“Meg, how often have I told you that you aren’t really capable of appreciating anything written since 1910? Amos is extremely representative of his period and it’s a period you hate. His output is prodigious and yet it has never fallen below the standard he set himself in that first book. That is always a sign of superior talent. His success was immediate with his first book. All the critics hailed him as a rising star. That wasn’t accident, you know. Amos has something. Just what it is, I can’t say, but, whether you like his later stuff or not, his writing has that mysterious something that makes people want to read his books.”
“The Cottle touch.” Meg sighed. “That man in today’s Tribune doesn’t like it at all.”
“Do you mean to tell me you’re allowing yourself to be influenced by a review?” Gus poured scorn into the word review. “Emmett Avery is an old rival of Maurice Lepton’s. Avery’s review was probably written to take Leppy down a peg because he’s gone all out for Amos every time.”
“What a mean thing to do!”
“Don’t worry about that review of Avery’s. It’s the first adverse criticism Amos has ever had in a literary journal of major importance, and that’s a sign of his final success. A writer hasn’t arrived until one important critic has said publicly that his work stinks. Then all his admirers leap to his defense, and the controversy stirs up more excitement about him than ever before.”
“You’ll be making me think that Tony planted Avery’s review in the Tribune!’
“You can’t plant things in the Trib, but if you could, Tony is perfectly capable of it.”
Silence held the fog-choked car for the next twenty miles. Then Meg screwed her courage to the sticking point again.
“Gus.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper.
His eyes were on the murky red taillights of the car ahead. “Yes?” He sounded impatient.
Once again Meg’s nerve failed at the jump. “Why do you care so much about what happens to Amos? We have other clients.”
“Yes, but there’s only one Amos.” Gus took a chance and swung around the car ahead at higher speed while Meg held her breath.
“I don’t suppose you ever have really understood what an important part Amos plays in our economy,” went on Gus as they came back safely into the right-hand lane. “A small literary agency like ours is in the same position as a small publishing house like Tony’s. One really successful author who produces regularly and hits the best-seller list every time can make or break us. Amos is exceptionally prolific for a writer of such prestige. One book a year for the last four years. With each new book, I’m scared to death that he’ll slip, but he hasn’t yet, and as long as he doesn’t, he’s a big slice of our bread and butter as well as all our cake and jam. When Amos gets a movie sale, that ain’t hay. It’s the cornerstone of our economy. Amos pays for the apartment, the car, clothes, entertaining, everything. Without Amos, my agency would just be one of a dozen little outfits that struggle along with a gross profit of ten or fifteen or twenty thousand a year. After taxes and overhead, our income would be even less. We’ve got all our eggs in one basket, Meg, and that basket is named Amos Cottle.”
“Ten or twenty thousand.” Meg’s smile was haggard. “In 1933 I would have considered that a nice income, but…”
“You wouldn’t now with prices what they are and two children to support. You’ve got used to spending a lot more, and spending is one of the habit-forming drugs, you know. We’re both addicts.” Gus frowned. “So—we’ve got to head off Vera somehow.”
“Gus.”
“Yes?”
“I—There’s something I have to tell you.”
But Gus was hardly listening. His mind was still fixed on Vera. “Telling her flatly to leave Amos alone would probably be the worst thing we could do. Remember when Polly was two and we got her to eat by telling her positively not to touch her food? Vera has all the perversity of a child of two. Maybe that’s it. Maybe we should tell her that we all want her to come back to Amos. That he needs her and that it’s her duty to do so, no matter how hard it is on her. Maybe she’d have nothing to do with him if she thought he wanted her back and we approved the idea.”
“Would she believe that?”
“Why shouldn’t she? There’s only one really good thing about this whole situation. If it weren’t for that, we’d be sunk.”
“And that is?”
“That Vera herself has not the slightest idea of how all the rest of us feel about her.”
Meg choked.
“Something wrong?”
She managed to swallow. “No.”
“What was it you wanted to tell me, darling?”
“I…” Meg hesitated. Then, “It seems to have slipped my mind.”
“Then it can’t have been very important.”
Through the swirling fog, they saw the signpost that marked the Weston exit. Gus pulled farther to the right and slowed down for the turn. Meg sighed with relief. Once they were off the parkway, on winding country roads, there would be less traffic and speed would be reduced automatically.
Ten minutes later they left a highway and turned into a wooded drive. When they came out of the trees, they saw Tony’s house at the top of a hill, its lights glowing golden through the mist. It was that rare thing in New England, an old farmhouse built of stone with a large, stone barn. Tony, who had lived and worked in Manhattan, was aggressively bucolic now that he could afford that greatest of all modern luxuries—a farm. There were saddle horses in the stable, Jersey cows in the barn, hens in the hen house, pigs in the sty, and even doves in the dovecote—all screened from the house by distance and a twelve-foot hedge of juniper and hemlock. On Tony’s writing paper the place was described as Hilltop Farm, and when Tony filled out forms he always put under Occupation the words farmer and publisher in that order, though even Tony knew he could never have been a farmer if he hadn’t been a publisher first. At Christmas his office staff received presents of home-grown turkeys and homemade fruit cake. At Easter they all got baskets of fresh eggs from Hilltop.
The house itself stood at the highest point of the hill overlooking a brook with a lily pond. Beyond, lawn and meadows sloped down to the treetops of the woods on the hillside below. In summer these trees formed a leafy screen that hid the nearest houses from view. In winter their shapes, scattered at random like a child’s blocks, could be seen dimly through the branches. To-night, with snow on the ground and lights at all the windows, the view looked like a giant Christmas card derived from Currier and Ives.
There was only one other car in the half moon of gravel—Philippa’s little Austin. Gus parked his car and rang the bell. Meg shivered nervously inside her warm coat as they waited.
A Negro in a white jacket opened the door. Gus surrendered his wraps while Meg made her way up the familiar stairs to the guest room. When she came down again, Gus was waiting for her in the hall. Together they entered the great drawing room that made even an apartment as large as theirs seem cramped and cluttered.
Philippa, in gray velvet and emeralds, stood with her back to a blazing fire in the grate. At her elbow, in an attitude of gallantry, was Maurice Lepton, the critic. An ugly, fascinating man, thought Meg, a perverse compound of grace and malice.
There was no sign of Tony.
“He’s gone to call Amos’s house again.” Philippa’s voice was strained! “They should have been here by this time.”
“There’s fog on the parkway,” said Gus. “Everyone will be late.”
Philippa sighed and rested one slender arm on the mantelpiece, trailing a chiffon stole of pale green. “What a responsibility Amos