The High Heart

by Basil King

  CHAPTER IV

  I was glad of the fog. It was cool and refreshing; it was alsoconcealing. I could tramp along under its protection with little or nofear of being seen. Wearing tweeds, thick boots, and a felt hat, I wasprepared for wet, and as a Canadian girl I was used to open air in allweathers. The few stragglers generally to be seen on the Cliff Walkhaving rushed to their houses for shelter, I had the rocks and thebreakers, the honeysuckle and the patches of dog-roses, to myself. Inthe back of my mind I was fortified, too, by the knowledge that dampnesscurls my hair into pretty little tendrils, so that if I did meet any oneI should be looking at my best.

  The path is like no other in the world. I have often wondered why theAmerican writer-up of picturesque bits didn't make more of it. Trouvillehas its _Plage_, and Brighton its King's Road, and Nice its Promenadedes Anglais, but in no other kingdom of leisure that I know anythingabout will you find the combination of qualities, wild and subdued, thatmark this ocean-front of the island of Aquidneck. Neither will youeasily come elsewhere so near to a sense of the primitive humanstruggle, of the crude social clash, of the war of the rights ofman--Fisherman's Rights, as this coast historically knows them--againstencroachment, privilege, and seclusion. As you crunch the gravel, andpress the well-rolled turf, and sniff the scent of the white and redclover and Queen Anne's lace that fringe the precipice leaning over thesea, you feel in the air those elements of conflict that make drama.

  In clinging to the edge of the cliff, in twisting round every curve ofthe shore line, in running up hill and down dale, under crags and overthem, the path is, of course, not the only one of its kind. You willfind the same thing anywhere on the south coast of England or the northcoast of France. But in the sum of human interest it sucks into thethree miles of its course I can think of nothing else that resembles it.As guaranteeing the rights of the fisherman it is, so I believe,inalienable public property. The fisherman can walk on it, sit on it,fish from it, right into eternity. So much he has secured from the pasthistory of colony and state; but he has done it at the cost of makinghimself offensive to the gentlemen whose lawns he hems as a seamstresshems a skirt.

  It is a hem like a serpent, with a serpent's sinuosity and grace, butalso with a serpent's hatefulness to those who can do nothing but acceptit as a fact. Since, as a fact, it cannot be abolished it has to be putup with; and since it has to be put up with the means must needs befound to deal with it effectively. Effectively it has been dealt with.Money, skill, and imagination have been spent on it, to adorn it, ordisguise it, or sink it out of sight. The architect, the landscapegardener, and the engineer have all been called into counsel. OnFisherman's Rights the smile and the frown are exercised by turns, eachwith its phase of ingenuity. Along one stretch of a hundred yards blandrecognition borders the way with roses or spans the miniature chasmswith decorative bridges; along the next shuddering refinement grows ahedge or digs a trench behind which the obtrusive wayfarer may passunseen. But shuddering refinement and bland recognition alike withdrawinto themselves as far as broad lawns and lofty terraces permit them toretire, leaving to the owner of Fisherman's Rights the enjoyment ofocher and umber rocks and sea and sky and grain-fields yellowing on farheadlands.

  It gave me the nearest thing to glee I ever felt in Newport. It wasbracing and open and free. It suggested comparisons with scrambles alongNova-Scotian shores or tramps on the moors in Scotland. I often hatedthe fine weather; it was oppressive; it was strangling. But a day likethis, with its whiffs of wild wind and its handfuls of salt slashingagainst eyes and mouth and nostrils, was not only exhilarating, it wasglorious. I was glad, too, that the prim villas and pretentiouschateaux, most of them out of proportion to any scale of housekeeping ofwhich America is capable, could only be descried like castles in a dreamthrough the swirling, diaphanous drift. I could be alone to rage andfume--or fly onward with a speed that was in itself a relief.

  I could be alone till, on climbing the slope of a shorn and wind-sweptbluff, I saw a square-shouldered figure looming on the crest. It was nomore than a deepening of the texture of the fog, but I knew its lines.Skimming up the ascent with a little cry, I was in Hugh's arms, my headon his burly breast.

