FOR THE SAKE OF NANCY
It was toward six o'clock when she ascended the steps of the rectory.
Bernal, coming from the opposite direction, met her at the door. Back of
his glance, as they came together, was an intimation of hidden things,
and at sight of him she was smitten by an electric flash of wonder. The
voice of Wyeth, that friendly, untroubled voice, she now remembered had
called to no specific Linford. In the paralysis of embarrassment that
had seized her in that darkened hallway, she had failed to recall that
there were at least two Linfords in existence. In an instant her inner
world, wrought into something like order in the past two hours, was
again chaos.
"Why, Nance--you look like night, when there are no stars--what is it?"
He scanned her with an assumption of jesting earnestness, palpably meant
to conceal some deeper emotion. She put a detaining hand on his arm as
he was about to turn the key in the lock.
"Bernal, I haven't time to be indirect, or beat about, or anything--so
forgive the abruptness--were you at Mrs. Wyeth's this afternoon?"
His ear caught the unusual note in her voice, and he was at once
concerned with this rather than with her question.
"Why, what is it, Nance--what if I was? Are you seeing another
Gratcher?"
"Bernal, quick, now--please! Don't worry me needlessly! Were you at Mrs.
Wyeth's to-day?"
Her eyes searched his face. She saw that he was still either puzzled or
confused, but this time he answered plainly,
"No--I haven't seen that most sightly cold lady to-day--more's the
pity!"
She breathed one quick little sigh--it seemed to him strangely like a
sigh of relief.
"I knew you couldn't have been." She laughed a little laugh of secrets.
"I was only wondering foolish wonders--you know how Gratchers must be
humoured right up to the very moment you puff them away with the deadly
laugh."
Together they went in. Bernal stopped to talk with Aunt Bell, who was
passing through the hall as they entered; while Nancy, with the manner
of one not to be deflected from some set purpose, made straight for
Allan's study.
In answer to her ominously crisp little knock, she heard his "Come!" and
opened the door.
He sat facing her at his desk, swinging idly from side to side in the
revolving chair, through the small space the desk permitted. Upon the
blotter before him she saw that he had been drawing interminable
squares, oblongs, triangles and circles, joining them to one another in
aimless, wandering sequence--his sign of a perturbed mind.
He glanced up with a look of waiting defiance which she knew but masked
all his familiar artillery.
Instantly she determined to give him no opportunity to use this. She
would end matters with a rush. He was awaiting her attack. She would
make none.
"I think there is nothing to say," she began quickly. "I could utter
certain words, but they would mean one thing to me and other things to
you--there is no real communication possible between us. Only remember
that this--to-day--matters little--I had already resolved that sooner or
later I must go. This only makes it necessary to go at once."
She turned to the door which she had held ajar. At her words he sat
forward in his chair, the yellow stars blazing in his eyes. But the
opening was not the one he had counted upon, and before he could alter
his speech to fit it, or could do more than raise a hand to detain her,
she had gone.
He sat back in his chair, calculating how to meet this mood. Then the
door resounded under a double knock and Bernal came in.
"Well, old boy, I'll be off to-night. The lawyer is done with me here
and now I'll go to Edom and finish what's to be done there. Then in a
few days I'll be out of this machine and back to the ranche. You know
I've decided that my message to the world would best take the
substantial form of beef--a message which no one will esteem
unpractical."
He paused, noting the other's general droop of gloom.
"But what's the trouble, old chap? You look done up!"
"Bernal--it's all because I am too good-hearted, too unsuspecting. Being
slow to think evil of others, I foolishly assume that others will be
equally charitable. And you don't know what women are--you don't know
how the sentimental ones impose upon a man in my office. I give you my
word of honour as a man--my word of _honour_, mind you!--there never has
been a thing between us but the purest, the most elevated--the loftiest,
most ideal--"
"Hold on, old chap--I shall have to take the car ahead, you know, if you
won't let me on this one...."
"--as pure a woman as God ever made, while as for myself, I think my
integrity of purpose and honesty of character, my sense of loyalty
should be sufficiently known--"
"Say, old boy--" Bernal's face had lighted with a sudden flash of
insight--"is it--I don't wish to be indiscreet--but is it anything about
Mrs. Wyeth?"
"Then you _do_ know?"
"Nothing, except that Nance met me at the door just now and puzzled me a
bit by her very curious manner of asking if I had been at the Wyeth's
this afternoon."
"_What_?" The other turned upon him, his eyes again blazing with the
yellow points, his whole figure alert. "She asked you _that--Really_?"
"To be sure!"
"And you said--"
"'No'--of course--and she mumbled something about having been foolish to
think I could have been. You know, old man, Nance was troubled. I could
see that."
His brother was now pacing the floor, his head bent from the beautifully
squared shoulders, his face the face of a mind working busily.
"An idiot I was--she didn't know me--I had only to--"
Bernal interrupted.
"Are you talking to yourself, or to me?"
The rector of St. Antipas turned at one end of his walk.
"To both of us, brother. I tell you there has been nothing between
us--never anything except the most flawless idealism. I admit that at
the moment Nancy observed us the circumstances were unluckily such that
an excitable, morbidly suspicious woman might have misconstrued them. I
will even admit that a woman of judicial mind and of unhurried judgments
might not unreasonably have been puzzled, but I would tear my heart open
to the world this minute--'Oh, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny!'"
"If I follow you, old chap, Nancy observed some scene this afternoon in
which it occurred to her that I might have been an actor." There was
quick pain, a sinking in his heart.
