Fortune's Hand (29 page)

Ellen thought wryly now, nothing and no one but Philip Lawson. With him in mind she had planned this room as her sheltered workplace, rearranging a dressing room that must have been planned for a woman who changed her clothes three times a day. With him in mind, she had managed the move to this house, and done it so gracefully that Robb had come to believe that she liked it.

She was no martyr. It would be ridiculous to think of martyrdom while living in so much luxury. No, it was simply a practical acceptance of reality. She could have gotten her way, with a disgruntled man and a troubled, victimized daughter as the price, but that would have been too steep a price. Not in those precise words had Philip said so, but she had not mistaken his meaning.

He knew—oh, he knew too much! It was possible even that he knew her, Ellen, better than she knew herself. But she must stop playing these tricky little games:
Did he look at me as if—? Did we really look at each other as if—?

She had not taken Penn to see him more than a dozen times in the five years since they had left home. On several Sundays Robb had suggested inviting him for one of their old-time lunches, but she had made excuses, and after a while, Robb had stopped asking.

The outer door closed now with a thundering echo. There was too much marble everywhere; could that be the reason for the echoes in the house? Julie's greeting resounded from below.

“Hi, Penn. Come on, I'll play the piano for you.”

Penn still loved her. But who did not fall in love, first with Julie's open face, then with her open mind and humor, and last, when they knew her, with her open heart? “A treasure,” Robb said.

He came in now and sat down on the sofa to remove his boots. His face had a fine flush from the sun. He looked healthy, and she told him so.

“Nothing like outdoor exercise. I wish you'd try riding,” he said.

“I take long hikes. Julie and I must have covered five miles yesterday.”

“Where? Down by the river?”

“I don't always, but yesterday we did.”

“This is a paradise, isn't it? We stopped the horses a couple of times just to gaze. The house looks positively regal standing alone at the top of the hill.” When she had no comment, for “regal” would hardly have been her adjective, he continued, “A house this size needs to
have land around it. The proportions are wrong otherwise.”

“The yard is very generous, I think. By the way, when are they ever going to get started on some more building?”

“Well, it's still a kind of slack time in this part of the country.” Robb hesitated, shifted himself on the sofa, and no doubt without meaning to, warned her that something was coming. “That being the case, I was thinking that this is the perfect time to take the whole business for ourselves. The more I think, the more the idea appeals to me.”

“Buy the whole thing?” she cried. Her heart fell. And then it beat like a little red-hot engine. “I'm stunned. What can you be thinking of?”

“I think it's plain what I'm thinking of. It's a good proposition, a smart buy.”

A prolonged argument was indeed on the way, and she was already tired. “Robb,” she said, “let me tell you something about yourself. I don't mean to be unkind, but the fact is you are a compulsive buyer, a spender, like some of those people you read about who go through the malls with a dozen credit cards in their pockets, buying stuff they don't need. They like it, so they want it.”

“I am hardly in that position,” he said stiffly.

“Don't act insulted. There are plenty of people about whom you would never guess by their appearance that everything they seem to own, fancy houses, fancy furniture, imported cars, the best of everything—they do not own. Some bank does.”

“That's not our case, and you know it isn't.”

“There has to be an end,” she said, trying to be patient. “We do not need acreage. We are not raising sheep on a ranch out west.”

“You would think I was talking about two thousand acres or something. Plenty of people, not famous people, have estates of two hundred or more.”

“Yes, people of substantial wealth. A man who owns factories, or—”

Ellen's patience was leaving her. There was scarcely a day when he was not coming up with another expensive purchase. Last week it was a greenhouse. Who in the world was going to tend it? Not he, who spent his days in the courtroom or in the office. And not she, who had her own path to follow. And losing her carefully nurtured patience, she burst out, “You have delusions of grandeur! That's what's the matter. You're a lawyer in a small city doing very, very well, but you're not a captain of industry, and why should you be? Why aren't you satisfied the way you are?”

