On the way downstairs, late in the afternoon, he remembered meeting Frenside coming down the same stairs in the morning, and recalled his warning: “Keep free.”
“Oh, well,” Vance said to himself, “what’s he made of his life, anyway?” For Frenside already seemed to him as remote as old age and failure. His head was brimming with ideas for his article, and for others to follow, and it was agreed (at his suggestion) that the series should appear under the caption of “The Coconut Tree,” in memory of the spot where the bargain had been struck. “I want a tree to climb, to get a bird’s-eye view from,” Vance had said, laughing; and Rauch replied that he was sure the title would take Tarrant’s fancy. He pressed a copy of his poems on Vance, and the latter set off, his heart beating high at the thought of announcing to Laura Lou that he was a member of the editorial staff of The Hour, had signed a three years’ contract with a big publisher. “She won’t understand what it’s all about, but it’ll sound good to her,” he thought. And so it did to him.
Laura Lou showed the radiant incomprehension he had foreseen. “Oh, Vance, isn’t it great?” She clung to him and worshipped; then, loosening her arms, drew back and lifted ineffable eyes to his. “Oh, Vanny—”
He laughed and recaptured her. “Guess you’re thinking already what show we’ll pick for tonight, aren’t you?” He grew reckless. “And, say, darling, if there’s anything particular you want to buy …” He knew there would be no pay till the end of the coming month, but time seemed as negligible as age while she lifted her trembling smile to him.
“Oh, Vanny … I wonder, could we go out and buy something to take back to Mother?”
“Sure.” He laughed with relief. Mrs. Tracy’s wants could be more inexpensively supplied than her daughter’s; and besides, he liked Laura Lou’s not instantly asking for something for herself. Then he looked again and noticed a shadow of anxiety on her radiance. He saw that she was asking for something for herself, but inwardly, because she dared not speak it. “What is it, sweet? Anything bothering you?”
Yes, something was: her mother. They’d been gone four days now, she reminded Vance, and Mrs. Tracy didn’t even know where they were, and must have been fretting dreadfully over that letter her daughter had left; and what Laura Lou wanted, oh, beyond anything, was to start right off for Paul’s Landing—oh, Vance, truly, couldn’t they?—and surprise her mother with the splendid news, and make everything all right that very day. Oh, wouldn’t Vance help her to pack up at once, and maybe they could catch the five o’clock express, and pop in on Mrs. Tracy just as she was clearing away supper?
Their hotel was close to the train, their packing was soon done. Secretly, Vance was relieved by his wife’s suggestion. The rush of his happiness had swept away all resentment against Mrs. Tracy, and he felt obscurely in the wrong in having persuaded Laura Lou to marry without her mother’s knowledge. Only the certainty of Mrs. Tracy’s opposition had made him do so; but he could not shake off his compunction, for he knew her life had been full of disappointments, and that Laura Lou’s flight would be the bitterest. Now it was all different; with his two contracts in his pocket he could face his mother-in-law with head erect. She would surely rather see Laura Lou married to the assistant editor of The Hour than to the barker of a sightseeing car; and if Vance should capture the Pulsifer Prize the Hayes debt would be cancelled at once. They paid in haste and hurried to the station, finding time on the way to select for Mrs. Tracy a black silk bag mounted in imitation amber. “She never has anything pretty,” Laura Lou explained, as if excusing so frivolous a choice; and Vance, remembering the basket of sweet peas with the stuffed dove, mused once more on the mysterious utility of the useless.
XXIII
Mrs. Tracy’s forgiveness turned out harder to win than they had imagined. When they came on her that evening clearing away her lonely supper, as Laura Lou had predicted, their arrival provoked a burst of tears and an embrace in which Vance managed to get included. But the rousing of Mrs. Tracy’s emotions did not affect her judgment. The exchange of acrimonious letters between Paul’s Landing and Euphoria, at the time when she had ordered Vance out of her house, had sown ineradicable seeds. Even had her son-in-law’s prospects impressed her as much as he had hoped, her view would not have changed; but, as Vance soon perceived, she remained unimpressed by the documents so proudly spread before her. “I guess newspaper work’s more reliable than magazines,” she merely remarked, no doubt mindful of the dizzy heights to which journalism had lifted Bunty Hayes.
But these were secondary considerations; for she now regarded Vance as the corrupter of both her children. Vance had taken Upton to a “bad house” (so Upton, the sneak, had never shouldered his part of the blame!); Vance had made Laura Lou deceive her mother and break her promise to Bunty Hayes, the promise on the strength of which Mrs. Tracy had accepted a loan that it might take years to repay. Vance had wounded her in her pride and her affection; and the double humiliation was not effaced by this vague talk about a review that was
