One day someone related in Vance’s presence a tragic episode which had happened in a group of strolling actors. The picturesqueness of it seized on his imagination, and he tried to bring it to life; but here again he lacked familiarity with the conditions, and his ardour flagged. Fellows at the Coconut Tree talked a lot about working up a subject, about documentation and so forth; but Vance obscurely felt that he could not go out on purpose to hunt for local colour, and that inspiration must come to him in other ways. Perhaps a talk with a man like Tristram Fynes would given him his clue. He wrote and asked Fynes for an appointment; but he received no answer to his letter.
Mrs. Pulsifer did write again. She asked why he hadn’t been back to see her, and suggested his coming to dine, giving him the choice of two evenings. The letter reached him on the day when he had taken his watch and his evening clothes to a pawnbroker. He wrote that he couldn’t come to dine, but would call some afternoon; and she wired naming the next day. When he presented himself he found the great drawing rooms empty, and while he waited he wandered from one to another, gazing and dreaming. Art had hitherto figured in his mind as something apart from life, inapplicable to its daily uses; something classified, catalogued, and buried in museums. Here for the first time it became a breathing presence, he saw its relation to life, and caught a glimpse of the use of riches and leisure—advanced even to the assumption that it might be the task of one class to have these things and preserve them, to live like a priestly caste isolated for the purpose. The stuffed dove on the gilt basket, he thought, reverting again to his old symbol of the mysterious utility of the useless. … Mrs. Pulsifer’s arrival interrupted his musings, and gave him a surprised sense of the incongruity between the treasures and their custodian.
She looked worried and excited; drew him at once into the circular sitting room, and impetuously accused him of being sorry she’d come back, because now he’d have to talk to her instead of looking at the pictures. Vance had no conversational parries; he could only have kissed her or questioned her about her possessions; the latter course he saw would be displeasing, and he felt no temptation to the former, for she had a cold, and her face, in the spring light, looked sallow and elderly. “I do like wandering about this house first-rate,” he confessed.
“Well, then, why don’t you come oftener? I know I’m not clever; I can’t talk to you; but if you’d come and dine I’d have just a few of the right people; brilliant people—Frenside, and Lewis and Halo Tarrant, and Sibelius, from the Metropolitan, who’d tell you ever so much more than I can about my pictures.” She became pathetic in her self-effacement, and when she repeated: “Why won’t you come? Why do you always refuse?” he lost his head, and stammered: “I … no. … I can’t—I can’t dine with you.”
“You mean you’ve got more amusing things to do?” she insinuated; and he answered: “Lord, no, not that. It’s—I’m too poor,” he finally blurted out.
There was a silence.
“Too poor—?” she echoed, with an uncomprehending look.
He laughed. “For one thing I’ve got no evening clothes. I’ve had to pawn them.”
Mrs. Pulsifer, who was sitting near him, and leaning forward in her solicitous way, involuntarily drew back. “Oh—” she faltered, and he divined that her embarrassment was greater than his. The discovery somehow put him at his ease.
“Oh, you don’t need to look so frightened. It’s a thing that happens to people,” he joked. She murmured: “I’m so sorry,” and her lips seemed shaping themselves for the expression of further sympathy. She leaned nearer again, and he saw she was feverishly wondering what she ought to say. Her helplessness touched him; in her place he would have known so well! She seemed a creature whose impulses of pity had become atrophied, and who was vainly trying to give him a sign of human feeling across the desert waste of her vast possessions. “I’m so sorry,” she began again, in a whisper, as if her voice was unable to bridge the distance. Vance stood up and took a few steps across the room. If she was sorry, really—as sorry as all that. … He stopped in front of her, and began to speak in a low confused voice. “Fact is, I’m down and out—oh just temporarily, of course; I’ve had unexpected expenses. …” He paused, wondering desperately why he had ever begun. Mrs. Pulsifer sat before him without moving. Even her eyes were motionless, and her startled hands. He wondered if no one had ever spoken to her of such a thing as poverty. “Look here,” he broke out, “if you really believe in me, will you lend
