Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  Jimmy. At the memory of Jimmy the serried ranks of thoughts fell back a Httle. A sudden wave of emotion reminded her that feeling was not so easily forsworn. Jimmy's face in the moonlight — his eyes — his hps — his arms about

  her body. Suddenly Jane heard Stephen stirring on the sleeping-porch. It was seven o'clock, then. The day had begun. This day in which thoughts must give birth to action. This day in which feeling must be forsworn. Stephen, struggling into his bathrobe, appeared on tiptoe at the door to the sleeping-porch. He looked a Httle sleepy, but very cheerful.

  'Hello,' he said, *you awake? Why did you sleep in here?'

  *I didn't want to wake you up,' said Jane. She was amazed at the casual tone she managed to achieve. 'I sat out very late with Jimmy in the garden.'

  *I went up early,' said Stephen, 'just as soon as I finished with the paper. Coming down to breakfast?'

  'No,' said Jane. 'Ask Sarah to bring up a tray.*

  Jane felt she could not face a Lakewood family breakfast. Whatever life demanded of her on this dreadful day, it did not demand that she should sit behind her coffee tray, surrounded by her children, and pour out Jimmy's coffee under Stephen's unconscious eye. She would wait in her room until Stephen had gone to the train, until the children had left for school. Then she would go down and tell Jimmy that she had been mad in the garden.

  Two hours later, Jane opened her bedroom door and walked down the staircase. No Jimmy in the hall. She entered the Uving-room and saw him standing by the terrace doors, gazing out at the apple tree. He wheeled quickly around at the sound of her step on the threshold. Jimmy looked tired. Jimmy looked worn. But Jimmy looked terribly happy. Jane smiled tremulously.

  'Jimmy ' she said, still standing in the doorway.

  'Don't say it!' cried Jimmy. 'I know just how you feel. I know just how you've reacted. Don't say it, Jane! Give yourself time to — to get used to it.*

  'I am used to it,' said Jane pitifully. *I'm terribly used to it. I've been thinking for hours.'

  *I know what you've been thinking!' cried Jimmy. He walked quickly over to her and caught her hand in his. *It was inevitable, Jane, that you'd think those thoughts. Don't — don't let them trouble you, Jane. I knew how it would be.'

  'You knew how it would be?' faltered Jane.

  *I even knew you wouldn't come down to breakfast. In point of fact, I didn't come down to breakfast myself In spite of all the many things I've done, Jane, in and out of camp meetings, I can't say that I ever planned to run off with the wife of a friend before. I didn't seem to care much about meeting Stephen myself, this morning. I didn't seem to care much about sharing his eggs and bacon.'

  'You haven't had any breakfast?' said Jane stupidly. Jimmy shock his head. 'I'll ring for a tray.' She moved to the bell by the chimney-piece. Jimmy followed her across the room.

  'But, Jane * he said.

  'Yes,' said Jane, her hand on the bell-rope.

  'Those thoughts, you know, aren't really — really important. I mean — they don't change anything.'

  'They change everything,' said Jane dully. 'Sarah, a breakfast tray, here in the living-room, for Mr. Trent.*

  'And one for Mrs. Carver,' said Jimmy, with an affable smile for the maid in the doorway. 'I'm sure you haven't eaten a bite this morning. I'm sure you just drained down a cup of black coffee.'

  'That's just what I did,' said Jane, smiling wanly at Jimmy's omniscience.

  *Two breakfast trays, Sarah,' grinned Jimmy in dismissal. Then, when the girl had gone; 'Sit down here, darling, on the

  sofa, with a pillow at your back. Put your feet up. There! Comfortable, now?'

  'Very,' said Jane with another wan smile. 'Jimmy, you make it awfully hard for me to tell you.'

  'Tell me what?' said Jimmy brightly. 'That you take it all back? Don't trouble to tell it, Jane. Just sit there and rest and wait for your breakfast. When you've eaten it, life will seem much rosier.' He stood looking down at her very cheerfully from the hearthrug. 'I wish I could sit down on the floor, Jane, and take your hands and tell you I adore you, but I really think I hadn't better do it until Sarah has come in with the breakfast trays.'

  'You hadn't better ever do it,' said Jane.

