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Undertow

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Undertow



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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS


UNDERTOW


VOLUME VII






To

MARGARET THOMAS

We need no gifts, whose thoughts and prayers maintain
Through all the years a strong and stronger chain,
Yet take the little gift, the visible sign
Of the deep love between your heart and mine.





UNDERTOW



Chapter One


The marriage of Albert Bradley and Anne Polk Barrett was as close
as anything comes, in these prosaic days, to a high adventure.
Nancy's Uncle Thomas, a quiet, gentle old Southerner who wore tan
linen suits when he came to New York, which was not often, and
Bert's mother, a tiny Boston woman who had lived in a diminutive
Brookline apartment since her three sons had struck out into the
world for themselves, respectively assured the young persons that
they were taking a grave chance. However different their viewpoint
of life, old Mrs. Bradley and old Mr. Polk could agree heartily in
that.

Of course there was much to commend the union. Nancy was
beautiful, she came of gentlefolk, and she liked to assert that
she was practical, she "had been a workin' woman for yeahs." This
statement had reference to a comfortable and informal position she
held with a private association for the relief of the poor. Nancy
was paid fifteen dollars a week, seven of which she in turn paid
to the pretty young widow, an old family friend only a few years
older than herself, with whom she boarded. Mrs. Terhune was rich,
in a modest way, and frequently refused the money entirely. But
she took it often enough to make the blooming Nancy feel quite
self-supporting, and as Nancy duly reported at the sunshiny office
of the Southern Ladies' Helping Hand every morning, or almost
every morning, the girl had some reason to feel that she had
solved her financial and domestic problem.

Bert was handsome, too, and his mother knew everybody who was any
body in Boston. If Nancy's grandfather Polk had been Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Maryland, why, Bert was the seventh of his
name in direct descent, and it was in Bert's great-great-
grandfather's home that several prominent citizens of Boston had
assumed feathers and warpaint for a celebrated tea-party a great
many years ago.

More than that, Bert was at a sensible age for matrimony, twenty-
five, and Nancy, like all southern girls, had ripened early, and
at twenty-two had several years of dancing and flirting behind
her. There was nothing impulsive about the affair. The two had
trotted about their adopted city for perhaps two years before Bert
brought Nancy the enormous diamond that his mother had given him
years ago for just this wonderful time. Circumstances had helped
them to know each other well. Nancy knew the sort of play that
made Bert stutter with enthusiasm as they walked home, and Bert
knew that Nancy made adorable little faces when she tried on hats,
and that her salary was fifteen dollars a week. At this time, and
for some years later, Bert was only one of several renting agents
employed by the firm of Pearsall and Pearsall, City Real Estate.
He moved his office from one new office-building downtown to
another, sometimes warmed by clanking new radiators, sometimes
carrying a gasoline stove with him into the region of new plaster
and paint. His name was not important enough to be included in the
list of tenants in the vestibule, he was merely "Renting Office,
Tenth Floor." And Nancy knew that when he had been a few months
longer with Pearsall and Pearsall, they would pay him exactly
thirteen hundred dollars a year.

That was the objection, money. Mother and Uncle Tom thought that
that was not enough; Nancy and Bert worked it all out on paper,
and thought it more than sufficient. They always had a splendid
balance, on paper. Meanwhile, Mrs. Terhune went on refusing
Nancy's board now and then, and slipping bank-notes into Nancy's
purse now and then, and Bert continued to board with the southern
gentlewomen to whom he had paid ten dollars a week for three
years. He felt like a son in the Venables' house, by this time.

It was at the Venables' boarding-house, indeed, that he first had
met the dark-eyed and vivacious Nancy, who was intimate with the
faded daughters of the family, Miss Augusta and Miss Sally Anne.
When Nancy's Uncle Thomas came to the city for one of his
infrequent visits, she always placed him in Mrs. Venable's care.

Bert's first impression of her was of a supernaturally clever
person, hopelessly surrounded by "beaux." She had so many admirers
that even Miss Augusta, who had had a disappointment, warmed into
half-forgotten coquetries while she amused Bert, for whom Miss
Nancy had no time. They seemed to Bert, whose youth had known
responsibility and hardship, a marvellously happy and light-
hearted crowd. They laughed continuously, and they extracted from
the chameleon city pleasures that were wonderfully innocent and
fresh. It was as if these young exiles had brought from their
southern homes something of leisure, something of spaciousness and
pure sweetness that the more sophisticated youth of the city
lacked. Their very speech, softly slurred and lazy, held a charm
for Bert, used to his mother's and his aunts' crisp consonants. He
called Nancy "my little southern girl" in his heart, from the hour
he met her, and long afterward he told her that he had loved her
all that time.

