Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  'Happy birfday, Granma!' it cried and staggenng across the room fell tottering across Jane's knees. It was Robin Redbreast, her youngest grandcliild.

  'Magnificent!' cried Cicily's voice.

  The twins appeared in the doorway. Tripping on rugs, slipping on the hardwood floor, they dashed across the living-room and cast themselves on Jane's neck.

  'Happy birthday, Grandma!' they repeated.

  Cicily stood on the threshold. She looked extremely pretty in a rose-coloured sport suit and immensely amused at her ofispring's dramatic entrance.

  'Hello, Mumsyi* she cried. 'Happy birthday again!

  Hello, Aunt Isabel! I thought you'd be here. How do you do, Aunt Muriel?'

  'Don't tell her,* whispered Muriel. TDon't tell her until I've gone' She rose as she spoke. Untanghng herself from the arms of grandchildren, Jane walked with her to the door.

  *I do feel a little silly,' confessed Muriel in the hall, 'in the presence of Albert's contemporaries.'

  'Nonsense!' said Jane stoutly. Though she could not imagine what her own feeUngs would be if she had to announce her prospective marriage to Cicily. She kissed Muriel tenderly and returned to the Uving-room. Isabel had wasted no time. Cicily, standing on the hearthrug, wzis facing her mother-in-law in shocked, derisive increduHty.

  'Oh, I don't believe it!' she was saying.

  'It's true!' cried Isabel. 'It's perfecdy true!'

  'You're kidding me,' said Cicily.

  'I'm not!' cried Isabel. 'Ask your mother!'

  'It's true,' said Jane soberly.

  'Aunt Muriel — is going to marry — Ed Brown?'

  Jane nodded solemnly.

  'My Gawd!' said Cicily profanely. Then, 'How absurd!'

  'Why is it absurd?' inquired Jane a trifle sharply. She sat down again at the tea-table and removed Robin Redbreast's fingers from the sugar-bowl.

  'It's so undignified,' said Cicily promptly. *If Aunt Muriel wanted to marry again, why didn't she do it years ago?'

  'My dear,' said Jane gendy, 'her husband was living.'

  'If you call it Uving,' said Cicily cheerfully. She had appropriated Robin Redbreast and was removing his scarlet sweater. Little Jane was already seated on Isabel's knee. Jane put her arm around John and drew him gently to her. She leaned her cheek against the embroidered chevron on the sleeve of his navy-blue reefer. The twins looked exactly ahke,

  brown-eyed and solemn and very like their great-grandfather. Their souls were different, however. Matter-of-fact and mat-ter-of-fancy, Jane always called them. John's soul was mat-ter-of-fancy. He was a lovely, imaginative little boy. His big brown eyes looked up at her wistfully. There was nothing in the world more endearing, Jane reflected tenderly, than the freckles on an eight-year-old nose!

  But Cicily was still intrigued with the problems of her Aunt Muriel.

  *I should think she would have fallen in love with some one else long since,' she said.

  Jane's eyes met Isabel's. She hoped her sister was going to restrain herself The hope was vain, however.

  'She's been falUng in love with some one else every six months for the last thirty years,' said Isabel shortly.

  *WTiy didn't she walk out on Uncle Bert, then?' asked Cicily lightly. 'Why didn't she get a divorce?'

  Jane glanced uneasily at the twins. Eight-year-old children were very understanding. Cicily never seemed to care what she said in their hearing.

  'The Lesters are a very conventional family,' she said gravely. T'm sure your Aunt Muriel never thought of divorce. Not even before Uncle Bert's stroke.*

  'WTiy not?' asked Cicily again.

  'She had Albert to consider,' said Isabel.

  'Albert?' cried Cicily. Her voice was greatly astonished. *What had Albert to do with it?'

  'It would have broken up his home,' said Isabel, a trifle sententiously.

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Cicily. *He might have drawn a very good stepfather.*

  'Men who love married women,' said Isabel with asperity, *don't make very good stepfathers.'

  Cicily looked up at her with interest. Robin Redbreast slid from her knees to the floor.

  *Do you mean she really had lovers?'

  Isabel did not reply. In her turn, she glanced a little uneasily at the twins. Her silence was very eloquent.

  'How stupid of her!' said Cicily. *A woman who takes a lover is always the underdog.'

