Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/223

 fine smooth accent. Her son, for all his American parentage and British schooling, was French; or at least, not American. He had a taste for music, for pictures, even for poetry.

"Fancy that," she remarked to Ellen. "Fancy that, and think what his father has become."

And she held up a newspaper photograph of the Governor. . . now the Senator. . . clipped from one of the American newspapers which Ellen brought to Numero Dix. It portrayed him in the act of addressing the Benevolent Order of Camels in Detroit. The pose was in itself flamboyant. Everything about him flowed. His loose black cravat flowed in the breeze. His hair, worn rather long, waved behind him. His alpaca suit ballooned about his heavy figure. His stomach rested upon a flag-draped railing, and his face wore a smile that was old and familiar, the smile of one who patronized his audience. In the background there was a vague suggestion of a square, solid figure in a richly flowered costume, wearing a pince nez and a cloud of flowing veils. . . obviously the figure of the Senatoress.

Though Lily sometimes mocked the Governor, she never mentioned him as the source of Jean's restless vitality and intelligence. But it did not matter, since no one in her world and, least of all Ellen, was interested in the Governor or eager to defend him.

The women who came to her drawing-room were, first of all, "Madame Gigon's friends." Toward Lily, for all her good-nature and her submission to their world, their attitude was never more than that of acquaintances. She saw them many times a month but there remained always an insurmountable barrier. It existed perhaps because she was too indolent to make those overtures necessary to friendship, perhaps because deep down in the heart of their bourgeois respectability they detected in the American traces of the wanton. They came to the "salons" of Madame Gigon and Lily went in turn to theirs. But she never entertained in the evening save at small dinners of four and six, and she never went to balls. Her hunger for gaiety she satisfied in the midst of crowds, at the Opera, in the music halls, at the races. And always she was accompanied by Jean or Ellen or Madame Gigon so that no one was able