THE WOMAN WHO GAVE
Tony Adriance had not really heeded the weather until he found his way
to the stone pavilion on Riverside Drive at dusk that evening. Cold and
wind had recorded slight impression on his preoccupied mind and his
healthy body. Indeed, his feeling was that of a man passing through a
fever, rather than one chilled. And he was hot with a savage sense of
victory, for he brought decision back with him. He knew, at last, what
he meant to do.
He was brought to heed the weather by his need of seeing the girl who
was Holly's nurse. He stood for a while in the pavilion, after realizing
the absurdity of expecting to find her, and considered. He was
accustomed to having his own way; hardly likely to abandon it when his
necessity loomed urgent. His distrust of himself was deep, if
unconfessed; he dared not wait until the next day. Besides, the storm
might continue. After a brief pause of bafflement, he walked up to
Broadway, found a stationer's shop and a messenger, and dispatched a
note to Miss Elsie Murray. He looked curiously at the name, after it was
written; it seemed so soft, even childish, matched with that
steadfastness of hers to which he held as to the one stable thing in his
knowledge.
Would she come? The doubt bore him company on his way back to the
pavilion. Could she free herself from duties to come, if she wished? He
did not know, but he was obstinately resolved to see her that night. He
was indeed like a man in a fever; one idea consumed him.
A quarter of an hour passed; a half hour. Dusk, their hour of adventure
fixed by chance, had almost darkened to night when Adriance saw the
small figure for which he watched step from the curb. She hurried,
almost ran across the broad avenue, the wind wrapping her garments
around her.
"Thank you," the man greeted her, his gratitude very earnest.
The girl brushed aside his speech with a gesture. She was breathing
rapidly; amid all the shadows her face showed white and small.
"Of course I came," she said. "It was not easy--to come. I cannot stay
long. But I knew you would not have sent unless it was important."
"No," he affirmed, and paused. "I wonder why you are there? I mean, why
are you somebody's nurse, to be ordered about when you could do so much
better things? Of course, I can see how different you are!"
He stopped, with a sense of alarmed clumsiness. Because she was weary,
the girl sat down on the cold stone bench before answering.
"You are quite wrong," she said quietly. "I cannot do clever things at
all. I do not mean that I am stupid, exactly, but that I cannot do
anything so especially well as to make people pay me for it. Neither can
my father. I think he is the best man in the world, and my mother the
dearest woman, but they cannot make money. He is a professor of romance
and history, at a small college in Louisiana. There are a good many of
us--I have four younger sisters--so I came North to support myself."
"But----"
"Not as a nurse, of course. I came with an old lady whose son we knew at
the college. She asked me to be her private secretary. But after a few
months she died. I could not go back to be a burden. After I had tried
to find other things to do, and failed, I came to take care of Holly.
Why are we talking about me? There was something important, you said?"
"I--yes," Adriance said. He could read so much more than she told.
Afterward he was ashamed to remember that he neither felt nor expressed
any pity for her disappointed hopes. His whole attention was fixed on
her steady courage; the fighting spirit that he had divined in her and
toward which his indecision reached weak hands groping in the dark for
support.
The girl shrank behind the stone column nearest her as a blast of
freezing wind rushed past.
"Well?" she spurred his hesitation.
She was successful. He moved nearer her to be heard; the fever of the
last twenty-four hours thickened and hurried his speech.
"I'm not going to tell you about Mrs. Masterson," he told her. "In the
first place, you would not listen, and in the second place, I have
nothing to say. But you must know that last evening she broke her
engagement with me. I mean, before I saw you in the nursery. I was free,
then."
"She dismissed you?"
He had deliberately thought out the falsehood that protected Lucille
Masterson at his own expense. But it was harder than he had anticipated
to play this weak role before Elsie Murray.
"Yes," he forced the difficult acknowledgment.
"You need not have told me that," her slow reply crossed the darkness to
him. "I know it is not true. And I know what is true. It does not matter
how I--learned. But we may as well speak honestly."
He could have cried out in his great relief. Instead, he seized the
offered privilege of speech.
"I will, then! You know what I have done to Fred Masterson. I brought
the glamour of money, of what I could buy, into his household and made
his wife awake to discontent and ambition. I didn't know what mischief I
was working, until too late. I did not understand some of it until last
night. Now, what? Suppose I go away? Where can I go? Abroad, or on a
hunting trip? While I was gone she would get the divorce, when I came
back she and the rest would push me into the marriage. My own father is
pushing me. Everyone pities her and thinks the thing is suitable. You
don't know me! I like her, and I'm easily pushed. I tell you I never did
anything but drift, until last night. I am afraid of myself, yet."
"Then, why have you sent for me?" she asked, after a silence.
There was as much sullenness as resolution in the unconscious gesture
with which he folded his arms.
"Because I mean to stop this thing. Because I am going to take my own
way for the rest of the journey instead of being pushed and pulled. I
quit, to-night."
"How? What do you mean?"
"I am leaving the position where I am not strong enough to stand firm.
And because I know myself, I am fixing it so I cannot go back. You"--he
stumbled over the word--"you are not much better off than I, so far as
getting what you want out of life is concerned. Do you want--will you
try the venture with me? I think, I'm sure I could keep my half of a
home. You once said you would like to be a poor man's wife----"
The last word died away as if its boldness hushed him with a sense of
what he asked so readily. The girl rose to her feet, swaying slightly in
the strong wind; her fingers gripped the stone railing behind her while
she strove to see his face through the dark. A street lamp sent a faint
grayness into the pavilion, but he stood in shadows.
