“Why?”
“I won’t tell you. But with all your thinking and all your analyzing people, there’s a lot you miss,” she said.
“I never miss a thing,” he said. “Not a thing.”
“You’re feeling pretty good. You are pleased about Tina.”
“Of course I am. I planned it all.”
“You’re insufferable, positively insufferable. If anybody planned this, I did.”
“Sorry. It was me.”
“In a minute you’ll have yourself believing that,” she said.
“However, I do thank you for the small part you played in it. You were very helpful. I shall reward you with a suitable present.”
“You don’t have to give me any more presents. The only present I want from you is seeing you this way. In really good spirits for the first time in I don’t know how long.”
“Nevertheless I’m going to give you a present. I’ll find something in New York tomorrow that’ll knock your eye out.”
“You’re going to New York tomorrow?”
“A meeting of the candy bar company. Like to come along?”
“No thanks. The thought of leaving this beautiful weather for hot stuffy New York—no thanks. I’d almost like to stay here till the first of October.”
“Through the hurricane season?”
“There may not be any hurricane.”
“True,” he said. “Well, I’m sure Elias White will be pleased to accept an extra three weeks’ rent. Our lease is up the tenth. I’ll speak to the agency. However, if we’re staying till the first of October, one of us ought to go to Swedish Haven just to have a look.”
“A look at what?” she said.
“A look around, actually. We planned to reopen the house on the eleventh of September, but it’ll be three weeks later now. So I think I’ll run over and see how the place came through the summer, and arrange for the watchman and the gardener to keep coming. I’d like to get the place in good shape for Tina’s first visit with Hibbard, whenever that will be. Later on, of course, there’ll be the usual exchange of visits with his family. We ought to do some entertaining for them. They won’t expect much, but a fairly good-sized dinner party in November, don’t you think?”
“Or a dance. We’ve never had a dance in that house, and we can’t go on forever reminding people of Pen and Marian Strademyer. We ought to have a dance at Christmas. Have the Boston people as our house guests, and Emil Coleman’s orchestra.”
“I’d be more inclined to have Markel.”
“No, not for this kind of a party. Emil Coleman is all the rage now,” she said.
“Whatever you say. A dance is your idea. Don’t tell me you’ve been wanting to have a dance all along?”
“No, but I do now, and we’ll never have a better excuse to have one. We’ll invite everybody. Tina’s friends. Your old friends. My old friends. Preston’s friends. The whole membership of the country club.”
“I’ll have to make arrangements with the bootlegger. A party that size, we’ll have to order the liquor well in advance, if we want good stuff. Wimley used to be the caterer. Philadelphia.”
“You’re as enthusiastic about this party as I am,” she said.
“Well, if we’re going to have this kind of party, we have to do it up brown, whatever that means. I remember a party in Fort Perm, when Grace Caldwell married Sidney Tate. Agnes couldn’t go, but I went anyway. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Handsome girl. Still is, I should imagine. They had everybody from the governor to a trainload of people from New York, mostly Yale. Sidney Tate was an Eli. He died several years ago. They weren’t getting along so well. I used to run into her brother, Brock Caldwell. It’s really not too early to start getting to work on an invitation list. A good party is either impromptu, on the spur of the moment, or everything planned well ahead. I, of course, would rather plan ahead. I’ll come back from Swedish Haven full of ideas.”
“And when will that be?” said Geraldine.
“Let’s see. Tomorrow night I’ll be in New York, at the Carstairs. Take the early morning train to Philadelphia. Change trains there and get to Gibbsville in time for lunch with Arthur McHenry, and he can drive me to Swedish Haven. I’ll have all afternoon at the house. Order a taxi to pick me up at the house and drive me back to Gibbsville. There I can have dinner at the club or the hotel. That will give me plenty of time to take the sleeper from Gibbsville. Be in New York early the next morning and get a train to Providence. Andrew can meet me there. I’ll be home in time for dinner the day after the day after tomorrow. Not bad, considering what I’ll have accomplished, and the distance covered. Planning will do it.”
“You’ll be awfully tired of trains when you get home,” she said.
“But I don’t just sit there, you know. I’ll be busy every minute. I like to work on a train. The porter puts one of those little tables in front of you, and if nothing else, it keeps the bores away. What will you be doing while I’m gone?”
“Well, I’ve come to depend so much on Tina for company that I expect to be bored to death. So do come back as soon as you can.”
“If you have any messages for me, the Carstairs tomorrow. After tomorrow, either the Gibbsville Club or Arthur’s office. You have both numbers in your book. Of course you could reach me at the house, the day after tomorrow, between three o’clock in the afternoon and six o’clock in the evening. But I may be outside and not hear the ring.”
“I doubt if there’ll be anything. Tina won’t call us this week.”
“No, they have to get used to each other,” he said.
“Yes, that applies to every married couple, whether they’re young or not so young.”
“I agree with you,” he said. “And when I come back you can tell me what’s on your mind. We have to plan for our future. If anything, more carefully than the young do theirs. I hope yours is going to be with me, but you’d have damn good reason for making other plans.”
“As you said, we can discuss all that when you get back,” she said.
“One of the fascinating things about life is the different levels we can think on at the same time. You and I can plan a big party, to take place four months from now. That’s one level. On another level, a conversation we have three days from now could very well put a quick end to our marriage. It will largely depend on the degree of your discontent.”
“And, since you’re such a great planner, what you plan to do about it,” she said.
“Precisely. But don’t, please don’t spend the next couple of days in building up righteous indignation. If you were to do that, there wouldn’t be much use in my coming back. I might just as well stay in Swedish Haven.”
“I want you to come back,” she said.
“That’s good. I want to,” he said. “And I have to deliver your present. That’s what might be called thinking on three levels.”
“The way your mind jumps around, you don’t stay on any one level for long,” she said.
“Hmm. My mind jumps back to a few years ago when there used to be a slang expression, ‘he isn’t on the level.’ You remember?”
“There was a song. Devil on the level. She’s a devil, on the level. Something like that rhymed devil and level.”
“I’m not very good at songs,” he said. He put down his napkin. “A lot of work to do this afternoon. Anger had come over him and he did not wish to show it. Their conversation had taken a turn that put their relationship on a tentative basis. He had intended to go to bed with her that night, but he could anticipate their self-consciousness and its enervating effect; the limp man and the dry woman, benumbed and hostile. For at least three nights he was to be deprived of the pleasure of her body, and if the conversation on his return revived her resentment, it might be a week or even longer before she wanted him. It was not always necessary for her to want him; he knew that. There had been times when anyone else would have done just as well, and on several occasions their love-making had the character of adultery, for him and for her. (“You were thinking of someone else,” he once said. “So were you,” she said.) But until they settled the problem of her discontent they would be kept apart by surly mental activity, and he had not married her for her mental activity. More’s the pity, he had allowed her to discover that fact.