It was the period, of course, Jane reflected soberly. It was not the children. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. It was prohibition and the emancipation of women and the new freedom of the sexes. There was no real harm in it. But was this just Jenny’s idea of “living smartly in New York”? It was not Jane’s. It was not Stephen’s. It was not Bill Belmont’s. In his brownstone residence on East Sixty-First Street, Bill Belmont, Jane knew, was as mystified as she and Stephen were at the charms of the penthouse.
Eric Arthur had run through the score of Laugh, Lady, Laugh, but his nimble fingers were still rattling over the keys. A shout of applause burst from his little audience.
“Sing it, Eric!” they cried.
“It’s the new song hit from Sunny Side Up!” Jenny tossed in explanation to her parents. Eric Arthur’s tender young tenor dominated the uproar. He was singing appassionata, uplifted by highballs.
“Turn on the heat! Start in to strut!
Wiggle and wobble and warm up the hut!
Oh! Oh! It’s thirty below!
Turn on the heat, fifty degrees!
Get hot for papa, or papa will freeze!
Oh! Oh! Start melting the snow!
If you are good, my little radiator—”
This was not living smartly in New York, thought Jane firmly. Young people had always sung cheerily around grand pianos. But not—not drunk. Not—not songs like that. She rose to leave the party.
“Jenny,” she whispered, “you ought to send them home.”
Jenny’s eyes met hers with a little indulgent twinkle.
“I mean it, Jenny,” said Jane.
“All right,” said Jenny calmly. “I will.” She moved to Barbara’s side and whispered in her ear. Barbara laughed a little, then glanced at Jane and Stephen. Jenny clapped her hands, then clapped them again, more vehemently, until the clamour about the piano ceased.
“You’ve got to go home, boys,” she said in the sudden silence. “It’s twelve o’clock and Mother’s a blue-ribbon girl. She thinks we’ve all had enough!”
The blunt statement was met with a burst of good-humoured laughter. Eric rose from the piano bench and drained the last of his highball. They were no drunker, Jane reflected, than she had seen many young men at perfectly respectable parties at home. The young Jewish decorator said good night to her very politely. He was really a nice boy, thought Jane. He got the two inebriates out of the room much quicker than Jane would have thought possible. Jane heard Barbara make a date with the curator of prints for luncheon next day. She wondered if he would remember it. When they had finally taken themselves off, Jenny turned to her parents.
“You didn’t like them, did you, Mumsy?” she said. “But you know Eric’s funny when he’s tight.”
“They say, Mr. Carver,” said Barbara conversationally to Stephen, “that the tighter he is, the funnier he is in the show. He keeps putting in lines—I don’t suppose he knows what he’s saying—but they always bring down the house—”
“It’s a gift!” laughed Jenny. She was placing Jane’s evening wrap around Jane’s shoulders. “I’ll meet you at the dock,” she said. She kissed Jane tenderly and threw her arms around Stephen. She looked absurd and adorable, Jane thought, as she smiled up into his weary face—like some fragile, fantastic clown, in those loose black velvet trousers and that cherry-coloured sack. Barbara was rallying Steve at the door. No one, Jane thought suddenly, had yet mentioned Cicily’s name.
“I wish I were going with you,” smiled Jenny. “But we’re going to have a fearfully busy month at the kennels.”
“I wish I were going with them,” said Steve, “but I’m just getting into my stride at the bank.”
“You’ll have a lovely time,” said Barbara.
“Won’t they?” smiled Jenny.
“You bet they will!” said Steve.
It was a conspiracy, Jane decided, as she plunged earthward in the elevator. It was a friendly conspiracy of silence, to keep two foolish old people from worrying over something they could not control—something that was none of their business, really. Steve chatted pleasantly all the way back to the Plaza in the taxi about modern decoration versus Duncan Phyfe tables. Jane did not listen. They did not know what they had lost in life, these kindly, capable, clever young people who did not believe in worry. Stephen looked terribly tired in the bright, white light of the Plaza lobby. She should have taken him away from that party at ten o’clock. They did not know that they had lost anything, she thought, as she plunged skyward in the Plaza elevator. But Stephen knew. And she knew. Though it was difficult to define it.
IV
Paris, thought Jane—the city of joy! She glanced across the railway carriage at Stephen’s face. It looked rather grim. Stephen was rested, however. The six days at sea had been good for him. Stephen was a sailor and, in spite of parental anxieties, he had responded immediately to the tang of the briny breeze and the roll of the deep-sea swell. While still in the Ambrose Channel, he had seemed perceptibly more cheerful. He had landed at Cherbourg that morning, looking tanned and healthy and braced for his ordeal. The grimness had returned to his face rather slowly, as he had sat silently all day, staring out through the window of the railway carriage at the pleasant midsummer French landscape.
The train was pulling slowly into the Gare Saint-Lazare. A group of porters were assailing the door of the carriage. The air rang with their staccato utterance. Jane caught a whiff
