Sherwood Park is twelve miles from Washington. Starting as a somewhat pretentious suburb on the main line of a railroad, it was blessed with easy accessibility until encroaching trolleys swept the tide of settlement away from it, and left it high and dry—its train service, unable to compete with modern motor vehicles, increasingly inefficient. Property values, inevitably, decreased. The little suburb degenerated, grew less fashionable. People who might have added social luster to its gatherings moved away. The frame houses, which at first had made such a brave showing, became a bit down at the heel. Most of them, built before the revival of good taste in architecture, seemed top-heavy and dull with their imitation towers, their fretted balconies, their gray and brown coloring, their bands of contrasting shingles tied like sashes around their middles.
The Barnes cottage was saved from the universal lack of loveliness by its simple lines, its white paint and green blinds. Yet the paint had peeled in[8] places, and the concrete steps which followed the line of the two terraces were cracked and worn.
Old Baldwin Barnes had bought his house on the instalment plan, and his children were still paying for it. Old Baldwin had succumbed to the deadly monotony of writing the same inscription on red slips through thirty years of faithful service in the Pension Office, and had left the world with his debts behind him.
He had the artistic temperament which his son inherited. Julia was like her mother who had died two years before her husband. Mrs. Barnes had been unimaginative and capable. It was because of her that Julia had married an architect, and was living in a snug apartment in Chicago, that Baldwin Junior had gone through college and had some months at an art school before the war came on, and that Jane, the youngest, had a sense of thrift, and an intensive experience in domestic economy.
As for the rest of her, Jane was twenty, slender as a Florentine page, and fairly pretty. She was in love with life and liked to talk about it. Young Baldwin said, indeed, with the frankness of a brother, that Jane ran on like a babbling brook.
She was “running on” this November morning, as she and young Baldwin ate breakfast together. Jane always got the breakfast. Sophy, a capable negro woman, came over later to help with the housework, and to put the six o’clock dinner on the table. But it was Jane who started the percolator,[9] poached the eggs, and made the toast on the electric toaster, while young Baldwin read the Washington Post. He read bits out loud when he was in the mood. He was not always in the mood, and then Jane talked to him. He did not always listen, but that made no difference.
Jane had named the percolator “Philomel,” because of its purling harmonies.
“Don’t you love it, Baldy?”
Her brother, with one eye on the paper, was eating his grapefruit.
“Love what?”
“Philomel.”
“Silly stuff——”
“It isn’t. I like to hear it sing.”
“In my present mood I prefer a hymn of hate.”
She buttered a slice of toast for him. “Well, of course, you’d feel like that.”
“Who wouldn’t?” He took the toast from her, and buried himself in his paper, so Jane buttered another slice for herself and ate it in protesting silence—plus a poached egg, and a cup of coffee rich with yellow cream and much sugar. Jane’s thinness made such indulgence possible. She enjoyed good food as she enjoyed a new frock, violets in the spring, the vista from the west front of the Capitol, free verse, and the book of Job. There were really no limits to Jane’s enthusiasms. She spoke again of the percolator. “It’s as nice as a kettle on the hob, isn’t it?”
[10]Young Baldwin read on.
“I simply love breakfast,” she continued.
“Is there anything you don’t love, Janey?” with a touch of irritation.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You.”
He stared at her over the top of the sheet. “I like that!”
“Well, you won’t talk to me, Baldy. It isn’t my fault if you hate the world.”
“No, it isn’t.” He laid down the paper. “But I’ll tell you this, Janey, I’m about through.”
She caught her breath, then flung out, “Oh, you’re not. Be a good sport, Baldy. Things are bound to come your way if you wait.”
He gave a short laugh and rose. “I wish I had your optimism.”
“I wish you had.”
They faced each other, looking for the moment rather like two young cockerels. Jane’s bobbed hair emphasized the boyish effect of her straight, slim figure. Baldy towered above her, his black hair matching hers, his eyes, too, matching—gray and lighted-up.
Jane was the first to turn her eyes away. She looked at the clock. “You’ll be late.”
He got his hat and coat and came back to her. “I’m a blamed sorehead. Give me a kiss, Janey.”
She gave it to him, and clung to him for a moment.[11] “Don’t forget to bring a steak home for dinner,” was all she said, but he was aware of the caress of those clinging fingers.
It was one of his grievances that he had to do the marketing—one could not depend on Sherwood’s single small store—so Baldy with dreams in his head drove twice a week to the butcher’s stall in the old Center Market to bring back chops, or a porterhouse, or a festive small roast.
He had no time for it in the mornings, however. His little Ford took him over the country roads and through the city streets and landed him at the Patent Office at a quarter of nine. There, with a half hour for lunch, he worked until five—it was a dog’s life and he had other aspirations.
