The next morning Vance went early to Mrs. Mennenkoop’s. He wanted to see his grandmother before she began to be besieged by the prophets and seers who had been such a trial to Mrs. Weston when the Scrimsers came to live under her roof. All night he had lain awake, torn between his disillusionment and his wrath against those who had shared it. . . . Those damned unsatisfied people who always had to have some new sensation to batten on! Why had they dragged his grandmother out of Euphoria, where she belonged, persuaded her that New York was in need of her, that she had a “message” for them, as her jargon called it? Such wrath as he had felt against the rich after Mrs. Pulsifer’s rebuff now blazed up in him against these ridiculous “Seekers” — seekers of new sensations, new catchwords, new fads to take up or to turn to ridicule! At Euphoria Mrs. Scrimser had her place in the social order. She was more persuasive than the ministers of the rival churches, better educated than their congregations. She had an authority which no one questioned — except Mrs. Weston, who saw no sense in telling people how to run their lives when you couldn’t manage your own hired girl.
Here in New York everything was different — and Vance himself, in the interval, had grown different. The world had come to have a perspective for him, and Euphoria was a hardly perceptible dot far off between two narrowing lines. But in proportion as he understood this, and suffered for his grandmother, his tenderness for her increased. It became defensive and fierce; he would have jumped at the chance of doing battle for her against all the Frensides and Spears. After all, wasn’t his own case precisely hers? He too was the raw product of a Middle–Western town, trying to do something beyond his powers, to tell the world about things he wasn’t really familiar with; his pride winced at the exactness of the analogy, and it moved him to acuter sympathy. If only he could persuade his grandmother to give up this crazy crusade; to go back to Euphoria, and take him and Laura Lou with her! He made up his mind, on the way out to Bronxville, that he would propose to her to break her lecturing engagements and go back at once.
His aunt Saidie Toler, who received him, did not share his apprehensions. She said she had never seen her mother more inspired than on the previous evening. Evidently New York audiences were less responsive at first than those in the western cities where Mrs. Scrimser had hitherto spoken; but Mrs. Mennenkoop had prepared them for that. She thought quite a number of converts would seek out Mrs. Scrimser in the course of the day, and was sure that in Brooklyn, where that evening’s meeting was to be held, there would be more of an emotional surrender . . . .
Vance had always hated his aunt Saidie’s jargon. She reminded him of a salesman retailing goods, and repeating automatically what was on their labels. . . . He wanted to know if he couldn’t go in and see his grandmother; but Mrs. Toler said there was somebody with her on business: a man who organized lecture tours. He wanted to take Mrs. Scrimser right through the country, he said. . . . He’d answer for it that upstate she’d get the response she was accustomed to. . . . In New York it was a fashion to sit back and pretend you knew everything.
Vance’s heart sank. He asked if he couldn’t go in at once, while the man was there — and at the same moment a door opened, and Mrs. Scrimser came out into the hall. “I thought I heard my boy’s voice,” she said, coming to him with open arms. She begged him to step in and see the gentleman who had called about a lecture tour — he had made a very interesting proposal. Vance followed her, and found himself being named to Bunty Hayes, who held out his hand with undiminished cordiality. “Why, yes,” he said, with an explanatory glance between grandmother and grandson, “‘Storecraft’ aims to handle all the human interests. We can’t leave out religion, any more’n we could art or plumbing. And the minute I heard about this grand new religious movement of Mrs. Scrimser’s, I said: ‘That’s exactly our line of goods, and there’s nobody but “Storecraft” can do it justice.’ If only she’d of got in touch with me before she came to New York I’d of had her addressing three thousand human people in Steinway Hall instead of trying to get a kick out of a few society highbrows from Park Avenue.”
Vance stood silent between the two. His grandmother looked more aged in the morning light. In spite of her increasing bulk she seemed smaller: as if Fate had already traced on her, in deep lines and folds, her future diminution. But Bunty Hayes’s flesh was taut and hard; he shone with a high varnish of prosperity. And he looked at Vance with a bright unwinking cordiality, as if their encounter were merely a happy incident in an old friendship. “On’y to think she’s your grandmother; seems as if you’d got a corner in celebrity in your family,” he said.
“Oh, Vanny’s our REAL celebrity,” Mrs. Scrimser murmured, her tired eyes filling as they rested on her grandson.
“Well, I guess there’s enough of it to go round,” Hayes encouraged them both. “What I say is . . .”
Mrs. Scrimser’s gaze was still caressing Vance. She took his hand. “I guess he’ll be lecturing all over the United States before long,” she said.
“Well, when he does, ‘Storecraft’ ‘ll be all ready to handle him too — we’ll feature you both on the same progrum,” Mr. Hayes joked back.
