XXIX

Halo Tarrant’s eleventh-hour decision not to sail with her husband was due to a trifling domestic quarrel; so most people would no doubt have called it⁠—though she sometimes wondered how it was possible, in any given case, to say in advance what would turn out trifling and what ominous in the world of sentiment.

She had, or imagined she had, been looking forward eagerly to the trip; to the interesting people they would see, the excitement of playing even a small part in the literary world of London and Paris, and all the inducements which change offers to the young and the unsatisfied. Then, suddenly, a link had snapped in the chain holding her to Tarrant, and they stood miles apart, hardly visible to each other.

Queer that life should be at the mercy of such accidents! But in this case circumstances had been tending for some time to unsettle her husband’s moral atmosphere, which was not at best a stable one. The New Hour was not taking hold as they had hoped. Subscriptions were not increasing. That, they were told, was natural: the first year of a new periodical is always critical. More disquieting was the fact that bookshops and newsstands were not sending in heavier orders. There had even been a falling off in the sale of the last numbers, and the editorial programme for the rest of the year was hardly brilliant enough to revive the demand. The situation was not unusual; but that was precisely what made it mortifying to Tarrant. Halo had already learned that in her husband’s scheme of life half successes were almost worse than failures. He had taken hold of the moribund journal and put new life into it; and if it were to languish again in his hands⁠—if somebody else’s failure were to become his⁠—the situation would be much more humiliating (and more difficult for his vanity to account for) than if he had started a new enterprise and not made it a success.

Frenside, at this juncture, had the happy thought of suggesting that Tarrant should go over to London and Paris and look about him: personal contact with editors and authors abroad might lead, he thought, to something interesting. Tarrant, always exhilarated by any new plan, at once became buoyant and masterful. He declared he had always thought he ought to go; he was glad that, for once, his wife and Frenside had come round to his view. He was prepared, Halo knew, to face a pecuniary loss on the review for the first year or two, but not a loss of prestige. Being his review, it must be brilliant or vanish: a slow decline would be unbearable. But he was confident that great things would result from this journey, and that he would come home with a glittering list of contributors.

Whenever his faith in himself returned, his wife’s revived with it, and the two hurried joyfully through their preparations. But on the evening before they were to sail Tarrant came home in a different humour. He and Halo were alone, and when they returned to the library after dinner he broke out at once: “Well, we’re dished this time; I don’t see that there’s much use in sailing.”

Halo roused herself out of her happy preoccupation. Hurry, confusion, sudden preparations of any sort, always amused and stimulated her; but they made Lewis nervous⁠—and so did the mere reaction from optimism. She had learned to allow for that, and only echoed absently: “No use sailing?” while her real self remained absorbed in luggage labels, passports and deck chairs. At length her husband’s silence told her that something more was expected of her, and still absently she added: “Why?”

As if her delay had reached to the extreme limit of his patience, his answer sprang back: “The Pulsifer Prize. That fool Weston has gone and lost it.”

Halo shook off her travel dream with a start. What on earth, she wondered, could have set Lewis fretting about the Pulsifer Prize? But what was the use of wondering? She supposed that, after two or three years of marriage, there were times when most husbands seemed to their wives like harmless lunatics (when it wasn’t the other way round, or perhaps reciprocal), and she answered, in a tone of good-humoured reminder: “Lost it? How could he, when it’s not given until next November?”

Tarrant, with a shrug, threw himself back wearily in his chair, and she remembered, too late, that there was nothing he so loathed as being humoured. “My dear,” he said, “what’s the sense of that sort of talk? You’re not really as simple as all that: you know perfectly well that the prize is given the minute Jet Pulsifer takes a shine to one of the candidates. And she had taken a shine to that silly ass.”

Halo’s indifference was giving way to a sense of counter-irritation. Where would he go to dig up his next grievance, she wondered? And just as she ought to be writing out the labels⁠—! “Oh, if that’s all⁠—” The whole subject of the Pulsifer Prize, with its half-confessed background of wire-pulling and influencing, was particularly distasteful to her, and she was really thankful there was no time to deal with it.

“All?” Tarrant echoed. “It’s everything. She fell for Weston the minute she laid eyes on him⁠—that evening at the party here. It was rather what we’d planned the thing for⁠—you remember? And she’s been awfully nice to him ever since⁠ ⁠… seeing him very often, and encouraging him a good deal, I imagine. You know what she is.”

