Book + 

III + 

XII + 

Vance turned over slowly, opened his eyes, pushed back his rumpled hair, and did not at first make out where he was. + 

He thought the bed was a double one, black walnut with carved ornaments and a pink mosquito net, on the wall facing him a large photograph of a fat man with a Knights of Pythias badge and a stiff collar, and a gramophone shrieking out the Volga Boat Song somewhere below. + 

Then the vision merged into the more familiar one of his neat little room at Euphoria, of college photographs and trophies on the walls, and the sound of early splashing in the white-tiled bathroom at the end of the passage. But this picture also failed to adapt itself to his clearing vision, and gradually he thought: “Why, I’m back at Paul’s Landing,” and the sloping ceiling, the flies banging against the pane, the glimpse, outside, of a patch of currant bushes backed by sultry blue woods, came to him with mingled reassurance and alarm. “What the hell⁠—” he thought. + 

Oh⁠—he knew now. That baseball game over in New Jersey had been Upton’s idea. It was a Saturday, the day after Lorry Spear’s visit to the Willows. When Vance got back to the Tracys’ Upton had been waiting at the gate, his eyes bursting out of his head. A fellow had given him tickets: Bunty Hayes, a reporter on the Paul’s Landing paper. They could leave next morning by the first train, take a look round in New York, and reach the field in good time. As it was a Saturday there would be no difficulty in Upton’s getting off. Vance was struck by the change in him: his pale face flushed, his shy evasive eyes burning with excitement, his very way of moving and walking full of a swagger and self-importance which made him seem years older. + 

Indoors, under Mrs. Tracy’s eyes, he relapsed at once into the shy shambling boy with callous hands and boots covered with mud from the nursery. Mrs. Tracy did not oppose the plan, or did so only on the ground of Vance’s health. They had a long hot day before them, and could not get home till ten or eleven o’clock at night. He must remember that he was just getting over a bad illness.⁠ ⁠… But Vance refused to be regarded as an invalid, or even as a convalescent. He was well again, he declared, and equal to anything. Mrs. Tracy could not but acknowledge how much he had gained during his fortnight at Paul’s Landing; and she finally gave a colourless assent to the expedition, on condition that the two youths should take the earliest possible train home, and keep out of bad company⁠—like that Bunty Hayes, she added. Vance and Upton knew it was not her way to acquiesce joyfully in any suggestion which broke the routine of life, and after giving her the requisite assurances they began their preparations lightheartedly. + 

In the morning, when they came down to gulp the cold coffee and sandwiches she had laid out overnight, Vance was astonished to find Laura Lou in the kitchen, in her refurbished yellow muslin, with a becoming shade-hat on her silvery-golden head. “You’re going to take me, aren’t you? I’ve warmed the coffee and boiled some eggs for you,” she said to Vance in her childish way; and it caused him a pang when Upton, with a brother’s brutality, reminded her that she knew Bunty’d only given him two tickets. Her lower lip began to tremble, her big helpless gray eyes to fill: Vance asked himself with inward vexation whether he ought to surrender his ticket to this tiresome child. But before he had made up his mind Upton cut short his sister’s entreaties. “We’re going with a lot of fellows: you know Mother wouldn’t hear of it. What’s all the fuss about anyway? You’ve got that school picnic this afternoon. That’s what you were doing up your dress for yesterday. Don’t you take any notice of her, Vance.” She ran from the room, crimson and half crying; and Vance ate his eggs with compunction and relief. He didn’t want any girl on his hands the first day he saw New York.⁠ ⁠… + 

They were there only a couple of hours, and there was no use trying to hunt up an editor. The most he could achieve was a distant view of the most notable skyscrapers, a gasp at Fifth Avenue and a dip into Broadway, before dashing to the Pennsylvania Station for the Jersey train. From that moment they were caught up in the baseball crowd, a crowd of which he had never seen the like. Life became a perspiring struggle, a struggle for air, for a foothold, for a sight of anything but the hot dripping napes and shoulder blades that hemmed them in. Finally, somehow, they had reached the field, got through the gates, found their places, discovered Bunty Hayes nearby with a crowd of congenial spirits, and settled down to the joys of spectatorship⁠—or such glimpses of it as their seats permitted. It was a comfort to Vance to reflect that he had been right not to give his ticket to Laura Lou; such a frail creature could hardly have come alive out of the battle. + 

The oddest thing about the adventure was the transformation of Upton. Vance would have imagined Upton to be almost as unfitted as his sister for such a test of nerve and muscle; but the timorous youth of Paul’s Landing developed, with the donning of his Sunday clothes, an unforeseen audacity and composure. The fact that Vance didn’t know the ropes seemed to give Upton a sense of superiority; he said at intervals: “Come right along; stick to me; don’t let ’em put it over on you,” in a tone of almost patronizing reassurance. And when they joined Bunty Hayes, who was one of the free spirits of Paul’s Landing, Vance was struck by the intimacy of his greeting of Upton, and by the “Hullo, Uppy boy”⁠—“Say, that the Tracy kid?” of his companions. It was evident that Upton had already acquired the art of the double life, and that the sheepish boy who went about his job at the Paul’s Landing nursery, and clumped home for supper with mud and manure on his boots, was the pale shade of the real Upton, a dashing blade with his straw hat too far back on his pale blond hair, and a fraternity ribbon suddenly budding in his buttonhole. “Wonder if Laura Lou knows?” Vance speculated, and concluded that she did, and that brother and sister carried on their own lives under Mrs. Tracy’s unsuspecting eye. He was rather sorry now that they hadn’t brought Laura Lou after all; it would have been curious to see her blossom out like her brother. But Vance soon forgot her in the exhilaration of watching the game. It was his first holiday for months; for the dull business of convalescence had nothing to do with holiday-making. The noise and excitement about him were contagious, and he cheered and yelled with the rest, exchanged jokes with Bunty Hayes and his friends, and felt himself saturated with the vigour of all the young and vigorous life about him. But when the game was over, and the crowd began to scatter, the vitality seemed to ebb out of him as the spectators ebbed out of the stadium. It was still very hot; he had shouted himself hoarse; they had ahead of them the struggle at the station, the struggle to get into a train, the stifling journey home⁠—and Vance began to feel that he was still a convalescent, with no reserves of strength. At Euphoria, after a ball game, a dozen people would have been ready to give him a lift home; but here he knew no one, Upton seemed to have no acquaintances but Bunty Hayes and his crowd, and Paul’s Landing, where they all came from, was a long way off. + 

“See here⁠—you look sick,” said Bunty Hayes, touching him on the shoulder. + 

Vance flushed up. “Sick? I’m hot and thirsty, that’s all.” He wasn’t going to have any of that lot of Upton’s treating him like a sissy. + 

“Well, that’s easy. Come round with us and have a cool-off. We’re all going to look in at the Crans’, close by here. This is their car: jump in, sonny.” + 

Suddenly a motor stood there: Vance remembered piling into it with Upton, Bunty Hayes, and some other fellows; they sat on each other’s laps and on the hood. A girl who laughed very much and had blown-back hair, dyed red, was at the wheel. Where were they going? Who was she? Vance didn’t care. As the motor began to move the wind stirred in his own hair, driving it back like the girl’s, and life flowed through him again. He began to laugh, and tried to light a cigarette, but couldn’t, because there wasn’t enough elbow-room for a sardine. The others laughed at his ineffectual attempt, and another girl, perched somewhere behind him, lit a cigarette and leaned forward to push it between his lips. They were going to the Crans’, and he found out, he didn’t know how, that these two were the Cran girls⁠—Cuty with the dyed hair at the wheel, and the younger, ’Smeralda they called her, sitting behind him on the hood between two fellows, so that his head rested against her knees, and he felt, through his hair, the warm flesh where her scant skirt had slipped up. Once or twice, after they had left the state highway, the overloaded motor nearly stuck in the deep ruts of the country road, and everybody laughed and cheered and gave college yells till Cuty somehow got them going again. + 

