V
“But Cicily,” said Jane, half an hour later, “have you never heard of conduct?” She was sitting hand in hand with her daughter on the sofa in the little French drawing-room.
“I have,” said Cicily firmly, “and I think I’m conducting myself very well!” The child’s young voice rang true with conviction.
“How can you think that, Cicily?” said Jane sadly. “I’m not asking you to consider your father or me, or your grandmother, or your Aunt Isabel, or your Uncle Robin. But leaving us all out of it, you’re wrecking ten lives.”
“Meaning Albert’s and Belle’s and Jack’s and mine and the lives of all six children?” smiled Cicily. “Mumsy, don’t be hysterical!”
“But you are, Cicily,” said Jane. “You’re wrecking them all for your own individual pleasure. You’re utterly selfish. You don’t care what havoc you make—”
“I’m not making havoc!” cried Cicily indignantly. “I’m not making havoc, any more than a surgeon is who performs a necessary operation. No one likes operations. They’re very unpleasant. But they save lives. People cry and carry on, but later they’re glad they had them. It takes time, of course, to get over a major incision. But you wait, Mumsy. In two years’ time we’ll all be a great deal happier. A great deal happier than we’ve been for years.”
“You will, perhaps,” said Jane. “And possibly Albert. But what about Jack and Belle?”
“Don’t talk about Belle!” cried Cicily contemptuously.
“I have to talk about her,” said Jane very seriously. “You have to think of her. You’re doing her a great wrong.”
“Mumsy,” cried Cicily, “you are not civilized. You have the morals of the Stone Age! You really have! I’m not wronging Belle! She doesn’t love Albert. She just wants to hang on to him because she doesn’t love anyone else! If she did, she’d be all smiles. No one likes to be left, Mumsy, but if Belle were doing the leaving—”
“But she’s not,” said Jane firmly. “Facts are facts. Belle says she loves her husband.”
“Well, she’s never said that to me,” said Cicily. “And she’s never had the nerve to say it to Albert either. Do you know what she said to Albert?” Cicily’s voice was rising excitedly. “She told Albert to take me for his mistress. She told Albert she didn’t care what he did, if he wouldn’t ask for divorce!”
“She was thinking of the children,” said Jane defensively.
“Bunk!” said Cicily succinctly. She rose, as she spoke, from the little French sofa. “It would be fine for my children, wouldn’t it? A situation like that? Jack’s been great about it, Mumsy. He really has. He didn’t talk like that.”
“Where is he?” said Jane. “I’d like to speak to him.”
“He moved out yesterday,” said Cicily calmly. “He’s living at the University Club.”
“Oh, Cicily!” said Jane pitifully.
For the first time in this distressing interview, Cicily herself seemed slightly shaken. She walked across the room and stood with her back to Jane, fingering the white and yellow heads of the jonquils and narcissus in the window-boxes. Her hands were trembling a little.
“I won’t say, Mumsy,” she said—and her voice was slightly tremulous—“I won’t say that it wasn’t a bad moment when he left this house. But it’s always a bad moment when you go up to the operating room. And for divorce they can’t give you ether. I wish they could. I wish we could all just go to sleep and wake up when it was safely over.” She turned from the window-boxes to face her mother. “It will be safely over, Mumsy. I’m not going to weaken. I’m not going to be sentimental.” She took her stand on the hearthrug and looked firmly at Jane. “It’s utter nonsense to think that if you love one man you can be happy living with another. You don’t understand that, Mumsy, because you’ve always loved Dad. There never was anyone else. If there had been—” Cicily’s voice trailed suddenly off into silence. She was staring at Jane. “Mumsy!” she cried quickly. “Don’t tell me there ever was anyone else? Mumsy! was there?”
“Yes,” said Jane soberly. Suddenly she felt very near to Cicily. It seemed important to tell her the whole truth. “Yes. There was.”
Cicily’s face was alight with sympathy. “Before Dad, Mumsy—or after?”
