As a matter of fact, that was all Mrs. Rossiter and I did say. I was so relieved at not being thrown out of house and home on the instant that I went back to Gladys and her lisping in French almost cheerily. You will think me pusillanimous—and I was. I didn't want to go to Mrs. Applegate and the Home for Working-Girls. As far as food and shelter were concerned I liked them well enough where I was. I liked Mrs. Rossiter too. I should be sorry to give the impression that she was supercilious or unkind. She was neither the one nor the other. If she betrayed little sentiment or sympathy toward me, it was because of admitting me into that feminine freemasonry in which the emotional is not called for. I might suffer while she remained indifferent; I might be killed on the spot while she wouldn't shed a tear; and yet there was a heartless, good-natured, live-and-let-live detachment about her which left me with nothing but good-will.
Then, too, I knew that when I married Hugh she would do nothing of her own free will against me. She would not brave her father's decree, but she wouldn't be intolerant; she might think Hugh had been a fool, but when she could do so surreptitiously she would invite him and me to dinner.
As this was a kind of recognition in advance, I could not be otherwise than grateful.
It made waiting for Hugh the easier. I calculated that if he entered into some sort of partnership with his cousin Andrew Brew—I didn't in the least know what—we might be married within a month or two. At furthest it might be about the time when Mrs. Rossiter removed to New York, which would make it October or November. I could then slip quietly back to Halifax, be quietly married, and quietly settle with Hugh in Boston. In the mean time I was glad not to be disturbed.
I spent, therefore, a pleasant morning with my pupil, and ate a pleasant lunch, watching from the gable window of the school-room the great people assemble in the breakfast loggia in honor of the Marquise de Pompadour's mother. I am not sure that old Madame Poisson ever went to court; but if she did I know the courtiers must have shown her just such deference as that which Mrs. Rossiter's guests exhibited to this withered old lady with the hooked nose and the lorgnette.
I was curious about the whole entertainment. It was not the only one of the kind I had seen from a distance since coming to Mrs. Rossiter, and I couldn't help comparisons with the same kind of thing as done in the ways with which I was familiar. Here it was less a luncheon than it was an exquisite thing on the stage, rehearsed to the last point. In England, in Canada, luncheon would be something of a friendly haphazard, primarily for the sake of getting food, secondly as a means to a scrambling, jolly sort of social intercourse, and hardly at all a ceremonial. Here the ceremonial came first. Hostess and guests seemed alike to be taking part in a rite of seeing and being seen. The food, which was probably excellent, was a matter of slight importance. The social intercourse amounted to nothing, since they all knew one another but too well, and had no urgent vitality of interests in any case. The rite was the thing. Every detail was prepared for that. Silver, porcelain, flowers, doilies, were of the most expensive and the most correct. The guests were dressed to perfection—a little too well, according to the English standard, but not too well for a function. As a function it was beautiful, an occasion of privilege, a proof of attainment. It was the best thing of its kind America could show. Those who had money could alone present the passport that would give the right of admission.
If I had a criticism to make, it was that the guests were too much alike. They were all business men, and the wives or widows of business men. The two or three who did nothing but live on inherited incomes were business men in heart and in blood. Granted that in the New World the business man must be dominant, it was possible to have too much of him. Having too much of him lowered the standard of interest, narrowed the circle of taste. In the countries I knew the business man might be present at such a festivity, but there would be something to give him color, to throw him into relief. There would be a touch of the creative or the intellectual, of the spiritual or the picturesque. The company wouldn't be all of a gilded drab. There would be a writer or a painter or a politician or an actor or a soldier or a priest. There would be something that wasn't money before it was anything else. Here there was nothing. Birds of a feather were flocking together, and they were all parrots or parrakeets. They had plumage, but no song. They drove out the thrushes and the larks and the wild swans. Their shrill screeches and hoarse shouts came up in a not wholly pleasant babel to the open window where I sat looking down and Gladys hovered and hopped, wondering if Thomas, the rosy-cheeked footman, would remember to bring us some of the left-over ice-cream.
I thought it was a pity. With elements as good as could be found anywhere to form a Society—that fusion of all varieties of achievement to which alone the word written with a capital can be applied—there was no one to form it. It was a woman's business; and for the rôle of hostess in the big sense the American woman, as far as I could judge, had little or no aptitude. She was too timid, too distrustful of herself, too much afraid of doing the wrong thing or of knowing the wrong people. She was so little sure of her standing that, as Mrs. Rossiter expressed it, she could be "queered" by shaking hands with Libby Jaynes. She lacked authority. She could stand out in a throng by her dress or her grace, but she couldn't lead or combine or co-ordinate. She could lend a charming hand where some one else was the Lady Holland or the Madame de Staël, but she couldn't take the seemingly heterogeneous types represented by the writer, the painter, the politician, the actor, the soldier, the priest, and the business man and weld them into the delightful, promiscuous, entertaining whole to be found, in its greater or lesser degree, according to size or importance of place, almost anywhere within the borders of the British Empire. I came to the conclusion that this was why there were few "great houses" in America and fewer women of importance.
It was why, too, the guests were subordinated to the ceremonial. It couldn't be any other way. With flint and steel you can get a spark; but where you have nothing but flint or nothing but steel, friction produces no light. The American hostess, in so far as she exists, rarely hopes for anything from the clash of minds, and therefore centers her attention on her doilies. It must be admitted that she has the most tasteful doilies in the world. There is a pathos in the way in which, for want of the courage to get interesting human specimens together, she spends her strength on the details of her rite. It is like the instinct of women who in default of babies lavish their passion on little dogs. One can say that it isfaute de mieux.Faute de mieuxwas, I am sure, the reason why Ethel Rossiter took her table appointments with what seemed to me such extraordinary seriousness. When all was said and done it was the only real thing to care about.
