THE FAMILY

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Meanwhile, while this momentous happening was taking place, events were moving smoothly to their consummation in other quarters of the house. The swing door between the kitchen and the dining room kept slatting back and forth as the maids came in and out to make the final preparations for the feast. Janie came through the dining room bearing a great silver tray filled with bottles, decanters, a bowl of ice, and tall lovely glasses crystal thin.

As she sat the tray down upon a table in the living room the shell-thin glasses chimed together musically, there was a pleasant clink of bottles, the cold, clean rattle of cracked ice. Then the girl came over toward the hearth, removed the big brass screen and knelt before the dancing flames. She poked the logs with a long brass poker and a pair of tongs. For a moment there was a shower of fiery sparks, the fire blazed and crackled with new life. The girl restored the tongs and poker to their place and for a moment stayed there on her knees in a gesture of sweet maiden grace. The fire danced and cast its radiance across her glowing face and Mrs. Jack looked at her for a moment with a softened glance, thinking how sweet and clean and pretty the girl was.

Then the maid arose and restored the screen to its former position. And Mrs. Jack, after arranging anew a vase of long-stemmed roses on a small table in the hall and glancing at herself for a brief moment in the mirror above, turned and walked briskly and happily down the broad, deep-carpeted hallway towards her own room at the other end.

Her son was just coming from his room as she passed his door. He was fully dressed for the evening. She looked at him with an expert eye that missed no detail of his costume. And she saw how well his clothes fit him and how he wore them as if they had grown on him. He was a young man, only twenty-six or seven. But, compared to his mother’s fresh and jolly face, her quick and nervous movements, her habitual expression of almost bewildered innocence and surprise, of childlike innocence—a manner and expression so naive and ingenuous that it made everyone smile affectionately when they saw her, although it did not always take everyone in—his own face, his own voice and manner and expression were by the contrast curiously tainted and sophisticated.

It was not that he was in any way a dissipated man. He was, on the contrary, a very wise and knowing one. He took excellent care of himself. He was certainly by no means inexperienced in the pleasures and temptations of the flesh but he knew how far to go. He knew very well beyond what point lay danger, beyond what point lay chaos, shipwreck and the reef. Looking at him quickly, in one of those swift and comprehensive glances that missed nothing, despite the deceptive and half bewildered innocence of her jolly little face, she was amazed to see how much he knew, a little troubled, perhaps, to find he knew so much, that he knew even more, perhaps, than she could see or fathom.

The young man’s face was heavy, white, blue jowled and thick jawed. It was a curiously sleepy, almost stupid looking kind of face. The eyes also were dull and sleepy looking. But it was the eyes that gave him away. The face was a bland and heavy mask, but the eyes had something jeering in their sleepy depths that he could not wholly hide. It was not something that jeered bitterly. It was not something that had ever been fierce and young and wounded sorrowfully. It was not the bitter jeering hurt of anguish that came from the young soul’s torment, the anguish of a ruined innocence, the bitter desolation and despair of youth’s lost dream, its shattered world.

No, it was none of this and for this reason it was more terrible. It was something that had never had a youth or known innocence. It was something that had sprung full-born and full-begotten, old and dark and weary and corrupt as hell out of its race and womb. It was something that had never looked upon this earth and on the strange and bitter miracle of living with a child’s fierce eyes of love and hope and terror and fierce passion, with horror, pity or with desperate pride. It was something that had been born with ancient eyes and with an ancient soul, with all the weary visions of ten thousand years of pain, of fear, of craft, of stealth and of perverse contrivings and that had come here from the cradle, canopied with the full armor of all its sorrowful and ill-starred wisdoms, with all the guilt and caution of its unhappy findings, with all the faithlessness of its lost faith, the hopelessness of its lost hope, the bitter damnations of its own security—which was to live, to breathe, to flourish and grow sleek, to profit and to prosper, somehow not to die—to survive, just to survive by any means.

So lost, it was no longer to be lost or desperate, or drawn in, wisely to know where peril lay, and to avoid it. A barren gain! To be so knowing and so wrong, to see so clearly and to be so blind to be betrayed at last by its own knowingness, duped out of wisdom by its own ancient and remediless unrighteousness: to look for ever on all the pain, the ruin, the victory and defeat, the error, the frustration, the despair of the tormented race of man as if it were a barren comedy, the provender of a mirthless laugh, with the sleepy and unfathomed cynicism of those jeering eyes—ah, comfortless! Profitless comfort! Comfortless gain! He bent smoothly over her small figure as she approached. He said: “Oh, hello,” in a tone in which suave courtesy was curiously commingled with a kind of heavy insolence. He kissed her lightly and perfunctorily on one rosy cheek. It was the kiss of an ambassador, the heavy smoothness of the whole manner, the entire gesture of greeting and of welcome was really one of old and polished sophistry, instead of youth. His manner and his tone, the perfect bland assurance of everything he did, were more like the gestures of an old and jaded diplomat—an automaton of faultless conduct, perfect courtesy, from whom all the warmth and sincerity of life had gone.

