The steps by which I came to be Stacy Grainger's librarian could easily be traced, though to do so with much detail would be tedious.
After Hugh's departure for New York my position with Mrs. Rossiter soon became untenable. The reports that reached Newport of the young man's doings in the city were not merely galling to the family pride, but maddening to his father's sense of pre-eminence. Hugh was actually going from door to door, as you might say, in Wall Street and Broad Street, only to be turned away.
"He's making the most awful fool of himself," Mrs. Rossiter informed me one morning, "and papa's growing furious. Jim writes that every one is laughing at him, and, of course, they know it's all about some girl."
I held my tongue at this. That they should be laughing at poor Hugh was a new example of the world's falsity. His letters to me were only a record of half-promises and fair speeches, but he found every one of them encouraging. Nowhere had he met with the brutal treatment he had received at the hands of Cousin Andrew Brew. The minute his card went in to never so great a banker or broker, he was received with a welcome. If no one had just the right thing to offer him, no one had turned him down. It was explained to him that it was largely a matter of the off season—for his purpose August was the worst month in the year—and of the lack of an opening which it would be worth the while of a man of his quality to fill. Later, perhaps! The two words, courteously spoken, gave the gist of all his interviews. He had every reason to feel satisfied.
In the mean while he was comfortable at his club—his cash in hand would hold out to Christmas and beyond—and in the matter of energy, he wrote, not a mushroom was springing in his tracks. He was on the job early and late, day in and day out. The off season which was obviously a disadvantage in some respects had its merits in others, since it would be known, when things began to look up again, that he was available for any big house that could get him. That there would be competition in this respect every one had given him to understand. All this he told me in letters as full of love as they were of business, written in a great, sprawling, unformed, boyish hand, and with an occasional bit of phonetic spelling which made his protestations the more touching.
But Jim Rossiter's sources of information were of another kind.
"Get your father to do something to stop him," he wrote to his wife. "He's making the whole house of Meek & Brokenshire a laughing-stock."
There came, in fact, a Saturday when Mr. Rossiter actually appeared for the week-end.
"He wouldn't be doing that," Mrs. Rossiter almost sobbed to me, on receipt of the telegram announcing his approach, "unless things were pretty bad."
Though I dreaded his coming, I was speedily reassured. Whatever the object of Mr. Rossiter's visit, I, in my own person, had nothing to do with it. On the afternoon of his arrival he came out to where I was knocking the croquet balls about with Gladys on the lawn, and was as polite as he had been through the winter in New York. He was always polite even to the maids, to whom he scrupulously said good-morning. His wistful desire to be liked by every one was inspired by the same sort of impulse as the jovialbonhomieof Cousin Andrew Brew. He was a little, weazened man, with face and legs like a jockey, which I think he would gladly have been. Racin' and ridin', as he called them, were the amusements in which he found most pleasure, while his health was his chief preoccupation. He took pills before and after all his meals and a variety of medicinal waters. During the winter under his roof my own conversation with him had been entirely on the score of his complaints.
In just the same way he sauntered up now. He talked of his lack of appetite and the beastly cooking at clubs. Expecting him to broach the subject of Hugh, I got myself ready; but he did nothing of the kind. He was merely amiable and, as far as I could judge, indifferent. Within ten minutes he had sauntered away again, leading Gladys by the hand.
I saw then that in common with the other Brokenshires he considered that I didn't count. Hugh could be dealt with independently of me. So long as I was useful to his wife, there was no reason why I should be disturbed. I was too light a thing to be weighed in their balances.
Next day there was a grand family council and on Monday Jack Brokenshire accompanied his brother-in-law to New York. Hugh wrote me of their threats and flatteries, their beseechings and cajoleries. He was to come to his senses; he was to be decent to his father; he was to quit being a fool. I gathered that for forty-eight hours they had put him through most of the tortures known to fraternal inquisition; but he wrote me he would bear it all and more, for the sake of winning me.
Nor would he allow them to have everything their own way. That he wrote me, too. When it came to the question of marriage he bade them look at home. Each of them was an instance of what J. Howard could do in the matrimonial line, and what a mess he and they had made of it! He asked Jack in so many words how much he would have been in love with Pauline Gray if she hadn't had a big fortune, and, now that he had got her money and her, how true he was to his compact. Who were Trixie Delorme and Baby Bevan, he demanded, with a knowledge of Jack's affairs which compelled the elder brother to tell him to mind his own business.
Hugh laughed scornfully at that.
"I can mind my own business, Jack, and still keep an eye on yours, seeing that you and Pauline are the talk of the town. If she doesn't divorce you within the next five years, it will be because you've already divorced her. Even that won't be as big a scandal as your going on living together."
