Resting my case there, I waited for some response, but I waited in vain. He reflected, and sat silent, and crossed and uncrossed his knees. At last he picked up his hat from the floor and rose. I, too, rose, waiting beside my chair, while he flicked the dust from the crown of his hat and seemed to study its glossy surface as he still reflected.
I was now altogether without a clue to what was passing in his mind, though I could guess at the age-long tragedy of December's love for May. Having seen Ibsen's "Master Builder," at Munich, and read one or two books on the theme with which it deals, I could, in a measure, supplement my own experience. It was, however, the first time I had seen with my own eyes this desperate yearning of age for youth, or this something that is almost a death-blow which youth can inflict on age. My father used to say that fundamentally there is no such period as age, that only the outer husk grows old, while the inner self, the vitalego, is young eternally. Here, it seemed to me, was an instance of the fact. This man was essentially as young as he had been at twenty-five; he had the same instincts and passions; he demanded the same things. If anything, he demanded them more imperiously because of the long, long habit of desire. Denial which thirty years ago he could have taken philosophically was now a source of anguish. As I looked at him I could see anguish on his lips, in his eyes, in the contraction of his forehead—the anguish of a love ridiculous to all, and to the object of it frightful and unnatural, for the reason that at sixty-two the skin had grown baggy and the heart was supposed to be dead.
From the smoothing of the crown of his hat he glanced up suddenly. The whip-lash inflection was again in the timbre of the voice.
"How much do you get here?"
I was taken aback, but I named the amount of my salary.
"I will give you twice as much as that for the next five years if—if you go back to where you came from."
It took me a minute to seize all the implications contained in this little speech. I saw then that if I hoped I was making an impression, or getting further ahead with him, I was mistaken. Neither had my interpretation of Mrs. Brokenshire's character put him off the scent concerning her. I was so far indeed from influencing him in either her favor or my own that he believed that if he could get rid of me an obstacle would be removed.
Tears sprang into my eyes, though they didn't fall.
"So you blame me, sir, for everything."
He continued to watch his gloved hand as it made the circle of the crown of his hat.
"I'll make it twice what you're getting here for ten years. I'll put it in my will." It was no use being angry or mounting my high horse. The struggle with tears kept me silent as he glanced up from the rubbing of his hat and said in a jerky, kindly tone: "Well? What do you say?"
I didn't know what to say; and what I did say was foolish. I should have known enough to suppress it before I began.
"Do you remember, sir, that once when you were speaking to me severely, you said you were my friend? Well, why shouldn't I be your friend, too?"
The look he bent down on me was that of a great personage positively dazed by an inferior's audacity.
"I could be your friend," I stumbled on, in an absurd effort to explain myself. "I should like to be. There are—there are things I could do for you."
He put on his tall hat with the air of a Charlemagne or a Napoleon crowning himself. This increase of authority must have made me desperate. It is only thus that I can account for mygaffe—the French word alone expresses it—as I dashed on, wildly:
"I like you, sir—I can't help it. I don't know why, but I do. I like you in spite of—in spite of everything. And, oh, I'm so sorry for you—"
He moved away. There was noble, wounded offense in his manner of passing through the wrought-iron grille, which he closed with a little click behind him. He stepped out of the place as softly as he had stepped in.
For long minutes I stood, holding to the side of the William and Mary chair, regretting that the interview should have ended in this way. I didn't cry; I had, in fact, no longer any tendency to tears. I was thoughtful—wondering what it was that dug the gulf between this man and his family and me. Ethel Rossiter had never—I could see it well enough now—accepted me as an equal, and even to Hugh I was only another type of Libby Jaynes. I was as intelligent as they, as well born, as well mannered, as thoroughly accustomed to the world. Why should they consider me an inferior? Was it because I had no money? Was it because I was a Canadian? Would it have made a difference if I had been an Englishwoman like Cissie Boscobel, or rich like any of themselves? I couldn't tell. All I knew was that my heart was hot within me, and since Howard Brokenshire wouldn't have me as a friend I wanted to act as his enemy. I could see how to do it. Indeed, without doing anything at all I could encourage, and perhaps bring about, a situation that would send the name of the family ringing through the press of two continents and break his heart. I had only to sit still—or at most to put in a word here and there. I am not a saint; I had my hour of temptation.
It was a stormy hour, though I never moved from the spot where I stood. The storm was within. That which, as the minutes went by, became rage in me saw with satisfaction Howard Brokenshire brought to a desolate old age, and Mildred and Ethel and Jack and Pauline, in spite of their bravado and their high heads, all seared by the flame of notorious disgrace. I went so far as to gloat over poor Hugh's discomfiture, taking vengeance on his habit of rating me with the socially incompetent. As for Mrs. Brokenshire, she would be over and done with, a poor little gilded outcast, whose fall would be such that even as Mrs. Stacy Grainger she would never rise again. Like another Samson, I could pull down this house of pride, though, happier than Samson, I should not be overwhelmed in the ruin of it. From that I should be safe—with Larry Strangways.
Nearly half an hour went by while I stood thus indulging in fierce day-dreams. I was racked and suffering. I suffered, indeed, from the misfortunes I saw descending on people whom at bottom of my heart I cared for. It was not till I began to move, till I had put on my jacket and was turning out the lights, that my maxim came back to me. I knew then that whatever happened I should stand by that, and having come to this understanding with myself, I was quieted.
Having made up my mind to adhere, however imperfectly, to the principle that had guided me hitherto, I was obliged to examine my conscience as to what I had said to Mr. Brokenshire. This I did in the evening, coming to the conclusion that I had told him nothing but the truth, even if it was not all the truth. Though I hated duplicity, I couldn't see that I had a right to tell him all the truth, or that to do so would be wise. If he could be kept, for everybody's sake, from knowing more than he knew already, however much or little that was, it seemed to me that diplomatic action on my part would be justified.
In the line of diplomatic action I had before all things to inform Mrs. Brokenshire of the visit I had received. This was not so easy as it may seem. I could not trust to a letter, through fear of its falling into other hands than hers. Neither could I wait for her coming on the following Tuesday, since that was what I wanted to prevent. There was no intermediary whom I could intrust with a message, unless it was Larry Strangways, who knew something of the facts; but even with him the secret was too much to share.
In the end I had recourse to the telephone, asking to be allowed to speak to Mrs. Brokenshire. I was told that she never answered the telephone herself, and was requested to transmit my message. Not to arouse suspicion, I didn't ask that she should break her rule, but begged that during the day she might find a minute in which to see Miss Adare, who was in a difficulty that involved her work. That this way of putting it was understood I gathered from the reply that came back to me. It was to the effect that as Mr. Brokenshire would be lunching with some men in the lower part of New York Mrs. Brokenshire would be alone and able to receive Miss Adare at two. Fortunately, it was a Saturday, so that my afternoon was free.
