What is more, Cecil was a powerful[Pg 163] friend. He had a cheerful, domineering sort of way with his mother and sister, and it was obvious that they idolized him. He said that Emily was chilly, and that the window was to be closed and the heat turned on. They suffered terribly, but did not complain. He consulted Emily about the proposed menu. He insisted upon knowing what she really liked, and saw that she got it. He made her talk and made her laugh, because he was so persistently cheerful and silly, and his mother and sister looked on with an air of patient indulgence.
Back came all her native gayety. She didn’t fear or dislike these frigid women any more. She wasn’t a meek, scared, silly little object now; she was the girl Denis loved, and they would have to love her, too. She felt sure of herself, radiant, happy, no longer alien and oppressed; and beyond all measure grateful to her new friend, her brother Cecil.
IV
Nothing had been said by any of the Laniers about seeing her again, and Emily had consulted her book on etiquette in vain for a hint. She was the more disturbed by this because she had had a letter from Denis—a solemn, miserable letter, filled with careful descriptions of the scenery and the weather. Through it all, in every line, she could read his longing for her and his great anxiety about her. Such a dear, stupid letter—honest and serious and manly, like Denis himself. He knew well enough how to love, but nothing at all about making love.
He hadn’t heard yet of his family’s arrival in New York, and, thought Emily, he was not going to get the news from them first. Very likely his mother would write to him by the same mail, but he would surely read Emily’s letter first, and he should have her account of the meeting.
Just what ought she to tell him? She would say, of course, that she had dined with his people.
“And then shall I say I’m going to call on them? Or should I invite them here to dinner?” she thought. “Or ought I just to wait?”
She was in her room, struggling with this problem, when Mr. Cecil Lanier was announced. She hastened down into the lounge, very much pleased. Here was something else to tell Denis. There was at least one member of his family that she could praise with candor.
She welcomed Cecil with frank pleasure, and he, on his part, seemed so remarkably glad to see her again, so very friendly, that a new and daring idea sprang up in her mind. It might be more diplomatic and more polite to wait a little, however. In spite of his jolly, friendly manner, there was something rather impressive about Cecil. He wasn’t to be treated too casually.
He was really younger than Denis, but he seemed older, not only because his face was a little worn, and his smiling eyes a little tired, but because of his affable worldliness. Denis, in his earnestness, his straightforward simplicity, had sometimes seemed quite boyish to Emily, but there was no trace of boyishness in Cecil. He was a charming fellow, handsome, courteous, and amusing, and he knew it. Emily had mighty little worldly wisdom, but she did not lack intuition, and she thought—and rightly—that Cecil would be extraordinarily kind and obliging to any one he liked, and by no means so to those he did not like; so she decided to make him like her.