Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  Station a little overwhelming. It had seemed quite an adventure to choose a black porter and follow him as he threaded his way through the crowded concourse and out past the swinging doors through the traffic of Forty-Second Street to the lobby of the Belmont Hotel.

  Jane had felt just a httle queer, as she stood alone at the desk, her luggage at her feet, signing the register and asking for a single room and bath for the night. It was perfectiy ridiculous — she was thirty-six years old — but Jane really couldn't remember ever having spent a night alone at a hotel before. She was very glad that Flora and Mr. Fumess would join her at noon next day and greatly relieved to discover that a letter from Agnes was waiting for her, confirming her invitation to dinner and containing explicit directions as to how to reach the Greenwich Village flat.

  'Come at six,' Agnes had written. *I get out of Macy's at five-thirty and I'll be there before you.'

  She was perhaps a trifle early, reflected Jane, as she paused in the path to reassure herself as to just which direction was west. She had allowed too much time for the bus ride through the afternoon traffic. She had been glad to get out of her hotel bedroom. Once her bag was unpacked, there was nothing to do there but stare through the dingy lace curtain, which had seemed at once curiously starched and soiled, at the taxis and street-cars that congested Fort)'-Second Street and the crowds of suburbanites who were pouring into the entrance of the Grand Central Station. She had watched the station clock for fifteen minutes and when the hands pointed to five she had left the room.

  Washington Square, thought Jane, gazing curiously about her, wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It didn't look Uke the cradle from which a city's aristocracy had sprung. There was a nice old row of red-brick houses at the north end, but

  many of them seemed rather gone to seed and dilapidated, and the grass in the Square was worn down to hard-caked mud and the elm trees were leafless, and the shirt-sleeved men and shavled women on the benches and the dirty little dark-eyed children who were plaving marbles and hopscotch on the patli were the kind that you would only see 'west of Clark Stree/' at home.

  Jane left the Square at the southwest comer and, referring once more to the written directions that Agnes had given her, plunged into tlie congestion of the city streets. This was a funny place to choose to live in, thought Jane, as she pushed through a group of pale-faced little girls, skipping rope on the sidewalk. It was a funny place to choose in which to bring up a child. A group of shabby young men, hanging about the entrance of a comer saloon, commented favourably on her appearance as she approached them. Jane held her chin high and passed on in disdain. The green baize door swung open to admit an elderly hobo and Jane caught a whiff, across the stale heat of the pavement, of the acrid damp odour of beer. She thought the disreputable bar looked rather cool and dark and inviting from trie glare of the city street. She could quite understand why the group of shabby young men Hked to linger there.

  At the next comer she stood amazed and delighted at the sight that met her eye. A curving vista of narrow street, flanked by tall red-brick houses trellised with iron fire escapes. The fire escapes were festooned with varicoloured washing and all tlie vsindovss were wide open and the window-sills were hung with bedding. From nearly every window a dark-haired woman and a couple of children were hanging out, leaning on the bedding and gazing dovvTi at the street beneath them. The street itself was crowded with push carts and fiuit stands. Great piles of golden oranges and yellow bananaa

  were displayed for sale. Clothing hung fluttering from improvised frame scaffolds. A fish vendor was crying his wares at her elbow. The front steps of all the houses were crowded with people laughing and talking together and shouting to the purchasers that clustered about the open-air booths. The dingy store on the corner had a sign in its dirty window, *Ice — kindling — coal and charcoal.' A little olive-faced girl came out of it balancing an old peach basket on her head. It contained a melting lump of ice. She skipped gaily down the street and vanished into a basement entrance. The store on the opposite corner had a foreign sign in the doorway. 'Ravioli. Qui si vende Pasta Caruso. Speciahtk in Pasta Fresca.' Jane was suddenly enchanted with Greenwich Village. Still — it was a funny place to choose in which to bring up a child.

  Presently she came to Agnes's comer. Charlton Street was quite broad and paved with cobblestones. A car-track ran down the centre of the street. The houses on both sides were built of red brick, with white frame doorways. Nice white-panelled front doors with fanlights above them and brass knobs and knockers, some brightly polished. The windows were all square-paned and many of the houses had green window-boxes. The plants in them were drab and shrivelled, however, in the city heat. Jane did not see a single flower.

