XXXI + 

Vance continued to sit there. He had imagined he had suffered on the day when he had seen his grandfather down by the river with Floss Delaney: poor simpleton! That was a wound to his raw senses. He had escaped from it by writing it out and selling it to an editor. But now there was not a vein of his body, not a cell of his brain, not a dream or a vision of his soul, that was not hurt, disabled.⁠ ⁠… This woman who had kindled in him the light by which he lived had sat there complacently telling him that she believed in his work, that her husband and old Frenside believed in it⁠ ⁠… and had thought she was leaving him comforted! + 

But did she really think so? Or was all she had said only a protective disguise, the conscientious effort to repress emotions corresponding to his own? He had an idea she would be very conscientious, full of scruples he wasn’t sure he wholly understood. For if she hadn’t cared as much as he did, why should she have devoted all those hours to helping him? If it was just for the good of the New Hour, she was indeed the ideal wife for an editor! But no: those afternoons had been as full for her as for him. What was that phrase she had pointed out, in the volume of Keats’s Letters she had given him⁠—about loading every rift with gold? That was what they had done to their hours together: both of them. + 

Suddenly, as he sat brooding, he heard a door open: then, after a moment’s delay, a step coming through the empty rooms. The carpets muffled it, the stealing twilight seemed to envelop it; but it was hers, hers surely⁠—who else would have business there? She was returning, coming back to say all the things that were surging in his heart.⁠ ⁠… He sat still, not daring to look up. + 

The step drew nearer, reached the threshold, clicked on the parquet of the library. He started up and saw Mrs. Tracy. In the faint light her face looked so drawn and wretched that he thought she had been taken ill again, and went toward her hurriedly. + 

“Why, what’s the matter?” + 

“Matter? It is a woman you come to meet here then!” She had reached the table, and with a quick pounce picked up a glove which lay there. “That’s what you call your literary work, is it?” she triumphed venomously. + 

Vance stood silent. His mind was still so charged with ardent and agonizing thoughts that he could not grasp what she was saying. What was she talking about, what was she trying to insinuate, what had she come for? Once more he caught in her face the gleam of animosity he had been conscious of, just below the surface, ever since he had gone with Upton to the ball game. + 

“Well, haven’t you got anything to say? No, I don’t suppose you have!” Mrs. Tracy taunted him. + 

“I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t know what you’re talking about. That glove is Mrs. Tarrant’s⁠—she left here only a few minutes ago.” + 

Mrs. Tracy’s sallow face grew sallower. He saw that she was unprepared for the answer and not wholly inclined to believe it. “Mrs. Tarrant⁠—what was she doing here?” + 

“She came to see me.” + 

“And what were you doing here?” + 

“Writing, as you see.” + 

Mrs. Tracy was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed incredulously on the piled-up pages before her. “I’d like to know who it is lets you in,” she said at length. + 

“Why, Mrs. Tarrant let me in today, of course.” + 

“Today! Maybe she did. I’m not talking only about today. It’s not the only day you’ve been here.” + 

Vance hesitated. He had expected to silence his mother-in-law, and dispel her suspicions, by naming Mrs. Tarrant⁠—one of the few persons who had the undisputed right to come and go in that house. But it would be a different matter, he instantly felt, to let Mrs. Tracy associate Halo’s name with the frequent and clandestine visits of which she evidently suspected him. He was convinced now that she had come on purpose to surprise him, as the result of information received; and he was never ready-witted in emergencies. + 

“Well, I don’t know’s I need ask who lets you in,” she pursued. “You had plenty of time to have duplicate keys made while I was sick.” + 

“Certainly I had⁠—if it had occurred to me to do anything so low-down.” + 

“Low-down? I guess it isn’t that would have prevented you, if you’d been set on coming here, whether it was to steal books or to meet women⁠ ⁠… maybe both⁠ ⁠…” she flung back, trembling. + 

