Among the Daughters

Chapter 1 OH YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL "Mother, what is the man doing to the lady?" Big blue eyes in a small silky head like a newly hatched chick gazed unblinking. Run quick, birdie, ask mother. "Nothing, Pussy, he just has his arms around her." "Why?" "Because." "Because why?" "Because he loves her." "Do

Chapter 2 SHE'S ONLY TWELVE YEARS OLD! "She's only twelve years old!" The two plump girls gnashed gum and glared five rows down in the dark theatre at the phosphorescent glow of a frizzy golden head. Its owner, her gaze never leaving the screen, lifted full child lips to receive by proxy from the bo

Chapter 3 THE BISON BALL Lucy knew the store windows on both sides of the street and inspected their changes of display with the interest of a chronic shopper. With, or without, a few cents left from her noon milk money, she often wandered through the shops pricing articles, or sniffed along the toi

Chapter 4 THE GIRLS IN THE NEXT ROOM The luxury of a room with private bath was worth every bit of three dollars for two. Oblivious of the surface-clean drab-pattemed shoddiness of the room, Lucy poked about discovering delightedly unexpected extras. "Look, a telephone! Who can we call up?

Chapter 5 "A THING OF BEAUTY" On Twelfth Street, in the moonless starlight, giant elms lining curbs reached arms across the road to form a long black tunnel of love. An outraged sparrow, awakened, cheeped accusingly, agitating the still, black leaves of its perch. Calls of "Run, my good sheep, run,

Chapter 6 "SHE'S AN EVIL INFLUENCE" Fireflies sparked in backyard gardens. St. Cecilia's bells tolled eleven. Tomatoes, string beans, lettuce, blended their fragrance in the cool dew.

Chapter 7 ARTIST AND MODEL Turning into the vestibule which led up to Bittner Sisters she saw in the window of Cheever's Store a canary-yellow rectangle on which was a strange sort of human bird in red, purple, green, and blue—a picture without a frame on a three-legged stand. She never before had s

Chapter 8 "A FINE OUTFIT FOR A SCHOOLGIRL" School began ten days after Lucy began posing for Clem Brush. Vida had seen little of Lucy, for posing had become a daily routine. At last, thought Vida happily, she will have to stop going to that place, not knowing Lucy had promised to pose after school.

Chapter 9 THE SLEIGHRIDE PARTY Lucy touched the brass doorknob of Aunt Mabel's home to give herself tingling pleasure with the electric shock she had discovered the first freezing dry day in Congress. As usual Vida was waiting. They walked and slid on the icy snow with small steps so as not to fall,

Chapter 10 SOFT SHOE VS. ART OF THE BALLET To Lucy, 410 Brick had become the special property of Clem and herself. On afternoons when Clem was otherwise engaged she would shove aside the wicker chairs of the first-floor clubroom to practice. Ever since the sleighride she had avoided Harry despite hi

Chapter 11 THE BLUE HEPATICAS A small square basket of twisted shavings—Made in Japan stamped purple on its bottom—held a bouquet of blue hepaticas. A May Day gift from Clem to Lucy. Her eyes were the deep pure cobalt at the end of the flowers' harmonic scale. "I never knew," she said, sniffing the

Chapter 12 THE PICNIC A week after graduation, as though nature planned it, on a warm clear Tuesday Clem took Lucy for the delayed picnic. During the last weeks of school she had been absorbed in examinations, graduating with marks only slightly below the first shining five, and this preoccupation h

Chapter 13 THE FLY-BY-NIGHTS Mae planned telling Mabel immediately after graduation about their leaving but kept putting it off in superstitious fear that something might delay them. Since May she and Lucy had observed a fanatical economy. Lucy thought a day especially profitable if she could cheat

Chapter 14 INITIATION "We'll have to have a going-away party for you here in the studio," Clem said a week before August 1st. "That'd be lovely," Lucy said in the consoling tone she had found herself adopting toward Clem since she told him Mae had bought the railroad tickets. Two long green paper ri

Chapter 15 "HELEN OF TROY" A desolate eight weeks and three days after Lucy left, Vida, resigned to never hearing from her friend, discovered after school an opened envelope addressed to her in Lucy's stiff handwriting on the Battenberg lace cover of the golden oak dining-room table. Shaking with ra

Chapter 16 ARBITER ELEGANTIARUM On a muggy December afternoon Lucy sat crosslegged on the double bed of their hotel room. The latest issue of Mode lay across her knees open at a full-page photograph of herself. She ate the last of a chocolate bar and stared pensively at the gold-lettered window acro

Chapter 17 FIRST THE WORST, SECOND THE SAME Carly did not telephone. For two months she accompanied Lyle to other parties, to Piselli's exclusive speakeasy, or supper dances at the Hotel Athenée, where Scotch from Lyle's silver hip-flask had to be poured into coffee cups held beneath the damask tabl

Chapter 18 "WOULD YOU CALL ME AN ARTIST?" Simone Calvette, the French singer, had vanished beyond reach of Beman's cables and in her place he reluctantly put his mistress, Tessie Soler. Lucy worked zealously at Master's to perfect her dances for Beman's Revue but despite her activity gained four pou

Chapter 19 THE GIRL IN THE GILDED CAGE By June and what with sticky heat Lucy's head felt addled with the past few months of art talk at Ilona's and Figente's. Occasional but interminable monologues by Vermillion whom Figente delighted in egging on baffled her. Even when Vermillion talked to her she

Chapter 20 "WHEAHFOAH AHT THOU RRROMEO?" The painted dummies sporting Franklin & Co. wigs and transformations smiled welcome from across the street as she sat crosslegged on the hard mattress of the double bed in the Derby Hotel. Sophie's Corsets were for flatter figures this year, than for those fa

Chapter 21 THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER Vida Bertrand not only had graduated with honors but, more important, $150—first prize for the State's High Schools short story contest. "Who'd have thought the sleighride party would have so much money in it?" she had said to Clem. Congress, to say nothing of Ma and

Chapter 22 OLYMPIA AND SHIVA One sweltering August midafternoon a month later a perspiring Vida returned from her daily exploration of the city to discover Lucy naked, a black ribbon around her throat, lying on a chaise longue having her hair brushed by Cleo. A black cat, cousin of the theatre's mou

Chapter 23 THE EYE IS A SMALL BULB On a Sunday in mid-September, and in the middle of painting, Paul Vermillion received a telephone call from Raymond Figente whom he had not seen for a month. "I suppose it's no news to you that Simone is in town?" said Figente, consumed with curiosity. "How is she?

Chapter 24 MA DOUCE ANNETTE High up under a painted Heaven where Eros sported with a not-too-garlanded Venus amid rosy clouds, and against a soft blue wall emblazoned with golden fleur de lys, bare-breasted Diane de Poitiers, occasional mistress of French kings, father and son, and others, sat in a