Almost everybody familiar with New York knows the residence of J. Howard Brokenshire not far above the Museum. Built of brick with stone facings, it is meant to be in the style of Louis Treize. It would be quite in the style of Louis Treize were the stonework not too heavy and elaborate, and the façade too high for its length. Inside, with an incongruity many rich people do not mind, it is sumptuously Roman and Florentine—the Brokenshire villa at Newport on a larger and more lavish scale. Having gone over the house with Ethel Rossiter during the winter I spent with her, I had carried away the impression of huge unoccupied rooms, of heavily carved or gilded furniture, of rich brocades, of dim old masters in elaborate gold frames, of vitrines and vases and mirrors and consoles, all supplied by some princely dealer inobjets d'artwho had receivedcarte blanchein the way of decoration. The Brokenshire family, with the possible exception of Mildred, cared little for the things with which they lived. Ethel Rossiter, in showing me over the house, hardly knew a Perugino from a Fragonard, and still less could she distinguish, between the glorious fading softness of a Flemish fifteenth-century tapestry and a smug and staring bit of Gobelins. Hugh went in and out as indifferently as in a hotel, while Jack Brokenshire's taste in art hardly reached beyond racing prints. Mildred liked pretty garlanded thingsà laMarie Antoinette, which the parental habit of deciding everything would never let her have. J. Howard alone made an effort at knowing the value, artistic and otherwise, of his possessions, and would sometimes, when strangers were present, point to this or that object with the authority of a connoisseur, which he was not.
It was a house for life in perpetual state, with no state to maintain. Stafford House, Holland House, Bridgewater House, to name but a few of the historic mansions in London, were made spacious and splendid to meet a definite necessity. They belonged to days when the feudal tradition still obtained and there were no comfortable hotels. Great lords came to them with great families and great suites of retainers. Accommodation being the first of all needs, there was a time when every corner of these stately residences was lived in. But now that in England the great lord tends more and more to be only a simple democratic individual, and the wants of his relatives are easily met on a public or co-operative principle, the noble Palladian or Georgian dwelling either becomes a museum or a club, or remains a white elephant on the hands of some one who would gladly be rid of it. Princes and princesses of the blood royal rent numbered houses in squares and streets, next door to the Smiths and the Joneses, in preference to the draughty grandeurs of St. James's and Buckingham Palace, while a villa in the suburbs, with a few trees and a garden, is often the shelter sought by the nobility.
But in proportion as civilization in England, to say nothing of the rest of Europe, puts off the burdensome to enjoy simplicity, America, it strikes me, chases the tail of an antiquated, disappearing stateliness. Rich men, just because they have the money, take upon their shoulders huge domestic responsibilities in which there is no object, and which it is probable the next generation will refuse to carry. In New York, in Washington, in Newport, in Chicago, they raise palaces and châteaux where they often find themselves lonely, and which they can rarely fill more than two or three times a year. In the case of the Howard Brokenshires it had ceased to be as often as that. After Ethel was married Mr. Brokenshire seldom entertained, his second wife having no heart for that kind of display. Now and then, in the course of a winter, a great dinner was given in the great dining-room, or the music-room was filled for a concert; but this was done for the sake of "killing off" those to whom some attention had to be shown, and not because either host or hostess cared for it. Otherwise the down-stairs rooms were silent and empty, and whatever was life in the house went on in a corner of the mansard.
Thither the footman took me in a lift. Here were the rooms—a sort of flat—which the occupants could dominate with their personalities. They reminded me of those tiny chambers at Versailles to which what was human in poor Marie Antoinette fled for refuge from her uncomfortable gorgeousness as queen.
Not that these rooms were tiny. On the contrary, the library or living-room into which I was ushered was as large as would be found in the average big house, and, notwithstanding its tapestries and massive furniture, was bright with sunshine and flowers. Books lay about, and papers and magazines, and after the tomb-like deadness of the lower floors one got at least the impression of life.
From the far end of the room Mrs. Brokenshire came forward, threading her way between arm-chairs and taborets, and looking more exquisite, and also more lost, than ever. She wore what might be called a glorifiednegligée, lilac and lavender shading into violet, the train adding to her height. Fear had to some degree blotted out her color and put trouble into the sweetness of her eyes.
"Something has happened," she said at once, as she took my hand.
I spoke as directly as she did, though a little pantingly.
"Yes; Mr. Brokenshire came to the library yesterday."
"Ah-h!" The exclamation was no more than a long, frightened breath. "Then that explains things. I saw when he came home to dinner that he was unhappy."
"Did he say anything?"
"No; nothing. He was just—unhappy. Sit down and tell me."
Staring wide-eyed at each other, we seated ourselves on the edge of two huge arm-chairs. Having half expected my companion to fling the gauntlet in her husband's face, I was relieved to find in her chiefly the dread of detection.
As exactly as I could I gave her an account of what had passed between Mr. Brokenshire and myself, omitting only those absurd suggestions of my own that had sent him away in dudgeon. She listened with no more interruption than a question or two, after which she said, simply:
"Then, I suppose, I can't go any more."
"On the contrary," I corrected, "you must come just the same as ever, only not on the same days, or at the same hours—or—or when there's any one else there besides the visitors and me. If you stopped coming all of a sudden Mr. Brokenshire would think—"
"But he thinks that already."
"Of course, but he doesn't know—not after what I said to him." I seized the opportunity to beg her to play up. "You are all the things I told him you were, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, don't you see you are?"
But my appeal passed unheeded.
"What made him suspect? I thought that would be the last thing."
"I don't know. It might have been a lot of things. Once or twice I've rather fancied that some of the people who came there—"
Her features contracted in a spasm of horror.
"You don't mean detect—" She found the word difficult to pronounce. "You don't mean de-detectives watching—me?"
"I don't say as much as that; but I've never liked Mr. Brokenshire's man, Spellman."
"No, nor I. He's out now. I made sure of that before you came."
"So he might have sent some one; or— But it's no use speculating, is it? when there are so many ways. What we've specially got to know is how to act, and I think I've told you the best method. If you don't keep coming—judiciously—you'll show you're conscious of having done wrong."
She sighed plaintively.
"I don't want to do wrong unless I can't help it. If I can't—"
"Oh, but you can." I tried once more to get in my point. "You wouldn't be all I told Mr. Brokenshire you were if your first instinct wasn't to do right."
"Oh, right!" She sighed again, but impatiently. "You're always talking about that."
"One has to, don't you think, when it's so important—and so easy to do wrong?"
She grew mildly argumentative.
"I don't see anything so terrible about wrong, when other people do it and are none the worse."
"May not that be because you've never tried it on your own account? It depends a little on the grain of which one's made. The finer the grain, the more harm wrong can do to it—just as a fragile bit of Venetian glass is more easily broken than an earthenware jug, and an infinitely greater loss."
