Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  'And how was Mrs. Carver's arthritis?' Mrs. Ward was inquiring of Jane. 'Poorly, I suppose, in that damp climate. Wc hiid a lovely summer in Chicago.'

  Mrs. Ward always loved to talk about the infirmities of other old ladies, and she felt the need at the moment, to justify, in the minds of her daughters, her and Minnie's contested decision to spend the dog-days in town. Jane let the statement pass unchallenged. No one could do anything with Minnie, and her mother had borne the heat very well. If she

  liked to spend the summer one mile firom Chicago's loop

  Isabel did look worried, thought Jane, as she commented favourably on the sponge cake. Probably Minnie was raising some kind of ruction again.

  When she stood up to go an hour later, Isabel rose also.

  *Run me home in your car, Jane,' she said.

  The two sisters left the house together.

  'Well, what is it?' asked Jane, as soon as they were seated in the motor.

  'We can't talk here,' said Isabel. 'The traffic's too noisy. Run me out on the lake front. Isn't this street awful? We ought to make Mamma move.'

  They certainly ought, thought Jane. Stripped of its elms, widened to twice its size, invaded by commerce and metamorphosed into North Michigan Boule'ard, Pine Street bore no resemblance to the provincial thoroughfare of Jane's childhood. The wide yards had vanished, and many of the old red-brick and brown-stone houses had been pulled down to make v/ay for the skyscrapers. Those that were left were defaced by bill-boards or disfigured with plate-glass show

  windows, in which gowns and cosmetics and lingerie were displayed for sale. Mrs. Ward was the only old resident, now living south of Chicago Avenue.

  Jane turned down Superior Street in search of quiet. As they rolled past the dirty, decaying facade of a row of boarding-houses, she turned curiously to look at her sister. But Isabel was staring straight before her down the dusty street, her eyes on the flash of brilliant blue at the end of it that was the lake.

  'Let's park on the curve,' she said, as Jane turned in'to the outer drive.

  Jane drew up at the edge of the parkway. The curve commanded a view of the Oak Street Beach again, seen now across blue water, with a ragged fringe of skyscrapers beyond it, outlined against a sunset sky.

  'What's on your mind, old girl?' said Jane.

  'Can't you guess?' said Isabel.

  Jane looked at her with increasing uneasmess. This cunous reticence was very unlike Isabel. Isabel was usually delighted to break the bad news.

  *No,' said Jane. *I can't.'

  'It's about Belle,' said Isabel.

  'Isabel!' cried Jane. 'She's not having another baby?'

  'No,' said Isabel. 'I almost wish she were. It might help matters. But then, again, it might only make them worse.'

  'What are you talking about?' cried Jane.

  Isabel looked at her for a moment in silence.

  'Cicily and Albert,' she said.

  Jane really felt her heart turn over. She stared, dumb* founded, at Isabel.

  'Cicily and — Albert?' she stammered.

  'It's making Belle awfully unhappy,' said Isabel. Then,

  almost angrily, 'Jane, you don't mean to say you haven't noticed it?'

  *How could I have noticed it?' cried Jane, almost angrily in her turn. 'I've been away all summer. I don't believe it, anyway. Cicily wouldn't — Cicily couldn't '

  'Well, Cicily has/ said Isabel grimly.

  'I don't believe it,' said Jane again.

  'You'll have to believe it,' said Isabel sharply. 'She was with him every minute all summer. She sent the children to Gull Rocks to get them out of the way. She used to motor out with him to that damned airport and fly with him all day and then motor in town at night and dine with him at the night clubs. Of course I don't say there was any real harm in it, Jane, but it made Belle perfectly miserable. She felt so humiliated — and bewildered. Why, Cicily was her best friend.'

  'What — what does Jack think?' asked Jane slowly.

  'I don't know what he thinks,' said Isabel. 'He'd be the last, of course, to criticize Cicily. He acts — he acts exactly as if it weren't happening.' Her voice was trembhng a Uttle. 'I wouldn't speak to him about it for worlds.'

  'Of course not,' said Jane quickly. 'It — it's not a thing to talk about. But I know you're exaggerating it, Isabel. You know Cicily '

  'Yes, I know Cicily,' put in Isabel ironically.

  'She's pretty and gay and only twenty-eight. She's been married nine years and she never really had her fling. I — I suppose Albert turned her head. I think it's outrageous oi him to take advantage of her '

  'Take advantage of her!' cried Isabel.

