Cicily had planned to have a little lunch with Albert. She had arranged for Jane and Stephen, however, to join Muriel and Ed Brown at the Ritz. That luncheon with Muriel, Jane reflected, had been rather like the first meal after a family funeral. Though, of course, you did not usually have to take the first meal after a family funeral in a pubUc restaurant and you did not usually have to talk through it about prohibition
with Ed Brown. Jane and Stephen had returned very early in the afternoon to their rooms at the Chatham.
Jane closed the bedroom door and reentered the green sitting-room. She sat down on the Empire sofa. From behind the heavy green curtains of the long French windows the sharp, staccato uproar of the traffic on the rue Daunou rang in her ears. The shrill, toy-like toots of the French taxis punctuated the sound. Cities had voices, thought Jane. Chicago rumbled and New York hummed and Paris tooted. Jane glanced at the London 'Times' and the Paris 'Herald.' She felt curiously empty-handed, but she did not seem to want to read the papers. Reading the papers, Jane reflected, was the eternal resource of men. It offered no distraction to women. She had at last her hour alone in Paris and she did not know what to do with it. She wondered what Cicily and Albert were doing. She thought of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. The Catholics were right. Metaphysically speaking, there was no such thing as divorce. Marriage was a mystical union of body and spirit. It was a state of being. It could not be dissolved by legal procedure. The past could not be denied. The present was its consequence. The future — but as far as the future went, though Cicily seemed to Jane as much Jack's wife as she had ever been, she was going to marry Albert Lancaster in Flora's apartment in three days' time. After that, Jane reflected hopelessly, she would be two men's wife! It was frightfully complicated, metaphysically speaking.
Just then Jane heard a knock on the door.
'Entrez!' she cried, with a curious sense of relief. But it was only a bell-boy. He had a letter on a Uttle silver tray. 'Merci,' said Jane and fumbled for a franc. The letter was from Isabel.
Jane opened it before the bell-boy had left the room. Isabel's letters were always good reading. This one contained a
surprise, and Jane felt, as she read it, exactly as if Isabel were sitting beside her on the little Empire sofa. Her sister's very accents clung to the sixteen closely written pages.
'Dearest Jane,
*I haven't written, but I've been awfully busy. I've been thinking of you, of course, and of Stephen, too. I sometimes feel that all this has been harder on Robin and Stephen than on you and me. In a way, I think, fathers care more than mothers what happens to daughters.
*I care most about Jack. But, Jane, I'm beginning to feel much happier about him. He loved his work at Tech, and as soon as he left there this June, he took a summer job with the telephone company down near Mexico City. I've just had his first letter. He's stringing wires and building bridges, just as Cicily said he would. He misses the children fearfully, of course, but he could not have taken them to Mexico, in any C£ise. Nevertheless, they are the insuperable problem.
'At any rate, work is the thing for Jack to tie to, just now. It can't betray him, as a woman might. It's so much safer to love things than people.
'This brings me to Belle's news. It's what I've been so busy over these last two weeks. It's still a great secret, but I know it will make you and Stephen happier to know it. She's engaged to Billy Winter. She's not going to announce it, but just marry him quietly here in the apartment some afternoon and slip off to Murray Bay for her honeymoon. Robin and I are going to keep the babies while she's gone. Billy's rented a Palmer House on Ritchie Court for the winter.
'Belle has no misgivings about anything and almost no regrets. And to hear Billy talk, you'd think every one was divorced and remarried. Of course, in a way, I hate it and so does Robin. But we like Billy and he's sweet with Belle's
children. She's so glad, now, they're all girls. She's going to give them Billy's name. She's really in love again, I think, and if she's happy, perhaps it will all work out for the best. But I can't get used to this modern idea that you can scrap the past and wipe the slate clean and begin hfe over again.
*I haven't told Mamma anything about it and shan't, until after the wedding. She keeps right on saying she doesn't want to see Cicily or Albert ever again. But she'll get over that, of course.
'Her blood pressure has been flaring up and she's had some dizzy spells that have worried me. She fusses a lot about the house, and Minnie quarrels with all the other servants. She just made Mamma dismiss an excellent waitress I got her — such a nice girl who didn't want her Sundays out — because she thought the pantry cupboards weren't very clean.
