and position, Vincent felt, should appear in their proper forms and add to
the variety of life. He was sure that there were proper forms both of refine-
ment and vulgarity. But these women of the Creative Writing class made
but a commonplace spectacle. Thus, the meagre taste in dress of Mrs.
Stocker quite matched the meagreness of her face, which showed the ir-
ritable energy of a person whose social self-esteem is not matched by cash
in the bank. Or Mrs. Territt was so very coarse in complexion, so brutally
dull in manner that it was inevitable to suppose that what gentility she
had was hanging by only a thread of income. Mrs. Knight was ruddy and
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healthy from an expensive outdoor life, but in other respects she appeared
no more than merely well-off. Poor Miss Wilson’s truly painful nervous-
ness and her evasive eye quite transcended the bounds of class. But on
the other hand it was even more difficult to believe in the actual status
of Mrs. Broughton, Mrs. Forrester and old Mrs. Pomeroy, for wealth had
marked them only in the way of parody and they were all three so “typical”
that one had to suppose that they had been produced not so much by na-
ture and circumstance as by certain artistic imaginations of rather limited
range. In the East, Vincent had always felt, in cities of complex culture,
wealth would surely make a better show, would impart a more firmly bot-
tomed assurance, a more interesting arrogance.
Vincent, as he well knew, had not been a success with the group. But
he knew that none of the instructors who had come before him had suc-
ceeded any better. The university had sent its best men, professors first,
then young instructors and assistants, likely to be more modern. Each
autumn the new man had been received with taut feminine expectancy,
each spring he had been discarded, for he had not conveyed the precious,
the inconceivable secret which the women had come in hopes to receive.
Yet although Vincent understood that he was not successful, he always
supposed that he was a little forgiven by reason of his sex and age. Ac-
tually, he was wrong to count on this feminine extenuation—his being
masculine and young had made his case, if anything, even worse.
His own particular failure had no doubt begun when, upon being
invited to instruct the group, organized by the Junior League, he had con-
jured up a vision of gently-bred ladies, all pretty and all precisely thirty
years old, gracefully filling empty days and hearts with the delicate practice
of an elegant art. He had not been prepared for the urgent women who
were actually his pupils, nor for their really quite grim dark worship of the
potency that print conferred, nor for their belief—more intense than any
coterie in metropolitan garrets could have—that they were held in bond-
age by a great conspiracy of editors. Responding to Miss Anderson’s gen-
tleness and to her authority as chairman of the group, he had put to her
the question of his progress. Using all her gentleness, yet bound by her
authority, Miss Anderson had told him. She quite dissociated herself from
the general feeling, perhaps dimly feeling it to be vulgar if not mistaken.
“They feel, Mr. Hammell,” she had said, “that you are very brilliant, but a
little— theoretical?” A question in her voice deferred to his superior knowl-
edge of words and gave him the right to reject this one if it in any way hurt
his feelings. “What they want is something more—practical.” This time
there was no question, for she was sure that he could not be hurt by their
5
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desire for anything so ordinary, nor feel at fault for his inability to give it.
“They think that perhaps they ought to get a literary agent from New York.
What they want is ‘straight dope’—contacts and the right approach.” They
despaired, these poor ladies, of having the secret of creation imparted to
them and now they dreamed of the other secret, of the “straight dope,” of
contacts and the right approach. And even Miss Anderson, although she
pronounced the first of their desires as if it were slang, uttered the other
two quite without quotation marks, as literal and legitimate things.
Vincent carried a briefcase, an elegant piece of luggage of excellent
leather and the best bronze hardware. It had been a gift from his parents
who, with such gifts, useful but very fine and extravagant, kept for them-
selves and their son the memory and the hope of better days. Vincent
laid it on the plate-glass table beneath which his own legs and the legs
of his pupils were visible. Usually he was glad of the briefcase, for its
elegance helped to arm his youth and poverty against the wealth of his
pupils. But today he did not need its help. For the first time he felt the
deep, pure pleasure, almost sensual, of freedom.
If anything could have heightened the great wonder of the lunch and
its almost incredible offer, [it was] the arrival at his home that same eve-
ning of a bottle of the most extravagantly fine Scotch whiskey, elaborately
wrapped, a gift from Harold Outram. The card enclosed said, “To cel-
ebrate the beginning of your enterprise—and our friendship,” and the
simplicity of its wording, the openness of its offer, gathered up all the
aspects of Harold Outram that were charming and impressive, forming
a figure that was enormously reassuring. The arrival of the whiskey in its
red ribbons and with its cordial note made it both necessary and easy for
Vincent to explain to his parents the nature of his good fortune and even
to accept the quiet look of triumph and wise foreknowledge his mother
legitimately wore. But two weeks had passed, then three, and May wore
on into June and no word of confirmation or definition had come from
Harold Outram, until the lunch and the offer seemed but a fantasy and
only the bottle of whiskey and the card proved, like evidence in a fairytale,
that the event had really taken place. But the letter had come at last with
dates of arrival suggested, a check for travelling expenses and the whole
financial arrangement laid out, and the thing was as real as it could be,
making everything real with its own actuality. Already the Techniques of
Creative Writing class seemed to him a lingering item of his past.
