Desert such parents in their extremity? It was unthinkable to a girl who loved their romantic responsiveness as much as she raged against their incurable dishonesty. Lewis Tarrant had been immensely generous—was she going to let herself be outdone by him? Some day—if she inherited the Willows, and a little of Cousin Tom’s money—she might be able to pay him back, and start fair again. But meanwhile, what could she do but marry him? And at the thought of his generosity she began to glow with tenderness, and to mistake her tenderness for love. On this tidal wave of delusion—and after the news that her cousin Tom had disinherited her—she was swept into the dull backwater of her marriage. …
She had not seen Vance since the destruction of the manuscript. After a sleepless night—a night of dry misery and crazy unreal plans—she had telegraphed him: “Have you gone mad? Is there really no other copy? Come this evening after nine. I must see you.” The day dragged by. She did not see Tarrant again before he departed for the office. She had nothing further to say to him, and was afraid of making another blunder if the subject of Vance came up. If she had not foolishly reproached her husband for destroying a masterpiece he might have been glad to let Vance off his bargain—but now she knew he would exact his pound of flesh. In what form? she wondered. She was not clear about the legal aspects of the case, but she knew Tarrant would move cautiously and make certain of his rights in advance. The meaningless hours crawled on. Her husband was dining at Mrs. Pulsifer’s—a big affair for some foreign critic who had been imported to receive a university degree. She was sure of her evening alone with Vance. But the hours passed, the evening came, and he did not come with it, and he sent no message. She sat waiting for him till after midnight; then she heard the click of her husband’s latchkey and hurried away to her room to avoid meeting him. When she looked at herself in the glass as she undressed she saw a ravaged face and eyes swollen with crying. She had wept unconsciously as she sat there alone and waited.
The next day and the next Vance made no sign; it was not until the third that a note came. “I am going away from New York. My wife is sick, and we are moving out to the country. I couldn’t come the other night. There isn’t any other copy; but then you never cared for it much, and I guess I can do better. Vance.”
Not a word of tenderness or of regret. But the phrases had the desperate ring of the broken words he had jerked out that evening in the library. It was never his way to waste words over the irremediable. And, as far as he and she were concerned, she saw now that the case was irremediable. How could she have asked him to come back to her house? The breach with her husband made that impossible. And now he was going away from New York, he did not even tell her where. It was all useless, hopeless—whatever she might have been to him, or done for him, the time was past, the opportunity missed. …
After waiting a day or two she had sent for Frenside, and told him as much of the story as concerned her share in Vance’s work, and the intellectual side of their friendship. When she came to the destruction of the manuscript, and to her husband’s attitude in the matter, Frenside, who had listened musingly over his pipe, gave a short laugh. “Well, my dear, you have made a mess of it!” She was too much humiliated to protest. “But what can I do now?” she merely asked, and was not unprepared for the “Nothing!” he flung back.
“Oh, Frenny, but I must—”
He shrugged her protest away. “And you know,” he went on, “it’s not such a bad thing for a young novelist with a demoralizing success behind him to tear up a manuscript or two. Chances are they wouldn’t have been much good—just the backwash of the other. He’s done the right thing to go off into the country and tackle a new job in new surroundings—without even you to advise him.”
She winced, but Frenside’s sarcasm was always salutary. “But he can’t afford to wait,” she said. “He’s starving—and with that poor little ill wife. How can I persuade Lewis to let him off his bargain? His only hope is to get an advance from Lambart on his unwritten book, so that he can go off and work quietly, without this dreadful anxiety about money. But I can’t make Lewis feel as I do about it. …”
Frenside contemplated his pipe in silence. “Tarrant’s writing a novel himself, isn’t he? What about—?”
She felt a little shock of apprehension. “Oh, I don’t