“Must we flounder through all this again? Let's not repeat what we did when I suggested this house in the first place, and see how it has turned out.”

“How has it turned out? I don't like it. And I wonder what some other people think about it. If you or I could be a fly on the wall, we would know what they're saying. I was ashamed before your senior partners when we had the housewarming. What do you think the Fowlers and Mrs. Harte had to say when they were on their way home? It's much more costly than anything they
have. Yes, what do you think they thought? It's a silly, pompous, show-off place, and we don't belong in it.”

He looked as he might if she had punched him. And she was immediately, painfully, sorry. For years she had played her decent part in spite of everything—
everything
—and now she had spoiled it. For the first time she had lost her temper, and she was deeply sorry.

Nevertheless, it was true. Everything she had said was true. But she did not say anything more, and they were both standing there in bewilderment when they heard the piano strike a hard final chord and stop. Julie was coming up the stairs. Neither of them had to tell the other that she must not know what had passed.

So they had a normal lunch, and afternoon, and dinner. In the morning they had the final breakfast, and the final good-byes at the airport.

“It was a wonderful time,” Julie told them. “Love you both. See you soon.”

They kissed her, she waved, and went down the jetway. They waited until her backpack was out of sight. Then, having come in two cars, for Robb needed his own to go on a business trip, they spoke their own cool good-bye in the airport's parking lot and went their separate ways.

Robb headed south toward the Gulf. This powerful, mighty engine, built for the auto routes of Europe, would take him to his destination by late afternoon. Traffic, seldom congested in this area, was exceptionally light, probably because of the hurricane warnings. When he had phoned the office, even his secretary had
told him he was taking a risk. But this was his only free opportunity for the next few weeks. And besides that, he wanted to get away. The argument yesterday morning had left him restless and tense.

Not wanting to relive it, he turned on the radio. The hurricane, with winds of a hundred fifteen miles an hour, was approaching the coast. On the other hand, there was a chance that it might veer outward and dissipate over water. In short, nobody really knew what was going to happen.

He drove on through the familiar terrain, this level land on which he had grown up and learned to know these gray-board hamlets, these busy little towns that served the farms, and the larger towns, actually small cities now, with prosperous streets and pretty new suburbs. He drove with a mind divided, one part alert to the road, and the other dozing, so to speak, out of a wish to escape from the dregs of a bad mood.

His psychological daze was harshly interrupted by a long line of halted cars and the presence of police. Apparently, there had been an event far up ahead, either an accident or some road repairs, that was to keep them standing there. So he shut off the engine and sat back to contemplate the sky ahead. Every few minutes he looked at his watch. Then he saw something. In the line of cars parallel to his, in the car almost neck and neck with his, he saw Lily.

There was no mistaking her. It was not one of those situations in which there is first a shock of recognition, followed by doubt: Is it, or is it not? He had only the shock, without doubt. There were the sandy hair, the
small frame—even in the neat little American car, she looked small—and the profile with its impertinent, upturned nose. All of a sudden, he recalled his old name for her: Flower Face.

He did not know what he felt, although embarrassment was certainly part of it. Damn! If he could only get out of this line! But he was hemmed in all around. If only he had something to read, he could pretend not to see her. The windows in both cars were open. He wondered whether she would say anything to him, and what she could possibly say after all these years, and after everything. He must simply stare straight ahead and not see her.

Yet he could not resist another cautious, quick look. And she saw him. There they were, eyes to eyes … Her face had no expression that could mean anything. Or perhaps this total absence of any expression had some deep sense of its own. Perhaps she was seeing some deep meaning in his own expression, although he did not know what his face might be revealing. He felt only that it was all horrible.

Then the instant was over. The cars, thank heaven, began to move. By any statistical measure, the instant would never be repeated in their lifetimes. As his car rode ahead, he was sweating. Surprised that the encounter should have had such a strong effect upon him, he stopped at the side of the road to drink from his water bottle. Then curiosity, as he gradually quieted, began to replace his agitation, and he wondered about her. Had life made any real change in her? Was she still as soft and malleable as he remembered?

