XL
It was one of Tarrant’s accomplishments to be able to go imperturbably through a scene where his advantage depended on his keeping his temper; but it was one of his weaknesses to collapse afterward, his overtaxed self-control abandoning him to womanish tremors, damp hands, and brittle nerves.
When he turned up that evening, his wife knew at once that he was in the throes of one of these reactions. Something had gone wrong again at the office. Of late, on such occasions, he had taken to seeking comfort in the society of Mrs. Pulsifer. Halo knew this and was faintly amused. She knew also that he was losing interest in the New Hour because it had not succeeded as he had hoped, and that he had begun to write a novel—probably under Mrs. Pulsifer’s inspiration. An important Pulsifer Prize for First Novels was to be added to the one already established for the Best Short Story; and it was like Tarrant, to whom the money was utterly indifferent, to be tempted to compete for the sake of publicity. His restless vanity could never find sufficient pasturage, and as the years passed without the name of Lewis Tarrant becoming a household word on two continents (or even figuring in the English Who’s Who), his wife noticed that his appetite for praise grew coarser.
All this Halo marked with the lucid second sight of married experience. As long as she had continued to be fond of her husband she had seen him incompletely and confusedly; but under the X-ray of her settled indifference every muscle and articulation had become visible. At times she was almost frightened by the accuracy with which she could calculate the movements of his mind and plot out his inevitable course of action. Because really she no longer cared to do so. … She would have been glad enough to impart the unneeded gift to Mrs. Pulsifer; and one day when Mrs. Spear, after various tentative approaches, had put a maternal arm about her and asked ever so gently: “Darling, has it never occurred to you that Lewis is being seen about rather too much with Jet Pulsifer?” Halo had burst into hysterical laughter, and caught her bewildered parent to her bosom. …
But no. There was no escape that way. Lewis still needed her, and she knew it. Mrs. Pulsifer ministered to his thirsting egotism, but Halo managed his life for him, and that was even more important. Some day, perhaps … But she shook off the insinuating vision. Penny by penny, hour by hour, she was still paying back the debt she had assumed when she found out that, all through his courtship, her family had been secretly and shamelessly borrowing from him. And since then the debt had gone on increasing much faster than she could possibly reduce it. The comfort he had given to Mr. and Mrs. Spear since he had become their son-in-law, the peace and security assured to them by his lavish allowance—how many years of wifely devotion and fidelity would it take to wipe out such a score?
Musing fruitlessly on these things she sat alone, waiting for her husband to join her and go in to dinner. She had refused several invitations for that evening, thinking that Lewis would probably dine out (as he did nowadays on most nights), and hoping rather absurdly that Vance Weston might come in and see her. …
The poor boy must have calmed down by this time; it would be safe to see him; and she was eager to hear more of the novel. Her sympathy with him, she told herself again and again, was all intellectual; she was passionately in love with his mind. It was a pity that he had not understood this; had tried to mix up “the other thing” with their intellectual ardours. And yet—no, certainly, she did not want him to make love to her; but would it not have mortified her to be treated forever like a disembodied intelligence? She had to confess to herself that she could not wish undone that foolish scene of the other evening … that the incident in it she most obstinately remembered was his despairing boy’s cry: “I want to kiss you. …”
Oh, but what folly! Of course, if she was really to help him with his work, all those other ideas must be put aside and forgotten. And she did so want to help him; it was her greatest longing, the need of her blood. The thought of it fed her lonely hours, filled her empty life—or nearly filled it. And she hoped he would feel the same longing, the same urgent necessity, and would come back to her soon for more companionship, more encouragement. … Perhaps she had not encouraged him enough, that last evening, about his work, that is. It was well to remember that authors, even the least fatuous and the most intelligent of them, were nervous, irritable, self-conscious: the slightest unfavourable criticism flayed them alive. In that respect certainly (she smiled) Tarrant seemed qualified to join the brotherhood. But poor Vance’s sensitiveness was of a different kind, the result of inexperience and humility. Under it she always felt an inarticulate awareness of his powers; his doubts, she was sure, concerned only his aptitude for giving those powers full expression. She could almost picture him, in some glorious phase of future achievement, flinging down his pen to cry out like a great predecessor: “My God, but this is genius—!”
