II

"And did I tell you he said you played as if you had a soul?"

They were standing beside the coat-rack. Miss Fitzhugh was doing up her

gloves with little jerky movements of a hairpin, talking all the while

breathlessly. From the parlor at the end of the narrow green-papered

hall came a whiff of tea and the sound of cups clinked against saucers.

"What he said was.... You won't mind if I tell you all, will you

dear...? Anyway, I've always admired your way of playing Chabrier. He

said your technique was rotten, but that you had a soul. And he turned

down Mrs. Glendinning to come here this afternoon, honest he did. Will

you turn on the light a sec, my hat's crooked ... There!..."

Miss Fitzhugh put back the hairpin and made a few jabs at the hair

under her hat.

"If you want my plain opinion ... O, I do look a sight ... I think

you've made a conquest, Nancibel. O, you are a lucky girl! And that

Wendell boy's dreadfully good looking.... Well, I must go." Miss

Fitzhugh drew the taller girl down on her firm plump bosom and kissed

her moistly--"Just think of being loved by Salinski!" She kissed

Nancibel on the mouth again and fled with a little giggle out the door.

"Poor fool!" muttered Nancibel. With her lips tightly compressed she

walked back towards her guests. While still in the dark of the hall she

closed her eyes for a second--O, I hope they go soon. Then with a smile

she went back to her place by the teathings.

"Was Fitzie telling you all the Boston Theatre gossip?" asked a little

girl with light fuzzy hair and a green dress.

"No, it was only about Mr. Salinski."

"She's jealous because he played here, I bet you."

"She doesn't want him to play with that dreadful ladies' orchestra, does

she?" put in a tall girl with large teeth and a picture hat.

"You shouldn't laugh at people's misfortunes, Susan," said the

fuzzy-haired girl with a shrill little titter.

"What are Miss Fitzhugh's misfortunes?" asked Fanshaw, who stood tall

and blonde in a light grey suit, with his back to the fireplace.

"She's celloist on the famous ladies' orchestra."

"How delicious. The Fadettes!"

"Fitzie's an awful fool, but I like her," said Nancibel gruffly.

"Susan, we must go," said the fuzzy-haired girl.

"Must you, dear?" said Nancibel automatically.

Their dresses swished and kisses were exchanged in the hall beside the

coatrack. When the door had closed behind the two women, Nancibel

hurried back to the parlor.

"O, what a relief!" she cried, "I was so afraid there would be somebody

left I'd overlooked."

"I'm about dead," said Wendell. "Nan, you ought to warn people when you

have tea fights and celebrities. I tried to escape once I'd got in, but

Fanshaw held on to my coat." He got up from where he had sat crouched in

the corner by the window and walked over to the teatable. "Any food

left?"

"Here, you poor child," said Nancibel, bouncing a section of sticky

chocolate cake on to a plate. "I'll make some fresh tea in a minute. Do

you realize that this afternoon is the first triumph in a career of

fashionable music? O, it's too silly ..." She burst out laughing,

letting herself drop limply into a chair.

"I thought it was going a little far when the stout, red-haired lady

sailed in with those two poor little men like a liner being tugged up to

the wharf," said Fanshaw, who still stood with his back to the unlit

gaslogs.

"That's the famous Mrs. Hammond Tweed, who writes animal stories," burst

out Nancibel, carried off on a fresh gust of hysterical laughter. "The

way she said Ah when Salinski wriggled out of a cadenza, like people

watching sky-rockets."

Nancibel rolled about on her chair. What fun it was to be giggling like

this with Wenny and Fanshaw, like children who've done something

naughty. Through the tears in her eyes she could see, beyond the big

brass-topped teatable stacked with used teacups and crumb-covered plates

where here and there a cigarette but blackened with its ash a few drops

of tea left in a spoon, Wenny's brown face convulsed with laughter and

greediness as he stuffed hunks of chocolate cake into his mouth. And

Fitzie thinks I'm angling after old Salinski. The thought came to make

her laugh the harder. Her foot knocked against the leg of the teatable

and all the cups rattled.

"Look out, Nan, you'll have it over," said Fanshaw.

"Wouldn't care if I did. I'd like to smash something."

"You shan't smash Confucius there, young lady. I'll not let you."

Fanshaw put the big blue Chinese teapot in a place of safety on the

mantelpiece.

Nan got to her feet and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

"O, dear!... But I must give you children some fresh tea to make up for

all you've suffered."

She ran out to the kitchenette to put fresh tea in the pot. From there

she called: "Wenny, bring the debris, I'll leave it for the maid to

clean up." The glasses in a row along a shelf whined with the vibration

of her voice. She felt all at once curiously constrained. Absurd. She'd

known Wenny when he was in knickerbockers. Why should it embarrass her

to be alone with him in the kitchenette? The tea sizzled faintly, and

the steam came up scalding in her face as she poured the boiling water

into the pot. She did not turn around she was flushing so, when he heard

Wenny's step and the rattle of china behind her.

