Her mind’s eye followed it as far as the small table just inside the living room doorway where she and Mary Ellen were in the habit of leaving mail, but followed it no farther, no matter how she tried. She hadn’t had a stamp, she remembered that much, and she had been distracted by the necessity of having to go out and buy the evening dress which she wasn’t apparently going to need after all. Celia’s last vision had the envelope lying face up, with her own clear writing taking on the aspect of a billboard.
Nearsighted, heedless Mary Ellen had no doubt stamped it and mailed it with cards of her own, and it was hardly likely that she would have telescoped all those syllables to “Brett.” Why should she? She could become interminably interested in things like heavy water or sand-casting, but she was singularly incurious about people’s backgrounds.
But—the nonexistent breeze blew more coldly on Celia’s back while behind her there were murmurs of “Isn’t it lovely?” and “Very Renaissance-looking”—Mary Ellen was also extraordinarily absent-minded. She was quite capable of tucking the envelope into the depths of her huge bag, intending to mail it, and then forgetting all about it.
Perhaps because the encounter with Willis Lambert had been so unsettling, Celia said to Mary Ellen at the first opportunity, “By the way, did you ever mail a card I left on the table with no stamp? I know I didn’t, but it disappeared.”
“Then I must have,” said Mary Ellen reasonably. “I remember that I was going to get stamps at lunch on Monday and all they had were those hideous ones that don’t look like real stamps at all—I wonder that they ever get through the mail. I suppose they do.” Under some quality in Celia’s stare she went on hastily, “And yes, now that I think of it, I did pick up yours. I had a few last-minute ones of my own to send, at the shop, and when Susan stopped in on Monday afternoon I gave them all to her to mail.”
Celia needed the evening dress after all, for what was apparently a traditional day-after-Christmas party at the country club. Along with the simple glowing brocade she wore an air of tranquil accomplishment that had nothing to do with triumph at entering precincts like these for the first time. She scarcely saw the good-looking face of the escort provided for her by Susan’s Navy lieutenant, and it did not disturb her, it filled her with elation, that David Macintosh’s glance fled away from hers.
Although he had arrived at the Inn the day before, and been at the house for cocktails and dinner, she had not had a moment alone with him until this afternoon. A kind of post-holiday somnolence had descended, with the Christmas tree shimmering coldly in its fall of silver and looking as remote as the two sleeping dogs. Celia, alone with David and Mary Ellen in the living room, had risen suddenly, strolled to a window, said into the quilted silence, “You know what I’d love? A walk.”
She did not glance at David, lazy in a chair with his arms crossed behind his head, although every ounce of her will was concentrated on him. She said to Mary Ellen, briskly, “Where’s a good place to go?”
“Right back to your chair,” said Mary Ellen with a horrified face. “Celia, it’s cold out there.”
“I know. That’s the idea—a little fast exercise to get rid of those marvelous turkey sandwiches. Oh, well,” said Celia carelessly as she started for the hall, “I’m sure I can’t get lost.”
It was a gamble, but a successful one. Behind her she heard David say, “Come on, my love, just to the Point and. back,” and Mary Ellen grumble, “Well, all right, but I don’t know how I ever got tangled up with such energetic people.”
Celia had been resigned to her coming along; for all her random ways Mary Ellen was the kind of hostess who would consider it only courteous to jump over a cliff with her guest if that was what the guest wanted to do. What she hadn’t hoped for was that the telephone would ring just as they all neared the door, and Mary Ellen would answer it and say, “Hi, Marge . . . Yes, thanks, did you?” She grimaced at them over the mouthpiece, went on listening, presently flipped her fingers at them in a go-on-ahead gesture.
The world was full of people who said after events, “If I’d only had a chance—” Celia was not among them. She glanced inquiringly at David and opened the door.
She genuinely enjoyed walking—fast, vigorous walking as opposed to strolling—and she knew that it was an activity that became her, as it did not a majority of women, who had to take frequent little running, catching-up steps. As the big houses began to thin, and they turned into a narrow sandy road where the wind was unmistakably right off the water, she became aware of something else: David was as fully conscious as she that they had left Mary Ellen in the house behind them. He kept his arm elaborately from touching hers as they walked, and his silence had the constraint which follows a quarrel between two people closely involved, when the first word spoken may prove of crucial importance.
The peculiar excitement of that waiting moment in the Vestrys’ hall came sharply back to Celia, although this time it was compounded of wind and gray water and the crying of gulls as she and David emerged on a small rocky headland. They