Mr. Rossiter intervened on this and did his best to calm the younger brother down:
"Ah, cut that out now, Hugh!"
But Hugh rounded on him, shaking off the hand that had been laid on his arm.
"You're a nice one, Jim, to come with your mealy-mouthed talk to me. Look at Ethel! If I'd married a woman as you married her—or if I'd been married as she married you—just because your father was a partner in Meek & Brokenshire and it was well to keep the money in the family—if I'd done that I'd shut up. I'd consider myself too low-down a cur to be kicked. What kind of a wife is Ethel to you? What kind of a husband are you to her? What kind of a father do you make to the children who hardly know you by sight? And now, just because I'm trying to be a man, and decent, and true to the girl I love, you come sneaking round to tell me she's not good enough. What do I care whether she's good enough or not, so long as she isn't like Ethel and Pauline? You can go back and tell them so."
Jack Brokenshire came back, but I think he kept this confidence to himself. What he told, however, was enough to produce a good deal of gloom in the family. Though Mrs. Rossiter didn't cease to be nice to me in her non-committal way, I began to reason that there were limits even to indifference. I had made up my mind to go and was working out some practical way of going, when an incident hastened my departure.
Doing an errand one day for Mrs. Rossiter in the shopping part of Bellevue Avenue, I saw old Mrs. Billing going by in an open motor landaulette. She signaled to me to stop, and, poking the chauffeur in the back through the open window, made him draw up at the curb.
"I've got something for you," she said, without other form of greeting. She began to stir things round in her bag. "I thought you'd like it. I've been carrying it about with me for the last three or four days—ever since Jack Brokenshire got back from New York. Where the dickens is the thing? Ah, here!" She handed me out a crumpled card. "That's all, Antoine," she continued to the man. "Drive on."
I was left with the card in my hand, finding it to be an advertisement for the Hotel Mary Chilton, a place of entertainment for women alone, in a central and reputable part of New York.
By the time I got back to Mrs. Rossiter's I had solved what had at first been a puzzle, and, having reported on my errand, I gave my resignation verbally. I saw then—what old Mrs. Billing had also seen—that it was time. Mrs. Rossiter expressed no relief, but she made no attempt to dissuade me. That she was sorry she allowed me to see. She didn't speak of Hugh; but on the morning when I went she gave up her engagements to stay at home with me. As I said good-by she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me. I could feel on my cheek tears of hers as well as tears of my own, as I drew down my veil.
Hugh met me at the station in New York, and we dined at a restaurant together. He came for me next morning, and we lunched and dined at restaurants again. When we did the same on the third day that sense of being in a false position which had been with me from the first, and which argument couldn't counteract, began to be disquieting. On the fourth day I tried to make excuses and remain at the hotel, but when he insisted I was obliged to let him take me out once more. The people at the Mary Chilton were kindly, but I was afraid they would regard me with suspicion. I was afraid of some other things, besides.
For one thing I was afraid of Hugh. He began again to plead with me to marry him. Even he admitted that we couldn't continue to "go round together like that." We went to the most expensive restaurants, he argued, where there were plenty of people who would know him. When they saw him every day with a girl they didn't know, they would draw their own conclusions. As in a situation similar to theirs I would have drawn my own, I brought my bit of Bohemianism to a speedy end.
There followed some days during which it seemed to me I was deprived of any outlook. I could hardly see what I was there for. I could hardly see what I was living for. Never till then had I realized how, in normal conditions, each day is linked to the day before as well as to the morrow. Here the link was gone. I left nothing undone when I went to bed; I had nothing to get up for in the morning. My reason for existing had suddenly been snuffed out.
It was a time for the testing of my faith. I was near the end of mycul-de-sac, and yet I saw no further development ahead. If the continuous unfolding of right on which, to use Larry Strangways's expression, I had banked, were to come to a stop, I should be left not only without a duty, but without a law. Of the two possibilities it was the latter I dreaded most. One can live if one has a motive theory within one; without it— And then, just as I was coming to the last stretches of what seemed a blind alley and no more, my confidence was justified. Larry Strangways called on me.
I have not said that on coming to New York I had decided to let my acquaintance with him end. He made me uneasy. I was terrified by the thought that he might be in love with me. Why I was terrified I didn't know; I only knew I was. I did not tell him, therefore, when I left Mrs. Rossiter; and in the whirlpool of New York I considered that I was swallowed up. But here was his card, and he himself waiting in the drawing-room below.
Naturally my first question was as to how he had found me out. This he laughed off, pretending to be annoyed with me for coming to the city without telling him. I could see, however, that he was in spirits much too high to allow of his being seriously annoyed with anything. Life promised well with him. He enjoyed his work, and for his employer he had that eager personal devotion which is always a herald of success. After having run away from him, as it were, I was now a little irritated at seeing that he hadn't missed me.
