Eva Gilson had been in Brooklyn within the month, and in a passion of
remembrance of home, Claire cried, "Oh, do tell me about everybody."
"I had such a good time with Amy Dorrance," said Mrs. Gilson. "Of course
Amy is a little dull, but she's such an awfully good sort and---- We did
have the jolliest party one afternoon. We went to lunch at the Ritz,
and a matinée, and we saw such an interesting man--Gene is frightfully
jealous when I rave about him--I'm sure he was a violinist--simply an
exquisite thing he was--I wanted to kiss him. Gene will now say, 'Why
didn't you?'"
And Gene said, "Well, why didn't you?" and Claire laughed, and her
toes felt warm and pink and good, and she was perfectly happy, and she
murmured, "It would be good to hear a decent violinist again. Oh! What
had George Worlicht been doing, when you were home?"
"Don't you think Georgie is wonderful?" fluttered Mrs. Gilson. "He makes
me rue my thirty-six sad years. I think I'll adopt him. You know, he
almost won the tennis cup at Long Branch."
Georgie had a little mustache and an income, just enough income to
support the little mustache, and he sang inoffensively, and was always
winning tennis cups--almost--and he always said, at least once at every
party, "The basis of savoir faire is knowing how to be rude to the
right people." Fire-enamored and gliding into a perfumed haze of
exquisite drowsiness, Claire saw Georgie as heroic and wise. But the
firelight got into her eyes, and her lids wouldn't stay open, and in her
ears was a soft humming as of a million bees in a distant meadow
golden-spangled--and Gene was helping her upstairs; sleepiness submerged
her like bathing in sweet waters; she fumbled at buttons and hooks and
stays, let things lie where they fell--and of all that luxury nothing
was more pleasant than the knowledge that she did not have to take
precautions against the rats, mice, cockroaches, and all their obscene
little brothers which--on some far-off fantastic voyaging when she had
been young and foolish--she seemed to remember having found in her own
room. Then she was sinking into a bed like a tide of rainbow-colored
foam, sinking deep, deep, deep---And it was morning, and she perceived that the purpose of morning light
was to pick out surfaces of mahogany and orange velvet and glass, and
that only an idiot would ever leave this place and go about begging
dirty garage men to fill her car with stinking gasoline and oil.
The children were at breakfast--children surely not of the same species
as the smeary-cheeked brats she had seen tumbling by roadsides along the
way--sturdy Mason, with his cap of curls, and Virginia, with bobbed
ash-blond hair prim about her delicate face. They curtsied, and in
voices that actually had intonations they besought her, "Oh, Cousin
Claire, would you pleasssssse tell us about drive-to-the-coast?"