Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  'I had a lovely time, Mr, Furness,' she said, as they drew up in firont of the house on Pine Street. He didn't seem to hear her.

  'Good-night, Mrs. Lester,' said Jane politely. 'I had a lovely time.'

  Mrs. Lester held her hand a moment and patted it.

  'You're a good little girl, Jane. I'm sure you can be trusted.'

  'Oh, yes, Mrs. Lester,' said Jane. And then, 'Good-night, Andre.'

  *Good-night,' said Andre. 'I'll call you up in the morning.'

  'Why does Mrs. Lester think you can be trusted?' said Isabel curiously, as she was fishing in her bag for the door-key.

  'I don't know,' said Jane. 'I can't imagine.'

  Isabel opened the door. As they walked down the hall their mother called over the bannisters.

  'Was it fun, girls?' She was sitting up for them in her lavender wrapper. She followed Isabel into her bedroom to talk it all over. Isabel seemed to have lots to say.

  'I never saw Freddy so gone on any one as he is on Rosalie. I think he's really in love with her. Of course, I don't say he

  would be if she didn't have money, but ' Jane's mother

  closed Isabel's door.

  Jane went into her own room alone. She could hear their whispering voices, broken by low laughter, long after her light was out. It was funny, Jane thought, but it was perfectly true. Telling lies made you trustworthy.

  CHAPTER III

  I

  *I don't know why you want to go,* said Jane's mother, 'anyway.'

  'Just to the Thomas concert,' said Isabel.

  'And down in the street cars,' said Jane's mother, 'in your pretty frock.'

  •Well —I do,'said Jane.

  It was a party of Agnes's that was under discussion. Agnes had asked her, yesterday in school, to come up to dinner that evening and go down to the Auditorium later to the Thomas concert. Agnes's mother was going to work that night. She couldn't use her seat. Agnes's father would take them. Jane's mother and Isabel had argued about it all last evening and now they were beginning all over again at the breakfast table.

  'Oh, let her go,' said Jane's father. 'It can't hurt her.'

  Jane smiled at him gratefully. Mrs. Ward sighed and poured herself a second cup of coffee.

  'You don't make it any easier, John,' she said, 'to control the children.'

  'Papa, can I go?' asked Jane, appealing direcdy to the higher court, a little impertinently.

  'Of course she can go, can't she, Lizzie?' said her father, smiling disarmingly o'er the morning 'Tribune.'

  *Oh — I suppose so,' said Mrs. Ward, with a resigned shrug. We won't have much more of it. Agnes goes to Bryn Mawr in the fall.'

  Jane's eyes met her father's with a Httle gleam of understanding. But there was no use in opening the college issue, just then. It was late April, and Jane was almost ready for

  her final examinations. She was going to take them, anyway. Miss Milgrim insisted on that. She rose from the table to telephone to Agnes.

  *I'm coming up early,' she said, 'and I'm going to bring my Virgil. We can read over that passage.' Jane loved Latin, but she wasn't nearly as good at it as Agnes. She wasn't nearly as good as Agnes at anything. Agnes was terribly bright. Agnes was going abroad that summer, to tutor a littie girl. She was going to England and Germany and Switzerland. Both she and Jane were awfully excited about it. Agnes was eighteen.

  Jane left the house quite early with her Virgil. She walked up the Drive and west through the Park to Center Street. It was a beautiful, breezy day, with a wind off the lake. The elm trees were in tiny feathery leaf The yellow forsythia was in bloom. The heart-shaped leaves of the lilacs were very soft and small. They hadn't begun to bud yet. Jane left the Park and crossed the Clark Street car-tracks and wondered, as she did so, why they formed such a social Rubicon. Her mother and Isabel never had any opinion of any one who Hved west of Clark Street. It was the worst thing they had to say of Agnes.

  Agnes Uved in a Uttie brown wooden house in a street of other littie brown and grey wooden houses. Some of them had quite large yards and here and there was a newly planted garden. The street was Uned with cottonwood trees. Their flickering leaves looked very bright and sticky in the April sunshine. The wooden sidewalk was covered, here and there, with a dust of cottonwood seed. Agnes's street was very Hke the country.