  'Your Aunt Muriel wasn't,' said Isabel 'There was always a good deal of talk, of course, but she managed things very cleverly.'

  *I don't believe in promiscuity,' said Cicily firmly.

  'Cicily!' cried Isabel sharply. 'What words you use! At your age your mother and I wouldn't have '

  'I can't see that it makes much difference what you call things, Aunt Isabel,' said Cicily cheerfully. 'You and Mother certainly didn't believe in it and I don't either. It isn't practical and it's terribly complicated. I behevc in monogamy.'

  'You reassure me, darling,' murmured Jane, with a smile.

  'I beUeve,' continued Cicily stoutly, 'that when a married woman falls in love, she ought to march straight to the divorce court and make everything regular.'

  'Oh,' said Jane, still with the smile, 'progressive monogamy.'

  'Exactly,' said Cicily. Then added wisely, 'No woman is ever really happy trying to hve with two men at once. And no woman is ever really happy without her marriage lines.'

  'No woman is eventually happy,' said Jane rather solemnly, 'if she doesn't play the game with the cards that were dealt her.'

  'Why?' said Cicily promptly. *Not all games are like that. I think life's very like poker. You look over your hand and keep what you Uke, and what you don't, you discard. Throw away your Jack, you know, and hope for a king!'

  Cicily was smiling a little over her play on words. It was an innocent Uttle joke, of course, but Jane was very thankful that Isabel had not noticed it.

  'And if you draw a deuce?' she said soberly.

  'Have faith in the future,' said Cicily lightly, 'and keep your poker face. There's always a new deal.'

  *You talk,' said Jane severely, 'as if a woman had nine lives like a cat.'

  'She could have,' said Cicily, 'if she had vision and courage.'

  'Vision!* cried Jane. *What takes vision is to recognize the imperial quahdes in the cards in your hand! What takes courage is to win the pot with a deuce spot!'

  'I call that bluffing,' said Cicily, cheerfully. 'You fool the world, but you don't fool yourself. You may win the pot, but it's not worth the winning. What's fun is a game with a handful of face cards!'

  For the last few minutes Isabel had not been listening to her argumentative daughter-in-law. Her next remark betrayed the fact that her thoughts had been wandering.

  'Belle's coming back for the wedding,' she said.

  *Really?' cried Cicily. Her face lit up at the thought. 'Oh, I'll love to see Belle again! Is she bringing the children?'

  Isabel nodded cheerfully.

  •What fun!' cried Cicily. 'What fun for all ol us!'

  It would be fun for all of them, Jane reflected, as she stood at the front door with Isabel an hour later and watched Cicily, attended by her cavalcade of children, disappear around the bushes at the entrance of the drive. The twins were trying to roller-skate, with a signal lack of success, on the gravel walk. The air resounded with their shrieks of triumph and emulation. Cicily was pushing an empty go-cart and guiding Robin Redbreast's faltering footsteps with a maternal hand. At the

  turn of the path she paused to wave gaily back at the two grandmothers.

  'Cicily's a good mother,' said Isabel approvingly.

  'She adores the children,' said Jane. 'You know, Isabel,* she added slowly, 'modem young people don't mean all they say.'

  'I don't listen much to what Cicily says,* said Isabel. 'But what I catch sounds very wild.'

  'Their talk is wild,' said Jane. 'But their lives are just as tame as ours were.'

  'Except for the drink,' said Isabel.

&nbs
p; 'The drink, of course,' said Jane. 'But CicUy never takes too much.'

  'I've seen her pretty gay at the Casino,* said Isabel. Then added honestly, 'But Jack was, too.'

  'They all get pretty gay,' said Jane, 'but the nice ones don't get really tight. Not very tight, that is.'

  'You don't have to get very tight to be pretty loose!' said Isabel. She beckoned for her car as she spoke. It was waiting by the service entrance. 'But I think you're right. They don't mean a thing by it.'

  The motor drove slowly up to the front door. Isabel climbed into it.

  'Gk)od-bye, birthday child!' she cried, as it started into motion. She was waving cheerfully through the open window. *I can't wait to tell Robin about Muriel.'

