Outside Inn Part 32

"Everything?"

"Well, money and freedom and--and--"

"Money is the only thing I've got that you haven't, and that doesn't mean much unless you can share it with the person you love."

"No, it doesn't, does it?" Nancy said unexpectedly. "What's that scar on your forehead?"

"That's a scratch I got."

"How?"

"Shaving or fighting, or something like that."

"_Was_ it fighting, d.i.c.k?"

"Yes."

"Who were you fighting with?"

"I wasn't fighting. I was a.s.saulting and battering."

"Why, d.i.c.k!"

"If it's any satisfaction to you to know it I made one grand job of it."

"Why should it be any satisfaction to me?"

"I don't know."

"Why, d.i.c.k!" Nancy said again. "I didn't know you had any of that kind of brutality in you."

"Didn't you?"

"What happens to a man when he--does a thing like that?"

"He gets jugged."

"Did he get jugged?"

"Well, that wasn't the part that interested me."

An odd picture presented itself to Nancy's mind of the men of the world engaged in one grand melee of brawling; struggling, belaying one another with their bare fists, drawing blood; brutes turned on brutes.

"Men are queer things," she said.

d.i.c.k's face was turned away from her. It was not at the moment a face she would have recognized. The eyes were contracted: the nostrils quivering: the teeth set.

"I'm always at your service, Nancy," he said presently. "Is there anything in the world you want that I can get for you?"

"The only thing I want is something you can't get?"

"And that is?"

"Sheila."

"No," d.i.c.k said. "I can't get Sheila for you. I'm sorry. I suppose that's the whole answer to you," he went on musingly. "You want something, somebody to mother--to minister to. It doesn't make so much difference what else it is, so long as it's--downtrodden. That's why I've never made more of a hit with you. I've never been downtrodden enough. I didn't need feeding or nursing. I've always sort of cherished the feeling that I liked to be the one creature you didn't have to carry on your back. I thought that to stand behind _you_ was a pretty good stunt, but you've never needed anything yet to fall back on."

"I don't think I ever shall," Nancy said. "Not,--not in the way you mean, d.i.c.k."

"So be it," he said, folding his arms. "But there's still one thing you'll take from me, and that's the thing I've got that you haven't--money. I never have cared much about it before, but now that there are so many things I can't put right for you, I know you won't be selfish enough to deny this one satisfaction. Let me make over to you all the money you need to get you out of your difficulties with the Inn. Let me hand out a good round sum for all these charities of yours. If you knew how everything else in connection with you had conspired to hurt me,--how this being discounted and losing out all around has cut into me, you wouldn't deny me this one privilege. You don't want _me_, you wouldn't take me, but for G.o.d's sake, Nancy, take this one thing that I can give you."

They had just swung into the lower entrance of the Park, and the big car was speeding silently into the deepening night, low hung with silver stars, and jeweled with soft lights.

"You're awfully good to me, d.i.c.k," Nancy said, "and I appreciate every word you've been saying. I'd take your money, not for myself, but for the things I'm doing, if I needed it, but I don't, you know." She looked out into the coolness of the evening, lulled by the transition to a region of so much airiness and s.p.a.ce, soothed by the soft motion, and the presence of a friend who loved her. The conversation in which she was engaged suddenly became trivial and unimportant to her. She was very tired, and she found herself beginning to rest and relax. "I don't need it," she repeated vaguely. "I've got plenty of money of my own. Over a million, Billy says now. Uncle Elijah left it to me. I didn't want him to, but perhaps it was all for the best." She put her head back against the cushions and shut her eyes. "I'm terribly sleepy," she said, "and as for the Inn--that's making money, too, you know. Last month we cleared more than two hundred dollars."

And d.i.c.k saying nothing, but continuing to stare into s.p.a.ce--the panoramic s.p.a.ce fleeting rhythmically by the car window,--she let herself gradually slip into the depths of sudden drowsiness that had overtaken her.

CHAPTER XX

HITTY

Hitty put on her bonnet--she had worn widow's weeds for twenty-five years--and went out into the morning. She finally succeeded in boarding a south-bound Sixth Avenue car,--though since it was her habit to ignore the near side stop regulation, she always had considerable trouble in getting on any car,--and in seating herself bolt upright on the lengthwise seat, her black gloved hands folded indomitably before her.

At Fourth Street she descended and made her way east to the square, and thence to the top floor of the studio building to which Collier Pratt had taken his little daughter on the memorable occasion when he had plucked her from her warm nest of blankets and led her, sleepy and shivering, into the cold of the night. She had been at some pains to secure the address without taking Nancy into her confidence.

She took each creaking stair with a snort of disgust, and reaching the battered door with Collier Pratt's visiting card tacked on the smeary panel on a level with her eye, she knocked sharply, and scorning to wait for a reply, turned the k.n.o.b and walked in.

Collier Pratt was making coffee on a small spirit lamp, set on the wash-stand, which was decorously concealed during the more formal hours of the day behind a soft colored j.a.panese screen. He was wearing a s.m.u.tty painter's smock, and though his face was shining with soap and water, his hair was standing about his face in a disorder eloquent of at least a dozen hours' neglect. Sheila, in a mussy gingham dress, was trying to pry off the pasteboard covering of a pint bottle of milk with a pair of scissors, and succeeding only indifferently. They both turned on Hitty's entrance, and the milk bottle went crashing to the floor when the little girl recognized her friend, but after one terrified look at her father she made no move at all in Hitty's direction.

"And to what," Collier Pratt e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed slowly and disagreeably, as is any man's wont before he has had his draught of breakfast coffee, "am I to attribute the pleasure of this visit?"

"It ain't no pleasure to me," Hitty said, advancing, a figure of menace, into the center of the dusty workshop, strangely uncouth and unprepossessing in the cold morning light,--"and if it's any pleasure to you, that's an effect that I ain't calculated to produce. I've come here on business--the business of collecting that poor neglected child there, and taking her back where she belongs, where there's folks that knows enough to treat her right."

"Another of Miss Martin's friends and well-wishers, I take it. These American girls are given to surrounding themselves with groups of warm and impulsive a.s.sociates. Do you by any chance happen to know a young lawyer by the name of Boynton, Hitty? A collection lawyer?"

"I'll thank you to call me Mrs. Spinney, if you please, or if you don't please. Mrs. Spinney is the name I go by when I'm spoken to by them that knows their manners. If Billy Boynton thinks he can collect blood out of a stone he's welcome to try, but I should think he was too long headed to waste his time."

"I gave him my I. O. U.," Collier Pratt said wearily. "If you don't mind, Hitty,--I really must be excused from your inexcusable surname--I am going to drink a cup of coffee before we continue this interesting discussion--_cafe noir_, our late unfortunate accident depriving me of _cafe au lait_ as usual. Sheila, get the cups."

"You don't mean to say that you feed that peaked child with full strength coffee, do you? It'll stunt her growth; ain't you got the sense to know that?"

"I don't like _big_ women," Collier Pratt said. "She's very fond of coffee."

"Well! I've come to get her and take her away where you won't be in a position to stunt her growth, whatever your ideas on the subject is."