“Interrupt me? How can you say that? You know I’ve wanted a talk with you for a long time.”
“No, I didn’t know … I mean …” He broke off suddenly. “My wife wasn’t well when you called. You oughtn’t to have gone up into her room without her asking you,” he blurted out.
“Vance!”
“Can’t you see how people feel,” he continued passionately, “when somebody like you, coming out of this—” he took in the room with a gesture of reproach, “when you come into the kind of place we have to live in, and try to pretend that there can ever be anything in common between our lives and yours?”
Mrs. Tarrant, resting one hand on the back of her chair, still gazed at him in perplexity. “Vance—I don’t understand. Did Laura Lou object to my visit?”
“She felt about it the way I do. We know you mean to be kind. But it’s no use. We don’t belong to your kind of people—never will. And it just complicates things for me if you …” He checked himself, conscious that he was betraying what he had meant to conceal.
“I see,” she murmured in a low voice. There was an interval of silence; then she said: “I’m sorry to have done anything stupid. You know I’m impulsive, and not used to standing on ceremony. I went to see Laura Lou because I wanted to have news of you both, and because I particularly want you to come here some evening to meet a few people who really care for your book, and would talk to you intelligently about it. You ought to see more people of that sort—give them a chance to know you and talk with you. It would stimulate you, I’m sure, and be good for your work.”
Vance felt his colour rising. It was difficult to reply in a spirit of animosity to words so simple and kindly. But the suggestion of the evening party recalled Laura Lou’s resentment.
“Thank you—but that’s no use either. Evening parties, I mean. They’re not for people like us. …”
She did not answer immediately; then she said: “Won’t you sit down, Vance? I hoped you’d come for a long talk. …”
He replied, without noticing her request: “I came to say we’re much obliged to you for thinking of us, but it’s no use your bothering—really no use.”
She moved nearer and laid her hand on his. “Vance—what’s wrong? What has happened? How can you speak to a friend of ‘bothering’ about you? If you don’t want to meet people, I won’t invite them; but that seems no reason why you and I shouldn’t talk together sometimes in the old way. Perhaps you haven’t missed our talks as much as I have—perhaps they didn’t count as much in your life as they did in mine. …”
She paused, and suddenly he flung up his hands and hid his face in them. “Not count—not count in my life?”
He felt her fingers gently slipped through his, drawing his hands down so that his face was uncovered to her scrutiny and his eyes were forced to look into hers. “Not count … not count?” He stared at her through a blur of tears.
“They did, Vance? I’m so glad. Then why try to deny it? Why shouldn’t we just go back to where we were before? I’m sure you’ve got lots to tell me about your new plans. …”
He snatched his hands away and hid his face again, struggling to choke back his sobs. What would she think—what would she suppose? But it was no use fighting against the surge of joy and agony that caught him and shook him like a young tree in a spring gale. He stammered out: “I’m a fool. … You mustn’t mind me. … I’ve been through hell lately. … Just let me sit here a little while without talking, till I get used to you again. …” and without a word she went back to her chair and sat there silently, the shaded lamplight on her quiet head.
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
