Читать книгу Mrs. Parkington - Louis Bromfield - Страница 5

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There were times when Mrs. Parkington grew bored and moments when she grew a little weary of the sloppy winter weather in New York. She was fastidious and hated slush and liquid soot under foot. But she preferred New York even in the depths of winter to going off to Florida or California. In the old days she occasionally went to Paris or London in winter, out of season. She liked cities out of season because they had for her an air of reality, not being overrun by strangers who did not belong there, who did not have jobs and roots and families. The Major had loved resorts, possibly because he was a gambler, and in the last years of his life she had had plenty of experience with resorts—surrounded always by what the Duchess called “international white trash.” She had loved the Pyrenees and the blue Mediterranean and the damp rich fertility of the Norman countryside beyond the channel coast, but circumstances had never permitted her to develop any contact with them. She was always, wherever she went, Mrs. Parkington or Madame Parkington or Signora Parkington, the wife of the incredibly rich and handsome old Major Parkington who had come in on his yacht and was staying at the Splendide or the Carlton or the Hermitage, a robust old gentleman who ordered only the best food and champagne and rooms and lost fortunes at roulette and chemin de fer. Now and then she had managed to establish incognito some sort of contact with the people who lived in or near the great resorts—the small shopkeepers, the market gardeners, the farmers—but always very quickly they discovered her identity and then everything changed and neither the small people nor herself any longer had any reality. It was as if the money, all the great Parkington fortune, exerted a kind of evil enchantment, forcing her always back into the society of people who had at first amused her but whom she had come after a time to detest as frivolous and stupid and above all boring in their monotony. The Major, in his insensibility, had never seemed to be annoyed by them. He had gone on and on drinking and gambling and eating, carrying on business by cablegram, until the day at Cannes when he fell down dead as a turnip under extremely peculiar circumstances and set her free to live as she pleased. From that day on she avoided resorts and saw only the people for whom she felt affection or whose brains or talent she held in respect. It was a rule which she broke only once a year when she entertained her own family at Christmas dinner.

And so she stayed on in New York right through the winter in her own pleasant, luxurious house, the house which she had planned and furnished as a comfortable nest in which to die.

On Thursday after Christmas she came down for tea early, with impatience, because Janie was bringing her young man to call. She had made it a special occasion, with fresh flowers and shortbread and scones, and put on her new black dress from Bendel’s and the new hat, the one with a stiff chic bow on the side, which sat pertly and with a youthful air on her white hair. She wanted to make a good impression upon Janie’s young man. As she stood in her dressing-room regarding herself in the old cheval glass, she suddenly caught a glimpse of Mattie watching her with a curious smile on her broad Swedish face. As their eyes met, Mrs. Parkington turned and said, “What are you laughing at, Mattie?”

Mattie’s face grew slowly red, and she replied, “Nothing, madame. I was only thinking how smart you looked and how young.”

“I’ll live to bury them all,” said Mrs. Parkington.

That was an old joke but sometimes she half-believed in the truth of it. As she picked up the handkerchief Mattie had put out for her, she knew there was much more behind that smile than Mattie had confessed. Mattie had a long memory. She was thinking of a time when her mistress had studied herself in the mirror for a half hour at a time before going out because she had wanted to please someone, more than she wanted anything else in all her life. It was odd that for more than forty years Mattie had known perfectly well that her mistress was an adulteress and had never betrayed even the faintest sign of the knowledge.

“That, I suppose,” thought Mrs. Parkington, “is what is called being a perfect servant. But it’s also being a perfect friend.” But on second thought Mattie was in theory at least a wicked woman because she had connived at the adultery, giving silent approval and even encouraging it.

“Would you mind, madame,” Mattie was saying, “If I peeked when Miss Janie’s young man comes in?”

“No, Mattie. Take a good look. You could pretend to be doing something in the hall and I’ll introduce you.”

But Mattie, it seemed, did not think this was the proper procedure. She said, “No, madame. Not so soon. I might do it on the second or third time he comes.”

“Very well. Suit yourself, Mattie.”

She moved toward the door and again heard Mattie speaking. “Miss Janie’s got to be a very pretty girl. I never thought she would be when she was little.”

“She was too fat then and straightening her teeth made a great difference.” She opened the door and then said, “I’ll take the dogs with me ... Come Bijou ... come Mignon!”

The two Pekingese leapt from the sofa and, yapping with excitement, ran past her into the hall and down the curved stairway into the shadows of the hall as Taylor came forward with his false guardsman’s walk to answer the bell which sounded distantly in the servant’s hall.

