Stephen didn’t have much fun, thought Jane. With a sudden pang she realized that he looked his forty-four years. His curly, blond hair had receded over his temples and was streaked with grey above the ears. The temples were rather shiny and the hair was growing perilously thin—considering Uncle Stephen and the forces of heredity—in a small circular area at the top of his head. His grey sack suit was just a little wrinkled after a hot afternoon in a New England train. Yes—Stephen looked just like what he was—the forty-four-year-old first vice-president of the Midland Loan and Trust Company, badly in need of his summer vacation.
Men drew the short straw in the lottery of life, reflected Jane, as she looked at him. Men like Stephen, at least. Miss Thomas had claimed it was a man-made world. If so, men had certainly made it with a curious disregard of their own comfort and convenience. How terrible to have to be the first vice-president of a bank and work eight hours a day for forty years at a mahogany desk in the executive offices of the Midland Loan and Trust Company and never have more than a three weeks’ holiday! Why did men do it? When the world was so wide and so full of a number of things and they didn’t really have to marry to—to enjoy themselves.
Wives didn’t appreciate husbands. Ridiculous for her to carry on so about just having to live in idleness with the Carvers—who were, after all, quite harmless—at Gull Rocks—which was, after all, very pretty—for two brief months every summer, while Stephen—
“It wasn’t luck,” said Mr. Carver, “that you had to concede the right of way to the Uncateena. If you hadn’t been on the port tack, she would have had to give you room around the mark.”
“We shouldn’t have been on the port tack,” said Alden stubbornly, “if the wind hadn’t shifted.”
“I think the winds are so uncertain this time of year,” put in Mrs. Carver pacifically.
It was really pretty terrible to have to listen to them, thought Jane. Day in and day out. Perhaps it was worse than being the first vice-president of a bank. Men never had to listen to what bored them. Or did they? A sudden recollection of Stephen’s patient face across the candlelight at her father’s dinner-table rose in Jane’s mind. Stephen, listening to her mother and Isabel. Robin, listening to her mother and Isabel. Her father, listening to her mother and Isabel. The patient “Oh, all right, Lizzie!” that had terminated, since her earliest memory, so many of the Wards’ domestic discussions.
Perhaps people were all bored most of the time after they were thirty-six, thought Jane. Perhaps being bored was just a part of growing up and growing old. The excitement went out of things. Life no longer had a surprise up its sleeve. But still, after you were thirty-six, you went on living for another thirty-six years or so. Living and thinking about annoying trifles.
Why had Stephen, at twenty-two, wanted to be a banker? Why had Stephen, at twenty-nine, wanted, so desperately, to marry her? Why did he want, now, after fifteen years, to go on working at that mahogany desk, to protect the interests of the Midland Loan and Trust Company and support his wife and three children? Why did he want to waste the pathetic brevity of his three weeks’ holiday at Gull Rocks every summer, when the world was full of beautiful, bewildering places that he would never see and life might be full of strange exotic experiences that he would never know? What kept men faithful, throughout a long lifetime, to the banks and the wives they had embraced in early manhood? The sense of duty? The force of habit? The hands of their children, perhaps.
Jane looked at her fourteen-year-old daughter. Her young tanned face alight with enthusiasm, Cicily was sailing the race over, too, but rather with her father in a phantom catboat than with her aunt and uncle in the prosaic vessel now riding at its moorings beyond the pier. Cicily adored Stephen. And Stephen adored Cicily. In his eyes she could do no wrong. She could not even sit up too late. Jane knew she should have been in bed an hour ago. The other children had gone upstairs at eight.
“Cicily,” she said, “it’s ten o’clock.”
“But tonight’s Saturday,” said Stephen quickly. It was a family joke. Whatever night it was was always his excuse for letting Cicily sit up ten minutes longer.
“Yes, tonight’s Saturday, Mumsy!” echoed the child. “And it’s Daddy’s first evening.”
Jane smiled indulgently. It was very difficult not to smile indulgently at Cicily and Stephen.
“You heard your mother,” said Mr. Carver with severity.
The child rose reluctantly from her stool. She looked reproachfully at Jane, with Stephen’s eyes and Stephen’s smile. “Why stir up Grandfather?” her glance said, plainer than words. She looked a trifle mutinous and very pretty, with her cheeks flushed in the firelight and her crisply curly fair hair a little loosened from the bow at her neck.
“Good night,” said Stephen, as she kissed his bald spot.
“Good night,” said Jane, as her lips met her daughter’s smooth cheek. As she stooped for the caress, the child’s fail hair streamed over her mother’s shoulder.
“Melisande!” laughed Stephen.
“I want to put it up,” said Cicily. “I’m fourteen and a half.”
“Picnic tomorrow!” said Stephen, as his daughter turned toward the door. Her face lit up as she threw him a smile over her smocked shoulder. “That child’s growing up,” said Stephen, as she vanished into the hall.
III
Jane sat at her dressing-table, brushing the long straight strands of
