"NOT BY BREAD ALONE"
Mrs. Peter Champneys drove away from the scene of her wedding,
feeling as if boiling water had been poured over her. No man of all
the men she had ever met had looked at her with just such an
expression as she had encountered in Peter Champneys's eyes, and the
memory of it filled her with a rankling sense of injustice. He had
married her for the same reason she had married him, hadn't he? Then
why should he think himself a whit better than she was? It seemed to
her that all the unkindness, all the slights she had ever endured,
had come to a head in Peter's distressed and astonished glance.
Nancy had no illusions as to her own personal appearance, but it
occurred to her that her bridegroom left considerable to be desired
in that respect, himself. With his hatchet face and his outstanding
ears and his big nose--why, he was as homely as that dried old
priest in the glass case in the museum!--and him looking down on
people every mite as good as he was! That was really the crux of the
thing: Nancy had her own pride, and Peter had managed to trample
upon it roughshod. She felt she could never forgive him, and her
sense of injury included Chadwick Champneys as well. She hadn't
asked him to make his nephew marry her, had she? The suggestion had
come from the Champneys, not from her. Yet it was plain to her that
both these men considered her a very inferior person. She couldn't
understand them.
She liked the furnished apartment she and Mr. Champneys were to
occupy until their house was ready, better than she had liked the
hotel, though the Japanese butler, Hoichi, overawed her. She wasn't
used to Japanese butlers and she didn't know exactly how to treat
this suave, deft, silent yellow man who was so efficient and so
ubiquitous. It was different where the maids were concerned; she who
had been so lately an unpaid drudge was afraid these trained, clever
servants might suspect her former state of servitude and she covered
her fear with a manner so insupportable that Mr. Chadwick Champneys,
who looked upon arrogant rudeness to social inferiors as a sort of
eighth deadly sin, was presently forced to remonstrate.
"Nancy," he ventured one morning, "I have been observing your
manner to the servants with--er--disapproval. A habitual lack of
consideration is a serious deficiency. It is really a lack of
breeding--and of heart. A lady"--he fixed his large dark eyes upon
her--"is never impolite."
He touched her on the quick. She _knew_ these Champneys didn't think
she was a lady, but for this old man to come right out and say so to
her face--"Say, I guess I know how to be a lady without you havin'
to tell me!"
"I am more than willing to be convinced," said the South Carolinian,
pointedly.
At that, of a sudden, Nancy flared. She lifted a pair of sullen and
mutinous eyes, and her lips quivered. He saw with surprise that she
was trembling.
"Say, you look here--I done what you told me to do, didn't I? I
ain't no more nor no less a lady than I was before I done it, am I?
What you pickin' on me for, then? What more you want?"
He sighed. Milly's niece was distinctly difficult, to say the least.
How, he asked himself desperately, was one to make a dent in her
appalling ignorance? She irritated him. And as is usual with people
who do not understand, he took exactly the wrong course with her.
"I want you at least to try to live up to your position," he said
with cold directness, beetling his brows at her. "I want you to do
what you're told--and to keep on doing it! Do you understand that?"
He felt that he was allowing himself to be more wrought up than was
good for him, and this added to his annoyance.
She considered this, sullenly. "I'm not exackly straight in my mind
what I understand and what I don't understand, yet," she replied.
"But I got this much straight: If I done what I done to please you,
I done it to please me, too!"
This was logical enough; it had even a note of common sense and
justice. But her crude method of expressing it filled him with cold
fury. The Champneys temper strained at the leash.
"Ah!" said he, a dark flush staining his face, "ah! Then get this
straight, too: you'll please me only _if_ you carry out your part of
our contract. What! do you dream I would ruin my nephew's life for a
self-willed, undisciplined minx? Nothing could be farther from my
thoughts! Nancy, _I_ made you Mrs. Peter Champneys: you will qualify
for the position--or lose it!" He tapped his foot on the floor, and
glared at her.
Nancy gave him glare for glare. "Yeah, you said it! You made me Mrs.
