Part 23 (1/2)
But he did need to understand--for an att.i.tude, a choice of speech, if nothing else--his feeling for Savina. It consisted princ.i.p.ally in the tyrannical desire to be with her, to sink in the immeasurable depths of her pa.s.sion, and there lose all consciousness of the trivial mundane world. That, Lee felt, given the rest, the fact that he was here as he was, was sufficient; but--again still--he had had no voice in it.
The pa.s.sion had inundated him in the manner of an incoming tide and a low-water rock. Abruptly, after a certain misleading appearance of hesitation on the part of the waves, he had gone under. Well, it was very pleasant. In his case the celebrated maxims were wrong.
He left this, for the moment, and returned to what, actually, lay ahead of him. Would Savina go away with him, leave the correct William, the safety of their New York house in the style of eighteen-eighty? Lee considered in her two impulses, not alike--her overwhelming pa.s.sion, herself generally; and her admission, no, cry, that she loved him, or the special part he had in her. It rather looked as though he'd be successful. It did for a fact. He had not been idle through all the day, but had drawn from the Harriman Bank twenty thousand dollars. So much had not been necessary; it was very bad business to segregate in idleness such a sum of money now; but he enjoyed the extravagance of it.
Prudence, frugality, was no longer a factor in his affairs.
His present personal liberty, more complete than it had ever been before--than, he added lightly, it might ever be again--was astonis.h.i.+ngly soothing. Sitting comfortably in a room in his customary hotel, there wasn't a pressure that could be brought to bear on him. It was now twenty minutes past four, he was to go to Savina at a quarter to six, and until then there was nothing, nothing, to force him this way or that: no directors' meetings, gabbling East-lake figures, responsibility, housewife or children. He hadn't realized the extent to which he had been surrounded and confined, the imponderable ma.s.s of what he had not only been indifferent to but actually disliked. He could lie down--he had been up the entire past night--and be called in an hour; he could sit as he was, in an unb.u.t.toned waistcoat with his legs comfortably spread out; he could motor or walk on Fifth Avenue; smoke; drink--all in an inviolable security of being.
Or, going back to that moment when he had, so mistakenly, turned aside from visionary promptings to a solid comfortable career, he might--what was it?--write. Perhaps his sharp regret at the loss of his youth was premature, youth itself comparatively unimportant. But no, that would involve him in fresh distasteful efforts, imperceptibly it would build up a whole new world of responsibilities: writing would be arduous, editors captious, and articles, stories, books, tie him back again to all that from which he had so miraculously escaped. Savina would be enough. What a beautiful body, so unexpectedly full, she had; how astounding, intoxicating, was the difference between what she seemed to be and what she was. Lee Randon thought with amused pity of the files of men who must have pa.s.sed by her, with the most considerate bows, in ignorance of the inner truth.
That discovery, while, naturally, it had not been entirely reserved for him, had acc.u.mulated in a supreme delight, been kept back, like the best of all presents, for the last. He was glad that it wasn't too late for him to enjoy it. Here, suddenly, intervening in the midst of a prosaic drudgery, a tepid and meaningless period, was a magnificent relief. By G.o.d, would he take advantage of it! Would he! There was a knock at the door, and the hotel valet hung a freshly pressed suit in the closet; the shoes into which he intended to change were in a perfection of readiness; laid out were a heavy blue silk s.h.i.+rt and a dull yellow tie. Lee got these various carefully selected articles of dress slowly, exactly, on. His pearl pin f.a.n.n.y had given him! Well, it was a good pearl, selected personally by a celebrated dealer; and Lee was obliged to her, nothing more. He lighted a cigarette, collected his hat and gloves, his overcoat and stick, and descended in the elevator in a mood of unrestrained enjoyment.
The door attendant, who knew him, whistled for a taxi-cab, commenting lightly on the visible accident to his jaw. But, in spite of it, Lee had an appearance, as he phrased it, of good luck. The world, he said, was evidently in favor of Mr. Randon. The latter agreed that it had such a look. He was positively jovial. He dismissed the cab before the familiar entrance on East Sixty-sixth Street, and was admitted immediately: the servant caught his coat, and he went into the drawing-room. There had been, he saw, a tea; the confusion lingering from a crowd was evident; the cups, on all the available surfaces, had not been removed; in a corner were the skeleton-like iron music racks of a small orchestra; ash trays were overflowing; and a sealskin m.u.f.f, with a bunch of violets pinned to it, had been left.
Savina had gone upstairs, but she would be down at once. Lee was turned away from the door when she entered; she was wearing a cloth dress of dull red--hadn't he heard it called Cuba color?--with a heavy girdle of grotesque intertwined silver figures. With a single glance behind her she swept forward into Lee's arms, her mouth held up to his.
Listening closely to all that he had to say, she sat with her hands quietly folded on crossed knees. Perhaps twice she nodded, comprehendingly. ”And so,” he ended, ”that is what has occurred. We are not to blame ourselves too much, as I've explained; the thing happened within itself, died of its own accord. But the past doesn't need our attention now. The future is the thing. What is it going to be? What,”
he hesitated, ”can we make it? Maybe everything, or nothing.”
”Are you leaving that for me to decide?” she asked.