He could not free the cramped muscles of his spirit to meet her
quite on her own ground; it was his fate sometimes to reach the
laugh just as all the others grew suddenly serious, and as often
he took their airy interest heavily, and chained them with facts,
from which they fluttered like a flight of butterflies. But he had
his own claim, and it warmed the very fibres of his lonely heart
when he saw that Nancy was beginning to recognize that claim.

When they all went out to the theatre and supper, it was his
pocket-book that never failed them. And what a night that was
when, eagerly proffering the fresh bills to Lee Porter, who was
giving the party, he looked up to catch a look of protest, and
shame, and gratitude, in Nancy's lovely eyes!

"No, now, Lee, you shall not take it!" she laughed richly. Bert
thought for a second that this was more than mere persiflage, for
the expression on the girl's face was new. Later he reminded
himself that they all used curious forms of speech. "I just was
too tired to get up this morning," a girl who had actually gotten
up would say, or someone would comment upon a late train: "The old
train actually never did get here!"

After a while he took Nancy to lunch once or twice, and one day
took her to the Plaza, where his mother happened to be staying
with Cousin Mary Winthrop and Cousin Anna Baldwin, and his mother
said that Nancy was a sweet, lovely girl. Bert had quite a thrill
when he saw the familiar, beautiful face turned seriously and with
pretty concern toward his mother, and he liked Nancy's composure
among the rather formal older women. She managed her tea and her
gloves and her attentions prettily, thought Bert. When he took her
home at six o'clock he was conscious that he had passed an
invisible barrier in their relationship; she knew his mother. They
were of one breed.

But that night, when he went back to the hotel to dine, his mother
drew him aside.

"Not serious, dear--between you and Miss Barrett, I mean?"

Bert laughed in pleasant confusion.

"Well, I--of course I admire her awfully. Everyone does. But I
don't know that I'd have a chance with her." Suddenly and unbidden
there leaped into his heart the glorious thought of possessing
Nancy. Nancy--his wife, making a home and a life for unworthy him!
He flushed deeply. His mother caught the abashed murmur,
"...thirteen hundred a year!"

"Exactly!" she said incisively, almost triumphantly. But her eyes,
closely watching his expression, were anxious. "I don't believe in
having things made too easy for young persons," she added,
smiling. "But that--that really is too hard."

"Yep. That's too hard," Bert agreed.

"It isn't fair to the girl to ask it," added his mother gently.

"That's true," Bert said a little heavily, after a pause. "It
isn't fair--to Nancy."

The next night Nancy wondered why his manner was so changed, and
why he spoke so bitterly of his work, and what was the matter with
him anyway. She reflected that perhaps he was sorry his mother's
visit was over. For two or three weeks he seemed restless and
discontented, and equally unwilling to be included in the "Dutch
treats," or to be left out of them. And then suddenly the bad mood
passed, and Bert was his kind and appreciative and generous self
again. Clark Belknap, also of Maryland, who had plenty of money
and a charming personality and manner as well, began to show the
familiar symptoms toward Nancy, and Bert told himself that Clark
would be an admirable match for her. Also his Cousin Mary wrote
him that his second cousin Dorothy Hayes Hamilton was going to be
in New York for a few weeks, and asked him to take her about a
little, and see that she had a nice time. Cousin Mary, as was
usual, enclosed a generous check to insure the nice time, and
little Dorothy proved to be a very rose of a girl, just as
unspoiled as if her fortune had been half a dollar instead of half
a million and full of pride in her big cousin, whose Harvard
record she evidently knew by heart.

Bert willingly took her about, and they became good friends. He
did not see much of Nancy now, and one of the times he did see her
was unfortunate. He and Dorothy had been having tea at a roof-
garden, after a long delightful day in Dorothy's car, and now he
was to take her to her hotel. Just as he was holding the little
pongee wrap, and Dorothy was laughing up at him from under the
roses on her hat, he saw Nancy, going out between two older women.
His look just missed hers; he knew she had seen him; had perhaps
been watching him, but he could not catch her eye again.

