V
“Flora,” said Jane, “they’re the cutest things I ever saw! It was too dear of you to make them!”
“The last hats,” smiled Flora, “that I’ll ever make. I sold the goodwill of the shop today.”
“And you’re sailing Wednesday?” Jane passed the toast. She and Flora were having tea on the terrace. It was late in June. The first roses were beginning to bud. Flora had motored out for a farewell call. She had brought with her two little blue caps for the twins.
“Wednesday,” said Flora. “It nearly killed me, Jane, to close the house.”
“I know it did,” said Jane.
“I’m staying at the Blackstone,” said Flora. “The storage company took the furniture yesterday. I’ve sold the house to such a funny man—his name’s Ed Brown. He’s a billboard king. He’s going to turn it into studios for his commercial artists.”
“I don’t see how you could do it,” said Jane.
“I wanted to do it,” said Flora. “I wanted to keep myself from ever coming back. I would have, you know, as long as the house was there. And yet I was miserable in it. You don’t know, Jane, how much I’ve missed Father.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Jane.
“At first, you know, I tried to keep busy with the hats and the war orphans. But I never saw the war orphans. And the hats—Jane, it was the hats that made me realize that I was growing old.”
“But you’re not old!” cried Jane. Her protest was quite honest. Flora’s slim, fashionable figure seemed to her as young as ever. Her face had lost the blank and weary expression it had worn for the first years after her father’s death. In the sunlight of the terrace, the faint sheen of silver seemed only a highlight on her red-gold hair.
“I’m forty-three,” sighed Flora, “and I know I look it. I’ve known it from the moment I realized that I didn’t want to try on the hats any longer. At first I couldn’t wait to get them out of the boxes when they came from the customs-house. I used to put them all on and preen myself in front of the mirrors. But lately—lately, Jane—I didn’t seem to want to. At first I just said to myself that the new styles were trying. But pretty soon I knew—I knew it was my face.”
“Flora!” cried Jane, in horror. “Don’t be ridiculous! You’re lovely looking. You always were!”
“You don’t understand, Jane,” said Flora accusingly. “You don’t care how you look. You never did.”
“I did, too!” cried Jane. “Of course, I know I never looked like much of anything—”
“But you’re coming into your own, now, Jane,” said Flora, smiling. “The fourth decade is your home field. You’re going to spend the next ten years looking very happy and awfully amusing and pretty enough, while the beauties—the beauties fade and frizzle or grow red and blowsy, and finally rot—just rot and end up looking like exceptionally well-preserved corpses, fresh from the hand of a competent undertaker—” Flora’s voice was really trembling. “So—I’m going to Paris, Jane, where the undertakers are exceedingly competent and there’s some real life for middle-aged people. Here in Chicago what do I do but watch your children and Muriel’s and Isabel’s grow up and produce more children? It’s terrible, Jane, it’s really terrible—” Again she broke off. “What are you and Isabel going to do with your mother?”
“She’s going on living in the old house with Minnie,” said Jane. “Of course, it’s dreadful there, now that the boulevard has gone through. Noisy and dirty and awfully commercial—”
“And the elms all cut down,” said Flora sympathetically, “when they widened the street.”
“But Mamma likes it,” said Jane. “She likes the old house—”
“And Isabel’s near her. She comes out here for the weekends. I don’t know what she’ll do when we go to Gull Rocks.”
“You’re going to Gull Rocks?” asked Flora.
“We have to,” said Jane. “We really have to, Stephen’s mother counts on it. And I’ve promised Cicily that she and Jack could have this house for the summer, while they’re deciding what to do. Stephen’s going to celebrate his fiftieth birthday by taking a two months’ vacation.”
“Why don’t you go abroad?” asked Flora.
“Stephen would rather sail that catboat,” smiled Jane.
“Jane, you’ve been a saint about Gull Rocks all these years,” said Flora earnestly. “I couldn’t stand it for a week.”
Yet Flora had stood Mr. Furness for twenty years, thought Jane. Stood that life, spent junketing about with a cribbage board in trains de luxe! Stood those expensive hotels in London and Paris and Rome and Madrid and Carlsbad and Biarritz and Dinard and Benares and Tokyo!
“You’ve been the saint, Flora!” said Jane.
As she spoke Molly appeared, pushing the double perambulator around the clump of evergreens at the foot of the garden. She paused beneath the apple tree, put on the brake, and sat down on the green bench. Molly was Cicily’s impeccable English nursemaid. She was infallible with the twins and very firm with Cicily. She liked Jane, however.
“Come and look at the babies,” said Jane.
The twins, very plump and pink and as alike as two pins, were blinking up at the June sunlight through the boughs of the apple tree. Molly had risen respectfully at Jane’s approach. She had beautiful British manners.
“Aren’t they funny?” said Flora. “They look so clean. And somehow so—brand-new.”
“They are brand-new,” said Jane proudly. She stroked John Ward’s velvety cheek with a proprietary finger. He responded immediately with a vague, toothless, infinitely touching smile and a spasmodic gesture of his small pink-sweatered arms.
“Sometimes he has a dimple,” said Jane.
