“Ten minutes isn’t going to ruin dinner,” said Geraldine. Now that she had the support of Wilma and Bing she was not to be intimidated. She was rather enjoying her own performance as chatelaine.
All the leaves had been taken out of the dining-room table, but five was a difficult number to seat, and the table was still large. “Have you decided where to put everybody, Geraldine? If not, I suggest I have Dorothy on my right, Wilma on my left. Son, you will be on your aunt’s left, and Geraldine, to the right of Dorothy,” said George.
“It reminds me of the open end of Palmer Stadium,” said Bing.
“Palmer Stadium,” said Dorothy. “Do you know that I have never been to Princeton? Sherry went to Columbia. Almost nobody goes there now, but in his day it was well thought of.”
“It still has a very high standing scholastically,” said George.
“Yes, I believe it has, but I wish Sherry’s father had sent him to Harvard.”
“Why?” said George.
“Because nearly all his friends went to Harvard. My two brothers, and so many of his close friends. And it would have done him good to get out of New York. He went to Cutler School, then to Columbia, and an extra year at Columbia Law School. All in New York City.”
“But if he’d gone to Harvard with all his friends, it would have amounted to the same thing,” said Bing.
“That’s the kind of thinking I’d have expected from your father,” said Wilma.
“Now, Aunt Wilma, give me credit for some thinking of my own,” said Bing.
“I will if you stop calling me Aunt Wilma. You’re old enough and I’m young enough to be Bing and Wilma. And actually, I’d have been too young to be your mother, so I don’t consider myself a genuine aunt. As far as that goes, Geraldine wouldn’t have been old enough to be your mother.”
“I unfortunately would have been,” said Dorothy. “Not that I’d object to having you as my son, but I—”
“Age, age, let’s stop talking about age,” said Wilma. “It’s not a very pleasant thing to think about, and I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“As much the oldest member of this party, I agree,” said George. “Having ruled out that topic, we’re left with all the other topics. What shall it be, Dorothy?”
“Well—I’d like to hear more about California,” said Dorothy James. “We visited there ever so many years ago, but we didn’t meet many Californians.”
“There aren’t many, are there? Didn’t most of them move there from somewhere else?” said Geraldine.
“That’s one of the best things about it,” said Bing. “I’m there because I want to be, and I’m staying there because I never want to live anywhere else.”
“That’s exactly the same answer I got from Francis Davis when we were there,” said Dorothy. “Do you all know Francis Davis? You do, Wilma. Do you, George?”
“I know of him,” said George.
“No, Father doesn’t know him, but I do. I see him once in a while in San Francisco,” said Bing.
“Who is he?” said Geraldine. “Is he somebody important?”
“Only two ways. Financially, and socially,” said Bing. “He has all those social connections back East, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he could raise forty or fifty million by Friday, if he had to. He’s an old Beacon Hill Bostonian. He’s in shipping and real estate, banking, insurance, God knows what all. And one of the worst poker players I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve played poker with him?” said George.
“Once a month,” said Bing. “If we played oftener I wouldn’t have to work for a living. But we only play once a month, and never for high stakes. The most anybody ever loses in that game is three or four hundred bucks. But we have fun.”
“Where do these games take place? At the Pacific Union Club?”
“No, God, I’m not a member there. I’ll be lucky to get in by the time I’m forty. No, we take turns playing at each other’s houses.”
“But aren’t you pretty far from San Francisco?” said George.
“Yes, but Francis has property near us, and he combines business with pleasure. We all do, as a matter of fact. I have to go to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Out there we think nothing of driving three or four hundred miles. On a normal day I’ll drive at least seventy-five or a hundred. My office is as far as from here to Reading and I go there five or six days a week. Fortunately I love to drive.”
“And you have got that Rolls-Royce,” said Geraldine.
“Oh, have you got a Rolls? If I come out and visit you, will you take me for a long ride in it? Pen would never buy one. I asked him to, over and over again, but no,” said Wilma.
The first mention of Pen Lockwood’s name, so casual and so curt, acted on the others like an unfair trick, but the sorriest victim of it was Wilma herself. “Oh, Christ,” she said, barely audibly, and looked down at her plate.
Bing put his arm around her shoulder. “You come out to California, and I’ll show you places the natives don’t know about.”
“Thank you,” she said, and let her head rest on his arm. She was quite drunk.
“I always wanted to tour New England on horseback,” said Dorothy James. “You can, you know. You start at Fort Ethan Allen, I believe, and there are maps that show you how to avoid all the main highways. Stay at little country hotels.” By changing the scene she changed the subject, and no more was said of Pen Lockwood. They finished dinner in a condition of disorganization and not as the unit that had been formed when they sat down.
“Will you have a cigar?” said George Lockwood to his son.
“Oh, now don’t you two go off by yourselves,” said Geraldine.
“I don’t think I’ll have a cigar, thanks,” said Bing.
“No, and let’s have our coffee in the little room,” said Geraldine. “You haven’t seen the little room, Dorothy, or you either, Bing.”
“You mean Father’s little room?” said Bing.
“No, the little sitting-room. We never got in the habit of calling it the library, but that’s what we intended it to be. The library,” said Geraldine. “We’ve never called it the library because most of my books are upstairs, and your father keeps his in his study.”
“Didn’t I hear of some movie actress that bought her books by the yard,” said Dorothy to Bing.
“Search me. I’ve never met any of those people,” said Bing.
“Oh, we did! We met Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and they invited us to lunch, but we were leaving the next day,” said Dorothy. “I thought he was charming. I didn’t get to talk to her.”
“Does she still wear those curls?” said Wilma.
“Yes, but I suppose she has to,” said Dorothy. “She must have been very close to thirty when we met her. It was soon after they were married.”
“There we are, back on the subject of age again,” said Wilma.
“It keeps cropping up, but at our age it somehow does,” said George Lockwood. “Who will have cognac? Dorothy?”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Dorothy.
“Wilma?”
“Of course,” said Wilma.
“None for me, thanks,” said Geraldine.
“Me either, but I’ll help myself to some of that whiskey,” said Bing.
“This is a comfortable room,” said Dorothy.
“It will be, I think,” said Geraldine.
“I like what you did with the big room,” said Dorothy.
“Thank you, I like it too,” said Geraldine. “But we don’t use it much. If we entertained more, but George spends most of his time in his study, and I come in here or else I have my upstairs sitting-room. I’ve become a radio fan, and that’s where I have my big set. George thinks it’s a waste of time, but I enjoy it.”