Jane suddenly felt that the whole truth could not be told. “B-before,” she said.
Cicily looked at her. “And after, Mumsy? Never after?”
Jane’s eyes fell before her daughter’s. “Once,” she said.
“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. “Tell me! I never—”
“I don’t want to tell you,” said Jane.
“Did you tell Dad?”
“No,” said Jane.
“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. “Did you really deceive him?”
“I deceived him,” said Jane soberly.
“My God!” said Cicily. “When and how?”
“Oh, long ago,” said Jane. “And just as everyone else does, I suppose. I loved a man who loved me. And when he told me, I told him. And I—I said I’d go away with him. But I didn’t.”
“What next?” said Cicily.
“Nothing next,” said Jane.
“Was that all?” said Cicily.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“You didn’t go away with him, nor—nor—you know, Mumsy—you didn’t—without going away?”
“I didn’t.”
“You just loved him, and didn’t?”
“Yes.”
“And you call that deception?”
“I call that deception,” said Jane.
Cicily’s eyes were unbelievably twinkling. “Mumsy,” she said, “is that all the story?”
“That’s all the story,” said Jane.
Cicily drew a long breath. “Well, I believe you,” she said. “But I don’t know why I do. Resisted temptations become lost opportunities, Mumsy. Haven’t you always regretted it?”
“I’ve never regretted it,” said Jane.
“Not the loving, of course,” said Cicily, “but the not going away.”
“Not that either,” said Jane.
“Mumsy,” said Cicily, “you are simply incredible. You are not civilized. You have the morals of the Stone Age! I should think an experience like that would make you see how wise I am to take my happiness—”
“You don’t achieve happiness,” said Jane very seriously, “by taking it.”
“How do you know?” said Cicily promptly. “You never tried!”
“I’ve always been happy,” said Jane with dignity, “with your father.”
“I can’t believe that, Mumsy. Not after what you’ve told me.”
“Well, I’m happy now,” said Jane. “Much happier now than if—”
“But that’s what you don’t know, Mumsy!” said Cicily, smiling. “And what I’ll never know either. You have to choose in life!”
Jane rose slowly from the little French sofa. “Cicily,” she said, “how can I stop you?”
“You can’t,” said Cicily.
It was terribly true.
“But you can love me,” said Cicily. She walked quickly across the room and took Jane in her arms. “You can love me always. You will love me, won’t you, Mumsy—whatever happens?”
Jane felt the hot tears running down her cheeks.
“Cicily!” she cried. “I love you—terribly. I want to help you—I want to save you! I want you to be happy, but I know you won’t be!”
“I shall be for a while,” said Cicily cheerfully. “And after that we’ll see.”
It was on that philosophic utterance that Jane left her. When she reached her living-room again, she found Jack standing on the hearthrug. He was facing Isabel and Stephen a trifle belligerently. He looked tired and worn and worried. He had no smile for Jane.
“I know you think, sir,” he was saying wearily, “that I ought to be able to keep her—that I ought to refuse to let her go. But how can I? You can’t insist on living with a woman who doesn’t want to live with you—if you love her, you can’t.”
“Well, Jane?” said Isabel. “Did you make any headway?”
Jane shook her head.
“Jack,” she said slowly, “I’m ashamed of my daughter.”
Jack threw her a little twisted smile. “Don’t say that, Aunt Jane. I’m proud of my wife. I always have been and I can’t break the habit. Cicily’s all right. She’ll pull through. We’ll all pull through, somehow.”
“But what will you do, Jack?” wailed Isabel.
“I haven’t thought it out,” said Jack. “But you can always do something. The world is wide, you know.” He looked, rather hesitatingly, at Stephen. “I thought I’d leave the bank, sir, for a time, at any rate.” That would be hard on Stephen, thought Jane swiftly. “I’d like to take up my engineering. I want to leave Lakewood, and I thought if I began to fool around with those old problems again—go back to school, perhaps—”
“Attaboy!” It was Jenny’s cheerful voice. She was standing in the doorway, smiling in at them all very tranquilly.
