“He has told me that,” Emory said.
“Nobody could forget the Empress,” Mrs. Lane said with complacency.
Ruth came in, looking pretty again. Her short curly hair was almost white and very becoming. They went away at once since it was already late, and they found the theaters so crowded that they could only get seats at a new musical.
At the dinner table that night Emory described to William the effect of the afternoon and he listened gravely. They seldom had guests nowadays. Since the war they had fewer really distinguished visitors from abroad and not many Americans were interesting enough to be invited for a whole evening.
“I shall advise Ruth to get a divorce,” William said with decision. He had grown very handsome with the years. The discontent which had marred his face from childhood was almost gone.
“Oh, can you?” Emory murmured mildly.
“Certainly, why not? She’s not a Catholic,” William replied. “Moreover, at her age she will certainly not marry again. For my own part, I shall be glad to be rid of Jeremy.”
Emory did not reply. They sat in comfortable silence. She was glad that she need not live now in England. How ghastly might her life have been in such penury as Michael and his family endured! He was trying to make the farmlands pay, for the government was threatening to take over Hulme Castle if he could not. The only really safe and comfortable spot now in the world was America.
This thought moved her to an unusual idea. “William, what would you think of a cozy family dinner now that your mother is back, something to gather us together again in these troubled times? After all, there’s nothing quite like family. I think it would comfort your poor sisters and impress the children, you know. We needn’t ask the grandchildren.”
William’s heavy eyebrows moved. He pushed aside his salad. He had never liked salads, which he called food for rabbits. “I am going to Washington next week to insist on more arms for Chiang. I gave my promise to him — a promise I hold sacred, in spite of what’s happened in Korea.”
Emory evaded this. William had grown amusingly dictatorial in these past few years. “Why shouldn’t I just telephone them for tomorrow night? After all, it’s family. One needn’t be too formal.”
William reflected, then consented. “Very well. But tell them to be prompt. Will’s wife is always late.”
Emory rose at once and walked with her long lingering step across the floor. “I’ll telephone Henrietta first.”
None of them would think of saying he or she could not come, unless Henrietta declared she had to work in her absurd laboratory. She would tell her that she needn’t dress, at least.
“You mean we aren’t to dress?” Henrietta inquired over the telephone. “But I have a quite decent black gown. I had to get it when Clem was given an award in Dayton — for the citizen who had done the most for the town during the war.”
“Oh, then we’ll dress,” Emory replied. “William always does anyway.”
So she had telephoned to everybody to dress, and therefore it was upon his family in its best trappings that William looked the next evening, after he had said his usual grace before the meal. The dinner was excellent, hearty without being heavy. Emory understood food as Candace never had and she had no qualms about dismissing a careless cook. She never allowed herself to become involved in the domestic situation of any servant, a fault which had been very trying in Candace. They had once endured abominable omelets for nearly three years because the cook had a crippled son. In the end William had dismissed the cook himself one Sunday morning over a piece of yellow leather on his plate.
Tonight the bouillon, the soufflé, the roast pheasant, and the vegetables were all delicious. He did not care for sweets but Emory had a Russian dessert that he had never tasted before, flavored with rum. “It is a pity,” he remarked, “that our relations with the Russians cannot be confined to their sweets.” Everybody laughed and even Emory smiled.
His mother was looking very handsome in a lilac velvet, trimmed at the bosom with a fall of cream-colored lace. No one would dream that she had ever been the wife of a missionary in China. She had kept her stout figure in spite of her age, and her visit in England, prolonged as it had been, had given her an imperial air, enhanced by the pile of white curls on her head, which he liked. He was proud of her and, the dinner over, he led her to the most comfortable chair in the long drawing room.
“You’re looking well, Mother.”
“I am in splendid health, thank God,” she replied in a resonant voice. “I’ve had no chance at you, you naughty boy. Oh, I know you’ve been too busy for your old mother.” She leaned over the edge of her chair while the others were settling themselves. “Now, William, I want you to have a talk with Henrietta. She is living all by herself somewhere way downtown in the most miserable little apartment. It doesn’t look right for your sister.”
“What is she doing?” he asked. He knew vaguely from Emory that Henrietta was still working on one of Clem’s absurd notions and his eyes fell on her as he spoke. She was sitting in her characteristic repose.
“She’s working at some laboratory with an old Jew. I don’t know what she’s doing. Clem was a queer duck, if you ask me.”
At this moment Henrietta raised her dark eyes and smiled at them. She was gentler than she used to be, though even more withdrawn.
“I want a word with you later, Henrietta,” he called.
She nodded and her eyes fell.
Ruth was very pretty in spite of her troubles. He had time now to look at each one of his family. She had gained some weight — eating, probably, to take her mind off Jeremy. Of all of them Ruth looked the most like his father, her features delicate and her bones fine. Yet there was nothing in her face of that spiritual quality which he remembered with reverence as being his father’s habitual expression. Her two daughters were nondescript young matrons, he thought. They looked like all the modern women, flaring blond hair, wide painted mouths, a clatter of thin bracelets and high heels. He supposed they were well enough and certainly they need not worry him now that they had husbands.
He had taken no more relatives into the business, not even his own sons. He wanted to be free to dismiss incompetents like Jeremy. Not that his sons were incompetent in any way. Both of them were successful men, Will a lawyer, Jerry a surgeon. They were married and he had three grandchildren, two of them boys. He did not know his sons’ wives very well and had even been accused of passing them on the street without recognizing them. He had grumbled a good deal when Jerry married an ordinary trained nurse while he was an intern. William had a theory that it would be better for all young people if they were married in the Chinese fashion by their parents, in order that one could be sure of what was coming into the family. When he had said this to Emory she had gone into fits of laughter. “You are the most unrealistic of men,” she had declared. “Don’t you know yet that you are living in modern America?” He did not know what she meant and was too proud to say so.
His sons and Ruth’s daughters seemed on the best of terms with Emory. She sat among them and behind her coffee table, appearing, he thought with self-congratulation, entirely happy. Her darkly regal head was bent while she busied herself with cups. She wore a coral-colored gown of some sort that he did not remember having seen before. The full skirt flowed round her like a calyx, and she had on her diamonds.
It was all very pleasant and he did not remember ever having been quite so happy before. Everything was well with him, and it was dawning upon him that perhaps even the war had been good for him in its own way. The world needed leadership as never before. He must not allow himself to think of retiring, however much Emory hoped for it. Monsignor Lockhart had said to him only last week that the new war in Asia might be the — beginning of mankind’s most titanic struggle. Within the next years—