Other, less sympathetic observations reached her, such as, ‘She’s up against it!’ ‘Some girl, too!’ with various humorous asides which were quite unintelligible to Nelly’s English ears.
She got out hurriedly at the next stop which proved to be Columbus Circle — another symbolic name! Here a hopeless weariness descended upon her and when she had climbed the steps and emerged into the great open space near the entrance to the park she leaned against the edge of a newspaper stand and began to cry without caring who noticed it.
A man who was buying the New Republic raised his hat. His head was large and powerfully moulded, his figure of corresponding weight and dignity. ‘Can I do anything for you, lady?’ he said kindly. Nelly pulled herself together with a gallant effort and dried her eyes. ‘I’m so ashamed of myself,’ she murmured. ‘I’m not often like this. I’m not feeling very well.’
‘Won’t you let me get you a taxi?’ said the tall man whose face seemed vaguely familiar to Nelly, though where she had seen him, or anyone like him, she could not remember. While addressing her he continued to hold his hat, which was a soft broad-brimmed felt one, in his right hand, while with his left he stroked her jacket reassuringly with the New Republic.
A sort of blackness began now to descend on the girl’s eyes, blackness crossed by little vibrations of white light. She nodded eagerly however and the tall man stopped a passing taxi and assisted her into it. He handed the driver a couple of dollar bills; only after he had done that did he put his head into the window and ask her for an address.
By that time the blackness was very dense around Nelly Moreton’s brain and without realizing what she said she uttered the words ‘Elise Angel’.
The man’s friendly physiognomy became illuminated with a new interest. ‘Ah! you’re one of her girls are you? That’s where you belong, is it? Well! tell her that Pat Ryan says she must give you some of his especial cognac.’ And he shouted an address in clear terms to the driver who started his car without further question.
Nelly sank back on the cushioned seat, too faint to realize in the least what was happening and too dizzy to breathe another word.
The air beating on her face through the open window saved her from becoming actually unconscious, but she felt too wretched to think anything or even to feel anything. A blank numbness, inert and obscure, took possession of her and sealed up her mind and senses.
They stopped in front of the well-appointed apartment house where Elise Angel had her rooms.
The driver got down from his seat and approached the door of the taxi. He mechanically held the door open, gazing down the street and meditating upon matters in no way connected with cabs or houses or fares.
While he stood thus, waiting in professional indifference for her to emerge, the door of the house opened and Elise and Richard came down the steps.
Richard looked straight into the taxi window. He was laughing at some remark Elise had just made and his eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed. Elise, sweeping majestically down the steps just behind him, laid her hand at that moment upon his arm. She bent towards him as she did so and whispered something which made him laugh yet louder. Then he turned his head and they both moved down the street.
Richard, had he been challenged, could not have told what vehicle it was that was waiting there. His heart was full of excitement and happiness. He was in a trance of obvious delight.
But he had smiled straight into Nelly’s wide-open bewildered eyes; and when the other whispered to him and putting her hand on his arm led him away, an ice-cold stab of an emotion the girl had never known before pierced her heart.
The sight of Richard had brought her consciousness back; but it was only brought back to be startled into sharp incredible pain at what she saw. To her bewildered mind it seemed as if her husband had recognized her, had laughed in her face, and in callous disregard of her distress had gone off, jesting about her with his new love.
But her brain was working only too normally now and her fit of faintness was gone.
‘Number sixty-six! Where I was told to go to, Marm,’ repeated the driver. To the end of her days Nelly would associate that particular number with the stark desolation of that moment.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said quietly. ‘Will you please go to number one Charlton Street.’
The man looked slightly surprised at this order, but closed the door again and mounted his seat. He was considerate in his demands upon her purse, however, when they reached her own house, exacting only sixty cents in addition to what Mr Pat Ryan had given him.
Nelly mounted the stairs to her room with chaos in her heart. One wild notion succeeded another in her brain. She would leave Richard, she thought. She would go off somewhere into the country and stay there till her child was born. She would borrow money from Robert, risk the voyage, and go back to Sussex. She would seek refuge with Mrs Shotover who, no doubt for old acquaintance sake, would take her in.
All these ideas surged through her mind as she climbed the stairs. When she reached her own floor she was a little surprised to find the door of her apartment standing ajar. She must have forgotten to close it when she went out that morning.
She pushed it open and entered quickly to discover, to her immense surprise, a completely unknown young man smoking a cigarette in Richard’s armchair.
The stranger rose at her entrance and began stammering and apologizing. ‘I am Roger Lamb,’ he said. ‘You don’t know me, but I’m a cousin of your friend Olive Shelter. My grandmother was a Shelter and we’ve kept up the connection. I’ve never seen Cousin Olive — I’ve never been to Europe — but she wrote to tell me you were here.’
There was something so grave and quaint about this youth’s manner that Nelly felt drawn towards him at once. She begged him to sit down while she took off her things and tidied herself up. Incidentally she slipped into the kitchen and lit the gas under the kettle. ‘I must have some tea,’ she said to herself; then she gazed at her face in the looking glass as she used her brush and comb.
Presently she laid down these objects and began smoothing out the little wrinkles round her mouth and eyes with the tips of her fingers.
She was shocked by the drawn look of her face; as if in these last hours the skin had grown tighter and less soft.
A faint shadow of her old elfish smile flickered back at her from her staring disillusioned eyes.
Then her face hardened into a mask of bitterness and a strange expression of recklessness passed across it. The queer thought came into her head — Richard’s got tired of me. He has this other woman. What does it matter what I do now? It was with this reckless expression still upon her face that she returned to her guest.
In the first few minutes before she got the kettle to boil and the tea poured out the conversation between herself and her visitor was broken and perfunctory. When they had drunk a few cups, however, they began to grow quite intimate.
Roger Lamb persuaded Nelly to try one of his own cigarettes which were a different sort from those Richard smoked. Settled comfortably in the deep armchair listening to his whimsical talk, the girl felt as if she were recovering from an anaesthetic.
It appeared that her young visitor was a journalist — a dramatic critic — attached to one of the largest of the New York evening papers. He seemed to know all the people Nelly knew and a great many she had only heard of by name, and she was struck by the way he spoke of them, without any of that tang of spiteful disparagement which she had come to associate with artistic people.