I
His domestic difficulty left behind, Raymond settled down to a
middle-aged life of dignity and leisure--or attempted to. But the trial
had rather shaken the dignity, and the sole control of Albert ate into
the leisure. There followed, naturally, a period of restlessness and
discontent.
Those who imputed no blame to Raymond still felt it unfortunate, even
calamitous, that he should not have learned how to get on with a young
wife. But there were those that did blame him--blamed him for an
unbending, self-satisfied prig who would have driven almost any spirited
young woman to desperation. These disparaged him; sometimes--not always
covertly--they ridiculed him. That hurt not only his dignity, but his
pride.
Some of you have perhaps been looking for a generalized expression of
general ideas--for some observations on marriage and divorce which
should have the detachable and quotable quality of epigram. Yet suppose
I were to observe, just here, that Marriage makes a promise to the ear
and breaks it to the hope; or that Divorce is the martyr's crown after
the tortures of Incompatibility; or that Marriage is the Inferno, the
Divorce-Court the Purgatory, and Divorce itself the Paradiso of human
life? You would not be likely to think the better of me, and I should
certainly think less well of myself. Though I am conscious of a homespun
quality of thought and diction, I must keep within the limits set me by
nature, eschewing "brilliancy" and continuing to deal not in abstract
considerations but in concrete facts.
Little Albert spent a good part of his time in a condition of
bewilderment; he perceived early that he must not ask questions, that he
must not try to understand. At intervals he ran noisily through the big
house and made it seem emptier than ever. A nurse, or governess, or
attendant of some special qualifications was required--even for the
short time before he should begin his month with his mother, who was
spending some months with her parents in the East. Even the
preliminaries for this small event occasioned considerable thought and
provoked a reluctant correspondence. His mother--prompted probably by
her own mother--wrote on the subject of Albert's summer clothes. She
wished to buy most of them herself. The Eastern climate in summer had
its special points; also local usage in children's costuming must be
considered--in detailed appearance her child must conform measurably to
that particular juvenile society in which he was to appear. Then there
was the nurse, or governess. Should Albert be brought on by her? And
should she, once in the East, remain there to take him back; or...?
"Oh, the devil!" cried Raymond, in his library, as he turned page after
page of diffuse discourse. "How long is she going to run on? How many
more things is she going to think of?"
And she had felt impelled to address him, despite the cool tone of her
letter, as "Dear Raymond." And that seemed to put him under the
compulsion of addressing her, in turn, as "Dear Gertrude"! Truly, modes
of address were scanty, inadequate.
Well, Albert went East (wearing some of the disesteemed things he
already possessed) to be outfitted for the summer shores of New Jersey.
His governess took him as far as Philadelphia, where the Eastern
connection met him, and "poored" him, sent the woman back home, and took
him out on the shining sands. During the child's absence she made covers
for the drawing-room sofas and chairs; the house, bereft of Albert and
draped in pale Holland, became more dismal than ever.
Raymond, now left alone, was free to devise a way of life in single
harness. He liked it quite as well as the other way. He told himself,
and he told me, that he liked it even better. I believe he did; and I
believe he was relieved by the absence of Albert, whose little daily
regimen, even when directed by competent assistance, had begun to grind
into his father's consciousness. I even believe that the one serious
drawback in Raymond's comfortable summer was the need of studying over a
school for Albert in the fall.
Raymond spent much of his time among his books. He had long since given
up trying to "write anything"; less than ever was he in a mood to try
that sort of exercise now. He looked over his shelves and resolved that
he would make up a collection of books for the Art Museum. They were to
be books on architecture, of which he had many. The Museum library, with
hundreds of architectural students in and out, had few volumes in
architecture, or none. He visioned a Raymond Prince alcove--those boys
should be enabled to learn about the Byzantine buildings, just then
coming into their own; and about the Renaissance in all its varieties,
especially the Spanish Plateresque. He had a number of expensive and
elaborate publications which dealt with that period, and with others,
and he resolved to add new works from outside. He resumed his habit of
going to book-auctions (though little developed at them), dickered with
local dealers who limited themselves to a choice clientèle, and sent to
London for catalogues over which he studied endlessly. He would still
play the rôle of patron and benefactor. Perhaps he foresaw the time when
the Museum would recognize donors of a certain importance by bronze
memorial tablets set up in its entrance hall. Well, he would make his
alcove important enough for any measure of recognition. It was all a
work which interested him in its details and which was more in
correspondence than a larger one with his present means.
