Down in the City Read Free Page A

was well satisfied by her gentleness and calm—her husband pointed out that the girl was happy. He went so far as to call her in from the garden to ask her, so that she might reassure Marion, and yes, she said, she was quite happy. And, rendered less than happy herself by the expression in the unawakened eyes, Marion turned away, turned back to the piano where she sat, and with one finger slowly tapped a single key until she was alone again with David. She loved him, so she said no more about the past; she simply asked what plans there were for Esther’s future.
    To signify that this discussion, since it was her will, should certainly continue, that he would answer now but not again, David Prescott went to stand behind his wife, and touched her shoulder lightly.
    â€˜We have a good library, my dear, though you have probably noticed that Esther never uses it. We have a pleasant house and garden. Financially she is secure. She has no need of a career. If she decides to choose one for herself, she most certainly has my approval. If she does not, she has it still.’
    Marion looked up at him with a gravity that made him smile. ‘You, of course, had something more than a career,’ he said, referring to the fact that Marion was a musician, had given recitals, ‘but I’m afraid we should have known by this time if Esther had had a talent like yours—unfortunately, not. And so,’ he finished kindly, ‘no more of this—except to say thank you, and I do thank you, Marion, for your concern.’
    It was left at that.
    Checked, but not deterred, Marion cast about for other means of providing stimuli long lacking from her stepdaughter’s life, and very soon the two were regularly attending concerts and plays. They read, shopped, discussed careers and social problems. The first parties for years—and possibly the only parties the old house ever knew—were held at this time. There had never been so much company.
    At first some of her brothers’ friends were attracted by the enigma of Esther’s thin tanned face and light eyes. They were pleasant young men, but polite, and therefore as ill equipped as Marion to penetrate her personality. When they were abashed by her unawareness of them, only her brothers noticed and were disappointed. Even to the girls her unselfconsciousness was daunting, and suspecting that it masked some unnamed superiority, they were correspondingly stiff and unnatural.
    Esther moved through these eventful days with willing obedience, for she liked Marion and would have been pleased to oblige her, but, raised in her father’s house, enthusiasm was alien to her, real warmth beyond her capacity.
    â€˜Did you like that? Were you interested?’ Marion would ask, when she had finished a book she had been advised to read.
    â€˜Yes,’ the girl would say. ‘Of course.’ And they would look at one another doubtfully, with bafflement, and, on Marion’s part, despair.
    Quite often her kindness would be met with blank surprise, or perhaps alarm; enough, in any case, to convince the older woman gradually that she was not doing well, that what was done was done, and that she must desist from her efforts. This was, after all, not to be the way that Esther might be led to sudden awareness of life and herself.
    The empty days, the months and years that followed this one period of activity, passed with placid, dreamlike heaviness for Esther. For hour after hour, summer after summer, she lay alone in the sun in the garden of the old stone house overlooking Rose Bay. This was, in fact, her greatest pleasure—to be hot, to be alone in the sun, to notice the gradual deepening of her tan.
    It was only when she grew older that a new interest came, independent of sponsors, to take a high place in the scale of her enjoyments. It was a feeling for the city; a feeling for the tall, light buildings, the narrow streets and crowded pavements; a feeling for