Jane pushed the mail into a pigeonhole. She felt she could not bear to cope with it. She felt she could not bear to cope with the winter that lay before her. Which was, of course, ridiculous. Jane knew that it would be just like all other winters—fun enough, when you came to live it. But always in October, reestablished in Lakewood after the break of the Eastern summer, Jane wondered why she and Stephen chose to live just the way they did. Lakewood was good for the children, of course. No longer country, not much more rural than the Pine Street of her childhood, but better than Isabel’s town apartment, nicer, even, than Muriel’s smart city residence overlooking the lake.
Still—suburban life was pretty awful. Narrow, confining, in spite of the physical asset of its wider horizons. Jane rose from her desk and walked to a western window. The sun was setting over the Skokie Valley. An October sunset, red and cold, behind her copper oak woods, beyond the tanned haystacks in the distant meadows. A western sunset, violent and vivid, glorifying the flat swamps with golden light, setting the tranquil clouds in the wide, unbroken sky aflame with rosy fire. The Skokie always looked like that, on autumn evenings. It was lovely, too, on winter nights, a snowy plane beneath the sparkling stars. In the spring, when the Skokie overflowed its banks and the swamps were wet and the moonlight paled the pink blossoms of the apple tree at the foot of the garden, it was perhaps most lovely of all. Jane was lucky to live there—lucky to have that picture to look out on, always, outside her window. Still—
Jane watched the burnished sun sink slowly beneath the flat horizon, the low clouds lose their colour and turn darkly purple, the high clouds flame with pink and pure translucent gold. Then they, too, faded into wisps of grey. The western sky was lemon-coloured now. A crescent moon was tangled in the oak boughs.
Jane turned back to her desk and stood looking at the illuminated quotation from Stevenson that hung over it in a silver frame—the work of Jenny’s hand in the sixth grade of the Lakewood Progressive School, a gift of last Christmas.
“To make this earth, our hermitage,
A cheerful and a changeful page,
God’s bright and intricate device
Of days and seasons doth suffice.”
“What a damn lie!” thought Jane, and turned at the sound of a step in the doorway. Jimmy Trent, his hat in his hand, his fiddle-case under his arm, stood smiling at her on the threshold. The children had left the front door open, of course. He had come in quietly—
“Hello!” said Jimmy. “How’s every little thing?”
“Jimmy!” said Jane. “Come in! Sit down. I’m awfully glad to see you!”
“That’s quite as it should be,” said Jimmy. “May I stay to dinner?”
“Of course,” said Jane. Then, before she could stop herself, “Why didn’t you telephone?”
“Why didn’t you telephone me?” said Jimmy, tossing his hat on a table and placing the fiddle-case beside it. “You could have, you know, at the Daily News.”
Jane thought her reason for not telephoning Jimmy might sound a little foolish. If you said you thought a man should telephone you first, it really seemed as if you took the fact that he had not telephoned quite seriously.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jane; “I’ve been busy.”
“So have I,” said Jimmy. “Awfully busy. It’s the first time in six years that I’ve cut loose from a woman’s apron strings in a big city. I like Chicago.”
“Do you like your job?” said Jane severely. Jimmy looked white, she thought, and just a little tired.
“My job?” said Jimmy. “Oh, yes. I like my job. It isn’t very arduous.”
“I hope you’re working at it,” said Jane.
“Now, Jane,” said Jimmy sweetly, “lay off salvation. I get enough of that at home.” He strolled over to the hearthrug and took his stand upon it, his back toward the smouldering fire. He was still smiling. “I met Stephen at noon today. I met him, I regret to tell you, Jane, in the University Club bar. Everyone was talking about this Lancaster’s stroke. Stephen said he was going up to see Mrs. Lancaster this evening. So I thought I’d come out with my fiddle and offer you a little entertainment. I want to play you Debussy’s ‘La Fille aux Cheveux de Laine.’ ”
“How nice of you,” said Jane a little uncertainly.
“Like Debussy?” asked Jimmy.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Me, too,” said Jimmy.
There was a moment of silence. Jane suddenly realized how dark the room had grown. She turned on a lamp and gat down in her chair by the fireside.
“This is nice,” said Jimmy. “This is very nice.” He was looking interestedly around the chintz-hung living-room. The panelled walls, the books, the Steinway, the few good pieces of mahogany furniture all seemed to meet with his approval. “It’s just like you, Jane. Modern, but not morbid.” He sank into Stephen’s armchair across the hearthrug and picked up the October Question Mark from the
