Seed on the Wind

Partly it was the evenings at school that kept her from seeing more of the other girls outside of the office, but even when some of them arranged a Saturday night movie party or a Sunday trip to the seashore she usually did not care to go. They decided she was snooty, but she was scarcely aware of it, and certainly was unconcerned. She liked to sew, and made most of her clothes; the movies bored her. Her chief diversions were sewing and reading and automobile riding; the last she loved, but she got more invitations than she cared to accept. She went now and then on a Sunday trip with a handsome youth who was Mr. Pitkin’s assistant, once or twice with a man named Gilstairs, an office manager from the floor below, and somewhat oftener with Steve Adams, one of the field men who had been called in from Canada a year after the war started and was now at the desk of one of the department heads who had enlisted. Around thirty, erect and slender, not much taller than Lora, personable and well-featured save for a nose slightly too flat and muddy brown eyes that never quite opened, he continuously smoked cigarettes and carried in his watch case a photograph of his mother taken many years before; this he had shown to Lora at their second meeting.

There was something about Steve she did not entirely like, something in him that seemed to be saying, be careful, don’t hurt me or I’ll run. That was the impression she got, though she didn’t put it into words; what she knew was that she was always a little ill at ease with him. On the other hand there was something pleasing in his quiet manner, his courtesy in little things, his disinclination to take anything for granted, so that she enjoyed being with him more than with Gilstairs, for instance, who apparently proceeded on the theory that a slight initial propulsion is all that is required for the development of an emotional avalanche. Although this did not frighten Lora it annoyed her; after two experiments she let him apply his theory elsewhere.

What was Steve afraid of, she wondered. He wasn’t exactly shy, she couldn’t call him timid, but when she was with him she was always aware of a sense of fragility, of a necessity to avoid with more than ordinary care the danger of intrusion into forbidden places. There was nothing concrete about it; his warnings were conveyed so subtly that it was impossible to put your finger on one and say, why did he do that? In fact, as Lora grew to know him better she became fairly persuaded that it was all her imagination.

He offered no caresses or solicitations, but as time went on he showed a growing tendency to talk intimately about himself. Lora, he said, was the only girl he had ever known with whom he felt he could talk freely. He stated categorically that he was sexually a virgin, using that word, virgin, which Lora thought absurd and amusing. He had often thought of marriage, but there had been two obstacles: first, no girl had ever sufficiently attracted him; and second, his mother. Was she so opposed to it, Lora asked, because his pause seemed to invite a question. Oh, no, by no means, not at all, he replied; but it had always seemed to him that one of the most important functions of a mother was to set a standard by which other girls and women could be measured, and he had the fortune, good or bad, to have thus acquired a standard that was all but unattainable. His mother had faults of course, for instance she was a little too tolerant of masculine peccadilloes among friends and acquaintances, but doubtless without a slight blemish here and there she would have been unendurable in her perfection. His father was dead, Lora somehow supposed, but it appeared not; he was in fact very much alive, a professor in a technical college who had made quite a name for himself in a minor sort of way. Brothers or sisters? No. None. He returned to marriage. It was really terrifying, he said, to think of marriage. Not on account of the involvement of sex, not at all; though he had never experienced it he had no reason to suppose that he was any different from other men in that respect, and he had yet to learn that any healthy man had died of it; no, the trouble with marriage was its finality; in spite of divorce laws it was in its nature irrevocable. Lora asked what about children, and he looked at her as if he had never heard of such a thing; she had a queer feeling that he was going to begin talking about storks. But it appeared that in connection with this subject children simply had never occurred to him; he seemed quite startled and upset, as if an Einstein had introduced a new and disturbing element into his most searching and abstruse calculations.

He returned to the topic on various occasions. He often referred, as to something which others might deprecate but which he was prepared to defend and justify, to his own lack of experience with sex; and one day he said to her point-blank:

“Of course I don’t suppose you’ve had any either.”