The Magpies Nest

by Isabel Paterson

  "Me?" He looked at her with seeming candour. Should he tell her? Couldn't she help him? A woman might persuade Hope to let herself be taken out of town, perhaps to go South! But Grace would naturally want to know everything. He couldn't, until Hope was able to speak for herself. "No, I'll tell you what I was thinking of. I've got an offer, from the Rutherford people, to go to Chicago. It might mean something big for me; and then again, I'm doing pretty well with the Cornwall. I can't make up my mind, that's all. Now if you can decide that for me..."

  She was watching him, sidelong, with a veiled, intense scrutiny. He was telling the truth, which always makes matters a great deal more difficult. She had to confess herself at a loss, and he departed as soon as he decently could. He had not seen Hope for nearly a day. The subway did not go fast enough. He pictured her lying there asleep over her book, waking to smile at him.

  That was a mistake, but even lovers cannot be clairvoyant. Hope went out that afternoon, though it was a labour of Hercules to attire herself for the street She nearly tumbled over her nose, she told him afterward, in the simple process of buttoning her gaiters. A veil was quite beyond her strength. And then the elevator was not running, as so often happened. It took her ten minutes to creep downstairs.

  The editor she sought was out. She had hoped for something from that visit; she had studied the preferences of his periodical two weeks in advance. A fresh wave of weariness and dejection swept over her; she sank back into her chair in the waiting-room. No, she could not go further that day. But on the way home she might adopt a temporary expedient. When she got home, she would write to Mary.

  Edgerton's bracelet brought less than she expected, being unused to the ways and rates of pawnbrokers. So she took off her little amethyst necklet and put that in. Then she held onto the edge of the counter while the money was being paid over.

  The stairs stretched before her once more. They looked higher than the Rockies. But, after sitting on the lowest step a long time, she essayed them. If the building had boasted a hall-porter, she would have asked help. It was an old building, and had no such luxury. The elevator boy was taking an opportune holiday.

  One flight. She paused for breath, put out her hand to steady against the wall, and it treacherously failed her. Afterwards she fancied she had not found strength to cry out, and merely fell, in a resigned sort of way, to the bottom again, like the problematic frog in the hypothetical well. And by the time she reached the bottom she knew nothing.

  It was less than ten minutes before Nick came and found her. He lifted her in his arms and ran all the way up the three flights. She was so very light. His heart seemed to be stopped while he was doing it, and if she were dead, he felt sure it would never start again.

  "Did I break my neck?" was her first preposterous question, reviving just as he laid her down.

  Mrs. Hassard, hovering distractedly on the verge of things, gave vent to a half hysterical giggle, and Nick choked and hid his face against Hope's hair. She tried to pat his head comfortingly, and gave a little squeak of pain.

  "Where does it hurt?" Nick asked, and slipped his fingers gently along her arm.

  "Up here." She tried to move her chin to indicate the point of difficulty. "What's up there—my collarbone?" He unfastened her collar, and found the pale red bruise, already slightly swollen. Mrs. Hassard had telephoned for a doctor.

  It was her collar-bone, the doctor said—broken. No, not her arm; that was only very badly wrenched. Nothing else much but a few contusions; bad ones, yes, but bruises couldn't kill.

  So, by and by, trussed like a chicken, she lay flat on her back and listened to a lecture. The doctor sat taking her pulse and scowling at her benevolently. He was an old man, who considered patients a lot of refractory and interesting children.

  "Nerves? Fever?" he said accusingly. "Yes! Yes! And what have you been doing for them? I know— worrying! And galloping about the city like a lunatic on a day like this." She tried to explain that galloping was not an accurate description of het gait, but he listened not at all. "Let me tell you one thing, young lady; you may have done the best thing for yourself, though it's not a method I'd recommend generally. You'll keep quiet now. Yes, if we have to get a straitjacket. And you'll probably get well in consequence." He rose and seized his instrument case. "Stop worrying!" he barked suddenly, turning at the door. "I'll drop in to-morrow." He vanished.

  "Nice old man," said Hope. "Well, unless the house burns down, there's not much left to worry about. Everything's happened."

