"You've left home and you've gone away; but you won't have gone away with him till—till you've actually joined him."
"I've actually joined him already. His things are there beside that chair." She nodded backward. "By the time we've passed Providence he'll be—he'll be getting ready to come for me."
I said, more significantly than I really understood: "But we haven't passed Providence as yet."
To this she seemingly paid no attention, nor did I give it much myself.
"When he comes," she exclaimed, lyrically, "it will be like a marriage—"
I ventured much as I interrupted.
"No, it will never be like a marriage. There'll be too much that's unholy in it all for anything like a true marriage ever to become possible, not even if death or divorce—and it will probably be the one or the other—were to set you free."
That she found these words arresting I could tell by the stunned way in which she stared.
"Death or divorce!" she echoed, after long waiting. "He—he may divorce me quietly—I hope he will—but—but he won't—he won't die."
"He'll die if you kill him," I declared, grimly. I continued to be grim. "He may die before long, whether you kill him or not—the chances are that he will. But living or dead, as I've said already, he'll stand between you and anything you look for as happiness—after to-night."
She threw herself back, into the depths of her chair and moaned. Luckily there was no one near enough to observe the act. As we talked in low tones we could not be heard above the rattle of the train, and I think I passed as a companion or trained nurse in attendance on a nervous invalid.
"Oh, what's the use?" she exclaimed at last, in a fit of desperation. "I've done it. It's too late. Every one will know I've gone away—even if I get out at Providence."
I am sorry to have to admit that the suggestion of getting out at Providence startled me. I had been so stupid as not to think of it, even when I had made the remark that we had not as yet passed that town. All I had foreseen was the struggle at the end of the journey, when Larry Strangways and I should have to fight for this woman with the powers of darkness, as in medieval legends angels and devils fought over a contested soul.
I took up the idea with an enthusiasm I tried to conceal beneath a smile of engaging sweetness.
"They may know that you've gone away; but they can also know that you've gone away with me."
"With you? You're going to Boston."
"I could wait till to-morrow. If you wanted to get off at Providence I could do it, too."
"But I don't want to. I couldn't let him expect to find me here—and then discover that I wasn't."
"He would be disappointed at that, of course," I reasoned, "but he wouldn't take it as the end of all things. If you got off at Providence there would be nothing irrevocable in that step, whereas there would be in your going on. You could go away with him later, if you found you had to do it; but if you continue to-night you can never come back again. Don't you see? Isn't it worth turning over in your mind a second time—especially as I'm here to help you? If you're meant to be a Madeline Pyne or an Anna Karénina, you'll get another opportunity."
"Oh no, I sha'n't," she sobbed. "If I don't go on to-night, he'll never ask me again."
"He may never ask you again in this way; but isn't it possible that there may eventually be other ways? Don't make me put that into plainer words. Just wait. Let life take charge of it." I seized both her hands. "Darling Mrs. Brokenshire, you don't know yourself. You're too fine to be ruined; you're too exquisite to be just thrown away. Even the hungry, passionate love of the man in the smoking-car must see that and know it. If he comes back here and finds you gone—or imagines that you never came at all—he'll only honor and love you the more, and go on wanting you still. Come with me. Let us go. We can't be far from Providence now. I can take care of you. I know just what we ought to do. I didn't come here to sit beside you of my own free will; but since I am here doesn't it seem to you as if—as if I had been sent?"
As she was sobbing too unrestrainedly to say anything in words, I took the law into my own hands. The porter had already begun dusting the dirt from the passengers who were to descend at Providence on to those who were going to Boston. Making my way up to him, I had the inspiration to say:
"The old lady I'm with isn't quite so well, and we're going to stop here for the night."
He grinned, with a fine show of big white teeth.
"All right, lady; I'll take care of you. Cranky old bunch, ain't she? Handle a good many like that between Boston and Ne' Yawk."
Mrs. Brokenshire made no resistance when I fastened the lighter of her two veils about her head, folding the other and putting it away. Neither did she resist when I drew her cloak about her and put on my own coat. But as the train drew into Providence station and she struggled to her feet in response to my touch on her arm, I was obliged to pull and drag and push her, till she was finally lifted to the platform.
Before leaving the car, however, I took time to glance at the English traveling-cap. I noted then what I had noted throughout the journey. Not once did the head beneath it turn in my direction. Of whatever had happened since leaving the main station in New York Larry Strangways could say that he was wholly unaware.
What happened on the train after Mrs. Brokenshire and I had left it I heard from Mr. Strangways. Having got it from him in some detail, I can give it in my own words more easily than in his.
I may be permitted to state here how much and how little of the romance between Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Brokenshire Larry Strangways knew. He knew next to nothing—but he inferred a good deal. From facts I gave him once or twice in hours of my own perplexity he had been able to get light on certain matters which had come under his observation as Mr. Grainger's confidential man, and to which otherwise he would have had no key. He inferred, for instance, that Mrs. Brokenshire wrote daily to her lover, and that occasionally, at long intervals, her lover could safely write to her. He inferred that when their meetings had ended in one place they were taken up discreetly at another, but only with difficulty and danger. He inferred that the man chafed against this restraint, and as he had got out of it with other women, he was planning to get out of it again. I understood that had Mrs. Brokenshire been the only such instance in Stacy Grainger's career Larry Strangways might not have felt impelled to interfere; but seeing from the beginning that his employer "had a weakness," he felt it only right to help me save a woman for whom he knew I cared.
I have never wholly understood why he believed that the situation had worked up to a crisis on that particular day; but having watched the laying of the mine, he could hardly do anything but expect the explosion on the application of the match.
When Mr. Grainger had bidden him that morning go to the station and secure a drawing-room, or, if that was impossible, two parlor-car seats, on the five-o'clock for Boston, he had reasons for following the course of which I have briefly given the lines. No drawing-room was available, because any that was not sold he bought for himself in order to set the stage according to his own ideas. How far he was justified in this will be a matter of opinion. Some may commend him, while others will accuse him of unwarrantable interference. My own judgment being of no importance I hold it in suspense, giving the incidents just as they occurred.
