sank. Outram was looking at him curiously. He felt mocked and belittled.
Under Outram’s gaze, his high sense of life sank to extinction.
“But there is one Way that you left out,” Outram was continuing,
“It’s an important one. The Way of the Darling. It’s a new one, and it’s
remarkably effective. You must be very young and attractive for it, and re-
ally gifted. You must be very taut and energetic, willing to work hard, but
full of deep feeling. The fire of idealism must be in your eye, the light of
dedication. And if the fire is of the right kind, it is astonishing how many
people will try to keep it burning there for you—and make it their own.
They will love you for the youth and devotion they don’t have any more.
You will be their rebel—for you must be rebellious, a little rebellious,
and at the right time you must rebel against unconsidered rebellion. You
will be their darling. Very subtle, that one.”
Suddenly Vincent felt very weary. All the sense of quick, heightened
life which he had had at the beginning of the interview was gone from
him. His essay had been written with a certain irony and also with a
magical intention—for if you could represent the case as bad enough
perhaps you could propitiate the fates. Outram was taking the essay with
a literalness that was not intended. It seemed to represent for him a per-
fect reality. And when he had spoken of the Way of the Darling had he
been accusing Vincent himself of having chosen that Way? Vincent’s
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guilt for his deep desire made it seem terribly possible that the accusa-
tion had been made.
But perhaps not, for Outram said searchingly, “And you—do you
think you will avoid all the Ways?”
Whether or not the specific accusation had been made, a wave of
misery swept over Vincent. Yes, all the irony and all the magic had gone
from his poor little essay. He had been dealing, after all, with facts. The
man across the table was taking them as facts. Indeed, the man across
the table was living proof of the reality of the facts. “No,” Vincent heard
himself saying, “I am quite a common type, really quite ordinary. I want
to live the life, not be the thing.”
It was a terrible thing to say. In his worst moments of despair he
had never thought this of himself. He did not know why this idea about
himself had come to him now. He did not know whether or not it was
true, this admission that he was not a truly dedicated spirit. But he had
suddenly had to say it. Something in Outram’s presence had demanded
that he say it. And not only to say it but feel it.
Outram said, “It’s a great temptation to pay for the life of the writer
with worry and self-torture. It’s much harder to pay for it with work.”
His manner was stern, it had a nearly paternal firmness of authority.
This allowed Vincent to make his own next remark almost angry. “You
make it sound easy,” he said. “But the work—the work is to resist, to
resist, and then to continue to resist.” It seemed to him that he was no
longer talking about himself. He said, “You talk as if it were a matter of
industriousness. It is not. It is—”
And here Vincent stopped, for he did not know how to go on, so
heavy was his heart, so hopeless, in the company of Harold Outram, was
all possibility of living as one would. Outram had not said anything about
that hopelessness, yet it was his message, it was announced, he intended
it to be announced, by his whole being. It was the poetry and drama of
his existence, to be heard in every tone of his voice, in the way in which
he handled his cocktail glass and his knife and fork. And as poetry and
drama it had a nobility and charm, it had heroism. It called to Vincent
like the possibility of a voluptuous experience.
Vincent tried to say what he meant. “It is not effort and will. It is—”
But still he did not know how to go on until he heard himself say, “You
should certainly know what it is.”
It was a dreadful thing to say, unforgivable. Outram’s own great fail-
ure, it is true, had been taken for granted between them. It was a fact that
Outram had laid on the table just as he had laid Vincent’s essay. Yet even
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the unfinished novel
so, it was a terrible thing to say. But as the words came, Vincent knew
that if they did not immediately destroy all relationship with this man,
they would establish it beyond anything he might ever say or do.
He saw Outram pale under the direct blow. Then Outram raised his
head and looked him full and searchingly in the face. The forms of po-
liteness, the plane of ordinary social intercourse, had been transcended.
Outram said quietly, “Yes, you are right. Who should know if I do not?”
Then he said, gently, solicitously, “What is it you resist?”
Vincent did not know. He had never put into words the dark and ter-
rible moods that could descend upon him. But he found that he had the
impulse now to speak sorrowfully and with dignity. Here in this great
room, surrounded by the representatives of alien, unconscious power,
he wanted to speak of what he felt. He said, not knowing what the words
would be until he heard them, “Loneliness. The certainty that you are not
connected with the past or the future. That no good can come of you. Or
to you. That humanity is something that happened long ago.”
