17

III

Grand drove leisurely up the East River Drive—to a large and fine old house in the Sixties, where he lived with his two elderly aunts, Agnes and Esther Edwards.

He found them in the drawing room when he arrived.

“There you are, Guy!” said Agnes Edwards with tart affection, who at eighty-six was a year senior to Esther and held the initiative in most things between them.

“Guy, Guy, Guy,” exclaimed Esther happily in her18 turn, with a really beautiful pink smile for him—but she insisted then upon raising her teacup, so that all to be seen now was her brow, softly clouded, as ever, in maternal concern for the boy. Both women were terribly, chronically, troubled that Guy, at fifty-three, was unmarried—though perhaps each, in her way, would have fought against it.

18

Guy beamed at them from the doorway, then crossed to kiss both before going to his big sofa-chair by the window where he always sat.

“We’re just having tea, darling—do!” insisted his Aunt Agnes with brittle passion, flourishing her little silver service bell in a smart tinkle and presenting her half-upturned face for his kiss—as though to receive it perfunctorily, but with eyelids closed and tremoring, one noticed, and a second very thin hand which, as in reflex, started to rise towards their faces, wavering up, clenched white as the lace at her wrists.

“Guy, Guy, Guy,” cried Esther again, sharpening her own gaiety as she set her cup down—quickly enough, but with a care that gave her away.

“You will take tea, won’t you, my Guy!” said Agnes, and she conveyed it in a glance to the maid who’d appeared.

“Love some,” said Guy Grand, giving his aunts such a smile of fanatic brightness that they both squirmed a bit. He was in good spirits now after his trip—but19 soon enough, as the women could well attest, he would fall away from them, lapse into mystery behind his great gray Financial Times and Wall Street Journal for hours on end:     distrait, they thought; never speaking, certainly; answering, yes—but most often in an odd and distant tone that told them nothing, nothing.

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