II
Before my wife and I left for an outing on the seaboard, news came from
that quarter about Gertrude and Albert. Intelligence even reached us,
through the same correspondent, regarding Mrs. Johnny McComas. Mrs.
Johnny, with her three children, was frequenting the same sands and the
same board walk. It was possible to imagine the arrangement as having
been suggested by Raymond's one-time wife. See it for yourself. Mrs.
Raymond and Mrs. Johnny slowly promenading back and forth together, or
seated side by side beneath their respective parasols or under some gay
awning shared in common, while their authentic children played about
them. What if people--whether friends, acquaintances, or
strangers--_did_ say, "She is divorced"? There she was, with her own son
plainly beside her and her closest woman friend giving her complete
countenance. If a separation, who to blame? The husband, doubtless. In
fact, there was already springing up in her Eastern circle, I was to
find, the tradition of a dour, stiff man, years too old, with whom it
was impossible to live.
It is unlikely that Gertrude, at any time--even at this time--would have
been willing to rank Mrs. Johnny as her closest friend. But Mrs. Johnny
had spoken a good word for her in a trying season, and at the present
juncture her friendly presence was invaluable. She could speak a good
word now--she was, so to say, a continuing witness. The two, I presume,
were seen together a good deal, along with the children, especially
Albert; and Mrs. Johnny, coöperating (if unconsciously) with Gertrude's
mother, did much to stabilize a somewhat uncertain situation.
It was the understanding that Mrs. Johnny was in rather poor health this
summer; the birth of her little daughter had left her a different woman,
and the tonic of the sea-air was needed to remake her into her
high-colored and energetic self. There was nothing especially reviving
in the Wisconsin lakes, to which (placid inland ponds) they had confined
their previous summer sojourns: and the vogue of the fresher resorts
farther north on the greater lakes had not yet reached them. This year
let the salt surf roll and the salt winds blow.
My wife and I, in our Eastern peregrinations, passed a few days at the
particular beach frequented by the two mothers. We really found in Mrs.
Johnny's aspect and carriage some justification for the incredible
legend of her poor health. She walked with less vigor than formerly and
was glad to sit down more frequently; and once or twice we saw her
taking the air at her bedroom window instead of on the broad walk before
the shops. Her boys played robustly on the sands, and would play with
Albert--or rather, let him play with them--if urged to. But, like most
twins, they were self-sufficing; besides, they were several years older.
To produce the full effect of team-work between the families required
some perseverance and a bit of manoeuvring. The little girl was hardly
two.
Gertrude and her mother welcomed us rather emphatically--too
emphatically, we felt. The latter offered us politic lunches in the
large dining-room of their hotel, and laid great stress upon our
_provenance_ when we met her friends on the promenade. We seemed to be
becoming a part of a general plan of campaign--pawns on the board. This
shortened our stay.
The day before we left, Johnny McComas himself appeared. He had found a
way to leave his widely ramifying interests for a few odd hours. A man
of the right temperament gains greatly by a temporary estival
transplantation; and if Johnny always contrived to seem dominant and
prosperous at home, he now seemed lordly and triumphant abroad. He
"dressed the part": he was almost as over-appropriately inappropriate as
little Albert himself. He played ostentatiously with his boys on the
sands, and did not mind Albert as one of their eye-drawing party. He,
whether his wife did or no, responded fully and immediately to the salt
waves and the salt winds.
"Immense! isn't it?" he said to me, throwing out his chest to the breeze
and teetering in his white shoes, out of sheer abundance of vitality, on
the planks beneath him.
There was only one drawback: his wife was really not well. And he
wondered audibly to me, while my own wife was having a few words near by
with Gertrude, how it was that a young woman could, within the first
year of her married life, bear twins with no hurt or harm, and yet
weaken, later, through the birth of a single child.
"She doesn't seem at all lively, that's a fact," he said, with a
possible touch of impatience. "But another two weeks will do wonders for
her," he added: "she'll go back all right."
Prepotent Johnny! No doubt it was a drain on vitality to live abreast of
such a man, to keep step with his robustious stride.
