In view of the speed with which the low-hung clouds were driving past
the window, there would evidently be no business with ducks that day.
Hodge helped himself to more coffee.
“I wonder what happened to them afterward,” he said.
“Does it matter?” said Penfield. “When an emotional problem is solved,
the others become unreal.”
“You don’t consider poverty a real problem?” asked McCall.
“Only in a social and relative sense. Go look at the natives in the
hill-country of any Latin-American state. They live on rice, beans and
fifteen cents a day, and remain quite happy.”
Hodge said; “I agree that poverty is a minor matter in this particular
case. But it seems to me that you’re assuming too much when you speak of
the emotional problem of that couple as solved. It’s not like a sum in
arithmetic, with a simple answer in definite figures. There are all
sorts of sub- and side-problems involved, to which no definite values
can be assigned. For instance, isn’t the memory of the girl, Leece,
together with one of Lalette’s outbursts of temper, going to produce an
explosive mixture at some point? And aren’t they keeping a good deal
from each other?”
Penfield’s long face was thoughtful. “There are secrets in the
background of every union,” he said. “Even secrets as black as the
murder by witchcraft, and as inexplicable as the failure and recovery of
the Blue Star. But it seems to me that they are like the disagreements
of parties in a politically stable state. Once the essential agreement
to abide has been reached, any difficulties can be resolved or
compromised. Another thing—these people have a capacity for . . . well,
close attunement to each other. More of it than we have. What puzzles
me—” he took a pull at his cigarette “—is a certain preoccupation with
sex.”
McCall laughed. “Since it was the product of all three of us, that
probably came out of Hodge’s mind somehow. Persons of your age and
mine . . .”
Hodge said; “I don’t know where it came from, but I think I can explain
it. It goes with religion, which is so often an outgrowth of sex—or a
substitute for it.”
“What really interests me,” said McCall, “is what happened in a
political sense.”
“Well, the short-range developments seem fairly obvious,” said Penfield,
“and long-range ones are always unpredictable.”
“I wonder if it really exists,” said Hodge, as Penfield had the night
before.
Penfield got up, went to the window, and looked out at the scudding
clouds. “I wonder if we do,” he said.