XXXII

Lily loved the Sunday papers. Lying on the sofa covered like an elderly Babe in the Wood with papers instead of leaves, she read every word about Queen Mary’s toques and Princess Mary Viscountess Lascelle’s baby, how to arrange salad in green pepper canoes, whether skirts were going to be long or short, and what “Doug and Mary” were doing at the moment. She read selected poems, and often cut them out raggedly with a hair pin and lost them down the crack of the sofa. She looked at the funny pictures and made baffled tries at the puzzles, like a moth bumping softly against a window pane. She read anything about Harvard, in the sports section, on account of Papa and Victor, and looked at pictures of football heroes, thinking how their mothers must worry. She read special articles about chorus girls winning the mystic love of Hindu Swamis. And she always read straight through the society columns. In fact she read everything in the newspapers except the news.

So it was she who discovered that Lucy Hawthorn was back in America. It was quite a shock to come upon the name of someone who was a real person to her, among all the well known but unseen Vanderbilts and Whitneys and Astors. “Countess de la Villeblanche, who will be remembered as Lucy Hawthorn⁠—”

Her first impulse was not to tell Victor. Lucy home again and a widow⁠—she’d be certain to grab him if he gave her half a chance! And she saw herself alone and old. Her better nature triumphed in a minute⁠—besides, she would burst if she kept such an exciting bit of news untold. But it would be just as well to have things especially pleasant when she told him. Somehow, though she tried so hard, home wasn’t the same without Maggie.

He was having Sunday supper somewhere in Wilmington. She would sit up for him, and make some candy to have for a surprise when he came in.

Out in the kitchen she and a little mouse gave each other a good scare⁠—she jumped so that she knocked over the vanilla bottle. Oh dear! Tears came to her eyes. But she got up quite a lot of vanilla with a spoon.

It was so still that she could hear the tinkle of falling icicles, pure and exquisite sound. Alone in the house at night. It was sort of scary when you let yourself think about it.

Alone in the house. And she and Victor weren’t as young as they used to be. Suppose⁠—something should happen to one of them? What would the other do? Alone in the house, alone in the world.

They said it was a sign of getting old when time slipped past faster and faster. It made her dizzy, the world was spinning around so these days, spinning from blue and gold to black and silver, so fast that not a drop was spilled from the rivers and seas, not a pot of flowers fell from a window sill, not a bird’s egg fell from its nest. Standing in the quiet kitchen that suddenly opened out vast and unfamiliar, she felt herself clinging head down to the whirling globe that would some day spin her off altogether.

In a panic she began to clatter pots and spoons, to sing a hymn they had sung when they were children.

“ ‘Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me;
Bless Thy little lamb tonight;
Through the darkness be Thou near me⁠—’ ”

The house grew friendly again. “Tickticktick!” said the clock, brisk and cheerful. She could hear the mice scratching in the walls⁠—it sounded as if they were having fun together. The boiling chocolate made a thick bubbling sound and smelt delicious.

“ ‘Boil till it forms in a soft ball in cold water,’ ” she said aloud. Good little soft balls! She ate five or six of them before she suddenly remembered that it was time to pour the candy out and she had forgotten to butter the soup plates.

It turned nice and hard⁠—a pleasant surprise, so often her candy had to be eaten with a spoon. She marked it off into squares, sampling a good many. Fudge or caramels? She couldn’t make up her mind. She filled a dish and took it in to the living-room, where she had a game of her favorite Tiddley-winks⁠—another game⁠—another. She wasn’t quite sure about playing Tiddley-winks on Sunday, but she was so lonely in the evening without Maggie, she had to do something. Just one more game. And as she played her hand strayed from the dish to her mouth.

When Victor came in, wrapped in cold March air, the dish was empty. She couldn’t believe it!

“Oh, Victor! I made them all for you⁠—for a surprise!”

She could have cried, if she hadn’t remembered her other surprise.

“Guess what!”

“What?”