Peter Champneys, and all I got to do is to do what I don't want to
do, to hold down the job! What you askin' _him_ to do to please
_me_? How's _he_ qualifyin'? Is he so much I'm nothin'? Because
that's what he thinks! Oh, you needn't talk! I guess I got eyes, at
least!"
"I suggest that you use them to your own advantage, then," said he,
disgustedly. "Let us have done with such squabbling! You agreed to
obey. Very well, then, you will do so, or I shall take steps to put
you outside of my calculations. In other words, I will wash my hands
of you. Is that perfectly clear to you?" How else, he asked himself,
was he to make her understand?
She saw that he was in a towering rage, and she reflected that if
she had made Baxter that mad he'd have banged her with his fists.
For a long minute the two stared at each other. She was about to
make a defiant reply and let come what might, when a sort of spasm
distorted his face. His mouth opened gaspingly, his eyes rolled back
in his head like a dying man's. He seemed to crumple up, and she
caught him as he fell. Her terrified shriek brought Hoichi, who took
instant charge of the situation. He made the unconscious man
comfortable on a divan, applied such restoratives as were at hand,
and directed a frightened maid to telephone for physicians.
Nancy fled to her own room, and sat on the edge of her bed,
frightened and subdued. That quarrel and its serious effect made a
turning-point in her life, though she attached no blame to herself
for the man's illness. She had no love for him, but her heart was
not callous to suffering, and his distorted and agonized face had
terrified and shocked her.
The suddenness of the seizure made his words more impressive.
Suppose he died: what of her? She was not sure that any definite
provision had as yet been made for her. What, then, should she do?
Suppose he recovered: what then? She had cause for serious thought.
All this luxury and ease, this pleasant life of plenty, in which she
reveled with the deep delight of one quite unused to it, hung upon a
contingency--the contingency of absolute obedience. She was not
naturally supine, and her spirit rose against an unconditional
self-surrender to a hot-tempered, imperious old man, who would mold
her to his will, make her over to his own notions, quite as
high-handedly as if she'd been a lump of putty and not a human
being. Nancy tasted the bitterness of having no voice in the making
of her own destiny.
Well, but suppose she defied him? He was quite capable of washing
his hands of her, just as he had threatened. And then? Before that
possibility Nancy recoiled. No. She couldn't, she wouldn't go back
to that old life of squalid slavery--eating bad food, wearing
wretched clothes, suffering all the sodden and sordid misery of the
ignorant, abjectly poor, a suffering twice as poignant now that she
knew better things. She knew poverty too well to have any illusions
about it. The Baxter kitchen rose before her. Why! while she was
sitting here now, in this luxurious room, back there they'd be
getting ready for the noonday dinner. The close kitchen would be
reeking with the odor of boiling potatoes and cabbage, from which a
greasy steam would be arising, so that one saw things as through a
hot mist. One of the children would be screaming, somewhere about
the house, and Mrs. Baxter, in an unsavory wrapper, her face
streaming with perspiration, her hair in sticky strands on her hot
forehead, would be shrilly threatening personal chastisement: "You
shut up, out there! Just you wait till I get this batch o' biscuits
off my hands an' I bet I fix _you_! didn't I say shut up?" The
hateful voice seemed so close to Nancy's ear that the girl shrank
back, shivering with distaste.
She fingered the soft, fine stuff of the frock she was wearing. She
stared about the room,--_her_ room, which she didn't have to share
with one of the Baxter children, who squirmed and kicked all night
in summer, and pulled the bed-coverings off her in winter. She went
over to her dressing-table and fingered its pretty accessories,
sniffing with childish pleasure the delicately scented powder and
cologne. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, and scowled.
Then she began to walk restlessly up and down the room. She had to
think this thing out.
Why should she go, and leave the road clear for Peter Champneys? It
occurred to her that, seen from his point of view, her elimination
from the scene might be regarded somewhat in the light of
providential interference in his behalf. She flushed. It wasn't
fair! The thought of Peter Champneys was gall and wormwood to her.
