Fortune's Hand (19 page)

There was a silence. Robb looked out to the square of lawn, to the old house across the street, to the oaks, and back where, through the half-opened door between the rooms, he could see his books on the shelves. This place had been his home away from home, and an urgent part of him wanted to stay. But then, the other part—

“So that's the story,” he said abruptly. “I guess I'll have to mull it over some more. Thanks for listening.”

Later in the day when, since this office was not accustomed to keeping frequent night hours, he was preparing to leave, Robb was summoned upstairs to Wilson Grant's room. Immediately, there he saw that the face behind the desk was furious. The voice that met his entrance was, however, controlled and clear.

“I'm told that you have had an offer from Fowler, Harte and Fowler, and that you are considering your resignation from this firm. Is that true?”

“Well, sir, yes, but I've made no commitment and that's why I've said nothing—”

“I should like to know why you are even considering it.”

“The offer, entirely unsought, I assure you, is very tempting. It is half again as much as I am earning here. And still, I am not sure I even want to accept it. I'm sorry that Jim told you. He should not have done so.”

“You were prepared, then, to think about it, then sneak out with two weeks' notice like a janitor or a
typist, whom, by the way, I would completely understand. But not you.”

“I certainly was not planning to ‘sneak' out.” The very word was an attack upon his dignity. “I have never ‘sneaked' anywhere in all my life, and I don't intend to.”

Robb stood tall. He had not been invited to sit down, and now did not want to. Standing, he had an advantage over the man behind the desk.

“Very well, I shall use another word. ‘Dishonest' is perhaps better. I had a right to know that you were dissatisfied.”

“I wasn't dissatisfied. I loved my work. I learned here. I always felt that I was growing here.”

On the wall behind Grant's head hung photographs: Ellen's mother, her smile serene above pearls, Ellen's brother, and most prominently, Ellen with the baby Julie on her lap. The great almond eyes of this beloved pair looked back at Robb as, so it was said, the Mona Lisa's eyes responded to one's gaze.

In this family grouping, there was no place for Penn.

“Noble sentiments,” said Grant, “but not so important as the money I can't afford to pay you.”

Robb shook his head. “If money were that much more important, I would have said yes at once to the Fowler firm.”

Grant's mouth was disdainful. Do I, at this moment, hate him? Robb asked. I have never really hated anybody. And yet, it's strange to recall that in the beginning I held him in true awe; he sat in his house beside the portrait of his ancestor, his twin, men of probity,
honor and—yes, admit it—of position. Deserved position. With such qualities, with all his admirable absence of greed for material things, his charities and good causes, how is it possible for him to be so deficient in heart as he sits here now? He has only ‘heart' for Ellen. Once he made room there for me, too. When Penn came, helpless child, he shut us both out. Then it was that I felt the first inklings, when I turned the key in the lock, of not belonging in that house. Yes, I crushed the feelings, but I never lost them entirely, any more than I ever forgot Eddy's remark about Grant's coattails. Supersensitive? That may well be. Chip on the shoulder? No. That I deny.

“If it's not only the glitter of Fowler's political connections and fancy fees, what else is it?”

He could have answered. I
want money for Penn
. And, to be totally accurate, I
want money for my self-esteem that has been trodden on
. Instead, the sarcasm, the sneer, gave impetus to an even bolder retort.

“It is my realization that you despise me.”

“What? I have never made any complaint about you or treated you without courtesy.”

“You have never complained about my work, it is true, because there have never been any grounds for complaint. But ever since Penn came, you have treated me with courteous contempt, sir. You have ignored the poor child. Perhaps it has just gone on too long for me.”

“ ‘Despise' and ‘contempt' are very strong words.”

“They're what I've felt.”

“Have you been talking this way to Ellen?”

“No.”

“I shouldn't want you to. She's had enough to bear, and I want to protect her from this kind of ugliness. She's my daughter.”

“She's my wife, in case you've forgotten. My beloved wife.”

The two men stared at each other. In another milieu, Robb thought, we would be shoving or using fists. As it was, strong words were their weapons.

“You acquired this wife under false pretenses. You have been told that sixty percent of people like your boy inherit their condition. Sixty percent! And you must have known. You can't tell me you didn't. But you lied. By your silence, you lied.”

Robb's heart was pounding. Hot, bitter liquid, strong as bile or blood, formed in his mouth. “There is no use in going on with this,” he said. “I thank you at least, and at last, for being totally truthful about your feelings toward me. It is better for all of us.” He strode toward the door. “Now, if you will please ask Jim to work out the terms of my departure, so that there will be no inconvenience here to this firm, I will appreciate it. You and I will then have no need for any further meetings. Good night, sir.”

In the hall downstairs, he stopped at the cooler for water. When he had drunk a paper-cupful, he filled it again and smoothed his face with wet hands.

Never, never, would he tell Ellen exactly what had been said here. Yet, with its inevitability, life would be changed for a woman whose husband and father were estranged. Already, he felt her grief, the tangible sore
that would stay with her. I will do everything to make it up to her, he vowed. Everything.

At least now the slate was clean. Grant had made the challenging decision an easy one.

Jasper was putting on his coat when Robb came in and gave him his news, which Jasper heard gravely.

“Robb,” he said, “I apologize for having gone to him with the problem. But I did it with the best of motives. I hoped he would dissuade you before you could make such a drastic move.”

“I understand,” Robb said, meaning it.

“So the die is cast?”

“Yes. Now it is. It has to be.”

“I still say it's a mistake. I only hope you will not regret it.”

“I don't think I will,” Robb said gently.

