by Basil King
CHAPTER VI
What Hugh did in the end was simple. Finding the footman who wasaccustomed to valet him, he ordered him to bring a supply of linen andsome suits to a certain hotel early on the following morning. He thenput on a light overcoat and a cap and left the house.
The first few steps from the door he closed behind him gave him, so hetold me next day, the strangest feeling he had ever experienced. He wasconsciously venturing forth into life without any of his usual supports.What those supports had been he had never realized till then. He hadalways been stayed by some one else's authority and buoyed all round byplenty of money. Now he felt, to change the simile as he changed ithimself, as if he had been thrown out of the nest before having learntto fly. As he walked resolutely down the dark driveway toward OchrePoint Avenue he was mentally hovering and balancing and trembling, witha tendency to flop. There was no longer a downy bed behind him; nolonger a parent bill to bring him his daily worm. The outlook which hadbeen one thing when he was within that imposing, many-lighted mansionbecame another now that he was turning his back on it permanently and inthe dark.
This he confessed when he had surprised me by appearing at the breakfastloggia, where I was having my coffee with little Gladys Rossitersomewhere between half past eight and nine. He was not an early riser,except when the tide enticed him to get up at some unusual hour to takehis dip, and even then he generally went back to bed. To see him comingthrough the shrubbery now, carefully dressed, pallid and grave, halftold me his news before he had spoken.
Luckily Gladys was too young to follow anything we said, so that afterhaving joyfully kissed her uncle Hugh she went on with her bread andmilk. Hugh took a cup of coffee, sitting sidewise to the table of whichonly one end was spread, while I was at the head. It was the hour of theday when we were safest. Mrs. Rossiter never left her room before elevenat earliest, and no one else whom we were afraid of was likely to beabout.
"Well, the fat's all in the fire, little Alix," were the words in whichhe announced his position. "I'm out on my own at last."
I could risk nothing in the way of tenderness, partly because of themaid who was coming and going, and partly because that was somethingGladys would understand. I tried to let him see by my eyes, however, thesympathy I felt. I knew he was taking the new turn of events soberly,and soberly, with an immense semi-maternal yearning over him, I couldn'thelp taking it myself.
He told his tale quietly, with almost no interruption on my part. I waspleased to note that he expressed nothing in the way of recriminationtoward his father. With the exception of an occasional fling at old Mrs.Billing, whom he seemed to regard as a joss or a bottle imp, he wastemperate, too, in his remarks about everybody else. I liked hissporting attitude and told him so.
"Oh, there's nothing sporting in it," he threw off with a kind ofserious carelessness. "I'm a man; that's all. As I look back over thepast I seem to have been a doll."
I asked him what were his plans. He said he was going to apply to hiscousin, Andrew Brew, of Boston, going on to tell me more about the Brewsthan I had ever heard. He was surprised that I knew nothing of theimportant house of Brew, Borrodaile & Co., of Boston, who did such animportant business with England and Europe in general. I replied that inCanada all my connections had been with the law, and with Service peoplein England. I noticed, as I had noticed before in saying things likethat, that, in common with most American business men, he looked on theArmy and Navy as inferior occupations. There was no money in either.That in itself was sufficient to condemn them in the eyes of agentleman.
I forgot to be nettled, as I sometimes had been, because of findingmyself so deeply immersed in his interests. Up to that minute, too, Ihad had no idea that he had so much pride of birth. He talked of theBrews and the Brokenshires as if they had been Bourbons andHohenzollerns, making me feel a veritable Libby Jaynes never to haveheard of them. Of the Brews in particular he spoke with reverence. Therehad been Brews in Boston, he said, since the year one. Like all otherAmerican families, as I came to know later, they were descended fromthree brothers. In Norfolk and Suffolk they had been, so Iguessed--though Hugh passed the subject over with some vagueness--ofcomparatively humble stock, but under the American flag they hadacquired money, a quasi-nobility and coats of arms. To hear a manboasting, however modestly--and he was modest--of these respectablenobodies, who had simply earned money and saved it, made me blushinwardly in such a way that I vowed never to mention the Fighting Adaresagain.
