III
Jane tried to remember it that very evening, as she sat by Stephen’s side on a black-and-silver divan in the shrimp-pink drawing-room of Jenny’s East Seventy-Ninth Street penthouse. The penthouse was small and very, very modern. Jane could not understand its scheme of decoration. From the Euclid designs of the geometric silver furniture to the tank of living goldfish set in the marble walls of Jenny’s black bathroom, it all looked very queer to Jane. It looked queerer than queer to Stephen. His face had been a study when he had seen the goldfish. Young Steve had thought nothing of it.
“I don’t like this arty stuff,” he had said with brotherly candour. “I’d change this entire roomful of modern truck for one genuine Duncan Phyfe table!”
Jenny had laughed at him and so had Barbara and so had the young interior decorator who had designed the room. Rather to Jane’s surprise, Jenny and Barbara had invited three of their friends to meet Jane and Stephen—three young men, who, at the first glance, seemed almost as queer to Jane as the tiny modern penthouse.
One was the interior decorator, of course, a clever-looking young Jew in London evening clothes. He painted, Barbara had murmured, and had done some tremendous things, and condescended to run his shop on Madison Avenue, only because one must live. One must, thought Jane, and presumably in London evening clothes. Looking at a canvas of his that hung over the silver fireplace, Jane was not surprised that he found it practical to sell chintzes on the side. It looked like a broken kaleidoscope of green and pink and yellow glass. Jane wondered if it were a sunset or a woman, then realized that her ideas of painting were outdated. It was obviously a reaction, or, at the most concrete, a passion or a mood. Jane knew she was benighted about modern art. But honest, at least. She admitted frankly that she could not speak its language.
The second friend was a volatile young Englishman, the musical comedy star who had just finished playing the lead in Laugh, Lady, Laugh, a show that had been “packing them in,” so Jenny had informed Jane, for the last eighteen months on Broadway. Jane thought his crisp blond hair just a ripple too curly and the strength of his clear-cut jaw line a trifle weak. Nothing made a man look weaker, Jane reflected with a twinkle, than a strong chin. He was very nice and friendly, however. His name was Eric Arthur and he had a penchant for Russian wolf hounds. He had two with him on tour, with which he walked in Central Park every day at noon. They had formed his first bond with Jenny. She had met him at a party at Pierre’s and they had talked of the wolf hounds immediately.
The third friend looked more to Jane like someone whom you would conceivably ask to dinner in Lakewood. That was her first impression and she immediately despised herself for it. A thought like that was distinctly unworthy. It was just like her mother and Isabel. Jane was determined to like Jenny’s friends. This third young man was only a little anaemic-looking. He came from Hartford, Connecticut, and he had gone to Yale University and he was the youthful curator of prints at the Metropolitan. He had struck up an argument with Steve immediately on the question of the eternal merit of Currier and Ives.
All three of them, at any rate, seemed to be on the most intimate terms with Jenny and with Barbara. The curator of prints was their amateur bootlegger, the interior decorator was furnishing the farmhouse at Bedford Hills, the musical comedy star was full of wise thoughts on English kennels where they could buy a few better bitches. He was sailing for Liverpool next week and would take the matter up for them.
Jane learned all this before they had finished with the cocktails. They did not finish with the cocktails for some time. Champagne was served with the perfect little dinner, and chartreuse afterward, and, later in the evening, a highball for the men.
By nine o’clock the curator of prints and the musical comedy star were both a little flushed and loquacious. By ten they were distinctly hilarious. The young Jew did not drink, and Steve, Jane was thankful to note, was behaving himself, though he rated his sister’s taste in liquor much higher than her taste in decoration. By eleven all the young people were shouting the lyrics from Laugh, Lady, Laugh, around the grand piano, while Eric Arthur pounded out the melody on the keys. Stephen looked fearfully tired. Jane knew she ought to take him back to the Plaza, but she did not like to leave the girls alone at a party that was going just like this. Ridiculous, of course. Jenny and Barbara were left alone at all their other parties. They looked completely in command of themselves and the situation. Too young and too pretty, however, to—
They did look ridiculously young. And rather as if preposterously masquerading in this little modern penthouse of their own. Barbara wore a black lace smoking-jacket over a gown of trailing black chiffon. Her curly red hair was cropped close, like a prizefighter’s, on her aristocratic little head. She wore her cigarette—that was the verb that came to Jane’s mind—in a long green jade holder. She was standing at Eric Arthur’s shoulder, highball in hand, her arm thrust casually through the curator’s elbow, singing the jazz melodies with mock emotion. Jenny was hanging over the end of the grand piano, singing, too. She was, Jane thought, rather amazingly dressed in black velvet pajamas, with a long loose coat of cherry-coloured silk. Her shiny pale hair was brushed straight off her forehead and cut short like a boy’s at the white nape of her neck. Two long paste earrings glittered at her ears. Between them her plain, distinguished little face looked out at Jane with exactly the same expression as her poor Aunt Silly’s. But Jenny had been born in the right period. There was a premium set now on distinguished plainness. Jenny’s lank figure in its bizarre costume, Jenny’s homely face with the hair strained off her high forehead, was the essence of smartness. She looked like a cover design for Vanity Fair.
