Mrs. Tracy was not expected back till the following evening, and for twenty-four hours Vance struggled alone against the dark mystery of illness. As he watched through the night beside Laura Lou, watched her burning face and hollow eyes, and sought to quiet her tossings and soothe her incessant cough, he tried to recall what had been done for him during his own illness. He too had been consumed with fever day and night, week after week; and his mother and sisters had been always there, with cooling drinks, soft touches, ingenious ways of easing his misery — and here he sat by his wife, his hands all thumbs, his shoes creaking, his brain in a fog, unable to imagine what he ought to do for her.
At one moment her eyes, which had clung to his so anxiously, always asking for something he could not guess, suddenly became the eyes of a stranger. She looked at him in terror, and sitting up thrust him back. “Oh, go away — go away! You shan’t take Vanny from me . . . I say you shan’t!” For a while she rambled on, battling against the obduracy of some invisible presence; then she sank back, and tears of weakness forced their way through the lids she had shut against her husband . . . Vance threw himself down by her and held her in beseeching arms. “Laura Lou . . . Laura Lou . . . Vanny’s here; love, it’s Vanny holding you . . . .” With passionate murmurs he smoothed the hair from her forehead, and gradually her contracted face relaxed, and she opened her lids, and tried to smile. “Is it you, Vanny? Don’t go . . . you’ll never leave me any more, will you?” . . . She dozed off on his shoulder for a few minutes before the cough woke her again . . . .
When morning came she refused to touch the milk he had warmed, and lay tossing and coughing in parched misery. What was it? Bronchitis? His heart sank: what was it people did for bronchitis? There was no telephone, and no nearby neighbour except an old deaf woman who would probably not be of much use — even if Vance could absent himself long enough to summon her. He decided to run across to the deaf woman’s house, and bribe her grandson, a lazy fellow who was not on good terms with Mrs. Tracy, to bicycle to Paul’s Landing for a doctor; but whenever he tried to creep out of the room his shoes creaked or a board cried, and Laura Lou started up. “Don’t leave me, Vanny — you mustn’t leave me . . .” and the heavy hours dragged on . . . Vance rummaged out an old bottle of cough mixture, and gave her some; but it did not relieve her, and the hands she wound about his neck grew drier and more burning. It was as if the fever were visibly consuming her, so small and shrunken had her restless body become. As he sat there and watched it was her turn to become a stranger: this haggard changeling was not the tender creature whom he loved. This discovery of the frail limits of personality, of the transformation of what seemed closest and most fixed in the flux of life, dragged his brain down into a labyrinth of conjecture. What was she, this being so beloved and so unknown? Something in her craved for him and clung to him, yet when he tried to reach that something it was not there. Unknown forces possessed her, she was wandering in ways he could not follow. . . . Now and then he got up and replenished the stove; now and then he wet a handkerchief with cologne water and put it on her forehead, or clumsily shook up her pillows. . . . But he did it all automatically, as if he too were elsewhere, in ways as lonely as those she walked. . . . Was this why we were all so fundamentally alone? Because, as each might blend with another in blissful fusion, so, at any moment, the empty eyes of a stranger might meet us under familiar brows? But then, where was the real primordial personality, each man’s indestructible inmost self? Where did it hide, what was it made of, what laws controlled it? What WAS the Vance Weston who must remain himself though sickness and sorrow and ruin destroyed the familiar surface of his being? Or was there no such unchangeable nucleus? Would he and Laura Lou and all their kind flow back finally into that vast impersonal Divinity which had loomed in his boyish dreams? . . . But, oh, those little hands with twining fingers, the deep-lashed eyes, the hollows under the cheekbones — those were Laura Lou’s and no other’s, they belonged to the body he worshipped, whose lovely secrets were his . . . .
He started up with blinking eyes. The room was dark — the fire out. Had he fallen asleep in trying to soothe his wife to rest? He became dimly conscious of someone’s having come in; someone who groped about, struck a match, and held a candle in his face. “For God’s sake, Vance! Why are you here in the dark? What’s happened to my child?” Mrs. Tracy cried; and Vance, stumbling to his feet, brushed back his hair and stared at her.
But she had no time to deal with him. In a trice she had lit the lamp, revived the fire, thrust a thermometer between Laura Lou’s lips, and piled more blankets on her. “What is she taking? What does the doctor say?” she whispered over her shoulder.
“She hasn’t seen the doctor.”
“Not seen him? You mean he hasn’t been?”
“No.”
“How long’s she been like this?”
“Since last night.”
“Last night? And she’s seen no doctor? When did you go for him?” She drew closer, deserting her daughter to approach her fierce whisper to his ear.
“I didn’t go. She wouldn’t let me leave her . . . .”
The withering twitch of Mrs. Tracy’s lips simulated a laugh. “I guess it’d be luckier for her if you’d leave her and never come back. And now,” she added scornfully, “go and get the doctor as quick as you can; and don’t show yourself here without him. It’s pneumonia . . . .”
