Jane was home again. Judy was better. Philomel sang. The world was a lovely place. “Oh, but it’s good to be back,” Jane was telling Baldy at breakfast. The windows were wide open, the fragrance of lilacs streamed in, there were pink hyacinths on the table.
“It’s heavenly.”
Baldy smiled at her. “The same old Jane.”
She shook her head, and the light in her eyes wavered as if some breath of doubt fanned it. “Not quite. The winter hasn’t been easy. I’m a thousand years older.”
“And with a wedding day ahead of you.”
“Yes. Do you like it, Baldy?”
He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. “Not a bit—if you want the truth—I shall be jealous of Mr. Frederick Towne.”
“Silly. You know I shall never love anybody more than you, Baldy.”
She was perfectly unconscious of the revelation she was making, but he knew—and was constrained to say, “Then you don’t really love him.”
“Oh, I do. He’s much nicer than I imagined he might be.”
[279]“Oh, well, if you think you are going to be happy.”
“I know I am—dearest,” she blew a kiss from the tips of her fingers. “Baldy, I’m going to have a great house with a great garden—and invite Judy and the babies—every summer.”
“Towne’s not marrying Judy and the babies. He’s marrying you. He won’t want all of your poor relations hanging around.”
“Oh, he will. He has been simply dear. I feel as if I can never do enough for him.”
She was very much in earnest. Baldy refrained from further criticism lest he cloud the happiness of her home-coming. The thing was done. They might as well make the best of it. So he said, “Do you always call him ‘Mr. Towne’?”
“Yes. He scolds, but I can’t say Frederick—or Fred. He begs me to do it—but I tell him to wait till we’re married and then I’ll say ‘dear.’ Most wives do that, don’t they?”
“I hope mine won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I shall want my wife to invent names for me, and if she can’t, I’ll do it for her.”
Jane opened her eyes wide. “Romance with a big R, Baldy?”
“Yes, of course. I should want to be king, lover, master—friend to the woman who cared for me. That’s the real thing, Janey.”
“Is it?” But she did not follow the subject up;[280] she drew another cup of coffee for herself, and asked finally, “When is Evans coming back?”
“Not for several days. He will go to Boston when he finishes with New York.”
“I see. And he’s much better?”
“I should say. You wouldn’t know him.”
He rose. “I must run on. We’re to dine at Towne’s then?”
“Yes. Just the five of us. It seems funny that I haven’t met Cousin Annabel. But she’s able to take her place at the head of the table, Mr. Towne tells me. He told me, too, that she wants to meet me. But I have a feeling that she won’t approve of me, Baldy. I’m not fashionable enough.”
“Why should you be fashionable? You are all right as you are.”
“Am I? Baldy, I believe my stock has gone up with you.”
“It hasn’t, Janey. You were always a darling. But I didn’t want to spoil you.”
“As if you could,” she smiled wistfully. “Sometimes I have a feeling, Baldy, that I should like life to go on just as it is. Just you and me, Baldy. But of course it can’t.”
“Of course it can, if you wish it. You mustn’t marry Towne if you have the least doubt.”
“I haven’t any doubts. So don’t worry.” She stood up and kissed him. “Briggs will come out for me—and we are all to see a play together afterward.”
[281]“Edith told me.”
“Baldy,” she had hold of the lapel of his coat, “how are things going with—Edith?”
“Do you mean, am I in love with her? I am.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“God knows.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “What makes you say it that way? Has she told you she didn’t care?”
“She has told me that she does care. But do you think, Janey, that I’m going to take her money?”
He patted her on the cheek and was off. She went to the top of the terrace and watched him ride away. Then she walked in the little shaded grove behind the house. Merrymaid followed her and the much-matured kitten. There was a carpet underfoot of pine needles and of fragrant young growth. Several of her old hens scratched in the rich mould—and their broods of tiny chicks answering the urgent mother-cry were like bits of yellow down blown before a breeze.
Jane picked a spray of princess-pine and stuck it in her blouse. Oh, what an adorable world! Her world. Could there be anything better that Frederick Towne could give her?
Baldy’s words rang in her ears—“Do you think I am going to take her money?”
Yet she was taking Frederick Towne’s money.[282] She wished it had not been necessary. Each day it seemed to her that the thought burned deeper: she was under obligations to her lover that could be repaid only by marriage. And they were to be married in June.
Yet why should the thought burn? She loved him. Not, perhaps, as Baldy loved Edith. But there were respect and admiration, yes, and when she was with him, she felt his charm, she was carried along on the whirling stream of his own adoration and tenderness.
Yet—there were things to dread. She would have to meet his friends. Be judged by them. There would be formal entertaining. Edith had said once that the demand of society on women was really high-class drudgery. “Much worse than washing dishes.”
Jane didn’t quite believe that. Yet there must be a happy medium. Her dreams had had to do with a little house—a little garden.
She went back to her own little house, and found a great box of roses waiting. She spent an hour filling vases and bowls with them. Old Sophy coming in from the kitchen said, “Looks lak dat Mistuh Towne’s jes’ fascinated with you, Miss Janey.”
