Dark Valley Destiny (50 page)

Years later, when the doctor told Novalyne about this conversation,

he repeated his wife's reply. Hester Howard had answered: "No, don't worry about that. We're not going to lose him."
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During their moonlight ride into the countryside, the two young people rushed avidly into conversation. They touched every base: history, politics, literature, poetry, philosophy—all subjects in which they were intensely interested. They found in each other a heartwarming overlap of beliefs and predispositions. This unexpected congeniality brought out all of Robert's charm, which could be great when he was not antagonized by acquaintances he disliked or alienated by crowds of strangers.

Their delighted absorption in each other was interrupted only once, when Bob informed Novalyne that he had to return home to give his mother her ten o'clock medicine. Puzzled, Novalyne asked: "Couldn't your father do that?"

Robert answered shortly: "Well, I always do it."
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When they reached the house, Bob asked Novalyne to wait in the car. Without another word he went in and fifteen minutes later came out and silently started the motor. As they drove off, they resumed their animated conversation.

Words tumbled out. Novalyne felt that, at long last, she had found someone with whom she could talk about abstract ideas. Undoubtedly Robert, on the first real date of his life, felt the same. By the time he had arranged for another date a few nights later and dropped her off at her boardinghouse, the full moon hanging over the Caddo Peaks had worked its magic. Novalyne Price and Robert Howard were in love.

They had fallen in love all of a sudden, with each other, with love, with the night, and with their own creative potential as reflected in each other. So ready were they for a tangible projection of their romantic feelings that, when a mere approximation of their dreams took form, both seized upon it; and the fulfillment of their phantasies seemed to be some deep design of fate. Actually they had fallen in love not so much with the real Novalyne Price and the real Robert Howard as with their ideals of a person of the opposite sex. They ignored the fact that each had qualities of which the other disapproved, as have millions of other romantic souls on such an occasion.

Too excited to sleep, Novalyne spent hours recording in her diary the experiences of the evening. Then, in the small hours of the morning, she slipped out of the house into the backyard and, in her white batiste nightgown, spun around and around under the moon in a dance of pure joy, heedless of the fact that she had to be up early to take her morning classes.

We may guess that Robert, too, lay sleepless on the narrow bed in his crowded study, thinking of the intense young woman who had, so unexpectedly, come into his life.

After their first date, Robert and Novalyne set about getting acquainted. They dated fast and furiously, each feeling that the other was the only person in the world with whom it was possible to be perfectly at ease. As Robert once remarked, with whom else could he spend an evening talking history and politics and learning also about the schoolteaching profession?

Sometimes they saw each other several nights in a row; at other times a week might pass without a date if Robert was deeply immersed in a story, or if Novalyne was busy with her schoolwork. During these early periods of separation, Novalyne tried to telephone Bob. Each time Mrs. Howard answered the call and said that Robert was out or away on a trip. Once, after being repeatedly told that Robert was away, Novalyne ventured to ask during their next date: "Bob, have you been down to Brownwood or somewhere?"

No, replied Robert, he had been home at work for weeks.

Astonished, Novalyne said: "I wonder why, when I called, your mother told me you were away all last week."

Confronted with this evidence of his mother's deceit, Robert mumbled in confusion: "Oh—ah—yes, I was away. I guess I forgot."
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Robert always defended his mother, even when she went to outrageous lengths to interfere in his affairs in order to keep him from sliding out of her iron grip. If he ever felt confined by his mother's clinging dependence or his father's equally demanding bids for attention—all clothed, of course, in the guise of concerned affection—Robert never revealed his frustration, even to the girl with whom he was in love. But Novalyne sensed Mrs. Howard's hostility and never went to the Howard house after her first call. When not dating, she and Bob communicated by letters; for it was Bob who made the daily pilgrimages to the post office, and his mail was never censored.