"After the battle mother," sang Wenny as he put the tea things down

beside the sink.

"Here, you cut this lemon and bring it in, Wenny, if you don't mind,"

she said and fled with the pot and a couple of clean cups into the other

room. Fanshaw's voice was always so soothing when one was excited.

"There's still a bit of the afterglow," said Fanshaw from near the

window. "It's wonderful how long it lingers these fall evenings."

Wenny had come back with the lemon and dropped a piece into each of the

three cups. Then he sniffed at his hands.

"That's a splendid lemon. It's wonderful how good it makes your

fingers smell."

She watched his lips form the words. Semetic lips, like in the Assyrians

in the museum, she thought.

"Gertrude said"; Fanshaw was taking little sips of tea as he spoke,

"You'ld be taken up with the spirits."

"Not gin I hope." She tossed her head up suddenly, lips pressed

together. Fine gesture that, whispered some mocking demon in her.

Fanshaw smiled indulgently with thin lips.

"No, I mean spooks," he said. "Gertrude said you did extraordinary

things with a ouija board. She's very silly, you know."

"Made me out a regular witch of Endor, did she?" Her voice was tense in

spite of herself.

"O, I hate the longfaced way people talk about that guff ... as if

people dead could be more important than people alive," Wenny blurted

out angrily.

Nan found herself looking in his eyes; the black pupils widened as she

looked in them. There was a warmth about her body as if his vehemence

had communicated itself to her. Then the eyes flashed away.

"What nonsense, Wendell," she said. "Don't be so silly. I just played

with a ouija board to see what people would say. We talked to Robinson

Crusoe."

Fanshaw waved a long thin hand in the air.

"For Heaven's sake, don't squabble. After all those young women, I feel

weak. There must have been a thousand of them ... I say, Nan, did you

invite the whole conservatory?"

"No, but as they were all dying to say they'd been in the same room with

Salinski, I went the limit."

"You certainly did."

"Gosh! The size of that star," came Wenny's voice from the window. In

his black silhouette Nan was imagining the moulding of the muscles of

the arms, the hollow between the shoulders, the hard bulge of calves.

She got to her feet. The grey jade beads hung down from her neck as she

lifted the teatable out of the way. The little demon in her head was

hissing Careful Nancibel, careful Nancibel as she walked over to the

window. Her arm hanging limply at her side touched his arm; writhing

hump-backed flares danced an insane ballet through her body. Down the

street a grindorgan was playing The Wearing of the Green. What wonderful

lashes he has, she caught herself thinking, so much nicer than mine.

Warm shudders came from his cheek to her cheek, from his moving lips.

"It looks as big as a chrysanthemum," he was saying. She had forgotten

the star. She saw it then bristling with green horns of light.

Wenny wore a woolly suit that had been wet, as it had been raining; the

smell of it mixed with a tang of tobacco filled her nostrils. She was

looking at the star that seemed to palpitate with slow sucking rhythm,

afloat in the evening like a jellyfish in shallow bay water. For an

instant all her life palpitated hideously with the star. She turned. Her

lips almost brushed Wenny's cheek.

"L'étoile du berger," said Fanshaw. His voice rasped through Nan's head.

Her hands were icecold. The little demon in her head with a voice like

Aunt M's was whispering: You must meet my niece Nancibel Taylor, she's

such a clever violinist. She pulled the shade down sharply in Wenny's

face.

"You'ld be there all night mooning at that star," she said and tried

to laugh.

They sat down in their chairs again.

"Well, Wenny, how have you been wasting your time?" Her voice rang false

in her ears.

Wenny's brown eyes looked at her timidly for a moment. He spread his

square hands on his knees and glanced down at their large knuckles. In

Nan a cold voice exulted: he has the hands of a ditchdigger.

"I wish I knew," he said.

She looked at Fanshaw. His bluish green crepe necktie was the color his

eyes were behind the round tortoiseshell spectacles. His arched nose and

high forehead were what had made one of the girls say: There's a clever

looking man. She was glad he was here. She always felt sane where

Fanshaw was.

"Wenny," Fanshaw was saying as he got to to his feet.

"What's the matter?"

"Don't go," said Nan in a sudden panic at the idea of being left alone.

"But, Nan, I promised the Perkinses I'd bring Wenny to dinner and we

are late already."

"O hell," muttered Wenny.

"I promised you'ld come, and I'm going to drag you along even if your

shirt is dirty."

"It looked clean this morning," said Wenny flushing.

"Well, it's filthy now."

"That seems to me a darn good reason for not going."

