Iwas relieved of some of my embarrassment by the fact that Mr. Grainger took command.
Having bowed over Mrs. Brokenshire's hand with an empressement he made no attempt to conceal, he murmured the words, "I'm delighted to see you again." After this greeting, which might have been commonplace and was not, he turned to me. "Perhaps Miss Adare will give me some tea."
I could carry out this request, listen to their scraps of conversation, and think my own thoughts all at the same time.
Thinking my own thoughts was the least easy of the three, for the reason that thought stunned me. The facts knocked me on the head. Since before my engagement as Mr. Grainger's librarian this situation had been planned! Mrs. Brokenshire had chosen me for my part in it! She had given Mr. Grainger my address, which she could have learned from her mother, and recommended me as one with whom they would be safe!
Their talk was only of superficial things; but it was not the clue to their emotions. That was in the way they talked—haltingly, falteringly, with glances that met and shifted and fell, or that rested on each other with long, mute looks, and then turned away hurriedly, as if something in the spirit reeled. As she gave him bits of information concerning the summer at Newport, she stumbled in her words, because there was no correlation between the sentences she formed and her fundamental thought. The same was true of his account of yachting on the coast of Maine, of Gloucester, Islesboro, and Bar Harbor. He stuttered and stammered and repeated himself. It was like one of those old Italian duets in which stupid words are sung to a passionate, heartbreaking melody. Nevertheless, I had enough sympathy with love, even with a guilty love, to have some mercy in my judgments.
Not that I believed it to be a guilty love—as yet. That, too, I was obliged to think over and form my opinion about it. It was not a guilty love as yet; but it might easily become a guilty love. I remembered that Larry Strangways, with all his admiration for his employer, had refused him a place in his list of whole-hearted, clean-hearted men because he had a weakness; and I reflected that on the part of Mrs. Billing's daughter there might be no rigorous concept of the moralities. What I saw, therefore, was a man and a woman so consumed with longing for each other that guilt would be chiefly a matter of opportunity. To create that opportunity I had been brought upon the scene.
I could see, of course, how admirably I was suited to the purpose I was meant to serve. In the first place, I was young, and might but dimly perceive—might not perceive at all—what was being done with me. In the next place, I was presumably too inexperienced to take a line of my own even if I suspected what was not for me to know. Then, I was poor and a stranger, and too glad of the easy work for which I was liberally paid not to be willing to take its bitter with its sweet. Lastly, I, too, was in love; and I, too, was a victim of Howard Brokenshire. If I couldn't approve of what I might see and hear, at least I might be reckoned on not to speak of it. Once more I was made to feel that, though I might play a subordinate rôle of some importance, my own wishes and personality didn't count.
It was obviously a minute at which to bring my maxim into operation. I had to do what was Right—with a capital. For that I must wait for inspiration, and presently I got it.
That is, I got it by degrees. I got it first by noting in a puzzled way the glances which both my companions sent in my direction. They were sidelong glances, singularly alike, whether they came from Stacy Grainger's melancholy brown eyes or Mrs. Brokenshire's sweet, misty ones. They were timid glances, pleading, uneasy. They asked what words wouldn't dare to ask, and what I was too dense to understand. I sat sipping my tea, running hot and cold as the odiousness of my position struck me from the various points of view; but I made no attempt to move.
They were still talking of people of whom I knew nothing, but talking brokenly, futilely, for the sake of hearing each other's voice, and yet stifling the things which it would have been fatal to them both to say, when Mr. Grainger got up and brought me his cup.
"May I have another?"
I looked up to take the cup, but he held it in his hands. He held it in his hands and gazed down at me. He gazed down at me with an expression such as I have never seen in any eyes but a dog's. As I write I blush to remember that, with such a mingling of hints and entreaties and commands, I didn't know what he was trying to convey to me. I took the cup, poured out his tea, handed the cup back to him—and sat.
But after he had reached his seat the truth flashed on me. I was in the way; I wasde trop. I had done part of my work in being the pretext for Mrs. Brokenshire's visit; now I ought, tactfully, to absent myself. I needn't go far; I needn't go for long. There was an alcove at the end of the room where one could be out of sight; there was also the corridor leading to the house. I could easily make an excuse; I could get up and move without an excuse of any kind. But I sat.
I hated myself; I despised myself; but I sat. I drank my tea without knowing it; I ate my cake without tasting it—and I sat.
The talk between my companions grew more fitful. Silence was easier for them—silence and that dumb interchange of looks which had the sympathy of something within myself. I knew that in their eyes I was a nuisance, a thing to be got rid of. I was so in my own—but I went on eating and drinking stolidly—and sat.
It was in my mind that this was my chance to be avenged on Howard Brokenshire; but I didn't want my vengeance that way. I have to confess that I was so poor-spirited as to have little or no animosity against him. I could see how easy it was for him to think of me as an adventuress. I wanted to convince and convert him, but not to make him suffer. If in any sense I could be called the guardian of his interests I would rather have been true to the trust than not. As I sat, therefore, gulping down my tea as if I relished it, it was partly because of my protective instinct toward the exquisite creature before me who might not know how to protect herself—and partly because I couldn't help it. Mr. Grainger could order me to go, but until he did I meant to go on eating.
Probably because of the insistence of my presence Mrs. Brokenshire felt obliged to begin to talk again. I did my best not to listen, but fragments of her sentences came to me.
"My mother spent a few weeks with us in August. I—I don't think she and—and Mr. Brokenshire get on so well."
Almost for the first time he was interested in what she said rather than in her.
"What's the trouble?"
"Oh, I don't know—the whole thing." A long pause ensued, during which their eyes rested on each other in mute questioning. "She's changed, mamma is."
"Changed in what way?"
"Oh, I don't know. I—I suppose she sees that she—she—miscalculated."
It was his turn to ruminate silently, and when he spoke at last it was as if throwing up to the surface but one of a deep undercurrent of thoughts.
"After the pounding I got three years ago she didn't believe I'd come back."
She accepted this without comment. Before speaking again she sent me another of her frightened, pleading looks.
"She always liked you better than any one else."
He seconded the glance in my direction as he said, with a grim smile:
"Which didn't prevent her going to the highest bidder."
She colored and sighed.