On the forenoon of the day we left, Johnny was walking with Gertrude and
her mother along the accepted promenade. His excess of vitality and of
action gave him an air of gallantry not altogether pleasing to see. His
wife sat at her window, looking down and waving her hand rather
languidly. The Johnny of her belief had come, in part, assuredly, for a
bit of enjoyment. She smiled unconcernedly.
III
Raymond waited back home for Albert, and Albert did not return. We
gathered from a newspaper published near the shores of Narragansett Bay
that Albert, as his mother's triumphant possession, was now being shown
at another resort--and a more important one, judging by his
grandmother's social affiliations; also, that Mrs. McComas, who had not
done any too well on the Jersey shore, was appearing at the new
_plage_--doubtless as the just and sympathetic friend (of social
prominence in her own community) who had stood stanch through
difficulties unjustly endured. Her husband himself had, of course,
returned to the West.
His business called him, even in mid-summer. He had his bank, but he had
more than his bank. There are banks and banks--you can divide them up in
several different ways. There are, of course,--as we have seen,--the
banks that fail, and the banks that do not. And there are the banks that
exist as an end in themselves, and the banks that exist as a means to
other things: those that function along methodically, without taking on
any extraneous features; and those that serve as a nucleus for
accumulating interests, as a fulcrum to move affairs through a wide and
varied range. Of this kind was McComas's. Johnny was not the man to
stand still and let routine take its way--not the man to mark time, even
through the vacation season. Nor could he have done so even if he had
wanted to. But all I need say, just here, is that he came back home
again after three or four days, all told, and that any threatened
embarassment was nullified, or at least postponed.
Raymond heard in silence my account of the doings on the Atlantic shore:
only a wry twist of the mouth and a flare of the nostrils. But as the
weeks went on, and still no Albert, his anger became articulate.
"I shall teach her that an agreement is an agreement," he declared. "She
will never try this again."
Albert finally came home, three weeks late; his mother brought him
herself. The governess transferred him from the hands of one parent to
those of the other; and Raymond had asked my presence for that moment,
as a sort of moral urge.
"Who knows," he asked, "what delay she may try for next?"
He gave one look at the picturesque, if not fantastic, toggery of his
restored child.
"Did you ever see anything like that?" he said scornfully; and I foresaw
a sacrificial bonfire--or its equivalent--with Albert presently clothed
in sane autumn garb.
Albert was followed, within a week, by a letter from his mother. This
was diffuse and circumlocutory, like the first. But its general sense
was clear. If Raymond was thinking of putting Albert into a
boarding-school....
"There she goes again!" exclaimed the exacerbated father. "A matter with
which, by hard-and-fast agreement, she has absolutely nothing to do!"
However, if he was thinking of a boarding-school....
"A child barely seven!" cried Raymond. "Why, half of them will hardly
consider one of eight!"
Still, if he was thinking--well, Mrs. McComas knew of a charming one, an
old-established one, one in which the head-master's wife, a delightful,
motherly soul.... And it was just within the Wisconsin line, not forty
miles from town....
"I see her camping at the gate!" said Raymond bitterly. "Or taking a
house there. Or spending months at a hotel near by. Constantly fussing
round the edge of things. Running in on every visitors' day...."
"Likely enough," I said. "A mother's a mother."
"Well," rejoined Raymond, "the boy _shall_ go to school--in another
year. But the school will be a good deal more than forty miles from
here--no continual week-end trips. And it will not be in a town that has
an endurable hotel--that ought to be easy to arrange, in this part of
the world. No, it won't be near any town at all. I don't suppose she
would take a--tent?" he queried sardonically.
"To some mothers the blue tent of heaven would alone suffice," I
said--perhaps unworthily.
"Rubbish!" he ejaculated; and I felt that a word fitly spoken--or
perhaps unfittingly--was rebuked.
IV
In due season, Albert went off to school, according to his father's
plans; and it was not the school which Adele McComas had hoped to see
Albert enter a little before her own boys should leave it. Raymond,
after another year of daily attentions to Albert's small daily concerns,
was glad to have him away. He did not see his boy's mother a frequent
visitor at this school, nor did he purpose being a frequent visitor
himself. The establishment was approved, well-recommended: let it do its
work unaided, unhindered.
No, Adele McComas never saw Albert at the school of her predilection;
indeed, it was not long after the choice had been made that she lost all
opportunity of seeing anything at all. She withered out, like a
high-colored, hardy-seeming flower that belies all promise, and died
when her little girl was months short of four.
