firelight was dancing on the shiny surfaces of polished walnut, here and there, in the darker comers, and shining on the big brass humidor on the desk that held her father's cigars.

  Andre sat down again beside her on the sofa.

  'What happened to you this summer?' asked Andre. 'You look awfully grown-up.'

  * It's my hair,' said Jane, referring to the knot on her neck. 'Nothing happened to any of us except the World's Fair.'

  'I must go right down there,' said Andre. 'I never really saw it before we sailed in June.*

  'Muriel wants you to go to-morrow night,' said Jane, and unfolded the plan. Andre was delighted. He could go, of course.

  'And what have you been doing all summer?' asked Jane, when they had exhausted the subject of Muriel's party. She had a most dehghtful sensation of being a real young lady. Leading the conversation, like a hostess, with ease and distinction firom one subject to another. But it seemed a little strange to be talking to Andre hke this, quite seriously on the library sofa instead of up on the playTOom window seat or out in the side yard beneath the willow tree.

  His face Ut up at the question.

  'Oh, Jane!'he said. 'It's been great. You would have just loved it. I couldn't tell }'ou in my letters. I — I hated to come

  back, really, except — except ' His voice broke a little and

  sounded young and trembly. He didn't look at her. 'Except for you.'

  That made him seem like the same old Andre. Jane felt that happy feeling again, deep down inside. But she didn't know just what to say to him.

  'Tell me what it was like,' she ventured, after a little pause

  He began then, in a great rush, just as he always did when he wanted to share things with her. Jane's eyes grew big and round as she listened, and they never left his face. It sounded just Hke books. Different books, and all of them nice ones. June in London lodgings. That was like Tunch' and Dickens and Thackeray. And July in his grandfather's house in Bath. That was Hke Jane Austen. And August and September in Paris, working with his clay in an artist's studio, living with his father in a garret bedroom on the rue de I'Universite, eating at little iron tables on the sidewalks of cafes, and drinking at them too, red wine in carafes, as every one did in France, why — that was just Hke 'Trilby.' The book that RosaUc had lent to Isabel and Jane had read, knowing perfectly well that she shouldn't, that it wasn't at all the kind of book her mother would wish her to read.

  *A real artist, Andr^?' she asked. Tn a real studio?'

  'You bet he was. A friend of Rodin's. He wouldn't have let me mess around except that he had always known my father. I learned a lot from him. More than in any regular class. I — I did a study of your hands, Jane. I brought it back to show you.'

  Jane stared entranced. Why, this was just like 'Trilby.' Trilby's beautiful bare foot — and Little Billee.

  'Andr6! I'll love to see it.'

  'It's pretty good,' he said. His eyes were on her hands, clasped tight in ecstasy. 'I remembered just how they were.' He looked up laughing. 'But you can't have it.'

  *Oh!' she said fervently, 'I — I don't want it! I want you to keep it. I just want to see it '

  'Who ht the fire, Minnie?' said her mother's voice. Jane hadn't heard the door-bell. Her mother stood in the doorway. Andre sprang to his feet.

  'It's Andr6, Mamma.'

  Her little look of annoyance over the fire faded instantly into one of surprise. She held out her hand and smiled up at Andre exactly as if he were one of Isabel's callers.

  'Why, you've grown up,' she said.

  Andre smiled and blushed and Jane suddenly realized that he towered over both of them.

  'You're quite a young gentleman,' said her motlier, still smihng. 'Have you had a nice summer?'

  'He's been working in a studio in Paris,' said Jane. And realized instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. It didn't please her mother.

  'Oh,' she said, 'in a Paris studio?'

  *Yes,' said Andr^ confidingly. 'It was lots of fun.' That was the one stupid thing about Andre. He never seemed to sense what people were thinking. Was it because he never, never cared?

  'Was it, indeed?' said her mother and her tone seemed somehow to terminate Andre's call.

  Jane walked to the door with him.

  'I'll call up Muriel,' said Andr6, 'and sec you to-morrow night.*

  'Yes,' said Jane.

  'I am glad to be back,' said Andre.

  'Are you?' said Jane a Uttle wistfully. 'I'm glad you'reglad.*

  Muriel telephoned to her after dinner. Andre was coming and so were Bob and Teddy. Flora was delighted with the plan. She was all alone in the big brown stone house. Her father had gone to New York for a board meeting and her mother had gone away rather suddenly to spend three days with her sister in Galena, who wasn't very well. Rosalie wanted Isabel to come, too. She'd get another man.

  'She said to tell Isabel,' said Muriel, giggling over the wire, *that she knew who.'

>   Jane knew who, too. She must mean Robin Bridges, Isabel's latest beau. She ran back to the parior to tell the family all about it. Isabel looked very pleased.

  'That's nice of Lily Fumess to go up to stay with that unattractive sister,' said Jane's mother.

  *And in Galena, too,' said Isabel.

  *Lily Fumess has her nice side,' said Jane's mother.

  Jane went upstairs to see if her foulard frock needed pressing. It seemed to bring the party nearer to be doing something about it.

  n

  Jane woke next morning in a state of great excitement. For a minute she couldn't quite recollect, as she lay in her big walnut bed with the early sunshine streaming in her east window, just what was going to happen that wzis so very nice. She felt strangely entangled by dreams that she couldn't remember. Happy dreams, though, and vivid, but lost even as she tried to clutch after them. Then she knew. Andre was back. Andre still — liked her. She was going to see Andre that evening at Muriel's party.

  Jane sprang from her bed and ran to the window. It was a lovely day. The sky was bright and blue above the willow tree. The tree itself was waving, silvery green, in the soft September breeze. There would be a moon that evening. She had looked it up in the weather report in the paper, the night before.

  Andre would like the World's Fair. He would Hke those vasi white buildings standing stark in the moonbeams. And thf twinkhng lights on restless, moving water. And the terrace at the restaurant. And the music. And the crowds. It would be fun to see him see it.

  Soon after breakfast she was called to the telephone. At the

  sound of Muriel's voice Jane was awfully afraid that something dreadful had happened. But no, the party was getting better and better. Flora had called up Muriel to say that her father had come home from New York unexpectedly that morning. As his wife was in Galena he wanted to join the party. He had asked if Mr. Lester would let him take them all down to the fair grounds in the tally-ho.

  The tally-ho! Even Muriel had thought that that would be magnificent. The Fumesses' coach and four was quite the most splendid vehicle that Jane and Muriel had ever seen. They weren't asked to ride on it very often. Mr. Fumess had bought it only that summer and Flora herself seldom went on the elegant parties that he drove up the lake to the end of the pavement, or down to Washington Park, with the clatter of prancing hoofs and the jingle of chain harness and the toot of the triumphant horn. Mr. Fumess was quite a judge of horse-ficsh. He always sat on the box seat, very plump and straight, his short arms stifHy outstretched to hold the four yellow reins, his whip cocked at the proper horse show angle, and his high hat cocked too, just a Uttle bit, over his fat puffy face and great pale eyes. It was always fun to stand in the yard with Flora to watch his parties start out from under the porte-cochere. Tall, frock-coated, high-hatted gentlemen helping beautiful billowing ladies to chmb up the httle steps to the top of the coach in their voluminous silken flounces. Beautiful billowing ladies, blushing at the display of slender ankles. Flora's mother was always the most beautiful and billowing and blushing of all.