Ah, how good the cool drinks were when they got to the Crans’! It was at the back of the house, he remembered, under an arbour of scarlet runners that looked out on a long narrow yard where clothes were drying. Some of the clothes were funny little garments with lace edgings and holes for ribbon, and there was a good deal of joking about that, and he remembered Cuty Cran crying out: “No, it ain’t! No, I don’t! Mine are crepp-de-sheen.⁠ ⁠… Well, you come upstairs and see, then.⁠ ⁠…” But Cuty was not the one he fancied; and anyhow, since Floss he’d never⁠ ⁠… and he had young Upton to look after.⁠ ⁠… + 

As the shadows lengthened it grew quiet and almost cool under the arbour. The girls had the house to themselves, it appeared, Mr. and Mrs. Cran having been called away that morning to the bedside of a grandmother who had been suddenly taken sick somewhere upstate. “Real accommodating of the old lady to develop stomach trouble the day before the game,” Bunty commented to the sisters, who responded with shrieks of appreciation. “Not the first time either,” he continued, winking at his admiring audience, and the sisters shrieked afresh. The redhaired one was the current type of brazen minx⁠—but the younger, ’Smeralda, with her smouldering eyes and her heavy beauty of chin and throat⁠—ah, the younger, for his undoing, reminded Vance of Floss Delaney. She had the same sultry pallor, the same dark penthouse of hair.⁠ ⁠… + 

Presently some other girls turned up, and there were more drinks and more jokes about Mr. and Mrs. Cran being away. “Guess some of us fellows ought to stay and act watchdog for you two kiddies,” Bunty humorously suggested. “Ain’t you scared nights, all alone in this great big house?” A general laugh hailed this, for the Cran homestead was of the most modest proportions. But it stood apart in the fields, with a little wood behind it and the girls had to admit that it was lonesome at night, particularly since somebody’d poisoned the dog.⁠ ⁠… More laughs, and a burlesque confession from Bunty that he’d poisoned the dog for his own dark ends, which evoked still shriller cries of amusement.⁠ ⁠… Bunty always found something witty and unexpected to say.⁠ ⁠… + 

There was a young moon, and it glinted through the dusk of the bean leaves and silvered their edges as darkness fell. Bunty and Cuty, and the other girls and fellows, wandered off down into the wood. Vance meant to follow, but he was very tired and sleepy, and a little befuddled with alcohol, and his broken-down rocking chair held him like a cradle. + 

“You’re dead beat aren’t you?” he heard one of the girls say, and felt a soft hand push back his hair. He opened his eyes and ’Smeralda’s were burning into his. + 

“Come right upstairs, and you can lay down on Mother’s bed,” she continued persuasively. + 

He remembered saying: “Where’s Upton?” with a last clutch at his vanishing sense of responsibility, and she answered: “Oh, he’s down in the woods with Cuty and the others,” and pulled Vance to his feet. He followed her upstairs through the darkening house, and at the top of the landing she slid a burning palm in his.⁠ ⁠… + 

As his vision readjusted itself and he found that he was in a narrow iron bedstead, instead of a wide one of black walnut, with a portrait of Mr. Cran facing him, he began to wonder how he had got from the one couch to the other, and how much time had elapsed in the transit.⁠ ⁠… But the effort of wondering was too much for him; his aching head dropped back.⁠ ⁠… + 

The recollection of Upton shot through him rebukingly; but he said to himself that Upton hadn’t needed any advice, and would probably have rejected it if offered. “He ran the show⁠—it was all fixed up beforehand between him and the Hayes fellow.⁠ ⁠… I wonder if his mother knows?” The thought of Mrs. Tracy was less easy to appease. He remembered her warning against Hayes, her adjuration that they should avoid bad company and come home before night; and he would have given the world to be in his own bed at Euphoria, with no difficulties to deal with but such as could be settled between himself and his family. “If I only knew the day of the week it is!” he thought, feeling more and more ashamed of the part he had played, and more and more scared of its probable consequences. “She’ll cry⁠—and I shall hate that,” he reflected squeamishly. + 

At last he tumbled out of bed, soused his head in cold water, got into his clothes, and shuffled downstairs. The house was quiet, the hour evidently going toward sunset. In the back porch Mrs. Tracy sat shelling peas. There was no sign of emotion on her face, which was sallow and stony. She simply remarked, without meeting his eyes: “You’ll find some fried liver left out on the table,” and bent again to her task. + 

“Oh, I don’t want anything⁠—I’m not hungry,” he stammered, longing to question her, to find out from her all that remained obscure in his own history, to apologize and to explain⁠—if any explanation should occur to him! But she would not look up, and he found it impossible to pour out his excuses to her bent head, with the tired-looking hair drawn thinly over the skin, like the last strands of cotton round one of his mother’s spools. “Funny women should get to look like that,” he thought with a shiver of repulsion. To cut the situation short, he wandered into the dining room, looked at the fried liver and sodden potatoes, tried in vain to guess of what meal they were the survival, and turned away with the same sense of disgust with which the top of Mrs. Tracy’s head had inspired him. + 

In the passage he wavered, wondering if he should go up again to his room or wander out in the heat. If Mrs. Tracy had not been in the porch his preference would have been to return there and go to sleep again in the hammock. Then he determined to go back and have it out with her. + 

“Can’t I help with those peas?” he asked, sitting down beside her. She lifted her head and looked at him with eyes of condemnation. “No, I don’t want any help with the peas. Or any help from you, anyhow. You’d better go upstairs and sleep off your drunk before Miss Spear and Mr. Lorburn come round again⁠—” + 

“My drunk?” Vance flushed crimson. “I don’t know what you mean⁠—” + 

“The words are English, I guess. And you’ll want all your wits about you when you see Mr. Lorburn.” + 

“Who’s Mr. Lorburn? Why should he want to see me?” + 

“He’s the owner of the Willows. He’ll tell you soon enough why he wants to see you.” + 

Vance felt a sinking of the heart. “I don’t know what Mr. Lorburn’s got to say to me,” he muttered, but he did. + 

“Well, I presume he does.” Mrs. Tracy pushed aside the basket of peas and stood up. Her face was a leaden white and her lower lip twitched. “Not as I care,” she continued, in a level voice as blank as her eyes, “what he says to you, or what you feel about it. What’s a few old books, one way or another? I don’t care if you did take his books⁠—” + 

“Take his books?” Vance gasped; but she paid no heed. + 

“⁠—When what you took from me was my son. I trusted him with you, Vance; I thought you’d had enough kindness in this house to feel some obligation. I said to you: ‘Well, go to that game if you’re a mind to. But swear to me you’ll be back the same night, both of you; and keep away from that Hayes and his rough crowd.’ And you swore to me you would. And here I sat and waited and waited⁠—the first time Upton was ever away from me for a night, and not so much as knowing where he was. And then a second night, and no sign of you. I thought I’d go mad then. I began life grand enough, as your folks’ll tell you; and now everything’s gone from me except my children. And when you crawled in yesterday evening, the two of you, I knew right away where you’d been, and what you’d been doing⁠—and leading Upton into. It’s not the first time you’ve been out all night since you came here, Vance Weston; but I wasn’t going to say anything about the other time, if only you’d have let Upton alone. Now I guess you’d better tell your folks the air here don’t agree with you. And here’s the money your father sent me for your first fortnight. Take it.” + 

She held out the money in a twitching hand, and Vance took it because at that moment he would not have dared to disobey any injunction she laid on him. And, besides, he could understand her hating that money. There was something much more alarming to him in the wrath of this mild creature than in the explosions of the choleric. When Mr. Weston was angry Vance knew it bucked him up like a cocktail; but Mrs. Tracy’s anger clearly caused her suffering instead of relief, was only one more misery in a life made up of them. “If it hurts her to keep that money I’d better take it,” he thought vaguely. + 