Halo murmured reluctantly: “Well⁠—?”

“Well, what does the infernal fool do? Goes there the other day and holds her up for a loan.”

“A loan?”

“A loan. And how much, do you suppose? The exact amount of the prize. Two thousand dollars⁠—not a copper less!” Tarrant started up angrily and began to pace the floor. “She sent for me today; I never saw a woman so upset. She says he talked as if he were merely asking for an advance⁠—as if his getting the prize was a sure thing, and she might as well hand the cash over at once, as long as he was bound to get it.”

Thoughts of luggage labels and deck chairs vanished from Halo’s mind. Into their place there stole a cold insidious dread of what was coming, of what her husband was going to say, and she was going to feel about it. “Nonsense, Lewis,” she exclaimed. “I don’t believe he ever said anything like that.”

Tarrant laughed. “We all know you think he can’t do wrong. But I suppose you’ll admit he did ask for the money, if she says so?”

Halo pondered. She had forgotten herself and Tarrant in the shock of a new distress. “Poor fellow⁠—I wonder why he wanted it so badly.”

“Well, I own I’m less interested in that. What I care about is that he’s fairly dished us, and that we were banking on the prize to give us a boost at the end of the year. With a new review it would have made a lot of difference. But the idea of considering us is the last that would enter his head.”

“I suppose it is, if he wanted the money as much as that; and he must have, to dream of asking Jet Pulsifer.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I daresay it’s rather in his line. That kind of man, when he sees a woman’s gone on him⁠ ⁠…”

“He’s not that kind of man!” Halo exclaimed. She also stood up, trembling with an unaccountable dismay. “What reason did he give⁠—didn’t she tell you?”

“Oh, the usual one, I believe. Hard up⁠—wife ill, or something⁠—they always tell the same story. To think the fool had only to sit tight and let her go on admiring him!”

There was a long silence. Tarrant stopped his nervous pacing and returned to his armchair, throwing himself into it with a groan of impatience. “That prize was ours!”

“Ours?”

“Well⁠—isn’t he our discovery?” He laughed. “Yours, if you prefer. You’re welcome to it. I hold no brief for blackmailers.”

She looked at him with astonishment. He had suddenly crowded Vance Weston out of her mind and taken possession of its centre himself. “Blackmailers?” she repeated. She said the word over slowly, once or twice. Then: “But, Lewis, if he’s that, what are we? What’s the New Hour?”

Tarrant threw back his handsome head and returned her look with faintly raised brows of interrogation, and a glance which declared resignedly: “Ah, now I give up!”

“What are we,” his wife went on, “who knew what Jet was, and put the boy in her way, and worked up her imagination about him, all to⁠ ⁠…” She broke off, vexed with her own exaggerated emotion, yet unable to control it.

Tarrant’s tone, in contrast, grew profoundly quiet. “All to⁠—what?”

“Steal the prize for our paper.”

He looked at her, still with arched ironic brows. “That’s what you call it? Stealing?”

“Don’t you? We began to throw that boy in Jet’s way months ago⁠—began in this very house, and at your suggestion.” (Oh, of course, he interjected, he knew she’d end by putting all the blame on him.) “No, I don’t,” Halo continued. “I keep my share; and it’s a big one. But I see now that we ought both to be ashamed⁠—far more ashamed than Vance. And I am⁠—I’m revolted. If that’s the way literature is produced, it had better cease altogether. If it has to be shoved down people’s throats like Beauty Products and patent collar buttons it shows our people don’t really want it; that’s all!”

Tarrant leaned back, and stretched his hand out for a cigar. “Did you ever really think they did?”

Her colour rose. “I suppose I didn’t think at all⁠—I just rushed ahead with the crowd. But now⁠ ⁠…”

“Well⁠—now?”

“Now it seems to me there’s only one thing we can do to save our souls⁠—we must lend the boy that money.”

Tarrant paused attentively in the lighting of his cigar. “We⁠—?”

“You,” she corrected herself, crimsoning. Something, perhaps involuntary, in the inflection of his voice seemed to imply that, where there was a question of bestowing money, the plural pronoun could hardly be current between them. But his next retort brushed aside the implication.

“We⁠—I? Lend him the money? What on earth are you talking about? He gets us into a damned mess, and we reward him for it?” She was silent. “Is that your idea of it?” he insisted.

