Hudson River Bracketed

frequent absences had been a relief to Vance. When the two did meet, though usually it was only to exchange a few words, Vance felt unhappy in the other’s presence. To anyone less simplehearted it might have been easier to despise the husband of the woman he worshipped than to be on friendly terms with him; but his opinion of Tarrant added to Vance’s general distress of mind. It made him utterly wretched to think of Halo Tarrant’s life being spent with a man for whom she must feel the same contempt that Tarrant excited in him; and since his last talk with her⁠—since she had uttered that “I won’t take a lover while I have a husband” which still filled him with its poignant music⁠—his feeling for her husband had hardened to hatred. His own grievance against Tarrant played little part in this, except insofar as it showed him the kind of man she was chained to; but he wondered bitterly how she could consider the tie binding. In his own case it was different; he was bound to Laura Lou by her helplessness and his own folly, and the bond seemed to him so sacred that he had at once acknowledged the force of Halo’s argument. He knew he could not abandon his wife for the woman he loved; he owned the impossibility and bowed to it. But Halo’s case was different. Tarrant was not an object of pity; and what other feeling could hold her to him?

It was a strange and desperate coil, but one on which his immediate domestic problem left him no time to brood. He was still determined to do all he could to prevent his grandmother from continuing her lecturing tour; even if he could not prevail with her, and she did continue it, he was determined that his wife and he should not live on her earnings. Whatever the alternative might be⁠—and all seemed hopeless⁠—that resolve was fixed in him.

As soon as his grandmother had gone he decided to look up the publisher who had made him such urgent proposals. He carried the hundred dollars up to Laura Lou, and let his heart be warmed for an instant by her cry of surprise, and the assurance that she’d never seen anybody as lovely as his grandmother; then he hurried off on his errand. But at the door he ran into a messenger from the New Hour, with a line from Rauch saying that Tarrant wished to see him about something important. “Better come along as quick as you can,” a postscript added; and Vance unwillingly turned toward the office.

He had not realized till that moment how deeply distasteful it would be to him to see Tarrant again. He had no time to wonder what the object of the summons might be; the mere physical reluctance to stand in the man’s presence overcame all conjecture, filled him to the throat with disgust at being at his orders. “That’s got to end too,” he thought⁠—and then it occurred to him that the Mr. Lambart’s negotiations might have been successful, and that Tarrant, as conscious as himself of the friction between them, had decided to give him his release.

This carried him to the office on lighter feet, and he entered the editorial retreat with a feeling almost of reassurance. It would be hateful, being near Tarrant, seeing him, hearing him⁠—but the ordeal would doubtless soon be over.

Tarrant looked up quickly from his desk: it was one of the days when his face was like a perfectly symmetrical but shuttered housefront. “Sit down,” he sighed; and then: “Look here, Weston, I’m afraid you’ll have to move to some place where I can reach you by telephone. It’s the devil and all trying to get at you; and your hours at the office are so irregular⁠—”

Vance’s heart sank. That dry even voice was even more detestable to listen to than he had expected. He hardly knew which part of Tarrant’s challenge to answer first; but finally he said, ineffectively: “I can work better away from the office.” This was not true, for he did most of his writing there; but he was too bewildered to remember it.

Tarrant smiled drily. “Well, that remains to be seen. It’s so long since any of your script has been visible here that I’ve no means of knowing how much of the new book you’ve turned out.”

Vance’s blood was up. “I don’t understand. It was with your consent that I dropped the monthly articles to give all my time to my novel⁠—”

“Oh, just so,” Tarrant interrupted suavely. “And I presume you’ve got along with it fairly well, as I understand you’ve been negotiating privately to sell it to Lambart.”

“It was Lambart who came to me. He offered to fix it up with Dreck and Saltzer. The price I had contracted for with them is so much below what I understand I have a right to expect that I couldn’t afford to refuse.”

“Refuse what? Are you under the impression that you can sell the same book twice over, to two different publishers? You signed a contract some time ago with Dreck and Saltzer for all your literary output for four years⁠—and that contract has over two years more to run. Dreck and Saltzer have asked me for an explanation because it was through me that the New Hour was able to put you in the way of securing a publisher. They’re not used to this way of doing business; neither am I, I confess.”

Vance was silent. The blood was beating angrily in his temples; but, put thus baldly, he could not but feel that his action seemed underhand, if not actually dishonourable. Of course he ought not to have concealed from Tarrant and his publishers that he had authorized Lambart to negotiate for him. He saw clearly that what he had done was open to misconstruction; but his personal antagonism toward Tarrant robbed him of his self-control. “The price I was