Hudson River Bracketed

the illusion that all was well. He consolidated the divan, and bought a stove, a couple of lamps, some linen, a jute rug; he managed their simple marketing, and rigged up shelves and hooks; and the house being made habitable, Laura Lou began the struggle to keep it going. At first it did not much trouble Vance. He took his fountain pen and his pad and wandered off along the ridge, where there were still shady hollows in which you could stretch out and dream, and watch the clouds travel, and the birds; it was enough to be in this green solitude, and he did not much care what food, or lack of it, he came back to. But for a good many weeks he did little more than dream. The foundations of his being had been shaken; he was full of warfare and alarms. What he wrote he tore up, and he read more than he wrote; the few books he had picked up at a cheap sale, as they were leaving New York, were devoured before the summer was half over. But all the while he was rebuilding his soul; he found no other term for the return of the inner stability which was like a landing field for his wide-pinioned dreams. And then one day he looked out of the window and saw the apple bough, and his new book hanging on it. He held his breath and watched.⁠ ⁠…

He had no idea of reviving Loot. All desire to treat the New York spectacle was gone. The tale he saw shaping itself was simpler, nearer to his own experience. It was to be about a fellow like himself, about two or three people whose spiritual lives were as starved as his own had been. He sat for a long time penetrating his mind with the strange hard beauty created by that bit of crooked apple bough against a little square of sky. Such ordinary material to make magic out of⁠—and that should be his theme. As he meditated, a thousand mysterious activities began to hum in him, his mind felt like that bit of rustling woodland above the cottage, so circumscribed yet so packed with the frail and complicated life of birds, insects, ferns, grasses, bursting buds, falling seeds, all the incessantly unfolding procession of the year. He had only to watch himself, to listen to himself, to try and set down the million glimmers and murmurs of the inner scene. “See here, Laura Lou,” he cried out, pushing back his chair to go and tell her⁠—and then remembered that nothing he could tell would be intelligible to her. He stood still, picturing the instant shock of thought if it had been Halo he had called, Halo who had hurried in from the kitchen.⁠ ⁠… He sat down at the desk and hid his face in his hands. “God,” he thought. “When I was beginning to forget.⁠ ⁠…” He pulled his pen out, and wrote a few lines; then he was struck by Laura Lou’s not having responded to his shout⁠—she who always flew to him at the least pretext. A minute or two ago he had heard her busying herself with the preliminary assembling of food fragments which she called getting dinner. It was funny she hadn’t answered; he thought he would go and see.⁠ ⁠…

She was in the kitchen, over the range. He thought he saw her push something into it⁠—a white rag or paper, it seemed⁠—and a moment later he caught the smoky acrid smell of burning linen. She turned with a face as white as the rag, and a smile which showed her teeth too much, as if her lips had shrunk away. “Yes⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… coming⁠ ⁠…” she said nervously.

“Why, what’s that queer smell? What are you burning?”

She gave the same death’s-head smile. “I can’t get the fire to draw⁠—I just stuffed in anything.⁠ ⁠…”

“I should say you did. What a stench! I guess you’ve put it out now⁠—”

She went and sat down on the chair by the kitchen table without making any answer.

“I don’t see the joke,” he grumbled, exasperated at being shaken out of his dream.

“I guess there’s something wrong with the range⁠—you’ll have to get somebody to mend it,” she brought out in a queer thin voice, as if she had been running. On the table was her untidy work basket, and near it were more white rags, or handkerchiefs or something, in a dirty heap. She crammed them into the basket, looking at him sideways. “Baby clothes?⁠—” he thought, half dismayed, half exultant. He stood a moment irresolute, finding no words; but suddenly she spoke again, in the same breathless reedy voice. “You better go and find somebody to repair it.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, Lord. I’ll see first if I can’t do it myself,” he grumbled, remembering the cost of the last repairs to the range.

“No, no, you can’t. You better go out somewhere and get your dinner today,” she added.

“What’ll you eat then?”

She gave the same grin, which so unnaturally bared the edges of her pale pink gums. “Oh, I’ll take some milk. You better go out for your dinner. Then I’ll lie down,” she insisted breathlessly.

He stood doubtful, his book palpitating in him. The glorious blue air invited him⁠—very likely she’d be glad to have a rest. He noticed the purplish rings about her eyes, and thought again: “It might be that,” recalling the scenes in fiction in which blushing wives announce their coming motherhood. But Laura Lou did not seem to want to announce anything, and he was too shy to force her silence. “Want to get rid of me today, do you?” he joked; and she nodded, without other acquiescence than that of her queer fixed smile.

He rummaged in the cupboard for bread, and a piece of the cheese they had had for supper; with an apple from the magic tree it would be all he wanted. He would go on a long tramp, to a wonderful swampy wood he knew of, the