"You wouldn't be so hard on her if you knew what a fight she had to make during papa's lifetime. We were always in debt. You knew that, didn't you? Poor mamma used to say she'd save me from that if she never—"
I lost the rest of the sentence by deliberately rattling the tea things in pouring myself a third or a fourth cup of tea. Nothing but disconnected words reached me after that, but I caught the name of Madeline Pyne. I knew who she was, having heard her story day by day as it unfolded itself during my first weeks with Mrs. Rossiter. It was a simple tale as tales go in the twentieth century. Mrs. Pyre had been Mrs. Grimshaw. While she was Mrs. Grimshaw she had spent three days at a seaside resort with Mr. Pyne. The law having been invoked, she had changed her residence from the house of Mr. Grimshaw in Seventy-fifth Street to that of Mr. Pyne in Seventy-seventh Street, and likewise changed her name. Only a very discerning eye could now have told that in the opinion of society there was a difference between her and Cæsar's wife. The drama was sufficiently recent to make the topic a natural one for an interchange of confidences. That confidences were being interchanged I could see; that from those confidences certain terrifying, passionate deductions were being drawn silently I could also see. I could see without hearing; I didn't need to hear. I could tell by her pallor and his embarrassment how each read the mind of the other, how each was tempted and how each recoiled. I knew that neither pointed the moral of the parable, for the reason that it stared them in the face.
Because that subject, too, was exhausted, or because they had come to a place where they could say no more, they sat silent again. They looked at each other; they looked at me; neither would take the responsibility of giving me a further hint to go. Much as they desired my going, I was sure they were both afraid of it. I might be a nuisance and yet I was a safeguard. They were too near the brink of danger not to feel that, after all, there was something in having the safeguard there.
A few minutes later Mrs. Brokenshire flew to shelter herself behind this protection. She fluttered softly to my side, beginning again to talk of Hugh. Knowing by this time that her interest in him was only a blind for her frightened essays in passion, I took up the subject but half-heartedly.
"I've the money here," she confided to me, "if you'll only take charge of it."
When I had declined to do this, for the reasons I had already given, her face brightened.
"Then we can talk it over again." She rose as she spoke. "I can't stay any longer now—but we'll talk it over again. Let me see! This is Tuesday. If I came—"
"I'm always at the Hotel Mary Chilton after six," I said, significantly.
I smiled inwardly at the way in which she took this information.
"Oh, I'll come before that—and I sha'n't keep you—just to talk about Hugh—and see he won't take the money—perhaps on—on Thursday."
As nominally she had come to see me, nominally it was my place to accompany her to the door. In this at least I got my cue, walking the few paces with her, while she held my hand. I gathered that, the minutes of temptation being past, she bore me some gratitude for having helped her over them. At any rate, she pressed my fingers and gave me wistful, teary smiles, till at last she was out in the lighted street and I had closed the door behind her.
It was only half past five, and I had still thirty minutes to fill in. As I turned back into the room I found Mr. Grainger walking aimlessly up and down, inspecting a bit of lustrous faïence or the backs of a row of books, and making me feel that there was something he wished to say. His movements were exactly those of a man screwing up his courage or trying to find words.
The simplest thing I could do was to sit down at my desk and make a feint at writing. I seemed to be ignoring my employer's presence, but in reality, as I watched him from under my lids, I was getting a better impression of him than on any previous occasion.
There was nothing Olympian about him as there was about Howard Brokenshire. He was too young to be Olympian, being not more than thirty-eight. He struck me, indeed, as just a big, sinewy man of the type which fights and hunts and races and loves, and has dumb, uncomprehended longings which none of these pursuits can satisfy. In this he was English more than American, and Scottish more than English. He was certainly not the American business man as seen in hotel lobbies and on the stage. He might have been classed as the American romantic—an explorer, a missionary, or a shooter of big game, according to taste and income. Larry Strangways said that among Americans you most frequently met his like in East Africa, Manchuria, or Brazil. That he was in business in New York was an accident of tradition and inheritance. Just as an Englishman who might have been a soldier or a solicitor is a country gentleman because his father has left him landed estates, so Stacy Grainger had become a financier.
As a financier, I understood he helped to furnish the money in undertakings in which other men did the work. In this respect the direction his interests took was what might have been expected of so virile a character—steel, iron, gunpowder, shells, the founding of cannon, the building of war-ships; the forceful, the destructive. I gathered from Mr. Strangways that he was forever making journeys to Washington, to Pittsburg, to Cape Breton, wherever money could be invested in mighty conquering things. It was these projects that Howard Brokenshire had attacked so savagely as almost to bring him to ruin, though he had now re-established himself as strongly as before.
Being as terrified of him as of his rival, I prayed inwardly that he would go away. Once or twice in marching up and down he paused before my desk, and the pen almost dropped from my hand. I knew he was trying to formulate a hint that when Mrs. Brokenshire came again—But even on my part the thought would not go into words. Words made it gross, and it was what he must have discovered each time he approached me. Each time he approached me I fancied that his poetic eye grew apologetic, that his shoulders sagged, and that his hard, strong mouth became weak before syllables that would not pass the lips. Then he would veer away, searching doubtless some easier phrase, some more delicate suggestion, only to fail again.
It was a relief when, after a last attempt, he passed into the corridor leading to the house. I could breathe, I could think; I could look back over the last half-hour and examine my conduct. I was not satisfied with it, because I had frustrated love—even that kind of love; and yet I asked myself how I could have acted differently.
In substance I asked the same of Larry Strangways when he came to dine with me next day. Hugh being in Philadelphia on one of his pathetic cruises after work, I had invited Mr. Strangways by telephone, begging him to come on the ground that, having got me into this trouble, he must advise me as to getting out.
"I didn't get you into the trouble," he smiled across the table. "I only helped to get you the job."
"But when you got me the job, as you call it—"
"I knew you would be able to do the work."
"And did you think the work would be—this?"
"I couldn't tell anything about that. I simply knew you could do the work—from all the points of view."
"And do you think I've done it?"
"I know you've done it. You couldn't do anything else. I won't go back of that."
If my heart gave a sudden leap at these words it was because of the tone. It betrayed that quality behind the tone to which I had been responding, and of which I had been afraid, ever since I knew the man. By a great effort I kept my words on the casual, friendly plane, as I said:
"Your confidence is flattering, but it doesn't help me. What I want to know is this: Assuming that they love each other, should I allow myself to be used as the pretext for their meetings?"
"Does it do you any harm?"
"Does it do them any good?"
"Couldn't you let that be their affair?"
"How can I, when I'm dragged into it?"
"If you're only dragged into it to the extent of this afternoon—"
"Only! You can use that word of a situation—"
"In which you played propriety."
"Oh, it wasn't playing."
"Yes, it was; it was playing the game—as they only play it who aren't quitters but real sports."
"But I'm not a sport. I've the quitter in me. I'm even thinking of flinging up the position—"
"And leaving them to their fate."
I smiled.
"Couldn't I let that be their affair?"
He, too, smiled, his head thrown back, his white teeth gleaming.