But he did not take his leave without a bit of information that puzzled me beyond expression. He was going out of Mr. Grainger's office that morning, he said, with a bundle of letters which he was to answer, when his master observed, casually:
"The young lady of whom you spoke to me as qualified to take Miss Davis's place is at the Hotel Mary Chilton. Go and see her and get her opinion as to accepting the job!"
I was what the French callatterrée—knocked flat.
"But how on earth could he know?"
Larry Strangways laughed.
"Oh, don't ask me. He knows anything he wants to know. He's got the flair of a detective. I don't try to fathom him. But the point is that the position is there for you to take or to leave."
I tried to bring my mind back from the fact that this important man, a total stranger to me, was in some way interested in my destiny.
"What can I do but leave it, when I know no more about it than I do of sailing a ship?"
"Oh yes, you do. You know what books are, and you know what rare books are. For the rest, all you'd have to do would be to consult the catalogue. I don't know what the duties are; but if Miss Davis is up to them I guess you would be, too. She's a sweet, pretty kitten of a thing—daughter of one of Stacy Grainger's old pals who came to grief—but I don't believe she knows much more about a book than the cover from the print. Anyhow, I've given you the message with neither more nor less than he said. Look here!" he exclaimed, suddenly. "Why shouldn't you put on your hat and walk down the street with me, so that I could show you where the library is? It's not ten minutes away. I've never been inside it, but every one knows what it looks like."
Consulting my wrist-watch, I objected that it was but twenty minutes to the time when Hugh was due to come and take me to walk in Central Park, returning to the hotel to tea.
"Oh, let him go to the deuce! We can be there and back in twenty minutes, and you can leave a message for him at the office."
So we started. The Mary Chilton is in one of the cross-streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. I discovered that Stacy Grainger's house was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and a corresponding cross-street a little farther down-town. It is a big brownstone house, in the eighteen-seventy style, of the type which all round it has been turned into offices and shops. All its many windows were blinded in a yellowish holland staff, giving to the whole building an aspect sealed and dead.
I shuddered.
"I hope I shouldn't have to work there."
"No. The house has been shut up for years." He named the hotel overlooking the Park at which Stacy Grainger actually lived. "Anybody else would have sold the place; but he has a lot of queer sentiment about him. Of the two or three devotions in his life one of the most intense is to his father's memory. I believe the old fellow committed suicide in that house, and the son hallows it as he would a grave."
"Cheerful!"
"Oh, cheerful isn't the word one would associate with him first—"
"Or last, apparently."
"No, or last; but he's got other qualities to which cheerfulness is as small change to gold. All I want you to see is that he keeps this property, which is worth half a million at the least, from motives which the immense majority wouldn't understand. It gives you a clue to the man."
"But what I want," I said, with nervous flippancy, for I was afraid of meeting Hugh, "is a clue to the library."
"There it is."
"That?"
He had pointed to a small, low, rectangular building I had seen a hundred times, without the curiosity to wonder what it was. It stood behind the house, in the center of a grass-plot, and was approached from the cross-street, through a small wrought-iron gate. Built of brownstone, without a window, and with no other ornament than a frieze in relief below the eave, it suggested a tomb. At the back was a kind of covered cloister connecting with the house.
"If I had to sit in there all day," I commented, as we turned back toward the hotel, "I should feel as if I were buried alive. I know that strange things would happen to me!"
"Oh no, they wouldn't. It's sure to be all right or a pretty little thing like Miss Davis couldn't have stood it for three years. It's lighted from the top, and there are a lot of fine things scattered about."
He gave me a brief history of how the collection had been formed. The elder Grainger on coming to New York had bought up the contents of two or three great European salesen bloc. He knew little about the objects he had thus acquired, and cared less. His motive was simply that of the rich American to play the nobleman.
He was still talking of this when Hugh passed us and turned round. Between the two men there was a stiff form of greeting. That is, it was stiff on Larry Strangways's side, while on Hugh's it was the nearest thing to no greeting at all. I could see he considered the tutor of his sister's son beneath him.
"What the devil were you walking with that fellow for?" he asked, after Mr. Strangways had left us and while we were continuing our way up-town. He spoke, wonderingly rather than impatiently.
"Because he had come from a gentleman who had offered me employment. I had just gone down with him to look at the outside of the house."
I could hardly be surprised that Hugh should stop abruptly, forcing the stream of foot-passengers to divide into two currents about us.
"The impertinent bounder! Offer employment—to you—my—my wife!"