“Malleable.” The word repeated itself in his mind as the car went rolling again. It meant something that you could shape. The opposite word was “resistant,” something you could not shape. That was Ellen. She resists, he thought. I have to argue my way to get what I want. She's a schoolteacher reprimanding an active boy. It's a humiliation. Would Lily have been different? Yes, probably she would. Lily was humble, or was when I knew her. But is this being fair to Ellen? No, it isn't. After all, what appealed to me? She gets what she wants, I said at my very first sight of her. And I got what I wanted when I left her father, didn't I, and when I bought the house, didn't I? Still, I was right. Both times, I was right. Now she is fighting me again.…

He was still thinking and his anger was still smoldering, when, two hours later, he stopped the car. Eddy was standing with a group of men, architects and construction engineers, at the entrance to the partially completed mall.

“I thought you might not be coming on account of the weather,” Eddy said. “We've been down here since yesterday checking on things, but I'm feeling nervous. The latest weather bulletin is bad. All hell is going to break loose in a couple of hours.”

The trees were shaking violently. Through thick clouds the invisible sun shed a sickly light.

“I'd like a tour all the same,” Robb said.

“Of course. We'll take a quick one.”

The mall was a huge, U-shaped structure on two levels. Great empty spaces, partitioned from each other,
lay on either side of the walkway. With pride of possession, Eddy marched Robb through.

“Where the land dips, there'll be a third level area below. We're thinking of a small movie theater. Art movies, maybe.” His enthusiasm leaped ahead. “The ice-skating rink—how's that for a big draw in a climate like this?—will be over there. It's to have mirrored walls. Pretty neat, hey? The latest from the rental office is that we're signing up one national chain after the other. A top-notch restaurant is interested. Come on before the storm hits. You'll want to have a bird's-eye view of the rest. I'll get my car.”

Winding gravel roads cut through oak and pine woods and outlined, as if on a blueprint, the pattern of the new community. Once on a knoll, Eddy commanded Robb to get out of the car and see where the Gulf lay some ten miles in the distance.

“It beats me how much some people will pay for a view of water. Amazing. So what do you think? A bonanza, isn't it? We've struck gold this time, Robb, pure gold. Devlin has the Midas touch. Well, come on back. I think you've met everybody here.”

“I'll say a quick hello and get started. As it is, I won't get home till long after midnight.”

“You're not going to drive back home tonight. In the middle of a tropical storm? You're out of your mind.”

The little cluster of men stood searching the sky, where the weak yellow light had, in the last few minutes, gone dim. How small, how fragile they looked, Robb thought, against the enormity of blue-black sky and boiling clouds!

Somebody said as the first rain spattered, “It looks bad here. But we'll be riding ahead of it, and it's only fifty miles to the hotel.”

Robb wanted to get home. Too much was wrong in a subtle, elusive way between Ellen and himself. It needed to be unearthed, discussed in the open, and settled. He needed to find out what it was.

“I can make it,” he told Eddy.

“Okay, if you insist. Follow us in the van. When we get to the hotel, if you still think it's safe to drive, keep going. Otherwise, come in, have a good feed, and keep dry.”

In the end, the hotel proved to be a welcome sight. Not only was it unsafe to drive, it was almost impossible. Wind rocked the car, and the windshield wipers could not keep up with the rush of the rain. In effect, you were driving blind with only the very occasional dazzle of headlights to show that some other poor soul was out on the road. And leaving the car at the hotel's entrance, Robb entered the safety of the lobby.

Up in his room, he telephoned home. When Mrs. Vernon told him to hold on while she got Ellen, he replied that it was not necessary.

“Just take this number in case I'm needed for anything,” he said, and went downstairs to dinner.