THE HAPPIEST DAY
It was thoroughly characteristic of Nancy to turn her back on the most
significant facts of her experience, and occupy herself exclusively
with its by-products. She refused to consider herself as an heiress
entitled to spend money lavishly for her own uses, but she squandered
it on her pet enterprise. She dismissed the idea that Dick, whom she
neglected to discourage as decisively as her growing interest in
another man would seem to warrant, had bought a country estate for the
sole purpose of ensconcing her there as mistress. She dreamed of
Collier Pratt and his ideal of her, and presented herself punctually
at his studio as a model for that ideal, while ignoring absolutely the
fact that he was nearly a hundred dollars in debt to her for meals
served at Outside Inn. She had sufficient logic and common sense to
apply to these matters, and sufficient imagination to handle them
sympathetically, had she chosen to consider them at all, but she did
not choose. She was deep in the adventure of her existence as
differentiated from its practical working out.
The day Collier Pratt finished his portrait of her she was not alone
in the studio with him. Sheila, in a fluffy white dress with a floppy
black satin hat framing her poignant little face, was omnipresent at
the interview which succeeded the actual two hours of absorption when
he put in the last telling strokes.
"It's done," he said, as he set aside pigments and brushes, and
divested himself of his painting apron. "I don't want to look at it
now. I've got it, but I can't stand the strain of contemplating it
till my brain cools a trifle. Let's go out and celebrate."
"Where shall we go?" Nancy said. This was the moment she had dreamed
of for weeks, the hour of fruition when the work was done, and they
could face each other, man and woman again with no strip of canvas
between them.
"The place I always go when I've finished a picture is a little café
under the shadow of _Notre Dame_, where I get cakes and beer and an
excellent perspective on all my favorite gargoyles."
"And the little birds flutter in the sun, and eat my crumbs and the
great music swells out while you ask the _garçon_ for another _bock_.
Do you remember, father dear, the day that _she_ found us there?"
"I remember only that you made yourself ill eating _Madelaines_ and
had to be taken home _en voiture_," Collier Pratt said quickly. "We
will go and have some coffee at the Café des Artistes, and discuss
ships and shoes and sealing wax--anything but the art of painting."
"And cabbages and kings," Sheila contributed ecstatically. "I used to
think when I was a very little girl and couldn't read English very
well that it was really Heaven where Alice went, and it made me sad to
think she was dead and I didn't understand it, but now Miss Dear has
explained to me."
"Miss Dear has made a good many things clear to us both," Collier
Pratt said, but he said no more that might be even remotely construed
as referring to the issue between them, and Nancy finished out her day
with dragging limbs and an aching empty heart that a word of
tenderness would have filled to running over.
But after her work for the day was done, and she was back in her own
apartment with Sheila tucked snugly in bed, and Hitty out for the
night with a sick friend, there came the touch on her bell that she
knew was Collier Pratt's; and she opened the door to find him standing
on her threshold.
"I knew you'd come," she said, as women always say to the man they
have that hour given up looking for.
"I wasn't sure I would," Collier Pratt said, "but I did, you see."
"Why weren't you sure?" She stood beside him in her little rectangular
hall while he divested himself of his cape, and placed his hat, stick
and gloves in orderly sequence on the oak settee beside it. She liked
to watch the precision with which he always arranged these things.
"Why should I be sure?" He turned and faced her. "Miss Dear," he said
to himself softly, "Miss Dear," and she saw that in his eyes which
made the moment simpler for her to bear.
She led the way into her drawing-room.
"Light the candles," he said, "this firelight is too good to drown in
a flood of electric light!"
"Is that better?" she asked.
They were standing before the fireplace; the embers had burned to a
gentle glowing radiance. Of the four candles she had lighted, the wick
of only one had taken fire and was burning. Nancy's breath caught in
her throat, and she could not steady it. Collier Pratt took a step
forward and held out his arms.
"No, this is better," he said.
"I thought there was some place in the world where I could
be--comfortable," Nancy said, when she finally lifted her head from
the shoulder of the shabby, immaculate black suit, "but I wasn't quite
sure."
"Are you sure now, you little wonder woman?" He held her at the length
of his arm for a moment and gazed curiously into her face. Then he
drew her slowly toward him again. She met his kiss bravely, so bravely
that he understood the quality of her courage.
"I didn't realize that this would be the first time," he said.
"There couldn't have been any other time," Nancy breathed, "you know
that."
"I didn't know," Collier Pratt said thoughtfully. "Oh! you little
American girls, with your strange, straight-laced little bodies and
your fearless souls!"
"Betty told you something," Nancy cried, scarcely hearing him, "but it
wasn't true. There never has been anybody else." She put her head down
on his shoulder again. "It is comfortable here," she said, "where I
belong."