At the top of the stairs Mrs. Parkington stopped for a moment to look at her watch. It wasn’t five yet and Janie had said her young man could not leave his office until five. It couldn’t be Janie yet.

As the door opened, the old lady leaned out over the rail in order to get a view of the hallway. For a moment the back of Taylor obscured her view. Then as he stood aside, she saw that the caller was the cowboy who she thought was in Nassau with Madeleine.

She heard Taylor saying, “I’ll see if Mrs. Parkington is in.” And before he could ask the cowboy to sit down, she started down the stairway, calling out impatiently, “It’s all right, Taylor. Tell Mr. Swann to come in.”

She was astonished at seeing him, but very pleased. It was to be a pleasant late afternoon in the small sitting-room where she had had the brief unpleasant interview with Amory on Christmas night. She and the cowboy and Janie and her young man could shut the door and close out the rest of the world, all the unpleasant dull people and the slush and soot and dirt. The anticipation of pleasure made her feet light as she descended the stairs.

The cowboy had lost none of his shy awkwardness. He came up the three steps leading from the vestibule into the hall and then stood there shyly, his big hands clasped as if he did not know what to do with them, his face a little flushed, awed again by the elegance of the house. His blue eyes turned toward her; he waited as if uncertain what to do.

She came toward him, fluttering a little, even at the age of eighty-four. She was aware of this and a trifle ashamed that any man should still rouse in her heart a desire to please and attract. Yet she experienced too a flutter of pleasure. This man, so out of place here in the big hall, had a hard core of masculinity. It was like steel, unlike anything she had encountered in many years. It was easy to see why Madeleine had made a fool of herself.

Her tiny blue-veined be-diamonded hand disappeared in his. A sudden smile broke out on his face—“broke out” she thought was exactly right, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

She said, “This is good luck. Where is Madeleine?”

He said, a little sheepishly, “She is still at the dressmaker’s. I didn’t like it much there.”

“Come along in here,” she said, leading him by the hand into the small sitting room.

The curtains were drawn and in the yellow marble fireplace there was a small wood fire. Beside it Taylor had placed the great Sheffield tray with all the heavy silver. As she rang a bell and then said, “Sit down here,” one of the dogs leapt into her lap as she sat down and the other, the black one, curled on the rug with its nose against the fender, just below the Dresden china shepherdess.

Taylor appeared in the doorway and she said to the cowboy, “Would you like tea?”

He said, “Yes, ma’am,” but shyly without enthusiasm, and she asked “Perhaps you’d prefer whisky.”

His face brightened, “Yes, ma’am. Bourbon, if you have it ... straight, with water on the side.”

“Have we any Bourbon, Taylor?”

“Yes, madame.”

“And tea for me.”

She divined that Madeleine had not been allowing him Bourbon. Madeleine probably thought it a vulgar drink.

When Taylor had gone, she said, “I didn’t know you were still in town. I thought you’d gone to Nassau.”

“No. Madeleine’s clothes weren’t ready.” The grin broadened on his face. It was not exactly a handsome face, she thought, watching it slyly. It was a simple face—with a wide mouth, a straight nose, blue eyes surrounded by the tiny wrinkles which come of living always out of doors. The eyebrows were a little too heavy, and the hair a little too slicked. She guessed that he was ashamed of the natural wave for which most of the women she knew would give a couple of years of their lives.

He took out a gold and platinum cigarette case and asked, “May I smoke, ma’am?”

(The cigarette case would, of course, be a gift from Madeleine. He handled it with awe as if he were afraid of it.)

“Of course.”

She fussed with the tea things while he lighted a cigarette, wanting to fill in the silence and make him feel at ease. She was aware that there was no barrier between him and her; he was simple and she had learned long ago that simplicity and directness were a great power and vastly important to the richness of life. It was “things” which got between them—this room, with its marble fireplace and the heavy silver and the naked Boucher drawings and the luxurious little dogs. Except that she had chosen all of them, they had very little to do with her. She would not care very much if they all vanished overnight.

“Are you enjoying New York?”

“Yes. It’s quite a place for sight-seeing.”

“Will you be sorry to leave?”

“No. It’s all right, but it’s not my kind of thing. A lot of the time I don’t know what to do with myself.” He grinned, “and I don’t get enough sleep here.”