But the simile was wasted. From long contemplation of her hands she looked up to say in a curiously coaxing tone:
"You live at the Hotel Mary Chilton, don't you?"
I caught her suggestion in a flash, and decided that I could let it go no further.
"Yes, but you couldn't come there—unless it was only to see me."
"But what shall I do?"
It was a kind of cry. She twisted her ringed fingers, while her eyes implored me to help her.
"Do nothing," I said, gently, and yet with some severity. "If you do anything do just as I've said. That's all we've got to know for the present."
"But I must see him. Now that I've got used to doing it—"
"If you must see him, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, you will."
"Shall I? Will you promise me?"
"I don't have to promise you. It's the way life works. If we only trust to events—and to whatever it is that guides events—and—and do right—I must repeat it—then the thing that ought to be will shape its course—"
"Ah, but if it doesn't?"
"In that case we can know that it oughtn't to be."
"I don't care whether it ought to be or not, so long as I can go on seeing him—somewhere."
I had enough sympathy with her to say:
"Yes, but don't plan for it. Let it take care of itself and happen in some natural way. Isn't it by mapping out things for ourselves that we often thwart the good that would otherwise have come to us? I remember reading somewhere of a lady who wrote of herself that she had been healed of planning, and spoke of it as a real cure. That struck me as so sensible. Life—not to use a greater word—knows much better what's good for us than we do ourselves."
She allowed this theme to lapse, while she sat pensive.
"What shall I say," she asked at last, "if he brings the subject up?"
I saw another opportunity.
"What can you say other than what I've said already? You came to me because you were sorry for me, and you wanted to help Hugh. He might regret that you should do both, but he couldn't blame you for either. They're only kindnesses—and we're all at liberty to be kind. Oh, don't you see? That's your—how shall I put it?—that's your line if Mr. Brokenshire ever speaks to you."
"And suppose he tells me not to go to see you any more?"
"Then you must stop. That will be the time. But not now when the mere stopping would be a kind of confession—"
And so, after many repetitions and some tears on both our parts, the lesson was urged home. She was less docile, however, when in the spirit of our new compact she came on the following Monday morning.
"I must see him," was the burden of what she had to say. She spoke as if I was forbidding her and ought to lift my veto. I might even have inferred that in my position in Mr. Grainger's employ it was for me to arrange their meetings.
"You will see him, dear Mrs. Brokenshire—if it's right," was the only answer I could find.
"You don't seem to remember that I was to have married him."
"I do, but we both have to remember that you didn't."
"Neither did I marry Mr. Brokenshire. I was handed over to him. When Lady Mary Hamilton was handed over in that way to the Prince of Monaco the Pope annulled the marriage. We knew her afterward in Budapest, married to some one else. If there's such a thing as right, as you're so fond of saying, I ought to be considered free."
I was holding both her hands as I said:
"Don't try to make yourself free. Let life do it."
"Life!" she cried, with a passionate vehemence I scarcely knew to be in her. "It's life that—"
"Treat life as a friend and not as an enemy. Trust it; wait for it. Don't hurry it, or force it, or be impatient with it. I can't believe that essentially it's hard or cruel or a curse. If it comes from God, it must be good and beautiful. In proportion as we cling to the good and beautiful we must surely get the thing we ought to have."
Though I cannot say that she accepted this doctrine, it helped her over a day or two, leaving me free for the time being to give my attention to my own affairs. Having no natural stamina, the poor, lovely little creature lived on such mental and spiritual pick-me-ups as I was able to administer. Whenever she was specially in despair, which was every forty-eight or sixty hours, she came back to me, and I did what I could to brace her for the next short step of her way. I find it hard to explain the intensity of her appeal to me. I suppose I must have submitted to that spell of the perfect face which had bewitched Stacy Grainger and Howard Brokenshire. I submitted also to her child-like helplessness. God knows I am not a heroine. Any little fright or difficulty upsets me. As compared with her, however, I was a giant refreshed with wine. When her lip quivered, or when the sudden mist drifted across her eyes, obscuring their forget-me-not blue with violet, my yearning was exactly that which makes any woman long to take any suffering baby in her arms. For this reason she didn't tax my patience, nor had I that impulse to scold or shake her to which another woman of such obvious limitations would have driven me. Touched as I was by the aching heart, I was captivated by the perfect face; and I couldn't help it.
Thus through the rest of February and into March my chief occupation was in keeping Howard Brokenshire's wife as true to him as the conditions rendered possible. In the intervals I comforted Hugh, and beat off Larry Strangways, and sat rigidly still while Stacy Grainger prowled round me with fierce, suspicious, melancholy eyes, like those of a cowed tiger. Afraid of him as I was, it filled me with grim inward amusement to discover that he was equally afraid of me. He came into the library from time to time, when he happened to be at his house, and like Mrs. Brokenshire gave me the impression that the frustration of their love was my fault. As I sat primly and severely at my desk, and he stalked round and round the room, stabbing the old gentleman who classified prints and the lady who collated the early editions of Shakespeare with contemptuous glances, I knew that in his sight I represented—poor me!—that virtuous respectability the sinner always holds in scorn. He could not be ignorant of the fact that if it hadn't been for me Mrs. Brokenshire would have been meeting him elsewhere, and so he held me as an enemy. Had he not known that I was something besides an enemy he would doubtless have sent me about my business.
In one of the intervals of this portion of the drama I received a visit that took me by surprise. Early in the afternoon of a day in March, Mrs. Billing trotted into the library, followed by Lady Cecilia Boscobel. It was the sort of occasion on which I should have been nervous enough in any case, but it became terrifying when Mrs. Billing marched up to my desk and pointed at me with her lorgnette, saying over her shoulder, "There she is," as though I was a portrait.
I struggled to my feet with what was meant to be a smile.
"Lady Cecilia Boscobel," I stammered, "has seen me already."
"Well, she can look at you again, can't she?"
The English girl came to my rescue by smiling back, and murmuring a faint "How do you do?" She eased the situation further by saying, with a crisp, rapid articulation, in which every syllable was charmingly distinct: "Mrs. Billing thought that as we were out sight-seeing we might as well look at this. It's shown every day, isn't it?"
She went on to observe that when places were shown only on certain days it was so tiresome. One of her father's places, Dillingham Hall, in Nottinghamshire, an old Tudor house, perfectly awful to live in, was open to the public only on the second and fourth Wednesdays, and even the family couldn't remember when those days came round. It was so awkward to be doing your hair, or worse, and have tourists stumbling in on you.
I counted it to the credit of her tact and kindliness that she chatted in this way long enough for me to get my breath, while Mrs. Billing turned her lorgnette on the room with which she must have once been familiar. If there was to be anything like rivalry between Lady Cissie and me I gathered that she wouldn't stoop to petty feminine advantages. Dressed in dark green, with a small hat of the same color worn dashingly, she had that air of being the absolutely finished thing which the tones of her voice announced to you. My heart grew faint at the thought that Hugh would have to choose between this girl, so certain of herself, and me.
