Years of Grace Read online

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  YEARS OF GRACE

  PART I ANDRE

  YEARS OF GRACE PART I

  ANDRE

  CHAPTER I

  I

  Little Jane Ward sat at her father's left hand at the family breakfast table, her sleek, brown pigtailed head bent discreedy over her plate. She was washing down great mouth-fuls of bacon and eggs with gulps of too hot cocoa. She did not have to look at the great black clock, surmounted by the bronze bird, that had stood on the dining-room mantelpiece ever since she could remember, to know that it was twenty minutes after eight. If she hurried with her breakfast she could get off for school before Flora and Muriel called to walk up with her. If she could escape them she could meet Andre, loitering nonchalantly near the Water Works Tower, and walk up with him. She could walk up with him anyway, of course, but, with Flora and Muriel fluttering and gigghng at her elbow, it would not be quite the same.

  Her father was buried behind the far-flung pages of the 'Chicago Tribune.' Her mother sat behind the coffee tray, immaculately clad in a crisp white dressing-sack, her pretty, proud little head held high above the silver urn, her eyes wandering competently over the breakfast table. Her sister, Isabel, was not yet down. Her sister Isabel was nineteen. Grown up. Her school days behind her. A young lady.

  About to become a debutante. Old enough to loiter, unrc-buked, in bed, after a late party, until her father had left for the office and Jane was well on her way to school.

  *Jane,* said her mother tranquilly, 'don't take such large mouthfuls.' Jane was not grown up. Jane was still fourteen. Young enough to be rebuked for almost anything, including table manners.

  'What's the hurry. Kid?' said her father cheerfully, lowering the margins of the paper. He was nearly always cheerful. His brown eyes twinkled as they rested on Jane. They usually did.

  *I want to get off to school early,' said Jane plausibly. 'I want to meet Agnes.'

  'Agnes!' exclaimed her mother with a Httle fretful shrug. 'Always, Agnes!'

  That was all, but it was quite enough. Jane knew very well that her mother did not approve of Agnes Johnson. And Jane knew why. With the crystal clarity of fourteen-year-old perception, Jane knew why all too well. It was because Agnes lived west of Lincoln Park and her father was a newspaper reporter and her mother worked in an office. Her mother was somebody's secretary. There was something unforgivable in that.

  Her mother did approve, now, of Flora Fumess and Muriel Lester. She approved of them wholeheartedly. They Hvcd just around the comer. Flora on Rush Street, in a big brown stone house with hlac bushes in the yard, and Muriel on Huron, in a grey stone fortress, built by Richardson, the great Eastern architect. Muriel gave a party every Christmas vacation. A dancing party, with white crash laid down over the parlor carpet and an orchestra, hidden in palms, beneath the stairs. Flora's house was very large and lovely. It had belonged to her grandfather. It had a big ballroom, tucked

  away under its mansard roof and there was a tiger-skin rug in the front hall and gold furniture in the drawing-room and a conservatory, opening off the library, with hanging Boston ferns and a real orange tree and two grey parrots in a gilded cage.

  Her mother liked Jane to walk to school with Flora and Muriel. She Hked her to have them over to play. She had always liked it, from the days of their first paper dolls. There were things that were wrong with Flora and Muriel, too. But they were subtle things that didn't seem to make much difference. Nevertheless they caused comment. Comment, at least, from her mother and Isabel. Jane had sensed them always, without exactly understanding.

  There was something wrong with Flora's mother, who was perhaps the prettiest, and certainly the most fashionable lady that Jane had ever seen. She was always going out to parties, sweeping out of her front door in rustling draperies, shpping through the crowd of staring children on the sidewalk, wafting a kiss to Flora, and vanishing into the depths of her Httle blue brougham that waited at the curb. She had a pug for a lap dog and drove out every spring and summer aflernoon in a dark blue victoria, with two men up, behind a pair of spanking bays, with a little tiptilted sunshade of black lace held over her tiny flowered toque of violets. She had always the pug with her, and never Flora, and sometimes a gentleman called Mr. Bert Lancaster, who led cotillions and danced \dth Isabel occasionally at parties and skated with her sometimes on the Superior Street rink, and made her very happy when he did.

