XXXIV + 

It was long past midnight when he cautiously pushed open his door on Mrs. Hubbard’s third story. The light from a street lamp, shining through the shutterless window, showed him Laura Lou in bed, asleep or pretending to be; and he undressed as noiselessly as he could and lay down beside her. He was used to her ways now: he knew she would not begin questioning him till the next morning, and he lay there, his arms crossed under his head, staring up at the cracked and blotched ceiling, and reliving with feverish vividness the hours he had spent with Halo Tarrant. He did not mean to tell Laura Lou where he had been; to do so would only grieve her. Besides, she would never believe him when he told her that all those hours had been spent in talk: the absorbing, illuminating, inexhaustible exchange of confidences and ideas. Laura Lou could not imagine what anybody could have to say that would take that length of time.⁠ ⁠… And Vance himself could hardly believe that this woman, without whom life was so lame and incomplete a business, this woman whom he had so missed and longed for, and thought he hated, could have calmed his vehemence, cast a spell over his throbbing senses, and kept him with her, enriched and satisfied, by the mere magic of her attentive understanding.⁠ ⁠… + 

He had told her everything⁠—tumbled out all his distresses and anxieties, the misery of his marriage, the material cares that made his work so difficult, his secret resentment of what had appeared to him her hardness and indifference when they had parted at the Willows. Nothing had been farther from his intention than to speak to her in this way: he had sought her out as the one confidante of his literary projects, had imagined that pride and loyalty forbade any personal confession. But once his reserve had broken down there rushed through the breach all the accumulated distress of the long months since he had seen her. The exquisite solace of confessing everything effaced all scruples and reserves. He was as powerless as ever to conceal his soul from her⁠ ⁠… and with every word he felt her understanding reaching out to him, soothing the way for what he had to tell. Instead of the resistance against which he was always instinctively arming himself, which made him involuntarily deform every phrase to fit it to a mind so different from his own that there was not one point where they dovetailed, or even touched⁠—instead of that he felt the relief of knowing that his clumsiest word, his lamest statement, would be smoothed out, set upright, and drawn in across the threshold of a perpetually welcoming mind.⁠ ⁠… + 

And then, when he began to talk about his work (“the only thing worthwhile,” he passionately repeated)⁠—ah, then it seemed as if they were in the library of the Willows again, in the green summer twilight, while he read and she listened, taking in his meaning with every line of lids and lips, and the quietness of that head supported statuelike on her smooth bare arm.⁠ ⁠… It was curious, though, how some substitution of values of which she held the secret caused this spiritual communion to bring them nearer than the embraces he had hungered for at the Willows. Or perhaps his recoil from the idea of combining physical endearments with such a communion was due to Laura Lou’s persistent suspicion. He would have to dissociate sensual passion from all that had debased and cheapened it before it could blend with his vision of this woman who had understood and pitied him.⁠ ⁠… Next morning, when the questioning began, Vance told his wife that he had stopped in at the “Loafers’,” and stayed late talking about his book with a lot of fellows. “And that Stram woman, I suppose?” she suggested; and he retorted, plunging his angry face into the basin: “Oh, yes, and half the vaudeville stage of New York.” Laura Lou was brushing her hair before the looking glass. He caught the reflection of the small pale oval, the reddened lids, the ripe lips crumpled up with distress, and turning to her he passed his wet hand through her hair, tumbling it forward over her eyes. “You little goose, you⁠ ⁠…” She caught his hand and flung herself against him. “I don’t care a single scrap, darling, as long as you didn’t go and see Mrs. Tarrant,” she whispered, her lips on his. “Oh, hell,” he laughed, jerking away from her to finish his dressing.⁠ ⁠… + 