Sometimes their dates involved an evening at the movies, for which they might drive forty miles to Abilene or thirty miles to Brownwood. On such occasions Bob overcame his dislike of "dressing up" enough to appear in his three-piece suit and a necktie. Sometimes they did impulsive things like running hand in hand along the road in the moonlight. Sometimes they simply drove around the countryside and parked outside the drugstore for a soda.

In the 1930s in small towns, the customary things to do on a date were to drive, to talk, and to share a snack; and if the relationship was intimate enough, to touch, to hold, and perhaps to kiss. Long afterward, with a hearty laugh, Novalyne confessed: "He was very good at that."
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This was long before the days of the so-called "sexual revolution," and Robert's ideas of propriety were conservative for even one of the more straight-laced sections of Texas. Novalyne, therefore, always felt secure with Bob, who never tried to take advantage of her warmly affectionate nature and uninhibited remarks. Their relationship remained entirely proper by local standards, even though Novalyne—as any young woman in love will—entertained some lively phantasies of a passionate romance.

As the friendship between Bob and Novalyne deepened, points of difference between them began to surface. Discovering that each other's personality did not fit the illusion conjured up by the magic of their first date, each set about trying to "remould" the other "nearer to the Heart's desire," as Omar, a favorite poet of both, had suggested.
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Novalyne was an attractive girl with soft brown hair and large dark eyes, which could flash fire when she was thwarted or angry. She liked attractive clothes and wore them well. Thin almost to a fault, her lithe figure still retained its feminine roundness, but there was no softness or passivity in the briskness of her movements or in the intensity of her determination. She had a lively interest in the world's affairs and expressed her strong opinions in earthy language picked up from her stepfather. Such talk shocked Bob Howard, who had old-fashioned ideas about what sort of speech was suitably feminine, and who seldom used expletives more ribald than "God-damned" and "son of a bitch." Rabe-lais's scatological humor, he said, nauseated him.
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Like Robert, Novalyne gained the repute among the folk of Cross Plains of being a bit of an eccentric, because she dated Robert Howard

and because she was a tense, perfectionistic teacher who took her Shakespeare seriously. Each year the University of Texas staged a University Interscholastic League contest in public speaking. Novalyne coached her teams so mercilessly on one-act condensations of Shakespearean plays that students from the Cross Plains School repeatedly won first prize.

Unlike Robert, Novalyne was not feared or disliked by the townsfolk. Since she brought honor to the community, people were willing to forgive her such follies as overwork and literary ambition. While it was hard for them to imagine how a sane person could wish to be a writer, they were more tolerant of this crotchet in a woman than in a man.

The conversations between Novalyne and Bob inevitably turned to marriage, but more as an abstract concept than as a realistic personal plan. At times they came close but never quite got to the point of becoming engaged. When she was willing, he shied away; the following | month their roles might be reversed.
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Bob's attitudes toward women, a recurrent topic for argument, ; exacerbated their indecision. Bob might vehemently defend the rights of women; he might write stories about women warriors who could spit a man on their blades as deftly as they could spear a pat of butter—Red I Sonya in "The Shadow of the Vulture," Valeria in "Red Nails," or Agnes de Chastillon in the unsold "Sword Woman"—but from the women with i whom he had daily converse, he expected total dependence and subservience. Most of the women in his stories, as a matter of fact, were soft, timid, passive, foolish girls, like Natala in "The Slithering Shadow" or Muriela in "Jewels of Gwahlur"; and they seem to have been their creator's ideal of femininity.

It is not too difficult to see how this ideal came about. All Robert's life his adoring mother had been his willing slave. When he was on a writing binge, she would bring him meals on a tray, wordlessly placing f them beside his typewriter, lest he suffer hunger while the divine afflatus possessed him. Novalyne considered that this constant service had been spoiling him and wanted no part of it. She did not relish domestic work and could not imagine spending all her life cooking, cleaning, and washing for any man. During one of their discussions, she burst out: "If I married you, it would be just to cook three meals every day and iron your shirts!"