I repeat that I thought it was a pity. I had dreams, as I looked down, of what I could do with the same use of money, the same position of command. I had dreams that the Brokenshires accepted me, that Hugh came into the means that would be his in the ordinary course. I saw myself standing at the head of the stairway of a fine big house in Washington or New York. People were streaming upward, and I was shaking hands with a delightful, smilingdésinvolture. I saw men and women of all the ranks and orders of conspicuous accomplishment, each contributing a gift—some nothing but beauty, some nothing but wit, some nothing but money, some nothing but position, some nothing but fame, some nothing but national importance. The Brokenshire clan was there, and the Billings and the Grays and the Burkes; but statesmen and diplomatists, too, were there, and those leaders in the world of the pen and the brush and the buskin of whom, oddly enough, I saw Larry Strangways, with his eternal defensive smile, emerging from the crowd as chief. I was wearing diamonds, black velvet, and a train, waving in my disengaged hand a spangled fan.
From these visions I was roused by Gladys, who came prancing from the stair-head.
"V'là, Mademoiselle! V'là Thomas et le ice-cream!"
Having consumed this dainty, we watched the company wander about the terraces and lawns and finally drift away. I was getting Gladys ready for her walk when Thomas, with a pitying expression on his boyish face, came back to say that Mr. Brokenshire would like to speak with me down-stairs.
I was never so near fainting in my life. I had barely the strength to gasp, "Very well, Thomas, I'll come," and to send Gladys to her nurse. Thomas watched me with his good, kind, sympathetic eyes. Like the other servants, he must have known something of my secret and was on my side. I called him thebouton de rose, partly because his clean, pink cheeks suggested a Killarney breaking into flower, and partly because in his waiting on Gladys and me he had the yearning, care-taking air of a fatherly little boy. Just now he could only march down the passage ahead of me, throw open the door of my bedroom as if he was lord chamberlain to a queen, and give me a look which seemed to say, "If I can be your liege knight against this giant, pray, dear lady, command me." I threw him my thanks in a trumped-up smile, which he returned with such sweet encouragement as to nearly unman me.
I stayed in my room only long enough to be sure that I was neat, smoothing my hair and picking one or two threads from my white-linen suit. The suit had scarlet cuffs and a scarlet belt, and as there was a scarlet flush beneath my summer tan, like the color under the glaze of a Chinese jar, I could see for myself that my appearance was not ineffective.
Thebouton de rosewas in waiting at the foot of the stairs as I came down. Through the hall and the dining-room he ushered me royally; but as I came out on the breakfast loggia my royalty stopped with what I can only describe as a bump.
The guests had gone, but the family remained. The last phase of the details of the rite were also on the table. All the doilies were there, and the magnificent lace centerpiece which Mrs. Rossiter had at various times called on me to admire. The old Spode dessert service was the more dimly, anciently brilliant because of the old polished oak, and so were the glasses and finger-bowls picked out in gold.
Mr. Brokenshire, whom I had seen from my window strolling with some ladies on the lawn, had returned to the foot of the table, opposite to the door by which I came out, where he now sat in a careless, sidewise attitude, fingering his cigar. Old Mrs. Billing, who was beside him on his right, put up her lorgnette immediately I appeared in the entrance. Mrs. Rossiter had dropped into a chance chair half-way down the table on the left; but Mrs. Brokenshire, oddly enough, was in that same seat in the far corner to which she had retreated on the occasion of my summoning ten days before. I wondered whether this was by intention or by chance, though I was presently to know.
Terrified though I was, I felt salvation to lie in keeping a certain dignity. I made, therefore, something between a bow and a courtesy, first to Mr. Brokenshire, then to Mrs. Billing, then to Mrs. Rossiter, and lastly to Mrs. Brokenshire, to whom I raised my eyes and looked all the way diagonally across the loggia. I took my time in making these four distinct salutations, though in response I was only stared at. After that there was a space of some seconds in which I merely stood, in my pose ofEcce Femina!
"Sit down!"
The command came, of course, from J. Howard. The chair to which I had once before been banished being still in its corner, I slipped into it.
"I wished to speak to you, Miss—a—Miss—"
He glanced helplessly toward his daughter, who supplied the name.
"Ah yes. I wished to speak to you, Miss Adare, because my son has been acting very foolishly."
I made my tone as meek as I could, scarcely daring to lift my eyes from the floor. "Wouldn't it be well, sir, to talk to him about that?"
Mrs. Billing's lorgnette came down. She glanced toward her son-in-law as though finding the point well taken.
He went on imperturbably. "I've said all I mean to say to him. My present appeal is to you."
"Oh, then this is an—appeal?"
He seemed to hesitate, to reflect. "If you choose to take it so," he admitted, stiffly.
"It surely isn't as I choose to take it, sir; it's as you choose to mean."
"Don't bandy words."
"But I must use words, sir. I only want to be sure that you're making an appeal to me, and not giving me commands."
He spoke sharply. "I wish you to understand that you're inducing a young man to act in a way he is going to find contrary to his interests."
I could barely nerve myself to look up at him. "If by the 'young man' you mean Mr. Hugh Brokenshire, then I'm inducing him to do nothing whatever; unless," I added, "you call it an inducement that I—I"—I was bound to force the word out—"unless you call it an inducement that I love him."
"But that's it," Mrs. Rossiter broke in. "That's what my father means. If you'd stop caring anything about him you wouldn't give him encouragement."
I looked at her with a dim, apologetic smile. It was a time, I felt, to speak not only with more courage, but with more sentiment than I was accustomed to use in expressing myself.
"I'm afraid I can't give my heart, and take it back, like that."
"I can," she returned, readily. She spoke as if it was a matter of cracking her knuckles or wagging her ears. "If I don't want to like a person I don't do it. It's training and self-command."
"You're fortunate," I said, quietly. Why I should have glanced again at Mrs. Brokenshire I hardly know; but I did so, as I added: "I've had no training of that kind—and I doubt if many women have."
Mrs. Brokenshire, who was gazing at me with the same kind of fascinated stare as on the former occasion, faintly, but quite perceptibly, inclined her head. In this movement I was sure I had the key to the mystery that seemed to surround her.
"All this," J. Howard declared, magisterially, "is beside the point. If you've told my son that you'd marry him—"
"I haven't."
"Or even given him to understand that you would—"
"I've only given him to understand that I'd marry him—on conditions."
"Indeed? And would it be discreet on my part to inquire the terms you've been kind enough to lay down?"
I pulled myself together and spoke firmly. "The first is that I'll marry him—if his family come to me and express a wish to have me as a sister and a daughter."
