… the hunter returned …

O MATTER WHAT HAPPENS I will never let it take me this way, vowed Dennis, outside Callingham’s bedroom at the Madison, I’m damned if I’ll have a bedful of literary agents, movie magnates, lawyers, brokers, Spanish and Russian translators, editors, gossip columnists, and old college roommates. The hotel valet with a suit of evening clothes over his arm emerged from the sacred bedroom and the open door allowed the chatter, the clink of glasses, the typewriter clicking out statements to the press and other inner sanctum noises to nourish for a brief moment the hungry ears of those awaiting an interview. No, resolved Dennis, I won’t put on this act, not for a minute; I may have naked ladies jumping out of Easter eggs and drinking out of my slipper, I may have an extra suit and a watch with two hands and a charge account at Bellows, but this prima donna act, this big business ritual that obliged ex-wives to wait their turn with tailors till the big affairs were attended, contracts signed, checks deposited, broker called up, dinner arrangements for the next fortnight made … oh no, never. Dennis looked at Effie on the sofa beside him and wondered how she could endure this delay. She had spelled out her name and repeated it three times to the secretary—E-f-f-i-e—T-h-o-r-n-e—and finally said, “Just tell him Effie.” The awful delay that followed this announcement sickened Dennis though Effie seemed undisturbed. Maybe after a lifetime of keeping up a front the front ossified and a little of the stone seeped through the veins. Then Dennis saw her hands and looked quickly away. He studied the rug, the little whispering groups, the pictures on the wall, but all he really saw were Effie’s hands gripping the gloves in her lap, twisting them, rolling them, crumbling them, smoothing them out again.

The secretary opened the inner door and called in the film reporter. Effie pretended not to notice, kept her eyes on a picture.

“Hotels have their own art, don’t they?” she said.

Just Effie. But the tailor, the film reporter came first. Dennis passed her a cigarette.

“I’ve always felt there ought to be a museum of hotel art,” he said. “It hardly seems fair that only the great or rich can enjoy these masterpieces, the living-room sunsets and forest fires, the little pastel bedroom quainties, the old tavern on the parchment lampshade. Do you think the twin prints over the twin beds in there will be Godey’s or something from the chambermaid’s own palette?”

Effie smiled, turned to the man just entering the suite, and Dennis knew she was thinking this newcomer would be admitted before she was.

“About the launch,” the new caller informed the secretary.

The bedroom door closed again on voices.

Andy was buying a new launch, then. The launch came before Effie, before Marian dying.…

“I’m so glad you came with me,” she whispered. “I could never have found out where he was.”

It had been easy enough to get the address from Johnson, though Dennis dared not explain the cause of his request, knowing how staunchly the author’s world unites against wives and mistresses, readier to protect the darling from these catastrophes than from bill collectors and minor nuisances. It was easier, however, to prepare the way for Effie than it would be to explain his own presence to Callingham. He found himself growing slowly enraged at the situation. He was mad because he had no hat, because his shoes had suddenly become conspicuously muddy, his shirt cuffs frayed, his fingernails black; his beard leapt out of his face, his tie’s white flannel stuffing wiggled out of its decent cover, his garter broke and dangled down, all the things happened that would put him at a disadvantage with Callingham, made his anger with the man seem nothing more than the futile envy of the failure for a successful rival.

“There,” said Effie, nodding toward the table and he saw a copy of The Hunter’s Wife. “Dennis, tell me why you wrote that book. You are my friend, then why—why?”

“I wrote it for you,” Dennis answered and for the first time he knew he was speaking the truth. He had written an annihilation of the man Callingham, but whereas only last week his conscience had reproached him for this betrayal of Effie, he saw now with illuminating clarity that he had done it for her. Somewhere, unconfessed, inside him was the St. George who would free the princess from a dragon and for no other purpose than this had his pen lashed out. The truth will free, he had cried, and then was remorseful when the truth only destroyed the princess in the telling.

Effie looked at him curiously, trying to understand. Someone in the room asked the time and another answered that it was half-past six. Effie gave a start of fear. Marian. It might already be too late. She would almost at that moment have braved everything and run straight into the other room to Andy, but this courage fled when the secretary beckoned to her from the door. She shrank back, looked beseechingly at Dennis. She had never really expected the meeting to come true, he thought, the man in the doorway summoning her to step from a long dream into reality was a shock. Dennis handed her her bag, gloves, cigarettes.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said, and drawing a deep breath she walked slowly, numbly, away from him into the open door.