Shirley said no more, and facing each other in the candle-glow, across the spotless damask, they talked, as with common consent, of other things. She thought she had never seen her mother more brilliant. An odd excitement was flooding her cheek with red and she chatted and laughed as she had not done for years. Even Ranston rolled his eyes in appreciation, later confiding to Emmaline in the kitchen that “Mis’ Judith cert’n’y chipper ez er squ’rl dis evenin’. Reck’n she be breckin’ dat cane ovah some o’ ouah haids yit! What yo’ spos’n she say ’bout dem aryplanes? She ’clah she tickle tuh deff ter ride in one—yas’m. Say et soun’ lak er thrash’n-machine en look lak er debble-fish but she don’ keer. When she ride, she want tuh zip—yas she did! Dat’s jes’ whut Mis’ Judith say.”
But after dinner the gaiety and effervescence faded quickly and Mrs. Dandridge went early to her room. She mounted the stair with her arm thrown about Shirley’s pliant waist. At the window, where the balustrade turned, she paused to peer into the night. The air outside was moist and heavy with rose-scent.
“How alive they seem, Shirley,” she said, “—the roses. But the jessamine deserves its little hour.” At her door she kissed her, looking at her with a strange smile. “How curious,” she said, as if to herself, “that it should have happened, to-day!”
The reading-lamp had been lighted on her table. She drew a slim gold chain from the bosom of her dress and held to the light a little locket-brooch it carried. It was of black enamel, with a tiny laurel-wreath of pearls on one side encircling a single diamond. The other side was of crystal and covered a baby’s russet-colored curl. In her fingers it opened and disclosed a miniature at which she looked closely for a moment.
As she snapped the halves shut, her eye fell on the open page of a book that lay on the table in the circle of radiance. It was Lucile:
“Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?
Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?
Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?
Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?
To a voice who shall render an image? or who
From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?”
Her eyes turned restlessly about the room. It had been hers as a girl, for Rosewood had been the old Garland homestead. It seemed now all at once to be full of calling memories of her youth. She looked again at the page and turned the leaf:
“Hush! That which is done
I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That’s best
Which God sends. ’Twas His will; it is mine. And the rest
Of that riddle I will not look back to!”
She closed the book hastily and thrust it out of sight, beneath a magazine.