As we were all standing, I invited my callers to sit down. To this Lady Cecilia acceded, though old Mrs. Billing strolled off to renew her acquaintance with the room. I may say here that I call her old because to be old was a kind of pose with her. She looked old and "dressed old" so as to enjoy the dictatorial privileges that go with being old, when as a matter of fact she was only sixty, which nowadays is young.
"You're English, aren't you?" Lady Cecilia began, as soon as we were alone. "I can tell by the way you speak."
I said I was a Canadian, that I was in New York more or less by accident, and might go back to my own country again.
"How interesting! It belongs to us, Canadia, doesn't it?"
With a slightly ironic emphasis on the proper noun I replied that Canadia naturally belonged to the Canadians, but that the King of Great Britain and Ireland was our king, and that we were very loyal to all that we represented.
"Fancy! And isn't it near here?"
All of Canada, I stated, was north of some of the United States, and some of it was south of others of the United States, but none of the more settled parts was difficult of access from New York.
"How very odd!" was her comment on these geographical indications. "I think I remember that a cousin of ours was governor out there—or something—though perhaps it was in India."
I named the series of British noblemen who had ruled over us since the confederation of the provinces in 1867, but as Lady Cecilia's kinsman was not among them we concluded that he must have been Viceroy of India or Governor-General of Australia.
The theme served to introduce us to each other, and lasted while Mrs. Billing's tour of inspection kept her within earshot.
I am bound to admit that I admired Lady Cecilia with an envy that might be qualified as green. She was not clever and she was not well educated, but her high breeding was so spontaneous. She so obviously belonged to spheres where no other rule obtained. Her manner was the union of polish and simplicity; each word she pronounced was a pleasure to the ear. In my own case life had been a struggle with that American-Canadian crudity which stamps our New World carriage and speech with commonness; but you could no more imagine this girl lapsing from the even tenor of the exquisite than you could fancy the hermit thrush failing in its song.
When Mrs. Billing was quite at the other end of the room my companion's manner underwent a change. During a second or two of silence her eyes fell, while the shifting of color over the milk-whiteness of her skin was like the play of Canadian northern lights. I was prepared for the fact that beneath her poise she might be shy, and that, being shy, she would be abrupt.
"You're engaged to Hugh Brokenshire, aren't you?"
The words were whipped out fast and jerkily, partly to profit by the minute during which Mrs. Billing was at a distance, and partly because it was a matter of now-or-never with their utterance.
I made the necessary explanations, for what seemed to me must be the hundredth time. I was not precisely engaged to him, but I had said I would marry him if either of two conditions could be carried out. I went on to state what those conditions were, finishing with the information that of the two I had practically abandoned one.
She nodded her comprehension.
"You see that—that they won't come round."
"No," I replied, with some incisiveness; "they will come round—especially Mr. Brokenshire. It's the other condition I no longer expect to see fulfilled."
If the hermit thrush could fail in its song it did it then. Lady Cecilia stared at me with a blankness that became awe.
"That's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. Ethel Rossiter must be wrong."
I had a sudden suspicion.
"Wrong about what?"
The question put Lady Cecilia on her guard.
"Oh, nothing I need explain." But her face lighted with quick enthusiasm. "I call it magnificent."
"Call what 'magnificent'?"
"Why, that you should have that conviction. When one sees any one so sporting—"
I began to get her idea.
"Oh, I'm not sporting. I'm a perfect coward. But a sheep will make a stand when it's put to it."
With her hands in her sable muff, her shapely figure was inclined slightly toward me.
"I'm not sure that a sheep that makes a stand isn't braver than a lion. The man my sister Janet is engaged to—he's in the Inverness Rangers—often says that no one could be funkier than he on going into action; but that," she continued, her face aglow, "didn't prevent his being ever so many times mentioned in despatches and getting his D. S. O."
"Please don't put me into that class—"
"No; I won't. After all a soldier couldn't really funk things, because he's got everything to back him up. But you haven't. And when I think of you sitting here all by yourself, and expecting that great big rich Mr. Brokenshire and Ethel, and all of them, to come to your terms—"
To get away from a view of my situation that both consoled and embarrassed me, I said:
"Thank you, Lady Cecilia, very, very much; but it isn't what you meant to say when you began, is it?"
With some confusion she admitted that it wasn't.
"Only," she went on, "that isn't worth while now."
A hint in her tone impelled me to insist.
"It may be. You don't know. Please tell me what it was."
"But what's the use? It was only something Ethel Rossiter said—and she was wrong."
"What makes you so sure she was wrong?"
"Because I am. I can see." She added, reluctantly, "Ethel thought there was some one—some one besides Hugh—"
"And what if there was?"
Though startled by the challenge, she stood her ground.
"I don't believe in people making each other any more unhappy than they can help, do you?" She had a habit of screwing up her small gray-green eyes into two glimmering little slits of light, with an effect of shyness showing through amusement anddiablerie. "We're both girls, aren't we? I'm twenty, and you can't be much older. And so I thought—that is, I thought at first—that if you had any one else in mind, there'd be no use in our making each other miserable—but I see you haven't; and so—"
"And so," I laughed, nervously, "the race must be to the swift and the battle to the strong. Is that it?"
"N-no; not exactly. What I was going to say is that since—since there's nobody but Hugh—you won't be offended with me, will you?—I won't step in—"
It was my turn to be enthusiastic.
"But that's what I call sporting!"
"Oh no, it isn't. I haven't seen Hugh for two or three years, and whatever little thing there was—"
I strained forward across my desk. I know my eyes must have been enormous.
"But was there—was there ever—anything?"
"Oh no; not at all. He—he never noticed me. I was only in the school-room, and he was a grown-up young man. If his father and mine hadn't been great friends—and got plans into their heads—Laura and Janet used to poke fun at me about it. And then we rode together and played tennis and golf, and so—but it was all—just nothing. You know how silly a girl of seventeen can be. It was nonsense. I only want you to know, in case he ever says anything about it—but then he never will—men see so little—I only want you to know that that's the way I feel about it—and that I didn't come over here to— I don't say that if in your case there had been any one else—but I see there isn't—Ethel Rossiter is wrong—and so if I can do anything for Hugh and yourself with the Brokenshires. I—I want you to make use of me."
With a dignity oddly in contrast to this stammering confession, which was what it was, she rose to her feet as Mrs. Billing came back to us.
The hook-nosed face was somber. Curiosity as to other people's business had for once given place in the old lady's thoughts to meditations that turned inward. I suppose that in some perverse fashion of her own she loved her daughter, and suffered from her unhappiness. There was enough in this room to prove to her how cruelly mere self-seeking can overreach itself and ruin what it tries to build.
