Cicily had laughed at her, consistently, throughout the whole terrible ordeal of birth. Laughed at her as they stole from the Lakewood house with the elaborate precaution not to waken Stephen. Laughed at her in the motor in that hurried drive through the nocturnal boulevards, laughed at the sight of that beautifully furnished waiting-room, laughed even between ether gasps in her breathless struggle, the last few minutes before the twins had arrived. Laughed most of all, in the tranquillity of her narrow, ordered bed, as she lay with the newborn babies in her arms, and said, twinkling up at Jane’s joyful, relieved countenance:
“Well, if this is the curse of Eve, I don’t think so much of it! What have women been howling about down the ages? Why, it’s nothing—it’s really nothing—to go through for two babies!”
Jane had stood astounded at her courage. Her courage and her common sense—the two great virtues of the rising generation. Freedom from sentimentality. Freedom from the old taboos that had shackled humanity for generations. Bravery and bravado—they would take the rising generation far.
Cicily was lying, now, in the tranquillity of the ordered bed across the room from Jane. The room was a bower of flowers. Cicily was wearing a blue silk negligee that Muriel had sent her. Her lips were pale, but her eyes were bright and her dandelion head burned on the pillow like a yellow flame. She was holding a letter from Jack in her hands.
“I’m so happy, Mumsy,” she said. “He’ll be home in four weeks. Do you honestly think we can keep him from knowing it was twins until he gets here?”
“I honestly do,” smiled Jane.
“If Belle didn’t write Albert. She swears she didn’t.”
“I don’t believe she did,” smiled Jane.
“Poor Belle!” laughed Cicily. “She’s so envious of me—with everything over.”
“It will be over for Belle next week,” smiled Jane.
“But it won’t be twins!” said Cicily proudly. “Not if there’s anything in the law of chances!”
“It probably won’t be twins,” smiled Jane.
“I’ve put it over Belle,” laughed Cicily, “all along the line. Jack’s twice as nice as Albert and my baby’s twice as many as hers!”
“Nevertheless,” said Jane, “I dare say Belle will continue to prefer her own husband and her own baby.”
“I suppose she will,” said Cicily, “but I prefer mine. Give them to me, Mumsy, before Miss Billings comes in. It’s almost time to nurse them.”
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