“They’re prettier than Belle’s little girl,” said Flora. “I hoped she was going to look like Muriel. But she doesn’t.”
“She looks like Belle,” said Jane. “Belle was a homely baby.”
“She’s lovely now,” said Flora.
“Oh, lovely,” said Jane.
“Cicily’s lovely, too,” said Flora.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“And so young,” said Flora wistfully.
“And so happy,” said Jane. “They’re both so happy since the boys came home.”
“Jane,” said Flora solemnly, as they turned to leave the garden, “do you find that looking at the younger generation makes you think of your own life?”
“Yes,” said Jane, a bit uncertainly.
“It makes me think of lost opportunities,” said Flora—“chances that will never come again.” They strolled across the lawn for a moment in silence. Then Flora spoke once more, this time a trifle tremulously: “Do you know, Jane, that I’ve never been happy—happy like that, I mean—except for just the ten days that I was engaged to Inigo Fellowes.”
“I’m afraid,” said Jane slowly, as they ascended the terrace steps, “that no one’s ever happy like that for very long.”
“But for longer than ten days,” said Flora, still solemnly, “and maybe more than once. Inigo’s still very happy with his wife.”
“I didn’t know he had a wife,” said Jane.
“Oh, yes,” said Flora. “He’s been married for twelve years. I met him in Paris during the war, you know. He’d lost a leg and was being shipped back to Australia. He lives there now. He showed me a picture of his two sons.”
Jane wondered why Inigo had felt he had to do that. It seemed a bit unnecessary. Though Flora, no doubt, had been wonderful about them.
“You’ve had such a—a normal life, Jane,” said Flora, as they ascended the terrace steps. “You’ve always been so happy with Stephen.”
“Yes,” said Jane evenly, “Stephen’s a darling.”
“And now you have the children—to amuse you always.”
“Children,” said Jane doubtfully, “don’t always amuse you.”
“Don’t they?” said Flora. “I should think they would.”
“Well, they don’t,” said Jane.
She kissed Flora goodbye very tenderly in the front hall. She stood on the doorstep and watched her motor recede down the gravel path. The passing of Flora meant a great deal to Jane. She would miss her frightfully. Her oldest friend. Except Muriel, who was, of course, so much less—less friendly. Not a friend like Agnes, of course. But Agnes was in New York. And now Flora would be in Paris. She might never see her again. With Stephen feeling the way he did about Gull Rocks, she might never go to Paris. Flora would meet André there. Flora would probably come to know André very well again—
The striking of the clock in the hall behind her recalled Jane to a sense of the present. Six o’clock. Jenny ought to be home on the five-fifty. She was in town taking her College Entrance Board physics examination for Bryn Mawr. Jane was glad that she was going there. It had been hard to convince her that she should. Jenny cared very little for Bryn Mawr, but she cared even less for a social début. It was with the single idea of postponing that distressing event that Jenny had embraced the thought of a college education. Jenny was a girl’s girl, pure and simple. So unlike Cicily, who had always had a crowd of boys about the house—But where was Cicily? She should be home that minute, nursing the twins. She was probably out on the golf links. Stephen and Jack would be back from the bank on the five-fifty. Jane had tried in vain to impress on Cicily the elementary fact that she ought to be home before Jack every evening. To precede your husband to the conjugal hearth at nightfall had always seemed to Jane the primary obligation of matrimony. But Cicily had said she should worry! Suddenly she whirled around the bushes at the entrance of the driveway in her little Ford roadster. Her hat was off and her yellow bob was blowing in the breeze.
“Just met Cousin Flora!” she called. She threw on her brakes. The Ford stopped in a whirl of gravel. Cicily sprang to the doorstep. “Is Jack home?” she cried. “Are the twins howling?” She was unbuttoning her blouse as she rushed into the hall. Jane followed her.
“Call Molly, will you, Mumsy? I’ve got to hurry! Gosh, Jack should be here! We’re dining in town, you know, this evening!”
Jane turned toward the living-room in quest of Molly.
“Cousin Flora told me about the bonnets!” called Cicily from the upper hall. “Bring them up, will you? I’ll look at them while I nurse the babies!”
The impeccable Molly had heard the Ford. She met Jane at the terrace doors. She had a twin tucked under each arm.
“I’m afraid Mrs. Bridges kept them waiting,” smiled Jane.
“Well—you know how young mothers are, ma’am,” said Molly resignedly, and passed on through the living-room and up the stairs.
Jane was not sure she did know, half as well as Molly did. She closed the terrace doors to keep out the mosquitoes. Molly always left them open. Young mothers were rather perplexing to Jane. Cicily never worried about those babies and never watched over them. She left them entirely to Molly’s care. Molly did the watching and Jane did the worrying. Last week, for instance, when the supplementary bottle had not seemed to agree with little Jane, Molly had watched over formulas for hours and Jane had lain awake worrying for two whole nights. But Cicily had not been ruffled.
“It’s up to the doctor, Mumsy,” she said. “Babies always have their ups and downs. I can’t invent a formula.”
Courage and common sense, again, perhaps. Bravery and bravado. But it did seem a little heartless—
The front door opened and Stephen and Jack and Jenny came in from the five-fifty.
