Pride House: The Quest for Vainglory

Chapter 9 Inspiration

  Pride awoke in the night with a feeling of Visitation. What could have changed one featureless night moment so completely from the next as to fill his heart with mute expectation? He rose and went quietly out and down the hallway to the library, where he switched on a light and seated himself in an easy chair. The night was a sleeping giant and he was in its arms. The dark paneled walls fairly moved as with human breath. He felt supremely alert, watchful, receptive.

  Anything might happen inside a man at such a moment. He might give up settled existence and strike out in foreign travels, seeking a fabled city or the wealth of commerce. He might enlist for the brief glory of war. Or seek the heart of a lady, a lady so perfect and remote as to dismay all her thousand suitors and still the mouths of her hundred thousand admirers.

  He thought also of a dragon to be slain, but he returned again and again to the lady whom he would serve and win, somehow impossibly win. The dragon, if there should be any, would be slain for her, for this dread and lofty one, who “dwelleth in unapproachable light.” His hand upon the chair arm formed a fist.

  He said to himself that Doubt’s three friends had proved unsatisfactory because, being her friends, they were on her level; that is, below his own. But what if he could yet find a way to be rid of the whole lot of them, Doubt included? His marriage was unconsummated, hence could be annulled. His parents would be happy to see him paired with someone worthier of himself. Was it not their goal to make him happy?

  At the height of this resolve, which seemed to come from nowhere, he looked upon the table at his side and saw a woman’s picture. Framed by the title and blurbs of a magazine cover was the face of the same beautiful redhead he had admired in another magazine on his wedding night. But she was also point for point the image of the lady he had just dreamed of! The gray, lustrous eyes with long lashes, the petite nose, the line of her jaw and brow: all proclaimed her ascendancy with unarguable proofs. He opened his mouth in awe.

  Here was his destiny. This was his childhood’s end. Now began his quest, the quest that would determine the shape of his life. He was keenly aware of the drama of the moment. He remembered to shut his mouth.

  “Who is she?” he muttered, lifting the magazine closer to the lamp. “She’s alive somewhere and not just a picture. She has a name and a history. It’s the City Magazine! So she’s here, very probably here in this town. We may even have mutual acquaintances. I might stand in the same room with her, even speak with her.”

  Her name was evident enough, being printed in larger type and apart from the other blurbs so as to suggest a connection with the picture. “Fame Vainglory,” it read, “Reveals Her Make-up Secrets—Page 29.” He turned to the page and devoured the article. Yes, she was a city girl, a former pageant queen, a model. He learned little else other than pointers on mascara application.

  He carried the magazine face up, like a fragile and priceless Torah, back to his room, enshrined it by his bed, and lay down.

  “For the first time in my life,” he thought, “I have a purpose. Tomorrow I’ll begin looking for her.”

  And misty eyed over his own courage and commitment, he fell asleep.

  Part 2 The Quest for Vainglory