“But you’ll have more time,” he said. There was a little pause. “I’ve been thinking, Jane,” he continued—what had Stephen been thinking? Jane thought breathlessly—“I’ve been wondering if this wouldn’t be a good spring to see about getting Steve’s teeth straightened. If he wore braces at Gull Rocks this summer—”
Jane turned from him in an absurd surge of irritation. Oh, yes—she would have plenty of time, now, to straighten Steve’s teeth and plan for Gull Rocks and—Stephen was unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“I think you’d better take him in to the dentist—” he began.
“I’ll take him in, Stephen,” said Jane snappishly. “Of course I’ll take him in. Why do you act as if you had to nag me—”
Her voice died down. Stephen had paused, in the act of untying his necktie, to look at her in amazement. Jane walked over to him and laid her hand on his arm. “I’ll take him in, dear,” she said. Her tone was a tacit apology. Stephen went on untying his necktie. Jane slipped out of the Poiret tea-gown. Jimmy, she supposed, was writing a letter to Agnes at the living-room desk downstairs.
V
Next morning Stephen had his eighteen holes of golf with Jimmy. The April day had dawned very bright and fair. The men came home from the links just a little late for luncheon with Jane and the children. It was nearly three before the meal was finished. While they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee, Mr. and Mrs. Ward turned up, rather unexpectedly. The day was so pleasant, Mrs. Ward remarked, that they had motored out to spend Sunday afternoon with the grandchildren. Mr. Ward had greeted Jimmy very affably, but Mrs. Ward looked distinctly affronted by his presence at Jane’s fireside. When Stephen produced a cocktail for the men at teatime, Jane saw her mother fasten a lynx eye on Jimmy, as he stood on the hearthrug, nonchalantly toying with his glass of amber liquid. Jane could not suppress a smile. She knew that her mother was determined that Jimmy should not kiss the rim of that glass unobserved. He made no attempt to do so, however. He had made no attempt, all day, to resume the conversation of which Jane had deprived him on the previous evening. Mr. and Mrs. Ward did not leave their grandchildren until after six o’clock. It was time to dress for dinner when they had gone.
Both men seemed silent, Jane thought, at table. Tired out, perhaps, by their morning of golf in the open air. Cicily rather monopolized the conversation. She was chattering of the educational plans of the rising generation. In particular of the educational plans of Jack Bridges, on whom the family interest was centring that spring. At seventeen Jack was about to take his final entrance examination for Harvard. He was a clever boy, snub-nosed and twinkle-eyed like his father, with a strong natural bent for the physical sciences. Robin and Isabel were very proud of him. Cicily, herself, wanted to go to Rosemary next year with her cousin Belle. Jane had tried in vain to interest her in Bryn Mawr. She tried again, a little half-heartedly, this evening at the table.
“Why should I go to college, Mumsy?” said Cicily. “And lock myself up on a campus for four years?”
Lock herself up on a campus, thought Jane. That was what college life meant to the rising generation. For her Bryn Mawr had spelled emancipation. Through Pembroke Arch she had achieved a world of unprecedented freedom. Under the Bryn Mawr maples she had escaped from family surveillance, from the “opinions” of her mother and Isabel, from ideas with which she could never agree, from standards to which she could never conform. To Agnes and herself the routine existence in a Bryn Mawr dormitory had seemed a life of liberty, positively bordering upon licence. To Cicily it seemed ridiculous servitude.
“I don’t want to go to college,” said Cicily. “I want to room with Belie at boarding-school and come out when I’m eighteen.”
“Don’t you want to know anything?” asked Stephen, rousing himself from his silence. The twinkle in his eyes robbed the question of all harshness.
“I don’t want to know anything I can learn at Bryn Mawr,” laid Cicily airily.
“That’s a very silly thing to say,” said Jane.
“Oh, I don’t know,” interposed Jimmy brightly. “What use is knowledge to a girl with hair like Cicily’s? Let her trust to instinct. I bet that takes her farther, Jane, than you’ll care to see her go.”
“A little knowledge might hold her back,” said Jane.
“I don’t want to be held back,” said Cicily promptly. “I want to do everything and go everywhere.”
“Nevertheless, you want to know what you’re doing and where you’re going,” said Jane severely.
“I don’t know that I do,” said Cicily. “I like surprises.”
“The child’s a hedonist, Jane,” said Jimmy. “Let her alone. You’ll never understand a hedonist. ‘Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.’ Pater said that first, but it’s very true. You’ll never read Pater, Cicily, if you don’t go to Bryn Mawr, and you probably wouldn’t like him if you did. He doesn’t speak the language of your generation. Nevertheless, he is your true prophet. I learned pages of Pater by heart, when I was at night school at the settlement. I thought he had the right idea. ‘A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.’ That was my credo, Cicily, when I was not so much older than you are. Go on burning, my dear, burn like your golden hair, and never bother about the consequences.”
Cicily was staring at him with wide, non-comprehending