She murmured with a shrug: “I suppose it’s your idea of my idea.”

“Ah, and what is yours, if I’ve misinterpreted it?”

“That the fault is all ours, and that we ought to expiate.”

“Expiate!” He smiled. “You talk like an old-fashioned Russian novel.⁠ ⁠…” He paused a moment, and then added: “I had no idea you were such an idealist.⁠ ⁠… Well, it’s getting late,” he continued, standing up with a shake of his long body. “I’ve got to throw some last things into my trunk, and we’ll postpone this discussion till we’re on board.”

Halo felt a sudden blur before her eyes. “Lewis!” she exclaimed.

He turned back, irritated, impatient to make an end, and as the two stood looking at each other Halo saw, in a revealing flash, how immeasurably far apart they were⁠—had always been, perhaps. It was as if she had been walking in her sleep, and had now abruptly opened her eyes on the edge of a sheer drop. Yet what was there in this paltry wrangle to throw such a glare into the depths?

Tarrant stood waiting. He looked drawn, tired, exasperated. It was no time for reasonable explanations; he hated tactlessness, and she was being tactless. Yet speak she must⁠—speak (she said to herself) before they were so far apart that he was out of hearing.⁠ ⁠…

“Well?” he repeated.

“Lewis⁠ ⁠… you’re not going to understand.⁠ ⁠…”

“Understand what?”

“Why I say what I’m going to say⁠—”

“Lord! How portentous! What are you going to say?”

“That our talk has made me feel I want to be by myself for a while⁠—away from you, I mean.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, is that all? All right. I’m off to bed this minute,” he said, strangling a yawn.

“I don’t mean that. I mean⁠ ⁠… I’d rather not sail with you tomorrow.”

“Not sail?” He swung round and mustered her incredulously. “What in God’s name are you driving at now?”

“Just what I say. I’d rather not go.⁠ ⁠…”

He leaned in the doorway, waiting. She said nothing more, and he broke into the thin laugh which often preceded his outbursts of anger. “May I ask what all the fuss is about anyhow?”

She gave back his look almost timidly. She had not known she meant to say just those words till they were uttered; but now she knew it was her inmost self which had said them, and she could not take back what was spoken. Yet how was she to explain? “Because I⁠ ⁠… because I feel I want to be alone for a while.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s why you’re not going?”

“I don’t feel as if⁠—I could.⁠ ⁠…”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

“Yes. I’m serious.”

There was another silence. She saw that he was baffled and mortified, and yet too proud to argue with her or entreat her.

“Oh, all right⁠—if you say so,” he muttered. Then, after a pause: “All the same, though, I’m curious to know why.”

She hesitated, still caught in the hopeless difficulty of finding words. “It’s because⁠ ⁠… I suddenly see that we feel too differently about things, and I want to have time to think⁠ ⁠… to go away and think by myself.⁠ ⁠…”

Tarrant’s lips narrowed, and his cold eyes seemed to draw closer together. “If you mean that we feel differently about lending Vance Weston money, we certainly do. I rather wonder, though, that you should pick that out as a grievance. I should have thought you might have remembered that as a rule I’m not backward about lending money.”

There was a long pause. Halo leaned against the chair from which she had risen, and the eyes resting on her husband filled with tears. Her resentment had died at the very moment when he had found the taunt most calculated to quicken it. She would have given the world if he had not said those particular words, because they laid bare to her the corner of his mind where old grudges and rancours were stored, the corner into which she had always refused to look. But now that the words were spoken she felt only pity for him⁠—and for herself. It seemed to her that he and she merited equally such humiliation as the moment involved. “Oh, Lewis,” she began, “please don’t.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t want to⁠—all I want is to make myself clear.”

“You have,” she murmured. She straightened herself and took a step back. He still leaned in the door and looked at her.

“All right,” he said, again with his thin laugh. “Then we may call the matter settled?”

She made no answer, and after waiting a moment he went out of the room. When the door had closed she sat down and leaned back in her chair with closed eyes.