Mrs. Scrimser answered humorously that she guessed that would depend on how well “Storecraft” handled HER; and he challenged her to take a good look round and see if any other concern was prepared to do it better. It was agreed that she was to think over his proposition and give him an answer the next day; and thereupon he took his leave.
Mrs. Scrimser, when they were alone, held her grandson fast for a minute saying only: “Vanny boy, Mapledale Avenue’s been like the grave since you went away,” and he felt the contagion of her tenderness and a great longing to lay his cares in those capacious arms. She asked about Laura Lou, and why Vance hadn’t brought her the night before, or today; and when he said she was ill in bed, exclaimed reproachfully at his not telling her sooner, and said she would go straight down to Mrs. Hubbard’s after lunch. She began to question Vance about how they lived, and whether Laura Lou was comfortable and well looked after, and if the food was nourishing, and he was satisfied with the doctor; and gradually he was drawn into confessing his financial difficulties, and the impossibility of giving his wife such a home as she ought to have. Mrs. Scrimser’s ideas of money were even vaguer than her grandson’s, but her sympathy was the more ardent because she could not understand why a successful novelist, who knew all the publishers and critics in New York, shouldn’t be making a big income. She was indignant at such injustice; but she implored Vance not to worry, since the “Storecraft” offer would enable her to help him and Laura Lou as soon as she’d paid back what she owed his father. From her confused explanations Vance gathered that Mr. Scrimser’s long illness, and his widow’s unlimited hospitality, had been a heavy strain on Mr. Weston, who, besides having to support his family-inlaw, had been crippled by one or two unlucky gambles in real estate. Vance guessed that Mrs. Scrimser’s attention had finally been called to these facts (no doubt by his mother), and that in a tardy rush of self-reproach she had resolved to wipe out her debt. It was not religious zeal alone which had started her on her lecturing tour. In the West, she told Vance, she had spoken without pay; but now that she understood her pecuniary obligations she was impatient to make money by her lectures. No one was more scrupulously anxious not to be a burden on others; the difficulty was that for her, to whom no fellow creature could ever be a burden, it was an effort to remember that she might be one herself. Vance was moved by the candour and humility of her avowal. He too knew what it felt like to be dragged down from the empyrean just as the gates of light were swinging open; how happy it would have made him to relieve this old dreamer of her cares, and leave her to pursue her vision! “I daresay when she came here she thought I’d be able to help her out,” he reflected bitterly, and regretted that he had mentioned his own troubles. But Mrs. Scrimser’s optimism was irrepressible; already she was planning, with the proceeds of her tour, to hire a little house in Euphoria and take Vance and Laura Lou to live with her. “Saidie Toler’ll take all the housekeeping bothers off our hands, and you can do your writing, and I’ll go on speaking in public if God’s got any more use for me; and in the good clean prairie air Laura Lou’ll get all the poison of New York out of her in no time.” Her face was as radiant as if she were enumerating the foundations of the Heavenly City.
“Don’t you think you and Laura Lou could be happy, making your home with me?” she pleaded.
Yes, Vance said, he was sure they could; it was long since his eyes had rested on anything as soothing as the vision of that little house. “I’d have a big kitchen table, six feet long, for my writing,” he mused voluptuously; and then roused himself to his grandmother’s summary of the “Storecraft” offer for a three months’ tour, for which she was to be featured as: “God’s Confidant, Mrs. Loraine Scrimser,” who was to “tell the world about her New Religion.”
“You see, Vanny, Saidie Toler’s been all over the figures with him, and she says I ought to clear twenty or thirty thousand dollars. And perhaps that would be only a beginning . . . .” Her face glowed with tenderness, and Vance, trembling a little, took her large warm hand and pressed it against his cheek.
“Why, Van darling, don’t — don’t cry! You mustn’t! I guess your troubles are all over now.”
He sat silent, holding her hand. How could he tell her what was in his mind? Perhaps the inertness of his hand betrayed the lack of response in his thoughts; for she questioned him with eyes softened by perplexity. “Maybe you don’t care for the way he’s featured me?” she suggested timidly. “I guess you could find something more striking yourself — only I wouldn’t want to bother you.” He shook his head, and she went on, still more timidly: “Or is it the way I was received last night among those fashionable people? Don’t suppose I didn’t see it, Vanny; I was a failure; I know it as well as you do. My message didn’t get over to them . . . it was a terrible disappointment to me. But Mrs. Mennenkoop says that in that set they’re dreadfully inexperienced in the spiritual life . . . infants wailing in the dark . . . and that maybe what I gave them was too startling, too new . . . .”
“Oh, no, that’s not it,” Vance interrupted with sudden vehemence. “It was NOT new to them — that’s the trouble.”
“Not new —?” Her hand began to tremble in his, and she drew back a little. “Do you mean to say, Vanny, that every profound and personal spiritual adventure is NOT new, is NOT different . . .?”
“No, it’s not. That’s the point. Lots of people............