What remained of the other was hardly more than a rare accelerated heart-beat at a chord of music like the memory of a lost happiness, or at the sea shimmering with morning. He never spoke of it now, not even to Fanny; although it was possible that he might be doing her understanding an injustice. Fanny, generally, was a woman in whom the best of sense triumphed; Fanny was practical. It was she who saw that the furnace pipes were inspected, the chimney flues cleaned before winter; and who had the tomato frames properly laid away in the stable. Problems of drainage, of controversies with the neighbors, were instinctively brought to her, and she met and disposed of them with an unfailing vigorous good judgment.
A remarkable companion, he told himself; he had been a fortunate man. She was at once conventional and an individual: Fanny never, for example, wore the underclothes of colored crepe de chines, the elaborate trifles, Lee saw in the shop windows, nightgowns of sheer exposure and candy-like ribbons; hers were always of fine white cambric, scalloped, perhaps, or with chaste embroidery, but nothing more. Neither did she use perfumes of any sort, there was no array of ornamental bottles on her dressing-table, no sachet among her handkerchiefs, her cambric was not laid in scented flannel. Her dressing, a little severe, perhaps—she liked tailored suits with crisp linen waists and blue serge with no more than a touch of color—was otherwise faultless in choice and order; and, it might be that she was wholly wise: Fanny was thin and, for a woman, tall, with square erectly held shoulders. Her face was thin, too, almost bony, and that magnified, emphasized, the open bright blueness of her eyes; all her spirit, her integrity and beauty, were gathered in them; her hair was pale and quite scanty.
Yes, Fanny's eyes were her principal attraction, they were forever startling, contrasted with the rest, not only remarkable in shade but, as well, in light; in her quick unreasoning tempers, the only perceptible flaw of her character, they sparkled with brilliancy. The tempers, Lee decided, descending the narrow stony road from the club-house to his gate, were an unavoidable part of her special qualities: her quick decisiveness, her sharp recognitions of right and her obdurate condemnation of wrong—these distinctions were never obscured in Fanny—necessitated a finality of judgment open to anger at any contrary position. Aside from that she was as secure, as predictable, as any heavenly orbit; her love for him, beginning before marriage, had quietly and constantly increased; her usual mood was moulded to his need; nothing had ever contested the supremacy of his place with her.
Lee swung open the white wicket that broke the middle of his border hedge and went up the path over the broad lawn; the house, an admirable copy of locally colonial dwellings, was a yellow stucco, with a porch on his left and the dining-room at the extreme right. Beyond the porch was the square of the formal garden, indistinguishable at this season, and the garage, the driveway, were hidden at the back. He mounted the broad steps of field stone at the terrace, but, in place of going directly in under the main portico, turned aside to the porch, past the dim bare forms of the old maples. Just as he had anticipated, the glass door showed him Fanny sitting in the maple slatted-back rocking-chair; Gregory, in blue, was present, but Helena not to be seen.
His wife's hands were lying idly in her lap, and she was gazing into nothingness with an expression he had never before noticed, there was a faint troubled doubt on her brow, a questioning expression about her eyes. As he stood momentarily quiet he saw her hands slowly clasp until he felt that they were rigid, and her mouth became pinched; her face seemed actually hard. Gregory spoke to her, with his fat fingers on her sleeve, but she made no reply, paid no attention to him. Lee could hear Gregory's demanding voice; and then, gathering herself, Fanny sighed deeply and smiled at her boy. She was wearing her pearls, her rings sparkled in glittering prisms; and, as he opened the door, Lee Randon wondered if he had forgotten an engagement to go out for dinner?
He asked at once if this were so, but found that they were staying at home. She regarded him still, he realized, a little withdrawn in the abstraction he had surprised. This, because it was so uncommon, disturbed him, and he demanded what was worrying her.
“Nothing, really. What made you suppose I was bothered?” Her reply was instinctive; and then, after a pause, she continued, more insecurely, “I was only thinking about some things.... Lee,” she inquired, “you love me very much, don't you?”
“Why, of course,” he spoke almost impatiently.
“That is all I have, you see,” she admitted; “and that was what was in my mind. The other women I know are so different; they seem to have so many more interests than I, and to care less for them than I do for my one. It is exactly as though I belonged before the war and they came afterwards. It is true—I am old-fashioned. Well, I don't care if you don't! But, just the same, it's a problem; I don't want to be out of the times or narrow; and yet I can't, I don't know how, and I honestly don't want to, change.