'Of course they aren't as clean as they were when Minnie used to keep them. But the neighbourhood's so dirty now. That factory on Erie Street always burns soft coal. I don't blame the waitress — and, anyway, Jane, you know what I mean, what difference does it make? The main thing is to keep Mamma tranquil, and she'd never know about the pantry cupboards if Minnie didn't tell her.
'She ought to move, of course, into some nice apartment that would be easy to live in, but she won't hear of it. They're going to pull down the house across the yard and put up a skyscraper. It will take away all the south sun and the blanR north wall will be hideous to look at. I hate to think what Minnie will say when the wreckers begin. The plaster dust will sift in all the windows and the noise will be frightful. After that steel riveting, I suppose, all summer and fall.
'If you were here, I'd really advise trying to move them at once, but I honestly don't feel up to all the argument alone.
And, after all, perhaps it wouldn't be worth while. Mamma's seventy-seven and she'd never really feel at home anywhere else. She doesn't do anything any more. She never goes out. Just walks around that empty house, rummaging in bureau drawers and boxes, going over her possessions and trying to throw things away. You know Mamma always kept everything, and the closets are all full of perfectly worthless objects. She doesn't accomplish a thing, of course, and it tires her fearfully. But she won't stay quiet.
'She's always very sweet with me when I drop in, and I think she's quite happy. But Minnie says she talks a lot about how she wants to leave things. She mentions that to me, sometimes, and I just hate to hear her. It's queer — you'd think it would make her feel so sad, but she seems rather to enjoy it. I think it makes her feel important again — you know, something to be reckoned with. Perhaps at seventy-seven that's the only way you can feel important — by disposing of your property. That would account for lots of startling wills, wouldn't it, Jane?
*She told me last week that you were to have the seed-pearl set and I was to have the amethyst necklace. It really made me cry. She says she wants that opal pin that she always said was Cicily's to go to Belle, now, along with the cameos. But she'll change her mind about that, of course, when she hears of Billy Winter.
'Minnie reads the paper to her every night in the library. They're always sitting there together when Robin and I drop in. Reading the paper or talking over old times. In a way it seems awful — Mamma talking like that with Minnie — But Minnie's really the only one, now, who remembers the things that Mamma likes to talk about. She always stands up very nicely when Robin and I are there, but I know when we've gone she just settles down in Papa's armchair, and she doesn't
wear her a pron any longer. I think I ought to try to make her, but Robin says to let her alone.
*I wouldn't write Mamma much about the wedding if I were you. Not even about the children. It would only upset her. Her great-grandchildren don't seem to mean much to her any more. They're just things that make the general situation worse. I dread telling her about Belle. She keeps saying she's glad that Papa was spared all this. And Mrs. Lester. She always speaks as if they had died just last week. And, after all, it's nine years now.
*Of course, Jane, I think we really feel just as badly about it as Mamma does. But we have to carry it off. Old people are just like children. They have no m
ercy on you. I get so sick of trying to defend the situation to Mamma and Minnie, when I think, in my heart, there's no defence for it.
*Well — when Jack's a full-fledged engineer and Belle and Billy have settled down in Ritchie Court and Cicily and Albert are living in Pekin, I suppose we'll all shake down in some dreadful modern way and accept the situation and not even feel awkward about it. Cicily's children are still my grandchildren and Belle's children are Muriel's grandchildren as well as mine. We're all held together by the hands of babies, which, I suppose, are the strongest links in the world. Nevertheless, Cicily and Albert won't live in Pekin forever, and I just can't bear to think of the Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving luncheons that are ahead of us! It all seems so terribly confused and sordid.
'But I'm fifty-six, old dear, and you're fifty-one and Stephen's turned sixty and Robin's sixty-three. The children will all have to live with the messes they've made a great deal longer than we will. So I suppose it's none of our business — how they work out their own salvation. I wish I could really chink so.
'Isabel
'P.S. Write me all about the wedding — what Cicily wore and how Muriel looked, and all about Flora and what she had to say about Ed Brown. It's funny to think of him in a front pew at one of our family weddings!
