Years of Grace Read online

  'Mamma — Manuna ' she began weakly. How coult

  she tell him?

  'I don't hear you,' said Andre.

  'Mamma,' said Jane desperately. She couldrCt tell him. 'Mamma wants me to play out of doors — it's such a nice day.'

  'Oh,' said Andre. He sounded very sorry. 'Well — perhaps we could take a walk by the lake.'

  Jane fell a prey to panic. This was what always happened when you lied.

  *I — I can't,' she said very quickly. 'I — I'm going over to Flora's.'

  'Oh,' said Andr^. And his voice sounded just a Utde queer.

  'We — are going to play in her yard,' said Jane.

  'I see,' said Andre.

  'I — I'll see you to-morrow,' said Jane.

  He didn't answer.

  'Won't I?' asked Jane pitifully.

  *Oh, yes,' said Andre. 'Yes. I — I'll be waiting.'

  'Well, good-bye,' said Jane.

  'Good-bye,' said Andr^. 'I'm awfully sorry.'

  Jane hung up the receiver. She felt perfectly miserable. She had lied to Andr^. She despised Isabel, yet she'd taken her advice. And he hadn't believed her. He hadn't beheved her at all. He had known she was lying. Jane was plunged in despair. Well — at least she could go over to Flora's. She could make that he come true.

  Flora's front door was opened by Flora's butler. Jane always felt a httle uneasy with butlers but she knew this one very well. He had been with the Fumesses for years. Not Uke Muriel's butlers who changed every month or so. He smiled reassuringly down at Jane.

  'Miss Flora is upstairs,' he said. All Flora's servants called her 'Miss Flora.' It was very impressive. At home every one said just 'Jane.'

  Jane walked very softly down Flora's hall, skirting the black walnut furniture with care. The floor was very shppery and the tiger skin rug before the fireplace snarled with its papier machi jaws and glared with its yellow glass eyes in a very rezdistic manner.

  At the foot of the stairs she met Flora's mother. She was beautifully dressed in a dark green velvet gown, with leg-of-mutton sleeves of Ughter green tafifeta, and her little blond

  head was held very high and topped with a tortoise-shell comb, tipped sideways in her hair. She was running down the stairs very quickly, with her little tan pug behind her, and her cheeks were very pink and her eyes were very bright, and when she saw Jane she stopped and laughed as if she were just so happy she had to laugh at every one.

  'Hello, little Jane!' she said.

  At the sound of her voice some one came out of the drawing-room. It was Mr. Bert Lancaster. He looked very tall and handsome, Jane thought. She didn't wonder that Isabel hked to dance with him. His moustache was beautiful and he had a black pearl in his necktie. He walked at once up to Flora's mother. He took her hand as if he hked to hold it. Flora's mother looked happier than ever.

  'This is Httle Jane Ward,' she said.

  'Hello, Uttle Jane Ward,' laughed Mr. Bert Lancaster. He, too, looked as if he were so happy that he had to laugh at every one.

  Flora's mother stooped over and kissed Jane's cheek. Her face felt very smooth and soft and it smelled of flowers. Mr. Bert Lancaster was watching her. Then she picked up the pug and held it tenderly in her arms and kissed the top of its little tan head and looked up at Mr. Lancaster over its black muzzle. They turned away from Jane toward the drawing-room door.

  T told you not to come 'til four,' said Flora's mother, still smiling up at Mr. Lancaster over the pug. Jane couldn't hear his reply.

  'Silly!' said Flora's mother, as he held the brocade portieres aside for her at the drawing-room door. She passed through them, looking over her shoulder at Mr. Lancaster. He followed her rustling train. Jane ran upstairs to Flora's bedroom.

  Flora's bedroom was beautifiil. All blue and white, with white-painted furniture and a little brass bed and real silver brushes and mirrors on her little dressing-table. Jane had no dressing-table. She kept a wooden brush and a celluloid comb and a steel nail file in her upper bureau drawer. Flora had two heart-shaped siher picture frames, too. In one was her mother, smiling over a feather fan in a lovely light evening gown, with pearls on her throat and long white gloves running up her arms to her great puffy sleeves. In the other frame was Flora's father. He looked a httle silly in that silver heart. Fat-faced and bald-headed and solemn. It was a very good picture, though. That was just the way he always looked, on the rare occasions vvhen Jane ran into him in Flora's hall.

