The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“Fiction. Novels, principally,” Dane said. “I’ve already dipped my toes in the short story — one was published in a little magazine; I don’t suppose you found time to read it in the copy I sent you.” Dane smiled faintly. “I’m lucky. I mean, having the means to write without having to worry about rent money or the electric bill — or, for that matter, deadlines. A lot of writers have to write stuff they loathe, just to keep the fuel pump going. I don’t have to do that—”

“Because of money you didn’t earn,” said his father.

“I admitted I’m lucky, Dad. But I hope to justify my luck by producing good books.” Dane saw his father’s look and said carefully, “Don’t get me wrong. Supplying people with sugar and coffee is honorable employment—”

“Thanks!” Ashton said sarcastically. Nevertheless, he was touched. At least, he said to himself, the boy doesn’t accuse me of being a rotten capitalist exploiter or sneer at the way his people have been making a living for almost three hundred years.

“Only it’s not for me, Dad. I’m going to write. I want to. I have to.”

“Well,” said Ashton McKell. “We’ll see.”

He saw. He saw that it was neither phase nor fancy, but good solid ambition.

Dane took an apartment of his own in one of the buildings he had inherited from the estate of Gerard DeWitt. He did this with kindness, and for a long time scarcely a day passed without a visit home; but Ashton knew that it was not so much from genuine involvement as out of consideration for his mother’s feelings.

The boy worked hard, his father had to concede. Dane allowed himself exactly one weekend off each month; the rest was four walls, stuffy cigaret smoke, and the firing of his typewriter. He wrote, rewrote, destroyed, started over.

His first novel, Hell in the Morning, was a flop utter and absolute. No major reviewer mentioned it, and the minor ones were merciless. A typical notice from a provincial book column said: “Hell in the Morning is hell any time of the day.” He was scolded as “a rich man’s Nelson Algren” and “Instant Kerouac” and “a moth in the beard of Steinbeck.” One lady reviewer (“Why doesn’t she stay home and wash the dirty diapers?” roared Ashton McKell) remarked: “Rarely has such small talent labored so hard to produce so little.” Dane, who had been absorbing punishment like an old club fighter, in grim silence, cried out when he read that one. But his father (only Judith Walsh, Ashton’s private secretary, knew that the tycoon had subscribed to a clipping service) stormed and raved.

“The Duxbury Intelligencer! What’s that smelly little rag good for but to wrap codfish in?” and so on. Finally, anger spent, came consolation. “At least now he’ll give up this tomfoolery.”

“Do you think so, Ashton?” Lutetia asked. It was at one of the family dinners from which Dane was absent — his absences were becoming more frequent. It was clear that Lutetia did not know whether to be sorry for her son’s sake or glad for her husband’s. The struggle, as usual, was short-lived. “I hope so, dear,” Lutetia said. If Ashton thought writing was bad for Dane, it was.

“I simply don’t understand you people.” Judy Walsh was a more than occasional visitor to her employer’s home. Ashton required outlandish hours of his secretary, sometimes dictating well past midnight in his study, so that Judy was frequently there for dinner. She was important to Lutetia McKell in another way. Lutetia’s never-expressed regret had been for lack of female companionship. Her few nieces were too emancipated for her taste, and there was Judy, an orphan, trim, efficient, outspoken, and yet, under the independence, with a need no one but Lutetia suspected, a need like her own, feminine, and yearning for tenderness. Judy’s hair bordered on Irish red, and she had a slanty little Irish nose and direct blue Irish eyes. “Really, Mr. McKell.” Thus Judy, at Ashton’s remark. “Give up this tomfoolery! You sound like a character out of the Late Late Show. Don’t you know enough about Dane to realize he won’t ever give up?”

Ashton growled into his soup.

Dane’s second novel, The Fox Hunters, was a failure also. The Times called it “Faulkner and branch water, New England style.” The New Yorker said (in toto): “A teen-ager’s first experience with Life turns out to be not at all what he had thought. Callow.” The Saturday Review...

Dane continued to plow away.