  I think it was his burliness that made the most definite appeal to me.He was so sturdy and strong, and I was so small and desolate. From thebeginning, when he first used to come near me, I felt his presence, asthe Bible says, like the shadow of a rock in a thirsty land. That was inmy early homesick time, before I had seized the new way of living andthe new national point of view. The fact, too, that, as I expressed itto myself, I was in the second cabin when I had always been accustomedto the first, inspired a discomfort for which unwittingly I soughtconsolation. Nobody thought of me as other than Mrs. Rossiter'sretainer, but this one kindly man.

  I noticed his kindliness almost before I noticed him, just as, I think,he noticed my loneliness almost before he noticed me. He opened doorsfor me when I went in or out; he served me with things if he happened tobe there at tea; he dropped into a chair beside me when I was the onlymember of a group whom no one spoke to. If Gladys was of the company Iwas of it too, with a nominal footing but a virtual exclusion. The menin the Rossiter circle were of the four hundred and ninety-nine to whomI wasn't attractive; the women were all civil--from a distance.Occasionally some nice old lady would ask me where I came from and if Iliked my work, or talk to me of new educational methods in a way which,with my bringing up, was to me as so much Greek; but I never got anyother sign of friendliness. Only this short, stockily built youngfellow, with the small, blue eyes, ever recognized me as a human beingwith the average yearning for human intercourse.

  During the winter in New York he never went further than that. Iremembered Mrs. Rossiter's recommendation and "let him alone." I knewhow to do it. He was not the first man I had ever had to deal with, evenif no one had asked me to marry him. I accepted his small, kindly actswith that shade of discretion which defined the distance between us. Asfar as I could observe, he himself had no disposition to cross the linesI set--not till we moved to Newport.

  There was a fortnight between our going there and his--a fortnight whichseemed to work a change in him. The Hugh Brokenshire I met on one of myfirst rambles along the cliffs was not the Hugh Brokenshire I had lastseen in Fifth Avenue. Perhaps I was not the same myself. In the newsurroundings I had missed him--a little. I will not say that his absencehad meant an aching void to me; but where I had had a friend, now I hadnone--since I was unable to count Larry Strangways. Had it not been forthis solitude I should have been less receptive to his comings when hesuddenly began to pursue me.

  Pursuit is the only word I can use. I found him everywhere, quiet,deliberate, persistent. If he had been ten or even five years older Icould have taken his advances without uneasiness. But he was onlytwenty-six and a dependent. He had no work; apart from his allowancefrom his father he had no means. And yet when, on the day before mychronicle begins, he stole upon me as I sat in a sheltered nook belowthe cliffs to which I was fond of retreating when I had time--when hestole upon me there, and kissed me and kissed me and kissed me, Icouldn't help confessing that I loved him.

  I must leave to some woman who has had to fend for herself the task oftelling what it means when a man comes to offer her his heart and hisprotection. It goes without saying that it means more to her than to thesheltered woman, for it means things different and more wonderful. It isthe expected unexpected come to pass; it is the impossible achieved. Itis not only success; it is success with an aureole of glory.

  I suppose I must be parasitical by nature, for I never have conceived oflife as other than dependent on some man who would love me and take careof me. Even when no such man appeared and I was forced out to earn mybread, I looked upon the need as temporary only. In the loneliest oftimes at Mrs. Rossiter's, at periods when I didn't see a man for weeks,the hero never seemed farther away than just behind the scenes. Iconfess to minutes when I thought he tarried unnecessarily long; Iconfess to terrified questionings a
s to what would happen were he neverto come at all; I confess to solitary watches of the night in companywith fears and tears; but I cannot confess to anything more than a lowburning of that lamp of hope which never went out entirely.

  When, therefore, Hugh Brokenshire offered me what he had to offer me Ifelt for a few minutes--ten, fifteen, twenty perhaps--that sense of thefruition of the being which I am sure comes to us but rarely in thislife, and perhaps is a foretaste of eternity. I was like a creature thathas long been struggling up to some higher state--and has reached it.