He was growing bald, his short, silky hair was getting very thin on top and on the sides it crinkled in unpleasant little scrolls. She was conscious of a moment’s distaste and repugnance as she looked at him, but then she remembered what a perfect son he was, how thoughtful and how good and how devoted and how, no matter what the unfathomed implications of those jeering eyes might be he had said nothing—for all that anyone could prove, saw nothing.

“He’s a sweet boy,” she was thinking as she responded brightly to his greeting: “Oh, hello, darling. You’re all ready, aren’t you? Listen,”—she spoke rapidly—“Will you look out for the bell and take care of anyone who comes? Mr. Logan is changing his costume in the guest room—won’t you look out for him if he needs anything? And see if Edith’s ready. And when the guests begin to come you can send the women to her room to take off their wraps—oh, just tell Molly—she’ll attend to it! And you’ll take care of the men yourself—won’t you, dear? You can take them back into your father’s room—is he ready yet? You’d better go and tell him that it’s time. I’ll be out in a few minutes. If only everything!—” she began in a worried tone, slipped the jade ring quickly from her finger and slipped it back again. “I do hope that everything’s all right!” She spoke rapidly, nervously, with a little line of tension between her eyes.

“But isn’t it?” he said in his heavy, smooth and blandly jeering tone. “Have you looked?”

“Oh, everything looks perfect!” she cried. “It’s really just too beautiful! The girls behaved wonderfully—only—” the little furrow came between her eyes again—“Do keep an eye on them, won’t you, Ernie? You know how they are if you’re not around. Something’s so likely to go wrong. And of course I can’t hear everything that’s going on any longer. It’s such a nuisance getting deaf this way!—” she said impatiently—“So please do listen and look out for me, won’t you, dear? And look out for Mr. Logan. I do hope—” she paused, with a look of worried abstraction in her eyes. She began to snap the ring on and off her finger again.

“You do hope what?” said Ernie pointedly, with just the suggestion of an ironic grin around the corners of his heavy mouth.

“I do hope he won’t—” she began in a troubled tone, then went on rapidly—“He said something about—about clearing away some of the things in the living room for his show—”

She looked at him rather helplessly, then, catching the irony of his faint grin, she colored quickly and laughed, shortly richly: “God! I don’t know what he’s going to do. He brought enough stuff with him to sink a battleship! Still, I suppose it’s going to be all right. Everyone’s been after him you know—everyone’s thrilled at the chance of seeing him—Oh, I’m sure it’ll be all right. Don’t you think so? Hah?” She looked eagerly, earnestly at him with her flushed and rosy little face with a look of such droll, beseeching inquiry as she clapped a small hand to her ear that, unmasked for a moment, he laughed abruptly, coarsely, as he turned away, saying:

“Oh, I suppose so, I’ll look after it.”

Mrs. Jack went on down the hall, pausing just perceptibly as she passed her daughter’s door, cupping her hand swiftly to her ear and listening for a moment. She could hear just faintly the girl’s voice clear, cool, and young, humming the jaunty strains of a tune that was popular at the moment:

“You’re the cream in my coffee—You’re the salt in my stew-w-”

The woman listened eagerly, a little smile of love and tenderness suffusing her face as she did so. Then she went on down the hall and entered her room, leaving her door slightly ajar behind her.

It was a very simple, lovely room. It was a room that had a kind of haunting chastity, a moving austerity. At first glance the room seemed almost needlessly severe: There was, in the centre of one wall, a little narrow wooden bed, so small, and plain, and old, that it seemed it might almost have served as the bed of a medieval nun, as perhaps it had. Beside this bed there was a little table with a few books, a telephone, a glass and a silver pitcher and in a silver frame a photograph of a girl in her early twenties. This was Mrs. Jack’s daughter.

In the centre of the wall at the left as one entered there was an enormous old wooden wardrobe, which she had brought from Italy and which was a product of the Italian renaissance. On the opposite wall, two high broad windows looked out on the street and between these windows there was a small writing table, with some ink, some paper and a pen.

Along the wall that faced the bed and near the door of the big closet were all her beautiful dresses, gowns and suits and the wonderful collection of wing-like little shoes which had been made by hand to house her perfect little feet, and which were one of her special and most proud extravagances. There was a gay old painted wooden chest, a product of the Pennsylvania Dutch, carved and colored in quaint and cheerful patterns. Here she kept her fine old silks and laces and the wonderful and noble Indian saris which she loved so well and which adorned her small but lovely figure with such gracious dignity.

Facing this old chest, along the opposite wall, between the bed and window, there was a small drawing table. It was a single sheet of white perfect wood on which were arranged with faultless precision a dozen sharpened pencils, a few feathery brushes, some crisp sheets of tracing papers on which the geometric figures of design were legible, a pot of paste, a ruler, and a little jar of golden paint. Exactly above this table hanging from the wall in all the clean perfection and beauty of their strength and accuracy were a triangle and a square. At the foot of the little bed there was a chaise longue covered with a flowered design of old faded silk.