He had given Mrs. Tarrant a rough outline of Loot, and had been troubled, for a moment, by her hesitation, her reluctance to express an opinion. She thought the subject too big for him⁠—was that it? No, not too big⁠ ⁠… she had confidence in his range⁠ ⁠… and she agreed with Frenside that he must above all not attempt another Instead. That had been a radiant accident; it would be disastrous to try to repeat it. When he murmured: “Pondicherry,” and spoke of the vision the word evoked, she shook her head, and said: “The publishers would jump at it; but take care!” No, Frenside was right; he must try his hand now at reality, the reality that lay about him. For the novelist, fantasy was a sterile bloom, after all. Only (she wondered) was he sufficiently familiar with the kind of life he was going to describe? Vance laughed and said that Frenside had put the same question. He ought to go out more, Frenside said, rub up against New York in its various phases, especially the social ones⁠—oh, none of your damned documentation, that corpse-dissecting, as Frenside called it⁠—Vance must just let himself live, go about among people, let the place and the people work themselves into his pores.⁠ ⁠… Excellent advice, but not so easy, when a fellow⁠ ⁠… + 

Here she interrupted him, leaning forward with her drawn-up scrutinizing gaze. “Vance, what is it? What’s wrong? Why do you persist in burying yourself instead of taking advantage of your success?” + 

“Well, I guess it’s because I’m not used to society, for one thing.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Don’t think of it as ‘society,’ but just as a few friendly people who admire your work and want to know you.⁠ ⁠… Come here and see them,” she urged; and when he confessed that he had no evening clothes she laughed, and asked if he supposed she meant to invite him to formal entertainments, and if he didn’t know that Frenside never could be coaxed out on tailcoat occasions? Later, she added, when Vance had got more used to it all, he must go to some of the big shows too⁠—the opera, musical parties, millionaire dinners, the whole stupid round⁠—just to see how “the other half lived”; but meanwhile all she suggested was that he should not cut himself off from the small group of the cultivated and intelligent, who might stimulate him and enlarge his point of view⁠—not, at least, she added, if he meant to go on writing novels.⁠ ⁠… + 

Of course he agreed with her; of course he said he would come on whatever evening she named. The mere sound of her voice made the creative ardour beat in him, and when she asked him if he couldn’t soon bring her his first chapter he answered joyfully that she should have it before the end of the week.⁠ ⁠… + 

After breakfast he hurried off to Lambart & Co., the publishers whose letter he had received the previous day. In the inner office where the great Mr. Lambart himself awaited him he heard fresh praises of Instead, and the hope that he was already starting “on another just like it; it’s what your public wants of you, Mr. Weston”; and finally the crucial question: “Will you leave it to us to see if we can come to an understanding with Dreck and Saltzer? Between ourselves (and quite confidentially, of course) their financial situation isn’t sound enough to let them give their authors a chance. They can’t advertise properly, they can’t⁠—” Oh, yes, Vance interrupted; he knew all that. The trouble was that his contract with them was tied up with his New Hour contract⁠ ⁠… and he didn’t see⁠ ⁠… + 

The publisher smiled the faint secret smile of initiation. That was just it: the New Hour wasn’t in any too healthy a state either. There too there might be something to be done: negotiations⁠ ⁠… If Mr. Weston would simply authorize him to act⁠ ⁠… + 

Vance hardly heard the suggestion. The statement with regard to the New Hour, coming to him with a shock of surprise, suddenly recalled the look on Mrs. Tarrant’s face when, the night before, he had blurted out that he was imprisoned by his contract with her husband. She had not answered; had not spoken at all: but her eager eyes and lips seemed drawn back, immobilized, and for the only time in their talk he felt between them an impenetrable barrier.⁠ ⁠… It was that, then! She knew the review was in a bad way, but pride, or perhaps loyalty to her husband, forbade her to admit it. She had merely said, after a moment: “The two years that are left will soon be over; then you’ll be free⁠ ⁠…” with a smile which seemed half ironic and half sympathizing. And they had passed on to other matters. + 

