I

Jane stood by the piano in the Lakewood living-room, looking fixedly at the flowers that the children had sent her. Fifty Killarney roses in a great glass bowl. Time was when Jane had regarded a woman of fifty as standing with one foot in the grave. Even now she was glad that Isabel was coming out for tea. Isabel was fifty-five. Jane felt that it would be a comfort to look at her. It had been a comfort that morning to look at Stephen, who was fifty-eight. But men were different. To men, years brought distinction. To women, they brought only grey hairs and crow’s-feet, thick waistlines and double chins.

Jane turned from the roses to glance at her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that hung over her Colonial mantelpiece. Jane’s waistline was nothing to be ashamed of. She had no crow’s-feet. When she remembered to hold her head high, her chin, if slightly⁠—well⁠—mature, was certainly not double. It could not be denied, however, that her hair was very grey. Jane hated that. What had Jimmy once said? “A woman is young as long as she looks beguiling with mussy hair.” Jane looked like the Witch of Endor, now, with mussy hair. Still, she reflected courageously, she never allowed it to be mussy. “Well-groomed”⁠—that was the adjective a well-intentioned eulogist would have chosen with which to describe Jane’s hair at fifty. A barren adjective. An adjective devoid of glamour and romance. Well-groomed hair, Jane reflected sadly, would never have appealed to Jimmy.

Did it appeal to Stephen? Jane smiled a little fondly at the thought. Stephen, she knew, had never even observed her increasingly meticulous arrangement of hairnet and hairpin. To Stephen, Jane still looked like Jane, and, though she had ceased to be the phantom of delight that he had married, in Stephen’s eyes Jane could never be fifty. And yet⁠—she was. There were the smiling flowers to prove it.

Jane turned resolutely from the mirror. A woman of character on her fiftieth birthday, she told herself firmly, should not be staring despondently into a gilt-framed looking-glass regretting her vanished charms. A woman of character on her fiftieth birthday should have put vanity behind her. She should be competently and confidently taking stock of the more durable satisfactions of life.

There were plenty of them to take stock of, Jane reflected. Durable satisfactions were the kind she had gone in for. From her earliest girlhood some unerring instinct of emotional thrift had led her to select them at life’s bargain counter. They had worn well. They had washed splendidly. They had not stretched nor shrunk nor faded. They were all nearly as good as new. They were, perhaps, Jane reminded herself, with a smile, a little out of fashion. Durable satisfactions were not in vogue any longer. Cicily professed to think nothing of them. But at fifty Jane could spread them all out before her and take solid Victorian comfort in the fact that there was not a shred of tarnished tinsel among them. No foolish purchases to regret. Only a very fortunate, a very happy woman could say that, Jane reflected wisely.

And yet⁠—and yet⁠—what wanton instinct whispered that a moment of divine extravagance would be rather glamorous to look back upon? That at fifty it would be cheering to remember having purchased⁠—oh, long ago, of course⁠—something superbly silly that you had loved and paid high for and⁠—But no, Jane’s thoughts continued, if you had done that you would also have to remember that you had tired of it or worn it out or broken it in some deplorable revulsion of feeling. It was much better to have gone in for the satisfactions that endured. Satisfactions that endured like the familiar furniture of the Lakewood living-room. Jane’s eyes surveyed the objects around her with a whimsical twinkle⁠—the books, the Steinway, Stephen’s armchair, her own sewing-table, tangible reminders of the solidity of her life. The very walls were eloquent of domesticity. The serenity of the pleasant, ordered room was very reassuring. It reminded her that she had nothing to worry about in her pleasant, ordered life.

The children, of course. You always worried about your children. Even about good children like Cicily, Jenny, and Steve. You worried about Cicily because she smoked too much and drank a little and played bridge for too high stakes and seemed a trifle moody⁠—too reckless one day, too resigned the next. A curious mixture, at twenty-eight, of daring and domesticity. You worried about Jenny because she did not really like the life in Lakewood, because she did not care for dances and was not interested in any particular young man, and talked absurd nonsense about leaving home and taking a job and leading her own life. Jenny was twenty-five. She really should be falling in love with someone. You worried about Steve because⁠—but of course that was only ridiculous! At twenty-three Steve was proving himself a chip off the old block. He was a most enthusiastic young banker. Stephen was delighted with him and Jane was delighted with Stephen’s delight. She would not admit, even to herself, a certain perverse disappointment that her handsome young son, with the world at his feet and so full of a number of things, had embraced the prosaic career of a banker with such ardent abandon. It was nice, it was natural, she told herself firmly, that Steve should follow in his father’s and his grandfather’s footsteps. It was absurd of her to wish him a little more⁠—adventurous. A little less conventional. A bit of a gypsy.

A gypsy. Jane had only known one gypsy. If she had run off with Jimmy and they had had a son⁠—Jane pulled herself up abruptly. These were no thoughts for Mrs. Stephen Carver to be indulging herself in as she stood staring at the great glass bowl of Killarney roses that her three grown children had sent her on her fiftieth birthday. There was nothing in Steve to criticize, of course, save a certain youthful scorn for his Middle-Western environment, engendered by his education on the Atlantic seaboard. Three years at Milton and four at Harvard had transformed Steve into an ardent Bostonian. He had wanted to settle there and go into his grandfather’s bank. His uncle Alden had encouraged the thought. But Stephen had felt that Chicago offered greater opportunities. Stephen had been for seven years the president of the Midland Loan and Trust Company. He had seated his only son, very firmly, on a high stool in his outer office.

Jane heard the doorbell. That would be Isabel. She turned from the roses as her sister entered. Isabel was well-groomed, too, Jane noticed with a sigh. Well-groomed and portly, with a stole of silver fox thrown around her substantial blue broadcloth shoulders and a smart little black hat pulled unbecomingly down over her worn round face, uncompromisingly concealing the soft waves of her silvery hair. Modern styles were made for the young, Jane reflected.

