Part 28 (1/2)

”When my play is produced,” Nancy went on, airily, ”I shall invite you to come down and sit in a box and see it--and maybe, you'll bring Miss Denny with you!” She wanted to punish him.

But Peter Hyde, the incorrigible, was looking neither crestfallen nor disheartened. He seized both of Nancy's hands and held them very close.

”I'll come! When that play is produced you can just bet I'll be in the stage box and it won't be Miss Denny that's with me either! You haven't told me, Nancy--that you did not love _me_! You've just said you didn't like--pigs and cows and hired men and Judson's in general.

Dear, I'm not going to let you answer me--now! I'm not even going to say good-bye! You're a tired little girl. If I go, will you promise me to go straight to bed?”

In her astonishment Nancy submitted to the impetuous kiss he pressed against her fingers. When but a few moments before her heart had been torn with pity that she must hurt this man, now he was, in a masterful way, sending her off to bed as though she was a very little girl! And nothing in his tone or manner suggested _anything_ but utter peace of mind and heart.

But Nancy _was_ tired--so very tired that it was pleasant to be led up the path toward the house, to think that someone--even Peter Hyde--cared enough about her to beg her ”not to open an eye for twenty-four hours.”

And of course it was because the day had held so much for her that upon reaching her room, she threw herself across her bed and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

CHAPTER XXV

NANCY'S CONFESSION

A thousand torments seemed to rack poor Nancy's tired soul and body.

For a long time she had lain, very still, across her bed. Then she had, mechanically, made ready for the night. But sleep would not come.

Wider and wider-eyed she stared at the dim outline that was her open window. After awhile she crossed to it and knelt down before it, her bare arms folded on the sill.

A sense of remorse, which Nancy had been trying for some time past to keep tucked back somewhere in a corner of her mind, now overwhelmed her. She saw herself a cheat, an imposter. What would these good people of Happy House say of her when they knew all of them, even Peter Hyde--and little Nonie!

Her hands clenched tightly, Nancy faced what she called the reckoning.

Only a few days before she and Aunt Milly had had a long talk. Aunt Milly had told her how, one afternoon, she had tried to walk--and had failed.

”I'd been praying, my dear, that it might be possible. I thought, perhaps, I felt so much better----. But the wonderful thing was Nancy,--_I didn't care_! My life seems so full, now, of real things, thanks to all you've done for me, that whether I can walk or not is insignificant. And I shall always have you, anyway, Nancy!” Aunt Milly had said with the yearning look in her eyes that Nancy knew so well.

What would Aunt Milly say when she knew?

How had she, Nancy, betrayed Sabrina's trust?

Rapidly, as one can at such moments, Nancy's mind went over the weeks of her stay at Happy House. She had let herself go so far; she had taught these people she was deceiving to grow fond of her--to _need_ her!

And she had grown fond of them--that was her punishment. She had grown fond of Happy House; she wanted to be the real Anne Leavitt and belong to Happy House and its precious traditions, that she had mocked; she wanted to have the right to rejoice, now, in the vindication of that brother who had gone away, years before.

Poor little Nancy, s.h.i.+vering there in the chill and silence of the night, her world, her girl's world, fell away from her. Like one looking in from without, she saw her own life as though it was another's--and what it might hold for her! She saw it stripped of the little superficialities of youth; she saw clearly, with uncanny preciseness, causes and effects, the havoc, too, of her own thoughtlessness and weaknesses.

Something in the vision frightened her, but challenged the best in her, too. One had only one life to live and each wasted day counted so much--each wasted hour cost so dearly! In the striving for the far goal one must not leave undone the little things that lay close at hand, the little, worth-while, sometimes-hard things. She had gone a long way down the wrong road, but she'd turn squarely! Her head went high--she would make a clean breast of it all--to them all; Aunt Sabrina, Aunt Milly--Peter Hyde.

Her face went down against her arms; she wanted to hide, even in the darkness, the flush that mantled her cheeks. She could see his eyes as they had seemed to caress her--out there in the orchard. Oh, why had she not told him the truth, then and there; if she had he would have despised her, but it would have killed forever the hope she had read in his face.

Nancy, girlishly eager to struggle in life's tide, now, facing the greatest thing in life, shrank back, afraid. She wanted, oh so much, to be little again; there had always been someone, then, to whom to turn when problems pressed--Daddy, even Mrs. Finnegan--the Seniors in college, the Dean herself. Now--she felt alone.

Lighting her lamp, she pulled a chair to the table and spread out sheets of paper. She wanted to tell it all, while her courage lasted.

She wrote furiously, her lips pressed in a straight line. She would not spare herself one bit--Peter Hyde must know just what she had done.

But, at the end, she yielded to a longing too strong to resist.

”Please, _please_ don't think too badly of me. You see you don't know Anne and how her heart was set on going to Russia, and she was sure that if she told her relatives about going they'd stop her. And that seemed, then, the only important thing--neither of us thought of the wrong we'd be doing the people--here. It seemed, too, a very little thing for me to do for her. But I just can't bear to have _you_ hate me!” For a moment she held her pencil over the last words, then hastily sealed the letter and addressed it.