I walked on with dignity.
"You mustn't call me that, Hugh. It's a word only to be used in its exact signification." He began to apologize, but I interrupted. "I'm not only not your wife, but as yet I haven't even promised to marry you. We must keep that fact unmistakably clear before us. It will prevent possible complications in the end."
He spoke humbly:
"What sort of complications?"
"I don't know; but I can see they might arise. And as for the matter of employment, I must have it for a lot of reasons."
"I don't see that. Give me two or three months, Alix!"
"But it's precisely during those two or three months, Hugh, that I should be left high and dry. Unless I have something to do I have no motive for staying here in New York."
"What about me?"
"I can't stay just to see you. That's the difference between a woman and a man. The situation is awkward enough as it is; but if I were to go on living here for two or three months, merely for the sake of having a few hours every day with you—"
Before we reached the Park he saw the justice of my argument. Remembering what Larry Strangways had once said as to Hugh's belief that he was stooping to pick his diamond out of the mire, I reasoned that since he was marrying a working-girl it would best preserve the decencies if the working-girl were working. For this procedure Hugh himself was able to establish precedent, since we were in sight of the very hotel where Libby Jaynes had rubbed men's nails up to within an hour or two of her marriage to Tracy Allen. He pointed it out as if it was an historic monument, and in the same spirit I gazed at it.
That matter settled, I attacked another as we advanced farther into the Park.
"And Mr. Strangways is not a bounder, Hugh, darling. I wish you wouldn't call him that."
His response was sufficiently good-natured, but it expressed that Brokenshire disdain for everything that didn't have money which specially enraged me.
"Well, I won't," he conceded. "I don't care a hang what he is."
"I do," I declared, with some tartness. "I care that he's a gentleman and that he's treated as one."
"Oh, every one's a gentleman."
"No, Hugh, every one isn't. I know men right here in New York who could buy and sell Mr. Strangways a thousand times, perhaps a million times over, and who wouldn't be worthy to valet him."
His small wide-apart blue eyes were turned on me questioningly.
"You don't know many men right here in New York. Who do you mean?"
I saw that he had me there and, not wishing to be driven into a corner, I beat a shuffling retreat.
"I don't mean any one in particular. I'm speaking in general." As we had reached an empty bench and the afternoon was hot, I suggested that we sit down.
We had been silent a little while, when he asked the question I had been expecting.
"Who was the person who offered you the—the—" I saw how he hated the word—"the employment?"
I had already decided to betray no knowledge of matters which didn't concern me.
"It's a Mr. Grainger," I said, as casually as I could.
As he sat close to me I could feel him start.
"Not Stacy Grainger?"
I maintained my tone of indifference.
"I think that is his name. Do you know him? He seems to be some one of importance."
"Oh, he is."
"Mr. Strangways has gone to him as secretary and, I suppose, knowing that I was out of a situation, he must have mentioned me."
"For what?"
"As I understand it, it's librarian. It seems that this Mr. Grainger has quite a collection—"
"Oh yes, I know." As he remained silent for some time I waited for him to raise objections, but he only said at last: "In that case you wouldn't have much to do with him. He's never there."
"No, I fancy not," I hastened to agree, and Hugh said no more.
He said no more, but I could see that it was because he was wrestling with a subject of which he couldn't perceive the bearings. As far as I was concerned he plainly considered it wise not to tell me that which, as a stranger and a foreigner, I wouldn't be likely to know. He consequently dropped the topic, and when he talked again it was of trivial things.
A half-hour later, as we were on our way homeward, he exclaimed, suddenly, and apropos of nothing at all:
"Little Alix, if you were to love anybody else I'd—I'd shoot myself."
His innocent, boyish, inexperienced face wore such a look of misery that I laughed. I laughed to conceal the fact that I was near to crying.
"Oh no, you wouldn't, Hugh. Besides, you don't see any likelihood of my doing it."
"I'm not so sure about that," he grumbled.
"Well, I am, Hugh, dear." I laughed again. "I've no intention of loving any one else—till I've settled my account with your father."
Nearly a week later, in the middle of a hot afternoon, I came back from some shopping to wait for Hugh at the hotel. Though it was a half-hour before I expected him, I was too tired to go up-stairs and so went directly to the reception-room. It was not only cool and restful there, but after the glare of the streets outside, it was so dim that I took the place to be empty. Having gone to a mirror for a moment to straighten my hat and smooth the wayward tendrils of my hair, so that I shouldn't look disheveled when Hugh arrived, I threw myself into an arm-chair.