Jane, left to herself, read the paper. One headline was sensational. The bride of a fashionable wedding had been deserted at the altar. The bridegroom had failed to appear at the church. The guests waiting impatiently in the pews had been informed, finally, that the ceremony would be postponed.
Newspaper men hunting for the bridegroom learned that he had left a note for his best man—and that he was on his way to southern waters. The bride could not be seen. Her uncle, who was also her guardian, and with whom she lived, had stated that there was nothing to be said. That was all. But society was on tiptoe. Delafield Simms was the son of a rich New Yorker. He and his[12] bride were to have spent their honeymoon on his yacht. Edith Towne had a fortune to match his. Both of them belonged to old and aristocratic families. No wonder people were talking.
There was a picture of Miss Towne, a tall, fair girl, in real lace, orange blossoms, seed pearls——.
Pride was in every line of her. Jane’s tender fancy carried her to that first breathless moment when the bride had donned that gracious gown and had surveyed herself in the mirror. “How happy she must have been.” Then the final shuddering catastrophe.
Sophy arrived at this moment, and Jane told her about it. “She’ll never dare trust anybody, will she?”
Sophy was wise, and she weighed the question out of her wide experience of human nature. She could not read or write, and she was dependent on those around her for daily bulletins of the way the big world went. But she had worked in many families and had had a family of her own. So she knew life, which is a bigger thing sometimes than books.
“Yo’ kain’t ever tell whut a woman will do, Miss Janey. Effen she a trustin’ nature, she’ll trus’ and trus’, and effen she ain’ a trustin’ nature, she won’t trus’ nohow.”
“But what do you suppose made him do it?”
“Nobody knows whut a man’s gwine do, w’en it comes to gittin’ married.”
[13]“But to leave her like that, Sophy. I should think she’d die.”
“Effen the good Lord let women die w’en men ’ceived them,” Sophy proclaimed with a chuckle, “dere wouldn’ be a female lef’ w’en the trump sounded.” Her tray was piled high with dishes, as she stood in the dining-room door. “Does you-all want rice puddin’ fo’ dinnah, Miss Janey?”
And there the subject dropped. But Jane thought a great deal about it as she went on with her work.
She told her sister, Julia, about it when, late that afternoon, she wrote her weekly letter.
“The worst of it must have been to lose her faith in things. I’d rather be Jane Barnes without any love affair than Edith Towne with a love affair like that. Baldy told me the other day that I am not unattractive! Can’t you see him saying it? And he doesn’t think me pretty. Perhaps I’m not. But there are moments, Judy, when I like myself——!
“Baldy nearly had a fit when I bobbed my hair. But I did it and took the consequences, and it’s no end comfortable. Baldy at the present moment is mid-Victorian. It is his reaction from the war. He says he is dead sick of flappers. That they are all alike—and make no appeal to the imagination! He came home the other night from a dance and read Tennyson—can you fancy that after the way he used to fling Amy Lowell at us and Carl Sandburg? He says he is so tired of short skirts and knees and proposals and cigarettes that he is going to hunt with a gun, if he ever decides to marry, for[14] an Elaine or a Griselda! But the worst of it is, he takes it out on me! I wish you’d see the way he censors my clothes and my manners, and I sit here like a prisoner in a tower with not a man in sight but Evans Follette, and he is just a heartache, Judy.
“Baldy has had three proposals; he said that the first was stimulating, but repetition ‘staled the interest’! Of course he didn’t tell me the names of the girls. Baldy’s not a cad.
“But he is discouraged and desperately depressed. He has such a big talent, Judy, and he just slaves away at that old office. He says that after those years in France, it seems like a cage. I sometimes wonder what civilization is, anyhow, that we clip the wings of our young eagles. We take our boys and shut them up, and they pant for freedom. Is that all that life is going to mean for Baldy—eight hours a day—behind bars?
“Yet I am trying to keep him at it until the house is paid for. I don’t know whether I am right—but it’s all we have—and both of us love it. He hasn’t been able lately to work much at night, he’s dead tired. But there’s a prize offer of a magazine cover design, and I want him to compete. He says there isn’t any use of his trying to do anything unless he can give all of his time to it.
“Of course you’ve heard all this before, but I hear it every day. And I like to talk things out. I must not write another line, dearest. And don’t worry, Baldy will work like mad if the mood strikes him.
“Did I tell you that Evans Follette and his mother are to dine with us on Thanksgiving Day? We ought to have six guests to make things go.[15] But nobody will fit in with the Follettes. You know why, so I needn’t explain.