It must be evident that as Mr. Strangways didn't know what was to happen he could have no plan of action. All he could arrange for was that he and I should be on the spot. As it is difficult for guilty lovers to elope while acquaintances are looking on, he was resolved that they should find elopement difficult. For anything else he relied on chance—and on me. Chance favored him in keeping Stacy Grainger out of sight, in putting Mrs. Brokenshire next to me, and in making the action, such as it was, run smoothly. Had I known that he relied on me I should have been more terrified than I actually was, since I was relying on him.
It will be seen, then, that at the moment when Mrs. Brokenshire and I left the train Larry Strangways had but a vague idea of what had taken place. He merely conjectured from the swish of skirts that we had gone. His next idea was, as he phrased it, to make himself scarce on his own account; but in that his efforts miscarried.
Hoping to slip into another car and thus avoid a meeting with the outmanoeuvered lover, he was snapping the clasp of the bag into which he had thrust his cap when he perceived a tall figure enter the car by the forward end. To escape recognition he bent his head, pretending to search for something on the floor. The tall figure passed, but came back again. It was necessary that he should come back, because of the number on the ticket, the ulster, the walking-stick, and the golf-clubs.
What Stacy Grainger saw, of course, was three empty seats, with his secretary sitting in a fourth. The sight of the three empty seats was doubtless puzzling enough, but that of the secretary must have been bewildering. Without turning his head Mr. Strangways knew by his sixth and seventh senses that his employer was comparing the number on his ticket with that of the seat, examining the hand-luggage to make sure it was his own, and otherwise drawing the conclusion that his faculties hadn't left him. For a private secretary who had ventured so far out of his line of duty it was a trying minute; but he turned and glanced upward only on feeling a tap on his shoulder.
"Hello, Strangways! Is it you? What's the meaning of this?"
Strangways rose. As the question had been asked in perplexity rather than in anger, he could answer calmly.
"The meaning of what, sir?"
"Where the deuce are you going? What are you doing here?"
"I'm going to Boston, sir."
"What for? Who told you you could go to Boston?"
The tone began to nettle the young man, who was not accustomed to being spoken to so imperiously before strangers.
"No one told me, sir. I didn't ask permission. I'm my own master. I've left your employ."
"The devil you have! Since when?"
"Since this morning. I couldn't tell you, because when you left the office after I'd given you the tickets you didn't come back."
"And do you call that decent to a man who's— But no matter!" He pointed to the seat next his own. "Where's the—the lady who's been sitting here?"
Mr. Strangways raised his eyebrows innocently, and shook his head.
"I haven't seen any lady, sir."
"What? There must have been a lady here. Was to have got on at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."
"Possibly; I only say I didn't see her. As a matter of fact, I've been reading, and I don't think I looked round during the entire journey. Hadn't we better not speak so loud?" he suggested, in a lower tone. "People are listening to us."
"Oh, let them go to— Now look here, Strangways," he began again, speaking softly, but excitedly, "there must be some explanation to this."
"Of course there must be; only I can't give it. Perhaps the porter could tell us. Shall I call him?"
Mr. Grainger nodded his permission. The colored man with the flashing teeth came up on the broad grin, showing them.
"Yep," he replied, in answer to the question: "they was two ladies in them seats all the way f'um Ne' Yawk."
"Two ladies?" Mr. Grainger cried, incredulously.
"Yes, gen'lemen. Two different ladies. The young one she got in at the Grand Central—fust one in the cyar—and the ole one at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."
"Do you mean to say it was an old lady who got in there?"
"Yep, gen'lemen; ole and cranky. I 'ain't handled 'em no crankier not since I've bin on this beat. Sick, too. They done get off at Providence, though they was booked right through to Boston, because the ole lady she couldn't go no farther."
Mr. Grainger was not a sleuth-hound, but he did what he could in the way of verification.
"Did the young lady wear—wear a veil?"
The porter scratched his head.
"Come to think of it she did—one of them there flowery things"—his forefinger made little whirling designs on his coffee-colored skin—"what makes a kind of pattern-like all over people's face."
Because he was frantically seeking a clue, Mr. Grainger blurted out the foolish question:
"Was she—pretty?"
To answer as a connoisseur and as man to man the African took his time.
"Wa-al, not to say p'ooty, she wasn't—but she'd pa-ss. A little black-eyed thing, an' awful smart. One of 'em trained nusses like—very perlite, but a turr'ble boss you could see she'd be, for all she was so soft-spoken. Had cyare of the ole one, who was what you'd call plumb crazy."
"That will do." The trail seemed not worth following any further. "There's some mistake," he continued, furiously. "She must be in one of the other cars."
Like a collie from the leash he bounded off to make new investigations. In five minutes he was back again, passing up the length of the car and going on to examine those at the other end of the train. His face as he returned was livid; his manner, as far as he dared betray himself before a dozen or twenty spectators, that of a balked wild animal.
"Strangways," he swore, as he dropped to the arm of his seat, "you're going to answer for this."
Strangways replied, composedly:
"I'm ready to answer for anything I know. You can't expect me to be responsible for what I don't know anything about."
He slapped his knee.
"What are you doing in that particular chair? Even if you're going to Boston, why aren't you somewhere else?"
"That's easily explained. You told me to get two tickets by this train. Knowing that I was to travel by it myself I asked for three. I dare say it was stupid of me not to think that the propinquity would be open to objection; but as it's a public conveyance, and there's not generally anything secret or special about a trip of the kind—"
"Why in thunder didn't you get a drawing-room, as I told you to?"
"For the reason I've given—there were none to be had. If you could have taken me into your confidence a little—But I suppose that wasn't possible."
