He pulled on his shoes and raced down to the sea. The air was still mild, and he stood by the fringe of little waves and looked eastward at the bar of light reddening across the waters. As he stood there, all the shapes of beauty which had haunted his imagination seemed to rise from the sea and draw about him. They swept him upward into the faint dapplings of the morning sky, and he caught, as in a mystic vision, the meaning of beauty, the secret of poetry, the sense of the forces struggling in him for expression. How could he ever have been afraid—afraid of Laura Lou, of fate, of himself? She was the vessel from which he had drunk this divine reassurance, this moment of union with the universe. Whatever happened, however hard and rough the road ahead, he would carry her on his heart like the little cup of his great communion. …
XXII
For two more balmy days they lingered, ecstatic children, by the sea; but on the third the air freshened. Laura Lou began to cough, and Vance, frightened, packed up their possessions and carried her back to civilization. He had made up his mind to give her twenty-four hours at a New York hotel, with a good evening at the movies or a cabaret show (should her imagination soar so high), after which—though he had not confessed it—he knew no more than she where they were going.
He had no pressing anxiety about money. His mind was teeming with visions, and in his state of overwrought bliss every dream seemed easy to capture and interpret. His preference would have been to sit down by the sea and write an immensely long poem; but he knew that Laura Lou, the inspirer of this desire, was also the insuperable obstacle to its fulfilment. He would write stories instead; after the acceptance of “Unclaimed” he felt no doubt that he could sell as many as he chose. And he had promised, as soon as possible after his marriage, to call on Tarrant, and talk over the plan of becoming a regular contributor to The Hour. Still, to live in New York with Laura Lou would be a costly if not impossible undertaking. She was as much of a luxury as an exotic bird or flower: that she might help him in wage earning or housekeeping had never entered his mind. He had simply wanted her past endurance, and now he had her; and exquisite as the possession was, he was abruptly faced with the cost of it.
He found a hotel showy enough to dazzle her without being too exorbitantly dear; and they had dinner in a sham marble restaurant where every masculine eye was turned to them, and she glowed in innocent enjoyment of the warmth and light, and the glory of sitting with him, as his wife, at a pink-candle-shaded table. Afterward, with a charming assumption of superiority, she decided on a theatre rather than the pictures. It was a good deal more expensive—but, hang it, he’d write another story: it was wonderful, how the unwritten stories were accumulating on the shelves of his mental library. It was he who selected the play: Romeo and Juliet, with a young actress, tragically lovely, as Juliet; and presently they were seated in the fashionable audience, Vance with mind and eye riveted on the stage, Laura Lou obviously puzzled by the queer words the actors used and the length of their speeches, and stealing covert glances (when what was going on became too incomprehensible) at the fashionable clothes and exquisitely waved heads all about them. Between the acts she sat silent, brimming with a happy excitement, her hand close in her husband’s, as if that contact were the only clue to life. As at the restaurant, many glances were drawn to her small head with its silvery-blonde ripples and the tender moulding of brow and cheek; but Vance saw that she was wholly unaware of attracting attention, and enclosed in his nearness as in a crystal world of her own.
Gradually this barrier was penetrated by what was happening on the stage: the beauty of the young actress, the compelling music of the words, seemed to stir in Laura Lou some confused sense of doom, and Vance felt her anguished clutch on his arm. “Oh, Vanny, I’m sure it’s going to end bad,” she whispered, and a tear formed on her lashes and trembled down.
“You darling—” he breathed back, wondering why on earth he had chosen Romeo and Juliet for a honeymoon outing; but when the tragedy rose and broke on them he saw that even her tears, now flowing in a silver stream, were part of the happiness in which she was steeped to the weeping lashes. “It’s too dreadful … it’s too lovely …” she moaned alternately as the play moved deathward, and with a furtive movement she dried her wet cheek against his sleeve. And brooding on those beautiful dead lovers they went home to another night of love.
The next morning Vance presented himself at the office of The Hour. As he sprang up the stairs he almost ran into Frenside, who was coming slowly down. The older man stopped and looked at him curiously.
“Going up to settle about your job?”
“Well, I hope so, sir.”
“All right. Good luck.” Frenside nodded and passed on. From a lower step he turned to call back: “I