“You mean I’d better go?” he asked. + 

“You’d better go,” she flung back with white lips. + 

“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of saying. It was awfully unjust about Upton, but the boy was his junior by two or three years, and of course, if his mother didn’t know⁠ ⁠… + 

“All right, I’ll go if you say so. Is this Monday or Tuesday?” + 

“It’s Tuesday, and near suppertime,” said Mrs. Tracy contemptuously. “I trust you’ve enjoyed your sleep.” She gathered up the basket of pods and the bowl of shelled peas, and walked into the kitchen. Vance stood gazing after her with a mind emptied of all willpower. It seemed incredible that three nights should have passed since he and Upton had set out so lightheartedly for the ball game. He had always hated the idea of drunken bouts⁠—had never been in one like this since his freshman year. His self-disgust seemed to cling to every part of him, like a bad taste in the mouth or a smell of stale tobacco in the clothes. He didn’t know what had become of the Vance of the mountain pool and of the library at the Willows.⁠ ⁠… + 

The Willows! The name suddenly recalled Mrs. Tracy’s menacing allusion. What had she meant by saying that he had taken old Mr. Lorburn’s books? She must have lost her head, worrying over Upton. He had left the books in a mess, the evening before the ball game; he remembered that. He had wanted to go back and straighten them out, and Lorry Spear had dissuaded him; said it was too dark, and it wouldn’t do, in that old house, to light a candle. And now it would seem that the absentee owner of the place, who, according to Miss Spear, never came there, had turned up unexpectedly, and found things in disorder. Well, Vance had to own that the fault was his; he would have liked to see Miss Spear, and tell her so, before leaving. But the pale hostility of Mrs. Tracy’s face seemed to thrust him out of her door, out of Paul’s Landing. He thought to himself that the easiest thing would be to pack up and go at once⁠—he did not want to sit at the table again with that face opposite to him. And Upton, the dirty sneak, would be afraid, he felt sure, to say a word in his defence⁠ ⁠… to tell his mother that the Hayes gang, and the Cran girls, were old acquaintances.⁠ ⁠… “No, I’ll go now,” Vance thought. + 

He went up to his room, packed up his clothes, and jammed his heap of scribbled papers in on top of them; then he leaned for a moment in the window and looked out to the hills. Up there, behind that motionless mask of trees, lived the girl with whom he had wandered in another world. He would have liked to see her again, to be with her just once on those rocks facing the sunrise.⁠ ⁠… Well⁠ ⁠… and how was he going to get his things down to the station? He guessed he was strong enough by this time to lug them down the lane to the trolley⁠ ⁠… He started downstairs with the suitcase and the unwieldy old bag into which his mother, at the last moment, had crammed a lot of useless stuff. The sound of the bags bumping against the stairs brought Mrs. Tracy to the kitchen door. She stared at Vance, surprised: “Where are you going?” + 

Vance said he was going to New York. She looked a little frightened. “Oh, but you must wait till tomorrow. I didn’t mean⁠—” + 

“I’d rather go today,” he answered coldly. + 

She wiped her hands on her apron. “There’s no one to help you to carry your things to the trolley. I didn’t mean⁠—” + 

“I guess I’ll go,” Vance repeated. He walked a little way down the garden path and then turned back to Mrs. Tracy. “I’d like to thank you for your kindness while I’ve been here,” he said; and she stammered again: “But you don’t understand⁠ ⁠… I didn’t mean⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But I do,” said Vance. He shouldered his bags and walked to the gate. Mrs. Tracy stood crying in the porch, and then hurried in and shut the door behind her. Vance trudged along the rutty lane, measuring his weakness by the way the weight of his bags increased with every step. The perspiration was streaming down his face when he reached the corner of the turnpike, and he sat down under the same thorn tree where, so short a time ago, he had waited in the summer darkness for Halo Spear. Even the memory of that day was obscured for him by what had happened since. He did not even like to think of Miss Spear’s touch on his arm as she turned him toward the sunrise, or of the way she had looked as she sat by the pool leaning her head on her hand and listening while he recited his poems to her. All that seemed to belong to the far-off world of the hills, the world he had voluntarily forsaken, he didn’t know why.⁠ ⁠… + 

The trolley came, and he scrambled in and was carried to the station. When he got there he found that the next train for New York was not leaving for an hour and a half. He deposited his property in the baggage room and, wandering out again, stood aimlessly in the square, where the same tired horses with discoloured manes were swinging their heads to and fro under the thin shade of the locust boughs. It seemed months since he had first got out of the train, and seen that same square and those old-fashioned vehicles and languid horses. He remembered his shock of disappointment, and was surprised to find that he now felt a choking homesickness at the idea of looking at it all for the last time. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might still be able to walk as far as the Willows and have a last glimpse at its queer bracketed towers and balconies. He could not have told why he wanted to do this: the impulse was involuntary. Perhaps it was because his hours in that shadowy library had lifted him to other pinnacles, higher even than Thundertop. + 

He walked from the station to the main street, and at the corner was startled by the familiar yelp of the Eaglewood motor. His heart turned over at the thought that it might be Miss Spear. He said to himself: “Perhaps if she sees me she’ll stop and tell me she’s sorry for what’s happened”; and he softened at the memory of her lavish atonements. But when the motor disengaged itself from the traffic he found there was no one in it but Jacob. Vance was about to walk on, but he saw Jacob signalling. The thought started up: “He may have a message⁠—a letter,” and his heart beat in that confused way it had since his illness. Jacob drew up. “See here, I was looking for you. I’ve been round to the Tracys’. You get right in here with me.” + 

“Get in with you⁠—why?” + 

“ ’Cos the folks’ve sent me to bring you over to the Willows. They’re waiting for you there now. They said I was to go to your place and tell you you was to come right off.” + 

The blood rushed to Vance’s forehead, and his softened mood gave way to resistance. Who were these people, to order him about in this way? Did they really suppose that he was at their beck and call? “Waiting for me? What for? I’m leaving for New York. Mrs. Tracy has the keys of the Willows. I’ve got nothing to do with it.” + 

Jacob took off his straw hat and scratched his head perplexedly. “Miss Halo she said you was to come. She said: ‘You’ve got to bring him, dead or alive.’ ” + 

Jacob’s face expressed nothing; neither curiosity nor comprehension disfigured its supreme passiveness. His indifference gave Vance time to collect himself. He burst into a laugh. “Dead or alive⁠—” the phrase was so like her! “Oh, I’m alive enough. And I’ll come along with you if she says so.” In his heart he knew Miss Spear was right: it was his business to see her again, to explain, to excuse himself. He had failed her shamefully⁠ ⁠… he hadn’t done the job she had entrusted him with⁠ ⁠… he had left the books in disorder. “All right⁠—I’ll go,” he repeated. He knew there was a train for New York later in the evening. “Anyhow,” he thought, “I’m done with the Tracys.⁠ ⁠…” + 

XIII + 

The door of the house stood wide. The afternoon radiance gilded the emerald veil of willows, shot back in fire from the unshuttered windows, rifled the last syringas of their inmost fragrance. Vance, even through his perturbation, felt again the spell of the old house. That door had first admitted him into the illimitable windings of the Past; and as he approached the magic threshold compunction and anger vanished. + 