The jade beads clinked as she followed them down the hall towards the

door. For some reason she held out her hand to them formally. After the

limpness of Fanshaw's hand, Wenny's seemed hard and hot. Again the

phrase came to her mind: ditchdigger's hands.

"I don't want to go a bit, Nan...."

"Well, good evening," interrupted Fanshaw pushing Wenny towards the door

with a gesture of proprietorship. As they turned towards the elevator,

her eyes followed the fuzziness of Wenny's hair down the nape of his

neck under the soft collar. The collar had a line of grime round it.

Dirty little animal, said the voice in her. She closed the door, her

nostrils full of the greasy smell of the elevator. The smile went out of

her face.

The beads clinked as she walked back to the parlor. What was the matter

with her today anyhow?--An old maid that's what you are like Aunt M.

Nonsense, I'm too alive for all that rubbish. She stood with compressed

lips looking about the room. How beastly small it was. There was a

design in reddish orange on the bright blue curtains, that was echoed by

the orange shade on the tall lamp that stood on the floor beside the

piano. She'd thought herself clever to think up the colorscheme, with

the warm buff walls as a background. It seemed hideous to her at that

moment, like the decoration of a room in the window of a department

store. There were still soiled teacups on the tables and along the

mantel, and little plates with bits of sandwich and cake on them. She

picked up the fat blue teapot Fanshaw had named Confucius. The smooth

bulge of it in her hands was reassuring for a moment. Then solitude

poured in upon her again. The Jacobean table with knobby legs opposite

the fireplace and the books crammed into the bookcase and the battered

Buhl cabinet in the corner all seemed squared and tiptoe with hostility.

There was a faint bitter smell of tealeaves and burnt out cigarettebutts

about everything.

She put down the teapot and flung herself on the pianostool. She would

play madly. She would compose. A momentary thrill of huge chords, rising

cadences to carry her with immense wingbeats out of the pit of sick

yearning. She struck the keys with all ten fingers. The sound jangled

loud through the room. She winced. Idiot, she said aloud, and went to

the window. She raised the shade part way and let it fall behind her.

The green star trembled in the west just above the dark mass of a

building the other side of the Fenway. She watched it breathless while

it sank out of sight.

* * * *

Nan climbed painfully out of slumber as one climbs a ladder. Sparrows

were twittering outside. Her white bedroom was full of sunlight that

poured through the wide window opposite her bed, smouldered hotly on the

red and blue of the carpet, glinted on the tall mahogany bedpost and

finally struck a warm tingling coverlet over her feet and legs. She

snuggled into the bedclothes and lay staring at the ceiling wrapped in a

delicious blank haze of sleepiness. A motortruck rasping by outside

grated on her drowsy quiet and then rattled off into silence. Through

the window she could see a lacework of treetops and the expressionless

cubes of the further apartment houses and, beyond, a blue vaguely

clouded sky. Two little sparrows, fat, fuzzy, with bright eyes,

fluttered down past the window. She closed her eyes. In her ears

something formed the words: So wonderfully secure.

She woke with a start from her doze. What was she trying to remember?

She was suddenly wide awake, her heart pounding. The warm bulge of his

arm against her arm, hard, male, and the bright jelly of his eyes

between black lashes, last evening looking at the star. She tried to

brush the memory off; it clung about her the way the sticky spiderwebs

used to cling to her face and hair walking through the woods last

summer. She didn't want to think of Wenny that way, she told herself. It

would spoil everything, she must have more self-control. No, no, she

said aloud as she put her toes into her slippers. Then she went about

her dressing with compressed lips.

She threw herself into a flurry of things to be done. Sunday and late

and the maid not coming. There was the percolator to put on, the water

to run for her bath, the milk to take in, and the paper, and the caps to

take off the milk bottle and the creambottle, and the flame under the

percolator mustn't be too high and the bath mustn't be too hot. The

familiar morning smells, gasflame, soap, bathwater, coffee-steam, were

vaguely distasteful to her this morning, gave her a feeling of days

succeeding days and years years, as alike and meaningless as

milkbottles. As she was cleaning her teeth she stopped with her mouth

full of lather and the tooth brush in her hand. It was two years and

eight months she'd been living in this apartment. O something must

happen soon. When she had rinsed her mouth she looked at herself a long

while in the tilted mirror over the washbasin. On one side the nickel

fixture of the shower over the bathtub, on the other a glimpse through

the open door into the hall and a patch of blue and green curtain; in

the middle her face, chestnut hair caught loosely away from the narrow

forehead, straight eyebrows darker than her hair, fine lashes. She

stared for a moment intensely in her own grey eyes, then closed them

with a shudder. I have the thin New England lips, she said to herself.

She pulled the nightgown off impatiently and stood with her hands on her

scarcely formed breasts looking down into the pale green of the bathtub.

