Lewis had not insisted on the seashore; he had suggested it, enumerated its advantages, and then quietly accepted her decision not to go. A few days later he had departed for Canada, headed for a little chateau in the Saguenay country where there was golf and trout-fishing, leaving behind him a card with the address typewritten on it and an invitation to wire him if any difficulty arose.
“Difficulty?” said Lora. “What difficulty could there be?”
“I don’t know. I’m quite ignorant,” he replied. “Don’t bother to write.”
So every few days she sent him a line or two to say that the union of chromosomes (this, long previously, from Albert) was proceeding without hindrance. There was no word from him, but each week an envelope came from his downtown office — Kane, Hildebrandt & Powers — containing a check neatly folded into a crisp blank letterhead. Surely less than impeccably discreet, she thought, but doubtless the intricate machinery of the legal factory of which he was the head somehow incorporated this weekly disbursement with an ambient indistinguishable vapor that would defy all analysis. The checks were generous and made many things possible. She bought Roy a velocipede and Helen a doll that walked three steps, and new clothing for all of them; she repaid Leah several hundred dollars which she had borrowed the preceding winter; she rescued from the pawnshop the necklace with platinum links and clasp which Max had given her the day after Morris was born; and one Sunday afternoon early in September she told Albert Scher, who was making his first paternal visit since July, that he need no longer bother about his monthly contribution to her household purse. Albert, seated on the floor trying to make Helen’s new doll go without falling over, looked up at her and blinked.
“What’s that, what’s that?” he demanded. Then he whistled in surprise and scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go into the bedroom,” he said; and then to Helen, “You try to make it go.” On his way past his foot clumsily knocked the doll on its head, but the child’s cries of protest went unregarded.
After she had righted the doll and followed him into the bedroom he closed the door and turned to her: “What’s up? What are you talking about?”
“What I said, that’s all,” she replied. “I won’t need any more money. There’s nothing mysterious about it.”
“I’m not being mysterious. There’s no occasion to discuss it in front of Panther.”
“But we don’t need to discuss it, and children know everything anyway. It doesn’t matter, that’s all there is to it.”
He stared at her, and blinked again. “Has anything happened? I don’t get it. Has Roy’s father turned out to be a bootlegger?”
Lora laughed. “Albert darling, listen. I’ll need no more of your hard-earned money. Isn’t that enough?”
“By god, you’re going to get married,” he exclaimed.
“No.”
“Of course it’s none of my business—”
“No,” she agreed.
“But you can’t do this. I mean, Panther is my daughter and I have a right to furnish her support — as well as I can. By the way, why won’t you call her Panther? Helen doesn’t mean anything; there are a million girls named Helen. Panther gives her individuality. A panther is itself a thing of beauty, of flowing living lines; the psychological effect should be tremendous. Think what your attitude toward yourself and art would be like if your name were Toad or Ichthyosaurus or Warthog. Gradually but inevitably you would come to hate all nature; you would be blind to everything but ugliness; you would probably even give up bathing—”
“You named her Helen.”
“Then I was wrong. Not that Helen is bad; it’s merely negative. But Panther! Don’t you feel it? Panther!”
“I have no objection; Panther it shall be,” agreed Lora. “Then it’s understood about the money.”
“By no means. I am her father and I should contribute to her support.”
“But it isn’t necessary. Honestly I don’t need it any more.” She put her hand on his shoulder and patted it. “You are a dear, Albert, but I don’t suppose the magazines pay any better than they ever did, and I know there are things you would like to have...”
He frowned. “Last month, Art of Today handed me a hundred and fifty for the article on Van Gogh. Only four thousand words.”
“Yes, I know. It was worth three times that.”
“And what about my experiment? If I contribute nothing I could not expect you to let me see her, to promote the formation of her mind by a natural process, to keep constant watch against the obscene vulgarities—”
“You’ve been here, I think, seven times in the past year. Not so constant. But heavens, you can come as often as you want to. You didn’t think you were paying for it? It’s just that I don’t need the money. Come whenever you like. Come every day.”
“I’m frightfully busy—”
“All right. Whenever you like.”
He shook his head. “I can’t resign my share of the burden. You shouldn’t ask me to. It’s not decent. I should feel restricted, fenced out...”
“All right.” Again she patted his shoulder. “If you insist on it. But just think, fifty dollars a month. Put it away in a sock. Six hundred a year. In two years that would mean a winter in Europe—”
“You’re tempting me, you slut. Get out of here.” He grinned, and suddenly broke into a loud roar of laughter. “If you could see the holes in my socks! Get out of here.”
He opened the door and out he went, back into the living room where Helen, from this day Panther, kneeled over the prostrate doll trying to pour water down its nose.
The next day Lora got out some old dresses, the two thin woolen ones and the grey tweed she had worn when carrying Morris, and even an old favorite from Roy’s time, a beige silk which she had made herself; and tried them on in front of the long mirror on the bedroom door. The silk was far too long, and all of them hung like distorted bags. Surely all that fullness would not be needed! Why is a baby’s outward show so out of proportion to its tiny and fragile frame? At any rate, she thought, nothing could be done now, thank goodness the moths had been kept out — though for that matter she would this time be able to get as many new ones as she wanted. It was fortunate that it would be a winter baby, like Helen and Morris, for otherwise an entire new wardrobe would have been required. Wouldn’t it be amusing if it should happen to hit Helen’s very day. Only she must say Panther. Certainly it would be the same month; Morris had been some weeks earlier. It was nicer in the winter, everything seemed so warm and the warmth was so pleasant. Those suffocating July days with the first one — good god, no, not the first...
As she bent over the bed folding up the dresses to go back into the box she became aware of a presence and, looking up, saw Leah watching her from the door.
“There’s only two bottles,” said Leah.
“Yes,” said Lora. “Roy broke one. Two is enough. I’ll get more when I go out.”
IV
On a day in September which brought the first faint whiff of autumn a telephone call came from Lewis Kane. He had returned that morning, he said, was extremely busy with the accumulation at his office and would be for a week or more. Was everything all right? Perfectly, Lora reported; all departments of the factory were running smoothly. Splendid, he said, he would call again.
Throughout the fall months they met every week or so for a pleasant and unexciting dinner. Lora, expecting every moment to be bored, found to her surprise, that his invitations were always welcome, tried to account for it by various theories all of which turned out to be unsatisfactory, and ended by accepting it with an indifferent shrug. Certainly he was unfailingly courteous and good-tempered, and never intolerably inquisitive. Immediately upon his return he placed a car at her disposal, and a little later got her one of her own, a little dark-blue sedan. She wanted to drive it herself, but he begged her earnestly not to take the risk.