"You think you've caught me, don't you? But you've got the shoe on the wrong foot. I said just now that it might be their affair as to whether or not it did them any good to have you as the pretext of their meetings; but it's surely your affair when you say they sha'n't. Their meetings will be one thing so long as they have you; whereas without you—"
"Then you think they'll keep meeting in any case?"
"I've nothing to say about that. I limit myself to believing that in any situation that requires skilful handling your first name is resourcefulness."
I shifted my ground.
"Oh, but when it's such an odious situation!"
"No situation is odious in which you're a participant, just as no view is ugly where there's a garden full of flowers."
He went on with his dinner as complacently as if he had not thrown me into a state of violent inward confusion. All I could do was to summon Hugh's image from the shades of memory into which it had withdrawn, and beg it to keep me true to him. The thought of being false to the man to whom I had actually owned my love outraged in me every sentiment akin to single-heartedness. In a kind of desperation I dragged Hugh's name into the conversation, and yet in doing so I merely laid myself open to another shock.
"You can't be in love with him!"
The words were the same as Mrs. Billing's; the emphasis was similar.
"I am," I declared, bluntly, not so much to contradict the speaker as to fortify myself.
"You may think you are—"
"Well, if I think I am, isn't it the same thing as—"
"Lord, no! not with love! Love is the most deceptive of the emotions—to people who haven't had much experience of its tricks."
"Have you?"
He met this frankly.
"No; nor you. That's why you can so easily take yourself in."
I grew cold and dignified.
"If you think I'm taking myself in when I say that I'm in love with Hugh Brokenshire—"
"That's certainly it."
Though I knew my cheeks were flaming a dahlia red, I forced myself to look him in the eyes.
"Then I'm afraid it would be useless to try to convince you—"
He nodded.
"Quite!"
"So that we can only let the subject drop."
He looked at me with mock gravity.
"I don't see that. It's an interesting topic."
"Possibly; but as it doesn't lead us any further—"
"But it does. It leads us to where we see straighter."
"Yes, but if I don't need to see straighter than I do?"
"We all need to see as straight as we can."
"I'm seeing as straight as I can when I say—"
"Oh, but not as straight as I can! I can see that a noble character doesn't always distinguish clearly between love and kindness, or between kindness and loyalty, or between loyalty and self-sacrifice, and that the higher the heart, the more likely it is to impose on itself. No one is so easily deceived as to love and loving as the man or the woman who's truly generous."
"If I was truly generous—"
"I know what you are," he said, shortly.
"Then if you know what I am you must know, too, that I couldn't do other than care for a man who's given up so much for my sake."
"You couldn't do other than admire him. You couldn't do other than be grateful to him. You probably couldn't do other than want to stand by him through thick and thin—"
"Well, then?"
"But that's not love."
"If it isn't love it's so near to it—"
"Exactly—which is what I'm saying. It's so near it that you don't know the difference, and won't know the difference till—till the real thing affords you the contrast."
I did my best to be scornful.
"Really! You speak like an expert."
"Yes; an expert by intuition."
I was still scornful.
"Only that?"
"Only that. You see," he smiled, "the expert by experience has learnt a little; but the expert by intuition knows it all."
"Then, when I need information on the subject, I'll come to you."
"And I'll promise to give it to you frankly."
"Thanks," I said, sweetly. "But you'll wait till I come, won't you? And in the mean time, you'll not say any more about it."
"Does that mean that I'm not to say any more about it ever—or only for to-night?"
I knew, suddenly, what the question meant to me. I took time to see that I was shutting a door which my heart cried out to have left open. But I answered, still sweetly and with a smile:
"Suppose we make it that you won't say any more about it—ever?"
He gazed at me; I gazed at him. A long half-minute went by before he uttered the words, very slowly and deliberately:
"I won't say any more about it—for to-night."
On Thursday Mr. Grainger came to the library to tea, but notwithstanding her suggestion Mrs. Brokenshire did not. She came, however, on Friday when he did not. For some time after that he came daily.
Toward me his manner had little variation; he was courteous and distant. I cannot say that he ever had tea with me, for even if he accepted a cup, which he did from time to time, as if keeping up a rôle, he carried it to some distant corner of the room where he was either examining the objects or making their acquaintance. He came about half past four and went about half past five, always appearing from the house and retiring by the same way. In the house itself, as I understood from Mrs. Daly, he displayed an interest he had not shown for years.
"It's out of wan room and into another, and raisin' the shades and pushin' the furniture about, till you'd swear he was goin' to be married."
I thought of Mr. Pyne, wondering if, before his trip to Atlantic City with Mrs. Grimshaw, he, too, had wandered about his house, appraising its possibilities from the point of view of a new mistress.
On the Friday when Mrs. Brokenshire came and Mr. Grainger did not she made no comment on his non-appearance. She even sustained with some success the fiction that her visit was on my account. Only her soft eyes turned with a quick light toward the door leading to the house at every sound that might have been a footstep.
When she talked it was chiefly about Mr. Brokenshire.
"It's telling on him—all this trouble about Hugh."
I was curious.
"Telling on him in what way?"
"It's made him older—and grayer—and the trouble with his eye comes oftener."
It seemed to me that I saw an opportunity.
"Then why doesn't he give in?"
"Give in? Mr. Brokenshire? Why, he never gave in in his life."
"But if he suffers?"
"He'd rather suffer than give in. He's not an unkind man, not really, so long as he has his own way; but once he's thwarted—"
"Every one has to be thwarted some time."
"He'd agree to that; but he'd say every one but him. That's why, when he first met—met me—and my mother at that time meant to have me—to have me marry some one else— You knew that, didn't you?"
I reminded her that she had told me so among the rocks at Newport.
"Did I? Perhaps I did. It's—it's rather on my mind. I had to change so—so suddenly. But what I was going to say was that when Mr. Brokenshire saw that mamma meant me to marry some one else, and that I—that I wanted to, there was nothing he didn't do. It was in the papers—and everything. But nothing would stop him till he'd got what he wanted."
I pumped up my courage to say:
"You mean, till you gave it to him."
She bit her lip.
"Mamma gave it to him. I had to do as I was told. You'd say, I suppose, that I needn't have done it, but you don't know." She hesitated before going on. "It—it was money. We—we had to have it. Mamma thought that Mr.—the man I was to have married first—would never have any more. It was all sorts of things on the Stock Exchange—and bulls and bears and things like that. There was a whole week of it—and every one knew it was about me. I nearly died; but mamma didn't mind. She enjoyed it. It's the sort of thing she would enjoy. She made me go with her to the opera every night. Some one always asked us to sit in their box. She put me in the front where the audience watched me through their opera-glasses more than they did the stage—and I was a kind of spectacle. There was one night—they were singing the 'Meistersinger'—when I felt just like Eva, put up as a prize for whoever could win me. But I was talking of Mr. Brokenshire, wasn't I? Do you think his eye will ever be any better?"