  There was something wrong with all Muriel's family, though her eldest sister, Edith, had been the belle of last winter and her second sister, Rosalie, was going to be the belle of this and had been with Isabel at Farmington and was one

  of Isabel's dearest friends. This wrong was easier to fathom. It was because their name was Lester, though every one knew that it had once been Leischer, and their grandfather, old Solomon Lester, made no bones about it at all, but was just frankly Hebraic, so every one said who had met him in New York.

  Jane knew all this and had always known it. She could not have said how. She was acutely conscious of everything that her mother approved or disapproved. And now that Isabel had come home from Farmington and was frankly recognized as some one to be listened to, Jane was acutely conscious of her opinions, too. It never occurred to her to agree or disagree with them, consciously. There they were. Opinions. Jane bumped into them, tangible obstacles in her path, things to be recognized, and accepted or evaded, as the exigencies of the situation demanded. Just now she didn't bother at all about Agnes. Jane was very fond of Agnes, but Agnes was. for the moment, a pretext.

  'May I be excused?' she asked meekly.

  'Use your finger bowl,' said her mother abstractedly.

  'What's the rush, Kid?' asked her father again. 'Done your algebra?'

  Her algebra was Jane's bite noire. She never told her teacher how much her father helped her. She nodded, rising.

  'Understand that last quadratic equation?'

  Jane nodded again and kissed her mother good-bye.

  'Keep that frock clean,' said her mother, 'Don't climb on fences.'

  Jane kissed her father. His face was lean and hard and smelled of shaving-soap. His cheeks were always very smooth in the morning.

  'Good-bye, Kid. I see in the paper that the GUbert and Sullivan operas are coming. We'll have to sec "The Mikado."'

  Jane flushed with pleasure. Even Andr
  'Really, Papa? Honestly?' Her face was shining. Then she heard the doorbell ring. Her heart sank, in spite of her glowing prospects. That was Flora and Muriel at the front door, of course. Minnie, the waitress, went to open it. There was a shuffle, a whispered joke, and a giggle in the hall. It was certainly Flora and Muriel. Jane walked slowly out of the room.

  'I wish that child would drop Agnes Johnson,' she heard her mother say and caught the irritated rustle of her father's paper in reply.

  'Just a jiffy!' she called, and raced upstairs, two steps at a time, for her home work.

  'Don't wake Isabel!' called her mother.

  When Jane came downstairs again her father was strug gUng into his coat in the front hall. Flora and Muriel sat mutely on the bench beneath the hatrack, school books in hand. Minnie handed her her lunch for recess. A Httie wicker basket with a leather strap, containing two jelly sandwiches, Jane knew, and a piece of cake and her favorite banana.

  Flora and Muriel
rose to meet her. Her father was humming, gaily, regarding the children before him with a benevolent smile. As they reached the front door he broke into jocular song.

  •Three little maids from school arc we. Pert as a school girl well can be, Filled to the brim with girlish glee. Three little maids from school 1'

  Flora and Muriel were regarding him dispassionately. Jane was just a little bit ashamed of him. In the presence of her contemporaries, Jane felt almost grown up. Her father opened the door for them with mock ceremony.

  'Everything is a soiirce of fun. Nobody's safe for we care for none.*

  He tweaked her pigtails affectionately.

  'Life is a joke that's jiist beg^un! Three little maids from school!*

  They were out and had run down the steps before he could go any further. Jane's sense of embarrassment had deepened. Flora was fifteen and was already talking of putting up her golden curls. Muriel had a real suit, with a skirt and Eton jacket, and her dresses reached almost to her boot tops. It was too bad of her father. The song wasn't so very funny, after all. Nor so very true.