To this there was no response, but a series of muttered oaths that bore the same relation to soliloquy as a frenzied lion's growl. For some twenty minutes they sat in the same attitudes, Strangways quiet, watchful, alert, ready for any turn the situation might take, the other man stretched on the arm of his chair, indifferent to comfort, cursing spasmodically, perplexity on his forehead, rage in his eyes, and something that was folly, futility, and helplessness all over him.
Almost no further conversation passed between them till they got out in Boston. In the crowd Strangways endeavored to go off by himself, but found Mr. Grainger constantly beside him. He was beside him when they reached the place where taxicabs were called, and ordered his porter to call one.
"Get in," he said, then.
Larry Strangways protested.
"I'm going to—"
I must be sufficiently unlady-like to give Mr. Grainger's response just as it was spoken, because it strikes me as characteristic of men.
"Oh, hell! Get in. You're coming with me."
Characteristic of men was the rest of the evening. In spite of what had happened—and had not happened—Messrs. Grainger and Strangways partook of an excellent supper together, eating and drinking with appetite, and smoking their cigars with what looked like an air of tranquillity. Though the fury of the balked wild animal returned to Stacy Grainger by fits and starts, it didn't interfere with his relish of his food and only once did it break its bounds. That was when he struck the arm of his chair, saying beneath his breath, and yet audibly enough for his secretary to hear:
"She funked it—damn her!"
Larry Strangways then took it on himself to say:
"I don't know the lady, sir, to whom you refer, nor the reasons she may have had for funking it, but may I advise you for your own peace of mind to withdraw the two concluding syllables?"
A pair of fierce, melancholy eyes rested on him for a second uncomprehendingly.
"All right," the crestfallen lover groaned heavily at last. "I may as well take them back."
Characteristic of women were my experiences while this was happening.
Bundled out into the station at Providence no two poor females could ever have been more forlorn. Standing in the waiting-room with our bags around us I felt like one of those immigrant women, ignorant of the customs and language of the country to which they have come, I had sometimes seen on docks at Halifax. As for Mrs. Brokenshire, she was as little used to the unarranged as if she had been a royalty. Never before had she dropped in this way down upon the unexpected; never before had she been unmet, unwelcomed, and unprepared. She wasbouleversée—overturned. Were she falling from an aeroplane she could not have been more at a loss as to where she was going to alight. Small wonder was it that she should sit down on one of her own valises and begin to cry distressfully.
That, for the minute, I was obliged to disregard. If she had to cry she must cry. I could hear the train puffing out of the station, and as far as that went she was safe. My first preoccupations had to do with where we were to go.
For this I made inquiries of the porter, who named what he considered to be the two or three best hotels. I went to the ticket-office and put the same question, getting approximately the same answer. Then, seeing a well-dressed man and lady enter the station from a private car, which I could discern outside, I repeated my investigations, explaining that I had come from New York with an invalid lady who had not been well enough to continue the journey. They told me I could make no mistake in going to one of the houses already named by my previous informants; and so, gathering up the hand-luggage and Mrs. Brokenshire, we set forth.
At the hotel we secured an apartment of sitting-room and two bedrooms, registering our names as "Miss Adare and friend." I ordered the daintiest supper the house could provide to be served up-stairs, with a small bottle of champagne to inspirit us; but, unlike the two heroes of the episode, neither of us could do more than taste food and drink. No kidnapped princess in a fairy-tale was ever more lovely or pathetic than Mrs. Brokenshire; no giant ogre more monstrously cruel than myself. Now that it was done, I figured, both in her eyes and in my own, not as a savior, but a capturer.
She had dried her tears, but she had dried them resentfully. As far as possible she didn't look at me, but when she couldn't help it the reproach in her glances almost broke my heart. Though I knew I had acted for the best, she made me feel a bad angel, a marplot, a spoil-sport. I had thwarted a dream that was as full of bliss as it was of terror, and reduced the dramatic to the commonplace. Here she was picking at a cold quail in aspic face to face with me when she might have been. . . .
I couldn't help seeing myself as she saw me, and when we had finished what was not a repast I put her to bed with more than the humility of a serving-maid. You will think me absurd, but when those tender eyes were turned on me with their silent rebuke, I would gladly have put her back on the train again and hurried her on to destruction. As the dear thing sobbed on her pillow I laid my head beside hers and sobbed with her.
But I couldn't sob very long, as I still had duties to fulfil. It was of little use to have her under my care at Providence unless those who would in the end be most concerned as to her whereabouts were to know the facts—or the approximate facts—from the start. It was a case in which doubt for a night might be doubt for a lifetime; and so when she was sufficiently calm for me to leave her I went down-stairs.
Though I had not referred to it again, I had made a mental note of the fact that Mr. Brokenshire was at Newport. If at Newport I knew he could be nowhere but in one hotel. Within fifteen minutes I was talking to him on the telephone.
He was plainly annoyed at being called to the instrument so late as half past ten. When I said I was Alexandra Adare he replied that he didn't recognize the name.
"I was formerly nursery governess to your daughter, Mrs. Rossiter," I explained. "I'm the woman who's refused as yet to marry your son, Hugh."
"Oh, that person," came the response, uttered wearily.
"Yes, sir; that person. I must apologize for ringing you up so late; but I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Brokenshire is here at Providence with me."
The symptoms of distress came to me in a series of choking sounds over the wire. It was a good half-minute before I got the words:
"What does that mean?"
"It means that Mrs. Brokenshire is perfectly well in physical condition, but she's tired and nervous and overwrought."
I made out that the muffled and strangled voice said:
"I'll motor up to Providence at once. It's now half past ten. I shall be there between one and two. What hotel shall I find you at?"
"Don't come, sir," I pleaded. "I had to tell you we were in Providence, because you could have found that out by asking where the long-distance call had come from; but it's most important to Mrs. Brokenshire that she should have a few days alone."
"I shall judge of that. To what hotel shall I come?"