“Kiss both of the babies for me. Failing other young things, I am going to have a Christmas tree for the kitten. It’s a gay life, darling.
“Ever your own,
“Jane.”
The darkness had come by the time she had finished her letter. She changed her frock for a thinner one, wrapped herself in an old cape of orange-hued cloth, and went out to lock up her chickens. She had fed them before she wrote her letter, but she always took this last look to be sure they were safe.
She passed through the still kitchen, where old Sophy sat by the warm, bright range. There were potatoes baking, and Sophy’s famous pudding. “How good everything smells,” said Jane.
She smiled at Sophy and went on. The wind was blowing and the sky was clear. There had been no snow, but there were little pools of ice about, and Jane took each one with a slide. She felt a tingling sense of youth and excitation. Back of the garage was a shadowy grove of tall pines which sang and sighed as the wind swept them. There was a young moon above the pines. It seemed to Jane that her soul was lifted to it. She flung up her arms to the moon, and the yellow cape billowed about her.
The shed where the chickens were kept was back[16] of the garage. When Jane opened the door, her old Persian cat, Merrymaid, came out to her, and a puff-ball of a kitten. Jane snapped on the lights in the chicken-house and the biddies stirred. When she snapped them off again, she heard them settle back to sheltered slumber.
The kitten danced ahead of her, and the old cat danced too, as the wind whirled her great tail about. “We won’t go in the house—we won’t go in the house,” said Jane, in a sort of conversational chant, as the pussies followed her down a path which led through the pines. She often walked at this hour—and she loved it best on nights like this.
She felt poignantly the beauty of it—the dark pines and the little moon above them—the tug of the wind at her cloak like a riotous playmate.
Baldy was not the only poet in the family, but Jane’s love of beauty was inarticulate. She would never be able to write it on paper or draw it with a pencil.
Down the path she went, the two pussy-cats like small shadows in her wake, until suddenly a voice came out of the dark.
“I believe it is little Jane Barnes.”
She stopped. “Oh, is that you, Evans? Isn’t it a heavenly night?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
“Why not?”
[17]“Because an evening like this is like wine—it goes to my head.”
“You are like wine,” he told her. “Jane, how do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Hold the pose of youth and joy and happiness?”
“You know it isn’t a pose. I just feel that way, Evans.”
“My dear, I believe you do.”
He limped a little as he walked beside her. He was tall and gaunt. Almost grotesquely tall. Yet when he had gone to war he had not seemed in the least grotesque. He had been tall but not thin, and he had gone in all the glory of his splendid youth.
There was no glory left. He was twenty-seven. He had fought and he would fight again for the same cause. But his youth was dead, except when he was with Jane. She revived him, as he said, like wine.
“I was coming over,” he began, and broke off as a sibilant sound interrupted him.
“Oh, are the cats with you? Well, Rusty must take the road,” he laughed as the little old dog trotted to neutral ground at the edge of the grove. Rusty was friends with Merrymaid, except when there were kittens about. He knew enough to avoid her in days of anxious motherhood.
Jane picked up the kitten. “They would come.”
“All animals follow you. You’re sort of a domestic[18] Circe—with your dogs and chickens and pussy-cats in the place of tigers and lions and leopards.”
“I’d love to have lived in Eden,” said Jane, unexpectedly, “before Eve and Adam sinned. What it must have meant to have all those great beasts mild-mannered and purring under your hand like this kitten. What a dreadful thing happened, Evans, when fear came into the world.”
“What makes you say that now, Jane?” His voice was sharp.
“Shouldn’t I have said it? Oh, Evans, you can’t think I had you in mind——”
“No,” with a touch of weariness, “but you are the only one, really, who knows what a coward I am——”
“Evans, you’re not.”
“You’re good to say it, but that’s what I came over for. I am up against it again, Jane. Some cousins are on from New York—they’re at the New Willard—and Mother and I went in to see them last night. They have invited us to go back with them. They’ve a big house east of Fifth Avenue, and they want us as their guests indefinitely. They think it will do me a lot of good—get me out of myself, they call it. But I can’t see it. Since I came home—every time I think of facing mobs of people”—again his voice grew sharp—“I’m clutched by something I can’t describe. It is perfectly unreasonable, but I can’t help it.”
[19]For a moment they walked in silence, then he went on—“Mother’s very keen about it. She thinks it will set me up. But I want to stay here—and I thought if you’d talk to her, she’ll listen to you, Jane—she always does.”
“Does she know how you feel about it?”
“No, I think not. I’ve never told her. I’ve only spilled over to you now and then. It would hurt Mother, no end, to know how changed I am.”
