“Of course he is,” she replied. “He’s so intellectual. And then he has such lovely manners. I think he’s more of a gentleman than any man I’ve ever known.”
I thought of Masters. Was she in her mind comparing them? If she was there was no sign of it in her face. She murmured a commendatory phrase of the pie, and holding it off on the palm of an outspread hand, carried it into the back room.
I sat on the wooden chair staring after her. Did she care for Roger? Was she going to transfer her incomprehensible affections to him? It was a hideous thought. She came back and swept about, collecting the feast, and my dazed eyes followed her. How could she do such a thing unless she was so lacking in a central core of character that she was nothing but the shell of a woman?
It was a queer scrappy meal, most of it sent round from the delicatessen store on Lexington Avenue. Such as it was the hostess offered it with as smiling an aplomb as if Delmonico’s head chef had produced it in an inspired moment. No qualm that her chief guest might not enjoy ham and beer disturbed her gracious serenity. Petronius Arbiter treating his emperor to a gastronomic orgy, could not have recommended the nightingale’s tongues more confidently than Lizzie did the canned asparagus, bought at a discount.
That Roger enjoyed it was evident. I don’t suppose he had ever been at a supper where the ladies waited and sometimes, when the plates ran short, washed them between courses. Lizzie’s inexpertness caused continuous breaks in the progress of the feast—important items overlooked, consultations as to the proper order of the viands, an unexpected shortage of small silver. Before we had got to the canned asparagus, I found myself assuming the management. Roger rising and pursuing an aimless search for the beer opener, and Lizzie making rapid futile gropings for it in the backs of drawers and the bottoms of bowls, was distracting to my orderly sense. They couldn’t find it anywhere. They had too much to say, got in each other’s way, forgot to hunt and stood laughing, while I took up the search and ran it to earth on a nail in the kitchen.
After that the party shifted its base entirely and became mine. They were glad to relinquish it to me, took their seats with the air of those who know an uncongenial task has found the proper hands. I directed it, grimly attentive, and it was not the least of my pain that I saw they thought I was pleased to do so. If I had ever done any one a deadly wrong he would have been avenged had he seen me—making things pleasant for Roger and Lizzie, ministering to their creature comfort, too engrossed in my labors to join in. I was the chaperon, I was the maiden aunt, I was Mrs. Grundy.
When we reached the last course I found that the coffee machine had not been emptied of the morning’s dregs and took it into the kitchen, while Lizzie put the pie on the table. From my place at the sink I could see it, a foamy surface of beaten-egg, glistening against the white expanse of cloth. Lizzie was proud of her pie and refused my offer to cut it. She held the knife poised for a deliberating moment, then sliced carefully, while Roger watched from across the table and I from beside the sink. She cut a piece for me and put it at my place, then one for Roger. Leaning from her seat she handed him the plate and he took it, the circle of porcelain joining their hands. Over it he looked at her with shining passion-lit eyes.
To me, watching from that squalid kitchen, their outstretched arms were symbolic of their attitude one to the other, the piece of pie, a love potion she was offering. It was “Isolde” holding out the cup to “Tristan”. Probably any one reading this will laugh. Believe me, in that moment, I tasted the fulness of despair—that darkening of the dear bright world, that concentrating of all the pain one can feel into one consummate pang.
XVI
I am convinced now. Roger loves her. Until that supper I had ups and downs—times when I felt unsure, hours when I argued myself into the belief that I was mistaken. But when I came down to my rooms that night my uncertainties were ended. As I lay in the dark I saw everything as clear as crystal. It seemed as if I was clairvoyant, caught up above myself, the whole situation visualized before me like a picture.