"Well, what are you talking about?" she snapped, as she approached us. "Hugh Brokenshire, I'll bet a dime."
"Fancy!" was the stroke with which the English girl, smiling dimly, endeavored to counter this attack.
Mrs. Billing hardly paused as she made her way toward the door.
"Don't let her have him," she threw at Lady Cecilia. "He's not good enough for her. She's my kind," she went on, poking at me with her lorgnette. "Needs a man with brains. Come along, Cissie. Don't mind what she says. You grab Hugh the first chance you get. She'll have bigger fish to fry. Do come along. We've had enough of this."
Lady Cissie and I shook hands with the over-acted listlessness of two daughters of the Anglo-Saxon race trying to carry off an emotional crisis as if they didn't know what it meant. But after she had gone I thought of her—I thought of her with her Limoges-enamel coloring, her luscious English voice, her English air of race, her dignity, her style, her youth, her naïveté, her combination of all the qualities that make human beings distinguished, because there is nothing else for them to be. I dragged myself to the Venetian mirror and looked into it. With my plain gray frock, my dark complexion, and my simply arranged hair. I was a poor little frump whom not even the one man in five hundred could find attractive. I wondered how Hugh could be such a fool. I asked myself if he could go on being such a fool much longer. And with the thought that he would—and again with the thought that he wouldn't—I surprised myself by bursting into tears.
In similar small happenings April passed and we had reached the middle of May. Easter and the opera were over; as the warm weather was coming on people were already leaving town for the country, the seaside or Europe. Personally, I had no plans beyond spending the month of August, which Mr. Grainger informed me I was to have "off," in making a visit to my old home in Halifax. Hugh had ceased to talk of immediate marriage, since he had all he could do to live on what he earned in selling bonds.
He had taken that job when Mildred could lend him no more without dipping into funds that had been his father's. He was still resolute on that point. He was resolute, too, in seeing nothing in the charms of Cissie Boscobel. He hated red hair, he said, making no allowance for the umber-red of Australian gold, and where I saw the lights of Limoges enamel he found no more than the garish tints of a chromolithograph. When I hinted that he might be the hero of some young romance on Cissie's part, he was contented to say "R-rot!" with a contemptuous roll of the first consonant.
Larry Strangways was industrious, happy, and prospering. He enjoyed the men with whom his work brought him into contact, and I gathered that his writing for daily, weekly, and monthly publications was bringing him into view as a young man of originality and power. From himself I learned that his small inherited capital was doubling and tripling and quadrupling itself through association with Stacy Grainger's enterprises. For Stacy Grainger himself he continued to feel an admiration not free from an uneasiness, with regard to which he made no direct admissions.
Of Mrs. Brokenshire I was seeing less. Either she had grown used to doing without her lover or she was meeting him in some other way. She still came to see me as often as once a week, but she was not so emotional or excitable. She might have been more affectionate than before, and yet it was with a dignity that gradually put me at a distance.
Cissie Boscobel I didn't meet during the whole of the six weeks except in the company of Mrs. Rossiter. That happened when once or twice I went to the house to see Gladys when she was suffering from colds, or when my former employer drove me round the Park. Just once I got the opportunity to hint that Lady Cissie hadn't taken Hugh from me as yet, to which Mrs. Rossiter replied that that was obviously because she didn't want him.
We were all, therefore, at a standstill, or moving so slowly that I couldn't perceive that we were moving at all, when in the middle of a May forenoon I was summoned to the telephone. I was not surprised to find Mr. Strangways at the other end, since he used any and every excuse to call me up; but his words struck me as those of a man who had taken leave of his senses. He plunged into them without any of the usual morning greetings or preliminary remarks.
"Are you game to go to Boston by the five-o'clock train to-day?"
I naturally said, "What?" but I said it with some emphasis.
He repeated the question a little more anxiously.
"Could you be ready to go to Boston by the five-o'clock train this afternoon?"
"Why should I be?"
He seemed to hesitate before replying.
"You'd know that," he said at last, "when you got on the train."
"Is it a joke?" I inquired, with a light laugh.
"No; it's not a joke. It's serious. I want you to take that train and go."
"But what for?"
"I've told you you'd know that when you got on the train—or before you had gone very far."
"And do you think that's information enough?"
"It will be information enough for you when I say that a great deal may depend on your doing as I ask."
I raised a new objection.
"How can I go when I've my work to attend to here?"
"You must be ready to give that up. If any one makes any trouble, you must say you've resigned the position."
As far as was possible over the wire I got the impression of earnestness on his part and perhaps excitement; but I was not yet satisfied.
"What shall I do when I get to Boston? Where shall I go?"
"You'll see. You'll know. You'll have to act for yourself. Trust your own judgment as I trust it."
"But, Mr. Strangways, I don't understand a bit," I was beginning to protest, when he broke in on me.
"Oh, don't you see? It will all explain itself as you go on. I can't tell you about it in advance. I don't know. All I can say is that whatever happens you'll be needed, and if you're needed you'll be able to play the game."
He went on with further directions. It would be possible to take my seat in the train at twenty minutes before the hour of departure. I was to be early on the spot so as to be among the first to be in my place. I was to take nothing but a suit-case; but I was to put into it enough to last me for a week, or even for a week or two. I was to be prepared for roughing it, if necessary, or for anything else that developed. He would send me my ticket within an hour and provide me with plenty of money.
"But what is it?" I implored again. "It sounds like spying, or the secret service, or something melodramatic."
"It's none of those things. Just be ready. Wait where you are till you get your ticket and the money."
"Will you bring them yourself?"
"No. I can't; I'm too busy. I'm calling from a pay-station. Don't ring me up for any more questions. Just do as I've asked you, and I know you'll not regret it—not as long as you live."
He put up the receiver, leaving me bewildered. My ignorance was such that speculation was shut out. I kept saying to myself: "It must be this," or, "It must be that," but with no conviction in my guesses. One dreadful suspicion came to me, but I firmly put it away.
A little after twelve a special messenger arrived, bringing my ticket and five hundred dollars in bank-notes. I knew then that I was in for a genuine adventure. At one I put on my hat and coat, locked the door behind me, and went off to my hotel. Mentally I was leaving a work to which, from certain points of view, I was sorry to say good-by, but I could afford no backward looks.
At the hotel I packed my belongings and left them so that they could be sent after me in case I should not return. I might be back the next morning; but then I might never come back at all. I thought of those villagers who from idle curiosity followed the carriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette as it drove out of Varennes, some of them never to see their native town again till they had been dragged over half the battle-fields of Europe. Like them I had no prevision as to where I was going or what was to become of me. I knew only—gloatingly, and with a kind of glory in the fact—that I was going at the call of Larry Strangways, to do his bidding, because he believed in me. But that thought, too, I tried to put out of my mind. In as far as it was in my mind I did my best to express it in terms of prose, seeing myself not as the heroine of a mysterious romance—a view to which I was inclined—but as a practical business woman, competent, up-to-date, and unafraid. I was afraid, mortally afraid, and I was neither up-to-date nor competent; but the fiction sustained me while I packed my trunks and sent a telegram to Hugh.
