“Attaboy!” It was Jenny’s cheerful voice. She was standing in the doorway, smiling in at them all very tranquilly.
“Jenny, come in,” said Stephen soberly. “We have something to tell you.”
“I’ve known about it for weeks, Dad,” said Jenny affably. She advanced to the hearthrug and thrust her arm through Jack’s. “Cicily’s a fool, but she must run through her folly. It’s a great shame that the world was organized with two sexes. It makes for a lot of trouble. I’m all on Jack’s side. I have been from the start. I’m thinking of marrying him myself, if he’ll turn that old bean of his to the raising of Russian wolfhounds!”
Jack met his sister-in-law’s levity with rather an uncertain smile. She grinned cheerfully at him.
“Want a drink, Jacky?”
“Jenny!” cried Isabel, in shocked accents.
“Of course he does!” persisted Jenny coolly. “I’ll ring for a cocktail.” As she walked toward the bell, her clear young eyes wandered brightly over the ravaged faces of the older generation. “Do you know, you’re all taking this a great deal too seriously? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of Cicily and Jack and Albert and Belle. They’re all going to live to make you a great deal more trouble. Save your strength, boys and girls, for future crises!” She turned to meet the maid. “A whiskey sour, Irma, and some anchovy sandwiches. You’ll all feel better when you’ve had a drink.”
It was, Jane was reflecting, an incredible generation. They took nothing seriously. Unless, perhaps, the preservation of the light touch. But Jack looked distinctly cheered.
And very grateful to Jenny. Yet Jack loved Cicily. When the whiskey arrived, Jane was very much surprised to find herself drinking it. She drank two cocktails. Isabel did, too, and ate four anchovy sandwiches as well.
“I had no lunch,” she remarked in melancholy explanation. Then, “I’ll run you in town. Jack,” she said, putting down her glass.
“No, I’m going over to call on the kids,” said Jack very surprisingly. “They leave in three days.” He turned toward the door.
“I’ll see you at the Winters’ musicale tonight,” said Jenny.
“I’m not—quite sure,” said Jack slowly.
“Nonsense!” said Jenny. “Of course I will. The Casino, at nine. You must make Belle go, Aunt Isabel. You must make her wear her prettiest frock!”
“Belle wouldn’t dream of going,” said Isabel with dignity.
“I bet she does,” said Jenny. “And rightly so!”
“Jenny,” said Jane gently, “don’t.”
“Cicily and Albert won’t be there, Mumsy. He’ll be out here with her, as she’s going in three days. And if they were, what of it? What of it? Why carry on so about it? It’s all in the day’s work. Can’t you take divorce a little more calmly?”
No, she couldn’t, thought Jane, when Jack and Isabel had gone and Jenny had returned to her room and The American Kennels Gazette and she was left alone with Stephen before the living-room fire. She really couldn’t and she did not want to. What was the world coming to? What had gone out of life? What was missing in the moral fibre of the rising generation? Did decency mean nothing to them? Did loyalty? Did love? Did love mean too much, perhaps? One kind of love. It was a sex-ridden age. For the last twenty years the writers and doctors, the scientists and philosophers, had been preaching sex—illuminating its urges, justifying its demands, prophesying its victory. But the province of writers and doctors, of scientists and philosophers, was preaching, not practice. Could it be possible that ordinary men and women, like Jack and Cicily, like Albert and Belle, on whom the work of the world and the future of children depended, had been naive enough to take this nonsense about sex-fulfilment seriously? Did they really believe it to be predominantly important? Sex-fulfilment, Jane thought hotly, was predominantly important only in the monkey house. Elsewhere character counted.
But these children had character. They had managed this appalling affair with extraordinary ability and restraint. They had a code, Jane dimly perceived, a code that was based—on what? Bravado and barbarism or courage and common sense? It was very perplexing. It was very complicated. It was wrecking the older generation. But it was not a clear-cut issue, Jane admitted with a sigh, between the apes and the angels.
VI
I
New York was shining and shimmering in the first summer heat. Jane stood at her window in the Plaza Hotel, looking out over the feathery green treetops of Central Park at the long grey line of skyscrapers that reared their incredible towers against the serene background of the blue June sky. A black river of traffic streamed up and down Fifth Avenue. Here and there, like high lights on the water, Jane could catch the glint of a yellow taxi, the sheen of a green bus, the flash of sunlight from a moving windshield. New York looked cleaner and smarter and gayer than Chicago. It looked brand-new. Chicago, Jane thought, had a curious quality of antiquity. Like London. Looking down Adams Street, for instance, toward the smoke-stained portico of the Art Institute, with the old grey lions on guard. It was probably merely a question of the soot-smirched façades. New York, however, could boast a blue sky and a bright sun, just like the country. But it was much hotter than Lakewood. In spite of their unholy errand, Jane was glad that she and Stephen were going to sail in the morning.
The room behind her was crowded with luggage, neatly ticketed for the steamer. Stephen was seated in a plush armchair, perusing the columns of the New York Times. Jenny had met them at the Century, two hours before, looking very chic and New-Yorky, Jane had thought, in a new grey covert-cloth suit and a little black skull cap, pulled smartly back from her round forehead. She had come up
