“I suppose you have daughters, yourself?”
“Yes, three. All of them married. But they still come to me for advice.—Mastin’s? I thought so. Thank you so much.”
He watched her purple linen frock ruck up in lumps as her fat knees bent over the brass sill of a door and pitied her daughters. He was playing poker in the smoke room when Gurdy slid into the couch beside him and sat silently observing the game. The boy was lately thirteen and gaunt. His silence coated an emotion that Mark felt, disturbing as the chill of an audience on an opening night. Gurdy was angry. The milky skin below his lips twitched and wrinkled. The luncheon bugle blew. The game stopped and, when the other players rose, Mark could turn to him. “Was that fat woman in tortoise shell glasses talkin’ to you?” The boy demanded.
“Yes.”
“Well, it was a bet. I was reading in the parlour place. It was a bet. One of the women bet you got Margot’s things in New York and the rest of ’em said Paris. And that fat hog—” Gurdy’s voice broke—“said she didn’t mind slumming. So she went off and talked to you. They all s-said that Margot looked like a poster.”
This was horrible. Mark saw some likeness between Margot’s pink splendour and the new posters clever people made for him. He must be wrong. He uncertainly fingered the pile of poker chips and asked Gurdy, “D’you think sister’s—too dressed up?”
Gurdy loosed a sob that slapped Mark’s face with its misery and dashed his hand into the piled chips. He said, “D-don’t give a dam’ what they say about her. I hate hearin’ them talk about you that way!”
Mark waited until the nervous sobs slacked. Then he asked, “Do they ever talk about me at your school, sonny?”
“No. Oh, one of the masters asked me why you didn’t put on some play. Is there a play called the Cherry Orchard?”
“Russian. It wouldn’t run a week.” Mark piled up the chips and said, “I may be all wrong—Anyhow, don’t you bother, son ... God bless you.”