A few days later, after one of the unproductive mornings which often followed on his stretches of feverish work, Vance said to Halo: “When you said that the other day to Churley about a man’s forcing himself to write, I suppose you were thinking of me, and the endless time I’m taking to do this book.”
There had been a day when Halo would have protested, and he would have been sorry that he had spoken; but a new Halo, with steadier nerves and smoother temper, had replaced the pleasing anxious spirit of last year, and she only rejoined, with a glance of good~natured surprise: “Why, Vance, how absurd! With a book on the scale of this one you’re bound to take a long time to get to the top of the hill.”
That was sensible enough; but Vance was in the mood to feel that a sensible answer could only be a transparent attempt to humour him. “Oh, well — climbing’s not bad exercise. But what you said has frightened away poor Churley. . .”
“Frightened him — why?”
“Writers don’t much care to be told by outsiders to buckle down to their work. They generally get enough of that sort of advice in their own families.”
“Oh, poor boy! I’m sorry! But how could he have minded? He’s always joking about his own laziness.”
“That’s different,” Vance retorted; and Halo, without appearing to notice his tone, suggested that he should go and hunt up his young friend. “Perhaps he may have stayed away because he’s ill; he looks spectral at times. I’m sure it would please him if you looked him up.”
Churley had never suggested his friend’s coming to see him, and Vance thought he might interpret an unsought visit as an attempt to remind him of the article he perhaps no longer wished to write. To a youth so acutely self-conscious it would seem natural that an author should attach great importance to being reviewed by him. But the possibility that he might be lying ill in that dreary house made Vance decide to follow Halo’s advice. As he mounted the hill, the house, rising above him in its neglected garden with windows shuttered against the sun, seemed to take the warmth out of the air, and he felt half inclined to turn back. While he stood there the blistered front door was jerked open and Colonel Churley came out. The Colonel looked at him with astonishment, and said: “Oh — ” in a voice as sombre as his countenance, but somehow less forbidding; and on Vance’s asking for his son, replied unexpectedly: “Ah — you’re a friend of his, are you?”
Vance hesitated. “Well, a literary friend . . . yes . . . We both write, sir. . .”
The Colonel considered him thoughtfully. “Ah — you write? Indeed? I wish you’d persuade my son to do as much. But I’ve no idea where he is at present; none whatever. I seldom have any idea where he is,” the Colonel concluded, in a voice more sorrowful than angered; and he lifted his hat with a gesture which implied that he expected Vance to precede him to the gate. If Chris were within his father evidently did not mean the visitor to know it. He did not even ask Vance’s name. At the gate he turned with another bow, and strode away through the olives.
That evening Chris Churley reappeared. He looked drawn and colourless, and flinging himself down on the divan plunged his hand into Vance’s box of cigarettes. For a while they talked of a new book that Vance had lent him (and which he had promised to return, and hadn’t); then, when Halo left the room for a moment, he said abruptly: “I suppose it was you who looked me up this afternoon.”
“Yes. I met your father at the door. He said he didn’t know where you were.”
“And you told him you were a literary pal?” Churley laughed. “He didn’t for a minute believe that. He thought you were one of my waster friends come to carry me off on a spree. My father and mother always think that, when anybody they don’t know comes to see me.”
“Wasters? I shouldn’t think there were many in this place,” said Vance, smiling.
“THEY do. They think they’re everywhere where I am. My mother’s convinced there’s a private gambling hell in one of the houses on the quay. I daresay there is — and a filthy hole it must be. What my family can’t understand is that riotous living, unless it’s on the grand scale, appeals to me no more than getting drunk on cheap wine at a bistro. What I want to make me go astray is marble halls and millions; and Oubli is fairly safe from both.” He sat up and clutched his tossed red hair in his brown hands. “Oh, God, Weston, if I could get away! If only I could get away!”
Vance was moved at the cry. Well, why couldn’t he get away? And where would he go, and what would he do, if he could?
“Go? Straight to London, by God!” Churley swung around on the divan, his eyes dark with excitement under his flaming hair. “London, of course. If I could have a month there, with nobody to nag me, or ask me when I was going to get to work again (I know what my father told you — I know); if I could have a fortnight, even, I could write that article about you, and a couple of others that have occurred to me during our talks; and with those articles I’d go to the ‘Windmill’, and from what Zélide says I’m practically certain they’d take me on permanently. But what am I to do, without a penny in my pocket? That’s what my people can’t be got to see. You must have found, haven’t you, that there are places where a man can work, and places where he can’t, though nobody but an artist can understand, and other people imagine you can say to a writer: ‘Well, how is it you haven’t turned out your thousand words this morning?’ as they’d say to a child in the nursery: ‘Now, then, down with that cod-liver oil, or I’ll know why’.”
The appeal reminded Vance of his own ineffectual efforts, the hours of agonizing inability to express what was in him, and the intervals when even the craving for expression failed because there was only emptiness within. Remembering his good fortune, the difficulties surmounted, the distinction achieved, the tenderness and understanding that had silently fostered his talent, he felt ashamed of the contrast between his fate and Churley’s.
“Oh, see here; things may not be as bad as you think; we’ll see what can be done . . .” he began, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder; and at the terrible light in Churley’s eyes Vance understood that he was already pledged to help the flight to London.
He had been rather afraid of Halo’s disapproval when she learned what he had done. His earnings from “The Puritan in Spain” had not been large, for the book had been more fashionable than popular; and Halo’s means were cramped by the necessity............