Her name was on the new monument within six weeks. It was the third
name. That of Johnny's father had lately been placed above that of his
mother, and that of his wife was now clearly legible upon the opposite
side of the shaft's base. Some of Johnny's friends saw in this
promptitude a high mark of respect and affection; others felt a haste,
almost undue, to turn the new erection into a bulletin of "actualities";
and a few surmised that had the work not been done with promptitude it
might have come to be done in a leisurely fashion that spelled neglect:
if it were to be done, 't were well it were done quickly--a formal token
of regard checked off and disposed of.
During Albert's first year at his school his mother made two or three
appearances. She was exigent, and she showed herself to the school
authorities as fertile in blandishments. The last of her visits was made
in a high-powered touring-car. Raymond heard of this, and warned the
school head against a possible attempt at abduction.
The second year opened more quietly. One visit--a visit without
eagerness and obviously lacking in any fell intent, and that was all.
It was fair to surmise that this once-urgent, once-vehement mother had
developed a newer and more compelling interest.
She had made herself a figure at Adele McComas's funeral--or, at least,
others had made her a figure at it. She began to be seen here and there
in the company of the widower, and it was reported privately to me that
she had been perceived standing side by side with him in decorous
contemplation, as it were in a sort of transient, elegiac revery _à
deux_, before the monument. It was no surprise, therefore, when we
heard, two months later, that they had married.
"That stable-boy!" said Raymond. "After--me!"
The expression was strong, and I did not care to assent.
Instead, I began:--
"And now, whatever may or may not have been, everything is--"
"Everything is right, at last!" he concluded for me.
"And if they--those two--are put in the right," he went on, "I suppose I
am put in the wrong--and more in the wrong than ever!"
He stared forward, across his littered table, beyond his bookcases,
through his thick-lensed glasses, as if confronting the stiffening
legend of a husband too old, too dry, too unpliable; the victim,
finally, of a sudden turn that was peculiarly malapropos and
disrelishing, the head of a household tricked rather ridiculously before
the world.
Reserve now began to grow on him. He simplified relationships and saw
fewer people. Before these, and before the many at a greater remove, he
would maintain a cautious dignity as a detached and individual human
creature, as a man,--however much, in the world's eyes, he might have
seemed to fail as a husband.
V
John W. McComas, at forty-five, was in apogee. His bank, as I have said,
was coming to be more than a mere bank; it was now the focus of many
miscellaneous enterprises. Several of these were industrial companies;
prospectuses bearing his name and that of his institution constantly
came my way. Some of these undertakings were novel and daring, but most
of them went through; and he was more likely to use his associates than
they were to use him. As I have said, he possessed but two interests in
the world: his business--now his businesses--and his family; and he
concentrated on both. It might be said that he insisted on the most
which each would yield.
He concentrated on his new domestic life with peculiar intensity. His
boys were away at a preparatory school and were looking forward to
college. He centred on his daughter, a future hope, and on his wife, a
present reality and triumph. Over her, in particular, he bent like a
flame, a bright flame that dazzled and did not yet sear. He was able, by
this time, to coalesce with the general tradition in which she had been
brought up--or at least with the newer tradition to which she had
adjusted herself; and he was able to bring to bear a personal power the
application of which she had never experienced. She found herself
handled with decision. She almost liked it--at least it simplified some
teasing problems. He employed a direct, bluff, hearty kindness; but
strength underlay the kindness, and came first--came uppermost--if
occasion seriously required. Life with Raymond had been a laxative, when
not an irritant; life with Johnny McComas became a tonic. She had felt
somewhat loose and demoralized; now she felt braced.
Johnny was rich, and was getting richer yet. He was richer, much, than
he had been but a few years before; richer than Raymond Prince, whose
worldly fortunes seemed rather to dip. Johnny could give his wife
whatever she fancied; when she hesitated, things were urged upon her,
forced upon her. She, in her turn, was now a delegate of luxury. He
approved--and insisted upon--a showy, emphatic way of life, and a more
than liberal scale of expenditure. He wanted to show the world what he
could do for a fine woman; and I believe he wanted to show Raymond
Prince.
Gossip had long since faded away to nothingness. If anybody had wondered
at Johnny's course--a course that had run through possible dubiousness
to hard-and-fast finality--the wonder was now inaudible. If anybody felt
in him a lack of fastidiousness, the point was not pressed. The marriage
seemed a happy solution, on the whole; and the people most
concerned--those who met the new pair--appeared to feel that a problem
was off the board and glad to have it so.