Old Mrs. Billing emitted the queer, cracked cackle of a hen when it crows, but she put up her lorgnette and examined me more closely. Ethel Rossiter gasped audibly, moving her chair a little farther round in my direction. Mrs. Brokenshire stared with concentrated intensity, but somehow, I didn't know why, I felt that she was backing me up.
The great man contented himself with saying, "Oh, you will!"
I ignored the tone to speak with a decision and a spirit I was far from feeling.
"Yes, sir, I will. I shall not steal him from you—not so long as he's dependent."
"That's very kind. And may I ask—"
"You haven't let me tell you my other condition."
"True. Go on."
I panted the words out as best I could. "I've told him I'd marry him—if he rendered himself independent; if he earned his own money and became a man."
"Ah! And you expect one or the other of these miracles to take place?"
"I expect both."
Though the words uttered themselves, without calculation or expectation on my part, they gave me so much of the courage of conviction that I held up my head. To my surprise Mrs. Billing didn't crow again or so much as laugh. She only gasped out that long "Ha-a!" which proclaims the sporting interest, of which both Hugh and Ethel Rossiter had told me in the morning.
Mr. Brokenshire seemed to brace himself, leaning forward, with his elbow on the table and his cigar between the fingers of his raised right hand. His eyes were bent on me—fine eyes they were!—as if in kindly amusement.
"My good girl," he said, in his most pitying voice, "I wish I could tell you how sorry for you I am. Neither of these dreams can possibly come true—"
My blood being up, I interrupted with some force. "Then in that case, Mr. Brokenshire, you can be quite easy in your mind, for I should never marry your son." Having made this statement, I followed it up by saying, "Since that is understood, I presume there's no object in my staying any longer." I was half rising when his hand went up.
"Wait. We'll tell you when to go. You haven't yet got my point. Perhaps I haven't made it clear. I'm not interested in your hopes—"
"No, sir; of course not; nor I in yours."
"I haven't inquired as to that—but we'll let it pass. We're both apparently interested in my son."
I gave a little bow of assent.
"I said I wished to make an appeal to you."
I made another little bow of assent.
"It's on his behalf. You could do him a great kindness. You could make him understand—I gather that he's under your influence to some degree; you're a clever girl, I can see that—but you could make him understand that in fancying he'll marry you he's starting out on a task in which there's no hope whatever."
"But there is."
"Pardon me, there isn't. By your own showing there isn't. You've laid down conditions that will never be fulfilled."
"What makes you say that?"
"My knowledge of the world."
"Oh, but would you call that knowledge of the world?" I was swept along by the force of an inner indignation which had become reckless. "Knowledge of the world," I hurried on, "implies knowledge of the human heart, and you've none of that at all." I could see him flush.
"My good girl, we're here to speak of you, not of me—"
"Surely we're here to speak of us both, since at any minute I choose I can marry your son. If I don't marry him it's because I don't choose; but when I do choose—"
Again the hand went up. "Yes, of course; but that's not what we want specially to hear. Let us assume, as you say, that you can marry my son at any time you choose. You don't choose, for the reason that you're astute enough to see that your last state would be worse than the first. To enter a family that would disown you at once—"
I kept down my tone, though I couldn't master my excitement. "That's not my reason. If I don't marry him it's precisely because I have the power. There are people—cowards they are at heart, as a rule—who because they have the power use it to be insolent, especially to those who are weaker. I'm not one of those. There's anoblesse obligethat compels one in spite of everything. In dealing with an elderly man, who I suppose loves his son, and with a lady who's been so kind to me as Mrs. Rossiter—"
"You've been hired, and you're paid. There's no special call for gratitude."
"Gratitude is in the person who feels it; but that isn't what I specially want to say."
"What you specially want to say apparently is—"
"That I'm not afraid of you, sir; I'm not afraid of your family or your money or your position or anything or any one you can control. If I don't marry Hugh, it's for the reason that I've given, and for no other. As long as he's dependent on your money I shall not marry him till you come and beg me to do it—and that I shall expect of you."
He smiled tolerantly. "That is, till you've brought us to our knees."
I could barely pipe, but I stood to my guns. "If you like the expression, sir—yes. I shall not marry Hugh—so long as you support him—till I've brought you to your knees."
If I expected the heavens to fall at this I was disappointed. All J. Howard did was to lean on his arm toward Mrs. Billing and talk to her privately. Mrs. Rossiter got up and went to her father, entering also into a whispered colloquy. Once or twice he glanced backward to his wife, but she was now gazing sidewise in the direction of the house and over the lines of flowers that edged the terraces.
When Mrs. Rossiter had gone back to her seat, and J. Howard had raised himself from his conversation with Mrs. Billing, he began again to address me tranquilly:
"I hoped you might have sympathized with my hopes for Hugh, and have helped to convince him how useless his plans for a marriage between him and you must be."
I answered with decision: "No; I can't do that."
"I should have appreciated it—"
"That I can quite understand."
"And some day have shown you that I'm acting for your good."
"Oh, sir," I cried, "whatever else you do, you'll let my good be my own affair, will you not?"
I thought I heard Mrs. Billing say, "Brava!" At any rate, she tapped her fingers together as if in applause. I began to feel a more lenient spirit toward her.
"I'm quite willing to do that," my opponent said, in a moderate, long-suffering tone, "now that I see that you refuse to take Hugh's good into consideration. So long as you encourage him in his present madness—"
"I'm not doing that."
He took no notice of the interruption. "—I'm obliged to regard him as nothing to me."
"That must be between you and your son."
"It is. I'm only asking you to note that you—ruin him."
"No, no," I began to protest, but he silenced me with a movement of his hand.
"I'm not a hard man naturally," he went on, in his tranquil voice, "but I have to be obeyed."
"Why?" I demanded. "Why should you be obeyed more than any one else?"
"Because I mean to be. That must be enough—"
"But it isn't," I insisted. "I've no intention of obeying you—"
He broke in with some haste: "Oh, there's no question of you, my dear young lady. I've nothing to do with you. I'm speaking of my son. He must obey me, or take the consequences. And the consequences will last as long as he lives. I'm not one to speak rashly, or to speak twice. So that's what I'm putting to you. Do you think—do you honestly think—that you're improving your position by ruining a man who sooner or later—sooner rather than later—will lay his ruin at your door and loathe you? Come now! You're a clever girl. The case is by no means beyond you. Think, and think straight."