*I wish you could see Belle. She looks so young and happy again.
'Isabel'
Jane read the letter through three times and then sat staring at it in silence. She was thinking of Cicily. Of Cicily, sitting at her side on the sofa of her little French drawing-room in Lakewood and saying courageously, *In two years' time we'll all be a great deal happier. A great deal happier than we've been for years.' It was, however, 'a dreadful modern way' to find your happiness. Jane had no sympathy with it. She did not even feel sure that Belle's engagement made matters any better. It made them worse, perhaps. More trivial, more meaningless, more like the monkey house. She would not tell Cicily, she reflected firmly, about Belle's engagement. She would not give her that satisfaction.
vm
Three days later, when Jane entered Flora's drawing-room with Stephen, she had no particular sense that she was going to witness the consecration of a marriage. The civil rites of France that they had all subscribed to that morning had made Cicily, she conceded, Albert's lawful wife. This blessing of the Church seemed but an irrelevant afterthought. Cicily had set her heart on it, however. It was part of the party. It all went to prove that this was a very usual situation, a very gay situation, a very happy situation. It was the consummation of the friendly conspiracy of chatter.
Flora's beautiful formal room was swept and garnished for
the ceremony. It was always a little bare. The polished floor was sparsely adorned with three small rugs. The fumitm"C was clustered in Uttle social groups of chairs and sofas and small convenient tables. A Renoir hung over the fireplace — it was the only picture in the room — the portrait of a plump dark lady in a red velvet gown with a shirred bustle and a fair-haired child in a white muslin frock with a blue sash. The room was filled with vases of white Hlies and curtained against the crude glare of the July sunshine. The perfume of the flowers, the subdued light, the faint gleam, here and there, of glass and gilt and parquet, the tranquillity of the Victorian lady over the fireplace, all subtly contributed to the sense of space and serenity that was the room's distinguishing characteristic. The windows were open, their silken hangings moving a little in the gentle July breeze. The uproar of the Paris trafiic was hushed in Flora's neighbourhood. The tiny, rip>-pling plash of some fountain in an outer court could be distinctly heard above the voices of Flora's guests.
Flora's guests were very few in number. Jane's eyes found Cicily at once. She was at Albert's side, smiling up into the face of a rather more than middle-aged gentleman, who was standing, when Jane entered the drawing-room, with his back to the door. Her gown was charming — a daffodil yellow chiflTon. A great straw shade hat hid her golden hair. She was carrying a sheaf of yellow calla lilies. The three children were being restrained by Molly in a distant corner of the room. Robin Redbreast was scuffling on the shiny floor. To judge by their rosy, excited faces they had no sense of the solemmty of the occasion. Flora, in a frock of pale grey taffeta, was talking to Ed Brown on the hearth beneath the Renoir. Ed Brown looked very cheerful. He had a gardenia in the buttonhole of his cutaway. Muriel, in a striking new costume of black-and-white satin, was chatting very pleasantly with the
Church of England clergyman. He was a very callow young clergyman, and he did not look entirely at his ease with Muriel. She was doing her best for him, however. She had turned the full battery of her deeply shaded, bright blue eyes upon his embarrassed countenance. Her carmined lips were smiling.
'Here you are, Jane!' cried Flora.
Cicily waved her yellow lilies. The more than middle-aged gentleman at whom she had been smiling turned as she did so. Across the slippery expanse of poUshed floor, Jane stared at him, astounded. She suffered a distinct sense of shock. She was back, instantly, in Chicago in the early nineties. She was back in the Duroys' little crowded living-room in the Saint James Apartments. She had two thin pigtails and a sense of social inadequacy and she was staring at Mr. Duroy! He had come! It was Andre! But how exactly like his father! The greying beard, the beribboned eyeglasses, the shred of scarlet silk run through the buttonhole! The wise, sophisticated gleam in the shrewd brown eyes!
The eyes were not sufficiently sophisticated, however, to veil their expression of complete astonishment. Andre stared at Jane. She saw the glint of amazement fade quickly from his face. A broad smile of pleasure supplanted it. It had struck her like lightning, however. She knew what it meant. She was fifty-one years old. Then Andre was holding both her hands in his own.