I could do this with no diminution of my feeling for poor Hugh. Hisartless glory in a line of ancestry of which the fame had never gonebeyond the shores of Massachusetts Bay was, after all, a harmless bit ofvanity. It took nothing away from his kindness, his good intentions, orhis solid worth. When he asked me how I should care to live in Boston Ireplied that I should like it very much. I had always heard of it as apleasant city of English characteristics and affiliations.
Wherever he was, I told him, I should be at home--if I made up my mindto marry him.
"But you have made up your mind, haven't you?" he asked, anxiously.
I was obliged to reply with frankness, "Not quite, Hugh, because--"
"Then what's the use of my getting into this hole, if it isn't to bewith you?"
"You mean by the hole the being, as you call it, out on your own? But Ithought you did that to be a Socialist--and a man."
"I've done it because father won't let me marry you any other way."
"Then if that's all, Hugh--"
"But it isn't all," he interrupted, hastily. "I don't say but what iffather had given us his blessing, and come down with another sixthousand a year--we could hardly scrub along on less--I'd have taken itand been thankful. But now that he hasn't--well, I can see that it'sall for the best. It's--it's brought me out, as you might say, andforced me to a decision."
I harked back to the sentence in which he had broken in on me. "If itwas all, Hugh, then that would oblige me to make up my mind at once. Icouldn't be the means of compelling you to break with your family andgive up a large income."
He cried out impatiently, "Alix, what the dickens is a family and alarge income to me in comparison with you?"
I must say that his intensity touched me. Tears sprang into my eyes. Irisked Gladys's presence to say: "Hugh, darling, I love you. I can'ttell you what your generosity and nobleness mean to me. I hadn'timagined that there was a man like you in the world. But if you could bein my place--"
He pushed aside his coffee-cup to lean with both arms on the table andlook me fiercely in the eyes. "If I can't be in your place, Alix, I'veseen women who were, and who didn't beat so terribly about the bush.Look at the way Libby Jaynes married Tracy Allen. She didn't talk abouthis family or his giving up a big income. She trusted him."
"And I trust you; only--" I broke off, to get at him from another pointof view. "Do you know Libby Jaynes personally?"
He nodded.
"Is she--is she anything like me?"
"No one is like you," he exclaimed, with something that was almostbitterness in the tone. "Isn't that what I'm trying to make you see?You're the one of your kind in the world. You've got me where a womanhas never got a man before. I'd give up everything--I'd starve--I'dlick dust--but I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, and I'd cling toyou and keep you." He, too, risked Gladys's presence. "But you're sodamn cool, Alix--"
"Oh no, I'm not, Hugh, daring," I pleaded on my own behalf. "I may seemlike that on the outside, because--oh, because I've such a lot to thinkof, and I have to think for us two. That's why I'm asking you if youfound Libby Jaynes like me."
He looked puzzled. "She's--she's decent." he said, as if not knowingwhat else to say.
"Yes, of course; but I mean--does she strike you as having had my kindof ways? Or my kind of antecedents?"
"Oh, antecedents! Why talk about them?"
"It's what you've been doing, isn't it, for the past half-hour?"
"Oh, mine, yes; because I want you to see that I've got a big asset in
Cousin Andrew Brew. I know he'll do anything for me, and if you'll trustme, Alix--"
"I do trust you, Hugh, and as soon as you have anything like what wouldmake you independent, and justified in braving your family'sdisapproval--"
He took an apologetic tone. "I said just now that we couldn't scrapealong on less than twelve thousand a year--"
To me the sum seemed ridiculously enormous. "Oh, I'm sure we could."
"Well, that's what I've been thinking," he said, wistfully. "That figurewas based on having the Brokenshire position to keep up. But if we wereto live in Boston, where less would be expected of us, we could manage,I should think, on ten."
Even that struck me as too much. "On five, Hugh," I declared, withconfidence. "I know I could manage on five, and have everything weneeded."
He smiled at my eagerness. "Oh, well, darling, I sha'n't ask you to comedown to that. Ten will be the least."
To me this was riches. I saw the vision of the dainty dining-room again,and the nursery with the bassinet; but I saw Hugh also in thebackground, a little shadowy, perhaps, a little like a dream as anartist embodies it in a picture, and yet unmistakably himself. I spokereservedly, however, far more reservedly than I felt, because I hadn'tyet made my point quite clear to him.
