XXXVIII
The next morning Vance went early to Mrs. Mennenkoop’s. He wanted to see his grandmother before she began to be besieged by the prophets and seers who had been such a trial to Mrs. Weston when the Scrimsers came to live under her roof. All night he had lain awake, torn between his disillusionment and his wrath against those who had shared it. … Those damned unsatisfied people who always had to have some new sensation to batten on! Why had they dragged his grandmother out of Euphoria, where she belonged, persuaded her that New York was in need of her, that she had a “message” for them, as her jargon called it? Such wrath as he had felt against the rich after Mrs. Pulsifer’s rebuff now blazed up in him against these ridiculous “Seekers”—seekers of new sensations, new catchwords, new fads to take up or to turn to ridicule! At Euphoria Mrs. Scrimser had her place in the social order. She was more persuasive than the ministers of the rival churches, better educated than their congregations. She had an authority which no one questioned—except Mrs. Weston, who saw no sense in telling people how to run their lives when you couldn’t manage your own hired girl.
Here in New York everything was different—and Vance himself, in the interval, had grown different. The world had come to have a perspective for him, and Euphoria was a hardly perceptible dot far off between two narrowing lines. But in proportion as he understood this, and suffered for his grandmother, his tenderness for her increased. It became defensive and fierce; he would have jumped at the chance of doing battle for her against all the Frensides and Spears. After all, wasn’t his own case precisely hers? He too was the raw product of a Middle-Western town, trying to do something beyond his powers, to tell the world about things he wasn’t really familiar with; his pride winced at the exactness of the analogy, and it moved him to acuter sympathy. If only he could persuade his grandmother to give up this crazy crusade; to go back to Euphoria, and take him and Laura Lou with her! He made up his mind, on the way out to Bronxville, that he would propose to her to break her lecturing engagements and go back at once.
His aunt Saidie Toler, who received him, did not share his apprehensions. She said she had never seen her mother more inspired than on the previous evening. Evidently New York audiences were less responsive at first than those in the western cities where Mrs. Scrimser had hitherto spoken; but Mrs. Mennenkoop had prepared them for that. She thought quite a number of converts would seek out Mrs. Scrimser in the course of the day, and was sure that in Brooklyn, where that evening’s meeting was to be held, there would be more of an emotional surrender. …
Vance had always hated his aunt Saidie’s jargon. She reminded him of a salesman retailing goods, and repeating automatically what was on their labels. … He wanted to know if he couldn’t go in and see his grandmother; but Mrs. Toler said there was somebody with her on business: a man who organized lecture tours. He wanted to take Mrs. Scrimser right through the country, he said. … He’d answer for it that upstate she’d get the response she was accustomed to. … In New York it was a fashion to sit back and pretend you knew everything.
Vance’s heart sank. He asked if he couldn’t go in at once, while the man was there—and at the same moment a door opened, and Mrs. Scrimser came out into the hall. “I thought I heard my boy’s voice,” she said, coming to him with open arms. She begged him to step in and see the gentleman who had called about a lecture tour—he had made a very interesting proposal. Vance followed her, and found himself being named to Bunty Hayes, who held out his hand with undiminished cordiality. “Why, yes,” he said, with an explanatory glance between grandmother and grandson, “ ‘Storecraft’ aims to handle all the human interests. We can’t leave out religion, any more’n we could art or plumbing. And the minute I heard about this grand new religious movement of Mrs. Scrimser’s, I said: ‘That’s exactly our line of goods, and there’s nobody but “Storecraft” can do it justice.’ If only she’d of got in touch with me before she came to New York I’d of had her addressing three thousand human people in Steinway Hall instead of trying to get a kick out of a few society highbrows from Park Avenue.”
Vance stood silent between the two. His grandmother looked more aged in the morning light. In spite of her increasing bulk she seemed smaller: as if Fate had already traced on her, in deep lines and folds, her future diminution. But Bunty Hayes’s flesh was taut and hard; he shone with a high varnish of prosperity. And he looked at Vance with a bright unwinking cordiality, as if their encounter were merely a happy incident in an old friendship. “On’y to think she’s your grandmother; seems as if you’d got a corner in celebrity in your family,” he said.
“Oh, Vanny’s our real celebrity,” Mrs. Scrimser murmured, her tired eyes filling as they rested on her grandson.
“Well, I guess there’s enough of it to go round,” Hayes encouraged them both. “What I say is …”
Mrs. Scrimser’s gaze was still caressing Vance. She took his hand. “I guess he’ll be lecturing all over the United States before long,” she said.
“Well, when he does, ‘Storecraft’ ’ll be all ready to handle him too—we’ll feature you both on the same progrum,” Mr. Hayes joked back.
