Seed on the Wind

The puzzle continued for weeks. His invitations became more frequent, always to the same little restaurant not far from Madison Square, and the dinners remained innocuous, never a theatre afterward, always the pleasant digestive ride uptown and the parting at the door. Once or twice he arranged to come early and they drove through the park or along the river for an hour or so with the windows open to the March breezes, he with the collar of his black overcoat buttoned tightly around his scarf, she with her throat open to the swift chill gusts. “He means something deep,” she thought, “or he’d take me to a show or something. Probably he’s going to offer me a job in his office as a filing-clerk; it’s just his thoroughness. Anyway, the dinners are good and Leah loves being left alone with the children.”

He talked correctly and unexcitingly of books, of dogs (Doberman pinschers particularly), of the superiority of Turkish cigarettes, of corruption in politics, of food and music and pictures and English tailors; never of himself or of her. But one evening late in April, as soon as they were seated at their usual corner table and the order had been given, he said suddenly, without warning, without any change of expression:

“You know I’m married.”

Ha, she thought, this is the big moment, he is going to ask me to go to the flea circus. She nodded, laid her gloves on the table, folded her hands under her chin, and watched his face.

“I was married in nineteen-three, twenty years ago,” he went on. “I was twenty-seven, she was a year younger. We have two children: George, sixteen, and Julia, fourteen. They are charming. Two years ago I discovered that I am not their father. Their father is a baritone who sings in a church, and I believe he now also has engagements on the radio.”

He stopped to lean back from the waiter’s arm with the soup, arranged the dish precisely in front of himself, with its edge exactly even with the edge of the table, and picked up his spoon. Lora, saying nothing, poised her own spoon ready for the plunge.

“You probably think I am leading up to a complaint against my wife,” he resumed. “Not at all. Macaulay was wrong when he assailed the common judgment that Charles was an excellent man though an execrable king. Mrs. Kane is an excellent woman, an excellent wife, an excellent mother, but an execrable moralist. She thinks well of her generosity in permitting me to believe that I am the father of two charming and intelligent children.”

He took another spoonful of soup and broke off a piece of bread; Lora, for punctuation, observed:

“She doesn’t know that you know.”

“No.”

“Maybe you don’t.”

“Oh, yes, perfectly. I have the most exact proof; if I had not been blind I should have known long ago. Next month it will be two years since I found out.”

“Well,” said Lora, “maybe it isn’t so bad. And maybe your proof isn’t as perfect as you think it is. It’s a rather hard thing to prove sometimes, there’s only one way really, and since she thinks you have no suspicion...”

That was putting it delicately, she thought; Pete would probably have said, you never know what you’re getting when you eat hash. But Lewis Kane wasn’t listening; he looked at her in silence a moment and then said:

“I want to be a father, Miss Winter.”

In order not to laugh she bent her head and took a spoon of soup. Ingenuous, direct, the words pleading but all the heart’s yearning crushed precisely to the last drop out of the dull even tone, he went on, “I want to have a son. My wife’s daughter, Julia, was named after my mother. I want to have a son and name him Julian.”

“Well... that should be possible.”

“Yes. You’ve been very patient with me, Miss Winter. No doubt you’ve been dreadfully bored these past two months; I couldn’t help it; I had to make sure you were the sort of person I could trust. You have behaved admirably.”

“I? I’ve eaten your excellent dinners.”

He waved that aside. “I have found nothing that is not extremely creditable. Your conduct since Kadish’s death — I knew him, you know — your general manner of living, your care of your children — by the way, what about Albert Scher? Do you see Scher often?”

This is delightful, thought Lora. What a man! What an incredible man! There was no telling; it might easily prove in the end that all he wanted was a wet nurse or a midwife. She was silent while the waiter removed the soup plates and replaced them with others, but Lewis Kane, not waiting, went on with a faint note of something like apology:

“I’ve missed out on Scher. My reports are very vague about him.”

She suddenly remembered something, and looked at him aghast.

“That man in the brown suit who keeps walking up and down in the park!”

“Perhaps. Does he always wear a brown suit?”

“Great heavens!” said Lora, and began to laugh.

“When I want to find out anything,” said Lewis Kane, “I take the most direct and efficient means at hand. I’m glad you aren’t annoyed.”