Nancy wasn't a fool. Her honesty had a blunt directness, a sort of
cave-woman frankness. In her, truthfulness was not so much a virtue
as an energy. The hardness of her unloved life had bred a like
hardness in her sense of values; she was distrustful and suspicious
because she had never had occasion to be anything else. In that
suspicion and distrustfulness had lain her safety. She had no sense
of spiritual values as yet. Religion had meant going to church on
Sundays when you had clean clothes in which to appear. Morals had
meant being good, and to Nancy being good simply meant not being
bad--and you couldn't be bad, go wrong, if you never trusted any
man. A girl that trusted none of 'em could keep respectable. Nancy
had seen girls who trusted men, in her time. Nothing like that for
_her_! But she knew, also, the price the woman pays whether she
trusts or distrusts, and the matrimony which at times rewarded the
distrustful didn't appear much more alluring than the potter's
field which waited for the credulous. Anyway you looked at it, what
happened wasn't pleasant. And it was worse yet when you knew there
was something better and different. You had to pay a price to get
that something better and different, of course. The fact that one
pays for everything one gets was coming home to Nancy with
increasing force; the problem, then, was to get your money's worth.
She took her head in her hands, and tried to concentrate all her
faculties. She wasn't a shirker, and she realized that she must
decide upon her course of conduct now and stick to it. If she didn't
look out for herself, who would? And presently she had reached the
conclusion that when Mr. Peter Champneys reappeared upon the scene,
he must find Mrs. Peter Champneys occupying the foreground, and
occupying it creditably, too. She'd do it! When Mr. Chadwick
Champneys recovered, she'd come to terms with him. She'd keep faith.
She spent three or four anxious days, while specialists came and
went, and white-capped, starched, authoritative personages
relieved each other in the sick-room, their answers to all queries
being that the patient was doing quite as well as could be
expected. At the end of the fifth day they admitted that the
patient was recovering,--was, in fact, out of danger, though he
wouldn't leave his room for another week or ten days; and he
wasn't to be worried or disturbed about anything.
Satisfied, then, that he was on the highroad to recovery, and
having made up her mind as to her own course of procedure, Nancy
rather enjoyed these few days of comparative freedom. She supplied
herself with a huge box of bonbons, "Junie's Love Test" and "The
Widowed Bride,"--books begun long ago, but wrested from her untimely
by the ruthless Mrs. Baxter, on the score of takin' her time off:
her rightful work for them that'd took her in, and fillin' her red
head with the foolishest sort o' notions. She had had so much to do
that to have nothing to do but lie around in a red silk kimona and
nibble chocolates and read love stories, seemed to her the supreme
height of felicity.
She reveled in these novels. They represented that something
different toward which her untutored and stinted heart groped
blindly. Otherwise her mind, by no means a poor one, lay fallow and
untilled. The beauty and wonder of the world, the pity and terror of
fate, the divine agony of love which sacrifices and endures, did not
as yet exist for her. She merely sensed that there was something
different, somewhere--maybe on the road ahead. And so she wept over
the woes of star-crost lovers, and sentimentalized over husky heroes
utterly unlike any male beings known to nature, and believed she
didn't believe that disinterested and unselfish love existed in the
world. As she hadn't the faintest gleam of self-knowledge, in all
this she was perfectly sincere.
She did not see Mr. Champneys for two weeks or so. In his nervous
condition he evinced a singular reluctance to have her come near
him, although others saw him daily. For instance, Mr. Jason
Vandervelde appeared at half after ten o'clock every morning during
his client's convalescence, was immediately admitted to Mr.
Champney's room, and left it upon the stroke of eleven.
Nancy watched this man curiously. When he met her in the hall, he
spoke to her in a nice, full-toned, modulated voice, exceedingly
pleasing to the ear. His eyes were small but of a deep and bright
blue, and although he was heavily built he wore his clothes so well
that he gave the effect of strength rather than of clumsiness. He
was clean-shaven and ruddy, and his large, well-shaped mouth was
deeply curled at the corners. His hands were not fat and white, as
one might expect, but tanned and muscular, and slightly hairy. His
glasses gave him a certain precision, and his curled lips suggested
irony. Nancy liked to look at him. He discomfited her understanding
of men, for, she couldn't tell why, she both liked and trusted him.