“Happy birthday!” said Isabel as she kissed her.

Jane acknowledged the ironic salute.

“You won’t mind any other, you know,” smiled Isabel, “until the sixtieth.”

“I don’t mind this one,” said Jane stoutly.

“Tell that to the marines!” laughed Isabel. “I’ll never forget Muriel’s! Wasn’t she down?”

“She certainly was,” smiled Jane, “in spite of the celebration.”

Muriel’s fiftieth birthday had occurred last month. She had celebrated it by taking off her mourning for Bert. He had been dead two years.

“Muriel’s gone off awfully,” sighed Isabel. It was rather a sigh of satisfaction, however. “She’s reverting to race as she gets older.”

“It was a mistake,” said Jane, “for her to bob her hair.”

“It certainly was,” said Isabel. She threw off her fox fur and sank down in Stephen’s armchair. “Do you know that she’s been seeing an awful lot of Ed Brown?”

“I know,” said Jane, “and I can’t understand it. I can’t even understand how she came to know him. He’s very unattractive.”

Isabel, as usual, could supply all required details.

“He gave her twenty-five thousand dollars in her campaign for the Crippled Children. She went to see him in Flora’s old house. He’s turned the gold parlour into his private office.”

A little shiver of repulsion passed over Jane.

“Don’t, Isabel!” she cried. “I can’t bear to think of it!”

“Can you?” said Isabel. “But he has. I suppose he was bowled over by the sight of Mrs. Albert Lancaster in the flesh! He’s just the kind that would read all the society columns. Anyway, he drew out his checkbook with a flourish and that gesture made a great hit with Muriel.”

“He must be as old as Bert Lancaster was,” mused Jane.

“Oh, no, dear,” said Isabel promptly. “Bert was sixty-seven when he died. Ed Brown can’t be a day over sixty.”

“Well, anyway,” said Jane, “it won’t come to anything.”

“Rosalie’s not so sure,” said Isabel. “He has millions. Bert’s illness was awfully expensive, you know. And Muriel’s been generous to Albert.”

“Oh, Isabel!” said Jane defensively. “That won’t make any difference! Whatever you may say against Muriel, she never cared about money. All Muriel ever wanted in life was excitement and admiration and⁠—”

“And love,” interrupted Isabel, with decision. “Ed Brown could love her. Any man can do that. He could love her in an opera box and a Rolls-Royce town-car and a sable cape! I think Muriel would enjoy it immensely.”

“A billboard king,” said Jane reflectively. “I don’t just see Muriel Lancaster as a billboard queen.”

“He’s the president of the Watseka Country Club,” said Isabel with a twinkle. “But I think Muriel could be relied on to make him resign. He couldn’t resign from his married daughters, however. I should think Pearl and Gertie would give Muriel pause for thought.”

Isabel’s command of facts was really astounding.

“Are those their names?”

Isabel nodded solemnly.

“They’re terrible, Jane. They play bridge in the afternoons in lace evening gowns and they wear white fox furs in streetcars! At home, I’m sure they have flats with sun parlours and sit in them in boudoir caps, reading the comic supplements of the Sunday papers⁠—”

“Isabel!” laughed Jane. “You’re simply morbid!”

“Merely clairvoyante,” smiled Isabel. “But I tell you, Jane, since Bert died, curiously enough, Muriel’s been rather lonely. She couldn’t talk to him, of course. But as long as he lived she had to plan for him and quarrel with his nurses and argue with his doctors. It gave her something to do.”

Just then the maid entered the room, bearing the tea-tray. Isabel, pausing discreetly, glanced up at her, just as Mrs. Ward used to glance at Minnie.

“Where’s Jenny?” she asked, on just her mother’s note of hollow inquiry, as Jane poured the water on the tea leaves.

“Out walking with her dogs,” said Jane.

The maid left the room and Isabel promptly resumed.

“It’s fun to flirt, you know, when you haven’t much time for it. But you can’t make a life out of philandering. Not even if you’re Muriel. Especially at fifty.”

“Two lumps?” said Jane.

“Two lumps,” said Isabel. “And lots of cream.” She rose to pick up her cup and stood silently on the hearthrug for a moment, absently stirring her tea. “You know, Jane,” she resumed presently, “it’s a little difficult, from fifty on, to decide just what you will make a life out of. And speaking of that, old girl, what are we going to do about Mamma? She says she won’t go away for the summer.”

“She must,” said Jane firmly, as she offered the toast.

“Well, she won’t,” said Isabel, accepting a piece. “She won’t because of Minnie’s asthma. Minnie has every kind of asthma there is⁠—horse, rose, and goldenrod! Mamma says Minnie must stay in town. Or Minnie says Mamma must. It’s too ridiculous, but I can’t do a thing with her! We ought to have got rid of Minnie years ago, Jane. She rules Mamma with a rod of iron.”

“We’re lucky to have her,” said Jane. “Mamma adores her and she takes very good care of her.”

“We could take care of her,” said Isabel.

“Could we?” said Jane. “I mean⁠—you know, Isabel⁠—would we? Mamma’s awfully trying. Just as trying as Minnie, really. Minnie’s the only person in the world who can manage her.”

“It’s dreadful,” said Isabel, “to think of Mamma being managed by a servant. When you remember how she used to be⁠—so pretty and proud and decided.”

“She’s a very old lady now,” said Jane. “A very lonely old lady.”

“Jane,” said Isabel solemnly, “when you see me getting like that, I hope you’ll kill me.”

“We’ll kill each other,” smiled Jane. “Let’s make a suicide pact.”

“I mean it,” said Isabel.

