Mrs. Tracy’s forgiveness turned out harder to win than they had imagined. When they came on her that evening clearing away her lonely supper, as Laura Lou had predicted, their arrival provoked a burst of tears and an embrace in which Vance managed to get included. But the rousing of Mrs. Tracy’s emotions did not affect her judgment. The exchange of acrimonious letters between Paul’s Landing and Euphoria, at the time when she had ordered Vance out of her house, had sown ineradicable seeds. Even had her son-in-law’s prospects impressed her as much as he had hoped, her view would not have changed; but, as Vance soon perceived, she remained unimpressed by the documents so proudly spread before her. “I guess newspaper work’s more reliable than magazines,” she merely remarked, no doubt mindful of the dizzy heights to which journalism had lifted Bunty Hayes.
But these were secondary considerations; for she now regarded Vance as the corrupter of both her children. Vance had taken Upton to a “bad house” (so Upton, the sneak, had never shouldered his part of the blame!); Vance had made Laura Lou deceive her mother and break her promise to Bunty Hayes, the promise on the strength of which Mrs. Tracy had accepted a loan that it might take years to repay. Vance had wounded her in her pride and her affection; and the double humiliation was not effaced by this vague talk about a review that was going to give him a hundred dollars a piece for articles he hadn’t even written.
“Mr. Hayes wanted she should be brought up like a lady, as her father’s daughter ought to be,” Mrs. Tracy said over and over again, during her first private talk with Vance, on the day after their return to Paul’s Landing.
“She doesn’t have to be in Hayes’s pay to learn to be a lady — I guess God made her that,” Vance retorted. Mrs. Tracy, with a cold patience, said he knew well enough what she meant — she meant, educated like a lady, the way all the Lorburns had been; the way she couldn’t afford to educate her children because of her husband’s misfortunes, and his dying just when things were going against them. . . . Mr. Hayes had understood, and had wanted to help them, and had acted as a gentleman would . . . .
“Well, I guess you can trust me to act as well as he did,” Vance said, too happy not to be generous, and feeling how poor a case he could make out for his own behaviour. But Mrs. Tracy only answered that, whatever she might feel about the matter, Laura Lou was not free to break her engagement till that thousand dollars was paid back.
“Why, see here, there’s been a law in the United States for some years now against trading in flesh and blood,” Vance broke out, his irritation rising again; but the resentment in Mrs. Tracy’s eyes showed him the uselessness of irony.
“I guess I understand well enough how you feel,” he began humbly. “But Laura Lou loved me, and didn’t love Hayes; that’s about the only answer. Anyhow, I’ve told you I mean to pay back that loan as soon as ever I can. I’ve got the promise of a salary of fifteen hundred dollars, and I’m going to get right to work earning it, and as much over it as I can; and every cent I can put by each month will go to paying off Hayes. You couldn’t seriously expect Laura Lou and me to let a thousand dollars separate us, could you?”
Mrs. Tracy replied, obliquely, that she supposed he knew by this time what his own folks intended to do for him; and this brought Vance up with a jerk, for he had not yet told his parents of his marriage. He stood before Mrs. Tracy flushed and irresolute while she added: “I guess a thousand dollars isn’t the mountain to them it is to me. But maybe they don’t fancy your getting married so young.”
“I— I haven’t heard yet,” Vance stammered, and she said, evidently perceiving her advantage, and enjoying the chance to exercise a grim magnanimity: “Well, I guess you and Laura Lou’d better stay here till you hear what your family mean to do.”
Vance and Laura Lou knew she was secretly thankful to have them there. Upton’s new job made it impossible for him to live at Paul’s Landing, and his mother was nervous alone in the house, yet reluctant to leave because of her monthly allowance for the care of the Willows; so that, her resentment once expressed, she found it easier to keep the offenders than to send them away.
Vance, when he carried off Laura Lou, had never thought of the possibility of having to live at Paul’s Landing. Vague visions of life in a New York boarding house had flitted through his mind, or rather lurked scarce-visible on its edge; but till he had persuaded Laura Lou to come to him nothing had seemed real or near at hand save the bliss he craved, and before four days of that bliss were over he understood that he lacked the experience and the money to make any sort of home for her. They were lucky to have Mrs. Tracy to turn to; her conditional forgiveness, and the shelter of her tumbledown roof, were the best they could expect — unless Mapledale Avenue should intervene. But Vance had small expectation of help from home. He had been startled back to a sense of reality by Mrs. Tracy’s question; for he had not meant to conceal his marriage from his parents, but had simply forgotten all about them. From the very moment — less than a fortnight ago — when he had stepped out of the Grand Central and seen Laura Lou in the rubberneck car, he had thought of nothing else — hardly even of his art. The sight of her, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand had rapt him away from common values and dimensions into that mystic domain to which he sometimes escaped from the pressure of material things. To that domain Laura Lou at the moment held the key, as hitherto great poetry had held it, the sunrise from Thundertop, his first sight of the sea, his plunge into the past in the library at the Willows, or any of the other imaginative shocks that flung open the gates of wonder. But the world to which Laura Lou admitted him seemed to comprise all the others, and it was not till he woke from his first ecstasy that he saw she herself was not an extra-terrestrial joy but a solid earthly fact, capable of apprehending only the earthly bounds out of which her beauty had lifted him. Laura Lou, dispenser of raptures, was merely a human being to be fed, clothed, cherished — what was it the minister had said? — in sickness and in health, till death should them part. And as long as they were together it could be only (to her at least) in the world of food, clothes, salary, sickness or health, prosperity or failure, mothers~in-law or boarding houses. As Vance went up to bed, after a drawn battle in the cold dimly lit dining room with his first “Cocoanut Tree” article, he reflected: “Well, anyway, I know it makes her happy to be back here,” and bent his impetuous neck to the yoke.
