His question echoed through the room as if he had shouted it. A slight tremor passed over Mrs. Pulsifer’s face; then her immobility became rigid. The situation clearly had no parallel in her experience, and she felt herself pitifully unequal to it. The fact exasperated Vance. It was all wrong that these people, the chosen custodians of knowledge and beauty, should be so stupid, so unfitted for their task. He hung before her irresolute, angry with himself and her. “I’d better go,” he muttered at length.
She looked up, disconcerted. “Oh, no … please don’t. I’m so sorry. …”
The meaningless repetition irritated him. “I don’t suppose you ever before met a fellow who was dead broke, did you? I suppose that young man who opens the door has orders not to let them in,” he jeered, flushed with his own humiliation.
She grew pale, and her hands moved uneasily. “I—oh, you don’t understand; you don’t. I try to … to live up to my responsibilities. … These things … I have advisers … a most efficient staff who deal with them. … Every case is—is conscientiously investigated.” She seemed to be quoting a social service report.
“Oh, I’m not a case,” Vance interrupted drily. “I thought you acted as if you wanted me for a friend—that’s all.”
“I did—I do. I only mean. …” She lifted horrified eyes to his. “You see, there’s the prize. … If anyone knew that … that you’d come to me for assistance … that I. …”
“Oh, damn the prize! Excuse me; I’m sorry for my blunder. There are times when a man sees a big ditch in front of him and doesn’t know how he’s going to get across. I’m that man—and I spoke without thinking.”
Her eyes, still on his, grew moist with tears. “It’s so dreadful—your being in such trouble. I had no idea. …” She glanced about her, almost furtively, as if the efficient staff who dealt with her “cases” might be listening behind a screen. “I do want to help you if I can,” she went on, hardly above a whisper. “If you’ll give me time I … I think I could arrange … but of course it would have to be quite privately. …”
He softened at the sight of her distress. “You’re very kind. But I guess we won’t talk of it anymore. I’ve been tired and worried and I started thinking out loud.”
“But it’s so wrong, so cruel, that you, with your genius, should have such worries. I don’t understand.” She drew her brows together in anxious conjecture. “I thought there was such a demand for what you write, and that you had a permanent job in the New Hour.”
“Yes, I have. But they’re just starting and can’t pay much. And I’m pledged to give them whatever I write. But I’d have pulled through all right if other things hadn’t gone wrong. And I will anyhow.” He held his hand out. “You’ve helped me a lot, just letting me look at those pictures. Thank you for it. Goodbye.”
The decision of his manner seemed to communicate itself to her, and she stood up also, pale and almost beautiful under the stress of an unknown emotion. “No, no, not goodbye, I do want to help you—I want you to tell me what it is that’s wrong. … I know young men are sometimes foolish.” She laid on his arm a bejewelled hand of which one ring would have bought his freedom.
Vance gave an impatient laugh. “Foolish? Is that what you people call not having enough money to keep alive on? What’s wrong with me is that my wife’s been desperately sick … sick for weeks. That costs.”
There was a silence. Mrs. Pulsifer’s hand slipped away. She drew back a step and slowly repeated: “Your wife? You mean to say you’re married?” Vance made a gesture of assent.
“But I don’t understand. You never told me. …”
“Didn’t I? Maybe I didn’t.”
She continued to look at him uncertainly. “How could I know? I never thought … you never spoke. … But perhaps,” she faltered, a curious light of expectancy in her tired eyes, “it’s because your marriage is—unhappy?”
Vance coloured hotly. “God, no! I’m only unhappy because I can’t do all I want for her.” He thought afterward that he had never loved Laura Lou as he did at that moment.
“Oh. … I see. …” he heard Mrs. Pulsifer murmur; and he was vaguely conscious of the fading of the light from her eyes.
“Well, goodbye,” he repeated. She seemed about to speak, to make some sign to detain him; but her narrowed lips let pass only a faint echo of his goodbye. It drifted mournfully after him as he walked down the endless perspective of tapestried and gilded emptiness to the hall below, where the tall young man in dark clothes and silver buttons was waiting with a perfectly matched twin to throw back the double doors. Vance wondered ironically whether they added to their other mysterious duties that of investigating Mrs. Pulsifer’s cases; but he knew that his own, at any rate, would never be brought up for examination.
One of the fellows at the Coconut Tree gave him the name of a moneylender; and a few days later he had a thousand dollars in his pocket. He told Mrs. Tracy he had enough to pay off Hayes, and asked for his address. She gave it without comment, and Vance, thankful to avoid explanations, returned to New York the next day to discharge his debt. He had no idea how he was going to meet the interest on the loan; but he put that out of his mind with the ease of an inexperienced borrower.
The address led to a narrow office building in an uptown street, where, across the front of an upper floor, he read: “storecraft,” and underneath: “Supplies Taste and saves Money.” He was admitted to a small room with roughcast walls, a sham Marie Laurencin, slender marquetry chairs, and a silvered mannequin in a Spanish shawl. There he waited till a fluffy-headed girl in a sports suit introduced him to an inner office, where Bunty
