Part 40 (2/2)
She sat beside him, her thoughts flying ahead into the years. She saw things as she wanted them to be--Derry at odds with his father; married to Jean; herself mistress of this great house, wearing the diamond crown and the pearl collar; her portrait in the place of the one of the painted lady on the stairs; looking down on little Jean who had judged her by youth's narrow standards--whose husband would have no fortune unless he chose to accept it at her hands.
Thus she weighed her influence over the sleeping sick man, thus she dreamed, calm as fate in her white uniform.
CHAPTER XVI
JEAN-JOAN
Drusilla Gray's little late suppers were rather famous. It was not that she spent so much money, but that she spent much thought.
Tonight she was giving Captain Hewes a sweet potato pie. ”He has never eaten real American things,” she said to Jean. ”Nice homey-cooked things--”
”No one but Drusilla would ever think of pie at night,” said Marion Gray, ”but she has set her heart on it.”
There were some very special hot oyster sandwiches which preceded the pie--peppery and savory with curls of bacon.
”I hope you are hungry,” said Drusilla as her big black cook brought them in. ”Aunt Chloe hates to have things go back to the kitchen.”
Nothing went back. There was snow without, a white whirl in the air, piling up at street corners, a night for young appet.i.tes to be on edge.
”Jove,” said the Captain, as he leaned back in his chair, ”how I shall miss all this!”
Jean turned her face towards him, startled. ”Miss it?”
”Yes. I am going back--got my orders today.”
Drusilla was cutting the pie. ”Isn't it glorious?”
Jean gazed at her with something like horror. Glorious! How could Drusilla go on, like Werther's Charlotte, _calmly cutting bread and b.u.t.ter_? Captain Hewes loved her, anybody with half an eye could see that--and whether she loved him or not, he was her friend--and she called his going ”glorious!”
”I was afraid my wound might put me on the shelf,” the Captain said.
”He is ordered straight to the front,” Drusilla elucidated. ”This is his farewell feast.”
After that everything was to Jean funeral baked meats. The pie deep in its crust, rich with eggs and milk, defiant of conservation, was as sawdust to her palate.
Glorious!
Well, she couldn't understand Margaret. She couldn't understand Drusilla. She didn't want to understand them.
”Some day I shall go over,” Drusilla was saying. ”I shall drive something--it may be a truck and it may be an ambulance. But I can't sit here any longer doing nothing.”
”I think you are doing a great deal,” said Jean. ”Look at the committees you are managing.”
”Oh, things like that,” said Drusilla contemptuously. ”Women's work.
I'm not made to knit and keep card indexes. I want a man's job.”
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