“But, Vanny, that’s the way the old tyrannical religions talked. All that’s got nothing to do with the modern world. What people want nowadays is a new religion—”
Well, he interrupted her, if that was it, what she called her religion wasn’t new; it had been in the air for centuries; and anyhow, even if it had been new, that was no particular recommendation. The greatest proof of the validity of a religion was its age, its duration, its having stood through centuries of change, as something that people had to have, couldn’t in any age get on without. Couldn’t she feel the beauty of continuity in the spiritual world, when the other was being pulled down and rebuilt every morning? Couldn’t she see that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was sheer ignorance and illiteracy that made people call things new—that even in the brick-and-mortar world that was being forever pulled down and rebuilt, the old materials and the old conceptions had to be used again in the rebuilding? Who wanted a new religion, anyhow, when the old one was there, so little exhausted or even understood, in all its age-long beauty?
He pressed on, so possessed by his subject that the words came of themselves, as they had when he had poured out his soul to Halo Tarrant: all unconsciously, he had yielded again to the boyish hope that his grandmother would be able to follow his reasoning.
She listened with bent head, and then lifted a face humbled yet admiring. “Yes, yes, I see what you mean, Vanny,” she began eagerly—and even as she spoke he remembered that she had always said that, had always believed that she saw what people meant; but whereas in his boyhood he had retorted brutally: “No, you don’t!” now he only mumbled: “Oh, well, I don’t know that it matters so much about seeing. …”
Her face lit up. “No; that’s it. Feeling’s everything, isn’t it, dear?”
“Well, I didn’t mean that, either. I only meant—”
She raised her tired eyes and fixed them on his. “You meant that I’d better not try any more of my talks on your clever literary friends? But I don’t intend to, Vanny; I’m sure you’re right. My message is for the plain folks who want to be told how to get to God. … I know they’ll come to me in their hundreds. I don’t mean to give up or lose courage because I can’t reach the hearts of a few super-cultivated intellectuals. … All that doesn’t matter, as long as I can make money enough for us all to live on—does it?”
Vance got up and bent over to kiss her. He could not tell her at the moment that what he really wanted was to make her give up her lecturing tour altogether. Their talk had carried him back to the old days when she had been his only listener, had understood him with her heart if not with her mind; he could not bear, just then, to say anything that would bring the anxious humbled look into her eyes. He must be off, he explained, he had to hurry down to the office; but he promised to be waiting for her when she called after lunch to see Laura Lou.
He knew it was only a postponement: he had already decided that he could not live on his grandmother’s earnings. Everything in his life seemed a postponement nowadays: morally as well as materially he was living from hand to mouth. But his intelligence still refused to bow to expediency; it was impossible for him to think of living on the money which Mrs. Scrimser’s own ignorance was prepared to extract from that of others. His long hours of study and meditation at the Willows had made any kind of intellectual imposture seem the lowest form of dishonesty.
His grandmother’s hour with Laura Lou nearly undermined his resolution. Seeing them thus—Laura Lou in one of her strange moments of loveliness, her head resting contentedly against the pillows, her willing hand yielded to Mrs. Scrimser’s, and the latter settled in the rocking chair by the bed, her great person giving out an aura of good-humour and reassurance—it seemed to Vance that nothing mattered except that these two should understand each other. If only the conditions had been reversed, and he had been able to provide a home for his grandmother! He saw all his difficulties solved; Laura Lou soothed and sustained, the housekeeping somehow managed, and he himself with a free corner in which to go on undisturbed with his work. … This was precisely what Mrs. Scrimser and “Storecraft” were offering him; and the irony of the contrast burnt itself into him. He made up his mind to see that very day the publisher who had made him such tempting proposals. Perhaps there was still some hope of readjustment with the New Hour and Dreck and Saltzer.
On the way downstairs Mrs. Scrimser laid her hand on his arm. “Is there anywhere that I can speak to you for a minute alone, Vanny?”
He pushed open the parlour door and found its desert spaces untenanted. Mrs. Scrimser seated herself on one of the antimacassared sofas and drew him down beside her. She looked at him tenderly, and before she spoke he knew what she was going to say. “You think Laura Lou looks sick?” he broke out. “She was
