The Magpies Nest

by Isabel Paterson

  "Oh-h-h," she said, the word spilling into a little laugh, "what does it matter what we said? I forget." She held out both her hands to him, and to life, seizing her immortal moment without fear.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE Chinese have a naïve way of calling their children by some derogatory nickname, during their tender years, thus pretending before the gods that the treasure of their hearts lies elsewhere. We laugh at this, but sometimes imitate it.

  Hope, her head bent over her drawing-board, appeared to be entirely absorbed in her work. If she admitted any extraneous thought, it was for other material affairs. She did not feel well. She had got a chill from her belated swim. She hated rising in the morning, and came home with unspeakable relief She felt very cold all day, and now a burning languor possessed her. But the day's work must be finished. A natural tenacity and single-mindedness, which amounted almost to stupidity, helped her to concentrate. There was nothing in her attitude that indicated she might be waiting for anything or anyone.

  Yet, when the door-bell rang, she sprang up instantly, and went rather unsteadily but quickly down the hall. Mrs. Hassard was out. Hope opened the door, and then leaned against the wall. Nick noticed that first.

  "What's the matter, dear?" he asked. "Are you sick?"

  "Tired," she said, watching him with that curious tentative look he had come to know. He glanced down the hall first, and then without words picked her up and carried her back to her room with the greatest ease. As if that served instead to tell her what she sought to know, she broke into laughter.

  "Heap big Injun," she remarked approvingly. "For a little man, that is."

  "Ha," he said ferociously, "a little man, am I? You snippet—apologise!" He put her up on his shoulder and she wound her fingers in his hair and drummed on his chest with her heels. One of her shabby blue satin slippers fell off.

  "For a mejurn-sized man," she amended meekly. "Lemme down; I'm a sick woman." So he laid her on the couch in a careful bundle, picked up the slipper, and put it on with a kiss.

  "All worn out," she said thoughtfully. "Look; my toe is coming out of the other one." He struck an operatic attitude, and sang, in a tragic barytone:

  "My God, my God, your little feet are frozen!"

  "What is that charming bit?" she inquired, mirthfully.

  "Rodolphe's song—or is it Marcel's? Very free translation. Never seen La Bohème? We must go some time. To appreciate La Bohème, of course, you've got to have lobster and champagne afterward; we'll do that too. Not to-night, no?"

  "Please, nothing to-night," she said. "Let's be devilish, and play seven-up for pennies. Nick, have you got a lobster and champagne income?"

  "No, dear, I haven't," he said candidly. "I have only my paltry stipend from the Cornwall Motor Works, and a rich uncle whose health is positively irritating. But I have enough—more than enough for one," he said hastily. "Hope, is there anything —do you want..."

  She did not seem to hear him.

  The Cornwall Motor Works made high-power engines of all kinds, but chiefly marine engines of the smaller types, for motor boats and such craft. Nick sold them, or demonstrated them, or did whatever was required of him. Sometimes he drove in motor-boat or motor-car races, but only incidentally. (It always made Grace very angry.) He was well liked; he knew himself marked for promotion if he worked for it; and lately, without explaining to himself just why, he had worked for it. He liked machinery; he liked anything that would go.

  "Won't you hand me my drawing things, and a cushion; I have a little bit of work to do," said Hope.

  "I hate to see you work when you're sick," he said gloomily, doing her bidding.

  "Well," she said with assumed carelessness, "you won't, for a week or two. I am to have a rest, the doctor told me. And I told my editor."

  "The doctor?" He pounced on the word. "You are ill. What else did he say?"

  "Nothing else. I've got a low fever; I knew that anyway; and nerves. Don't look so horrified; it's about equivalent to chickenpox. Change of climate, I daresay."