It was a hot night, and Nancy looked a little pale and, although
as trim and neat as usual, a little shabby. Her pretty hands in
old gloves she had washed herself, her pretty eyes patiently fixed
upon the faces of the women who were boring her in her youth and
freshness with the business of sickness and poverty, her whole
gentle, rather weary aspect, smote Bert's heart with a pain that
was half a fierce joy. Never had he loved her in her gaiety and
her indifference as he loved her now, when she looked so sweetly,
so almost sorrowfully.

A week later he went to see her.

"Well, Mister Bert Bradley," she smiled at him, unfastening the
string from the great box of roses that had simultaneously arrived
from some other admirer, "I didn't know what to make of you! And
who was the more-than-pretty little girl that you were squiring on
the Waldorf roof last week?"

"Just my cousin, Dorothy Hamilton. She went back to Boston to-day.
She's finished school, and had a year abroad, and now she isn't
quite sure what she wants to do. How's Mr. Belknap?"

She narrowed her eyes at him mischievously.

"Don't you think you're smart! These are from him. He's very well.
He took me to the theatre last night, and we had a wonderful time.
Come with me into the kitchen, while I put these in water."

"Take good care of them!" Bert said witheringly. But she only
laughed at him from the sink. He followed her into the small, hot,
neat kitchen, with the clean empty pint bottle and the quarter-
pint bottle turned upside down near the bright faucets, and the
enamel handles of the gas stove all turned out in an even row.
Bert remembered that the last time he had been here was a cold May
morning, when he and Nancy had made countless hot cakes. He had
met her at church, and walked home with her, and while they were
luxuriously finishing the last of the hot cakes the others had
burst in, with the usual harum-scarum plans for the day. But that
was May, and now it was July, and somehow the bloom seemed to be
gone from their relationship.

They talked pleasantly, and after awhile Mrs. Terhune came in and
talked, too. She was distressed about some shares she held in a
traction company and Bert was able to be of real service to her,
taking a careful memorandum, and promising to see her about it in
a day. "For I expect we'll see you round here in a day or two,"
she said with simple archness. She was well used to the demands of
Nancy's beaux. Nancy looked particularly innocent and expectant at
this, "Perhaps Mr. Bradley might come in and cheer you up, if I go
off with Mrs. Featherstone for the week-end?" she suggested
pleasantly. Mrs. Featherstone had been Virginia Belknap.

Bert presently bade her a cold good-bye. His reassurance to Mrs.
Terhune was made the next day by telephone, and life became dark
and dull to him. Certain things hurt him strangely--the sight of
places where she had taken off the shabby gloves; and had seated
herself happily opposite him for luncheon or tea; the sound of
music she had hummed. He wanted to see her--not feverishly,
nothing extreme, except that he wanted it every second of the
time. A mild current of wanting to see Nancy underran all his
days; he could control it, he decided, and to an extent he did. He
ate and worked and even slept in spite of it. But it was always
there, and it tired him, and made him feel old and sad.

And then they met; Bert idling through the September sweetness and
softness and goldness of the park, Nancy briskly taking her
business-like way from West Eightieth to East Seventy-second
Street. What Nancy experienced in the next hour Bert could only
guess, he knew that she was glad to see him, and that for some
reason she was entirely off guard. For himself, he was like a
thirsty animal that reaches trees, and shade, and the wide
dimpling surface of clear waters. He had so often imagined meeting
her, and had so longed to meet her, that he was actually a little
confused, and wanted shakily to laugh, and to cling to her.

He walked to Seventy-second Street, with her and then to tea at a
tiny place in Madison Avenue called the Prince Royal. And she
settled herself opposite him, just as in his dreams--only so much
more sweetly--and smiled at him from her dear faithful blue eyes,
as she laid aside her gloves.

She was wearing a large diamond, surrounded by topazes. Bert knew
that he had never seen this ring before, although it did not look
like a new one. However, the age of the ring signified nothing. He
wondered if Clark Belknap's mother had ever worn it, and if Clark
had just given it to Nancy...

She was full of heavenly interest and friendliness. But when they
were walking home she told him that she was so sorry--she couldn't
ask him to dine, because she was going out. She asked him for the
next day, but his board of directors was having a monthly meeting
that night, and he had to be there. How about Saturday?

Saturday she was going out of town, a special meeting of the Red
Cross. They hung there. Nancy was perhaps ashamed to go on through
the list of days, Bert would not ungenerously force her. He left
her, thrilled and yet dissatisfied. He looked back almost with
envy to his state of a few hours earlier, when he had been hoping
that he might meet her.