She was not getting very far. There were so many things she wanted to know—how he had met Madeleine, how they had ever come close enough even to discuss marriage, which one had done the wooing, what he really thought of her granddaughter, how on earth he had ever come to marry her. But she knew that this afternoon at least, she would discover the answer to none of these things. This was a simple man and he had a simple code of decency and honor. It would take a long time for her to break down these barriers. The sight of him took her back a long way into the past, to Leaping Rock and the shadows of the great mountain. There she had once known men like this. In all the years in between she had met only one or two like him. The sort of life she had led had not brought men of this sort into the vortex of her existence. She regretted it now, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Suddenly she said, “Do you have a ranch of your own?”

“Yes, ma’am. Not a very big one. Only ten thousand acres but it’s good grazing ground. It’ll take care of a thousand head of Herefords in a good season. I’m hoping to spread out a bit.”

She thought, “Maybe he married Madeleine for money.” But almost at once dismissed the idea. A man with a face like this wouldn’t marry for money. You could tell by people’s faces ... so much ... everything. To understand people’s faces required years of experience and a fine sensitive instinct. She had a sudden idiotic impulse to say, “I’ll buy you another hundred thousand acres, two hundred thousand acres, a million—whatever you want. I’ll make it a wedding gift.” But immediately she knew this was silly and that he would not accept. He would be frightened or think her mildly insane.

“How old are you?” she asked abruptly.

“Thirty-four.”

(Then he was five years younger than Madeleine.)

“There’s plenty of time to spread out. Does Madeleine like it out there?”

“Yes. For a while she’s crazy about it but after a little she seems to get kind of bored.”

“That’s in her blood ... both things,” said Mrs. Parkington. And after a moment she added, “That’s like her grandfather—Major Parkington.”

Then Taylor came in followed by the footman with the tea and sandwiches and the Bourbon and at the same time the doorbell sounded and Mrs. Parkington, bending over the tea tray, carefully, so as not to disturb the Pekingese, said, “That’s probably Miss Janie and her young man. Bring them right in here, Taylor.”

But it wasn’t Janie. When the door opened, the Duchess came in. She was dressed badly again, Mrs. Parkington thought, in a violet walking suit trimmed with sable and a turban of mink which made her bored, weary, sallow face look rather like that of an impotent pasha.

She said, “Hello, Mother.” And then as her nearsighted eyes discovered another figure in the room, she said, “Oh, I thought you were alone.”

The cowboy stood up, uncertain as to whether or not to shake hands. The Duchess peered at him and then said, “Oh, it’s you ... Madeleine’s husband,” as if he weren’t there at all, and then as if moved by an afterthought, “Glad to see you.”

She sat down and said, “Could I have some of the Bourbon?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Parkington. She had long ago given up trying to persuade Alice to drink less. She rang the bell and asked “How is your rheumatism?”

“Neither better nor worse,” said the Duchess. “Sometimes I think it’s neuralgia ... sometimes acidity.”

“I think it’s acidity,” said Mrs. Parkington, firmly and with significance.

The Duchess took out a cigarette and lighted it. She did it languidly as she did everything, as if long ago she had lost all interest in whatever she did and was only marking time until with utter indifference, she died. Mrs. Parkington saw that the clear blue eyes of Al Swann were watching her daughter and it occurred to her that he must find the whole assortment of his wife’s relatives odd in the extreme.

Taylor arrived with another glass and the Duchess took her Bourbon straight, like Al, and Mrs. Parkington, with an odd desire to chuckle, saw that the cowboy watched the performance with respect. Then Alice said, “If you’re alone for dinner, Mother, I thought I might stay.”

Mrs. Parkington did not want this. All the time in her heart she was hoping that Janie and her young man might not have an engagement and could be lured into staying for dinner or perhaps into going to the theater ... that is, if the young man was really what Janie said he was. She wanted young people tonight, not someone tired like Alice to feed off her vitality. She pulled herself together and said, “If you have nothing better to do, stay by all means.”

A sudden gleam came into her daughter’s eye, a curious gleam of life as if an oyster had suddenly become animated. Alice said, “There is something important to discuss. I’d like to talk with you alone.”

“Janie is coming,” said Mrs. Parkington quickly, “She’s bringing her young man. They may stay to dinner.”

The gleam in the eye of the Duchess seemed to grow a little brighter. “That’s luck. I’ve wanted to meet him. Janie never said anything about him to me. I only heard in a roundabout way.”

Her voice trailed away drearily and Mrs. Parkington thought, “She must not begin to whine. It’s better that she drinks than to go about complaining all the while like Helen.” And quickly she said, “Janie hasn’t told anyone but me.”

