In Jane’s opinion, Agnes had ruined her life by marrying Jimmy Trent. She never understood how it could have happened. Levelheaded Agnes, at the great age of thirty-one, with a reputation really established as a writer of short stories, with one good novel published and a better one half-finished, had succumbed to the incomprehensible charm of a ne’er-do-well journalist, hanging about the outskirts of the newspaper world of New York, three years younger than Agnes and perfectly incapable of holding down a lucrative job for more than two months at a time. When Jane considered Agnes as she had been in college, the marriage was really incredible. Agnes, on a Bryn Mawr window-seat, the level head triumphantly crowned with a wreath of potted ivy, saying seriously, “I’m not at all romantic. I just want to accomplish.”
One moment of romance had ruined for Agnes ten years of accomplishment. The baby had come at once, of course, and the second novel had never been finished. After a year or two of living in boardinghouses and trying to subsist on Jimmy’s nonexistent income, Agnes had abandoned her writing and had taken a job in the advertising department of Macy’s. It was a good job, she had written Jane very cheerfully, at the time. She liked advertising. On the whole, she liked it better than writing. They had taken a nice little flat in Greenwich Village and little Agnes was established in a play school at the age of three and Jimmy did a little writing, now and then, mainly musical criticism, and worked with his fiddle, which amused him awfully, and took her to hear a lot of good music, of which he was very fond.
Jane’s lip curled as she remembered that letter. She had had another last week. It was this second letter that had determined her to go to New York.
“I wish I could see you,” Agnes had written. “Jimmy may go West for a few months. He’s had a temporary position offered him on the Chicago Daily News. I hope he takes it, I’d like him to see Chicago. Of course I have to stick at Macy’s.”
Jane read between the lines just what Agnes really wanted. She wanted Jane to meet Jimmy and like Jimmy and make things pleasant for him in Chicago, so that he would hold down this new job and make life a little easier for them all, financially speaking, when he returned to the Greenwich Village flat. Jane didn’t relish the task. She knew perfectly well what she would think of Jimmy and what Stephen would think of Jimmy and what her mother and Isabel and even her father would think of Jimmy, when he showed up in the West. But Agnes was Agnes. And Agnes’s husband was Agnes’s husband. Jane would do what she could for him. But she would like to go to New York and look over the field.
“Stephen!” called Silly suddenly. “Don’t you think Jane ought to go to New York?”
“Sure I do,” said Stephen amicably. “I’m going to make her go. Of course, I’ve never seen the fatal charm in Agnes—”
“But you’re a perfect husband!” cried Jane, sitting up in the sunshine. “It’s time we set sail for home. Come on, girls!”
Cicily and Jenny turned at her call. Jenny threw the baseball, with unerring aim, straight into the group around the picnic basket. It landed with a plop, right in the centre of her father’s waistcoat. Cicily and Jenny and little Steve all burst into laughter as he collapsed in mock agony under the force of the blow. Jenny came running up in hilarious apology. An Alice in Wonderland child, with straight fair hair strained back from a round comb on her forehead, and a plain practical little face that was her Aunt Silly’s all over again. She had none of Cicily’s blonde beauty.
“Come help us pack up,” said Jane. “We must leave a clean beach.” She was picking up eggshells as she spoke. Silly’s support had strengthened her determination. She would go to New York. Suddenly she realized that she was humming aloud. The refrain of an old Bryn Mawr song, “Once there dwelt captiously a stern papa!” Good gracious! She hadn’t thought of it for nearly twenty years! It would be fun to see Agnes again.
II
I
Nevertheless, seven days later, as Jane stood on the platform of the Bay State Limited in the Boston South Station, waving goodbye to Stephen and the children and Miss Parrot, she felt her eyes fill suddenly with tears. She was always absurd over partings. That very morning, on the front porch at Gull Rocks, when she was saying goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Carver and Uncle Stephen and Aunt Marie, she had felt a sudden surge of emotion. They were all over sixty. She wouldn’t see them for another ten months. They had been awfully good to her. The congenital peculiarities of Carvers already seemed harmless. Jane had embraced her relatives-in-law with ardour.
And now, at the sight of the little smiling, waving group on the dingy platform, Jane had an almost irresistible impulse to jump off the New York train and return to the West with her family at half-after two that afternoon.
“Mumsy!” shouted Cicily, hanging on Stephen’s arm. “Can I order the meals ’til you get home?”
“Don’t you let her!” cried Jenny, tripping over the cocker-spaniel puppy’s leash in her excitement. “She’d forget and we’d starve!”
“Now, don’t worry about anything, Mrs. Carver,” called Miss Parrot, almost losing her balance as little Steve tugged at her hand. He was on his knees on the platform, peering under the train.
“I want to see the air brakes!” he cried.
“Have a whirl with Agnes,” smiled Stephen. “Don’t let that husband cramp your style!”
“I won’t,” said Jane. “But I know I’ll hate him.”
The train jerked into motion. Jane