“Jenny,” cried Jane, “how did the exam go?”
“Oh, all right,” said Jenny calmly; “but why should a girl know physics?”
Jack made a dive for the stairs.
“Golly!” he cried, “I’ve got to step on it! Where’s Cicily? Where are the kids?”
“In her room,” called Jane. She turned to smile at Stephen.
“That’s boy’s going to make a banker,” said Stephen proudly.
Jane slipped her arm around Jenny’s thin young shoulders.
“Do you really think you passed?” she inquired.
“Oh, I guess so,” said Jenny. She tossed her felt hat on the hall table and ran her hand through her straight blonde bob. Her plain little face was twinkling at her mother in an indulgent smile. “Don’t fuss, Mumsy!”
Just then little Steve burst in at the front door. He looked flushed and excited and just a trifle mussy in grass-stained flannels. Tennis racket in hand he towered lankily over Jane.
“Mumsy, can we have dinner early? Can we have it at half-past six?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jane, with a glance at the clock and a thought for the menu. Her eyes returned to her son. His blond, boyish beauty always made her heart beat a little faster. At fifteen he looked so much like Stephen—the young Stephen that Jane had met in Flora’s ballroom. “Why?”
“Well, because I promised Buzzy Barker that I’d take her to the seven-thirty movie. I said I’d be there in the car at seven-fifteen. I can’t keep Buzzy waiting, Mumsy. I absolutely can’t! If we can’t have dinner early, I’ll have to go without it, but I’ve been playing tennis all afternoon, and I think when a man comes home tired at night and says he’d like to have dinner early—”
Jane, Stephen, and Jenny burst simultaneously into laughter.
“Go vamp the cook, Steve,” said Jenny unsympathetically. “You’re a devil with women!”
Steve vanished, with a contemptuous snort in the direction of the pantry.
“He’s awful, Mumsy,” continued Jenny. “And Buzzy Barker is the arch-petter of her generation.”
“You’re all awful,” smiled Stephen, as he entered the living-room. “I don’t know how your mother puts up with you.”
Jane slipped her arm through his.
“Come out and look at the roses,” she said, “they’re lovely this time of day.”
Somehow it seemed to her at the moment that she put up with them all very easily. She had a normal life and children did amuse you! Arm in arm with Stephen she strolled across the terrace in the early evening air. A faint damp breeze was stealing in from the west—the very breath of the swamps. An amber sunset light was flooding the Skokie Valley. It turned the terrace turf a vivid yellow green. It intensified the kaleidoscopic colours of the flower border. The roses looked redder and pinker than they did at high noon. Jane was thinking of defrauded Flora. She was wondering why she, herself, was ever discouraged about life. When she had Stephen and three funny children and two ridiculous grand-twins—
“Do you remember the swamp this garden was sixteen years ago?” said Stephen suddenly.
Jane nodded solemnly.
“It was under this apple tree,” she said, “that I told you that I knew Steve was going to be a boy. And you kissed me, Stephen—”
“I’ll kiss you again,” said Stephen handsomely, suiting the action to the words.
“Mumsy!” shrieked Steve from the pantry window. “Stop necking with Dad! Lena says we can have dinner at six-thirty! I absolutely can’t keep Buzzy waiting, Mumsy—”
Jane slipped from Stephen’s arms.
“Come in and eat and keep him quiet,” she said tranquilly. Still arm in arm, they strolled back across the terrace. As they entered the living-room, Cicily’s voice was floating down the stairs.
“Where are those bonnets of Cousin Flora’s, Mumsy?”
“Jane,” said Stephen cheerfully, sinking into his armchair and opening the Evening Post, “this house is Bedlam.”
“I like it Bedlam,” said Jane, smiling. She picked up Flora’s bonnets from the living-room table and started with them toward the door. On the threshold she ran into Steve.
“Golly, Dad!” he was crying, aghast. “Don’t start to read the paper before dinner! I absolutely can’t keep Buzzy waiting—”
Jane walked slowly up the stairs, smoothing out the frilly ruffles of Flora’s little blue bonnets. She could still hear Steve arguing incoherently with his father in the living-room.
On the first landing she caught the great guffaw of Jack’s laughter as he played with the twins on Cicily’s bed. Jenny was singing to the accompaniment of running water in the bathroom off her bedroom at the head of the stairs.
“Yes, sir, she’s my baby!
Tra-la—I don’t mean maybe!”
Ignoring her brother’s views on early dinner, Jenny was obviously taking a tub. She had not bothered to close any doors.
There was nothing more satisfactory, thought Jane, as she knocked lightly at Cicily’s threshold, than a large, quarrelsome, and united family.
“Mumsy!” shouted Steve from the lower hall. “Dinner’s served!”
“Come in!” called Cicily shrilly, over Jack’s laughter.
“Jenny!” shouted Steve. “Come on down! Dinner’s ready!”
“Oh, shut up, Romeo!” shrieked Jenny affably, over the sound of running water.
Jane smiled indulgently as she opened Cicily’s door. There was a comfortable domestic sense of reassurance about a house that was Bedlam. Bedlam was exactly the kind of a house she liked.