  Agnes's house had a httie front porch and Agnes was sitting on it in an old maple rocking chair. Agnes was reading a French book. Jane knew what it was, 'Extracts Selected and Edited from Voltaire's Prose,' by Cohn and Woodward.

  Agnes was reading it quite easily, without a dictionary. Agnes was going to take some advanced standing examinations in French in the faU. She closed the book with a bang as Jane came up the front steps. Jane sat down on tlie top one.

  'This is lovely,' said Jane. 'Like summer.' It really was. The sun fell hot and bright on the wooden steps. Agnes's father had put out some crocuses along the little path that led to the gate. Some litde boys were playing baseball in the empty lot across the street. Agnes's next-door neighbor was hanging out the wash — great wet flapping sheets that waved like banners in the spring breeze. Behind her a row of children's dresses, pink and green and yellow and blue and four pair of men's white underdrawers danced a fantastic ballet on a second clothes-hne.

  T like your street, Agnes,' said Jane.

  Then they buckled down to the iEneid, They were reading the end of Book IV. The part about Dido's funeral pyre. Agnes could read it so well that it almost made Jane cry, at the end.

  *Vixi et quern dederat cmsumfortuna peregiy Et nunc magna tnei sub terras ibit imago.*

  Agnes crooned the sonorous lines, then translated slowly.

  *I have lived and accomplished the task that destiny gave mc and now I shall pass beneath the earth no common shade.'

  'That's beautiful,' said Jane. 'Nice and proud. That's the way you ought to feel if you were dying. Not snivelling, you know, or frightened, or crying over spilled milk.'

  'It didn't do her much good,' said Agnes, turning over a page or two. 'The next book begins "In the mean time iEneas unwaveringly pursued his way across the waters." He didn't turn back, you know, though he saw the light from the flames.'

  'I don't care,' said Jane stoutly, 'what iEneas did. He was

  a poor thing anyway. But Dido died like a lady. A gallant lady. I hope I'll never cry over spilled milk, Agnes.'

  'I don't believe you will,' said Agnes. Her funny freckled face was bent very admiringly on Jane. 'You're as gallant as any one I know. Always running uphill. I bet I see you in Bryn Mawr in October. I bet you get there.'

  Jane was suddenly electrified to see Andre turn the comer and come walking up the street. He waved his cap to the two girls.

  'Agnes!' said Jane. 'Did you ask Andre?'

  'This afternoon,' said Agnes. 'Dad telephoned that he couldn't go with us. He was kept at the newspaper.'

  'But who is going with us?' asked Jane.

  'Andre,' said Agnes.

  *Just you — and me — and Andre?' asked Jane again.

  'Yes,' said Agnes. 'And we have to cook our own dinner first. Mother's down at the office.'

  Andre turned in at the gate. Agnes sprang up to meet him. Jane sat very soberly on the top step, pricking a brown paint blister with her finger nail, her eyes on the worn porch floor. Her mother wouldn't like this, thought Jane. Her going with Andre and Agnes, alone, to the Thomas concert. Jane didn't like it, herself. Jane knew perfectly well she ought to have some older person with her when she went out in the evening. She felt very much troubled.

  'Hello, Jane,' said Andre. 'Can't you smile?'

  Jane tried to.

  'Can you scramble eggs, Andre?' asked Agnes.

  'Just watch me!' said Andre. 'If you've got some ham I can make eggs Benedictine.'

  'If we haven't,' said Agnes, 'we can get it at the grocery.*

  They all went into the house. Agnes's house always looked just a little mussy. Not mussy like the Lcsters', because peop
le

  lived all over it, but mussy in quite another way, as if nobody lived in it quite enough. Tlie living-room was often dusty and the chairs and sofas weren't pushed around quite right. They looked as if the people they belonged to never had time to sit down on them. The dining-room had a funny unused look. The fernery needed water and the dishes were piled a little askew in the golden-oak built-in sideboard. Andre and Agnes and Jane were going to eat in the kitchen. The kitchen was the nicest room in the house.

  It was quite large and the stove was always beautifully polished. There were two rocking-chairs in it, near the window that looked over the yard. The curtains were made ot blue and white gingham and a blue-and-white tablecloth covered the kitchen table. Mrs. Johnson's mending basket stood on one corner. Agnes pitched it off onto one of the rocking chairs.

