Seed on the Wind

He burst into laughter. “Hell,” he exploded, “let’s go and jump in the river; that’s what you sound like. We’re not going to a hotel, we’re going to the middle of Africa and live in a hut and eat coconuts, didn’t you know that? No, there wouldn’t be coconuts. We’ll eat alligators. By god, you’ve lost your nerve; something’s taken it out of you. Last night you wanted me; yesterday you wanted me, first thing — as a novelty, I thought, until you set me right.”

“I still want you,” she said desperately.

“Bah. You’re pale with terror for fear I’ll take you up. Don’t worry, my love; keep your legs crossed and I’ll try to control myself. But what the hell did you come for? Put on your swell rags and ride the damn train and stand around waiting for me — what was all that for?”

“I don’t know,” she said. I’m giving up, she thought, I’m done for good.

She looked at him and asked abruptly, almost angrily, “Why didn’t you take me last night? You could have.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yes you could. If you’d held me in that chair one more second—”

“I don’t believe it. Why do you think I let you go? You weren’t having any just then, I saw that, and I swallowed your twaddle about the children and the sacred fireside. Listen.” He grinned at her and she turned her face away; he looked remarkably unprepossessing, she thought, with his teeth yellow from smoking and his white unhealthy face with the cheekbones sticking out. For that, instantly, she despised herself. To look away from Pete because he wasn’t handsome!

“Listen,” he was saying, “you mustn’t take it to heart. Everybody has to sell out sooner or later, and you’ve made a damn good bargain. It’s a very pretty little house, and the rugs and chairs and things are very nice. You’re a good honest woman too; when you got on that train today you really thought you wanted what you were coming after, I’ve no doubt of it.”

“I know I did,” Lora said. “I do. I’ve made no bargain.”

“Oh, yes you have. A good one. I envy you. Look at me, I was trying my hand at a little bargaining myself, and it didn’t work. Your boyfriend was too much for me.”

“You said he told you to go to hell.”

“So he did.” Pete grinned. “I saw him this morning. He said I had stated that I wouldn’t do anything vulgar and unlovely, and he was curious to find out if I meant it. That was worse than telling me to go to hell, it was shoving me in and putting the lid on. He’s no fool at all. That’s why he took me out to see you, he wanted to size me up; and here I am, hung out on a limb, with no one to blame but myself. I’m no fool either, I know what the trouble is, I won’t follow the rules. I despise their damn rules and I never have followed them and never will. One rule is you’ve got to lie; I never told anyone a lie in my life. I use these crude terms in deference to the simplicity of your mental processes. Another is that when you take something you’ve got to pretend you’re paying for it. Odious hypocrisy; to hell with it. What’s the result? I’m lucky to have a shirt. In the end I’ll probably either starve or blow my brains out. If they still had monasteries I’d take a crack at that — provided there were some women handy...”

“You never lied to me,” Lora said. So that was what Lewis had done, she was thinking. Did Pete mean what he said? She tried to remember whether it was really true that he had never lied to her. They were in the park now; she looked out of the window at the trees and grass and thought how dingy and dis-reputable they were compared to those at Maidstone, around her house and up on the hilltop. Did Pete mean what he said? Not that it greatly mattered; if Lewis was to get additional favors he could afford to pay for them if he had to.

She was dimly aware that Pete was talking. The taxi sped smoothly around the curves of the park drives, and Pete talked on. Lora scarcely heard. She had a feeling that she was losing something, leaving something behind forever, and that Pete was taking it. That was what she had come to town for this day, to get it away from him, and now he wouldn’t let her have it. He had pretended to see something in her face — oh, no, he hadn’t. It had been in her face all right and in her mind too; the only question was why she had been fool enough to come at all and what difference did that make...

The sound of Pete’s voice annoyed and exasperated her.

“I want to go back,” she said abruptly.

He grinned. “To a hotel?”

“To Grand Central.”

He looked at her, but she looked away. Ha, she thought savagely, he wasn’t sure after all. She was, though; perfectly sure.

He pulled the window open to speak to the driver again, and at the next entrance the cab wheeled out into Fifth Avenue and turned downtown.