She asked the question without change of tone. I could only reply that I didn't know.
"The doctor says—that is, he's told me—that in a way it's mental. It's the result of the strain he's put upon his nerves by overwork and awful tempers. Of course, his responsibilities have been heavy, though of late years he's been able to shift some of them to other people's shoulders. And then," she went on, in her sweet, even voice, "what happened about me—coming to him so late in life—and—and tearing him to pieces more violently than if he'd been a younger man—young men get over things—that made it worse. Don't you see it would?"
I said I could understand that that might be the effect.
"Of course, if I could really be a wife to him—"
"Well, can't you?"
She shuddered.
"He terrifies me. When he's there I'm not a woman any more; I'm a captive."
"But since you've married him—"
"I didn't marry him; he married me. I was as much a bargain as if I had been bought. And now mamma sees that—that she might have got a better price."
I thought it enough to say:
"That must make it hard for her."
A sigh bubbled up, like that of a child who has been crying.
"It makes it hard for me." She eyed me with a long, oblique regard. "Don't you think it's awful when an elderly man falls in love with a young girl who herself is in love with some one else?"
I could only dodge that question.
"All unhappiness is awful."
"Ah, but this! An elderly man!—in love! Madly in love! It's not natural; it's frightful; and when it's with yourself—"
She moved away from me and began to inspect the room. In spite of her agitation she did this more in detail than when she had been there before, making the round of the book-shelves much as Mr. Grainger himself was in the habit of doing, and gazing without comment on the Persian and Italian potteries. It was easy to place her as one of those women who live surrounded by beautiful things to which they pay no attention. Mr. Brokenshire's richly Italianate dwelling was to her just a house. It would have been equally just a house had it been Jacobean or Louis Quinze or in the fashion of the Brothers Adam, and she would have seen little or no difference in periods and styles. The books she now looked at were mere backs; they were bindings and titles. Since they belonged to Stacy Grainger she could look at them with soft, unseeing eyes, thinking of him. That was all. Without comment of my own I accompanied her, watching the quick, bird-like turnings of her head whenever she thought she heard a step.
"It's nice for you here," she said, when at last she gave signs of going. "I—I love it. It's so quiet—and—and safe. Nobody knows I come to—to see you."
Her stammering emboldened me to take a liberty.
"But suppose they found out?"
She was as innocent as a child as she glanced up at me and said:
"It would still be to see you. There's no harm in that."
"Even so, Mr. Brokenshire wouldn't approve of it."
"But he'll never know. It's not the sort of thing any one would think of. I leave the motor down at Sixth Avenue, and this time of year it's so dark. As soon as I heard Miss Davis was leaving I thought how nice the place would be for you."
Since it was useless to make the obvious correction here, I thanked her for her kindness, going on to add:
"But I don't want to get into any trouble."
"No, of course not." She began moving toward the door. "What kind of trouble were you thinking of?"
I wondered whether or not, having taken one liberty, I could take another.
"When I see my boat being caught in the rapids I'm afraid there's a cataract ahead."
It took her some thirty seconds to seize the force of this. Having got it her eyes fell.
"Oh, I see! And does that mean," she went on, her bosom heaving, "that you're afraid of the cataract on your own account—or on mine?"
I paused in our slow drifting toward the door. She was a great lady in the land, and I was nobody. I had much to risk, and I risked it.
"Should I offend you," I asked, deferentially, "if I said—on yours?"
For an instant she became as haughty as so sweet a nature knew how to be, but the prompting passed.
"No; you don't offend me," she said, after a brief pause. "We're friends, aren't we, in spite of—"
As she hesitated I filled in the phrase.
"In spite of the difference between us."
Because she was pursuing her own thoughts she allowed that to pass.
"People have gone over cataracts—and still lived."
"Ah, but there's more to existence than life," I exclaimed, promptly.
"There was a friend of my own," she continued, without immediate reference to my observation; "at least she was a friend—I suppose she is still—her name was Madeline Grimshaw—"
"Yes, Mrs. Pyne; but she wasn't Mrs. Brokenshire."
"No; she never was so unhappy." She pressed her handkerchief against the two great tears that rolled down her cheeks. "She did love Mr. Grimshaw at one time, whereas I—"
"But you say he's kind."
"Oh yes. It isn't that. He's more than kind. He'd smother me with things I'd like to have. It's—it's when he comes near me—when he touches me—and—and his eye!"
I knew enough of physical repulsion to be able to change my line of appeal. "But do you think you'd gain anything if you made him unhappy—now?"
She looked at me wonderingly.
"I shouldn't think you'd plead for him."
I had ventured so far that I could go a little farther.
"I don't think I'm pleading for him so much as for you."
"Why do you plead for me? Do you think I should be—sorry?"
"If you did what I imagine you're contemplating—yes."
She surprised me by admitting my implication.
"Even if I did, I couldn't be sorrier than I am."
"Oh, but existence is more than joy and sorrow."
"You said just now that it was more than life. I suppose you mean that it's love."
"I should say that it's more than love."
"Why, what can it be?"
I smiled apologetically.
"Mightn't it be—right?"
She studied me with an air of angelic sweetness.
"Oh no, I could never believe that."
And she went more resolutely toward the door.
Hugh returned in good spirits from Philadelphia. He had been well received. His name had secured him much the same welcome as that accorded him on his first excursions into Wall Street. I didn't tell him I feared that the results would be similar, for I saw that he was cheered.
To verify the love I had acknowledged to him more than once, I was eager to look at him again. I found a man thinner and older and shabbier than the Hugh who first attracted my attention by being kind to me. I could have borne with his being thinner and older; but that he should be shabbier wrung my heart.
I considered myself engaged to him. That as yet I had not spoken the final word was a detail, in my mind, considering that I had so often rested in his arms and pillowed my head on his shoulder. The fact, too, that when I had first allowed myself those privileges I had taken him to be a strong character—the shadow of a rock in a thirsty land, I had called him—and that I now saw he was a weak one, bound me to him the more closely. I had gone to him because I needed him; but now that I saw he needed me I was sure I could never break away from him.
He dined with me at the Mary Chilton on the evening of his return, sitting where Larry Strangways had sat only forty-eight hours previously. I was sorry then that I had not changed the table. To be face to face with two men, on exactly the same spot, on occasions so near together, in conditions so alike, gave me a sense of faithlessness. Though I wanted nothing so much as to be honest with them both, I was afraid of being so with neither; and yet for this I hardly knew where to place the blame. I suffered for Hugh because of Larry Strangways, and I suffered for Larry Strangways because of Hugh. If I suffered for myself I was scarcely aware of it, having to give so much thought to them.
