III
Jane could not, however, keep her angry thoughts on Isabel. The April afternoon was very warm and fair. The elm trees were budding down the stretch of Pine Street. The bushes in the park around the Water Works Tower were already green. Jane saw the bench where she and André had sat to look at the pictures of Sarah Bernhardt. She remembered Muriel’s adolescent giggle. Muriel was an idiot, even then.
The lake stretched, softly blue beyond the Oak Street breakers. A gaunt skyscraper or two loomed up on the filled-in land to the southeast. A whole section of the city had been created there since Jane’s childhood. Created from garbage and tin cans and rags and old iron. Apartments were going up in the waste of empty land. Magnificent redbrick and grey-stone apartments, with liveried doormen and marble entrance halls and wrought-iron elevators, standing where once there had been only blue water. Blue water beyond the vacant lots where sweet clover and ragweed had bloomed. Jane felt like the first white child born west of the Alleghenies when she looked at them. She had seen Chicago change from a provincial town into the sixth largest city in the world.
She turned the car abruptly from the Drive at the Division Street corner. She was going to pick up Jimmy at his North State Street boardinghouse and motor him out to Lakewood for the weekend. They would have lovely weather. One more hot day like this, thought Jane, and perhaps the apple tree would burst into bloom.
Jimmy was standing on the curbstone, his suitcase at his feet.
“Am I late?” asked Jane anxiously, as she brought the car to a standstill.
“No—I’m early,” said Jimmy. He opened the door of the motor and slipped into the seat beside her. “I thought maybe you’d come sooner than you said.”
“I was having tea with Mamma,” said Jane, “and talking to Isabel.” She set the gears in motion.
“What about?” asked Jimmy.
“Oh, nothing,” said Jane. “Nothing much.” Suddenly she decided to tell him. “Muriel told Isabel about seeing us at De Jonche’s yesterday,” she said, her eyes on the street before her.
“What was there to tell?” asked Jimmy innocently.
“Oh—Muriel can always make a good story,” said Jane. There was a little pause. Jane knew Jimmy was looking at her profile.
“Well—do you care?” asked Jimmy presently.
“Oh, no,” said Jane falsely. “No—not at all. Only—”
She stopped.
“Only what?” asked Jimmy gently.
“Only it seems too bad that people have to try to spoil lovely things. To—to smirch them, you know, with ugly gossip and false interpretations.” Again Jane stopped.
“They can’t spoil them really, Jane,” said Jimmy very seriously. “No one could ever spoil what happens between you and me but just ourselves.”
That was just like Jimmy, thought Jane, smiling softly at the North State Street traffic. It was just like Jimmy to understand. He had perfectly phrased the thought she had been groping forever since her angry altercation with Isabel. As long as she and Jimmy kept their heads and—well—did not allow anything—anything silly to happen, there was nothing in their friendship to be ashamed of.
And it would so soon be over. Jimmy’s job at the News would be ended in a fortnight. His friend was on the water now, coming back from Munich. They had had a lovely winter—the loveliest winter, Jane thought, that she had ever known. Jimmy had written his reviews and had finished his concerto, and she—she had never been so happy, really, with Stephen and the children, never so contented at Lakewood, never so sure and satisfied, in her secret heart, that Life was worth living, that it would always, somehow, be fun to live.
There had been, of course. Miss Parrot’s cynical smile and Sarah’s impassive silence and Muriel’s malicious twinkle and her father’s troubled eyes. And now there was Isabel’s uncalled-for interference. It was, as her father had just said, a wicked world. But she and Jimmy had never exchanged a word that she could be sorry for. Never said anything, really, that Stephen might not have heard. Stephen, himself, had never been troubled, Stephen liked Jimmy. Stephen knew she was to be implicitly trusted.
And now Jimmy was going—going in two weeks—back to New York to the Greenwich Village flat and the big and little Agneses. And Jane—Jane would be left in Lakewood to—to watch the spring come and buy the children’s thin clothes and clean the house and pack up for the Gull Rocks summer. Jane sighed a little as she thought of the months before her. Just like all other spring months, of course. But she would miss Jimmy dreadfully, and she would never see him again, of course, just as she had this last lovely winter. He would go back to New York and produce the concerto and become suddenly distinguished. Suddenly distinguished, really, a little bit because of her. Of course it was absurd of Jimmy to call it her concerto, but Jane knew that she had kept him working. Her encouragement and enthusiasm had spurred him on. Yes, both she and Jimmy would always be a little better for the winter’s friendship, which no one but themselves could ever spoil. No one but themselves could ever understand it, really—a simple friendship that had meant so much to them, a joy of companionship—
“A penny for your thoughts, Jane?” said Jimmy.
“I was just thinking of us,” said Jane, “and of all that’s happened this winter.”
“Have you really liked it?” asked Jimmy.
“Oh, yes,” breathed Jane. Then, after a moment, “It seems so funny, now, to think I didn’t think I would, when Agnes first wrote me you were coming. I thought you’d be terrible, Jimmy—”
“I am terrible,” said Jimmy, with a smile.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Jane
