Collected Novels and Plays Read Free

Lily’s affections, making her feel agreeably small and innocent next to him. How fiercely, for example, his cigar glowed now! He had risen again at the end of a long moment’s silence, to say in a paralyzing voice: “God damn it, if you don’t know who did it, I do!”
    Both Lily and her mother managed to avoid his meaning.
    “The portrait, Enid,” he said crossly. “Hasn’t it occurred to you?”
    “That some particular person—?”
    “Of course!”
    She hummed a high soft note by way of showing reluctance. “No,” she said, “no, it hasn’t occurred to me.”
    Already he was rubbing his hands together. “Are we thinking of the same person? Are we?”
    But she made a funny, final movement, and set down her untasted glass.
    He stared, then cried, “And now you’ve got a headache!”
    “I’ve had a teensy one since being at the Cottage. Sweetie,” she turned to Lily, “see if there’s some hot coffee in the kitchen. It’s the first in weeks,” she added apologetically.
    “God damn it!” he shouted, striding about. “The smallness! The spitefulness!”
    Lily was holding her breath outside the door.
    “If you don’t know who did it, I do!” her father repeated at the top of his lungs. “Irene Cheek did it!”
    Cousin Irene! The tramp! Lily ran to fetch the coffee.
    Throughout supper she let the twins chatter. They were only six; poor little girls, their time was coming. Soberly she got into her pajamas, attended to teeth and prayers, let Alice put the medal under her pillow. Out went the light, but Lily lay, for hours perhaps, intensely wondering. Was Cousin Irene a misfit? Could portraits be slashed by grown-ups?—those stately eccentrics, cordial yet vacant, who wore bathing-suits but didn’t swim, who were always
     thirsty but never for water. Lily took for granted this coincidence of dullness and daring in their behavior, also itscomplete remoteness from her own. However, if something
she
had done could be blamed on Cousin Irene, either Cousin Irene wasn’t a real grown-up at all, or she, Lily, a little girl swept towards a whirlpool visible only to herself, had started turning into one. Her father’s having called Cousin Irene a tramp tended to support
     the former view. But her own common sense confirmed the latter.
    For instance: “What dress are you wearing to your party?” her mother had asked the other day.
    “My blue one?”
    “Sweetie, you’re getting too
big
for that. What’s wrong with your pretty new yellow one?”
    In the dark, Lily shook her head over the futility of it.
    She was forever being reminded, “You’re the oldest, Lily, we expect more of you.” Or, “My, what a big girl! This can’t be Lily!” As for dresses, who could put into words that sense of how they were constantly outgrown? Of how the wearer’s whole person had altered and elongated during the six weeks since last, in gray taffeta or blue, with velvet hair-ribbon and slippers of patent-leather, it had curtsied in dancing class
     or played Sinding while Mrs. Clement Younger and all her pupils’ parents nodded approval? No, change kept happening. Alice had stated that childhood ought to be the happiest part of your entire life, and here was Lily’s draining away like a lovely warm bath while she scrambled to replace the plug. With that, she sprang out of bed.
    A faint light shone under her parents’ door. Receiving no answer to her knock, she ventured in. The large room was done in tones of cream and sugar. On bright days, with only the dotted-swiss curtains drawn, it seemed the inside of a pearl. Lily’s advance through its present gloom could not be heard above her father’s distant thrashing in his tub. And her mother lay with shut eyes, her long hair loose, her profile, like that on a medal, rising in
     low relief against the pillow. Lily stifled a little sob.
    “Sweetie? Aren’t you asleep yet?”
    “Does it still hurt?”
    “It’s better lying down. I took my pill.”
    Lily touched