“Oh, Vance!” he heard Miss Spear exclaim. He caught in her rich voice a mingling of reproach and apology⁠—yes, apology. She was atoning already⁠—for what?⁠—but she was also challenging. “I knew you’d come.” She put her hand on his arm with her light coercive touch. “Our cousin Mr. Tom Lorburn is here⁠—he arrived unexpectedly on Sunday to see the Willows. It’s years and years since he’s been here.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“A surprise visit,” came a voice, an old cracked fluty voice, querulous and distinguished, from the drawing room. “And I was surprised.⁠ ⁠… But perhaps you’ll bring the young man in here, Halo.⁠ ⁠… Whatever you have to say to him may as well be said in my presence, since I am here⁠ ⁠…” + 

The little tirade ended almost in a wail, as the speaker, drooping in the doorway, looked down on Vance from the vantage of his narrow shoulders and lean brown throat. Vance looked up, returning the gaze. He had hardly ever seen anyone as tall as Mr. Lorburn, and no one, ever, as plaintively and unhappily handsome. A chronic distress was written on the narrow beautiful face condescending to his, with its perfectly arched nose, and the sensitive lips under a carefully trimmed white moustache; and the distress was repeated in the droop of Mr. Lorburn’s shoulders under their easily fitting homespun, in the hollowing of his chest, and the clutch of his long expressive brown hand (so like Mrs. Spear’s) on the bamboo stick which supported him. + 

“Since unhappily I am here,” Mr. Lorburn repeated. + 

Miss Spear met this with a little laugh. “Oh, Cousin Tom⁠—why unhappily? After all, since you’ve come, it was just as well you should arrive when we were all napping.” + 

Mr. Lorburn bent his grieved eyes upon her. “Just as well?” + 

“That you should know the worst.” + 

“Ah, that we never know, my child; there’s always something worse behind the worst.⁠ ⁠…” Mr. Lorburn, shaking his head, turned back slowly through the drawing room. “There’s my health, to begin with, which no one but myself ever appears to think of. A shock of this kind, in this heat⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Well, here’s Vance Weston, who has come, as I knew he would, to clear things up.” + 

Mr. Lorburn considered Vance again in the light of this fresh introduction. “I should be glad if he could do that,” he said. + 

“Then,” said Miss Spear briskly, “let’s begin by transporting ourselves to the scene of the crime, as they say in the French law reports.” + 

She slipped her arm in Mr. Lorburn’s, and led him through the two drawing rooms, his long wavering stride steadied by her firm tread. Vance followed, wondering. + 

In the library the shutters were open, and the western sun streamed in on the scene of disorder which Vance had left so lightheartedly three days before. He wondered at his own callousness. In the glare of the summer light the room looked devastated, dishonoured; and the long grave face of Miss Elinor Lorburn, with its chalky highlights on brow and lappets, seemed to appeal to her cousin and heir for redress. “See how they have profaned my solitude⁠—that, at least, my family always respected!” + 

Mr. Lorburn let himself down by cautious degrees into the Gothic armchair. “At least,” he echoed, as if answering the look, “if I never came here, I gave strict orders that nothing should be touched⁠ ⁠… that everything should remain absolutely as she left it.” + 

The words were dreadful to Vance. His eyes followed Mr. Lorburn’s about the room, resting on the books pitched down on chairs and tables, on the gaping spaces of the shelves, and the lines of volumes which had collapsed for lack of support. Then he looked at the cigarette ashes which Lorry Spear had scattered irreverently on the velvet table cover, and his gaze turned back to Mr. Lorburn’s scandalized countenance. He felt too crushed to speak. But Miss Spear spoke for him: + 

“Now, Cousin Tom, that all sounds very pretty; but just consider what would have happened if we’d obeyed you literally. The place would have been a foot deep in dust. Everything in it would have been ruined; and if the house hadn’t been regularly aired your precious books would have been covered with green mould. So what’s the use⁠—” + 

Vance lifted his head eagerly, reassured by her voice. “The books did need cleaning,” he said. “But I was wrong not to put them back after I’d wiped them, the way you told me to. Fact is, I’d never had a chance at real books before, and I got reading, and forgot everything.⁠ ⁠…” He looked at Miss Spear. “I’m sorry,” he said. + 

Mr. Lorburn, leaning on his stick, emitted a faint groan. “The young man, as he says himself, appears to have forgotten everything⁠—even to return the books he has taken from here.” + 

Again Mrs. Tracy’s accusation! Vance turned his eyes on Miss Spear; but to his bewilderment her eloquence seemed to fail her. She met his glance, but only for a moment; then hers was averted. At last she said in a low voice: “I’m sure he’ll tell you the books are at Mrs. Tracy’s⁠ ⁠… that he took them away to finish reading something that interested him⁠ ⁠… without realising their value.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I’m waiting to hear what he has to tell me,” Mr. Lorburn rejoined. “But I must remind you, Halo, that, according to your own statement, Mrs. Tracy has looked everywhere for the books, and been forced to the conclusion⁠—as you were⁠—that when the young man disappeared from her house he took them with him. Perhaps he will now say if he has been obliging enough to bring them back.” + 

Mr. Lorburn revolved his small head on his long thin neck and fixed his eyes on Vance. + 

Vance felt the muscles of his face contracting. His lips were so stiff that he could hardly move them. These people were suggesting that he had taken away books from the Willows⁠—valuable books! This Mr. Lorburn, apparently, was almost accusing him of having stolen them! What else could he mean by the phrase “When he disappeared from Mrs. Tracy’s he took them with him”? Vance felt as defenceless as a little boy against whom a schoolmate had trumped up a lying charge; in his first bewilderment he did not know what to say, or what tone to take. Then his anger rushed to his lips. + 

“What’s this about taking books away and disappearing? I never disappeared. I went with Upton to a ball game.” He felt himself redden at the memory. “I never took a single book away from here, not one.” + 

Miss Spear interrupted eagerly: “I told you so, Cousin Tom⁠ ⁠… I was sure.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Mr. Lorburn leaned more heavily on his stick. “Where are they then?” Her head drooped, and she turned from him with an appealing gesture. “Vance?⁠—” + 

“What books?” Vance asked again. + 

Mr. Lorburn drew himself to his feet and began to move across the room with shaking sideway steps, his stick pointed first at one shelf, then at another. As he did so he reeled off a succession of long titles, all too unfamiliar to Vance for his ear to hold them. He heard “rare Americana,” and did not know if it were the name of a book or a reference to some literary category he had never met with. At last he said: “I never even heard of the names of any of those books. Why on earth should I have taken them?” + 

“Never heard of them?” Mr. Lorburn spluttered. “Then some accomplished bibliophile must have given you a list.” He looked pale and gasping, like a fish agonizing for water. “Oh, my heart⁠—I should never have let myself to be drawn into this.” Sitting down again, he closed his lids and leaned his head against the knobby carving of the armchair. + 

Vance was alarmed by his appearance; but he noticed that it did not affect Miss Spear. She continued to fix her anxious gaze upon himself. “Just try to remember exactly what happened.” She spoke as if reassuring a child. Her voice was too kind, too compassionate; his own caught in his throat, and he felt the tears swelling. + 

“Of course I didn’t take any books,” he repeated. “And I didn’t disappear⁠—I went with Upton.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Of course,” she said. “But the books are gone. There’s the point. Very valuable ones, unluckily.” + 

(“The most valuable,” Mr. Lorburn interjected, his eyes still closed.) + 

“Think, Vance; when you left last Saturday night, didn’t you forget to shut this window?” She pointed to the window near which she stood. + 

The definiteness of the question cleared Vance’s mind. + 

“No, I didn’t. I fastened all the shutters and windows before I left.” + 

She paused, and he saw a look of uncertainty in her face. “Think again, please. On Sunday morning this one was found open, and the shutter had been unhooked from the inside. Someone must have got in after you left, and taken the books, for they’re really gone. We’ve hunted everywhere.” + 

Vance repeated: “I fastened all the shutters; I’m sure I did. And I locked the front door.” He stopped, and then remembered that when he left the house Lorburn Spear had been with him. “Ask your brother; I guess he’ll remember.” + 