  But Nick was looking at her queerly. Mrs. Hassard had taken herself off.

  "Will you really stop worrying?" he said, in a low voice. "And leave everything to me till you are better—everything?"

  She was filled with aches and pains and fatigue, and she leaned back on him mentally, at last, as on a pillow.

  "Yes," she assented. "How long am I to be getting well?"

  "Only a few days," he said mendaciously. "Now, I've broken orders. You were not to talk, to drink this, and to go to sleep immediately."

  She drank something faintly bitter and pungent, and he sat covering her hand with his. After awhile she felt pain and happiness alike slipping out of her weak grasp as consciousness faded, and so she slept.

  Waking to entire helplessness is a strange sensation. It lends itself to speculation, to odd twists of thought and feeling, and philosophical, resigned meditation. Hope wanted a drink, but she could not reach for one, and the day seemed very young, so she did not wish to call.

  "I must think of something else," she told herself. "I wonder what it means that I am here—like this— now? Is there any sense in it? Why do nice things seem sensible and disagreeable ones stupid? They are both the outcome of the logic of events. Where am I getting to? Well, where am I, anyway? I can think about Seattle. Is my mind in Seattle, or is Seattle in my mind? So where am I? Isn't my mind me? What is me? My hand, there; if it is me, why can't I lift it and wave it around? It just won't; and it's absurd to say that I could disobey myself. There's a catch in logic there... Come in. Nick, how did you get here so early?"

  It was Nick; he had tea and toast and other things, yet he failed to look ridiculous.

  "I stayed here," he explained briefly. Then he fed her with a spoon, and smoothed her pillows in the approved manner of nurses. She did not seem to object.

  "How do you feel?" he asked inevitably.

  "Not very much," she said. "I'm trying thought suggestion on me, but I find it doesn't extend to the bandages; they remain perfectly immoveable. I am a child of light," she recited solemnly. "Pain does not exist; there is no evil, nor no stairs, and especially no elevator; I do not exist myself..." She burst out laughing, and he put down the plate he was holding and slipped his arm under her head cautiously, kneeling beside the cot.

  "You sweet," he said huskily, "won't you laugh again? Hope, your hair smells like flowers."

  "My collar-bone smells like arnica," she said, and saw with surprise that he was nodding with sleep. He was white and haggard. "Nick! What is the matter?"

  "Nothing." He was very alert again. "Only I didn't sleep last night. I was thinking... Hope, you can't move now; I've got you; I'm going to keep you if I can. Will you marry me?"

  He had said it at last.

  "What?" she said faintly. "Like this—all in pieces and tied together again, useless and ugly. Besides, you don't want to marry anyone."

  "Anyone but you," he corrected her firmly. "I was afraid you'd remember that fool break. Can't you forget it? You're the loveliest thing in the world, and I can't do without you. You will, say you will, sweetheart; you're not tired of me, are you?"

  "Oh," she said brokenly, confronted at last with the real logic of events, the punishment of the unthinking, which she had once truly acknowledged as the most severe of punishments. "Oh, Nick—I can't!" And, as he was silent in sick astonishment, she went on stumblingly: "I made you believe a lie. Because I didn't want to talk about it. My husband isn't dead —or anything. It's th
ree years since I saw him. I was such a fool, too."

  "But you don't—you don't care for him?"

  "No—no!"

  "Would you marry me if you could?" He was wondering if he might rescind that refusal to the Rutherford people. He had refused on Hope's account. Now he wanted to accept for the same reason.

  "Yes," she said hesitantly. "I never thought of it before; we said..."

  "As if that mattered!" He smoothed her hair. "Don't you care; it will be all right. I can see what we must do."

  CHAPTER XXV

  WHAT do you want me to do?" she asked submissively. So do good resolutions and bad end alike.

  "I have an offer to go to Chicago. You shall go, too. We'll have to wait a year, but it would be three years here. A year isn't very long, if I can be near you. You can get a divorce there. You don't care for him?" he insisted.

  "I never did. No, you just can't understand. It was an insane mood—like committing suicide." To her relief he seemed to comprehend. "I can't give a real reason," she pleaded. "Didn't you ever do anything that had just no sense in it at all? That you couldn't even make up a good reason for afterward? Oh, did you really?"