This last I did only when it was too late for him to answer or intercept me.
"Called suddenly out of town," I wrote. "May lead to a new place. Will write or wire as soon as possible." Having sent this off at half past four, I took a taxicab for the station.
My instructions were so far carried out successfully that, with a colored porter wearing a red cap to precede me, I was the first to pass the barrier leading to the train, and the first to take my seat in the long, narrow parlor-car. My chair was two from the end toward the entrance and exit. Once enthroned within its upholstered depths I watched for strange occurrences.
But I watched in vain. For a time I saw nothing but the straight, empty cavern of the car. Then a colored porter, as like to my own as one pea to another, came puffing his way in, dragging valises and other impedimenta, and followed by an old gentleman and his wife. These the porter installed in chairs toward the middle of the car, and, touching his cap on receipt of his tip, made hastily for the door. Similar arrivals came soon after that, with much stowing of luggage into overhead racks, and kisses, and injunctions as to conduct, and farewells. Within my range of vision were two elderly ladies, a smartly dressed young man, a couple in the disillusioned, surly stage, a couple who had recently been married, a clergyman, a youth of the cheap sporting type. To one looking for the solution of a mystery the material was not promising.
The three chairs immediately in front of mine remained unoccupied. I kept my eye on them, of course, and presently got some reward. Shortly before the train pulled out of the station a shadow passed me which I knew to be that of Larry Strangways. He went on to the fourth seat, counting mine as the first, and, having reached it, turned round and looked at me. He looked at me gravely, with no sign of recognition beyond a shake of the head. I understood then that I was not to recognize him, and that in the adventure, however it turned out, we were to be as strangers.
One more thing I saw. He had never been so pale or grim or determined in all the time I had known him. I had hardly supposed that it was in him to be so determined, so grim, or so pale. I gathered that he was taking our mission more to heart than I had supposed, and that, prompt in action as I had been, I was considering it too flippantly. Inwardly I prayed for nerve to support him, and for that presence of mind which would tell me what to do when there was anything to be done.
Perhaps it increased my zeal that he was so handsome. Straight and slim and upright, his features were of that lean, blond, regular type I used to consider Anglo-Saxon, but which, now that I have seen it in so many Scandinavians, I have come to ascribe to the Norse strain in our blood. The eyes were direct; the chin was firm; the nose as straight as an ancient Greek's. The relatively small mouth was adorned by a relatively small mustache, twisted up at the ends, of the color of the coffee-bean, and, to my admiring feminine appreciation, blooming on his face like a flower.
His neat spring suit was also of the color of the coffee-bean, and so was his soft felt hat. In his shirt there were lines of tan and violet, and tan and violet appeared in the tie beneath which a soft collar was pinned with a gold safety pin. The yellow gloves that men have affected of late years gave a pleasant finish to this costume, which was quite complete when he pulled from his bag an English traveling-cap of several shades of tan and put it on. He also took out a book, stretching himself in his chair in such a way that the English traveling-cap was all I could henceforth see of his personality.
I give these details because they entered into the mingled unwillingness and zest with which I found myself dragged on an errand to which I had no clue. Still less had I a clue when the train began to move, and I had nothing but the view of the English traveling-cap to bear me company. But no, I had one other detail. Before sitting down Mr. Strangways had carefully separated his own hand-luggage from that of the person who would be behind him, and which included an ulster, a walking-stick, and a case of golf-clubs. I inferred, therefore, that the wayfarer who owned one of the two chairs between Mr. Strangways and myself must be a man. The chair directly in front of mine remained empty.
As we passed into the tunnel my mind lashed wildly about in search of explanations, the only one I could find being that Larry Strangways was kidnapping me. On arriving in Boston I might find myself confronted by a marriage license and a clergyman. If so, I said to myself, with an extraordinary thrill, there would be nothing for it but submission to thisforce majeure, though I had to admit that the averted head, the English traveling-cap, and the intervening ulster, walking-stick, and golf-clubs worked against my theory. I was dreaming in this way when the train emerged from the tunnel and stopped so briefly at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street that, considering it afterward, I concluded that the pause had been arranged for. It was just long enough for an odd little bundle of womanhood to be pulled and shoved on the car and thrown into the seat immediately in front of mine. I choose my verbs with care, since they give the effect produced on me. The little woman, who was swathed in black veils and clad in a long black shapeless coat, seemed not to act of her own volition and to be more dead than alive. The porter who had brought her in flung down her two or three bags and waited, significantly, though the train was already creeping its way onward. She was plainly unused to fending for herself, and only when, as a reminder, the man had touched his hat a second time did it occur to her what she had to do. Hastily unfastening a small bag, she pulled out a handful of money and thrust it at him. The man grinned and was gone, after which she sagged back helplessly into her seat, the satchel open in her lap.
That dreadful suspicion which had smitten me earlier in the day came back again, but the new-comer was so stiflingly wrapped up that even I could not be sure. She reminded me of nothing so much as of the veiled Begum of Bhopal as she sat in the durbar with the other Indian potentates, her head done up in a bag, as seen in the pictures in the illustrated London papers. For a lady who wished to pass unperceived it was perfect—for every eye in the car was turned on her. I myself studied her, of course, searching for something to confirm my fears, but finding nothing I could take as convincing. For the matter of that, as she sat huddled in the enormous chair I could see little beyond a swathing of veils round a close-fitting hat and the folds of the long black coat. The easiest inference was that she might be some poor old thing whom her relatives were anxious to be rid of, which was, I think, the conclusion most of our neighbors drew. Speaking of neighbors, I had noticed that in spite of the disturbance caused by this curious entrance, Larry Strangways had not turned his head.
I could only sit, therefore, and wait for enlightenment, or for an opportunity. Both came when, some half-hour later, the ticket-collectors passed slowly down the aisle. Other passengers got ready for them in advance, but the little begum in front of me did nothing. When at last the collectors were before her she came to herself with a start.
She came to herself with a start, seizing her satchel awkwardly and spilling its contents on the floor. The tickets came out, and some money. The collectors picked up the tickets and began to pencil and tear them; the youth of the cheap sporting type and I went after the coins. Since I was a young woman and the lady with her head in a bag might be taken for an old one, I had no difficulty in securing his harvest, which he handed over to me with an ingratiating leer. Returning the leer as much in his own style as I could render it, I offered the handful of silver and copper to its owner. To do this I stood as directly as might be in front of her, and when, inadvertently, she raised her head I tried to look her in the eyes.
