A shade of apprehension crossed her face. “Oh, Vance darling—not tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Sunday, and Sunday’s Bunty’s day.” She made the statement with a sort of tragic simplicity, as a fact to be neither disguised nor eluded.
“Bunty’s day?” Wrath descended on him like a thunderclap. “How dare you, after this afternoon—how dare you speak to me as if you belonged to that fellow and not to me? Don’t you know we’re each other’s forever, Laura Lou? Say you do—say you’ve always known it!” he commanded her.
“Well, I was engaged to him,” she murmured, with her gentle obstinacy.
“If you were, you’re not now. How could your mother ever have let you go with a fellow like that anyhow? She thought poorly enough of him when I was with you.”
“Well, she didn’t fancy him at first; she thought he was a bad companion for Upton. But you don’t know how changed he is, Vance. He helped Mother when she lost her job here; and it’s him who’s paying for my year at Saint Elfrida’s. You see, he’s real cultured himself, and he wants I should be cultured too, so that by and by we can take those personally conducted parties to Europe for one of the big travel bureaus, and earn a lot of money. That’s what first reconciled Mother to him, I guess, his being so cultured. She’s always wanted I should marry somebody in the same class as Father’s.”
Vance stood listening in a tumult of anger and amazement. He had never heard her say as much at one time, and every word she spoke was pure anguish to him. He had the same sense of the world’s essential vileness as had swept over him that day by the Crampton riverside. Life tasted like cinders on his lips. At length his indignation broke out in a burst of scattered ejaculations. “He’s been paying for you at school—that low-down waster? Laura Lou, you don’t know what you’re saying! Culture—him? In your father’s class? Oh, God! You’d make me laugh if it wasn’t so sickening. … I’m coming back to see your mother tomorrow whether you want me or not—understand? And if that Hayes fellow wants to come too, let him. I’ll be there to talk to him. And I’ll work day and night till I pay him back what he’s paid your mother for you. And you’ve got to leave that school tomorrow, Laura Lou … do you hear me?”
“No, no, Vance.” Her little pale face had grown curiously resolute, and her voice too. “You mustn’t come tomorrow—it would kill me if you did. You must give me time … you must do as I tell you. …”
“What are you telling me? That I’m not to see you till it suits this gentleman’s convenience? Is that it?”
Her head drooped, and there was a glitter of tears on her lashes; but in a moment she looked up, and her gaze rested full on his. “Vance, if you’ll give me your promise not to come tomorrow I’ll promise to go and see you next week in New York. I’ll slip off somehow. … Because now, Vance,” she cried, “whatever happens, I’ll never marry anybody but you—never, never, not even if we have to wait for each other years and years.”
Dizzy with joy, he stood looking at her as if he were looking into the sun; then he caught her to him, and their youth and passion flowed together like spring streams. “Laura Lou … Laura Lou … Only we won’t wait any years and years,” he cried; for at that moment it really seemed to him that achievement lay in his hand.
XIX
Three years of marriage had not been needed to teach Halo Tarrant that when her husband came home to lunch it was generally because something had gone wrong. She had long known that if he sought her out at that hour it was not to be charmed but to be tranquillized, as a man with a raging headache seeks a pillow and a darkened room. This need had been less frequent with him since he had bought The Hour and started in on the exciting task of reorganizing it. Usually he preferred to lunch near the office, at one of the Bohemian places affected by Frenside and his group; probably it was not indifferent to him, as he made his way among the tables, to hear: “That’s the fellow who’s bought The Hour. Lewis Tarrant; tall fair chap; yes—writes himself. …” Every form of external recognition, even the most casual and unimportant, was needed to fortify his self-confidence. Halo remembered how she had laughed when Frenside, long before her marriage, had once said: “Young Tarrant? Clever boy—but can’t rest unless the milkman knows it.” Nowadays she would not have tolerated such a comment, even from Frenside; and if she made it inwardly she tempered it by reminding herself that an exaggerated craving for recognition often proceeds from a morbid modesty. Morbid—that was what poor Lewis was at bottom. She must never forget, when she was inclined to criticize him, that her faculty of rebounding, of drawing fresh energy from discouragement, had been left out of his finer organization—for her own support she had to call it finer.
And now, on the very Friday when he was expecting his new discovery—the Tracys’ young cousin from the West—Tarrant had suddenly turned up for lunch. When his wife heard his latchkey she supposed he had brought young Weston back with him, and she had been pleased, and rather surprised, since it would have been more like him to want to parade his new friend among his colleagues. Possibly Weston had not turned out to be the kind to
