“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
