I Come as a Theif Read Free

Lowder. Everyone who saw him in the campaign recognized that."
    "Oh, I don't say he doesn't do it well, Lee. Of course, he does. Tony does everything well."
    "I thought you were just suggesting that he has no talent for speculating."
    "Well, that's hardly a great art, is it?"
    "It had better be, I guess, if it's what he's doing!"
    "You take one up so fast on things, Lee. I simply meant that Tony may be too nice for politics."
    "Too nice or too soft?"
    "Too
nice,
Lee. I shan't have words put in my mouth. Politicians—successful ones, that is—have to be hard-boiled. Tony would always be worrying about some lame duck. That's why I think he'll do better in his profession. There his lame ducks can pay."
    "I never heard anything so cynical," Lee retorted. She was beginning to be uncomfortable at the prospect of really losing her temper. "Why can't you admit, Mrs. Lowder, that the only reason you don't want Tony in politics is that you don't want him to go to Washington and leave you?"
    "Now, darling..." Tony was beginning, but his mother, quite as angry now as Lee, cut him off.
    "Well, is it so unnatural for a mother to lean on her own son?" Then, after a moment's silence in which they all showed the shock of how far they had gone, Dorothy took a loftier tone. "Don't worry, Lee, it's not going to last forever. One of these days you and Tony will be perfectly free to go to Washington or anywhere else you please. And there may be a bit of money for you, too. Not much, I fear, but a bit."
    "But Tony can't wait, Mrs. Lowder. If he's going to do anything, he's got to do it now."
    "I wasn't suggesting that he would have to wait for long."
    "Oh, in these days people live forever."
    Mrs. Lowder rose with the dignity of an old print of Sarah Siddons playing Queen Katharine at her trial. "Let us hope for some exceptions to that unfortunate rule. Perhaps, Tony, you won't mind helping me to get a taxi."
    When they had gone, Lee saw Isabel in the dining alcove. She had come back to practice and had heard it all.
    "If you're ever fool enough to marry a man with a mother, Isabel Lowder," Lee exclaimed fiercely, "never give her an exit line like that."

2
    What humiliated Lee about the complaint that she inwardly nursed against Tony was that it was the commonest complaint on the American domestic scene: that he did not belong to her as much as she wanted and had not, since their honeymoon. He had not, she was fairly sure, belonged to anyone else—he did not, for example, belong to Joan Conway or even to his mother—but that did not prevent her feeling a lack, over and above (or at least so she fancied) the lack that every human being who loves another human being is doomed to feel in the bottom of that other's response.
    "I know it doesn't do any good, because nobody ever listens to anyone else," her own mother had retorted on the only occasion when Lee had confided in her about this. "But I must still tell you that you're a perfect little idiot. Tony is doing very well as a husband and father, and he's certainly a good son-in-law. Always so polite and interested. I never feel it's perfunctory, though I suppose it must be."
    "But it's not perfunctory!" Lee protested. "It never is with Tony. That's just what I mean. He's devoted to you. Sometimes I think he's devoted to everybody."
    "Thanks."
    "Well, I even think he's devoted to me."
    "Then what on earth are you complaining about?"
    "That he loves us all just the same amount."
    "Really, Lee, you're too ridiculous. Anyway, I can't imagine why people think parents have any influence. You've always been wildly romantic, and I don't think anyone ever accused your father or me of that. But you might do well to borrow a leaf out of our unromantic notebook: 'Let well enough alone.' If I kept picking away at your father the way you pick at Tony, I might find out that he was less amiable than I suppose. Human beings aren't such great shakes, my dear. We all wear masks, for decency's sake.