"I am thinking, sir. I'm thinking so straight that I see right through you. My father used to say—"
"No reminiscence, please."
"Very well, then; we'll let the reminiscence go. But you're thinking of committing a crime, a crime against Hugh, a crime against yourself, a crime against love, every kind of love—and that's the worst crime of all—and you haven't the moral courage to shoulder the guilt yourself; you're trying to shuffle it off on me."
"My good woman—"
But nothing could silence me now. I leaned forward, with hands clasped in my lap, and merely looked at him. My voice was low, but I spoke rapidly:
"You're talking to bewilder me, to throw dust in my eyes, to snare me into taking the blame for what you're doing of your own free act. It's a kind of reasoning which some girls would be caught by, but I'm not one of them. If Hugh is ruined in the sense you mean, it's his father who will ruin him—but even that is not the worst. What's worst, what's dastardly, what's not merely unworthy of a man like you but unworthy of any man—of anything that calls itself a male—is that you, with all your resources of every kind, should try to foist your responsibilities off on a woman who has no resources whatever. That I shouldn't have believed of any of your sex—if it hadn't happened to myself."
But my eloquence left him as unmoved as before. He whispered with Mrs. Billing. The old lady was animated, making beats and lunges with her lorgnette.
"So that what it comes to," he said to me at last, lifting himself up and speaking in a tired voice, "is that you really mean to pit yourself against me."
"No, sir; but that you mean to pit yourself against me." Something compelled me to add: "And I can tell you now that you'll be beaten in the end."
Perhaps he didn't hear me, for he rose and, stooping, carried on his discussion with Mrs. Billing. There was a long period in which no one paid any further attention to my presence; in fact, no one paid any attention to me any more. To my last words I expected some retort, but none came. Ethel Rossiter joined her father at the end of the table, and when Mrs. Billing also rose the conversation went onà trois. Mrs. Brokenshire alone remained seated and aloof.
But the moment came when her husband turned toward her. Not having been dismissed, I merely stood and looked on. What I saw then passed quickly, so quickly that it took a minute of reflection before I could put two and two together.
Having taken one step toward his wife, Howard Brokenshire stood still, abruptly, putting his hand suddenly to the left side of his face. His wife, too, put up her hand, but palm outward and as if to wave him back. At the same time she averted her face—and I knew it was his eye.
It was over before either of the other two women perceived anything. Presently, all four were out on the grass, strolling along in a little chattering group together. My dismissal having come automatically, as you might say, I was free to go.
An hour later I had what up to then I must call the greatest surprise of my life.
I was crying by myself on the shore, in that secluded corner among the rocks where Hugh had first told me that he loved me. As a rule, I don't cry easily. I did it now chiefly from being overwrought. I was desolate. I missed Hugh. The few days or few weeks that must pass before I could see him again stretched before me like a century. All whom I could call my own were so far away. Even had they been near, they would probably, with the individualism of our race, have left me to shift for myself. Louise and Victoria had always given me to understand that, though they didn't mind lending me an occasional sisterly hand, my life was my own affair. It would have been a relief to talk the whole thing out philosophically with Larry Strangways. As I came from the house I tried, for the first time since knowing him, to throw myself in his path; but, as usual when one needs a friend, he was nowhere to be seen.
I could, therefore, only scramble down to my favorite corner among the rocks. Not that it was really a scramble. As a matter of fact, the path was easy if you knew where to find it; but it was hidden from the ordinary passer on the Cliff Walk, first by a boulder, round which you had to slip, and then by a tangle of wild rosebines, wild raspberries, and Queen Anne's lace. It was something like a secret door, known only to the Rossiter household, their servants, and their friends. Once you had passed it you had a measure of the public privacy you get in a box at the theater or the opera. You had space and ease and a wide outlook, with no fear of intrusion.
I cannot say that I was unhappy. I was rather in that state of mind which the American people, with its gift for the happy, unexpected word, have long spoken of as "mad." I was certainly mad. I was mad with J. Howard Brokenshire first of all; I was mad with his family for having got up and left me without so much as a nod; I was mad with Hugh for having made me fall in love with him; I was mad with Larry Strangways for not having been on the spot; and I was most of all mad with myself. I had been boastful and bumptious; I had been disrespectful and absurd. It was foolish to make worse enemies than I had already. Mrs. Rossiter wouldn't keep me now. There would be no escape from Mrs. Applegate and the Home for Working-Girls.
The still summer beauty of the afternoon added to my wretchedness. All round and before me there was luxury and joyousness and sport. The very sea was in a playful mood, lapping at my feet like a tamed, affectionate leviathan, and curling round the ledges in the offing with delicate lace-like spouts of spume. Sea-gulls swooped and hovered with hoarse cries and a lovely effect of silvery wings. Here and there was a sail on the blue, or the smoke of a steamer or a war-ship. Eastons Point, some two or three miles away, was a long, burnished line of ripening wheat. To right and to left of me were broken crags, red-yellow, red-brown, red-green, where lovers and happy groups could perch or nestle carelessly, thrusting trouble for the moment to a distance. I had to bring my trouble with me. If it had not been for trouble I shouldn't have been there. There wasn't a soul in the world who would fight to take my part but Hugh, and I was, in all my primary instincts, a clinging, parasitic thing that hated to stand alone.
There was nothing for it then but crying, and I did that to the best of my ability; not loudly, of course, or vulgarly, but gently and sentimentally, with an immense pity for myself. I cried for what had happened that day and for what had happened yesterday. I cried for things long past, which I had omitted to cry for at the time. When I had finished with these I went further back to dig up other ignominies, and I cried for them. I cried for my father and mother and my orphaned condition; I cried for the way in which my father—who was a good, kind man,du reste—had lived on his principal, and left me with scarcely a penny to my name; I cried for my various disappointments in love, and for the girl friends who had predeceased me. I massed all these motives together and cried for them in bulk. I cried for Hugh and the brilliant future we should have on the money he would make. I cried for Larry Strangways and the loneliness his absence would entail on me. I cried for the future as well as for the past and if I could have thought of a future beyond the future I should have cried for that. It was delicious and sad and consoling all at once; and when I had no more tears I felt almost as if Hugh's strong arm had been about me, and I was comforted.