The Duchess rose quietly and with a curious dignity that was almost like a burlesque of dignity, walked three or four steps to the decanter which contained the Bourbon. Quietly, ignoring the eyes of Mrs. Parkington and Al Swann, she poured herself another measure of whisky.

Mrs. Parkington thought, “Now she is going to spoil everything. I won’t get a chance to get any nearer to Al and it’s going to be difficult with Janie’s young man.”

She could not ask Alice not to take another drink. A kind of pride prevented her. She never had discussed the subject of drinking with Alice. Somehow she had never been able to do it. It was weak of her, she knew, but she was aware that to break someone of the habit of drinking, you had to offer him something. Alice drank out of despair; at sixty-five there was nothing which could be offered her to compensate for the solace of alcohol ... nothing at all.

She was sitting down again, with the same unsteady travesty of dignity, as if she were balancing a coronet on the top of her head. Mrs. Parkington thought: With a train she would be like Beatrice Lillie doing a duchess at the coronation. But behind this reflection, there was a pang, for Mrs. Parkington suddenly remembered Alice, sitting there in the absurd violet walking costume, as she had been as a little girl, before anything had happened to her.

Quickly, abruptly, she said, “Mr. Swann ... Al, I mean ... was born in Leaping Rock, where I was born.” And she saw that for a moment the name “Leaping Rock” meant nothing to her daughter. It lay too far back, before she was born, in a world of which she knew nothing at all save the stories her mother had told her as a child. And now Alice was sixty-five and between her and these stories there was a veil, a thick veil with a pattern confused and ugly, which obscured much.

“Oh, yes,” she said and smiled the ordered practiced inane smile of one pretending interest from an eminence shrouded in fog. And Mrs. Parkington thought, “It’s awful now. Her dropping in has spoiled everything.”

Then the bell sounded again and she said, aware that Al was uneasy. “That’s Janie, I suppose,” and in her excitement she stood up, taking the sleepy, indignant Pekingese from her lap and slipping it under her arm. She started toward the door leading into the hallway and then checked herself and moved toward the fireplace, standing with her back to the gentle flame as if she had meant to warm herself. A curious smile came over the face of the Duchess. It was difficult sometimes for Mrs. Parkington to discover how much her daughter observed, how much of what happened beneath the surface of things ever penetrated the haze in which she seemed to exist. Alice was secret as a turtle, yet at times as acutely sensitive as a gazelle.

Then something came into the room. It was as if the air had changed, as if the light had become more brilliant. It came in the door with Janie and her young man, and Mrs. Parkington knew at once that it was going to be all right. Janie was right. She must keep this young man.

He was tall, possibly over six feet, and good-looking, not handsome so much as healthy, with his dark hair and high color and blue eyes. He moved nicely as if he felt confidence in himself, not at all as if he were shy at meeting a formidable old lady who was very nearly legendary. Yet there was nothing arrogant or conceited or brazen in his manner. Mrs. Parkington thought: Oh, blessed young man who was born simple and direct. He must have been born so for he could not have learned the magic secret in so few years.

He was happy, it was clear, and Janie was happy. It was the happiness that came of being with each other. It was as simple as that.

Janie brought him straight over to her and as her great-granddaughter came nearer to her, Mrs. Parkington felt warmth stealing over her old body. Janie’s face was flushed, her eyes brilliant.

She said, “This is Ned, Great-Grandmama. Ned Talbot.”

He said quite simply, “I’m so glad to meet you, Mrs. Parkington.”

He took her hand and she said, “I wanted to meet you too.” Then she said, “This is my daughter, Mrs. Sanderson, and Mr. Swann ... Al Swann who married my granddaughter Madeleine.” She smiled, “There are a lot of us—quite a lot. Sometimes it seems very complicated.”

The boy had nice manners. He shook hands with both the Duchess and Al and the Duchess took out a lorgnon to reinforce her weak eyes. She looked at him with frank concentration for a long time as if making a study of a wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s.

The conversation was not good. It could not have been because the mixture of the people in the room was too preposterous. Al and his ranch, the Duchess with her dreary manner of splendor, and the two young people, so obviously in love. It was talk about the weather, about theaters, about books, about Washington, about everything in general and nothing in particular. Mrs. Parkington did not trouble to give it much of her attention, only enough to keep it going. She was watching the boy, discovering many things which experience had taught her could be discovered.

