“I like black hair,” Randon asserted.
“That's amusing, when you think Fanny's is quite brown,” Anette replied. “Whom have you been meeting with black hair? There's none I can remember in Eastlake.”
“There isn't anybody in particular,” Lee reassured her; “it is just an idea of mine.” He had a vision of intense black hair swept about an enigmatic still smile, of an old gilt headdress. “Mina Raff must have developed if she gets half the pay advertised.”
“She'll get twice that when this contract expires,” Peyton put in; “and that will be increased again. No one on the screen can touch her.” He made these declarations in a manner both shadowed and aggressive. Lee observed that he held a cigarette in one hand and a match in the other with no effort at conjunction.
“Mina simply tells you everything,” Anette continued. “If she comes you must do your best. It's perfectly marvelous, with so much else, that she even considers it. I couldn't budge her when she was practically free.”
“How is Claire?” Randon abruptly demanded.
“She's all right,” her husband returned; “a little offhand, but no more than usual. I want her to go to the West Indies and take Ira but she won't listen. Why anyone who doesn't have to stay through these rotten winters I can't imagine.” A flaming log brought out his handsomely proportioned face, the clear grey eyes, the light carefully brushed hair and stubborn chin. Peyton was a striking if slightly sullen appearing youth—yet he must be on the mark of thirty—and it was undeniable that he was well thought of generally. At his university, Princeton, he had belonged to a most select club; his family, his prospects, even his present—junior partner in a young but successful firm of bond brokers—were beyond reproach. Yet Lee Randon was aware that he had never completely liked Peyton.
His exterior was too hard, too obviously certain, to allow any penetration of the inevitable human and personal irregularities beneath. It might be possible that he was all of a piece of the conventional stereotyped proprieties; but Lee couldn't imagine Claire marrying or holding to a man so empty, or, rather, so dully solid. Claire he admired without reservation—a girl who had become a wife, a mother, with no loss of her vivid character. Her attitude toward Ira, now four years old—wholly different from Fanny's manner with her children—was lightly humorous; publicly she treated her obligations as jokes; but actually, Lee knew, she was indefatigable.
This was a type of high spirits, of highly bred courage, to which he was entirely delivered. Fanny was a perfect mother, a remarkably fine wife, but she bore an evident sense of her responsibilities. She wasn't so good-looking as Claire, who at times was almost beautiful; but Fanny had a very decided kind of attractiveness which Lee Randon wished she would more bring out. She was a little too serious. He didn't actually want her to drink and swear in public, that wouldn't become her; but something of that sort, he felt, might help her. At times, when she had had more than her customary cocktail and a half, he saw in her a promise of what he desired.
God knew he wasn't criticizing Fanny, he hastened to reassure even himself: how could he, in the face of all she had brought him—the freedom of money and undeviating devotion and their two splendid children? His house was as absolute in its restrained luxury of taste as was the unfailing attention to his comfort. It was purely for her own happiness that he wanted her to be, well—a little gayer. She was already developing a tendency to sit serenely on the veranda of the club through the dances, to encourage others rather than take an active part herself.