During the two months since Vance’s return to New York “Colossus” had taken the high seas of publicity, and was now off full sail on its adventurous voyage. Where would the great craft land? It had been reviewed from one end of the continent to the other, and from across the seas other reviews were pouring in. The first notices, as usual in such cases, were made largely out of left-over impressions of “The Puritan in Spain”; but a few, in the literary supplements of the big papers, and in the high-brow reviews, were serious though somewhat bewildered attempts to analyze the new book and relate it to the author’s previous work, and in two or three of these articles Vance caught a hint of the doubt which had so wounded him on Halo’s lips. Was this novel, the critics asked — in spite of the many striking and admirable qualities they recognized in it — really as original, as personal as, in their smaller way, its two predecessors had been? “Instead” and “The Puritan in Spain”, those delicate studies of a vanished society, had an individual note that the more ambitious “Colossus” lacked . . . And the author’s two striking short stories — “One Day” and “Unclaimed” — showed that his touch could be vigorous as well as tender, that his rendering of the present was as acute and realistic as his evocations of the past were suffused with poetry . . . Of this rare combination of qualities what use had he made in “Colossus”? On this query the critics hung their reserves and their regrets. The author’s notable beginnings had led them to hope that at last a born novelist had arisen among the self-conscious little essayists who were trying to substitute the cold processes of the laboratory for the lightning art of creation. (The turn of this made Vance wonder if Frenside had not come back to fiction reviewing.)
It was a pity, they said, that so original a writer had been influenced by the fashion of the hour (had he then, he wondered, flushing?) at the very moment when the public, not only the big uncritical public but the acute and cultivated minority, were rebelling against these laborious substitutes for the art of fiction, and turning with recovered appetite to the exquisite freshness and spontaneity of such books as David Dorr’s “Heavenly Archer”, the undoubted triumph of the year. (David Dorr? A new name to Vance. He sent out instantly for “Heavenly Archer”, rushed through it, and flung it from him with a groan.)
Some books fail slowly, imperceptibly, as though an insidious disease had undermined them; others plunge from the heights with a crash, and thus it was with “Colossus “. Halo had been right — slowly he was beginning to see it. “Colossus” was not his own book, brain of his brain, flesh of his flesh, as it had seemed while he was at work on it, but a kind of hybrid monster made out of the crossing of his own imaginings with those imposed on him by the literary fashions and influences of the day. He could have borne the bitterness of this discovery, borne the adverse criticisms and the uncomfortable evidence of sales steadily diminishing, as the book, instead of gathering momentum, flagged and wallowed in the general incomprehension. All that would have meant nothing but for two facts; first that in his secret self he had to admit the justice of the more enlightened strictures, to recognize that his masterpiece, in the making, had turned into a heavy lifeless production, had literally died on his hands; and secondly that its failure must inevitably affect his relations with Floss Delaney. He had always known that she would measure his achievement only by the material and social advantages it brought her, and that she wanted only the successful about her. And he was discovering how soon the green mould of failure spreads over the bright surface of popularity, how eagerly the public turns from an idol to which it has to look up to one exactly on its level. (”‘Heavenly Archer’ — oh, God!” he groaned, and kicked the pitiful thing across the floor.)
Had he gone back to his old New York world — to Rebecca Stram’s studio and the cheap restaurants where the young and rebellious gathered — he might have had a different idea of the impression produced by his book. These young men, though they had enjoyed his early ardours and curiosities, had received his first novels with a shrug; but “Colossus” appealed to them by its very defects. Like most artistic coteries they preferred a poor work executed according to their own formula to a good one achieved without it; and they would probably have championed Vance and his book against the world if he had shown himself among them. But there was no hope of meeting Floss Delaney at Rebecca Stram’s or the Cocoanut Tree, and Vance cared only to be where she was, and among the people she frequented. His return to the New York he had known when he was on “The Hour” was less of a personal triumph than he had hoped. In certain houses where he knew that Floss particularly wanted to be invited he was less known as the brilliant author of “The Puritan in Spain” than as the obscure young man with whom Halo Tarrant had run away, to the scandal of her set; and in groups of more recent growth, where scandals counted little, celebrity was a shifting attribute, and his sceptre had already passed to David Dorr.
David Dorr was a charming young man with smooth fair hair and gentle manners. He told Vance with becoming modesty what an inspiration the latter’s lovely story “Instead” had been to him, and asked if he mightn’t say that he hoped Vance would some day return to that earlier vein; and none of the strictures on “Colossus” made Vance half as miserable as this condescending tribute. “If any of my books are the kind of stuff that fellow admires — ” he groaned inwardly, while he watched Dorr surrounded by enraptured ladies, and imagined him saying in his offensively gentle voice: “Oh, but you know you’re not fair to Weston — really not. That first book of his — what was it called? — really did have something in it. . .”
But there were moments when the mere fact of being in the same room with Floss, of watching her enjoyment and the admiration she excited, was enough to satisfy him. Mrs. Glaisher had reappeared in New York as a Russian Grand Duchess, with Spartivento and the assiduous Alders in her train, and Floss, under the grandducal wing, was beginning to climb the glittering heights of the New York world, though certain old-fashioned doors were still closed to her. “I told you it’d be harder to get on here than in London. They always begin by wanting to know who you are,” she complained one day to Vance. “I guess I’m as good as any of them; but the only way to make them believe it is to have something, or to be somebody, that they’ve got a use for. And I mean to pull that off too; but it takes time.” She had these flashes of dry philosophy, which reminded Vance of her father’s definition of her character. Mr. Delaney was not in New York with his daughter. He had been prudently shipped off to Virginia to negotiate for the re-purchase of one of the Delaney farms. “It’ll keep him busy,” Floss explained — “and out of the way,” her tone implied, though she did not say it. But she added reflectively: “I’ve told him I’ll buy the place for him if he can get it for a reasonable price. He’ll want somewhere to go when I’m married.”