She noticed with pleasure the line of his square jaw. Janie, who had her share of the family instability, would have need of the firmness it indicated. She liked the full, rather sensual mouth and the large and beautiful hands. Janie was young and warm—the whole family had been like that, even the Duchess, long ago—and she would need a lover as well as a husband to bring her happiness. Big men should not have small tight mouths and small hands. That was Amory’s trouble; that was one of the things which made his wife’s mouth turn down so bitterly at the corners.

And she liked the large vigorous ears with their well-defined lobes and the line from the chin which was clear and straight, and the rather large feet and the square set of the shoulders. At fifty he would be heavier but never fat; there was too much energy in him, too much life in the eyes and the way the lips curled at the corners. He had humor too. There were fine lines about the eyes, not the deep creases that fringed the cowboy’s eyes, but lines which came of good humor and health. Al was simple and direct; this boy was different. He was not simple, although he understood somehow the power of simplicity. He was complex—complicated. At times he would be tortured by his own variety of mood and intelligence. He might even be unfaithful to Janie, but he would, Mrs. Parkington thought, never allow her to discover it, and he would never be carried into disaster by the sweep of his own emotions.

Suddenly Mrs. Parkington laughed quietly, so quietly that the others did not even notice it. She had thought, “I am looking him over as if he were a horse I was buying for Janie, as if I were telling his fortune.”

He was talking now and she liked the sound of his voice. He was arguing with the Duchess some point of British politics, bewildering her heavy mind by the quickness of his own. He talked very rapidly as if his tongue could not keep pace with his mind.

When he had finished and made his point, the Duchess agreed, won over more by his masculinity and vitality and charm than by his arguments which could scarcely make much impression on her tired befogged mind. She was displaying an extraordinary interest in him, looking at him directly now and then through the lorgnon. Once she even reached up and set her hat straight and took out a lipstick and made up her lips.

Janie obviously was very proud of him. She had clearly wanted to show him off. But the nice thing was that he was not showing off. His excitement over an idea was genuine. It even moved Al, who sitting forward a little in his chair, listening, could not have had the faintest idea of what they were talking about.

When Ned had finished, Al looked at his watch (from Cartier, thought Mrs. Parkington. Another gift from Madeleine) and said, “I must go. Madeleine’s waiting for me at the hotel. I’m late already.”

“Madeleine doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” said the Duchess with a perfectly blank expression. You did not know whether or not she spoke with malice, implying that Madeleine always bought her husbands and expected them to be punctual. Al looked at her sharply and Mrs. Parkington thought the color appeared for a second in his weathered face. She herself did not know whether or not Alice had been malicious. She had never been able, even after sixty-five years, to discover when Alice was being malicious and when she was simply being stupid and tactless. Perhaps it had something to do with the myopia of her hyperthyroid eyes. Nearsighted people very often had a curious blank expression which came of the effort to focus objects which were perpetually hazy.

Shyly, Al said good night and went out. Mrs. Parkington went with him as far as the hall, for she wanted to ask him to come back another time when they could have a good talk about Nevada. If she asked him in front of the others, she knew it would mean nothing and he might not return.

In the doorway, she asked him to come back.

“I’d like to, ma’am,” he said.

“Telephone me and I’ll fix it so that we can be alone and have a good talk.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

He started to move away but she laid her hand on his arm. Suddenly she found herself saying, “Is it all right with Madeleine?”

For a second he was silent. Then the tanned face turned a mahogany red and the blue eyes looked past her. “Yes, Mrs. Parkington. It’s all right.”

She patted his arm and said, “I’m glad.” And he went away quickly as she thought, “So, it’s like that!”

What a fool Madeleine was! But that was not her fault. It was a tragedy. Otherwise, Madeleine was the best of the family, save for Janie. She was big, healthy, pleasant and good-natured, but this thing was a disease.

As she re-entered the room, closing the door behind her, a sigh rose from deep inside her, taking utter possession of the trim, straight old body.

Consciously she thrust back the sigh and brightened herself in time to hear Alice saying, “I must say our new relative doesn’t have much to say for himself.”

“He hadn’t much chance,” said Mrs. Parkington.

But Alice had not finished. She said, “He does seem to be bearing up better than the others. Cowboys must have something.”

Then suddenly, sharply, Mrs. Parkington made use of her dignity. It was a terrifying dignity which could chill and awe even her own descendants. It was as if she turned suddenly to ice, as if she became a sword of judgment, tempered with contempt.

She simply said, “Alice! That’s enough of that!”

