Part 8 (1/2)
”You mustn't,” f.a.n.n.y a.s.serted; ”you're not yourself. Mina Raff should be burned alive, something terrible done to her.” f.a.n.n.y's voice had the hard cold edge of fanatical conviction. ”If she had come into my house making trouble.... But that couldn't have happened; I'd have known at once.”
”You are more feminine than I am,” Claire told her. ”I see this in a very detached manner, as if it didn't concern me. I suppose I can't realize that it has happened to us. It has! But if you are right, f.a.n.n.y, and it's necessary to treat a man like a green hunter, then this was bound to occur. I couldn't do anything so--so humiliating; he could bolt sooner or later. I did the best I knew how: I was amusing as possible and always looked well enough. I never bothered Peyton about himself and encouraged him to keep as much of his freedom as possible.
”I don't believe in the other,” she said to f.a.n.n.y Randon in a sharp accession of rebellion; ”it is degrading, and I won't live that way, I won't put up with it. If he wants to go, to be with Mina Raff, how in G.o.d's name can I stop it? I won't have him in my bed with another woman in his heart; I made that clear to you. And I can't have him hot and cold--now all Mina and then the sanct.i.ty of his home. I've never had a house of that kind; it was christened, like a s.h.i.+p, with champagne.
”I have never cared for domestic things. I'd rather wear a dinner-gown than an ap.r.o.n; I'd a d.a.m.n sight rather spin a roulette wheel than rock a cradle. And, perhaps, Peyton wanted a housewife; though heaven knows he hasn't turned to one. It's her blonde, no bland, charm and destructive air of innocence. I've admitted and understood too much; but I couldn't help it--my mother and grandmother, all that lot, were the same way, and went after things themselves. The men hated sham and sentimentality; they asked, and gave, nothing.”
f.a.n.n.y, it was evident, was growing impatient at what was not without its challenge of her character and expressed convictions. ”I do agree with you, Claire, that we are not alike,” she admitted. Her voice bore a perceptible note of complacency, of superior strength and position.
”Just last week I was telling Lee that I belonged before the war--things were so different then, and, apparently, it's only in my house they haven't changed. We are frightfully behind the times, and you'd be surprised at how glad we are. It was your mother's father, wasn't it, who fell in love with the Spanish woman while he was in the Emba.s.sy at Seville? My family weren't people of public connections, although a great-aunt married Senator Carlinton; but they had the highest principles.”
”They were lucky,” Claire Morris replied indifferently; ”I am beginning to think it isn't what you have so much as what happens to it. Anyhow, Peyton is going away with Mina Raff, and I am sorry for him; he's so young and so certain; but this has shaken him. Peyton's a sn.o.b, really, like the rest of his friends, and Mina's crowd won't have that for a moment: he can't go through her world judging men by their slang and by whom they knew at college. I envy him, it will be a tremendously interesting experience.” If her eyes were particularly brilliant it was because they were surrounded by an extreme darkness. Her voice, commonly no more than a little rough in its deliberate forthrightness, was high and metallic. She gave Lee the heroic impression that no most mighty tempest would ever see her robbed of her erect defiance. It was at once her weakness and strength that she could be broken but not bent.
After dinner Claire, who was staying with the Randons until tomorrow, played picquet with Lee; and his wife, her shapely feet elevated above the possible airs of the floor, continued to draw threads from the handkerchiefs she was making for Christmas. Claire played very well and, at five cents a point, he had to watch the game. On a specially big hand she piqued and repiqued. ”That,” she declared, ”will pay you for caputting me.” The jargon of their preoccupation, ”A point of six; yes, to the ace; paid; and a quatorze, kings,” was the only sound until f.a.n.n.y rose, decidedly. ”I am going to bed.” She hesitated at the door. ”I hope you'll be comfortable, Claire: I had some club soda and rye put in your room, since you like it so well. Don't be too late, please, Lee; it makes you tired starting so early in the morning.”
”You'll have to forgive me,” Claire said, when f.a.n.n.y had gone; ”but I don't--I never did--like women.”
”Do you think any more of men, now?”