Her agitation had a steadying effect on Vance. “Why not both, as you say?” he rejoined impartially, beginning to gather up his papers. He was sure she was not there without a definite purpose, and it was obviously safer to leave the burden of explanation on her shoulders. After all, he had nothing to reproach himself with but the venial wrong of concealing from Laura Lou that he did his writing at the Willows, and not at the New Hour office. He had been slaving all summer to pay off the money Mrs. Tracy had accepted from Bunty Hayes, and the women had better leave him alone, or he’d know why.⁠ ⁠… Silently he crammed his papers into their usual storing-place and walked toward the door. + 

Mrs. Tracy stepped in front of him. “Where are you going?” + 

“Home.” + 

“Home? It’s a place you don’t often trouble. Why don’t you do your writing there⁠—if it’s writing you say you come here for?” + 

“Because I’m never left alone,” he said, his anger rising again. Mrs. Tracy saw her chance and laughed. “Not with the right woman, you mean?” + 

Vance halted in front of her. After all, if there was a scene coming⁠—and he saw she was not to be cheated out of it⁠—better have it out here than wait and risk Laura Lou’s being drawn in. “What is it you’re driving at? I can’t answer till I know,” he said sullenly. + 

“Well, answer me this, then. Who’s the woman you come here to meet?” + 

The blood rose to his face. “Nonsense. I told you Mrs. Tarrant came here today. You’d better give me her glove and I’ll take it back to her.” + 

Mrs. Tracy paid no attention to this. She hesitated a moment; then she said: “You haven’t answered my question yet. It’s no good beating round the bush. The neighbours all know about what’s been going on here. Laura Lou’s had a letter warning her. You say, what am I driving at? Well, I’m here to find out what you propose to do, now we’ve caught you. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?” She flung the words out in a kind of shrill monotone, as if she had learned them from someone else and were afraid of not getting them in the right order. + 

Vance was speechless. His mind had seized on one phrase: “Laura Lou’s had a letter,” and he turned sick with an unformed apprehension. “What nonsense are you talking? What kind of letter? I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to explain. If you have the letter with you, you’d better let me see it, and if I can find the sneak who wrote it I’ll go and break his neck.” + 

Mrs. Tracy laughed. “Well, you’ll have some trouble doing that, I guess. But the letter isn’t here⁠—it’s locked up at home. It’s done enough harm to my poor child already⁠—” + 

“Who wrote it?” Vance interrupted. + 

“It’s not signed.” + 

“I thought as much. That kind never is. And you’ve come here to spy on me on the strength of a rag of paper with God knows what anonymous slander on it?” He took his hat up again, and as he did so, his eye lit on the keys which Halo, in leaving, had laid beside him. They were no good to him now; he would never use them again, never come back here without her. He would take them back to Eaglewood this very night, with the glove.⁠ ⁠… + 

He put them in his pocket and turned again to his mother-in-law. “I come here to work, not to meet women.” This sounded impressive, and in a way was true⁠—yet he didn’t care for the ring of it. He cleared his throat, and began again: “If you’ll give me Mrs. Tarrant’s glove I’ll send it back.” + 

For all answer Mrs. Tracy opened her handbag (it was the very one the bridal couple had bought for her on their return to Paul’s Landing), and put the glove in it, snapping shut the imitation ivory clasp. + 

“See here⁠—give me that glove,” Vance burst out; then crimsoned at his blunder. Mrs. Tracy tucked the bag under her arm. “I’ll see to returning it,” she said. + 

He affected indifference. “Oh, very well⁠—” There was a pause, and then he added. “If that’s all, I’ll be off.” + 

Mrs. Tracy, however, continued to oppose him from the threshold. “It’s not all⁠—nothing like. I guess it’s for me to decide about that.” + 

Vance waited a moment: angry as he was, he had the sense to want to check Mrs. Tracy’s recriminations. “If there’s anything else to be said, I guess it’s for Laura Lou to say it. I’m going back home now to give her the chance,” he declared. + 

Mrs. Tracy raised her hand in agitation. “No, Vance⁠—no! You won’t do that. The letter’s half killed her, anyway. And you know she can’t stand anything that excites and worries her.⁠ ⁠…” She paused a moment, and added with a certain dignity: “That’s why I came here⁠—it was to spare her.” + 

