A Poor Wise Man | Page 6

her little-girl years.
"Welcome home, Miss Lily," he said.
Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over her
old black dress. Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion, for
Mademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth and
gladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had
come back. She was the only young thing in the house. She would
bring them gladness and youth. She would try to make them happy.
Always before she had taken, but now she meant to give.
Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. She
ran up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.

"You darling old thing!" she cried. She lapsed into French. "I saw the
collar at once. And think, it is over! It is finished. And all your nice
French relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sipping
their little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girl
passes. Is it not so?"
"It is so, God and the saints be praised!" said Mademoiselle, huskily.
Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was
negligible, and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the little
world of two which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's
doing, that. He had never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an
early conversation returned to her. It was on Lily's first birthday and he
had made one of his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him
a pearl in a velvet case.
"All our women have their own pearls," he had said. "She will have her
grandmother's also when she marries. I shall give her one the first year,
two the second, and so on." He had stood looking down at the child
critically. "She's a Cardew," he said at last. "Which means that she will
be obstinate and self-willed." He had paused there, but Grace had not
refuted the statement. He had grinned. "As you know," he added. "Is
she talking yet?"
"A word or two," Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone than
was in his.
"Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French
before she does English. It is one of the accomplishments of a lady. Get
a good woman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in
her room. I don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French
woman at eight in the morning."
"No, you wouldn't," Grace had said.
Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did not
like Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him. He respected her for
that. He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and at

dinner, the only meal he took with the family, he would now and then
send for the governess and Lily to come in for dessert. That, of course,
was later on, when the child was nearly ten. Then would follow a
three-cornered conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony and
Lily, with Mademoiselle joining in timidly, and with Grace, at the side
of the table, pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middle-class
world of her own, at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retained
the head of his table, and he had never asked her to take his dead wife's
place.
After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the
fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to see
her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made
desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was
atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in
childish, unthinking mirth. She gave it up at last.
She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with his
father, and she would not add to them. She managed the house, checked
over the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful and
courageous front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor of
smiling indifference. But she thanked heaven when the time came to
send Lily away to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutrality
between Anthony and herself was growing more wearing. The girl was
observant. And Anthony had been right, she was a Cardew. She would
have fought her grandfather out on it, defied him, accused him, hated
him. And Grace wanted peace.
Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she felt
the barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and traditions
that somehow cut her off.
But in Lily's rooms she was her sane