”Heavens, yes. I wish I could find someone to blame for what has happened, Peyton specially, but I can't, not to save my life. It seems so hopelessly inevitable. I don't want you to suppose I'm not unhappy, Lee; or that I care only a little for Peyton. I love him very much; I needed him, and my love, more than I can explain. As f.a.n.n.y as good as told me, I am a wild bird; anything, almost, with what is behind me, may happen. It was just the irony of chance that this affair caught Peyton, the immaculate, instead of me. I was awfully glad that I had an anchor that seemed so strong; in my own faulty way I adored everything I had; I wanted to be tranquil, and it had a look of security.”
”It isn't over, Claire,” Lee a.s.serted. ”I haven't seen that young fool yet.”
”Please don't bother him; and it's too much to drag out the moralities on my account.”
”Moralities!” he echoed indignantly, ”who said a word about them? I'm not interested in morals. Lord, Claire, how little you know me. And as for bothering him, he'll have to put up with that. He has invited a certain amount of it.”
They forgot the game and faced each other across the disordered cards.
”If I won't argue with him,” she insisted, ”you can't. But we needn't discuss it--he won't listen to you, Peyton's all gone. I never saw such a complete wreck.”
”He can't avoid it,” Lee went on; ”I'll have to do it if it is only for myself; I am most infernally curious about the whole works. I want to find out what it's about.”
”If you mean love, he can't tell you; he hasn't had enough experience to express it. You might do better with me.”
”No, I want it from the man; a woman's feeling, even yours, would do me no good. You see, this has always been explored, accounted for, condemned, written about, from the feminine side. Where the man is considered it is always in the most d.a.m.nable light. If, in the novels, a man leaves his home he is a rascal of the darkest sort, and his end is a remorse no one would care to invite. That may be, but I am not prepared to say. No, dear Claire, I am not considering it in preparation for anything; I want to know; that's all.”
”The books are stuff, of course,” she agreed. ”The grandfather of mine who was killed in Madrid--it wasn't Seville--must have had a gorgeous time: a love affair with one of the most beautiful women alive. It lasted five months before it was found out and ended; and his wife and he had been sick of living together. After it was over she was pleased at being connected with such a celebrated scandal; it made her better looking by reflected loveliness. She was rather second cla.s.s, I believe, and particularly fancied the d.u.c.h.ess part.”
”It wouldn't be like that in the current novels, or even in the better: either your grandparent or the d.u.c.h.ess would be a villainous person, and the other a victim. I'm inclined to think that most of the ideas about life and conduct are lifted from cheap fiction. They have the look of it. But that realization wouldn't help us, with the world entirely on the other side.”
”No, it isn't,” Claire objected; ”and it's getting less so all around us. Perhaps men haven't changed much, yet; but you don't hear the women talk as I do. I don't like them, as I said; they are too d.a.m.ned skulking for me; but they are gathering a lot more sense in a short while.”
”I don't agree with you there,” he replied; ”you are getting your own infinitesimal world confused with the real overwhelming majority; you haven't an idea how it feels and, in particular, of what it thinks of you, smoking and gambling and d.a.m.ning your fate. It may be largely envy--personally I am convinced it is--but they have you ticketed straight for h.e.l.l just the same.”
”It doesn't interest me.” Claire increasingly showed the strain, the unhappiness, through which she was parsing. Nor did it him, he ended lamely, except in the abstract. This at once had the elements of a lie and the unelaborate truth; he couldn't see how his curiosity applied to him, and yet he was intent on its solving. The fixed mobile smile of Cytherea flashed into his thoughts. His perpetual restlessness struck through him.
His att.i.tude toward the Morrises was largely dictated by his fondness for Claire. He had determined what, exactly, he would say to Peyton.
Yet, as a fact, he returned to his former a.s.sertion to f.a.n.n.y; the boy would make it difficult, if not impossible, to discuss such intimate relations.h.i.+ps. And as Claire had pointed out, the very openness of Peyton's life would make him exceptionally far to reach; he was particularly youthful in his hardness, his confidence in his acts and friends and beliefs; yet all that couldn't help but be upset now.
”f.a.n.n.y will think I have designs on you,” Claire remarked; ”go up when you like. I am not a bit sleepy.”