“So do I,” said Jane. “We’ll jump off the Michigan Boulevard Bridge together.” The thought had really caught Jane’s fancy. “Some early spring afternoon, I think, Isabel, when the ice is just out of the river and the first seagulls have come and the water’s running very clear and green. We’ll climb up on the parapet together⁠—which will be difficult as we’ll both be a little infirm⁠—and take a last look down the boulevard, thinking of how it was once just Pine Street. We’ll shut our eyes and remember the old square houses and the wide green yards and the elm trees, meeting over the cedar-block pavement. We’ll remember the yellow ice wagons, Isabel, and the Furnesses’ four-in-hand, and the bicycles and the hurdy-gurdies and our front steps on summer evenings. And then we’ll take hands and say ‘Out, brief candle!’ and jump! It would make a nine days’ wonder and the front page of all the newspapers, but I think it would be worth it!”

“It would be worth it to Cicily and Belle and Jenny,” said Isabel cynically. “They wouldn’t have to cope with anything worse than a double funeral!”

“To Cicily and Jenny, perhaps,” assented Jane. “Belle won’t have to cope with much if Albert stays in the diplomatic service and keeps the ocean between you.”

“I hope he won’t stay in it,” said Isabel. “He’s got as far up now as he can ever get without a great deal more money. You need millions, Jane, for even a second-rate embassy. Belle’s awfully tired of being the wife of an undersecretary and having a different baby in a new city every third year. I hope to goodness if she ever has another it will be a son! Three daughters in nine years is enough for Belle to handle!”

“A boy in time saves nine!” smiled Jane. As she spoke she heard the doorbell. “That’s probably Cicily,” she said. “She was going to bring over the children.”

In a moment, however, Muriel’s voice was heard in the hall.

“Is Mrs. Carver at home?” She appeared in the doorway, holding a little package in her hands. Muriel hadn’t gone off much, reflected Jane. She was looking very charming, that afternoon, in a new grey spring suit and a little red hat that matched the colour of her carmined lips. Her blue eyes were twinkling, as of old. There was a spirit of youth about Muriel that the frosts of fifty winters could not subdue. It triumphed over the ripe effulgence of her middle years. She looked well-groomed, however.

“How’s the birthday girl?” she cried. “Hello, Isabel!” Advancing to the hearthrug she kissed Jane warmly. “Feeling rather low, old speed?”

“Not at all,” said Jane falsely. “I like to be fifty.”

“I believe you,” said Muriel. “It’s a lovely age. ‘The last of life, for which the first was made!’ How poets do lie! Never mind, darling, you’ll feel better tomorrow. One gets used to everything!” She sank into an armchair and smiled up at Jane. “Here’s a present for you!”

Jane opened the little package. It contained a gold vanity case.

“Why, Muriel!” she cried. “How⁠—how magnificent!”

“Use that lipstick,” said Muriel firmly. “Better and brighter lipsticks are the answer, Jane. No tea, darling! Such as it is, I’m trying to keep my figure! Do you see what I see, Jane? Is Isabel actually eating chocolate cake?”

“I certainly am,” said Isabel, a bit tartly.

“I can’t have eaten a piece of chocolate cake,” said Muriel meditatively, “for over fifteen years! But you eat it, Jane, and you don’t get fat at all. Neither does Flora. I saw her in Paris last spring, just stuffing down patisserie at Rumpelmayer’s, and she was a perfect thirty-six!”

“You’re looking very pretty today, Muriel,” said Isabel suddenly. Her tone was not that of idle compliment. Rather of acute appraisal. She had been watching Muriel intently since her triumphal entrance.

Muriel glanced quickly up at her. Jane heard her catch her breath in a little excited gasp.

“I⁠—I’m feeling rather pretty,” she said surprisingly. “Do you know what I mean, girls⁠—how you do sometimes feel pretty, from the inside out?”

Jane nodded solemnly. She understood. Though she herself had not felt pretty in just that way for years. Not since that last night when she had gone with Jimmy into the moonlit garden. It was such a happy, excited feeling. And it always told its story in your face. You only felt pretty, Jane reflected wisely, when you knew that someone else, whose opinion you cared about terribly, really thought you were.

“Muriel!” cried Isabel. “What’s the matter with you?”

Jane suddenly realized that Muriel was laughing. Laughing happily, excitedly, and yet a trifle shyly. There was something absurdly virginal about that happy, excited laughter. She clasped her gloved hands impulsively in a little confiding gesture that recalled to Jane’s memory the Muriel of Miss Milgrim’s School.

“Girls,” she said dramatically, “I’m going to marry Ed Brown on the first of June!”

“M-Muriel!” stammered Jane. She rose to her feet. She did not dare to look at Isabel.

“I’m⁠—terribly happy,” said Muriel faintly. She had stopped laughing now. There were actually tears in her great blue eyes. Her carmined lips were trembling. The sudden display of emotion had curiously shattered the hard enamel of her brilliant, fading beauty. Jane took her in her arms. Muriel had never seemed more appealing. Jane felt terribly fond of her. She wanted to protect her from Isabel. From Isabel, who, quite unmoved, was still watching Muriel with that look of acute appraisal. Nevertheless, Jane, herself, could not suppress the thought that Muriel’s ample, corseted figure felt very solid, very mature in her eager embrace. She despised herself for the thought.

“Muriel,” she said, “I think it’s lovely.”

“I know I’m ridiculous,” said Muriel, withdrawing from her arms and fumbling for a handkerchief in her little grey bag. “But it’s terribly cheering to be really ridiculous again. I⁠—I was never very happy with Bert, you know. Ed really loves me. He⁠—he’s like a boy about me⁠—” Meeting Isabel’s appraising eye she stopped abashed. “I know you’re thinking there’s no fool like an old fool, Isabel!”

“I’m not!” protested Isabel. “I’m not at all. I’m sure you’ll be very happy⁠—” Her voice trailed off a trifle lamely.

