Jane mounted to her room in silence. At thirty-six life was terrible, she thought, as she pulled on her rubber shoes. It had no dignity. It wasn’t at all what you expected, when you were young. Youth wasn’t dignified, of course, but it was simple, it was joyous, it was expectant. In youth life seemed—important. The things you thought about were important, no matter how inadequately you thought about them. But later you found yourself involved in a labyrinth of trifles. Worrying, ridiculous trifles. Things that didn’t matter, yet had to be coped with. And you’d lost that sustaining sense that, at any moment, something different might be going to happen. At thirty-six you found yourself a buffer state between the older generation and the younger. You had to keep your son’s trained nurse and you had to keep the peace with your mother-in-law. Did Miss Parrot think she liked to live with Mrs. Carver? Did Mrs. Carver think she liked to live with Miss Parrot? If she could live with both of them, Jane thought, they might at least succeed in living with each other for two brief months—
“Jane!” It was the voice of her mother-in-law, raised in anxious protest from the terrace below her window. “What are you doing, dear? The launch is waiting!”
Jane snatched up a hat and ran from her room. She dashed down the stairs. Oh, well! Stephen was coming that evening. They would go home in three weeks. Miss Parrot was a good heart nurse. She took all the responsibility. And Steve was much better. Gull Rocks had done a lot for him. The sun and the sea air. Her mother-in-law was pathetic. She couldn’t really help Mr. Carver. And Stephen was coming.
Jane banged the screened door and overtook Mrs. Carver on the path to the pier. She slipped her hand through her plump arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was talking to Miss Parrot.”
“What about?” asked Mrs. Carver.
“She was telling me she didn’t like prunes,” said Jane, laughing.
“Did she think that you cared?” inquired Mrs. Carver with acerbity.
“Yes. But she was wrong!” Jane dropped her mother-in-law’s arm and stooped to pluck a handful of sweet fern from among the beach grass. The grey-green petals, wrenched from the fibrous stem, exhaled a pungent perfume. Jane buried her nose in them. They were very sweet and warm from the sun. She ran lightly ahead of her mother-in-law out onto the pier.
Mr. Carver was standing on the float, his watch in his hand. He looked severely at her from under his straw hat-brim.
“Quickly, now,” said Mr. Carver.
Jane sprang from the float to the boat. Aunt Marie was seated in a canvas deck chair. Her ankles looked thick and her small, wide feet very flat and stubby in her white sneakers. She had brought the August Atlantic with her. Jane knew she wouldn’t be allowed to read it. Uncle Stephen was sitting on the little varnished bench along the rail. He looked more like a baby than ever, thought Jane, in his round canvas boating hat. A semicircle of pink scalp showed under its floppy brim in the rear. Mr. Carver was carefully handing his wife up over the little landing-ladder. Her feet fumbled on the rubber treads and she clung a trifle nervously to his blue serge sleeve.
“We may be in time yet,” said Mr. Carver quite happily. Then, with severity, “The starting gun is late.” His tone implied that starting guns were not what they used to be. In the days when he was president of the Seaconsit Yacht Club—
Jane, perched on the rail, her rubber-shod feet upon the varnished bench, suddenly realized that she was laughing aloud. Carvers were pathetic. They were all over sixty. They didn’t know how funny they were. Jane felt distinctly sorry for them. To a discerning daughter-in-law they didn’t really matter.
One white-clad sailor was pulling up the ladder. Another was standing by to push off the launch. Mr. Carver had taken his seat at the wheel. His shrivelled little New England face, with its grey Vandyke beard, was turned sideways and upward, estimating the weather.
“Not much wind,” he said.
The whir of the gasoline engine increased in volume, then quieted suddenly to a steady purr. The water widened between the launch and the pier. Jane turned to watch the catboats, veering and tacking now, around the first buoy. Suddenly she heard the gun. Mr. Carver rose from his seat, still holding the wheel, to observe the start. Alden and Silly were well in the rear. That was too bad, thought Jane. She had long ago decided that, all things considered, it was preferable to listen to Alden talking all evening of how he had won a race than of how he had lost one.
II
“If the wind hadn’t dropped at the second buoy,” said Alden, “we should have come in third.”
“You made a mistake,” said Mr. Carver, “splitting tacks on the second leg.”
“We only missed that puff by four seconds,” said Silly.
“But you missed it,” said Mr. Carver.
“That was a matter of luck,” said Alden.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Carver. “I’m talking of the science of seamanship.”
Jane, busy again with her knitting before the living-room fire, was not bothering to listen. It was just the same sort of talk she had heard at Gull Rocks every Wednesday and Saturday evening of July and August for the last twelve years. Sometimes she listened. Sometimes she even joined in the argument. But tonight she was watching Stephen over her amber knitting-needles in silence.
Stephen, settled in a chintz-covered armchair, with his daughter Cicily on a stool at his feet, was following the conversation of the assembled Carvers with interest. He was sailing the race over again with Alden and Silly. Jane knew he knew every rock in the harbour, every trick of the summer breeze that blew over the blue waters of the bay. In spite of the animation of his face, he seemed tired and very much in need of