  "Often," he said thoughtfully. "Small things: they might just as well have been big ones."

  "Because sometimes nothing seems to matter, there are no valid reasons for anything. I will never do things like that again—not now."

  "No, not now," he agreed, and kissed her. "You will come?"

  "Of course," she said. And though she was beginning to feel faint again, and wanted to shut her eyes and sleep, she murmured first: "After all, you have to work for love, the same as anything else. I don't mind. But did you always know that? I believe I thought it was something you could acquire suddenly, like a piece of jewelry, perhaps. And then you just had it. But it isn't."

  "No, it isn't like anything else," he agreed again.

  The doctor was quite right. Compelled to quietude, Hope felt her tense nerves slowly relaxing, day by day, and the sluggish fever in her veins subsiding. It was slow, for she had the destruction of years to rebuild, and nothing but Nick to help her. Long, dreamily monotonous hours, that resolved themselves into days, days that joined the steady squadrons of weeks, filed by; her fancy seemed to see them passing her door, always outside, for in that high-ceiled narrow room time came to a backwater and ceased. The city whirled and roared about it, filtering in a grumbling sullen noise through the window from which was visible only a high and hideous brownstone wall across the street. In all that seething life she had no part, and was forgotten of it.

  Nothing short of the enthusiasm that Nick brought into it could have made that room endurable so long. It was a terrible room, high and angular, with brown walls and carpets and melancholy tall windows. All the furniture in it looked accidental and fragmentary; no furniture could have suited it. It was bleak; it glared sombrely. Always it was either too hot or too cold. But they used it as a temporary storehouse for dreams, and it served well enough.

  It was a month before Hope could go out at all, and then she found herself too uncertain on her feet, so easily fatigued, she had to take her exercise cautiously, in graduated doses. Picking up her drawing again presented unexpected difficulties. Her unused fingers and mistreated arm were singularly clumsy.

  "My muscles feel like pulp," she said disgustedly. "And I simply must get into trim soon. I wonder if if I could get my job back?"

  "You aren't fit to work yet," said Nick. "And— aren't you going to Chicago?"

  "Why, yes; when you are ready. But in the meantime?"

  "There ain't going to be no meantime. I'm only waiting till you're fit. And I want to have a few days off, first, and take you out of town. Now, will you be a good girl till the first fine weather, so we can go down to the shore?"

  She said she would.

  "When shall we have fine weather?" she asked wistfully.

  "Oh, soon—in April."

  And he took her for a careful pilgrimage of a few blocks, and afterward to tea, because he saw she was feeling restless. It was not so cold just then, for the end of February. Hope realised that this was no such rigorous climate as she had been bred to. There was just enough frost to crisp the air. It was dusk when they returned, by way of Riverside Drive. Leaving it gave them one of those lovely vignettes sometimes to be seen momentarily framed in a cross street that looks to the river. A slender tree, the delicate twigs etching with black the faintly suffused western sky, on one side; the other straightly framed by a wall; and a street lamp hanging in the branches like some marvellous fruit, a globe of the palest frosty violet light. The distant Palisades balanced the picture with their solid masses. Whistler might have painted it.

  "What a lot of lovely things there are in the world," remarked Hope, gazing.

  "Yes, and you shall have all of them," said Nick fatuously, not following her thought.

  She pinched his arm and laughed, and he felt a shock of pleasure, as if he had just discovered that she was near.

  "You'll bring that home in a basket, I suppose." she said, indicating the view. "But I do wonder why, when there is so much raw material for it, we don't have more beauty in life? Are we too lazy? I'm sure some people never know what beauty means. Their faces are so dull and mean, or simply vacant. Or is it my fault that I don't get under their surfaces and discover their sensibilities? A real artist would, I suppose. Why does Mrs. Hassard bore me so? Am I not intelligent enough to find anything interesting in her. And the new lodger; have you seen him? I hate his face, don't you? Yet I don't know anything about him."

