For two more balmy days they lingered, ecstatic children, by the sea; but on the third the air freshened. Laura Lou began to cough, and Vance, frightened, packed up their possessions and carried her back to civilization. He had made up his mind to give her twenty~four hours at a New York hotel, with a good evening at the movies or a cabaret show (should her imagination soar so high), after which — though he had not confessed it — he knew no more than she where they were going.
He had no pressing anxiety about money. His mind was teeming with visions, and in his state of overwrought bliss every dream seemed easy to capture and interpret. His preference would have been to sit down by the sea and write an immensely long poem; but he knew that Laura Lou, the inspirer of this desire, was also the insuperable obstacle to its fulfilment. He would write stories instead; after the acceptance of “Unclaimed” he felt no doubt that he could sell as many as he chose. And he had promised, as soon as possible after his marriage, to call on Tarrant, and talk over the plan of becoming a regular contributor to The Hour. Still, to live in New York with Laura Lou would be a costly if not impossible undertaking. She was as much of a luxury as an exotic bird or flower: that she might help him in wage earning or housekeeping had never entered his mind. He had simply wanted her past endurance, and now he had her; and exquisite as the possession was, he was abruptly faced with the cost of it.
He found a hotel showy enough to dazzle her without being too exorbitantly dear; and they had dinner in a sham marble restaurant where every masculine eye was turned to them, and she glowed in innocent enjoyment of the warmth and light, and the glory of sitting with him, as his wife, at a pink-candle-shaded table. Afterward, with a charming assumption of superiority, she decided on a theatre rather than the pictures. It was a good deal more expensive — but, hang it, he’d write another story: it was wonderful, how the unwritten stories were accumulating on the shelves of his mental library. It was he who selected the play: Romeo and Juliet, with a young actress, tragically lovely, as Juliet; and presently they were seated in the fashionable audience, Vance with mind and eye riveted on the stage, Laura Lou obviously puzzled by the queer words the actors used and the length of their speeches, and stealing covert glances (when what was going on became too incomprehensible) at the fashionable clothes and exquisitely waved heads all about them. Between the acts she sat silent, brimming with a happy excitement, her hand close in her husband’s, as if that contact were the only clue to life. As at the restaurant, many glances were drawn to her small head with its silvery-blonde ripples and the tender moulding of brow and cheek; but Vance saw that she was wholly unaware of attracting attention, and enclosed in his nearness as in a crystal world of her own.
Gradually this barrier was penetrated by what was happening on the stage: the beauty of the young actress, the compelling music of the words, seemed to stir in Laura Lou some confused sense of doom, and Vance felt her anguished clutch on his arm. “Oh, Vanny, I’m sure it’s going to end bad,” she whispered, and a tear formed on her lashes and trembled down.
“You darling — ” he breathed back, wondering why on earth he had chosen Romeo and Juliet for a honeymoon outing; but when the tragedy rose and broke on them he saw that even her tears, now flowing in a silver stream, were part of the happiness in which she was steeped to the weeping lashes. “It’s too dreadful . . . it’s too lovely . . .” she moaned alternately as the play moved deathward, and with a furtive movement she dried her wet cheek against his sleeve. And brooding on those beautiful dead lovers they went home to another night of love.
The next morning Vance presented himself at the office of The Hour. As he sprang up the stairs he almost ran into Frenside, who was coming slowly down. The older man stopped and looked at him curiously.
“Going up to settle about your job?”
“Well, I hope so, sir.”
“All right. Good luck.” Frenside nodded and passed on. From a lower step he turned to call back: “I wouldn’t tie yourself up too far ahead — especially your fiction.”
Vance, new at such transactions, stared a moment, not quite understanding.
“Keep free — keep free as long as you can,” Frenside repeated, hobbling down with a heavy rap of his stick on each step. And Vance turned in to the office.
He found a cordial welcome from Tarrant. Everybody on the staff had read “Unclaimed,” and great hopes were founded on its appearance in the coming number. Tarrant produced cigarettes and cocktails, and introduced Eric Rauch, the assistant editor. Eric Rauch was a glib young Jew with beautiful eyes and a responsive smile, who had published an obscure volume of poetry: Voodoo, and a much talked-of collection of social studies: Say When. For the first time Vance found himself talking with an author, and treated by him as one of the tribe. When Rauch said: “You’ve struck out on a new line,” the praise rushed through Vance like fire, and he longed to hurry back to the hotel and tell Laura Lou. But what would it have meant to her?
