Jenny had talked for two hours, Jane was just realizing, and had run off for a luncheon engagement, without mentioning Cicily’s name. Without referring to the unholy errand. No one would have gleaned, from Jenny’s cheerful conversation, that her parents were not bound on a casual summer spree, a sightseeing tour, a lighthearted holiday. No one could have gathered that they had embarked on a monstrous pilgrimage to the divorce courts of France, that in three short weeks they would see one marriage of Cicily’s outrageously dissolved and another outrageously consecrated.
They would not have embarked on it, Jane thought with a sigh, if it had not been for the grandchildren. Albert was already in Paris. Muriel and Ed Brown, completing their circuit of the globe, were to meet him there for the wedding. Stephen would have washed his hands of the whole affair, would have left his daughter to the tender ministrations of Flora and Muriel, would have let her be given away at the altar by even Ed Brown, if it had not been so pathetically obvious that no one but Molly, the nurse, was going to look after the twins and Robin Redbreast.
Cicily was going to Russia for her honeymoon. To Russia and across Siberia and over the Gobi Desert to Peking, where Albert’s new job awaited him in the legation. The twins and Robin Redbreast were to summer at Gull Rocks. At Gull Rocks and Lakewood, where Cicily was to join them in October and “see all the family,” she had cheerily written, before carrying her children off to begin life in Peking. Cicily had thought the impeccable Molly, who had been, after all, nine years with the twins, was quite capable of taking the children from Paris to Gull Rocks. Muriel had agreed with her, while regretting that she and Ed Brown were to summer in England. But Jane had been outraged at the suggestion. “She just thinks of the physical care,” she had said to Stephen. “She doesn’t consider what it will do to those babies to see her marry again.” And she had offered to make the monstrous pilgrimage alone.
Stephen, of course, had scouted that suggestion. “I guess it’s a leading from the Lord,” he had said heavily. “I guess we both belong there.”
But this pleasant June morning, as Jane stood looking out over the feathery green treetops of Central Park, she had a guilty feeling that she was going to enjoy the pilgrimage, in spite of its monstrosity. Enjoy it more than Stephen would, at any rate. No woman was quite proof against the excitement of a trip to Paris. Jane had not seen Paris for twenty-three years. She had not seen New York for five. Every mother wanted to be with her daughter on her wedding day—on all her wedding days, thought Jane, with a little rueful smile. And—she would see André again.
She would certainly see André—unless by ill luck he were out of Paris. Flora would arrange it. André himself would arrange it. She and André would meet—it would be almost like meeting on the other side of the Jordan—after thirty-four years of separation. They would meet and talk about life and she would feel again that old sense of intimacy, of identity, almost, with the boy that—After all, there had never been anyone quite like André. They had seen life eye to eye. They had experienced together that first tremulous intimacy of passion. Not with Stephen, not with Jimmy, had she ever felt just that unity of interest and emotion. With Stephen there had been questioning—did she love him, should she marry him? With Jimmy there had been conflict—she should not love him, she should not marry him. With André it had all been as simple as the Garden of Eden. First love, Jane supposed, was always like that.
“Well, I’ve got to go,” said Stephen. He was lunching on Wall Street with Bill Belmont.
“Take a taxi, dear,” said Jane. “It’s very warm. Don’t experiment with the subway.”
“Don’t worry,” said Stephen. “My subway days are over, they were over when I turned sixty. Take a taxi, yourself.”
“I will,” said Jane. She was lunching with Agnes. It was funny how young she felt, just because she was going to see Agnes again. She glanced in the mirror before leaving the room. A sedate, grey-haired, much more than middle-aged lady glanced back at her. A lady discreetly attired in a black-and-white foulard dress and sensible kid walking-shoes and a black straw hat, perched just a little too high for fashion on a head with too much hair! But Jane only laughed. She laughed out loud alone in her hotel bedroom. Agnes would look like that, too. But it was only a joke. She and Agnes would know that the sedate, grey-haired, much more than middle-aged ladies were incredible changelings. When she and Agnes were together they were sitting on a Bryn Mawr window-seat. When she and Agnes were together they defied time and eternity. They laughed at the joke.
II
Agnes lived on Beekman Place in an old brownstone front house that she had bought twelve years ago. She had spent the proceeds of her third play upon it, figuring that it would be as good an investment as any other for little Agnes. It was very tall and narrow,