  'Take advantage of her inexperience '

  'Jane! You know as well as I do that such affairs are always the woman's fault! The idea of Cicily, the mother of three children '

  'It's just a harmless flirtation!' cried Jane. She was conscious of blind prejudice as she spoke. She knew nothing about it.

  'It's not a very pretty flirtation,' said IsabeL

  'I agree with you,' said Jane soberly.

  'And it's made a different woman of Cicily. Surely, Jane, you saw '

  *I saw she looked very happy,' said Jane.

  *A woman's always happy,' said Isabel, 'when she's falling in love.'

  'She's not falling in love,' said Jane decidedly. She saw it all clearly now, in a flash of revelation. 'She's just falling for Albert. She's falling for excitement and admiration and fim. She'll snap out of it, Isabel.'

  'Will you speak to her?' asked Isabel.

  'I — don't — know,' said Jane slowly. 'I don't know if it would do any good. Don't you remember how you felt yourself, Isabel, about — about parents — speaking? It only irritated you.'

  'I certainly don't!' cried Isabel sharply. 'There was never any occasion for parents to speak about a thing like that to me. Or to you, either, Jane.'

  Jane sat a moment in silence, staring across the deep blue water at the glowing embers in the Western sky.

  'I can remember — I can remember,' she said slowly, 'how I felt about parents — mixing in and — zind spoiling things that were really lovely '

  *What things?' pursued Isabel hotly. 'You never had a beau in your life, Jane, after you married Stephen — unless you count little Jimmy Trent! But this — this is serious.'

  'Perhaps,' said Jane. 'I'll tliink it over. But somehow I don't bcheve much in parental influence. It's something inside yourself that makes you behave, you know. Matthew

  Arnold knew — "the enduring power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." I don't believe that Cicily would ever really be unkind — would ever knowingly hurt others.'

  'But she is hurting them!' cried Isabel. 'She's hurting Belle, this minute!'

  'Well, she'll stop,' said Jane stoutly. 'She'll stop when she realizes.'

  Isabel opened the door of the motor.

  'I'm going to walk home,' she said. She stood a moment hesitatingly by the side of the car. 'It — it upsets me so to talk about it, Jane.' Her lips were trembling again. 'I'm going to walk home and — and think of something else. I don't want to worry Robin. We've never talked about it. I suppose

  that seems funny to you, Jane, but ' She broke off a little

  helplessly.

  'No. No, it doesn't,' said Jane. 'I'm glad you haven't. I never worry Stephen. So many things blow over, you know, and if you haven't said anything '

  'Exactly,' said Isabel.

  Jane stared a moment in silence, down into her troubled eyes.

  'Children can just wreck you,' said Isabel.

  Jane nodded.

  'Give my love to Robin,' she said. She set the gears in motion and moved slowly off down the boulevard. 'Little Jimmy Trent,' she was thinking. So that was all that Isabel had ever realized. She felt a sudden flood of sympathy for Cicily. Cicily, intoxicated with the wine of admiration. Cicily succumbing to the transcendent temptation to quicken a passion, to love and be loved. It was all very wrong, h
owever. And very dangerous. Such temptations must be overcome. The wine of admiration could be forsworn. Cicily would, 0/ course, forswear it. She could not speak to her. But she could

  watch. She could worry. That was what parents were

  for.

  m

  It was one o'clock on a late November morning and the first Assembly ball was in full swing in the ballroom of the Blacks tone Hotel. The room was brilliantly lighted. Its gilded walls were hung with smilax and banked with palms and chrysanthemums. The floor was filled with dancers. A few elderly ladies, in full evening dress, were clustered in little groups on a row of gilt chairs, under the palms, A great crowd of young men were massed near the door. From tliat crowd, black broadcloth figures continually detached themselves, dashed into the revolving throng, tapped young women cavaherly on naked shoulders, drew them from their partners' embrace and stalked solemnly off with them.

  Modern dances always seemed stalking and solemn to Jane. She was sitting in the balcony that ran round the room, her arms on the smilax-hung railing gazing down at the kaleidoscope of light and movement and colour on the floor. She was wearing a new black velvet evening gown — every ocie wore a new gown to the first Assembly — and she was vaguely wondering if the cane seat of her gilt chair was creasing tite skirt. The balcony was crowded with other middle-aged Avomen in other new evening gowns, sparsely attended by a spnnkling of middle-aged men.

