Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

Three years of marriage had not been needed to teach Halo Tarrant that when her husband came home to lunch it was generally because something had gone wrong. She had long known that if he sought her out at that hour it was not to be charmed but to be tranquillized, as a man with a raging headache seeks a pillow and a darkened room. This need had been less frequent with him since he had bought The Hour and started in on the exciting task of reorganizing it. Usually he preferred to lunch near the office, at one of the Bohemian places affected by Frenside and his group; probably it was not indifferent to him, as he made his way among the tables, to hear: "That's the fellow who's bought The Hour. Lewis Tarrant; tall fair chap; yes--writes himself. ." Every form of external recognition, even the most casual and unimportant, was needed to fortify his self-confidence. Halo remembered how she had laughed when Frenside, long before her marriage, had once said: "Young Tarrant? Clever boy--but can't rest unless the milkman knows it." Nowadays she would not have tolerated such a comment, even from Frenside; and if she made it inwardly she tempered it by reminding herself that an exaggerated craving for recognition often proceeds from a morbid modesty. Morbid--that was what poor Lewis was at bottom. She must never forget, when she was inclined to criticize him, that her faculty of rebounding, of drawing fresh energy from discouragement, had been left out of his finer organization--for her own support she had to call it finer.

And now, on the very Friday when he was expecting his new discovery-- the Tracys' young cousin from the West--Tarrant had suddenly turned up for lunch. When his wife heard his latchkey she supposed he had brought young Weston back with him, and she had been pleased, and rather surprised, since it would have been more like him to want to parade his new friend among his colleagues. Possibly Weston had not turned out to be the kind to parade--though his young poet's face and profound eyes had lingered rather picturesquely in her memory. Still, it was three years since they'd met, three years during which he'd been reporter on a smalltown newspaper. Perhaps the poetry had not survived. .