“Jenny, come in,” said Stephen soberly. “We have something to tell you.”
“I’ve known about it for weeks, Dad,” said Jenny affably. She advanced to the hearthrug and thrust her arm through Jack’s. “Cicily’s a fool, but she must run through her folly. It’s a great shame that the world was organized with two sexes. It makes for a lot of trouble. I’m all on Jack’s side. I have been from the start. I’m thinking of marrying him myself, if he’ll turn that old bean of his to the raising of Russian wolfhounds!”
Jack met his sister-in-law’s levity with rather an uncertain smile. She grinned cheerfully at him.
“Want a drink, Jacky?”
“Jenny!” cried Isabel, in shocked accents.
“Of course he does!” persisted Jenny coolly. “I’ll ring for a cocktail.” As she walked toward the bell, her clear young eyes wandered brightly over the ravaged faces of the older generation. “Do you know, you’re all taking this a great deal too seriously? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of Cicily and Jack and Albert and Belle. They’re all going to live to make you a great deal more trouble. Save your strength, boys and girls, for future crises!” She turned to meet the maid. “A whiskey sour, Irma, and some anchovy sandwiches. You’ll all feel better when you’ve had a drink.”
It was, Jane was reflecting, an incredible generation. They took nothing seriously. Unless, perhaps, the preservation of the light touch. But Jack looked distinctly cheered.
And very grateful to Jenny. Yet Jack loved Cicily. When the whiskey arrived, Jane was very much surprised to find herself drinking it. She drank two cocktails. Isabel did, too, and ate four anchovy sandwiches as well.
“I had no lunch,” she remarked in melancholy explanation. Then, “I’ll run you in town, Jack,” she said, putting down her glass.
“No, I’m going over to call on the kids,” said Jack very surprisingly. “They leave in three days.” He turned toward the door.
“I’ll see you at the Winters’ musicale tonight,” said Jenny.
“I’m not—quite sure,” said Jack slowly.
“Nonsense!” said Jenny. “Of course I will. The Casino, at nine. You must make Belle go, Aunt Isabel. You must make her wear her prettiest frock!”
“Belle wouldn’t dream of going,” said Isabel with dignity.
“I bet she does,” said Jenny. “And rightly so!”
“Jenny,” said Jane gently, “don’t.”
“Cicily and Albert won’t be there, Mumsy. He’ll be out here with her, as she’s going in three days. And if they were, what of it? What of it? Why carry on so about it? It’s all in the day’s work. Can’t you take divorce a little more calmly?”
No, she couldn’t, thought Jane, when Jack and Isabel had gone and Jenny had returned to her room and The American Kennels Gazette and she was left alone with Stephen before the living-room fire. She really couldn’t and she did not want to. What was the world coming to? What had gone out of life? What was missing in the moral fibre of the rising generation? Did decency mean nothing to them? Did loyalty? Did love? Did love mean too much, perhaps? One kind of love. It was a sex-ridden age. For the last twenty years the writers and doctors, the scientists and philosophers, had been preaching sex—illuminating its urges, justifying its demands, prophesying its victory. But the province of writers and doctors, of scientists and philosophers, was preaching, not practice. Could it be possible that ordinary men and women, like Jack and Cicily, like Albert and Belle, on whom the work of the world and the future of children depended, had been naive enough to take this nonsense about sex-fulfilment seriously? Did they really believe it to be predominantly important? Sex-fulfilment, Jane thought hotly, was predominantly important only in the monkey house. Elsewhere character counted.
But these children had character. They had managed this appalling affair with extraordinary ability and restraint. They had a code, Jane dimly perceived, a code that was based—on what? Bravado and barbarism or courage and common sense? It was very perplexing. It was very complicated. It was wrecking the older generation. But it was not a clear-cut issue, Jane admitted with a sigh, between the apes and the angels.