She had not been out alone with David again, although Mary Ellen arranged occasional foursomes, but the relationship between them had undergone a change. On evenings when he waited with a drink for Mary Ellen to find a scarf or a belt or even, on one occasion, a pair of shoes, Celia was no longer a lay figure—the roommate—but feminine in her own right, the companion of an exhilarating night walk. She sensed that it would be disastrous to pit her own calm and certitude of movement against Mary Ellen’s charming ineptitude, because while ants might do the work grasshoppers were much more popular, but more than once she and David smiled at each other in an alone way across the room.
On the fifteenth of December, Mary Ellen said at breakfast, “If you haven’t any other plans for Christmas, Celia, why not come home with me?”
“Oh, I don’t think I should, do you? It’s such a family time,” said Celia with an air of wistful recollection. No observer would have guessed that for the past several years she had managed to confine her own sentimental feelings in this regard to a Christmas card and a ten-dollar bill.
“You’d only stay here and brood, which nobody should do at Christmas,” said Mary Ellen firmly. “Besides which, you’ll be more than welcome. Mother’s been wanting to meet you. Ill have her call you if that will make you feel any better about it.”
It would be the first time in her fife that Celia had slept in anyone’s home as a guest. Instead of redoubling her labors in an employer’s house as Christmas approached, she would be the one to arrive, the object and not the supplier of the fresh linen and towels and attention. For the briefest of instants, in some strange, transported way, she gazed with wonder at the simple fact of this achievement.
But even after Mrs. Vestry called the next day, in a voice resembling gravel being poured down a chute, Celia was in doubt as to what to bring or, if necessary, buy. Mary Ellen, clearly assuming that she had been a house guest on other occasions and had certainly attended Christmas parties, was no help; she only said blithely, “Oh, good, that’s settled,” and returned to her gift-wrapping. This was a process which the deft Celia could hardly bear to watch: under Mary Ellen’s tutelage, festive paper flew apart, ribbon slipped from comers, the scissors got lost. Irritatingly, she seemed to enjoy the shambles, and looked on with an air of slight regret when Celia, driven beyond endurance, whisked paper and ribbon into taut perfection without wasting an inch of anything. “I suppose it’s something like perfect pitch,” observed Mary Ellen unenviously. “You either have it or you don’t.”
In the end, Celia had to ask carelessly, “Will I be needing an evening dress?”
“Better bring one,” said Mary Ellen vaguely, as though Celia had several instead of none at all. “You never know, we might get roped into something at the country club. Oh, I go there. David made me see that I had to.”
David, who would be on the scene at some point over Christmas although he had his own family obligations. . . . Celia bought an evening dress of pale-blonde brocade, completely simple except for a narrow ribbon of icy yellow satin at the midriff; in it, she looked as serene as a candle. But her real weapon was a pair of shoes for walking.
Mary Ellen had somehow wangled her way out of the frantically busy bookshop by five o’clock on Christmas Eve. Celia, wearing the leopard coat and the one good suit she had promised herself, met her at five thirty at Pennsylvania Station. And there—emerging from the hectic mass of luggage-laden, parcel-carrying, holiday-flushed humanity with the unlikelihood of a needle leaping out of a haystack, she also met Willis Lambert.
Ten
FOR a moment or two, in spite of the shouted “Celia! Hey, Cellar it almost seemed possible to avoid him. Celia turned her head away and wove rapidly and ruthlessly through the crowd as though she hadn’t heard. When Mary Ellen, struggling to keep up with her, panted breathlessly, “Someone’s calling you,” she answered as though that had been swallowed up in the loud-speaker carols, “Gate seven—we’d better hurry.”
But a very small lost child had sat down to cry, and in one of the strange spontaneous departures which overtake New Yorkers at festive seasons, strangers who would normally have scorned to notice each other had stopped to exchange clucks of concern. Helpless with rage at the scented furs of two elderly women who stood immovably in her path, Celia was trapped for the few seconds it took Willis Lambert to navigate the ring from the far side.
And there he stood, breathing hard and reproachfully, disaster made visible in a bright tweed topcoat that fitted too tightly. Even from a distance he had worn an expression of astonishment; now, after the merest flick of a glance at Mary Ellen, he amplified this to an elaborately admiring head-to-toe inspection of Celia and a “Sa-a-ay,” that had the quality of a whistle. The leopard coat stirred him to a witticism that was only half-friendly. “Certainly have changed your spots, haven’t you, Celia?”
“Oh, hello, Willis—and good-bye for now, I’m afraid, we have a train to catch,” said Celia, trying to speak lightly out of a throat that felt turned to stone. “Merry Christmas.”
She started to move away as she spoke, and Willis’s hand shot out for her gloved wrist. “Oh, no, you don’t, not when I’ve just found you again.” He wasn’t drunk, but there was
