Part 79

"I am glad," she assured him; "and it is so nice to have you come before the summer is at an end. We can have a ride out into Westchester, and come back by daylight to dinner."

"And no chaperons?"

"No." She was looking up at him a little wistfully. "We know each other too well to have to drag in a lot of people, don't we? It is the men whom women trust with whom they go alone."

He met her glance gravely. "Do you know," he said, "that you have the sweetest way of putting things? A man simply has to come up to your expectations. He'd as soon think of disappointing a baby as of disappointing you."

His selection of a simile was unfortunate. Mrs. Beale's eyes became fixed upon a refractory button of her glove.

"Please help me," she said; "your fingers are stronger," and as he bent above her hand she forgot the baby, forgot her new estate, forgot everything except the joy she felt at having his smooth gray head so close to her own.

When he had her safely beside him in his big car he asked, "What made you run away from me in Chicago?"

"My daughter came home from Europe."

"I can't quite think of you with a grown daughter."

"Cecily's a darling." Mrs. Beale's voice held no enthusiasm.

Landry, noting her tone, looked faintly surprised. "You and she must have great good times together."

"Oh, yes--"

Mrs. Beale wished that he wouldn't talk about Cecily. Cecily had married before good times were possible. They had never played together--she and the little daughter for whom she had toiled and sacrificed.

Landry's voice broke in upon her meditations: "I should like to meet Cecily."

Mrs. Beale switched him away from the topic expeditiously. He should not see her as yet in the bosom of her family. He should not. He should not see Cecily with her air of mature motherliness. He should not see Victor, Cecily's husband, who was ten years older than Cecily and only ten years younger than herself. He should not hear her big son Bob call her "Grandma." He should not gaze upon the pretty deference of Bob's little wife toward the queen-dowager!

Dining later opposite Landry in a great golden palace, Cissy seemed like some gay tropical bird. In her new and lovely clothes she was very pretty, very witty, almost girlishly charming. Yet Landry was conscious of a vague feeling of disappointment. She had been more serenely satisfying in Chicago--not so brilliantly hard, not so persistently vivacious. How could he know that the change was one of desperation? Cissy, as grandmother, felt that she must prove, even to herself, that she was not yet a back number.

With this rift in the lute of their budding romance, they ate and drank and went to the play and had what might otherwise have been an enchanted ride home in the moonlight. But when Landry said "Good-night" Cissy felt the loss of something in his manner. His greeting that afternoon had had in it something almost of tenderness; his farewell was commonplace and slightly constrained.

As Mrs. Beale went through the dimly lighted hall to her room, she met Cecily in a flowing garment, pacing back and forth with the baby in her arms.

"She isn't well," Cecily whispered, as the little lady in the lace frock questioned her. "I don't know whether I ought to call a doctor or not."

Mrs. Beale poked the tiny mite with an expert finger. "I'll give her a drink of hot water with a drop of peppermint in it," she said, "as soon as I get my hat off, and you'd better go back to bed, Cecily; you aren't well enough to worry with her."

Cecily looked relieved. "I was worried," she confessed. "It's nurse's night out and Victor had to go to a board meeting unexpectedly--and with you away--I lost my nerve. It seemed dreadful to be alone, mother."

Mrs. Beale knew how dreadful it was. She had carried the wailing Cecily in her arms night after night in the weeks which followed the crushing knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But she had carried a heavier burden than the child--the burden of poverty, of desertion, of an unknown future.

But these things were not to be voiced. "You go to bed, Cecily," she said. "I'll look after her."

Walking the floor later with the baby in her arms, Mrs. Beale's mind was on Landry. "Heavens! if he could see me now!" was her shocked thought, as she stopped in front of a mirror to survey the picture she made.

Her hair was down and the grayest lock of all showed plainly. She had discarded frills and furbelows and wore a warm gray wrapper. She looked nice and middle-aged, yet carried, withal, a subtle air of girlishness--would carry it, in spite of storm or stress, until the end, as the sign and seal of her undaunted spirit.

The baby stirred in her arms, and again Mrs. Beale went back and forth, crooning the lullaby with which she had once put her own babies to bed.

In the morning the baby was much better, but Mrs. Beale was haggard. She stayed in bed until eleven o'clock, however. Cecily, coming in at twelve, found her ready to go out. In response to an inquiry, Mrs. Beale spoke of a luncheon engagement with Valentine Landry.

"Mother--are you going to marry him?"