Vance pondered. “Was it her idea that you should come?” + 

“No, she doesn’t even know I’m here. I told her we’d have to take steps to find out⁠—but she was so upset she wouldn’t listen. My child’s a nervous wreck, Vance. That’s what you’ve made of her.” + 

“If I’ve made her a nervous wreck, is it your idea that it’s going to quiet her if you go back and report⁠—as you apparently mean to do⁠—that I come here to meet other women?” + 

The reasoning of this was a little too close for Mrs. Tracy’s flurried brain. She considered it for a while, and then said: “I didn’t come here to go back and report to her.” + 

Vance looked at her in astonishment. “Then what on earth did you come for? Your imagination is so worked up against me that all my denials wouldn’t convince you⁠—I see that. But if Laura Lou’s to be left out of the question⁠—” + 

His mother-in-law moved nearer to him, with a look of appeal in her face that made it human again. “It all depends on you, Vance.” + 

“Well, you don’t suppose⁠—” + 

“I don’t suppose you want to hurt Laura Lou more than you can help⁠—any more than I do,” she continued, with an effort at persuasiveness. “And what I’m here for is to ask you to spare her⁠ ⁠… give her a chance⁠ ⁠… before it’s too late.⁠ ⁠…” She lifted her hands entreatingly. “For God’s sake, Vance, let her go without a fight. It’s her chance now, and I mean she shall take it; but if you’ll let it be easy for her, I’ll let it be easy for you⁠—on my sacred word. Vance⁠ ⁠… See here; I’ve got you where I can make my own terms with you⁠ ⁠… I’ve got my proofs⁠ ⁠… I’ve got the whip hand of as they say⁠ ⁠…” She broke off, and went on in an altered voice: “But that’s not the way I want to talk to you, Vance. I just want to say: Why not recognize it’s all been a failure and a mistake from the first, and set my child free before it’s too late?” + 

“Too late for what?” + 

“For her to get back her health⁠—to enjoy her youth as she ought to.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Vance’s brain was still so confused with the shock of Mrs. Tarrant’s abrupt leave-taking that this fresh assault on his emotions left him dazed. Mrs. Tracy hated him; had always hated him. He had long been carelessly aware of that, and had instantly seen how eagerly she must have caught at this chance of getting the whip hand of him, as she called it; of finding herself justified in all her disappointments and resentments. But he had not suspected that she might have a more practical object in mind, that what she wanted was not to injure him but to free Laura Lou. It was dull of him, no doubt, it was incomprehensible even, that, having lived all his life in a world of painless divorce, where a change of mate was often a mere step in social advancement, it should never have occurred to him that he and Laura Lou could part. But though he had often chafed at the bondage of his unconsidered marriage, though he had long since ceased to think of his wife as the companion of his inner life, and had stooped to subterfuges to escape her fond solicitude⁠ ⁠… yet now her mother’s proposal filled him with speechless wrath. He and Laura Lou divorced!⁠ ⁠… He turned to Mrs. Tracy. “Are you talking seriously?” + 

Of course she was, she said. Wouldn’t he try and understand her and listen to her, and not get all worked up, and make her so nervous she couldn’t get out what she had to say⁠ ⁠… ? + 

“Have to say?” he interrupted. “Who obliges you? You say Laura Lou doesn’t know you’re here.” + 