The dignity had invested her partly because she had grown fond of Al and did not mean to have him treated as a fool, and partly because the things implied by her daughter’s remark had nothing to do with the two young people here in the room with them. Alice had been insensitive and vulgar, smirching somehow the brightness which Janie and Ned had brought into the room.

Purposely the old woman crossed near to the Duchess, saying fiercely as she passed, “Sometimes you are a bloody fool!” But Alice, cowering spiritually, merely stared at her in astonishment, wondering that her mother, who had no scruples at discussing anything on earth, should suddenly have turned prude.

But already her mother was saying brightly, too brightly, too eagerly, “Could you and Ned have dinner with me?” And before they could answer she said, “We’re having pheasant your great-uncle Henry sent down from Rhinebeck.”

Janie came over quickly and put her arm about great-grandmother. “We can’t, darling. We’re dining with Ned’s sister. She’s here from South Bend for two days with her husband.”

Something in Janie’s voice took away the chill of disappointment. Mrs. Parkington thought, “Janie knows. She knows how much I want them.” That was what Janie had that none of her other descendants had ever had save her son Herbert and Herbert was dead, these fifty years, so long ago that lately the memory of him had come to seem nearer to her than the physical reality of the people about her. Janie knew, with that curious extra sense which she herself had.

She wanted suddenly to say, “Bring them too.” But she did not, partly because she would have seemed too eager and partly out of worldly experience. The sister and her husband might turn out to be frightful and spoil everything.

“It’s all right, my dear. Another time.”

Ned said, “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Parkington. I should have liked staying. I’d put them off but I want Janie to meet my sister and it’s the only time we could meet.”

Then Janie kissed her and whispered, “Come into the hall, Granny. I want to ask you something.”

So Mrs. Parkington went into the hall with them and Janie said to her young man, “Go along, get your hat, Ned. I want to speak to Granny.”

She stood watching him go away and then she turned to Mrs. Parkington and said, “Isn’t he nice, darling? Isn’t he what you would like?”

Mrs. Parkington laughed, “It’s a little late for that. But he is what I would have liked at your age.” Then she kissed Janie and said, “Run along now.”

She watched them go out the door and as she turned to re-enter the small sitting-room she felt suddenly tired and depressed and old. The feeling was like a cloud of mist enveloping her, dimming everything—the lights, the outlines of the familiar furniture, the figure of the Duchess in the absurd violet costume.

“I am old,” she thought, “After all I am old.” But at the same time she was aware that the weariness was born not so much of her body as of the weight of all that happened to her since she had gone out joyously to meet what life held for her. Oddly the weariness seemed to center about the figure of the Duchess. The violet walking costume lay at the very midst of the cloud.

With a great effort of will she straightened her body and smiled at Alice.

“He’s a nice boy,” she said, “And I should think, a clever one.”

“Helen and Amory are not very pleased.” She chuckled wickedly, “South Bend! They probably think South Bend is full of Indians and cowboys.”

Mrs. Parkington was about to say, “If ever a family needed new blood, ours does.” But Alice said it for her. So she rang for Taylor to clear away and said, “At least we’re trying. Janie and her young man, Madeleine and her cowboy.” Then she noticed the gleam again in the olive-colored eyes of the Duchess, and was certain now that her daughter had some tremendous piece of news which would make no one but herself happy.

Taylor came and Mrs. Parkington said, “Mrs. Sanderson and I will dine here by the fire.” It would be better that way. She could not dine at the great table alone with Alice. Then she added, “Mrs. Sanderson would probably like a cocktail. What do you want, Alice?”

“A martini.”

Taylor’s face betrayed no emotion whatever. “Very good. Shall I bring it when I bring your champagne?”

“Yes. We’ll be ready in half an hour. I’m going to freshen up.”

She had hoped to escape Alice for a little while, but there was no escape. Alice rose and said, “I’ll come up with you.” And Mrs. Parkington resigned herself out of weariness.

In the boudoir abovestairs Alice lost herself among the objects—the chairs, photographs, sofas—that once had been a part of the monstrous house on Fifth Avenue. While Mrs. Parkington primped, thinking how gray her face looked, her daughter went about looking at the faded photographs, making comments, remembering things long forgotten. For a long time she held the photographs of her dead brothers, the two brothers who had always been so much more beautiful and brilliant than herself, peering at them in a nearsighted way, as if seeking to recapture something which perhaps was not happiness but something better than the grayness of her present existence.

Suddenly she turned and said, “How odd of Uncle Henry to send you pheasants. Do you ever hear from him?”

