“Yes,” said Vance.
“Know me? God, that’s the trouble with him. And I’ve given him a chance at a stand-up fight, and he won’t take it. That so?” he challenged Vance. Vance, his hands in his pockets, repeated: “That’s so.” He saw the disdain on Tarrant’s lips turn to contempt, and his blood leapt up again. But inwardly he still knew that, even if Hayes had been completely sober, he would not have fought him.
Tarrant turned toward the intruder. “You get out of here,” he said.
“Get out of here? I’ll see you to hell first—I’ll …”
Eric Rauch, who had not been in the office, came running up the stairs. He glanced about the group, bewildered, and turned to Vance. “What’s up?” he asked. Bunty shouted back: “He’s taken my girl and he won’t fight me for her,” and there was another snicker among the lookers-on. It was manifest that sympathy was veering away from Vance.
Vance felt Rauch’s luminous eyes rest curiously and not unkindly on his white face with the burning welt. Rauch smiled a little and put his hand on Hayes’s arm. “If you’ll step this way,” he said, with a faint wink at the spectators, “I’ll take you down to my private office, and you can tell me what it’s all about.” He drew Hayes across the threshold, with a quick sign to the office boy to follow. But Hayes had already collapsed—the tears were running down his face, and he was putting his arm about Rauch’s neck as the door closed on them.
Tarrant turned back to his private room. His hand on the door he paused to say to Vance: “I don’t care for any explanation. But you understand, of course, that if this sort of thing happens again … I can’t have …”
“Oh, of course not,” Vance stammered, half dazed.
In a few moments Rauch came back, unconcerned, and lighting a cigarette. His eloquent eyes rested again on Vance. “You must have been reading the Russians lately,” he said with his soft incisiveness. He nodded and passed on to his desk.
Vance sat down at his, and began to write furiously. But he was merely making meaningless scratches on the paper. These people had of course realized that Hayes was half drunk, and would no doubt think he had been unwilling to fight him at a disadvantage. And on the whole, they would regard this as being to his credit. But Vance knew that the real reason was different: he had refused to fight Hayes because he had read his letter. And that was something he would never be able to explain.
On his desk lay a bundle of galleys—the proofs of “Coleridge Today.” He spread them out before him and tried to set to work revising. An hour ago each word, each syllable, would have been subjected to the most searching scrutiny; but now the page danced meaninglessly before him. … Suddenly he laid down his pen. Something of dominating importance had steadied his shaking nerves. What had Eric Rauch meant when he said: “You must have been reading the Russians lately”? Who were “the Russians,” and how was it that Vance had never read or even heard of them? At the mere thought, his mind felt firm ground under it again, and Bunty Hayes and his bluster were swept away like chaff on the wind.
“I’ll find out who they are before night,” Vance resolved, and settled down again to his work.
Book V
XXIV
Tarrant, that evening, got home late and out of humor. His lateness ought in reason to have annoyed his wife, for they were off to Eaglewood the next day for Christmas, and many holiday questions were still unsettled; but she met him with her vague shortsighted smile and the air of one whom nothing in the world can annoy.
At dinner she ascribed his sulkiness and taciturnity to strained nerves and the effort not to betray himself before the maid. The first number of the New Hour—they had accepted Frenside’s rechristening—was to appear on the second of January, and the intervening week was a bad time for readjustments. No wonder the editor was on edge.
Over coffee and his cigar he broke out. What did she suppose? That damned protégé of Frenside’s—that Middle-Western yahoo … Weston, yes … had been turning the office into a beer garden. … Yes, this very afternoon. Outrageous … Why, a drunken fellow came in and tried to fight him … and, well, the fact was Weston funked it … luckily, or they might have had the police there … and the other man would have made mincemeat of him. … Disgusting business … he’d told Weston what he thought of it. … Over a woman, of course …
“A woman?” Halo echoed, startled. “Why, he’s only just married, isn’t he?” Well—there you had it, her husband’s shrug emphasized. He was that sort, was Frenside’s little pet. … Messing about with women before his honeymoon was over … The cigar drew less well than usual; Tarrant stood up and paced the floor angrily. Disgusting … he wouldn’t have it, he repeated. Good mind to sack the fool on the spot … a coward too, that was the worst of it. He threw the cigar into the fire, and groped nervously for another. …
Halo, leaning back in her deep armchair, looked up at him with indolent curiosity. “Lewis, aren’t you just simply overworked—overwrought?” she suggested.
“Just simply—?”
“I mean haven’t you let your nerves get the better of you? You look dead beat.” She made a friendly gesture toward the opposite armchair. “Sit down and light your cigar. Who told you this preposterous yarn anyhow?”
“Preposterous yarn?” He paled with anger, and she saw her mistake. “No one told me—no one had to. I was there. In the front row—saw the ruffian slap Weston’s face, and Weston turn the other cheek. Precisely.”
Halo mused, perplexed but still unperturbed. “But
