“How are they, Rob? I’d like to see them all. I really would. Goodness, it’s been ten years! How’s Hal?”
There was no challenge in the tone—it was just a natural question.
“You haven’t heard about Hal? Well, Hal is in China. Been there for six years and I reckon he won’t come home. You know he looked high and low for you—thought he was going out of his mind. There were difficulties, you understand, or perhaps you counted on them. Fear of publicity—truth leaking out—abduction—shouting your name from the house-tops. But he wore himself out. Then one night he came home, and broke down. Well, he told me he guessed it was better the way it turned out—that he admired you and knew you’d never be moved. Thought after what happened you’d never feel right. My God, you high and mighty idealists!”
“Is he happy?”
“I don’t know. Hal and I were always so confounded different, it’s hard for me to get him. He wasn’t cut out to be happy or the opposite. He’s turned out one of those quiet, square-jawed gumps, Moira. I met him in Paris two years ago, and we had a rotten dull time of it. I suppose he’ll mope around the Orient the rest of his life, working for corporations, get richer and richer and marry somebody’s sister equally rich. Now, I’m another breed of coyote. I’m always satisfied when I have a clean shirt on. It’s the thoughtless life I like.”
“I’m sorry Hal isn’t happy,” said Moira ruefully.
“I wouldn’t be sorry about him!” snapped Rob. “Damn it, Moira, I don’t say you weren’t clever as the devil. But if Hal had been me I’d have found you.”
“You’re the same Rob!” she laughed. “You know, of course, you’re the only one of them I could have run into this way and talked to comfortably. And the others—how are they? Your father I”—she dropped her voice—“read about in the papers.”
“Poor Dad. He must have felt he was buncoed sometime or other in his life. He tried to overcrowd the last few years. I think Aunt Mathilda felt he went off about in time.... Those two old women—I mean your mother, Moira, and my aunt. It’s a curious friendship that’s grown up between them. They keep that big house together and think mostly about cows and flowers—and old times.”
She did not reply to that nor look at him directly. She was glad when he burst out in a more immediate vein.