  She was quite as much concerned about what her editor had not said as over what the doctor did say. He had been going out when she caught him, and had borne her along with him, in his casual, friendly way, saying he was meaning to confer with her about something. Whatever it was, he let it go by when she made her plea for a brief respite, and, as the only expression of sympathy he could think of, made her drink a champagne cocktail and put her on the subway for home. But she was sure he had been thinking her work unsatisfactory; and equally sure that she had not yet struck the right note. Kennard had not been sorry to lay her off; that was too plain. Something with more "punch" in it; that was what they all wanted; Heaven alone knew what the imbecile phrase meant, and she would have to find out. No doubt it could be done, but the immediate prospect was not comforting. Her mind was as sluggish as her limbs; it refused to be spurred to fresh efforts, or even to keep the old pace.

  "You stay in bed," Nick commanded, "till you're perfectly well."

  "And let the ravens feed me?" she inquired.

  "Certainly; I've got a herd of trained ravens," he said. "Look here, Hope, have you got plenty of money?" He spoke very fast.

  "Yes," she said cheerfully, "lots." She made a mental reckoning; she could afford to stop work for what seemed a long time, in prospect; ample time to recover tn.

  "I hate to see you sick," he said again, with some indignation at the powers that be.

  "Oh, I don't mind," she said absently. "Not for a few days; it's rather luxurious." She was thinking that the respite should enable her to coax back her inventiveness, to formulate new ideas. "I'm sure that under more favourable circumstances I should be a confirmed malade imaginaire. But don't let me be a nuisance to you."

  Hecaught up her hands and held them against his heart.

  "Don't," he said. "Don't laugh at me. I—love you."

  When he said that, her laughter went quickly enough. She was afraid to hear it. She was afraid of vows, of all the spoken ritual, the winged words that return as arrows from the bow of wrath when the cord of faith is loosed. Therefore, inconsistently, she had made a vow to let each day be sufficient unto itself. Her sense of humour must have been dormant just then. It should have reminded her that of the three parties concerned, only one had said anything at all about this preposterous contract, and that one herself. Dealing with the devil in the middle ages was more comfortable than making terms to-day with the Great Unknowable; one could get security or acknowledgment occasionally.

  But what he was vaguely afraid of was that she was going to get away from him. She had run away once, from the beach hotel. And she did not seem able to explain why. That was simple enough, too. She thought he might be sorry again, or that he would expect her to be nursing regret. If she had laughed at him a little afterward, that was not surprising. He had fallen into such hopeless confusion on finding her again in town. Any human woman would have laughed at him. Besides, it helped her to her own balance But now, when he waited exposed to her shafts, the tears came in her eyes too, and she drew his head down into her arms, with a soft crooning sound. They whispered, in the immortal "little language" of lovers, until Hope recalled herself to duty.

  "Now," she remarked patiently, "you will please get my pad. And a cushion. And my pencil. Thanks You may go on talking, if you won't expect me to listen. Or do you want to read a book?"

  "Grace is in town," he answered irrelevantly. "Will you be well enough to come to lunch, or tea, or something, this week, and meet her? As soon as you're better, I should like you to. I must go and see her."

  "Humph!" said Hope. "Oh, yes, any time. Well, why don't you go and see her?"

  "I will to-morrow." Somehow he felt a premonition that Grace would scold him. "I'll tell her to be ready for an exclusive little party."

  "Exclusive little party," repeated Hope mechanically "Oh, shut up, Nick. How can I work? Yes, I know I told you to go on talking, but you shouldn't pay any attention to me."<
br />
  "I won't," he said. "I'll talk all I want to." Having thus declared his independence, he was silent, glancing at Hope surreptitiously from time to time, as if he feared his thoughts might be overheard. He had matter for thought.

  Her small but extremely capable looking hands held his gaze. They were so sure and quick.

  "Hope," he said at last, "where is your wedding ring?"

  "I threw it away," she said briefly, without looking up.

  "Did you feel like that?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  He did not speak again for a long time. Did she still feel like that?

  When she finished her drawing, they did play cards, but at ten o'clock she declared she could sit up no longer and sent him away. First she rubbed out two creases on his forehead, but they came back as soon as he was out of her sight. She heard him speaking to Mrs. Hassard for a time, though their words were indistinguishable. Very wearily and slowly she crept into bed. The thought of going out in the morning for breakfast was wearisome.