There was nothing romantic about him,--a well-fed, well-groomed
lawyer-man in his late thirties, with a handsome wife in a handsome
house,--yet he had the faculty of making her wonder about him, and
wonder with kindness at that. She wished she knew just how much he
knew about her, her early upbringing, her sad lack of education.
What had Mr. Champneys told him? Or had he really told him anything?
When her uncle finally overcame his reluctance and sent for her, she
entered his room quietly and stood looking at him with an honest
concern that was in her favor. She was always honest, he reflected.
There was nothing of the hypocrite or the coward in those wary
gray-green eyes that always met one's glance without flinching.
The change in his appearance shocked her. His eyes were hollow, his
tall form looked meager and shrunken. He was growing to be an _old_
man. She said awkwardly:
"I'm real sorry you been so sick." And she made no attempt to
apologize for her share in the quarrel that had led to his seizure.
She ignored it altogether, and for this he was grateful.
"Thank you. I am getting along nicely," he said civilly. And with a
slightly impatient gesture he dismissed all further mention of
illness. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, the better
to collect his thoughts. He wished to make his wishes perfectly
clear to her. But she surprised him by saying quietly:
"I been thinking things over while you was sick, and I come to the
conclusion you was right. I got to have more education. There's
things I just got to know--how to talk nice, and what to wear, and
what fork you'd ought to eat with. Forks and things drive me real
wild."
"I had thought, at first, of sending you to some particularly fine
boarding-school--" he began, but Nancy interrupted him.
"If I was six instead o' sixteen, you might do it. As 't is, I
wouldn't learn nothin' except to hate the girls that'd be turnin'
up their noses at me. No. I don't want to go to boardin'-school.
I've saw music-teachers that come to folks' houses to give lessons,
and I been thinkin', why can't you get me a school-teacher that'll
teach me right at home!"
"As I was saying when interrupted,"--he looked at her
reprovingly--"I had at first thought of sending you to some
finishing school. I gave up that idea almost at once. I agree with
you that it is best you should be taught at home. In fact, I have
already engaged the lady who will be your companion as well as your
teacher."
"I don't know as I'm crazy about a lady companion as a steady job,"
said Nancy, doubtfully. She feared to lose her new liberty, to
forego the amazing delight of living by herself, so to speak. "But
now you've done it, I sure hope you've picked out somebody _young_.
If I got to have a lady companion, I want she should be young."
"Mr. Vandervelde attended to the matter for me," said Mr. Champneys,
in a tone of finality. "He is sure that the lady in question is
exactly the person I wish. Mrs. MacGregor is an Englishwoman, the
widow of a naval officer. She is in reduced circumstances, but of
irreproachable connections. She has the accomplishments of a lady of
her class, and her companionship should be an inestimable blessing
to you. You will be governed by her authority. She will be here
to-morrow."
"A ole widder woman! Good Lord! I--" here she stopped, and gulped.
An expression of resignation came over her countenance. "Oh, all
right. You've done it an' I'll make the best of it," she finished,
not too graciously.
"It is not proper to refer to a lady as 'a ole widder woman'."
"Well, but ain't she?" And she asked: "What else you know about
her?"
"Mr. Vandervelde attended to the matter," he repeated. "He is
thoroughly satisfied, and that is enough for me--and for you. I sent
for you to inform you that she is to be here to-morrow. See that you
receive her pleasantly. Your hours of study and recreation will be
arranged by her. She will also overlook your wardrobe. And, I do not
wish to hear any complaints."
"I can't even pick out my own clothes?"
"You lack even the rudiments of good taste."
"What's wrong with my clothes?" she demanded.
"Everything," said he, succinctly, and with visible irritation. He
remembered the wedding-gown, and his face twitched. She watched him
intently.
"Oh, all right. I said I'd obey, an' I will. I ain't forgettin',"
said she, wearily.