Chapter Two


The week dragged by. The undercurrent of longing to see Nancy
flowed on and on. Bert wanted nothing else--just Nancy. He had
been spending the summer with a friend, at the friend's uptown
house, but now he thought he would go out to the Venables, and
show some interest in his newly-papered room and hear them speak
of her.

He rang their bell with a thumping heart. It was four o'clock in
the afternoon. She might even be here! Or they might tell him she
was engaged to Clark Belknap of Maryland. ... Bert felt so sick at
the thought that it seemed a fact. He wanted to run away.

Miss Augusta, red-eyed, opened the door. Beyond her he was somehow
vaguely aware of darkness, and weeping, and the subdued rustling
of gowns. Po' Nancy Barrett was here--he knew that? Well, didn't
he know that the dea' old Colonel had passed away suddenly--Miss
Augusta's tears flowed afresh. Nancy had come in unexpectedly to
lunch, and the telegram from her aunt had come while she was
there. "Tell Nancy Brother Edward passed on at five o'clock. Come
home at once."

Bert listened dazedly, in the shabby old parlour with the scrolled
flowery carpet, and the statues, and the square piano. He
comforted Miss Augusta, he even put one arm about her. Was there
something he could do?--he asked the forlorn, empty question
merely as a matter of course.

"I don't suppose yo' could send some telegrams..." Miss Augusta
said, blowing her nose damply. "Po' child, she hasn't got a
brother, nor anyone to depend on now in the hour of her bitteh
need!"

Bert's heart leaped.

"Just tell me!" he begged. "And what about trains, and
arrangements? Will she go down? And clothes?--would she need
something--"

This last item had been attended. Mama and Sis' Sally Anne had
gone down town, po' child, she didn't want much. And yes, she was
going down, to-morrow--that night, if it could be managed.

"But Nancy herself had better see yo'," Miss Augusta said
disappearing. Bert waited, his heart thundering. Murmuring and
tears came from some remote region. Then quietly and slowly Nancy,
in new black, came in. And Bert knew that to the end of the world,
as long as he should breathe, life would mean Nancy's life to him;
and the world was only Nancy.

They sat down on the slippery horsehair, and talked softly and
quickly. Ticket--train--telegrams--the little money that was
necessary--he advised her about them all. He called her "Nancy"
to-day, for the first time. He remembered afterward that she had
called him nothing. She went to get Mrs. Venable, after a while,
and later Sis' Sally Anne drew him aside and told him to make
Nancy drink her good hot tea. She drank it, at his command. Clark
Belknap came that evening; others came--all too late. Before the
first of them, Bert had taken her to the train, had made her as
comfortable as he could, had sat beside her, with her soft gloved
hand tight in his, murmuring to her that she had so much to be
thankful for--no pain, no illness, no real age. But she had left
him, she said, her lip trembling and her eyes brimming again. He
reminded her of her pretty, dependent step-mother, of the two
little half-brothers who were just waiting for Nancy to come and
straighten everything out.

"Yes--I've got to keep up for them!" she said, smiling bravely.
And in a tense undertone she added, "You're wonderful to me!"

"And will you have some supper--just to break the evening?"

"I had tea." She leaned back, and shut her eyes. "I couldn't--
eat!" she whispered pitifully. His response was to put his clean,
folded handkerchief into her hand, and at that she opened the wet
eyes, and smiled at him shakily.

"Just some soup--or a salad," he urged. "Will you promise me,
Nancy?"

"I promise you I'll try," she said in parting.

Walking home with his head in a whirl, Bert said to himself: "This
is the second of October. I'll give her six months. On the second
of April I'll ask her."

However, he asked her on Christmas night, after the Venables'
wonderful Christmas dinner, when they all talked of the Civil War
as if it were yesterday, and when old laces, old jet and coral
jewelry, and frail old silk gowns were much in evidence. They were
sitting about the coal fire in the back drawing-room, when Nancy
and Bert chanced to be alone. Mrs. Venables had gone to brew some
punch, with Sis' Sally Anne's help. The other young men of the
party were assisting them, Augusta had gone to the telephone.

Bert always remembered the hour. The room was warm, fragrant of
spicy evergreen. There was a Rogers group on the marble mantle,
and two Dresden china candlesticks that reflected themselves in
the watery dimness of the mirror above. Nancy, slender and
exquisite, was in unrelieved, lacy black; her hair was as softly
black as her gown. Her white hands were locked in her lap.
Something had reminded her of old Christmases, and she had told
Bert of running in to her mother's room, early in the chilly
morning, to shout "Christmas Gift!"