"I'm sure we could be comfortable on that. When you get it--"
I hadn't realized that this was the detail as to which he was mostsensitive.
"There you go again! When I get it! Do you think I sha'n't get it?"
I felt my eyebrows going up in surprise. "Why, no, Hugh, dear. I supposeyou know what you can get and what you can't. I was only going to saythat when you do get it I shall feel as if you were free to giveyourself away, and that I shouldn't have"--I tried to smile at him--"andthat I shouldn't have the air of--of stealing you from your family.Can't you see, dear? You keep quoting Libby Jaynes at me; but in myopinion she did steal Tracy Allen. That the Allens have made the best ofit has nothing to do with the original theft."
"Theft is a big word."
"Not bigger than the thing. For Libby Jaynes it was possibly all right.I'm not condemning her. But it wouldn't be all right for me."
"Why not? What's the difference?"
"I can't explain it to you, Hugh, if you don't see it already. It's adifference of tradition."
"But what's difference of tradition got to do with love? Since you admitthat you love me, and I certainly love you--"
"Yes, I admit that I love you, but love is not the only thing in theworld."
"It's the biggest thing in the world."
"Possibly; and yet it isn't necessarily the surest guide in conduct.There's honor, for instance. If one had to take love without honor, orhonor without love, surely one would choose the latter."
"And what would you call love without honor in this case?"
I reflected. "I'd call it doing this thing--getting engaged or married,whichever you like--just because we have the physical power to do it,and making the family, especially the father, to whom you're indebtedfor everything you are, unhappy."
"He doesn't mind making you and me unhappy."
"But that's his responsibility. We haven't got to do what's right forhim; we've only got to do what's right for ourselves." I fell back on mymaxim, "If we do right, only right will come of it, whatever the wrongit seems to threaten now."
"But if I made ten thousand a year of my own--"
"I should consider you free. I should feel free myself. I should feelfree on less than so big an income."
His spirits began to return.
"I don't call that big. We should have to pinch like the devil to keepour heads above water--no motor--no butler--"
"I've never had either," I smiled at him, "nor a lot of the things thatgo with them. Not having them might be privations to you--"
"Not when you were there, little Alix. You can bet your sweet life onthat."
We laughed together over the expression, and as Broke came bounding outto his breakfast, with the cry, "Hello, Uncle Hughie!" we lapsed intothat language of signs and nods and cryptic things which we mutuallyunderstood to elude his sharp young wits. By this method of _doubleentendre_ Hugh gave me to understand his intention of going to Boston byan afternoon train. He thought it possible he might stay there. Thefriendliness of Cousin Andrew Brew would probably detain him till heshould go to work, which was likely to be in a day or two. Even if hehad to wait a week he would prefer to do so at Boston, where he had notonly ties of blood, but acquaintances and interests dating back to hisHarvard days, which had ended three years before.
In the mean time, my position might prove to be precarious. Herecognized that, making it an excuse for once more forcing on me hisimmediate protection. Marriage was not named by word on Broke's account,but I understood that if I chose we could be marred within an hour ortwo, go to Boston together, and begin our common life without furtherdelays.
My answer to this being what it had been before, we discussed, over thechildren's heads, the chances that could befall me before night. Ofthese the one most threatening was that I might be sent away indisgrace. If sent away in disgrace I should have to go on the instant. Imight be paid for a month or two ahead; it was probable I should be. Itwas J. Howard's policy to deal with his cashiered employees with thatkind of liberality, so as to put himself more in the right. But Ishould have to go with scarcely the time to pack my boxes, as Hugh hadgone himself, and must know of a place where I could take shelter.
I didn't know of any such refuge. My sojourn under Mrs. Rossiter's roofhad been remarkably free from contacts or curiosities of my own. Hughknew no more than I. I could, therefore, only ask his consent to myconsulting Mr. Strangways, a proposal to which he agreed. This I wasable to do when Larry came for Broke, not many minutes after Hugh hadtaken his departure.
