"Life has its trials, of course, " pursued Mrs.Blake, as if speaking to herself."I can't look out upon the June flowers, you know, and though the pink crape-myrtle at my window is in full bloom I cannot see it."Following her gesture, Carraway glanced out into the little yard;no myrtle was there, but he remembered vaguely that he had seen one in blossom at the Hall.
"You keep flowers about you, though," he said, alluding to the scattered vases of June roses.
"Not my crape-myrtle.I planted it myself when I first came home with Mr.Blake, and I have never allowed so much as a spray of it to be plucked."Forgetting his presence, she lapsed for a time into one of the pathetic day-dreams of old age.Then recalling herself suddenly, her tone took on a sprightliness like that of youth.
"It's not often that we have the pleasure of entertaining a stranger in our out-of-the-way house, sir so may I ask where you are staying--or perhaps you will do us the honour to sleep beneath our roof.It has had the privilege of sheltering General Washington.""You are very kind," replied Carraway, with a gratitude that was from his heart, "but to tell the truth, I feel that I am sailing under false colours.The real object of my visit is to ask a business interview with your son.I bring what seems to me a very fair offer for the place."Grasping the carved arms of her chair, Mrs.Blake turned the wonder in her blind eyes upon him.
"An offer for the place! Why, you must be dreaming, sir! A Blake owned it more than a hundred years before the Revolution."At the instant, understanding broke upon Carraway like a thundercloud, and as he rose from his seat it seemed to him that he had missed by a single step the yawning gulf before him.Blind terror gripped him for the moment, and when his brain steadied he looked up to meet, from the threshold of the adjoining room, the enraged flash of Christopher's eyes.So tempestuous was the glance that Carraway, impulsively falling back, squared himself to receive a physical blow; but the young man, without so much as the expected oath, came in quietly and took his stand behind the Elizabethan chair.
"Why, what a joke, mother," he said, laughing; "he means the old Weatherby farm, of course.The one I wanted to sell last year, you know.""I thought you'd sold it to the Weatherbys, Christopher.""Not a bit of it--they backed out at the last; but don't begin to bother your head about such things; they aren't worth it.And now, sir," he turned upon Carraway, "since your business is with me, perhaps you will have the goodness to step outside."With the feeling that he was asked out for a beating, Carraway turned for a farewell with Mrs.Blake, but the imperious old lady was not to be so lightly defrauded of a listener.
"Business may come later, my son," she said, detaining them by a gesture of her heavily ringed hand."After dinner you may take Mr.Carraway with you into the library and discuss your affairs over a bottle of burgundy, as was your grandfather's custom before you; meanwhile, he and I will resume our very pleasant talk which you interrupted.He remembers seeing me in the old days when we were all in the United States, my dear."Christopher's brow grew black, and he threw a sharp and malignant glance of sullen suspicion at Carraway, who summoned to meet it his most frank and open look.
"I saw your mother in the height of her fame," he said, smiling, "so I may count myself one of her oldest admirers, I believe.You may assure yourself," he added softly, "that I have her welfare very decidedly at heart."At this Christopher smiled back at him, and there was something of the June brightness in his look.
"Well, take care, sir," he answered, and went out, closing the door carefully behind him, while Carraway applied himself to a determined entertaining of Mrs.Blake.
To accomplish this he found that he had only to leave her free, guiding her thoughts with his lightest touch into newer channels.
The talk had grown merrier now, and he soon discovered that she possessed a sharpened wit as well as a ready tongue.From subject to subject she passed with amazing swiftness, bearing down upon her favourite themes with the delightful audacity of the talker who is born, not made.She spoke of her own youth, of historic flirtations in the early twenties, of great beaux she had known, and of famous recipes that had been handed down for generations.
Everywhere he felt her wonderful keenness of perception, that intuitive understanding of men and manners which had kept her for so long the reigning belle among her younger rivals.
As she went on he found that her world was as different from his own as if she dwelt upon some undiscovered planet--a world peopled with shades and governed by an ideal group of abstract laws.She lived upon lies, he saw, and thrived upon the sweetness she extracted from them.For her the Confederacy had never fallen, the quiet of her dreamland had been disturbed by no invading army, and the three hundred slaves, who had in reality scattered like chaff before the wind, she still saw in her cheerful visions tilling her familiar fields.It was as if she had fallen asleep with the great blow that bad wrecked her body, and had dreamed on steadily throughout the years.Of real changes she was as ignorant as a new-born child.Events had shaken the world to its centre, and she, by her obscure hearth, had not felt so much as a sympathetic tremor.In her memory there was no Appomattox, news of the death of Lincoln had never reached her ears, and president had peacefully succeeded president in the secure Confederacy in which she lived.Wonderful as it all was, to Carraway the most wonderful thing was the intricate tissue of lies woven around her chair.Lies--lies--there had been nothing but lies spoken within her hearing for twenty years.
CHAPTER VII.In Which a Stand is Made Dim wonder was still upon him when Docia appeared bearing her mistress's dinner-tray, and a moment later Cynthia came in and paused uncertainly near the threshold.