  I am ashamed to say, too, that my first consciousness came in picturesto which the dear young man himself was only incidental. Two scenes inparticular that for ten years past had been only a little below thethreshold of my consciousness came out boldly, like developedphotographs. I was the center of both. In one I saw a dainty littledining-room, where the table was laid. The damask was beautiful; thesilver rich; the glasses crystalline. Wearing an inexpensive butextremely chic little gown, I was seating the guests. The other picturewas more dim, but only in the sense that the room was deliciouslydarkened. It had white furnishings, a little white cot, and toys. In itsvery center was a bassinet, and I was leaning over it, wearing adelicate lace peignoir.

  Ought I to blush to say that while Hugh stammered out his impassioneddeclarations I was seeing these two tableaux emerging from the state ofonly half-acknowledged dreams into real possibility? I dare say. Imerely affirm that it was so. Since the dominant craving of my naturewas to have a home and a baby, I saw the baby and the home before Icould realize a husband or a father, or bring my mind to the definiteproposals faltered by poor Hugh.

  But I did bring my mind to them, with the result of which I have alreadygiven a sufficient indication. Even in admitting that I loved him Ithrust and parried and postponed. The whole idea was too big for me tograpple with on the spur of a sudden moment. I suggested his talking thematter over with his father chiefly to gain time.

  * * * * *

  But to rest in his arms had only a subordinate connection with the greatissue I had to face. It was a joy in itself. It was a pledge of thefuture, even if I were never to take anything but the pledge. After myshifts and struggles and anxieties I could feel the satisfaction ofknowing it was in my power to let them all roll off. If I were never todo it, if I were to go back to my uncertainties, this minute wouldmitigate the trial in advance. I might fight for existence during allthe rest of my life, and yet I should still have the bliss ofremembering that some one was willing to fight for me.

  He released me at last, since there might be people in Newport asindifferent to weather as ourselves.

  "What happened?" he asked then, with an eagerness which almost chokedthe question in its utterance. "Was it awful?"

  I was too nearly hysterical to enter on anything like a recital. "Itmight have been worse," I half laughed and half sobbed, trying torecover my breath and dry my eyes.

  His spirit seemed to leap at the answer. "Do you mean to say you gotconcessions from him--or anything like that?"

  I couldn't help clinging to the edge of his raincoat. "Did you expect meto?"

  "I didn't know but what, when he saw you--"

  "Oh, but he didn't see me. That was part of the difficulty. He lookedwhere I was--but he didn't find anything there."

  He laughed, with a hint of disappointment. "I know what you mean; butyou mustn't be surprised. He'll see you yet." He clasped me again. "Ididn't see you at first, little girl; I swear I didn't. You're likethat. A fellow must look at you twice before he knows that you're there;but when he begins to take notice--" I struggled out of his embrace,while he continued: "It's the same with all the great things--withpictures and mountains and cathedrals, and so on. Often thought about itwhen we've been abroad. See something once and pass it by. Next time youlook at it a little. Third time it begins to grow on you. Fourth timeyou've found a wonder. You're a wonder, little Alix, do you know it?"

  "Oh no, I'm not. I must warn you, Hugh darling, that I'm very prosaicand practical and ordinary. You mustn't put me on a pedestal--"

  "Put you on a pedestal? You were born on a pedestal. You're the womanI've seen in hopes and dreams--"

  We began to walk on, coming to a little hollow that dipped near enoughto the shore to allow of our scrambling over the rocks to where we couldsit down among them. As we were here below the thickest belt of the fogline, I could see him in a way that had been impossible on the bluff.

  If he was good-looking it was only in the handsome-ugly sense. Mrs.Rossiter often said he was the one member of the family who inheritedfrom the Brews of Boston, a statement I could verify from the first Mrs.Brokenshire's portrait by Carolus-Duran. Hugh's features were notill-formed so much as they were out of proportion to each other,becoming thus a mere jumble of organs. The blue eyes were too small andtoo wide apart; the forehead was too broad for its height; the nose,which started at the same fine angle as his father's, changed inmid-course to a knob; the upper lip was intended to be long, buthalf-way in its descent took a notion to curve upward, making a hollowfor a tender, youthful, fair mustache that didn't quite meet in thecenter and might have been applied with a camel's-hair brush; the lowerlip turned outward with a little fullness that spilled over in a littlefall, giving to the whole expression something lovably good-natured.