“We’re going around the world on our honeymoon,” said Muriel. “We won’t be back for a year.”

A honeymoon, thought Jane. A honeymoon for Muriel, who was her own contemporary. It was absurd, of course, but it was touching, too. It was touching to think that anyone could have the courage to believe that life could begin over again at fifty. Love at fifty. It tired Jane to think of it. But perhaps it was possible. Autumn blossoming. A freak of nature, like the flowers of the witch-hazel, bursting weirdly into bloom in October when all the other bushes were bare. But⁠—Ed Brown.

“Have you written Albert?” asked Isabel.

“I cabled him Saturday,” said Muriel, The familiar glint of shameless curiosity glittered in Isabel’s eye. “He was very much pleased,” said Muriel with dignity.

“Of course,” said Jane hastily. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Will he come back for the wedding?” asked Isabel suddenly. “Will he bring Belle?”

“They’re both coming,” said Muriel, smiling. “And bringing the children.”

“You should have them for flower girls,” said Isabel wickedly.

“Ed has grandchildren, too,” said Muriel blandly. Jane felt the spectral presences of Pearl and Gertie hover for an instant in the circumambient air. But Isabel, thank Heaven, was obviously not going to refer to them. “I’m going to have such fun, Jane,” went on Muriel, “buying a trousseau. I’m going to be very foolish. I’m going in for black chiffon nightgowns and I saw a negligee last week at Castberg’s⁠—”

A sudden shuffle, a sound of suppressed laughter, broke in upon their colloquy from the hall. Jane looked up quickly. She had not heard the doorbell ring. A tiny red-sweatered figure stood, tottering, in the doorway.

“Happy birfday, Granma!” it cried and staggering across the room fell tottering across Jane’s knees. It was Robin Redbreast, her youngest grandchild.

“Magnificent!” cried Cicily’s voice.

The twins appeared in the doorway. Tripping on rugs, slipping on the hardwood floor, they dashed across the living-room and cast themselves on Jane’s neck.

“Happy birthday, Grandma!” they repeated.

Cicily stood on the threshold. She looked extremely pretty in a rose-coloured sport suit and immensely amused at her offspring’s dramatic entrance.

“Hello, Mumsy!” she cried. “Happy birthday again! Hello, Aunt Isabel! I thought you’d be here. How do you do, Aunt Muriel?”

“Don’t tell her,” whispered Muriel. “Don’t tell her until I’ve gone.” She rose as she spoke. Untangling herself from the arms of grandchildren, Jane walked with her to the door.

“I do feel a little silly,” confessed Muriel in the hall, “in the presence of Albert’s contemporaries.”

“Nonsense!” said Jane stoutly. Though she could not imagine what her own feelings would be if she had to announce her prospective marriage to Cicily. She kissed Muriel tenderly and returned to the living-room. Isabel had wasted no time. Cicily, standing on the hearthrug, was facing her mother-in-law in shocked, derisive incredulity.

“Oh, I don’t believe it!” she was saying.

“It’s true!” cried Isabel. “It’s perfectly true!”

“You’re kidding me,” said Cicily.

“I’m not!” cried Isabel. “Ask your mother!”

“It’s true,” said Jane soberly.

“Aunt Muriel⁠—is going to marry⁠—Ed Brown?”

Jane nodded solemnly.

“My Gawd!” said Cicily profanely. Then, “How absurd!”

“Why is it absurd?” inquired Jane a trifle sharply. She sat down again at the tea-table and removed Robin Redbreast’s fingers from the sugar-bowl.

“It’s so undignified,” said Cicily promptly. “If Aunt Muriel wanted to marry again, why didn’t she do it years ago?”

“My dear,” said Jane gently, “her husband was living.”

“If you call it living,” said Cicily cheerfully. She had appropriated Robin Redbreast and was removing his scarlet sweater. Little Jane was already seated on Isabel’s knee. Jane put her arm around John and drew him gently to her. She leaned her cheek against the embroidered chevron on the sleeve of his navy-blue reefer. The twins looked exactly alike, brown-eyed and solemn and very like their great-grandfather. Their souls were different, however. Matter-of-fact and matter-of-fancy, Jane always called them. John’s soul was matter-of-fancy. He was a lovely, imaginative little boy. His big brown eyes looked up at her wistfully. There was nothing in the world more endearing, Jane reflected tenderly, than the freckles on an eight-year-old nose!

But Cicily was still intrigued with the problems of her Aunt Muriel.

“I should think she would have fallen in love with someone else long since,” she said.

Jane’s eyes met Isabel’s. She hoped her sister was going to restrain herself. The hope was vain, however.

“She’s been falling in love with someone else every six months for the last thirty years,” said Isabel shortly.

“Why didn’t she walk out on Uncle Bert, then?” asked Cicily lightly. “Why didn’t she get a divorce?”

Jane glanced uneasily at the twins. Eight-year-old children were very understanding. Cicily never seemed to care what she said in their hearing.

“The Lesters are a very conventional family,” she said gravely. “I’m sure your Aunt Muriel never thought of divorce. Not even before Uncle Bert’s stroke.”

“Why not?” asked Cicily again.

“She had Albert to consider,” said Isabel.

“Albert?” cried Cicily. Her voice was greatly astonished. “What had Albert to do with it?”

“It would have broken up his home,” said Isabel, a trifle sententiously.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cicily. “He might have drawn a very good stepfather.”

“Men who love married women,” said Isabel with asperity, “don’t make very good stepfathers.”

Cicily looked up at her with interest. Robin Redbreast slid from her knees to the floor.

“Do you mean she really had lovers?”

Isabel did not reply. In her turn, she glanced a little uneasily at the twins. Her silence was very eloquent.