I was just wiping my eyes and wondering whether at the moment of going homeward my nose would be too red, when I heard a quiet step. I thought I must be mistaken. It was so unlikely that any one would be there at this hour of the day—the servants generally came down at night—that for a minute I didn't turn. It was the uncomfortable sense that some one was behind me that made me look back at last, when I caught the flutter of lace and the shimmer of pale-rose taffeta. Mrs. Brokenshire had worn lace and pale-rose taffeta at the lunch.
Fear and amazement wrestled in my soul together. Struggling to my feet, I turned round as slowly as I could.
"Don't get up," she said in a sweet, quiet voice. "I'll come and sit down beside you, if I may." She had already seated herself on a low flat rock as she said, "I saw you were crying, so I waited."
I am not usually at a loss for words, but I was then. I stuttered and stammered and babbled, without being able to say anything articulate. Indeed, I had nothing articulate to say. The mind had suspended its action.
My impressions were all subconscious, but registered exactly. She was the most exquisite production I had ever seen in human guise. Her perfection was that of some lovely little bird in which no color fails to shade harmoniously into some other color, in which no single feather is out of place. The word I used of her wassoignée—that which is smoothed and curled and polished and caressed till there is not an eyelash which hasn't received its measure of attention. I don't mean that she was artificial, or that her effects were too thought out. She was no more artificial than a highly cultivated flower is artificial, or a many-faceted diamond, or a King Charles spaniel, or anything else that is carefully bred or cut or shaped. She was the work of some specialist in beauty, who had no aim in view but to give to the world the loveliest thing possible.
When I had mastered my confusion sufficiently I sat down with the words, rather lamely spoken:
"I didn't know any one was here. I hope I haven't kept you standing long."
"No; but I was watching you. I came down only a few minutes after you did. You see, I was afraid—when we came away from Mrs. Rossiter's—that you might be unhappy."
"I'm not as unhappy as I was," I faltered, without knowing what I said, and was rewarded to see her smile.
It was an innocent smile, without glee, a little sad in fact, but full of unutterable things like a very young child's. I had never seen such teeth, so white, so small, so regular.
"I'm glad of that," she said, simply. "I thought if some—some other woman was near you, you mightn't feel so—so much alone. That's why I watched round and followed you."
I could have fallen at her feet, but I restricted myself to saying:
"Thank you very much. It does make a difference." I got courage to add, however, with a smile of my own, "I see you know."
"Yes, I know. I've thought about you a good deal since that day about a fortnight ago—you remember?"
"Oh yes, I remember. I'm not likely to forget, am I? Only, you see, I had no idea—if I had, I mightn't have felt so—so awfully forlorn."
Her eyes rested upon me. I can only say of them that they were sweet and lovely, which is saying nothing at all. Sweet and lovely are the words that come to me when I think of her, and they are so lamentably overworked. She seemed to study me with a child-like unconsciousness.
"Yes," she said at last, "I suppose you do feel forlorn. I didn't think of that or—or I might have managed to come to you before."
"That you should have come now," I said, warmly, "is the kindest thing one human being ever did for another."
Again there was the smile, a little to one side of the mouth, wistful, wan.
"Oh no, it isn't. I've really come on my own account." I waited for some explanation of this, but she only went on: "Tell me about yourself. How did you come here? Ethel Rossiter has never really said anything about you. I should like to know."
Her manner had the gentle command that queens and princesses and very rich women unconsciously acquire. I tried to obey her, but found little to say. Uttered to her my facts were so meager. I told her of my father and mother, of my father's mania for old books, of Louise and Victoria and their husbands, of my visits abroad; but I felt her attention wandering. That is, I felt she was interested not in my data, but in me. Halifax and Canada and British army and navy life and rare first editions were outside the range of her ken. Paris she knew; and London she knew; but not from any point of view from which I could speak of them. I could see she was the well-placed American who knows some of the great English houses and all of the great English hotels, but nothing of that Britannic backbone of which I might have been called a rib. She broke in presently, not apropos of anything I was saying, with the words:
"How old are you?"
I told her I was twenty-four.
"I'm twenty-nine."
I said I had understood as much from Mrs. Rossiter, but that I could easily have supposed her no older than myself. This was true. Had there not been that something mournful in her face which simulates maturity I could have thought of her as nothing but a girl. If I stood in awe of her it was only of what I guessed at as a sorrow.
She went on to give me two or three details of her life, with nearly all of which I was familiar through hints from Hugh and Ethel Rossiter.
"We're really Philadelphians, my mother and I. We've lived a good deal in New York, of course, and abroad. I was at school in Paris, too, at the Convent des Abeilles." She wandered on, somewhat inconsequentially, with facts of this sort, when she added, suddenly: "I was to have married some one else."
I knew then that I had the clue to her thought. The marriage she had missed was on her mind. It created an obsession or a broken heart, I wasn't quite sure which. It was what she wanted to talk about, though her glance fell before the spark of intelligence in mine.
Since there was nothing I could say in actual words, I merely murmured sympathetically. At the same time there came to me, like the slow breaking of a dawn, an illuminating glimpse of the great J. Howard's life. I seemed to be admitted into its secret, into a perception of its weak spot, more fully than his wife had any notion of. She would never, I was sure, see what she was betraying to me from my point of view. She would never see how she was giving him away. She wouldn't even see how she was giving away herself—she was so sweet, and gentle, and child-like, and unsuspecting.
I don't know for how many seconds her quiet, inconsequential speech trickled on without my being able to follow it. I came to myself again, as it were, on hearing her say:
"And if you do love him, oh, don't give him up!"
I grasped the fact then that I had lost something about Hugh, and did my best to catch up with it.
"I don't mean to, if either of my conditions is fulfilled. You heard what they were."
"Oh, but if I were you I wouldn't make them. That's where I think you're wrong. If you love him—"
"I couldn't steal him from his family, even if I loved him."