Nevertheless, I regretted that I had not chosen another table, and all the more when Hugh brought the matter up. He had finished telling me of his experiences in Philadelphia. "Now what have you been doing?" he demanded, a smile lighting up his tired face.
"Oh, nothing much—the same old thing."
"Seen anybody in particular?"
I weighed my answer carefully.
"Nobody in particular, except Mr. Strangways."
He frowned.
"Where did you see that fellow?"
"Right here."
"Right here? What do you mean by that?"
"He came to dine with me."
"Dine with you! And sat where I'm sitting now?"
I tried to take this pleasantly.
"It's the only place I've got to ask any one I want to talk to."
"But why should you want to talk to—to—" I saw him struggling with the word, but it came out—"to that bounder?"
"He's a friend of mine, Hugh. I've asked you already to remember that he's a gentleman."
"Gentleman! O Lord!" He became kindly and coaxing, leaning across the table with an ingratiating smile. "Look here, little Alix! Don't you think that for my sake it's time you were beginning to drop that lot?"
Though I revolted against the expression, I pretended to see nothing amiss.
"You mean just as Libby Jaynes had to drop the barbers and the pages in the hotel when she became Mrs. Tracy Allen."
He laughed nervously.
"Oh, I don't go as far as that. And yet if I did—"
"It wouldn't be too far." I gave him the impression that I was thinking the question out. "But you see, Hugh, dear, I don't see any difference between Mr. Strangways—"
"And me?"
"I wasn't going to say you, but between Mr. Strangways and the people you'd like me to know. Or rather, if I do see a difference it's that Mr. Strangways is so much more a man of the world than—than—"
Perceiving my embarrassment, he broke in:
"Than who?"
I took my courage in both hands.
"Than Mr. Rossiter, for example, or your brother, Mr. Jack Brokenshire, or any of the men I met when I was with your sister. If I hadn't seen you—the truest gentleman I ever knew—I shouldn't have supposed that any of them belonged to the real great world at all."
To my relief he took this good-naturedly.
"That's what we call social inexperience, little Alix. It's because you don't know how to distinguish."
"That is, I don't know a good thing when I see it."
"You don't know that sort of good thing—the American who counts. But you can learn. And if you learn you've got to take as a starting-point the fact that, just as there are things one does and things one doesn't do, so there are people one knows and people one doesn't know—and no one can tell you the reason why."
"But if one asked for a reason—"
"It would queer you with the right people. They don't want a reason. If people do want a reason—well, they've got to stay out of it. It was one of the things Libby Jaynes picked up as if she'd been born to it. She knew how to cut; she knew how to cut dead; and she cut as dead as she knew how."
"But, Hugh, darling, I don't know how."
He was all forbearance.
"You'll learn, sweet." As for the moment the waitress was absent, he put out his hand and locked his fingers within mine. "You've got it in you. Once you've had a chance you'll knock Libby Jaynes into a cocked hat."
I shook my head.
"I'm not sure that you're right."
"I know I'm right, if you do as I tell you: and to begin with you've got to put that fellow Strangways in his place."
I let it go at that, having so many other things to think of that any mere status of my own became of no importance. I was willing that Hugh should marry me as Tracy Allen married Libby Jaynes, or in any other way, so long as I could play my part in the rest of the drama with right-mindedness. But it was precisely that that grew more difficult.
When Mrs. Brokenshire and Mr. Grainger next met under what I can only call my chaperonage they were distinctly more at ease. The first stammering, shamefaced awkwardness was gone. They knew by this time what they had to say and said it. They had also come to understand that if I could not be moved I might be outwitted. By the simple expedient of wandering away on the plea of looking at this or that decorative object they obtained enough solitude to serve their purposes. Without taking themselves beyond my range of vision they got out of earshot.
As far as that went I was relieved. I was not responsible for what they did, but only for what I did myself. I was not their keeper; I didn't want to be a spy on them. When, at a certain minute, as they returned toward me, I saw him pass a letter to her, it was entirely by chance. I reflected then that, while she ran no risk in using the mails in writing to him, it was not so with him in writing to her, and that communications of importance might have to pass between them. It was nothing to me. I was sorry to have surprised the act and tried to dismiss it from my mind.
It was repeated, however, the next time they came and many times after that. Their comings settled into a routine of being twice a week, with fair regularity. Tuesdays and Fridays were their days, though not without variation. It was indeed this variation that saved the situation on a certain afternoon when otherwise all might have been lost.
We had come to February, 1914. During the intervening months the conditions in which I lived and worked underwent little change. My days and nights were passed between the library and the Mary Chilton, with few social distractions, though I had some. Larry Strangways's sister, Mrs. Applegate, had called on me, and her house, a headquarters of New York philanthropies, had opened to me its kindly doors. Through Mrs. Applegate one or two other women came to relieve my loneliness, and now and then old Halifax friends visiting New York took me to theaters and to dinners at hotels. Ethel Rossiter was as friendly as fear of her father and of social conventions permitted her to be, and once or twice when she was quite alone I lunched with her. On each of these occasions she had something new to tell me.
The first was that Hugh had met his father accidentally face to face, and that the parent had cut the son. Of that Hugh had told me nothing. According to Ethel, he was more affected by the incident than by anything else since the beginning of his cares. He felt it too deeply to speak of it even to me, to whom he spoke of everything.
It happened, I believe at the foot of the steps of a club. Hugh, who was passing, saw his father coming down, and waited. Howard Brokenshire brought into play his faculty of seeing without seeing, and went on majestically, while Hugh stared after him with tears of vexation in his eyes.
"He felt it the more," Mrs. Rossiter stated in her impartial way, "because I doubt if he had the price of his dinner in his pocket."
It was then that she gave me to understand that if it were not that Mildred was lending him money he would have nothing to subsist on at all. Mildred had a little from her grandfather Brew, being privileged in this respect because she was the only one of the first Mrs. Brokenshire's children born at the time of the grandfather's demise. The legacy had been a trifle, but from this fund, which had never been his father's, Hugh consented to take loans.
"Hugh, darling," I said to him the next time I had speech with him, "don't you see now that he's irreconcilable? He'll either starve you into surrender—"
"Never," he cried, thumping the table with his hand.
"Or else you must take such work as you can get."
"Such work as I can get! Do you know how much that would bring me in a week?"
"Even so," I reasoned, "you'd have work and I should have work, and we'd live."
He was hurt.