As he spoke, there came back to him the sensation he had experienced as he waited in the dusk of the hall for Lorry Spear, who had gone back to the library to find his cigarette case. He had been a long time finding it, and while Vance waited he had heard that mysterious sound somewhere in the distance: a sound like a window opening or a shutter swinging loose. He had thought of Laura Lou’s childish fears, smiled them away, and nevertheless turned back to see.⁠ ⁠… + 

“My brother? Yes, I know he was with you,” Miss Spear said, almost irritably. Her face looked expressionless, cold. “He says it was you who attended to closing the house.” + 

“Well, doesn’t he say I closed everything?” + 

“He says he doesn’t remember.” She paused, and then began, in a hasty authoritative tone: “Someone must have broken in. Someone has taken the books. Try to remember what happened when you were leaving⁠—try again, Vance,” she urged, more gently. + 

Mr. Lorburn still sat with closed eyes, and the gasping fishlike expression. He murmured again: “I ought not to have let myself be drawn into this⁠—” and then was silent. + 

Vance looked resolutely at Miss Spear. Her eyes wavered, as if trying to escape from him; then they bathed him in a fluid caress. The caress poured over him, enveloping, persuading. The words were on his lips: “But after we left the library your brother went back to it alone⁠—while he was there I heard a window opened⁠ ⁠… or thought I did.⁠ ⁠…” Thought you did? But only thought, her smile whispered back, silencing him. How can you suggest (it said)⁠ ⁠… and anyhow, what use would it be? Don’t you see that I can’t let you touch my brother? Vance felt himself subdued and mastered.⁠ ⁠… He couldn’t hurt her⁠ ⁠… he couldn’t. He had the sense of being shut in with her in a hidden circle of understanding and connivance. + 

“Of course a burglar broke in somehow and stole the books,” he heard her begin again with renewed energy. “Come, Cousin Tom; why should we stay any longer? It’s just upsetting you.⁠ ⁠… This is a job for the police.” + 

She held out her hand to Vance. “I’m sorry⁠—but I had to ask you to come.” + 

He said of course she had to⁠ ⁠… he understood; but the only thing he really understood was that she had bound him fast in a net of unspoken pledges. As they reached the door she turned back. “We’ll see you again soon⁠—at Eaglewood? Promise.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But he had given her his last promise. “I don’t know. I’m going to New York.⁠ ⁠… Maybe I’ll have to go back home.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Mr. Lorburn had descended the steps and was walking unsteadily along the drive. Miss Spear looked at Vance. “Yes, go,” she said quickly, “but come back someday.” Her face was sunned over with relief; for a moment she reminded him of the girl of the mountaintop. “Don’t forget me,” she said, and pressed his hand. She unlocked the gate and sprang into the car after Mr. Lorburn. Vance watched them drive away. Then he walked slowly down the lane without once looking back at the old house. He felt sick at heart, diminished and ashamed, as he had at Crampton the day he had seen his grandfather prowling by the river. + 

XIV + 

Vance Weston had started from Euphoria with two hundred dollars; and to what was left of that sum there was added the money Mrs. Tracy had thrust back at him as they started. After he had sat for a while in the train, dazed from the shock of his last hour at the Willows, he remembered that henceforth he must subsist on the balance of his funds, and he drew the money out and counted it. He had bought a ten-dollar wristwatch for Upton in New York, the day they went to the ball game, and a rainbow-coloured scarf for Laura Lou, to console her for not coming; the scarf, he thought, had cost about three-seventy-five. On the eve of their ill-fated expedition he had lent ten dollars to Lorburn Spear; and at the ball game, and afterward at the Crans’, had stood drinks, soft and hard, a good many times. He remembered also that the fellows, with a lot of laughing and joking, had clubbed together to buy the Cran girls a new watchdog; and good watchdogs, it appeared, came pretty high. Still, it gave him an unpleasant shock of surprise to find that he had only ninety-two dollars left, including the money returned by Mrs. Tracy. He could not recall where the rest had gone; his memory of what had happened at the Crans’ was too vague. + 

Ninety dollars would have carried him a long way at Euphoria. In New York he didn’t know how far it would go⁠—much less, assuredly. And he didn’t even know where to turn when he got out of the train, where to find a lodging for the night. In the car there were people who could no doubt have told him, friendly experienced-looking people; but no familiar face was among them, and a rustic caution kept him from questioning strangers on the approach to a big city. As the train entered the Grand Central he hurriedly consulted the black porter, and the latter, after looking him over with a benevolent eye, gave him an address near the station. He found a narrow brick hotel squeezed in between tall buildings, with a dingy black-and-gold sign over the door. It looked dismal and unappetizing enough; but his bed there, and his coffee next morning, cost him so much that he decided he must not remain for another night, and wandered out early in search of a rooming house. + 

The noise and rush of traffic, the clamour of the signboards, the glitter of the innumerable shops distracted him from his purpose, and hours passed as he strayed on curiously from street to street. Some faculty separate from mind or heart, something detached and keen, was roused in him by this tumult of life and wealth and energy, this ceaseless outpour of more people, more noises, more motors, more shopfuls of tempting and expensive things. He thought what fun it would be to write a novel of New York and call it Loot⁠—and he began to picture how different life would have seemed that morning had he had the typescript of the finished novel under his arm, and been on his way to the editorial offices of one of the big magazines. The idea for a moment swept away all his soreness and loneliness, and made his heart dilate with excitement. “Well, why not?⁠ ⁠… I’ll stay here till I’ve done it,” he swore to himself in a fever of defiance. + 

He halted before a shop window displaying flowers in gilt baskets, or mounted in clusters tied with big pink bows. The money Mrs. Tracy had returned was burning in his pocket, and he said to himself that he could not keep it another minute. In one corner of the window was an arrangement which particularly took his fancy: a stuffed dove perched on the gilt handle of a basket of sweet peas and maidenhair fern. It recalled to him Miss Spear’s description of that temple to Apollo, somewhere in Greece, which had been built by the birds and bees; and looking at the burnished neck of the dove he thought: “That might have been one of the birds.” There was a good-natured-looking woman in the shop, and he ventured to ask her the price of the object he coveted. She smiled a little, as if surprised. “Why, that’s twenty-five dollars.” + 

Vance crimsoned. “I was looking for something for thirty.” + 

“Oh, were you?” said the woman, still smiling. “Well, there’s those carnations over there.” + 

Vance didn’t care for the carnations; the bird on the basket handle was what attracted him. “Laura Lou’ll like it anyhow,” he thought. And suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he asked the woman whether, for thirty dollars, she would have the basket carried for him that very morning to the house of a lady at Paul’s Landing. She looked still more surprised, and then amused, and after they had hunted up Paul’s Landing in the telephone book, she said, yes, she guessed she could, and Vance, delighted, pulled out thirty dollars, and his pen to write the address. She pushed a card toward him, and after a moment’s perplexity he wrote: “I thank you, Cousin Lucilla,” addressed the envelope, and walked out with a lighter step. The woman was already wrapping up the dove. + 

He was beginning to feel hungry, and the instinct of clinging to the relatively familiar drew him back to the Grand Central, where he knew he could lunch. As he entered he almost ran into a motherly-looking woman with a large yellowish face and blowsy gray hair, who wore a military felt hat with a band inscribed: “The Travellers’ Friend.” Vance went up to her, and her smile of welcome reassured him before he had spoken. He wanted to know of a nice quiet rooming house? Why, surely⁠—that was just what she was there for. Country boy, she guessed? Well, why wouldn’t he bring his things right round to Friendship House, just a little way off, down in East Fiftieth⁠—she fumbled in her bag and handed him the address on a card with: “Bring your friend along⁠—always room for one more,” in red letters across the top. That, she explained, was the men’s house; she herself was in the station to look after women and girls, and there was another house for them not far off; but Vance had only to mention her name to Mr. Jakes and they’d find a room for him, and give him the addresses of some respectable rooming houses. She shook his hand, beamed on him maternally, and turned away to deal with a haggard bewildered-looking woman who was saying: “My husband said he’d sure be at the station to meet me, but I can’t find him, and the baby’s been sick in the cars all night.⁠ ⁠…” + 