  'Nonsense,' said Jimmy. 'I'm going to do it innumerable mornings. In the South Sea Islands and Siam and Burma '

  Jane couldn't help laughing.

  'Jimmy,' she said, 'you're perfectly incorrigible. But I mean it. I really mean it. I'm terribly sorry — I know it's rough on you — but — but I made a dreadful mistake last night in the garden.'

  'And now you've discovered that you don't love me,' smiled Jimmy. 'Well, presently you'll discover again that you do.'

  'No, Jimmy.' Jane's voice was shrill with conviction.

  'Here's Sarah,' murmured Jimmy, turning with nonchalance to fleck the ash of his cigarette in the empty grate. Sarah placed the breakfast trays on two small tables and retired noiselessly from the room.

  'Now eat, Jane,' said Jimmy commandingly. 'I'm going to let you have all that breakfast before I even kiss you.'

  Jane thought the breakfast would choke her. But somehow, under the stimulus of Jimmy's pleasant conversation, she

  found she had consumed the entire contents of the tray. Jimmy rang again for Sarali. When the trays were removed, he stepped quickly over to her and sank on his knees by the sofa.

  'Darling!' said Jimmy, seizing her hands in his.

  Jimmy!' cried Jane in terror. 'Don't kiss me! Don't you dare to kiss me! I'm not the woman I was last night in the garden.' Her earnestness held him in check.

  'Darling,' said. Jimmy, still clinging firmly to her hands, *I know it's terribly hard for you. I know it's much worse for you than it is for me. You'll have to face Stephen, whom you love, and a scandal, which you'll hate. You'U have to leave your children for a time — though, of course, you'll see them afterwards. I love your children, Jane, and they Hke me. They're great kids. But of course you'll have to leave them. It's a terrible sacrifice — and what have I to offer you?'

  'Oh, Jimmy,' said Jane pitifiilly, 'don't say th*>
  'I know it isn't, but still I have to say it. I'm a total loss as a husband, Jane. I'm a rolling stone and I'll never gather moss. We'll wander about the world together and I'll write a little music and look for pleasant little jobs that won't keep me too long in any one place. You'll be awfully uncomfortable, Jane, a great deal of the time. And maybe lonely '

  'No, I wouldn't be lonely,' said Jane.

  'I'm not so sure,' said Jimmy. 'I think there are lots of raggle-taggle gypsies that you wouldn't find so very congenial on closer acquaintance. They're rather sordid, you know, and just a little promiscuous, in close quarters.'

  'I wouldn't care,' said Jane eagerly; 'I wouldn't care, Jimmy, as long as I had you.'

  •Well, then,' smiled Jimmy, drawing a long breath, *wcll,

  then — if that's the way you feel, just why am I not to dare to kiss you?'

  'Because I'm not going away with you, Jimmy.' Jane drew her hands from his. 'I'm not going to do it. This isn't just the silly reaction of a foolish woman to a moment's indiscretion. It's something much more serious. I'm in love with you, Jimmy, but I love you, too. I love you, just as I love Stephen and the children. I love you as I love Agnes. And that's one of the reasons why I won't let you do this thing. Can't I make you understand, Jimmy, what I mean? When you love people, you've got to be decent. You want to be decent. You want to be good. Just plain good — the way you were taught to be when you were a Uttle child. Love's the greatest safeguard in life against evil. I won't do anything, Jimmy, if I can possibly help it, that will keep me from looking any one I love in the eye.' Her voice was trembling so that she could not keep it up a moment longer. She turned away from Jimmy to hide her tears. In a moment he had tucked a big clean handkerchief into her hand. She buried her face in the cool, smooth Hnen. Jimmy rose, a trifle unsteadily, to his feet.

  Jane,' he said, Jane — you almost shake mc.' />
  Jane wept on in silence.

  'See here,' said Jimmy presently; his voice had changed abruptly: 'Tliis won't do, you know. For it really isn't true — it's very sweet, but it's silly — it's sentimental. It doesn't do anybody any good for a man and woman who are in love with each other to go on sordidly livdng with people they don*t love. Stephen wouldn't want you to Uve with him imdcr those circumstances. Agnes wouldn't want me to live with her. They're both exceptionally decent people.'

  *So we're to profit by their decency?' said Jane coldly. *To be, ourselves, indecent?'