"I beg and implore you, sir, not to come. Please believe me when I say that it will be better for you in the end. Try to trust me. Mrs. Brokenshire isn't far from a nervous breakdown; but if I can have her to myself for a week or two I believe I could tide her over it."
Reproof and argument followed on this, till at last he yielded, with the words:
"Where are you going?"
Fortunately, I had thought of that.
"To some quiet place in Massachusetts. When we're settled I shall let you know."
He suggested a hotel at Lenox as suitable for such a sojourn.
"She'd rather go where she wouldn't meet people whom she knows. The minute she has decided I shall communicate with you again."
"But I can see you in the morning before you leave?"
The accent was now that of request. The overtone in it was pitiful.
"Oh, don't try to, sir. She wants to get away from every one. It will be so much better for her to do just as she likes. She had got to a point where she had to escape from everything she knew and cared about; and so all of a sudden—only—only to-day—she decided to come with me. She doesn't need a trained nurse, because she's perfectly well. All she wants is some one to be with her—whom she knows she can trust. She hasn't even taken Angélique. She simply begs to be alone."
In the end I made my point, but only after genuine beseeching on his part and much repetition on mine. Having said good-night to him—he actually used the words—I called up Angélique, in order to bring peace to a household in which the mistress's desertion would create some consternation.
Angélique and I might have been called friends. The fact that I spoke Frenchcomme une Française, as she often flattered me by saying, was a bond between us, and we had the further point of sympathy that we were both devoted to Mrs. Brokenshire. Besides that, there is something in me—I suppose it must be a plebeian streak—which enables me to understand servants and get along with them.
I gave her much the same explanation as I gave to Mr. Brokenshire, though somewhat differently put. In addition I asked her to pack such selections from the simpler examples of Mrs. Brokenshire's wardrobe as the lady might need in a country place, and keep them in readiness to send. Angélique having expressed her relief that Mrs. Brokenshire was safe at a known address, in the company of a responsible attendant—a relief which, so she said, would be shared by the housekeeper, the chef, and the butler, all of whom had spent the evening in painful speculation—we took leave of each other, with our customary mutual compliments.
Though I was so tired by this time that fainting would have been a solace, I called for a Boston paper and began studying the advertisements of country hotels. Having made a selection of these I consulted the manager of our present place of refuge, who strongly commended one of them. Thither I sent a night-letter commandeering the best, after which, with no more than strength to undress, I lay down on a couch in Mrs. Brokenshire's room. When I knew she was sleeping I, too, slept fitfully. About once in an hour I went softly to her bedside, and finding her dozing, if not sound asleep, I went softly back again.
Between four and five we had a little scene. As I approached her bed she looked up and said:
"What are we going to do in the morning?"
Afraid to tell her all I had put in train, I gave my ideas in the form of suggestion.
"No, I sha'n't do that," she said, quietly.
She lay quite still, her cheek embossed on the pillow, and a great stray curl over her left shoulder.
"Then what would you like to do?"
"I should like to go straight back."
"To begin the same old life all over again?"
"To begin to see him all over again."
"Do you think that after last night you can begin to see him in the same old way?"
"I must see him in some way."
"But isn't the way what you've still to discover?" I resolved on a bold stroke. "Wouldn't part of your object in going away for a time be to think out some method of reconciling your feeling for Mr. Grainger with—with your self-respect?"
"My self-respect?" She looked as if she had never heard of such a thing. "What's that got to do with it?"
"Hasn't it got everything to do with it? You can't live without it forever."
"Do you mean that I've been living without it as it is?"
"Isn't that for you to say rather than for me?"
She was silent for a minute, after which she said, fretfully:
"I don't think it's very nice of you to talk to me like that. You've got me here at your mercy, when I might have been—" A long, bubbling sigh, like the aftermath of tears, laid stress on the joys she had foregone. "He'll never forgive me now—never."
"Wouldn't it be better, dear Mrs. Brokenshire," I asked, "to consider whether or not you can ever forgive him?"
She raised herself on her elbow and looked at me. Seated in a low arm-chair beside her bed, in an old-rose-colored kimono, my dark hair hanging down my back, I was not a fascinating object of study, even in the light of one small, distant, shaded bedroom lamp.
"What should I forgive him for?—for loving me?"
"Yes, for loving you—in that way."
"He loves me—"
"So much that he could see you dishonored and disgraced—and shunned by decent people all the rest of your life—just to gratify his own desires. It seems to me you may have to forgive him for that."
"He asked me to do only what I would have done willingly—if it hadn't been for you."
"But he asked you. The responsibility is in that. You didn't make the suggestion; he did."
"He didn't make it till I'd let him see—"
"Too much. Forgive me for saying it, dear Mrs. Brokenshire; but do you think a woman should ever go so far to meet a man as you did?"
"I let him see that I loved him. I did that before I married Mr. Brokenshire."
"You let him see more than that you loved him. You showed him that you didn't know how to live without him."
"But since I didn't know how—"
"Ah, but you should have known. No woman should be so dependent on a man as that."
She fell back again on her pillows.
"It's easy to see you've never been in love."
"I have been in love—and am still; but love is not the most important thing in the world—"
"Then you differ from all the great teachers. They say it is."
"If they do they're not speaking of sexual love."
"What are they speaking of, then?"
"They're speaking of another kind of love, with which the mere sexual has nothing to do. I'm not an ascetic, and I know the sexual has its place. But there's a love that's as much bigger than that as the sky is bigger than I am."
"Yes, but so long as one never sees it—"
I suppose it was her tone of feeble rebellion that roused my spirit and made me speak in a way which I should not otherwise have allowed myself.
"You do see it, darling Mrs. Brokenshire," I declared, more sweetly than I felt. "I'm showing it to you." I rose and stood over her. "What do you suppose I'm prompted by but love? What urges me to stand by Mr. Brokenshire but love? What made me step in between you and Mr. Grainger and save him, as well as you, but love? Love isn't emotion that leaves you weak; it's action that makes you strong. It has to be action, and it has to be right action. There's no love separable from right; and until you grasp that fact you'll always be unhappy. I'm a mere rag in my own person. I've no more character than a hen. But because I've got a wee little hold on right—"
She broke in, peevishly, as she turned away:
"I do wish you'd let me go to sleep."
