The High Heart Part 26

"Of course," he said. "What could you expect?" I was sure he was looking down on me with the expression Mrs. Rossiter had detected, though I didn't dare to lift an eye to catch him in the act. "You really mean to marry him?"

"Mean to marry him is not the term," I answered, with the decision which I felt the situation called for. "I mean to marry him only--on conditions."

"Oh, on conditions! What kind of conditions?"

I named them to him as I had named them to others. First that Hugh should become independent.

He repeated his short, hard laugh.

"I don't believe you had better bank on that."

"Perhaps not," I admitted. "But I've another string to my bow. His family may come and ask me."

He almost shouted.

"Never!"

It was the tone they all took, and which especially enraged me. I kept my voice steady, however, as I said, "That remains to be seen."

"It doesn't remain to be seen, because I can tell you now that they won't."

"And I can tell you now that they will," I said, with an a.s.surance that, on the surface at least, was quite as strong as his own.

He laughed again, more shortly, more hardly.

"Oh, well!"

The laugh ended in a kind of sigh. I noted the sigh as I noted the laugh, and their relation to each other. Both reached me, touching something within me that had never yet been stirred. Physically it was like the p.r.i.c.k of the spur to a spirited animal, it sent me bounding up the steps. I was off as from a danger; and though I would have given much to see the expression with which he stood gazing after me, I would not permit myself so much as to glance back.

CHAPTER XI

The steps by which I came to be Stacy Grainger's librarian could easily be traced, though to do so with much detail would be tedious.

After Hugh's departure for New York my position with Mrs. Rossiter soon became untenable. The reports that reached Newport of the young man's doings in the city were not merely galling to the family pride, but maddening to his father's sense of pre-eminence. Hugh was actually going from door to door, as you might say, in Wall Street and Broad Street, only to be turned away.

"He's making the most awful fool of himself," Mrs. Rossiter informed me one morning, "and papa's growing furious. Jim writes that every one is laughing at him, and, of course, they know it's all about some girl."

I held my tongue at this. That they should be laughing at poor Hugh was a new example of the world's falsity. His letters to me were only a record of half-promises and fair speeches, but he found every one of them encouraging. Nowhere had he met with the brutal treatment he had received at the hands of Cousin Andrew Brew. The minute his card went in to never so great a banker or broker, he was received with a welcome. If no one had just the right thing to offer him, no one had turned him down. It was explained to him that it was largely a matter of the off season--for his purpose August was the worst month in the year--and of the lack of an opening which it would be worth the while of a man of his quality to fill. Later, perhaps! The two words, courteously spoken, gave the gist of all his interviews. He had every reason to feel satisfied.

In the mean while he was comfortable at his club--his cash in hand would hold out to Christmas and beyond--and in the matter of energy, he wrote, not a mushroom was springing in his tracks. He was on the job early and late, day in and day out. The off season which was obviously a disadvantage in some respects had its merits in others, since it would be known, when things began to look up again, that he was available for any big house that could get him. That there would be compet.i.tion in this respect every one had given him to understand. All this he told me in letters as full of love as they were of business, written in a great, sprawling, unformed, boyish hand, and with an occasional bit of phonetic spelling which made his protestations the more touching.

But Jim Rossiter's sources of information were of another kind.

"Get your father to do something to stop him," he wrote to his wife.

"He's making the whole house of Meek & Brokens.h.i.+re a laughing-stock."

There came, in fact, a Sat.u.r.day when Mr. Rossiter actually appeared for the week-end.

"He wouldn't be doing that," Mrs. Rossiter almost sobbed to me, on receipt of the telegram announcing his approach, "unless things were pretty bad."

Though I dreaded his coming, I was speedily rea.s.sured. Whatever the object of Mr. Rossiter's visit, I, in my own person, had nothing to do with it. On the afternoon of his arrival he came out to where I was knocking the croquet b.a.l.l.s about with Gladys on the lawn, and was as polite as he had been through the winter in New York. He was always polite even to the maids, to whom he scrupulously said good-morning. His wistful desire to be liked by every one was inspired by the same sort of impulse as the jovial _bonhomie_ of Cousin Andrew Brew. He was a little, weazened man, with face and legs like a jockey, which I think he would gladly have been. Racin' and ridin', as he called them, were the amus.e.m.e.nts in which he found most pleasure, while his health was his chief preoccupation. He took pills before and after all his meals and a variety of medicinal waters. During the winter under his roof my own conversation with him had been entirely on the score of his complaints.

In just the same way he sauntered up now. He talked of his lack of appet.i.te and the beastly cooking at clubs. Expecting him to broach the subject of Hugh, I got myself ready; but he did nothing of the kind. He was merely amiable and, as far as I could judge, indifferent. Within ten minutes he had sauntered away again, leading Gladys by the hand.

I saw then that in common with the other Brokens.h.i.+res he considered that I didn't count. Hugh could be dealt with independently of me. So long as I was useful to his wife, there was no reason why I should be disturbed.

I was too light a thing to be weighed in their balances.