“How stupid of her!” said Cicily. “A woman who takes a lover is always the underdog.”

“Your Aunt Muriel wasn’t,” said Isabel. “There was always a good deal of talk, of course, but she managed things very cleverly.”

“I don’t believe in promiscuity,” said Cicily firmly.

“Cicily!” cried Isabel sharply. “What words you use! At your age your mother and I wouldn’t have⁠—”

“I can’t see that it makes much difference what you call things, Aunt Isabel,” said Cicily cheerfully. “You and Mother certainly didn’t believe in it and I don’t either. It isn’t practical and it’s terribly complicated. I believe in monogamy.”

“You reassure me, darling,” murmured Jane, with a smile.

“I believe,” continued Cicily stoutly, “that when a married woman falls in love, she ought to march straight to the divorce court and make everything regular.”

“Oh,” said Jane, still with the smile, “progressive monogamy.”

“Exactly,” said Cicily. Then added wisely, “No woman is ever really happy trying to live with two men at once. And no woman is ever really happy without her marriage lines.”

“No woman is eventually happy,” said Jane rather solemnly, “if she doesn’t play the game with the cards that were dealt her.”

“Why?” said Cicily promptly. “Not all games are like that. I think life’s very like poker. You look over your hand and keep what you like, and what you don’t, you discard. Throw away your Jack, you know, and hope for a king!”

Cicily was smiling a little over her play on words. It was an innocent little joke, of course, but Jane was very thankful that Isabel had not noticed it.

“And if you draw a deuce?” she said soberly.

“Have faith in the future,” said Cicily lightly, “and keep your poker face. There’s always a new deal.”

“You talk,” said Jane severely, “as if a woman had nine lives like a cat.”

“She could have,” said Cicily, “if she had vision and courage.”

“Vision!” cried Jane. “What takes vision is to recognize the imperial qualities in the cards in your hand! What takes courage is to win the pot with a deuce spot!”

“I call that bluffing,” said Cicily, cheerfully. “You fool the world, but you don’t fool yourself. You may win the pot, but it’s not worth the winning. What’s fun is a game with a handful of face cards!”

For the last few minutes Isabel had not been listening to her argumentative daughter-in-law. Her next remark betrayed the fact that her thoughts had been wandering.

“Belle’s coming back for the wedding,” she said.

“Really?” cried Cicily. Her face lit up at the thought. “Oh, I’ll love to see Belle again! Is she bringing the children?”

Isabel nodded cheerfully.

“What fun!” cried Cicily. “What fun for all of us!”

It would be fun for all of them, Jane reflected, as she stood at the front door with Isabel an hour later and watched Cicily, attended by her cavalcade of children, disappear around the bushes at the entrance of the drive. The twins were trying to roller-skate, with a signal lack of success, on the gravel walk. The air resounded with their shrieks of triumph and emulation. Cicily was pushing an empty go-cart and guiding Robin Redbreast’s faltering footsteps with a maternal hand. At the turn of the path she paused to wave gaily back at the two grandmothers.

“Cicily’s a good mother,” said Isabel approvingly.

“She adores the children,” said Jane. “You know, Isabel,” she added slowly, “modern young people don’t mean all they say.”

“I don’t listen much to what Cicily says,” said Isabel. “But what I catch sounds very wild.”

“Their talk is wild,” said Jane. “But their lives are just as tame as ours were.”

“Except for the drink,” said Isabel.

“The drink, of course,” said Jane. “But Cicily never takes too much.”

“I’ve seen her pretty gay at the Casino,” said Isabel. Then added honestly, “But Jack was, too.”

“They all get pretty gay,” said Jane, “but the nice ones don’t get really tight. Not very tight, that is.”

“You don’t have to get very tight to be pretty loose!” said Isabel. She beckoned for her car as she spoke. It was waiting by the service entrance. “But I think you’re right. They don’t mean a thing by it.”

The motor drove slowly up to the front door. Isabel climbed into it.

“Goodbye, birthday child!” she cried, as it started into motion. She was waving cheerfully through the open window. “I can’t wait to tell Robin about Muriel.”

The car moved slowly down the drive. Jane lingered a moment on her doorstep looking after it in the pleasant May sunshine. Her thoughts were still busy with Cicily’s wild talk. To Jane, Cicily seemed barely out of the nursery. She looked barely out of the nursery with her dandelion head and her short slim skirts and her silly silky little legs! She might have been pushing her doll’s carriage down that drive! She shouldn’t be playing with thoughts like that, though. Edged tools in the hands of a child.

Jane turned on her doorstep and walked slowly back into the living-room to ring for the waitress to remove the ravaged tea-tray. She sank down in Stephen’s armchair. Of course the silly child did not mean a word that she had been saying. Good women talked differently in different generations but they always acted the same.

But did they? Women⁠—good women⁠—were getting divorced every day. Just as girls⁠—good girls⁠—were getting, well⁠—gay, every night. In Jane’s mother’s time a girl who got drunk, a woman who was divorced, was an outcast, a public scandal, a skeleton in a family closet. In her time and Isabel’s she was a deplorable curiosity⁠—more to be pitied than censured, perhaps, but always to be deplored. Now Cicily regarded intoxication as an incidental accident, dependent on the quality of bootlegged liquor that was served at a party. She regarded divorce as a practical aid to monogamous living.

When Stephen and young Steve came in from the five-fifty half an hour later, Jane was still sitting in the armchair.

“Jane?” called Stephen, from the front door. Before taking off his overcoat he came into the living-room to give her another birthday kiss. “What are you thinking about?” he inquired, “all alone by the fire.”

“It’s a godless age,” said Jane promptly.

Young Steve grinned pleasantly at her from the threshold.

“What have we done now?” he inquired cheerfully.

“It’s what you don’t do,” said Jane. “Or rather what you don’t think⁠—what you don’t feel.”

