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 272 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 273 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 Dick 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 chÈre, 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 274 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 Dick I give him tout mon coeur. Come to see me if it is permit. No more. You could write peut-Être. 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 275 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.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“You let three years go by without a word.”

“Of course—”

“If you say ‘of course I did’ again I’ll fly straight up through this roof. If you’d ever loved me you wouldn’t have gone away and left me.”

“If I hadn’t loved you I wouldn’t have gone away.”

“Oh, dear,” Betty sighed. “I don’t see how you can stand there and think about yourself with Nancy out in the night—we don’t know where.”

“Ourselves, Betty—did you ever really love me?”

“It doesn’t make any difference whether I did or not,” Betty said. “I hate men.”

“I think I’d better be going,” Preston Eustace said, his face dark with pain. He was rather a literal-minded young man, as Caroline’s brother would have been likely to be.

Betty buried her face in her hands.

“My head aches,” she said, “and I was never in my life so mad and so miserable. I can’t 278 understand why everything and everybody should behave so—devilishly. You and every one else, I mean. I just simply can’t bear to have Nancy suffer so. My head aches and my heart aches and my soul aches.” She lifted her head defiantly.

“I think I had better be going,” Preston Eustace repeated, looking down at her sorrowfully.

“Oh! don’t be going,” Betty said. “What in the name of sense do you want to be going for?” Then without warning or premeditation she hurled herself at his breast. “Oh! Preston, if there is anything comforting in this world,” she said, “tell it to me, now.”

Preston Eustace gathered her to his breast with infinite tenderness.

“I love you,” he said with his lips on her brow. “Doesn’t that comfort you a little?”

“Yes,” she admitted, “yes,” winding her arms about his neck, “but you have no idea what a little devil I am, Preston.”

“I don’t want to have any idea,” he said, still holding her hungrily.

“No, I don’t think you do,” Betty said. “Oh! kiss me again, dear, and tell me you won’t ever let me go now.”

When Nancy came in she found the lovers so oblivious to the sound of her key in the latch or her footstep in the corridor that she decided to slip into bed without disturbing them, and did so, without their ever realizing that for the latter part of the evening at least, they had a hostess within range of the sound of their voices—indeed, she was obliged to stuff the pillow into her ears to prevent herself from actually hearing what they were saying.

At first her freedom—her release from the monotonous constraint of her daily confinement at the Inn—the unaccustomed independence of her new activities which justified her most untoward goings and comings—was very soothing to her. She liked the feeling of slipping out of the house at night, accountable to no one except the redoubtable Hitty to whom she presented any explanation that happened to occur to her,—however wide its departure from the actual facts—and losing herself in the resurgent town. But after a while her liberty lost its savor. She began to feel uncared for and neglected. The unaccountable anguish in her breast was neither assuaged nor mitigated by 280 the geographical latitude she permitted herself. She kept doggedly on with her personally conducted philanthropies, but she began to feel a little frightened about her capacity for endurance. Her body and brain began to show strange signs of fatigue. She was afraid that one or the other might suddenly refuse to function.

One night, on coming out into the heterogeneous human stream on Avenue A, after a visit to a Polish family in the model tenements on Seventy-ninth Street, she ran into Dick.

“Why, Dick,” she said, “what an extraordinary place to find you!”

“Yes, isn’t it?” he said. “My business often brings me up this way.”

“Your business? What business?” she asked incredulously.

“I don’t know exactly what business it is. The ministering business, I guess.” He motioned toward the basket on her arm: “Let me carry that, and you, too, if you’ll let me, Nancy. You look tired.”

“I am tired, Dick,” she said. “Have you got a car anywhere around?”

“I can phone for it in two shakes,” he said. 281 “Here in this ice-cream parlor. Can I buy you a cone while you’re waiting?”

“Buy cones for that crowd of children and I’ll watch them eat them. Doesn’t that little girl in the pink dress look like Sheila, Dick?”

She sank down on a stool in the interior of the candy shop and rested her elbows on the damp marble table in front of her, splotched and streaked still with the refreshment of the last customer who occupied the seat there and watched the horde of dirty clamorous street children devouring ice-cream cones and cheap sweets to the limit of their capacity.

“I didn’t know you believed in this promiscuous feeding of children between meals,” Dick said, when she was settled comfortably at last among the cushions of his car, which had arrived on the scene with an amazing, not to say, suspicious promptness.

“I don’t,” Nancy said, “in the least; but I don’t really believe in the things I believe in any more.”

“Poor Nancy!” Dick said.

“I’ve had some trouble, Dick. I’m shaken all out of my poise. I can’t seem to get my universe straight again.”

“I’m sorry for that,” he said. “Anything I can do?”

“Stand by; that’s all, I guess.”

“You couldn’t tell me a little more about it, could you?”

“No, I couldn’t, Dick.”

“I’m not even to guess?”