  Because the sea boiled over the ledges and scraped on the pebbles with ascreechy sound we were obliged to sit close together in order to makeourselves heard. His arm about me was amazingly protective. I felt safe.

  The account of his interview with his father was too incoherent to giveme more than the idea that they had talked somewhat at cross-purposes.To Hugh's statement that he wished to marry Miss Adare, the littlenursery governess at Ethel's, his father had responded by reading aletter from Lord Goldborough inviting Hugh to his place in Scotland forthe shooting.

  "It would be well for you to accept," the father commented, as hefolded the letter. "I've cabled to Goldborough to say you'd sail on--"

  "But, father, how can I sail when I've asked Miss Adare to marry me?"

  To this the reply was the mention of the steamer and the date. He wenton to say, however: "If you've asked any one to marry you it's absurd,of course. But I'll take care of that. If you go by that boat you'llreach London in plenty of time to fit out at your tailor's and still beat Strath-na-Cloid by the twelfth. In case you're short of money--"

  Apparently they got no further than that. To Hugh's assertions andobjections his father had but one response. It was a response, as Iunderstood, which confronted the younger man like a wall he had neitherthe force to break down nor the agility to climb over, and left himstaring at a blank.

  Then followed another outburst which to my unaccustomed ear was as wild,sweet music. It wasn't merely that he loved me, he adored me; it wasn'tmerely that I was young and pretty and captivating with a sly,unobtrusive fascination that held you enchanted when it held you at all.I was mistress of the wisdom of the ages. Among the nice expensivelydressed young girls with whom he danced and rode and swam and flirted,Hugh had never seen any one who could "hold a candle" to me in knowledgeof human nature and the world. It wasn't that I had seen more than theyor done more than they; it was that I had a mind through which everyimpression filtered and came out as something of my own. It was what hehad always been looking for in a woman, and had given up the hope offinding. He spoke as if he was forty. He was serious himself, heaverred; he had reflected, and held original convictions. Though a richman's son, with corresponding prospects, his heart was with the massesand he labeled himself a Socialist.

  It was not the same thing to be a Socialist now, he explained to me, asit had been twenty years before, since so many men of education andposition had adopted this system of opinion. In fact, his own conversionhad been partly due to young Lord Ernest Hayes, of the British Embassy,who had spent the preceding summer at Newport, though his inclinationshad gone in this direction ever since he had begun to think. It wasbecause
I was so open-eyed and so sincere that he had been drawn to meas soon as he had started in to notice me. It was true that he hadnoticed me first of all because I was in a subordinate position andalone, but, having done so, he had found a queen disguised as a workinggirl. I was a queen of the vital things in life, a queen ofintelligence, of sympathy, of the defiance of convention, of everythingthat was great. I was the woman a Socialist could love, of whom aSocialist could make his star.

  "If father would only give me credit for being twenty-six and a man,"the dear boy went on earnestly, "with a man's responsibility to societyand the human race! But he doesn't. He thinks I ought to quit being aSocialist because he tells me to--or else he doesn't think at all. Ninetimes out of ten, when I begin to say what I believe, he talks ofsomething else--just as he did last night in bringing up theGoldboroughs."

  I found the opportunity for which I had been looking during hisimpassioned rhapsody. The mention of the Goldboroughs gave me that kindof chill about the heart which the mist imparted to the hands and face.

  "You know them all very well," I said, when I found an opening in whichI could speak.

  "Oh yes," he admitted, indifferently. "Known them all my life. Fatherrepresented Meek & Brokenshire in England till my grandfather died.Goldborough used to be an impecunious chap, land poor, till he andfather began to pull together. Father's been able to give him tips onthe market, and he's given father-- Well, dad's always had a taste forEnglish swells. Never could stand the Continental kind--gilt gingerbreadhe's called 'em--and so, well, you can see."

  I admitted that I could see, going on to ask what the Goldborough familyconsisted of.