I couldn't see them. The shimmer I caught behind the two or three veils might have been any one's eyes. But in the motion of the hand that took the money, and in the silvery tinkle of the voice that made itself as low as possible in murmuring the words, "Thank you!" I couldn't be mistaken. It was enough. If I hadn't seen her she at least had seen me, and so I went back to my seat.
I had got the first part of my revelation. With the aid of the ulster, the walking-stick, and the golf-clubs I could guess at the rest. I knew now why Larry Strangways wanted me there, but I didn't know what I was to do. By myself I could do nothing. Unless the little begum took the initiative I shouldn't know where to begin. I could hardly tear off a disguise she had chosen to assume, nor could I take it for granted that she was not on legitimate business.
But she had seen me, and there was something in that. If the owner of the vacant chair turned up he, too, would see me, and he wouldn't wear a veil. We should look each other in the eyes, and he would know that I knew what he was about to do. The situation would not be pleasant for me; but it would conceivably be much less pleasant for anybody else.
I waited, therefore, watching the beautiful green country go tearing by. The smiling freshness of spring was over the hillsides on the left, while the setting sun gilded the tiny headlands on the right and turned the rapid succession of creeks and inlets and marshy pools into sheets of orange and red. Fire illumined the windows of many a passing house, to be extinguished instantaneously, and touched with occasional flames the cold spring-tide blue of the sea. Clumps of forsythia were in blossom, and here and there an apple-tree held out toward the sun a branch of early flowers.
When the train stopped at New Haven I was afraid that the owner of the ulster and the golf-clubs would appear, and that my work, whatever it was to be, would be rendered the more difficult. But no new arrival entered. On the other hand, the passengers began to thin out as the time came for going to the dining-car. In the matter of food I determined to stay at my post if I died of starvation, especially on seeing that the English traveling-cap was equally courageous.
Twilight gradually filtered into the world outside; the marshes, inlets, and creeks grew dim. Dim was the long, burnished line of the Sound, above which I could soon make out a sprinkling of wan yellow stars. Wan yellow lights appeared in windows where no curtains were drawn, and what a few minutes earlier had been twilight became quickly the night. It was the wistful time, the homesick, heart-searching time. If the little lady in front of me were to have qualms as to what she was doing they would come then.
And indeed as I watched her it seemed to me that she inserted her handkerchief under her series of coverings as if to wipe away a tear. Presently she lifted two unsteady hands and began to untie her outer veil. When it came to finding the pins by which it was adjusted she fumbled so helplessly that I took it on myself to lean forward with the words, "Won't you allow me?" I could do this without moving round to where I should have been obliged to look her in the face; and it was so when I helped her take off the veil underneath.
"I'm smothering," she said, very much as it might have been said by a little child in distress.
She wore still another veil, but only that which was ordinarily attached to her hat. The car being not very brightly lighted, and most of our fellow-travelers having gone to dinner, she probably thought she had little to fear. As she gave no sign of recognition on my rendering my small services I subsided again into my chair.
But I knew she was as conscious of my presence as I was of hers. It was not wholly surprising, then, that some twenty minutes later she should swing round in the revolving-chair and drop all disguises. She did it with the words, tearfully yet angrily spoken:
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm going to Boston, Mrs. Brokenshire," I replied, meekly. "Are you doing the same?"
"You know what I'm doing, and you've come to spy on me."
There is something about the wrath of the sweet, mild, gentle creature, not easily provoked, which is far more terrible than the rage of an irascible old man accustomed to furies. I quailed before it now, but not so much that I couldn't outwardly keep my composure.
"If I know what you're doing, Mrs. Brokenshire," I said, gently, "it isn't from any information received beforehand. I didn't know you were to be on this train till you got in; and I haven't been sure it was you till this minute."
"I've a right to do as I please," she declared, hoarsely, "without having people to dog me."
"Do I strike you as the sort of person who'd do that? You've had some opportunity of knowing me; and have I ever done anything for which you didn't first give me leave? If I'm here this evening and you're here, too, it's pure accident—as far as I'm concerned." I added, with some deepening of the tone, and speaking slowly so that she should get the meaning of the words: "I'll only venture to surmise that accidents of that kind don't happen for nothing."
I could just make out her swimming eyes as they stared at me through the remaining veil, which was as black and thick as a widow's.
"What do you mean?"
"Wouldn't that depend on what you mean?"
"If you think you're going to stop me—"
"Dear Mrs. Brokenshire, I don't think anything at all. How can I? We're both going to Boston. By a singular set of circumstances we're seated side by side on the same train. What can I see more in the situation than that?"
"You do see more."
"But I'm trying not to. If you insist on betraying more, when perhaps I'd rather you wouldn't, well, that won't be my fault, will it?"
"Because I've given you my confidence once or twice isn't a reason why you should take liberties all the rest of your life."
To this, for a minute, I made no reply.
"That hurts me," I said at last, "but I believe that when you've considered it you'll see that you've been unjust to me."
"You've suspected me ever since I knew you."
"I've only suspected you of a sweetness and kindness and goodness which I don't think you've discovered in yourself. I've never said anything of you, and never thought anything, but what I told Mr. Brokenshire two months ago, that you seem to me the loveliest thing God ever made. That you shouldn't live up to the beauty of your character strikes me as impossible. I'll admit that I think that; and if you call it suspicion—"
Her anger began to pass into a kind of childish rebellion.
"You've always talked to me about impossible things—"
"I wasn't aware of it. One has to have standards of life, and do one's best to live up to them."
"Why should I do my best to live up to them when other people— Look at Madeline Pyne, and a lot of women I know!"
"Do you think we can ever judge by other people, or take their actions as an example for our own? No one person can be more bound to do right than another; and yet when it comes to doing wrong it might easily be more serious for you than for Mrs. Pyne or for me."
"I don't see why it should be."
"Because you have a national position, one might even say an international position, and Mrs. Pyne hasn't, and neither have I. If we do wrong, only our own little circles have to know about it, and the harm we can do is limited; but if you do wrong it hurts the whole country."
"I must say I don't see that."
"You're the wife of a man who might be called a national institution—"
"There are just as important men in the country as he."
"Not many—let us say, at a venture, a hundred. Think of what it means to be one of the hundred most conspicuous women among a population of a hundred millions. The responsibility must be tremendous."
"I've never thought of myself as having any particular responsibility—not any more than anybody else."
"But, of course, you have. Whatever you do gets an added significance from the fact that you're Mrs. Howard Brokenshire. When, for example, you came to me that day among the rocks at Newport, your kindness was the more wonderful for the simple reason that you were who you were. We can't get away from those considerations. When you do right, right seems somehow to be made more beautiful; and when you do wrong—"
"I don't think it's fair to put me in a position like that."
"I don't put you in that position. Life does it. You were born to be high up. When you fall, therefore—"
"Don't talk about falling."
