One Friday evening an unusual smell of roast chicken came through the
kitchen door. Mary put on the slender, long-tailed white gown she wore
when she dined at the Sutcliffes'.
Dan's friend, Lindley Vickers, was sitting on the sofa, talking to Mamma.
When she came in he left off talking and looked at her with sudden happy
eyes. She remembered Maurice Jourdain's disappointed eyes, and Mark's.
Dan became suddenly very polite and attentive.
All through dinner Mr. Vickers kept on turning his eyes away from Mamma
and looking at her; every time she looked she caught him looking. His
dark hair sprang in two ridges from the parting. His short, high-bridged
nose seemed to be looking at you, too, with its wide nostrils, alert. His
face did all sorts of vivid, interesting things; you wondered every
minute whether this time it would be straight and serious or crooked and
gay, whether his eyes would stay as they were, black crystals, or move
and show grey rings, green speckled.
He was alive, running over with life; no, not running over, vibrating
with it, holding it in; he looked as if he expected something delightful
to happen, and waited, excited, ready.
He began talking, about Hegel. "'Plus ça change, plus c'est la même
chose.'"
She heard herself saying something. Dan turned and looked at her with a
sombre, thoughtful stare. Mamma smiled, and nodded her chin as much as to
say "Did you ever hear such nonsense?" She knew that was the way to stop
you.
Mr. Vickers's eyes were large and attentive. When you stopped his mouth
gave such a sidelong leap of surprise and amusement that you laughed.
Then he laughed.
Dan said, "What's the joke?" And Mr. Vickers replied that it wasn't a
joke.
In the drawing-room Mamma said, "I won't have any of those asides between
you and Mr. Vickers, do you hear?"
Mary thought that so funny that she laughed. She knew what Mamma was
thinking, but she was too happy to care. Her intelligence had found its
mate.
You played, and at the first sound of the piano he came in and stood by
you and listened.
You had only to play and you could make him come to you. He would get up
and leave Dan in the smoking-room; he would leave Mamma in the garden.
When you played the soft Schubert _Impromptu_ he would sit near you, very
quiet; when you played the _Appassionata_ he would get up and stand close
beside you. When you played the loud, joyful Chopin _Polonaise_ he would
walk up and down; up and down the room.