  It was no more cheerful to contemplate when morning came and she waked from a long heavy feverish sleep. So she lay still, watching the shadow shift on the blind. She was not in the least hungry. Why not wait for lunch? Someone knocked.

  "Here's your breakfast," said Mrs. Hassard. "And Mr. Carter said to tell you not to go out to-day, and he'll come up and see about your dinner."

  "What?" said Hope stupidly. Mrs. Hassard repeated her remarks in a matter of fact tone. Hope blinked, and tried to think. Nick and dinner appeared with evening. She was dressed; she meant to scold him, but forgot. Her head was heavy, and it was so delightful to have him. He made her feel comfortable. She tried to remember that this would not last She was in love; and she knew the end of that, by experience. She did not want to depend on him, not even for happiness. But it did not seem to matter. Only by and bye she managed to ask: "What do you suppose Mrs. Hassard thinks?" It was not that she cared for anyone's opinion for itself, but she was in Mrs. Hassard's house. Nick only remarked soothingly:

  "I wouldn't worry about that; I talked to her" He added to himself: "Mrs. Hassard won't think at all, as long as she gets paid promptly."

  CHAPTER XXIV

  AND it was true that so far as it could be avoided, Mrs. Hassard did not think. She had been a New York landlady a long, long time. The world was not as she would have it, perhaps, but then she had not made it, and must accept the best terms she could get from it. What milk of human kindness had not dried in her long since in the arid wastes of "ufurnished rooms" went out to Hope when she perceived her lodger was really ill. But this was probably because no active exercise of benevolence was required of her. Nick took it off her hands, and Mrs. Hassard was glad to let him do it. And Hope did not look very ill. Mrs. Hassard thought her lucky.

  She could get about most of the time, when her fever was at the ebb. When it burned up higher, the flush it lent her concealed her growing thinness. She spent most of her time lying, banked up with pillows, on her meagre couch, with a rug over her feet, her eyes half closed, her thoughts shuttling between her old day dreams and flickering visions of an equally fantastic future. Sometimes she would doze, and wake again feeling hot and oppressed, with a reminiscent touch of dread, as if some black pit had opened at her feet in a dream. She had time enough to weigh her affairs, perhaps to be sorry; but she did neither at first. Perhaps the fever would not permit her to think coldly, though none of her fancies even verged on delirium: it was only her old inconsequence and impracticality of mind. So one day after another went by, in a curious timeless manner. She dieted on milk because it saved the trouble of eating; she pretended to read sometimes, and would close the book in the middle of a sentence. And every few days she would steal out of doors, and come back weakly, with a defeated look, unable to face the cold and the barren inhospitable streets.

  After awhile, though the lassitude grew on her, her mind began to struggle with it, in the manner of one gagged and bound when freedom is an immediate necessity. Being ill was a kind of release from a troublesome world, at first. It grew to be an imprisonment.

  She had never been ill, or at least not helpless, in her life. It appeared to her in the light of a cowardly stratagem, robbing her of her legitimate weapons. Life had no conception of immediate justice, so far as she could see; it might be immeasurably cruel, or boundlessly generous, but always unfair from the standpoint of to-day. She had said in her heart that she could do without the world, without anyone or anything; in the end, of course, she expected to do without love too, and therefore without Nick. This was as if some mocking power should hold her and say, "Yes, but first taste and see if you like the brew " It is easier to reject the world than to have it reject oneself. She wanted her work, anyway! And where was her independence of Nick, and of to-morrow? She could not walk, and he carried her in his arms, metaphorically; as he had done literally. So her thoughts fretted about in a circle.

  And as the days stretched into weeks, and the New Year came and went, the oppression that haunted her in dreams translated itself into a very prosaic fact that stayed with her during the daylight hours. Her position could not be kept open for her indefinitely; it was probably already filled. She did not wish to inquire, knowing herself still unequal to the resumption of its duties. Her money was dwindling very rapidly.