  There was Lord Leatherhead, the eldest son; then there were two youngersons, one in the army and one preparing for the Church; and there werethree girls.

  "Any of the daughters married?" I ventured, timidly.

  There was nothing forced in the indifference with which he made hisexplanations. Laura was married to a banker named Bell; Janet, hethought he had heard, was engaged to a chap in the Inverness Rangers;Cecilia--Cissie they usually called her--was to the best of hisknowledge still wholly free, but the best of his knowledge did not gofar.

  I pumped up my courage again. "Is she--nice?"

  "Oh, nice enough." He really didn't know much about her. She wasgenerally away at school when he had been at Goldborough Castle. Whenshe was there he hadn't seen more than a long-legged, gawky girl, rathergood at tennis, with red hair hanging down her back.

  Satisfied with these replies, I went on to tell him of my interview withhis father an hour or two before. Of this he seized on one point withsome ecstasy.

  "So you told him you'd take me! Oh, Alix--gosh!"

  The exclamation was a sigh of relief as well as of rapture. I couldsmile at it because it was so boyish and American, especially as heclasped me again and held me in a way that almost stopped my breath.When I freed myself, however, I said, with a show of firmness:

  "Yes, Hugh; it's what I said to him; but it's not what I'm going torepeat to you."

  "Not what you're going to repeat to me? But if you said it to him--"

  "I'm still not obliged to accept you--to-day."

  "But if you mean to accept me at all--"

  "Yes, I mean to accept you--if all goes well."

  "But what do you mean by that?"

  "I mean--if your family should want me."

  I could feel his clasp relax as he said: "Oh, if you're going to waitfor that!"

  "Hugh, darling, how can I not wait for it? I told him I couldn't stop toconsider a family; but--but I see I must."

  "Oh, but why? We shall lose everything if you do that. To wait for myfamily to want you to marry me--"

  I detached myself altogether from his embrace, pretending to arrange myskirts about my feet. He leaned forward, his fingers interlocked, hiselbows on his knees, his kind young face disconsolate.

  "When I talked to your father," I tried to explain, "I saw chiefly theindividual's side of the question of marriage. There is that side; butthere's another. Marriage doesn't concern a man and a woman alone; itconcerns a family--sometimes two."

  His cry came out with the explosive force of a slowly gathering groan."Oh, rot, Alix!" He went on to expostulate: "Can't you see? If we wereto go now and buy a license--and be married by the first clergyman wemet--the family couldn't say a word."

  "Exactly; it's just what I do see. Since you want it I could forcemyself on them--the word is your father's--and they'd have no choice butto accept me."

  "Well, then?"

  "Hugh, dear, I--I can't do it that way."

  "Then what way could you do it?"

  "I'm not sure yet. I haven't thought of it. I only know in advance thateven if I told you I'd marry you against--against all their wishes, Icouldn't keep my promise in the end."

  "That is," he said, bitterly, "you think more of them than you do ofme."

  I put my hand on his clasped fingers. "Nonsense. I--I love you. Don'tyou see I do? How could I help loving you when you've been so kind tome? But marriage is always a serious thing to a woman; and when it comesto marriage into a family that would look on me as a greatmisfortune--Hugh, darling, I don't see how I could ever face it."

  "I do," he declared, promptly. "It isn't so bad as you think. Familiescome round. There was Tracy Allen. Married a manicure. The Allens kickedup a row at first--wouldn't see Tracy and all that; but now--"

  "Yes, but, Hugh, I'm not a manicure."

  "You're a nursery governess."

  "By accident--and a little by misfortune. I wasn't a nursery governesswhen I first knew your sister."

  "But what difference does that make?"

  "It makes this difference: that a manicure would probably not think ofherself as your equal. She'd expect coldness at first, and be preparedfor it."

  "Well, couldn't you?"

  "No, because, you see, I'm your equal."

  He hunched his big shoulders impatiently. "Oh, Alix, I don't go intothat. I'm a Socialist. I don't care what you are."

  "But you see I do. I don't want to expose myself to being looked downupon, and perhaps despised, for the rest of my life, because my familyis quite as good as your own."