Jane!' he was crying. 'It is really you!' Looking up at the bearded face, meeting the wise, sophisticated gleam behind the beribboned eye-glasses, Jane was desperately trying to realize that it was really Andre.
'And this is Stephen,' she said confusedly.
The men shook hands. Cicily kissed her prettily over the yellow lilies. Albert tore his eyes from his bride to smile hap-
pily, reassuringly at Jane. The clergyman slipped away to get into his vestments. Cicily was taking command of the situation.
'I'll stand here near the windows,' she was saying gaily. *I want the children near me, Molly! And you, too, Mumsy!'
Andre was staring at Jane. She still felt he must be Ivlr. Duroy. Cicily slipped her arm around her waist.
'Have you heard from Aunt Isabel?' she asked. 'Albert had a cable from Belle this noon. She was married yesterday to Billy Winter.' Her blue eyes, meeting Jane's, were twinkling with tranquil amusement. 'She wouldn't let me get ahead of her! But isn't it nice?'
The clergyman had returned. His vested figure looked strangely out of place in Flora's drawing-room.
'Come, Dad!' cried Cicily. 'You know your place by this time!'
The little company had gathered in an informal semicircle. Stephen looked very grim as he took his stand by Cicily. Ed Brown was beaming, in step-paternal solicitude, at the ardent young face of Albert. Robin Redbreast was clinging to Molly's hand. Jane moved to put her arms around the twins. Little John Ward smiled happily up at her. Andre was covertly watching her, all the time, from his stand between Flora and Muriel. The Church of England clergyman opened his prayer book.
'Dearly beloved brethren,' he said, 'we are met together in the sight of God and this company to join together this man and this woman '
Jane turned her eyes from the flushed and radiant face of her recalcitrant daughter. She would not look at it. She could not look at it. This was worse than any wedding. This was worse than all the weddings. The measured tones of the clergyman's voice recalled with frightful vividness the cere-
mony in her little Lakcwood garden. Was she the only wedding guest, Jane wondered dumbly, that saw so plainly the pleasant, snub-nosed, twinkle-eyed ghost of Jack, standing at Gicily's side?
&
nbsp; IX
*I didn't think you'd come,' said Jane.
*Of course I came,' said Andre.
They were sitting side by side in a taxi that was rolling down the Avenue dcs Champs filysees. Half an hour before Jane had seen Cicily depart for her honeymoon with Albert Lancaster. The parting with the children had been painfully emotional. Cicily herself had been very much moved. Little Jane had wept, and John had clung to his mother, and Robin Redbreast had tried to run after her as she paused on Albert's arm, in the doorway of Flora's apartment, to toss one last tremulous kiss to Jane.
'Well — that's over!' Stephen had said, when she had vanished. Personally Jane felt that it had just begun. The summer stretched before her with the children to watch over — the autumn with its inevitable parting—the years ahead with their adjustments and compromises. Then Andr<^ had spoken.
'Are you really going to-morrow?' he had asked.
Jane had nodded.
*Then won't you come back with me, now, to my studio? I want to talk to you.'
*Oh, go, Jane!' Flora had cried. *Andr6's studio is awfully interesting.'
'I think,'Jane had said rather slowly, 'I'd better go back to the Chatham with Stephen. The children are dining with us, so Molly can pack.'
'Won't Stephen come, too?' said Andr6, a little hesitantly.
*No,' said Stephen abruptly. 'I — I think I'd like to he with the kids. But why don't^ou go, Jane?'
And Andre had picked up his hat. That was how Jane had come to be with him in the taxi. She was still trying to realize that he was really himself. It was a great waste of Andre, she reflected, to have to meet him after thirty-four years at Cicily's wedding. Her thoughts were with the grandchildren. It was hard to concentrate on Andre, after all she had just been through. Perhaps at fifty-one, however, it would always be hard to concentrate on any man. At fifty-one, you were perpetually torn by conflicting preoccupations. Meeting Andre's gaze with a smile, Jane observed, a trifle whimsically, that he, at least, had achieved concentration. His wise, sophisticated brown eyes were bent earnestly upon her.
Years of Grace Page 51