  "I could live without him," admitted Nick. "Holton, you mean?" But Hope, characteristically, did not know his name. She had passed him in the hall and noted that he had fishy, impertinent eyes; she knew no more about him. "Looks like a bad lot," Nick said. "I think I've seen his kind before." There are many ''kinds" in any great city—spawn of the strange deeps of piled humanity. Nick knew all he wanted to about them; they made him rather sick. So he seldom thought of them. He was very like the rest of us.

  They went out for a short time every day now, in all weathers, as Hope's strength increased. And in the mornings she strove to recapture her skill with the pencil, such as it had been. She used to amuse Nick with impromptu sketches, and introduced the Moon Babies to him. Sometimes he found them in his pockets, in the lining of his hat, in all sorts of unlikely places, on little homemade Valentine affairs that would always flutter out at just the wrong moment.

  She even went downtown surreptitiously again, once or twice, again in pursuit of art editors. Some of the newspapers were kind enough to ask her to call again later, but that was all. She felt reluctant about going to Kennard. Persistence was all she needed, she felt sure.

  Then suddenly it was April, and the looked-for fine weather came, and Nick said they need wait no longer They would find no flowers nor burgeoned trees, nor any of the luxuriance of summer, but the snow had passed, and they could look again on the sea, even if they could not dip in it. He had a sneaking romantic wish to take her again to the sea.

  So they went out of town with immense relief, saying good-bye to Mrs. Hassard with ill-concealed enthusiasm. They never expected to see her again. Hope packed all her belongings. They would return to New York just long enough for Nick to gather up a few loose ends of his affairs. Then Chicago, a smoky Paradise, invited them. Hope faced the prospect with equanimity. She could get work there easily enough, no doubt; it was large enough for all practical purposes.

  So she gave up the thought of New York, though she confessed to Nick she wished she had won its favour, forced some recognition from its enormous indifference. There was still that glitter and allure about it. It did look like a treasure box. He promised rashly that they should return some day and loot it, even unto repletion. He felt serenely confident. So do the children of Naples, under the shadow of Vesuvius. He could not even see Vesuvius.

  Yet he should have known they were living on sufferance. Perhaps he did, dimly,
the next day. Hope did not realise anything just at the time. It has been said that she was rather stupid, especially in the ways of the world. Especially she did not realise how utterly her original resolve had gone by the board. She had vowed to leave men out of her life, to take her happiness by the day; to build nothing on promises.

  And just then there was nothing at all in her life but one man; and she was going to follow him to the end of the world—or Chicago, anyway—on nothing but a promise. An observant man, looking at her mouth and eyes, would have known she was born for nothing else.

  They went to a very commonplace summer resort, sparsely populated because the season had not begun, its beaches pleasantly free of humanity; the hotels in a semi-comatose condition, hibernating, with the pulse of activity running low. Coming late for lunch, they were almost alone in the dining-room. Then they walked up the beach a little way, and it was theirs. They ran races on the sand; they sat in the pale sunlight and built sand castles, and filled them with sea-shell treasure. And they went back to their hotel agreeably hungry.

  Pausing at the bend of the staircase, going to her room to freshen herself for dinner, Hope idly noticed a man at the desk, with his back to her, poring over the register.

  "Looks familiar, somehow," she commented fragmentarily, and as Nick turned she nodded over her shoulder. "Down there, the man in the brown hat." Nick looked hard, but Hope went on, and did not observe his apprehensive frown. Nor, after dinner, did she note that the man in the brown hat walked behind them from the dining-room, and spoke to Nick while he bought a cigar. Afterward, in the lounge, it meant nothing that Nick excused himself to go in search of some particular evening paper.

  He was gone for ten minutes, when it occurred to her to go upstairs for a forgotten handkerchief, instead of waiting where she had been put.

  Through the open transom of Nick's room, which adjoined her own, his voice was distinctly audible.

  And he spoke angrily, though not loudly; she failed to catch an intelligible sentence. But she heard her own name; she was sure of that. A man's voice answered him. Nick cut him off short. She stood blankly wondering and listening, so the door opened in her face. Nick opened it, with a gesture of ushering out his companion, though not at all politely. His eyes were very angry indeed, a cold blue in his flushed, set face.