CHAPTER I
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT
"Ask Nancy Cornish!"
The phrase might have exploded into Herrick's mind, it leaped there withsuch sudden violence, distinct as the command of a voice, out of thesmothering blackness of the torrid August night.
He started up instantly, as if to listen, sitting upright on the bedfrom which he had long since tossed all covering. Then he frowned at thetricks which the heat was playing upon even such strong nerves as his.In the unacknowledged homesickness of his heart his very first doze hadbrought him a dream of home; then the dream had slid along the trail ofdesire to a cool sea beach, where he and Marion used to be taken everysummer when they were children, and a fog had rolled in along this beachwhich, at first, he had welcomed because it was so deliciously cold. Itwas no longer his sister who was there beside him; it was no lessunexpected a person than the Heroine of the novel he was writing andwhose conduct in the very next chapter he had been trying all day todecide. It was a delightful convenience to have her there, ready to tellhim the secret of her heart! He saw that she had brought the novel withher, all finished. She held it out to him, open, and he read onephrase, "When Ann and her lover were down in Cornwall." He asked herwhat that was doing there--since her name was not Ann and he had neverimagined her in Cornwall. And then the fog rolled up between them,blotting out the book, blotting out his Heroine; that fog became ahorror, he was lost in it, and yet it vaguely showed him the shadowyforms of shadowy persons--he hoped if they were his other charactersthey really weren't quite so shadowy as that!--one of whom threateninglycried to him through the fog, "Ask Nancy Cornish!" And here he was, now,actually conscious of a great rush of energy and intention, as if hereally had some way of asking Nancy Cornish, or anything to ask her, ifhe had!
He remembered perfectly well, now, who she was--a little red-headedgirl, a friend of his sister; a girl whom he had not seen in eight yearsand did not care if he never saw again. What had brought her into hisdreams?
She certainly had no business there. No girl had any business anywhereinside his head for the present, except that Heroine of his, whosephotograph he had had framed to reign over his desk. It was a photographwhich he had found forgotten, last winter, in the room of a hotel inParis, and it had seemed to him the personality he had been looking for.Of the original he knew no more than that. But he knew well enough shewas not Nancy Cornish.
The novel was his first novel; and, after a long day of laboriousfailure at it, Herrick, in pure despair of his own work, had early flunghimself abed. He had lain there waking and restless upon scorchinglinen, reluctantly listening, listening; to the passage of the trolleycars on upper Broadway; to the faint, threatening grumble of the Subway;the pitiful crying of a sick baby; the advancing, dying footfalls; toall the diabolic malevolence of shrieking or chugging automobiles. Themere act of sitting up, however, recalled him from the mussy stuffinessin which he had been tossing. Why, he was not buried somewhere in ablack hole! He was occupying his landlady's best bedroom--the backparlor, indeed, of Mrs. Grubey's comfortable flat. Well, and to-morrow,after two months of loneliness, of one-sided conversations with themaddeningly mute countenance of his Heroine and of swapping jokes,baseball scores, weather prophecies, and political gossip withMcGarrigle, the policeman on the beat, he was going to take lunch withJimmy Ingham, the most eminent of publishers. Everything was all right!That peculiar sense of waiting and watching was growing on him merelywith the restless brooding of the night, which smelt of thunder. In thatburning, motionless air there was expectancy and a crouching sense ofclimax.
Yet it was not so late but that, in the handsome apartment houseopposite, an occasional window was still lighted. The pale blinds of oneof these, directly on a level with Herrick's humbler casement, weredrawn to the bottom; and Herrick vaguely wondered that any one shouldcare to shut out even the idea of air. Just then, behind those blinds,some one began to play a piano.
The touch was the touch of a master, and Herrick sat listening insurprise. The tide of lovely melody swept boldly out, filling the airwith soaring angels. Could people be giving a party?
Herrick got to his feet and struck a match. Five minutes past one! If hedressed and went down to the river, he would wake Mrs. Grubey and theGrubey children. He resigned himself; glancing at the precious letter ofappointment with Ingham on his desk, and at the photograph of hisHeroine, looking out at him with her quiet eyes; shy and candid, tenderand bravely boyish, and cool with their first youth. To her he sighed,thinking of his novel, "Well, Evadne, we must have faith!" He turned outthe light again, stripped off the coat of his pajamas, sopped thedrinking water from his pitcher over his head and his strong shoulders,and drew an easy chair up to the window. Down by the curb one of thosequivering automobiles seemed to purr, raspingly, in its sleep. Some oneacross the street was talking on and on, accompanied by the musician'snow soft and improvising touch. Then, in Herrick's thoughts, the voice,or voices, and the fitful, straying music began to blend; and then hehad no thoughts at all.
He was wakened by a demonic crash of chords. His eyes sprang open; andthere, on the blind opposite, was the shadow of a woman. She stood therewith her back to the window, lithe and tense, and suddenly she flung onearm up and out in such a strange and splendid gesture, of such free anddesperate passion, as Herrick had never seen before. For a full minuteshe stood so; and then the gesture broke, as though she might havecovered her face. The music, scurrying onward from its crash, had neverceased; it had risen again, ringing triumphantly into the march fromFaust, a man's voice rising furiously with it, and it flashed overHerrick that they might be rehearsing some scene in a play. Then thesound of a pistol-shot split through the night. Immediately, behind theblind, the lights went out.