  He turned slowly from peering into the fog-bank to fix on me a look ofwhich the tenderness and pity and incredulity seemed to stab me. I feltthe helplessness of a sane person insisting on his sanity to some onewho believes him mad.

  "Don't let us talk about those things, darling little Alix," he begged,gently. "Let's do the thing in style, like Tracy Allen, without anyflummery or fluff. What's family--once you get away from the idea? WhenI sink it I should think that you could afford to do it too. If I takeyou as Tracy Allen took Libby Jaynes--that was her name, I remembernow--not a very pretty girl--but if I take you as he took her, and youtake me as she took him--"

  "But, Hugh, I can't. If I were Libby Jaynes, it's possible I could; butas it is--"

  And in the end he came round to my point of view. That is to say, heappreciated my unwillingness to reward Mrs. Rossiter's kindness to me bycreating a scandal, and he was not without some admiration for what hecalled my "magnanimity toward his old man" in hesitating to drive him toextremes.

  And yet it was Hugh himself who drove him to extremes, over questionswhich I hardly raised. That was some ten days later, when Hugh refusedpoint-blank to sail on the steamer his father had selected to take himon the way to Strath-na-Cloid. I was, of course, not present at theinterview, but having heard of it from Hugh, and got his accountcorroborated by Ethel Rossiter, I can describe it much as it took place.

  I may say here, perhaps, that I still remained with Mrs. Rossiter. Mymarching orders, expected from hour to hour, didn't come. Mrs. Rossiterherself explained this delay to me some four days after that scene inthe breakfast loggia which had left me in a state of curiosity andsuspense.

  "Father seems to think that if he insisted on your leaving it would makeHugh's asking you to marry him too much a matter of importance."

&nbs
p; "And doesn't he himself consider it a matter of importance?"

  Mrs. Rossiter patted a tress of her brown hair into place. "No, I don'tthink he does."

  Perhaps nothing from the beginning had made me more inwardly indignantthan the simplicity of this reply. I had imagined him raging against mein his heart and forming deep, dark plans to destroy me.

  "It would be a matter of importance to most people," I said, trying notto betray my feeling of offense.

  "Most people aren't father," Mrs. Rossiter contented herself withreplying, still occupied with her tress of hair.

  It was the confidential hour of the morning in her big chintzy room. Themaid having departed, I had been answering notes and was still sittingat the desk. It was the first time she had broached the subject in thefour days which had been to me a period of so much restlessness.Wondering at this detachment, I had the boldness to question her.

  "Doesn't it seem important to you?"

  She threw me a glance over her shoulder, turning back to the mirror atonce. "What have I got to do with it? It's father's affair--and Hugh's."

  "And mine, too, I suppose?" I hazarded, interrogatively.

  To this she said nothing. Her silence gave me to understand what so manyother little things impressed upon me--that I didn't count. What Hughdid or didn't do was a matter for the Brokenshires to feel and for J.Howard Brokenshire to deal with. Ethel Rossiter herself was neither forme nor against me. I was her nursery governess, and useful as anunofficial companion-secretary. As long as it was not forbidden shewould keep me in that capacity; when the order came she would send meaway. As for anything I had to suffer, that was my own lookout. Hughwould be managed by his father, and from that fate there was no appeal.There was nothing, therefore, to worry Mrs. Rossiter. She could dismissthe whole matter, as she presently did, to discuss her troubles over therival attentions of Mr. Millinger and Mr. Scott, and to protest againsttheir making her so conspicuous. She had the kindness to say, however,just as she was leaving the house for Bailey's Beach:

  "I don't talk to you about this affair of Hugh's because I really don'tsee much of father. It's his business, you see, and nothing for me tointerfere with. With that woman there I hardly ever go to their house,and he doesn't often come here. Her mother's with them, too, justnow--that's old Mrs. Billing--a harpy if ever there was one--and withall the things people are saying! If father only knew! But, of course,he'll be the last one to hear it."

  She was getting into her car by this time and I seized no more; but atlunch I had a few minutes in which to bring my searchings of heartbefore Larry Strangways.