“Aren’t the roses lovely, Sophy?” Jane wanted to tell Sophy that Mr. Towne would some day be her husband. But she still deferred the announcement of her engagement.
[283]“I’ve told one or two people,” Frederick had said.
“Whom?”
“Well, Adelaide. She’s such an old friend. And I told Annabel, of course. I don’t see why you should care, Jane.”
“I think I’m afraid that when I go into a shop someone will say, ‘Oh, she’s going to marry Frederick Towne, and see how shabby she is.’”
“You are never shabby.”
“That’s because I made myself two new dresses while I was at Judy’s. And this is one of them.”
“You have the great art of looking lovely in the simplest things. But some day you are going to wear a frock that I have for you.” He told her about the silver and blue creation he had bought in Chicago. “Now and then I take it out and look at it. I’ve put it in your room, Jane, and it is waiting for you.”
She thought now of the blue and silver gown, as Sophy said, “Miss Jane, I done pressed that w’ite chiffon of yours twel it hardly hangs together.”
“I’ll wear it once more, Sophy. I’m having a sewing woman next week.”
With the old white chiffon she wore a golden rose or two—and sat at Frederick’s right, while on the other end of the great table, Cousin Annabel weighed her in the balance.
Jane knew she was being weighed. Cousin Annabel[284] was so blue-blooded that it showed in the veins of her hands and nose—and her hair was dressed with a gray transformation which quite overpowered her thin little face with its thin little nose.
As a matter of fact, Cousin Annabel felt that Frederick had taken leave of his senses. What could he see in this short-haired girl—who hadn’t a jewel, except the one he had given her?
Jane wore Towne’s ring, hidden, on a ribbon around her neck. “Some day I’ll let everybody see it,” she had said, “but not now.”
“You act as if you were ashamed of it.”
“I’m not. But Cinderella must wait until the night of the ball.”
It was while they were drinking their coffee in the drawing-room that the storm came up. It was one of those cyclonic winds that whip off the tops of the trees and blow the roofs from unsubstantial edifices. The thunder was a ceaseless reverberation—the lightning was pink and made the sky seem like a glistening inverted shell.
Cousin Annabel hated thunder-storms and said so. “I think I shall go to my room, Frederick.”
“You are not a bit safer up there than here,” Towne told her.
“But I feel safer, Frederick.” She was very decided about it. What she meant to do was to sit in the middle of her bed and have her maid give her[285] the smelling salts. She would be thus in a sense fortified.
So she went up and Baldy and Edith wandered across the hall to the library, where Edith insisted they could observe other aspects of the storm.
Jane and her lover were left alone, and presently Frederick was called to the telephone.
“I’m not sure that it’s safe, sir, in this storm,” Waldron warned.
“Nonsense, Waldron,” Towne said, and stepped quickly across the polished floor.
Thus it happened that Jane sat by herself in the great drawing-room of the Ice Palace, while the wind howled, and the rain streamed down the window glass, and all the evil things in the world seemed let loose.
And she was afraid!
Not of the storm, but of the great house. She was so small and it was so big. Her own little cottage clasped her in its warm embrace. This great mansion stood away from her—as the sky stands away from the desert. All the rest of her life she would be going up and down those great stairs, sitting in front of this great fireplace, presiding at the far end of Frederick’s great table—dwarfed by it all, losing personality, individuality, bidding good-bye forever to little Jane Barnes, becoming until death parted them the wife of Frederick Towne.
She sat huddled in her chair, panting a little, her eyes wide.
[286]“Silly,” she said with a sob.
The sound of her voice echoed and re?choed, “Silly, silly, silly.”
The noise without was deafening—the wind shook the walls. She stood up, her hands clenched, then ran swiftly into the hall.
A thundering crash and the lights went out.
She heard Frederick calling, “Jane, Jane!”
She called back, “I’m here,” and saw the quick spurt of a match as he lighted it, holding it up and peering into the dark.
“There you are, my dearest.” He lighted another match and came towards her, as Waldron, with a brace of candles, appeared in one door and Baldy and Edith in another.
Frederick lifted Jane in his strong arms. “Why, you’re crying,” he said; “don’t, my darling, don’t.”
Then Baldy came up and demanded, “What’s the matter, Kitten? You’ve never been afraid of storms.”
She tried to smile at him. “Well, I’ve gone through such a lot lately.” But Baldy wasn’t satisfied. A Jane who dissolved into tears was a disturbing and desolating object. He glowered at Frederick, holding him responsible.
At this moment Waldron reappeared to say that Briggs had pronounced the streets impassable. Branches had been blown down—and there was other wreckage.
“That settles it,” Frederick said. “You two[287] young things may as well stay here for the night. Jane’s not fit to go out anyhow.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she protested.
Edith suggested bridge, so they played for a while. The big room was still lighted by the candles, so that the shadows pressed close. Jane was very pale, and now and then Frederick looked at her anxiously.
“You and Edith had better go up,” he said at last. “And you must have Alice get you some hot milk—I’ll send Waldron with a bit of cordial to set you up.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
“But I want you to have it.” There was a note of authority which almost brou............