There was sixpence-halfpenny in that purse, and to-morrow, Nancy thought, her last brooch would have to go to the pawnshop. After that there would only be a few dresses, and then Bram’s watch must go and perhaps even her wedding-ring. It would be madness to refuse. She pushed her purse toward Mr. Plimmer.
“All right. Consider us engaged,” she sighed.
The actor was frankly delighted. He ordered a fresh bottle of Chambertin and talked for another half-hour enthusiastically about his play and the success that Letizia was going to make. But Nancy could not be merry. She was wondering what Bram would have said about Letizia’s acting. The people in the restaurant faded out of sight; the noise of knives and forks died away; the conversation sank to less than a whisper, to less than the lisp of wind in grass. There stood Bram in the entrance, his eyebrows arched in a question, his eyes half-laughing, half-critical, his lips pursed. It seemed to Nancy that she rose from her seat and cried out to him; but in that instant the people in the restaurant reappeared and the noise of talk and plates was louder than ever. There was no Bram in the entrance of the restaurant, no Bram anywhere in the world.
Mr. Plimmer offered to drive Nancy to Unicorn Street; but she refused and bade him good-bye outside Kettner’s. She wanted to be alone, and finding herself in Soho she thought that she would look in at her late lodgings and inquire if there were any unforwarded letters waiting for her, not that she expected any, but it might be that somebody had written to her at that address. It would be cheerful to find a letter from the Kinos. The Kinos? Ah, but it was not the same thing. It was quite another matter for Letizia to act in the same play as her mother.
Miss Fewkes was ungracious when she opened the door to her late lodger. She had not let any of her rooms since the Kinos and Nancy went away.
“There was a letter and a parcel came for you some days ago, but I don’t know if I can find them. If you’d have left your address I could have forwarded it on. But I’m too busy to keep an eye on stray letters kicking about and getting in the way when I’m dusting.”
However, in the end she found what turned out to be a postcard from Mrs. Kino sending messages from herself and her husband. The parcel was a set of Japanese boxes, one inside the other down to the last one which was hardly bigger than a pin’s head. These were for Letizia to play with.
There was nothing about Miss Fewkes that invited one to stay and gossip with her. So Nancy went away with her post, and as she did not want to visit Blackboy Passage again she left her address behind her in case any more letters did happen to come.
That night Nancy lay awake for a long time, puzzling over the wisdom and morality of the step she had taken. Was it due to selfishness? Was it due to her own desire to be at work again? At work! At work again! No longer to lie here night after night, staring out of the curtainless window at the tawny London sky, her heart sick for his arms about her. The evenings might not be so long when she was working again. There would be indeed the poignancy of once more treading boards that he and she had trod together; there would be the agony of seeing again the familiar platforms along which he had run with cups of tea for her; there would be continuous reminders of what she had lost. Reminders? What reminders were needed to make more empty this empty world? At work again! At work! Every week a new town. Always something to distract her from this eternal ache, some poor little futile change, but still change—change and work. Was it very selfish of her to sacrifice Letizia to her own need? Very wrong and very selfish? Yet even from a practical point of view, surely it was right to take this money when she had the chance? She could not leave Letizia with Mrs. Pottage indefinitely. To refuse an offer like this while she accepted the old landlady’s charity would put her in such a humiliating position. Bram surely would not blame her. He would remember what had happened when she went to his brother, and she would know that she had tried to put her own feelings on one side. It made such a difference to open her purse and hear the crackle of that five-pound note when she put in her hand to find a penny for the bus-conductor. It was as comforting and warm as the crackling of a fire in wintertime.
“Oh, my darling,” she cried toward the stars that were visible again at last after that unending black frost, “my precious one, I don’t think I have any more courage left. I can’t live alone any longer and wonder what I shall have to pawn of ours next.”