At first the yoke proved less heavy than he had expected. While he was at work Laura Lou had her mother’s companionship. During their brief days alone his wife’s tenderness had begun to frighten him, not its ardour but its submissiveness. He had not imagined that one human life could be so swiftly and completely absorbed into another. It was like a blood transfusion: body and soul, he seemed to have taken her into himself; whenever he returned, after an absence of a few hours, only her lovely ghost awaited him, and his presence had to warm her back to life. Now it was different. Her love was quieted by the return to the daily routine in familiar surroundings. She, who had formerly done so little to help her mother, was now eager to share in the household labours; Vance guessed that she was trying to learn how to make a home for him. Already she sternly defended his working hours, and had once or twice reproved Mrs. Tracy for asking him to bring up the coal or clear out the roof gutter. Luckily, if clumsy he was willing, and had no objection to undertaking the tasks which had been Upton’s, if only the women would let him alone while he wrote. This was not very difficult, since he worked in the afternoon and after they had gone to bed; and the first weeks at Paul’s Landing passed peacefully.
One day Upton came over. He had grown broader and stronger, and his new job had given him an air of importance which at first amused and then irritated Vance, to whom he was still the shifty boy of three years ago. Upton did not appear much more pleased with Laura Lou’s marriage than his mother, nor more impressed by Vance’s literary credentials. While the women were in the kitchen he followed Vance back to the dining room, where the latter had been given a corner for his desk and papers, shut the door solemnly, and asked: What about Bunty Hayes? Vance laughed, and said he guessed Bunty Hayes wasn’t going to bother them much, and anyhow he’d had three weeks now to stir things up, and they hadn’t heard from him.
“Oh, but you will,” Upton said, a little apprehensively. “He was in California when Laura Lou and you went off, and I don’t believe he knows anything yet. His job in New York ended after Thanksgiving, and the firm that employs him sent him West to look over some winter and spring routes. I guess he’ll be back any day,” he added.
Vance laughed again. “Well, what do you think he’ll do?” Upton coloured uncomfortably, and said: “I’d feel better if Mother hadn’t taken the money.” Vance rejoined that he would too, but as it had been taken the only thing was to pay it back. He understood Saint Elfrida’s School wouldn’t refund an advance if the pupil had taken part of the course, and he was going to do his best to get the loan paid off as quickly as his earnings permitted. He was getting bored with the subject, and tried to change it, but Upton, scratching his head, insisted dubiously: “I wish’t you could have raised the whole thousand right away. He’s the kind to turn ugly.”
“Oh, I thought he was a friend of yours,” Vance rapped back, exasperated; but Upton answered: “Well, I guess you’d better try and stay friends with him too, if you don’t want him coming round and raising hell.”
Vance would have been angry if he had not seen that Upton, under his commanding manner, was still the scared boy of old. The discovery made him smile, and rejoin: “Well, I guess I’d better get to work right now, and try to earn some money for him,” — at which Upton sulkily withdrew.
Vance became aware, after this, that the only thing to restore his credit with Mrs. Tracy would be the approval of his family. If they were pleased with his marriage they would do something handsome; and the something handsome would help to wipe out the Hayes loan. Vance shared her view, but not her hope; he knew what his family would think. The exchange of acrimonious letters had left traces no less deep in Mapledale Avenue than at Paul’s Landing. His people would regard it as folly for him to marry at his age, and be indignant with him for marrying the Tracy girl after the way the Tracys had treated him. These considerations weighted his pen when he wrote home to announce his marriage; and he was less surprised than Mrs. Tracy at the time which elapsed before he had an answer.
The first sign came from Grandma Scrimser, who sent him a beautiful letter, a Bible, and a year’s subscription to Spirit Light, to which she and her daughter Saidie Toler were now regular contributors. Grandma thought it lovely and brave of him to get married right off. She hoped that Laura Lou was as pretty and high~minded as her mother, when Mrs. Tracy had come out to see them years ago, on her wedding tour, and that Vanny would bring his bride to Euphoria right away, and that their married life would be full of spiritual benedictions.
A few days later Mrs. Weston wrote. She said they had been so taken aback by Vance’s news that they didn’t know what to say. They’d all supposed Vance would have too much pride ever to set foot in Mrs. Tracy’s house again, and now first thing they knew he’d married her daughter, without even telling them, or asking their advice or approval. His father had been so hurt and upset that at first she didn’t know how she’d ever bring him round, and even now he couldn’t make up his mind to write; but she, Mrs. Weston, had finally persuaded him to let her do so, and he had told her to say that if Vance chose to bring his wife out to Euphoria and get a job there, the couple would be welcome to the spare room to live in, and Mr. Weston would see what he could do to get Vance taken back on the Free Speaker, though of course he couldn’t guarantee anything — only Vance might be able to do something if he was on the spot, so Mrs. Weston thought they’d better come out as soon as they could. She added in a postscript that Mr. Weston had showed the terms of Vance’s contract with The Hour to the celebrated authoress, Yula Marphy, who was over from Dakin visiting with friends at Euphoria, and Miss Marphy had said, why it looked to her like a downright swindle, for she could get five hundred dollars any day for a story in the big magazines, and she’d never heard of The Hour anyhow, and she guessed it was one of those highbrow papers that run at a loss for a year or so, and then fizzle out. And what she advised was for Vance to come straight back West, where he belonged, and take up newspaper work again, and write pure manly stories about young fellows prospecting in the Yukon, or that sort of thing, because the big reading public was fed up with descriptions of corrupt society people, like there was a demand for in the East. Mrs. Weston added that his sisters sent him their love, and hoped his marriage would make him very hap............