  The car moved slowly down the drive. Jane lingered a moment on her doorstep looking after it in the pleasant May sunshine. Her thoughts were still busy wdth Cicily's wild talk. To Jane, Cicily seemed barely out of the nursery. She looked barely out of the nursery witli her dandelion head and her short shm skirts and her silly silky little legs! She might have been pushing her doll's carriage down that drive! She

  shouldn't be playing with thoughts like that, though. Edged tools in the hands of a child.

  Jane turned on her doorstep and walked slowly back into the living-room to ring for the waitress to remove the ravaged tea-tray. She sank down in Stephen's armchair. Of course the silly child did not mean a word that she had been saying. Good women talked differently in different generations but they always acted the same.

  But did they? Women — good women — were getting divorced every day. Just as girls — good girls — were getting, well — gay, every night. In Jane's mother's time a girl who got drunk, a woman who was divorced, was an outcast, a public scandal, a skeleton in a family closet. In her time and Isabel's she was a deplorable curiosity — more to be pitied than censured, perhaps, but always to be deplored. Now Cicily regarded intoxication as an incidental accident, dependent on the quality of bootlegged liquor that was served at a party. She regarded divorce as a practical aid to monogamous living.

  When Stephen and young Steve came in from the five-fifty half an hour later, Jane was still sitting in the armchair.

  'Jane?' called Stephen, from the front door. Before taking off his overcoat he came into the living-room to give her another birthday kiss. 'What are you thinking about?' he inquired, 'all alone by the fire.'

  'It's a godless age,' said Jane promptly.

  Young Steve grinned pleasantly at her from the threshold.

  'What have we done now?' he inquired cheerfully.

  'It's what you don't do,* said Jane. 'Or rather what you don't think — what you don't feel.'

  'What's that got to do with God?' inquired Steve, as he, too, kissed her.

  *I don't know,' said Jane thoughtfully. 'I guess God's

  here, all right, as much as He ever was. But you — you see Him differently.' Then suddenly it came to her just what sort of an age it was. 'It's a graceless age!' said Jane triumphantly.

  'Not while you're in it,' said Stephen with gallantry.

  'Bravo, Dad!* laughed Steve. 'That ought to cheer her!'

  Jane looked tenderly up at her grey-haired, bald-headed Stephen. For a moment she saw him, slim, young, and debonair, standing by Mr. Bert Lancaster's side beneath the crystal chandelier of Flora's litde third-floor ballroom. Almost as young as Steve, quite as care-free, just as good-looking. But yet an ardent supporter of the vanished dignities and decencies and decorums. Your husband's point of view was a refuge, thought Jane. It was a sanctuary to which you fled from the assaults of time and your own children. It was where you belonged. If your husband was fifty-eight, thought Jane, you wanted, yourself, to be fifty!

  *I am cheered!' said Jane.

  *I get awfully fed up with it,' said Cicily.

  'With what?' asked Jane.

  *With this,' said Cicily.

  Jane's eyes followed her daughter's around the drawing-room of the little French farmhouse. It was a charming room. It was in perfect order. The May sunshine was streaming in over the yellow jonquils and white narcissus of the window-boxes. Streaming in over the pale, plain rug, lighting the ivory walls, ghnting here and there on the gold frame of an antique mirror, the rim of a clear glass bowl, the smooth, polished surfaces of the few old pieces of French furniture with which the room was sparsely furnished. The abrupt dark eyes of a Marie Laurencin over the fireplace met Jane's enigmatically. That opal-tinted canvas was Cicily's most cher-

  ishcd possession. Jane, herself, thought it very queer. The enigma of those chocolate eyes set in that pale blank face always made her feel a trifle uncomfortable. The lips were cruel, she thought. Nevertheless, the room was charming.

  *I don't know why you should,' she said slowly. 'It's all so nice.'

  'It's nice enough,' said Cicily vaguely. Then added honestly, after a brief pause, 'It's just the way I Uke it, really. Only '

  'Only what?' said Jane gently.

  'Only nothing ever happens in it,' said Cicily with sudden emphasis. 'Do you know what I mean, Mumsy? Nothing ever happens to me. I sometimes feel as if these walls were just waiting to see something happen. Something ought to happen in a room as charming as this. I feel just that way about ever^'thing, Mumsy — about my clothes and the way I look and all the trouble I take about the maids and the meals and the children. I'm everlastingly setting the stage, but the drama never transpires. I'd like a little bit of drama, Mumsy. Something nice and unexpected and exciting. Something different. Before I'm too old to enjoy it.'

