Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  Jane's fingers were busy and her eyes were occupied, but her mind was not concerned with the work in hand. Quite

  mechanically she purled and plained and tossed the blue wool over her amber needles. She was thinking wise, thirty-six-year-old thoughts about the relative-in-law complex. 'The relative-in-law complex' was the phrase that Jane herself had coined to account for the obvious injustice of her thoughts about Carvers. She was privately rather proud of it. The Freudian vocabulary was not yet a commonplace in the Western hemisphere, but Jane knew all about complexes and was vaguely comforted to feel herself in the grip of one that was undoubtedly authentic. There was nothing you could do about a complex. There it was — hke the shape of your nose. You had no moral responsibility for it and it innocently explained all the baser emotional reactions, of which, alone with your conscience, you were somehow subtly ashamed.

  Jane was decidedly relieved to feel able to evade all moral responsibility for the emotions aroused in her breast by the constant society of Carvers. For, from any point of view but that of the enlightened Freudian, she could not but feel that they were distinctly unworthy. Even ridiculous. For years she had struggled against them. But emotions were strangely invincible. Ephemeral, however. That was a comfort. It was only when visiting at Gull Rocks, Seaconsit, that Jane fell a prey to the baser variety of which she was subtly ashamed. Safe at home with Stephen, in her Uttle Colonial cottage in the suburbs of Chicago, Jane could always look back on the complications presented by hfe at Gull Rocks with a tolerant smile. Seen from that secure perspective, the congenital peculiarities of Carvers seemed always harmless, at times picturesque, and often pathetic. For ten months of the year they figured in her Hfe as mere alien phenomena at which she marvelled detachedly, with easy amusement. In July and August they reared their sinister heads as dragons in her path.

  Jane had spent July and August at Gull Rocks, Seaconsit,

  every summer but two since the birth of her first baby. The year that Steve was bom, Stephen had gone East alone with their two little daughters. And the year after that Stephen had incredibly taken a three months' vacation from the bank to make the grand tour of Europe, leaving the three children at home in the Colonial cottage in Mrs. Ward's care. Twelve Julys and twelve Augusts at Gull Rocks, Seaconsit! When Jane put it like that, she really felt that she had joined the Holy Fellowship of Martyrs. Stephen didn't know what it was like — how could he, being born a Carver? — marooned alone with the children at Gull Rocks summer after summer, while he held down his job at the bank at home and only came on to join them for a three weeks' hoHday. Stephen wanted his children brought up with some idea of the New England tradition. That was only natural, of course, still

  However, Stephen was coming, that very afternoon, on the six o'clock train, for the three weeks' holiday. Jane was very glad of that. Stephen's coming would make everything much better. Gull Rocks was almost fun, when Stephen was there. They would swim with the children and Stephen would teach little Steve to sail and

  Jane heard the screened door open behind her and the brisk, decided step of Aunt Marie crossing the piazza. She did not raise her head from her knitting.

  'I've come out to keep you company,' said Aunt Marie pleasantly.

  Jane made no comment. She was counting stitches again, softly, under her breath. She heard the Nantucket hammock at the corner of the verandah creak faintly under her aunt's substantial weight.

  'Have you read the August "Atlantic"?' asked Aunt Marie presently.

  Jane shook her head in silence. She could hear the pages of the magazine flutter faintly in her aunt's deUberate fingers.

  'There's a very good article in it,' continued Aunt Marie, in her pleasant practical New England voice, 'by Cassandra Frothingham Perkins, on "The Decline of Culture.'"

  'Twenty-three, twenty-four,' whispered Jane defensively. Then 'Has it declined?' she asked. The innocence in her tone was not entirely ingenuous.

  'Well, hasn't it?' returned Aunt Marie very practically, as before. Then, after a pause, 'You know who Cassandra Frothingham Perkins is, don't you?'

  *One of the Concord Perkinses,' said Jane, as ghbly as a child responding with '1492' or '1066' to the question of a history teacher. She had not spent twelve summers at Gull Rocks, Seaconsit, in vain.

  'She's the daughter,' said Aunt Marie, 'of Samuel Wendell Perkins, who wrote the Perkins biography of Emerson and "Literary Rambles in Old Concord." The "Atlantic" publishes a lot of her stuff.'