He opened the briefcase and took from it a thin folder of manu-
scripts. “Two weeks ago,” he said, and waited for the class to come finally
to order, “two weeks ago l asked you to write a story about some simple
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outdoor experience. You were to concentrate on the physical details. You
remember that we discussed as models a passage from Huckleberry Finn
and a story of Ernest Hemingway’s.” He picked up the folder and exam-
ined its thinness. “Some of you,” he said drily, “carried out the assign-
ment.” For the fact was that very few members of the group ever wrote
anything at all.
Mrs. Stocker moved in her seat to indicate a protest which Vincent
understood—all this was elementary. Mrs. Stocker had once, but only
&nbs
p; once, sold a story, to a women’s magazine, for a sizeable sum, and it was
in part the memory of that great check that kept alight the flame of aspi-
ration in the Techniques of Creative Writing class.
Vincent ignored Mrs. Stocker’s demonstration and said, “I’d like to
read one example.” He took a manuscript from the folder. Only three of
his pupils had attempted the assignment, two of them very dully. But
he was rather proud of Mrs. Knight’s little story. It was quite unpreten-
tious, about a young wife who is left by her husband in their hunting
lodge in the Canadian woods. She wakes in the night to hear a howling
that can only be that of wild animals and then the creaking hinge of an
of unlatched door opening and closing. She is not alone, but of her two
guests one is another woman and the man is incompetent. She lies still
and miserable, bearing all the sad isolation of responsibility. Her emo-
tions are in conflict, she is afraid of the wolves but afraid to take steps to
protect herself; yet more than anything is her fear of the contempt her
absent husband will feel for her lack of courage. But at last she becomes
bold—and finds that though indeed the door is unlatched, the howling is
only that of a high wind. Her self-deception was perhaps not wholly con-
vincing, but something in the matter of her story was indeed convincing,
her desire to seem manly to her husband and the whole impulse of the
story to discover safety where danger seemed to be.
Vincent read this story aloud. When he came to the end, he looked
around the table, inviting comment.
“Very nice,” Mrs. Broughton said. “Very nice indeed.”
Mrs. Broughton had been imagined by a radical caricaturist of rather
conventional fancy. Careless of verisimilitude, concerned only with the
political passions he would arouse, this artist had drawn her short and
pudgy, with a face of gross and foolish pride and a bridling neck that gave
an air of condescension to her remarks, many of which were in their in-
tention actually quite good-natured.
“Yes, it is quite nice,” Mrs. Stocker said, suppressing as much as she
could the professional condescension she felt. “Of course, it has no plot,
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no complication, no conflict really, but it has a kind of twist at the end, it
is true to life and it has touches of realism.”
“Oh, very realistic,” said Mrs. Broughton.
“Well, I don’t think it is very realistic,” said Mrs. Forrester with sud-
den authority. As compared with the inventor of Mrs. Broughton, the
imagination that had conceived Mrs. Forrester was of greater complex-
ity—some social satirist, gifted but not profound, had projected this slim
and elegant woman, no longer young but still beautiful, and had endowed
her with an intensity of self-regard and a sense of noblesse so petulant and
shoulder-shrugging, yet so easily snubbed, that poor Mrs. Forrester lived
in a constant alternation of blind attack and bewildered retreat, with the
result that since her beautiful girlhood scarcely anyone had felt toward
her any emotion save the various degrees of contempt. “Not at all—to me
it doesn’t seem realistic at all. It isn’t convincing,” she said. “Now take the
central problem—yes, take the central problem. That definitely is not con-
vincing. She lies there worrying about what she should do. Why? What
for?”—her appeal was vehement. “All that she had to do was ring for the
guides and that would be that.” Her beautiful dark eyes flashed finality.
There was a gasp from young Mrs. Knight. Her cheeks flamed. She
almost rose from her chair. Her voice was choked. “It just so happens,” she
said with terrible scorn, “it just so happens that you couldn’t ring for the
guides, because in our lodge—there—are—no—guides—to—ring—for.”
