JANE POURS TEA
In Jane’s next letter to Judy she told her how the evening with the
Townes had ended.
“Edith insisted that I should stay all night. She’s a perfect
darling, so absolutely and utterly exquisite, and yet so human. She
and her uncle simply can’t look at things from the same angle. And
they are both to blame. Anything sets them off,--you should have seen
them--like people in a play.
“I slept in the spare room--and well, I lay awake half the night
looking at it, and admiring myself in one of Edith’s nighties!
I never saw such underthings, Judy! For a princess! Her room is
all rose and silver and ivory, and the room I slept in is in pale
yellow--with a canopy to my bed of gold brocade.
“Edith and I had breakfast together. Everything brought up on a
tray and set in her little sitting-room, and we wore lace caps and
breakfast coats, and looked--superlative! Edith is the most beautiful
person--like one of the Viking women--with her hair in thick fair
braids. I told her that, and she laughed. ‘What a pair of poets you
are,’ she said, ‘you and your brother.’
“It was good to hear her laugh. She cried dreadfully the night
before. Coming back was hard for her--and then Mr. Towne got on her
nerves. They both wanted me to stay, and Baldy stayed, too, and I
know his head bumped the clouds. And this morning on his way to the
office, he bought a bunch of heliotrope for Edith and sent it up to
her.
“The trouble with Edith is that her life hasn’t been _real_, Judy.
Not in the way that your life and mine and Baldy’s is real. She has
never had any work to do, and nothing has ever depended upon her.
Think of it. There’s no reason why she can’t stay in bed all day
if she wants to. And she can gratify any mood of the moment. The
consequence is that half the time she is bored stiff. She says that
was the reason she became engaged to Delafield Simms. Anything for a
change.
“It looks as if she and I were going to be frightfully friendly. She
told me that she wants me for a friend. That Eloise Harper and her
kind are horrible to her after the things that have happened.
“To-morrow afternoon she and her uncle are coming out here to tea,
and I’m going to have the Follettes over. Mrs. Follette will love it.
But Evans won’t. He doesn’t like Mr. Towne.
“And now, my dearest-dear, I am worried about that hint in your last
letter that you are not well. Take care of yourself, and remember I
have only one precious sister, and the kiddies have only one mother.
We need you in our young lives, and you mustn’t work too hard.”
When she had written the last line, Jane sat very still at her desk.
She was thinking of Evans. She hadn’t seen him for three days. Not
since the Sunday night she had gone to the Townes. That night in the
fog had impressed her strangely. She had felt for Evans something that
had nothing to do with admiration for him nor respect nor charm. His
weakness had drawn her to him, as a mother might be drawn to a child.
His struggle was, she felt, something which she must share. Not as his
wife! No.... That kind of love was different. If only he would let her
be his little sister, Jane.
He had not even called her up. When she had invited him and his mother
to tea with the Townes, Mrs. Follette had answered, and had accepted
for both of them. Evans, she said, was in Washington, and would be out
on the late train.
When he arrived ahead of the others on the afternoon of her tea, Jane
said, “Where have you been? Do you know it has been four days since
we’ve seen each other?”
“Weren’t you glad to get rid of me? I’ve thought of you every minute.”
He dropped into a seat beside her.
She was gazing at him with lively curiosity. “How nice you look.”
“New suit. Like it?”
“Yes. And you act as if somebody had left you a million dollars.”
“Wish he had. I bought this outfit with a first edition ‘Alice in
Wonderland,’” he laughed and explained. “I’ve been getting rid of some
of our rare books. I feel plutocratic in consequence. Five hundred
dollars, if you please, for that old Hogarth, with the scathing Ruskin
inscription. And I’m going to open an office, Jane.”
“In Washington?”
“On Connecticut Avenue. Same building, same room, where I started.”
“Evans, how splendid!”
“Yes. You did it, Jane.”
“I? How?”
“The night of the fog. I never realized before what a walking-stick
I’ve been--leaning on you. Henceforth you’re the Lady of the Lantern.
It won’t be so fatiguing.”
He was smiling at her, and she smiled back. Yet quite strangely and
inconsistently, she felt as if in changing his attitude towards her, he
had robbed her of some privilege. “I didn’t mind being a walking-stick.”
“Well, I minded. After this I’ll walk alone. And I’m going to work
hard, and play around a bit. Will you have tea with me to-morrow, Jane?
At the Willard? To celebrate my first tottering steps.”
She agreed, eagerly. “It will be like old times.”
“Minus a lot, old lady.”
That was the way he had talked to her years ago. The plaintive note was
gone.
“Take the three-thirty train and I’ll meet you. I’ll pay for the taxi
with what’s left of ‘Alice.’”
“Don’t be too extravagant.”
