“How did he know … how did he know?” she murmured to herself. And the fact that he did know seemed warrant of future achievement.
“Halo, are you never coming?” her husband’s voice called from the dining room. “You seem to forget that a hard day’s work makes a fellow hungry. …”
At dinner he went into all sorts of details about his new printing contract, and his interviews in Boston, where he had gone to secure various literary collaborations. All that he said was interesting to Halo. She began to see that The Hour would bring a new breath of life into her world as well as her husband’s. It would be exciting to get hold of the budding geniuses; and once she had let Lewis discover them, she knew they would be handed over to her to be tamed and amused. She had inherited her mother’s liking for the company of clever people, people who were doing things and making things, and she saw the big room in which she now spent so many solitary hours peopled by a galaxy of new authors and artists, gathered together under the banner of The Hour.
“If only nobody calls it a ‘salon’ Lewis won’t mind,” she thought.
There was so much to hear and to say that Vance Weston was not mentioned again till dinner was over and they returned to the library. Tarrant lit his cigar and settled down in his own particular easy chair, which had a broad shelf for his coffee cup and ashtray. “Well, how does it strike you?” he said, nodding in the direction of the manuscript.
“Oh, Lewis, you’ve discovered a great novelist!” She prided herself on the tactfulness of the formula; but enthusiasm for others was apt to excite her husband’s suspicions, even when it implied praise for himself.
“Novelist? Well—we’ll let the future take care of itself. But this particular thing—”
“I think it’s remarkable. The simplicity, the unselfconsciousness. …”
“H’m.” He puffed at his cigar and threw back his head in meditation. “To begin with, war stories are a drug in the market.”
She flashed back: “Whose market?” and he replied, with a hint of irritation: “You know perfectly well that we can’t afford to disregard entirely what the public wants.”
“I thought you were going to teach it what it ought to want.”
As this phrase was taken from his own prospectus it was too unanswerable to be welcome, and his frown deepened. “Little by little—certainly. But anyhow, doesn’t it strike you that this story—which has its points, of course—is … well, rather lacking in relief? A trifle old-fashioned … humdrum? The very title tells you what it’s about.”
“And you want to have it called ‘What Time Chronos?’ or ‘Ants and Archangels’?” She broke off, remembering the risk of accusing him of wanting anything but the rarest and highest. “Of course I know what you mean … but isn’t there another point of view? I mean for a review like The Hour? Why not try giving your readers the exact opposite of what all the other on-the-spot editors are straining to provide? Something quiet, logical, Jane Austen-y … obvious, almost? A reaction from the universal paradox? At the very moment when even Home and Mother is feeding its million readers with a novel called Jerks and Jazzes, it strikes me that the newest note to sound might be the very quiet—something beginning: ‘In the year 1920 there resided in the industrial city of P⸺ a wealthy manufacturer of the name of Brown. …’ That’s one of the reasons why I’ve taken such a fancy to Vance’s story.”
Adroitly as she had canalized her enthusiasm, she did not expect an immediate response. She knew that what she had said must first be transposed and become his own. He laughed at her tirade, and said he’d make a note of her titles anyhow—they were too good to be lost; but the fact remained that, for the opening number of The Hour under its new management, he thought they ought to have something rather more showy. But he’d think it over … he’d told Weston to come back in a day or two. “Queer devil—says he wrote the thing white hot, in forty-eight hours after getting here; must be about ten thousand words. … And it jogs along so soberly.”
The bell rang, and Halo said: “That must be Frenny.” Frenside was incapable of spending an evening alone. His life of unsettled aspirations and inconsecutive work made conversation a necessity to him as soon as he had shaken off the daily task, and he often drifted in to sit with Halo for an hour after his club or restaurant dinner.
He entered with his usual dragging step, stooping and somewhat heavier, but with the same light smouldering under the thick lids behind his eyeglasses.
“Hallo, Lewis—didn’t know you were back,” he grumbled as Tarrant got up to welcome him.
“There’s a note of disappointment in your voice,” his host bantered. “If you were led to think you’d find Halo alone I advise you to try another private enquiry man.”
“Would, if they weren’t so expensive,” Frenside bantered back, settling down into the armchair that Tarrant pushed forward. “But never mind—let’s hear about the new Hour. (Why not rechristen it that, by the way?) Have you come back with an argosy?”
“Well, I’ve done fairly well.” Tarrant liked to dole out his news in guarded generalities. “But I’m inclined to think the best of my spoils may be here at your elbow.