As for Bob, he capped one argument by growling: "Look, girl, if

this were Conan, he'd bat you down and drag you by the hair in the dust!"
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For all this half-joking bluster, Robert Howard was exceedingly courteous to women, tipping his hat, opening doors for them, tucking them into car seats, and rising when they entered the room. It angered him when a woman preempted his masculine responsibilities by venturing to open a car door or climbing into a car by herself.

While Robert demanded subservience from his womenfolk, he himself became increasingly a slave to his mother's whims and wishes because of her deepening illness. Seeing Hester Howard using her ill health to manipulate her son, while at the same time denying the severity of her disease, confused Novalyne and led her to suspect that the doctor's wife was less ill than she truly was. Mrs. Howard neither looked nor acted ill on the occasions when Novalyne encountered her. With the high color and general stimulation resulting from the low, constant fever of tuberculosis, Hester probably appeared in the pink of health to the casual observer. This misleading impression was enhanced by the care with which she dressed. Whenever she went into the town on the simplest errand, she wore handsome clothes and, in a day when hat and gloves demarcated "a lady," she made regular use of both accessories.

Robert took his mother wherever he went—to market, to shop, or to call on friends. To Novalyne this unceasing companionship was less a sign of Hester's frailty than of her determination to monopolize her son's time and attention. Novalyne divined that Hester Howard had long since driven a wedge between her husband and herself, and she felt that Hester was using similar tactics to forestall a growing intimacy between Robert and his girl. Whenever their paths crossed in the small shops of Cross Plains, Hester looked at the younger woman with cold formality and spoke grudgingly, "glowering at me as if I were some sort of venomous reptile."
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These meetings, not surprisingly, made Novalyne feel awkward and self-conscious.

If the relation between Novalyne and Bob was love at first sight, that between Novalyne and Hester Howard was hate at first glance. Aware of this antagonism between the two women who were closest to him, Robert Howard never discussed his mother with Novalyne, not even to explain the precarious state of her health. If Novalyne criticized

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i Hester or berated Bob for being her willing slave, he fell silent, sulked, < And looked hurt. All he ever said was by indirection, arguing for more
Irresponsibility
toward one's parents than Novalyne was willing to con-ide.

Once, when Bob warned Novalyne that she was risking her good Reputation by dating the "town freak,"
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she began to urge him to try Jto conform to the local standards—to dress in a less outlandish manner tnd to let his crew-cut hair grow somewhat longer. He bought his first "gent's felt hat" at her urging, although he said in a letter that his mother nagged him into it. To Lovecraft, he groused:

I detest the things. I never wore anything before but a cap or a broad-brimmed sombrero. I go bare-headed most of the time.... They're all right in cities where there's no wind, or sun or anything else natural, but for an open country the only headgear is a broad-brimmed Stetson.
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Soon after this unwilling purchase, Novalyne persuaded Bob to have a studio photograph taken wearing his brown suit and the new hat. Aside from the fact that, in the 1930s, portrait photographs of men were not infrequently taken with their hats on, Novalyne wanted him to wear the hat so that his brush-cut hair, which she disliked, would be less conspicuous.

During the whole time they dated, although Novalyne was a most attractive girl, Robert was reluctant to take her to any gathering, such as football games or boxing matches. To him, two were company; three, a crowd; and his dislike of crowds persisted. Although Robert was regularly dating Novalyne and spoke openly of "going with a young lady,"
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he made no effort to have her included in an invitation to a banquet by the local patroness of literature, the poet Lexie Dean Robertson. Mrs. Robertson, fat and jolly, held court in the neighboring town of Rising Star, and she invited writers and would-be writers from all over Central Texas. Instead Robert went alone and was confounded by the crowd of strangers. Later he reported to Novalyne that he had spent the evening in a sulk; when people spoke to him, he answered by grunts and surly monosyllables.