  Twenty feet away dov/n the line of spectators sat Isabel, with Stephen, resigned and somnolent, standing behind hex chair. Robin sat at Jane's elbow. Jane knew every one present and was tired of seeing them. She had seen them at an endless succession of first Assembly balls. To-night they looked just as they always had. At the other balls they had worn other new evening gowns. That was the only diflerence. On an Oriental rug at the ballroom door a row of Jane's con-

  temporaries stood in line to receive the guests as they entered the room. Jane could remember when the hostesses at an Assembly ball had looked to her like a group of bedizened old ladies, pathetically tricked out in the garb of folly. Now the dancers seemed to her incredibly young.

  Jane was watching Jenny, revolving on the floor beneath in the arms of what looked to Jane like an extremely Bacchic young man. She was wishing that Steve would cut in on her and take her away from him. Steve was a bit Bacchic, too, however. Too Bacchic to notice his sister's predicament. He was standing by the receiving line, rallying Cora Delafield. Cora Delafield was at least five years Jane's senior, but she rather specialized in Bacchic young men. Steve thought her very entertaining. Jane wished that Cicily would come. Her dinner-party was late. Jane wanted, ridiculously, to look just once at Cicily in her new white velvet, before taking Stephen home to bed.

  Robin said something, but Jane could not hear it. She could not hear anything above the clash of the jazz orchestra at the end of the balcony. Modem balls were frightfully noisy. And there were always two orchestras, so you never had one single intermittent moment of peace. Stephen looked dog-tired. It was mean of her to keep him up a moment longer. It was mean of her to have brought him at all. Absurd to go to balls when you were fifty! You danced three times, perhaps, lumbering around the room with the more courteous men of your dinner-party, and then you retired to the balcony and talked to your brother-in-law, while you watched your own children.

  Good gracious! Jenny's young man had almost fallen down in negotiating a turn. He had torn the flounce of her blue chiffon gown. Steve had disappeared, taking Cora Delafield with him. Cora's young men would do anytliing in

  reason, but they would not lead her out on the dancing floor. She tipped the scales at two hundred pounds.

  Cora had the right idea, however. If you were going to go to balls in your fifth decade, it was much better to go in for Bacchic young men, on any terms, than to sit in the balcony, watching your own children and straining your cars to catch the amiable conversation of your brother-in-law, over the din of those infernal saxophones.

  Why, there was Jack! Jack cutting in on Jenny, the darling! Jack could always be relied on. Jenny was talking and they were both laughing uproariously, casting discreet glances back at the Bacchic young man, left standing befuddled in the centre of the ballroom floor. Jenny was undoubtedly repeating some alcoholic anecdote! Girls did not care nowadays what they said, or what was said to them. Jane tried to imagine what would have happened to a Bacchic young man at a dance in Chicago in the middle nineties. Social ostracism — nothing less. Prohibition had turned ballrooms into barrooms.

  But where was Cicily? There was Belle, lovely-looking, too, in that silver gauze gown. Could Isabel be right? Was she worried, was she really worried, over Cicily and Albert? She did not look as if she had a care in the world, one-stepping mystically, with sweet raised face and half-closed eyes, in the arms of Billy Winter. He was a nice young man. Why didn't Jenny fancy him? Why didn't Jenny fancy any one? She was tv/enty-six years old. It was nonsense — it was utter nonsense — her talk of wanting to leave home and live in New York and run dog kennels in Westchester County wdth Barbara Belmont.

  But where was Cicily? If Jack and Belle were here, Cicily and Albert must be somewhere in the offing. They had come up in a tajd together, perhaps, from some young mar-

  ricd dinner. Stopped, possibly, at a night club. Jane suddenly realized how tired she was. And how tired of wondering, as she had wondered for two months, just what was happening to Cicily in taxis and in night clubs.

  Tlie lights were dimming. The lights were going out. The orchestra was silenced. A spotlight shone brilliantly down on Ihe centre of the ballroom floor. A young man indistinguishable in the darkness, his shirt-front picked out startlingly in the silver radiance, was shouting that Miss Ivy Montgomery, from the company of *Hot Chocolates' now playing at the Selwyn, would offer a dance. A slender quadroon in a spangled evening gown slipped suddenly into the spothght. Her sleek oiled hair was shining. She smiled hugely, good-hmnouredly, her white teeth gleaming in the brutal orifice of her thick rouged lips. The orchestra crashed into a barbaric orgy of sound.

