the priest should come home, the scrubbing with inadequate handker-
chiefs, the sanding of the stone floor to clean off the prints of their feet.
When the priest returned they had to sit there demure, with their legs
still sticky under their stockings. The priest served them glasses of the
wine they had bathed in and their manners were perfect as they heard
him say that never before had he known the wine to be so good.
As the story went on to its end, Vincent was sorry he had chosen it
to read. The silence was becoming unusually intense. He had always ad-
mired Garda Thorne and her work was now naturally in his mind. And
he had especially wanted Miss Anderson to hear the story, for he thought
it might suggest to her, with its simplicity and gaiety, that there were bet-
ter subjects than the artificialities she so feelingly contrived. But, as he
read, he felt that it had been a cruel mistake to read this story to these
women. As it went on through its narration of the flash of skirts and un-
derskirts, of white stained thighs, the grave silence of the girls and then
their giggles and the beautiful prints of their naked feet on the stone
floor, it seemed to him that his own youth had been thoughtless to have
0
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chosen the story. He felt, too, like an intruder into feminine mysteries
and the sweat came to his forehead. He dreaded the return of the priest
and the end of the story when he would have to take his eyes from the
book and look around. At last he finished. He did not look up but mood-
ily sifted through the pages of the book. This had the histrionic effect of
letting the story hang for a while in the air.
For a moment the silence continued. Then it was broken by Miss An-
derson crying, “Oh that was lovely, Mr. Hammell,” and “Lovely,” “Love-
ly,” “Lovely,” echoed the women around the glass table, beneath whose
surface there was a shifting of legs and a pulling down of skirts.
Vincent now ventured to look at their faces, which were relaxed and
benign. There were little half-smiles on their mouths, directed tangen-
tially at him. It was as if he himself had been the author of the story and
as if the story had celebrated the things that were their peculiar posses-
sions, their youth, their beauty, their femininity.
In the sunlit room, in the soft spring air, there was a moment of mus-
ing silence as the quest for the fierce and precious secret was abandoned.
Despite himself, Vincent experienced a sense of power, in all his months
of teaching the class, the first he had felt. Yet in the entrancement of the
women, in their moment of brooding relaxation, there was something
archaic and mythological, something latently dangerous. It was thus that
the women of Thrace must have sat around Orpheus before they had
occasion to be enraged with him. He would have liked to remind them,
but it was not possible, that he had merely read aloud the story which
someone else, a woman, Garda Thorne, had written.
It was old Mrs. Pomeroy who memorialized the moment. Mrs.
Pomeroy was by far a gayer creation than either Mrs. Broughton or Mrs.
Forrester. Perhaps she was aware of her role, perhaps she had even had
the wit to invent it herself—she was the old lady of widest experience and
profoundest wisdom, and it was impossible not to see her lengthy past
of drawing rooms (at home and abroad) in which the brilliant and the
famous were received. Silence and a twinkle were the evidences of Mrs.
Pomeroy’s breadth of culture. At certain literary names she would smile,
as at the memory of old, intimate and special delights. But only once had
she made vocal her feeling for the great past. On that occasion the name
of Proust had been mentioned by Vincent and what Mrs. Pomeroy had
said was, “And also Paul Bourget.” She had added a knowledgeable whis-
per of explanation, “Psychology!” And now, as her way was, she smiled
sadly and wisely as she spoke. She closed her eyes and said, “Such a story
makes one truly glad there is literature. We should be so grateful.”
1
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She spoke so seldom and perhaps she was really wise—at her bene-
diction upon literature and her admonition to gratitude everyone looked
solemn, as if, in the moving picture, they were present as Anatole France
delivered the panegyric at Zola’s funeral.
“Very excellent,” said Mrs. Broughton. “Very.”
And now Mrs. Stocker spoke. “What I like about the story,” she said,
“is that it is neither one thing nor another. I mean that it isn’t highbrow
or commercial.”
It was not that she wanted to bring the discussion back again to the
matter which so much interested her. No doubt she as much as anyone
else had been caught in the moment of contemplation, but in uttering
her feeling about it she used the only language she knew. And having
used that language it was now natural for her to say, “Tell me, Mr. Ham-
mell, does this writer sell well?”