I could talk to him the more freely because of his knowledge of myrelation to Hugh. With the fact that I was in love with another man keptwell in the foreground between us, he could acquit me of those ulteriordesigns on himself the suspicion of which is so disturbing to a woman'sfriendship with a man. As the maid was clearing the table, as Broke hadto go to his lessons, as Gladys had to be remanded to the nursery whileI attended to Mrs. Rossiter's telephone calls and correspondence, ourtalk was squeezed in during the seconds in which we retreated throughthe dining-room into the main part of the house.
"The long and short of it is," Larry Strangways summed up, when I hadconfided to him my fears of being sent about my business as soon as Hughhad left for Boston--"the long and the short of it is that I shall haveto look you up another job."
It is almost absurd to point out that the idea was new to me. In goingto Mrs. Rossiter I had never thought of starting out on a career ofearning a living professionally, as you might say. I clung to theconception of myself as a lady, with all sorts of possibilities in theway of genteel interventions of Providence coming in between me and alifetime of work. I had always supposed that if I left Mrs. Rossiter Ishould go back to my uncle and aunt at Halifax. After all, if Hugh wasgoing to marry me, it would be no more than correct that he should do itfrom under their wing. Larry Strangways's suggestions of another jobthrew open a vista of places I should fill in the future little short ofappalling to a woman instinctively looking for a man to come and supporther.
I shelved these considerations, however, to say, as casually as I could:"Why should you do it? Why shouldn't I look out for myself?"
"Because when I've gone to Stacy Grainger it may be right in my line."
"But I'd rather you didn't have me on your mind."
He laughed--uneasily, as it seemed to me. "Perhaps it's too late forthat."
It was another of the things I was sorry to hear him say. I could onlyreply, still on the forced casual note: "But it's not too late for me tolook after my own affairs. What I'm chiefly concerned with is that if Ihave to leave here--to-night, let us say--I sha'n't in the least knowwhere to go."
He was ready for me in the event of this contingency. I suspected t
hathe had already considered it. He had a married sister in New York, aMrs. Applegate, a woman of philanthropic interests, a director on theboard of a Home for Working-Girls. Again I shied at the word. He musthave seen that I did, for he went on, with a smile in which I detected agleam of mockery:
"You are a working-girl, aren't you?"
I answered with the kind of humility I can only describe as spirited,and which was meant to take the wind out of his sails:
"I suppose so--as long as I'm working." But I gave him a flying upwardglance as I asked the imprudent question, "Is that how you've thought ofme?"
I was sorry to have said it as soon as the words were out. I didn't wantto know what he thought of me. It was something with which I was solittle concerned that I colored with embarrassment at having betrayed somuch futile curiosity. Apparently he saw that, too, hastening to come tomy relief.
"I've thought of you," he laughed, when we had reached the mainstairway, "as a clever little woman, with a special set of aptitudes,who ought to be earning more money than she's probably getting here; andwhen I'm with Stacy Grainger--"
Grateful for this turning of the current into the business-like andcommonplace, I called Gladys, who was lagging in the dining-room withBroke, and went on my way up-stairs.
Mrs. Rossiter was sitting up in bed, her breakfast before her on a lightwicker tray that stood on legs. It was an abstemious breakfast,carefully selected from foods containing most nutrition with leastadipose deposit. She had reached the age, within sight of the thirties,when her figure was becoming a matter for consideration. It was almostthe only personal detail as to which she had as yet any cause foranxiety. Her complexion was as bright as at eighteen; her brown hair,which now hung in a loose, heavy coil over her left shoulder, was thickand silky and long; her eyes were clear, her lips ruby. I always noticedthat she waked with the sleepy softness of a flower uncurling to thesun. In the great walnut bed, of which the curves were gilded _a la_Louis Quinze, she made me think of that Jeanne Becu who became Comtessedu Barry, in the days of her indolence and luxury.
Having no idea as to how she would receive me, I was not surprised thatit should be as usual. Since I had entered her employ she was never whatI should call gracious, but she was always easy and familiar. Sometimesshe was petulant; often she was depressed; but beyond a belief that sheinspired tumultuous passions in young men there was no pose about hernor any haughtiness. I was not afraid of her, therefore; I was onlyuneasy as to the degree in which she would let herself be used againstme as a tool.
"The letters are here on the bed," was her response to my greeting,which I was careful to make in the form in which I made it every day.