Mrs. Tracy’s embarrassment increased. When Vance flew out at her like that, she said, she couldn’t keep her wits together; and what was to be gained by making a fuss, anyhow? She was determined, whatever he said, that her child should be free to make a fresh start, and get back her health and spirits.⁠ ⁠… She talked on and on in the same half scared yet obstinate tone. They’d been married too young, she said; that had always been her chief objection to the match. And Vance with no fixed prospects⁠ ⁠… or not enough to support a wife on, anyhow⁠ ⁠… and his parents doing nothing⁠ ⁠… and Laura Lou’s health so delicate, and her lungs threatened since that crazy climb up the mountain in the snow, and no way, as far as her mother knew, for her to get to a mild climate for the winter, as the doctor said she ought to, if she was to get her lungs healed.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Tracy paused, breathless and drawn. “It all depends on you, Vance,” she began again, still panting a little. “You’ve got your own life⁠—your own ambitions. I don’t say but what you’ll go a great way yet, and maybe get onto a big newspaper job some day. But meantime, how are you going to get ahead with a sick wife on your hands⁠—and your own family not doing anything to help?⁠ ⁠… Let her go, Vance; I say it in your own interest as well as hers; for pity’s sake, let her go. Think what it would be to you to be free yourself.” + 

He stood with bent head, her last words resounding strangely in his ears. “Think what it would be to be free yourself.” He had not thought of that. + 

“Let her go⁠—go where?” + 

South, Mrs. Tracy hurriedly explained⁠—to California somewhere. That was what the doctor said. She’d worked it all out with Upton. Upton had had the offer of a job in a big California nursery, and he would make up his mind to take it if his mother would go out and keep house for him; and Mrs. Tracy would sell the little place at Paul’s Landing for whatever it would bring, if only they could get Laura Lou away before the cold weather.⁠ ⁠… And out there, in some of those western states, folks said you could get a divorce as easy as you get a cake of yeast at the grocer’s. Just walk in and ask for it; and nothing said against either party⁠ ⁠… no question about other women or anything⁠ ⁠… so that if Vance wanted to marry again he’d have a clean slate⁠ ⁠… absolutely.⁠ ⁠… “Oh, Vance, if you only would⁠—if you’d only agree to part as friends, and let my child have her chance!” Mrs. Tracy broke off in a spasm of dry sobbing. + 

Vance did not afterward recall how the discussion ended. He only knew that dusk had fallen when he and Mrs. Tracy at length left the house. As they turned down the lane they saw the lights of the high road, and the illuminated trolleys jogging by. Mrs. Tracy got into one and disappeared. + 

Vance sat down under a road lamp and pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. He wrote on it: “I don’t want these; I’ll never go back there,” wrapped the keys in the paper, and addressed it to Mrs. Tarrant. Then he caught the next trolley, and was carried as far as it went in the direction of Eaglewood. He meant to walk up there and leave the keys for her; after that he would see. The late August night was hushed but not oppressive; the stars already seemed to hang higher than in midsummer, as if receding to autumn altitudes; as he climbed there was a stir of air in the upper branches. The walk might help to clear the confusion from his brain; at any rate, it was out of the question to follow Mrs. Tracy home. First of all he had to be by himself, and in the open.⁠ ⁠… + 

The Eaglewood gate was unlatched, and he walked along the drive to the house. It lay low and spreading under mysterious tree shadows, and he thought of the day when he had been caught asleep in the broken-down motor, and brought there, a bewildered culprit, by the scandalized Jacob. Every step was thick with memories which in the making had worn no special look of happiness, but were now steeped in it. He remembered how ashamed and angry he had been when Jacob had shoved him into the hall among those unknown people.⁠ ⁠… + 

Through the canopy of foliage one or two lights peeped from the upper panes, but the lower floor was dark, the shutters were not closed. Perhaps everybody was still out. Silence and night seemed stealing unnoticed into the empty rooms, and Vance would have liked to open one of the windows and enter too.⁠ ⁠… But as he stood on the lawn, a little way off, a light appeared in one of the drawing room windows, and he heard a few chords struck on the piano, and voices rising and falling. Without looking to see who was in the room he hurried back into the shade of the drive, and dropped the keys into the letter box by the front door. They were all strangers to him, those people⁠—he did not belong up there, in the light and music and ease, any more than he did in the dismal Tracy house below. He walked away heavy with that sense of inexorable solitude which sometimes oppresses young hearts. From all the glorious worlds he could imagine he seemed equally shut out.⁠ ⁠… + 