At Friendship House Vance was received by an amiable man with gold teeth, given supper of coffee and bread and butter, and assigned to a spotless cubicle. Not till he was falling asleep did it occur to him that Mrs. Tracy had a row of sweet peas in her own garden, and that a stuffed dove could hardly compensate her for the cost of his fortnight’s board. He felt ashamed of his stupidity, and was haunted all night by the vision of the dreary smile with which she would receive his inappropriate tribute. Probably even Laura Lou would not know what to do with a stuffed dove. Yet that basket, with the lustrous bird so lightly poised on it, had seemed all poetry when he chose it.⁠ ⁠… + 

The weeks passed. After Vance’s regulation twenty-four hours at Friendship House he was recommended to a rooming house which was certainly as respectable as they had promised, but offered few other attractions, at least in hot weather. During those first lonely suffocating days and nights Vance’s weak body and sore spirit yearned for his neat room at home, the glitter of the bath, the shade of the Mapledale Avenue trees. But since he was determined to hold on till he got a job he dared not risk taking a better room; and the thought of going home was more hateful than his present misery. Yet loneliness was the core of that misery; incessant gnawing loneliness of mind and heart. He was benumbed by the feeling that in the huge wilderness of people about him not one had ever heard of him, or would take the least interest in his case if he should appeal for understanding; not one would care a straw that within him all the forces of the universe were boiling. He felt the same desolation, the sense of life being over for him, as when he had staggered down the passage to his parents’ room and groped for the absent revolver.⁠ ⁠… + 

But the returning tide of vitality did not mount as rapidly as it had then. The situation was different. Then he had made up his mind to wait till life gave him another chance; and life had given him that chance⁠—magnificently⁠—and what had he made of it? His rage against Mrs. Tracy, against Upton and the Spears, was a mere passing flare-up; it soon gave place to a lasting sense of failure. He had been at fault, and he only. Upton was a sly little fool, but he, Vance, was the older of the two, and being the more experienced should have been the stronger. He should have resisted the temptation to loaf and drink with those wasters and flashy girls, should have remembered his promise to Mrs. Tracy to come home with Upton after the game. If he had, everything might have been different, for early the next morning he would have hurried back to the Willows, have noticed that the books were gone, and perhaps prevented his own disgrace and Miss Spear’s unhappiness.⁠ ⁠… He could not forget how unhappy she had looked when it first flashed on her that her brother had probably taken the books. Vance ached with that more than his own wretchedness. His only comfort was that he had seen at once what was passing through her mind, had caught her signal and obeyed it. He knew she had perceived this, and been grateful; and the fact that she had sacrificed him to her brother did not offend him⁠—it seemed to create a new tie between them.⁠ ⁠… + 

All this worked out gradually in his mind, and meanwhile he waited, and reflected on his situation. His first impulse had been not to let his whereabouts be known to anyone. He lived in dread of being dragged back to Euphoria when his parents learned that he had left the Tracys. What he longed for was to vanish into space, to get off into a universe of his own where nothing associated with his former life could reach him. It was what he had tried to do after he had seen his grandfather and Floss Delaney by the river; only this time his suicide would have taken the form of losing himself in a big city, to re-emerge from it when he had made himself a new existence. But he soon came to his senses and realized that Mrs. Tracy, frightened by his departure, would be sure to write to his family, and that, if he gave them no sign, they would be frightened also, and would set all the machinery of police research in motion. It was not easy for a fellow with an anxious family to lose himself in these times; and Vance had not had the presence of mind to give a fictitious name at his lodgings. + 

He wrote briefly to his mother, telling her he was doing well; and wouldn’t his folks please let him alone and give him a show in New York, now he’d got there? He said he’d left Paul’s Landing because he felt quite strong enough to take a job on a paper, and didn’t care to loaf around any longer at the Tracys’, where it was a good deal hotter than in the city, anyhow. He added that he had money enough left, and had already made the acquaintance of a famous editor (and so he had, though he would rather have starved than appeal to George Frenside); and he arranged with the good-natured secretary at Friendship House to receive his letters, so that his family should be reassured by the address. + 

Accident favoured him. His sister Mae wrote that his father had just left for a Realtors’ Congress at Seattle and would not return for a month or more; and that though Mrs. Weston was upset and anxious at the idea of his being alone in New York she had been persuaded by Grandma Scrimser not to interfere, but to let him try his luck, at any rate till his father got back. This being settled, Vance turned his mind to the means of holding out⁠—for he was sure that, until he got a job, his father would not think of sending him more money. His promised allowance had been meant to see him through his convalescence at Paul’s Landing; if he didn’t choose to stay there, and was strong enough to work⁠—well, let him. + 

Meanwhile he had New York to himself, and his first business was to collect his wits and try not to miss this chance as he had the other. The main thing was to see how long he could make his remaining dollars last; and he bent his mind on this, foregoing all amusements which had to be paid for, eating at the cheapest places he could find, often going without a midday meal, and wandering about the streets for hours staring at the strange confused spectacle which remained so mockingly unaware of him. + 

But all his moments were not lonely. A few days after his arrival he happened to emerge upon Fifth Avenue just opposite the public library. Awed by its rhetorical façade, so unlike a haunt of studious peace, he stood wondering if it were one of the swell hotels he’d heard about⁠—the Ritz or the St. Regis⁠—till looking more closely he read its designation. Instantly he dashed up the vast steps, entered the doors unabashed, and asked the first official he met if he could go in and read.⁠ ⁠… He could, it appeared, and without paying a cent, and for many hours of the day. At first he was perplexed as to his next step; but where books were concerned some instinct seemed to guide him, and presently he had been made free of a series of card catalogues, and was lost in them as in the murmurs of a forest.⁠ ⁠… True, the place lacked the magic of the Willows, since the reader had to know beforehand what he wanted, and could not roam at will from shelf to shelf, subject to the mysterious, the almost physical appeal of books actually visible and accessible. That joy was one he could not hope to find again till⁠—well, till he had made money enough to have his own library. But meanwhile it was wonderful enough to sit in a recess of a quiet room, with a pile of volumes in front of him, his elbows on the table, his hands plunged in his hair, his soul immersed in a new world.⁠ ⁠… + 

The weeks passed, and though his hours at the public library cost him nothing, those spent in his rooming house were using up his funds. In spite of what he had written to his mother he had not as yet looked up a newspaper job. He wanted first to acquaint himself a little more with New York, its aspect, its ways, its language; to appear less of a hayseed and an ignoramus. That, at least, was what he told himself; but in reality his hours at the library were so engrossing, and his ignorance had revealed itself on a scale so unsuspected and overwhelming, that each day drew him back to the lion-guarded gates of knowledge. To cheat himself into thinking that he could live thus indefinitely he began to plan his novel of New York; nor did it strike him till afterward that a raw boy whose experience was bounded by a rooming house and a library would find it even harder to weave a tale out of the millions of strands of a great city’s activities than to evolve copy for a newspaper. Everything that appealed to his creative instinct always seemed to become a part of his experience, and he sat down with a passionate eagerness to block out his dream. But he knew that this novel, even if he could do it, would take an immense time in the doing; and meanwhile he must find the means to live. + 

