“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.
VI
Jane sat on the brick parapet of her little terrace, wondering if the soft October air was too cool for her mother. It was a lovely autumn afternoon. An Indian summer haze hung over the tanned stretch of the Skokie Valley. The leaves of the oak trees were wine-red. A few scattered clumps of marigolds and zinnias that had withstood the early frost still splashed the withered flower border with patches of orange and rose.
Isabel and Robin had motored Mrs. Ward out for Sunday luncheon at Lakewood, and the sun was so warm and the terrace so sheltered and the last breath of summer so precious that Jane had suggested that they take their after-luncheon coffee in the open air. Mrs. Ward sat, her small black-garbed figure wrapped in the folds of a white Shetland shawl, sipping the hot liquid a shade gratefully. She was warming her thin, ringed hands on the outside of the little cup.
“Cold, Mamma?” asked Jane. “That shawl’s not very thick.”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Ward tartly. “I’m never cold.”
Jane’s eyes met Isabel’s. They were always incredibly touched by their mother’s perpetual, proud refusal to admit the infirmities of age. Infirmities that had seemed to creep insidiously upon her since her husband’s death, eight months before. That death had vividly emphasized for Jane and Isabel the menace of the years.
Robin and Stephen were casually dressed in tan tweeds for a country weekend. The three women were still in mourning. Their crude, black figures stood out uncompromisingly against the soft russet background of the October garden. The sombre badge of grief seemed to draw them closer together, to emphasize the family unit and their common loss. Nevertheless, it was still impossible for Jane to realize that her father was dead. That he would never again make one of the little group that was gathered that sunny afternoon on her terrace. Never again meet her eyes with his indulgent twinkle, half-veiled in cigar smoke, as Isabel and her mother rattled off their brittle, shameless, incisive comment on life. Never again help solve a family problem, like the one now under discussion. Isabel was discussing it, very incisively.
“I hate,” she said, “to have him give up his engineering.”
“He wants to give it up,” said Stephen eagerly.
“Not really,” said Isabel; “he just thinks he ought to. I wish he could go to Tech this winter. Cicily could take a little flat in Boston.”
“My dear,” said Robin seriously, “Jack ought to support his wife.”
“He’s only twenty-three,” sighed Isabel.
“He oughtn’t to have a wife,” put in Mrs. Ward, again rather tartly, “at his age.”
“But he has,” said Robin, “and he ought to support her.”
“He’s planned on engineering since he was a little boy,” said Isabel plaintively. “You know, Jane, I think it’s really up to Cicily. If she told him she’d like to live in Boston—”
“I know,” said Jane, “but Cicily wouldn’t like to live in Boston. She’d like to buy that four-acre lot and build a little French farmhouse and live here in Lakewood while Jack worked in Stephen’s bank.”
“He’s awfully good in the bank,” said Stephen.
Isabel rose impatiently from her chair and walked across the terrace. She stared a moment in silence at the tanned stretch of meadow.
“He’s good at anything,” she said presently. Jane caught the sob that was trembling in her voice. “But he ought to have his chance.”
“I think myself,” said Jane seriously, “that Cicily’s making a mistake. But you know how it is, Isabel. She likes Lakewood. She’s made all her plans. She doesn’t want to go into exile.”
“Boston isn’t exile!” said Isabel, turning back to her chair.
“Thank you, Isabel!” threw in Stephen parenthetically.
“But Cicily thinks it is,” said Jane. “She’s never liked the Bostonians she met at Gull Rocks—”
“I know how she feels,” said Robin generously. “No woman wants a husband who’s still in school. Besides, Isabel can’t support them. I mean—we couldn’t give Cicily the things she’s accustomed to have. Jack made his decision when he married. He has a wife and two children. He can’t settle back on his father-in-law for a meal ticket. Stephen’s very generous to offer to build them that house and to give him such a good job in the bank.”
“I’m glad to have him there,” said Stephen warmly. “He’s a bright kid.”
“Just the same,” said Isabel, “Jack’s been building bridges since the age of ten. I can see him now with his first set of Meccano! He’ll be awfully bored with banking! He’ll never really like it.”
“Isabel,” said Mrs. Ward reprovingly, “you shouldn’t talk like that about banking.” Mrs. Ward had a solid Victorian respect for the source of her younger son-in-law’s income. Her remark was ignored, however. In the heat of family discussion, Jane reflected, it was becoming increasingly customary to ignore Mrs. Ward.
“He’ll like Cicily,” said Robin, “and the twins and the little French farmhouse. He’ll like the fun of starting out in life, on his own. He’ll like himself if he’s holding down an honest job.”
“Of course, I can understand,” said Isabel, “that Jane would like to have Cicily near her, now Steve’s at
