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Star Dust

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Star Dust




"Who?"

"Silly darling--nobody--the world--life."

There was no restraining her. She smoothed her mother's hair only to
kiss it awry again. She fluffed a fragrant cloud of powder along her
neck. Trilled at a drowsy canary in a wicker cage. Stretched herself in
the conscious pose of a Récamier on the lacy mound of a chaise-longue,
and finally followed her mother into the drawing-room, entirely at ease
in the straight blue frock.

It was a room almost the width of the house, with a balcony at one end
hung in a shah's silk prayer rug, and a stone fireplace, out of the
Davanziti palace, opposite. Three sets of leaded doors opened out on to
a flagged parapet that overlooked the Hudson and beyond the deep purple
of perfect September.

They met in a little group at one of these doors, and Lilly noticed
gratefully that Mrs. Enlow had thrown a net wrap over the formality of
her evening gown and that Bruce had merely changed to flannels.

He smiled at her with that impersonal sort of kindness which could cause
such a gush of blood to her heart, and spread himself in a playful
salaam before Zoe.

"Princess."

She held out her hand to be kissed, which he did five times, finger by
finger.

"These terraces," said Lilly, trying not to be heavy, "are like the
setting for an Aegean romance."

He smiled back at her again through the new film across his eyes.

"Write it and I'll produce it."

"Close the doors, Dicky; it's growing chilly," said Mrs. Enlow.

"Yes," said Lilly, shivering a bit, "chilly."

"And I'm burning, Dicky, Tickey Tavey," cried Zoe, applying the name
audaciously. "How can anyone be chilly on such a night as this?"

"Come, Princess, and I'll show you some stars."

"Don't wander too far before dinner, children. Mrs. Penny and I will sit
indoors. Only youth can risk swollen joints."

"Yes," said Lilly, feeling herself rather terrifiedly past the fiercer
rush of life, "only youth."

They sat on a great overstuffed divan that faced the parapet, lighted
softly at each end by the first lamps of evening.

"Why, you poor child, you're shivering of chill! It's the damp. Let me
get you a wrap."

In the thickening silence Lilly sat alone looking out through the glass
doors. Bruce and Zoe were silhouetted out there against a fathomless
evening sky that was brilliantly pointed with a few big stars. But they
were not gazing out. Her face was up to his like a flower about to be
plucked, and, looking down into it, his whole body seemed to sway to its
sweetness.

Suddenly the ache in Lilly's heart was laid. With all of her old
capacity for the incongruous, but without any of her usual pump of
terror, she thought suddenly of her father, two nights hence, sitting
down to the creamed salmon and fried potatoes on Page Avenue, hanging
his napkin with the patent fasteners about his neck. Edna Shriner
must teach her that French-knot stitch for Zoe's gowns--in
case--heigh-ho!--in case--

With her gaze on those two etched and eloquent profiles, a piercing
sense of achievement seemed to flow with a warm rush of blood, curing
her of chill.

Her heart beat high with what even might have been fulfillment.


THE END

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