She felt the sudden passion sweep through him,--the high avid wave of
tenderness and desire,--and she exulted as all purely innocent women
exult when that madness surges first through the veins of the man they
love. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her into the
armchair by the fire, and there she took his head on her breast and
understood for all time what it means for a woman to be called the
mother of men.
"You wonder woman," he murmured again.
She brushed the dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his eyes.
"You dear," she said, "you boy, you little boy."
Suddenly through the darkness came the sound of a shrill cry, and the
thud of a fall in some room down the corridor.
"It's Sheila," Nancy said, "she has those little nightmares and falls
out of bed."
"I know she does," Collier Pratt said, "but she picks herself up
again."
"Not always," Nancy said; "don't you want to come in and help me put
her back?"
"I do not," Collier Pratt said with unnecessary emphasis.
Nancy was of two minds about picking the child up in her little white
night-gown and bringing her out to her father, flushed and lovely with
sleep as she was. It was Collier Pratt's baby she had in her arms; her
charge, the child she loved, and the child of the man she loved, a
part of the miracle that was slowly revealing itself to her; but a
sudden sharp instinct warned her that her impulse was ill-timed.
"I had forgotten the child was here," Collier Pratt said when she
returned to him.
"I hadn't," Nancy said happily.
"I suppose she has to be somewhere, poor little wretch," he said.
"She's an extraordinarily picturesque baby, isn't she?"
Nancy crept nearer to him. He stood leaning against the mantel and
frowning slightly, but he made no move toward her again.
"She doesn't have nightmares often now," Nancy said with stiffening
lips. "She used to have them almost every night, but by watching her
diet carefully we have practically eliminated them."
"The Hitty person doesn't like me," Collier Pratt said. "_Pas du
tout_. She treats me as if I were a book agent."
"She loves Sheila, she--she'd do anything for her."
"The women who do not find me attractive are likely to find me quite
conspicuously otherwise, I am afraid." He had been carefully avoiding
Nancy's eyes, but her little cry at this drew his gaze. She was
standing before him, slowly blanching as if he had struck her,
absolutely still except for the trembling of her lips.
"What am I," he said, "to hold out against all the forces of the
Universe? Do you love me, Nancy, do you love me?"
"You know," she whispered, once more in the shelter of the shabby
shoulder.
"This is madness," he swore as he kissed her; "we're both out of our
senses, Nancy; don't you know it?"
"The picture is done, anyhow," she said. "I don't know how I can ever
bear to look it in the face, but I shall have to."
"It's the best work I've ever done," he said.
"I don't look like it now, do I?"
He held her off to see.
"No, by jove, you don't. It's gone, now--just that thing I painted."
"How do I look now?"
"Much more commonplace from the point of view from which I painted
you. Much more beautiful though,--much more beautiful."
"I'm glad."
"I might paint you again,--like this. No, I swear I won't. I got the
thing itself down on canvas. I'll never try to paint you again."
"Is--that flattering?"
"Supremely."
"When am I going to have my picture?" she asked after another
interlude. "Do you want me to send for it?"
"I can't give you the picture," he said. "I intended to if I had done
merely a portrait, but I can't part with this. It has got to make my
fame and fortune."
"I thought I was to have it," Nancy said. "I--I--" then she felt she
was being ungenerous, unworthy, "but I couldn't take it, of course,
it's too valuable."
"Please God."
"It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if my picture did make you
famous!"
"I think it will."
"I'm nothing but a grubby little working girl, and you're a great
artist,--and you love me."
"You're not a grubby little working girl to me," he said, "you're a
glorious creature--a wonder woman. I ought to go down on my knees to
you for what you've given me in that picture."
"In the picture?" Nancy said. "I love you. I love you. That wasn't in
the picture--I kept it out."
* * * * *
"I won't marry him until he is ready for me," she said to herself at
one time during the night. She lay perfectly quiet till morning, her
hands folded upon her breast, and her little girl pig-tails pulled
down on either side of the coverlet, wide-eyed and tranquil. She could
not bear to sleep and forget for a moment the beautiful thing that had
happened to her between dawn and dawn. "I'll take care of him and
Sheila, and nourish him, and help him to sell my picture. It isn't
every woman who would understand his kind of loving, but I understand
it."
At eight o'clock Hitty came in to her, and roused her from the light
drowse into which she had fallen at last.
"You was crying in your sleep again," she said, "your cheeks is all
wet. I heard you the minute I put my key into the latch. You're as bad
as Sheila, only I expect she suffers from something laying hard on her
stummick. It's always something on your mind that starts you in."
"There's nothing on my mind, Hitty," Nancy said, sitting up in bed,
"nothing but happiness, I mean. In some ways, Hitty dear, this is the
happiest day that I've ever waked up to."
"Well, then, there's other ways that it isn't," Hitty said, opening
the door to stalk out majestically.