"You--are asking--me----?"
He laughed shortly to cover his own embarrassment.
"To marry a man who isn't much more than a chauffeur out of work!
Driving a car is my only way of earning money, just now. Of course, if
we go away together we will have to live on what I can bring in. It's
not very dazzling, but neither is being a nurse."
Comprehension slowly came to her.
"You would do this so you never could go back," she whispered, half to
herself. "To be cut off from everyone, because of me!"
"Not that!" he offered quick apology. "Why, you are above me by every
count I can make! No, it is because I can't stand alone. And, of
course--if I were married----"
"Mrs. Masterson would give her husband another chance," she finished.
He could not see her expression, but he felt her bitterness, and that he
was losing.
"Don't be offended," he appealed. "I thought we could be good
friends--why, if I did not respect and--and admire you, would I be
asking to spend my life with you? I know I am not offering you much, but
it's my best."
"You do not love me."
He bent his head to the assertion; for it was an assertion, not a
question. After the dazzling companionship of Lucille Masterson, love
was scarcely an emotion he could associate with the grave, quiet little
figure of Elsie Murray. He was surprised and embarrassed anew, and
showed it.
"I am not very sentimental, I'm afraid. Couldn't we start with
friendship? I'll try to make a good comrade for everyday."
The delay was long, so long that he anticipated the refusal and felt his
heart sink with a sense of loss and apprehension. All his plans, he
suddenly realized, were founded upon a strength drawn from her. He felt
the tremor of his structure of resolution, with that support withdrawn.
Unreasonable bitterness surged over him. Even she would not have him,
penniless.
She was shivering. He noticed that, when she spoke.
"You wish us to understand each other?" she said, her voice quite
steady. "Very well. Remember, then, I never knew who you were until last
night. You were just a man who seemed lonely, as I was just a woman
alone. Remember that I am human, too, and imagine things, and how
monotonous it is to be a nurse and do the same things every day. I
thought you talked to me and came so often because you were commencing
to like me. Once you bought violets from a man on the corner, then threw
them away before you crossed to me. I knew you meant them for me, but
feared I would not like you to give them to me. I liked you better for
throwing them away than for buying them. I was--foolish. And I cannot
marry you, because you do not love me, while I--might you."
With the last low word, she passed him and went from the pavilion, not
in running flight, but with the swift, certain step of finality.
Adriance was left standing, struck out of articulate thought. The
astounding blow had fallen among his accumulated ideas and scattered
them like dust. She loved him. Slowly stupefaction gave place to hot
shame for the insult of his proposal to her. He had been coarse, selfish
beyond belief and wrapped in egotism. He had asked her to be his wife
with the grace of one engaging a housemaid. And he might have had the
unbelievable! A slow-rising excitement mounted through him; a tingling,
vivifying interest in the future he had faced with such sullen
indifference.
She was gone from sight. Adriance was not rapid of thought, or
readjustment. But he knew where to look for her, now. He sprang from the
pavilion and ran, throwing his weight against the wind's blustering
opposition. The physical effort, in that stinging air, sent his blood
racing with tonic exhilaration. He felt dulness and morbidity dropping
away from him; zest of life taking their place.
The girl was crossing a dark little strip of park that lay before the
house where the Mastersons lived, when he overtook her.
"Elsie Murray!" he panted. "Elsie Murray!"
His voice had changed, and his accent. He spoke to her possessively; he
no longer depended, he directed. Instantly sensitive to the difference,
the girl stopped.
"Are you running away from me, Elsie Murray?" His hand closed lightly on
her arm, he stood over her with the advantage of his superior height,
and she heard him draw the cold air deeply into his lungs. "I did not
tell you the truth, back there. I meant to, but I did not know it
myself. I want what you might give, and I want to give as much to you.
Why, do you know what started me toward ending all this bad business,
what has given me the will to keep on? It was what you said, the first
night I saw you, about a woman waiting for her husband, with the lamps
lit, and all. I can't say what I mean--I'm clumsy! But, will you come
keep the lamp for me?"
She tried to speak, but to his dismay and her own, instead covered her
face; not weeping, but fiercely struggling not to weep.
"No," she flung refusal at him. "No! No!"
As her firmness lessened, his gained. She looked pitiful and helpless,
she, his tower of strength. Suddenly, protectingly, he caught her from
the assault of a violent swirl of the gale; caught and held her against
him, in the curve of his arm.
"If you may love me, and I want you, we have enough to start with," he
gently insisted. "I promise you I'll do my part. Will you try it with
me?"
She remained still. But the long pause, the contact between them, joined
with the change in the man and helped him.
"Will you marry me to-night?" he pressed.
She drew away from him with a flare of her natural resolution.
"No! Not to-night, if you could!"
"To-morrow, then?"
"Go home," she bade him. "Go home; think of everything--of what you have
and what you would leave, of all you want and must miss. _Think._ And
if, to-morrow----"
"Yes?"
"If you are sure, come back. I----may try it."
He knew better than to force her further.
"To-morrow, then, I will meet you at noon, in the pavilion," he yielded,
quietly, in spite of his leaping excitement. "And there is something
else. Once I bought these, for you. Of course I dared not give them to
you, afterward. But I did not throw them away, and I brought them in my
pocket to-night. Perhaps you will wear them to-morrow, when we go away."
The storm swooped down again. This time he did not hold her from the
gust, and she flitted with it into the darkness. But she took the little
package he had pressed into her hands; she had at last the little pair
of buckled shoes.