The High Heart Part 34

"Does that mean that I'm not to say any more about it ever--or only for to-night?"

I knew, suddenly, what the question meant to me. I took time to see that I was shutting a door which my heart cried out to have left open. But I answered, still sweetly and with a smile:

"Suppose we make it that you won't say any more about it--ever?"

He gazed at me; I gazed at him. A long half-minute went by before he uttered the words, very slowly and deliberately:

"I won't say any more about it--for to-night."

CHAPTER XIV

On Thursday Mr. Grainger came to the library to tea, but notwithstanding her suggestion Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re did not. She came, however, on Friday when he did not. For some time after that he came daily.

Toward me his manner had little variation; he was courteous and distant.

I cannot say that he ever had tea with me, for even if he accepted a cup, which he did from time to time, as if keeping up a rle, he carried it to some distant corner of the room where he was either examining the objects or making their acquaintance. He came about half past four and went about half past five, always appearing from the house and retiring by the same way. In the house itself, as I understood from Mrs. Daly, he displayed an interest he had not shown for years.

"It's out of wan room and into another, and raisin' the shades and pus.h.i.+n' the furniture about, till you'd swear he was goin' to be married."

I thought of Mr. Pyne, wondering if, before his trip to Atlantic City with Mrs. Grimshaw, he, too, had wandered about his house, appraising its possibilities from the point of view of a new mistress.

On the Friday when Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re came and Mr. Grainger did not she made no comment on his non-appearance. She even sustained with some success the fiction that her visit was on my account. Only her soft eyes turned with a quick light toward the door leading to the house at every sound that might have been a footstep.

When she talked it was chiefly about Mr. Brokens.h.i.+re.

"It's telling on him--all this trouble about Hugh."

I was curious.

"Telling on him in what way?"

"It's made him older--and grayer--and the trouble with his eye comes oftener."

It seemed to me that I saw an opportunity.

"Then why doesn't he give in?"

"Give in? Mr. Brokens.h.i.+re? Why, he never gave in in his life."

"But if he suffers?"

"He'd rather suffer than give in. He's not an unkind man, not really, so long as he has his own way; but once he's thwarted--"

"Every one has to be thwarted some time."

"He'd agree to that; but he'd say every one but him. That's why, when he first met--met me--and my mother at that time meant to have me--to have me marry some one else-- You knew that, didn't you?"

I reminded her that she had told me so among the rocks at Newport.

"Did I? Perhaps I did. It's--it's rather on my mind. I had to change so--so suddenly. But what I was going to say was that when Mr.

Brokens.h.i.+re saw that mamma meant me to marry some one else, and that I--that I wanted to, there was nothing he didn't do. It was in the papers--and everything. But nothing would stop him till he'd got what he wanted."

I pumped up my courage to say:

"You mean, till you gave it to him."

She bit her lip.

"Mamma gave it to him. I had to do as I was told. You'd say, I suppose, that I needn't have done it, but you don't know." She hesitated before going on. "It--it was money. We--we had to have it. Mamma thought that Mr.--the man I was to have married first--would never have any more. It was all sorts of things on the Stock Exchange--and bulls and bears and things like that. There was a whole week of it--and every one knew it was about me. I nearly died; but mamma didn't mind. She enjoyed it. It's the sort of thing she would enjoy. She made me go with her to the opera every night. Some one always asked us to sit in their box. She put me in the front where the audience watched me through their opera-gla.s.ses more than they did the stage--and I was a kind of spectacle. There was one night--they were singing the 'Meistersinger'--when I felt just like Eva, put up as a prize for whoever could win me. But I was talking of Mr.

Brokens.h.i.+re, wasn't I? Do you think his eye will ever be any better?"

She asked the question without change of tone. I could only reply that I didn't know.

"The doctor says--that is, he's told me--that in a way it's mental. It's the result of the strain he's put upon his nerves by overwork and awful tempers. Of course, his responsibilities have been heavy, though of late years he's been able to s.h.i.+ft some of them to other people's shoulders.

And then," she went on, in her sweet, even voice, "what happened about me--coming to him so late in life--and--and tearing him to pieces more violently than if he'd been a younger man--young men get over things--that made it worse. Don't you see it would?"

I said I could understand that that might be the effect.

"Of course, if I could really be a wife to him--"

"Well, can't you?"

She shuddered.

"He terrifies me. When he's there I'm not a woman any more; I'm a captive."

"But since you've married him--"

"I didn't marry him; he married me. I was as much a bargain as if I had been bought. And now mamma sees that--that she might have got a better price."

I thought it enough to say:

"That must make it hard for her."

A sigh bubbled up, like that of a child who has been crying.

"It makes it hard for me." She eyed me with a long, oblique regard.

"Don't you think it's awful when an elderly man falls in love with a young girl who herself is in love with some one else?"

I could only dodge that question.

"All unhappiness is awful."

"Ah, but this! An elderly man!--in love! Madly in love! It's not natural; it's frightful; and when it's with yourself--"