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