Jane laid her hand on his arm. “You’re not. Brace up, old dear. You aren’t dead yet.” As she lifted her head to look up at him, the hood of her cape slipped back, and the wind blew her soft, thick hair against his cheek. “But I’ll talk to your mother if you want me to. She is a great darling.”
Jane meant what she said; she was really very fond of Mrs. Follette. And in this she was unlike the rest of the folk in Sherwood. Mrs. Follette was extremely unpopular in the Park.
They had reached the kitchen door. “Won’t you come in?” Jane said.
“No, I’ve got to get back. I only ran over for a moment. I have to have a daily sip of you, Jane.”
“Baldy’s bringing a steak for dinner. Help us eat it.”
“Sorry, but Mother would be alone.”
“When shall I talk to her?”
“There’s no hurry. The cousins are staying on for the opening of Congress. Jane dear, don’t despise me——” His voice broke.
[20]“Evans, as if I could.”
Again her hand was on his arm. He laid his own over it. “You’re the best ever, Janey,” he said, huskily—and presently he went away.
Jane, going in, found that Baldy had telephoned. “He kain’t git here until seven,” Sophy told her.
“You had better run along home,” Jane told her. “I’ll cook the steak when it comes.”
Sophy was old and she was tired. Life hadn’t been easy. The son who was to have been the prop of her old age had been killed in France. There was a daughter’s daughter who had gone north and who now and then sent money. Old Sophy did not know where her granddaughter got the money, but it was good to have it when it came. But it was not enough, so old Sophy worked.
“I hates to leave you here alone, Miss Janey.”
“Oh, run along, Sophy. Baldy will come before I know it.”
So Sophy went and Jane waited. Seven o’clock arrived, with the dinner showing signs of deterioration. Jane sat at the front window and watched. The old cat watched, too, perched on the sill, and gazing out into the dark with round, mysterious eyes. The kitten slept on the hearth. Jane grew restless and stood up, peering out. Then all at once two round moons arose above the horizon, were lost as the road dipped down, showed again on the rise of the hill, and lighted the lawn as[21] Baldy’s car made a half circle and swept into the garage.
Jane went through the kitchen to the back door, throwing an appraising glance at the things in the warming oven, and stood waiting on the threshold, hugging herself in the keenness of the wind.
Presently her brother’s tall form was silhouetted against the silvery gray of the night.
“I thought you were never coming,” she said to him.
“I thought so, too.” He bent and kissed her; his cheek was cold as it touched hers.
“Aren’t you nearly frozen?”
“No. Sorry to be late, honey. Get dinner on the table and I’ll be ready——”
“I’m afraid things won’t be very appetizing,” she told him; “they’ve waited so long. But I’ll cook the steak——”
He had gone on, and was beyond the sound of her voice. She opened the fat parcel which he had deposited on the kitchen table. She wondered a bit at its size. But Baldy had a way of bringing home unexpected bargains—a dozen boxes of crackers—unwieldy pounds of coffee.
But this was neither crackers nor coffee. The box which was revealed bore the name of a fashionable florist. Within were violets—single ones—set off by one perfect rose and tied with a silver ribbon.
Jane gasped—then she went to the door and called:
[22]“Baldy, where’s the steak?”
He came to the top of the stairs. “Great guns,” he said, “I forgot it!”
Then he saw the violets in her hands, laughed and came down a step or two. “I sold a loaf of bread and bought—white hyacinths——”
“They’re heavenly!” Her glance swept up to him. “Peace offering?”
There were gay sparks in his eyes. “We’ll call it that.”
She blew a kiss to him from the tips of her fingers. “They are perfectly sweet. And we can have an omelette. Only if we eat any more eggs, we’ll be flapping our wings.”
“I don’t care what we have. I am so hungry I could eat a house.” He went back up the stairs, laughing.
Jane, breaking eggs into a bowl, meditated on the nonchalance of men. She meditated, too, on the mystery of Baldy’s mood. The flowers were evidence of high exaltation. He did not often lend himself to such extravagance.
He came down presently and helped carry in the belated dinner. The potatoes lay like withered leaves in a silver dish, the cornbread was a wrinkled wreck, the pudding a travesty. Only Jane’s omelette and a lettuce salad had escaped the blight of delay.
Then, too, there was Philomel, singing. Jane drew a cup of coffee, hot and strong, and set it at[23] her brother’s place. The violets were in the center of the table, the cats purring on the hearth.
Jane loved her little home with almost passionate intensity. She loved to have Baldy in a mood like this—things right once more with his world.
She knew it was so by the ring of his voice, the cock of his head—hence she was not in the least surprised when he leaned forward under the old-fashioned spreading dome which drenched him with light, and said, “I’ve such a lot to tell you, Jane; the most amazing thing has happened.”