“Nothing is too good for you, Jane. I can’t say it as I want to say
it, but you’ll never know what you seemed to me on Sunday as you came
through the mist.”
His voice shook a little, but he recovered himself in a moment. “Here
come the Townes.” He rose as Edith entered with young Baldwin.
After that Evans followed Baldy’s lead as a dispenser of hospitality.
The two of them passed cups, passed thin bread and butter, passed
little cakes, passed lemon and cream and sugar, flung conversational
balls as light as feathers into the air, were, as Baldy would have
expressed it, “the life of the party.”
“Something must have gone to Casabianca’s head,” Frederick Towne
remarked to Jane. “Have you ever seen him like this?”
“Years ago. He was tremendously attractive.”
“Do you find him attractive now?” with a touch of annoyance.
“I find him--wonderful”--her tone was defiant--“and I’ve known him all
my life.”
“If you had known me all your life would you call me wonderful?”
She looked at him from behind her battlements of silver. “How do I
know? People have to prove themselves.”
Dr. Hallam had driven Mrs. Follette over. He rarely did social stunts,
but he liked Jane. And he had been interested enough in Evans to want
to glimpse him in his new rôle.
Strolling up to the tea-table, he was aware at once of a situation
which might make for comedy, or indeed for tragedy. It was evident that
Towne was much attracted to little Jane Barnes. If Jane reciprocated,
what of young Follette?
Hallam knew Towne, and himself a bachelor of quite another type,
without vanity where women were concerned, he had a feeling of contempt
for a man whose reputation was linked with a long line of much-talked
about ladies. And now little Jane was the reigning queen. He didn’t
like the idea of her youth, and Towne’s late forties.
“I saw Mrs. Laramore yesterday,” he said, abruptly, “lovely as ever----”
“Yes, of course.” Towne wished that Hallam wouldn’t talk about
Adelaide. He wished that all of the others would go away and leave him
alone with Jane.
“Mrs. Laramore,” said Jane unexpectedly, “makes me think of the lady
of Shallott. I don’t know why. But I do. I have really never seen such
a beautiful woman. But she doesn’t seem real. I have a feeling that if
anything hit her, she’d break like china.”
They laughed at her, and Edith said, “Adelaide will never break. She’ll
melt. She’s as soft as wax.” Then pigeonholing Mrs. Laramore for more
vital matters. “Uncle Fred, I am going out to Baldy’s studio; he’s
painting Jane.”
Frederick was at once interested. “Her portrait?”
“No. A sketch for a magazine competition,” Baldy explained.
“May I see it?”
Baldy, yearning for solitude and Edith, gave reluctant consent. “Come
on, everybody.”
So everybody, including Dr. Hallam and Mrs. Follette, made their way to
the garage.
Edith and young Baldwin arrived first. “And this is where you work,”
she said, softly.
“Yes. Look here, will you sit here so that I can feast my eyes on you?
I’ve dreamed of you in that chair--in classic costume. Do you know that
you were made for a goddess?”
“I know that you are a romantic boy.”
Yet as she sat in the garden seat which he had transformed into a
throne for her by throwing a rug over it and setting it up above the
others on a small platform, she sighed a little.
Here in this small room he spent his spare moments. He looked out
through that small square window on the rains and snow, and the young
green of the spring--and he tried to paint his dreams, yet was held
back because he was chained to the galley of a Government job. And if
he was not chained, what might he not do? If someone waved a wand and
set him free? And if the someone who waved a wand loved him? Inspired
him? Might he not give to the world some day a masterpiece? Well, why
not? She found herself thrilling with the thought. To be a torch and
light the way!
“How old are you?” she asked him.
“Twenty-five.”
“I don’t believe it. I’m twenty-two, and I feel a thousand years older
than you.”
“You will always be--ageless.”
She laughed. “How old is Jane?”
“Twenty. Yet people take us for twins.”
“She doesn’t look it and neither do you.”
The others came in and Edith went back to her thoughts. He wasn’t too
young. She was glad of that....
The sketch of Jane was on an easel. There she stood, a slender figure
in her lilac frock--bobbed black hair, lighted-up eyes--the lifted
basket with its burden of gold and purple and green!
Towne stood back and looked at it. Jane at his side said, “That’s some
of the fruit you sent.”
“Really?” Frederick had no eyes for anything but Jane, in her lilac
frock. Jove, but the boy had caught the spirit of her!
He turned to Baldy. “It is most unusual. And I want it.”
“Sorry,” said Baldy, crisply. “I am sending it off to-morrow.”
“How much is the prize?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
“I will write a check for that amount if you will let me have this.”
“I am afraid I can’t, Mr. Towne.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I feel this way about it. It isn’t worth two thousand dollars.
