“And Sarah,” the mistress continued. “When Miss Irene comes in, tell her I should like to see her. It’s important.”
The servant hesitated for an instant. “But Miss Irene don’t come in till after midnight, Mis’ Shane.” She spoke with the manner of concealing something. In her soft voice there was a thin trace of insinuating suspicion, almost of servile accusation. “That foreign fella brings her home,” she added.
“It’s all right,” replied the old woman. “I shall be awake.” And then in a cold voice she added, “I’m sure it’s good of him to bring her home. I shouldn’t want her wandering about alone at that hour of the night. It’s very thoughtful of him.”
At midnight, true to her word, she was still awake. She had even managed to gain her feet painfully and to make her way with unsteady step across the room to the drawer which held her cigarettes. These too the doctor had forbidden her.
On the way back to her vast bed, she passed by the window and, drawing aside the curtain for a moment, she looked out over the hot panorama of glowing furnaces and tall black chimneys. As she stood there, she saw entering the wrought iron gates two figures sharply outlined against the glare of the white arc light in Halsted Street. The woman was Irene. She was accompanied by Krylenko.
Quietly the old woman extinguished the candle on the table beside her. The room became a vault of darkness. Beneath her window at the turn in the drive, the pair halted and stood talking in voices so low that what they said was inaudible even through the open window. After a time Irene seated herself wearily on the horseblock. Her frail body sagged with fatigue. She leaned against the cast iron Cupid who held in one outstretched hand an iron ring. Krylenko bent over her and his hands, with the curious, eloquent gestures of an alien, pantomimed their tale against the distant arc light. Above them in the recessed window the mother, clinging all the while to the heavy curtains for support, watched silently. She could hear nothing. She could only keep watch. At length Irene arose and lifting the ugly black hat from her head, ran her finger through her loose hair all damp with the terrible heat. Now was the moment. The old woman, awaiting proof, leaned against the table by her side.
But there was no proof. There was no embrace, not even the faintest exchange of intimacies. Krylenko chastely took Irene’s hand, bade her good-night and turned with his swinging powerful stride down the long drive. Irene, passing along the gallery by the drawing room, slipped her key into the lock and entered the house.
Above stairs she found her mother sitting up in bed, lost again in the midst of Les Anges Gardiens. Still carrying the worn hat in her hand, the daughter came over to the bed. With the increasing illness of the old woman, Irene’s manner had become more gentle. She even smiled a tired smile.
“What?” she said playfully. “Are you still awake? Skimming again, I see.”
Yet her manner was not the manner of a daughter with a mother. Rather it was that of a casual friend. It was too playful, too forced. The chasm of thirty years and more was not to be bridged by any amount of strained cordiality.