“Sorry, but there’s nothing to be done,” he repeated, frigidly.
“There is! You could just ask his lawyers to let you see the will——”
“My dear girl, I am not going to go crawling after Horace’s money. It’s not decent. I absolutely will not!”
He might have known what would happen after that, but he didn’t even suspect....
Minnie said she was obliged to go to the city, shopping. And as she never concerned herself except about domestic matters, Lionel believed her object to be entirely serious and legitimate, and agreed to stop at home with the baby while she was gone. He had forgotten she had said she had no money, and anyway, he had learned that that statement from Minnie was not to be believed. She always said that.
It was a horrible day for him. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He sat on the sun scorched little porch conscientiously watching his languid child digging in the gutter. It seemed to him to spend all its waking hours there, busy with some patient work. At noon he brought her in and fed her with the lunch Minnie had left, then he rocked her to sleep in a hammock on the sweltering porch.
He wandered about the hot, dirty little house, smoking and trying not to think. He did not dare to reflect, he did not wish to face the secret desolation in his soul. He valiantly maintained that his life here with Minnie was “wholesome,” was “normal,” was really the best sort of life. And tried to deny visions of cool seaside hotels, or bars where men lounged in flannels and drank those amazing and adorable American drinks, with ice clinking in them.... He almost saw himself on the veranda of a country club, with other well-dressed people, gay, careless, enviable.
He strode across the tiny dining-room to disperse a swarm of flies about an uncovered sugar bowl, and jerked down the dark shades, as much to hide the room from his own eyes as to quiet the disgusting insects. She would leave the cloth on the table all day long, with its crumbs and grease spots.
The baby called him; he went out and took her out of the hammock, poor hot, patient little soul! He washed her pale little face, disfigured with mosquito bites, and carried her out on the porch again. He held her in his lap; she didn’t want to stir, lay against him, staring before her.
Toward five o’clock Minnie came home, pallid and limp from the heat, with her black hair escaping in wisps from under her crushed little hat.