Clarkton Read Online Free

himself that he would not speak until she spoke first, and it only rubbed his irritation to realize that she knew. It was quite dark now; the rubble of foothills, stone walls, and sparse fields blended into the Massachusetts evening, and above the hard beam of car lights there showed one plaintive band of pink that the setting sun had left. In regular succession, they drove through the small towns, beads on a concrete necklace, following the winding road up into the foothills, almost home before Lois said:
    â€œGeorge, did Clark have a girl?”
    He had dozed a little; he came awake with his hurt gone and tried to think in this new direction.
    â€œA girl? I suppose so—I suppose a good many.”
    â€œI mean—was there a special girl? Was there someone we didn’t know about?” They were coming to the cutoff, where she could go straight ahead, into the town, past the plant, or turn right and go directly out to their house. “You don’t mind if I go straight home?”
    â€œI wish you would,” he said. “What about tonight?”
    â€œI asked Elliott and Ruth for dinner.”
    â€œWill Fern be there?”
    â€œShe said she would. I meant a girl in town, George.”
    â€œI don’t know. What difference could it possibly make?”
    â€œNo great difference, I guess, but it would mean something to me. I would want to know about it. I would want to know who she was and what she was like. Wouldn’t you want to know?”
    â€œNot particularly,” Lowell said.
    â€œMrs. Delara was in to sew on a dress for Fern, and she began to talk about an Italian girl, here in town, who was going around with Clark. It seems that a good many of the people in town knew about it, and I thought I would want to see the girl and talk to her.…”
    She kept glancing sidewise at him, and Lowell could see that she was uncertain of her ground, indulging sentiment, indulging memory, picking in the past for something where actually there was nothing.
    â€œWhy not, if you want to,” he said.
    â€œI asked Mrs. Delara to ask her to come to the house tomorrow for tea.”
    They turned into the gates of the house then, the car lights picking out the bluestone drive, the shrubbery of the grounds, and then one wing of the big, rambling colonial house where Lowells had lived for well over half a century.

7. F ern, who had come home an hour or so be fore, greeted Lowell as he came into the house, threw her arms around him and kissed him. Actually, it was four days since he had seen her; sometimes, their paths just didn’t happen to cross, and this was one of those times, as Lowell knew from the careful lack of reference his wife made to his daughter. Ever since the spring before, when Lowell was advised by the people who conducted Bennington College that it would be better for all concerned if his daughter were to go elsewhere, advised most diplomatically yet firmly, he had refused to face the reality of the slim, pretty nineteen-year-old girl. She was necessary to him, and he let it pause there; since Clark died, she was more than ever necessary to him—Lois knew that as well as he did. If there was a part of her that had an objective reality, he could brush it aside with the personal observation that he could vouch only for what he saw; and he saw what he wanted to see. Fern was medium size, slim, with a very good bust, a shock of very dark hair that she cut short, good legs, a convertible roadster that he had given her on her eighteenth birthday, blue eyes, a membership at the Revere Country Club, a soft voice, and stocks, bonds, and tangible assets to the extent of a million and a half dollars, which would be hers when she was twenty-one years old. She was also someone George Clark Lowell felt he loved a great deal.
    Arm in arm, they walked upstairs to his room. “I went skiing today,” she said, “believe it or not—because there’s snow fifty