Seed on the Wind

On her way to the stairs she paused in the dining room to draw the curtains and turn on the light. Outside was the early October dusk, and the brass knob at the end of the curtain-cord was warm from the steam radiator against which it hung. Her hands felt chilly and she closed one of them tightly around the warm knob and then released it again and turned to go. She loathed disquiet, particularly a suspended unreasonable disquiet such as now, unprecedented, filled her breast. With irritation she told herself that she had acted stupidly, but at the same time something within her was saying, oh, no you haven’t, no indeed, you know what you’re doing all right. Ridiculous. She would lie down; no, but she would go to her room and be alone, until dinner. After all, everyone has memories, god help them; given occasion to consider, she would have known that an unexpected sight of Pete Halliday would inevitably arouse an echo of the pain of that old disaster. Damn this silly uneasiness! She should have seen him and let him speak to her...

As she started up the stairs she heard little Julian’s thin voice from the living room, trying to speak slowly so as to get all the words in: “If you say my papa’s ears stick out your nose will fall off and I’ll walk on it with my iron shoes.”

In her room she sat in the chair by the window, with no light turned on, her back straight and her head upright, her hands folded in her lap.

II

Lewis Kane meant money to her. She sometimes idly wondered, without anxiety, what her life would have been like the past six years but for him. She couldn’t have gone on forever selling the jewelry Max Kadish had given her. That was funny about the life insurance; someone had diddled her, no doubt of that, probably Max’s mother and her lawyer. There was a curious thought for you: Max had meant money to her too, but how differently from Lewis! The money Max gave her wasn’t money, it was merely a handy tool, like the needle and thread she used to sew on his buttons. Whereas with Lewis — ha, that was different, Lewis was the tool himself, poor dear.

Pete Halliday had had no money. Long before. She had worked day after day, nine long hours a day. Nothing disastrous about that, nor even about his leaving; but shift the scene a bit, to another bed, another man, another day...

Her thought shied off, darted like a frightened hummingbird around the years, and searching for ease settled again on Lewis Kane.

Her first knowledge of him was lost somewhere in the distant past; she had seen him a dozen times, here and there, of no account, before that day six years ago when a telephone call had unexpectedly come from him to the flat on Seventy-first Street. He had given his name, so clearly and precisely that she understood it the first time, unexpected as it was, and without preamble had asked her to dine with him.

“No, I can’t do that.”

“You mean you don’t care to.”

“No, really I can’t. I never go out to dinner. I have three children to put to bed.”

“But surely there is a maid...”

“Can’t afford one. I never leave them alone except to go to the pawnshop.”

To either the pathos or the humor there might be in that he gave no pause. He said at once:

“I could find a woman somewhere, a trustworthy woman...”

“No, really I’d rather not.”

A week later he phoned again. In the meantime she had remembered things about him, his calm sensible face, his wealth, his air of assured propriety, and she had given some thought to the probabilities and her present situation. She was not bored, she was far from unhappy, but something was stirring within her. The practical difficulty with which she had put him off did not as a matter of fact exist; she had friends, especially she had Leah, Max’s sister. Indeed, she had too much of Leah, who was orthodox, very short and fat, and talked constantly and disconsolately of her dead brother.