“I never heard of him,” said Kildare.
Dingwell laughed, but it was easy to see that he was hurt.
“Light in the forehand, I grant you that, and some of his get let you down beyond a mile. But I wouldn’t say that I’d never heard of Missionary. They broke his back with weight in the Belmont or you know what would have happened. And then he got Salvation out of Jingle Bells, and you can’t laugh off Salvation, can you? Jacqueline, here’s a fellow who owns half of Texas, and he wouldn’t have Missionary blood on his place. Not for a gift, he wouldn’t.”
Jacqueline turned her head slowly and looked Kildare up and down.
“How naïve!” she said. “What would you use? Domingo, perhaps?”
“Why not Domingo?” asked Dingwell. “Look at Dominic and Do-Re-Mi, both chuck a block with Domingo blood.”
“Domingo horses are front runners and nothing else,” said Jacqueline with decision. “The dirty dogs drop dead in the stretch if anything comes up and looks them in the eye. Uncle Tom, I want you to talk to John Stevens here; he has a million acres of Texas all full of that lousy Domingo strain…”
This chatter continued from the automobile into the night club, until the Fothergill girl said: “Nancy, whatever made you sell that mare of yours? ‘Distinction,’ wasn’t that her name? What did you go and sell that mare for last month? I thought you were sure crazy about that little old chestnut jumper.”
The whole group of these horsey people turned on Nancy with voluble questions, and Kildare saw that she was badly hurt. A signal from her brought them out dancing together, and as they danced she said: “I’ve got to get away. This talk about horses, horses, is driving me crazy. Get me away from them, John?”
They slipped away during an act of the floor show that came on.
“Are we stopping or going on she asked.
“I wish we were never stopping,” said Kildare. “I mean, I hate to see things stop.”
She looked with a sudden flash of interest at him—and they went on. Wherever they went somebody knew her, a party seemed ready to engulf her, yet she never seemed fully aware of what was going on around her. She drank little, danced a great deal, and in her face there appeared, it seemed to Kildare, greater and greater apprehension, as though she were approaching some invisible danger. At four o’clock, when the wheels that made New York travel by night all stop, Nancy Messenger bought the whole orchestra for triple pay and took it with a dozen of the last guests at the night club to a little apartment belonging to one of these new friends. There the party started all over again with a whoop, but the enthusiasm could not last. Dancing weariness and alcoholic fatigue began to reduce them to sleep by five-thirty. At six the party crumbled away to nothing and left Kildare with Nancy in the limousine which the chauffeur with the black streak of moustache was driving. She had been working hard up to the very moment when the party fell to pieces, like a driver whipping on tired horses, but she could not keep that group awake. Now she sat back with her eyes closed, apparently exhausted, but still he noted a certain tremulous tension about her lips.
“Tell me where to take you,” said the girl, without opening her eyes. “Where are you staying?”
“I suppose I have to be dropped somewhere,” agreed Kildare. “I don’t suppose we just could drive on for a while.”
He had his elbows on his knees and stared straight ahead, but he could feel the girl wake up beside him.
“We can have a spin through the Park, if you want,” he said.
“That’s better than nothing,” nodded Kildare. “Let’s do that.”
So the car was turned up Fifth Avenue and then in at the Sixtieth Street entrance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE knew that before the single round of the Park had been completed he must do his work with the girl. If he failed to hold her now, she was gone through his fingers. Still he could not find a good approach. In the hospital things were not like this. Patients had to answer questions there, but even a single interrogation probably would close the lips of Nancy for the rest of the night. When he tried to think his way forward, he found his train of thought dissipating among the clouds of frosty trees that swept away behind them, left and right; when he searched for words, the hollow of his brain was filled by the rushing noise of the tyres over the wet pavement, like a high wind. They continually were slowing for a red light, gathering soft way again when the green appeared. They were up by the reservoir and still the silence held Kildare. Ahead of them he saw a big yellow street lamp like a rising moon or a sun through heavy mist.
“The long nights,” said Kildare. “Now—if that were the sun coming up—you know?” He glanced nervously toward her and found that she was appraising him with a coldly curious eye. She was interested, but from a great distance. However, he had struck out a-line and for lack of a better he stuck to it.
“I thought it would be worse than this, though,” said Kildare. “I mean, about two o’clock it looked to me as though the party were going smash.”
“Well, would that have been such a great disaster?” he asked.
“No, not to you, of course,” said Kildare. He reached into his memory of certain cases and found phrases ready-made at his hand. “You don’t know anything about the emptiness that spins like a wheel, do you?”
“Emptiness—spins?” she repeated. She sat up and looked at him.
“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s horrible,” said Kildare. “But I mean—the darkness whistling—I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“I don’t mind listening,” she told him.
“You’d mind if I told you more about it, though,” went on Kildare. “The room you’ve been living in all day, happily enough—you’ve never had that room turn into a coffin when the night comes, have you?” A sudden movement of her head told him that he had caught her full attention at last, but she was silent. He leaned back and put a hand over his face. In this way he covered his smile of triumph, but also he felt like a sneak-thief. He said: “The right sort of people go to bed at a decent time, and they never stir until the daylight comes. But there are other people who’d rather have a hangman fit a noose around their neck than be alone at night.—Do you mind me talking?”
When she spoke to him now, there was a softening of her voice that gave a new quality to the whole night.
“Does it help you to talk about it?” she asked. “I’m glad to listen.”
“May I?” asked Kildare with a pretended eagerness. “Sometimes talking about it—if only one can find the right person—makes the whole business seem as childish as Mother Goose. It is childish, isn’t it?”
“Fear of the dark?” she asked.
“You don’t know anything about it,” declared Kildare, rousing himself to a greater fervour. “I can tell the people who never have any trouble about the night. They have clean, clear eyes like yours. They’ve never gone to sleep and dreamed that they were buried alive. They’ve never had a dream like that. Shall I tell you what it’s like?”
“Yes—tell me,” she said. He could feel her tension. It was like having a fish on a line.
“There are twenty different kinds,” said Kildare. “One of them is like this: You’re lying down on a smooth green lawn stretched out under a tree that makes a sort of a green heaven over you. The blue of the sky filters down through the branches till you know that you’re asleep. It’s the sort of a sleep that children have, perfect unconsciousness and a sense of being carried along toward happiness. There’s a bit of a wind blowing, and after a while it drifts over the grass a ripple of sand, a harmless little ripple of sand. It rolls up; it breaks and barely tickles your skin. Another ripple comes with the wind. The sand fits cool and snug under your cheek. More ripples build the sand higher and higher around your face…You can’t move, you know. The sleep has bound you down like cold irons. You can’t stir, and the sand is up to your lips now. If you dare to open your mouth, it will pour down your throat. It reaches your nostrils. All at once—my God, you’re breathing the sand into your lungs! All the clean air with life in it is gone from the world!”