Chapter 34

I was lying down in the kitchen, near the stove, on an old rug which Mary-Myrtle had spread for me. She was really a nice girl. My educated nose informed me that she was kind, young and affectionate. When she entered the room I used to rear up and place my forepaws on her shoulders and lick her ears. She liked me. She used to put her arms around my neck and press against me and give me a smack on the back and a “Go on with you, can’t you see I’m busy?”

I was lying by the stove when Winnie Tompkins entered the kitchen. Mary-Myrtle was bending over the stove, fussing with a saucepan of vegetables. I was quietly sniffing with interest the combination of cooking-smells and the scents from the warm spring afternoon. Winnie strolled across the kitchen, took his thumb and forefinger and gave her a hard pinch on her buttock.

“Oh! God!” she shrieked and turned to confront him. “Oh, you!” she observed. “I thought you’d got over all that!”

He whistled between his teeth, put one tweed-clad arm around her shoulders and pressed her to him.

“Go on!” she said, in a half-whisper. “I’ll call Mrs. Tompkins.”

Still whistling, with his free hand he tilted her chin up to his face, stooped over and kissed her. I could see her hands flutter and press against his chest for a moment, then relax, then clutch him fiercely, as her lips thrust against his mouth. I rose and growled.

“Hello!” Winnie exclaimed. “Why if it isn’t Ponto? You jealous again, old boy? We can’t have a moralist around here, can we, Myrtle?”

He turned and kissed her again.

I stalked over and stood, rumbling a bit, beside her, ready to attack if he carried his dalliance beyond decorum.

“Let me go, sir,” Myrtle begged in a hoarse whisper.

“Tonight?” he asked, holding her close.

“Yes,” she sighed. “I’ll come down, sir. Tonight, when the dishes are done and the house asleep.”

He snapped his fingers at me, with an air of assured authority. “Come on, Ponto,” he commanded.

I followed him with murder in my heart, my toe-nails clicking on the parquet floor, my tail wagging with slow servility. He led the way upstairs to my wife’s bedroom. He tapped on the door.

“Come in,” Germaine called. “And here’s Ponto!”

I padded across the room to the chaise longue and lay down beside her. I gave her silk-clad leg a poke with my nose. She smelled lovely.

“Thank you, Ponto,” she said courteously.

I rested my head on my paws and looked at Winnie. He absent-mindedly pulled a cigar out of his pocket, bit off the tip and lighted it, after spitting the shreds of tobacco in the general direction of the fireplace. I could feel Germaine go tense.

“I’m so glad you decided not to go to Hartford after all,” she remarked quietly. “It’s much nicer for you here. Myrtle and I can take care of you and see that you have a good rest. Poor darling, you must need one.”

Winnie blew a heavy puff of smoke toward her bed-canopy. I could tell by the way he answered her that he was feeling his way.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I might as well get a sample of this far-famed suburban home-life you read about.”

She jumped up and put her arms around his neck.

“It’s not so bad, is it, Winnie?” she asked gently. “You know--I suppose it’s silly to tell such things--but last night I dreamed we were going to have a baby.”

“Good Lord, Jimmie!” he drawled. “I hope not. You know as well as I do that we aren’t the kind of people who have kids. If you think there’s any danger of it, there’s a doctor I know in New York who’ll put a good stop to it.”

Germaine’s hand fluttered helplessly at her breast and her face went white and peaked. A sharp whiff of the acrid sense of human anger and fear came from her body. I rose and eyed Winnie steadily. I was careful not to growl.

“Why, I thought--” she began. “The other night, I mean, it was all so--What’s the matter? What has changed?”

He gave a sort of neighing laugh. “Oh nuts, Jimmie! We aren’t the type. Say it’s spring or what-have-you? Just for that are you going to go through hell just to have a little animal that will go ‘Aah-Aah-Aah’ at you?”

Germaine stood up. “Yes,” she said. “I am. If that’s the way these things happen, that’s what I want. If it doesn’t happen I never want to see you again so long as I live. But if it does, it will be my business, not yours. I want this baby. You loved me the other night. You needed me. We needed each other. I can’t throw that away, like a--like a dead cigar butt.”

He thrust his cigar into the corner of his mouth, a la Churchill. “So that’s the way it is, is it?” he demanded. “Okay, but how am I expected to know that it wasn’t Jerry Rutherford--”

“Oh!” Germaine looked at him in utter, white-lipped silence. “You know that can’t be true.”

After a minute she spoke to him quite gently.