“Yes!” Outram said, and the intensity with which he spoke, the full
sad relief with which he sighed out that assent, astonished his compan-
ion. They sat silent as men do when they have agreed to share a common
pity for a fate they have in common.
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chapter 8
For both of them it was a difficult silence to come out of, so intimate was
it. Vincent, despising himself for not being able to support it longer, said,
“I’ve just been seeing an old friend of yours.”
“An old friend? Who could that be?” Outram was polite, but Vincent
heard in his voice a note of caution.
“Theodore Kramer.”
Outram repeated the name in a grave and musing voice, seeming
to let it evoke what memories it would. Vincent found himself a little
surprised at this mild unshaken response. He wondered what kind of re-
sponse he had expected, what kind of effect he had wanted to work upon
Outram by the mention of Kramer’s name.
“Old Teddy Kramer,” Outram said. “Of course—he’s been here at the
university for a long time now. Was he a teacher of yours?”
“Yes he was,” Vincent said, and some contrite loyalty led him to add,
“and a very good one too.”
“I’ll bet he was,” Outram said with great heartiness. “And how is
Teddy?”
“All right,” said Vincent. “All right and working hard.”
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“And that book—that big book on—who was it?—Wassermann was
it? How is that going?”
“Sudermann—not Wassermann.”
“Sudermann, of course. Is it finished yet? Teddy sends me reprints
of articles from learned periodical
s every now and then—studies for the
book, I suppose.”
The cold of shock and the warmth of great internal laughter simulta-
neously suffused Vincent’s mind. Kramer’s little treachery—was it treach-
ery?—was so comic, so wonderfully, humanly frail that it had a kind of
fragrance the reason for which he could not at the moment understand.
In answer to Outram’s question, he shook his head, and smiled—no, the
book was not yet finished. There was an answering smile from Outram.
Both smiles were grave and understanding. Between them, quite finally
understood, lay the touching career of their friend, Theodore Kramer. At
its bedside, filled with pity for it, Vincent Hammell and Harold Outram
became increasingly aware of each other. Each of them responded to the
quality of life in the other, which seemed the more vital by reason of that
poor moribund career of Kramer’s. They were closer together than they
had been before.
“What’s the matter with Teddy? Is he up to his old tricks, too consci-
entious, waiting for that last pointless document to be unearthed?”
“Yes, something like that. He is cursed with encyclopedism. He feels
that he can know nothing without knowing everything. He has taken all
knowledge for his province and he daily becomes more provincial.”
Outram smiled at the young man’s wit and passed it by. “Teddy has
never forgiven me for what he calls deserting,” he said. “The last time we
saw each other in the East, he quite denounced me and left hating me.”
Vincent said with mature assurance, “He would scarcely send you
reprints of his articles if he hated you. I know he doesn’t hate you.”
Outram’s curiosity was frank. “He talks about me then?”
“Yes, naturally he talks about you.”
“We were never intimate friends,” Outram said, as much gratified by
the assurance that Kramer did not hate him as he had been by express-
ing his own belief in Kramer’s animosity. “Still, we were good friends.”
Then, quite changing the subject, he said, “Tell me about yourself—
what do you do?”
The suddenness of the question, and its proprietary tone quite jarred
Vincent and made the little list he could give seem very bleak. “I have a
little job at the university,” he said, “what they call an assistantship. I give a
section of freshman English. Then I give the course at Meadowfield—”
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the unfinished novel
“Wait,” said Outram, “I can guess the rest—a little tutoring now and
then for the football team, reading examination papers for the big course
the Dean gives, a speech ghosted for a state senator, a little work for one
of the newspapers. Am I right?”
“Well, pretty much.”
“We’ve all done it one time or another. And I bet I’m right about the
atmosphere in which you live, the clutch at the belly when you think of
the passing of a year, the parents a little proud but very puzzled and al-
ways worried about the present and the future. And always the struggle
to keep enough time for the book. Enough time and enough pride. I sup-
pose there is a book?”
If his voice had a touch of mockery, it was of the most fraternal sort.
“Oh yes,” Vincent said, using a little mockery himself. “There’s a
book all right.”
“A novel of course.”
“No, not a novel.” Vincent had no impulse to explain further.
“Ah yes—your generation no longer worships the novel. In my time
it was novel or nothing. We spent our days getting ready for it, looking
for experience. An honest novel it had to be—honest was the big word.
And always one novel was what we thought of. Only one, very big, enor-
mous. Then, having laid this enormous egg, I suppose we expected to
die. It had to be big and explosively honest—you’d think we were collect-
ing dynamite grain by grain, you’d think we were constructing a bomb.