  'I've read it,' said Jane briefly. Who cared, she thought perversely, if culture had decUned? But the question was purely rhetorical. For obviously Cassandra Frothingham Perkins did. And Aunt Marie Carver. All the Carvers, in fact. Nevertheless, the decline of culture was not a burning issue with Jane.

  She bent her head again over the knitting directions in 'The Woman's Home Magazine' and her eye caught a flamboyant headhne on the opposite page. 'How Can We Keep Our Charm?' by Viola Vivasour. And below in explanatory vein, 'Fifteen minutes a day devoted to Miss Vivasour*s simple formula of face creams solves woman's eternal problem.' But Aunt Marie was again speaking.

  'Cassandra's made a little schedule,' she said. 'She claims

  that fifteen minutes a day, spent reading the best books — and she adds a little list of one hundred '

  How much less important, thought Jane wickedly, the decline of culture than that of charm! Not, however, in the Carvers' circle. There the significance of a five-foot bookshelf would always rise above that of a good cosmetic. The society of her relatives-in-law made Jane feel wantonly fi-ivolous. She would just as soon read one article, she thought, or follow one recipe, as the other. Both equally absurd. Prepared for diflferent pubhcs — that was all.

  Jane heard the screened door open once more behind her and the heavy, shghtly hesitant step of her mother-in-law crossing the piazza. She did not turn her head. Her hands still busy with her knitting, she gazed steadily out over the close-chpped lawn, pierced here and there with outcrops of granite rock, stretching smooth and green and fireshly watered, three hundred feet before her, to where the coarser growth of beach grass, rooted in sandy soU, met the yellow fine of beach that fringed the blue expanse of sea. Jane loved the beach grass. It continued to exist in a state of nature, rooted in primeval sand, defeating the best efforts of the impeccable Portuguese gardener to impose on it an aUen culture. There it was. The Carvers could do notliing about it. Jane wondered if her Aunt Marie had ever reflected that her Western niece-in-law was rather Uke the beach grass.

  Mrs. Carver's footsteps paused at her side.

  'Dexter doesn't think he can get me any lobster to-day, Jane.' Mrs. Carver's voice was grave and just a trifle anxious. 'Do you think Stephen would prefer bluefish or mackerel?'

  *I don't know,' said Jane.

  *He's so fond of sea food,' said Mrs. Carver.

  Jane felt again that absurd surge of irritation. Stephen would never know what fish he was eating. Why fuss about it?

  'I wanted to give him an old-fashioned shore dinner.'

  The wistful note in the worried voice suddenly touched Jane's heart. She looked up and met her mother-in-law's anxious gaze. The fat, elderly face was creased in lines of vivid disappointment. Old age was pathetic, thought Jane, secure in the citadel of her thirty-six summers. Mothers were pathetic.

  T think he'd love mackerel,' she said warmly.

  Mrs. Carver's face brightened.

  'I shall keep on trying for the lobster,' she said solemnly, 'until the last minute.'

  Suddenly Jane loved her mother-in-law. She loved her for the solemnity. It was touching and disarming. Why didn't she always say the things that Mi's. Carver liked to hear? It was so easy to say them. She really must reform.

  'Is that little Steve on the beach?' said Mrs. Carver.

  'Yes,' said Jane.

  'Don't you think the sun is too hot for him?' asked Mrs. Carver.

  'No,* said Jane.

  'The glare's very bright on those rocks,' said Mrs.
Carver, *and Miss Parrot never seems to notice '

  'The doctor said the sun was good for him,' said Jane tartly. Her moment of reform was short-lived.

  'We can't be too careful,' said Mrs. Carver.

  They couldn't be, of course. Why was she so perverse? Poor httle Steve, pulled down, still, from his scarlet fever in June, still watched by his nurse, still worrying them all with that heart that wasn't quite right yet, but would be, so the doctor said, by next spring!

  'I think he ought to come into the shade,' said Mrs. Carver.

  Jane rose abruptly and picked up the megaphone behind the hammocL

  'Yoo-hoo!'she called. 'Miss Parrot!' The white cap turned promptly in response to her call. 'Bring Steve up, please!'

  She sank on the steps again and picked up her knitting. She could see A'liss Parrot's slender starched figure rise from behind her rock. It assumed a slightly admonitory angle. Steve's yellow head was raised from the sands in obvious protest.

  'She doesn't know how to manage children,' said Mrs. Carver.

