A Poor Wise Man | Page 4

florist's
on her way downtown and bought them.
A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. The
small attentions which in the Cardew household took the place of
loving demonstrations had always touched her. As a family the
Cardews were rather loosely knitted together, but there was something
very lovable about her mother.
Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.
"Mercy, Lily!" she said, "you look as old as I do."
"Older, I hope," Lily retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear."
Now and then she called her mother "Grace." It was by way of being a
small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old
Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather
a row about it.
"I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it."

They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. "From your
father, dear. He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill. I
suppose you've seen the papers." Lily opened the box, and smiled at her
mother.
"Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?
Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind about
that; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you broken
the news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?"
"He sent you, all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner."
Lily laughed out at that.
"You darling!" she said. "You know perfectly well that I am nothing in
grandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likes
to call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if you
didn't go through life smoothing things for them?"
Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with her
directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life,
rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years of
ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between
old Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with.
A pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and
eyed Lily uneasily.
"You look tired," she said, "and you need attention. I wish you had let
me send Castle to you."
But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered
her. Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was less childish
than when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions,
an almost alarming maturity. But perhaps that was fatigue.
"I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've been
very happy, really, and very busy."

"You have been very vague lately about your work."
Lily faced her mother squarely.
"I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it would
drive grandfather crazy."
"I thought you were in a canteen."
"Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to
camps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was rather
awful. We married quite a lot of them, however."
The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter
held Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly
hardened. So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son,
and had thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had
hated her all her married life for it. But she had given her daughter, her
clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.
Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, with
Mademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of beauty.
Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep,
with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which had
wearied and would rest. Then she remembered the day when Elinor
Cardew, poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have
a baby, and after a few rapturous weeks for Lily the baby had died.
"But the baby isn't old," Lily had persisted, standing in front of her
mother with angry, accusing eyes.
Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, as
she told Howard later.
"It was such a nice baby," she said, feeling for an idea. "I think
probably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again."
"But it is still upstairs," Lily had insisted. She had had a curious instinct

for truth, even then. But there Grace's imagination had failed her, and
she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic, and
very clear in her own mind, but what