“Hello, this is a surprise,” Lora had said as he reached the top of the stairs, and now she spoke again:
“You’d better shake your hat and coat, they’re covered.”
He took them off and shook them thoroughly, and preceded her through the door. She followed him into the front room, where he threw his hat and coat on a chair and turned to look at her; she stood almost in the center of the room, with the light from the ceiling fixture shining directly on her; impudently she stood straight in the fullest light.
“Where were you at two o’clock?” said her father.
“I was here. I’ve been here all day.”
“You didn’t answer the bell. Who was with you?”
Her heart jumped a beat. I see, that’s it, she thought, I never thought of that. She shook her head:
“No one.”
“Is anyone here now?”
“Of course not.”
She was looking straight into his eyes, and his gaze met hers. Neither wavered. But suddenly his eyes slanted off downwards, and slowly descending their focus became successively her nose, then her chin, her throat, the pass between her breasts, her abdomen, the apex of her thighs. It was a complete and deliberate violation, and she stood without moving a muscle and watched him do it, knowing only that she should not so stand and submit, she should strike him dead, at the least tear out his shameless eyes and leave the glaring empty sockets as testimony of his punishment. There was a crooked twist to his mouth, and it reminded her of the way Pete looked the day she told him about the baby. That was an insane idea, she thought; certainly there was no resemblance between her father and Pete Halliday, inside or out. Let him look, let him get his eyes full. That was what she had stood under the light for.
“Who was it?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Who is he?”
Well, she thought, what’s the use, I can settle that.
“He’s gone away. To the war. He’s been gone a long while.”
His mouth twisted up again, but he said nothing.
“Cecelia told you all about it I suppose.”
This he disregarded. He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, took a long breath, and said calmly:
“We’re going home on the six-twenty. That’s an hour; you’ve got twenty minutes to get ready.”
“There isn’t any six-twenty.”
“There is the way we’re going.”
Lora didn’t move. “But why go home? I don’t see—”
“Good god,” he burst out, “you don’t mean to say you’re going to argue about it!” At once calm again, he added, “Your mother is at home waiting for you.”
For a long instant she hung on the edge of final and desperate rebellion. This sudden and unexpected proposal bewildered her. Why home; what could be his idea in that? Certainly it sounded harmless enough, but she was suspicious of it. Indeed, now that she saw his face, his unreal composure, his eyes that were hiding behind a film she could not penetrate, she realized that anything he proposed or did would be suspicious, and she wished with all her heart that she had had the courage to act on her impulse of yesterday, after Cecelia’s departure, to pack up and go — lose herself a thousand miles away. Then suddenly all that seemed tommyrot, mere weak hysteria; after all, what else would a father do but take his daughter home, that was natural enough. She remembered her room there, large and airy and comfortable, with windows on the south and east so that the morning sun always came in to greet her, with two big easy chairs and the shelves of books on either side of the fireplace, where she could have a blaze whenever she wanted it, the winter wind whistling around the corner and through the trees, or, in summer, the breeze rustling their leafy branches so close to the open window that they seemed about to come in and dance around the room; and the wide soft bed, all her own, so wide it didn’t matter which direction she lay there was plenty of room, and so soft — oh, that was the bed, for any purpose whatever...
She let her father take her home. He sat on a chair waiting while she packed a suitcase and a bag. After ten minutes had passed he kept looking at his watch and calling to her to hurry, so that she forgot several items which she thought of afterwards on the train; but two things she did not forget: the miniature wardrobe she had assembled during the preceding two months and the contents of the handkerchief drawer. Since Pete’s departure it had again grown to respectable proportions, but it was all in twenties, so she could stuff it into her stocking just above the knee. She made sure it was safe; that was her only insurance against fate.
They went to a railroad station she did not know. At first sight it seemed unfamiliar, and she gazed around at the row of ticket windows and the arrangement of benches in the waiting room to make sure. Immediately she was seized with panic; she stopped dead and refused to move a step. Her father yelled to the porter, who halted to wait for them, and then turned to her and explained. This train did not go home, but was on another line which stopped at Overton. At Overton they would hire a car to drive them home, forty miles over a state road. Did Lora want to arrive at their home station and descend from the train with everyone there from taxi drivers to the ticket agent recognizing her and looking at her? He explained this patiently, and she was touched by the evidence of his thoughtfulness and ingenuity. It seemed a bit over-subtle even for him, but of course he was right; she would have hated that. She walked beside him down the long platform, and they had barely found their seats in the parlor car when the train jerked forward and rolled slowly out of the shed.
They got to Overton after midnight, an hour late on account of the snowstorm. But their real tussle with the storm then began, during the forty-mile drive northwest, directly in the teeth of the blizzard. They had difficulty finding anyone who would undertake it, and finally persuaded a man who owned a little garage on the edge of town and whose only available vehicle was an open touring-car. He put up curtains, but the wind tore them open before they had gone a mile; and a few miles further on they got stuck in a drift. That was what he had put in the shovels for. Ten minutes’ furious work by the two men, while Lora sat huddled in robes and blankets on the rear seat, got them underway again. Four times more the performance was repeated before they got through, and in between these episodes they shoved the wheels stubbornly forward in low or second gear, with a wind of hurricane force, cruelly cold, blinding and stinging them with the icy particles of sleet and snow it drove before it. Once the driver had to fight his way through the drifts to a farmhouse and bring the farmer with a team of horses to pull them back on the road, or at least where the road was supposed to be. This was mad, Lora thought. Plain crazy. They should have stayed at a hotel in Overton. But the driver, a wiry little man with a strong foreign accent and bushy eyebrows which now were shelves of frozen snow, evidently didn’t mind it at all; he would laugh in gay excitement and shout encouragements to the car as it plunged and struggled forward. Lora was certain her feet were frozen.
As they turned into the driveway of their home her father looked at his watch by the dashboard light and announced that it was four o’clock. He paid off the driver, repeating his advice against attempting a return trip until the day came. He wouldn’t, the driver said; he knew a place to go where he could get just what he needed, inside and out. Then Lora wriggled out of her nest of blankets and robes, and her father picked her up in his arms and carried her through the drifts that had piled up to the very door. As they went in a blast of wind and snow whirled in too. The living room was warm, all the lights were on, and logs were blazing in the fireplace; and Mrs. Winter was there, arising from a chair in front of the fire as they entered. More slight and fragile than ever, her eyes red with weeping, a brown shawl around her shoulders, she came a step or two toward them, then stood still, swaying a little it seemed with the dancing light of the fire behind her. Lora knew she had to put her arms around her and kiss her, and she didn’t want to. She was filled that instant with a deep and overwhelming regret that she had let herself be brought home. Home indeed. This her mother! This weak ineffectual ghost — when what she needed was strength against her own weakness. That man would destroy them both yet — her mother was gone already beyond all hope of salvage; and here was she herself back again, and though she was by no means beyond hope she felt herself quivering with a distrust and revulsion that went clear to the center of her bones. Drowsy with cold and exhaustion, the warmth of the room was arousing her blood, awakening her momentarily into a curious trance of excitement and terror; everything was unreal and threatening and dangerous. She should not have come, she should never have let him bring her here.