490
PARTI SA N REVIEW
She said it softly but it was pretty positive. She herself painted
and she was in a very simple relation to pictures. She rose and placed
the picture on the sofa as if to give it another chance in a different
position and a better light. She stood at
::t
distance and looked at it
and Elwin stood behind her to get the same view of it that she had.
He put his hand on her shoulder. After a moment she looked up at
him and smiled. "I don't really
like
it," she said. The modulation
of her voice was not apology, but simply a gesture of making room
for another opinion. She did not think it was important whether she
liked or disliked the picture. It said something to her that was not in
her experience or that she did not want in her experience. Liking
the picture would have given her pleasure. She got no pleasure from
not liking it.
It
seemed to Elwin that
in
the little shake of her head,
in her tone and smile, there was a quality, really monumental, by
which he could explain his anger at the old conductor and the boy
and forgive himself for having had it.
·
When Lucy Elwin came in, her face was flushed from the stove
and she had a look of triumphant anticipation. She shamelessly com–
municated this to her family. "It's going to be ve-ry good," she said,
not as if she were promising them a fine dinner, rather as
if
she were
threatening them with a grim fate. She meant that her dinner was
going to be so very good that if they did not extravagantly admire it,
if they merely took it for granted, they would be made to feel sorry.
"It will be ready in about ten minutes," she said. "Are you very
hungry?"
"Just enough," Elwin said. "Are you tired?" For his wife had
stretched out in the armchair and put back her head. She slouched
with her long legs at full length, her skirt a little disordered, one ankle
laid on the other. Her eyes being closed made her complicated face
look simple and she seemed young and self-indulgent, like a
girl
who escapes from the embarrassment of herself into a broody trance.
It was an attitude that had lately become frequent with Margaret.
Lucy Elwin said, "Yes, a little tired. But really, you know, I'd
almost rather do the work myself than have that Margaret around."
She spoke with her eyes still closed, and so she did not see her
daughter stiffen. But Elwin did. He knew that it wrui not because
Margaret thought that her mother meant her but because of the
feelings she had for the other Margaret, the maid. The other Mar-
, garet, as so often, had not come to work that day.
Margaret had mixed a drink for her mother and now she was
standing beside Lucy's chair, waiting with exaggerated patience for
Lucy to open her eyes. She said, "Here's your drink, mother!"