She was thus softly pondering, in a mood of moral beatitude, when Tarrant turned up with his usual nervous: “I’m not late, am I? Well, put off dinner a few minutes, will you?” And now here he was again, fresh from his dressing room, brushed, glossy, physically renovated, but nervously on edge and obviously in need of consolation. … Goodbye to her moral beatitude!
Since their one quarrel about Vance Weston—the quarrel which had resulted in Halo’s deciding not to accompany her husband to Europe—the young man’s name had seldom figured in their talk. The unexpected success of Instead had been balm to Tarrant’s editorial vanity, and Halo had not suspected that there had been a subsequent difference between the two men till the evening, a few months previously, when Vance had told her of his asking Tarrant to raise his salary or annul their contract. She had suffered bitterly on hearing of this, but she had suffered in silence. She could not give Vance the clandestine help she would have wished to; she had neither money of her own, nor means of raising any. And she knew it would only injure him if she betrayed his confession and appealed to her husband’s generosity. Tarrant had no generosity of that kind; he would simply have said: “I suppose he’s been trying to borrow of you now, after failing to pull it off with Mrs. Pulsifer”; and if he had said that she thought she would have got up and walked out of his house—forever.
No; that was not the way to help Vance. Her only intervention on his behalf had been a failure. All she could do was to hold her tongue, and do what she could to contribute to the success of his new book. It flattered her (far more than she knew) to feel that in that way she really could be of use to him. To be his Muse, his inspiration—then there really was some meaning in the stale old image! She knew she had had a real share in the making of Instead, and she wore the secret knowledge like a jewel. …
“Well?—” she questioned her husband, when they had returned to the library after dinner. She knew it was necessary for his digestion (an uncertain function) that he should unburden himself of the grievance she read in every look and intonation. And sometimes, when she rendered him this service, she felt as impersonal as a sick nurse smoothing out a fractious invalid.
Tarrant gave his short retrospective laugh—like the scratch of a match throwing back a brief flare on his grievance. “Oh, it’s only your protégé again—”
She felt a little shiver of apprehension. Usually a cool harmony reigned between Tarrant and herself. Since the day of her great outburst, when she had refused to accompany him to Europe, she had carefully avoided anything approaching a disagreement. She had learned her lesson that day; and futile wrangles were humiliating to her. But whenever Vance Weston’s name was pronounced between them the air seemed to become electric. Was it her husband’s fault or hers? She was always on the alert to defend Vance, she hardly knew from what. Or was it herself she was defending … ?
“What protégé?” she asked carelessly.
“I didn’t know you had more than one. Weston, of course—yes, he’s been treating me to another of his scenes. Really, the fellow’s not housebroken. And a sneak too … can’t run straight. …”
“Lewis!”
“Dirty sneak. He’s after more money, as usual, and he’s been trying to get Lambart to buy his book from Dreck and Saltzer without first consulting me. Buy up our double contract with him … behind my back! But women can never see the enormity of these things. …”
He paused, and stirred his coffee angrily. “I daresay you see nothing in it,” he challenged her.
Halo’s heart had subsided to a more regular measure. It was not what she had feared … she was ashamed to think how much! She assured herself hastily that her fears had been for Vance, and not for herself. If he had lost his head and betrayed his feeling for her to her husband it would have meant ruin for him. She knew the deadly patience of Tarrant’s retaliations.
“Of course,” Tarrant continued, “things aren’t done that way between men. But the fact is I know only one woman who has a man’s sensitiveness in money matters”—he paused—“and that is Jet Pulsifer. …” He brought the name out with a touch of defiance which amused his wife.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured, with increasing relief.
“You don’t see anything in it yourself?” he insisted.
“I see what I always have—that your contract’s not fair to Vance; I’ve told you so before.”
“That’s neither here nor there—”
“Surely it’s very much here, if the poor boy’s in want of money.”
“Ah, he’s been whining to you again about money, has he?”
She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears. She remembered the uselessness of her previous intervention in Vance’s behalf, and wondered again by what curious coincidence it happened that his name always brought to a climax the latent tension between herself and Tarrant.
“Look here, Halo—I can see you still think I’ve treated him badly.”
“I think you’ve treated him—indifferently. What you call business is essentially an affair of indifference, isn’t it? It’s designed to exclude the emotions.”