Mrs. Scrimser answered humorously that she guessed that would depend on how well “Storecraft” handled her; and he challenged her to take a good look round and see if any other concern was prepared to do it better. It was agreed that she was to think over his proposition and give him an answer the next day; and thereupon he took his leave.
Mrs. Scrimser, when they were alone, held her grandson fast for a minute saying only: “Vanny boy, Mapledale Avenue’s been like the grave since you went away,” and he felt the contagion of her tenderness and a great longing to lay his cares in those capacious arms. She asked about Laura Lou, and why Vance hadn’t brought her the night before, or today; and when he said she was ill in bed, exclaimed reproachfully at his not telling her sooner, and said she would go straight down to Mrs. Hubbard’s after lunch. She began to question Vance about how they lived, and whether Laura Lou was comfortable and well looked after, and if the food was nourishing, and he was satisfied with the doctor; and gradually he was drawn into confessing his financial difficulties, and the impossibility of giving his wife such a home as she ought to have. Mrs. Scrimser’s ideas of money were even vaguer than her grandson’s, but her sympathy was the more ardent because she could not understand why a successful novelist, who knew all the publishers and critics in New York, shouldn’t be making a big income. She was indignant at such injustice; but she implored Vance not to worry, since the “Storecraft” offer would enable her to help him and Laura Lou as soon as she’d paid back what she owed his father. From her confused explanations Vance gathered that Mr. Scrimser’s long illness, and his widow’s unlimited hospitality, had been a heavy strain on Mr. Weston, who, besides having to support his family-in-law, had been crippled by one or two unlucky gambles in real estate. Vance guessed that Mrs. Scrimser’s attention had finally been called to these facts (no doubt by his mother), and that in a tardy rush of self-reproach she had resolved to wipe out her debt. It was not religious zeal alone which had started her on her lecturing tour. In the West, she told Vance, she had spoken without pay; but now that she understood her pecuniary obligations she was impatient to make money by her lectures. No one was more scrupulously anxious not to be a burden on others; the difficulty was that for her, to whom no fellow creature could ever be a burden, it was an effort to remember that she might be one herself. Vance was moved by the candour and humility of her avowal. He too knew what it felt like to be dragged down from the empyrean just as the gates of light were swinging open; how happy it would have made him to relieve this old dreamer of her cares, and leave her to pursue her vision! “I daresay when she came here she thought I’d be able to help her out,” he reflected bitterly, and regretted that he had mentioned his own troubles. But Mrs. Scrimser’s optimism was irrepressible; already she was planning, with the proceeds of her tour, to hire a little house in Euphoria and take Vance and Laura Lou to live with her. “Saidie Toler’ll take all the housekeeping bothers off our hands, and you can do your writing, and I’ll go on speaking in public if God’s got any more use for me; and in the good clean prairie air Laura Lou’ll get all the poison of New York out of her in no time.” Her face was as radiant as if she were enumerating the foundations of the Heavenly City.
“Don’t you think you and Laura Lou could be happy, making your home with me?” she pleaded.
Yes, Vance said, he was sure they could; it was long since his eyes had rested on anything as soothing as the vision of that little house. “I’d have a big kitchen table, six feet long, for my writing,” he mused voluptuously; and then roused himself to his grandmother’s summary of the “Storecraft” offer for a three months’ tour, for which she was to be featured as: “God’s Confidant, Mrs. Loraine Scrimser,” who was to “tell the world about her New Religion.”
“You see, Vanny, Saidie Toler’s been all over the figures with him, and she says I ought to clear twenty or thirty thousand dollars. And perhaps that would be only a beginning. …” Her face glowed with tenderness, and Vance, trembling a little, took her large warm hand and pressed it against his cheek.
“Why, Van darling, don’t—don’t cry! You mustn’t! I guess your troubles are all over now.”
He sat silent, holding her hand. How could he tell her what was in his mind? Perhaps the inertness of his hand betrayed the lack of response in his thoughts; for she questioned him with eyes softened by perplexity. “Maybe you don’t care for the way he’s featured me?” she suggested timidly. “I guess you could find something more striking yourself—only I wouldn’t want to bother you.” He shook his head, and she went on, still more timidly: “Or is it the way I was received last night among those fashionable people? Don’t suppose I didn’t see it, Vanny; I was a failure; I know it as well as you do. My message didn’t get over to them … it was a terrible disappointment to me. But Mrs. Mennenkoop says that in that set they’re dreadfully inexperienced in the spiritual life … infants wailing in the dark … and that maybe what I gave them was too startling, too new. …”
“Oh, no, that’s not it,” Vance interrupted with sudden vehemence. “It was not new to them—that’s the trouble.”
