My Uncle Bradford was not in town but there were a great many other family connections who came to see us and asked us to come to them for large hospitable succulent meals. They greeted me with hearty kisses and handshakes. “Well, Jane, glad to see you home at last. Hope you left your husband well.” And then we settled down into chairs.
“You certainly have changed. You’re real French, aren’t you? We’ve heard a lot about your doings. It sounds pretty funny to us, giving parties all the time to crowned heads, aren’t you?” This from the men, or from the women more gently—
“Dear, couldn’t you have brought your baby? We’re so disappointed. Yes, you do seem different, but we hope you’re happy. We can’t imagine your life, you know. It seems so empty, so artificial. The papers give such strange accounts. All those gambling places, your cousin fighting a duel, it sounds so strange. France seems to be turning to atheism with terrible rapidity. The separation of Church and State might be good if it led to a spiritual revival, but they don’t keep Sunday at all, do they? All the theatres are open Sundays they say.”
The elders were gentle but positive in their disapproval, the younger generation frankly intolerant. They had been struck by various religious and emotional disturbances that had swept the country, evangelical revivals, a thing called the “Student Movement,” and a university type of socialism. I felt myself being measured up to a certain high standard and found lamentably wanting. Had I forgotten their standards, I asked myself, or was this something new? When they asked me what I was doing with my life I said I didn’t know, that it took me about all my time just to live it. Wasn’t I interested in anything? Oh, yes, a great many things, music especially, and old enamels. They didn’t mean that, they meant causes. I didn’t understand. What causes, I asked, did they refer to? Women’s suffrage, the negro question, sweated labour. No, I was obliged to admit that women’s suffrage had not interested me and that there being no negro question in France I hadn’t thought about the subject. As for sweated labour, I supposed it did exist in Paris, but that its evils had never been brought to my notice. All the young people were espousing causes. They quite took my breath away. They believed so hard in so many things, and they talked so much about the things they believed in. Really they were violent talkers. Their fresh young lips uttered with ease the most astounding phrases. They were fond of big words. Their talk was a curious mixture of undigested literature and startling slang. Some of the things they believed in were love, democracy, the greatness of the American people and the equality of the sexes. What they didn’t believe in they condemned off-hand. There was for them no quiet region where interesting questions were left pleasantly unanswered. They abhorred an unanswered question as nature abhors a vacuum. Every topic was a bull to be taken by the horns. Everything concerned them. There was nothing that was not their business. They were crusaders, at war with idleness and cynicism, vowed to the regeneration of the world. They went for me, but how they went for me! I was a renegade, a back-slider, a poor, misguided victim of an effete and vicious foreign country. I had nothing to give them of any value. When I talked of the charm of Paris they yawned. When I mentioned my friends they called me a snob. When I spoke of my activities they laughed in gay derision. On the whole I didn’t mind. I was too tired to mind. They were so young, so keen, so good to look at, so full of hope. I wouldn’t have stopped their talking for the world, and I liked them for despising my money.
I envied them. They were happy, they were free. Deep in my heart I suspected that they were right to despise my life. In the evenings when they gathered on the shadowy verandahs of their comfortable countrified houses, the young men with mandolins, the girls in billowy muslin dresses, I listened to their laughter and their tinkling music, feeling so old, so very old. On those summer nights Aunt Patty and I would sometimes sit on the front steps of the Grey House as the custom was in the town, and all the street would seem to be charged with romance and joy and mystery. Through the trees one could see young forms flitting from house to house where lights streamed from hospitable windows down across the plots of grass, while on the shadowed verandahs young hearts whispered to young hearts, whispered of dreams that must come true, gallant, innocent dreams.
And there was the difficulty of religion. They couldn’t swallow my having become a Catholic. On the first Sunday morning I asked my Aunt Patience if she would like me to go to church with her.
“Why, yes, Jane, but I thought you’d be going to the Catholic Church.”
“I’d rather go with you, Aunt.”
“Come, then.” But I saw that she was troubled.