  Life didn't seem at all a joke to Jane as she skipped down Pine Street, that crisp October morning, arm in arm with her friends. She was wondering whether Andr6 would be waiting under the Water Works Tower. And whether Flora and Muriel would try to tease them if he were. And what he would think, if they did. And what her mother would say if she knew that Andre was waiting almost every morning, when she reached Chicago Avenue, waiting to walk up the Drive with her carrying her school books. Funny French Andre, whom Flora and Muriel always laughed at, a little, and of whom her mother and Isabel didn't at all approve, because he was French and a Roman Catholic and went to church in the Holy Name Cathedral and Hved in a httle flat in the Saint James Apartments and had an EngUsh mother who wore a funny-looking feather boa and a French father who was a consul, whatever that was, and spoke broken English and didn't know many people.

  Muriel was talking of Rosalie's cx>ming-out party. There was to be a reception and a dinner and a dance and Murid was going to sit up for it and have a new pink muslin dress, ordered from Hollander's in New York.

  Isabel was going to have a reception, too, but no dinner, as far as Jane knew, and certainly no dance. Jane's clothes were all made on the third floor by Miss McKelvey, who came twice every year, spring and fall, for two weeks, taking possession of the sewing machine in the playroom and turning out an incredible number of frocks and reefers and white percale petticoats with eyelet embroidery. She made lots of Isabel's dresses, too, and some of Jane's mother's. And doll clothes, on the side, for Jane, though Jane was too old for that, now. She hadn't looked at her doll for nearly two years. That wonderful French doll with real hair and eyes that opened and shut, that her mother had brought her from Paris on the memorable occasion, five years before, of her trip abroad.

  Jane had always loved Miss McKelvey from the days that she used to ride on her knees when she wound the bobbins. And she always hked her new clothes. It was only when Flora and Muriel talked of theirs that it occurred to her to disparage them. Flora and Muriel had lovely things. Dresses from New York and coats made at real tailors'. But Jane didn't want them, really. At least she wouldn't have wanted them if Flora and Muriel had only let her alone. She hadn't wanted them, at all, until she had met Andre. Now she couldn't help wondering what Andre would tliink if he could see her at a real dance, some evening, in a pink muslin dress from Hollander's. Of course she and Andre didn't go to dances. But there would be the Christmas parties and if she had 2l pink muslin, just hanging idle in the closet, perhaps she could wear it to dancing school or even to supper, some Satur-

  !0 Years of Grace

  day night at Andre's, if he ever asked her again and hei mother would let her go.

  Not that a mere pink muslin could ever make Jane look like Muriel. Jane knew that all too well. Or like Flora. She hadn't any curls, to begin with, and she simply couldn't look stylish. The way Isabel did, for instance, in any old rag. Isabel was just as pretty as Muriel's sisters, no matter what she wore.

  There was Andre, school books in hand, loitering under the Water Works Tower. He grinned a little sheepishly as the trio approached him. Flora and Muriel were pinching her elbows.

  'Don't be silly P she implored.

  'He's silly!' tittered Flora.

  'No, he's not!' she declared hotly.

  They only giggled.

  'Well, anyway, he's sissy,' said Muriel accusingly. *Why doesn't he play with the other boys?'

  By this time they had reached him.

  'Hello,' said Andr^.

  'Hello,' said Jane.

  He took her school books. Flora shook her curls at him. They shone like burnished gold against the rough chinchilla cloth of her navy blue reefer. Muriel rolled her great blue eyes under her wide hat brim. Her eyelashes were very long and curly and her cheeks were rose red in the sharp lake breeze. Andr^ grinned. He dropped into step at Jane's elbow. They walked half a block in silence. Almost in silence. Jane could hear Muriel's stifled giggles. Then Flora leaned mockingly forward. She looked across Muriel's mirthful countenance to Jane's disdainful one and then on, to Andre's cold young profile.

  'I'll race you to the corner, Muriel,' she said wickedly. Muriel dropped Jane's elbow.