I remember that my attitude was anything but graceful, and that I sighed. I sighed more than once and somewhat loudly. I was depressed, and as usual when depressed I felt small and desolate. It would have been a relief to cry; but I couldn't cry when I was expecting Hugh. I could only toss about in my big chair and give utterance to my pent-up heart a little too explosively.
It was five or six days since Larry Strangways's call, and no real development of my blind alley was in sight. He had not returned, nor had I heard from him. On the previous evening Hugh had said, "I thought nothing would come of that," in a tone which carried conviction. It wasn't that I was eager to be Stacy Grainger's librarian; it was only that I wanted something to happen, something that would justify my staying in New York. August had passed, and with the coming in of September I saw the stirring of a new life in the streets; but there was no new life for me.
Nor, for the matter of that, did I see any new life for Hugh. He had entered now on that stage of waiting on the postman which a good many people have found sickening. Bankers and brokers having promised to write when they knew of anything to suit him, he was expecting a summons by every delivery of letters. On his dear face I began to read the evidence of hope deferred. He was cheery enough; he could find fifty explanations to account for the fact that he hadn't yet been called; but brave words couldn't counteract the look of disquietude that was creeping day by day into his kindly eyes. On the previous evening he had informed me, too, that he had left his club and installed himself in a small hotel, not far from my own neighborhood. When I asked him why he had done that he said it was "to get away from a lot of the fellows who were always chewing the rag," but I suspected the motive of economy. For the motive of economy I should have had nothing but respect, if it hadn't been so incongruous with everything I had known of him.
It was probably because my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom in the reception-room that I noticed, suddenly, two other eyes. They were in a distant corner and seemed to be looking at me with the detached and burning stare of motor-lamps at night. For a minute I could discern no personality, the eyes themselves were so lustrous.
I was about to be frightened when a man arose and restlessly moved toward the chimneypiece, not because there was anything there he desired to see, but because he couldn't continue to sit still. He was a striking figure, tall, spare, large-boned and powerful. The face was of the type which for want of a better word I can only speak of as masculine. It was long and lean and strong; if it was handsome it was only because every feature and line was cut to the same large pattern as the frame. Sweeping mustaches, of the kind school-girls are commonly supposed to love, concealed a mouth which I could have wagered would be hard, while the luminosity of the gaze suggested a rather hungry set of human qualities and passions.
We were now two restless persons instead of one, and I was about to leave the room when a page came in.
"Sorry, sir," said the honest-faced little boy, with an amusingly uncouth accent I find it impossible to transcribe, "but number four-twenty-three ain't in, so I guess she must be out."
Startled, I rose to my feet.
"But I'm number four-twenty-three."
The boy turned toward me nonchalantly.
"Didn't know you was here! That gentleman wants you."
With this introduction he dashed away, and I was once more conscious of the luminous eyes bent upon me. The tall figure, too, advanced a few paces in my direction.
"I asked for Miss Adare." The voice was deep and grave and harsh and musical all at once.
"That's my name."
"Mine's Grainger."
I gasped silently, like a dying fish, before I could stammer the words—
"Won't you sit down?"
As he seated himself near me and in a good light, I saw that his skin was tanned, as if he lived on the sea or in the open air. I learned later from Larry Strangways that he had just come from a summer's yachting. His gaze studied me—not as a man studies a woman, but as a workman inspects a tool.
"You probably know my errand."
"Mr. Strangways—"
"Yes, I told him to sound you."
"But I'm afraid I wouldn't do."
"Why do you think so?"
"Because I don't know anything about the work."
"There's no work to know anything about. All you'd have to do would be to sit still. You'd never have more than two or three visitors in a day—and most days none at all."
"But what should I do when visitors came?"
"Show them what they asked to see. You'd find that in the catalogue. You'd soon get the hang of the place. It's small. There's not much in it when you come to sum it up. Miss Davis will show you the ropes before she leaves on the first of October. I'll give you the same salary I've been paying her."
He named a sum the munificence of which almost took my breath away.
"Oh, but I shouldn't be worth that."
"It's the salary," he said, briefly, as he rose. "You can arrange with my secretary, Strangways, when you would like to begin. The sooner the better, as I understand that Miss Davis would like to get off."
He was on his way to the door when, thinking of the tomb-like aspect of the place, I asked, desperately:
"Should I be all alone?"
He turned.
"There's a man and his wife in the house. One of them would be always within call. The woman will bring you tea at half past four."
I could hardly believe my ears. I had never heard of such solicitude. "But I shouldn't need tea!" I began to assure him.
He paused for a moment, looking at me searchingly.
"You'll have callers—"
"Oh no, I sha'n't."
"You'll have callers," he repeated, as if I hadn't spoken, "and there'll be tea every day at four-thirty."
He was gone before I could protest further, or ask any more questions.
