OTHER PEOPLE'S TROUBLES
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
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 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 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 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 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 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. "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 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 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 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 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.