There were a few simple drawings on the wall and a single painting of a strange, exotic flower. It was such a flower as never was, a kind of dream flower of the brain which this woman had painted long ago. There was an old chest of drawers with a few silver toilet articles and a small square mirror on its top, and these were the sole adornments of the room.

Mrs. Jack regarded herself for a moment in the mirror. She had a very lovely face, her brown and pleasant eyes were a little tired and there were webbings of fine wrinkles about them. But the healthy, jolly freshness of her rosy cheeks and lips needed the redemptive aid of no artifice of rouge. She never used it. Her hair was brown, a little dull and coarse, just touched a little by filaments of grey. The hair itself was not distinguished by its beauty, but it was clean and healthy looking. The forehead was low, not an impressive one, certainly not showing signs of intellectual grandeur. But the wise eyes were kind and shrewd and sharp and lively and missed nothing. The quality of the whole face had an expression of serious and acute intelligence a little worn by time, by care, by experience and the responsibilities of life and work. The face itself was a fine one: it was almost perfectly heartshaped. The glowing rosy features sloped firmly, perfectly, to a rounded but most determined chin. The chin was slightly cleft. The nose was somewhat too large and fleshy for the contours of the face, which were characterized not only by the strength, the decision, the firmness of the features, but also by a quality of delicacy and loveliness that can only be described as flowerlike.

It was a strange and moving congruence of age and youth, of innocence and maturity, of an almost childlike eagerness, surprise and wonder, with the shrewd intelligence, the driving will and energy of an extremely resourceful, able and experienced child of Eve.

She looked at herself for a moment. She regarded and admired herself. She found herself good.

And, as the woman continued to look at herself in the privacy of her mirror, her face and manner betrayed a childlike vanity that would have been ludicrously comical if anyone had seen her. First she bent forward a little and looked at herself long and earnestly with an expression of a childlike innocence, an air of surprised wonder which was one of her characteristic expressions when she faced and met the world.

Apparently she found the contemplation of her own rosy guilelessness quite pleasing, for in a moment she began to regard herself from first one angle, then another. She put her hand up to her temple and smoothed her brow, and regarded herself with rapt complacency again. Her expression now, indeed, barely escaped a smirk of satisfaction and for the first time, now, there was a sense of looseness about the mouth and nostril, a kind of cynic smirk not wholly good to see.

Then slowly, raptly, she lifted the small, strong hand and looked at it. She flexed the firm and slender fingers and turned her wrist, meanwhile regarding the miracle with a fascinated stare. And now, the look upon her face was truly childlike in its vanity. She admired the old Jade ring upon her finger. She brooded with a kind of dark and smouldering fascination on the thick bracelet around her arm—a rich and sombre chain of ancient India, studded with dull and curious gems.

She looked at her slender fingers, at her warm, slightly worn neck, and traced out with her fingertips the strange and opulent design of the old necklace, also a work of India, that she wore. She surveyed her smooth and naked arms, her smooth, bare back, her breast and gleaming shoulders and the outlines of her small and lovely figure and arranged half consciously with practiced touches of an expert hand the folds of her simple, splendid gown.

She looked demurely at her small feet, shod beautifully in golden wings. Then she lifted arm and hand again and half-turning with the other hand upon her hip she ogled herself absurdly in the friendly mirror.

But even while this ritual of adoring self was taking place, its spellbound abbess was discovered in the act. As the elder woman turned and worshipped at the shrine of her own beauty a girl, young, slender, faultless, cold and lovely—with the hard perfection, the perfect convention of Egyptian Nefratete, whose likeness she so strikingly suggested—had entered through the bathroom that connected two rooms and, standing in the door, paused in a moment of cold irony as she caught the other woman in the act.

Slowly the mother turned, arm raised and hand extended in the orbit of her own self worship. Slowly she turned, still rapt in contemplation of her loveliness, gasped suddenly with surprise and fright, and uttered a little scream. Her hand flew to her throat in a gesture of alarm and realizing now that she was not alone she looked up and saw the girl. Her face went crimson as a beet. For a moment longer the two women continued to look at each other, the mother utterly confused and crimson with her guilt, the daughter coolly and appraisingly with the irony of sophisticated mirth.

Then, as they continued to look at each other and full consciousness of the moment dawned upon the older woman, something quick and instant passed between them in their glance. Like one who has been discovered and who knows that there is nothing more to say, the woman suddenly cast up her head and laughed, a rich, full-throated, woman’s yell of free acknowledgment, unknown to the race of man.

As for the girl, now grinning faintly, she approached and kissed her mother, saying, “Well, Mother, was it good?” And again the woman was shaken with a rich hysteria of helpless mirth; then both freed from all argument by that all-taking moment, were calm again.

Thus passed there in a flash the whole tremendous comedy of womankind. No words were needed, there was nothing left to say. All had been said there in that voiceless instant of complete and utter understanding, of mutual recognition and conspiracy. The whole universe of sex had been nakedly revealed for just a moment in all its horror, guile, deception and its overwhelming humor.

And the great city, the unceasing city, the unnumbered temporal city, with its seven million lives roared on unwittingly around that secret cell and never knew that here for a moment had been revealed a buried force more strong than cities and as old as earth.