It was from their father that both girls inherited their gray eyes and Mary Ellen her look of extreme youth: in spite of his silvering hair, a lock of which usually fell over his forehead, and glasses with a down-trailing black ribbon, Paul Vestry had somewhat the air of a plaintive boy. He was retired—from what, nobody ever said—and had acquired a number of defensive bobbies at which he pottered fiercely.
To Celia it seemed almost possible that people like the Vestrys could summon snow for Christmas Eve: by the time Susan arrived at eleven the ground was covered with a sparkly fall. Celia herself, giving a small casual smile to the maid who assisted at the buffet dinner, had begun to feel at ease in an atmosphere she had hitherto only glimpsed in glossy magazines. Common sense told her that the house could not always wear this festive face, but there was still an unsurprised air about it. To anyone who had lived in the gloom induced by Mrs. Stryker’s anxious drawing of draperies against the sun, the mere fact that a snow-dampened Labrador and a Dachshund were allowed to fling themselves down on the beautiful rugs said a great deal.
At the same time, Celia had a cool appreciation of what had driven Mary Ellen to flight. Mrs. Vestry’s intense preoccupation with the well-being of her younger daughter had a curiously sapping effect: after less than four hours of that penetrating gaze and almost constant catechism— “It seems to me you’ve lost weight. Are they working you to death in that bookshop?”—Mary Ellen was somehow diminished and her small face was growing fretful. It fit again when Susan answered the telephone and came back to say, “Long distance, for you.”
Mary Ellen departed with speed. Celia thought, David. Mrs. Vestry said aggrievedly, “I can’t think why that child won’t wear contact lenses. She’d be so much more attractive.”
“They’re her eyes,” observed Susan to the Christmas tree. The patience of her tone suggested that she had said this often before, and Mrs. Vestry turned to Celia as a possible ally. “Don’t you agree with me? Mary Ellen has really beautiful eyes.”
Better to side with the daughters in this, even though Celia had been amazed that anyone with the means to do otherwise would wear those ridiculous frames. She said, temporizing, “Well, in a way, the glasses call attention to her eyes, don’t you think?”
Mrs. Vestry would have none of this. “Nonsense. Helen Gilmore wears contact lenses, and she’s stunning. I believe you met the Gilmores one evening at the theater with David. The Nettle’s Touch, wasn’t it? Anyway, the Gilmores remembered you.”
It was said with nothing more than carelessness, because it was obviously clear to Mrs. Vestry that no one would dare set a foot on Mary Ellen’s preserve, but Susan’s head had turned a little, curiously, and even Paul Vestry’s absorption in a velvet-cased set of silver coins seemed suspended. The room which Celia had allowed to grow dreamy around her shot into a sharp and dangerous focus; she had to fight down one of her rare eruptions of rage.
“Oh, were those the Gilmores? I remember a nice-looking couple, the night Mary Ellen had a bad headache and I sat in for her”—the necessity of explaining herself was like gall in her mouth—“but I was really much too excited about the play to catch their names. What with Mother’s illness and everything, it was such ages since I’d been to the theater.”
Mrs. Vestry had been all unwitting; Susan’s gaze had sped across the room like an arrow. But if Susan thought she could be another Mrs. Stevenson, she could think again.
Celia spent Christmas morning in a quiet, concentrated absorption of a background which she would one day appropriate, with a few necessary emendations, as her own. Very little escaped her. She kept an almost photographic memory of refracted sunlight catching tiny tongued reflections in the Christmas-tree bulbs, the leisurely breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausages and English muffins, the milk punch that arrived at eleven thirty, the ceremonial bones for the dogs, sensibly not gift-wrapped.
Celia had already exchanged presents with Mary Ellen at the apartment, but was not taken aback at a pair of short white pigskin gloves from Susan; she had prepared for such an emergency. “Now where did I—?” she began, looking about her with an air of perplexity, and went up to her room, returning with a small box for Susan and a glimmering object which she placed reverentially in Mrs. Vestry’s startled hands. “It was our Christmas candle, and I’d be so pleased if you’d have it, Mrs. Vestry, and give it a happy home.”
The clerk in the secondhand store where Celia supplied herself with instant ancestors had used the last phrase with a cynicism which missed her completely. The candlestick, of carved silver-gilt wood, did have a surprisingly nostalgic appearance; out of either carelessness or cunning, traces of colored wax had been allowed to remain in the trailing garments of trumpet-blowing angels, suggesting a festive overflow. It had cost Celia three dollars.
Mrs. Vestry was looking as touched and embarrassed as her craggy features would permit. “It’s charming, Celia, but I couldn’t let you—”
“You’d be doing me a great favor, really you would. Storage,” said Celia firmly, as though determined to restore lightness to a sorrowful occasion, “is no place for a Christmas candle”
Mrs. Vestry was finally persuaded to accept, and the ornament was given a place of honor on the mantelpiece. During the small fluster caused by all this, Celia, well-pleased with herself, moved modestly off to a window and stood gazing out at a curve of snowy lawn, white-freighted rhododendrons, a row of low thorny-looking bushes with red berries fining one side of the drive. The sun had gone, and under a gray sky the scene had an almost traditional Christmas-card flavor . . . and Celia was suddenly as cold as though an actual door had yawned open behind her.
The card to