Where did he belong then? Why, with himself! The idea came like a flash of light. What did he want with other people’s worlds when he would create universes of his own? What he wanted was independence, freedom, solitude⁠—and they cost less than houses and furniture, and much less than human ties. Mrs. Tracy’s words came back to him: “Think what it would be to you to be free yourself.” + 

Out in the lane again, he continued to climb. Through pearly clouds the moon of late summer climbed with him, lighting the way capriciously, as it had been lit by Halo’s motor lamps that morning before daylight when they had mounted to Thundertop. He had been free then, the world had lain before him in all its conquerable glory. And a few months of discouragement and the unexpected sight of a fresh face had annihilated everything, and reduced him to the poor thing he now was. He walked and walked, unconscious of the way, driven by the need of being alone and far from the realities to which he must so soon come back. At length he threw himself down on a ledge from which he could catch a first twist of the moon-silvered Hudson, remote and embosomed in midnight forest. + 

“Think what it would be to you to be free.” That was what they were offering him⁠ ⁠… the return to that other world, the world he had looked down on from Thundertop. + 

He tried to clear his mind of anger and confusion and look at his case dispassionately. The Tracy case was plain enough; from the first, very likely, Mrs. Tracy had been bent on getting rid of him, on giving Laura Lou what she called her chance. But she was not a woman of initiative, and would probably have ended by resigning herself if some persistent influence had not pushed her forward. Upton’s⁠—? Vance shrugged away the thought of Upton⁠ ⁠… Hayes, of course! The blood rushed to his forehead. He could hear Bunty Hayes rehearsing the scene with Mrs. Tracy. Very likely they had cooked up the anonymous letter between them. And now they were going to turn him out like a boarder whose room was wanted⁠ ⁠… that was about the way they looked at it.⁠ ⁠… “Nothing easier⁠ ⁠… slick as a button⁠ ⁠…” Hayes would say.⁠ ⁠… + 

Well, why not? + 

He lay there, stretched out on the ledge, and looked down into the nocturnal depths. In the contemplation of that widespread beauty calmer thoughts came back, little things fell away.⁠ ⁠… What had he been able to do for Laura Lou? What had she done for him? The tie between them had so quickly become a habit, an aquiescence, nothing more. Perhaps Laura Lou had been conscious of that too, perhaps she too had chafed and longed for freedom⁠—or simply for relief from worry, for material well-being, a home of her own⁠—all that he could never give her. His eyes filled.⁠ ⁠… What was there to prevent their both trying again? + 

He could not find the answer to this question. He had never heard of any reason why married people shouldn’t agree to part and begin life again if they wanted to⁠ ⁠… only he could not picture its happening to himself and Laura Lou. Whenever he tried to, it was as if a million delicate tendrils, of which he was unconscious when he and she were together, tightened about his heart and held it fast to hers, in a strange bondage closer than that of love or desire. He lay and lay there, and tried to puzzle it out, but in vain. His last conclusion was: “Of course if she really wants to be free, she shall be⁠—” and for an instant his soul blazed again with the rekindled light of opportunity.⁠ ⁠… After that, worn out, he fell asleep on his ledge.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was broad daylight when he woke up, aching and hungry. His watch had stopped, but from the position of the sun he judged it must be after eight o’clock. His first craving was that of a ravenous boy⁠—for a cup of Mrs. Tracy’s hot coffee. What was all the fuss about, anyhow? How different things looked by daylight, with the same old sun lighting up the same old daily road of duty. There was the office, there was his wife⁠—and, oh hallelujah, there was his work! He sprang down from rock to rock, reached the road, and hurried homeward. + 

When he got to Mrs. Tracy’s door he ran up the steps calling out Laura Lou’s name. What nonsense it all seemed now, that ranting scene of last night! But to his astonishment the door was locked. He called again, shook the handle, banged on the panel⁠—but no one answered. He walked around to the back of the house, expecting to find his mother-in-law among the currant bushes. “Laura Lou is sound asleep still, I suppose?” he would begin jokingly. But there was no one among the vegetables either, and the door of the back porch was also locked. Vance stepped back and threw a handful of pebbles at his wife’s window, calling out to her again. Again there was no answer. + 

