Hudson River Bracketed · Book V · Chapter 28 (2/2)

The meagreness of his inherited experience, the way it had been torn off violently from everything which had gone before, again struck him with a pang of impoverishment. On the Fourth of July, at Advance and then at Euphoria, the orators of the day (and Grandpa Scrimser foremost among them) had been much given to dilating on the priceless qualities the pioneers had brought with them into the wilderness. To Vance it sometimes seemed that they had left the rarest of all behind.⁠ ⁠…

He fancied he heard a step in the shadows and glanced up from his writing. “Vance!” Halo Tarrant exclaimed. She was standing there, in the doorway of the drawing room, with a look so amazed that Vance, jumping to his feet, lost his own sense of surprise in the shock of hers. “Why I thought you were in Europe!” he said.

“I was to have been.” She coloured slightly. “And then, at the last minute, I didn’t go.” She moved a step nearer. “You hadn’t heard I was at Eaglewood?”

“No. I didn’t know.”

She smiled a little. “Well, I didn’t know you were at the Willows. But just now, in passing the gate, I saw it was open⁠—” (Oh, curse it, Vance thought⁠—how could he have forgotten the padlock?) “and as I knew it wasn’t Mrs. Tracy’s day I came in to see who was here.”

Her eyes were fixed on him with a looked which seemed to call for an explanation, and he mumbled: “Mrs. Tracy’s been sick.⁠ ⁠…”

“I know; I’m sorry. And you’re replacing her?”

“There was no one else. At first I came only on Saturdays, just to see that things were all right. Then⁠—” he lifted his head, and returned her look, “then the books pulled me back. I couldn’t help it. And I got in the way of coming oftener.”

“I see. Very often?”

“Every day, I guess. But they don’t know it at home,” he added hastily.

“I know that too,” she said, and, in answer to his glance of interrogation: “I’ve just come from there. I heard Mrs. Tracy was ill, and I looked in to see if there was anything I could do.” She went on, a gleam of irony beneath her lashes: “Laura Lou seemed to think you were in New York.”

The blood rose to Vance’s face and burned its way slowly to his temples. “I⁠ ⁠… she’s been sick too.⁠ ⁠… I knew she’d just get fretting if she thought I came here often⁠ ⁠… like this.⁠ ⁠…”

Halo Tarrant stood before him pale and grave as a young judge; he felt that his fate trembled in the balance. “She’ll despise me for it, too,” he thought, with a pang which blotted out his other apprehensions. She made no answer, but presently she said: “I hadn’t seen Laura Lou for a year. How very beautiful she’s grown.”

Vance, in his surprise, could produce only an inarticulate murmur. There was no answer in his vocabulary to such amenities, especially when they were unexpected; and he stood abashed and awkward. At length he faltered out: “I guess you think I oughtn’t to be here at all.”

“Well, I won’t betray you,” she rejoined, still gravely. For a moment or two neither spoke; then she moved toward the table, and resting her long hand on it (yes, he thought, it was certainly like the hands in the picture), she bent over his manuscript. “You do your work here?”

“Yes. Down home there’s no place but the dining room. And they’re always coming in and disturbing me.”

Mrs. Tarrant tossed off her hat, and seated herself in the carven armchair. The severity of her gaze had softened. Vance leaned with folded arms in the window recess. From where he stood her head, with its closely folded hair and thin cheeks, was just below that of the portrait, and though the eyes were different he felt again the subtle resemblance between the two women. “You do look like her!” he exclaimed.

She glanced up, narrowing her shortsighted eyes. “Like poor Cousin Elinor? I suppose you and she are getting to be great friends, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” He laid his hand on the page at her elbow. “This is about her.”

“About Elinor?”

He nodded excitedly. “I’m writing her life⁠—trying to.”

His visitor looked at him with astonishment. “Her life⁠—Elinor Lorburn’s?”

“I mean, the way I imagine it. How things were in the days when this house was built. I don’t know how to explain⁠ ⁠… but I think I see a big subject for a novel⁠—different from the things the other fellows are trying for. What interests me would be to get back into the minds of the people who lived in these places⁠—to try and see what we came out of. Till I do I’ll never understand why we are what we are.⁠ ⁠…” He paused, breathless with the attempt to formulate his problem. “But I guess it won’t do,” he began again. “I don’t know enough about those old times. I think there are good things in what I’ve done, though⁠ ⁠… the beginning’s good, anyway. See here,” he broke out, “I wish you’d let me read it to you; will you?”

Hesitations and scruples had fallen from him. He forgot that he had been found where he had no right to be, and the probable consequences⁠—forgot the possibility of Halo Tarrant’s disapproval, was hardly aware of her presence even, save as a listener to what he thirsted to have heard. She nodded and leaned back in her chair; and gathering up the sheets he began.

His elocution was probably not much better than when he had recited his poems to her on Thundertop. But he did not think of that till he had started; and after the first paragraph he was swept on by the new emotion of watching his vision take shape in another mind. Such a thing had never happened to him, and before he had read a page he was vibrating with the sense of her exquisite participation. What his imagination had engendered was unfolding and ripening in hers; whatever her final judgment was, it would be as if his own mind had judged him.

As his self-possession returned, the enjoyment of her actual presence was added to the intellectual excitement. Everything about her seemed to be listening and understanding, from the attentive droop of her lids to the repressed eagerness of her lips and the hands folded quietly on her knee. When he had ended he turned away abruptly, as though she might see even the heart thumping in his throat. He threw the manuscript down, and his self-confidence crumbled.

Mrs. Tarrant did not speak. She merely unclasped her hands, and then laid one over the other again, without otherwise moving. To Vance the silence seemed abysmal. He turned back and almost shouted at her: “Well, it’s no earthly good, is it?”

She looked up. “It’s going to be by far the best thing you’ve done.” Her voice sounded rich with restrained emotion. “I can’t tell you how strange the feeling is⁠—all those dull familiar things with their meaning given back to them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, is that what I’ve done? You see⁠—you do see?”

“Of course⁠—I see with your eyes, and with mine too. That’s the strangeness⁠—and the beauty. Oh, Vance, how did you do it? I’m so glad!” She stood up and drew nearer. It was as if achievement were shining down on him. “You must go on⁠—you must give up everything to finish this.” He nodded, speechless, and she stood looking about the shadowy room. “And of course you must do your work here. You’ve made this place yours, you know. And you must be quiet and undisturbed. I’ll arrange it for you.” She sat down again, leaning toward him across the table. “But this is only a beginning; tell me how you mean to go on.”