Drifting from dream to dream, eating daily less, studying daily for longer hours, he entered into the state of strange illumination which comes to ardent youth when the body hungers while the intelligence is fed. His shaking fingers filled page after page with verse and prose; it seemed as though every difficulty of thought and language were overcome, and he could conceive and formulate whatever his restless intellect willed. The veil of matter had grown so transparent that the light of eternity shone through it, and in that pure radiance he could see with supernatural clearness the images of gods walking among men, and angels going up and down the heavenly ladder. But Jacob’s pillow is a hard one for a young head still weak from fever; and one morning when after a night of tossing misery he crawled to his table and pulled out his papers, his mind was a blank, and he could hardly decipher what he had written the day before. He looked up and saw in the blotched looking glass a face so bloodless and shrunken that he thought he must be on the verge of another illness; and when he counted his money he found he could not hold out, even on a starvation diet, for more than a week. + 

The world grew light and dizzy about him, as if the air had turned into millions of shimmering splinters. He managed to dress and get out to the nearest eating house, and for the first time in days he ordered hot coffee and a couple of eggs. After eating he felt better, but so tired and heavy that he crawled home and threw himself on his unmade bed; and there he slept dreamlessly for hours. When he woke he understood that he must have more food, and that the only way to get it was to try for a job. He felt too weak to think much more than that; but he gave himself another good meal, and the next day started out on his round. He went from one newspaper to another, was received either civilly or the reverse, was asked to state his qualifications, and saw his name and address taken down; but no one showed any interest in him, and he turned away hopeless from the last threshold. With no one to recommend him, and no past experience of newspaper work, what chance was there of his getting a job? The only alternative was Euphoria; but he was too disheartened to let his mind dwell on that. + 

There was just one other chance; that Mr. Frenside, in spite of his gruff sneering way, had not been unfriendly. He knew of Vance’s aspirations, and perhaps would be willing to advise him⁠—unless unfavourable rumours had reached him from Eaglewood. But Vance remembered Halo Spear’s kindly glance when she took leave of him, heard her say: “Go now⁠—but come back some day,” and guessed that, however bent she was on screening her brother, she would not let Vance suffer unjustly. He had found out by this time that The Hour, as he had suspected, was a mere highbrow review, and therefore not to his purpose; but Frenside must have relations with the newspaper world, and would be able to tell him where there was hope of an opening for an untrained outsider. At any rate, it was the only thing left to try. + 

XV + 

The Hour was modestly housed on an upper floor of a shabby ex-private house; no noiseless lift, plate-glass doors or silver-buttoned guardians led to its threshold. But the typewriter girl in the outer office, who said, no, Mr. Frenside wasn’t the editor, but only literary adviser, added that she guessed he was there that morning, and presently returned to show Vance into a stuffy cell full of cigar smoke where Frenside leaned on an ink-spattered table and fixed Vance with his unencouraging stare. + 

“Oh, yes⁠—Weston your name is? Well, sit down.” + 

He smoked and stared for a while; then he exclaimed: “By George, I saw you up at Eaglewood, didn’t I? Why, yes⁠—that business of the books.⁠ ⁠… Miss Spear’ll be glad I’ve run across you. The books were found, she wanted you to know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“The books?” Vance looked at him vaguely. In this shimmering dubious world in which he had lately lived the story of the books at the Willows had become as forgotten and far-off a thing as the song in one of those poems Miss Spear had read to him; Miss Spear herself was only a mist among mists; all Vance could think of now was that he must get this taciturn man behind the cigar to find him a job. + 

“Why, yes, the books turned up,” Frenside repeated. + 

“How?” Vance asked with an effort. + 

“I don’t know the particulars. It seems Lewis Tarrant⁠—you remember that fair young man who’s always up at Eaglewood?⁠—well, he managed to buy them back⁠ ⁠… advertised, I believe⁠ ⁠… offered a reward.⁠ ⁠… They never caught the thief; but that didn’t so much matter. The main thing was to get the books. So that question’s closed.” + 

“Well, I’m glad,” Vance forced himself to say. And he knew he would be, in the other world of solid matter, if ever he got back to it.⁠ ⁠… + 

He felt that Frenside was looking at him more attentively. “That’s not what you came for, though? Well, let’s hear.” He settled back in his chair, listening in silence to what Vance had to say, and drumming on the table as if he were rapping out his secret thoughts on a typewriter. + 

Vance stammered through the tale of his vain quest, and wondered if perhaps Mr. Frenside could recommend him to a newspaper⁠—but the other cut him short. He hadn’t any pull of that sort; sorry; but Vance had better go straight home if he had an opening on a newspaper there. Vance turned pale and made no answer; he cursed himself inwardly for having appealed, against his better judgment, to this man who cared nothing for him and was perhaps prejudiced by what had happened at the Willows. + 

“All right, sir, thank you,” he said, getting to his feet, and turning to the door. As he did so, Frenside spoke. “See here⁠—going home’s a nasty dose to swallow sometimes, isn’t it? I remember⁠ ⁠… at your age.⁠ ⁠… Why do you want to go on a newspaper, anyhow?” + 

Vance, leaning against the doorway, answered: “I want to learn to be a writer.” + 

“And that’s the reason⁠—” Frenside gave a gruff laugh. + 

Vance looked at him curiously. “Is there any other way?” + 

“There’s only one way. Buckle down and write. Newspapers won’t help you.” + 

Vance felt the blood rush to his forehead. “I have⁠ ⁠… I have⁠ ⁠… tried to write.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Frenside reached for a match, relit his cigar, and once more said: “Sit down.” Vance obeyed. “What have you written? Got it in your pocket, I suppose? Let’s see.” + 

Vance, with a feverish hand, pulled out a bundle of papers⁠—the poems he had written at Paul’s Landing, and some of the stuff which had poured from his pen in the long hungry hours at the rooming house. He laid them on the desk, and Frenside adjusted his eyeglasses. It seemed to Vance as if he were fitting his eyes to an exceptionally powerful microscope. + 

“H’m⁠—poetry. All poetry?” + 

“Most of what I’ve written is.” + 

“Well, poetry won’t earn your keep: it’s pure luxury. Like keeping a car.” + 

Silence followed. At intervals it was broken by what sounded to Vance like the roar of the sea, but was in reality the scarce audible rustle as Frenside unfolded one sheet after another. He was doubtless not accustomed to reading manuscript, and to Vance’s agony of apprehension was added the mortification of not having been able to type his poems before submitting them. In most editorial offices, he knew, they wouldn’t look at handwritten things; presenting the poems to Frenside in this shape would probably do away with their one chance. Vance thought of offering to read them aloud, remembered Miss Spear’s comment on his enunciation, and dared not. + 

The roar of unfolding pages continued. + 

“H’m,” said Frenside again. He spread the papers out before him, and puffed in silence. + 

“Well, you’re at the sedulous age,” he continued after a pause. (What did that mean?) “Can’t be helped, of course. Here’s the inevitable Shakespeare sonnet: ‘What am I but the shape your love has made me?’⁠—and the Whitman: ‘Vast enigmatic reaches of ocean beyond me’⁠—just so. It is beyond you, my dear fellow, at least at present. Ever seen the ocean?” + 

Vance could hardly find his voice. He shook his head. + 

“Not even at Coney Island?” Frenside shrugged. “Not that that matters. Look here; this is all Poets’ Corner stuff. Try it on your hometown paper. That’s my advice. There are pretty things here and there, of course; you like the feel of words, don’t you? But poetry, my son, is not a halfway thing. I remember once asking a book-learned friend if he cared for poetry, and he answered cautiously: ‘Yes, up to a certain point.’ Well, the devil of it is that real poetry doesn’t begin till beyond that certain point.⁠ ⁠… See?” + 

Vance signed that he saw: somehow he liked that definition of poetry, even at the cost of having to sacrifice his own to it. + 

“How about prose; never written any?” + 

The unexpectedness of the question jerked Vance out of the clouds. “I⁠—I’m writing a novel.” + 