I got down from my high horse and went back, humbly, to my couch. Scarcely, however, had I lain down, when the voice came again, in childish complaint:
"I think you might have kissed me."
I had never kissed her in my life, nor had she ever shown any sign of permitting me this liberty. Timidly I went back to the bed; timidly I bent over it. But I was not prepared for the sudden intense clinging with which she threw her arms round my neck and drew my face down to hers.
In the morning Mrs. Brokenshire was difficult again, but I got her into a neat little country inn in Massachusetts by the middle of the afternoon. I had to be like a jailer dragging along a prisoner, but that could not be helped.
On leaving Providence she insisted on spending a few days in Boston, where, so she said, she had friends whom she wished to see. Knowing that Stacy Grainger would be at one of the few hotels of which we had the choice, I couldn't risk a meeting. Her predominating shame, a shame she had no hesitation in confessing, was for having failed him. He would never forgive her, she moaned; he wouldn't love her any more. Not to be loved by him, not to be forgiven, was like death. All she demanded during the early hours of that day was to find him, wherever he had gone, and fling herself at his feet.
Because I didn't allow her to remain in Boston we had what was almost a quarrel, as we jolted over the cobblestones from the southern station to the northern. She was now an outraged queen and now a fiery little termagant. Sparing me neither tears nor reproaches, neither scoldings nor denunciations, she nevertheless followed me obediently. Sitting opposite me in the parlor-car, ignoring the papers and fashion magazines I spread beneath her eyes, she lifted on me the piteous face of an angel whom I had beaten and trampled and enslaved. For this kind of sacrilege I had ceased, however, to be contrite. I was so tired, and had grown so grim, that I could have led her along in handcuffs.
But once out in the fresh, green, northern country the joy of a budding and blossoming world stole into us in spite of all our cares. We couldn't help getting out of our own little round of thought when we saw fields that were carpets of green velvet, or copses of hazelnut and alder coming into leaf, or a farmer sowing the plowed earth with the swing and the stride of theSemeur. We couldn't help seeing wider and farther and more hopefully when the sky was an arch of silvery blue overhead, and white clouds drifted across it, and the north into which we were traveling began to fling up masses of rolling hills.
She caught me by the arm.
"Oh, do look at the lambs! The darlings!"
There they were, three or four helpless creatures, shivering in the sharp May wind and apparently struck by the futility of a life which would end in nothing but making chops. The ewes watched them maternally, or stood patiently to be tugged by the full woolly breasts. After that we kept our eyes open for other living things: for horses and cows and calves, for Corots and Constables—with a difference!—on the uplands of farms or in village highways. Once when a foal galloped madly away from the train, kicking up its slender hind legs, my companion actually laughed.
When we got out at the station a robin was singing, the first bird we had heard that year. The note was so full and pure and Eden-like that it caught one's breath. It went with the bronze-green of maples and elms, with the golden westering sunshine, and with the air that was like the distillation of air and yet had a sharp northern tang in it. Driving in the motor of the inn, through the main street of the town, we saw that most of the white houses had a roomy Colonial dignity, and that orchards of apple, cherry, and plum, with acres of small fruit, surrounded them all. Having learned on the train that jam was the staple of the little town's prosperity, we could see jam everywhere. Jam was in the cherry-trees covered with dainty white blossoms, in the plum-trees showing but a flower or two, and in the apple-trees scarcely in bud. Jam was in the long straight lines which we were told represented strawberries, and in the shrubberies of currant. Jam was along the roadsides where the raspberry was clothing its sprawling bines with leaves, and wherever the blueberry gladdened the waste places with its millions of modest bells. Jam is a toothsome, homey thing to which no woman with a housekeeping heart can be insensible. The thought of it did something to bring Mrs. Brokenshire's thoughts back to the simple natural ways she had forsworn, even before reaching the hotel.
The hotel was no more than a farm-house that had expanded itself half a dozen times. We traversed all sorts of narrow halls and climbed all sorts of narrow staircases, till at last we emerged on a corner suite, where the view led us straight to the balcony.
Not that it was an extraordinary view; it was only a peaceful and a noble one. An undulating country held in its folds a scattering of lakes, working up to the lines of the southern New Hampshire hills which closed the horizon to the north. Green was, of course, the note of the landscape, melting into mauve in the mountains and saffron in the sky. Spacing out the perspective a mauve mist rose between the ridges, and a mauve light rested on the three white steeples of the town. The town was perhaps two hundred feet below us and a mile away, nestling in a feathery bower of verdure.
When I joined Mrs. Brokenshire she was grasping the balcony rail, emitting little "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" of ecstasy. She drew long breaths, like a thirsty person drinking. She listened to the calling and answering of birds with face illumined and upturned. It was a bath of the spirit to us both. It was cleansing and healing; it was soothing and restful and corrective, setting what was sane within us free.
Of all this I need say little beyond mentioning the fact that Mrs. Brokenshire, in spite of herself, entered into a period in which her taut nerves relaxed and her over-strained emotions became rested. It was a kind of truce of God to her. She had struggled and suffered so much that she was content for a time to lie still in the everlasting arms and be rocked and comforted. We had the simplest of rooms; we ate the simplest of food; we led the simplest of lives. By day we read and walked and talked a little and thought much; at night we slept soundly. Our fellow-guests were people who did the same, varying the processes with golf and moving pictures. For the most part they were tired people from the neighboring towns, seeking like ourselves a few days' respite from their burdens. Though they came to know who Mrs. Brokenshire was, they respected her privacy, never doing worse than staring after her when she entered the dining-room or walked on the lawns or verandas. I had come to love her so much that it was a joy to me to witness the revival of her spirit, and I looked forward to seeing her restored, not too reluctantly, to her husband.