He would have liked to pour out his heart, to pour out his feelings about Grant, and Penn, and everything, but knowing himself to be a private person, he also knew that if he were to do so, he would be ashamed afterward and wish to take back his words. So he shook Jasper's hand with warmth and promised to stay in touch, after which he went to the telephone on his desk and called Eddy.

“Well, Eddy,” he said, “I've got something to tell you. No more coattails.”

E
llen left Phil Lawson's office with Penn and paused on the hospital's front steps. There came to her sometimes in this place a curious visitation from the past, the feel of that instant when Robb MacDaniel appeared and their not-so-accidental meeting occurred. She smiled now, remembering his hurried gait, which he still had, remembering exactly the heavy weight of the heat, the sleepy silence on the street, the green ribbon on her straw hat, and her impression that he looked like somebody grave and famous—Lincoln, or Robert E. Lee.

“I want a lollipop,” Penn said. “A chocolate one.”

“All right. We'll find one in the park.”

“I'll ride a horse?” he asked, or announced, meaning the wooden one on the carousel.

“Yes,” she said, holding his hand as they crossed the street.

So they would spend the rest of the afternoon. She
had brought crackers for him to crumble and throw to the ducks. They would walk slowly back to the parking lot and drive home in time to meet Julie, who would then be finished with her piano lesson.

In this way, the days were measured out. It was a kind of juggling act to keep things separate that needed to be so, such as Penn's nighttime disturbances and Robb's well-deserved sleep, or Penn himself and the car that was backing out of the garage.… And Ellen shuddered at last week's close encounter, Mrs. Vernon's chilling scream when he had somehow gotten away from her, and most of all, her own collapsing heart.

Yet things were better now, they really were. At eight, Penn was a not-entirely unpleasant four-year-old. You just had to know how to handle him. So she bought the lollipop, helped him climb onto the horse—after some peevish indecision about whether to choose the white one with black markings, or the black one with no markings.

When at last she sat down, she knew she was tired. Perhaps she was not getting enough exercise; it was hard to fit any into the day. Or perhaps it was only mental tiredness, to which she did not want to admit. Once in that diary she had written about it and been so ashamed after Robb had seen it that she had thrown the whole thing away, into the fire. You were brought up in a certain manner, not to complain even on paper, or especially not on paper. Her father had reminded her so just the last time they had been together.

It was hard to live as if she were a wall between two men, placed to keep them apart. She minded it far more
than either one of them did. In the two years since that climactic day, they seemed to have reached an armed understanding. As he had long been doing anyway, the father continued his visits when the husband was sure to be absent; the daughter visited the father in his office at lunchtime. On holidays, she included friends as buffers so that the two men, sitting at opposite ends of the table or opposite corners of a room, did not infringe upon each other's territory.

“He resents me far more than I resent him,” declared Wilson Grant. “He resents me because he knows he hid the truth from us.”

Again and again Ellen let that pass. Her father had already had a second heart attack, and although she saw the total injustice, even perhaps the cruelty of his remarks, she would not argue with him.

“I'm too old to harbor a grudge forever,” Robb would say whenever the subject intruded upon their lives.

Of course he meant by that to show that the other man ought to know better. “His pride is wounded because I finally dared to stand up to him.”

These days Robb was in high spirits. He was a senior associate and in another year or two, would become a full partner, or else, as he explained, they would not have invited him to join the firm. Conducting Ellen through the vast offices that occupied two floors of the impressive building, he had been as pleased as a child with a splendid new toy, and she had been not only touched by his pride, but very proud, too.

In a subtle way, Robb was changing, though not
toward her, for tender as always, he was indeed often more passionate than ever; the change was one of mood, his high spirits climbing at times toward exuberance. When he brought a check home for deposit in their joint account, his fingers touched it as if they cherished the very feel of the pristine paper. Gone were the evenings spent in checking the budget, for now there was more than enough to meet every expense, without need to stretch or calculate. So Ellen was glad for him, glad about his sense of independence, his busyness, his luncheon meetings and conferences with people of national note. He seemed more youthful. She imagined that all this activity might, in a way, be making up for the subdued and quiet years they had been living since Penn was born.

One day he had surprised her with two new cars, one for each of them, bought on the same day. He had already surprised her with half a dozen new suits for himself, made to order at Eddy's place.

“Eddy's right. Now I see the importance of it,” he had explained. “It's important to make an impression. That may sound superficial, but the fact is that a man is judged by his appearance.”

This opinion astonished Ellen. It seemed so unlike him, a reverse, harmless indeed, yet astonishing.

“Not that I mind, for heaven's sake. But I'm curious. You never thought so before.”

“The clientele are different now. Their expectations are different now.”

She supposed it must be so. But she knew little about such things, after all. Writing and art were solitary. You
worked at them surrounded by your own four walls. The two little books that during these last years she had barely managed to squeeze out of her head had been unsuccessful. She had felt when she submitted them that they would flounder and die, which they had done. She had not tried again, and so, even the very limited contact with the business world that publishing had afforded her was no more.

The carousel circled. The rhythmic jingle of its music circled through the repertoire as Penn's face appeared and reappeared. He would readily stay there for an hour if she were to let him, and she let him, giving the ticket-taker, who knew him, a sheaf of tickets at the start. She supposed Penn was not hard to remember: a tall boy for his age, handsome, and obviously well cared for; with his baby ways and his mouth often hanging open, he most probably evoked both curiosity and pity.

A pair of school boys was passing with their book bags on their shoulders. They were only a few years older than Penn. At best, he would never be like them, alert and laughing.… If only there were a school for him within a reasonable distance! It seemed as if the few here didn't even want to try to help him. Couldn't they at least
try
?

Even that nice tutor whom she had coaxed into working at home with Penn had given up teaching him the alphabet.

“I'm not well enough trained for a child like this,” she had apologized.