Vance couldn’t, for the moment, define it more clearly; but it was something impossible to shake off, close and haunting as a scent or a cadence, like the perfume in Mrs. Pulsifer’s clothes, or her curious unfinished ejaculations. It made him want to lie and stare at the sky and dream, or else start up and write poetry; not a big sweeping thing, such as he had dreamed of by the winter ocean, but the wistful fragments that used to chant in his brain during his solitary sessions at the Willows. Yes … poetry: that was what was stirring and murmuring in him again.
When these impulses came they were overmastering. As he walked through the still-torpid town and out to Mrs. Tracy’s, lines and images rose in his glowing mind like sea gods out of a summer sea. He had forgotten where he was, or to whom he was returning. The morning was gray and cold, and when he got out of the town he started on a run, and reached the house out of breath. At the door he was met by Laura Lou, wide-eyed and trembling a little, but forcing a smile of welcome. “Oh, Vanny—” He caught her to him, and cried out: “Give me some coffee quick, darling, and fix it up so I won’t be bothered for the rest of the day, can’t you? I’ve got to write a poem straight off … a long one … before the light fades.”
“Light fades? Why, it’s early morning,” she rejoined with bewildered eyes.
“Yes, but not that light,” he said, loosening her arms and smiling at her as if she were a remote memory, and not a sentient creature on his breast.
Mrs. Tracy emerged from the kitchen. “I’ll get your coffee for you. I guess you’ll need it, after one of your nights,” she said severely. “Laura Lou, you better go straight up now and try and get a little sleep,” she added in the same tone to her daughter.
They had not understood; they would never understand, these women. Mrs. Tracy, he was sure, was recalling that other night, his night of dissipation with Upton after the ball game; and Laura Lou perhaps had the same suspicion, though she would never own to it. And he knew he could never make either of them understand that what he was drunk with now was poetry. … Mrs. Tracy brought his coffee into the dining room (piping hot, he had to admit); then she poked up the fire, and left him at his writing table. His head dropped between his hands, and he murmured to himself: “Gold upon gold, like trumpets in the sunrise. …” It had sounded glorious as he crooned it over, drowsing in the train; but now he was not so sure. … When Mrs. Tracy, four hours later, came in to set the table for the midday dinner he started up out of a deep sleep on the springless divan. “No—she’s more beautiful than that. …” he stammered; and his mother-in-law admonished him, as she set down the plates: “Well, I guess you better not say anything more about that; and I’ll hold my tongue if you do.”
Vance stared and pushed back his rumpled hair. “It was somebody—in a poem. …” he said; and Mrs. Tracy responded with her mirthless laugh: “That what they call it in New York? I guess you better go up and get washed now,” she added; and looking at the blank sheets scattered over his desk, Vance saw that he must have fallen asleep directly after she had left him, without writing a line of his poem.
He had no difficulty in reassuring Laura Lou. She saw that, as one of the staff of the New Hour, he had to be present at the Tarrants’ party; he even coaxed a laugh from her about his having missed his train. She wanted to know where he had gone after leaving the Tarrants’, and whether he wasn’t worn out, waiting around so long in the station; and he said evasively, no, he hadn’t minded, feeling that the mention of the “Loafers’ ” would only unsettle her again. His own mind was unsettled enough. He was tormented with the poem he wanted to write, and exasperated at the thought of being chained up to his next monthly article (they had to be ready a month ahead), and then to a short story, and eventually to a novel, none of which, at the moment, he felt the least desire to write. How could he ever have been fool enough to run his head into such a noose? He remembered Frenside’s warning, and cursed himself for not having heeded it. What he earned at the New Hour (supposing he were able to fulfill his contract) wasn’t enough to keep him and his wife, if ever they had to leave Paul’s Landing—and to leave Paul’s Landing had become his overmastering desire. He wanted, worse than ever, to be back in New York, back among all those fellows he could talk to. He wanted to be able to spend an evening at the Tarrants’—or at the “Loafers’,” for that matter—without being confronted at dawn by two haggard women who thought themselves magnanimous because they didn’t cross-examine him like a truant schoolboy. He wanted to see whom he pleased, go where he chose, write what he wanted—be free, free, free, in body as well as mind, yes, and in heart as well as soul. That was the worst of it: if life went on like this much longer his love for Laura Lou would fade to a pitying fondness, and then there would be no meaning in anything.
The