Somewhere at the end of a long corridor of her mind she ran through the

dappled shadow of woods, naked, swift, chased by someone brown, flushed,

goatfooted. She could feel in her nostrils the roughness of the smell of

Wenny's damp homespun suit. Aprèsmidi d'un Faune, the words formed in

her mind, Music by Claude Debussy, Choreography by M. Nijinski; the big

program in her hands with its smell of glazed printer's ink and the

rustling of dresses about her at the Opera. What are you dawdling about?

she muttered, and stepped into the water and began briskly soaping the

facecloth.

Half an hour later Nancibel Taylor sat at the table beside the window in

the livingroom sipping coffee and putting dabs of butter on the broken

pieces of a sugared bun left over from tea. The sky had clouded over.

Through the black tangle of twigs of the low trees in the Fenway here

and there a slaty gleam of water flashed out. From a long way off came

the unresonant tolling of a churchbell broken into occasionally by the

shrill grind of a street car round a corner. Still chewing the last

mouthful Nan picked up the cup and plate, absentmindedly brushing a few

crumbs off the blue tablecover with one hand, and carried them into the

kitchenette. Putting them in the sink she let the hot water run on them,

and with her hand still on the tap, paused to think what she must do

next. O, the garbage. She picked up the zinc pail a little gingerly,

holding her face away from it, and put it on the dumbwaiter, then pulled

on the grimy cord that made the dumbwaiter descend, past the

kitchenettes of the apartments below into the lowest region of all where

the janitor was and a smell of coalgas from the furnace. After that with

a feeling of relief Nan washed her hands and put her hat on in front of

the pierglass in her bedroom, a hat of fine black straw without trimming

that seemed to her to go very well with her light grey tailored suit.

Pulling on her gloves, with a faint glow in her of anticipation of

streets and movement and faces, she walked down the stairs.

Outside the air was raw with a faint underlying rottenness of autumn.

Nan walked briskly, rejoicing in the tap of her little heels on the even

pavement, down a long street of brick apartments that merged into older

brownstone houses with dusty steps and several bells beside the front

door. The pianos were quieter than usual because it was Sunday, but

occasionally the high voice of a girl doing her scales jerked out

through a pair of muslin windowcurtains or there came the shriek of a

violin being tuned. Down Commonwealth Avenue the elms were losing their

leaves. In the windows bloated chrysanthemum flowers stood up stiffly

out of jardinieres. In the Public Garden, where there was still a bit of

flame in the leaves of the trees, in front of an asthmatic old man

sitting on a bench with his chin on a silverhandled cane beside a little

old grey woman in a porkpie hat, Nan found herself all of a sudden

looking into the eager black eyes of Miss Fitzhugh.

"O, Nan, I'm so glad to see you."

Nan felt her neatly gloved fingers squeezed with sudden violence.

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Just let me tell you.... O, I'm so upset. I haven't been able to

practice a minute all day. I haven't been so upset since I broke off my

engagement and sent Billy back his ring.... It's about Mabel

Worthington."

"But Fitzie, who's Mabel Worthington?"

"I must have told you about her. She was such a lovely girl, one of our

second violins.... Nancibel, you never pay any attention when I tell you

things; I think it's mean of you.... O, it's too dreadful and I'm just

miserable about it.... Look, dear, won't you walk a little up Huntington

Avenue? I was just going to get a soda ... so soothing, you know, dear,

and I know the nicest candy store just a block up."

As they followed the path towards the Unitarian Church between grass

patches dappled with russet of leaves, Nan could feel the eyes of the

men on the benches, eyes indolent after a bloating Sunday breakfast,

dazzled by following the smudgy sharpscented columns of Sunday

newspapers, eyes blurred by Saturday night parties; their glances seemed

to weave a warm shameful net to catch her wellpoised ankles and the

erect slenderness of her figure in its closely tailored tweed. Fitzie

was still talking.

"But, you must have seen her, dear, the last time you went to hear us

play.... You did go, didn't you, that time I sent you the ticket? You

said you'd been.... She was to the left beside the stage, just beside

the first violin, a lovely girl with black curly hair."

At the corner they threaded their way among groups of heavyjowled people

coming out of the church, men bristling with decorous stiffness, white

points of starched collars, prickly scarfpins in satin of neckties,

black curves of hats and gleaming shoetips, women fuzzy with boas and

bits of fur and spotted veils.

"I had always thought," went on Fitzie's voice in a whine of dismay,

"that she had a great future, and she seemed so much the best educated

and ... you know ... most refined person there."

"But, what's happened to her?"

"I must begin at the beginning.... You see, dear, it was this way.... O,

this is it. What will you have, dear?"

