It would be a pleasure to plan delicious meals, with Mr. Lacey to appreciate them. A gentleman made all the difference. And, of course, she always asked God, the Night-Watchman, to keep them all safe until morning, but He had so many households to guard, and, when she thought she heard a burglar, it would be reassuring to have a husband. “There’s nothing like a gentleman in the house to keep one from moping,” thought Mamma.
A series of little pictures of Mr. Lacey floated before her. Mr. Lacey about to sing, pulling himself up like a rooster about to crow (though that was not the way she thought of it).
“ ‘Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast
On yonder lea, on yonder lea—’ ”
(But you couldn’t imagine Mr. Lacey in a cold blast. You couldn’t imagine those silky whiskers rumpled, those decorous coattails blown out.)
Mr. Lacey bringing her gloxinias for the conservatory, large bells of white and violet-blue.
Mr. Lacey in his tam-o’-shanter on a botanizing stroll, telling them all the wildflower names.
Mr. Lacey reading Tennyson and Longfellow aloud to her—so much prettier than that Keats that Papa had been so fond of, and you never felt nervous about what might be coming next.
Mr. Lacey in his blue flannels and his straw sailor hat with a blue ribbon taking them on the river in his sailboat so prettily named “Swallow.”
Mr. Lacey—no, the pictures grew too intimate. Mamma, diffused with a warmth not of the day, put her hands over her eyes. Soft waves surged over her body, and the heart in her breast swelled until it held the earth, the sky, the sun and moon and stars. She forgot toilet-tables and how much a man might help a little boy; she forgot cooking sherry and the proprieties. She was no longer thirty-nine, fat, the mother of four children, nor was Mr. Lacey a dapper little gentleman with a sunny temper and an assured income. They were the hidden heart of the world, the pulse of life, the creators, through which life flows in its endless circle.
Bowls of roses on little tables of papier maché inlaid with mother of pearl, perfumed the darkened parlor in honor of Mr. Lacey. Other roses, artificial, adorned the ornament like the skirt of a lady’s ballgown that filled the empty fireplace, looking as if the lady’s head were stuck up the chimney, looking for swallows, perhaps, or stars. Under the bronze Arabs and camels standing beneath palm trees from which wax candles rose, the chilly marble mantelpiece had been put into a red flannel petticoat embroidered in yellow chain-stitch; and the chairs were dressed decently in tatted tidies. Everything in the room was well covered except the Venus de Milo in the darkest corner, that had been a Christmas present from the Blows. Was the statue quite nice, Mamma wondered? But it would have been so embarrassing explaining to Sam and Lizzie, if she had hidden it, and she remembered that Papa had said there were ever so much worse ones abroad.
The parlor windows had new terra-cotta curtains, and lace ones as well. The old crimson curtains had been hung upstairs in the schoolroom. Their folds concealed Victor curled up in a corner of the window seat, sleepy from his morning of fishing on the glaring river. Neither May or Lily knew he was there.
Lily ought to have been practicing “Convent Bells at Twilight” on the piano with its fan of puckered green silk in the front, and the swinging candle-holders. But it was so hot, and four flats were so hard. Besides, she wanted to talk to May, who was cutting out a picture of a statue of Psyche to paste on green “velvet” cardboard. Lily watched the quick flashing of the sharp scissors. If she had been doing it she would have torn the delicate winged figure, or pasted it on crooked, or messed the glue. She did things clumsily, as if her fingertips were numb, not like May’s that seemed as sensitive as the fingertips of a blind person.
“May!”
“Mm,” said May, abstracted.
“May, do you think Mamma is going to—that Mamma and Mr. Lacey are going to—you know!”
“Oh, Lily! Don’t!” May blushed brightly, delicately, and began to laugh; and Lily, blushing and laughing too, swung this way, that way on the fringed plush mushroom of the piano stool.
“Wouldn’t it seem—I don’t know—funny, if they got married? I sort of think maybe they will, though, don’t you?”
The sisters looked at each other, shaking with nervous laughter. They were curious, uneasy, and mildly unhappy. But Lily would have quite loved kind Mr. Lacey, if only the others had, and May had a sudden flashing vision of gloves from Paris, a trip to Italy.
“Who is that beautiful girl with the wistful eyes, looking out to sea?”
“That is May Campion, the stepdaughter of the rich Mr. Lacey. He showers every luxury upon her, they say.”
“And yet that lovely face is the saddest I ever saw in my life.”
“May—do you think Mr. Lacey ever—ever kisses Mamma?”
“Lily, how can you? You’re perfectly awful! Stop, for mercy’s sake!”
But they couldn’t stop laughing. Lily’s head went down with a clash on the piano keys, and her hair curtained her burning cheeks, while May’s hands shook so she had to put down the little picture—Psyche, the butterfly-winged, Psyche, the soul. But it was not only laughter that made her hands shake. Thinking about kissing did, too. She thought so much about being kissed. She longed passionately to be kissed, and would have died rather than admit it,