“What’s that got to do with God?” inquired Steve, as he, too, kissed her.

“I don’t know,” said Jane thoughtfully. “I guess God’s here, all right, as much as He ever was. But you⁠—you see Him differently.” Then suddenly it came to her just what sort of an age it was. “It’s a graceless age!” said Jane triumphantly.

“Not while you’re in it,” said Stephen with gallantry.

“Bravo, Dad!” laughed Steve. “That ought to cheer her!”

Jane looked tenderly up at her grey-haired, bald-headed Stephen. For a moment she saw him, slim, young, and debonair, standing by Mr. Bert Lancaster’s side beneath the crystal chandelier of Flora’s little third-floor ballroom. Almost as young as Steve, quite as carefree, just as good-looking. But yet an ardent supporter of the vanished dignities and decencies and decorums. Your husband’s point of view was a refuge, thought Jane. It was a sanctuary to which you fled from the assaults of time and your own children. It was where you belonged. If your husband was fifty-eight, thought Jane, you wanted, yourself, to be fifty!

“I am cheered!” said Jane.

II

“I get awfully fed up with it,” said Cicily.

“With what?” asked Jane.

“With this,” said Cicily.

Jane’s eyes followed her daughter’s around the drawing-room of the little French farmhouse. It was a charming room. It was in perfect order. The May sunshine was streaming in over the yellow jonquils and white narcissus of the window-boxes. Streaming in over the pale, plain rug, lighting the ivory walls, glinting here and there on the gold frame of an antique mirror, the rim of a clear glass bowl, the smooth, polished surfaces of the few old pieces of French furniture with which the room was sparsely furnished. The abrupt dark eyes of a Marie Laurencin over the fireplace met Jane’s enigmatically. That opal-tinted canvas was Cicily’s most cherished possession. Jane, herself, thought it very queer. The enigma of those chocolate eyes set in that pale blank face always made her feel a trifle uncomfortable. The lips were cruel, she thought. Nevertheless, the room was charming.

“I don’t know why you should,” she said slowly. “It’s all so nice.”

“It’s nice enough,” said Cicily vaguely. Then added honestly, after a brief pause, “It’s just the way I like it, really. Only⁠—”

“Only what?” said Jane gently.

“Only nothing ever happens in it,” said Cicily with sudden emphasis. “Do you know what I mean, Mumsy? Nothing ever happens to me. I sometimes feel as if these walls were just waiting to see something happen. Something ought to happen in a room as charming as this. I feel just that way about everything, Mumsy⁠—about my clothes and the way I look and all the trouble I take about the maids and the meals and the children. I’m everlastingly setting the stage, but the drama never transpires. I’d like a little bit of drama, Mumsy. Something nice and unexpected and exciting. Something different. Before I’m too old to enjoy it.”

The last sentence dispelled Jane’s sense of rising uneasiness with its touch of comic relief.

“You’re twenty-eight, Cicily,” she said, smiling.

“I know,” said Cicily, “but I’ve been married for nine years. I may be married for forty more. Am I just going to keep house in Lakewood for forty years? Keep house and play bridge and go in town to dinner and have people out for Sunday luncheon⁠—the same people, Mumsy⁠—until I grow old and grey-headed⁠—too old even to want anything different⁠—” She broke off abruptly.

Jane considered her rather solemnly for a moment in silence. Then, “Life’s like that, Cicily,” she said.

“Not all lives,” said Cicily. “There’s Jenny⁠—Jenny’s only three years younger than I am. She isn’t really happy, I think, Mumsy, but at least she’s free. She could light out if she wanted to⁠—she will some day, if she doesn’t marry⁠—and do almost anything. Make the world her oyster. But my life’s set. I signed on the dotted line before I was old enough to know what I was doing. I don’t mean that I really regret it, Mumsy⁠—Jack’s always been sweet to me and I love my children⁠—I want to have more children⁠—but just the same⁠—” Cicily rose uneasily from her little French armchair and stood staring out into the afternoon sunshine over the white and yellow heads of the jonquils and narcissus. “Oh, I don’t know what I want! Just girlhood over again, I guess. Just something else than this little front yard with the road to the station going by beyond the privet hedge, and Jack coming home from the five-fifty with a quart of gin in his pocket for a dinner-party full of people I wouldn’t care if I never saw again⁠—” She broke off once more and continued to stare moodily out into the pleasant May sunshine.

Jane watched the aureole of her dandelion hair a moment in silence. Then, “Well, Jack brings home the gin⁠—that’s something,” she ventured. She felt her attempt at the light touch was a trifle strained, however.

Cicily turned to face her.

“Yes,” she said. “He brings home the gin and he brings home the bacon, and he brings home a toy for the children he bought in the Northwestern Station. He adores the children and he loves me, but honestly, Mumsy, it’s years since he got any kick out of marriage. He takes it as a matter of course. He takes me as a matter of course. He never complains, but he hates Dad’s bank, and he’s just as bored with suburban gin as I am. I tell you, Mumsy, the excitement has gone out of things for Jack, too. But he signed on the dotted line and he sticks by his bargain. And he’s only thirty-one⁠—with forty years ahead of him! That’s rather grim, isn’t it? I don’t know, of course, if he’s ever realized just how grim it is⁠—”

Again Cicily lapsed into silence. She threw herself despondently back in her armchair. “Don’t you think it’s funny, Mumsy, the things you never discuss with your own husband?” Then, as Jane did not reply, “Perhaps you did, though. I can’t imagine anyone having any inhibitions with Dad.”

Jane met her daughter’s eyes for a moment in silence. She hoped her own were as enigmatic as those of the Marie Laurencin over the fireplace. She could not bring herself to discuss Stephen, even with Cicily.