And at her question there was a little murmur of agreement to its
relevance and eyes turned to Vincent for his answer. Victory, it seemed,
was not permanent. But today he was so much at ease with himself that
he set out to win it again. He was glad to be able to speak simply and
with enthusiasm about Garda Thorne, telling how at infrequent intervals
she produced her exquisite stories, which, having made their way slowly,
were so eagerly sought after and waited for by the editors. He did not
speak of the symbolic place which she held in the minds of many people,
especially the young. At the moment he felt so in alliance with her that
he could speak about her only modestly. Nor did he find in himself any
malice as he spoke to these women of her skill and fortitude. But, for the
first time, he felt he was indeed their instructor.
And they seemed to take pleasure in what he said. Mrs. Stocker did
not press her question. Old Mrs. Pomeroy again smiled sadly and said,
“A heroine—a true heroine of literature.”
“Very noble,” said Mrs. Broughton briskly. “Very.”
When the class was over, Miss Anderson stayed behind the others.
She was never quite at ease with Vincent, partly because he did not have
the advantages of her own class and this made her feel guilty, partly be-
cause he had other advantages and these she feared. The events of the
afternoon had made Vincent a more lively figure in her imagination than
he had ever been before. She admired, even while she disliked, the way
he had handled the disagreeable incident with Mrs. Territt. And the read-
ing of Garda Thorne’s story had put him in a new and slightly disturbing
character which, if Miss Anderson had examined it, would have seemed
to her not dissimilar from that of her physician. She was moved by ad-
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miration and pity for him, she wished in some way to reward and placate
him because he was not to be invited to teach the class next year.
“I wonder,” she said, “if I might borrow the book.”
Vincent understood
the friendliness of the request. Miss Anderson
often read the books he mentioned, but naturally she bought them.
“Oh, she’s so good-looking,” Miss Anderson said, for on the back of
the book-jacket was a photograph of Garda Thorne. “That’s rare, isn’t it?
A good woman writer who’s so good-looking? Aren’t they all supposed
to be plain, like George Eliot?” Vincent knew that to the gentle Miss An-
derson it was a matter for unhappiness that she was already seeing him
as the dispensed-with teacher of the group. But he was armored in youth
and armed with opportunity. He was in alliance with reality and drama.
In all this great dull city of his childhood and youth there was now no
opinion that could harm him.
He smiled politely in response to Miss Anderson’s naughtiness
about the appearance of women writers. “I expect I’ll be meeting her
soon,” he said.
“You will?” she said almost incredulously. “Oh lucky you,” she said.
“How did you get the chance?”
As well as a wish to announce his independence there was a friendly
impulse toward Miss Anderson that made him tell her about his great
fortune. She took it in slowly, it was all outside her experience. The name
of Harold Outram made it clearer to her, for she sat on the board of
Meadowfield and she knew something of Outram’s function. Her un-
derstanding of Vincent’s fortune presented itself to her as a vision of
a bright organized company of young males, moving forward, well ac-
coutred, to positions that had been prepared for them. The young men
moved in light, they shone with freedom, they glittered with the power of
their poverty, they gleamed with the great strength of never having had
mothers of high cultivation, nor three years of schooling at Lausanne,
nor long visits in England and France, nor long talks on Botticelli with
Professor Montani.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. She said it fervently because her
envy, sharp as if she had been struck with one of the weapons the young
men carried, was so truly unwanted. In an instant this Mr. Hammell,
a young man on the point of being dispensed with, had been trans-
formed into a member of the bright advancing band from which she
was forever excluded.
“Oh I am so glad for you,” she said, and she took his hand and
held it.
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Her intensity surprised Vincent. It was not inappropriate to this
great event, but it was strange coming from the gentle Miss Anderson
whom he would perhaps never see again. And the advice she gave him as
she stood there holding his hand, as if at some ceremonial of rank, was
also surprising, again not because it did not fit the occasion but because
it was Miss Anderson who gave it. “I hope,” she said, “oh I hope you can
remember to be fierce.”
chapter 11
On the great day of his departure Vincent woke early. He woke without
gaping or stretching. To wake in this way was a matter of pride with him.
It seemed to him a measurable adventure in love or adventure [ sic]. Ris-
ing, he went to the mirror to examine his face. He saw that its contours
were fined down by what his mother called “the intellectual look.” She
insisted that she could always tell when he had been working well. “It
gives you the intellectual look,” she said, “and then you’re almost hand-
some.” He thought she was right. Usually he did not approve of his face,
but when he had been working with concentration he could see in it the
attractive appearance of true disinterestedness. Today he had the look,
but it came not from work but from his elation at the adventure before
him and of the feeling of mastery it gave him.
He sang as he went to the bathroom and from the kitchen his mother
called up to him, “You’ll cry before dinner if you sing before breakfast.”