“Do you want me to be emotional about Weston?”
“I want you to be generous, Lewis—as you know how to be. …” She paused to let this take effect. “He’s young and unhappy and bewildered. Perhaps he did make a mistake in going to Lambart about his book without telling you.” (Tarrant snorted.) “But surely you can afford to overlook that. He’s given the New Hour one good book—and I believe he’s going to give you another. This last novel is a very fine thing—”
Tarrant shifted his position slightly, and looked at his wife. “Ah—so you’ve read it, then?” he said, a sudden jealous edge in his voice.
“The first chapters—yes.”
“Well, there are no more first chapters—or last ones, either.” He saw her startled movement, and laughed. “When I refused to let the young gentleman off his bargain he tore up the manuscript before my eyes and said he’d never write another line for any of us. Good old-fashioned melodrama, eh?” He waited, and then added with a touch of flatness: “He swore he had no other copy—but I wouldn’t trust him about that.”
Halo sat speechless. The scene had evidently been more violent than she had imagined. She knew Tarrant’s faculty for provoking violent scenes—his cool incisiveness cutting into the soul like a white-hot blade into flesh. The pound of flesh nearest the heart—that was what he always exacted. And she knew too that Vance had spoken the truth: to her also he had said that he had no duplicate of those first chapters. He still kept to his boyish habit of scribbling the pages with his own hand, and usually did not trouble to type them out till the book he was doing was well advanced. The mechanical labour of copying his own work was hateful to him, and he had never been able to pay for having it done. In the first months Laura Lou had tried to act as amanuensis; but she found his writing hard to decipher, her spelling drove him frantic, and she had nearly destroyed his Remington. Since her illness there had been no question of her continuing to render these doubtful services. The doctor said that stooping over was bad for her, and the manuscripts piled themselves up uncopied, in spite of Halo’s frequent protests. Why, she thought, had she not insisted on typing his work for him herself? But it was too late now; she could only try to swallow back the useless tears.
“Well, what do you think of that?” Tarrant insisted. It always annoyed him to have his climaxes fall flat, and he behaved like a conscientious actor whose careless partner had missed the cue. “You don’t seem to have heard what I’ve been saying,” he insisted.
“Oh, yes. And I’m sorry—dreadfully sorry.”
“Well, that’s not much use.” She saw that he was reaching the moment of reaction. It was the moment when, after he had produced his effect, brought out and aired his grievance, his taut nerves gave way, and he secretly asked himself what to do next, like a naughty child after a tantrum. The hour always came when he had to pay for the irresistible enjoyment of making somebody angry and unhappy, and there was something at once ludicrous in his surprise when it arrived, and slightly pitiful in his distress. “These things take it out of me,” he said, and drew his handkerchief across his damp forehead.
Usually Halo had some murmur of reassurance ready; but on this occasion none came. Vance had destroyed his manuscript—those pages in which she had indeed found things to criticise, but so much more to praise! She remembered now only what was admirable in them, and felt helplessly indignant at the cruelty which had driven him to such an act.
“The fact is, I’m not used to treating with people of that kind,” Tarrant went on, with rising self-pity.
“No—you’re not!” she retorted, carried away by sudden indignation. “It’s your only excuse,” she added ironically.
He stopped short, and looked at her with the injured eyes of a child who had expected compassion and gets a box on the ear.
“You’ve destroyed a fine thing—a great thing, perhaps. It’s an act of vandalism, as much as slashing a picture or breaking a statue—things people get arrested for,” she continued recklessly.
“I—I? Destroyed—? But, Halo, you haven’t even been listening. You think I tore up the manuscript? It was that damned fool who—”
“Yes, because you hurt him, wounded his pride as an artist. You don’t know what it is to respect other people’s work, the creation of their souls. … You don’t know anything about anything, unless it happens to yourself!”
She saw the beads of perspiration come out again on his forehead, and while he felt for his handkerchief she knew he was anxiously asking himself how he was to go through another painful discussion so soon after the previous one. Usually he required twenty-four hours to recover after he had given somebody hell—and here was his own wife, who knew better than anyone else how sensitive he was, how heavily he had to pay for every nervous strain, and who was ruthlessly forcing him into a second scene before he had recovered from the first!