“Don’t worry about those inhibitions,” she said presently. “For love creates them. Love and fear, which always go hand in hand. When you love people, you are always really afraid⁠—afraid of hurting them, afraid of disillusioning them, afraid of the spoken word which may upset the apple cart. Respect for the spoken word, Cicily, is the greatest safeguard in life against catastrophe.”

Cicily’s wide blue eyes were rather uncomprehending.

“Just the same I’d like to break down the barriers. I’d like to be with Jack the way I used to be⁠—happy and free and wild. Not thinking, not considering. But I guess you can never feel that way twice⁠—about the same person that is⁠—”

The sound of the front door closing broke in on Cicily’s last perilous words. They were still trembling on the circumambient air when Jack, hat in hand, stood on the threshold.

“Hello, Aunt Jane!” he said. His friendly, pale blue eyes were twinkling cheerfully. “I stopped at the garage in the village, Cicily, to see what was wrong with the Chrysler. They say you stripped those gears again. I wish⁠—”

A faint frown of irritation deepened on Cicily’s white brow.

“Did you call up Field’s about that bill?” she said. Then to Jane, “Aunt Isabel always gets her account mixed up with ours.”

“I did,” said Jack. “But it wasn’t Mother this time. It was your return credits. On the last day of every month, Aunt Jane, Cicily has half the merchandise in the store waiting in our front hall to be called for.”

He advanced to the armchair as he spoke and kissed Cicily’s pink cheek, a trifle absentmindedly.

“Where are the kids?”

“Eating supper,” said Cicily. “We’re dining out.”

Jane rose. She felt incredibly depressed by this little conjugal colloquy. As she walked slowly home over the suburban sidewalks, past rows and rows of little brick and wood and stucco houses, temples of domesticity enshrined, this loveliest, leafy season of the year, in flowering lilacs and apple trees in bloom, she reflected stoically that marriage was, of course, like that. The first fine careless rapture was bound to go. Something else came⁠—something else took its place⁠—something you held as your most priceless possession by the time you were fifty. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to have seen it so clearly happening to the next generation. It was disconcerting to know, without peradventure of a doubt, that, to cheerfully smiling, subconsciously philosophic Jack, Cicily had come to look only like Cicily.

III

“Muriel,” said Isabel, “looked amazingly young.”

“She certainly did,” said Jane.

“And wasn’t she wonderful with Pearl and Gertie?”

“My heart rather warmed to Gertie,” said Jane. “She was crying all through the ceremony.”

“It’s enough to make anybody cry,” said Isabel, “to see a sixty-year-old father making a fool of himself.”

They were sitting on the old brown sofa in the Pine Street library. An hour before they had seen Muriel depart in a shower of rice for her trip around the world with Ed Brown. The rice had been Albert’s eleventh-hour inspiration. He had foraged for it in the kitchen and thrust it, hilariously, into the hands of the younger generation. His three little daughters had thrown it, delightedly, at their grandmother. The rice, Jane thought, had rather disconcerted Muriel.

The entire family were taking supper with Mrs. Ward. The children and grandchildren were making merry in the yellow drawing-room across the hall. Belle was strumming out Gershwin on the old Steinway upright. The throbbing notes of the jazz melody vibrated incongruously in the little brown library. The Bard of Avon looked a bit bewildered, Jane thought. His wide mahogany eyes stared blankly over the heads of the two sisters.

Mrs. Ward was in the dining-room with Minnie. It was a long time since Mrs. Ward had given so large a dinner-party⁠—fifteen people, not counting Robin Redbreast and Belle’s youngest daughter, who had had their puffed rice in the pantry and were now supposedly asleep in the guestroom upstairs. All family, of course. Still, Mrs. Ward had brought out the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and her very best long damask tablecloth. She had had the silver loving-cup polished and had filled it with roses for the centre of the table. Jack had brought her some gin and vermouth and Isabel had lent her her cocktail glasses. Mrs. Ward was just making sure that the nut and candy dishes were placed straight with the candlesticks. Since Minnie had been promoted from the pantry to the role of companion, Mrs. Ward’s confidence in a waitress’s eye for symmetry had wavered.

“Albert was very funny,” said Isabel suddenly, “with that rice.”

“Albert is funny,” said Jane. “Funny and nice, too. He was sweet with Ed Brown, but yet you could see he didn’t miss a trick. He was touched and amused and amusing, all at once. He treats his mother just like a contemporary.”

“Live and let live is always Albert’s policy,” said Isabel. “Belle finds it rather trying. Belle’s like me⁠—she always has an opinion. A completely tolerant husband can be very irritating.”

“I like him,” said Jane. “I like him very much.” She hesitated for a moment toying with the thought of telling Isabel that she found Albert greatly improved, then abandoning it. You could not tell your sister that you found her son-in-law greatly improved, without tacitly implying that you had previously felt that there was room for great improvement.

Jane had never quite been able to overcome her prejudice against Albert because he was his father’s son. Jane’s distrustful dislike for Bert Lancaster was rooted deep in the hidden instincts of her childhood. She had subconsciously transferred it to his boy. That was unfair, Jane reflected honestly. Albert had sowed some wild oats in college. He had been a dangerously beautiful young man. Muriel had adored and spoiled him. But he had married Belle and gone to Oxford and entered the diplomatic service and had done very well for himself, until the lack of a great fortune had hampered his further advancement. He had given it up, temporarily, and come home to enter the aeroplane industry, to make, he had said laughingly, a million dollars. “I’ve rented my soul to Mammon” had been his phrase.

“Here come the boys,” said Isabel suddenly. The robust sound of masculine laughter was heard in the hall. Robin and Stephen entered the library, carrying Jack’s cocktail and Isabel’s glasses on Mrs. Ward’s silver tray.

“Mamma!” called Jane.

“Children!” called Isabel.