He returned to the front door, shook and rattled it without result, and finally, disheartened, sat down on the doorstep and wondered.⁠ ⁠… + 

All the way down the mountain conciliatory phrases, jokes, words of endearment had crowded to his lips⁠—anything to smooth the way back to the old life. And now he was confronted by this silent hostile house, which seemed to know nothing of him, but stared down from blank forbidding windows as if on an intruder. + 

An intruder? Was it possible that he was already that? By God, no! His smouldering wrath against Mrs. Tracy blazed up again. It was all her doing, whatever had happened. She wouldn’t rest till she had separated him from Laura Lou.⁠ ⁠… He was beginning to feel a sort of terror at the silent house and the unknown behind it. He saw the son of a neighbour walking down the lane, and stood up and hailed him. “See here⁠—I’m just home, and I guess I’m locked out. Seen my womenfolk round anywhere?” he asked facetiously. + 

Yes, the youth said, he had; he’d met them up the lane. They were going to see if they could get Dixon’s team to take them to the station, they told him; he guessed they were taking some baggage with them, for a stay.⁠ ⁠… He grinned and loafed on, and Vance stood and looked after him without moving. It had all been planned in advance, then; they were going to the city⁠—going straight to Bunty Hayes, no doubt! He would have secured rooms for them, where they could stay till they started for California.⁠ ⁠… + 

Vance walked dizzily back to the porch. It was true, then⁠—it had really happened, this thing which was still inconceivable to him. He stood there staring about him like a man waking out of sleep; and as he did so, he noticed a suitcase and two or three insecurely tied bundles in a corner of the porch. They had already packed, then; they would come back presently to pick up their belongings. + 

It was all as queer and telescopic as things piled up in a nightmare. Yesterday morning this house had been his home and Laura Lou’s⁠—now it was shut, empty, unrelated to them. That phase of its existence and theirs was over.⁠ ⁠… His eye lit casually on the suitcase, and he recognized it as the one which had accompanied him and Laura Lou on their honeymoon. He sat down beside it on the floor of the porch, and recalled how he had unpacked it on the beach on their wedding day and pulled out their sticky oozing wedding breakfast. And how Laura Lou had had her first taste of champagne out of a seashell! And it had been his first taste, too⁠—only he had got out of the way remembering that.⁠ ⁠… + 

His eyes filled, and he was overcome by the sudden boyish craving to see something belonging to her and touch it. It seemed to him now that he and she had really parted long ago; that the laughing child who had helped him to unpack the lunch from that suitcase had for months past been farther from him than there were miles between Paul’s Landing and California. He had not meant it to be so; had not been aware that it was so⁠—but now it came over him that perhaps, for Laura Lou, the knot had long since been untied, that the anonymous letter had been a pretext long waited for, perhaps provoked. At the thought, the physical sense of her stole back on him; it was clinging and potent, like the perfume of a garden in June. Vance bent over the suitcase, and hardly knowing what he did, pushed open the lock and lifted the lid. Her poor little possessions had been crammed in carelessly and in haste, and on top, flattened out and disjointed, lay the old stuffed dove from the gilt basket he had sent to her mother. + 

The sight caught him by the throat. He knelt for a long time, clutching the limp moth-eaten bird in both hands. He had not thought of the dove for ages⁠—but he remembered now having noticed that she had fastened it by a wire above the little looking glass on her chest of drawers. It had hung there, a little crooked, with one wing limp, ever since they had come back from their honeymoon. + 

He had hardly noticed it; but she had remembered, in the haste and grief of her going, to unfasten it from its perch and cram it into her bursting suitcase. “But if she feels like that, why is she going?” The thought rushed through him like a burst of warm rain in spring, softening, vivifying. He was afraid of nothing now, with the old stuffed dove in his hand! He stood up, pressing it to him, as the wheels of Dixon’s carryall halted before the gate. + 