A smell of sodawater and chocolate and polished nickel encompassed them

about. They sat at a little white table on which was a lace doily

covered by a round piece of plate glass.

A waitress in black with tight starched bands at the wrists and waist

hung over them.

"What are you having, dear?" said Fitzie again. "I'm goin' to have a

banana split. I just love banana splits. Isn't it greedy of me? And

before lunch, too."

"D'you know if you don't mind, Fitzie, I won't take anything. I'm going

to dine with Aunt M. and she always feeds one a dreadful lot of stuffing

on Sundays. She has such old-fashioned ideas about food."

"Well, as I was telling you, Nancibel, the first time I guessed anything

was wrong was about a month ago, when I noticed a young Italian waiting

outside the stage door. I was in a hurry and didn't notice him until I'd

brushed against him. He was very poorly dressed and smelt dreadfully of

garlic but I had to admit to myself that he was goodlooking, like a

young Greek god!"

"Young Greek gods probably smelt of garlic too," said Nan laughing.

The banana split had arrived in a boatshaped plate. Miss Fitzhugh took

up a dab of whipped cream on her spoon.

"Won't you have just a taste, Nancibel?... No? O, you are a Puritan,

dear.... Well, to make a long story short, one day last week I met them

on Washington Street, Mabel Worthington and that dreadful Italian. I was

brushing by pretending not to see them.... I thought it would be less

embarrassing for them, you understand, dear.... But not a bit of it, she

stopped me and chatted for a minute, calm as a cucumber, and then she

introduced me to him.... This is Giovanni, she said, and that's all she

said, though they both flushed crimson. He bobbed his head awkwardly at

me and smiled showing the most beautiful teeth. And that was all."

Fitzie was quiet for a minute and took three or four spoonfulls of

yellow icecream in succession. She was talking in a rapid whisper,

leaning far over the table towards Nan's unsmiling face.

"And yesterday morning she didn't turn up at rehearsal. And now it

appears that she has gone off with him. Isn't it frightful. Because she

was a lovely girl, really, a lovely girl. She reminded me of you."

"Well," said Nan, "she was probably in love with him."

"But I'm coming to the most dreadful part.... The wretched man had a

wife and two squalling filthy little babies. They came round to the

theatre and made a dreadful scene, a horrid coarse woman just like an

immigrant.... And he is nothing but a common laborer, just think of it.

O, how can people do such things? It just makes me sick to think of that

lovely girl in the power of that horrible garlic-smelling ruffian.... It

just makes me sick to think of it."

Miss Fitzhugh caught up the last yellow liquid on her plate with several

swift scraping little strokes of her spoon. She started delving with two

fingers in the back compartment of her alligatorskin purse.

"Just think of it, Nancibel, a common laborer. If he'd been a musician

or a composer or something it would have been different even if he was

an Italian, but ... O, Nancibel, won't you please let me have your hanky

a sec I declare I've lost mine."

Nan handed over her handkerchief.

"I suppose she's in love with him," she said. "It's a good thing she

makes her own living."

"But, don't you think it's dreadful?"

"How can we tell? But, anyway, I must run along. Aunt M. always expects

me at twelve every Sunday and she thinks I have come to some dreadful

end if I don't get there on the dot."

Nan was out in the street again. A dusty wind had come up and was making

dead leaves and scraps of newspapers dance in the gutters, and tearing

ragged holes in the clouds. O how poor Fitzie gets on my nerves, Nan was

saying to herself, and a picture flashed through her mind of Fitzie

opening her eyes wide, rapt, and saying, pausing with her mouth open a

little between the words--Like a young Greek god.

She walked over to Beacon Street and down the row of houses that faces

the Public Garden, looking now and then into front windows massed with

ferns and autumn flowers. On small wellcleaned windowpanes a reflection

of sky and clouds, shadows of sombredressed people passing, fleeting

glint of limousines, then, beside a bunch of yellow curlypetalled

chrysanthemums the face of Aunt M. Nan thought how ashy and wrinkled it

looked beside the yellow flowers. The face smiled and bobbed showing a

straight part and hair steelgrey slicked against the head on either

side. Nan pulled at the shining brass knob of the bell. Immediately the

door opened.

"Yer late, Miss Nancibel; the missus was agettin' anxious an' alookin'

outa the winder," said the old woman in flounced cap and apron metallic

with starch who let her in.

"I'm not so awfully late, am I, Mary Ann?"

Pulling off her gloves, Nan brushed through portieres of salmoncolored

brocade into the parlor.

"O, my dear Nancibel, how glad I am to see you," said Aunt M. throwing

stubby arms round her niece's neck. Nan's lips touched the wrinkled

lifeless skin.

"I'm sorry to be late, Auntie."