Vance forced a laugh. “When are we going to be married?” he wanted to ask; but he had just enough sense left to know that the moment for putting that question had not come. “Have you decided on the man?” he asked, his heart giving a thump.
She frowned, and shook her head. “Business first. Do you suppose I’m going to risk having to hang round some day and whine for alimony? Not me. I’ve told you already I’ll never marry till I’m independent of everybody. Then I’ll begin to think about it.” She looked at him meditatively. “I wish your new novel wasn’t so dreadfully long,” she began. “I’ve tried to read it but I can’t. The Grand Duchess told me people thought it was such a pity you hadn’t done something more like your first books — why didn’t you? As long as you’d found out what people wanted, what was the use of switching off on something different? You needn’t think it’s only because I’m not literary . . . Gratz Blemer said the other night he couldn’t think what had struck you. He says you could have been a best-seller as easy as not if you’d only kept on doing things like ‘The Puritan in Spain’. He doesn’t think that Dorr boy’s book is in it with your earlier things.”
“Oh, doesn’t he? That’s something to be thankful for,” Vance retorted mockingly.
The renewal of his acquaintance with Gratz Blemer had also been a disappointment. Vance had always respected Blemer’s robust and patient realism, and his gift of animating and differentiating the characters of his densely populated works; Vance recalled the shock he had received when he had first met the novelist at the Tarrants’, and heard him speak of his books as if they were mere business enterprises. Now, Vance thought, his greater literary experience might enable him to learn more from the older man, and to make allowances for his frank materialism. No one could do work of that quality without some secret standard of excellence; perhaps Blemer was so sick of undiscriminating gush that he talked as he did to protect himself from silly women and sillier disciples, and it would be interesting to break through his banter and get a glimpse of his real convictions.
Vance had seen Blemer one night at the Opera, at the back of his wife’s box, and had been struck by the change in his appearance. He had always been thick-set, but now he was fat and almost flabby; he hated music (Vance remembered), and sat with his head against the wall of the box, his eyes closed, his heavy mouth half open. They met a few nights afterward in a house where the host was old~fashioned enough to take the men into a smoking-room after dinner; and here Blemer, of his own accord, came and sat down by Vance. “Well,” he said heavily, “so you’ve got a book out.”
Vance reddened. “I’m afraid it’s no good,” he began nervously.
“Why — isn’t it selling?” Blemer asked. Without waiting for an answer he continued in a querulous tone: “I wish to God I’d brought my own cigars. I ought to have remembered the kind of thing they give you in this house.” He waved a fat contemptuous hand toward the gold-belted rows in their shining inlaid cabinet. “The main thing is to get square with the reviewers first,” he continued wearily. “And generally by the time a fellow’s enough authority to do that, he doesn’t give a damn what they say.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever cared,” Vance flashed out.
Blemer drew his thick lids together. “You don’t think they affect sales, one way or the other? Well, that’s one view — ”
“I didn’t mean that. I only care for what I myself think of my work.” As he spoke, Vance believed this to be true. But Blemer’s attention had already wandered back to himself. “I wish I could get away somewhere. I hate this New York business — dinners and dinners — a season that lasts five months! I’d like to go up the Nile — clear away to Abyssinia. Or winter sports — ever tried ’em? Of course the Engadine’s the only place . . . Write better there?” he interrupted himself, replying to a question of Vance’s. He gave a little grumbling laugh. “Why, I can’t write anywhere any more. Not a page or a line. That’s the trouble with me.” He laughed again. “Not that it matters much, as far as the shekels go. I guess my old age is provided for . . . Only — God, the days are long! Well, I suppose they’re waiting for us to begin bridge.” He got up with a nod to Vance. “I wish I was young enough to read your book — but I hear it’s eight hundred pages,” he said as he lumbered back to the drawing-room.
As the weeks passed Vance became aware that he was no nearer the object for which he had come to New York. He continued to meet Floss Delaney frequently, and in public she seemed as glad as ever to see him. But on the rare occasions when he contrived to be alone with her she was often absent-minded, and sometimes impatient of his attempts at tenderness. After all, she explained, he was the only old friend she had in New York, and it did seem hard if she couldn’t be natural with him, and not bother about how she looked or what she said. This gave him a momentary sense of advantage, and made him try to be calm and reasonable; but he knew he was only one in the throng of young men about her, and not even among the most favoured. At first she had made great play of the fact that he and she came from the same place, and had romped together as children (a vision of their early intimacy that he was himself beginning to believe); but she presumably found this boast less effective than she had hoped, for though she continued to treat him with sisterly freedom he saw that she was on the verge of being bored by his importunities, and in his dread of a rebuff he joined in her laugh against himself.
For a time she talked incessantly about the Euphoria deal, and boasted of her determination to outwit the Shuntses and make them buy her out at her own price. Though Vance had grown up in an atmosphere of real-estate deals the terminology of business was always confusing to him, ............