  'Set the table, Jane,' said Agnes. She was peering into the icebox. 'Andre,' she said solemnly, 'there is ham.'

  Andre tied a dislicloth around his waist and began to call for eggs and butter and lemon. He was going to make Hol-landaise sauce. He picked up an egg-beater and poured his ingredients into a big yellow bowl. Jane was devoutly thankful that Flora and Muriel couldn't see him. Agnes was taking the vegetable salad out of the icebox. Andre had views on salad dressing. Jane set the table very neatly and arranged the snow pudding on a plate. She went out on the back porch and picked six tiny leaves of Virginia creeper to trim the eggs Benedictine. There wasn't any parsley. Andre was mixing the salad dressing when she came in again. Agnes had put the coffee on the stove. Jane couldn't cook, at all. Agnes could do everything and Andre was certainly displaying latent talents that she had never suspected.

  ' This is like Paris,' he said to her with a grin. She had so

  often asked him if things were. But she would never have thought of putting that question in regard to the Johnsons' kitchen. 'This is just like the studio, except that there's running water and a better stove.'

  They all sat down together. The blue-and-white tablecloth looked very gay. The vegetable salad was used as a centre piece, a heaping pyramid of red beets and green beans and ecru cauliflower, piled on crisp lettuce leaves. The eggs Benedictine were perfectly deUcious. Agnes's coffee was awfully good.

  Jane felt her spirits rising in spite of her conscience. She knew that her mother wouldn't even approve of this meal alone in the house with just Andre and Agnes. She wouldn't like their eating in the kitchen and she'd think it was terribly funny that Andre could cook. But Jane really couldn't feel that there was anything to disapprove of in all that. Going downtown alone, at night, with just another girl and boy-— that was different. Still, Jane's spirits were rising. It was cer tainly lots of fun.

  Jane washed the dishes, later, and Agnes wiped them. They wouldn't let Andre help them, so he sat in one of the rockers and made funny suggestions, and, after asking Agnes's permission, smoked two cigarettes. Andre had begun to smoke with his father last summer in Paris. He didn't do it very often and it always made Jane feel very queer to see him. It brought home to her, terribly vividly, that they were all growing up.

  Andr6 was grown up, thought Jane, as she listened to him bantering Agnes. He really looked just Hke a young man, as he sat smoking in that rocking chair. An experienced young man. Not a boy at all. Andre was nineteen. He was going back to Paris in June to stay —Jane couldn't bear to think of it — really forever. To go to the Sorbonnc and work at the

  Beaux Arts and learn how to be a sculptor. It would take him years and years.

  And Agnes was going, too. Gk)ing to Europe to tutor a little girl and then to Bryn Mawr for four long winters. Things would never be the same again. It made Jane feel very sad to think of that.

  And she, Jane, would just have to stay in Chicago and go to Farmington for a year with Flora and Muriel, and come home and Uve with the family and go out Uke Isabel and never get away at all. Never get out in the world to see all the beautiful things that she'd read of in books and Andre had told her about. Just stay in Chicago — and grow up — and grow old — like her mother or even Mrs. Lester. Flora's mother hadn't grown old, Hke that, of course. But Jane knew very well that she could never grow up to be Uke Flora's mother. Flora herself might. Or maybe Muriel. But never Jane. There were tears in her eyes as she hung up the last damp dishcloth.

  'What's the matter, Jane?' asked Andre., in the hall. Agnes had run upstairs to get her hat and coat. 'You're awfully serious to-night.'

  'I was just thinking how old we all were,' said Jane, mustering up a smile. 'And how soon it would be all over—good

  times like this I mean — with Agnes in college ana you '

  She broke off abruptly. She was terribly afraid that she was going to cry.

  Andre caught up her hand, suddenly, in the darkness. Jane gave a httle gasp of astonishment. Almost of fright.

  'I'll never be very far away firom you, Jane,' said Andr^ solemnly, 'wherever I am.'

  Jane knew what he meant. It was dear of him to say it. She loved to think that he would take her with him, to all those lovely places that she might never see.

  *And I'll come back, Jane,' said Andr6, stiU more solemnly. That was even more comforting.

  'Will you, really?' she breathed. His face was very near her.

  *Of course I will,' he said, almost roughly. 'Don't you know I will?'