  Flora wasn't doing much of anything. Jane explained that she had come to play in the yard. Flora said that was fine. Muriel was coming over and they could go out to the playhouse.

  The playhouse was a tiny structure, out near the stable, the scene of all their childish froUcs. They didn't use it to play in now, of course, but Flora sometimes made candy on the httle cooking-stove and she and Jane and Muriel always liked to talk there undisturbed.

  'We'U make fudge,' said Flora.

  'Mamma wants me to be out-of-doors,' said Jane, still trying to make that lie come true.

  'We'll leave the windows open,' said Flora.

  Jane decided that would be true enough. They ran down the back stairs and got some things from the cook and went out the side door by the lilac bushes. Muriel was just coming around the comer.

  Jane began to feel much better as soon as she measured out the chocolate and sugar. She thought she could explain to Ajidr^ to-morrow morning. She thought he would under-

  stand. Mothers were mothers. You weren't responsible for what they thought or what they made you do.

  Flora's fire began to burn almost immediately. The scent of cooking chocolate permeated the air. Muriel's pink muslin had come fi"om Hollander's. It had real lace on the bertha. She was going to have some high-heeled slippers.

  'Hello!' said Flora suddenly. 'There's Andr^.'

  There was Andre, indeed, loitering a Uttle aimlessly by the iron fence. Muriel immediately began to giggle. Jane rushed to the playhouse door.

  *Yoo-hoo, Andre!' she called ecstatically. 'Come on over!*

  He vaulted the fence at a bound. Jane ran out to meet him.

  *Oh, Andr6,' she said, 'I'm terribly glad you came!'

  He looked pleased, but he didn't say anything.

  'We're making candy,' said Jane.

  'Andre! Do you hke fudge?' shrieked Flora from the doorway.

  'You bet,' said Andre. Muriel went right on giggling. Jane walked with Andre into the playhouse. How good the chocolate smelled! Jane felt she Hked fudge, as never before.

  She told him all about it, an hour later. He was walking home with her down Erie Street, in the last red rays of the October sun. It was awfully hard to lead up to it. Suddenly she took the plunge.

  'I — I'm afraid I can't do "Camille" with you, Andr^,* she said.

  He stopped quite still on the pavement.

  'Why not?' he asked.

  Jane felt her cheeks growing very hot and red.

  'Mamma — Mamma doesn't want me to,' she said.

  'Why not?' asked Andre again.

  Jane looked miserably away jfrom him.

  *Shc — she doesn't like the play.'

  Andre looked extremely astonished.

  *Why,' he said finally, 'she — she must like it. Every one likes "Camille."'

  'Mamma doesn't/ said Jane. There it was. That was all there was to say.

  *Do you mean to tell me,' said Andr^ hotly, *that she won't let you do it?'

  Jane nodded unhappily. Andre looked extremely puzzled.

  'Well, then,' he said finally, 'I guess you can't.'

  Jane's heart leaped up with gratitude. He did understand. Mothers were mothers. But there was still the he.

  'Andr^ ' said Jane, and stopped.

  'Yes?' said Andre. It was terribly difficult.

  * Andre,' said Jane again and her voice was very low. She couldn't look at him. *I — I didn't tell you the truth, over the telephone.'

  Andre didn't say anything.

  'Mamma didn't say I had to play ou
t-of-doors this afternoon. I — I was scared to tell you what she really said.'

  'Why?' said Andre very seriously.

  Jane felt her eyes fill with tears.

  'Because,' said Jane, and her hps were trembhng, 'I didn't know what you'd think of me.'

  Andr^ saw the tears. He looked awfully embarrassed and terribly kind.

  'That's all right, Jane,' said Andre. She was smihng straight up at him through the tears. 'I guess you know I'll always think one thing of you.'

  Jane was consumed in a flame of grateful happiness.

  *Oh, Andre!' she breathed.

  'Never mind "Camille,"' said Andr6, as they began walking again. 'We can do something else.'

  Jane became suddenly conscious of the windows of her house. They stared down on Pine Street.

  'Perhaps — perhaps,' she said guiltily, 'you hadn't better come any further.*

  Andr^ flushed right up to the edge of his b^ret. But he never stopped smiling.