  Agnes's house was in the centre of the block. It looked just like all the others. There was a sign in the downstairs front window, 'Furnished Room. Gents Preferred.' Jane mounted the front steps and regarded the empty hole, where a doorbell had once hung, for a moment in perplexity. Then she pushed open the front door. She found herself in a small white-panelled vestibule, carpeted with yellow linoleum. Three mail-boxes met her eye and on the middle one a card, 'Mr. and Mrs. James Trent.' She pushed the electric bell beneath

  the mail-box and, after a minute or two in which absolutely nothing happened, she opened the inner door. The odour of cooking cabbage instantly assailed her nostrils. The entrance to the first apartment was on her left hand. A white-panelled door, soiled with countless finger-prints. A straight, steep staircase, with uncarpeted wooden treads, led to the upper floors. Jane slowly ascended the stairs into comparative darkness. The odour of cooking cabbage grew fainter. At the fi^ont end of the upper corridor was a second white-panelled door. Jane knocked at it tentatively. She heard, immediately, the sound of mascuUne footsteps and the airy notes of a masculine whistle, a fi"agment of 'La Donna e mobile' firom 'Rigoletto.' The door was suddenly opened by a young man. He stood smiling at her on the threshold. A rather charming young man, with tousled dark hair and an open collar, who looked, Jane thought firom the dusk of the corridor, with his quizzical eyebrows and his pointed ears and his ironica) smile, exactly like a faun.

  'Come in,' he said pleasantly.

  'I — I'm looking for Mrs. James Trent,' said Jane.

  'Come in,' the young man repeated. Jane stepped, a little hesitantly, over the threshold. 'You must be Jane.' His smile deepened into a grin of appreciation. 'You don't look at all as I thought you would. Come in and sit down. Agnes will be home any minute.' Then, as she continued to stare at him in perplexity, 'I'm Jimmy.'

  Jane's eyes widened with astonishment. This boy, Jimmy — Agnes's husband? He did not look a day over twenty-five. Jane knew he was thirty-four, however.

  *Oh — how do you do?' she said. 'Yes — I'm Jane.'

  Agnes's living-room was pleasantly old-fashioned. The ceihng y/as high and was decorated with a rococo design in plaster that looked, Jane thought, like the top of a wedding

  cake. A charming Victorian mantel of white marble dominated one end of the room. It was adorned with a bas-relief of cupids holding horns of plenty in their chubby arms. The cupids were dusty and the hearth was discoloured and the fireplace was filled with sheets of musical manuscript, torn in twain. Two tall chintz-hung windows looked over Charlton Street and a battered davenport sofa was placed beneath them. The sofa was strewn with other sheets of music, and a vioUn lay on a pile of disordered cushions in one corner. The top of the mantelpiece was piled with books, and a high white bookcase, filled with heterogeneous volumes, occupied one end of the room. A small gate-legged table, covered with a clean linen cloth, stood near the hearth, with an armchair on one side of it and a child's Shaker rocker on the other. Through the half-open folding-doors across from the fireplace Jane caught a glimpse of a little room that was evidently a nursery. The floor was strewn with toys and a white iron crib stood near the window.

  'Sit down,' said Jimmy, throwing an armful of music from the sofa to the floor. 'Hot as he
ll, isn't it?'

  'I'm afraid I'm very early,' said Jane, sitting down in the armchair.

  'No. Agnes is late,' said Jimmy. He was standing before the Victorian mantel, still regarding her with an appreciative grin. 'You look as cool as a cucumber in that blue silk. Maybe I ought to put on my coat.'

  *Oh, no,' said Jane poUtely. She hadn't noticed his shirt-slee'es until that moment.

  'Well, anyway, a necktie,' persisted Jimmy engagingly, fingering his open collar.

  'You look very nice and Byronic as you are,' smiled Jane

  *I know I do,' said Jimmy rather surprisingly. 'I get away with a lot of that Byron stuff. But just the same I think I owe

  that French frock a cravat.' He walked across the room as he spoke and, opening a door, disappeared into the inner recesses of the apartment.

  Jane, left to herself, began to inspect the room once more without rising from her chair. Her eyes wandered to the high bookcase. She recognized some old Bryn Mawr books that had adorned, for two years, the walls of her Pembroke study. The two small blue volumes of Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' The green Globe editions of Wordsworth and Shakespeare. The Buxton Fomian Keats and Shelley, The Mermaid Series of Elizabethan dramatists. And the long dark red Hne of Matthew Arnold and Pater.