But if I win the prize it may be worth that to the magazine--the
advertising and all that.”
“Isn’t that splitting hairs?”
“Perhaps, but it’s the way I feel.”
“But if you don’t win the prize you won’t have anything.”
“No.”
“And you’ll be out two thousand dollars.” The lion in the Zoo was
snarling.
And above him, breathing an upper air, was this young eagle. “I’ll be
glad to give the sketch to you if it comes back,” said Baldy, coolly,
“but I rather think it will stick.”
It was, in a way, a dreadful moment for Towne. There was young Baldwin
sitting on the edge of the table, swinging a leg, debonair, defiant.
And Edith laughing in her sleeve. Frederick knew that she was laughing.
He was as red as a turkey cock.
It was Jane who saved him from apoplexy. She was really inordinately
proud of Baldy, but she knew the dangers of his mood. And she had her
duties as hostess.
“Baldy wants to see himself on the news stands,” she said, soothingly;
“don’t deprive him of that pleasure, Mr. Towne.”
“Nothing of the kind, Jane,” exclaimed her brother.
“Baldy, I won’t quarrel with you before people. We must reserve that
pleasure until we are alone.”
“I’m not quarrelling.”
Jane held up a protesting hand. “Oh, let’s run away from him, Mr.
Towne. When he begins like that, there’s no end to it.”
She carried Frederick back to the house, and Evans, looking after them,
said vindictively to Hallam, “Old Midas got his that time.”
Dr. Hallam chuckled. “You don’t hate him, do you? Evans, don’t let him
have Jane. He isn’t worth it.”
“Neither am I,” said Evans. “But I would know better how to make her
happy.”
Back once more in the bright little living-room, Towne said to Jane,
“May I have another cup of tea?”
“It’s cold.”
“I don’t care. I like to see you pour it with your lovely hands.”
She spread her hands out on the shining mahogany of the tea-table. “Are
they lovely? Nobody ever told me.”
His hand went over hers. “The loveliest in the world.”
She sat there in a moment’s breathless silence. Then she drew her
hands away. Touched a little bell. “I’ll have Sophy bring us some hot
water.”
Sophy came and went. Jane poured hot tea with flushed cheeks.
He took the cup when she handed it to him. “Dear child, you’re not
offended?”
“I’m not a child, Mr. Towne.” Her lashes were lowered, her cheeks
flushed.
He put his cup down and leaned towards her. “You are more than a child
to me--a beloved woman. Jane, you needn’t be afraid of me.... I want
you for my wife!”
Her astonished eyes met his. “But we haven’t known each other a week.”
“I couldn’t love you more if I had known you a thousand years.”
“Mr. Towne--please.” He was very close to her.
“Kiss me, Jane.”
She held her slender figure away from him. “You must not.”
“I must.”
“No, really.... Please,” she was breathing quickly. “Please.” She was
on her feet, the tea-table between them.
He saw his mistake. “Forgive me.”
Her candid eyes met his. “Mr. Towne, would you have acted like this ...
with Edith’s friends?”
Edith’s friends! The child’s innocence! Adelaide’s kisses went for a
song. Eloise frankly offered hers. Edith was saved by only some inner
grace.
“Jane, they are not worth your little finger. I put you above all. On a
pedestal. Honestly. And I want you to marry me.”
“But I don’t love you.”
“I’ll make you. I have everything to give you.”
Had he? What of Robin Hood and Galahad? What of youth and youth’s
audacity, high resolves, flaming dreams?
She felt something of this subconsciously. But she would not have been
a feminine creature had she not felt the flattery of his pursuit.
“Jane, I’ll make life a fairy tale. We’ll travel everywhere. Sail
strange seas. Wouldn’t you love it--all those countries you have never
seen--and just the two of us? And all the places you have read about?
And when we come home I’ll build you a house--wherever you say--with a
great garden.”
He was eloquent, and the things he promised were woven into the woof of
all her girlish imaginings.
“I ought not to listen,” she said, tremulously.
But he knew that she had listened. He was wise enough to leave
it--there.
He rose as he heard the others coming back. “Will you ride with me
to-morrow afternoon? Don’t be afraid of me. I’ll promise to be good.”
“Sorry. I’m to have tea in town with Evans.”
“Can’t you break the engagement?”
“I don’t break engagements.” The cock of her head was like Baldy’s.
“Oh, you don’t. Some day you’ll be breaking them for me.” But he liked
her independence. It promised much that would be stimulating. And he
would always be the Conqueror. He liked to think that he would be--the
Conqueror.
So he went away secure in the thought of Jane’s final surrender. There
was everything in it for her, and the child must see it. Her hesitation
was natural. She couldn’t, of course, come at the first crook of his
finger. But she would come.