  'Two's company!' she heard Muriel cry as they set off in a rush. Jane felt a little foolish. Then Andre glanced shyly down at her. He met her eyes and smiled. She looked hurriedly away, but she knew, instantly, that everything was all right. Let them be silly. It didn't matter. And she did want to talk to Andre. Andre talked of things she liked. Andre had seen lots of plays, here and in New York and in Paris. And Andre had lived abroad. He had been born in Fontainebleau and he had visited in London and he had crossed the ocean three times since his father had come to America. Andre had read everything and he had a httle puppet theatre and an awfully good stamp collection and a work shop in his bedroom where he modelled in clay and made some very clever things, book-ends and paper-weights and statues, that his father had cast, sometimes, for his mother to keep. Andre went to a class every Saturday morning at the Art Institute. A life class, so Flora and Muriel had said with a telling titter. Jane devoutly hoped her mother wouldn't hear of that.

  Andre was sixteen and he wasn't going to college. Not to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, at least, where the other boys were going. He wasn't even going to boarding school. He was just going to go on studying in Chicago and taking courses at the Art Institute until he went back to Paris. He was going back, when he was nineteen, to study at the Sorbonne, whatever that was, and try to get in the Beaux Arts. He was putting on a play called 'Camille,' now, in his puppet theatre. He wanted Jane to help him. That was what he was talking about.

  He talked so long and so interestingly that they were actually in front of the school before Jane realized it. There was Agnes, sitting on the front steps. She waved cheerfully at Andre, her funny freckled face wreathed in smiles. Agnes liked Andre and Agnes was never silly. She knew just how

  Jane felt about him and still she didn't think that there was an^^hing to laugh at. Out of the comer of her eye Jane could see Flora and Muriel up at the front window, pointing Andr^ out to some other girls. He saw them, too, of course, but he didn't seem to care. Andre never did care if people thought things. Jane always did. She wished he'd leave her at the comer every morning, half a block from the school, but she didn't want to tell him so. For most of all she cared what Andre thought. She knew Andre awfully well, of course, but not well enough to tell him a thing like that.

  The first bell rang while he was talking with Agnes. Jane slipped her arm through hers and turned toward the door.

  *See you after lunch,' said Andre, cap in hand. *If you could manage to come over about half-past two we could paint the first set. Mother told me to ask you to tea.'

  Jane only smiled and nodded, but she walked into the study hall in a thrill of anticipation. Tea with Andre. His mother had asked her. She wouldn't tell her mother.
She would just go. Jane's eyes were dancing behind her lowered eyelids as ancient Miss Milgrim read the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer over the bowed heads of the assembled school. She was almost laughing aloud as she rose for the morning hymn. Her thin litde voice shrilled up to Heaven's gates in purely secular ecstasy.

  'Rejoice, ye pure in heart!

  Rejoice, give thanks and sing!

  Your glorious banner raise on high

  The cross of Christ, your King!'

  She was going to tea with Andre.

  'Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice, give thanks and sing!'

  Andr^ was waiting for her on the steps of the Saint James Apartments at half-past two. He wore a funny navy-blue b^et on his sleek black hair and he was spinning a top. No

  other Chicago boy of sixteen ever spun a top and Jane had never seen any other beret. That was the kind of thing that Andr6 did that made Flora and Muriel think that he was sissy. Jane wished he wouldn't. She liked to spin tops herself and the beret was most becoming. Still, there was no sense in wilfully laying yourself open to mockery. Flora and Muriel had no idea how nice Andre really was.

  They went upstairs in the elevator and Andre's mother opened the front door. Andre's mother had only one servant and that one was often out. The children entered the Uttle crowded Uving-room. There were lots of books in it, filling the walls from floor to ceiling. Not nice volumes in neat, uniform sets of sombre leather, as in Jane's own father's Hbrary or in Flora's grandfather's, but all sorts and sizes of books in all kinds of variegated bindings, some quite dilapidated, set haphazard on the shelves. There were some sets, of course. A long Hne of bound 'Punch,* for instance, and many more 'Arabian Nights' than Jane had ever known there were, and a red row of nearly thirty volumes by Guy de Maupassant. Jane had never heard of him.

  Andre's mother had been reading in the big green Morris chair in the bay window that looked down Rush Street, all the way to the river. The book still lay in the chair seat. It was a French book, called 'Madame Bovary.' Andre's mother saw Jane looking at it.