“That’s kind of hard on me, as one of the promoters of the American industrial system,” said Sam.
“Oh, you, you old darling, you’re not really an industrialist at heart—you’re a researcher.”
And again she looked at him so appreciatively that everyone was edified at the sight of one happy American couple.
There was, at table and over coffee in the drawing-room, ever so much more conversation. Sam listened to it heartily, while within he was in a panic of realization that Fran, his one security in life now that work and children and friends were lost, had this evening definitely given the challenge that she was bored by him, that she desired a European husband, that the interlude with Arnold Israel, who was more European than Europe, had not been an accident but a symptom.
He watched her turning toward Kurt. He could not ignore her jealousy of Kurt’s pretty little friend, the Baroness Volinsky.
The Baroness was a slim, slight girl with beautiful ankles and curly shingled hair. She had nothing much to say. Throughout dinner, Kurt had turned to her with a hundred intimate approaches—“Do you remember Colonel Gurtz?” and “Vot a first night that was at The Patriot.” Fran had concentrated on the Baroness Volinsky that chilling inquiring courtesy which is the perfection of hatred; had asked abrupt questions about Hungary—questions which somehow suggested that Hungary was an inferior land where the women wore wooden shoes—and had not listened to the answers.
When they chattered their way into the drawing-room and Kurt sat on the arm of the Baroness’s chair, Sam noted that within five minutes Fran was sitting on the other arm of the chair, and that she insisted on speaking French, which Kurt spoke admirably and the Baroness not at all. And shortly thereafter the Baroness went home, followed by the Biedners and the Brauts, then by the violinist, Von Escher, who said almost obsequiously to his wife, “Could you possibly find your way home in safety alone? I must go practise with my pianist—tonight is his only free time.”
Minna von Escher, with a snippishness which surprised Sam, remarked to her husband that she had often found her way home alone!
During the agitated German adieux, Sam murmured to Fran, “We better go too, eh?” but she insisted, “Oh, let’s stay a little while—best part of the evening, don’t you think?”
He didn’t think. He merely looked passive.
Thus there were four together, Sam and Fran, Kurt and Minna von Escher, in that pleasant quiet after the gabble of conversation. In a corner of the room Kurt was showing Fran an enormous, very old-fashioned album of pictures of his boyhood home—apparently a castle in the Tyrol. Fran was in a leather chair; Kurt sat on the floor beside her, constantly bolting up to kneel and point out this old servant, that old schoolroom. They were locked in intimacy, forgetful of everyone else.
Sam talked to Minna von Escher. She had a clown-like face, a Brownie-face, with a snub nose and too wide a mouth, but her eyes opened in such surprised roundness, there was such vitality in her speech, her hands and her ankles were so fine, that she was more attractive than most pretty women. She lay on the couch, full-length, rather petulant, and Sam sat by her, leaning over with his elbows on his legs, like an old man smoking on a fence rail.
“Your wife—she praises European husbands!” said Minna. “If she had one! Oh, they can be charming; they küss d’Hand, they remember your birthday, they send flowers. But I get so very much tired of having my good Theodor make love to every woman he meets! Just now—of course he had to go practise with a man pianist, at midnight—well, he is by this time at the apartment of Elsa Emsberg, and if Elsa is a pianist or a man, she has changed much this past week—and she was my friend in the first place! Oh, I am a European, but I wish once I had an American husband who would not sacrifice me to music and lof-affairs!”
She looked at him in a lively, appraising way, and suddenly Sam knew that she considered him an interesting big animal, that he could make love to her if he liked, and as much as he liked, and he was frightened by it.
He had always been monogamic. Now and then he had been attracted by some other woman, but he had been as shocked as though he were a priest. Perhaps the fact that his intimate life with Fran had not been very passionate had made him feel that the whole matter of sex stimulation was something rather shameful, to be avoided as far as possible. Certainly, when he tried to think about it, he escaped from thought with a gruff, “Oh, a fellow’s got to be loyal to his wife, and not go getting mixed up in a lot of complications.”
But just now he seemed insufficiently afraid of “getting mixed up.” He caught himself noting that Minna had an exquisite body. He thought, “I ought to give Fran a dose of her own medicine.” He looked away from Minna, and growled, “Oh, I guess most husbands in all countries are ’bout equally selfish; just take different ways of showing it.” He looked away, but his look was drawn back to her, and he wanted to take her hand.
“Oh no, you would not be selfish!”
“Sure would!”
“No! I know you better! Big, terrifically strong men like you are always gentle and kind!”
“Hm! I wish you could have met some of the kind, gentle, big fellows from Harvard and Princeton that used to sit on my chest when I played football!”
“Oh, in sports