"Well, one can't expect a budding virtuoso.... I suppose one should say

virtuosa ... to be very punctual. And punctuality is fallen into

disrepute among young people nowadays.... Now run up and take your

things off like a good girl and come back quickly and talk to me so that

we can have a good chat before the Turnstables come."

"Are they coming Auntie?"

"Yes, Cousin Jane Turnstable and her boy and girl are coming to dinner

at half after one. It's quite thrilling to have so many young people in

the house."

Running up the thickcarpeted stairs, Nan caught herself remembering

running up those same stairs when she was still in short skirts, a

Scotch plaid it was, accordionpleated, that day, and Mary Ann was

polishing the brass rails that kept the carpet down, and her Aunt M., a

tall omnipotent person then, had told her not to sing, O my darling

Clementine, because it was a low vulgar song and somehow she hadn't been

able to keep it in and had shouted out without meaning to:

Herring boxes without topses,

Sandals were for Clementine.

And Aunt M. had come out on the landing suddenly very cold and

sharptoned and had made her stay in her room all afternoon and learn The

Slave's Dream. As Nan went into the little room with Dutch blue

wallpaper, which Aunt M. always called Nancibel's room, to throw her hat

on the bed and give a hasty pat to her hair in front of the mirror,

Beside the ungathered rice he lay

His sickle in his hand,

bubbled up from somewhere deep in her mind. She smiled thinking how as

the years had passed her relation to Aunt M. had changed, until now it

was she who seemed the tall omnipotent person, skilled in all the world

outside the house, and her aunt the timid one the housewalls protected

from the shaggy world.

"Well, dear, what have you been up to all the week?" said Aunt M. when

Nan had run down the stairs and back into the parlor. "I hope you

haven't been gadding about a lot, like last week."

"Not a gad," said Nan laughing. They sat side by side on the curvebacked

sofa in front of the window. Nan was looking down at Aunt M.'s old hands

swollen at the knuckles that lay halfclenched on the full mauve satin of

her dress. In her nostrils was a tang from the chrysanthemums.

"And how's your practicing?"

"Pretty good this week."

"You know how I feel about your music, Nancibel." There was a flame of

blue in Aunt M.'s hazel eyes.

"You mustn't put too much faith in it," said Nan roughly. She went on

hastily in a high nervous voice like her voice when she had people to

tea: "Practiced every day but Thursday. Worked to a frazzle, really. How

the neighbors must hate me. And there's somebody two floors down who

plays the cornet all the morning, so we do a sort of distant duet with

the effect quite ... modern."

"Why didn't you practice Thursday deary?"

"I went out to Nahant with Fanshaw and Wendell to see the surf. There

was a wonderful noreaster blowing."

"You see a lot of those two young men."

"Of course I do.... But, Auntie, what have you been doing? When did you

get the chrysanthemums? they're lovely."

"You can't get me off the track that way," said Aunt M. with a sly

smile. "Which of them is it, Nancibel?"

"No, it's different from that.... O, I can't explain it." Nan saw

herself and Wenny and Fanshaw running arm in arm on the turf at the

cliffedge, leaning against the wind, the taste of spray on their lips.

"It's so difficult to classify feelings. That's what Wenny says.... O,

you wouldn't understand Auntie."

Nan felt the old woman beside her wince.

"O, I didn't mean that, Aunt M. Why am I so dreadfully inconsiderate?"

"I wonder why Cousin Jane Turnstable doesn't come. I hope they won't be

late. It upsets poor Judkins so to have to keep dinner hot."

They were silent. O, I must think of something to talk about, Nan was

saying over and over again in her mind. She was staring at the little

Corot that hung beside the mantel. A poplar overhanging water greywhite

like milkweed silk.

"Do you remember Auntie when I was a little girl what ecstasies I used

to go into over that little picture? When you used to tell me about

abroad I used to think of everything as pale green and silver grey, like

that picture."

"A funny impatient little girl you were," said Aunt M. softly. "Poor

Elizabeth used to worry so about your tantrums, but I used to reassure

her by saying it was merely temperament and that you'd be a great artist

some day.... If she had only been spared to us to hear you play...."

The door bell rang.

"There they are," said Nan with relief.

"And they are not late after all. Punctual to the minute.... O, my dear

Cousin Jane, how glad I am to see you. And James you've grown I

declare.... Helen, you'll kiss your old cousin, won't you, dear?"

Cousin Jane Turnstable was a tall woman with silvery hair caught up

smoothly under a broad hat. Her eyebrows were black and her face had all

over the same unwrinkled milky texture as her cheeks. The boy and girl

were both blonde and very thin. They all stood in a group in the center

of the buff and blue carpet of the parlor, and the voices of the

Turnstables chimed softly together like well attuned bells against Nan's

deep voice and the quavering voice of her aunt.