  The sound of running water from the interior of the apartment distracted her attention. Jimmy was a great surprise. She had never thought that he would be Uke that. She glanced at the sheets of music on the sofa. The one on top of the pile was half-filled with pencilled notations. He must have been writing music. Evidently he was a composer on the side. Agnes had never mentioned that.

  The door to the inner rooms opened suddenly and Jimmy reappeared, freshly washed and brushed, his collar rebut-toned, and a soft blue necktie bringing out the colour in his smiling eyes. He picked up his coat from the back of the sofa and put it on vith a sigh.

  'What men do for women!' he murmured as he adjusted his collar.

  'What women do for men!' laughed Jane. 'This dress is French, but it's fearfully hot.'

  *I bet you didn't put it on for me!' grinned Jimmy. Jane's blush acknowledged the home thrust. 'You just wanted to show Agnes how well you'd withstood the assaults of time.'

  Jane had thought Agnes might think the dress was pretty. Not that Agnes ever noticed clothes, of course.

  *You must have been an infant prodigy,' went on Jimmy. He was sitting on the sofa now, his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed flatteringly on her face.

  'Why?' asked Jane unguardedly.

  'To have been Agnes's classmate,' said Jimmy promptly.

  Jane frowned. She didn't like that. She didn't hke it at all. That was no way for Agnes's husband to speak of Agnes.

  *I wish she'd come home,' she said with severity.

  *Do you?' smiled Jimmy. 'Well, she will soon. She stops at the Play School every evening to bring home the child. It began again last week, thank God! Another day of vacation and I should have committed infanticide.'

  Jane did not reply to this sally. She continued to look, very seriously, at Jimmy. But he rattled on, ignoring her silence.

  *A Play School is a wonderful invention. It takes children off their parents' hands for nine hours a day. I call it immoral — but very convenient. So much immorahty is merely convenience, isn't it? We resort to it, faute de mieux. Saloons and play schools and brothels — they're aU cheap compromises, forced on us by civilization. In an ideal Utopia I suppose we'd all drink and love and bring up our children at home. Do it and like it — though that seems rather a contradiction in terms. Progressive education is really only one of many symptoms of decadence. It's a sign of the fall of the empire.' He paused abruptly and looked charmingly over at Jane, as if waiting for her applause. Jane felt an inexplicable impulse not to applaud him.

  'That's all very clever,' she said quickly. 'But of course it isn't true.'

  Jimmy burst into amiable laughter.

  'So you are a pricker of bubbles, are you, Jane?' he asked amusedly. 'You certainly don't look it. Are you a defender

  of the truth and no lover of dialectic for dialectic's sake? Do beautiful rainbow-coloured bubbles, all made up of watery ideas and soapy vocabulary, floating airily, without founda-don, in the void, mean nothing in your life?'

  'Very little,' said Jane severely. 'I'm a very practical person.'

  'I seem to be a creature of one idea this afternoon,' said Jimmy lightly, 'but I can only repeat — you don't look it! The picture you present, as you sit in that armchair, Jane, is far from practical '

  As he spoke, Jane heard with relief the sound of a latchkey in the outer door.

  'That's Agnes I' she cried, springing to her feet.

  'It must be,' said Jimmy, rising reluctantly to his.

  The door opened quickly, and Agnes, hand in hand with her five-year-old daughter, stood beaming on the threshold. Just the same old Agnes, with her funny freckled face and her clever cheerful smile! No — somehow a slightly plumper, rather more solid Agnes, with a certain maturity of gesture and authority of eye! Jane clasped her in her arms. It was not until the embrace was over that she noticed how grey Agnes's hair had grown. It showed quite plainly under her broad hat-brim. Jane sank on her knees before the child. She looked a Httle pale and peaked, Jane thought, but she was Agnes all o'er again — the little Agnes that Jane had known in the first grades of Miss Milgrim's School! How preposterous — how ridiculous — to see that Httle Agnes once more in the flesh! How absurdly touching! Jane clasped the child gently in her arms.

  'Agnes!' she cried. 'She's precious! She's just like you!'