With him I had, of course, some correspondence. It was an odd correspondence, in which I made my customarygaffe. On our first evening at the inn I wrote to him in fulfilment of my promise, beginning, "Dear Mr. Brokenshire," as if I was writing to an equal. The acknowledgment came back: "Miss Alexandra Adare: Dear Madam," putting me back in my place. Accepting the rebuff, I adopted the style in sending him my daily bulletins.
As a matter of fact, my time was largely passed in writing, for I had explanations to make to so many. My acquaintance with Mrs. Brokenshire having been a secret one, I was obliged to confess it to Hugh and Mrs. Rossiter, and even to Angélique. I had, in a measure, to apologize for it, too, setting down Mrs. Brokenshire's selection of my company to an invalid's eccentricity.
So we got through May and into June, my reports to Mr. Brokenshire being each one better than the last. My patient never wrote to him herself, nor to any one. We had, in fact, been a day or two at the inn before she said:
"I wonder what Mr. Brokenshire is thinking?"
It was for me to tell her then that from the beginning I had kept him informed as to where she was, and that he knew I was with her. For a minute or two she stiffened into thegrande dame, as she occasionally did.
"You'll be good enough in future not to do such things without consulting me," she said, with dignity.
That passed, and when I read to her, as I always did, the occasional notes with which her husband honored me, she listened without comment. It must have been the harder to do that since the lover's pleading ardor could be detected beneath all the cold formality in which he couched his communications.
It was this ardor, as well as something else, that began in the end to make me uneasy. The something else was that Mrs. Brokenshire was writing letters on her own account. Coming in one day from a solitary walk, I found her posting one in the hall of the hotel. A few days later one for her was handed to me at the office, with several of my own. Recognizing Stacy Grainger's writing, I put it back with the words:
"Mrs. Brokenshire will come for her letters herself."
From that time onward she was often at her desk, and I knew when she got her replies by the feverishness of her manner. The truce of God being past, the battle was now on again.
The first sign of it given to me was on a day when Mr. Brokenshire wrote in terms more definite than he had used hitherto. I read the letter aloud to her, as usual. He had been patient, he said, and considerate, which had to be admitted. Now he could deny himself no longer. As it was plain that his wife was better, he should come to her. He named the 20th as the day on which he should appear.
"No, no," she cried, excitedly. "Not till after the twenty-third."
"But why the twenty-third?" I asked, innocently.
"Because I say so. You'll see." Then fearing, apparently, that she had betrayed something she ought to have concealed, she colored and added, lamely, "It will give me a little more time."
I said nothing, but I pondered much. The 23d was no date at all that had anything to do with us. If it had significance it was in plans as to which she had not taken me into her confidence.
So, too, when I heard her making inquiries of the maid who did the rooms as to the location of the Baptist church. "What on earth does she want to know that for?" was the question I not unnaturally asked myself. That she, who never went to church at all, except as an occasional act of high ceremonial for which she took great credit to her soul, was now concerned with the doctrine of baptism by immersion I did not believe. But I hunted up the sacred edifice myself, finding it to be situated on the edge of a daisied mead, slightly out of the town, on a road that might be described as lonely and remote. I came to the conclusion that if any one wanted to carry off in an automobile a lady picking flowers—a sort ofenlèvement de Proserpine—this would be as good a place as any. How the Pluto of our drama could have come to select it, Heaven only knew.
But I did as I was bid, and wrote to Mr. Brokenshire that once the 23d was passed he would be free to come. After that I watched, wondering whether or not I should have the heart or the nerve to frustrate love a second time, even if I got the chance.
I didn't get the chance precisely, but on the 22nd of June I received a mysterious note. It was typewritten and had neither date nor address nor signature. Its message was simple:
"If Miss Adare will be at the post-office at four o'clock this afternoon she will greatly oblige the writer of these lines and perhaps benefit a person who is dear to her."
The post-office being a tolerably safe place in case of felonious attack, I was on the spot at five minutes before the hour. In that particular town it occupied a corner of a brick building which also gave shelter to the bank and a milliner's establishment. As the village hotel was opposite, I advertised my arrival by studying a display of hats which warranted the attention before going inside to invest in stamps. As I was the only applicant for this necessary of life, the swarthy, undersized young man who served me made kindly efforts at entertainment while "delivering the goods," as he expressed it.
"English, ain't you?"
I said, as usual, that I was a Canadian.
He smiled at his own perspicacity.
"Got your number, didn't I? All you Canucks have the same queer way o' talkin'. Two or three in the jam-factory here—only they're French."
I knew some one had entered behind me, and, turning away from the wicket, I found the person I had expected. Mr. Stacy Grainger, clad jauntily in a gray spring suit, lifted a soft felt hat.
He went to his point without introductory greeting.
"It's good of you to have come. Perhaps we could talk better if we walked up the street. There's no one to know us or to make it awkward for you."
Walking up the street he made his errand clear to me. I had partly guessed it before he said a word. I had guessed it from his pallor, from something indefinably humbled in the way he bore himself, and from the worried light in his romantic eyes. Being so much taller than I, he had to stoop toward me as he talked.
He knew, he said, what had happened on the train. Some of it he had wrung from his secretary, Strangways, and the rest had been written him by Mrs. Brokenshire. He had been so furious at first that he might have been called insane. In order to give himself the pleasure of kicking Strangways out he had refused to accept his resignation, and had I not been a woman he would have sought revenge on me. He had been the more frantic because until getting his first note from Mrs. Brokenshire he hadn't known where she was. To have the person dearest to him in the world swept off the face of the earth after she was actually under his protection was enough to drive a man mad.
Having acquiesced in this, I considered it no harm to add that if I had known the business on which I was setting out I should have hardly dared that day to take the train for Boston. Once on it, however, and in speech with Mrs. Brokenshire, it had seemed that there was no other course before me.
