"I just had this day in town. I came home uedly. You see, Papa died last week."
"Papa Ferris is dead?"
"Yes, at Johns-Hopkins. He had been sick there nearly a year. The funeral was down home in Geia."
"Oh, Im so sorry, John. Papa Ferris was always one of my favorite people."
The little boy moved from behind the chair so that he could look into his mothers face. He asked, "Who is dead?"
Ferris was oblivious to apprehension; he was thinking of his fathers death. He saw agaistretched body on the quilted silk within the coffin. The corpse flesh was bizarrely rouged and the familiar hands lay massive and joined above a spread of funeral roses. The memory closed and Ferris awakeo Elizabeths calm voice.
"Mr. Ferris father, Billy. A really grand person. Somebody you didnt know."
"But why did you call him Papa Ferris?"
Bailey and Elizabeth exged a trapped look. It was Bailey who answered the questioning child. "A long time ago," he said, "your mother and Mr. Ferris were once married. Before you were born -- a long time ago."
"Mr. Ferris?"
The little boy stared at Ferris, amazed and unbelieving. And Ferris eyes, as he returhe gaze, were somehow unbelieving too. Was it irue that at oime he had called this stranger, Elizabeth, Little Butterduck during nights of love, that they had lived together, shared perhaps a thousand days and nights and -- finally -- endured in the misery of sudden solitude the fiber by fiber (jealousy, alcohol and money quarrels) destru of the fabriarried love.
Bailey said to the children, "Its somebodys supper-time. e on now."
"But Daddy! Mama and Mr. Ferris -- I --"
Billys everlasting eyes -- perplexed and with a glimmer of hostility -- reminded Ferris of the gaze of another child. It was the young son of Jeannine -- a boy of seven with a shadowed little fad knobby knees whom Ferris avoided and usually fot.
"Quick march!" Bailey gently turned Billy toward the door. "Say good night now, son."
"Good night, Mr. Ferris." He added resentfully, "I thought I was staying up for the cake."
"You e in afterward for the cake," Elizabeth said. "Run along now with Daddy for your supper."
Ferris and Elizabeth were alohe weight of the situation desded on those first moments of silence. Ferris asked permission to pour himself another drink and Elizabeth set the cocktail shaker oable at his side. He looked at the grand piano and noticed the musi the rack.
"Do you still play as beautifully as you used to?"
"I still enjoy it."
"Please play, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth arose immediately. Her readio perform when asked had always been one of her amiabilities; she never hung back, apologized. Now as she approached the piano there was the added readiness of relief.
She began with a Bach prelude and fugue. The prelude was as gaily iridest as a prism in a m room. The first voice of the fugue, an annou pure and solitary, was repeated intermingling with a sed voice, and agaied within an elaborated frame, the multiple music, horizontal and serene, flowed with unhurried majesty. The principal melody was woven with two other voices, embellished with tless iies -- now dominant, again submerged, it had the sublimity of a sihing that does not fear surreo the whole. Toward the end, the density of the material gathered for the last enriched insisten the dominant first motif and with a chorded final statement the fugue ended. Ferris