“Not new—?” Her hand began to tremble in his, and she drew back a little. “Do you mean to say, Vanny, that every profound and personal spiritual adventure is not new, is not different … ?”
“No, it’s not. That’s the point. Lots of people have thought they’d had spiritual adventures that were personal to them, and then, if they’ve taken the time to study, to look into the religious experiences of the past—”
“But what does the past matter? What I bring is a forward-looking faith, a new revelation—something God’s given to me.”
“No, it’s not,” Vance repeated vehemently. He felt now that he must speak out, at whatever cost to her feelings and his. “Those people last night were mostly well-educated, cultivated—some of the men were students of theology, scholars. They were there because they take an intellectual interest in religious ideas. …” He hurried on, trying to explain that, to such an audience, there was no novelty in what Mrs. Scrimser had to say, that her “revelation” belonged to a long-classified category of religious emotionalism. People had thought for centuries that God had given them a particular message, he went on. But supposing any direct access to the Divine to be possible, it was one of the great services of the organized churches to have maintained an authorized channel of communication between the Deity and men, and not to recognize any other.
“But, Vanny, that’s the way the old tyrannical religions talked. All that’s got nothing to do with the modern world. What people want nowadays is a new religion—”
Well, he interrupted her, if that was it, what she called her religion wasn’t new; it had been in the air for centuries; and anyhow, even if it had been new, that was no particular recommendation. The greatest proof of the validity of a religion was its age, its duration, its having stood through centuries of change, as something that people had to have, couldn’t in any age get on without. Couldn’t she feel the beauty of continuity in the spiritual world, when the other was being pulled down and rebuilt every morning? Couldn’t she see that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was sheer ignorance and illiteracy that made people call things new—that even in the brick-and-mortar world that was being forever pulled down and rebuilt, the old materials and the old conceptions had to be used again in the rebuilding? Who wanted a new religion, anyhow, when the old one was there, so little exhausted or even understood, in all its age-long beauty?
He pressed on, so possessed by his subject that the words came of themselves, as they had when he had poured out his soul to Halo Tarrant: all unconsciously, he had yielded again to the boyish hope that his grandmother would be able to follow his reasoning.
She listened with bent head, and then lifted a face humbled yet admiring. “Yes, yes, I see what you mean, Vanny,” she began eagerly—and even as she spoke he remembered that she had always said that, had always believed that she saw what people meant; but whereas in his boyhood he had retorted brutally: “No, you don’t!” now he only mumbled: “Oh, well, I don’t know that it matters so much about seeing. …”
Her face lit up. “No; that’s it. Feeling’s everything, isn’t it, dear?”
“Well, I didn’t mean that, either. I only meant—”
She raised her tired eyes and fixed them on his. “You meant that I’d better not try any more of my talks on your clever literary friends? But I don’t intend to, Vanny; I’m sure you’re right. My message is for the plain folks who want to be told how to get to God. … I know they’ll come to me in their hundreds. I don’t mean to give up or lose courage because I can’t reach the hearts of a few super-cultivated intellectuals. … All that doesn’t matter, as long as I can make money enough for us all to live on—does it?”
Vance got up and bent over to kiss her. He could not tell her at the moment that what he really wanted was to make her give up her lecturing tour altogether. Their talk had carried him back to the old days when she had been his only listener, had understood him with her heart if not with her mind; he could not bear, just then, to say anything that would bring the anxious humbled look into her eyes. He must be off, he explained, he had to hurry down to the office; but he promised to be waiting for her when she called after lunch to see Laura Lou.
He knew it was only a postponement: he had already decided that he could not live on his grandmother’s earnings. Everything in his life seemed a postponement nowadays: morally as well as materially he was living from hand to mouth. But his intelligence still refused to bow to expediency; it was impossible for him to think of living on the money which Mrs. Scrimser’s own ignorance was prepared to extract from that of others. His long hours of study and meditation at the Willows had made any kind of intellectual imposture seem the lowest form of dishonesty.
His grandmother’s hour with Laura Lou nearly undermined his resolution. Seeing them thus—Laura Lou in one of her strange moments of loveliness, her head resting contentedly against the pillows, her willing hand yielded to Mrs. Scrimser’s, and the latter settled in the rocking chair by the bed, her great person giving out an aura of good-humour and reassurance—it seemed to Vance that nothing mattered except that these two should understand each other. If only the conditions had been reversed, and he had been able to provide a home for his grandmother! He saw all his difficulties solved; Laura Lou soothed and sustained, the housekeeping somehow managed, and he himself with a free corner in which to go on undisturbed with his work. … This was precisely what Mrs. Scrimser and “Storecraft” were offering him; and the irony of the contrast burnt itself into him. He made up his mind to see that very day the publisher who had made him such tempting proposals. Perhaps there was still some hope of readjustment with the New Hour and Dreck and Saltzer.