To justify her appearance at Eaglewood on the day when she was supposed to be sailing with her husband, Halo told her parents that at the last minute she had decided he would do his job better without her. Dragging a wife about on such a hurried expedition⁠—what a nuisance! Of course he couldn’t tell her so; but his beautifully simulated distress, when she had announced her decision, had shown her how relieved he felt. “You know how he is: never so polite as when he wishes you were dead and buried,” she reminded her father and mother; and smilingly watched their incredulity melt into reassurance. It was easy now to reassure the Spears! Since their own wants were provided for they had grown less exacting for others. With a comforting word or two you could put Mr. Spear’s mind to rest about the treatment of live bait, or Mrs. Spear’s about the future of democracy. And so with the case of their daughter. Mrs. Spear, who still needed to be told at intervals that all was right with the world, instantly seized on the idea that Halo had given up sailing because she had “hopes” again⁠—at last!⁠—had perhaps been advised by the doctor⁠ ⁠… though the poor child, after her previous disappointments, was naturally reticent. And Mr. Spear smoked his good cigars, and said, well, no doubt his daughter knew her business better than they did, and he rather admired the way the modern young people had of respecting each other’s independence. Halo knew that her parents were enchanted to have her to themselves; Tarrant rather intimidated them, and it was easier to praise him behind his back than to humour him to his face. The easy happy-go-lucky quarrelsome atmosphere of Eaglewood was always chilled by his presence; and there were so many of their friends whom he regarded as bores or cranks, and whom they couldn’t invite when he was there.⁠ ⁠…

Halo did not care what her parents thought of her sham reasons, as long as they feigned to accept them; she was too busy examining the real ones. She knew that she had at last emerged into the bald light of day from the mist of illusion she had tried to create about her marriage. That talk with Lewis had been a turning point: the inevitable stocktaking. Never again would she see him save as he was; but she would also, as inevitably, see herself as chained to him for life.

The fact that he had reminded her of her obligation would make it perpetually present to her. The new carpets at Eaglewood, the Spear flat in New York, Mrs. Spear’s black velvet, Mr. Spear’s cigars, the funds for Lorry’s theatrical enterprise⁠—these were the links of her chain. They held her as tight as if divorce had never existed. For she knew now that all Lewis’s generosity (yes, yes, he was generous!) had proceeded not from the heart but from the head. He wanted her; she suited him; he had bought her. It was no more romantic than that. And being a gentleman, he punctiliously paid the annual tax on his acquisition, and would continue to as long as she continued to suit him. And it was her business to go on suiting him, since, the day she ceased to, the Spear household would fall to pieces.⁠ ⁠…

The idea frightened her, and as soon as he was safely at sea she began to think how to conciliate him. Everything seemed easy when he was not there. His cold unreasonableness always silenced her at the moment, and then stung her to resistance; but she could make her submission in writing because, escape being impossible, common sense warned her to make the best of her fate. And something higher than common sense whispered that, after all, she was only paying her dues.⁠ ⁠…

She sent him, by the next steamer, a simple friendly letter, telling him that she knew she’d been stupid, but she’d been feeling dreadfully nervous and overtired, and he must forgive her, and not think of their disagreement. It was really providential, she added, that she hadn’t gone with him, because the doctor found she was rather rundown and anaemic, and badly in need of a rest, and she would just have been a drag on him, and unable to keep up the pace. But to show she was forgiven he must send her long cable letters with all his news and the review’s.⁠ ⁠…

She had written that her not going with him had been providential; but how true it was she did not dream till she heard those first chapters of Vance Weston’s.

Under his touch the familiar setting of the Willows became steeped in poetry. It was his embodiment of the Past: that strange and overwhelming element had entered into his imagination in the guise of these funny turrets and balconies, turgid upholsteries and dangling crystals. Suddenly lifted out of a boundless contiguity of Euphorias, his mind struck root deep down in accumulated layers of experience, in centuries of struggle, passion, and aspiration⁠—so that this absurd house, the joke of Halo’s childhood, was to him the very emblem of man’s long effort, was Chartres, the Parthenon, the Pyramids.

It was extraordinary, how this new vision of it reanimated the dusty scene. Countless details that Halo had taken for granted, or dismissed as negligible, were now ripe with meaning. The mere discovery that there were people who had been born and died in the same house was romance and poetry to Vance. It gave to all these anonymous particles a relief and a substance she had never guessed in them. And the fact that she could help him in his magical evocation, provide him with countless necessary details about these people who were so near yet so remote, so trivial yet so significant, could tell him how they spoke and felt and lived and died, made her feel of use again in the world.

Every day at the same hour she came back to the Willows to meet him, so that there should be no break in his inspiration. Ah, now, indeed, the New Hour was to have its masterpiece!