“Je veux un taxi,” said Jane.
The porters responded with a flood of eloquence. Jane and Stephen following their blue smocked figures through the crowd. Steamer acquaintances waved and smiled. Jane caught other whiffs of garlic. She could not subdue that sense of adventure. Ten days in Paris! She was smiling a little excitedly, when she first caught sight of Cicily—Cicily standing with the three children and Molly at the gate of the train.
“Look at Robin Redbreast!” she cried gaily to Stephen. “Isn’t he huge?”
It was then that she saw Albert. She suffered a quick sense of shock. Why hadn’t she expected to see him? Of course he would be there. Nevertheless, his presence seemed vaguely indecent in that little family gathering. The pleasant, snub-nosed, twinkle-eyed ghost of Jack loomed at his side. He lifted Robin Redbreast to his shoulder. They were all laughing and waving. Cicily looked radiant. The twins dashed into Jane’s arms.
“Mumsy!” cried Cicily. She kissed Jane warmly. Then turned to greet her father. Albert thrust Robin Redbreast into Jane’s embrace. Over the child’s yellow head, surprisingly, he kissed her.
“Aunt Jane,” he was saying affectionately, “it was great of you to come!”
Cicily’s arm was thrust through Stephen’s. She was talking excitedly as she led him through the crowded concourse.
“I reserved your rooms at the Chatham. Why do you go there? Aunt Muriel’s at the Ritz. I wish I had room for you in my flat, but it’s perfectly tiny. Molly hates it. Just one bathroom and we froze all winter. But it’s sweet now. You can sit on the balcony and see the Arc de Triomphe.”
Albert was hailing two taxis.
“I suppose you want to go straight to the hotel, sir, and rest,” he was saying. “Did you have a smooth passage? We’re going to have a gay week.”
“Cousin Flora’s simply wild to see you, Mumsy,” interrupted Cicily. “She’s been awfully nice to me. She knows the smartest people—real frogs, you know—and she asked me to all her parties. I’ve simply loved it. I don’t want to go to Peking at all. I’d like to live here all my life—if it weren’t so far from Lakewood.”
Stephen was succumbing, with a faintly constrained smile, to Cicily’s gay garrulity. She broke off suddenly to squeeze his elbow and kiss his cheek. Albert took up the burden of her song.
“We’re all dining tonight at L’Escargot. Do you like snails, Aunt Jane? We’re going to pick up Mother and my esteemed stepfather at the Ritz—my esteemed stepfather is really all right, you know. He’s a good sort. We’ll all get a drink at the Ritz bar. The Ritz bar’s quite a sight, sir—”
“Let’s send the children home with Molly,” said Cicily gaily, “and go up to the Chatham with Mumsy and Dad. I’ve got so much to say to you, darlings, that I don’t know where to begin. We’re going to be married in Cousin Flora’s apartment. Just the families, you know. I know you’ll like my dress, Mumsy. I won’t let Albert see it—”
This was another conspiracy, thought Jane, as she climbed into the waiting taxi. A conspiracy, this time, not of silence, but of chatter. A friendly conspiracy to keep two foolish old people from worrying over something that they could not control. A conspiracy to prove that this was a very usual situation, a very gay situation, a very happy situation—a situation that called for frivolity and celebration. A party, in fact. A purely social occasion.
But did not Cicily, Jane wondered, as their taxi dodged and tooted through chaotic traffic of the old grey streets, did not Cicily, beneath the gay garrulity of her light and laughing chatter, feel at all disturbed by her equivocal position as Albert’s fiancée and Jack’s wife? Jane, herself, felt profoundly disturbed by it. Belle’s divorce had been granted in Reno the end of March. Albert had been—could you call him a bachelor?—for three months. Yet Jane could not really consider the engagement as a fait accompli until next Wednesday morning, when Cicily’s decree would be made final and Cicily, herself, would be—hateful word—free. She would be married three days later in Flora’s apartment. But not until Wednesday noon, Jane told herself, firmly, would she recognize the engagement. If she did not recognize it, however, what was Albert’s status in the crowded little taxi? It was terribly complicated. It was terribly sordid. Glancing from Cicily’s bright, smiling countenance to Stephen’s grim, constrained one, Jane could not agree with Albert’s initial statement. They would not have a gay week.
V
Jane and Flora were sitting side by side on the Empire sofa of Jane’s little green sitting-room in the Chatham Hotel. The sitting-room was rather small and rather over-upholstered. It was extremely Empire and extremely green. The green carpet, the green curtains, the green wallpaper, and the green furniture were all emblazoned with Napoleonic emblems. Gold crowns and laurel wreaths and bees met the eye at every turn. Jane thought it looked rather sweet and stuffy and French, but “I can’t think in this room for the buzzing” had been Stephen’s laconic comment, when Cicily and Albert had finally left them alone in it, yesterday afternoon.
It was ten o’clock in the morning and Flora had just come in. She had brought a big box of roses and she was terribly glad to see Jane. Stephen was downstairs in the dining-room eating what he termed “a Christian breakfast.” Jane’s tray of coffee and rolls and honey was still on the sitting-room table.
“Jane,” said Flora, “you’re incredibly the same.”
“Am I?” said Jane a little wistfully. She had not seen Flora for nine years. Flora, she thought, looked subtly subdued and sophisticated. Silver-haired and slender in her grey French frock she no longer suggested anything as bright and gay