  He dropped her hand again, as Agnes ran down the stairs.

  Agnes went out in the kitchen to lock the back door. Andr^ turned out the lights. Agnes locked the front door as they stood on the porch together. It all seemed very simple — not to have anything more to bother about than just what was in this little brown house. Jane thought of the fuss there always was at home when any one left for a party, with Minnie racing up and down stairs on forgotten errands, and some one at the front window, watching for the cab, and her mother in the hall giving last counsel and directions.

  'Have you got your key, dear? I'll be sitting up for you. Try not to muss that nice frock. If you have anything good to eat, remember what it was. Haven't you got your party shoes? Minnie! Run upstairs and bring down Jane's party shoes. Nod to the cabman, Isabel. She'll be out in a minute!'

  Jane thought it would be very restful to go out like this, just locking the door and leaving, with no questions asked. She walked soberly down the street between Andre and Agnes. Agnes's arm was linked in hers. The lamps were lighted, now, in all the little houses. You could see them on tables, with families grouped around them. No one pulled down window shades, much, on Agnes's street. At home it was a solemn ritual of the twiUght. Here you could see fathers with newspapers and mothers with mending and children bothering them, in almost every house. It was fun to peek in at them and think of all those different lives.

  At the Clark Street comer they waited for the cable-car. Jane began to feel very conscience-stricken again. The car

  rumbled up and stopped and they all climbed up in the grip car in front. It was such a lovely evening it was fun to ride in the open air. Jane still liked to look down the crack where the levers were and watch the grip pick up the cable. She had loved to do it as a little girl.

  The car went on down Clark Street. It looked awfully dark and not very respectable. The light from the cable car flashed in the spring puddles along the road. The stores were all dark except the saloons and drug stores on the corners, and an occasional cafe in the centre of a block. Down near the river they passed a cheap burlesque house. 'Ten, Twenty, Thirty,' it said, over the door. Jane could read the sign quite clearly in the flaring gas Hghts. And underneath there was a poster of eight kicking ladies in tights and ballet skirts. 'The Original Black Crook Chorus,' was the legend above them. And below in great red letters with exclamation points, 'Girls!!! Girls!!! Girls!!!' A dismal-looking crowd was gathering about the entrance. Jane felt more conscience-stricken than ever. The cable car plunged into the La Salle Street tunnel under the river.

  The crowds on the other side were much less dismal and the lights were brighter and there were
many more of them. The theatre-goers were gathering around the scattered playhouses. They looked very cheerful and gay. There was something sinister about it all, however. The city seemed very dark and dangerous to Jane, though Andre and Agnes were chattering gaily on, as if nothing out of the usual were transpiring.

  They got oflTthe car where it turned at the comer of Monroe Street and started to walk south on Dearborn. Jane slipped her arm through Andre's. She really had to. She felt too queer and unprotected in that dim, nocturnal thoroughfare. After a few blocks they turned east again and very soon the

  familiar entrance of the Auditorium loomed up in the dark like an old friend.

  Andre and Agnes pushed casually through the concert crowd and ran up the great staircase. Agnes had good seats, in the front row of the balcony. Jane always thought the music sounded better there than downstairs. She wondered, though, if any of her mother's friends would see her, perched up alone with Andre and Agnes. They would think it was very queer.

  The orchestra was already assembled on the enormous stage. Theodore Thomas made his entrance as they took their seats. The first bars of the Third Symphony diverted Jane's mind from all temporal troubles. They wafted her away from the world of her mother and Isabel, and even fi:om that of Andre and Agnes, on waves of purest sound to an ethereal region where the problem of chaperonage didn't matter. Jane leaned forward in her seat, intent on the music, watching the httle waving arms of Theodore Thomas puUing that mysterious magic out of strings and keys. The Eroica Symphony — how beautifully named!

  The second movement made her think of Dido — the throbbing Marcia Funebre for all gallant souls. She whispered as much to Agnes and fell to listening with closed eyes, dreaming of the deserted queen and the flames of the funeral pyre and ^neas's white sailed ships turned toward the promised land across the tossing seas. T shall pass beneath the earth no common shade,' she whispered softly. A proud thought. A self-respecting thought. Something to live and die for. Something much better than just keeping a restive Mneas, tied to your apron-strings.