Linda Condon | Page 3

they had no affairs of their own to attend to. This was perfectly clear to Linda until Mrs. Condon further characterized them as "busy."
The women, stopped by conventions from really satisfactory investigation at the source, drew her on occasion into a laboriously light inquisition. How long would Linda and her mama stay at the Boscombe? Had they closed their apartment? Where was it? Hadn't Mrs. Condon mentioned Cleveland? Wasn't Linda lonely with her mama out so much--they even said late--in rolling chairs? Had she ever seen Mr. Jasper before his arrival last week?
No, of course she hadn't.
Here they exchanged skeptical glances beneath relentlessly pulled eyebrows. He was really very nice, Mr. Jasper. Linda in a matter-of-fact voice replied that he had given her a twenty-dollar gold piece. Mr. Jasper was very generous. But perhaps he had rewarded her for being a good little girl and not--not bothering or hanging about. "Why should he?" was Linda's just perceptibly impatient response. Then they told her to be quiet because they wanted to listen to the music.
This consisted in studying, through suspended glasses in chased platinum, a discreet programme. At the end of a selection they either applauded condescendingly or told each other that they hadn't cared for that last--really too peculiar. Whichever happened, the leader of the small orchestra, an extravagant Italian with a supple waist, turned and bowed repeatedly with a grimacing smile. The music, usually Viennese, was muted and emotional; its strains blended perfectly with the floating scents of the women and the faintly perceptible pungent odors of dinner. Every little while a specially insinuating melody became, apparently, tangled in the women's breathing, and their breasts, cunningly traced and caressed in tulle, would be disturbed.
Mrs. Condon applauded more vigorously than was sanctioned by the others' necessity for elegance; the frank clapping of her pink palms never failed to betray a battery of affected and significant surprise in eyes like--polished cold agates. Linda, seated beside her parent, could be seen to lay a hand, narrow and blanched and marked by an emerald, on the elder's knee. Her pale fine lips moved rapidly with the shadow of trouble beneath the intense black bang.
"I wish you wouldn't do it so loudly, mother," was what she whispered.

II
The jealously guarded truth was that, by her daughter at least, Mrs. Condon was adored. Linda observed that she was not like an ordinary mother, but more nearly resembled a youthful companion. Mrs. Condon's gaiety was as genuine as her fair hair. Not kept for formal occasion, it got out of bed with her, remained through the considerable difficulties of dressing with no maid but Linda, and if the other were not asleep called a cheerful or funny good night.
Their rooms were separated by a bath, but Linda was scarcely ever in her own--her mother's lovely things, acting like a magnet, constantly drew her to their arrangement in the drawers. When the laundry came up, crisp and fragile webs heaped on the bed, Linda laid it away in a sort of ritual. Even with these publicly invisible garments a difference of choice existed between the two: Mrs. Condon's preference was for insertions, and Linda's for shadow embroidery and fine shell edges. Mrs. Condon, shaking into position a foam of ribbon and lace, would say with her gurgle of amusement, "I want to be ready when I fall down; if I followed your advice they'd take me for a nun."
This brought out Linda's low clear laugh, the expression of her extreme happiness. It sounded, for an instant, like a chime of small silver bells; then died away, leaving the faintest perceptible flush on her healthy pallor. At other times her mother's humor made her vaguely uncomfortable, usually after wine or other drinks that left the elder's breath thick and oppressive. Linda failed completely to grasp the allusions of this wit but a sharp uneasiness always responded like the lingering stale memory of a bad dream.
Once, at the Boscombe, her mother had been too silly for words: she had giggled and embraced her sweet little girl, torn an expensive veil to shreds and dropped a French model hat into the tub. After a distressing sickness she had gone to sleep fully dressed, and Linda, unable to move or wake her, had sat long beyond dinner into the night, fearful of the entrance of the chambermaid.
The next day Mrs. Condon had been humble with remorse. Men, she said, were too beastly for description. This was not an unusual opinion. Linda observed that she was always condemning men in general and dressing for them in particular. She offered Linda endless advice in an abstracted manner:
"They're all liars, Lin, and stingy about everything but their pleasure. Women are different but men are all alike. You get sick to death of them! Never bother