They would all have a pleasant winter together, reflected Jane, as she rolled through the southern entrance of the park and out onto the stream-like bend of the Lake Shore Drive. It was a lovely street, she thought, edging that great, empty plane of blue and sparkling water. One of the loveliest city streets in the world. If it were in Paris, you would cross the ocean to see it. If it were in London, you would have heard of it all your life. If it were in Venice, the walls of the world’s art galleries would be hung with oils and watercolours and etchings of its felicities of tint and line. But here, in Chicago, no one paid much attention to it. The decorous row of Victorian houses, withdrawn in their lawns, were discreetly curtained against that dazzling wash of light and colour. Only the new, bare, skyscraping apartments, rising here and there flush from the pavement, seemed aware of the view. They cheapened it, they commercialized it, they exploited it, but at least they knew it was there.
The Oak Street Beach, as Jane rolled past it, looked like a Sorolla canvas in the mellow afternoon sunshine. The golden sands were streaked and slashed and spotted with brilliant splashes of colour. Bathers, in suits of every conceivable hue, were sunning themselves on the beach. Men, incredibly brown, were breasting the blue waves. Girls were shrieking with delight in the nearer breakers. Children were paddling in the shallows. Jane had known the end of Oak Street before the beach had been there. The curve of filled-in land to the south had created it. Oak Street used to end in a row of waterlogged pilings, held in place by blocks of white limestone. Pilings on which ragged fishermen had sat, with tin cans of bait and strings of little silver fish at their side. It seemed just a year or two to Jane since she had seen the end of Oak Street looking just like that.
“Chicago,” thought Jane solemnly, “makes you believe in Genesis. It makes you believe that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.”
Jane loved Chicago. They would all have a pleasant winter together.
II
“I want to talk to you,” Isabel had whispered. “Don’t say anything in front of Mamma.” She was handing Jane her teacup as she spoke, in the little brown library. Mrs. Ward, preoccupied with misgivings on the consistency of the new cook’s sponge cake, had not heard her. Jane had looked up, a little startled, into Isabel’s plump, comfortable countenance. Her eyes looked rather worried.
“And how was Mrs. Carver’s arthritis?” Mrs. Ward was inquiring of Jane. “Poorly, I suppose, in that damp climate. We had a lovely summer in Chicago.”
Mrs. Ward always loved to talk about the infirmities of other old ladies, and she felt the need at the moment, to justify, in the minds of her daughters, her and Minnie’s contested decision to spend the dog-days in town. Jane let the statement pass unchallenged. No one could do anything with Minnie, and her mother had borne the heat very well. If she liked to spend the summer one mile from Chicago’s loop—Isabel did look worried, thought Jane, as she commented favourably on the sponge cake. Probably Minnie was raising some kind of ruction again.
When she stood up to go an hour later, Isabel rose also.
“Run me home in your car, Jane,” she said.
The two sisters left the house together.
“Well, what is it?” asked Jane, as soon as they were seated in the motor.
“We can’t talk here,” said Isabel. “The traffic’s too noisy. Run me out on the lake front. Isn’t this street awful? We ought to make Mamma move.”
They certainly ought, thought Jane. Stripped of its elms, widened to twice its size, invaded by commerce and metamorphosed into North Michigan Boulevard, Pine Street bore no resemblance to the provincial thoroughfare of Jane’s childhood. The wide yards had vanished, and many of the old redbrick and brownstone houses had been pulled down to make way for the skyscrapers. Those that were left were defaced by billboards or disfigured with plate-glass show windows, in which gowns and cosmetics and lingerie were displayed for sale. Mrs. Ward was the only old resident, now living south of Chicago Avenue.
Jane turned down Superior Street in search of quiet. As they rolled past the dirty, decaying façade of a row of boardinghouses, she turned curiously to look at her sister. But Isabel was staring straight before her down the dusty street, her eyes on the flash of brilliant blue at the end of it that was the lake.
“Let’s park on the curve,” she said, as Jane turned into the outer drive.
Jane drew up at the edge of the parkway. The curve commanded a view of the Oak Street Beach again, seen now across blue water, with a ragged fringe of skyscrapers beyond it, outlined against a sunset sky.
“What’s on your mind, old girl?” said Jane.
“Can’t you guess?” said Isabel.
Jane looked at her with increasing uneasiness. This curious reticence was very unlike Isabel. Isabel was usually delighted to break the bad news.
“No,” said Jane. “I can’t.”
“It’s about Belle,” said Isabel.
“Isabel!” cried Jane. “She’s not having another baby?”
“No,” said Isabel. “I almost wish she were. It might help matters. But then, again, it might only make them worse.”
“What are you talking about?” cried Jane.
Isabel looked at her for a moment in silence.
“Cicily and Albert,” she said.
Jane really felt her heart turn over. She stared, dumbfounded, at Isabel.
“Cicily and—Albert?” she stammered.
“It’s making Belle awfully unhappy,” said Isabel. Then, almost angrily, “Jane, you don’t mean to say you haven’t noticed it?”
“How could I have noticed it?” cried Jane, almost angrily in her turn. “I’ve been away all summer. I don’t believe it, anyway. Cicily wouldn’t—Cicily couldn’t—”
“Well, Cicily has,” said Isabel grimly.
“I don’t believe it,” said Jane again.
“You’ll have to believe it,” said Isabel sharply. “She was with him every minute all summer. She sent the children to Gull Rocks
