After Julian’s second birthday she went oftener to the city. There would be shopping to do, or a visit to Anne Seaver, or perhaps Albert would meet her for lunch and afterwards take her to some of the galleries or to a tea at some studio — once it was Palichak’s, and she was pleased that he evidently remembered her so well. But mostly that bored her; on the train on the way home she would wonder idly why she had bothered to go. There was nothing in it. It passed the time. But time passed at home just as rapidly and pleasurably and with less fuss.
At the house in the country Albert Scher was apt to show up at any time. He might come as often as two or three times in a week and then not put in an appearance for a fortnight or a month even. He came frequently on Sunday, when he knew he would find Lewis Kane there.
Unfailingly Lewis arrived on Sunday, throughout the year, just in time for the midday dinner, which was at twelve-thirty precisely; Lillian never missed it more than five minutes either way, and Lewis was never late. He always had something for each of the children, and he was careful that Julian’s gift should not be more desirable or costly than the others. Albert occasionally rode out with him, but ordinarily came on the train somewhat earlier and walked up from the station. All seven of them ate together, Julian and Morris and Panther on high chairs and Roy on a regular chair, so low his chin could have rested on the tabletop. Lora was well aware that Lewis behaved admirably; she knew, for instance, that he thought children should eat by themselves and should not speak when adults were talking, but he continued to accept the arrangement without a murmur and maintained an unruffled temper even when his twentieth attempt to get a sentence out was smothered in the general hilarity. He permitted himself to offer correction only when a personal issue arose between himself and one of them, and he never presumed to impose rules of conduct. This applied to Julian as strictly as to the others; it was of course as remarkable and admirable as to Lora it seemed, but she might have found it all provided for in paragraphs 14 and 15 of the contract which lay forgotten in the wooden box. Sunday evening there would be a light supper just before the children’s bedtime, and when that was over Lewis would go to the kitchen and give Lillian a two-dollar bill — always laying it on the table and always saying, “For the extra trouble”—tell the children goodbye by patting them on the head, take Lora’s hand and hold it a moment, and depart. Albert always rode back to town with him; only two or three times in four years did either ever spend the night, and then the couch in the living room was utilized. Lora wondered what they talked about during the ninety-minute ride. She knew they rarely saw each other in town, but she had a suspicion that Lewis was helping Albert in his newly projected venture as an art dealer.
After four years she remained aloof from Maidstone. There were agreeable casual contacts, but that was all. It was a bridge and golf community, but she hardly knew that much about it. During the first six months she had refused two or three invitations, giving the children and baby as an excuse, and had never returned the four or five calls she had received. This created a little atmosphere, but subsequent accidental encounters at the grocery or the drugstore, or on the sidewalk, had made it so obvious that she was totally unconcerned in the matter, one way or the other, that finally she was accepted on her own terms, and even, eventually, ceased to be a topic of general debate.
She had no arguments with life. At the age of thirty-three she remained as devoid of intellectual attitude as a cat, though she had by no means lacked exposure to that contagion — running all the way from the diluted second-hand humanism of her high school English teacher to the anarchic egoism of Pete Halliday and the unlabelled and confused vagaries of Albert Scher. It was not so much a failure in comprehension as it was a constitutional immunity. When on a Sunday afternoon Albert Scher — if in winter — sprawled on the living-room rug in front of the divan on which she and Lewis Kane were seated, or — in summer — lay on the soft grass under the big maple tree with his heels in the air, and demonstrated that the only progress possible to man was esthetic progress, she knew well enough what he was driving at, but she was as completely unconcerned as if he had been proving that apple sauce was made out of apples.
Or perhaps Albert would be expounding one of his various theories of art. Art, he would say, is merely one aspect of man’s unremitting effort to triumph over nature. That’s all right, Lewis would put in, if by triumph over you mean understand. Not at all, Albert would retort, not understand; conquer, defeat. For centuries man tried to put it over nature by showing that he could surpass her in the beauty of his creations. I’ll show you how clumsy you are, he said to her, look, when did you ever make a woman or a tree or a blending of light and shade as lovely as that? But one day not so long ago it was decided that that game was played out. No more could be done, all the old tunes were stale, so he determined to turn his challenge upside down. You think you’re beautiful, eh? he sneered. My god, let me show you, here’s what you really look like; and he produced a million masterpieces of ugliness. Nature, of course, has remained stolidly unaffected in either case, but meanwhile man has his fun. It is an excellent arrangement that nature is provided with no technique for surrender, otherwise there would be nothing left to live for.
This too would leave Lora totally unconcerned, except that she would be faintly amused at Albert’s idea of what it would take to make life not worth living. She knew well enough, she thought, what would make life not worth living for him: to suffer an amputation of either of two certain flexible members of his body, one of which was his tongue.
For herself the question did not arise. If contrary to all precedent she had elected to sport with an enigma that would have been the last one she would have chosen. She lived, after a fashion; that was her unconscious answer. There was nothing ecstatic about it, but neither was there any despair. She had sufficiently definite attitudes here and there, but they were unprovided with any intellectual foundation; it was merely that regarding certain things she knew how she felt. She was disposed to be friendly toward all women, for instance, but the ones she had known best — her mother, Anne, Leah — she despised for their weakness. Toward men her attitude was a mixture of fear, indifference and admiration — the proportion which each ingredient contributed to the combination depended on the man, but none was in any case wholly absent. Of these and similar phenomena within herself she was completely aware, and she enjoyed watching their development. When for example one Sunday morning Lewis Kane telephoned that his wife was seriously ill and that he would be unable to make his usual visit, and Lora found herself contemplating the possibility of marriage with him in case he should become a widower, it amused her to uncover the reasons why it was more nearly possible to consider him than any other man she knew as a husband. First, she decided, money. Second, the comfortable discipline of his emotions. Next, his practical competence. Fourth — well, money again, probably. But with all those advantages she preferred the present arrangement, should the choice present itself.