Mrs. Knight was defending not only her story from criticism but also
her way of life from—it was relative poverty beside—Mrs. Forrester’s
great wealth and be-guided lodge. The group was quite with Mrs. Knight.
As usual, Mrs. Forrester was put down.
Mrs. Stocker said, “Mr. Hammell, I gather that you like that story
of Mrs. Knight’s. And I like it too. It has a very fresh quality, definitely
fresh. But the question I want to ask is whether in your opinion a story
like that has a marketable value. Now you take Constance’s stories—Miss
Anderson’s stories, Mr. Hammell. You yourself admit they have some-
thing. They’re well thought out and they’re well-written, they have sus-
pense and a twist at the end. But the editors just never take them.”
Miss Anderson looked up in surprise and unhappiness. Although
now and then she sent her stories to market, she seemed to feel no cha-
grin at their refusal.
“Now why do you think that is, Mr. Hammell?” Mrs. Stocker said.
There was a silence, a degree of attention, even a note of embarrass-
ment that suggested that Mrs. Stocker’s question was pointed, that it was
the outcome of expressed dissatisfaction with his methods. Miss Ander-
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son looked detached from the matter at hand. While he considered how
to answer, Mrs. Broughton broke the silence, bridling, “It’s because they
are refined and charming and what they want nowadays is coarse—and
middle class. About miners. There was a story I read about two children
who could hear each other practicing through the wall of their apart-
ment.” She tossed her head resentfully. “Who cares?”
Now Mrs. Territt spoke up and her coarse voice was injured and de-
fensive. She said, “You all talk about selling stories. What I want to know
is how to write them. That’s what I come here to find out.” She looked
hostilely at Vincent. “All this talk about what’s been done already! I came
here to learn how to do it in the first place.”
Three or four of the company were swayed by this utterance to con-
fess among themselves what they had never before realized. “Yes, yes,”
they murmured and nodded to each other. The group was now divided
between those who believed that the secret lay in learning to sell and
those who believed that it lay in learning to write.
“Personally,” Mrs. Territt said, and her glance at Vincent was now
malevolent. “Personally that is what I give up my time to come here for.
And I haven’t got it—nothing.” The agreement she had won had gone to
her head and she was breathing hard.
Vincent said, “Mrs. Territt, one can only learn to write by writing.”
For the fact was that Mrs. Territt had never yet submitted a manuscript.
She bridled. “I suppose that’s very smart.” She used the word smart
not in the English sense of something clean and precise or fashionable
and elegant, but in the old American sense of something clever and im-
pertinent. In the eyes of all present this declassed her.
Vincent said, “How long do you spend at your desk every day, Mrs.
Territt?”
She did not answer but looked sullenly at the table before her.
“Four hours a day?” Vincent said inexorably. He
could feel the so-
lidifying interest of the group. The many handsomely shod feet seen
through the top of the table looked like aquarial creatures as they shifted
a little with interest.
“Three hours? Two? One solid hour every day?”
Mrs. Territt was sulking like a scolded chambermaid with an inex-
pressible grievance. Suddenly she flashed out, “No, why should I? When
I never get any ideas?” It was a direct accusation of Vincent.
Someone snickered and no doubt the fight was won, but he went on.
“How long do you spend every day trying to get ideas?”
She looked at him blankly from her raging sulks.
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It was necessary to bring the matter to an end. Vincent took from his
briefcase the book he had brought. It was a volume of stories by Garda
Thorne. “Shall we go on?” he said quietly and impersonally. The women
nodded, quite on his side against the revealed stupidity of Mrs. Territt.
Vincent began to read aloud the story he had selected. It was about
two young American girls who were visiting friends in an Austrian vil-
lage. They were Catholics and they were sent by their hostess to pay a call
of ceremony on the priest of the village. The priest had received them
charmingly, he was very polite. He was in an especially good humor be-
cause the new wine from the grapes of his own little arbor was just ready.
It stood in his tin bathtub on the floor. Just as the visit began the priest
was urgently sent for. He begged his young guests to remain until his
return. They could not but agree, but, as his absence continued, they
sat there bored and impatient and wondering how to amuse themselves
until first one and then the other took off her shoes and stockings, held
her skirts high and stepped into the tub. If you stopped to think of it, it
was not entirely probable, but you did not stop to think of it, and it was
a wonderfully funny and charming picture, the first girl standing in the
wine, then the second, then both together, elegantly dressed and with
their wide straw hats on, the drops of wine splashing up to their thighs,
their white feet and ankles scarcely visible to themselves as they looked
down into the roiled wine.
Then there was the scramble to get themselves presentable before
The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel Page 17
