“And you don’t want to feel tied down,” he said.
“A car wouldn’t be enough to tie me down,” she said.
Thus a month passed. The weather became a factor in her stay. The word had got around that she was remaining at home, and she was sought after by girls and young men who respected her tennis game. When on her game she could beat any of her Gibbsville contemporaries; she had played a lot with her brother, who had twice won the county singles championship. She had no intimates among the girls she grew up with, but now they reentered her life by way of the country club tennis courts. It was a warm spring, and she could have played every day if she had been willing to engage herself with the tennis-playing set. But she kept them at a certain distance, and she thereby inadvertently revealed to her father that her prolonged visit was something of a rest cure.
She came home from the country club one day while he was having lunch alone on the terrace. “I think I’ll have exactly what you’re having,” she said.
“You always play in the morning, and never stay there for lunch,” he said.
“I don’t always play in the morning, but I make sure that I’m not around there when the drinking starts. I want to play tennis, and not get mixed up in the social side. The social side is cocktails and gossip. To hell with that. If I rush to the defense of Julian English, they think I never got over my crush on him. And good heavens, those same people must have had a field day with Uncle Pen. Think what they’d say if they knew I’d been jilted by a married man.”
“I didn’t realize you were jilted,” said her father.
“That’s how it would seem to them. No, I enjoy the exercise, but otherwise I prefer to vegetate. You aren’t the only one that’s been under a strain, Father. Funnily enough, I thought being here would be a strain, but it hasn’t turned out that way. I’m down to ten cigarettes a day, and I sleep like an innocent babe. Of which I’m neither. I’ll soon be sufficiently recovered to try my luck again.”
“Try your luck at what?”
“That was an odd thing to say, wasn’t it?”
“It may have been very revealing,” he said.
“To me, as well as to you,” she said, and lit a cigarette. “Fourth today.”
“Geraldine and I hadn’t decided what to do this summer, and then when your Uncle Pen died we never seemed to get around to it again. Have you any ideas on the subject?”
“No,” she said.
“I don’t want to be too far away from New York,” he said. “This is going to be a busy summer for me. Uncle Pen’s estate, and my candy company, in addition to my usual dabblings and so on. In other words, we can’t go abroad. Also, we have to face the fact that we’ve been touched by scandal, and therefore we’ll do well to stay away from the so-called fashionable resorts. There’s a place on Cape Cod—”
“Why don’t you stay here? This house is cool, quite high up. Plenty of trees. Swimming pool. Tennis court. What more do you want?”
“Geraldine would really like to get away for a while. And she’s entitled to that. Pen was my brother, not hers, but she fell heir to some of the unpleasantness. As a matter of fact, Tina, I’ve all but signed up for a cottage on the Cape. Nothing very elaborate, and not in any town.”
“Have you seen it?” she said.
“Photographs of it. The house is fairly old. Grey shingles. A small boat goes with it. A clay tennis court. A putting green for anyone who may be addicted to clock golf. And a small stretch of beach for ocean bathing. Very expensive, I might add. But we wouldn’t have to join a club.”
“It sounds ideal. What’s the hitch? Why hasn’t it been rented?”
“It’s owned by a Boston couple, who’d rather not lease it at all than have it rented by a family with children. Small children, of course. They don’t object to daughters of advanced years. I’d be delighted if you’d say you’ll come. It would make all the difference in the world to Geraldine.”
“How did you hear about this place?”
“Through an agency,” he said. “It’s always wise to do things like that through an agency. Our law firm gets in touch with their correspondent law firm in Boston, and the Boston people recommend a real estate agency. All done in very orderly fashion. Everybody knows who everybody else is, but the principals—in this case, me and the owner—never have to meet, unless there’s some reason to. The owner, for instance, knows all he needs to know about me. My credit. My social standing, such as it is. Clubs I belong to. I had an interesting correspondence with the real estate agency. Would you like to take a look at it?”
“Not particularly,” she said.
“Well, it is on the dull side, except as an example of the negotiations I just described. What I care about now is, will you come? Would you try it for the month of July? If you get bored, you can pack up and leave. My offer of a car still stands, by the way. As a matter of fact, if and when we get there I’m going to buy one of those Ford station wagons.”
“Oh, I love them. With the curtains on the side, and those tiny little doors in the back?”
“I’ll buy it there so that the local dealer will make a little profit. Good will, of the sort those Yankees understand.”
“You’ve thought this out pretty thoroughly,” she said.
“I always do, don’t I?”
“Yes, but I never cease to wonder at how thoroughly,” she said. “It’ll be quiet, just like this?”
“That’s the whole point,” he said.
“Then I’ll come for July. As for staying all summer, I can’t say now,” she said.
“Done and done. I’ll sign the lease and mail them a cheque today,” said her father. “Geraldine will be terribly pleased.”
It had worked out beautifully, as things were likely to do with careful planning. His offer to show Tina the real estate correspondence was intended to allay any remote suspicion she might have as to—any remote suspicion she might have. She was sharp. But then she could not have known—only guessed wildly—how very carefully he had been planning, or why.
Basically, he had decided that he wanted her to marry Preston Hibbard. His plans and his planning proceeded from there. He recalled that Hibbard had made a passing reference to Maine as the place where he spent his summers. Cape Cod therefore fitted in perfectly; far enough away from Maine to allay any suspicion Hibbard might have that he was being pursued (and Hibbard would have such suspicions), and yet only a brief motor trip from Boston. Sometime in July, and preferably not on a weekend, Hibbard would be invited to come to the Cape for an informal discussion of the terms of Pen Lockwood’s bequests to St. Bartholomew’s and Princeton. George Lockwood was not an executor of Pen’s estate, but he was better acquainted than anyone else with the details of Pen’s securities and other investments. He anticipated several, if not many, such discussions with St. Bartholomew’s and Princeton.
Partly because of her disillusioning experience with the trackwalker, Tina had graduated from youthfulness to a maturity that a Preston Hibbard apparently was accustomed to in his Boston girls. At the same time she was uniquely attractive—and George had subjected her to the severe scrutiny of a father who had known more than his share of women of all ages. She was tall for a girl (girls seemed to be getting taller in the Twentieth Century), leggy rather than bosomy, but her ankles were slim and her breasts were high and firm. She had fortunately not inherited her mother’s bust. In the prevailing fashion she wore her hair bobbed to the shortness of a man’s haircut in back and at the sides, with a large wave left in front. The fashion was becoming to the shape of her head and the color of her hair, which was the lightest shade of brown next to blond. She breathed through her nose, a not unexceptional characteristic among her contemporaries who had undergone unsuccessful tonsillectomy, and in repose her mouth formed a thin line, placid if not severe. Consequently when she smiled her nearly perfect teeth were a surprise and a reward for people who suspended judgment on the severity of her expression. Preston Hibbard would be getting more than he deserved, but there had to be some inducements to divert him from a Boston marriage. Tina, or her father, would be likely to encounter resistance on the part of Preston Hibbard’s female cousins, since local custom was tolerant of intermarriage between parties of close degrees of kindred. As an out-of-town girl Tina needed all her attributes, and as the niece of Penrose Lockwood she needed something extra. Preston Hibbard’s eccentric brother might be relied upon to provide a scandal of major proportions, but thus far his unconventionality had not brought him to the notice of the police and the press. Indeed, there were in Boston men of middle age who in their youth had behaved with more abandon than Henry Hibbard, and who had so outgrown their wildness that they were immune to the hazards of l’age dangereux.