Outside Inn Part 27

"You'd better go now," he said, "before you do any more damage. I don't want you here. Once and for all I tell you that there is no place for you in my life. Weeping and wailing won't do you any good.

The only thing for you to do is to get out and stay out."

This was answered by an indistinguishable outburst.

"I won't tell you where the child is," Collier Pratt said steadily.

"She's well taken care of. G.o.d knows you never took care of her.

There's nothing you can do, you know. You might sue for a rest.i.tution of conjugal rights, I suppose, but if you drag this thing into the courts I'll fight it out to the end. I swear I will."

"You brute,--you--"

At the first clear sound of the woman's voice the child at Nancy's side broke into sobs of convulsive terror.

"Take me away, Miss Dear. Oh! take me away from here, quickly, quickly, I'm so frightened. I'm so afraid she'll come out and get me.

It's my _mother_," she moaned.

CHAPTER XVII

GOOD-BY

Nancy had no memory of her actions during the time that elapsed between leaving the studio building and her arrival at her own apartment. She knew that she must have guided Sheila to the beginning of the bus route at the lower end of the square, and as perfunctorily signaled the conductor to let her off at the corner of Fifth Avenue and her own street, but she could never remember having done so. Her first conscious recollection was of the few minutes in Sheila's room, while she was slipping off the child's gaiters, in the interval before she gave her over to Hitty for the night. The little girl was still sobbing beneath her breath, though her emotion was by this time purely reflexive.

"I didn't understand that your mother was living, Sheila," she said.

"She isn't very nice," the little girl said miserably. "We don't tell any one. She always cries and screams and makes us trouble?"

"Did she live with you in Paris?"

"Only sometimes."

"Does she do--something that she should not do, Sheila?" Nancy asked, with her mind on inebriety, or drug addiction.

"She just isn't very nice," Sheila repeated. "She is _histerique_; she pounded me with her hands, and hurt me."

Nancy telephoned to the Inn that she had a headache, and shut herself into her room, without food, to gather her scattered forces. She lay wide-awake all the night through, her mind trying to work its way through the lethargy of shock it had received. She remembered falling down the cellar stairs, when she was a little girl, and lying for hours on the hard stone floor, perfectly serene and calm, without pain, until she tried to do so much as move a little finger or lift an eyelid, when the intolerable nausea would begin. She was calm now, until she made the attempt to think what it was that had so prostrated her, and then the anguish spread through her being and convulsed her with unimaginable distress of mind and body.

By morning she had herself in hand again,--at least to the extent of dealing with the unthinkable fact that Collier Pratt, her lover, the man to whom she had given the lover's right to hold her in his arms and cover her upturned face with kisses, had a living wife, and that he was not free to make honorable love to any woman.

Her life had been too sound, too sweet, to give her any perspective on a situation of the kind. It was inconceivable to her that a married man should make advances to an unmarried woman,--but gradually she began to make excuses for this one man whose circ.u.mstances had been so exceptional. Tied to an insane creature, who beat his child, who made him strange hectic scenes, and followed him all over the world to threaten his security, and menace that beautiful and inexplicable creative instinct that animated him like a holy fire, and set him apart from his kind; she began to see how it might be with him. She was still the woman he loved,--she believed that; he was weaker than she had thought,--that was all, weaker and not so wise. This being true, she must put aside her own pain and bewilderment, her own devastating disillusionment, and comfort him, and help him. She rose from her bed that morning firmly resolved to see him before the day was through.

She breakfasted with Sheila, and made a brave attempt to get through the morning on her usual schedule, but once at the Inn she collapsed, and Michael and Betty had to put her in a cab and send her home again, where Hitty ministered to her grimly,--and she slept the sleep of exhaustion until well on into the evening, and into the night again.

On the day following she was quite herself; but she still hesitated to bring about the momentous interview that she so dreaded, and yet longed for. She intended to take her place at the table beside Collier Pratt when he came for his dinner that night, but when the time came she could not bring herself to do it, and fled incontinently. Later in the evening he telephoned that he wanted to see her, and she told him that he might come.

She faced him with the facts, breathlessly, and in spite of herself accusingly,--and then waited for the explanation that would extenuate the apparent ugliness of his att.i.tude toward her, and set all the world right for her again. As she looked into his face she felt that it must come. She noted compa.s.sionately how the shadows under the dark eyes had deepened; how weary the pose of the fine head; and for the moment she longed only to rest it on her breast again. Even as she spoke of the thing that had so tortured her it seemed insignificant in light of the fact that he was there beside her, within reach of her arms whenever she chose to hold them out to him.

"I regret that the revelation of my private embarra.s.sments should have been thrust upon you so suddenly," he said, when she had poured out the story to him. "My marriage has proved the most uncomfortable indiscretion that I ever committed; and unfortunately my indiscretions have been numberless as the well-known leaves of Vallombrosa."

"You always said that Sheila was motherless," Nancy said.

"It is simpler than stating that she is worse than motherless."

"Why didn't you tell me you were married?"

Collier Pratt smiled at her--kindly it seemed to Nancy.

"It hadn't anything to do with _us_," he said. "I should never want to marry again--even if I were free. The thought is horrible to me. You mean a great deal to me. _Think_, if you doubt that and think again. I have had in this little front room of yours the only real moments of peace and happiness that I have had for years. I value them--you can not dream or imagine how much--but surely it is understood between us that our relation can not be anything but transitory. I am an artist with a way to make for my art: you are a working woman with a career, odd as it is," he smiled whimsically, "that you have chosen, and that you will pursue faithfully until some stalwart young man dissuades you from it, when you will take your place in your niche as wife and mother, and leave me one more beautiful memory."

"Surely," Nancy said, "you know it isn't--like that."

"What is it like then?"

Nancy felt every sane premise, every eager hope and delicate ideal slipping beyond her reach as she faced his mocking, tender eyes.

"It can't be that you believe you have been--fair with me," she faltered.

"I don't think I have been unfair," he said, "I have made no protestations, you know."

Nancy shut her eyes. Curious sc.r.a.ps of her early religious education came back to her.

"You have partaken of my bread and wine," she said.

"It wasn't exactly consecrated."

"I think it was," she said faintly. "Oh! don't you understand that that isn't a way for a man to think or to feel about a woman like me?"

"Little American girl," Collier Pratt said, "little American girl, don't you understand that there is only one way for a woman to think or feel about a _man_ like _me_? I have had my life, and I haven't liked it much. I'm to be loved warmly and lightly till the flesh and blood prince comes along, but I'm never to be mistaken for him."

"I don't believe you're sincere," Nancy cried; "women must have loved you deeply, tragically, and have suffered all the torture there is, at losing you."

"That may be. Sincerity is a matter of so many connotations. You haven't known many artists, my dear."

"No," said Nancy. "No, but I thought they were the same as other men, only worthier."

"How should they be? He who perceives a merit is not necessarily he who achieves it. Else the world would be a little more one-sided than it is."

"I can't believe those things," Nancy said. "I want to believe in you.

You _must_ care for me, and what becomes of me. You have known so long what I was like, and what I was made for. All this seems like a terrible nightmare. I want you to tell me what it is you want of me, and let me give it to you."

"I am proving some faint shadow of worthiness at least, when I say to you that I want absolutely nothing of you. I love, but I refrain."

"You love," Nancy cried, "you _love_?"

"Not as you understand loving, I am afraid. In my own way I love you."