The throb of the Gershwin stopped abruptly in the yellow drawing-room.

“Drinks!” rang out Cicily’s voice above the talk and laughter.

Mrs. Ward entered the room. She looked a very pretty old lady in the new black silk dress she had bought for the wedding. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement over the nut and candy dishes.

“I hope that ice was cracked right for you, Robin,” she said anxiously. “We don’t know much about cocktails in this house. Your father never served them,” she added in superfluous explanation to Jane and Isabel. “Just wine and a highball for the gentlemen. Was the ice right, Robin?”

“Perfect!” responded Robin with a twinkle. “I never saw ice more expertly cracked!”

But Mrs. Ward did not smile.

“I’m very glad,” she said earnestly.

Just then the children trooped in from the hall. Jane looked up at them with a proud, proprietary smile. They were nice children. They made a pretty picture, in the modern manner, to be sure, as they clustered about the tray of cocktails. Jenny, slim, blonde, and boyish, in the tailor-made sport suit she affected at even a June wedding, sipping the amber liquid that was just the colour of her short, shining hair. Steve, a little flushed with nuptial champagne, singing a reminiscent fragment of the Gershwin as he shook the silver shaker. Belle and Cicily arm in arm on the hearthrug. Pretty Belle, who still looked like an apple blossom, a slightly paler, rather more full-blown apple blossom, clad in the flattering, fluttering pink panels of her French frock, and Cicily smiling beside her, her flower-like head rising proudly from a sheaf of pale green chiffon. Pleasant, snub-nosed Jack coming up with a cocktail in either hand for his wife and his sister. Albert in the doorway, dark and distinguished, not very tall, lithe and slim-waisted, with something of the Greek athlete about him in spite of his cutaway, smiling, over the heads of the brown-eyed twins and his own two dark-haired daughters, at the young women on the hearthrug. Steve approached him with the silver shaker. Albert accepted his glass.

“I give you a toast,” he said suddenly. “To Muriel and the reconstructed life!”

They all drank it riotously. Albert was sweet about his mother, thought Jane. So many sons would have resented that ridiculous mésalliance. Did Albert, in his heart? Isabel, of course, voiced the thought.

“How do you really feel about it, Albert?” she inquired curiously.

“Me?” said Albert innocently, extending his empty glass toward Steve. “Why, I believe in reconstruction. Mother’s had a pretty thin time the last fifteen years. It’s never too late to mend. We all learned that in our copybooks. Another cocktail, Cicily?”

Cool and aloof and flower-like, Cicily accepted the glass. She flashed a brief, bright smile up into Albert’s admiring eyes.

“I adore cocktails,” she said.

Suddenly across Jane’s mind shot the picture of a very different Cicily. A mutinous, moody Cicily, turning in the sunshine of her little French window to declare, “Jack’s just as bored with suburban gin as I am!” This was Jack’s gin, but the child did not look bored at all. Of course she was happy. She had not meant those perilous words that had troubled Jane so profoundly. She was still smiling up at Albert Lancaster over the rim of her little crystal goblet.

“It’s fire and ice,” she said, with a little thirsty gasp. “Exciting. Like love and hate. Like life, as it ought to be.”

“Like you, as you are,” said Albert gallantly. His eyes were bent admiringly on her cool, blonde radiance. His gallantry, Jane thought, was a bit professional. A technique in handling women, very alien to Lakewood. But he had hit the nail on the head. “Fire and ice” was rather like Cicily in her high moments. She did not seem at all impressed, however, with the accuracy of the description.

“He’s irresistible, isn’t he, Belle?” she was saying calmly.

The waitress appeared on the threshold. Jane caught a glimpse of Minnie’s plump figure, hovering officiously in the hall beyond. Minnie was going to see that dinner, on this important occasion, was announced correctly.

“Come, children,” said Mrs. Ward.

Robin offered her his arm. Stephen appropriated Isabel. Steve turned up at Belle’s elbow. Jenny clapped Jack familiarly on the shoulder.

“You’re elected, old top!” she said.

Albert and Cicily were left alone on the hearthrug. She turned from him abruptly to place her empty glass on the mantelshelf.

“Cicily,” smiled Albert, “do you know what you’ve done while my back was turned? You’ve grown up into a damned dangerous woman!”

Cicily met his eyes with a frosty little twinkle of complete composure. Girls were wonderful, thought Jane. You would think, to look at her, that Cicily had been talked to like that for years.

“Then watch your step!” laughed Cicily. “Don’t get burned or frostbitten.”

Jane followed them from the room, hand in hand with her grand-twins. Belle’s dark-haired daughters trooped at her side. Their frizzy black curls recalled the Muriel of Miss Milgrim’s School. It was fun, this reunion⁠—it was lovely to have all this big family under one roof again.

Standing behind her chair, Jane looked down the long white damask expanse of the candlelit table, across the cut-glass goblets and the Royal Worcester china and the loving-cup of roses, to the frail little matriarch in a new black silk dress who was the head of the clan, then turned, instinctively, to her father’s chair. Her brown-eyed grandson was going to occupy it⁠—little John Ward Bridges, aged eight.

“I hope I live long enough,” she thought suddenly, “to see my great-grandchildren.” Steve, on her other hand, was pulling out her chair. She sat down in the gay staccato confusion of talk and laughter. “I hope I live long enough,” she thought solemnly, “to see what happens to everyone. To know they’re safe⁠—”

Just then John Ward upset his glass of water in the nearest nut dish. In meeting the emergency of the moment, Jane forgot to be solemn. Later, she watched Cicily rather closely across the prattling queries and vast gastronomical silences of her grandson’s table manners. Cicily never looked happier⁠—never looked prettier⁠—never seemed to take more trouble to be charming and gay. Jane felt she had been a very foolish mother. There was no need to be profoundly troubled.