“You simply must not worry yourself about it so, Nancy, my darling,”
says Mrs. Ellicott brightly. “Lovers' quarrels are only lovers' quarrels
you know and they seem very small indeed to people a little older and
more experienced though I daresay they may loom terribly large just at
present. Why your father and myself used to have--ahem--our little times
over _trifles_, darling, mere _trifles _” and Mrs. Ellicott takes a
pinch of air between finger and thumb as if to display it as a specimen
of those mere trifles over which Mr. and Mrs. Ellicott used to become
proudly enraged at each other in the days before she had faded him so
completely.
Nancy, after a night of intensive sleeplessness broken only by dreams of
seeing Oliver being married to somebody else in the lobby of the Hotel
Rosario can only wonder rather dully when it could ever have been that
poor father was allowed enough initiative of his own to take even
the passive part in a quarrel over a trifle and why mother thinks the
prospect implied in her speech of her daughter's marriage being like
unto hers can be so comforting. Nancy made one New Year's resolution the
second day of her engagement, “If I ever find myself starting to act to
Ollie the way mother does to father I'll simply have to leave him and
never see him again.” But Mrs. Ellicott goes on.
“If Oliver is at all the sort of young man we must hope he is, he will
certainly come and apologize at once. And if he should not--well Nancy,
my little girl,” she adds hieroglyphically “there are many trials that
seem hard to bear at first which prove true blessings later when we see
of what false materials they were first composed.”
Mr. Ellicott thinks it is time for him to go to the office. It is five
minutes ahead of his usual time but Mrs. Ellicott has been looking at
him all the way through her last speech until he feels uneasily that he
must be composed of very false material indeed. He stops first though to
give an ineffective pat to Nancy's shoulder.
“Cheer up, Chick,” he says kindly. “Always sun somewhere you know, so
don't treat the poor boy too hard,” and he shuffles rapidly away before
his wife can look all the way through him for the vague heresy implicit
in his sentence.
“It is all very well for your father to say such things, but, Nancy,
darling, you shall not be put upon by Tramplers” proceeds Mrs. Ellicott
in her most cryptically perfect tones. “Oliver is a man--he must
apologize. A man, I say, though little more than a boy. And otherwise
you would now be pursuing your Art in Paris due to dear kind Mrs.
Winters who has always stood our truest friend and now this other
opportunity has come also but I would never be the first to say that
even such should not be sacrificed most gladly for the love of a true
kind husband and dear little children though marriage is but a lottery
at best and especially when affections are fixed upon their object in
early youth.”
All this without a pause, pouring over the numbed parts of Nancy's mind
like thin sweetish oil. Nancy considers wearily. Yes, Oliver should
apologize. Yes, it is only being properly dignified not to call up the
Rosario again to find if he is there. Yes, if he truly loves her, he
will call--he will come--and the clock hands are marching on toward
ten-seven and his train like stiff little soldiers and mother is
talking, talking--
“Not that I wish or have wished to influence your mind in any way, my
darling, but environment and propinquity count for mountains in such
first youthful attachments and sometimes when we are older to be looked
back upon with such regret. Nor would I ever have Words Spoken that
should seem to injure the choice of my daughter's heart--but when young
men cannot provide even Hovels for their _fiancées_ a reasonable time
having been given, it is only just that they should release them and you
looking like death all these last two months. Never wishing that my own
daughter should act in Ways dishonorable in the slightest but time is
the Test in such matters and if such tests are not to be survived it is
best they should end and no one can deny that the young man talks very
queerly and was often quite disrespectful to you though you may say that
was joking but it would not have been joking in my day and young men
with queer nervous eyes and hands I never have nor will quite trust--”
But it's Oliver that's doing this, Oliver who turned funny and white
when she cut her finger with the breadknife making sandwiches and wanted
her to put all sorts of things on it. Oliver who was always so sweet
when she was unreasonable and always the first to come looking unhappy
after they'd quarrelled even a little and say it was all his fault. Why
the very last letter she got from him was the one that said if she ever
stopped loving him he knew he'd die.
“And when things are ended it is better that such things should be
though doubtless not necessary to put an announcement in the paper yet
since God in his infinite wisdom arranges all things for the best.
And with such a splendid position opening before her it would be only
dignified to bring the young man to his senses for it would not be right
to let unreasonable young men stand in the way of advantages offered by
Foreign Travel and study and these things are soon forgotten, my dear,
and if nervous young men will not admit like gentlemen that they are in
the wrong when only engaged what kind of husbands will they make when
married forever? And is not a broken engagement better than lifelong
unhappiness when there are so many too many sinful people divorcing each
other every day and all men who write for their living use stimulants,
my dear, such is literary history and my dearest have your cry out on
mother's shoulder.”
The sweetish oil has risen about Nancy relentlessly--it is up to her
waist now and still it keeps talking and flowing and creeping higher.
Very soon when the fatter black soldier on the clock-face has only
hitched himself along a little, it will be over her head and the roving
Nancy, the sparkling Nancy, the Nancy that fell in love will be under it
like a calm body, never to rise or run or be kissed with light seeking
kisses on the soft of her throat again. There will only be a dignified
Nancy, a sensible Nancy, a Nancy going to Paris to study and be
successful, a Nancy who, sooner or later will marry “Some good, clean
man.”
A little tinkle of chimes from the clock. Six minutes more. The Nancy
that was stands on tiptoe, every eager and tameless bit of her hoping,
hoping. If mother weren't there that Nancy would have been at the
telephone an hour ago in spite of young people's pride and old people's
self-respect and all the thousand and one knife-faced fetishes that all
the correct and common-sensible people hug close and worship because
they hurt.
She can see the train sliding out of the station. Ollie is in it and
his face is stiff with surprise and unforgiveness like the face of some
horrible stranger you went up to and spoke to by mistake, thinking he
was your friend. By the time the train is well started he will have
begun talking to that fluffy girl in the other half of the Pullman--no,
that isn't worthy, he wouldn't--but oh Ollie, Ollie!
Half an hour later the telephone rings. Nancy is finishing the breakfast
dishes--her hands jump as she hears it--a slippery plate slops back into
the water and as she dives after it she realizes painfully that the new
water is much too hot.
“What _is_ it, mother?” For an instant the Nancy who has no real
self-respect is talking again.
“Just a minute, Isabella. Mrs. Winters, dear. Don't you want to speak to
her?”
“Oh.”