Raymond, on the eve of the marriage, had softened things for himself by
leaving for a few months in Rome. Back, he began to cast about for some
means of occupation and some way of making a careful assertion of his
dignity. At this time "society" was beginning to sail more noticeably
about the edge of the arts, and an important coterie was feeling that
something might well be done to lift the drama from its state of
degradation. Why not build--or remodel--a theatre, they asked, form a
stock company, compose a repertory, and see together a series of such
performances as might be viewed without a total departure from taste and
intelligence?
The experiment ran its own quaint course. The remodeling of the hall
chosen introduced the sponsors of the movement to the fire-laws and
resulted in a vast, unlooked-for expense. A good company--though less
stress was laid on its roster than on the list of guarantors--went
astray in the hands of a succession of directors, not always competent.
The subscribers refused to occupy their boxes more than one night a
week, and, later on, not even that: the space was filled for a while
with servitors and domestic dependents, and presently by nobody....
Raymond went into the enterprise. He put in a goodly sum of money that
never came back to him; and if he coöperated but indifferently, or
worse, he was not more inept than some of his associates. He was
displeased to learn that the McComases had given enough to the
guarantee-fund to insure them a box. And it offended him that, on the
opening night, his former wife, one of a large and assertive party,
should make her voice heard during intermissions (and at some other
times too) quite across the small auditorium. The situation was
generally felt to be piquant, and at the end of the performance people
in the lobby were amused (save the few who had the affair greatly at
heart) to hear Johnny McComas's comment on the play. It was a
far-fetched problem-play from the German, and Raymond had been one of
those who favored it for an opening.
"Did you ever see such a play in your life?" queried Johnny. "What was
it all about? And wasn't _he_ the fool!"
McComas--really caring nothing for the evening's entertainment either
way--could easily afford a large amount for social prestige, and his
wife for general social consolidation. It was little to Johnny that his
thousands went up in exacting systems of ventilation and in salaries for
an expensive staff; but it was awkward for Raymond to lose a sum which,
while absolutely less, was relatively much greater. After a few months
the scheme was dropped; the expensive installation went to the advantage
of a vaudeville manager; Raymond felt poorer, even slightly crippled,
and the voice of the present Mrs. Johnny McComas ran till the end
across that tiny _salle_.
This, I am glad to say, was the last of Raymond's endeavors to patronize
the arts.
VI
Albert's last year at his distant school ended rather abruptly. He came
home, ailing, about a month before the close of the school year. He was
thin and languid. He may have been growing too fast; he may have been
studying too hard; he may have missed the "delightful motherly soul" who
would have brooded over him at the school first proposed; or the
drinking-water may have been infected--_que sais-je_? Well, Albert moped
during much of May through the big house, and his mother heard of his
return and his moping, made the most of it, and insisted on a
visitation.
The child-element, of late, had not been large in her life. Her two tall
stepsons were flourishing in absence; she had had no second child of her
own; little Althea was nice enough, and she liked her pretty well....
But there was her own flesh and blood crying for her--perhaps. So she
descended on the old, familiar interior--familiar and distasteful--and
resumed with zeal the rôle of mother.
Her presence was awkward, anomalous. The servants were disconcerted, and
scarcely knew how to take her fluttery yet imperious orders. For Raymond
himself, as any one could see, it was all purgatory--or worse. Every
room had its peculiar and disagreeable memories. There was the
chamber-threshold over which they had discussed her tendency to out-mode
the mode and to push every extreme of fashion to an extreme still more
daring--for that black gown with spangles, or whatever, had been but the
first of a long, flagrant line. There was the particular spot in the
front hall, before that monumental, old-fashioned, black-walnut
"hat-rack," where he had cautioned more care in her attitude toward
young bachelors, if only in consideration of his own dignity, his
"face." There was the dining-room--yes, she stayed to meals, of course,
and to many of them!--where (in the temporary absence of service) he
had criticized more than once the details of her housekeeping and of her
menu--had told her just how he "wanted things" and how he meant to have
them. And in each case she had pouted, or scoffed, and had contrived
somehow to circumvent him, to thwart him, and to get with well-cloaked,
or with uncloaked, insistence her own way. Heavenly recollections! He
felt, too, from her various glances and shrugs, that the house was more
of a horror to her than ever, and, above all, that abominable
orchestrion more hugely preposterous.