  The last sentence dispelled Jane's sense of rising uneasiness with its touch of comic relief

  *You're twent)'-eight, Cicily,' she said, smiling.

  *I know,' said Cicily, 'but I've been married for nine years. I may be married for forty more. Am I just going to keep house in Lakewood for forty years? Keep house and play bridge and go in towTi to dinner and have people out for Sunday luncheon — the same people, Mumsy — until I grow old and grey-headed — too old even to want anything different ' She broke off abruptly.

  Jane considered her rather solemnly for a mom'cnt in silence. Then, 'Life's like that, Cicily,' she said.

  'Not all lives,' said Cicily. 'There's Jenny—Jenny's only three years younger than I am. She isn't really happy, I think, Mumsy, but at least she's free. She could Hght out if she wanted to — she will some day, if she doesn't marry — and do almost anything. Make the world her oyster. But my life's set. I signed on the dotted line before I was old enough to know what I was doing. I don't mean that I really regret it, Mumsy — Jack's always been sweet to me and I love my children — I want to have more children — but just the same * Cicily rose uneasily from her Httle French armchair and stood staring out into the afternoon sunshine over the white and yellow heads of the jonquils and narcissus. 'Oh, I don't know what I want! Just girlhood over again, I guess. Just something else than this Uttle front yard with the road to the station going by beyond the privet hedge, and Jack coming home from the five-fifty with a quart of gin in his pocket for a dinner-party full of people I wouldn't care if I never

  saw again ' She broke off once more and continued to

  stare moodily out into the pleasant May sunshine.

  Jane watched the aureole of her dandeHon hair a moment in silence. Then, 'Well, Jack brings home the gin — that's something,' she ventured. She felt her attempt at the light touch was a trifle strained, however.

  Cicily turned to face her.

  'Yes,' she said. 'He brings home the gin and he brings home the bacon, and he brings home a toy for the children he bought in the Northwestern Station. He adores the children and he loves me, but honestiy, Mumsy, it's years since he got any kick out of marriage. He takes it as a matter of course. He takes m^ as a matter of course. He never complains, bui he hates Dad's bank, and he's just as bored with suburban gin as I am. I tell you, Mumsy, the excitement has gone out of things for Jack, too. But he signed on the dotted line and he

  sticks by his bar
gain. And he's only thirty-one — with forty years ahead of him! That's rather grim, isn't it? I don't

  know, of course, if he's ever realized just how grim it is *

  Again CicUy lapsed into silence. She threw herself despondently back in her armchair. 'Don't you think it's funny, Mumsy, the things you never discuss with your own husband?* Then, as Jane did not reply, 'Perhaps you did, though. I can't imagine any one having any inhibitions with Dad.'

  Jane met her daughter's eyes for a moment in sUence. She hoped her own were as enigmatic as those of the Marie Lau-rencin over the fireplace. She could not bring herself to discuss Stephen, even with Cicily.

  'Don't worry about those inhibitions,' she said presently. 'For love creates them. Love and fear, which always go hand in hand. When you love people, you are always really afraid — afraid of hurting them, afraid of disillusioning them, afraid of the spoken word which may upset the apple cart. Respect for the spoken word, Cicily, is the greatest safeguard in Hfe against catastrophe.'

  Gicily's wide blue eyes were rather uncomprehending.

  'Just the same I'd like to break down the barriers. I'd like to be with Jack the way I used to be — happy and free and wild. Not thinking, not considering. But I guess you can never feel that way twice — about the same person that is '

  The sound of the front door closing broke in on Gicily's last perilous words. They were still trembling on the circumambient air when Jack, hat in hand, stood on the threshold.

  'Hello, Aunt Jane!' he said. His fiiendly, pale blue eyes were twinkling cheerfully. 'I stopped at the garage in the village, Cicily, to sec what was wrong with the Chrysler. They say you stripped those gears again. I wish '

  A faint frown of irritation deepened on Cicily's white brow.

  'Did you call up Field's about that bill?' she said. Then to Jane, 'Aunt Isabel always gets her account mixed up with ours.*

  *I did,' said Jack. 'But it wasn't Mother this time. It was your return credits. On the last day of every month. Aunt Jane, Gicily has half the merchandise in the store waiting in our front hall to be called for.'