"Quite so," he agreed, somewhat to my surprise. "I see that now. He's not altogether an ass, that fellow Strangways. I've kept him with me, and little by little—" He broke off abruptly to say: "And now the shoe's on the other foot. That's what I wanted to tell you."
I walked on a few paces before getting the force of this figure of speech.
"You mean that Mrs. Brokenshire—"
"Quite so. I see you get what I'd like you to know." He went on, brokenly: "It isn't that I don't want it myself as much as ever. I only see, as I didn't see before, what it would mean to her. If I were to take her at her word—as I must, of course, if she insists on it—"
I had to think hard while we continued to walk on beneath the leafing elms, and the village people watched us two as city folks.
"It's for to-morrow, isn't it?" I asked at last.
He nodded.
"How did you know that?"
"Near the Baptist church?"
"How the deuce do you know? I motored up here last week to spy out the land. That seemed to me the most practicable spot, where we should be least observed—"
We were still walking on when I said, without quite knowing why I did so:
"Why shouldn't you go away at once and leave it all to me?"
"Leave it all to you? And what would you do?"
"I don't know. I should have to think. I could do—something."
"But suppose she's counting on me to come?"
"Then you would have to fail her."
"I couldn't."
"Not even if it was for her good?"
He shook his head.
"Not even if it was for her good. No one who calls himself a gentleman—"
I couldn't help flinging him a scornful smile.
"Isn't it too late to think in terms like that? We've come to a place where such words don't apply. The best we can do is to get out of a difficult situation as wisely as possible, and if you'd just go away and leave it to me—"
"She'd never forgive me. That's what I'd be afraid of."
"There's nothing to be afraid of in doing right," I declared, a little sententiously. "You'll do right in going away. The rest will take care of itself."
We came to the edge of the town, where there was a gate leading into a pasture. Over this gate we leaned and looked down on a valley of orchards and farms. He was sufficiently at ease to take out a cigarette and ask my permission to smoke.
"What would you say of a man who treated you like that?" he asked, presently.
"It wouldn't matter what I said at first, so long as I lived to thank him. That's what she'd do, and she'd do it soon."
"And in the mean time?"
"I don't see that you need think of that. If you do right—"
He groaned aloud.
"Oh, right be hanged!"
"Yes, there you go. But so long as right is hanged wrong will have it all its own way and you'll both get into trouble. Do right now—"
"And leave her in the lurch?"
"You wouldn't be leaving her in the lurch, because you'd be leaving her with me. I know her and can take care of her. If you were just failing her and nothing else—that would be another thing. But I'm here. If you'll only do what's so obviously right, Mr. Grainger, you can trust me with the rest."
I said this firmly and with an air of competence, though, as a matter of fact, I had no idea of what I should have to do. What I wanted first was to get rid of him. Once alone with her, I knew I should get some kind of inspiration.
He diverted the argument to himself—he wanted her so much, he would have to suffer so cruelly.
"There's no question as to your suffering," I said. "You'll both have to suffer. That can be taken for granted. We're only thinking of the way in which you'll suffer least."
"That's true," he admitted, but slowly and reluctantly.
"I'm not a terribly rigorous moralist," I went on. "I've a lot of sympathy with Paolo and Francesca and with Pelléas and Mélisande. But you can see for yourself that all such instances end unhappily, and when it's happiness you're primarily in search of—"
"Hers—especially," he interposed, with the same deliberation and some of the same unwillingness.
"Well, then, isn't your course clear? She'll never be happy with you if she kills the man she runs away from—"
He withdrew his cigarette and looked at me, wonderingly.
"Kills him? What in thunder do you mean?"
I explained my convictions. Howard Brokenshire wouldn't survive his wife's desertion for a month; he might not survive it for a day. He was a doomed man, even if his wife did not desert him at all. He, Stacy Grainger, was young. Mrs. Brokenshire was young. Wouldn't it be better for them both to wait on life—and on the other possibilities that I didn't care to name more explicitly?
So he wrestled with himself, and incidentally with me, turning back at last toward the village inn—and his motor. While shaking my hand to say good-by he threw off, jerkily:
"I suppose you know my secretary, Strangways, wants to marry you?"
My heart seemed to stop beating.
"He's—he's never said so to me," I managed to return, but more weakly than I could have wished.
"Well he will. He's all right. He's not a fool. I'm taking him with me into some big things; so that if it's the money you're in doubt about—"
I had recovered myself enough to say:
"Oh no; not at all. But if you're in his confidence I beg you to ask him to think no more about it. I'm engaged—or practically engaged—I may say that I'm engaged—to Hugh Brokenshire."
"I see. Then you're making a mistake."
I was moving away from him by this time so that I gave him a little smile.
"If so, the circumstances are such that—that I must go on making it."
"For God's sake don't!" he called after me.
"Oh, but I must," I returned, and so we went our ways.
On going back to our rooms I found poor, dear little Mrs. Brokenshire packing a small straw suit-case. She had selected it as the only thing she could carry in her hand to the place of theenlèvement. She was not a packer; she was not an adept in secrecy. As I entered her room she looked at me with the pleading, guilty eyes of a child detected in the act of stealing sweets, and confessing before he is accused.
I saw nothing, of course. I saw nothing that night. I saw nothing the next day. Each one of her helpless, unskilful moves was so plain to me that I could have wept; but I was turning over in my mind what I could do to let her know she was deceived. I was reproaching myself, too, for being so treacherous a confidante. All the great love-heroines had an attendant like me, who bewailed and lamented the steps their mistresses were taking, and yet lent a hand. Here I was, the nurse to this Juliet, the Brangaene to this Isolde, but acting as a counter-agent to all romantic schemes. I cannot say I admired myself; but what was I to do?