  'Darling,' said Jimmy, 'it isn't indecent to live with the man you love.'

  Jane rose abruptly from the sofa.

  'You're just confusing the issues, Jimmy,' she said sadly. 'But you can't change them. It isn't rigkt for married people, happily married people, to leave their homes and children for their own individual pleasure.'

  'But we're not happily married people,' said Jimmy.

  'If we're not,' said Jane steadfastly, 'it's only our own fault. Neither Stephen nor Agnes has ever sinned against us. They love us and they trust us. They trusted us, once for all, with their life happiness. I couldn't feel decent, Jimmy, and betray that trust.'

  Jane,' said Jimmy, 'I don't understand you. With all your innocence you've always seemed so emancipated. Intellectually emancipated. You've always seemed to understand the compHcaticns of hving. To sympathize wath the people who were tangled up in them. You've always said '

  'Oh, yes,' said Jane, 'I've done a lot of talking. It made me feel very sophisticated to air my broad-minded views. I waa very smug about my tolerance. I used to say to Isabel that I could understand how anybody could do anything. I used to laugh at Mamma for her Victorian iews. I used to think it was very smart to say that every Lakewood housewife was potentially a Ught lady. I used to think I beheved it. I did believe it theoretically, Jimmy. But now — now when it comes to practice — I see there's a great diflerence.*

  'But there isn't any difference, Jane,' said Jimmy. 'Not any essential difference. Just one of convention. You're a woman before you're a Lakewood housewife. "The ColoneJ's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins!'"

  'But they're not^ Jimmy! That's just Kipling's revolt against Victorian prudery. I suppose he felt very sophisticated

  when he first got off that line! The compHcations of Hving seem very complicated when you look at them from a distance. When you're tangled up in them yourself, you know they're very simple. If you're really the Colonel's lady, Jimmy, no matter how Httle you may want to do it, you know exactly what you ought to do.* She turned away from him and stood staring out through the terrace doors at the April garden. For a long dme there was silence in the room. Then

  'I — I don't believe — you love me,' said Jimmy slowly.

  Jane turned her white face from the April garden.

  'Then you're wrong, Jimmy,' she said gendy. 'You're very wrong. It's killing me to do this thing I'm doing. It's killing me to be with you, here in this room. Will you please go away — back to town, I mean — and — and don't come back until you've accepted my decision,'

  T'll never accept it,' said Jimmy grimly.

  'Then don't come back,' said Jane.

  Without another word he left the room. Jane opened the terrace doors and walked out into the garden. She walked on beyond the clump of exergieens and sat down on the bench beneath the apple tree. She had been sobbing a long time before she reahzed that she sdll held Jimmy's handkerchief in her hand. She buried her face in it until the sobs were stilled in a mute misery that Jane felt was going to last a lifetime. She sat more than an hour on that bench. When she returned to the house, Sarah told her that ^Ir. Trent had gone back to the city on the eleven-f.fteen.

  vn

  Five days later, Jimmy returned to Lakewood. He turned up, early in the afternoon, and found Jane superintending the gardener, who was spading up the rose-bed in tlie garden.

  She looked up from the roots of a Dorothy Perkins and saw him standing on the terrace. She was no longer surprised that she was so easily able to dissemble her emotion. Jane had had plenty of practice in the fine art of dissembling emotion during the last five days.

  *I think you'd better order another load of black earth, Swanson/ she said casually and turned to walk over to the terrace.

  Jimmy stood there, quite motionless, watching her approach through the sunny garden. His face was very serious and his smile was very grave. Jane ascended the terrace steps and held out her hand to him. He took it in silence and held it very tightly.

  'You don't know what it does to me,' said Jimmy, 'to see you again.'

  'Have you accepted my decision?' said Jane.

  'No,' said Jimmy abruptly, 'of course not. Did you think I would?' He drew her hand through his arm and led her over to the corner of the terrace that was sheltered by the oak trees. The oak trees were just bursting into pink and wine-red buds. They did not give much shelter, but from that terrace corner you could not see the rose-bed.

  'I asked you not to come back until you had,' said Jane, withdrawing her hand from the crook of his arm and sitting down on the brick parapet of the terrace.

  'Jane, you're really invincible,' smiled Jimmy. 'Invincibly determined as well as invincibly innocent! Do you really mean to tell me that you haven't spent the last five days regretting that you sent me out of your life?'