“Well⁠—Lucy Hawthorn’s back in New York⁠—oh, I humbly beg her pardon, I should have said Her Royal Highness, the Countess of de la Villeblanche⁠—”

Lucy home again! The little feet that had carried her so far were bringing her back to him. And he saw himself receiving into his arms that piteous and fragile figure, heard her say brokenly:

“Victor⁠—at last⁠—”

Should he write to her? He tore up three letters, and then wrote one light in tone but with hidden depths, he really did think, and posted it in a perfect panic. And back came a note from Lucy, so charming that it sounded as if she had come back to America just for his sake.

He decided to go to New York to see her. He could go in the morning and come back after supper, and then he needn’t tell Lily anything about it.

Would she be changed? But people didn’t change really. He was the same Victor who had come to New York to see Lucy years ago⁠—he felt as young, if he admitted the truth, he felt as nervous. He walked from the Pennsylvania Station to the Ritz, dreamily escaping death among the taxicabs. Coming for a moment out of his absorption in the queer feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, he noticed a man with a tray of flowers for sale, among them a few little bunches of lilies-of-the-valley with leaves as tender and pale a green as butterfly wings. Lilies-of-the-valley. “Lucy’s flowers.” Their sweetness would build a bridge across the years, they would say the things he could not. He bought a bunch and slipped it in its screw of waxed paper into his overcoat pocket.

And then he was in Lucy’s apartment at the Ritz, and Lucy herself was holding his hand between hers. Lucy? But where was Lucy? This fat old woman with her powered face and reddened mouth and her queer coppery hair, wearing no jewels but the three strands of great pearls laid on the shelf of her bosom, and draped in heaviest crêpe, mourning as one who eats caviar, oysters, sole marguery, mourns because Christ died upon a Friday, what had she done with Lucy? Was his slim white dryad really there, imprisoned in this tree with its roots in the earth?

“Victor! After all these years⁠—no, dreadful man, don’t dare to say how many! My daughter Madame de Griche⁠—Mrs. Portal, Mrs. Lee, General Scudworth⁠—my grandson Marcel⁠—Monsieur Campion is a dear and old friend of Grand’maman’s, p’tit⁠—my little granddaughter Lucie. Tea! Tea! Ring for tea, Colette, chérie. Tell them heaps of confitures! Don’t sit on Galette or Chrysanthème, anyone⁠—”

Madame de Griche, ugly and chic, her black hair cut like a boy’s, the pearls in her ears and the cigarette drooping from her lacquer-red mouth startlingly white against her yellow skin, was pouring the tea. There were dishes heaped with the ruby and topaz of jam and marmalade, mauve tin boxes from Sherry’s stood open, disclosing chocolates and small rich cakes, the room was full of flowers wilting a little in the steam heat⁠—white lilac really swooning, blue and yellow iris, powdery-sweet mimosa. The two silky, fat toy dogs, like lumps of half-melted toffee, were yapping and being fed chocolates by Lucy, whose stern little granddaughter was chiding her. “Non, non, Grand’maman, c’est méchant! Va-tu, Chrysanthème! Chrysanthème! Galette! Taissez-vous, mauvaises chiens!” Boxes were arriving, the telephone ringing, Marcel’s high voice was crying into it, “Alloh, Alloh!” Old friends rushed in and were embraced.

“Le téléphone, Maman!”

Lucy took the teapot. “How do you take your tea, Victor?”

“Two lumps and cream, please.”

So she gave him lemon, saying, “Now we must have a long, long talk about the dear old days!” But things kept happening.

And then his body followed his spirit that had long ago hurried away towards home. The March air flowed cool and delicious over his hot face, he let his mouth relax from its stretch of polite and nervous smile. He could catch the six o’clock train, he would be home before ten!

He had let his bunch of lilies-of-the-valley stay crushed in his pocket. They had been too gentle. And he thought sadly, complacently:

“Poor Lucy, how fat she has grown⁠—and how old!”