It was the period, of course, Jane reflected soberly. It was not the children. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. It was prohibition and the emancipation of women and the new freedom of the sexes. There was no real harm in it. But was this just Jenny’s idea of “living smartly in New York”? It was not Jane’s. It was not Stephen’s. It was not Bill Belmont’s. In his brownstone residence on East Sixty-First Street, Bill Belmont, Jane knew, was as mystified as she and Stephen were at the charms of the penthouse.
Eric Arthur had run through the score of Laugh, Lady, Laugh, but his nimble fingers were still rattling over the keys. A shout of applause burst from his little audience.
“Sing it, Eric!” they cried.
“It’s the new song hit from Sunny Side Up!” Jenny tossed in explanation to her parents. Eric Arthur’s tender young tenor dominated the uproar. He was singing appassionata, uplifted by highballs.
“Turn on the heat! Start in to strut!
Wiggle and wobble and warm up the hut!
Oh! Oh! It’s thirty below!
Turn on the heat, fifty degrees!
Get hot for papa, or papa will freeze!
Oh! Oh! Start melting the snow!
If you are good, my little radiator—”
This was not living smartly in New York, thought Jane firmly. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. But not—not drunk. Not—not songs like that. She rose to leave the party.
“Jenny,” she whispered, “you ought to send them home.”
Jenny’s eyes met hers with a little indulgent twinkle.
“I mean it, Jenny,” said Jane.
“All right,” said Jenny calmly. “I will.” She moved to Barbara’s side and whispered in her ear. Barbara laughed a little, then glanced at Jane and Stephen. Jenny clapped her hands, then clapped them again, more vehemently, until the clamour about the piano ceased.
“You’ve got to go home, boys,” she said in the sudden silence. “It’s twelve o’clock and Mother’s a blue-ribbon girl. She thinks we’ve all had enough!”
The blunt statement was met with a burst of good-humoured laughter. Eric rose from the piano bench and drained the last of his highball. They were no drunker, Jane reflected, than she had seen many young men at perfectly respectable parties at home. The young Jewish decorator said good night to her very politely. He was really a nice boy, thought Jane. He got the two inebriates out of the room much quicker than Jane would have thought possible. Jane heard Barbara make a date with the curator of prints for luncheon next day. She wondered if he would remember it. When they had finally taken themselves off, Jenny turned to her parents.
“You didn’t like them, did you, Mumsy?” she said. “But you know Eric’s funny when he’s tight.”
“They say, Mr. Carver,” said Barbara conversationally to Stephen, “that the tighter he is, the funnier he is in the show. He keeps putting in lines—I don’t suppose he knows what he’s saying—but they always bring down the house—”
“It’s a gift!” laughed Jenny. She was placing Jane’s evening wrap around Jane’s shoulders. “I’ll meet you at the dock,” she said. She kissed Jane tenderly and threw her arms around Stephen. She looked absurd and adorable, Jane thought, as she smiled up into his weary face—like some fragile, fantastic clown, in those loose black velvet trousers and that cherry-coloured sack. Barbara was rallying Steve at the door. No one, Jane thought suddenly, had yet mentioned Cicily’s name.
“I wish I were going with you,” smiled Jenny. “But we’re going to have a fearfully busy month at the kennels.”
“I wish I were going with them,” said Steve, “but I’m just getting into my stride at the bank.”
“You’ll have a lovely time,” said Barbara.
“Won’t they?” smiled Jenny.
“You bet they will!” said Steve.
It was a conspiracy, Jane decided, as she plunged earthward in the elevator. It was a friendly conspiracy of silence, to keep two foolish old people from worrying over something they could not control—something that was none of their business, really. Steve chatted pleasantly all the way back to the Plaza in the taxi about modern decoration versus Duncan Phyfe tables. Jane did not listen. They did not know what they had lost in life, these kindly, capable, clever young people who did not believe in worry. Stephen looked terribly tired in the bright, white light of the Plaza lobby. She should have taken him away from that party at ten o’clock. They did not know that they had lost anything, she thought, as she plunged skyward in the Plaza elevator. But Stephen knew. And she knew. Though it was difficult to define it.