  Steve, pad and paint-box in hand, was wading through the beach grass, now, beside his nurse. His thin little voice could be heard, raised in inarticulate argument. Is/liss Parrot walked steadily on. Steve, reaching the smooth green turf of Che lawn, paused to scratch a mosquito bite on his brown httle knee.

  'Why doesn't she wait for him?' said Mrs. Carver.

  'Oh, he's all right,' said Jane. 'He loves Miss Parrot.'

  Mrs. Carver watched her grandson's approach in silence.

  'I don't want to come up, Mumsy!' he cried. 'I was painting the harbour.'

  'Don't run, dear,' said Mrs. Carver.

  'You can finish your painting to-morrow,' said Jane.

  'The hght will be different, Mumsy!' His tanned litUe nine-year-old countenance was eager with protest.

  'Mrs. Carver thinks the sun is too hot on the beach, Mlss Parrot,' said Jane.

  The trained nurse turned her pretty, pleasant face uf>on them with a tolerant smile.

  'All righty!' she said. 'Come on, Stevey, we'll paint in the garden.'

  'I don't want to,' said Steve. He glared crossly at his grandmother.

  Miss Parrot smiled again, throwing a glance of frank, professional understanding at the adults on the verandah.

  'Oh, yes, you do,' she said easily. 'If Grandma wants you to. Grandma's the doctor!'

  She disappeared around the comer of the house. Steve trailed aggrievedly after her. When he was irritated, reflected Jane, his Httle nine-year-old figure took on exactly the angle of that of her preposterous father-in-law. Mrs. Cai-ver's lips were shghtly compressed. Jane knew what was coming,

  'I don't like that woman's tone,' said Mrs. Carver.

  *She's a very good heart nurse,' said Jane.

  'She has no proper deference,' said Mrs. Carver.

  Jane's Hps, in their turn, were slightly compressed at the familiar phrase. Proper deference! That commodity that the Carvers sought in vain, throughout the world, looking for it, Jane thought, with the most pathetic optimism, in the most unlikely places. In the manners of Irish housemaids, on the Kps of trained nurses, and in the emotional reactions of mod-cm grandchildren. They never lost their simple faith that they ouglit to find it. That it was somehow owing to them. Was it, thought Jane curiously, because they were all over sixty? Or because they were Carvers? Stephen was a Carver, yet proper deference meant nothing in his Ufe.

  'Here comes Alden!' said Mrs. Carver suddenly. 'Marie, arc you ready?'

  The figure of Mr. Car'er had indeed deserted the pier and advanced to the beach grass. He was waving peremptorily. Aunt Marie rose from the Nantucket hammock a trifle hastily.

  'I'll get my sneakers,* she said, and vanished into the house.

  'Now, where is your Uncle Stephen?' said Mrs. Carver. Jane, you'll need your hat.' She was hurriedly swathing her own with a purple face veil.

  *Didn't you hear the horn?* called Mr. Carver. *I blew it twice.'

  'We didn't, dear,' said Mrs. Carver. 'The wind's offshore.'

  'Jane, not much time,' said Mr. Carver. He took out his watch as he spoke. 'It's twenty minutes to three. Where arc your rubber shoes?'

  'I'll get them,' said Jane. 'They're in my room.'

  'Gall your Uncle Stephen,' said Mrs. Carver. 'He's working in the study.'

  'I can't see why you can't all be ready at the proper time,' Jane heard her father-in-law observe as she crossed the porch. 'I only keep up the launch for the pleasure of the family.' The screened door banged behind her. She crossed the Uving-room with an air of extreme deliberation. What a ridiculous old man Mr. Carver was! Domestic dictator! Why didn't they all revolt? Why hadn't they all revolted, years ago, long before she came into the family?

  Jane paused before the hving-room chimney-piece to kick, vindictively, a smouldering log back into the ashes and place the screen before the dying fire. Always this fuss about nothing, every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, at twenty minutes to three! That launch! The Whim! Ironic name! It ought to be called The Duty, The Responsibihty, The Obhgation. Or perhaps, Hke a British dreadnought. The Invincible. It was invincible, when manned by Mr. Carver. Those Wednesday and Saturday races! That sacred necessity of following them, twice every week, out of the harbour and into the bay, around the three buoys and home. Watching those ridiculous catboats wdth Alden and Silly at the helm of one, appraising the wind, discussing the course, commending the seamanship. No one cared to go — except Mr. Carver. Take to-day when Mrs. Carver wanted to telephone for lobsters and Aunt Marie to read the 'Atlantic' and Uncle Stephen

  to work in the study and she just to be let alone for a quiet afternoon, to finish Cicily's sweater and think of Stephen's arrival. No one ever cared to go, really—except the children. And they couldn't because they made Mrs. Carver ner'ous, climbing around the boat, and Mr. Carver irritated, ever since little Steve had dropped the compass and broken the glass and spilled the alcohol all over the varnished table in the cabin.