"She had reason to know it was one of us--and if I had denied it was
I--"
"I _see_--why didn't you?"
"I thought she must surely have seen me--and besides"--his voice
softened with affection--"do you think, old chap, I would have shifted a
misunderstanding like that on to _your_ shoulders. Thank God, I am not
yet reduced to shirking the penalties of my own blameless acts, even
when they will be cruelly misconstrued."
"But you should have done so--It would mean nothing to me, and
everything to you--to that poor girl--poor Nance--always so helpless and
wondering and so pathetically ready to _believe_! She didn't deserve
that you take it upon yourself, Allan!"
"No--no, don't urge! I may have made mistakes, though I will say that
few men of my--well, my attractions! Why not say it bluntly?--few men of
my attractions, placed as I have been, would have made so few--but I
shall never be found shirking their consequences--it is not in my
nature, thank God, to let another bear the burden--I can always be a
man!--"
"But, old boy--you must think of poor Nancy--not of me!" Again he felt
the hurt of her suspicion.
"True--compassion requires that I think of her rather than of my own
pride--and I have--but, you see, it's too late. I committed myself
before I knew she didn't _know_!"
"Let her believe it is still a mistake--"
"No, no--it would be trickery--and it's impracticable--I as good as
confessed to her, you see--unless"--he brightened here and stopped in
his walk--"unless she could be made to believe that I meant to shield
you!"
"That's it! Really, you are an executor, Allan! Now we'll put the poor
girl easy in her mind again. I'll tell her you did it to shield me. You
know it's important--what Nancy thinks of you, old chap--she's your
wife--and--it doesn't matter a bit how meanly--she thinks of me--of
course not. I dare say it will be better for me if she _does_ think
meanly of me--I'll tell her at once--what was it I did?"
"No--no--she wouldn't believe you now. I dislike to say this, Bernal,
but Nancy is not always so trusting as a good woman should be--she has a
habit of wondering--but--mind you, I could only consent to this for the
sake of her peace of mind--"
"I understand perfectly, old chap--it will help the peace of mind of all
of us, I begin to see--hers and mine--and yours."
"Well, then, if she can be made to suspect this other aspect of the
affair without being told directly--ah!--here's a way. Turn that
messenger-call. Now listen--I will have a note sent here addressed to
you by a certain woman. It will be handed to Nancy to give to you. She
will observe the writing--and she will recognise it,--she knows it. You
will have been anxious about this note--expecting it--inquiring for it,
you know. Get your dinner now, then stay in your room so the maid won't
see you when the note comes--she will have to ask Nance where you
are--"
At dinner, which Bernal had presently with Aunt Bell and two empty
seats, his companion regaled him with comments upon the development of
the religious instinct in mankind, reminding him that should he ever
aspire to a cult of his own he would find Boston a more fertile field
than New York.
"They're so much broader there, you know," she began. "Really, they'll
believe anything if you manage your effects artistically. And that is
the trouble with you, Bernal. You appeal too little to the imagination.
You must not only have a novelty to preach nowadays, but you must preach
it in a spectacular manner. Now, that assertion of yours that we are all
equally selfish is novel and rather interesting--I've tried to think of
some one's doing some act to make himself unhappy and I find I can't.
And your suggestion of Judas Iscariot and Mr. Spencer as the sole
inmates of hell is not without a certain piquancy. But, my dear boy, you
need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a red robe, do
healing--"
He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, Aunt Bell--I've learned
that."
"But you could be, with proper managing. There's that perfectly stunning
beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you
make nothing of it--it might have happened to anybody and it never came
to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed
alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he
told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the
reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story
of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent--_any_ kind of accent
would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your message, and
I'd guarantee you a following of thousands in New York in a month. Of
course they'd leave you for the next fellow that came along with a key
to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, but you'd keep
them a while."
Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of breath.
"I'll quit, Aunt Bell--that's enough--"
"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his hold on the masses with
Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to the imagination. I'm told by those who have
read his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and yet the
President of Princeton Theological Seminary preaches a sermon in which
he calls him 'the greatest failure of the age.' I read it in this
morning's paper. His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.'
You see, there was an appeal to the imagination--the most audacious
appeal that the world has ever known--and the crowd will be with this
clergyman who uses it to refute the arguments of a man who worked hard
through forty years of ill-health to get at the mere dry common-sense of
things. If Jesus had descended to logic, he'd never have made a convert.
But he appealed magnificently to the imagination, and see the result!"
His mind had been dwelling on Allan's trouble, but now he came back to
his gracious adviser.
"You do me good, Aunt Bell--you've taken all that message nonsense out
of me. I suppose I _could_ be one of them, you know--one of those
fellows that get into trouble--if I saw it was needed; but it isn't. Let
the men who can't help it do it--they have no choice. Hereafter I shall
worry as little about the world's salvation as I do about my own."
When they had finished dinner he let it be known that he was not a
little anxious concerning a message that was late in arriving, and he
made it a point, indeed, that the maid should advise Mrs. Linford to
this effect, with an inquiry whether she might not have seen the delayed
missive.
Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south
window smoked into the night--smoked into something approaching quietude
a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in
dusky white--the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into
his so long ago--so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool,
forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of
idealism--forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible
custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously
through barren years!
He knew that he had awakened too late for more than a fleeting vision of
what would have made his life full. Now he must be off, up the path
again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand
waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations. The
woman was definitely gone. That was something, even though she went with
that absurd, unreasoning, womanish suspicion. And he had one free, dear
look from her to keep through the empty days.