Seed on the Wind

He frowned. “Last month, Art of Today handed me a hundred and fifty for the article on Van Gogh. Only four thousand words.”

“Yes, I know. It was worth three times that.”

“And what about my experiment? If I contribute nothing I could not expect you to let me see her, to promote the formation of her mind by a natural process, to keep constant watch against the obscene vulgarities—”

“You’ve been here, I think, seven times in the past year. Not so constant. But heavens, you can come as often as you want to. You didn’t think you were paying for it? It’s just that I don’t need the money. Come whenever you like. Come every day.”

“I’m frightfully busy—”

“All right. Whenever you like.”

He shook his head. “I can’t resign my share of the burden. You shouldn’t ask me to. It’s not decent. I should feel restricted, fenced out...”

“All right.” Again she patted his shoulder. “If you insist on it. But just think, fifty dollars a month. Put it away in a sock. Six hundred a year. In two years that would mean a winter in Europe—”

“You’re tempting me, you slut. Get out of here.” He grinned, and suddenly broke into a loud roar of laughter. “If you could see the holes in my socks! Get out of here.”

He opened the door and out he went, back into the living room where Helen, from this day Panther, kneeled over the prostrate doll trying to pour water down its nose.

The next day Lora got out some old dresses, the two thin woolen ones and the grey tweed she had worn when carrying Morris, and even an old favorite from Roy’s time, a beige silk which she had made herself; and tried them on in front of the long mirror on the bedroom door. The silk was far too long, and all of them hung like distorted bags. Surely all that fullness would not be needed! Why is a baby’s outward show so out of proportion to its tiny and fragile frame? At any rate, she thought, nothing could be done now, thank goodness the moths had been kept out — though for that matter she would this time be able to get as many new ones as she wanted. It was fortunate that it would be a winter baby, like Helen and Morris, for otherwise an entire new wardrobe would have been required. Wouldn’t it be amusing if it should happen to hit Helen’s very day. Only she must say Panther. Certainly it would be the same month; Morris had been some weeks earlier. It was nicer in the winter, everything seemed so warm and the warmth was so pleasant. Those suffocating July days with the first one — good god, no, not the first...

As she bent over the bed folding up the dresses to go back into the box she became aware of a presence and, looking up, saw Leah watching her from the door.

“There’s only two bottles,” said Leah.

“Yes,” said Lora. “Roy broke one. Two is enough. I’ll get more when I go out.”

IV

On a day in September which brought the first faint whiff of autumn a telephone call came from Lewis Kane. He had returned that morning, he said, was extremely busy with the accumulation at his office and would be for a week or more. Was everything all right? Perfectly, Lora reported; all departments of the factory were running smoothly. Splendid, he said, he would call again.

Throughout the fall months they met every week or so for a pleasant and unexciting dinner. Lora, expecting every moment to be bored, found to her surprise, that his invitations were always welcome, tried to account for it by various theories all of which turned out to be unsatisfactory, and ended by accepting it with an indifferent shrug. Certainly he was unfailingly courteous and good-tempered, and never intolerably inquisitive. Immediately upon his return he placed a car at her disposal, and a little later got her one of her own, a little dark-blue sedan. She wanted to drive it herself, but he begged her earnestly not to take the risk.

“A pregnant woman is too much of a fatalist to drive a car,” he declared. “The doctrine of absolute determinism is essentially a feminine philosophy, based on the uncontrollable nature of conception. That isn’t original. I’ve been investigating the matter. To tell the truth, Jameson, the specialist at Presbyterian, an old friend of mine, was with me in Canada. He used the word fatalist.”

“A pregnant woman is like any other woman.”

“Nonsense. You don’t believe that at all. Do you now?”

“No.”

“Admirable, I don’t pretend to any right to command, but I do most earnestly entreat you—”

“All right, I won’t.”

So around the park or shopping — sometimes into the country — she went comfortably cushioned on the back seat, with Panther beside her and Morris occasionally on her lap, more often on that of Leah in the other corner, and Roy in front with the chauffeur. Roy, supposed to begin kindergarten this fall, had talked himself out of it by announcing at the end of the third day, not with any bitterness, that the teacher had reprimanded him for putting a paper cow’s tail on the front end instead of the hind one.