Seed on the Wind

In time things got somewhat complicated. As the children grew into the confused and shifting comprehensions of childhood it became difficult to explain how it happened that whereas Roy’s and Morris’s fathers were dead everywhere, Panther’s and Julian’s fathers were dead only under certain circumstances. At school all fathers were dead — not only that, they were all somehow the same person. At home Panther’s and Julian’s fathers were alive, and they were different people; in fact, they were Albert and Lewis. Then at home did Roy’s and Morris’s fathers, though they remained dead, become different people too? The confusion of course extended to the children’s playmates, the other boys and girls of the village, and from them into the homes, so that it ended by becoming Maidstone’s favorite puzzle, and finally got so inextricably tangled that no amount of research could ever have straightened it out again. So far as the children’s acceptance in their community was concerned all the deliberation and shrewdness in the world could not have managed it better, for Lora was accused of so many things that not a tenth of them could possibly have been true; and Roy and Panther were clever enough not to waste any time in discovering their superiority when it came to a discussion of fathers.

To Lora it was a matter of indifference. The first year or so there was the baby. She discovered it was vastly easier to manage a baby properly in the country than it was in town. But not necessarily more pleasant; now and then, with little Julian in his carriage on the lawn or along the paths of the grove, she would remember the days of the others, in Washington Square or the park or along the piers, with all the people to watch, all the movement and excitement of the great city at her elbow, and a faint regret would flow peacefully across her mind. But this, she knew, was better. With four young children, one still a baby, she was sufficiently occupied so that the stimulation of the city was better at a distance; and if it did now and then get on her nerves a little to be so bound by the wall at the end of the grove and the abrupt termination of the village sidewalk there was always the car and the picnic hamper; the roads north to the foothills, west to the river, or east to the sound. In the summer, when there was no school, they would make these excursions two or three times a week.

After Julian’s second birthday she went oftener to the city. There would be shopping to do, or a visit to Anne Seaver, or perhaps Albert would meet her for lunch and afterwards take her to some of the galleries or to a tea at some studio — once it was Palichak’s, and she was pleased that he evidently remembered her so well. But mostly that bored her; on the train on the way home she would wonder idly why she had bothered to go. There was nothing in it. It passed the time. But time passed at home just as rapidly and pleasurably and with less fuss.

At the house in the country Albert Scher was apt to show up at any time. He might come as often as two or three times in a week and then not put in an appearance for a fortnight or a month even. He came frequently on Sunday, when he knew he would find Lewis Kane there.