Hugh's explanation, when I laid the matter before him, was that Mr. Grainger was trying to play into the hands of that fellow, Strangways.
"But why?" I demanded.
"He thinks there's something between him and you."
"But there isn't."
"I should hope not; but, evidently, Strangways has made him think—"
"Oh no, he hasn't, Hugh. Mr. Strangways is not that kind of man. Mr. Grainger has some other reason for wanting me there, but I can't think what it is."
"Then I shouldn't go till I knew," Hugh counseled, moodily.
But I did. I went the next week. Larry Strangways made the arrangements, and, after a fortnight under Miss Davis's instructions, I found myself alone.
It was not so trying as I feared, though it was monotonous. It was monotonous because there was so little to do. I was there each morning at half past nine. From one to two I had an hour for lunch. At six I came away. On Saturdays I had the afternoon. It was a little like being a prisoner, but a prisoner in a palace, a prisoner who is well paid.
The place consisted of one big, handsome room, some sixty feet by thirty, resembling the libraries of great houses I had seen abroad. That in this case it was detached from the dwelling was, I suppose, a matter of architectural convenience. Book-shelves lined the walls right up to the cornice. The dull reds and browns and blues and greens of the bindings carried out the mellow effects of the Oriental rugs on the floor. Under the shelves there were cupboards, some of them empty, others stocked with portfolios of prints, European and Japanese. There were no pictures, but a few large pieces of old porcelain and faïence, Persian, Spanish, and Chinese, stood on the mantelpiece and tables. For the rest, the furnishings consisted of a bust or two, a desk or two, and some decorative tables and chairs.
My chief objection to the life was its seeming pointlessness. I was hard at work doing nothing. The number of visitors was negligible. Once during the autumn an old gentleman brought some engravings to compare with similar examples in Mr. Grainger's collection; once a lady student of Shakespeare came to examine his early editions; perhaps as often as twice a week some wandering tourist in New York would enter and stare vacantly, and go as he arrived. To while away the time I read and wrote and did knitting and fancy-work, and at half past four every day, as regularly as the hands of the clock came round, I solemnly had my tea. It was very good tea, with cake and bread and butter in the orthodox style, and was brought by Mrs. Daly, the motherly old Irish caretaker of the house, who stumped in and stumped out, giving me, while she stayed, a good deal of detail as to her "sky-attic" nerves and swollen "varikiss" veins.
I am bound to admit that the tea ceremony oppressed me—not that I didn't enjoy it in its way but because its generosity seemed overdone. It was not in the necessities of the case; it was, above all, not American. On both the occasions when Mr. Grainger honored the library with a call I tried to screw up my courage to ask him to let me off this hospitality, but I couldn't reach the point. I was not so much afraid of him as I was overawed. He was perfectly civil; he never treated me as the dust beneath his feet, like Howard Brokenshire; but any one could see that he was immensely and perhaps tragically preoccupied.
I was having tea all alone on a cold afternoon in November, when the sound of the opening of the outer door attracted my attention. At first one came into a vestibule from which there was no entrance, till on my side I touched the spring of a closed wrought-iron grille. I had gone forward to see who was there and, if necessary, give the further admission, when to my astonishment I saw Mrs. Brokenshire.
She was in a walking-dress with furs. The color in her cheeks might have been due to the cold wind, but the light in her eyes was that of excitement.
"I heard you were here," she whispered, as she fluttered in, "and I've come to see you."
My sense of the imprudence of this step was such that I could hardly welcome her. That feeling of protection which I had once before on her behalf came back to me.
"Who told you?" I asked, as soon as she was seated and I was pouring her out a cup of tea. For the first time since taking the position I was glad the ceremony had not been suppressed.
She answered, while glancing into the shadows about her.
"Mildred told me. Hugh wrote it to her. He does write to her, you know. She's the only one with whom he is still in communication. She seems to think the poor boy is in trouble. I came to—to see if there was anything I could do."
I told her I was living at the Hotel Mary Chilton and that, if necessary at any time, she could see me there.
She repeated the address, but I knew it took no hold on her memory.
"Ah yes; the Hotel Mary Chilton. I think I've heard of it. But I haven't many minutes, and you must tell me all you can about dear Hugh."
As my anxiety on Hugh's account was deepening, I was the more eager to do as I was bid. I said he had found no employment as yet, and that in my opinion employment would be hard to secure. If he was willing to work for a year or two for next to nothing, as he would consider the salary, he might eventually learn the financial trade; but to expect that his name would be a key to open the door of any bank at which he might present himself was preposterous. I hadn't been able to convince him of that, however, and he was still hoping. But he was hoping with a sad, worried face that almost broke my heart.
