"Do you mean to say that you thought Nancy was going to marry Collier Pratt--_Nancy_?"
"Why, yes, if I hadn"t I--I wouldn"t have acted up the way I did in your rooms that night."
But d.i.c.k neither heard nor understood her.
"Do you mean to say that you think Collier Pratt has been making love to her?"
"I think so."
"But the d.a.m.ned scoundrel is married."
"Oh!" Betty cried. "_Oh!_--I didn"t know that."
"I"ve known it--I"ve always known it," d.i.c.k said. "I never dreamed that Nancy had any special interest in him."
"Well, she had. She"s going through everything, d.i.c.k, even Sheila--you know how she loved Sheila?"
"I know," d.i.c.k said grimly. "Do you mind going on home alone, Betty?
You"ll be perfectly safe with Williams, you know."
"Of course not. What are you going to do, d.i.c.k? Are you going to Nancy?"
"No, I"m not going to Nancy."
Betty, looking at him more closely, realized for the first time that she was sitting beside a man in whom the rage of the primitive animal was gaining its ascendency. His breath was coming in short stertorous gasps, his hands were clinched, the purplish color was mounting to his brows, but he still went through the motions of a courteous leave-taking.
"Where are you going, d.i.c.k?" she asked again, as he stood on the curb where he had signaled Williams to leave him, with the door of the car in his hand, staring down at it, and for the moment forgetting to close it.
"I"m going to find Collier Pratt," he said thickly. Then with a slam that splintered the hinge of the door he was holding he crashed it in toward the car.
CHAPTER XIX
OTHER PEOPLE"S TROUBLES
Nancy was trying conscientiously to interest herself in other people"s troubles. After the first great shock of pain following her loss at a blow of her lover and Sheila, she began automatically to try to work her way through her suffering. The habit of application to the daily task combined with her instinct for taking immediate action in a crisis stood her in good stead in her hour of need. She decided what to occupy herself with, and then devoted herself faithfully to the prescribed occupation.
The Inn did not need her. With Betty to guide him economically Gaspard was able to superintend all the details of the establishment adequately and artistically. Sheila was gone. She packed up several trunks of dresses and toys and other childish belongings and sent them to Washington Square, but even without these constant reminders of her, the hunger for the child"s presence did not abate. The little girl was curiously dissociated from her father in Nancy"s mind. She had seen so little of the two together that they seemed to belong to entirely different compartments of her consciousness. It was only the anguish of losing them that linked them together.
Nancy decided to devote a certain proportion of her days and nights to remedying such evils as lay under her immediate observation;--to helping the individuals with whom she came into daily contact--the dependents and tradespeople with whom she dealt. She had always been convinced that the people who ministered to her daily comfort in New York should occupy some part in her scheme of existence. It was one of her favorite arguments that a little more energy and imagination on the part of New York citizens would develop the communal spirit which was so painfully lacking in the soul of the average Manhattanite.
So the milkman and the corner grocer, the newspaper man, and Hitty"s small brood of grand nieces and nephews, to say nothing of the Italian fruit man"s family, and her laundress"s invalid daughter, were all occupying a considerable place in Nancy"s daily schedule. In a very short interval she had the welfare of more than half a dozen families on her hands, and was involved in all manner of enterprises of a domestic nature,--from the designing of confirmation gowns to the purchase of rubber-tired rolling chairs, and heterogeneous woolen garments and other intimate necessities.
She was a little ashamed of her new line of activities, and still hurt enough to shun the scrutiny of her friends, and thereby succeeded in mystifying and alarming Billy and d.i.c.k and Betty and Caroline almost beyond the limit of their endurance by resolutely keeping them at arm"s length. She was supremely unconscious of anything at all remarkable in her behavior, and believed that they accepted her excuses and apologies at their face value. She had no conception of the fact that her tortured face, with tragedy looking newly out of her eyes, kept them from their rest at night.
Sheila wrote to thank her for sending the trunks.
"My dear, _ma chere_, Miss Dear," she said. "_Merci beaucoup pour_ my clothes and other beautiful things. I like them. _Je t"aime--je t"aime toujours_. My father will not permit me to go back. _Comme_--how I desire to see you! My father has been sick. He fell down or was hurt in the street. There was blood--a great deal. Are they well--the others? Tell Monsieur d.i.c.k I give him _tout mon coeur_. Come to see me if it is _permit_. No more. You could write _peut-etre_. _Je t"aime_."
"Yours, "SHEILA."
Nancy read this letter, in the quaint childish hand, with a great wave of dumb sickness creeping over her--a devastating, disintegrating nausea of soul and body. The most significant fact in it, however, that Collier Pratt had fallen down "or been hurt in the street," of course escaped her entirely, except to stir her with a kind of dim pity for his distress.
In one of her long night vigils Preston Eustace"s face came back to her oddly. She remembered suddenly the strange sad way he had stared at Betty on the evening of her party at the Inn. She reconstructed Betty"s love-story, and its sudden breaking off, three years before, and with her new insight into the human heart, decided that these two loved each other still, and must be helped to the consummation of their happiness. She telephoned to them both the next day that they could be of service to her; and made an appointment to meet them at a given hour the next evening at her apartment.
She expected and intended to be there herself to give the meeting the semblance of coincidence, and to offer them the hospitality of her house before she was inspired with the excuse that would permit her an exit that left them alone together; but she found herself in the slums of Harlem by an Italian baby"s bedside at that hour, and decided that even to telephone would be superfluous, as once finding each other the lovers would be oblivious to all other considerations.
What actually happened was that Preston Eustace, exactly on time as was his habit, had been waiting some ten minutes on Nancy"s hearth-rug when Betty, delayed by the eccentricities of a casual motor-bus engine, and frantic with anxiety for her friend, burst in upon him. So full was she of the most hectic speculations concerning Nancy"s sudden appeal to her that she scarcely noticed who was waiting there to greet her, and when she did notice, scarcely heeded that recognition.
"Where"s Nancy?" she demanded breathlessly.
"I don"t know, Betty," Preston Eustace said.
"Doesn"t Hitty know?"
"She says she doesn"t!"
"How did you happen to be here?"
"She sent for me."
"She"s probably sent for everybody else," Betty said. "She"s killed herself, I know she has."
"What makes you think so?"
"Her heart is broken, she"s been suffering terribly."
"I don"t think she would have sent for me if she had been going to kill herself," Preston Eustace said, a little as if he would have added, "We are not on those terms."
"I don"t suppose she would," Betty said. "But oh, Preston, I"m so worried about her. I don"t know where she is or anything. I tell you her heart is broken."
"I didn"t know you believed in hearts--broken or otherwise, Betty."
"I believe in Nancy"s heart."
"You never believed in mine."
"You never gave me much reason to, Preston. You--you let me give you back your ring the first time I threatened to."
"Of course I did."
"You never came near me again."