Albert kept mostly to his room. It was the same room which Raymond
himself had occupied as a boy. It had the same view of that window above
the stable at which Johnny McComas had sorted his insects and arranged
his stamps. The stable was now, of course, a garage; but the time was on
the way when both car and chauffeur would be dispensed with. Parallel
wires still stretched between house and garage, as an evidence of
Raymond's endeavor to fill in the remnant of Albert's previous vacation
with some entertaining novelty that might help wipe out his recollection
of the month lately spent with his mother. Albert was modern enough to
prefer wireless--just then coming in--to "bugs" and postage-stamps; but
the time remaining had been short. Besides, Albert liked the theatre
better; and Raymond, during those last weeks in August, had sat through
many woeful and stifling performances of vaudeville that he might regain
and keep his hold on his son. His presence at these functions was
observed and was commented upon by several persons who were aware of the
aid he was giving for a bettered stage.
"Fate's irony!" he himself would sometimes say inwardly, with a sidelong
glance at Albert, preoccupied with knockabouts or trained dogs.
Albert spent some of his daylight hours in bed; some in moving about the
room spiritlessly. He looked out with lack-lustre eyes at the sagging
wires, and seemed to be wondering how they could ever have interested
him. His mother, as soon as she saw him, put him at death's door--at
least she saw him headed straight for that dark portal. She began to
insist, after a few days, that he go home with her: he would be hers, by
right, within a fortnight, anyhow. Her new house, she declared, would be
an immensely better place for him, and would immensely help him to get
well, if--with a half-sob--he ever _was_ to get well.
She knew, of course, the early legend of Johnny McComas, and had no wish
to linger in its locale.
"You _do_ want to go with your own, own mother--don't you, dear?"
"Yes," replied Albert faintly.
The town-house of Johnny McComas, bought at an open-eyed bargain and on
a purely commercial basis, had some time since fulfilled its predestined
function. It had been taken over, at a very good price, by an automobile
company; the purchasers had begun to tear it down before the last load
of furniture was fairly out, and had quickly run up a big block in
russet brick and plate glass. Gertrude McComas had had no desire to
inherit memories of her predecessor; if she had not urged the promptest
action her husband's plan might have given him a still more gratifying
profit.
They had built their new house out on the North Shore. At one time the
society of that quarter had seemed, however desirable to the McComases,
somewhat inaccessible. But the second wife was more likely to help
Johnny thitherward than the first. Besides, the participation of the new
pair in the scheme of dramatic uplift--however slight, essentially--had
made the promised land nearer and brighter. They might now transplant
themselves to that desired field with a certainty of some few social
relations secured in advance.
They had a long-reaching, rough-cast house, in a semi-Spanish style,
high above the water. They had ten acres of lawn and thicket. They had
their own cow. And there was little Althea--a nice enough child--for a
playmate.
"Let me get Albert away from all this smoke and grime," his mother
pleaded--or argued--or demanded, dramatically. "Let me give him the
pure country air. Let me give him the right things to eat and drink. Let
me look after his poor little clothes,--if" (with another half-sob) "he
is ever to wear them again. Let me give him a real mother's real care.
You _would_ like that better, wouldn't you, dear?"
"Yes," said Albert faintly.
It is quite possible, of course, that his school really had scanted the
motherly touch.
"You see how it goes!" Raymond finally said to me, one evening, in the
shadow of the orchestrion. "And what she will dress him in _this_
time...!"
The whole situation wore on him horribly. There was a light play over
his cheeks and jaws: I almost heard his teeth grit.
A few days later Albert was transferred to his mother's place in the
country. Raymond consoled himself as best he might with the thought that
this sojourn was, after all, but preliminary, as Gertrude had herself
implied, to the coming month on the Maine coast or at Mackinac. A change
of air, a greater change of air, a change to an air immensely and
unmistakably and immediately tonic and upbuilding--that, as his mother
stated, with emphasis, was what Albert required.
So Albert, by way of introduction to his real summer, came to be
domiciled under the splendid new roof of Johnny McComas--a roof, to
Raymond's exacerbated sense, gleaming but heavy. Its tiles--he had not
seen them, but he readily visualized them--bore him down. He was not
obliged, as yet, to meet McComas himself. That came later.