"Oh, but it wouldn't be stealing. When two people love each other there's nothing else to think about."
"And yet that might sometimes be dangerous doctrine."
"If there was never any danger there'd never be any courage. And courage is one of the finest things in life."
"Yes, of course; but even courage can carry one very far."
"Nothing can carry us so far as love. I see that now. It's why I'm anxious about poor Hugh. I—I know a man who—who loves a woman whom he—he couldn't marry, and—" She caught herself up. "I'm fond of Hugh, you see, even though he doesn't like me. I wish he understood, that they all understood—that—that it isn't my fault. If I could have had my way—" She righted herself here with a slight change of tense. "If I could have my way, Hugh would marry the woman he's in love with and who's in love with him."
I tried to enroll her decisively on my side.
"So that you don't agree with Mr. Brokenshire."
Her immediate response was to color with a soft, suffused rose-pink like that of the inside of shells. Her eyes grew misty with a kind of helplessness. She looked at me imploringly, and looked away. One might have supposed that she was pleading with me to be let off answering. Nevertheless, when she spoke at last, her words brought me to a new phase of her self-revelation.
"Why aren't you afraid of him?"
"Oh, but I am."
"Yes, but not like—" Again she saved herself. "Yes, but not like—so many people. You may be afraid of him inside, but you fight."
"Any one fights for right."
There was a repetition of the wistful smile, a little to the left corner of the mouth.
"Oh, do they? I wish I did. Or rather I wish I had."
"It's never too late," I declared, with what was meant to be encouragement.
There was a queer little gleam in her eye, like that which comes into the pupil of a startled bird.
"So I've heard some one else say. I suppose it's true—but it frightens me."
I was quite strangely uneasy. Hints of her story came back to me, but I had never heard it completely enough to be able to piece the fragments together. It was new for me to imagine myself called on to protect any one—I needed protection so much for myself!—but I was moved with a protective instinct toward her. It was rather ridiculous, and yet it was so.
"Only one must be sure one is right before one fights, mustn't one?" was all I could think of saying.
She responded dreamily, looking seaward.
"Don't you think there may be worse things than wrong?"
This being so contrary to my pet principles, I answered, emphatically, that I didn't think so at all. I brought out my maxim that if you did right nothing but right could come of it; but she surprised me by saying, simply, "I don't believe that."
I was a little indignant.
"But it's not a matter of believing; it's one of proving, of demonstration."
"I've done right, and wrong came of it."
"Oh, but it couldn't—not in the long run."
"Well, then I did wrong. That's what I've been afraid of, and what—what some one else tells me." If a pet bird could look at you with a challenging expression it was the thing she did. "Now what do you say?"
I really didn't know what to say. I spoke from instinct, and some common sense.
"If one's done wrong, or made a mistake, I suppose the only way one can rectify it is to begin again to do right. Right must have a rectifying power."
"But if you've made a mistake the mistake is there, unless you go back and unmake it. If you don't, isn't it what they call building on a bad foundation?"
"I dare say it is; and yet you can't push a material comparison too far when you're thinking of spiritual things. This is spiritual, isn't it? I suppose one can't really do evil and expect good to come of it; but one can overcome evil with good."
She looked at me with a sweet mistiness.
"I've no doubt that's true, but it's very deep. It's too deep for me." She rose with an air of dismissing the subject, though she continued to speak of it allusively. "You know so much about it. I could see you did from the first. If I was to tell you the whole story—but, of course, I can't do that. No, don't get up. I have to run away, because we're expecting people to tea; but I should have liked staying to talk with you. You're awfully clever, aren't you? I suppose it must be living round in those queer places—Gibraltar, didn't you say? I've seen Gibraltar, but only from the steamer, on the way to Naples. I felt that I was with you from that very first time I saw you. I'd seen you before, of course, with little Gladys, but not to notice you. I never noticed you till I heard that Hugh was in love with you. That was just before Mr. Brokenshire took me over—you remember!—that day. He wanted me to see how easily he could deal with people who opposed him; but I didn't think he succeeded very well. He made you go and sit at a distance. That was to show you he had the power. Did you notice what I did? Oh, I'm glad. I wanted you to understand that if it was a question of love I was—I was with you. You saw that, didn't you? Oh, I'm glad. I must run away now. We've people to tea; but some time, if I can manage it, I'll come again."
She had begun slipping up the path, like a great rose-colored moth in the greenery, when she turned to say:
"I can never do anything for you, I'm too afraid of him; but I'm on your side."
After she had gone I began putting two and two together. What her visit did for me especially was to distract my mind. I got a better perspective on my own small drama in seeing it as incidental to a larger one. That there was a large one here I had no doubt, though I could neither seize nor outline its proportions. As far as I could judge of my visitor I found her dazed by the magnitude of the thing that had happened to her, whatever that was. She was good and kind; she hadn't a thought that wasn't tender; normally she would have been the devoted, clinging type of wife I longed to be myself; and yet some one's passion, or some one's ambition, or both in collusion, had caught her like a bird in a net.
It was perhaps because she was a woman and I was a woman and J. Howard was a man that my reactions concerned themselves chiefly with him. I thought of him throughout the afternoon. I began to get new views of him. I wondered if he knew of himself what I knew. I supposed he did. I supposed he must. He couldn't have been married two or three years to this sweet stricken creature without seeing that her heart wasn't his. Furthermore, he couldn't have beheld, as he and I had beheld that afternoon, the hand that went up palm outward, without divining a horror of his person that was more than a shrinking from his poor contorted eye. For love the contorted eye would have meant more love, since it would have been love with its cognate of pity; but not so that uplifted hand and that instinctive waving of him back. There was more than an involuntary repulsion in that, more than an instant of abhorrence. What there was he must have discovered, he must have tasted, from the minute he first took her in his arms.
I was sorry for him. I could throw enough of the masculine into my imagination to know how he must adore a creature of such perfected charm. She was the sort of woman men would adore, especially the men whose ideal lies first of all in the physical. For them it would mean nothing that she lacked mentality, that the pendulum of her nature had only a limited swing; that she was as good as she looked would be enough, seeing that she looked like an angel straight out of heaven. In spite of poor J. Howard's kingly suavity I knew he must have minutes of sheer animal despair, of fierce and bitter suffering.