He answered her by lifting his voice defiantly. He continued to hum the
song—it was Leporello’s—as he stood before the mirror brushing his
thick dark hair.
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Mrs. Hammell’s eyes that day were keen and weary. It was a hard
day for her, and Vincent felt a pang at the thought of his departure. Not
for a long time had he felt so alert for his mother or so confirmed in his
loyalty. He had long dreamed of being free of his home, but now that the
fulfillment of the dream was at hand, he thought of the pleasures and the
rightness of living close to his roots, warmly in touch with his family and
his past. For a moment his adventure seemed cold and astringent.
Mrs. Hammell poured her son’s coffee and said, “Have you packed?
You haven’t shaved.”
“I’ll pack before I go down to say good-bye to father and I’ll shave
after I come back.”
She reached her hand across the table and took his. In the manner of
that gesture there was a great and frightening triumph for him, for she
seemed to be claiming his hand with no more than the legitimate love
of person for person which includes within itself the knowledge that the
tie, however strong it may be, can possibly be broken. And there was this
knowledge in her voice as she said, “Vincent, I don’t care what you say,
I’m going to the train with you.”
He had not wanted her at the train, for he wished to depart manly
and alone as befitted the occasion. But her voice, as she made the de-
mand, so rang with her awareness that he had the right and the power to
refuse her, that he was glad to relent.
The avenue down which Vincent walked was shabby. In a few years
it would surely become sordid, but now it still held the memory of days
when it was substantial, even fashionable. The new generation of the
well-to-do lived in ample new suburbs and could scarcely imagine that
these close-set heavy houses had ever represented comfort and standing.
Manilla Boulevard had become a street of apartments and rented rooms,
and, lately, of improvised stores, little hat and dress shops in which
business was conducted with a confidential air. It was becoming too a
street of specialists in certain technical services to the body, masseurs,
podiatrists, electrolysis experts, beauty operators, and undertakers. A few
lawyers combined home and office and declared their existence by signs
which represented them as Counsellors at Law.1
Yet the Boulevard still had its trees and its small lawns. Among its
houses were some that kept a strict respectability of trim hedges and
flower borders and a few of the very oldest families of the city stubborn-
1 This description also appears in chapter 4.
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ly held their seats. The freshness of the morning air, the trees, the few
houses that still resisted degradation, but most of all his near sense of
departure, allowed Vincent to find a kind of beauty in American things
not usually loved and now he was being rewarded by being able to find a
valuable pathos in what he was leaving.
When he reached his father’s place, his father greeted him with an
air of general benevole
nce which somehow seemed to ignore the fact of
his son’s departure. Mr. Hammell said, “Good morning, my boy. I know
you will appreciate this.”
He held his old blue Everyman Spinoza at a conscientious distance
from his eyes and read, “He who understands himself and his emotions
loves God, and the more so the more he understands himself and his
emotions!”
He lowered the book and looked mildly at Vincent. “Do you think
that is true, son?”
It was not his father’s habit to discuss philosophy with him and this
seemed an odd occasion on which to begin. But Vincent undertook to
answer as well as he could. “It isn’t a question of true or not, father,” he
said. “It is true in its place, I suppose.”
“You always want to put things in their place, my boy,” Mr. Hammell
said, his face suffused with sorrow for himself. “There are some things
that can’t be put in their place so easily.”
Vincent made his answer respectful. “I only meant that some of the
statements that Spinoza makes are true in their context. For instance,
what he means by God isn’t what most people mean by God.”
“It is what I mean by God,” Mr. Hammell said.
Vincent doubted this but did not reply. A year ago he would have
argued, though not so fiercely as the year before that, and both of them
would have become bitter. But he had learned how the pleasure of quar-
relling with his father always subsided into flat sickness with himself.
And certainly now there was no necessity for him to quarrel. But at his
silence, Mr. Hammell’s face flushed and bloated with anger and he said,
“That’s what I mean by God—and by God, I’m no fool either.”
“All right, father,” Vincent said quietly and then was ashamed that he
had been able to say it quietly.
“You stand there and talk as if Spinoza wasn’t one of the greatest
philosophers the world has ever known. You and your modern ideas, you
and your crazy ideas, your crazy communist ideas.”
Vincent said, “You know I’m not a communist, father.” But there
was no escape. To stand there all reasonable against his father’s petu-
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lance, to wait out the tantrum with paternal forbearance, would leave
The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel Page 18
