Jerry’s age, you . . .”
She went on talking in a quick, strained voice, but Stanton was oblivious to what she was saying. He perched on the uncomfortable wrought-iron chair, blinking in the glare of light coming through the windows and peered around the garish breakfast room almost as if he never had seen it before. He was conscious of a peculiar and most disconcerting sensation—one which he had experienced more than a few times lately—of being completely alone in his own home even when he was surrounded by people. It made him feel as though he were standing on the edge of a vast canyon and trying to shout across it to someone on the other side, but never getting any answer except the echoes of his own voice. Strange, strange, that it was possible to move so far away from those who were supposed to be so close.
“Stan!” Betsy’s voice broke through his remoteness. “Aren’t you listening to me?”
“Yes, dear, of course.”
“Well, why not answer me then? I said, if you want to catch the nine fifty-five we’d better be getting ready.”
“Oh.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Yes, you’re right.” He drained his coffee cup and rose. “Do you want to take me to the station, or shall I call a taxi?”
“No, I’ll be glad to take you,” Betsy said.
“I can just as well get a taxi, if it’s any trouble.”
“No, I have to go in to do the week-end marketing anyway. I’ll slip into a dress while you finish packing,” she said, on her way out of the breakfast room. “Everything’s in your bag except your dinner jacket. Now come on, Stan, or you’ll miss your train.”
“Yes, dear,” Stanton said, and followed her.
CHAPTER 2
AT THE Westport station, Betsy pulled into the line of cars disgorging husbands for the nine fifty-five, and stopped opposite the door of the waiting room. She flicked the gearshift lever and pressed her foot down on the brake pedal. She put her hand on his shoulder and turned her face toward him. “Well, Stan, here we are. Don’t you want to kiss me good-by? You’ve scarcely said a word since we left the house.”
“Of course I want to,” Stan muttered. “Pull ahead a bit, Betsy; let’s talk for a minute or two. I have something I want to tell you.”
“All right, Stan.” She eased the car ahead a few feet. In front of them other cars were backing and turning in the narrow roadway, and from behind came a staccato honking. “We can’t stop here,” Betsy said. “There’s nowhere to park.”
“Pull over by the side of the platform, just for a second,” he told her. “They can squeeze by, if they have to.” The honking grew insistent, and he added: “I guess they don’t want to, though.”
He put his arms around her swiftly, drew her close and brought his mouth against hers. For a moment she pressed herself toward him and parted her lips for his kiss, with her fingers clasping the back of his neck, behind his ears. The paisley bandana she had been wearing slipped down, and he ran a caressing hand over her shining blonde hair. Beneath his arms he felt her body tremble, and from her throat came something like a sob. Then she drew back.
Stanton grinned at her. His spirits had risen immeasurably during their embrace, and the sense of aloneness which had come over him at breakfast suddenly lifted. She was his girl again; still the wonderful, beautiful Betsy he had married.
“I couldn’t leave you that way, darling,” he said. “I’m sorry I was grumpy at breakfast—probably just worried about the speech and everything, subconsciously.”
“It was mostly my fault, Stan. I’m sorry.”
The honking behind was growing in volume; a police whistle shrilled. At the corner the red-faced cop who was on duty at the station during rush hours shouted, “C’mon! C’mon! You can’t stay there! You’re blocking traffic!”
“What I wanted to say is, when I get back we’ll have a man-to-man talk Stanton said quickly; “take a little inventory of ourselves and look at these things we argue about, and we’ll see that they’re not worth the time of day. Because we don’t have anything at all to really argue about, Betsy. Do we?”
“No, dear,” said Betsy. “Of course we don’t.”
The whistle shrilled again, and the cop started to approach from the corner. Stanton opened the door and got out, dragging his suitcase. Then he leaned across the seat, and Betsy again tilted her face for his kiss and put her hands on the back of his neck. “All the luck, Stan, dear. I know it will be great. I am proud of you.”
“I love you, sweetheart,” he said. “You make me very happy.”
He closed the door reluctantly, and the car slid away. The approaching cop stopped halfway from the corner and said, “Lovebirds!” in a disgusted voice. Stanton smiled at him, and waved once at Betsy just before she turned and went out of sight.
He strode into the waiting room, picked up a Times at the newsstand and emerged onto the platform just as the east-bound Boston express went roaring past, sucking a small cloud of dust from the ballast on the roadbed and causing everyone on the platform to squint and retreat an involuntary inch or two. A cold, damply penetrating northeast wind was blowing, and against the solid gray sky the lower clouds bobbed about and collided with one another. Stanton rather liked mornings like this. He pictured the Sound, a wet field of rugged gray-green furrows, and the muddy whitecaps slapping on the diminishing beaches in front of the summer cottages. It wasn’t real ocean, of course; salt water, but not ocean. He could nearly visualize and hear the real thing—the booming oncoming crash and the retreating sigh of the sledgehammer breakers pounding the granite abutments of North America along the Atlantic coast. It would be nice, he thought, if Betsy arranged so that next week end we could——
“Morning, Stanton,” he heard a voice at his side. “Keeping bankers’ hours these days, I see.”
Stanton recognized the voice, and turned. “Oh, good-morning, Mr. Hazen. Is this your regular train? I usually get the eight-thirty.”
“Why don’t you drop the Mr. Hazen and just call me Chester?” Hazen inquired. “We’ve known each other a long time. I’m only old enough to be your father, after all. Why make me sound like your grandfather? Next thing, you’ll be calling me ‘sir,’ and I’ll have no more to do with you.”
“How about Sir Chester, as a compromise?” Stanton suggested. “An interim arrangement, until I get used to the Chester?”
Hazen chuckled. “Agreed. Lawyers always like a compromise—if it’s favorable.”
Stanton chuckled with him, but he was not quite at ease. Chester Hazen was a local pillar of society and one of the first citizens of Westport, and it was true that Stanton had seen a good deal of him as a fellow member of several political and civic-improvement committees which Hazen either inspired, or financed, or both. But they had associated only as fellow members, not socially. The Hazens belonged to a much older, wealthier and infinitely more settled community within the concentric communities of admen, brokers, successful artists and writers and miscellaneous entrepreneurs. There was plenty of traffic to and fro between the outer concentric rings, but virtually no social penetration of the hard, permanent core of Westport life represented by the Hazens and a few other families like them. Stanton worked constantly