"Americans don't believe in working their women," he declared, loftily. "If I can't give you a life in which you'll have nothing at all to do—"
"But I don't want a life in which I'll have nothing at all to do," I cried. "Your idle women strike me as a weak point in your national organization. It's like the dinner-parties I've seen at some of your restaurants and hotels—a circle of men at one table and a circle of women at another. You revolve too much in separate spheres. Your women have too little to do with business and politics and your men with society and the fine arts. I'm not used to such a pitiless separation of the sexes. Don't let us begin it, Hugh, darling. Let me share what you share—"
"You won't share anything sordid, little Alix, I can tell you that. When you're my wife you'll have nothing to think of but having a good time and looking your prettiest—"
"I should die of it," I exclaimed but this he took as a joke.
That had passed in January. What Ethel Rossiter told me the next time I lunched with her was that Lady Cecilia Boscobel had accepted her invitation and was expected within a few weeks. She repeated what she had already said of her, in exactly the same words.
"She's a good deal of a girl, Cissie is." My heart leaped and fell almost simultaneously. If I could only give up Hugh in such a way that he would have to give me up, this girl might help us out of our impasse. Had Mrs. Rossiter stopped there I might have made some noble vow of renunciation; but she went on: "If she wants Hugh she'll take him. Don't be under any illusion about that."
Though my quick mettle was up, I said, docilely:
"Oh no, I'm not. But if you mean taking him away from me—well, a good many people have tried it, haven't they?"
"Cissie Boscobel hasn't tried it."
But I was peaceably inclined.
"Oh, well," I said, "perhaps she won't. She may not think it worth her while."
"If you want to know my opinion," Mrs. Rossiter insisted, as she helped herself to the peas which the rosebud Thomas was passing, "I think she will. Men aren't so plentiful over there as you seem to suppose—that is, men of the kind they'd marry. Lord Goldborough has no money at all, as you might say, and yet the girls have to be set up in big establishments. You've only got to look at them to see it. Cissie marrying a subaltern with a thousand pounds a year isn't thinkable. It wouldn't dress her. She's coming over here to take a look at Hugh, and if she likes him— Well, I told you long ago that you'd be wise to snap up that young Strangways. He's much better-looking than Hugh, and more in your own— Besides, Jim says that now that he's with"—she balked at the name of Grainger—"now that he's where he is he's beginning to make money. It doesn't take so long when people have the brains for it."
All this gave me a feeling of mingled curiosity and fear when, a few weeks later, I came on Mrs. Rossiter and Lady Cecilia Boscobel looking into a shop window in Fifth Avenue. It was a Saturday afternoon, the day which I had off and on which I made my modest purchases. It was a cold, brisk day, with light snow whirling in tiny eddies on the ground. I was going northward on the sunny side. At a distance of some fifty yards I recognized Mrs. Rossiter's motor standing by the curb, and cast my eyes about for a possible glimpse of her. Moving away from the window of the jeweler's whence she had probably come out, she saw me approach, and turned at once with a word or two to the lady beside her, who also looked in my direction. I knew by intuition who Mrs. Rossiter's companion was, and that my connection with the family had been explained to her.
Mrs. Rossiter made the presentation in her usual offhand way.
"Oh, Miss Adare! I want to introduce you to Lady Cecilia Boscobel."
We exchanged civil, remote, and non-committal salutations, each of us with her hands in her muff. My immediate impression was one of color, as it is when you see old Limoges enamels. There was more color in Lady Cissie's personality than in that of any one I have ever looked at. Her hair was red—not auburn or copper, but red—a decorative, flaming red. I have often noticed how slight is the difference between beautiful red hair and ugly. Lady Cissie's was of the shade that is generally ugly, but which in her case was rendered glorious by the introduction of some such pigment, gleaming and umber, as that which gives the peculiar hue to Australian gold. I had never seen such hair or hair in such quantities, except in certain pictures of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for which I should have supposed there could have been no earthly model had my father not known Eleanor Siddall. Lady Cissie's eyes were gray, with a greenish light in them when she turned her head. Her complexion could only be compared to the kind of carnation which the whitest of whites is flecked in just the right spots by the rosiest rose. In the lips, which were full and firm, also like Eleanor Siddall's, the rose became carmine, to melt away into coral-pink in the shell-like ears. Her dress of seal-brown broadcloth, on which there was a sheen, was relieved by occasional touches of sage-green, and the numerous sable tails on her boa and muff blew this way and that way in the wind. In the small black hat, perched at what I can only describe as a triumphant angle, an orange wing became at the tip of each tiny topmost feather a daring line of scarlet. Nestling on the sage-green below the throat a row of amber beads slumbered and smoldered with lemon and orange and ruby lights that now and then shot out rays of crimson or scarlet fire.
I thought of my own costume—naturally. I was in gray, with inexpensive black furs. An iridescent buckle, with hues such as you see in a pigeon's neck, at the side of my black-velvet toque was my only bit of color. I was poor Jenny Wren in contrast to a splendid bird-of-paradise. So be it! I could at least be a foil to this healthy, vigorous young beauty who was two inches taller than I, and might have my share of the advantages which go with all antithesis.
The talk was desultory, and in it the English girl took no part. Mrs. Rossiter asked me where I was going, what I was going for, and whether or not she couldn't take me to my destination in her car. I declined this offer, explained that my errands were trivial, and examined Lady Cissie through the corner of my eye. On her side Lady Cissie examined me quite frankly—not haughtily, but distantly and rather sympathetically. She had come all this distance to take a look at Hugh, and I was the girl he loved. I counted on the fact to give poor Jenny Wren her value, and I think it did. At any rate, when I had answered all Mrs. Rossiter's questions and was moving off to continue my way up-town, Lady Cissie's rich lips quivered in a sort of farewell smile.
But Hugh showed little interest when I painted her portrait verbally.
"Yes, that's the girl," he observed indifferently, "red-headed, long-legged, slashy-colored, laid on a bit too thick."
"She's beautiful, Hugh."
"Is she? Well, perhaps so. Wouldn't be my style; but every one to his taste."
"It you saw her now—"
"Oh, I've seen her often enough, just as she's seen me."
"She hasn't seen you as you are to-day, and neither have you seen her. A few years makes a difference."
He looked at me quizzically.
"Look here, little Alix, what are you giving us? Do you think I'd turn you down now—for all the Lady Cissies in the British peerage? Do you, now?"
"Not, perhaps, if you put it as turning me down—"
"Well, as you turning me down, then?"
"Our outlook is pretty dark, isn't it?"
"Just wait."
I ignored his pathetic boastfulness to continue my own sentence.
"And this prospect is so brilliant. You'd have a handsome wife, a big income, a good position, an important family backing on both sides of the Atlantic—all of which would make you the man you ought to be. Now that I've seen her, and rather guess that she'd take you, I don't see how I can let you forfeit so much. I don't want to make you regret the day you ever saw me—"
"Or regret yourself the day you ever saw me."
