Free The Immigrants by Howard Fast Page A

talking to her, and he found him self enjoying the challenge of this strange and somewhat incomprehensible dinner. After the soup, a plate of roast beef and potatoes was substituted for the gold-rimmed, monogrammed plate that had been in front of him. Then a salad with cheese. Then an ice. Then a small plate of what he guessed was rabbit stew, highly spiced. His only comparison was the dinners he had eaten at the Cassalas and the Levys, and he felt that both fami lies ate better food and more sensibly. But he would learn the ritual; he would learn every damn thing that existed in Jean Seldon’s world.
    After dinner, the butler passed cigars and brought out brandy.
    The women rose to leave the room. Jean Seldon said to her father, “Dear Daddy, let me take Mr. Lavette and show him the terrace.
    I’m sure he doesn’t smoke cigars. Do you, Mr. Lavette?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “There. May I?”
    Her mother watched coldly as she took Dan’s arm, and without waiting for an answer, Jean Seldon guided him out of the room.
    “I’m spoiled,” she said to him as they stood on the terrace behind the house, with the great, splendid sweep of the bay and the city beneath them. “You must under stand that. I am the spoiled only child of a very rich man who adores me, and that’s why I do shocking things and get away with it.”
    “Shocking things?”
    “Dragging you away like this and out of the clutches of that stupid Grant Whittier.” She watched him. “You don’t think that’s shocking?”
     
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    “No?”
    “Yes. No. You talked your head off with Grant Whittier, Mr. Lavette.”
    “That was different.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know what to say to you.”
    “Of all the silly things I ever heard! There, I’ve hurt your feelings.”
    “No.” He shook his head, trying to find the proper words. “I don’t know what to say to you. I never knew anyone like you before.”
    “How old are you, Mr. Lavette?”
    “Twenty-one.”
    “And I’ll be twenty-one in six—no, five—months. So we’re the same age, but every boy of twenty-one I ever knew was a little boy—not in size, mind you—but just a kid. You’re very different.
    Do you know that?”
    “No, I never thought about it.”
    “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
    “I don’t know. I suppose I do.”
    “Daddy described you as a sort of roughneck, in clothes that didn’t fit you. You’re not a roughneck at all.”
    “This is a new suit.”
    “That’s not what I meant at all. You are provoking me.”
    “I don’t mean to be, Miss Seldon.”
    “My name is Jean, Mr. Lavette. You may call me that. I shall call you Dan. We have been formally intro duced, so it’s perfectly all right.”
    “I want to see you again,” he said slowly.
    “Oh?”
    “Will that be all right? I told you I’ve never met a girl like you before. I’ve never been to a house like this before. You might as well know.”
    “Indeed.” She looked at him thoughtfully—tall, slen der, elegant,
     
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    coldly and incredibly beautiful. Then she closed her eyes while he waited. The she opened them and smiled at him. “Yes, Dan, you may see me again.”
    When he left the Seldon house, he walked quietly for a dozen paces, and then he let out a howl and began to run. He went down the hill like a loping steer. When he reached the wharf, he leaped into one of his boats, prowled through it, and then sat in the stern staring out at the fog that lay upon the bay. He had no desire to sleep. The whole world was new and wonderful and in credible.
    Maria Cassala gave birth to a stillborn child. Dan went to the hospital and stood by her bedside, while she clung to his hand and wept. At thirty-four, Maria had already left her youth behind her.
    She was stout, her once lovely face puffy and blotched. She clung to his hand with a kind of frantic desperation. The doctors had told her that she would never have another child. She