Part 5 (1/2)
”That is not very kind, Peyton,” she protested; ”but I have some common sense.”
”Haven't you any uncommon sense?” he begged. ”That's what I want. A little just now might save everything.”
”You must try to find out,” she informed him; ”I think I have been successful with Lee; anyhow he ought to say so.”
”I do,” Lee Randon a.s.serted quickly. ”f.a.n.n.y is wonderful. If I'm of no use go to her.”
”You don't know,” Peyton muttered; ”you can have no idea.”
”What in the world was he talking about?” she asked Lee in the automobile.
”Peyton is in love with Mina Raff,” he admitted shortly, in a pressure of conflicting emotions.
”Lee!” she exclaimed; ”are you sure? Did he say so? That is simply frightful.”
”I imagine it's worse than you realize.”
”Do you mean--”
”Nothing actual yet,” he interrupted her impatiently; ”perhaps nothing you would bother about. But you'd be wrong. It's all in his thoughts--some d.a.m.ned spoiled ideal, and as dangerous as possible.”
”Poor Claire,” she said.
”Of course, that's the thing to say,” he agreed. ”The man is always a criminal in such situations.”
”You are not trying to defend him?” she asked quietly.
”Maybe I am; I don't know. After all, we are jumping at conclusions; Peyton was drunk. But, for heaven's sake, if either of them comes to you don't just be moral. Try to understand what may have happened. If you lecture them they will leave you like a shot.”
f.a.n.n.y was driving, and she moved one hand from the wheel to his cheek.
”It isn't us, anyhow, Lee; and that is really all I care for. We are closer than others, different. I don't know what I'd do if you should die first--I couldn't move, I couldn't go on.”
”You would have the children,” he reminded her.
”They are nothing compared with you.” It was the only time she had made such an admission, and it moved him profoundly. It at once surcharged him with grat.i.tude and an obscure disturbance.
”You mustn't pin so much to me,” he protested; ”you ought to think of a hundred other things.”
”I would if I could; I often try, but it is impossible. It is terrible to care for a man the way I do for you; and that's why I am so glad you are what you are: silly at times, ridiculously impressionable, but not at all like George Willard, or Peyton Morris.”
He had an overwhelming impulse to explain himself in the most searching unsparing detail to f.a.n.n.y, the strange conviction that in doing it he would antic.i.p.ate, perhaps escape, grave trouble. Lee Randon realized, however, that he would have to begin with the doll, Cytherea; and the difficulty, the preposterousness, of trying to make that clear to his wife, discouraged and kept him silent. No woman, and least of any the one to whom he was married, could be trusted to understand his feeling, his dissatisfaction in satisfaction, the restlessness at the heart of his peace.
f.a.n.n.y went up at once, but he lingered, with a cigar, in the living room. A clock struck one. A photograph of Claire with her bridesmaids, Peyton and his ushers, on a lawn, in the wide flowered hats of summer and identical boutonnieres, stood on a table against the wall; and beyond was an early girlish picture of f.a.n.n.y, in clothes already absurdly out of mode. She had a pure hovering smile; the aspect of innocence time had been powerless to change was accentuated; and her hands managed to convey an impression of appeal. He had been, in the phrase now current, crazy about her; he was still, he told himself strictly. Well, he was ... yet he had kissed Anette; not for the first time, either; but, he recognized, for the last. He was free of that!
A s.p.a.ce, a phase, of his life was definitely behind him. A pervading regret mingled with the relief of his escape from what he had finally seen as a petty sensuality. The little might, in the sequence, be safer, better, than the great. But he vigorously cast off that ignominious idea. A sense of curious pause, stillness, enveloped Lee and surprised him, startled him really, into sitting forward and attentive. The wind had dropped, vanished into the night and sky: the silence without was as utter as though Lee Randon were at the center of a vacuum.
II
On Sat.u.r.day morning Lee telephoned to his office, found nothing that required his immediate attention there and, the brief-case again in evidence, stayed at Eastlake. f.a.n.n.y, too, with her hair severely plain and an air of practical accomplishment, was occupied with her day book.