“Oh, I suppose so, Esther. I’ll look after it.”
Mrs. Jack went on down the hall, pausing just perceptibly as she passed her daughter’s door. She could hear the girl’s voice, clear, cool, and young, humming the jaunty strains of a popular tune:
“You’re the cream in my coffee—you’re the salt in my stew-w----”
A little smile of love and tenderness suffused the woman’s face as she continued down the hall and entered the next door, which was her own room.
It was a very simple, lovely room, hauntingly chaste, almost needlessly austere. In the centre of one wall stood her narrow little wooden bed, so small and plain and old that it seemed it might almost have served as the bed of a medieval nun, as perhaps it had. Beside it stood the little table with its few books, a telephone, a glass and a silver pitcher, and in a silver frame a photograph of a girl in her early twenties—Mrs. Jack’s daughter, Alma.
Beside the door as one entered there was an enormous old wooden wardrobe, which she had brought from Italy. This contained all her beautiful dresses and her wonderful collection of winglike little shoes, all of them made by hand to fit her perfect little feet. On the opposite wall, facing the door, between two high windows, stood her writing-desk. Between the bed and the windows there was a small drawing-table. It was a single board of white, perfect wood, and on it, arranged with faultless precision, were a dozen sharpened pencils, a few feathery brushes, some crisp sheets of tracing paper on which geometric designs were legible, a pot of paste, a ruler, and a little jar of golden paint. Exactly above this table, hanging from the wall in all the clean beauty of their strength and accuracy, were a triangle and a square.
At the foot of the bed there was a chaise-longue covered with a flowered pattern of old faded silk. There were a few simple drawings, on the walls, and a single painting of a strange, exotic flower. It was such a flower as never was, a dream flower which Mrs. Jack had painted long ago.
Along the wall opposite the bed stood two old chests. One of them, a product of the Pennsylvania Dutch, was carved and coloured in quaint and cheerful patterns, and this contained old silks and laces and the noble Indian saris which she often loved to wear. The other was an old chest of drawers, with a few silver toilet articles and a square mirror on its top.
Mrs. Jack crossed the room and stood before the mirror looking at herself. First she bent forward a little and stared at her face long and earnestly with an expression of childlike innocence. Then she began to turn about, regarding herself from first one angle, then another. She put her hand up to her temple and smoothed her brow. Obviously she found herself good, for her eyes now took on an expression of rapt complacency. There was open vanity in her look as she brooded with smouldering fascination on the thick bracelet around her arm—a rich and sombre chain of ancient India, studded with dull and curious gems. She lifted her chin and looked at her neck,, tracing out with her finger-tips the design of an old necklace which she wore. She surveyed her smooth arms, her bare back, her gleaming shoulders, and the outlines of her breasts and figure, touching, patting, and half-unconsciously arranging with practiced touches the folds of her simple, splendid gown.
She lifted her arm again and with hand extended, the other hand upon her hip, she turned about once more in her orbit of self-worship. Slowly she turned, still rapt in contemplation of her loveliness, then she gasped suddenly with surprise and fright, and uttered a little scream. Her hand flew to her throat in a gesture of alarm as she realised that she was not alone and, looking up, saw her daughter standing there.
The girl, young, slender, faultless, cold, and lovely, had entered through the bathroom that connected the two rooms, and was standing in the door, having paused there, frozen to immobility as she caught her mother in the act. The mother’s face went blood-red. For a long moment the two women looked at each other, the mother utterly confused and crimson with her guilt, the daughter cold and appraising with the irony of sophisticated mirth. Then something quick and instant passed between them in their glance.
Like one who has been discovered and who knows that there is nothing more to say, the mother suddenly threw back her head and laughed, a rich, full-throated, woman’s yell of free acknowledgement, unknown to the race of man.
“Well, Mother, was it good?” said the girl, now grinning faintly. She walked over and kissed her.