On the way downstairs Mrs. Scrimser laid her hand on his arm. “Is there anywhere that I can speak to you for a minute alone, Vanny?”
He pushed open the parlour door and found its desert spaces untenanted. Mrs. Scrimser seated herself on one of the antimacassared sofas and drew him down beside her. She looked at him tenderly, and before she spoke he knew what she was going to say. “You think Laura Lou looks sick?” he broke out. “She was a little excited at seeing you—I guess it sent her temperature up. But she’s all right, really. …”
“Who looks after her when you’re at the office?” his grandmother asked.
“Well—the hired girl goes up every now and then. And Mrs. Hubbard—that’s our landlady—has been very nice to her … until just lately. …”
“Just lately?”
He reddened. “Well, I’ve been behindhand about paying—I suppose that’s the reason.”
“Vanny, you must take that child away from here.”
He gave an impatient laugh. “Take her away? Where to? To begin with, she wouldn’t go anywhere without me. …”
She looked at him gravely. “You must go with her then. Young eyes don’t recognize sickness the way old ones do. … No, dear, I don’t want to frighten you; she’ll get well; she just wants nursing and feeding—and comforting, I guess. Isn’t she fretting about you and your affairs? Maybe thinking she’s a burden to you? Poor child—I thought so. … Well, Vanny, all that’s got to stop. It must stop!” She stood up with sudden resolution. “I’ll send for that ‘Storecraft’ man—I could see they were anxious to get me; he was fairly scared that I’d fall into the hands of another manager. I’ll see him tonight, Vanny; I’ll get a good big advance out of him. … Saidie Toler’ll manage that for me … you’ll see!”
She stood beaming on him with such ample reassurance that his resolution wavered. Wasn’t she right, after all? What business was it of his if (in perfect good faith, he was sure) she chose to sell her hazy rhetoric to audiences more ignorant than herself? After all, it was probable that her teaching could do only good … why try it by standards of intellectual integrity that none of her hearers would think of applying? He was frightened by her tone in speaking of Laura Lou; he knew that, unless he could raise a little money at once, he and his wife could not stay on at Mrs. Hubbard’s; and to his grandmother’s question as to where he intended to take Laura Lou he could find no answer.
“See here, Vanny, don’t you look so discouraged. You’ll see, I’ll pull it off in the big towns upstate. And then—”
“No, no,” he broke out uncontrollably. “You don’t understand me; you must listen. I can’t take your money—no matter how much of it you make. I want you to give up lecturing; to give it up at once. I want you to go back home now—tomorrow. Don’t you see, Granny, we can’t either of us live on money that isn’t honestly got?”
Mrs. Scrimser stood listening with a face of gentle bewilderment. He felt the uselessness of his words; no argument of that sort could penetrate through the close armour of her conviction. Under her genuine personal humility there was a spiritual pride, the sense of a “call,” of the direct mandate of the Unseen. The word “honestly” had not even caught her attention, and she evidently attributed Vance’s scruples to the pride of a young man unwilling to be helped out of money difficulties by an old woman. He did not know what to say next; and for a minute or two they stood and faced each other in an embarrassed silence. Then he saw a tremor cross her face, followed by a look of painful enlightenment.
“Vanny,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, “perhaps, as you say, I haven’t understood what you meant. But you’ve got to tell me. Is it because you’re afraid I’ll hurt your reputation—a foolish old woman going about telling people about things she doesn’t half understand? I know that’s the way it struck you and your fashionable friends last night—and maybe you don’t want them to go round saying: ‘Who’d ever have thought that old evangelist woman with her Salvation Army talk was Vance Weston’s grandmother—the novelist’s grandmother?’ ” She paused, and let her eyes rest on his. “That it, Vanny? You see I’m not so stupid, after all.” She smiled a little, and drew him closer. “If you do feel that, sonny, I guess I’ll have to give up after all.”
Vance could find no reply. The words choked in his throat. “It’s not that—how could you … ?” he mumbled, answering her embrace. She groped in a big silk bag, drew out a crumpled handkerchief, and wiped her spectacles. When she had put them back, she plunged again into the deeper recesses of her reticule, and finally produced a hundred-dollar bill. She smoothed it out and pressed it into her grandson’s hand. “No, it’s not for you—it’s for Laura Lou. And you can let her take it, Vanny”—a whimsical twinkle crept into her eyes—“because I didn’t earn a dollar of it lecturing. I made every cent baking gingerbread for charity sales last winter—and see here, Vanny, it’s twice the work it is coaxing folks back to Jesus. …”