"Nancibel, you won't mind showing Cousin Jane and Cousin Helen where

they can take their things off, will you dear?" said Aunt M. At the same

moment Mary Ann came through the sliding doors that led to the dining

room and announced solemnly: "Dinner's on the table, mum."

"This is nice," said Aunt M. when they were all seated round the table

where amid a glitter of silverware the creases stood up stiffly in the

heavily starched linen cloth: "Quite like old times." And as Nan let the

brown croutons slide off the spoon into the tomato bisque a

heartbreaking lassitude came over her--I'm twentyeight and every seventh

day of my life I must have done this. Twentyeight by fiftytwo, what

does that make? But some one was speaking to her. "And how did you enjoy

September at Squirrel Island?" Cousin Jane Turnstable was asking in her

musical voice.

After dinner with the thickness of overrich icecream still in their

mouths they went into the parlor for coffee.

"I suppose I shall never go abroad again," Aunt M. was saying. "My

travelling days are over. But if I did it would be to take for one last

time that drive from Sorrento to Amalfi when the lemontrees are in

bloom.... I'm afraid it is a little blasphemous to say it, but I can't

imagine Heaven more beautiful. You surely have taken that drive,

Nancibel."

"I've never been south of Florence, Auntie." With bitter poignance she

sat remembering the smell of lemontrees. She was moving the spoon round

her small cup of coffee with a slow movement of long fingers. She

thought of Fitzie eating banana split and telling about the girl who'd

run off with an Italian smelling of garlic like a young Greek god. Poor

Fitzie who had none of that in her life, always making up romances for

other people.

"I seem to remember," Aunt M. went on, "having heard Philips Brooks say

that no one could really feel the beauty of such sights and remain an

unbeliever."

"Ah, yes, so true," said Cousin Jane Turnstable.

"O dear," said James, his voice breaking.

Nan looked up at him suddenly. His face was crimson. He had spilt half a

cup of coffee over his neatlypressed grey trousers. Nan took the cup out

of his hand and set it on the mantel while he sheepishly fumbled for the

spoon on the floor.

"No harm done," she said. "Come upstairs; it'll wash right out. I'll

give you a cloth to rub it with."

"I'm afraid you think I'm dreadfully dumb, Cousin Nancibel. That was the

dumbest thing to do," he said in tearful voice going up the stairs.

"Nonsense. I might have done it myself," she answered laughing.

"Anything to break up the monotony of Sunday afternoon!... Right in

here, James. You sit on the bathtub and hold it tight. I'll rub it with

a little soap, Here's a cloth."

The boy did as he was told.

"Why, that'll come right out. You'll never notice it," said Nan briskly

rubbing the cloth held against his thin thigh.

"You don't like Sunday either." His eyes looked up into hers with a

sudden flash.

She wrinkled up her nose and he laughed.

From the wet woolly cloth came up a rough little smell like from Wenny's

homespun. She felt herself flushing hotly. The boy looked up at her

fixedly for a second and then the flush suffused his fair skin until it

reddened his ears and the roots of his flaxen hair.

"That'll do," said Nan gruffly. "No one will notice it now." She walked

hurriedly to the stairs and down.

"You'll play for us a bit, won't you, Nancibel?" said her Aunt when she

was back in the parlor.

"All right. You'll accompany won't you?"

She brushed past James without looking at him as she went into the hall

to fetch her violin. She was furious at herself for having blushed. As

she leaned over to unstrap the violin case, the blood pounded in her

temples and filled her eyes so that she could scarcely see. The blood in

her ears was the sound of the grindorgan playing The Wearing of the

Green after tea yesterday, when Wenny's cheek had been beside her cheek

and they had looked at the throbbing star in the west. She tossed her

head back and stood for a moment, her teeth firm together, the violin in

one hand and bow in the other. And the girl who played the violin in the

Fadettes had run off with an Italian who smelt of garlic like a young

Greek god. O Fitzie's a romantic fool.

"How well you are looking today," said Aunt M. from the pianostool.

"Shall it be Bach, Nancibel?"

* * * *

A yellow mist had come in off the harbor during the evening so that

walking home after the concert the streets were dim and unfamiliar and

each arclight had a ruddy halo. Nan walked beside Fanshaw whose greenish

raincoat made him look taller and thinner even than usual. Ahead of them

they could hear Wenny and Betty Thomas laughing together.

"What do you think of Betty?" Nan was saying in a low voice.

"She's your latest discovery isn't she?... A trifle ... er ...

unconscious I should say. No harm in her.... I wish she hadn't such a

burr in her voice."

"O you are chilly."

"I didn't mean to be so pompous. She seems to like music. So rare in

a musician."

Nan laughed.

"You seem to be feeling very superior this evening, Fanshaw. What have

you done to be so cocky?"