  *Oh — all right,' he said.

  'See you to-morrow!' said Jane.

  He waved his cap at her. Jane ran across the street and up the block. At her front steps she paused to look after him. He waved again. She felt terribly happy. She didn't mind about 'Gamille,' now. No one could help mothers. And they would do something else.

  CHAPTER II

  I

  *I don't see why you want to go to college,' said Muriel, *at all.'

  Jane was taking lunch with Muriel. And Jane was very different. Her sleek brown pigtails had vanished, turned up in a knot on her neck beneath a big black hair ribbon- Her skirts were down to her boot tops and her dresses, though they were still made by Miss McKelvey, had a subtly young-ladyfied air. Jane was sixteen. It was September. Jane would be seventeen in May.

  Muriel was sixteen, too, of course, and the seven black finger curls had been twisted into two, that hung down her back under a black hair ribbon, just like Jane's, and she wore a thick, cloudy bang on her white forehead and her eyes were bigger and bluer than ever and her eyelashes longer and even more curly. She looked just like a postcard that Andre had sent Jane from the Tate Gallery in London last summer, 'A typical Pre-Raphaelite,' he had written across it. Muriel looked almost as old as her second sister, Rosalie, thought Jane admiringly. It was the being pretty that did it. Being pretty made Muriel look old and Rosalie look young. Rosalie was twenty-one and about to become engaged, so Isabel said, to Freddy Waters.

  Edith, the eldest, had married and was living in Cleveland, but had come back to her mother's house to have her first baby. Jane privately sympathized with Muriel about it. It was awfully embarrassing to have Edith around, looking so large and queer, with great dark shadows under her big black eyes and grey hollows in her waxen cheeks, when only

  last Christmas she was the prettiest bride Chicago had ever seen, floating up Saint James's aisle on old Solomon Lester's arm, in a cloud of tulle and yards and -yards of stiff gored satin, with a waist so tiny that she looked as if she'd break in two in the middle. Flora and Jane had been very much thrilled by the wedding. They had sat together in the sixth pew on the bride's side, because Muriel was a flower girl.

  Jane's mother and Isabel had thought it was awfully funny to import old Solomon Lester to stand by his granddaughter's side in that Episcopal chancel, when every one knew that back in New York he was a pillar of the synagogue. Of course Edith had been on the altar guild for years, and she had no brother and her father was dead. Nevertheless, Jane's mother and Isabel had thought it would have been better taste to have had a house wedding.

  There she sat, at any rate, in a cerise silk tea-gown, at her mother's right hand, languidly sipping her tea with lemon and looking quite as uncomfortable as she made every one else feel. It was awfully hard on RosaHe, Isabel told Jane, to have her always in evidence when Freddy Waters came to call. And Isabel thought it was perfectly disgusting of her to go about to parties. She had a long story that Jane had never thought so terribly funny about her almost pulling the horse off his feet when she stepped into a hansom, right in front of Bert Lancaster, on her way home from one of Flora's mother's receptions.

  Mrs. Lester, however, sitting comfortably behind her silver tea-tray, seemed sublimely unconscious that there was anything embarrassing in her presence. Isabel said that she positively encouraged Edith to go about everywhere and was continually seen in public, brazenly knitting on the most unmistakable garments, and talking of the baby in the most extraordinary way, as if it could be talked about — as if it were

  really there. She didn't do this in front of Jane and Flora and Muriel of course. Jane's mother said it was the Jew coming out. They were very queer about family life.

  Jane didn't exactly see why you couldn't talk about a baby before it was bom, but obviously you didn't, and it certainly made her feel very uncomfortable to look at Edith. There was something in the expression of Mrs. Lester's big brown eyes, however, as they rested on her first-born, that brought a lump into Jane's throat. Something anxious and worried and somehow proud and tender, all mixed up. Fat, funny Mrs. Lester, who was almost as large as Edith this minute! Her napkin was always sUpping off her lap and she had three double chins that cascaded down from her tiny mouth to her broad lace collar. It would seem awfully funny, Jane thought, if you were having a baby yourself, to know you must never mention it, when it would be all you would think about, all those long months.

  'I don't know why you don't want to go to Farmington next year, Jane,' continued Muriel, 'with Flora and me.'

