II
“I want to talk to you,” Isabel had whispered. “Don’t say anything in front of Mamma.” She was handing Jane her teacup as she spoke, in the little brown library. Mrs. Ward, preoccupied with misgivings on the consistency of the new cook’s sponge cake, had not heard her. Jane had looked up, a little startled, into Isabel’s plump, comfortable countenance. Her eyes looked rather worried.
“And how was Mrs. Carver’s arthritis?” Mrs. Ward was inquiring of Jane. “Poorly, I suppose, in that damp climate. We had 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 from 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 Boulevard, Pine Street bore no resemblance to the provincial thoroughfare of Jane’s childhood. The wide yards had vanished, and many of the old redbrick and brownstone houses had been pulled down to make way for the skyscrapers. Those that were left were defaced by billboards 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 façade of a row of boardinghouses, 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 into 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 uneasiness. This curious 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, dumbfounded, 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 trembling a little. “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 of 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 fun. 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—and 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 think it over. But somehow I don’t believe 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, however. And very dangerous. Such temptations must be overcome. The wine of admiration could be forsworn. Cicily would, of course, forswear it. She could not speak to her. But she could watch. She could worry. That was what parents were for.