“Well!” said her mother at last, with her benevolent smile, “are you never going to look at your little presents, chickabiddy?”
Then she had sat up, her short heavy braid over one shoulder, and began opening the packages always found on birthday mornings at one’s bedside. The gifts had brought tears to her eyes. The love in them, the unspeakably dear intimacy! Her mother had embroidered a dozen linen handkerchiefs, and an exquisite sachet case for them; her father had presented her with the bottle of Cherry Blossom perfume he had bought every year since she was a child—and which she didn’t like—and a big box of chocolates with a ten dollar gold piece on top. Lance gave her a book of verse. Then there was a photograph in a silver frame of her eldest sister with her three babies; there were six pairs of French gloves from one brother and a beautiful edition of “Ingoldsby Legends” from the other, and from the sister who had married only a year ago a combing jacket, trimmed with pale green ribbons. She had so well remembered Claudine’s tastes!
“Oh, Mother!” she had said, with a sob, “you’re all so good and dear! I wish ...?”
“What do you wish, Goosie?”
But she didn’t quite know. Perhaps she wished to clutch at Time and hold him here forever.
She had got up and dressed and gone into the garden before breakfast to look at the flowers, and to pick a very few. The roses were just beginning; they were so lovely that she almost wept again. The buds were drooping in a sort of enchanted drowsiness, some yellow, some so faintly pink, some a dark and wonderful red; she touched with her finger the waxy satin petals, she bent over them to inhale the fragrance of them, that heavenly fragrance warmed with the sun. She went about from one bed to the other, to see what new thing had come up, what was flourishing, what was disappointing. Her father was a notable gardener; she hadn’t his skill, but she had his love for growing things. She enjoyed the garden perhaps more than he did, for she had not his anxieties about it. She sauntered over the wide lawn that ran all down the hillside, the sun warm on her bare head, her white dress trailing over the grass, and as she went she reflected, with a little fleeting melancholy in her happiness, Nineteen! Nineteen such wonderful years in this garden!
But the years to come she thought, would be far more wonderful.
§ iii
The Masons were quite unabashed in their family celebrations—Mrs. Mason had a perfectly clear conception of the value of these ceremonies in holding together a family, and she made the most of them, in her calm way. It was a revelation to young Vincelle; he thought it somewhat childish and absurd and not quite the thing. The table that night was set with unusual magnificence with a lace cloth and four silver candelabra, and at the end a wonderful cake was brought, frosted with pink and white and green, and bearing twenty candles, one for good luck. He was the only guest and he felt embarrassed.
After the dinner the dance, the same sort of dance that had been on the occasion of his first visit, but without that unique flavor. He felt a little chilled, a little aloof, dreading unspeakably what lay before him. Never had Claudine seemed so distant, never had she seemed so much a stranger. He began to grow certain that he had no chance at all. Perhaps it would be better if she did refuse him, and he could go home again....