  Jane knew very well. She was very fond of Flora and Muriel — why, she had known them in her perambulator! But she wanted to go to Bryn Mawr, just the same, with Agnes, and live for four years with her in Pembroke Hall in one of those double suites that looked so enchanting in the catalogue and study more French and English and, yes, get away from her family and postpone the awful day when she would have to stop being shy and make a debut and go to dances with a lot of young men whom she didn't know and compete with Flora and Muriel on their own field, which could never be hers, in a dreadful artificial race, over hurdles of cotillion partners, with an altar at the end of it and bridegrooms given away in order of excellence, like first, second, and third prizes in a public competition. Jane always thought

  of bridegrcxjms like that. That was just the way her mother and Isabel talked about them. Like something the panting bride took home and unwrapped and appraised at her leisure. Her mother and Isabel always weighed all bridegrooms' quaUties minutely in the balance and usually found them wanting. Jane knew all about bridegrooms.

  Edith's, now, had been rich and of very good family — for there were very good famihes in Cleveland, who had moved there, years ago, from the East. But he looked very frail — Jane's mother thought almost consumptive — and Edith didn't need the money and would certainly miss hving in a large city and find it hard to get on without her mother, who had always been so indulgent. Even Freddy Waters, who was not a bridegroom yet, but, according to Isabel, soon would be, had been scrupulously balanced on jeweller's scales. Jane, facing RosaHe's unconscious face across the luncheon table, knew perfectly well that Freddy was awfully clever and a divine dancer, but hadn't a cent to bless himself with and had thrown himself at the feet of every rich girl in Chicago for the last seven years. Jane's indifferent mind was crowded with snapshot biographies Hke that of every actual and potential bridegroom in town. And she did want to go to Bryn Mawr and get away from the family and Uve with Agnes and study some more French and English. It seemed a great deal simpler.

  She had taken her preliminaries last spring and passed them well enough and Agnes had reserved a double suite in Pembroke Hall and her father had said explosively on one memorable occasion, *Oh, hell! Let the kid go!' But her mother and Isabel had never consented.

  It was partly because of Agnes, of course, whom her mother and Isabel had never grown to like, though she wa? turning out to be awfully clever and had passed her pr^

  liminaries with an amazin
g number of high credits and might be the Middle-Western Scholar and could write essays that Miss Milgrim thought were very unusual. Agnes had actually taken a job last summer, on her father's paper, though she was only seventeen. Jane thought it was very wonderful of her, but it seemed to be the last nail in her coffin as far as her mother and Isabel were concerned.

  *A young girl in a newspaper office!' Mrs. Ward had said. Considering the tone in which it was uttered, the comment had sufficed.

  *I don't know what I'll do without Muriel for a year,' Mrs. Lester was sa^dng, 'now Edith is gone.' Her eyes hngered pensively on Rosahe as if she sensed an approaching farev/ell. Her three dark-haired daughters were very dear to Mrs. Lester.

  *And Flora's mother has only Flora,' said Jane sympathetically.

  A litde gleam of cynicism shone in Edith's melancholy eye.

  *I dare say she'll be glad to have her out of the way.'

  'Flora's getting old enough to notice,' sighed Mrs. Lester.

  Treddy saw her lunching alone with him at the Richelieu last Wednesday,' said Rosalie. And added with perverse pleasure, 'They were having champagne.'

  Mrs. Lester clucked her dismay. But it was no news to Jane. She had heard Isabel telUng all about it at the dinner table on Thursday night.

  'Bert Lancaster ought to be ashamed of himself,' said Mrs. Lester.

  Ashe's old enough to know better,' said Rosalie pertly. 'How old is she. Mother?'

  'She was married,' said Mrs. Lester dreamily, 'the year that Edith had scarlet fever. I couldn't go to the wedding. That makes her about thirty-eight.'

  *She doesn't look it,' said Edith. 'She's an amazii^ woman.'

  'Bert's thirty-five,' said Rosalie meditatively. 'He told me so himself.'

  *I admire her husband,' said Mrs. Lester, 'for the way he takes it.'

  'Mother!' said Rosahe and Edith at once. And Rosalie continued, 'How can you admire him! He's a perfect dodo!'

  'He has been very much tried,' said Mrs. Lester, 'these last three years.'