  *I don't think that there's anything to laugh at in this situation,' said Jane severely.

  'Darling!' said Jimmy — in a moment he was all penitence and contrition — 'I'm not laughing. You know I'm not

  laughing. I'm preserving the light touch — something very different in situations of an emotional character. But I repeat my question — haven't you been awfully sorry?'

  'Of course I've been sorry,* said Jane. *I'vc been in hcU.'

  Jimmy looked down at her very tenderly.

  'I've been there with you, Jane,' he said soberly. 'Don't you think it's time you let us both out?*

  Jane shook her head.

  *I guess we're there to stay, Jimmy,' she said. 'Do you know, as far as I'm concerned, I almost hope I ivill stay there. The one thing that I couldn't bear would be the thought that I could ever get over you.'

  'Why?' said Jimmy.

  'To feel the way I feel about you, Jimmy,' said Jane, 'and then to get over it, would be the most disillusioning of all human experiences. I'm going to keep faith, forever, with the feeling I have for you at this moment.'

  Behind the tenderness in Jimmy's eyes glittered the ghost of his twinkle.

  *WeIl, that's very sweet of you, darling,* he said. 'But don't you think that assurance, taken by itself, is just a Httle barren? It has a note of finality '

  'It is final,' said Jane. 'That's all I have to say to you.'

  'Well,' said Jimmy, drawing a long breath, 'I've a great deal more than that to say to you. Listen, you ridiculous child — if you think I'm going to let you ruin both our lives v^ith a phrase '

  'Jimmy,' said Jane, 'I beg of you not to go into this again. I've had — really I've had — a tenible five days. But I haven't changed my mind. I haven't changed it one iota. I'm glad you're going away. I hope I don't see you again for years. It just kills me to see you. It kills me to Hve with your

  memory, but I wouldn't forget you for anything in the world.' His eyes were very bright as he stood looking down at her. Jane turned her head to gaze out over the flat, sunny Skokie Valley. After a moment she spoke again. Her voice had changed abruptly. It had grown dull and lifeless. 'When are you going?' she asked.

  'That depends upon you,' said Jimmy.

  *If it depends upon me,' said Jane, still not turning her head, 'you can't go too soon.'

  'Jane,' said Jimmy, dropping quickly down beside her on the parapet. 'You — you really wonU come with me?'

  'No,' said Jane.

  'You don't want to live?'

  Til live,' said Jane tonelessly, 'for Stephen and the children. That sounds ver
y melodramatic, I know, but it's exactly what I'm going to do. There's just one other thing I want to say to you, Jimmy. I thought of it after you'd gone the other day.' She turned her head to look into his eyes. 'I'm never going to tell Stephen anything about this, and I hope you won't tell Agnes. I couldn't decide, at first, just what I ought to do about that. I couldn't decide whether it was courage or cowardice that made me want not to tell. I couldn't decide whether Stephen ought to know. You see' — she smiled a little gravely — 'I really feel terribly about it, and I know, no matter how dreadful the telling was, I'd feel better after I'd told it. Confession is good for the soul. I wish I were a Cathohc, Jimmy. I wish I were a good Catholic and could pour the whole story into the impersonal ear of a priest in the confessional. But I'm not a Catholic and Stephen isn't a priest. So I think I'll just have to hve with a secret. I'll just have to Hve with Stephen, knowing that I know, but he doesn't, just what I did.'

  Jimmy's sad litde smile was very tender.

  *You didn't do so awfully much, you know, Jane,' he said.

  'But I felt everything,' said Jane soberly, *I think it's not so much what you do that matters, as what you feel. What I felt is somehow what I can't tell Stephen. I've never had a secret before, Jimmy. I've never had anything I couldn't tell the world. I hope — I hope you'll feel that way about Agnes. For I really feel about Agnes just the way I do about Stephen.'

  'I'm not going back to Agnes,' said Jimmy suddenly.

  Jane stared at him in horror.

  'You're not — going back — to Agnes?' she faltered.

  'Did you think I could?' said Jimmy harshly,

  'Why not?' asked Jane. Her eyes searched his. Suddenly her mouth began to tremble. 'Why not — if I can — stay with Stephen?'