“He drops in now and then and sometimes sends eggs or capons or pheasants or something.”

“I haven’t seen him for years. What is he like now?”

“About the same—older ... but not much changed ...” she smiled, “Still a ripsnorter.”

Then the conversation died away, leaving the shadow of Uncle Henry, the Major’s younger brother, there in the room with them—Uncle Henry, the family black sheep whom they all looked upon as mad because he did what he pleased in life, married the daughter of one of his farm tenants and lived like a farm laborer. He hadn’t been too mad, because he was a very rich man and had won several very profitable lawsuits against railroad companies and the estate of his own brother, the Major.

Presently Mrs. Parkington finished with her primping and said, “We’d better go down. Pheasant should not sit around waiting.”

The revelation came about the middle of dinner when they were just finishing Uncle Henry’s pheasant. Mrs. Parkington, to raise her spirits, had had two half-pints of champagne and the Duchess had had three martinis followed by a half-pint of Burgundy with the bird. But the wine had not raised Mrs. Parkington’s spirits.

As Taylor took away the pheasant, the Duchess, the gleam returning to her eyes, said, “I heard something alarming about Amory last night.”

Mrs. Parkington looked at her and said, “What? I knew there was something on your mind.”

“He’s in trouble.”

“What about?”

“Money. There’s something shady about it. I must say I was surprised—about Amory of all people.”

Mrs. Parkington did not answer. The memory of the conversation with Amory concerning a loan returned to her. At the same time she thought: How stupid Alice is to say “Amory of all people.” Why Amory was just the sort ... a vestryman of St. Bart’s, a pompous ass and a stupid man cursed with the smugness which believes itself all-knowing.

“For heaven’s sake,” she asked, “What is it?”

But the Duchess took her time, seeming to relish the story. “It seems,” she said, “that he has lost a great deal of money in the last ten years.”

“I know that,” said Mrs. Parkington.

“And lately he’s been trying to gamble and get it back.”

“Yes.”

“But not with his own money ... with the money and securities of other people ... some of it belonging to his firm and some to his clients.”

Mrs. Parkington frowned. She didn’t want to hear the story tonight. She was too weary and depressed. But she had to hear, knowing that in some strange way she was looked upon as the head of the family and that in the end it would all come back upon her. There was never any escape. They all depended on her, even Amory. And in this case there was no stopping Alice.

Mrs. Parkington asked, “Where did you hear this?”

“Judge Everett told me. He came in for tea yesterday.”

“I never thought of Judge Everett as a gossip.”

“He didn’t tell it as gossip. He thought perhaps you ought to know about it.”

Tartly Mrs. Parkington asked, “Why didn’t he come to me directly?”

“He said he didn’t because he was not sure about details.” Alice smiled suddenly. “And he was afraid to tell you without having the facts at hand. He was afraid that you’d tell him he was a fool.”

“It may be that he is. It all sounds like gossip to me.” But she knew it wasn’t gossip. She sincerely wished it was. “In any case I wouldn’t repeat it to anyone.”

“Of course not, Mother. It isn’t the sort of thing to go about telling about your niece’s husband.” When Mrs. Parkington, lost in thought, said nothing, her daughter asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing! There’s nothing I can do. It’s up to Amory to get himself out of this. In any case, there may be nothing in it.”

Alice was smiling now, a blank, slightly tipsy smile. She was pleased because she hated Amory and was none too fond of his wife with the drooping mouth. Mrs. Parkington wasn’t thinking of either of them. She was thinking of their daughter, Janie, and the radiance she had taken with her out of the house. Nothing must happen to spoil Janie’s happiness. She kept telling herself that such things did not happen to people like Amory—why, Amory had always been a monument of respectability—St. Bart School, Harvard, the best clubs, vestryman. Things like that didn’t happen to people like Amory. But a quiet voice kept saying, “But they do happen. They’ve happened to people you’ve known well. A crook is a crook and times have changed. Big crooks get caught nowadays. They don’t get away with it as they used to.”

She saw that Alice would not mind the notoriety; she could no longer be touched by it. Once perhaps, long ago, the pictures in the papers, the raucous headlines had shocked and hurt her, but for a long time, perhaps twenty years, these things had no longer had any power to astonish or hurt her. There had been too many family headlines since the day Augustus Parkington brought back to New York a bride from Leaping Rock, Nevada. Only on extraordinary occasions did the Duchess ever emerge from the misty world in which she existed to read a newspaper. She would certainly not mind the notoriety. She would be unaware of it.