"And how is he off for money?"
I said I thought his bank-account was running low. He made no complaint of that to me, but I noticed that he rarely now went to any of his clubs, and that he took his meals at the more inexpensive places. In taxis, too, he was careful, and in tickets for the theater. These were the signs by which I judged.
Her eyes had the sweet mistiness I remembered from our last meeting.
"I can let him have money—as much as he needs."
I considered this.
"But it would be Mr. Brokenshire's money, wouldn't it?"
"It would be money Mr. Brokenshire gives me."
"In that case I don't think Hugh could accept it. You see, he's trying to make himself independent of his father, so as to do what his father doesn't like."
"But he can't starve."
"He must either starve, or earn a living, or go back to his father and—give up."
"Does that mean that you won't marry him unless he has money of his own?"
"It means what I've said more than once before—that I can't marry him if he has no money of his own, unless his family come and ask me to do it."
There was a little furrow between her brows.
"Oh, well, they won't do that. I would," she hastened to add, "because—" she smiled, like an angel—"because I believe in love; but they wouldn't."
"I think Mrs. Rossiter would," I argued, "if she was left free."
"She might; and, of course, there's Mildred. She'd do anything for Hugh, though she thinks . . . but neither Jack nor Pauline would give in; and as for Mr. Brokenshire—I believe it would break his heart."
"Why should he feel toward me like that?" I demanded, bitterly. "How am I inferior to Pauline Gray, except that I have no money?"
"Well, I suppose in a way that's it. It's what Mr. Brokenshire calls the solidarity of aristocracies. They have to hold together."
"But aristocracy and money aren't one."
As she rose she smiled again, distantly and dreamily. "If you were an American, dear Miss Adare, you'd know."
Before she said good-by she looked deliberately about the room. It was not the hasty inspection I should have expected; it was tranquil, and I could even say that it was thorough. She made no mention of Mr. Grainger, but I couldn't help thinking he was in her mind.
At the door to which I accompanied her, however, her manner changed. Before trusting herself to the few paces of walk running from the entrance to the wrought-iron gate, she glanced up and down the street. It was dark by this time, and the lamps were lit, but not till the pavement was tolerably clear did she venture out. Even then she didn't turn toward Fifth Avenue, which would have been her natural direction; but rapidly and, as I imagined, furtively, she walked the other way.
I mentioned to no one that she had come to see me. Her kind thought of Hugh I was sorry to keep to myself; but I knew of no purpose to be served in divulging it. With my maxim to guide me it was not difficult to be sure that in this case right lay in silence.
A few days later I got Hugh's doings from a new point of view. As I was going back to my lunch at the hotel, Mrs. Rossiter called to me from her motor and made me get in. The distance I had to cover being slight, she drove me up to Central Park and back again to have the time to talk.
"My dear, he's crazy. He's going round to all the offices that practically turned him out six or eight weeks ago and begging them to find a place for him. Two or three of papa's old friends have written to ask what they could really do for him—for papa, that is—and he's sent them word that he'd take it as a favor if they'd show Hugh to the door."
"Of course, if his father makes himself his enemy—"
"He only makes himself his enemy in order to be his friend, dear Miss Adare. He's your friend, too, papa is, if you only saw it."
"I'm afraid I don't," I said, dryly.
"Oh, you will some day, and do him justice. He's the kindest man when you let him have his own way."
"Which would be to separate Hugh and me."
"But you'd both get over that; and I know he'd do the handsome thing by you, as well as by him."
"So long as we do the handsome thing by each other—"
"Oh, well, you can see where that leads to. Hugh'll never be in a position to marry you, dear Miss Adare."
"He will when your father comes round."
"Nonsense, my dear! You know you're not looking forward to that, not any more than I am."
Later, as I was getting out at my door, she said, as if it was an afterthought:
"Oh, by the way, you know papa has made me write to Lady Cissie Boscobel?"
I looked up at her from the pavement.
"What for?"
"To ask her to come over and spend a month or two in New York. She says she will if she can. She's a good deal of a girl, Cissie is. If you're going to keep your hold on Hugh— Well, all I can say is that Cissie will give you a run for your money. Of course, it's nothing to me. I only thought I'd tell you."
This, too, I kept from Hugh; but I seized an early opportunity to paint the portrait of the imaginary charming girl he could have for a wife, with plenty of money to support himself and her, if he would only give me up. This was as we walked home one night from the theater—I was obliged from time to time to let him take me so that we might have a pretext for being together—and we strolled in the shadows of the narrow cross-streets.