  Where was Cicily, thought Jane, as she watched the contorted evolutions of Miss Montgomery's Charleston — or was it a Black Bottom? — as she listened to the applause that broke from the apparently spellbound audience at the end of the dance. Where was Cicily, she thought, as two darky comedians followed Miss Montgomery into the spotlight, and tapped their flapping shoes and cracked their age-old jokes, to the accompaniment of throbbing saxophones and bursts of appreciative laughter.

  The lights flashed up. The darkies had vanished. The dancers, in twos and fours and sixes, took possession once more of the ballroom floor. Jane glanced at her wrist watch. It was almost two o'clock. But there if aj Cicily! Cicily, slim and slinky in the folds of the new white velvet, passing down the receiving line, bending her dandeUon head in channing deference before the dowager hostesses. And Albert was behind her. Well —Jane had known he would be. He was

  good-looking. He stood waiting, tranquilly, under a palm, for Cicily to complete her amenities. Belle floated by, witli Billy Winter again, her gauze flounces brushing her husband's knee. She nodded serenely at him. Cicily abandoned the last dowager with a final radiant smile. There was a faint shadow of inattention in that radiance, however. It sprang from some inner joy. Jane shrewdly suspected that Cicily had not heard one word that the dov/ager had been saying. Albert stepped out to meet her. His fine young face was absolutely impassive. As Cicily moved into his arms, her glance swept the balcony. Meeting her mother's eye, she smiled so innoccndy, so gaily, that no one but Jane herself would ever have sensed that there was something a bit unnatural in the innocence, in the gaiety, of that smile.

  'She wishes that I weren't watching her,' thought Jane, as she smiled and nodded brightly in response.

  IV

  Jane was walking briskly down the main street of Lake-wood, enjoying the first winter snowfall. The air was damply mild. Great feathery flakes were drifting all around her. The ground was cov
ered with a thin, wet blanket of snow. The roofs of the village stores, the bare boughs of the oak trees, were frosted with soft, white icing. The whiteness of the world contrasted vividly with the yellow grey of the December sky.

  Jane was on her way to the Woman's Club, to watch her grandchildren's dancing class. She often dropped in, on Tuesday afternoons, to look at it. In the midst of the uncertainties and perplexities engendered by the sight of her own children, Jane always found a glimpse of her grandchildren very comforting. Moreover, in a world of shifting values, of mental hazards and moral doubts, there was sometliing

  absurdly reassuring in the sight of anything that remained so exactly the same as dancing school.

  This afternoon, for instance, as soon as she entered the vestibule of the Woman's Club, the reassuring notes of the 'Blue Danube' fell caressingly on her cars. Mr. Boumiquc was still teaching children to waltz. Teaching the twins to waltz, as he had taught Cicily and Jenny and Steve, as his father had taught Jane herself Jane could distinctly recall her sensations when she had waltzed to the strains of the 'Blue Danube,' not with a partner, but standing with Flora and Muriel in a long line of little girls, with a long Une of little boys behind them, her eyes conscientiously fixed on old Mr. Bournique's striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. She remembered her white organdie dress, with pink ribbons run through it, and the fat pink satin bows on her thin pigtsiils. That was before she was old enough to be ashamed of her pigtails, to long for curls — before she had met Andre. The Bourniques were an institution in Chicago, as old as the aristocracy of the Western city,

  Jane entered the ballroom. And there was Mr. Boumique, grey-haired and slender, dominating the scene, gliding and bending to the thin, tinkling strains of the Woman's Club piano. And there was the line of little girls and the line of little boys, gliding and bending behind him, their eyes conscientiously fixed on his striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. Slick-haired little boys in blue serge suits and fairy-like little girls in light thin dresses. One fat little boy who could not keep time and one fat little girl who would never get partners. Every dancing class, reflected Jane, as she sat down at the end of the row of indifferent governesses in the far comer of the room, every dancing class had one fat Httle girl who was always reduced to dancing with Mr. Bournique, who could not aspire to even the fat little boy who could not keep time for a partner.