After these agreeable preliminaries Tarrant looked at his watch, said: “Half-past one, by Jove — and I’m due at the Century, to lunch with old Willsdon.” Willsdon, the historian, had promised The Hour an article on “A New Aspect of Benjamin Franklin,” and Tarrant hurried off, saying: “You and Eric’ll be able to fix up details. Come round again soon, won’t you?”
Eric Rauch proposed that Vance should lunch with him at the Cocoanut Tree, a nearby lunchroom, and they walked there, Vance’s steps dancing down the street as if the dull pavement were the seashore. Talking to a fellow like Rauch was something as new to him as his first sight of the ocean, and almost as exciting . . . .
At the Cocoanut Tree they met other fellows who were writing or painting, or doing something with the arts. To Vance, whose horizon had greatly widened in the interval since his first visit to New York, the names of two or three of the older men were familiar; but the ones Rauch took most seriously — vanguard fellows, he explained — who looked as youthful as Vance himself, the latter had never heard of. They all greeted him good-humouredly, and one, a critic named Redman, said: “See here, when are you going to give us a novel?”
“The Hour’s going to see to that,” Rauch rejoined briskly; and another young man, with bruised eyelids in a sallow illumined face, and a many-syllabled name ending in “ovsky,” adjured Vance with ardent Slav gestures: “For God’s sake tackle something big — colossal — cosmic — get away from the village pump . . .” while a shabbily dressed girl with a greasy mop of black hair and bold gay eyes pushed up to the table, exclaiming: “Eric, why don’t you introduce me? I’m the sculptress Rebecca Stram, and I want to do your head one of these days,” she explained to Vance.
“Well, I guess you will, if you want to,” said Rauch humorously; “only let the poor devil have something to eat before you begin to feel his bumps.”
It all sent a novel glow through Vance, and he thought how wonderful life would be, spent among these fellows who talked of art as freely and familiarly as his father did of real estate deals. Eric Rauch explained who they were, what they had written or painted or carved (“That Stram girl — she’s a regular headhunter; bright idea, doing all the newcomers . . .”), and which ones were likely to “get there.” For the first time Vance was inducted into the world of literary competitions and rewards. Eric Rauch said there was a big campaign on already for this year’s Pulsifer Prize; hadn’t Vance heard of it? Best short story of the year . . . Two thousand dollars; and of course The Hour was going to try for it for “Unclaimed.” “And, by the way, what have you got on the stocks now?” And then the business talk began.
Rauch said he had been charged by Tarrant to come to an understanding with Weston. They believed in him at The Hour — their policy was forward-looking; they wanted to make their own discoveries, not to butt in where somebody else had already staked out a claim. Weston, now — he wouldn’t mind Rauch’s saying frankly that as a writer he was utterly unknown? Because, unluckily, owing to muddle-headed mismanagement, his first story, “One Day,” had been allowed to fall flat, drop out of sight as completely as if it had never been written. And they would have to build up his reputation all over again with “Unclaimed,” which, they thought, was quite as remarkable as the other; though of course they couldn’t guarantee the public’s taking to it, with the silly prejudice there was against war stories. Anyhow, it was a good gamble, and they were glad to risk it. And to prove their faith in Weston, they were willing to go farther; willing to take an option on his whole output, articles, short stories and novels, for the next three years. Rauch didn’t know if Weston realized what a chance that was for a beginner, who — well, wasn’t in a position, let’s say, to order himself an eight-cylinder Cadillac . . . for the present, anyhow . . . .
But Tarrant wanted to do more. He understood that Weston was just married, and he knew that when a man takes on domestic responsibilities there’s nothing like a steady job, even a small one, for making his mind easy. The Hour therefore proposed to let Vance try his hand at a monthly article on current literary events. They’d find a racy title, and let him have full swing — no editorial interference if the first articles took. A fresh eye and personal views were what they were after — none of the old mummified traditions. And for those twelve articles they would guarantee him a salary of fifteen hundred a year for three years, without prejudice to what he earned by his fiction: say a hundred and fifty for the next two stories after “Unclaimed,” and double that for the following year, if he would guarantee three stories a year, or possibly four. Only, of course, he was to pledge himself not to write for any other paper or publisher — no other publisher, because The Hour’s solicitude included an arrangement for book publication with their own publishers, Dreck and Saltzer. Tar............