Next day there was a grand family council and on Monday Jack Brokens.h.i.+re accompanied his brother-in-law to New York. Hugh wrote me of their threats and flatteries, their beseechings and cajoleries. He was to come to his senses; he was to be decent to his father; he was to quit being a fool. I gathered that for forty-eight hours they had put him through most of the tortures known to fraternal inquisition; but he wrote me he would bear it all and more, for the sake of winning me.

Nor would he allow them to have everything their own way. That he wrote me, too. When it came to the question of marriage he bade them look at home. Each of them was an instance of what J. Howard could do in the matrimonial line, and what a mess he and they had made of it! He asked Jack in so many words how much he would have been in love with Pauline Gray if she hadn't had a big fortune, and, now that he had got her money and her, how true he was to his compact. Who were Trixie Delorme and Baby Bevan, he demanded, with a knowledge of Jack's affairs which compelled the elder brother to tell him to mind his own business.

Hugh laughed scornfully at that.

"I can mind my own business, Jack, and still keep an eye on yours, seeing that you and Pauline are the talk of the town. If she doesn't divorce you within the next five years, it will be because you've already divorced her. Even that won't be as big a scandal as your going on living together."

Mr. Rossiter intervened on this and did his best to calm the younger brother down:

"Ah, cut that out now, Hugh!"

But Hugh rounded on him, shaking off the hand that had been laid on his arm.

"You're a nice one, Jim, to come with your mealy-mouthed talk to me.

Look at Ethel! If I'd married a woman as you married her--or if I'd been married as she married you--just because your father was a partner in Meek & Brokens.h.i.+re and it was well to keep the money in the family--if I'd done that I'd shut up. I'd consider myself too low-down a cur to be kicked. What kind of a wife is Ethel to you? What kind of a husband are you to her? What kind of a father do you make to the children who hardly know you by sight? And now, just because I'm trying to be a man, and decent, and true to the girl I love, you come sneaking round to tell me she's not good enough. What do I care whether she's good enough or not, so long as she isn't like Ethel and Pauline? You can go back and tell them so."

Jack Brokens.h.i.+re came back, but I think he kept this confidence to himself. What he told, however, was enough to produce a good deal of gloom in the family. Though Mrs. Rossiter didn't cease to be nice to me in her non-committal way, I began to reason that there were limits even to indifference. I had made up my mind to go and was working out some practical way of going, when an incident hastened my departure.

Doing an errand one day for Mrs. Rossiter in the shopping part of Bellevue Avenue, I saw old Mrs. Billing going by in an open motor landaulette. She signaled to me to stop, and, poking the chauffeur in the back through the open window, made him draw up at the curb.

"I've got something for you," she said, without other form of greeting.

She began to stir things round in her bag. "I thought you'd like it.

I've been carrying it about with me for the last three or four days--ever since Jack Brokens.h.i.+re got back from New York. Where the d.i.c.kens is the thing? Ah, here!" She handed me out a crumpled card.

"That's all, Antoine," she continued to the man. "Drive on."

I was left with the card in my hand, finding it to be an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Hotel Mary Chilton, a place of entertainment for women alone, in a central and reputable part of New York.

By the time I got back to Mrs. Rossiter's I had solved what had at first been a puzzle, and, having reported on my errand, I gave my resignation verbally. I saw then--what old Mrs. Billing had also seen--that it was time. Mrs. Rossiter expressed no relief, but she made no attempt to dissuade me. That she was sorry she allowed me to see. She didn't speak of Hugh; but on the morning when I went she gave up her engagements to stay at home with me. As I said good-by she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me. I could feel on my cheek tears of hers as well as tears of my own, as I drew down my veil.

Hugh met me at the station in New York, and we dined at a restaurant together. He came for me next morning, and we lunched and dined at restaurants again. When we did the same on the third day that sense of being in a false position which had been with me from the first, and which argument couldn't counteract, began to be disquieting. On the fourth day I tried to make excuses and remain at the hotel, but when he insisted I was obliged to let him take me out once more. The people at the Mary Chilton were kindly, but I was afraid they would regard me with suspicion. I was afraid of some other things, besides.

For one thing I was afraid of Hugh. He began again to plead with me to marry him. Even he admitted that we couldn't continue to "go round together like that." We went to the most expensive restaurants, he argued, where there were plenty of people who would know him. When they saw him every day with a girl they didn't know, they would draw their own conclusions. As in a situation similar to theirs I would have drawn my own, I brought my bit of Bohemianism to a speedy end.

There followed some days during which it seemed to me I was deprived of any outlook. I could hardly see what I was there for. I could hardly see what I was living for. Never till then had I realized how, in normal conditions, each day is linked to the day before as well as to the morrow. Here the link was gone. I left nothing undone when I went to bed; I had nothing to get up for in the morning. My reason for existing had suddenly been snuffed out.

It was a time for the testing of my faith. I was near the end of my _cul-de-sac_, and yet I saw no further development ahead. If the continuous unfolding of right on which, to use Larry Strangways's expression, I had banked, were to come to a stop, I should be left not only without a duty, but without a law. Of the two possibilities it was the latter I dreaded most. One can live if one has a motive theory within one; without it-- And then, just as I was coming to the last stretches of what seemed a blind alley and no more, my confidence was justified. Larry Strangways called on me.