Whatever Lorraine thought concerning Dan’s frequent absences and his
attitude regarding his home and what happened therein, she still followed
the path of the Victorian era and kept her own counsel. Nor did any one
try to disturb her gentle self by the agony of doubts. For one reason
the “genteel grafters,” such as Cora, Hazel, Josie and Owen of the art
shoppe fame, came to Lorraine’s home only for what advantages could be
obtained. Why then disturb her who gave them the advantages? There might
be an end of them if they did. To be sure they gossiped among themselves
and the societies and lodges with vivid imagination and a generous manner
of embellishing a truly innocent but unique situation—a high-minded,
spirited man too high for his town yet too undisciplined for the city who
haunted the footsteps of a high-minded, spirited woman who had become big
enough in abilities for the entire world and who was dying inwardly of
ennui and heart-lonesomeness, who took this mild sort of affair as the
one genuine and refreshing thing in her hurried, _de luxe_ existence.
Neither of these young people realized the harm it incurred. They cheated
themselves into believing it “merely palship” or “an expression of
individuality”—a very nice sort of garden and not wild oats affair!
Sometimes Thurley met Dan with a zest for his boyish mannerisms, his
telling of the rise in wool goods, what a splendid housewife Lorraine
was—only she didn’t understand things—how jealous he was of the basso
who made love to Thurley on the opera stage. Sometimes she looked at
him in disdain, the strange sneer on her lips as she thought of what a
dull existence was Dan’s, what a lark it was to see him strive to make
as good a showing as the young millionaire who was hopelessly infatuated
with this Thurley Precore, boasting at his club that she would wear
his necklace or his flowers before the season ended. The vampire which
is in all women and which is not a sinister quality only to be raved
about as “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,” had for the time being
become supreme in Thurley. Dan did not understand this—any more than
he understood why he was unhappy when he was near Thurley and always
thinking about Lorraine and why, when he returned home, fortified a
thousand times by the blessed memories of Thurley’s beauty and the stolen
moments he had claimed, he was unhappier still.
Dan would return to his immaculate, prosaic living-room where Lorraine
would greet him and inform him all in the same breath that Lydia Hoyt was
engaged and Lorraine would give a kitchen shower—and did Dan notice how
the veranda posts sagged, hadn’t he better have a man come up and see
about them?—oh, yes, there was something wrong with her car, well—she
had let Owen drive it because he had deliveries to make ’way out in the
country—beefsteak was three cents higher a pound than last week and two
of the church deacons had resigned because they couldn’t have their way
about the music.
After which Dan would slip away to unpack his bag and Lorraine to prepare
his supper. There would be an abundant, well cooked meal on the prosaic
table with its nightmares of hand painted peppers and salts and cut glass
monstrosities, the water pitcher heavily banded with gilt. After eating
his fill, Dan would depart to smoke in peace and wonder what Lorraine
would think of Thurley’s new frocks and the baskets of flowers which
forever adorned her rooms, of the bizarre friends and their weird ways—he
would end, however, with the somewhat hopeless consolation that Lorraine
had about as much imagination or capacity for artistic enjoyment as the
old lady who, upon seeing mountains for the first time, merely said
querulously,
“Dear me, if any one ever started to roll—”
For Lorraine would have probably remarked, after viewing Thurley’s
apartment, “How in the world does she ever get the work done!” letting
the panorama of joys and possibilities sweep on uncomprehended.
Therefore, Dan had decided, after very arduous sophistry, it was
not wrong to see Thurley, to keep her in his bewildered heart as a
sort of lovely idol, something set apart from the Corners and his
house-and-garden life—something as different as the scarlet tanager
or the jewelled dragon-fly is different from the barn-swallow or the
field-daisy! Each has its own place.
But when spring began to hint of its appearance and Dan had been in New
York over Easter, while the Corners gossiped about his absence, although
Lorraine bravely occupied the front church pew and wore her new silk
gown, Dan came home prepared to tell Lorraine that he would probably be
away very often during the summer.
He waited until the work was “done up” and Lorraine brought her
everlasting handiwork to join him in the den. The den itself was
sufficient to make Dan’s nerves rebel—it had been furnished a few months
after their marriage, an upstairs bedroom transformed into an inquisition
chamber, as he told Thurley.
Dens in such hamlets as the Corners offer no _raison d’être_ save when a
cartoonist gets a peek at them or the family scapegoat turns up unawares
and is made to occupy the combination divan and folding lounge.
Lorraine fondly pictured the den as an ideal place for Dan to come and
rest—“A real man’s room,” she explained, “where they smoke and play
cards—and talk about things!” It was adorned by Indian heads, an oak
table with a prim scarf done in poppies and maidenhair fern, a lounge
with pillows made from cigar ribbons and college pennants, all placed in
undying positions of rectitude, glass candlesticks with pink shades, a
shining little ash tray and match box, a shelf of detective stories and
old magazines, an easy chair in old rose velours, two fragile rocking
chairs, some grinning lithographs of cowboys, African savages, Christy
girls and bulldogs placed at exact intervals about the pink flowered
walls and dimity curtains criss-crossed and crisp from recent washing to
shut out the light!
Seated here, this April evening, a hundred thoughts clamoring for
consideration before the task of telling Lorraine he was to be in
New York a great deal, Dan pretended to play solitaire and keep up a
desultory conversation about the way a neighbor trained a pumpkin vine
over his woodshed and captured the village improvement prize!
The absence of sympathy between them seemed a relentless, chilly wind
whipping on his treasonous speech, all the more so because Dan had no
truly logical excuse. On the face of it, what more could a man demand?
That is, if one were magnanimous about the Indian heads and sofa pillows,
what right had he, a small town shopkeeper, to wail his heart out for a
genius?
“Oh, ’Raine,” he said abruptly, shuffling the cards with a fillip, “I may
have to run off for a few days in a couple of weeks—all right?”
Lorraine did not answer; she bent her head over her work.
Dan looked at her sharply. “Isn’t it all right?” His voice had that
dangerous gentleness at which she always winced.
“Is she coming back this summer?” She dropped the sewing.
Dan put aside the cards and came beside her. Under the flare of the
reading light her face seemed thinner and more childish. There was a
miraculous subtlety of features, a hidden delicate something which he
could not analyze; he felt boorish, brutal, as absurd as when he was one
of Thurley’s guests at a party and every one really made polite game of
him.
He kept looking at Lorraine, wondering why this change had come about;
tired purple shadows were under her eyes, the eyes themselves were soft,
shining things seeming to look far beyond him.
She raised her hand, crumpling the sheer, white slip on which she was
sewing.
“You mean Thurley,” he stammered, “well—I—I don’t know, dear, you see the
Fincherie is Miss Clergy’s house and of course ... oh, _’Raine_ ... now,
I understand,” his eyes staring at the tiny, gossamer dress!