  'Unfortunately,' remarked Agnes with mock c>Tiicism. 'When she might have favoured her fascinating father! Whatever you may say against Jimmy, Jane, you have to admit he

  has looks. In six years of matrimony they've never palled on me.'

  'Don't talk like that, Agnes,' remonstrated Jimmy prompdy. *You make me feel superficial. I've much more than looks. I've all the social graces. I've been exhibiting them for Jane's benefit for the last twenty minutes and I leave it to her if my face is my fortune! I've many more important assets.'

  *How about it, Jane?' said Agnes, smiling. 'Did he make the grade?' Behind the smile Jane detected a gleam of real concern in Agnes's glance. She suddenly recalled that winter afternoon, sixteen years ago, when she had first displayed Stephen to Agnes in Mr. Ward's Ubrary on Pine Street. Handsome young Stephen, flushed from the winter cold! She remembered her own dismay at the unspoken verdict of 'cotillion partner' in Agnes's honest eyes.

  *Y-yes,' she said slowly, with a twinkle, rising to her feet, Btill holding the child's hand in hers. *I think he did — for a first impression.'

  'If anything,' said Jimmy engagingly, 'I improve on acquaintance. I'm an acquired taste, Uke ripe oUves. I feel that's been said before. Let's say I'm a bad habit, like nicotine or alcohol. Once you take me up, you'll find it hard to get on without me.'

  'Don't be ridiculous!' said Agnes. She threw a glance at Jane to see how she was taking his banter.

  *I was just warning her,' said Jimmy.

  Jane never needs much warning,' said Agnes.

  'Now, that's just the sort of thing she's always said of you,* sighed Jimmy plaintively. 'It gave me such a false impression. I've never been attracted by the type of woman who doesn't need to be warned against a handsome man *

  'Agnes,' interrupted Jane, 'is he always like this?'

  'Always/ said Agnes, with great good cheer. She looked

  distinctly relieved by Jane's frivolous question. She knew now tiiat Jane was taking Jimmy in the right spirit. 'Sometimes he's worse.' She placed her hand affectionately on Jimmy's shoulder. 'How did the music go to-day, old top?'

  'Oh — rotten!' said Jimmy Ughtly. 'My rondo's a flop.*

  'He's writing a concerto for the violin,' explained Agnes, with a glance at the music on the sofa.

  'Really?' cried Jane, honestiy impressed. Then, turning to Jimmy, 'Aren't you excited about it?'

&nb
sp; He met her shining eyes with an ironical smile.

  'Well,' he said calmly, 'I've lost my first fine careless rapture. I've been writing it for ten years.'

  'Some of it's very good,' said Agnes,

  'And some of it isn't,' pursued Jimmy cheerfully.

  'I want him to finish it,' said Agnes.

  'And I'm eager to please,' said Jimmy. 'So I sit here, day after day, pouring my full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art, while Agnes supports me in the style to which I was never accustomed before she laid me on the lap of luxury. I don't get much done, however.'

  His voice sounded a Httie discouraged, Jane thought, in spite of his le'ity. Agnes changed the subject abrupdy.

  'We're dining out at a restaurant,' she said. 'I won't cook dinner in hot weather.'

  'She's a swell cook, you know,' said Jimmy to Jane.

  'I've known it for twenty years,' said Jane to Jimmy.

  'Come with me while I clean the child,' said Agnes. She opened the door through which Jimmy had vanished in quest of his necktie. It led into a narrow dark corridor. Agnes pushed open another door and Jane found herself in a bedroom. A very dark bedroom, with one corner window opening on a dingy airshaft.

  'No electricity,' said Agnes. 'It's a curse.* She struck a

  match and lit a flaring gas-jet beside a maple bureau. The bureau and two iron beds completely filled the room. One bed was neatly made and covered with a cotton counterpane. The other was in complete disorder.

  'Jimmy never gets up until after I've gone in the morning,' said Agnes apologetically, *so he never gets his bed made until I come home at night.' As she spoke she picked up a pair of pajamas from the floor and hung them on a peg behind the door. A couple of discarded neckties were strewn on top of the bureau. Agnes added them to a long row of other neckties that hung from the brass gas-bracket. Then she tossed off her hat, without even a glance at the mirror, and opening a bureau drawer, took out a clean blue romper for the child. Jane suddenly realized that Agnes looked tired. Her hair was really very grey.