“You'd see to that, anyhow; men always do. Honestly, Alice Lucian was a scream this afternoon, she said that she hated and distrusted all men; yet I'm sure no one could be more considerate or dependable than Warner. Now, if she had a husband like George Willard—”
“What would you do,” Lee asked, “if I spent my spare time with the very young ones?”
“I'd have a doctor see you,” she replied coolly. “What in the world put that in your head? Haven't you everything here a man could want? That's exactly what they were talking about; it's so—so idiotic. Those younger girls ought to be smacked and put to bed, with their one-piece swimming-suits and shimmying. They give a very misleading impression.”
He lost the course of her speech in considering how little of themselves women, old and young, showed each other. If Fanny meant, if she for a moment thought, where the girls they were discussing came in, that there was smoke without fire.... It was all devilish strange, the present day, disturbing. The young men, since the war, had grown sober, and the older men resembled George Willard. The exploding of so much powder, the release of such naked passions, had over-thrown the balance of conduct and pressure. How fortunate, he thought again, he was in having Fanny.
They moved into the enclosure by the fire-place, where Cytherea was remote in shadow against the chimney, and through the hall to the living room for coffee. His wife placed the portable stool under her feet, and silence enveloped them. At intervals the clear treble of the children's voices was audible from above, and once Fanny called up for them to be quiet. The room was large, it filled that end of the lower floor, and Lee's gaze idly rested on the smoke of his cigar, veiling the grand piano in the far corner. There were no overhead lights, the plugs for the lamps were set in the baseboard, and the radiance was pleasantly diffused, warm and subdued: the dull immaculately white paint of the bookshelves on his left, silver frames on a table, harmonious fabrics and spots of color, consciously and sub-consciously spread a restful pattern. In reply to his comment Fanny acknowledged that she had seen the snow; she hated winter, she proceeded, and thought that if it turned out as bad as last year they might get away to Cuba and see Daniel.
Daniel was Lee's brother, four years his junior, an administrador of a sugar estancia in the Province of Camagüey; a man who, absorbed in his crops and his adopted Spanish-tropical civilization, rarely returned to the United States. This projected trip to Cuba they had discussed for many Novembers; every year Fanny and he promised each other that, early in February, they would actually go; and preparatory letters were exchanged with Daniel Randon; but it always came to nothing. Either it was impossible for Fanny to leave the children, the house, or the servants, or Lee's affairs were in need of close supervision.
Suddenly it annoyed him to discuss again, uselessly, Camagüey; it had become only a vain pretence, a sustained mirage, of escape from disagreeable days. While it was hot in Cuba, Daniel maintained, the trade wind coming with evening made the nights cool; it was far more comfortable, summer and winter, at La Quinta than in Eastlake. Cuba, he made it seem, Havana and the colonias of cane, the coast and the interior, was a place with none of the drawbacks of a northern land or society; there were, certainly, conventions—the Spanish were a very punctilious people—but they operated in a conveniently definite, Daniel might almost say a sensible masculine, manner. He had not gone into any further detail, but had sunk into his celebrated immobility of expression. Lee, therefore, had drawn his own, natural, conclusions; he had come to regard Cuba in the same light as that of the early Castilian adventurers—an El Dorado, but of freedom rather than gold.
A perverse restlessness settled upon him, and he put down his coffee cup abruptly; the contentment in his surroundings vanished. Lee wanted to be somewhere else, see something different, not so—so tranquil, so complacently delivered to the uneventful. Fanny, he told himself resentfully, would be satisfied to sit exactly where she was for a year. She met his fleet scrutiny with a faint smile. Her face wouldn't be greatly changed by old age, by death. She was like that, inside and out. Whirling ungracious fancies passed through his brain. He shook his head, and Fanny instantly demanded, “What is it, Lee, what is worrying you?” Nothing, he replied, but she continued to study him until, giving it up, she turned to the approaching dance; there would be a dinner at the Club before it, and forty people from out of town had accepted. They must all have a perfect time, she declared. Gregory could be heard laughing, and, with a sense of relief, of escape, he volunteered to go up and see what kept the children roused. He would only make them worse, Fanny observed, he was as fidgety as Helena; but her tone carried to him her compelling affection.
The darkened room where Helena and Gregory slept held a cold glimmering whiteness; and the light he switched on showed a most sanitary bareness and two severe iron beds. There was a moment's stillness as he entered, the scrutiny of two rosy faces framed in blanket and sheet—there were no pillows—and then there was a delighted vociferous recognition of his presence.