"But it would be a fall, wouldn't it? Don't you remember, some ten or twelve years ago, how a Saxon crown princess left her home and her husband? Well, all I mean is that because of her position her story rang through the world. However one might pity unhappiness, or sympathize with a miserable love, there was something in it that degraded her country and her womanhood. I suppose the poor thing's inability to live up to a position of honor was a blow at human nature. Don't you think that that was what we felt? And in your case—"
"You mustn't compare me with her."
"No; I don't—exactly. All I mean is that if—if you do what—what I think you've started out to do—"
She raised her head defiantly.
"And I'm going to."
"Then by the day after to-morrow there will not be a newspaper in the country that won't be detailing the scandal. It will be the talk of every club and every fireside between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and Mexico and Montreal. It will be in the papers of London and Paris and Rome and Berlin, and there'll be a week in which you'll be the most discussed person in the world."
"I've been that already—almost—when Mr. Brokenshire made his attack in the Stock Exchange on—"
"But this would be different. In this case you'd be pointed at—it's what it would amount to—as a woman who had gone over to all those evil forces in civilization that try to break down what the good forces are building up. You'd do like that unhappy crown princess, you'd strike a blow at your country and at all womanhood. There are thousands of poor tempted wives all over Europe and America who'll say: 'Well, if she can do such things—'"
"Oh, stop!"
I stopped. It seemed to me that for the time being I had given her enough to think about. We sat silent, therefore, looking out at the rushing dark. People who drifted back from the dining-car glanced at us, but soon were dozing or absorbed in books.
We were nearing New London when she pointed to one of her bags and asked me if I would mind opening it. I welcomed the request as indicating a return of friendliness. Having extracted a parcel of sandwiches, she unfolded the napkin in which they were wrapped and held them out to me. I took a pâté de foie-gras and followed her example in nibbling it. On my own responsibility I summoned the porter and asked him to bring a bottle of spring-water and two glasses.
"I guess the old lady's feelin' some better," he confided, when he had carried out the order.
We stopped at New London, and went on again. Having eaten three or four sandwiches, I declined any more, folding the remainder in the napkin and stowing them away. The simple meal we had shared together restored something of our old-time confidence.
"I'm going to do it," she sighed, as I put the bag back in its place. "He's—he's somewhere on the train—in the smoking-car, I suppose. He's—he's not to come for me till—till we're getting near the Back Bay Station in Boston."
I brought out my question simply, though I had been pondering it for some time. "Who'll tell Mr. Brokenshire?"
She moved uncomfortably.
"I don't know. I haven't made any arrangements. He's in Newport for one or two nights, seeing to some small changes in the house. I—I had to take the opportunity while he was away." As if with a sudden inspiration she glanced round from staring out into the dark. "Would you do it?"
I shook my head.
"I couldn't. I've never seen a man struck dead, and—"
She swung her chair so as to face me more directly.
"Why," she asked, trembling—"why do you say that?"
"Because, if I told him, it's what I should have to look on at."
She began wringing her hands.
"Oh no, you wouldn't."
"But I should. It would be his death-sentence at the least. It's true he has probably received that already—"
"Oh, what are you saying? What are you talking about?"
"Only of what every one can see. He's a stricken man—you've told me so yourself."
"Yes, but I said it only about Hugh. Lots of men have to go through troubles on account of their children."
"But when they do they can generally get comfort from their wives."
She seemed to stiffen.
"It's not my fault if he can't."
"No, of course not. But the fact remains that he doesn't—and perhaps it's the greatest fact of all. He adores you. His children may give him a great deal of anxiety but that's the sort of thing any father looks for and can endure. Only you're not his child; you're his wife. Moreover, you're the wife whom he worships with a slavish idolatry. Everything that nature and time and the world and wealth have made of him he gathers together and lays it down at your feet, contented if you'll only give him back a smile. You may think it pitiful—"
She shuddered.
"I think it terrible—for me."
"Well, I may think so, too, but it's his life we're talking of. His tenure of that"—I looked at her steadily—"isn't very certain as it is, do you think? You know the condition of his heart—you've told me yourself—and as for his nervous system, we've only to look at his face and his poor eye."
"I didn't do that. It's his whole life—"
"But his whole life culminates in you. It works up to you, and you represent everything he values. When he learns that you've despised his love and dishonored his name—"
Her foot tapped the floor impatiently.
"You mustn't say things like that to me."
"I'm only saying them, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, so that you'll know how they sound. It's what every one else will be saying in a day or two. You can't be what—what you'll be to-morrow, and still keep any one's respect. And so," I hurried on, as she was about to protest, "when he hears what you've done, you won't merely have broken his heart, you'll have killed him just as much as if you'd pulled out a revolver and shot him."
She swung back to the window again. Her foot continued to tap the floor; her fingers twisted and untwisted like writhing living things. I could see her bosom rise and fall rapidly; her breath came in short, hard gasps. When I wasn't expecting it she rounded on me again, with flames in her eyes like those in a small tigress's.
"You're saying all that to frighten me; but—"
"I'm saying it because it's true. If it frightens you—"
"But it doesn't."
"Then I've done neither good nor harm."
"I've a right to be happy."
"Certainly, if you can be happy this way."
"And I can."
"Then there's no more to be said. We can only agree with you. If you can be happy when you've Mr. Brokenshire on your mind, as you must have whether he's alive or dead—and if you can be happy when you've desecrated all the things your people and your country look to a woman in your position to uphold—then I don't think any one will say you nay."
"Well, why shouldn't I be happy?" she demanded, as if I was withholding from her something that was her right. "Other women—"
"Yes, Mrs. Brokenshire, other women besides you have tried the experiment of Anna Karénina—"
"What's that?"
I gave her the gist of Tolstoi's romance—the woman who is married to an old man and runs away with a young one, living to see him weary of the position in which she places him, and dying by her own act.
As she listened attentively, I went on before she could object to my parable.
"It all amounts to the same thing. There's no happiness except in right; and no right that doesn't sooner or later—sooner rather than later—end in happiness. You've told me more than once you didn't believe that; and if you don't I can't help it."
I fell back in my seat, because for the moment I was exhausted. It was not merely the actual situation that took the strength out of me, but what I dreaded when the man came for his prize from the smoking-car. I might count on Larry Strangways to aid me then, but as yet he had not recognized my struggle by so much as glancing round.
Nor had I known till this minute how much I cared for the little creature before me, or how deeply I pitied the man she was deserting. I could see her as happier conditions would have made her, and him as he might have become if his nature had not been warped by pride. Any impulse to strike back at him had long ago died within me. It might as well have died, since I never had the nerve to act on it, even when I had the chance.
She turned on me again, with unexpected fierceness.
"It doesn't matter whether I believe all those things or not—now. It's too late. I've left home. I've—I've gone away with him."
Though I felt like a spent prize-fighter forced back into the ring, I raised myself in my chair. I even smiled, dimly, in an effort to be encouraging.