A Poor Wise Man | Page 5

she left in Lily's brain was a
confused conviction that every person was two persons, a body and a
soul. Death was simply a split-up, then. One part of you, the part that
bathed every morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancing
school in a white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage boots
over pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at the
Resurrection. But the other part was all the time very happy, and
mostly singing.
Lily did not like to sing.
Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurt
themselves. She had been told that again and again when she threatened
tears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she
had found Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And
here again Grace remembered the child's wide, insistent eyes.
"Why?"
"She is sorry for Aunt Elinor."
"Because her baby's gone to God? She ought to be glad, oughtn't she?"
"Not that;" said Grace, and had brought a box of chocolates and given
her one, although they were not permitted save one after each meal.
Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had been
selected! When she came back, however, there had been no more
questions, and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over,
anyhow. But Lily was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some
vague way, resentful. Her mother found her, now and then, in a
frowning, half-defiant mood. And once, when Mademoiselle had
ventured some jesting remark about young Alston Denslow, she was
stupefied to see the girl march out of the room, her chin high, not to be
seen again for hours.

Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even
when she spoke.
"I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life," she said,
after a brief silence.
"That side of life is life, mother," Lily said gravely. But Grace did not
reply to that. It was characteristic of her to follow her own line of
thought.
"I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels strongly
about some things. And he hasn't forgiven me yet for letting you go."
Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rare
caresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more diffident
with her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts of
affection as she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle.
It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on her small feast
days, Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.
"Poor mother!" she said, "I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is he
as bad as ever?"
She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands,
now and then taking a luxurious sniff. She did not seem to expect a
reply. Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that old
Anthony Cardew was always as bad as could be.
"There is some sort of trouble at the mill. Your father is worried."
And this time it was Lily who did not reply. She said,
inconsequentially:
"We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were
worth saving. It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?" She glanced out.
They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her mother
whimsically.

"The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!" she said. "Only she
is unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war than the
State of Ohio."
Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grim old
house had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name,
returning from France.
The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war
from the Revolution on. There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48,
and in that upper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in
wrath on his son's marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a
child on seeing on the wall the sword he had worn in the Civil War. He
was a small man, and the scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute
testimony to the long forced marches of his youth. Her father had gone
to Cuba in '98, and had almost died of typhoid fever there, contracted in
the marshes of Florida.
Yes, they had been a fighting family. And now -
Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark old
hall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door, greeted
her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped her sweets
from the pantry after dinner parties in