An hour later and still the grand news hasn't been told. In fact very
little that Mrs. Ellicott would regard as either sensible or reasonable
has happened at all. Though they do not know it the conversation has
been oddly like that of two dried desert-travellers who have suddenly
come upon water and for quite a while afterwards find it hard to think
of anything else. But finally:
“Dearest, dearest, what was the grand news?” says Oliver half-drowsily.
“We must talk it over, dear, I suppose, I guess, oh, we must--oh, but
you're so sweet--” and he relapses again into speechlessness.
They are close together, he and she now. Their lips meet--and meet--with
a sweet touch--with a long pressure--children being good to each
other--cloud mingling with gleaming cloud.
“Ollie dear.” Nancy's voice comes from somewhere as far away and still
as if she were talking out of a star. “Stop kissing me. I can't think
when you kiss me, I can only feel you be close. If you want to hear
about that news, that is,” she adds, her lips hardly moving.
All that Oliver wants to do is to hold her and be quiet--to make out of
the stuffy room, the nervous rushing of noise under the window, the air
exhausted with heat, a place in some measure peaceful, in some measure
retired, where they can lie under lucent peace for a moment as shells
lie in clear water and not be worried about anything any more. But
again, the time they are to have is too short--Oliver really must be
back Monday afternoon--already he is unpleasantly conscious of the
time-table part of his mind talking trains at him. He takes his arms
from around Nancy--she sits up rubbing her eyes with the back of her
hand as if to take the dream that was so glittering in them away now she
and Oliver have to talk business-affairs.
“Oh, my _hair_--lucky it's bobbed, that's all--I'd have lost all the
hairpins I ever had in it by now--Well, Ollie--”
Her hand goes over to his uneasily, takes hold. For a moment the dream
comes back and she forgets entirely what she was going to say.
“Oh _dear_!”
“Nancy, Nancy, Nancy!”
But she will be firm about their talking. “No, we mustn't really, we
mustn't, or I can't tell you anything at all. Well, it's this.
“I didn't tell you about it at all--didn't even imagine it would come
to anything. But that old geology specimen Mrs. Winters knows the
art-editor of “The Bazaar” and she happened to say so once when she was
here being gloomy with mother, so I wormed a letter out of her to her
friend about me. And I sent some things in and the poor man seemed to be
interested--at least he said he wanted to see more--and then we started
having a real correspondence. Until finally--it was that Friday because
I wrote you the letter right away--he goes and sends me a letter saying
to come on to New York--that I can have a regular job with them if I
want to, and if they like my stuff well enough, after a couple of months
they'll send me to Paris to do fashions over there and pay me a salary I
can more than live on and everything!”
Nancy cannot help ending with a good deal of triumph, though there is
anxiety behind the triumph as well. But to Oliver it seems as if the
floor had come apart under his feet.
When he has failed so ludicrously and completely, Nancy has succeeded
and succeeded beyond even his own ideas of success. She can go to Paris
and have all they ever planned together, now; it has all bent down to
her like an apple on a swinging bough, all hers to take, from lunch at
Prunier's and sunset over the river to that perfect little apartment
they know every window of by heart--and he is no nearer it than he was
eight months ago. He has felt the pride in her voice and knows it as
most human and justified, but because he is young and unreasonable
that pride of hers hurts his own. And then there is something else. All
through what she was saying it was “I” that said, not “we.”
“That's fine, Nancy,” he says uncertainly. “That's certainly fine!”
But she knows by his voice in a second.
“Oh, Ollie, Ollie, of course I won't take it if it makes you feel that
way, dear. Why, I wouldn't do anything that would hurt you--but Ollie I
don't see how this can, how this could change things any way at all. I
only thought it would bring things nearer--both of us getting jobs and
my having a Paris one and--”
Her voice might be anything else in the world, but it is not wholly
convinced. And its being sure beyond bounds is the only thing that could
possibly help Oliver. He puts his hands on her shoulders.
“I couldn't do anything but tell you to take it, dearest, could I? When
it's such a real chance?” He is hoping with illogical but none the less
painful desperation that she will deny him. But she nods instead.
“Well then, Nancy dear, listen. If you take it, we've got to face
things, haven't we?”
She nods a little rebelliously.
“But why is it so _serious_, Ollie?” and again her voice is not true.
“You know. Because I've failed--God knows when I'll make enough money
for us to get married now--with the novel gone bust and everything.