Yes, Vance said, rousing himself to answer Mr. Lambart, yes, of course he would authorize any attempt to buy him off⁠ ⁠… only, he added, Tarrant was a queer-tempered fellow⁠ ⁠… you never knew⁠ ⁠… The publisher’s smile flicked Tarrant away like a straw. “Gifted amateur⁠ ⁠… They can’t edit reviews⁠ ⁠…” He promised to let Vance know the result as soon as possible. “And now about the next novel,” he said, a ring of possessorship in his voice. The terms proposed (a third in advance, if Mr. Weston chose) made Vance’s blood drum in his ears; but there was a change of tone when he began to outline Loot. A big novel of modern New York? What⁠—another? Tempting subject, yes⁠—tremendous canvas⁠—but there’d been so many of them! The public was fed up with skyscrapers and niggers and bootleggers and actresses. Fed up equally with Harlem and with the opera, with Greenwich Village and the plutocrats. What they wanted was something refined⁠—something to appeal to the heart. Couldn’t Mr. Weston see that by the way his own book had been received? Why not follow up the success of Instead by another novel just like it? The quaintness of the story⁠—so to speak⁠—had taken everybody’s fancy. Why not leave the New York show to fellows like Fynes, and the new man Gratz Blemer, who couldn’t either of them do anything else, didn’t even suspect there was anything else to do? This Gratz Blemer: taking three hundred thousand words to tell the story of a streetwalker and a bootblack, and then calling it This Globe! Why, you could get round the real globe nowadays a good deal quicker than you could dig your way through that book! No, no, the publisher said⁠—if Mr. Weston would just listen to him, and rely on his long experience⁠ ⁠… Well, would he think it over, anyhow? A book just like Instead, only about forty thousand words longer. If Instead had a blemish, it was being what the dry-goods stores called an “outsize”; the public did like to get what they were used to.⁠ ⁠… And if a novelist had had the luck to hit on something new that they took a shine to, it was sheer suicide not to give them more of it.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was an odd sensation for Vance, after so many months of seclusion, to find himself again in the harmonious setting of the Tarrants’ library, with friendly faces pressing about him and adulation filling the air like a shower of perfumed petals.⁠ ⁠… There were fewer people than at his former party at Mrs. Tarrant’s; there was no Mrs. Pulsifer, there were no ladies in gold brocade to startle and captivate. The men were mostly in day clothes, the few women in simple half-transparent dresses such as Mrs. Tarrant had worn that other evening when he had called her up and found her alone over the fire. Those women dressed like that when they were sitting at home alone in the evening! The fact impressed Vance more than all Mrs. Pulsifer’s brocades and jewels⁠—made the distance seem greater between the world of Mrs. Hubbard’s third story and that in which a sort of quiet beauty and order were an accepted part of life. + 

Vance had tried to induce Laura Lou to come with him, but had not been altogether sorry when he failed. He had not forgotten their disastrous lunch at the Tarrants’, and he told himself that he hated to see his wife at a disadvantage among people who seemed blind to her beauty, and conscious only of her lack of small talk. But in fact it was only in her absence that he was really himself. Every situation in which she figured instantly became full of pitfalls. The Vance Weston who was her husband was a nervous, self-conscious, and sometimes defiant young man, whereas the other, the real one, was disposed to take things easily, to meet people halfway, and to forget himself completely in the pursuit of any subject that interested him. And here at the Tarrants’, as always, the air was full of such subjects, and of a cordiality which instantly broke down his lingering resentments. He felt this even in Tarrant’s handshake on the threshold. Tarrant, at the office, was an enigma to Vance. What he had heard of the difficulties of the New Hour had prepared him to find them reflected in his host’s manner; but apparently among these people business concerns were left behind after business hours, and Tarrant had never been so friendly and fraternal. He detained Vance for a few moments in talk about the new book (“my wife tells me it’s really on the stocks”), and then effaced himself, declaring: “But it’s the author of Instead that people want to see; come along to my wife, and she’ll introduce you.” + 

Halo, at the farther end of the library, was talking to a short, heavily built young man with a head cropped like a German Bursche, whom she introduced as Gratz Blemer. Blemer was blunt but affable. “I guess we can’t read each other⁠—anyway, you’ll never flounder through a morass like my last book⁠—but I’m glad of the chance of a talk. Writing’s always a mannerism; talk’s the only real thing, isn’t it?” He spoke with a slight German accent, oiled by Jewish gutturals, and Vance, while attracted by his good-nature and simplicity, wondered for the thousandth time why American novels were so seldom written by Americans. He would have liked to go off into a corner with Blemer and put a series of questions about his theory of his art; but other people came up. There was little O’Fallery, whose short story, “Limp Collars,” had taken the Pulsifer Prize on which Tarrant had counted for Vance; Frenside, gruffly benevolent, Rebecca Stram (who was exhibiting Vance’s bust in the clay at a show of “Tomorrowists” got up by that enterprising industry, “Storecraft”), and others, men and women, unknown to Vance, or known only by reputation, but all sounding the same note of admiring interest and intelligent comprehension.⁠ ⁠… + 

