IX
Cecily sat in her room in pale satin knickers and a thin orange-colored sweater, with her slim legs elevated to the arm of another chair, reading a book. Her father, opening the door without knocking, stared at her in silent disapproval. She met his gaze for a time, then lowered her legs.
“Do nice girls sit around half-naked like this?” he asked coldly. She laid her book aside and rose.
“Maybe I’m not a nice girl,” she answered flippantly. He watched her as she enveloped her narrow body in a flimsy diaphanous robe.
“I suppose you consider that an improvement, do you?”
“You shouldn’t come in my room without knocking, daddy,” she told him fretfully.
“No more I will, if that’s the way you sit in it.” He knew he was creating an unfortunate atmosphere in which to say what he wished, but he felt compelled to continue. “Can you imagine your mother sitting in her room half undressed like this?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” She leaned against the mantel combatively respectful. “But I can if she wanted to.”
He sat down. “I want to talk to you, Sis.” His tone was changed and she sank on to the foot of the bed, curling her legs under her, regarding him hostilely. How clumsy I am, he thought, clearing his throat. “It’s about young Mahon.”
She looked at him.
“I saw him this noon, you know.”
She was forcing him to do all the talking. Dammit, what an amazing ability children have for making parental admonition hard to achieve. Even Bob was developing it.
Cecily’s eyes were green and fathomless. She extended her arm, taking a nail file from her dressing-table. The downpour had ceased and the rain was only a whisper in the wet leaves. Cecily bent her face above the graceful slender gesturing of her hands.
“I say, I saw young Mahon today,” her father repeated with rising choler.
“You did? How did he look, daddy?” Her tone was so soft, so innocent that he sighed with relief. He glanced at her sharply, but her face was lowered sweetly and demurely: he could see only her hair filled with warm reddish lights and the shallow plane of her cheek and her soft, unemphatic chin.
“That boy’s in bad shape, Sis.”
“His poor father,” she commiserated above her busy hands. “It is so hard on him, isn’t it?”
“His father doesn’t know.”
She looked quickly up and her eyes became gray and dark, darker still. He saw that she didn’t know, either.
“Doesn’t know?” she repeated, “How can he help seeing that scar?” Her face blanched and her hand touched her breast delicately. “Do you mean—”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “I mean his father thinks—that he—his father doesn’t think—I mean his father forgets that his journey has tired him, you see,” he finished awkwardly. He continued swiftly: “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“About being engaged to him? How can I, with that scar? How can I?”
“No, no, not engaged to him, if you don’t want to be. We won’t think about the engagement at all now. But just keep on seeing him until he gets well, you see.”
“But, daddy, I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Why, Sis?”
“Oh, his face. I can’t bear it any more.” Her own face was wrung with the recollection of a passed anguish. “Don’t you see I can’t? I would if I could.”
“But you’ll get used to it. And I expect a good doctor can patch him up and hide it. Doctors can do anything these days. Why, Sis, you are the one who can do more for him right now than any doctor.”
She lowered her head to her arms folded upon the foot-rail of the bed and her father stood beside her, putting his arm about her slim, nervous body.
“Can’t you do that much, Sis? Just drop in and see him occasionally?”
“I just can’t,” she moaned, “I just can’t.”
“Well, then, I guess you can’t see that Farr boy any more, either.”
She raised her head quickly and her body became taut beneath his arm. “Who says I can’t?”
“I say so, Sis,” he replied gently and firmly.
Her eyes became blue with anger, almost black.
“You can’t prevent it. You know you can’t.” She thrust herself back against his arm, trying to evade it. He held her and she twisted her head aside, straining from him.
“Look at me,” he said quietly, putting his other hand under her cheek. She resisted, he felt her warm breath on his hand, but he forced her face around. Her eyes blazed at him. “If you can’t occasionally see the man you are engaged to, and a sick man to boot, I’m damned if I’ll have you running around with anybody else.”
There were red prints of his fingers on her cheek, and her eyes slowly filled. “You are hurting me,” she said, and feeling her soft, vague chin in his palm and her fragile body against his arm, he knew a sudden access of contrition. He picked her up bodily and sat again in a chair, holding her on his lap.
“Now, then,” he whispered, rocking, holding her face against his shoulder, “I didn’t mean to be so rough about it.”
She lay against him limply, weeping, and the rain filled the interval, whispering across the roof, among the leaves of trees. After a long space in which they could hear dripping eaves and the happy sound of gutters and a small ivory clock in the room, she moved and still holding her face against his coat, she clasped her father about the neck.
“We won’t think about it any more,” he told her, kissing her cheek. She clasped him again tightly, then slipping from his lap, she stood at the dressing-table, dabbing powder upon her face. He rose, and in the mirror across her shoulder he saw her blurred face and the deft nervousness of her hands. “We won’t think of it anymore,” he repeated, opening the door. The orange sweater was a hushed incandescence under the formal illusion of her robe, molding her narrow back, as he closed the door after him.
As he passed his wife’s room she called to him.
“What were you scolding Cecily for, Robert?” she asked.
But he stumped on down the stairs, ignoring her and soon she heard him cursing Tobe from the back porch.
Mrs. Saunders entered her daughter’s room and found her swiftly dressing. The sun broke suddenly through the rain and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.
“Where are you going, Cecily?” she asked.
“To see Donald,” she replied, drawing on her stockings, twisting them skilfully and deftly at the knees.