"Very well. I am glad you understand." He closed his eyes, and
understanding that the interview was at an end, Nancy withdrew.
Mrs. MacGregor arrived on the morrow. The attorney had been given
explicit orders and instructions by his exacting client, who had his
own notions of what a teacher for his niece should and shouldn't be.
Vandervelde congratulated himself on having been able to meet them
so completely in the person of the estimable Mrs. MacGregor.
Mr. Champneys demanded a lady middle-aged but not too middle-aged,
not overly handsome, but not overly otherwise; an excellent
disciplinarian, of a good family, and with impeccable references.
For the rest, Mrs. MacGregor was a tall, spare, high-nosed lady,
with a thin-lipped mouth full of large, sound teeth of a yellowish
tinge, and high cheek-bones with a permanent splash of red on them.
Her eyes were frosty, and her light hair was frizzled in front, and
worn high on her narrow head. She dressed in plain black silk of
good quality, wore her watch at her waist, and on her wrist a large,
old-fashioned bracelet in which was set a glass-covered,
lozenge-shaped receptable holding what looked like a wisp of
bristles, but which was a bit of the late Captain MacGregor's hair.
Mr. Champneys had wanted a lady who was a church member. He had a
vague idea that if a lady happened to be a church member you were
somehow or other protected against her. Mrs. MacGregor was orthodox
enough to satisfy the most rigid religionist. Mr. Champneys gathered
that she believed in God the father, God the son, and God the Holy
Ghost, three in One, and that One a dependable gentleman beautifully
British, who dutifully protected the king, fraternally respected the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister, and was heartily in
favor of the British Constitution. Naturally, being a devout woman,
she agreed with Deity.
An American family domiciled for a while in England had secured her
services as companion to an elderly aunt of theirs, fetching her
along with them, on their return to America. The aunt had been a
family torment until the advent of Mrs. MacGregor, but in the hands
of that disciplinarian she had become a mild-mannered old body. On
her demise the grateful family settled a small annuity upon her whom
they couldn't help recognizing as their benefactor. Finding
Americans so grateful, Mrs. MacGregor decided to remain among them
and with her recommendations secure another position of trust in
some wealthy family. This, then, was the teacher selected by Mr.
Jason Vandervelde, who thought her just what Mr. Champneys wanted
and his ward probably needed.
Mrs. MacGregor never really liked anybody, but she could respect
certain persons highly; she respected Mr. Chadwick Champneys at
sight. His name, his appearance, the fact that Jason Vandervelde was
acting for him, convinced her that he was "quite the right
sort"--for an American. She was as gracious to him as nature
permitted her to be to anybody. And the salary was very good indeed.
It was only when Nancy put in her appearance that Mrs. MacGregor's
satisfaction withered around the edges. The red on her high cheeks
deepened, and she fixed upon her new pupil a cold, appraising stare.
She made no slightest attempt to ingratiate herself; that wasn't her
way; what she demanded, she often said, was Respect. The impossible
young person who was staring back at her with hostile curiosity
wasn't overcome with Respect. The two did not love each other.
Strict disciplinarian though she might be where others were
concerned, Mrs. MacGregor treated herself with lenient
consideration. She was selfish with a fine, Christian zeal that
moved Nancy to admiring wonder. Nancy's own selfishness had been
superimposed upon her by untoward circumstances. This woman's
selfishness was a part of her nature, carefully cultivated. She
believed her body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and she made
herself exceedingly comfortable in the building, quite as if the
Holy Ghost were an obliging absentee landlord. Nancy observed,
too, that although the servants did not like her, they obeyed her
without question. She got without noise what she wanted.
But she really could teach. Almost from the first lesson, Nancy
began to learn, the pure hatred she felt for her instructress adding
rather than detracting from her progress. Had the woman been
broader, of a finer nature, she might have failed here; but being
what she was, immovable, hard as nails, narrow and prejudiced,
sticking relentlessly to the obviously essential, she goaded and
stung the girl into habits of study.
