She went on to say that things had been very hard for a time, because they had been out of their job for six months. It wasn’t so much the money, though they needed that too; he gathered that Mrs. Tracy’s pride had been wounded, and that she had declared, when Miss Halo tried to fix it up, that it was no use, as she would never let her children go back to the Willows if they had forfeited their cousin’s confidence. But Miss Halo always somehow managed to put things right, and had finally persuaded Mrs. Tracy to relent; and she had continued to help them after that, and had found a fine situation for Upton as undergardener with some friends of hers who had a big place at Tarrytown. So everything was going better now; and she, Laura Lou, was at Saint Elfrida’s School, at Peapack, for a six months’ course, to learn French and literature and a little music—because her mother wanted her to be educated, like her father’s folks were. …
Laura Lou was not endowed with the narrative gift; only bit by bit, in answer to Vance’s questions (when he was not too absorbed in her to put any) did she manage, in fragmentary communications, to bridge over the interval which had turned the gawky girl into the miracle of young womanhood before him.
When she wanted to hear what had happened to him since they had parted he found it even harder to tell his story than to piece hers together. While she talked he could spin about her a silken cocoon of revery, made out of her soft drawl, the throb of her hand, the fruitlike curve of her cheeks and eyelids; but when he tried to withdraw his attention from her long enough to put his words in order he lost himself in a blur. … Really, he said, nothing much had happened to him, nothing that he specially remembered. He’d been a reporter in the principal Euphoria newspaper, and hated it; and he had taken a postgraduate course in philosophy and literature at the state college; but the lecturers somehow didn’t get hold of him. Reading in a library was what suited him, he guessed. (Her lashes were planted like the double row of microscopic hummingbird feathers in a South American embroidery he’d seen somewhere. …) But Euphoria was over and done with; he’d got a job in New York … a job on a swell magazine, a literary review they called it, but they published short stories too, they’d already published one of his, and wanted as many more as he could write … and the editor, Lewis Tarrant, had written to him to come to New York. …
“Lewis Tarrant! But he’s the one Miss Halo married!” Laura Lou exclaimed.
“Did she?” Vance absently rejoined. All his attention was on her hands now; he was separating the fingers one by one, lifting them up and watching them drop back, as though he were playing on some fairy instrument. He hardly noticed the mention of Halo Spear.
“Why, didn’t you know? They were married the year you went away, I guess. I know it was ever so long ago.”
“Does it seem to you ever so long since I went away?”
“Oh, Vance, I’ve told you you mustn’t … or I’ll have to go. …”
He drew back, dropping her hands, and restricting himself to the more delicate delight of looking at her. “What’s the use of trying to write poetry, when she is?” he mused. Yet in another moment he was again seeking rhymes and metaphors for her. He tried to explain to himself what it was that kept him thus awestruck and submissive, as if there were a latent majesty in her sweetness. With that girl on Thundertop it had been different; the shock of ideas, the stimulus of the words she used, the allusions she made, the sense of an unknown world of beauty and imagination widening about him as she talked—all this had subdued his blood while it set his brain on fire. But when Laura Lou spoke she became a child to him again. His allusions to his literary plans and ambitions filled her eyes with a radiant sympathy, but evoked nothing more definite than: “Isn’t that too lovely, Vance?” Yet his feeling for her was not the sensual hunger excited by girls like Floss Delaney. It was restrained by something new in this tender creature; as if the contending elements of body and soul were so harmonized in her that to look at her was almost to clasp her.
But the air grew chilly; Vance noticed that she had turned paler; she coughed once or twice. The instinct of protection woke in him. “See here, we mustn’t go on sitting here till you catch cold. Where’ll we go? Why don’t we walk back to the town to warm ourselves up, and have a cup of hot coffee before I catch my train?” She assented, and they turned toward the gate. As Laura Lou stooped to the padlock Vance looked back yearningly at the old house. “We’ll come here often now, won’t we?”
The gate had closed on them, and Laura Lou walked on a few steps before answering. “Oh, I don’t know about coming again, Vance. I had hard work getting the key out of Mother’s drawer without her seeing me. … Besides, I’m not here weekdays; I’m at school.”
“Your mother can’t object to our coming here after we’re married,” Vance tranquilly rejoined.
“Married?” she stood still in the lane and looked at him with wide incredulous eyes. Her pale pink lips began to tremble. “Why, how can we be, Vance?”
“Why can’t we be, I’d like to know? I’ll be earning enough soon.” (He was
