Part 12 (1/2)
It seems to me most peculiar.”
He couldn't help it, he replied, with a slight responsive sharpening of his own speech; he had driven to the hotel, where he had secured their room, and Mrs. Grove had made it impossible for him to stay there.
When he left--it would be late tomorrow or early the next day, Lee thought--she could meet him and do as they planned. But f.a.n.n.y refused to agree: it would, now, be a needless expense. No, the other was what she had eagerly looked forward to. Lee, drawing her attention once more to the fact that it wasn't possible, was answered by so long a silence that he concluded she had hung up the receiver.
”Have a good time,” f.a.n.n.y said at last; ”you will, anyhow, with the Raff woman. I suppose Mrs. Grove, who seems to get everything she wants, is fascinating as well.”
”Indeed, I don't know, f.a.n.n.y!” he exclaimed, his patience almost exhausted. ”It hasn't occurred to me to think about her. I'm sorry you won't do what I suggest; it's not different from what we first thought of.”
”Good-bye,” she answered reluctantly; ”the children are here and send their love. They'd like to speak to you, but probably you're in a hurry.”
”I may be late for dinner now,” he admitted.
The receiver in his house was abruptly, unmistakably, replaced. No one else, and for so little perceptible cause, could make him as mad as f.a.n.n.y frequently did. He put on his waistcoat, changed his money from the trousers on the bed to those he was wearing, in a formless indignation. This wasn't his fault, he repeated; positively, judged by her manner, he might be doing something wrong. f.a.n.n.y even managed to convey a doubt of Mrs. Grove, Mrs. William Loyd Grove. But she couldn't see how ridiculous that was.
William Grove Lee liked negatively; there was, patently, nothing in him to create an active response. His short heavy body was faultlessly clothed; his heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of the resources he had inherited.
”You are a relative of the Morrises?” he asked Lee, turning from the menu set before him in a miniature silver frame. This Lee Randon admitted, and Grove's eyebrows mounted. ”Can't anything be done with the young man?”
”How are you succeeding with the young woman?” Lee returned.
”Oh, women--” William Grove waved his hand; ”you can't argue with women.
Mina wants her Peyton--if that's his name; G.o.d knows I've heard it enough--and there's no more to that.”
”It begins to look as though she'd get him,” Lee observed; ”I must say we haven't got far with Morris.”
”Extraordinary.”
It was Mrs. Grove who spoke. She was dressed in grey, a gown cut away from sheer points on her shoulders, with a girdle of small gilt roses, her hair in a binding of grey brocade and amber ornaments; and above her elbows were bands of dull intricately pierced gold.
”I wonder what it's all about?”
Lee gazed at her with a new interest. ”So do I,” he acknowledged; ”I was thinking of that, really, before this happened: what is it all about?”
”I can answer that readily enough,” Grove a.s.sured them; ”anyone could with a little consideration. They saw too much of each other; they ran their heads into the noose. Trouble always follows. I don't care who they are, but if you throw two fairly young people of opposite s.e.x together in circ.u.mstances any way out of the ordinary, you have a situation to meet. Mina has been spoiled by so much publicity; her emotions are constantly over-strung; and she thinks, if she wants it, that she can have the moon.”
”You believe that, I know, William,” his wife commented; ”I have often heard you say so. But what is your opinion, Mr. Randon--have you reached one and is a conclusion possible?”
”I can't answer any of your questions,” he admitted; ”perhaps this is one of the things that must be experienced to be understood; certainly it hasn't a great deal to do with the mind.” He turned to William Grove, ”Your view has a lot to recommend it, even if it solves nothing. Suppose you are right--what then?”
”I don't pretend to go that far,” Grove protested; ”I am not answering the questions of the universe. Savina has an idea there's a mystery in it, a quality hidden from reason; and I want to knock that on the head. It's a law of nature, that's all; keep away from it if you want security. I can't imagine people of breeding--you will have to overlook this, Mr. Randon, on the account of Morris--getting so far down the slide. It belongs to another cla.s.s entirely, one without traditions or practical wisdom. Yet, I suppose it is the general tone of the day: they think they can handle fire with impunity, like children with parlor matches.”
”It can't, altogether, be accounted for so easily,” Lee decided. ”The whole affair has been so lied about, and juggled to suit different climates and people, that hardly any of the original impulse is left on view. What do you think would happen if for a while we'd lose our ideas of what was right and wrong in love?”
”Pandemonium,” Grove replied promptly.
”Not if people were more responsible, William,” Savina Grove added; ”not for the superior. But then, all laws and order were made for the good of the mob. I don't need the policeman I see in the streets; and, really, I haven't a sc.r.a.p more use for policeman-like regulations; I could regulate myself--”
”And there,” he interrupted, ”is where Mina fails; she can't run herself for a d.a.m.n; she ought to have a nurse. Your theories contradict each other, as well--you say one thing and do quite differently.”
She was silent at this, gazing at her hands, the beautifully made pointed fingers bare of rings. On their backs the veins, blue-violet, were visible; and there was a delicate tracery inside the bend of her arms. But her face, Lee reflected, was too pa.s.sive, too inanimate; her lack of color was unvaried by any visible trace of emotion, life. She was, in fact, plain if not actually ugly; her mouth was too large; on the street, without the saving distinction of her dress, he wouldn't have noticed her.