"Little enough, God knows.... Nan, I wish we could get Wenny settled

somehow. I'm worried about him. He ought to get to work at something

definite."

"But he's so enormously alive, Fanshaw. How can one worry about him. O,

if I had half his vitality, sensitiveness...."

"So much of that is sheer nerves ... in a man. In you it's different.

There's something rock bottom about women that men haven't at all. We

are lichen. If we are too alive we burn up and shrivel.... I wonder if

he isn't a little too alive."

"Nonsense."

"Do you know you do us a lot of good, Nan?"

"If you think, young man, that I'm going to be anybody's rock of ages,

you are mistaken, I can tell you that."

The others were waiting for them at a corner where a drugstore sent

planes of white and greenish light slanting to the gleaming mud-filmed

pavement.

"This is my street, people," said Betty Thomas.

"But we'll take you to your door. Remember the holdups," said Wenny.

"It'ld be so dreadfully exciting to be held up."

"It's on my way home anyway, Betty." Nan took the girl's arm and pulled

her with her across the street.

The two men followed them up a street of apartment houses where patches

of lighted windows made a yellow blur in the fog above their heads.

Before the word Swarthcote on a glass door they stopped.

"Good night all," said Betty Thomas. "Thank you, deary, for the lovely

supper and everything."

The door closed behind her. With Nan in the middle the three of them

walked on.

"How cosy it is this way in the fog?" she said.

"It makes me feel wonderfully sentimental," Wenny said slowly. "Wagner

makes me feel sentimental anyway, but Wagner plus fog ... like sitting

on the curbstone and letting great warm tears flow down my cheeks till

the gutter simply gurgled with them."

"I say," said Fanshaw.

"Not a bit of it," broke in Nan. "I feel jolly, like roasting apples in

front of an open fire. We're so secure all three of us together this way

and the world drifting by, dinner at Aunt M.'s and tomato bisque and

croutons and love and hate and all that outside drifting by like fog."

"Harmless you mean, Nan. I shouldn't say so.... Do you think its

harmless, Wenny?"

"May be for some people, Fanshaw."

"No, I don't mean that. O, you are so lackadaisical, Fanshaw," Nan said

bitterly. "I mean something more active.... The three of us conquering,

shutting the fog and the misery out, all that helpless against us. But

I'm talking like a book."

"You are a little, Nan," said Wenny laughing.

Nan felt what she wanted to say slipping out of her mind, ungraspable.

The three of them walked on in silence, arm in arm, with Nan in the

middle. Beginnings of sentences flared and sputtered out in her mind

like damp fireworks. Slowly the yellow fog, the cold enormous fog that

had somehow a rhythm of slow vague swells out at sea sifted in upon her,

blurred the focus of herself that had been for a moment intensely sharp.

She so wanted to say something that would make that moment permanent,

that would pin down forever the sudden harmony of the three of them so

that she could always possess it, no matter what happened after.

Epigram, that was the word. There had been Greeks who had cut the flame

of an instant deep on stone in broad letters for centuries to read.

"I wish we could walk like this always."

Her throat was dry. At the sound of her thin voice, all her thoughts

scuttled into the dark like cockroaches in a kitchen cupboard. Her mind

smoothed to vacancy.

"How do you mean?" asked Wenny.

"Well, here we are," said Fanshaw in a singsong tone.

The Swansea, in gold gothic letters shaded with black, stared at her

from a wide glass door. Beyond white steps another glass door, unmarked.

Nan remembered how she used to feel when she was a child and people were

getting ready to go into dinner and bedtime came. She turned her back on

the sourly familiar letters. Opposite a few twigs of trees leaned into

the warm tent of light from a streetlamp out of dark immensity of fog.

The light slanting out through the glass door gave a gleam on Fanshaw's

glasses that hid his eyes. She pressed ever so slightly his long limp

hand and Wenny's hard hand. Wenny's face was flushed from the rawness of

the fog and there was a glint in his eyes that made her catch her breath

joyously. She wanted to say something. They turned away, raised their

hands vaguely and walked off. Fanshaw had leaned over and said something

to Wenny that had made him laugh. The door closed behind her. She had a

glimpse of the letters The Swansea inside out. She took her key out of

her purse and unlocked the inner door. She hated Fanshaw, his glasses

that hid his eyes, his long limp hands. They had gone off carelessly

laughing. And Wenny too, with the grime round his collar and his

shambling walk like an Italian laborer's. She pushed open the sliding

door of the elevator that had a familiar everyday smell of dust and

machine oil. The door slid to behind her. She put her finger on the

button marked 4. It was the girl in the Fadettes who had gone off with a

brown man, garlicky, with bright teeth like the Greeks' were who made

epigrams. Nan closed her eyes as the elevator started to rise. She was

very tired.