Seed on the Wind

During the ride home Lora sat looking idly at the lighted windows and passing cars, her mind on Anne Seaver. It was pathetic and exasperating, she thought, that after four years Anne should still cherish the memory of Steve Adams. Not only the memory, apparently, even a hope — a vague amorphous hope, unfounded and desperate, plainly idiotic. What a waste of passion! A passion that Lora could not begin to understand. Passion was made for action; there was the object, here the purpose, the ultimate reason for both being quite obscure perhaps, but the present intention manifest. But a miserable purposeless passion, with its object so remote and inaccessible that in effect it did not exist at all, was utterly incomprehensible to her. You do not love Roy, Anne had said. Bah, that just didn’t mean anything. She might as well say, you do not love your arm, or your right leg, or your big toe. You love the things you’ve got to have, that’s all. Certainly Anne didn’t have to have Steve Adams; if she did she wouldn’t have lived four years without him — four years of dressing and undressing, of carefully prepared meals, of all the intricate politics, psychic and physical, of a social animal. That wasn’t love, it was a disease, a perversion, a sick clinging to a necessity that did not exist.

Nevertheless Anne was suffering, no pretense about that. Damn Steve Adams. No, that was silly; it wasn’t his fault. Maybe not, but damn him anyway, for it was painful to see Anne suffer. Her husband was an awful clod. Why didn’t he stick a pin in her or something?

In Manhattan the traffic was more than usually congested and moved by almost imperceptible jerks; by the time they reached Seventy-first Street Lora was restless and impatient, for it was past six o’clock and she hated to have the children’s routine disturbed. When they finally arrived and the chauffeur opened the car door Roy tumbled out and fell in the snow, but came up laughing; Panther scrambled out backwards; Lora followed with slow deliberation.

Upstairs there was no light except in the kitchen. The maid came hurrying out when she heard them enter and pressed the switches in the dining room and hall, then helped them with their wraps, shaking off the few snowflakes that had caught them crossing the sidewalk.

“Where’s Miss Kadish?” Lora asked.

“She went out.”

“That’s funny.” Lora pulled Panther’s dress down and brushed back Roy’s hair with her hand. “When did she go?”

“I don’t know. She sent me out for some soap and things and when I came back she was gone.”

“When was that?”

“It was three o’clock, ma’am.”

The woman stood there, not doing anything, not returning to the kitchen. Lora looked at her face, then hurried into the living room, to the little bedroom beyond, and from that into the further one; then through the bath she went to her own room. When she got back to the dining room, having completed the circuit, the maid was there spreading the tablecloth.

“She took the baby with her,” said Lora.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“She didn’t say anything.”

Lora looked at her a moment in silence. “Feed the children,” she said abruptly, and returned to the living room, to the little stand in the corner which held the telephone and directory.

When she got the number a woman’s voice answered. No, she said, Leah was not at home; no, she had been away all afternoon. She might be back for dinner and she might not. Where was she? Nobody could tell that, she might be anywhere.

“I understand. This is Mrs. Kadish, isn’t it? This is Lora Winter. This afternoon I went—”

“You know I will not talk to you, Miss Winter. I ring off.”

“Please! It’s about Leah. Wait, please!”

“You have killed her, too, maybe.”

“Please, Mrs. Kadish! This afternoon I went out with the children and left Leah at home with the baby. When I got—”

“Leah should not go there. She is a bad girl. I tell you I ring off.”

A click ended it. Lora stood a moment with the receiver in her hand, then replaced it on the hook.

“The damn old fool,” she said quietly.

She had never telephoned the police before and didn’t know how to go about it. It was quite simple, she discovered. The voice at the other end, rough and casual and disillusioned, told her that no accident to any baby or woman of Leah’s description had been reported; yes, he would see that the patrolmen in the neighborhood were notified; the baby was in a carriage, did she say? Lora asked him to hold the wire and she hurried to the hall and back again.

“No, not in a carriage, she was carrying him.”

“They’ll turn up, ma’am, they always do.” He took her phone number and said he would let her know of any report.