”To a great extent I have to; I don't want to appear to take so much for granted. And then, only you can measure what I have to offer. I believe what I have done is considered serious, if not ruinous; but that I can't help thinking is exaggerated. I haven't been struck down yet. I don't, candidly, now, expect to be. You ought to come to this through your head, and not the heart, which I'd naturally prefer you to use. What, in fact, I am asking you is to go away with me, to live with me. I shall not, and you couldn't, very well, return. It's quite final, in other words. I must find out, too, if the irregularity upsets you. That need only be temporary. Grove and f.a.n.n.y, I am sure, wouldn't persist in being disagreeable. But, if they did, we'd have to face that as well, the consequences of my--my impatience.
”No, don't answer so quickly. Do you know me, are you sure you'd be happy, satisfied, with me? I have some money, not a great deal for myself now; I should say fifteen thousand dollars a year. f.a.n.n.y, very rightfully--for herself and the children--will get most of what I have.
And then, are you wedded, if not to your individual life here, to New York? We should have to go away to some place rather vague--”
”Cuba,” she broke in.
The irony of that suggestion carried him back to the many vainly projected trips there with f.a.n.n.y. His brother was in Cuba, it was true; but that might turn out excellently: Daniel would be able to help them in the difficult readjustments to follow. He was intelligent, unprejudiced and calm and, Lee added, remote from the values, the ponderous authority, of a northern hypocritical society. Then he forgot that in the realization that Savina was going away with him, that she was to be his, not for a solitary stolen night, but for years ...
openly, completely. He lost his self control and kissed her, heedless of the open doors. Now she was cooler than Lee, and pushed him away.
”William will be in at any minute,” she explained:
”When shall we leave?”
”We might take a train tonight for Was.h.i.+ngton, since we'll need pa.s.sports and I have to have an income tax receipt, and we can manage all that best there. Then Key West, Havana, anywhere. We will hope to get off without trouble; but, if Grove interferes, accept the consequences as they come.”
”Very well.” Savina grew still quieter as the march of events became headlong. ”I can live without a maid for a while. Tonight I won't dress for dinner, this will do very nicely for the train; and come as soon after as I can pack a bag. There will be literally nothing in it; my summer things are all out of reach. Was.h.i.+ngton will be convenient for me, too. Unless you want to see William again--” She rose.
”Not particularly,” he acknowledged; ”though I wouldn't drive around the city to avoid him. Somehow--I may be blind--I can't think that I am doing him an infamous wrong: that he lost you proves that. Why, under the circ.u.mstances, should you, anyone, stay? I don't feel a particle immoral, or even devilish. It's all so sensible and balanced and superior. No, no, let William watch out for himself; his club, he's so devoted to, won't fail him. f.a.n.n.y and he will have their whole worlds to sympathize with their injury. We don't need sympathy.”
Lee walked back to the hotel, the pig-skin wrapped walking stick swinging from an arm, his bearing confident and relaxed. He stopped at the desk for a conference with the porter--a basket of fruit from the restaurant, and, if procurable regularly or irregularly, a drawing-room on the Was.h.i.+ngton train. Then he went up and closed his bag: he had time for dinner and several cigars afterwards; he wasn't hungry, but the ceremony would kill the intervening two hours and more.
The porter found him later and delivered his tickets, including the check for a drawing-room, secured as irregularly as possible from the Pullman conductor. There were, it began to seem, to be no minor annoyances. At a few minutes before ten he was standing, as he had arranged with Savina, with his bag before the hotel; and, just past the hour, the cab which held her turned in to the sidewalk. She had two bags, but one was very small--her toilet things, she explained--and she was carrying a jewel case. There wasn't a tremor in her voice or bearing, the slightest indication that they were going farther than a theatre in the vicinity of Forty-fourth Street. Internally, Lee was excited, filled with the long strange sense of holiday.
”William went to the club,” Savina told him with a smile edged with malice; ”everything was as usual when he left, but when he gets back it will be changed. I'm sorry to miss his expression when he reads the letter I wrote; he won't show it to anyone.”
”That sounds as though you really disliked him,” Lee observed. Then he remembered the hatred he had felt for f.a.n.n.y. Matrimony had a brutal hand for superficial relations.h.i.+ps and conventions. He had spoken lightly but, watching her, he saw the grimness of her pa.s.sion strike the animation from her face. The jewel case slid over the softness of her wrap to the floor, her hand crept under his cuff, clinging to his arm.
Going immediately to their train, they found the fruit in the drawing-room; the porter stopped to knock at the door and discover if they were in need of his attendance. They heard dimly the train's m.u.f.fled boring under the river and were conscious of the swimming lights of the Jersey plain, the confused illuminated darkness of cities, the tranquility of open country, the ringing echo of bridges and the sustained wail of their locomotive. They were, again, reaching Was.h.i.+ngton, close in a taxi-cab; Savina's jewel case again fell unheeded; and again, after the shortest halt possible, they were whirling south in a drawing-room where night and day were indistinguishable one from the other.
On the rear platform of the orange-painted train moving deliberately along the Florida coast Lee was first aware of the still, saturating heat; that, in itself, was enough to release him from the winter-like grip of Eastlake. He lost all sense of time, of hurry, of the necessity of occupation as opposed to idleness, of idleness contrasted with sleep.