  It was not often we took this repast alone with the children, but it hadto happen sometimes. Mrs. Rossiter had telephoned from Bailey's that shehad accepted the invitation of some friends and we were not to expecther. We should lunch, however, she informed me, in the breakfast loggia,where the open air would act as chaperon and insure the necessarymeasure of propriety.

  So long as Broke and Gladys were present we were as demure as if we hadmet by chance in the restaurant car of a train. With the coffee thechildren begged to be allowed to play with the dogs on the grass, whichleft us for a few minutes as man and woman.

  "How is everything?" he asked at once, taking on that smile which seemedto put him outside the sphere of my interests.

  I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at the spoon with which I wasdabbling in my cup. "Oh, just the same," I glanced up to say. "Tell me.Have people in this country no other measure of your standing but thatof money?"

  "Have they any such measure in any country?"

  I was beginning with the words, "Why, yes," when he interrupted me.

  "Think."

  "I am thinking," I insisted. "In England and Canada and the BritishEmpire generally--"

  "You attach some importance to birth. Yes; so do we here--when it goeswith money. Without the basis of that support neither you nor we givewhat is so deliciously called birth the honor of a second thought."

  "Oh yes, we do--"

  "When it's your only asset--yes; but you do it alone. No one else paysit any attention."

  I colored. "That's rather cruel--"

  "It's not a bit more cruel than the fact. Take your case and mine as anillustration. As the estimate of birth goes in this country, I'm as wellborn as the majority. My ancestors were New-Englanders, country doctorsand lawyers and ministers--especially the ministers. But as long as Ihaven't the cash I'm only a tutor, and eat at the second table. JimRossiter's forebears were much the same as mine; but the fact that hehas a hundred thousand dollars a year and I've hardly got two is theonly thing that would be taken into consideration, by any one in eitherthe United Kingdom or the United States. It would be the same if Idescended from Crusaders. If I've got nothing but that and my characterto recommend me--" He raised his hand and snapped his fingers with ascornful laugh. "Take your case," he hurried on as I was about to speak."You're probably like me, sprung of a line of professional men--"

  "And soldiers," I interrupted, proudly. "The first of my family tosettle in Canada was a General Adare in the middle of the seventeenhundreds. He'd been in the garrison at Halifax and chose to remain inNova Scotia." Perhaps there was some boastfulness in my tone as I added,"He came of the famous Fighting Adares of the County Limerick."

  "And all that isn't worth a row of pins--except to yourself. If youwere the daughter of a miner who'd struck it rich you'd be a candidatefor the British peerage. You'd be received in the best houses in London;you could marry a duke and no one would say you nay. As it is--"

  "As it is," I said, tremulously, "I'm just a nursery governess, andthere's no getting away from the fact."

  "Not until you get away from the condition."

  "So that when I told Hugh Brokenshire the other day that in point offamily I was his equal--"

  "He probably didn't believe you."

  The memory of Hugh's look still rankled in me. "No, I don't think hedid."

  "Of course he didn't. As the world counts--as we all count--no poorfamily, however noble, is the equal of any rich family, however base."There was that transformation of his smile from something sunny tosomething hard which I had noticed once before, as he went on to add,"If you want to marry Hugh Brokenshire--"

  "Which I do," I interposed, defiantly.

  "Then you must enter into his game as he enters into it himself. Hethinks of himself as doing the big romantic thing. He's marrying a poorgirl who has nothing but herself as guaranty. That yourgreat-grandfather was a general and one of the--what did you callthem?--Fighting Adares of the County Cork would mean no more to him thanif you said you were descended from the Lacedaemonians and the dragon'steeth. As far as that goes, you might as well be an immigrant girl fromSweden; you might as well be a cook. He's stooping to pick up hisdiamond from the mire, instead of buying it from a jeweler's window.Very well, then, you must let him stoop. You mustn't try tounderestimate his condescension. You mustn't tell him you were once ina jeweler's window, and only fell into the mire by chance--"

  "Because," I smiled, "the mire is where I belong, until I'm taken out ofit."

  "We belong," he stated, judicially, "where the world puts us. If we'rewise we'll stay there--till we can meet the world's own terms forgetting out."