VI
No, the warm, bright room couldn’t thaw them. On the contrary, Mrs. Lanier seemed to bring in her own frigid atmosphere. She entered, followed dutifully by her daughter and her son, and, without so much as a smile, bade Emily good evening.
“It’s so nice of you to come to see me!” said Emily. “Isn’t this a cozy little room?”
“It seems to me quite unbearably hot. However—”
A chill silence fell. Cecil broke it by asking if he might smoke a cigarette. Emily was about to say “Please do,” when Mrs. Lanier interposed:
“Pray don’t, Cecil—not in this close room!”
With a trace of sulkiness, Emily got up and opened a window. A gust of cold air blew into her face, stirring her bright hair. For an instant she looked down into the street below—the hurrying taxicabs, the hurrying people, all bent on their own concerns, all going somewhere. If she were only out there with Denis!
“I think,” said Mrs. Lanier, “that you had better come to live at my hotel, Emily.”
“Oh, thanks!” said Emily, alarmed. “But I’m very comfortable here. Anyhow, I couldn’t afford it.”
“I am willing to defray all your expenses myself.”
“Thank you ever so much! But—”
“I think it advisable,” said Mrs. Lanier.
“Advisable?” Emily repeated, a little puzzled. “I don’t—”
“You ought not to be here alone. You should be with your husband’s family. I’m sure Denis would agree with me.”
“He picked out this place himself. He said—”
“In the circumstances, Denis would agree with me.[Pg 166]”
“In what circumstances?” Emily demanded, beginning to grow angry.
“We called yesterday afternoon, and the clerk informed us that you had gone out with a young man. I really don’t think Denis would—”
That was too much!
“Upon my word!” cried Emily. “Didn’t you know—”
“I say!” interrupted Cecil, in haste. “Not our affair, is it? I mean—hardly the thing, is it, to bother Emily like this? I mean to say—”
His pleasant, well bred voice trailed off into silence, and Emily, after one amazed glance at his face, was silent too.
So he hadn’t told them, and his eyes implored her not to tell! She sat very still. All the heat of anger had died in her, leaving only bitterness and scorn. She could not endure to look at any of them—not at Cecil, with his contemptible faith in her good nature, not at the hostile and suspicious Mrs. Lanier, not at the utterly indifferent Cynthia.
“I strongly advise you to come to us,” said Mrs. Lanier.
“No,” replied Emily quietly. “I’m going to stay here.”
Mrs. Lanier rose.
“Then I shall feel it my duty to write to Denis,” she said, “and explain this unfortunate situation to him. I wish him to know that I have done my best.”
“By all means write to him,” said Emily, as calmly as she could.
“Come!” said Mrs. Lanier to her children, in a freezing tone.
After ceremonious farewells they all left, Cecil last. He turned in the doorway, but Emily was not looking at him. She was already absorbed in the letter she was going to write to Denis.
As soon as the door closed after them, she sat down at the desk, to put down on paper all her burning indignation and resentment. She wrote seven pages at lightning speed. Then she began to read over what she had written, and suddenly she broke into tears.
“No, I can’t!” she sobbed. “Poor Denis! They’re his own people. I can’t say all that to him. Oh, poor Denis!”
So in the end, after her fit of weeping had subsided, she wrote another letter—a cheerful, airy little letter. Part of it was:
Your mother seems to think I’m a flighty young thing. She wants me to come and live in the hotel with her—so that she can keep an eye on me, I suppose; but I’m going to stay here, in the place you and I picked out together. I don’t imagine you’ll be much worried by any tales of my awfulness, will you, Denny?
And then, moved by an honest and generous impulse to make her Denis happy, she added:
The trouble is that your mother doesn’t quite understand my barbarous American ways yet. Perhaps I don’t understand her very well, either; but we shall in time, I’m sure, Denny. Don’t worry about it!
She went to bed happier after that. As for her husband being in the least troubled by any tales of her going out with young men, that was simply absurd. He trusted her just as she trusted him.