Comprehension? At the moment it seemed so; yet as the hours passed, and the opportunity came for one after another to capture the new novelist, and start a literary conversation of which he was himself the glowing centre, Vance felt, again and again, how random praise can isolate and discourage. All that made his work worthwhile, all that made the force of his vocation, was apparently invisible or incomprehensible to others. He longed to learn more about this mysterious craft, the instruments of which some passing divinity had carelessly dropped into his hands, leaving him to puzzle out their use; but the intelligent and admiring people to whom he strove to communicate his curiosities seemed unable to follow him. “Oh, you’re too modest,” one cordial critic assured him; and another: “I suppose when you start a story you don’t always know yourself how it’s going to end.⁠ ⁠…” Not know how it’s going to end! Then these people had never heard that footfall of Destiny which, for Vance, seemed to ring out in the first page of all the great novels, as compelling as the knock of Macbeth’s gates, as secret as the opening measures of the Fifth Symphony? Gratz Blemer, even, whom he managed to corner later in the evening, and whose book gave him so great a sense of easy power⁠—Gratz Blemer, good-natured and evidently ready to be communicative, twisted a cigar between his thick lips, stared at the ceiling, and returned from it to say: “Novel-writing? Why, I don’t know. You have a story you want to tell, and instead of buttonholing a fellow and pouring it out⁠—which is the only natural way⁠—you shut yourself up and reel it off on a Remington, and send it to the publisher, so that more fellows can hear it. That’s the only difference, I guess⁠—that and the cash returns,” he added with a well-fed chuckle. + 

“Yes, but⁠—” Vance gasped, disheartened. + 

“Well, what?” + 

“I mean, how does the thing germinate, spread itself above and below the surface? There’s something so treelike, so preordained.⁠ ⁠… I came across something in Blake the other day that made me think of it: ‘Man is born like a garden ready planted and sown. This world is too poor to produce one seed.’ That just hints at the mystery⁠ ⁠… but I can’t make it all out⁠—can you?” + 

Blemer gave his jovial laugh. “Never tried to,” he said, reaching with a plump hairy hand for a passing cocktail. And after a moment he added good-naturedly: “See here, young man, don’t you go and read the Prophets and get self-conscious about your work, or you’ll take to writing fifty pages about a crack in the ceiling⁠—and then the Coconut Tree’ll grovel before you, but your sales’ll go down with a rush.” No, evidently Blemer did not know how or why he wrote his novels, and could not even conceive the existence of the problems which were Vance’s passion and despair.⁠ ⁠… The footfall of Destiny would never keep him from his sleep⁠ ⁠… and yet he had written a good book. + 

But if Vance was disappointed by his talks with the literary lights, he was stimulated by the atmosphere at the Tarrants’, by the flattering notice of these enviable people who spoke freely and familiarly of so many things he was aching to know about, who took for granted that you had seen the last play at the Yiddish Theatre, had heard the new Stravinsky symphony, had visited the Czechoslovakian painters’ show, and were eager to discuss the Tomorrowists’ coming exhibition, at which they all knew that Vance’s bust by Rebecca Stram was to be shown. + 

The air was electrical, if not with ideas at least with phrases and allusions which led up to them. To Vance the background of education and travel implied by this quick flashing back and forth of names, anecdotes, references to unseen places, unheard-of people, works of art, books, plays, was intoxicating in its manifold suggestions. Even more so, perhaps, was the sense of the unhampered lives of the people who seemed so easily able to satisfy all their curiosities⁠—people who took as a matter of course even the noble range of books in the Tarrant library, the deep easy chairs, the skilfully disposed lamps and flowers, and the music which, toward the end of the evening, a dreaming hand drew from the Steinway in its shadowy corner. As in every one of his brief contacts with this world, Vance felt a million currents of beauty and vitality pouring through him. If the life of a great city had such plastic and pictorial qualities, why not seize on them? Why not make the most of his popularity with these people who had so many ways of feeding his imagination? Before the party broke up he had accepted a dozen invitations to dine, to sup, to hear new music or look at old pictures. What a world it was going to be to dig into and then write about! + 