“You couldn’t guess. It’s the kind of thing that’s entirely outside of—of the probabilities. I think it’s outside of the range of your understanding, Dick. I don’t think you know that there is exactly that kind of trouble in the world.”

“And you think you’d better not enlighten me?”

“I couldn’t, Dick, even if I wanted to. Funny you happened to be in this part of town to-night just when I really needed you.”

He smiled. Every night of his life he followed her, watching over her, dodging down dark alley ways, waiting at squalid entrances until she came out. To-night he had ventured to speak to her only because he knew her to be in need of actual physical assistance.

“Awfully glad to be anywhere around when you need me,” he said; “still I hope you don’t 283 mind my suggesting that this is a Gehenna of a place for either of us to be in.”

“Haven’t you any feeling for the downtrodden?” Nancy asked, with a faint reflection of what Billy referred to as her “older and better manner.”

“I’m downtrodden myself, Nancy.”

She smiled in her turn.

“You don’t look very downtrodden to me,” she said. “You’ve got everything to live for.”

“Everything?”

“Well, money and freedom and—and—”

“Money is the only thing I’ve got that you haven’t, and that doesn’t mean much unless you can share it with the person you love.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?” Nancy said unexpectedly. “What’s that scar on your forehead?”

“That’s a scratch I got.”

“How?”

“Shaving or fighting, or something like that.”

“Was it fighting, Dick?”

“Yes.”

“Who were you fighting with?”

“I wasn’t fighting. I was assaulting and battering.”

“Why, Dick!”

“If it’s any satisfaction to you to know it I made one grand job of it.”

“Why should it be any satisfaction to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why, Dick!” Nancy said again. “I didn’t know you had any of that kind of brutality in you.”

“Didn’t you?”

“What happens to a man when he—does a thing like that?”

“He gets jugged.”

“Did he get jugged?”

“Well, that wasn’t the part that interested me.”

An odd picture presented itself to Nancy’s mind of the men of the world engaged in one grand mÊlÉe of brawling; struggling, belaying one another with their bare fists, drawing blood; brutes turned on brutes.

“Men are queer things,” she said.

Dick’s face was turned away from her. It was not at the moment a face she would have recognized. The eyes were contracted: the nostrils quivering: the teeth set.

“I’m always at your service, Nancy,” he said 285 presently. “Is there anything in the world you want that I can get for you?”

“The only thing I want is something you can’t get?”

“And that is?”

“Sheila.”

“No,” Dick said. “I can’t get Sheila for you. I’m sorry. I suppose that’s the whole answer to you,” he went on musingly. “You want something, somebody to mother—to minister to. It doesn’t make so much difference what else it is, so long as it’s—downtrodden. That’s why I’ve never made more of a hit with you. I’ve never been downtrodden enough. I didn’t need feeding or nursing. I’ve always sort of cherished the feeling that I liked to be the one creature you didn’t have to carry on your back. I thought that to stand behind you was a pretty good stunt, but you’ve never needed anything yet to fall back on.”

“I don’t think I ever shall,” Nancy said. “Not,—not in the way you mean, Dick.”

“So be it,” he said, folding his arms. “But there’s still one thing you’ll take from me, and that’s the thing I’ve got that you haven’t—money. I never have cared much about it 286 before, but now that there are so many things I can’t put right for you, I know you won’t be selfish enough to deny this one satisfaction. Let me make over to you all the money you need to get you out of your difficulties with the Inn. Let me hand out a good round sum for all these charities of yours. If you knew how everything else in connection with you had conspired to hurt me,—how this being discounted and losing out all around has cut into me, you wouldn’t deny me this one privilege. You don’t want me, you wouldn’t take me, but for God’s sake, Nancy, take this one thing that I can give you.”

They had just swung into the lower entrance of the Park, and the big car was speeding silently into the deepening night, low hung with silver stars, and jeweled with soft lights.

“You’re awfully good to me, Dick,” Nancy said, “and I appreciate every word you’ve been saying. I’d take your money, not for myself, but for the things I’m doing, if I needed it, but I don’t, you know.” She looked out into the coolness of the evening, lulled by the transition to a region of so much airiness and space, soothed by the soft motion, and the presence of a friend who loved her. The conversation in 287 which she was engaged suddenly became trivial and unimportant to her. She was very tired, and she found herself beginning to rest and relax. “I don’t need it,” she repeated vaguely. “I’ve got plenty of money of my own. Over a million, Billy says now. Uncle Elijah left it to me. I didn’t want him to, but perhaps it was all for the best.” She put her head back against the cushions and shut her eyes. “I’m terribly sleepy,” she said, “and as for the Inn—that’s making money, too, you know. Last month we cleared more than two hundred dollars.”

And Dick saying nothing, but continuing to stare into space—the panoramic space fleeting rhythmically by the car window,—she let herself gradually slip into the depths of sudden drowsiness that had overtaken her.