And I haven't any right to keep you like this when I'm not sure of ever
being able to marry you--and when you've got a job like this and can
go right ahead on the things you've always been crazy to do. Nancy, you
_want_ to take it--even if it meant our not getting married for another
year and your being away--don't you, don't you? Oh, Nancy, you've _got_
to tell me--it'll only bust everything we've had already if you don't!”
And now they have come to a point of misunderstanding that only a trust
as unreasonable as belief in immortality will help. But that trust could
never be bothered with the truth of what it was saying at the
moment--it would have to reach into something deeper than any transitory
feeling--and they have an unlucky tradition of always trying to tell
each other what is exactly true. And so Nancy nods because she has to,
though she couldn't bear to put what that means into words.
“Well, you take it. And I'm awful sorry we couldn't make it go, dear.
I tried as hard as I could to make it go but I guess I didn't have the
stuff, that's all.”
He has risen now and his face seems curiously twisted--twisted as if
something hot and hurtful had passed over it and left it so that it
would always look that way. He can hardly bear to look at Nancy, but she
has risen and started talking hurriedly--fright, amazement, concern and
a queer little touch of relief all mixing in her voice.
“But Ollie, if you can't _trust_ me about something as little as that.”
“It isn't that,” he says beatenly and she knows it isn't. And knowing,
her voice becomes suddenly frightened--the fright of a child who has let
something as fragile and precious as a vessel of golden glass slip out
of her hands.
“But, Ollie dear! But, Ollie, I never meant it that way. But Ollie, I
love you!”
He takes her in his arms again and they kiss long. This time though
there is no peace in the kiss, only the lost passion of bodies tired
beyond speech. “Do you love me, Nancy?”
Again she has to decide--and the truth that will not matter for more
than the hour wins. Besides, he has hurt her.
“Oh, Ollie, Ollie, yes, but--”
“You're not sure any more?”
“It's different.”
“It's not being certain?”
“Not the way it was at first--but, Ollie, we're neither of us the
same--”
“Then you _aren't_ sure?”
“I can't--I haven't--oh, Ollie, I don't know, I don't know!”
“That means you know.”
Again the kiss but this time their lips only hurt against each
other--Oliver feels for a ghastly instant as if he were kissing Nancy
after she had died. It seems to him that everything in him has made
itself into a question as discordant and unanswered as the tearing cry
of a puppy baying the moon, struck out of his senses by that swimming
round silver above him, ineffably lustrous, ineffably removed, none of
it ever coming to touch him but light too pale to help at all. He is
holding a girl in his arms--he can feel her body against him--but it is
not Nancy he is holding--it never will be Nancy any more. He releases
her and starts walking up and down in a series of short, uneasy strides,
turning mechanically to keep out of the way of chairs. Words come out of
him, words he never imagined he could ever say, he thinks dizzily that
it would feel like this if he were invisibly bleeding to death--that
would come the same way in fiery spurts and pauses that tore at the
body.
“Don't you see, dear, don't you _see_? It's been eight months now and
we aren't any nearer getting married than we were at first and it isn't
honest to say we will be soon any more--I can't see any prospect--I've
failed in everything I thought would go--and we can't get married on
my job for _years_--I'm not good enough at it--and I _won't_ have you
hurt--I _won't_ have you tied to me when it only means neither of us
doing what we want and both of us getting, older and our work not done.
Oh, I love you, Nancy--if there was any hope at all I'd go down on my
knees to ask you to keep on but there isn't--they've beaten us--they've
beaten us--all the fat old people who told us we were too poor and
too young. All we do is go on like this both of us getting worked up
whenever we see each other and both of us hurting each other and nothing
happening--Oh, Nancy, I thought we could help each other always and now
we can't even [Illustration: AND THEN THE QUEER MAN HAD GONE OUT OF THE
DOOR] a little any more. You remember when we promised that if either of
us stopping loving each other we'd tell?”
Nancy is very silent and rather white.
“Yes, Ollie.”
“Well, Nancy?”
“Well--”
They look at each other as if they were watching each other burn.
“Good-by darling, darling, darling!” says Ollie through lips like a
marionette's.
Then Nancy feels him take hold of her again--the arms of somebody else
in Oliver's body--and a cold mouth hurting her cheek--and still she
cannot speak. And then the queer man who was walking up and down so
disturbingly has gone out of the door.