If I took up this challenge it was more for his sake than my own.
"Then suppose I accept that way of putting it?"
He looked at me solemnly, for a second or two, after which he burst out laughing. That I might have hesitations as to connecting myself with the Brokenshires was more than he could grasp. He might have minutes of jealousy of Larry Strangways, but his doubt could go no further. It went no further, even after he had seen Lady Cecilia and they had renewed their early acquaintance. Ethel Rossiter had managed that, of course with her father's connivance.
"Fine big girl," Hugh commended, "but too showy."
"She's not showy," I contradicted. "A thing isn't necessarily showy because it has bright colors. Tropical birds are not showy, nor roses, nor rubies—"
"I prefer pearls," he said, quietly. "You're a pearl, little Alix, the pearl of great price for which a man sells all that he has and buys it." Before I could respond to this kindly speech he burst out: "Good Lord! don't you suppose I can see what it all means? Cissie's the gay artificial fly that's to tempt the fish away from the little silvery minnow. Once I've darted after the bit of red and yellow dad will have hooked me. That's his game. Don't you think I see it? What dad wants is not that I shall have a wife I can love, but that he shall have a daughter-in-law with a title. You'd have to be, well, what I hope you will be some day, to know what that means to a man like dad. A son-in-law with a title—that's as common as beans to rich Americans; but a daughter-in-law with a title—a real, genuine British title, as sound as the Bank of England—that's something new. You can count on the fingers of one hand the American families that have got 'em"—he named them, one in Philadelphia, one in Chicago, one or two in New York—"and dad's as mad as blazes that he didn't think of the thing first. If he had, he'd have put Jack on to it, in spite of all Pauline's money; but since it's too late for that I must toe the mark. Well, I'm not going to, do you see? I'm going to choose my own wife, and I've chosen her. Birth and position mean nothing to me, for I'm as much of a Socialist as ever—or almost."
With such resolution as this there was no way of reasoning, so that I could only go on, wondering and hoping and doing what I could for the best.
What I could do for the best included watching over Mrs. Brokenshire. As winter progressed the task became harder and I grew the more anxious. So far no one suspected her visits to Mr. Grainger's library, and to the best of my knowledge her imprudence ended there. Further than to wander about the room the lovers never tried to elude me, though now and then I could see, without watching them, that he took her hand. Once or twice I thought he kissed her, but of that I was happily not sure. It was a relief, too, that as the days grew longer occasional visitors dropped in while they were there. The old gentleman interested in prints and the lady who studied Shakespeare came not infrequently. There were couples, too, who wandered in, seeking for their own purposes a half-hour of privacy. After all, the place was almost a public one to those who knew how to find it; and I was quick enough to see that in this very publicity lay a measure of salvation.
Mrs. Brokenshire was as quick to perceive this as I. When there were other people there she was more at ease. Nothing was simpler then than for Mr. Grainger and herself to be visitors like the rest, strolling about or sitting in shady corners, and keeping themselves unrecognized. There was thus a Thursday in the early part of March when I didn't expect them, because it was a Thursday. They came, however, only to find the old gentleman interested in prints and the lady who studied Shakespeare already on the spot. I was never so glad of anything as of this accidental happening when a surprising thing occurred to me next day.
It was between half past five and six on the Friday. As the lovers had come on the preceding day, I knew they would not appear on this, and was beginning to make my preparations for going home. I was actually pinning on my hat when the soft opening of the outer door startled me. A soft step sounded in the little inner vestibule, and then there came an equally soft, breathless standing still.
My hands were paralyzed in their upward position at my hat; my heart pounded so that I could hear it; my eyes were wide with terror as they looked back at me from the splendid Venetian mirror before which I stood. I was always afraid of robbers or murderers, even though I had the wrought-iron grille between me and them, and Mr. or Mrs. Daly within call.
Knowing that there was nothing for it but to go and see who was there, and suspecting that it might be Mrs. Brokenshire, after all, I dragged my feet across the few intervening paces. It was not Mrs. Brokenshire. It was a man, a man who looked inordinately big and majestic in this little decorative pen. I needed a few seconds in which to gaze, a few seconds in which to adjust my faculties, before grasping the fact that I saw Mrs. Brokenshire's husband. On his side, he needed something of the sort himself. Of all people in the world with whom he expected to find himself face to face I am sure I must have been the last.
I touched the spring, however, and the little portal opened. It opened and he stepped in. He stepped in and stood still. He stood still and looked round him. If I dare to say it of one who was never timid in his life, he looked round him timidly. His eyes showed it, his attitude showed it. He had come on a hateful errand; his feet were on hateful ground. He expected to see something more than me—and emptiness.
I got back some of my own self-control by being sorry for him, giving no indication of ever having met him before.
"You'd like to see the library, sir," I said, as I should have said it to any chance visitor.
He dropped into a large William and Mary chair, one of the show pieces, and placed his silk hat on the floor.
"I'll sit down," he murmured less to me than to himself. His stick he dandled now across and now between his knees.
The tea things were still on the table.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" I asked, in genuine solicitude.
"Yes—no." I think he would have liked it, but he probably remembered whose tea it was. "No," he repeated, with decision.
He breathed heavily, with short, puffy gasps. I recalled then that Mrs. Brokenshire had said that his heart had been affected. As a matter of fact, he put his gloved left hand up to it, as people do who feel something giving way within.
To relieve the embarrassment of the situation I said:
"I could turn on all the lights and you could see the library without going round it."
Withdrawing the hand at his heart, he raised it in the manner with which I was familiar.
"Sit down," he commanded, as sternly as his shortness of breath allowed.
The companion William and Mary chair being near, I slipped into it. Having him in three-quarters profile, I could study him without doing it too obviously, and could verify Mrs. Brokenshire's statements that Hugh's affairs were "telling on him." He was perceptibly older, in the way in which people look older all at once after having long kept the semblance of youth. The skin had grown baggy, the eyes tired; the beard and mustache, though as well cared for as ever, more decidedly mixed with gray. It was indicative of something that had begun to disintegrate in his self-esteem, that when his poor left eye screwed up he turned the terrifying right one on me with no effort to conceal the grimace.
As it was for him to break the silence, I waited in my huge ornamental chair, hoping he would begin.
"What are you doing here?"
The voice had lost none of its soft staccato nor of its whip-lash snap.
"I'm Mr. Grainger's librarian," I replied, meekly.
"Since when?" he panted.
"Since not long after I left Mrs. Rossiter."
He took his time to think another question out.
"How did your employer come to know about you?"