Mrs. Rossiter spoke to me that evening with a suggestion of reprimand, which was letting me off easily. I was so sure of my dismissal, that when I returned to the house from the shore I expected some sort oflettre de congé; but I found nothing. I had had supper with Gladys and put her to bed when the maid brought me a message to say that Mrs. Rossiter would like me to come down and see her dress, as she was going out to dinner.
I was admiring the dress, which was a new one, when she said, rather fretfully:
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that to father. It upsets him so."
I was adjusting a slight fullness at the back, which made it the easier for me to answer.
"I wouldn't if he didn't talk like that to me. What can I do? I have to say something."
She was peering into the cheval glass over her shoulder, giving her attention to two things at once.
"I mean your saying you expected both of those preposterous things to happen. Of course, you don't—nor either of them—and it only rubs him up the wrong way."
I was too meek now to argue the point. Besides, I was preoccupied with the widening interests in which I found myself involved. To probe the security of my position once more, I said:
"I wonder you stand it—that you don't send me away."
She was still twisting in front of the cheval glass.
"Don't you think that shoulder-strap is loose? It really looks as if the whole thing would slip off me. If he can stand it I can," she added, as a matter of secondary concern.
"Oh, then he can stand it." I felt the shoulder-strap. "No, I think it's all right, if you don't wriggle too much."
"I'm sure it's going to come down—and there I shall be. He has to stand it, don't you see, or let you think that you wound him?"
I was frankly curious.
"Do I wound him?"
"He'd never let you know it if you did. The fact that he ignores you and lets you stay on with me is the only thing by which I can judge. If you didn't hurt him at all he'd tell me to send you about your business." She turned from the glass. "Well, if you say that strap is all right I suppose it must be, but I don't feel any too sure." She was picking up her gloves and her fan which the maid had laid out, when she said, suddenly: "If you're so keen on getting married, for goodness' sake why don't you take that young Strangways?"
My sensation can only be compared to that of a person who has got a terrific blow on the head from a trip-hammer. I seemed to wonder why I hadn't been crushed or struck dead. As it was, I felt that I could never move again from the spot on which I stood. I was vaguely conscious of something outraged within me and yet was too stunned to resent it. I could only gasp, feebly, after what seemed an interminable time: "In the first place, I'm not so awfully keen on getting married—"
She was examining her gloves.
"There, that stupid Séraphine has put me out two lefts. No, she hasn't; it's all right. Stuff, my dear! Every girl is keen on getting married."
"And then," I stammered on, "Mr. Strangways has never given me the chance."
"Oh, well, he will. Do hand me my wrap, like a love." I was putting the wrap over her shoulders as she repeated: "Oh, well, he will. I can tell by the way he looks at you. It would be ever so much more suitable. Jim says he'll be a first-class man in time—if you don't rush in like an idiot and marry Hugh."
"I may marry Hugh," I tried to say, loftily, "but I hope I sha'n't do it like an idiot."
She swept toward the stairway, but she had left me with subjects for thought not only for that evening, but for the next day and the next. Now that the first shock was over I managed to work up the proper sense of indignity. I told myself I was hurt and offended. She shouldn't have mentioned such a thing. I wouldn't have stood it from one of my own sisters. I had never thought of Larry Strangways in any such way, and to do so disturbed our relations. To begin with, I wasn't in love with him; and to end with, he was too poor. Not that I was looking for a rich husband; but neither was I a lunatic. It would be years before he could think of marrying, if there were no other consideration; and in the mean time there was Hugh.
There was Hugh with his letters from Boston, full of high ambitious hopes. Cousin Andrew Brew had written from Bar Harbor that he was coming to town in a day or two and would give him the interview he demanded. Already Hugh had his eye on a little house on Beacon Hill—so like a corner of Mayfair, he wrote, if Mayfair stood on an eminence—in which we could be as snug as two love-birds. I was composing in my mind the letter I should write to my aunt in Halifax, asking to be allowed to come back for the wedding.
I filled in the hours wondering how Larry Strangways looked at me when there was only Mrs. Rossiter as spectator. I knew how he looked at me when I was looking back—it was with that gleaming smile which defied you to see behind it, as the sun defies you to see behind its rays. But I wanted to know how he looked at me when my head was turned another way; to know how the sun appears when you view it through a telescope that nullifies its defensive. For that I had only my imagination, since he had obtained two or three days' leave to go to New York to see his new employer. He had warned me to betray no hint as to the new employer's name, since there was a feud between the Brokenshire clan and Stacy Grainger which I connected vaguely with the story I had heard of Mrs. Brokenshire.
Then on the fourth day Hugh came back. He appeared as he had on saying good-by, while I was breakfasting with Gladys in the open air and Broke was with his mother. Hugh was more pallid than when he went away; he was positively woe-begone. Everything that was love in me leaped into flame at sight of his honest, sorry face.
I think I can tell his story best by giving it in my own words, in the way of direct narration. He didn't tell it to me all at once, but bit by bit, as new details occurred to him. The picture was slow in printing itself on my mind, but when I got it it was with satisfactory exactitude.
He had been three days at the hotel in Boston before learning that Cousin Andrew Brew was actually in town and would see him at the bank at eleven on a certain morning. Hugh was on the moment. The promptitude with which his relative sprang up in his seat, somewhat as if impelled by a piece of mechanism, was truly cordial. Not less was the handshake and the formula of greeting. The sons of J. Howard Brokenshire were always welcome guests among their Boston kin, on whom they shed a pleasant luster of metropolitan glory. While the Brews and Borrodailes prided themselves on what they called their Boston provinciality and didn't believe to be provinciality at all, they enjoyed the New York connection.
"Hello, Hugh! Glad to see you. Come in. Sit down. Looking older than when I saw you last. Growing a mustache. Not married yet? Sit down and tell us all about it. What can I do for you? Sit down."