Then as she sat there, thinking, she became aware that the daughter opposite her had collapsed. Quite suddenly she seemed to have become weary and shattered. The eyes were closed, the head fallen a little on one side. For a second Mrs. Parkington thought: She is dead! For she had all the appearance of a dead person.

“Alice!” she said, and then in a stronger voice, “Alice! Alice!”

Then the tired head stirred, the dull eyes opened and peered at her. “Are you ill?”

“No, but I think I’ll go home if you’ll call a taxi.”

When the taxi came, Taylor and Mrs. Parkington helped her to the door and Mrs. Parkington said, “I think you’d better go with her, Taylor.”

The Duchess made a great effort at pulling herself together and said, “He doesn’t need to come. I’m all right.”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Mrs. Parkington.

Taylor fetched his hat and supported her to the taxi while Mrs. Parkington stood in the doorway watching. It had begun to snow again and the flakes came down thinly, melting as they struck the sidewalk. When the taxi drove off Mrs. Parkington closed the door and, followed by the two Pekingese, climbed the three shallow steps, and crossed the hall to the lift.

Upstairs she found Mattie waiting for her with the nightgown and peignoir laid out, her face expressionless. She was like Taylor, a good servant, a kind friend. She gave no sign of knowing that anything unusual had gone on belowstairs.

Mrs. Parkington said, “You can go to bed Mattie. I’ll read for a little while.”

“Very good, madame.”

She helped the old lady out of her clothes and then went away and Mrs. Parkington settled herself on the chaise longue with a French novel. It was an old novel by “Gyp” and she hoped that the memories it raised would dissipate the sense of depression and worry which had taken possession of her.

Old books, familiar scents, stray pieces of music took her, more and more frequently, into the remote past. For some time now she had fallen into the habit of tricking herself into slipping away from the present. It was a process of anesthesia, and made sleep possible on the nights when her mind, alive, awake and glittering, flitted like a firefly from one anxiety to another.

But the old novel by “Gyp” failed as a means of escape. Suddenly she could not even keep her mind on it. She would read a whole page without being aware of what she was reading because the story the Duchess had told her kept returning, gnawing like a weasel at her consciousness. She kept thinking: The fool! Why did he do it? Whatever happened, it must be hushed up. Alone now she no longer pretended to doubt the truth of the rumor.

And suddenly she was grateful for one of the few times in her life that she was a very rich woman. If this were true about Amory—if he really was in trouble—she could pay off what he had stolen, she could even give him money to bribe his way out of everything. She hated bribery as she hated all corruption, all dishonesty, but she would stoop to it now, at eighty-four, if there was no other way, but not for Amory’s sake, not to save Amory. For him she had little sympathy. If there must be dishonesty, if she had to accept it, she preferred the cynical, gangster dishonesty of her dead husband. In that, at least, there had been a kind of evil grandeur and romance. She hated Amory’s hypocrisy. No, she would not lift a finger to help Amory himself, but there was Janie to think of and Janie’s young man and what lay before them. All that money could be of use, if only to buy a clear way to happiness and decency for Janie. She would use it somehow to buy an escape for Janie from the blight which had touched the rest of the family.

But Amory must come to her and ask for help. She would not offer it, not to Amory who behaved when he married her granddaughter Helen as if he were conferring an honor upon the Parkington family. Amory must come on his knees to ask her.

In the old woman there had never been any strong instinct for vengeance. The humiliation of Amory would only be a payment, a kind of fine for the humbuggery of himself and all his background of privilege and snobbery.

The novel by “Gyp” slipped forgotten from her lap, startling Mignon, the Pekingese, into an outburst of yapping. When she had quieted the dog she rose and turning out the light went into her bedroom, hoping that she would be able to sleep. But sleep did not come. In the darkness she lay watching the snow falling thicker and thicker through the windows of light made by the street lamp. And presently the sight of the softly falling snow seemed to hypnotize her and after a time she slipped into a strange, blurred borderland between sleep and consciousness, and the snow seemed to be falling all about her in the room itself and through the snowstorm she drifted back and back through world after world to a winter night long ago and she was descending from a cab, helped by Major Augustus Parkington, into the falling snow through which the yellow gaslight was shining softly. A match seller came out of the snow and Gus gave her a coin, and then with a chuckle, lifted Mrs. Parkington, his bride, off her feet and holding her against his great barrel chest, carried her across the sloppy sidewalk and up the steps into the Brevoort Hotel from which the sound of music was coming.