To make a long story short I decided to do nothing. You may scorn me, oh, reader, for that; but I came to a place where I saw it would be vain to interfere. Even a child must sometimes be left to fight its own battles and stand face to face with its own fate; and how much more a married woman! It became the more evident to me that this was what I could best do for Mrs. Brokenshire in proportion as I watched the leaden hands and feet with which she carried out her tasks and inferred a leaden heart. A leaden heart is bad enough, but a leaden heart offering itself in vain—what lesson could go home with more effect?
During the forenoon of the 23d each little incident cut me to the quick. It was so naïve, so useless. The poor darling thought she was outwitting me. As if she was stealing it she stowed away her jewelry, and when she could no longer hide the suit-case she murmured something about articles to be cleaned at the village cleaner's. I took this with a feeble joke as to the need of economy, and when she thought she would carry down the things herself I commended the impulse toward exercise. I knew she wouldn't drive, because she didn't want a witness to her acts. As far as I could guess the hour at which Pluto would carry off Proserpine, it would be at five o'clock.
And indeed about half past three I observed unusual signs of agitation. Her door was kept closed, and from behind it came sounds of a final opening and closing of cupboards and drawers, after which she emerged, wearing a dark-blue walking-suit and a hat of thecanotièrestyle, with a white quill feather at one side. I still made no comment, not even when the wan, wee, touching figure was ready to set forth.
If her first steps were artless the last was more artless still. Instead of going off casually, with an implied intention to come back, she took leave of me with tears and protestations of affection. She had been harsh with me, she confessed, and seemingly indifferent to my tender care, but one day she might have a chance to show me how genuine was her gratitude. In this, too, I saw no more than the commonplace, and a little after four she tripped down the avenue, looking, with her suit-case, like a school-girl.
I allowed her just such a handicap as her speed and mine would have warranted. Even then I made no attempt to overtake her. Having previously got what is called the lay of the land, I knew how I could come to her assistance by taking a short cut. I had hardened my heart by this time, and whatever qualms I had felt before, I was resolved now to spare her no drop of the wormwood that would be for her good.
I cannot describe our respective routes without appending a map, which would scarcely be worth while. It will be enough if I say that she went round the arc of a bow and I cut across by the string. I came thus to a slight eminence, selected in advance, whence I could watch her descent of the hill by which the lower Main Street trails off into the country. I could follow her, too, when she deflected into a small cross-thoroughfare bearing the scented name of Clover Lane, in which there were no houses; and I should still be able to trace her course when she emerged on the quiet country road that would take her to her trysting-place. I had no intention to step in till I could do it at some spot on her homeward way, and thus spare her needless humiliation.
In Clover Lane she was within a few hundred yards of her destination. She had only to turn a corner and she would be in sight of the flowery mead whence she was to be carried off. It was a pretty lane, grass-grown and overhung with lilacs in full bloom, such as you would find on the edge of any New England town. The lilacs shut her in from my view for a good part of the time, but not so constantly that I couldn't be a witness to her soul's tragedy.
Her soul's tragedy came as a surprise to me. Closely as I had lived with her, I was unprepared for any such event. My first hint of it was when her pace through the lane began to slacken, till at last she stopped. That she didn't stop because she was tired I could judge by the fact that, though she stood stock-still, she held the light suit-case in her hand. I couldn't see her face, because I stood under a great elm, some five hundred yards away.
Having paused and reflected for the space of three or four minutes, she went on again, but she went on more slowly. Her light, tripping gait had become a dragging of the feet, while I divined that she was still pondering. As it was nearly five o'clock, she couldn't be afraid of being before her time.
But she stopped again, setting the suit-case down in the middle of the road. She turned then and looked back over the way by which she had come, as if regretting it. Seeing her open her small hand-bag, take out a handkerchief, and put it to her lips, I was sure she was repressing one of her baby-like sobs. My heart yearned over her, but I could only watch her breathlessly.
She went on again—twenty paces, perhaps. Here she seemed to find a seat on a roadside boulder, for she sat down on it, her back being toward me and her figure almost concealed by the wayside growth. I could only wonder at what was passing in her mind. The whole period, of about ten minutes' duration, is filled in my memory with mellow afternoon light and perfumed air and the evening song of birds. When the village clock struck five she bounded up with a start.
Again she took what might have been twenty paces, and again she came to a halt. Dropping the suit-case once more, she clasped her hands as if she was praying. As, to the best of my knowledge, her prayers were confined to a hasty evening and morning ritual in which there was nothing more than a pious, meaningless habit, I could surmise her present extremity. Stacy Grainger was like a god to her. If she renounced him now it would be an act of heroism of which I could hardly believe her capable.
But, apparently, she made up her mind that she couldn't renounce him. If there was an answer to her prayer it was one that prompted her to snatch up her burden again and hurry, with a kind of skimming motion, right to the end of the lane. It was to the end of the lane, but not to the turning into the roadway. Once in the roadway she would see—or she thought she would see—Stacy Grainger and his automobile, and her fate would be sealed.
She had still a chance before her—and from that rutted sandy juncture, with wild roses and wild raspberries in the hedgerows on each side, she reeled back as if she had been struck. I can only think of a person blinded by a flash of lightning who would recoil in just that way.
For a few minutes she was hidden from my view behind the lilacs. When I caught sight of her again she was running like a terrified bird back through Clover Lane and toward the Main Street, which would take her home.
I met her as she was dragging herself up the hill, white, breathless, exhausted. Pretending to take the situation lightly, I called as I approached:
"So you didn't leave the things."
Her answer was to drop the suit-case once again, while, regardless of curious eyes at windows and doors, she flew to throw herself into my arms.
She never explained; I never asked for explanations. I was glad enough to get her back to the hotel, put her to bed, and wait on her hand and foot. She was saved now; Stacy Grainger, too, was saved. Each had deserted the other; each had the same crime to forgive. From that day onward she never spoke his name to me.
But as, that evening, I went to her bedside to say good-night, she drew my face to hers and whispered, cryptically:
"It will be all right now between yourself and Hugh. I know how I can help."