Her reaction to Mrs. MacGregor really pushed her forward. She knew
that the woman could never overcome a secret sense of amaze that
such a person as herself should be a member of Chadwick Champneys's
family--the man was a _gentleman_, you see. And she called Nancy
"Anne." Her lifted eyebrows at Nancy's English, her shocked,
patient, parrot-like, "Not 'seen him when he done it,' _please_. You
_saw_ him when he _did_ it!--No, 'I come in the house' isn't
correct. Try to remember that _well-bred_ persons use the past tense
of the verb; thus: 'I _came_ into the house.'--What _do_ I hear,
Anne? You '_taken'_ it? No! You TOOK it!" And she would look at
Nancy like a scandalized martyr, ready to die for the noble cause of
English grammar! Rather than endure that look, rather than face
those uplifted eyebrows, Nancy, gritting her teeth, set herself
seriously to the task of making over her method of speech.
It was Mrs. MacGregor who, discovering the girl's unstinted
allowance of candy, cut off the supply. She didn't care much for
candies herself, but she did like fruit, and fruit was substituted
for the forbidden sweets. She had the healthy, wholesome English
habit of walking, and unless the weather was impossible she forced
her unwilling charge to take long tramps with her, generally
immediately after breakfast. They would set out, Nancy dressed in a
plain blue serge, her pretty, high-heeled pumps discarded for
flat-heeled walking-shoes, Mrs. MacGregor flat-footed also, tall,
bony, in a singular bonnet, but nevertheless retaining an inherent
stateliness which won respect. Sometimes they tramped up Riverside
Drive, their objective being Grant's tomb. Mrs. MacGregor respected
Grant; and the stands of dusty flags brought certain old British
shrines to her mind. On stated mornings they visited the Library,
while Mrs. MacGregor selected the books Nancy was to read, books
that Nancy looked at askance. They had their mornings for the
museums, too. Mrs. MacGregor knew nothing of art, except that, as
she said to Nancy, well-bred persons simply _had_ to know something
about it. After their walk came lessons, grueling, dry-as-dust,
nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy's speech was
vivisected. At two o'clock they lunched, and Nancy had further
critical instructions. The dishes she had once been allowed to order
were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such
honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just as she insisted upon
oatmeal for breakfast. Porridge, she called it. In the afternoon
they motored; Mrs. MacGregor, who detested speed, became the bane of
the hard-faced chauffeur's life.
They dined at seven, and for an hour thereafter Mrs. MacGregor
either read aloud from some book intended to edify the young person,
or forced Nancy to do so. She was possibly the only person alive who
delighted in Hannah More. She said, modestly, that at an early age
she had been taught to revere this paragon, and whatever happy
knowledge of the virtues proper to the female state she possessed,
she owed in a large measure to that model writer. Nancy conceived
for Hannah More a hatred equaled in intensity only by that cherished
for Mrs. MacGregor herself.
Mrs. MacGregor's notions of dress and her own were asunder, even as
the poles. But here again that rigid duenna did her invaluable
service, for if she didn't look handsome in the clothes selected
for her, she didn't, as that lady said frankly, look vulgar in them.
No longer would you be liable to mistake her for somebody's
second-rate housemaid on her day out. The simple diet and the
inexorable regularity of her hours also told in her favor, although
she herself wasn't as yet aware of the change taking place. Already
you could tell that hers was a supple and shapely young body, with
promise of a magnificent maturity; you glimpsed behind the fading
freckles a skin like a water-lily for creamy whiteness; and that red
hair of hers, worn without frizzings, began to take on a glossy,
coppery luster.
That spring they moved into the new house. It was so different from
the average newly-rich American home that it moved even Mrs.
MacGregor to praise. Nancy thought it rather bare. It hadn't color
enough, and there were but few pictures. Yet the old rosewood and
mahogany furniture pleased her. She remembered that golden-oak,
red-plush parlor at Baxter's with a sort of wonder. Why! she had
thought that parlor handsome! And now she was beginning to
understand how hideous it had been.