“Hullo⁠—are you? What about.” + 

“About life in New York.” + 

“I thought so,” said Frenside grimly. There was another silence. “Never tried an article or a short story?” + 

“Never anything⁠—good enough.” Vance got wearily to his feet. “I guess I’ll take these things and burn ’em,” he said, putting out his hands for the poems. + 

“No, don’t do that. Keep ’em, and reread ’em in a couple of years. That requires more courage, and courage is about the most useful thing in an artist’s outfit.” Vance was beginning to think it must be. + 

“Well,” Frenside continued, “if ever you try a short essay, or a story, bring them along. Don’t forget.” He smiled a little, as if to bind up the wounds he had inflicted. “You never can tell,” he concluded cryptically. + 

He held out his hand. The interview was over. + 

The interview was over; but when Vance reached the foot of the stairs he perceived its repercussions were only just beginning. He wandered on through a street or two, found himself in Union Square, and sat down under the meagre shade of its starved trees. The other people on the bench with him, listless sodden-looking men, collarless and perspiring, seemed like companions in misery who had preceded him a flight or two down the steep stairs of failure. Perhaps they too⁠—or at least one among them⁠—had tried for the impossible, as he was doing. He shivered a little at the sense of such kinship. + 

But gradually a luminous point emerged out of the enveloping fog. “Newspapers won’t help you,” Frenside had said; and Vance was suddenly aware that the dictum chimed with his own deep inward conviction. It had always seemed to him that newspapers, as he knew them, were totally unrelated to literature as he had always dreamed of it, and as he now knew that it existed. Yet was Frenside right⁠—was he himself right? Everyone always said: “Nothing like newspaper work as a training if a fellow wants to write. Teaches you not to waste time, to go straight to the point, to put things in a bright snappy way that won’t bore people.⁠ ⁠…” Ugh, how he hated all the qualities thus commended! What a newspaper man like Bunty Hayes, for instance, would have called wasting time seemed to Vance one of the fundamental needs of the creative process. He could not imagine putting down on paper anything that had not risen slowly to the verge of his consciousness, that had not to be fished for and hauled up with infinite precautions from some secret pool of being as to which he knew nothing as yet but the occasional leap, deep down in it, of something alive but invisible.⁠ ⁠… And this Frenside, whom he did not like, whose manner offended him, whose views awoke his instinctive antagonism, had yet, in that one phrase, summed up his own obscure feeling. “Buckle down and write”; yes⁠—he had always felt that to be the only way. But to do it a fellow must be quiet, must have enough to eat, must be fairly free from material anxieties; and how was he to accomplish that? He didn’t know⁠—but he was so grateful for the key word furnished by Frenside that nothing else seemed much to matter; not the disparagement of his poems, the shrug at his novel, or the assumption that his aspirations were bound to be exactly like those of any other young fool who presented himself to an editor with a first bundle of manuscript. He walked slowly back to his rooming house, uncertain what to do next, but feeling that at least the darkness was not total. + 

His first impulse was to go through all his accumulated papers, to resee them in this new faint ray. He skimmed over the pages of his novel, found it shapeless, helpless⁠—more so even than he had feared⁠—and remembered another tonic phrase of Frenside’s: the curt “I thought so,” in reply to Vance’s confession that he was attempting a novel, and then the injunction: “If ever you try a short story send it along.” What a pity he hadn’t tried one, instead of this impossible unwieldy novel! And then, as he sat there, fumbling with fragments of dead prose, his hand lit on a dozen typed pages, clipped together, and a little frayed at the edges. He’d forgotten he had that with him.⁠ ⁠… “One Day”⁠—the thing he’d written in a kind of frenzy, after his fever, when he couldn’t find his father’s revolver. How long ago all that seemed! There had been weeks when he couldn’t have looked at those pages, could barely have touched them; and now he was turning on them an eye almost as objective as George Frenside’s.⁠ ⁠… + 

You couldn’t call it a short story, he supposed. It was just the headlong outpouring of what he had felt and suffered during those few hours⁠—like a fellow who’d been knocked down and run over trying to tell you what it felt like. That was all. But somehow the sentences moved, the words seemed alive⁠—if he’d had to do it again he didn’t know that he’d have done it very differently. It didn’t amount to much, but still he felt as if it was his own, not the work of two or three other fellows, like the novel. A sudden impulse seized him: he wrapped up the manuscript, addressed it to Frenside, put his own name and address below, and carried the packet back to the office of The Hour. He hadn’t the courage to go in with it, but slipped it into the letter box and walked away. + 

Three days afterward⁠—the last but two of his week⁠—he came in one afternoon and found that a letter had been pushed under his door. On the corner of the envelope was stamped The Hour. Vance’s hands turned cold. He stood for a few seconds looking at that portentous name; then he tore open the envelope and read: “Dear Sir, The editor of The Hour asks me to say that he will be glad to take your story, ‘One Day,’ though The Hour does not usually publish short stories. I enclose a cheque for $50.” There followed a vague secretarial signature, and underneath, untidily scrawled with a blunt pencil: “Better go back home and write more like it. Frenside.” Vance stood a long time motionless, the letter in his hand. At first he was not aware of any sensation at all; and when it did come it seemed too strong for joy. It was more as if he had been buffeted in a crowd and had the wind knocked out of him, as he had on the day when he and Upton fought their way to the Crans’ car after the ball game.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I want to go and see the ocean,” he suddenly said aloud. He didn’t know where the words had come from, but the force of the impulse was overwhelming. Perhaps he had unconsciously recalled Frenside’s sneer: “Ever seen the ocean? Not even from Coney Island?” Well, he thought, he was going to see it now.⁠ ⁠… He put the cheque in his pocket and went out again. With that talisman on his breast he felt strong enough to conquer the world. What might it not have bought for him? Well, first of all it was going to buy him one of the greatest things in the universe.⁠ ⁠… He went round to Friendship House, found the friendly manager, and got his cheque cashed. Then he decided to leave the money in the manager’s safe; it was no use risking it in crowded trains. And he meant to take a train that very minute, and get down to the Atlantic shore before it grew dark. He didn’t know where⁠—but he asked, and the manager said, smiling: “Why, we’ve got a camp of our own down on Long Island, not far from Rockaway. It’s pretty near empty in the middle of the week; you might as well go down there, I guess. I’ll give you a line to the man in charge⁠—you look as if a good swim would pick you up.⁠ ⁠…” He scribbled a card. “Don’t forget to come for your money, though,” he said. + 

It was nearly sunset when the train reached the little station where Vance was to get out. He saw only a cluster of frame houses among scrubby sandhills, and a skyline crisscrossed by telephone and telegraph wires, like the view across the fields from Crampton. The man at the station said the camp was some way down the road. Vance followed the indication. The road, little better than a sandy trail, ran level for a bit, drifted past a colony of shacks and bathhouses, and then lifted him to a ridge of sand and left him face to face with the unknown. Before him more sandhills, sparsely tufted, sloped down imperceptibly to bare sand. The sand spread to a beach which seemed to stretch away right and left without end, and beyond the beach was another surface, an unknown element, steel gray in the cloudy twilight, and breathing and heaving, and swaying backward and forth with a shredding and rending of white yeasty masses ceaselessly torn off from that smooth immensity. Vance stood and gazed, and felt for the first time the weight of the universe upon him. Even the open sky of the plains, bending to the horizon on all sides, and traceried and buttressed, up aloft, with the great structure of the stars, seemed less huge, less immemorial, less incomprehensible to the finite mind than this expanse which rested not yet moved not, except in a rhythmic sway as regular as the march of the heavens. Vance sat down on a hillock and gazed and gazed as twilight fell; then in the last light he scrambled across the dunes to the sands, reached the stones of the beach, knelt close to that long incoming curve, and plunged his hands into it, as if in dedication. + 