  'I only keep up the launch,' thought Jane in resentful retrospect, as she cros'-^ed the hall, 'for the pleasure of the family,' What bunk! It was really Mrs. Carver's fault, of course. She should have taken him in hand just £is soon as she married him. Her weakness was his strength. She'd made him what he was to-day and the rising generations had to suffer for her folly. Stephen might have been like that if he had married a woman like his own mother. There was lots of 'Carv^er' in Stephen. Jane knew she had been good for him. All the Wards had been good for him. Her father in one way, and her motl.er, and even Isabel, in quite another. The West had been good for him. Jane paused at the hving-room door.

  'Uncle Stephen?' she said.

  The elderly professor was seated at his brother's mahogany secretary, bent over a little pile of manuscript. He did not hear her.

  'Uncle Stephen!' said Jane again.

  Her uncle raised his shiny bald head abruptly. His big blue eyes looked mildly up at her over his gold-rimmed spectacles. His face was very fat and round and pink and his nead was very spherical and almost hairless. In spite of his white moustache, Jane always thought he looked just like a good-natured baby. Uncle Stephen was always good-natured and Jane was very fond of him. He didn't seem at all Hke a Carver. Was that perhaps because of Aunt Marie, the in-

  domitable daughter of'the great Nielson,' with whom he had been united in matrimony for more than forty years? Aunt Marie seemed so much more like a Carver than Uncle Stephen himself There was a subtle warning in that thought, reflected Jane. In patiendy eradicating, throughout a long lifetime, the more disagreeable traits of a husband, did a wife herself acquire them?

  But Uncle Stephen's pleasant pink old face had assumed a guilty expression.

  'Good Lord, Janie!' he said regretfully. *Is it twenty minutes to three?'

  'You bet it is,' said Jane briefly. And her eyes met those of her uncle in a twinkle of understanding. Jane never discussed Carvers with Carvers, but she knew just how Uncle Stephen felt about The Whim. Fumbhn
g a little in his haste, he began to put away his manuscripts in a shabby brown brief case.

  *I wanted to finish these notes,' he said helplessly, 'but '

  'What are you doing?' asked Jane. The activities of Uncle Stephen at Gull Rocks were always refreshing. Jane thought scholarship a trifle amusing. Impersonal, however, and assuaging, like the blue sky. Uncle Stephen's conversation could always be counted on to rise above the domestic plane.

  'A monograph,' he said meekly, 'on the Letters of W^illiam Wycherley, for the Modern Language Society. His correspondence with Alexander Pope.'

  'I thought Wycherley wrote plays,' said Jane vaguely. In spite of the early exhortations of Miss Thomas, the details of a Bryn Mawr education were fast fading from her memory.

  'He did, my dear,' said Uncle Stephen. 'Good plays and bad poems and very bad letters.'

  'Then why write monographs on them?' asked Jane.

  'They are interesting,' said Uncle Stephen, rising from hil chair, 'because they stimulated Pope to reply.'

  'Then why not write on Pope's answers?'

  'That has been done, my dear.'

  Jane felt that the mysteries of scholarship were beyond her.

  'Pope was very fond of him,' said Uncle Stephen, as they turned toward the door. 'He said "the love of some things rewards itself, as of Virtue and of Mr. Wycherley."'

  As she mounted the stairs in search of her rubber shoes, Jane wished that she were a scholar. Scholarship would be a resource at Gull Rocks. She wished that she were capable of generating a passionate interest in the thoughts of Alexander Pope on Virtue and Mr. Wycherley. She wished that she were capable of generating a passionate interest in almost anything that would serve to pass the time. On the landing she met Miss Parrot.

  'Mrs. Carver,' said the trained nurse. Her voice was pleasant but a trifle cool.

  'Yes,' said Jane.

  *I wanted to speak to you again about Steve's diet,' said Miss Parrot. 'His grandmother will keep on giving him too much sugar. He had three tablespoons on his raspberries at luncheon. I can't convince her it won't build him up '