Five anxious days passed before Vance could think of his writing or of the office. Mrs. Tracy had given him to understand that he’d better go back to work, for all the use he was to her or Laura Lou: cluttering up the house, and no more help to anybody than a wooden Indian. . . . But it seemed part of his expiation to sit there and let her say such things. He suspected that, though she railed at him for being in the way, it was a relief to have him there, to be scolded and found fault with; besides, now and then there was something for him to do: coals to carry up, provisions or medicines to fetch, tasks not requiring much quickness of wit or hand. . . . He knew that Mrs. Tracy was justified in blaming him for Laura Lou’s illness. The doctor said he had been crazy to drag her up the mountain through the snow, and expose her to the night air when her strength was lowered by fatigue. She hadn’t much stamina anyway; and the long climb had affected her heart. The doctor took Vance aside to tell him that this sort of thing mustn’t happen again; and Vance saw Mrs. Tracy gloating over the admonishment. Well, let her . . . he deserved it.
During those days it seemed to him that he had at last grown from a boy into a man. He was not quick in practical matters; such lessons came to him slowly; but this one sank deep. He was frightened to think how completely, when Beauty called, that celestial Beauty which haunted earth and sky, and the deeps of his soul, he forgot everything else, and rushed after the voice unheeding. When that happened, his two worlds were merged in one, or rather the world of daily duties vanished under a more overwhelming reality. But this would no longer be so. He would school himself to keep the two apart . . . .
At length, when Laura Lou, propped against her pillows, first looked at him with reassured eyes, he decided to go to New York. He arrived empty-handed at the office, for he had not been able to write a line in the interval. He hoped to see Eric Rauch first and explain to him; but Rauch was out, and Vance was told that Mr. Tarrant was expecting him. Rauch was pliant and understanding; but his chief, to Vance, was a riddle. You could never tell if he was going to turn his nervous brilliant smile on you or meet you with a face of stone. He greeted Vance with a surprise in which the latter scented irony, and when told of Laura Lou’s illness uttered the proper sentiments and at once jerked back to business. “Too bad . . . too bad . . . yes, of course. . . . My wife would have been glad to do anything . . . Well, now the anxiety’s over I hope you’ll take hold again. So much time’s been lost that you really owe it to us . . .” and so on. Vance listened in silence. What could he say? At length he began: “You wouldn’t care to have me change ‘round and write some poetry for you?” Tarrant’s face expressed a mixture of dismay and resentment. Poetry? Good God, everybody wanted to write poetry for them: magazine poetry was the easiest thing on earth to turn out. And here was a fellow who could do something else; who had a real gift as a short-story writer; as a novelist, perhaps — and wanting to throw away a chance like that to join the anonymous crowd in the Poets’ Corner! Really, now, didn’t Weston understand? He was bound to them; bound to do a certain thing; had signed a contract to that effect. Contracts weren’t one-sided affairs, after all. . . . Tarrant’s frown relaxed, and he laid his hand on his contributor’s shoulder. “See here; you’ve had a bad shake-up. It’s liable to happen to any of us. Only, once a fellow’s formed the habit of work he keeps straight at it . . . through everything . . . .” Tarrant straightened his shoulders, as though discreetly offering himself as an object lesson. “Now then, Weston, better get back home as quick as you can, and tie up to your next short story. If ‘Unclaimed’ doesn’t pull off the Pulsifer Prize, who knows but you’ve got something up your sleeve that will? I understand that Fynes asked you for an article on The Corner Grocery. The sale of his book has fallen off lately, and he counts on us to buck it up. If you’d made a hit with the article it would have given you a big boost for the prize. But I’ve had to turn Rauch onto it because there was no time to wait. So you can put that out of your mind anyhow, and just tackle your story,” Tarrant ended on a note of affability.
“All right,” Vance mumbled, glad to be gone.
He had a couple of hours to spare before his train, and began to wander through the streets, as he had during his first dark days in New York. Then he had been unknown and starving; now he had a name, had friends, a roof over his head, and a wife who adored him; yet his inner solitude was deeper than ever. Was the fault his, or was it latent in this dreadful system of forcing talent, trying to squeeze every drop out of it before it was ripe; the principle of the quick turnover applied to brains as it was to real estate? As he walked, the old dream of the New York novel recurred to him: the jostling crowds, the swarm of motors, the huge arrogant masses of masonry, roused his imagination, and he thought to himself: “Tarrant’s right; what a fool I was to talk poetry to him!” He stood on a corner of Fifth Avenue while the motors crawled up and down in endless procession, and looking into one slowly moving carriage after another he wondered what sort of a life each of these women (they were almost all women) led, where they were going, what they were thinking of, what other lives were interwoven with theirs. Oh, to have a year to dream of it all, without putting pen to paper! But even a year would not be enough; what he needed was to immerse himself in life without so much as remembering that it must some day bring him in a return, to live as carelessly as all these women rolling past him in their motors . . . .
Mrs. Pulsifer — she was that kind, he supposed. The thought reminded him of her telegram. He hadn’t answered it because he hadn’t known what to say. But now that he was in town, why not try to see her? Funny woman — she’d signed the wire “Jet,” as if he and she were old friends! Lucky she had such a queer name; if she’d been called Mabel, or any real woman’s name, he’d never have heard the end of it from Laura Lou. . . . He remembered her add............