She saw little of Mr. Champneys, who seemed to be plunged to the
eyes in business. Occasionally he appeared, looked at her
searchingly, said a few words to her and Mrs. MacGregor, and
vanished for another indefinite period. Mr. Jason Vandervelde was
almost a daily visitor when Mr. Champneys happened to be in the
city. At times Mr. Champneys went away, presumably to look after
business interests, and Nancy thought that at such times the lawyer
accompanied him. She had no friends of her own age, and Mrs.
MacGregor wasn't, to say the least, companionable. And the books she
was compelled to read bored her to distraction. She took it for
granted they must be frightfully good, they were so frightfully
dull! The deadliest, dullest of all seemed to be reserved for
Sunday. She didn't mind going to church; in church you could watch
other people, even though Mrs. MacGregor sat rigidly erect by your
side, and expected you to be able to find your place in a Book of
Common Prayer entirely unfamiliar to you. While she sat rapt during
what you thought an unnecessarily long sermon, you could look about
you slyly, and take note of the people within your immediate radius.
Nancy liked to observe the younger people. Sometimes a bitter envy
would almost choke her when she regarded some girl who was both
pretty and prettily dressed, and, apparently, care-free and happy.
She watched the younger men stealthily. Some of them pleased her;
she would have liked to be admired by at least one of them, and she
felt jealous of the fortunate young women singled out for their
attentions. Think of being pretty, and having beautiful clothes, and
swell fellows like that in love with you! That any one of these fine
young men should cast a glance in her own direction never entered
her mind. No. Loveliness and the affection and gaiety of youth were
for others; for her--Peter Champneys. At that she fetched a deep
sigh. She always went home from church silent and subdued. Mrs.
MacGregor thought this a proper attitude of mind for the Sabbath.
The girl was vaguely disturbed and uneasy without knowing why. The
newness and glamour of the possession of creature comforts, the
absence of want, was wearing thin in spots. She was conscious of a
lack. She was beginning to think and to question, and as there was
no one in whom she might confide, she turned inward. Naturally, she
couldn't answer her own questions, and all her thoughts were as yet
chaotic and confused. She wanted--well, what did she want, anyhow?
She repeated to herself, "I want something different!" That
something different should not include a dreary round of Mrs.
MacGregor, a cold inspection by Mr. Chadwick Champneys; nor the
thought of Peter Champneys. It _would_ include laughter and--and
people who were neither teachers nor guardians, but who were gay,
and young, and kind. She began to be conscious of her own isolation.
She had always been isolated. Once poverty had done it; and now
money was doing it. Those girls she saw at church--she'd bet they
went to parties, had loads of friends, had a good time, were loved;
plenty of people wanted their love. For herself, as far back as she
could look, she had never had a friend. Who cared for her love?
Sometimes she watched the new maid, a distractingly pretty little
Irish girl, black-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-faced. The girl tried to
be demure, to restrain the laughter that was always near the
surface; but her eyes danced, her cheek dimpled, she had what one
might call a smiling voice. And the handsome young policeman on the
corner was acutely aware of her. Nancy remembered one afternoon when
she and Mrs. MacGregor happened to be coming in at the same time
with Molly. It was Molly's afternoon off and she was dressed trimly,
and with taste. Under her little close-fitting hat her hair was like
black satin, her face like a rose. The young policeman managed to
pass the house at that moment, and lifted his cap to her; Nancy saw
the look in the young man's eyes. She followed Mrs. MacGregor into
the house, rebelliously. Nobody had ever looked at _her_ like that.
Nobody was ever going to look at her like that. She remembered Peter
Champneys's eyes when they had first met hers. A dull flush stained
her face, and bitterness overwhelmed her.
Mr. Champneys was busy; Mrs. MacGregor was satisfied--she had a
position of authority; her creature comforts were exquisitely
attended to; her salary was ample. The man saw his plans being
carried forward, if not brilliantly at least creditably; the woman
saw that her tasks were fulfilled. It never occurred to either that
the girl might or should ask for more than she received, or that she
might find her days dull. But Nancy was discovering that the body is
more than raiment, and that one does not live by bread alone.