  "Time is a great solvent," she remembered Mary saying. She must, must hold out; she must get well. "If a person could hold her breath long enough," she reflected, almost amused, "she need never drown. That's what I have to do."

  But Nick could not see any of this. He brought a supply of cheerfulness, like a gust of summer air, with him each evening; and it lasted as long as he stayed. His entry was the event of her day. She knew his step, and the very way he turned the doorknob. And he too could see, before the door opened, the turn of her head, the lift of her languid eyelids, and her hands outstretched in greeting. Then she would look so bright and gay, he was half deceived into forgetting that it was fever lent the lustre to her eyes and the colour to her cheeks. That gaiety was what shut his lips on the one thing he most wanted to say to her.

  She seemed so perfectly satisfied with things as they were! It was largely a tribute to his own vitality. There are people who by their bearing and outlook give pleasure to the beholder as unconsciously as a wild animal, or a tree in leaf, or any other plastic form of nature. While he was with her she lived his life; he was her eyes, her ears, her world. If he could have glimpsed her when she was alone, fretting a pencil with her weak fingers, knitting her brow in baffled weariness over some unfinished piece of work, a gust of protective pity would have swept away his uncertainty.

  It was not that he minded eating his words. But her calmness seemed uncanny. He had always been sure that women were somehow "different," intrinsically. Hethought, like many men, that the edicts of civilisation, the forms of morality, were based on the inner requirements of women alone. That women insisted on that system for its own sake, and loved the letter of the law fanatically. He did not realise that if a bow is bent too far it breaks, and civilisation produces its anarchs as surely as solitude. In short, people must live. That explained poor Hope; she would live. Action, even unto violence, was necessary to her. Besides, she had bargained with Fate to be content; and she had bargained with her own pride to seem content. But how was he to know that? Men admit their own mortality, their human weakness, but they want women to be minor goddesses, who can be what they will be. What a woman does is her own fault, or her own choice. So it is, if life is to have any meaning; but one must consider what alternative is offered. She may be only doing the best she can, with great bewilderment.

  So he hesitated, failing to find the right word and the right moment.

  The equal unreason and omniscience of his goddesses were made plainer to him by Grace. Grace had come back to town just a little too late for his "exclusive party," and gone away again. She oscillated between New York and Philadelphia throughout the winter. Now she was back a
gain. Her temper was not improved, and she spared him none of it. She acted, in short, as if the sight of him exasperated her almost beyond endurance, and at the same time she insisted on his attendance. Her insistence did her little good. Nick did not mind her candid recitals of his shortcomings, but he had not time to listen. Hope got all his spare time, and he was becoming really anxious about her. He could see her going downhill, getting weaker and thinner daily, though she denied both facts. Rather fatuously, he was thinking that if Grace only knew, she would sympathise with his anxiety.

  "Certainly what?" Grace's voice came to him acidly. "I don't really mind your not listening, Nick; but please don't interrupt the thread of my thoughts with such utterly inept remarks."

  "Did I say 'certainly'?" he asked guiltily. "What should I have said? I only meant that I agree with you; you've got twice as much sense as I have, Grace."

  "Do you consider that a compliment?" she inquired, unmollified. "Now have you the least idea what I was talking about?"

  He threw himself on her mercy.

  "Not the least," he said shamelessly. "Be a dear, and tell me. I've got such a lot on my mind."

  "Oh, go away," she cried. "Go to—whoever does interest you." He took his hat obediently, and she said, "Sit down. If you want my drawing-room to meditate in, you are quite welcome. But as I haven't seen you for weeks, I thought you might care to talk awhile."

  "I do," he said, propitiatively. "You haven't told me yet what's going on in Philadelphia."

  "I've been trying to for the last half-hour," she said. "What have you been doing?"

  "Why, nothing much," he replied doubtfully. "Just dubbing along, I suppose."

  "You might tell me," she veered suddenly to a pretty coaxing tone. "Is it a scrape? You have got something on your mind. Nick—you're in love!"