He went back to tennis and swimming at the country club. He had become a figure of romance in the eyes of the debutantes and the smart young matrons; he had had an affair with a brilliant young actress and might still be having it. More than one of them gave signs of being willing to “cut her out,” but Lanny was absent-minded. It was August, and the papers reported a heat wave in New York; how was that frail little creature standing it? She was meeting this manager and that, she wrote; hopes were being held out to her; she would have good news soon. But not a word about love! Did she think that the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God might be opening Lanny's mail?
The war kept haunting him. Every time he went home he looked for a cablegram about Marcel; but nothing came. He thought about the monstrous battle line, stretched like a serpent across north eastern France; the mass deeds of heroism, the mass agony and death. The newspapers fed it to you, twice every day; you break fasted on glory and supped on grief:
I sing the song of the billowing flags,
the bugles that cry before.
Ah, but the skeletons flapping rags,
the lips that speak no more!
VI
September, and there came an ecstatic letter from Gracyn. She had a part; a grand part; something tremendous; her future was assured. Unfortunately, she couldn't tell about it; she was pledged to keep it a strict secret. “Oh, Lanny, I am so happy! And so grateful to you. I'd never have made the grade if it hadn't been for you. Forgive me if I don't write more. I have a part to learn. I am going to be a success and you'll be proud of me.”
So that was that; very mysterious, and a trifle disconcerting to a young man in love. A week passed, ten days, it was almost time to go back to school. Lanny found that he was glad, for it wasn't comfortable living in Esther's home when he knew that she didn't want him and was watching him all the time, anxious when he made the children happy, when he had too much influence over them. He knew that he had ruined himself with his stepmother and that nothing he could do would ever restore him to her favor.
All right; he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb; he decided suddenly that he wanted to see the great city of New York. He had had only a few hours there on his arrival, and only one trip with his father the previous summer. He hadn't seen the great bridges, the art galleries, the museums — to say nothing of the theatrical district, where many new plays were being got ready. He mentioned it to his father, who said all right. He sent his trunk to the school by express and packed a suitcase and took a morning train to the metropolis.