“I only keep up the launch,” thought Jane in resentful retrospect, as she crossed the hall, “for the pleasure of the family.” What bunk! It was really Mrs. Carver’s fault, of course. She should have taken him in hand just as soon as she married him. Her weakness was his strength. She’d made him what he was today and the rising generations had to suffer for her folly. Stephen might have been like that if he had married a woman like his own mother. There was lots of “Carver” in Stephen. Jane knew she had been good for him. All the Wards had been good for him. Her father in one way, and her mother, and even Isabel, in quite another. The West had been good for him. Jane paused at the living-room door.
“Uncle Stephen?” she said.
The elderly professor was seated at his brother’s mahogany secretary, bent over a little pile of manuscript. He did not hear her.
“Uncle Stephen!” said Jane again.
Her uncle raised his shiny bald head abruptly. His big blue eyes looked mildly up at her over his gold-rimmed spectacles. His face was very fat and round and pink and his head was very spherical and almost hairless. In spite of his white moustache, Jane always thought he looked just like a good-natured baby. Uncle Stephen was always good-natured and Jane was very fond of him. He didn’t seem at all like a Carver. Was that perhaps because of Aunt Marie, the indomitable daughter of “the great Nielson,” with whom he had been united in matrimony for more than forty years? Aunt Marie seemed so much more like a Carver than Uncle Stephen himself. There was a subtle warning in that thought, reflected Jane. In patiently eradicating, throughout a long lifetime, the more disagreeable traits of a husband, did a wife herself acquire them?
But Uncle Stephen’s pleasant pink old face had assumed a guilty expression.
“Good Lord, Janie!” he said regretfully. “Is it twenty minutes to three?”
“You bet it is,” said Jane briefly. And her eyes met those of her uncle in a twinkle of understanding. Jane never discussed Carvers with Carvers, but she knew just how Uncle Stephen felt about The Whim. Fumbling a little in his haste, he began to put away his manuscripts in a shabby brown briefcase.
“I wanted to finish these notes,” he said helplessly, “but—”
“What are you doing?” asked Jane. The activities of Uncle Stephen at Gull Rocks were always refreshing. Jane thought scholarship a trifle amusing. Impersonal, however, and assuaging, like the blue sky. Uncle Stephen’s conversation could always be counted on to rise above the domestic plane.
“A monograph,” he said meekly, “on the Letters of William Wycherley, for the Modern Language Society. His correspondence with Alexander Pope.”
“I thought Wycherley wrote plays,” said Jane vaguely. In spite of the early exhortations of Miss Thomas, the details of a Bryn Mawr education were fast fading from her memory.
“He did, my dear,” said Uncle Stephen. “Good plays and bad poems and very bad letters.”
“Then why write monographs on them?” asked Jane.
“They are interesting,” said Uncle Stephen, rising from his chair, “because they stimulated Pope to reply.”
“Then why not write on Pope’s answers?”
“That has been done, my dear.”
Jane felt that the mysteries of scholarship were beyond her.
“Pope was very fond of him,” said Uncle Stephen, as they turned toward the door. “He said ‘the love of some things rewards itself, as of Virtue and of Mr. Wycherley.’ ”
As she mounted the stairs in search of her rubber shoes, Jane wished that she were a scholar. Scholarship would be a resource at Gull Rocks. She wished that she were capable of generating a passionate interest in the thoughts of Alexander Pope on Virtue and Mr. Wycherley. She wished that she were capable of generating a passionate interest in almost anything that would serve to pass the time. On the landing she met Miss Parrot.
“Mrs. Carver,” said the trained nurse. Her voice was pleasant but a trifle cool.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“I wanted to speak to you again about Steve’s diet,” said Miss Parrot. “His grandmother will keep on giving him too much sugar. He had three tablespoons on his raspberries at luncheon. I can’t convince her it won’t build him up—”
“I’ll speak to her,” said Jane. She turned to mount the stairs.
“And Mrs. Carver—”
“Yes,” said Jane, pausing again on the third step above the landing.
“I’ll have to speak to you again about my supper tray. The desserts—last night the cook sent me up only three prunes. I thought you’d like to know.”
“Oh, I love to know!” thought Jane. But—“I’m sorry, Miss Parrot,” she said. “I’ll see about it.”
“And Mrs. Carver—Madam Carver spoke to me again about using the back stairs. I’m not a servant, Mrs. Carver.”
“You’re a guest, Miss Parrot,” said Jane, “as I am myself. You’ll have to use whatever stairs Madam Carver asks you to.”
Miss Parrot’s pretty lips were firmly compressed. Jane looked at her in silence. She was a very good heart nurse. Jane fell a prey to inner panic.
“Please be patient, Miss Parrot,” she said weakly. “It won’t be for long now.”
“I shall use the front stairs,” said Miss Parrot firmly. And turned to