But Halo felt no pity. The sight of her husband’s discomfiture only exasperated her. Often and often she had helped him back to self-esteem after one of his collapses; to do so was almost as necessary to her pride as to his, as long as they were to go on living together. But she was far past such considerations now, and pushed on without heeding. “You’ve destroyed something rare … something beautiful. …” She could only uselessly go over the same words.
Suddenly Tarrant’s face became attentive. “You thought as well of the book as all that?”
“I thought great things of it—” The only thing that relieved her indignation was to rub into him the value of what he had lost. He should at least feel it commercially, if there was no other way of making him suffer.
He was looking at her rather shamefacedly. “Really, you might have dropped a hint of all this before. …”
“I read the chapters only a little while ago; and Vance didn’t want me to form an opinion till he’d got on further, or to say anything about it.”
“Saying anything about it hardly applies to telling me—your husband, and his editor.”
“I’ve no doubt he would have shown it to you if you’d asked him.”
“I did ask him, just now; and his answer was to tear the thing up.” There was a long pause, during which the two opponents rested rather helplessly on their resentment. Halo was still too angry to speak, and her husband, she knew, was beginning to ask himself if he had made a mistake—if there were times when even the satisfaction of bullying someone who depended on one had better be foregone. He said sullenly: “After all, it only means the loss of the time it’ll take him to rewrite the thing. I don’t believe there were more than sixty pages.”
“Creative writers can’t rewrite themselves. It would be mental torture if they could … and they can’t.”
“Oh, well, we’ll see.”
“Do you mean to say he told you he’d try?”
“Lord, no. On the contrary. He said he’d never write another line for us. … But of course he will—he’ll have to. He belongs to the review for another two years, as I reminded him.”
Halo pondered. At length she said, in a quieter tone: “You can’t make him write if he doesn’t choose to.”
“I can threaten him with a lawsuit.”
“Oh, Lewis—”
“Well, what about it? Here’s a fellow who’s destroyed something beautiful—pricelessly beautiful. You tell me artists can’t do the same thing twice over. Well, that makes it unique. And that unique thing that he’s destroyed belonged to me—belonged to the New Hour, and to Dreck and Saltzer. As I told him, it was partly paid for already—and how’s he going to make it up to us now, I ask you? I could see the young ass had never even thought of that.”
Halo suddenly felt ashamed of her own impotent anger. She could have rendered Vance no worse service than by harping to her husband on his blunder. For the sake of satisfying a burst of temper as useless as Tarrant’s she had risked what little hope there was of bringing him around to a kindlier view. But it was almost impossible for her to be adroit and patient when she dealt with anything near to her heart. Then generosity and frankness were her only weapons—and they were about as availing as bows and arrows against a machine-gun. At length she said: “I can understand Dreck and Saltzer taking this stand—I suppose, from a business point of view, it’s all right. But with you it’s so different, isn’t it? Fellow artists surely ought to look at the question from the same angle. Vance is terribly poor … his wife is ill … in some respects his collaboration hasn’t been of much use to the review, and I should think you’d be glad, if the New Hour can’t afford to raise his pay, to let him off his bargain, and get Dreck and Saltzer to do the same. What harm can it do either of you? And at any rate you’ll have given him the chance of trying his luck elsewhere. … I daresay he was stupid, and even rude, in his talk with you—he’s got no tact, no cleverness of that kind—but you, who’ve got all the social experience he lacks, you ought to be generous … you can afford to be. …” Her lips were so parched that she had to stop. To go on talking like that was like chewing sawdust. And when she paused she understood in a flash the extent of her miscalculation. It is too easy to think that vain people are always stupid—and this was the mistake she had made. Yet she ought to have known that her husband, though he was vain, was not stupid … or at least not always so; and that flattery administered at the wrong time will not deceive even those who most thirst for it. Tarrant stood up and looked down on her with a faintly ironic smile.
“What you really think,” he said, “is that I’m a fool—but I’m not quite as an egregious one as all that. I leave that superiority to your young friend. Besides,” he added, “I ought not to forget that you’ve never understood anything about business. It was the only gift your fairy godmothers left out. I’m awfully obliged for your advice; but really, in matters of this kind, you must leave me to deal with our contributors myself. …”