She would never be pretty—her bones were too big for that—but her pale hair had grown back quite a bit from its scissoring, and Mrs. Stryker had not the temerity to demand that she have it cut. If she were to wear it in a chignon, or a French twist . . . She turned her face this way and that before the mirror, gazing slantingly at herself out of the dark eyes that were set a little too flush, giving them a peculiarly liquid look.
She remembered Hugh Stevenson’s mistake, and for the first time it became translated into something of significance.
Celia did not regret having refused Mrs. Caswell, but she was not quite the same after that. She had never before been much interested in the actual preparation of food; now she watched with care, and presently mastered, the creation of the baked clams and delicate cheese puffs for which the Strykers’ cook was fabled. She listened with sharpened awareness to the kitchen consultations before parties: Mrs. Stryker had the mysterious knack of providing an amplitude with no tired, and tiresome, slices and spoonfuls to be resurrected and disguised with considerable time and labor the next day. It was possibly her only virtue.
Celia no longer squandered her afternoons off by pretending to shop, but spent time in the library poring over books on etiquette, gourmet cooking, wines. She had learned at the Stevensons’ that there were occasions for red wine and white, but as this was not her decision she had never bothered to differentiate. Now she did, and committed the shapes of the various glasses to memory.
Perhaps her heightened consciousness of herself as a person rather than a maid played a part in what happened soon after she had received a second raise almost without effort; the Strykers, in their bemusement at having a servant who appeared to be permanent, were subservient themselves. At any rate, on a weekend when there were house guests and Celia was straightening one of the bedrooms, its occupant, a black-haired young woman, entered without warning, strolled to a window, and lit a cigarette in an unhurried way.
“I’ll come back, ma’am,” said Celia, preparing to withdraw, but the girl said easily, “Oh, no, that’s all right, I just want to get a scarf.”
She fished a glowing square of silk from a suitcase, but she didn’t go. She said in a conversational tone, “Have you been here long, Celia?”
For a moment Celia thought she meant here in this room, but then she realized that the scarf was an excuse and the clear, odd-colored gaze openly appraising. “About a year and a half, ma’am.”
“That’s a record,” said the girl, smiling. “Don’t worry, I’m a relative of Mrs. Stryker’s—by marriage anyway. What I’m getting at is that you seem so very . . . competent that I wonder if you’ve ever considered a somewhat different kind of job?”
Celia kept her lashes down over a flare of excitement. “That would depend on the circumstances,” she said carefully. “I know this house very well, ma’am, and I think Mrs. Stryker is satisfied with my work.”
“She is, very, but it seems to me that you’re wasting your abilities here. What I had in mind,” said the girl bluntly, “is a very old uncle of mine who lives alone and needs someone to manage his house in other ways than meals and so on.” She gestured with the hand that held the cigarette. “Someone to keep pests away—the doctor doesn’t want him tired—and provide dinner now and then for a few old friends, and remind him to take his medicine. Things like that. There’d be only light cleaning involved, a woman comes in twice a week. I ought to warn you that he’s rather difficult—well, he’s eighty-odd—but the pay is quite good and a lot of your time would be your own.”
There was a catch somewhere, thought Celia shrewdly. Plums like this did not fall into the hands of maids with only three years’ experience. The girl, misinterpreting her silence, said hastily, “He’s not an invalid, if that’s what you’re worried about, and in any case his doctor lives quite close by.”
“Here in Connecticut?”
“No, in New Jersey. Oh, I see, your family are here,” said the girl a little doubtfully, and Celia nodded. She had not seen her family for two years, but the mere fact of their existence might make a bargaining point if matters should ever come to that. “Well . . . think it over, anyway, and let me know. An interview couldn’t do any harm,” said the girl in a startlingly exact echo of Celia’s own thoughts.
A week later, on her day off, Celia presented herself at the tall narrow front of 4 Stedman Circle in Cherryville, New Jersey.
She had dressed with care for what she knew might be a turning point in her life. She wore a simple white blouse with an old but still-good gray suit which Mrs. Stevenson had given her; it made her look older, and the wide sweep of her shoulders saved it from complete dowdiness. Black calf pumps; black handbag that looked like calf but wasn’t. On the train, her gloved hands lay quietly in her lap although her heart was beating as it had the first time she had served eight people at dinner.
She had decided, with the New Jersey flats streaming past the window, that the old man was—what did they call it? Senile?—or semibedridden, in spite of what the girl had said, or downright crazy. It was Celia’s view that elderly