Hugh took the comfortable little upright arm-chair that stood at the corner of his cousin's desk, while the latter resumed the seat of honor. Knowing that the banker's time was valuable, and feeling that he would reveal his aptitude for business by going to the point at once, the younger man began his tale. He had just reached the fact that he had fallen in love with a little girl on whose merits he wouldn't enlarge, since all lovers had the same sort of things to say, though he was surer of his data than others of his kind, when there was a tinkle at the desk telephone.
"Excuse me."
During the conversation in which Cousin Andrew then engaged Hugh was able to observe the long-established, unassuming comfort of this friendly office, which suggested the cozy air that hangs about the smoking-rooms of good old English inns. There was a warm worn carpet on the floor; deep leather arm-chairs showed the effect of contact with two generations of moneyed backs; on the walls the lithographed heads of Brews and Borrodailes bore witness to the firm's respectability. In the atmosphere a faint odor of tobacco emphasized the human associations.
Cousin Andrew emphasized them, too. "Now!" He put down the receiver and turned to Hugh with an air of relief at being able to give him his attention. He was a tall, thin man with a head like a nut. It would have been an expressionless nut had it not been for a facile tight-lipped smile that creased his face as stretching creases rubber. Coming and going rapidly, it gave him the appearance of mirth, creating at each end of a long, mobile mouth two concentric semicircles cutting deep into the cheeks that would have been of value to a low comedian. A slate-colored morning suit, a white piqué edge to the opening of the waistcoat, a slate-colored tie with a pearl in it, emphasized the union of dignity and lightness which were the keynotes to Cousin Andrew's character. Blended as they were, they formed a delightfully debonair combination, bringing down to your own level a man who was somebody in the world of finance. It was part of his endearing quality that he liked you to see him as a jolly good fellow no whit better than yourself. He was fond of gossip and of the lighter topics of the moment. He was also fond of dancing, and frequented most of the gatherings, private and public, for the cultivation of that art which was the vogue of the year before the Great War. With his tall, limber figure he passed for less than his age of forty-three till you got him at close quarters.
On the genial "Now!" in which there was an inflection of command Hugh went on with his tale, telling of his breach with his father and his determination to go into business for himself.
"I ought to be independent, anyhow, at my age," he declared. "I've my own views, and it's only right to confess to you that I'm a bit of a Socialist. That won't make any difference, however, to our working together, Cousin Andrew, for, to make a long story short, I've looked in to tell you that I've come to the place where I should like to accept your kind offer."
The statement was received with cheerful detachment, while Cousin Andrew threw himself forward with his arms on his desk, rubbing his long, thin hands together.
"My kind offer? What was that?"
Hugh was slightly dashed.
"About my coming to you if ever I wanted to go into business."
"Oh! You're going into business?"
Hugh named the places and dates at which, during the past few years, Cousin Andrew had offered his help to his young kinsman if ever it was needed.
Cousin Andrew tossed himself back in his chair with one of his brisk, restless movements.
"Did I say that? Well, if I did I'll stick to it." There was another tinkle at the telephone. "Excuse me."
Hugh had time for reflection and some irritation. He had not expected to be thrust into the place of a petitioner, or to have to make explanations galling to his pride. He had counted not only on his cousinship, but on his position in the world as J. Howard Brokenshire's son. It seemed to him that Cousin Andrew was disposed to undervalue that.
"I don't want to hold you to anything you don't care for, Cousin Andrew," he began, when his relative had again put the receiver aside, "but I understood—"
"Oh, that's all right. I've no doubt I said it. I do recall something of the sort, vaguely, at a time when I thought your father might want— In any case we can fix you up. Sure to be something you can do. When'd you like to begin?"
Hugh expressed his willingness to be put into office at once.
"Just so. Turn you over to old Williamson. He licks the young ones into shape. Suppose your father'll think it hard of us to go against him. But on the other hand he may be pleased—he'll know you're in safe hands."
It was a delicate thing for Hugh to attempt, but as he was going into business not from an irresistible impulse toward a financial career, but in order to make enough money to marry on, he felt obliged to ask, in such terms as he could command, how much money he should make.
"Just so!" Cousin Andrew took up the receiver again. "Want to speak to Mr. Williamson. . . . Oh, Williamson, how much is Duffers getting now? . . . And how much before that? . . . Good! Thanks!"
The result of these investigations was communicated to Hugh. He should receive Duffers's pay, and when he had earned it should come in for Duffers's promotion. The immediate effect was to make him look startled and blank. "What?" was his only question; but it contained several shades of incredulity.
Cousin Andrew took this dismay in good part.
"Why, what did you expect?"
Hugh could only stammer:
"I thought it would be more."
"How much more?"
Hugh sought an answer that wouldn't betray the ludicrous figure of his hopes.
"Well, enough to live on as a married man at least."
The banker's good nature was proved by the creases of his rubber smile.
"What did you think you'd be worth to us—with no backing from your father?"
The question was of the kind commonly called a poser. Hugh had not, so I understood from him, hitherto thought of his entering his kinsfolks' banking-house as primarily a matter of earning capacity. It wasn't to be like working for "any old firm." He had prefigured it as becoming a component part of a machine that turned out money of which he would get his share, that share being in proportion to the dignity of the house itself and bearing a relation to his blood connection with the dominating partners. When Cousin Andrew had repeated his question Hugh was obliged to reply:
"I wasn't thinking of that so much as of what you'd be worth to me."
"We could be worth a good deal to you in time."
There was a ray of hope.
"How long a time?"
"Oh, twenty or thirty years, perhaps, if you work and save. Of course, if you had capital to bring in—but you haven't, have you? Didn't Cousin Sophy, your mother, leave everything to your father? I thought so. Mind you, I'm putting out of the question all thought of your father's coming round and putting money in for you. I'm talking of the thing on the ground on which you've put it."
Hugh had no heart to resent the quirks and grimaces in Cousin Andrew's smile. He had all he could do in taking his leave in a way to save his face and cast the episode behind him. The banker lent himself to this effort with good-humored grace, accompanying his relative to the door of the room, where he shook him by the shoulder as he turned the knob.
"Thought you'd go right in as a director? Not the first youngster who's had that idea, and you'll not be the last. Good-by. Let me hear from you if you change your mind." He called after him, as the door was about to close: "Best try to fix it up with your father, Hugh. As for the girl—well, there'll be others, and more in your line."