“You can’t go out again, Nancy,” he said. “Don’t go out, please.”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“You look rotten. You look all in,” said Kildare. “Nancy, I’m terribly fond of you. Don’t go out again. Try to rest a little, will you?”
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head, keeping her eyes hopelessly on him.
“Listen to me,” he said, “you go and lie down on the library couch and I’ll read aloud to you. I’m such a rotten reader that people always go to sleep in self-defence. You know?”
“Oh, Johnny, Johnny; it’s no good,” she said. “But where I’m going, maybe I’ll find something that canhelp me.”
There was a possibly double meaning in what she said that struck him cold.
“But I can’t ask you to come along. You’re too played out.”
“Nothing in the world could keep me from going along,” said Kildare.
He turned with her down the hall, down the stairs. “Are we going to leave any word? About when we’re coming back?” he asked her.
“It’s no good getting them into bad habits,” she said, with a wan smile. “They mustn’t start expecting to know where I am. Because in the end—” She did not finish the speech.
They were in the front hall when she said this and the door was opened in front of them by Charles Herron. He put the key back into his pocket and took off his hat, still silently looking at her. Then he spoke gravely to Kildare and said to Nancy: “You were hard to find last night, my dear.”
Kildare stepped away across the hall and turned his back on them as he pretended to look out the window on the formal little patch of garden at the rear of the house. He heard Nancy explaining: “I was just following my nose and it led me to some unexpected places. That was all. Were you wanting me?”
Herron got his voice down a bit lower, but there was so much natural resonance that Kildare heard every word clearly.
“I telephoned to your friends. None of them had seen you. I dropped around to a dozen of the night spots which you seem to favour. You weren’t around, and you hadn’t been seen. I suppose you were with young Johnny Stevens?”
If the girl answered, Kildare could not hear the words. Herron was saying: “What is the mystery? Am I what makes you unhappy?”
“Don’t go on,” said the faint voice of Nancy. “Don’t ask any more questions, Charles.”
“I spent the night hunting—and worrying. You were out till the morning and I was in hell. I know how fine you are, but I also know how rotten the night world is. You can’t like it. Can you?”
“No. I don’t like it.”
“Then what drives you to it? Is it because you want to get the thought of our marriage out of your mind?”
“No, Charles. No, please!” whispered the girl.
“Good God, Nancy, there’s no use being pitiful about it. If you’ll have me, I’m yours for the taking, and for ever. I feel as though I was taking my life in my hands forcing things like this. But I’ve got to know. Will you set up the day for our marriage, or will you not?”
“But I can’t!” said the girl.
“Why not?”
“Because of things you can’t understand.”
“I’ll do my stupid best to comprehend them if you’ll try to tell me.”
“But I can’t. I can’t…Charles, please wait…Don’t judge me now…Think of it just for one day…You’re in a passion…Charles, don’t say it!”
“I won’t say anything. I’m only waiting for you.”
The voice of the girl came faintly to Kildare, like an agony of his own mind.
“I’ve known it would have to come to this,” she murmured.
“It doesn’t have to come to anything,” declared Herron. “Ten clear words from you—that’s all I want, Nancy.” Then anger got into his voice. “But you wrong yourself and you wrong me when you trail me like a dog at your heels. Nancy, if it’s not our marriage that’s making the change in you, will you tell me what else it may be?”
She was silent. As the pause extended, Kildare found that he was holding his breath.
“Very well,” said Herron. “I’d rather have silence than some lie with nothing but pity behind it. But if you want me to carry on—if you want me to be blind and hopeful—say the word and I’ll swallow my pride and be that even.”
There was only the silence again. There was such a tension in Kildare that he felt himself breaking. Every instant of the pause was more incredible to him, for he knew that they loved one another with a rare and deep passion; he could not believe that they were parting. But now he heard Herron saying:
“Losing you is going to be hell, but I’ll never come begging for a word and a kind look. You can be sure that you’ll never see me again; no matter what happens, you’ll never lay eyes on me again.”
Even then she did not utter a word of answer.
When Kildare turned, he saw that Nancy had slipped down into a chair. Herron was taking the house key from his pocket and putting it on the table; then he opened the door and went out. Kildare, hurrying after him, found him lingering an instant on the top step, like someone surveying the weather before venturing out into the city.
Kildare said: “You’re wrong, Herron. She loves you. You’re as wrong as the devil. She’s not well. She’s sick and you’re making her desperate.”
It seemed hard for Herron to turn his head so that he could see Kildare. His contempt and disgust he managed to keep unexpressed except by his eyes; then he passed down the steps to his car. Kildare went back to the girl. Her head had fallen back. She was utterly exhausted. She pulled blindly to get on her gloves.
“You’re taking it too hard,” said Kildare. “That’s the way a man is apt to talk to a woman—if he loves her. He’ll get over it. He’ll come back to you if you say a word.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t know him,” she answered. “He makes up his mind only once about everything.”
“It’s not too late, Nancy. You can hurry a message to him. Tell him that you will marry him; it’s only the setting of the date that’s hard on you, just now.”
“Marry him?” she echoed. “I’ll never marry anyone. Will you take me away now? Back to the old house and Nora, Johnny?”
He took her back in the coupé on another silent ride. That word of hers about never marrying had staggered him. He felt that he was being presented not with too little but with too much evidence, only it needed some word, some key for the sorting of it. He wanted time, and apparently there was to be no time, for the action was heaping up before him.
That stunned, unhappy silence continued in her for mile after mile, except that she murmured once or twice: “I’ll never see him again; I’ll never lay eyes on him again. Did you hear him say that?”
When they came into the open country, she had recovered a little. She said:
“Johnny, I know what you think about doctors.”
“They’re a silly lot,” he said.
“I know. But it isn’t their silliness. When I see one of them, it makes me think of death; it’s like having death breathe in my face to have one of them near me. Can you understand that?”
“That’s a little thick, but I know that a lot of people feel that way about them,” he agreed. He listened hungrily. There seemed to be many roads toward the solution of the mystery, and this was a promising one. He wanted time, time, time—a month, even a week might do, but the girl, he felt sure, was going now straight to her destiny. This day, perhaps, would end everything.
“But Nora,” said the girl, “knows someone who is either quite miraculous or else a frightful quack. He hasn’t a licence to practise. He can’t even charge prices for his services. You just give him what you please. Do you think I’d be crazy if I went to him?”