"Little Alix," he declared, fervently, "I could no more give you up than I could give up my breath or my blood. You're part of me. You're the most vital part of me. If you were to fail me I should die. If I were to fail you—But that's not worth thinking of. Look here!" He paused in a dark spot beside a great silent warehouse. "Look here. I'm having a pretty tough time. I'll confess it. I didn't mean to tell you, but I will. When I go to see certain people now—men I've met dozens of times at my father's table—what do you think happens? They have me shown to the door, and not too politely. These are the chaps who two months ago were squirming for joy at the thought of getting me. What do you think of that? How do you suppose it makes me feel?" I was about to break in with some indignant response when he continued, placidly: "Well, it all turns to music the minute I think of you. It's as if I'd drunk some glowing cordial. I'm kicked out, let us say—and it's not too much to say—and I'm ready to curse for all I'm worth, but I think of you. I remember I'm doing it for you and bearing it for you, so that one day I may strike the right thing and we may be together and happy forever afterward, and I swear to you it's as if angels were singing in the sky."
I had to let him kiss me there in the shadow of the street, as if we were a footman and a housemaid. I had to let him kiss away my tears and soothe me and console me. I told him I wasn't worthy of such love, and that, if he would consider the fitness of things, he would go away and leave me, but he only kissed me the more.
Again I was having my tea. It had been a lifeless day, and I was wondering how long I could endure the lifelessness. Not a soul had come near the place since morning, and my only approach to human intercourse had been in discussing Mrs. Daly's "varikiss" veins. Even that interlude was over, for the lady would not return for the tea things till after my departure. I was so lonely—I felt the uselessness of what I was doing so acutely—that in spite of the easy work and generous pay I was thinking of sending my resignation in to Mr. Grainger and looking for something else.
The outer door opened swiftly and silently, and I knew some one was inside. I knew, too, before rising from my place, that it was Mrs. Brokenshire. Subconsciously I had been expecting her, though I couldn't have said why. Her lovely face was all asparkle.
"I've come to see you again," she whispered, as I let her in. "I hope you're alone."
I replied that I was and, choosing my words carefully, I said it was kind of her to keep me in mind.
"Oh yes, I keep you in mind, and I keep Hugh. What I've really come for is to beg you to hand him the money of which I spoke the other day."
She seated herself, but not before glancing about the room, either expectantly or fearfully. As I poured out her tea I repeated what I had said already on the subject of the money. She wasn't listening, however. When she made replies they were not to the point. All the while she sipped her tea and nibbled her cake her eyes had the shifting alertness of a watchful little bird's.
"Oh, but what does it all matter when it's a question of love?" she said, somewhat at a venture. "Love is the only thing, don't you think? It must make its opportunities as it can."
"You mean that love can be—unscrupulous?"
"Oh, I shouldn't use that word."
"It isn't the word I'm thinking of. It's the act."
"Love is like war, isn't it? All's fair!"
"But is it?"
Her eyes rested on mine, not boldly, but with a certain daring.
"Why—yes."
"You believe that?"
She still kept her eyes on mine. Her tone was that of a challenge.
"Why—yes." She added, perhaps defiantly, "Don't you?"
I said, decidedly:
"No, I don't."
"Then you don't love. You can't love. Love is reckless. Love—" There was a long pause before she dropped the two concluding words, spacing them apart as if to emphasize her deliberation. "Love—risks—all."
"If it risks all it may lose all."
The challenge was renewed.
"Well? Isn't that better than—?"
"It's not better than doing right," I hastened to say, "however hard it may be."
"Ah, but what is right? A thing can't be right if—if—" she sought for a word—"if it's killing you."
As she said this there was a sound along the corridor leading from the house. I thought Mrs. Daly had forgotten something and was coming back. But the tread was different from her slow stump, and my sense of a danger at hand was such as the good woman never inspired.
Mrs. Brokenshire made no attempt to play a part or to put me off the scent. She acted as if I understood what was happening. Her teacup resting in her lap, she sat with eyes aglow and lips slightly apart in a look of heavenly expectation. I could hardly believe her to be the dazed, stricken little creature I had seen three months ago. As the footsteps approached she murmured, "He's coming!" or, "Who's coming?" I couldn't be sure which.
Mr. Grainger entered like a man who is on his own ground and knows what he is about to find. There was no uncertainty in his manner and no apparent sense of secrecy. His head was high and his walk firm as he pushed his way amid tables and chairs to where we were sitting in the glow of a shaded light.
I stood up as he approached, but I had time to appraise my situation. I saw all its little mysteries illumined as by a flash. I saw why Stacy Grainger had kept track of me; I saw why, in spite of my deficiencies, he had taken me on as his librarian; but I saw, too, that the Lord had delivered J. Howard Brokenshire into my hands, as Sisera into those of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.