“She wishes that I weren’t watching her,” thought Jane, as she smiled and nodded brightly in response.
IV
Jane was walking briskly down the main street of Lakewood, enjoying the first winter snowfall. The air was damply mild. Great feathery flakes were drifting all around her. The ground was covered with a thin, wet blanket of snow. The roofs of the village stores, the bare boughs of the oak trees, were frosted with soft, white icing. The whiteness of the world contrasted vividly with the yellow grey of the December sky.
Jane was on her way to the Woman’s Club, to watch her grandchildren’s dancing class. She often dropped in, on Tuesday afternoons, to look at it. In the midst of the uncertainties and perplexities engendered by the sight of her own children, Jane always found a glimpse of her grandchildren very comforting. Moreover, in a world of shifting values, of mental hazards and moral doubts, there was something absurdly reassuring in the sight of anything that remained so exactly the same as dancing school.
This afternoon, for instance, as soon as she entered the vestibule of the Woman’s Club, the reassuring notes of the “Blue Danube” fell caressingly on her ears. Mr. Bournique was still teaching children to waltz. Teaching the twins to waltz, as he had taught Cicily and Jenny and Steve, as his father had taught Jane herself. Jane could distinctly recall her sensations when she had waltzed to the strains of the “Blue Danube,” not with a partner, but standing with Flora and Muriel in a long line of little girls, with a long line of little boys behind them, her eyes conscientiously fixed on old Mr. Bournique’s striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. She remembered her white organdie dress, with pink ribbons run through it, and the fat pink satin bows on her thin pigtails. That was before she was old enough to be ashamed of her pigtails, to long for curls—before she had met André. The Bourniques were an institution in Chicago, as old as the aristocracy of the Western city.
Jane entered the ballroom. And there was Mr. Bournique, grey-haired and slender, dominating the scene, gliding and bending to the thin, tinkling strains of the Woman’s Club piano. And there was the line of little girls and the line of little boys, gliding and bending behind him, their eyes conscientiously fixed on his striped trouser legs and black patent-leather shoes. Slick-haired little boys in blue serge suits and fairy-like little girls in light thin dresses. One fat little boy who could not keep time and one fat little girl who would never get partners. Every dancing class, reflected Jane, as she sat down at the end of the row of indifferent governesses in the far corner of the room, every dancing class had one fat little girl who was always reduced to dancing with Mr. Bournique, who could not aspire to even the fat little boy who could not keep time for a partner.
Her grandson noticed her immediately. He waved and grinned and lost his step in welcome. His sister was an excellent dancer. She had inherited Jane’s straight hair, however. But straight hair was not the curse of woman that it had been forty years ago. Belle’s little daughters’ wiry black curls bobbed up and down like shavings, just as Muriel’s had done in the late eighties. Mr. Bournique’s castanets clapped sharply in his gloved hands. The music stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar.
“Take partners!” he said.
The little girls sat down promptly on the benches that lined the room. The little boys walked deliberately over to them. They scanned the little girls’ indifferent faces indifferently. They bowed profoundly before their chosen partners. The little girls rose and curtsied. Mr. Bournique’s castanets clapped sharply in his gloved hands. The music started abruptly. The children began waltzing falteringly, their heads bent, their eyes on their own feet. All but the fat little girl, who, clasped in the firm gloved hands of Mr. Bournique, was moving about the room with the grace of a fairy.
This was much more fun, thought Jane, than watching a first Assembly ball. And it was reassuring to see so much Deportment—deportment with a capital D! It might be the late eighties all over again! Just then Jane heard Cicily’s low laugh ring out happily in the hall without.
“Oh, yes, you do!” she was saying. “They’re utterly darling!”
Jane’s startled eyes were on the doorway when Cicily and Albert entered the room. Her first impression was that never, never, had she seen the child looking so pretty. Her dark fox fur, her little black hat, were silvered with melting snowflakes. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright and her lips were parted in a little possessive smile of provocative mockery. She was glancing over her shoulder at Albert—Albert, who was obviously entering the ballroom under protest, who would much rather have prolonged his walk with Cicily in the privacy of the first December snowstorm without. She sank into a chair near the entrance, laughed up at him, and then, with a little gesture of confiding intimacy, reached up to touch his sleeve and motion him down into the seat at her side. He covered her hand with his own and sat down, saying something straight into her sparkling eyes. Cicily did not reply. She withdrew her hand and turned away and sat looking at the waltzing children, her eyes bright
