A World Elsewhere Read Online Free Page B

guilt than grief, guilt due to the unwarranted accusations of your family.”
    “You don’t understand. And it will be years before Vanderland is completed in Carolina. I shall have to live in New York until then. At least in the winter. I despise New York.”
    Van put his hands on Landish’s shoulders.
    “Don’t go home, Landish. Come to New York and then to Vanderland with me. I won’t be able to measure up without you. I will fail just as all the people in my life expect me to.”
    There had been tears in his eyes. It was Landish’s turn to feel guilty. His wit had merely emboldened their enemies to attack the one of them who was defenceless. But, unsure of how to answer, he told Van that he would think about his invitation.
    He began to think about graduating from Princeton, the end of the reign of the Umbrage Players, the end of Druken and his Circle, his leadership of both, the dismantlement, abandonment of Lotus Land. He wondered if he might somehow be able to linger on in the town of Princeton, perhaps convince other members of the Players and the Circle to do so and cull the most interesting of the new students for their Thursday salons. But without Lotus Land, without Van’s seemingly self-replenishing board of food and drink and cognacand cigars and the settees and sofas on which they lounged about—without all of this, none of it would work.
    Yet, though Van many times repeated his entreaty that Landish come to Vanderland, Landish said no.
    “I’ve been dreading the end of Lotus Land as much as you have,” Van said. “The two of us going our separate ways, you to as remote and wild a place as Newfoundland. At my invitation, famous writers and other artists will be staying at Vanderland for months, perhaps years. You could be the presiding wit of Vanderland. We could still have our salons.”
    “Me? Me, the presiding wit of a room full of world-famous writers. What do you plan to do, make it a condition of their stay at Vanderland that they pretend to take me seriously? I can just imagine what a figure of fun I would come to be among the artists of Vanderland. The ascots’ mascot. The writer who burns his every word. I would have no credentials , Van. All of this—Lotus Land, the Umbrage Players, Druken and his Circle—it can’t just be relocated to Vanderland. Not even the Vanderluyden fortune can prolong this time in our lives.”
    “You don’t understand what sort of place Vanderland will be. I’ll invite whomever I want to stay there, whomever you want. I’ll consult with you. If you don’t feel at ease among one group, we can simply find another.”
    “Another group. Made up of lesser minds whose presiding wit I could be.”
    “You’ve made such a promising beginning, Landish. Please don’t squander it. Don’t tell me that, after making your escape from it, you are going to return to some back-of-beyond place where no one has ever done or ever will do anything worth remembering, anything that will endure. I’m offering you what every writer dreams of, freedom from the nuisance of some body-and-soul-draining, penny-earning occupation. Even Shakespeare needed a patron whose praises he sang in sycophantic sonnets.”
    “I’m not Shakespeare. Though they called me the Bard in that broadsheet.”
    “Forget that. Forget them. Vanderland will not be some hermit’s hut. Those of us who live there will want for nothing. But it will be so self-sufficient there will simply be no need to go elsewhere. It will be a sanctuary, but a vast one. Think of it as being enclosed by a mesh that will admit only what little there is of true value in the world and filter out the rest.”
    “I would never be at home in some Carolina mansion.”
    Van had begun to suffer a decline. He had always struggled to get even passing grades, but was soon unable to put pen to paper.
    “Vanderluyden or not, I have to at least seem to be a student, if only to guarantee that I get my inheritance.”
    So Landish wrote