Not moving his sympathetic eyes from her Checking Page back In,
Please Wait ... to town again, and his own pleasure in their visit
was talking of Nancy; how wise, how sweet, how infinitely
desirable she was. Dorothy had wanted Cousin Albert to come to her
for Thanksgiving. No, a thousand thanks--but Miss Barrett was so
much alone now. He must be near her. Dorothy kept her thoughts on
the subject to herself, but he so far impressed his mother that
her own hopes came to be his, she dreaded the thought of what
might happen to her boy if that southern girl did not chance to
care for him.

But the southern girl cared. She locked the lace-clad arms about
his neck, on this memorable Christmas night and laid her cheek
against his. "Are you sure you want me, Bert?" she whispered.

They had not much altered their positions when Mrs. Venables came
back half an hour later, and a general time of kissing, crying and
laughing began.




Chapter Three


It was a happy time, untroubled by the thought of money that was
soon to be so important. Bert's various aunts and cousins sent him
checks, and Nancy's stepmother sent her all her own mother's linen
and silver, and odd pieces of mahogany on which the freight
charges were frightful, and laces and an oil portrait or two. The
trousseau was helped from all sides, every week had its miracle;
and the hats, and the embroidered whiteness, and the smart street
suit and the adorable kitchen ginghams accumulated as if by magic.
Bert's mother sent delightfully monogrammed bed and table-linen,
almost weekly. Nancy said it was preposterous for poor people to
start in with such priceless possessions!

Among the happy necessities of the time was the finding of a
proper apartment. Nancy and Bert spent delightful Saturdays and
Sundays wandering in quest of it; beginning half-seriously in
February, when it seemed far too early to consider this detail,
and continuing with augmented earnestness through the three
succeeding months. Eventually they got both tired and discouraged,
and felt dashed in the very opening of their new life, but finally
the place was found, and they loved it instantly, and leased it
without delay. It was in a new apartment house, in East Eleventh
Street, four shiny and tiny rooms, on a fourth floor. Everything
was almost too compact and convenient, Nancy thought; the ice box,
gas stove, dumb-waiter, hanging light over the dining table,
clothes line, and garbage chute, were already in place. It left an
ambitious housekeeper small margin for original arrangement, but
of course it did save money and time. The building was of pretty
cream brick, clean and fresh, the street wide, and lined with
dignified old brownstone houses, and the location perfect. She
smothered a dream of wide old-fashioned rooms, quaintly furnished
in chintzes and white paint. They had found no such enchanting
places, except at exorbitant rents. Seventy-five dollars, or one
hundred dollars, were asked for the simplest of them, and the
plumbing facilities, and often the janitor service, were of the
poorest. So Nancy abandoned the dream, and enthusiastically
accepted the East Eleventh Street substitute, Bert becoming a
tenant in the "George Eliot," at a rental of thirty-five dollars a
month. Some of the old Barrett furniture was too large for the
place, but what she could use Nancy arranged with exquisite taste:
fairly dancing with pleasure over the sitting room, where her
chair and Bert's were in place, and the little droplight lighted
on the little table. In this room they were going to read Dickens
out loud, on winter nights.

They were married on a hot April morning, a morning whose every
second seemed to Nancy flooded with strange perfumes, and lighted
with unearthly light. The sky was cloudless; the park bowered in
fresh green; the streets, under new shadows, clean-swept and warm.
Her gown was perfection, her new wide hat the most becoming she
had ever worn; the girls, in their new gowns and hats, seemed so
near and dear to her to-day. She was hardly conscious of Bert, but
she remembered liking his big brother, who kissed her in so
brotherly a fashion. Winter was over, the snow was gone at last,
the trying and depressing rains and the cold were gone, too, and
she and Bert were man and wife, and off to Boston for their
honeymoon.




Chapter Four


They had been married eleven days, and were loitering over a
Sunday luncheon in their tiny home, when they first seriously
discussed finances; not theoretical finances, but finances as
bounded on one side by Bert's worn, brown leather pocket-book, and
on the other by his bank-book, with its confusing entries in black
and red ink.

Here on the table were seventeen dollars and eighty cents. Nancy
had flattened the bills, and arranged the silver in piles, as they
talked. This was Sunday; Bert would be paid on Saturday next.
Could Nancy manage on that?

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