I explained, as though he had had no knowledge of the fact, that Mrs. Rossiter had employed for her boy, Brokenshire, a tutor named Strangways. This Mr. Strangways had attracted Mr. Grainger's attention by some articles he had written for the financial press. An introduction had followed, after which Mr. Grainger had engaged the young man as his secretary. Hearing that Mr. Grainger had need of a librarian, Mr. Strangways had suggested me.
I could see suspicion in the way in which he eyed me as well as in his words.
"Had you no other recommendation?"
"No, sir," I said, simply, "none that Mr. Grainger ever told me of."
He let that pass.
"And what do you do here?"
"I show the library to visitors. If any one wishes a particular book, or to look at engravings, I help him to find what he wants." I thought it well to keep up the fiction that he had come as a sight-seer. "If you'd care to go over the place now, sir—"
His hand went up in a majestic waving aside of this courtesy.
"And have you many visitors to the—to the library?"
Though I saw the implication, I managed to elude it.
"Yes, sir, taking one day with another. It depends a little on the weather and the time of year."
"Are they chiefly strangers—or—or do you ever see any one you've—you've seen before?"
His difficulty in phrasing this question made me even more sorry for him than I was already. I decided, both for his sake and my own, to walk up frankly and take the bull by the horns. "They're generally strangers; but sometimes people come whom I know." I looked at him steadily as I continued. "I'll tell you something, sir. Perhaps I ought not to, and it may be betraying a secret; but you might as well know it from me as hear it from some one else." The expression of the face he turned on me was so much that of Jove, whose look could strike a man dead, that I had all I could do to go on. "Mrs. Brokenshire comes to see me."
"To see—you?"
"Yes, sir, to see me."
The staccato accent grew difficult and thick. "What for?"
"Because she can't help it. She's sorry for me."
There was a new attempt to ignore me and my troubles as he said:
"Why should she be sorry for you?"
"Because she sees that you're hard on me—"
"I haven't meant to be hard on you, only just."
"Well, just then; but Mrs. Brokenshire doesn't know anything about justice when she can be merciful. You must know that yourself, sir. I think she's the most beautiful woman God ever made; and she's as kind as she's beautiful. I'll tell you something else, sir. It will be another betrayal, but it will show you what she is. One day at Newport—after you'd spoken to me—and she saw that I was so crushed by it that all I could do was to creep down among the rocks and cry—she watched me, and followed me, and came and cried with me. And so when she heard I was here—"
"Who told her?"
There was a measure of accusation in the tone of the question, but I pretended not to detect it.
"Mrs. Rossiter, perhaps—she knows—or almost anybody. I never asked her."
"Very well! What then?"
"I was only going to say that when she heard I was here she came almost at once. I begged her not to—"
"Why? What were you afraid of?"
"I knew you wouldn't like it. But I couldn't stop her. No one could stop her when it comes to her doing an act of kindness. She obeys her own nature because she can't do anything else. She's like a little bird that you can keep from flying by holding it in your hand, but as soon as your grasp is relaxed—it flies."
Something of this was true, in that it was true potentially. She had these qualities, even if they were nipped in her as buds are nipped in a backward spring. I could only calm my conscience as I went along by saying to myself that if I saved her she would have to bear me out through being true to the picture I was painting, and living up to her real self.
Praise of the woman he adored would have been as music to him had he not had something on his mind that turned music into poignancy. What it was I could surmise, and so be prepared for it. Not till he had been some time silent, probably getting his question into the right words, did he say:
"And are you always alone when Mrs. Brokenshire comes?"
"Oh no, sir!" I made the tone as natural as I could. "But Mrs. Brokenshire doesn't seem to mind. Yesterday, for instance—"
"Was she here yesterday? I thought she came on—"
I broke in before he could betray himself further.
"Yes, she was here yesterday; and there was—let me see!—there was an old gentleman comparing his Japanese prints with Mr. Grainger's, and a middle-aged lady who comes to study the old editions of Shakespeare. But Mrs. Brokenshire didn't object to them. She sat with me and had a cup of tea."
I knew I had come to dangerous ground, and was ready for my part in the adventure. Had he asked the question: "Was there anybody else?" I was resolved, in the spirit of my maxim, to tell the truth as harmlessly as I knew how. But I didn't think he would ask it. I reckoned on his unwillingness to take me into his confidence or to humiliate himself more than he could help. That he guessed at something behind my words I could easily suspect; but I was so sure he would have torn out his tongue rather than force his pride to cross-examine me too closely, that I was able to run my risk.
As a matter of fact, he became pensive, and through the gloom of the half-lighted room I could see that his face was contorted twice, still with no effort on his part to hide his misfortune. As he took the time to think I could do the same, with a kind of intuition in following the course of his meditations. I was not surprised, therefore, when he said, with renewed thickness of utterance:
"Has Mrs. Brokenshire any—any other motive in coming here than just—just to see you?"
I hung my head, perhaps with a touch of that play-acting spirit which most women are able to command, when the time comes.
"Yes, sir."
He waited again. I never heard such overtones of despair as were in the three words which at last he tried to toss off easily.
"What is it?"
I still hung my head.
"She brings me money for poor Hugh."
He started back, whether from anger or relief I couldn't tell, and his face twitched for the fourth time. In the end, I suppose, he decided that anger was the card he could play most skilfully.
"So that that's what enables him to keep up his rebellion against me!"
"No, sir," I said, humbly, "because he never takes it." I went on with that portrait of Mrs. Brokenshire which I vowed she would have to justify. "That doesn't make any difference, however, to her wonderful tenderness of heart in wanting him to have it. You see, sir, when any one's so much like an angel as she is they don't stop to consider how justly other people are suffering or how they've brought their troubles on themselves. Where there's trouble they only ask to help; where there's suffering their first instinct is to heal. Mrs. Brokenshire doesn't want to sustain your son against you; that never enters her head: she only wants him not—not"—my own voice shook a little—"not to have to go without his proper meals. He's doing that now, I think—sometimes, at least. Oh, sir," I ventured to plead, "you can't blame her, not when she's so—so heavenly." Stealing a glance at him, I was amazed and shocked, and not a little comforted, to see two tears steal down his withered cheeks. Knowing then that he would not for some minutes be able to control himself sufficiently to speak, I hurried on. "Hugh doesn't take the money, because he knows that this is something he must go through with on his own strength. If he can't do that he must give in. I think I've made that clear to him. I'm not the adventuress you consider me—indeed I'm not. I've told him that if he's ever independent I will marry him; but I shall not marry him so long as he isn't free to give himself away. He's putting up a big fight, and he's doing it so bravely, that if you only knew what he's going through you'd be proud of him as your son."