We expected to blow everything to bits with our honesty.”
Outram was giving way to an extravagant humor, but Vincent found
it harsh and jarring. “You’re a cagier generation, you live—I suppose you
think—in a tougher, narrower time, you play it safer and wiser. I sup-
pose,” Outram said, “it’s a critical book?”
“Yes, in a way it is,” Vincent said with reserve.
“Good, good,” Outram said with savage ironic approval. He dou-
bled his fist and struck the table with it. Then he did this again. “Good,”
he said. “Build with the bones of the dead men and you’ll be much
safer. Judge the corpses and tell us how they smell. That’s the right way
to do it.”
His silly words were uttered through clenched teeth. His face was
very violent. The bitter hostility of his voice was not directed at Vincent in
particular, but it took in so much that inevitably it included Vincent too.
Vincent was bewildered for himself and at the same time overcome
with embarrassment for his host. He wished to look away. In Outram’s
outburst there was a quality of hysteria that entirely disconcerted him.
5
the unfinished novel
The hostility in Outram’s eyes seemed to suggest that the vague wonder-
ful opportunity which Outram represented either did not exist or was
now suddenly to be withdrawn. And withdrawn it might have been if
at this moment Vincent had obeyed his almost overwhelming desire to
turn his glance from the fierceness of Outram’s face and from the panic
in it.
This he himself was later to understand and he never ceased to won-
der how, out of his unformed and untried youth, he had been able to
snatch the craft and courage to look full into Outram’s eyes. But he did
look—and not only with stubborn resistance but with sternness and even
with a challenging and almost cruel curiosity.
Outram met the look full and it checked him. The whirling bitterness
that had taken charge of his will met something resistant, perhaps not
indestructible but at least showing an intention of not being destroyed.
There was therefore no longer a temptation to destroy it. He permitted
Vincent’s look to engage his, he felt released from a bad necessity.
He said quietly, “What is the book about?”
Vincent held his answer, not too long, not vindictively, just an ap-
preciable moment. Then he acknowledged the encounter over. He even
allowed himself a smile of deprecation as he said, “It’s about American
literature.”
Outram’s expression of astonishment was perfectly good-natured.
“All of it?” he asked, “At your age?”
“Well, perhaps eventually,” Vincent said, his sense of power brought
forward by the flattery of Outram’s surprise. And he went on to speak
of the scope of his enterprise. Outram scrutinized his face as if to learn
whether the task was within his abilities.
“Let me ask you a question,” Outram said.
Vincent waited for the question.
“Why are you undertaking this thing?” And as if Vincent were about
to answer immediately, Outram held up a checking hand. “Oh of course,
> from the point of view of a career, it is perfectly understandable. You’re
very wise in your choice of subject. The American subject—it’s in the
cards. There’s going to be an enormous boom—there is already. Things
are bad in Europe, we’re going to start looking inward, we’re sick of run-
ning ourselves down when the rest of the world is such a mess. If your
tone is right, you may have a great success. But I don’t mean that. I mean
apart from that.”
There was an answer and Vincent was prepared to give it. He had
given it before, to himself and others. Perhaps he had given it too often,
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the unfinished novel
for it was by now so well formulated that the phrases came a little too pat
to suit his own ear. Yet, for all that, the answer was a sincere one—the an-
swer that nothing in the world interested him so much as the American
mind in its effort to comprehend the American complexity.
He was about to make this answer, knowing that the note of sincerity
and even of passion would sound in his voice, sensing that this would
move Outram and impress him. But Outram’s remarks about the clever-
ness of his choice of a subject made him hesitate. The assurance that his
project might succeed because of tendencies that Outram spoke of with
a certain scorn, suggested to him how much his intellectual passion was
interwoven with his vulgar will to be “successful.” And as his answer, its
sincerity now a little suspect, was not quick, Outram went on to define
the question further.
“Are you driven to it? Is it an absolute necessity? Or are you doing
it because you are a young man with ambitions and this is the way that
presents itself to you? Is there, for example, nothing else that would sat-
isfy you as well as this?”
“The question interests me for many reasons,” Outram went on.
“The fact is that literature is dead. The literary culture of Western Eu-
rope—it’s dead, dead and done with. What is the greatest country in the
world today? You know as well as I do that it’s Russia. Sooner or later we
will understand that Russia is our future and our hope. And Russia has
produced not one single notable work of art. Oh, don’t jump to what you
think is the defense, don’t tell me that time will produce masterpieces.
The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel Page 15
