Chapter I: Vita Nova

HIS mother was coming. He had wired, inviting her, and she had wired back the date of her arrival....

Ten days had passed since his talk with Dr. Zerneke, and in the meantime he had done most of the things outlined in her program. He had transferred his bank account to Chicago. He had rented a good-sized furnished apartment on the North side for the summer. He had even, according to instructions, picked up an etching, a satiric thing by Peggy Bacon, and put it on the wall, to make the place more his own....

He had in other respects dutifully carried out Dr. Zerneke’s commands, day by day. He had obediently gone to the dance for which she had sent him tickets (he thought of taking Monica, but rejected that idea as distinctly out of place); and rather to his surprise, he had found on that occasion that he was capable of enjoying himself like anybody else....

And finally, with some uneasiness and considerable doubt, he had applied to Mr. McCullough for a job--and had been taken on at forty dollars a week, which was all he had the nerve to ask.

He ought, he knew, to feel at ease now, in his comfortable apartment, and with his new job. But he had lost his sense of security. His experience of being out of a job had taught him something he could not so quickly forget. Some time he might be able to feel again that the world was made for him; but it seemed still a difficult and dangerous place, and he a somewhat helpless stranger in it. He was determined not to lose his new job. Never did a young man work at his tasks more earnestly and humbly....

He had been to Mrs. Czermak’s to see his son twice in those ten days--formal visits, different enough from the warm intimacy of his former association with the family. He felt under constraint, and so did the girls. Monica was distant and resentful, though she was rather obviously wearing his present--the cuff-links.

Well, at any rate, he was being sensible. With his mother coming to see him, he must not get involved in any more messes. But he felt a little guilty about Monica.... It wasn’t quite the thing to do to kiss a girl and then drop her cold....

When he was settled in his apartment, and at work on his new job, with no further excuse for delay, he had wired his mother the invitation to visit him. Her answering wire had said she would arrive Sunday morning; and this had been followed by a letter, a friendly and casual letter, taking everything as a matter of course. And Doris had scribbled a postscript saying that she’d love to see the baby.... Lucinda, it appeared, was still suffering from “nerves.” He gathered that she had taken it all pretty hard....

And there had been a letter from Gilbert Rand, giving him the town gossip. They were still talking about him in Vickley. Nothing like that had ever happened there.... Considering everything, Norman thought it was pretty sporting of his mother to be so calm and matter-of-fact about it.

Nevertheless, with the approach of his mother’s visit, he began to feel a sense of filial constraint. His new apartment was associated with the thought of her visit: it was not so much his own place, as one in which to entertain her. He felt that with her visit he would lose the liberty he had gained in leaving home and coming to Chicago. And he began to regret more keenly the pleasures of his stay at Mrs. Czermak’s, and to recall the delightful details of that period--the friendly midnight chats with old Mr. Victor, the morning coffee brought by Monica, and the delightful half hours with the girls in the nursery. Even Mrs. Case’s Rabelaisian conversation was something which he missed with regret.... Mrs. Case had not felt any of the constraint which had marked his visits since his departure from her roof; and last Sunday, when he had seen his son bathed, she had in her frank way commented upon one feature of the baby’s anatomy which is usually avoided in polite conversation. “Ah!” she had said, addressing the baby, “little do you know, young man, how much trouble you’re going to make in the world with that!” A realist, she.... Norman grinned, remembering.

He had lived there only a week altogether. And he had been rather longer than that installed here in his apartment. Yet that week would always live in his memory, full of warmth and color and homely sweetness. This week in his apartment had been merely barren.

Sitting there in his living room, he looked about with a vague dissatisfaction. Polite comforts evidently did not suffice a man. The fact was that he was lonely....

And his mother was coming in four days.

He really ought to make the best of those four days....