“Do you like Mr. Clements, Lizzie,” I said solemnly.
She nodded, then reached for the pie and began touching its surface
with the tip of a finger.
“Immensely. I don’t see how any one could help it. He’s so kind.”
Her attention was concentrated on what she held. She scrutinized it as
if it were a treasure in which she searched for a possible flaw.
“He’s more than kind,” I answered. Even in my misery I felt a tinge of
irritation that she should accept Roger’s homage as if he was of no
more value than the count or the doctor.
“Of course he is,” she replied. “He’s so intellectual. And then he has
such lovely manners. I think he’s more of a gentleman than any man I’ve
ever known.”
I thought of Masters. Was she in her mind comparing them? If she was
there was no sign of it in her face. She murmured a commendatory phrase
of the pie, and holding it off on the palm of an outspread hand,
carried it into the back room.
I sat on the wooden chair staring after her. Did she care for Roger?
Was she going to transfer her incomprehensible affections to him? It
was a hideous thought. She came back and swept about, collecting the
feast, and my dazed eyes followed her. How could she do such a thing
unless she was so lacking in a central core of character that she was
nothing but the shell of a woman?
It was a queer scrappy meal, most of it sent round from the
delicatessen store on Lexington Avenue. Such as it was the hostess
offered it with as smiling an aplomb as if Delmonico’s head chef had
produced it in an inspired moment. No qualm that her chief guest might
not enjoy ham and beer disturbed her gracious serenity. Petronius
Arbiter treating his emperor to a gastronomic orgy, could not have
recommended the nightingale’s tongues more confidently than Lizzie did
the canned asparagus, bought at a discount.
That Roger enjoyed it was evident. I don’t suppose he had ever been
at a supper where the ladies waited and sometimes, when the plates
ran short, washed them between courses. Lizzie’s inexpertness caused
continuous breaks in the progress of the feast--important items
overlooked, consultations as to the proper order of the viands, an
unexpected shortage of small silver. Before we had got to the canned
asparagus, I found myself assuming the management. Roger rising and
pursuing an aimless search for the beer opener, and Lizzie making
rapid futile gropings for it in the backs of drawers and the bottoms
of bowls, was distracting to my orderly sense. They couldn’t find it
anywhere. They had too much to say, got in each other’s way, forgot
to hunt and stood laughing, while I took up the search and ran it to
earth on a nail in the kitchen.
After that the party shifted its base entirely and became mine. They
were glad to relinquish it to me, took their seats with the air of
those who know an uncongenial task has found the proper hands. I
directed it, grimly attentive, and it was not the least of my pain that
I saw they thought I was pleased to do so. If I had ever done any one a
deadly wrong he would have been avenged had he seen me--making things
pleasant for Roger and Lizzie, ministering to their creature comfort,
too engrossed in my labors to join in. I was the chaperon, I was the
maiden aunt, I was Mrs. Grundy.
When we reached the last course I found that the coffee machine had not
been emptied of the morning’s dregs and took it into the kitchen, while
Lizzie put the pie on the table. From my place at the sink I could see
it, a foamy surface of beaten-egg, glistening against the white expanse
of cloth. Lizzie was proud of her pie and refused my offer to cut
it. She held the knife poised for a deliberating moment, then sliced
carefully, while Roger watched from across the table and I from beside
the sink. She cut a piece for me and put it at my place, then one for
Roger. Leaning from her seat she handed him the plate and he took it,
the circle of porcelain joining their hands. Over it he looked at her
with shining passion-lit eyes.
To me, watching from that squalid kitchen, their outstretched arms
were symbolic of their attitude one to the other, the piece of pie, a
love potion she was offering. It was “Isolde” holding out the cup to
“Tristan”. Probably any one reading this will laugh. Believe me, in
that moment, I tasted the fulness of despair--that darkening of the
dear bright world, that concentrating of all the pain one can feel into
one consummate pang.