Taking the small arm-chair at the bedside, I sorted the pile. The notesshe had not glanced at for herself I read aloud, penciling on themargins the data for the answers. Some I replied to by telephone, whichstood within her reach on the _table de nuit_; for a few I sat down atthe desk and wrote. I was doing the latter, and had just scribbled thewords "Mrs. James Worthington Rossiter will have much pleasure inaccepting--" when she said, in a slightly querulous tone:
"I should think you'd do something about Hugh--the way he goes on."
I continued to write as I asked, "How does he go on?"
"Like an idiot."
"Has he been doing anything new?"
My object being to get a second version of the story Hugh had told me, Isucceeded. Mrs. Rossiter's facts were practically the same as herbrother's, only viewed from a different angle. As she presented the caseHugh had been merely preposterous, dashing his head against a stonewall, with nothing he could gain by the exercise.
"The idea of his saying he'll not go to the Goldboroughs for thetwelfth! Of course he'll go. Since father means him to do it, he will."
I was addressing an envelope, and went on with my task. "But I thoughtyou said he'd left home?"
"Oh, well, he'll come back."
"But suppose he doesn't? Suppose he goes to work?"
"Pff! The idea! He won't keep that up long."
I was glad to be sitting with my back to her. To disguise the quaver inmy voice I licked the flap of the envelope as I said:
"But he'll have to if he means to support a wife."
"Support a wife? What nonsense! Father means him to marry CissieBoscobel, as I've told you already--and he'll fix them up with a goodincome."
"But apparently Hugh doesn't see things that way. He's told me--"
"Oh, he'd tell you anything."
"He's told me," I persisted, boldly, "that he--he loves me; and he'smade me say that--that I love him."
"And that's where you're so foolish, dear Miss Adare. You let him takeyou in. It isn't that he's not sincere; I don't say that for a minute.But people can't go about marrying every one they love, now can they? Ishould think you'd have seen that--with the heaps of men you had thereat Halifax--hardly room to step over them."
I said, slyly, "I never saw them that way."
"Oh, well, I did. And by the way, I wonder what's become of that CaptainVenables. He was a case! He could take more liberties in ahalf-hour--don't you think?"
"He never took any liberties with me."
"Then that must have been your fault. Talk about Mr. Millinger! Our menaren't in it with yours--not when it comes to the real thing."
I got back to the subject in which I was most interested by saying, as Ispread another note before me:
"It seems to be the real thing with Hugh."
"Oh, I dare say it is. It was the real thing with Jack. I don'tsay"--her voice took on a tender tremolo--"I don't say that it wasn'tthe real thing with me. But that didn't make any difference to father.It was the real thing with Pauline Gray--when she was down there atBaltimore; but when father picked her out for Jack, because of her moneyand his relations with old Mr. Gray--"
I couldn't help half turning round, to cry out in tones of which I wasunable to conceal the exasperation: "But I don't see how you can all letyourselves be hooked by the nose like that--not even by Mr.Brokenshire!"
Her fatalistic resignation gave me a sense of helplessness.
"Oh, well, you will before father has done with you--if Hugh goes onthis way. Father's only playing with you so far."
"He can't touch me," I declared, indignantly.
"But he can touch Hugh. That's all he needs to know, as far as you'reconcerned." She asked, in another tone, "What are you answering now?"
I told her it was the invitation to Mrs. Allen's dance.
"Then tear it up and say I can't go. Say I've a previous engagement. I'dforgotten that they had that odious Mrs. Tracy Allen there."
I tore up the sheet slowly, throwing the fragments into the waste-paperbasket.
"Why is she odious?"
"Because she is." She dropped for a second into the tone of the earlyfriendly days in Halifax. "My dear, she was a shop-girl--or worse. I'veforgotten what she was, but it was awful, and I don't mean to meet her."
I began to write the refusal.
"She goes about with very good people, doesn't she?"
"She doesn't go about with me, nor with some others I know, I can tellyou that. If she did it would queer us."
In the hope of drawing out some such repudiation as that which I feltmyself, I said, dryly: "Hugh tells me that if I married him I could beas good as she is--by this time next year."
I got nothing for my pains.
"That wouldn't help you much--not among the people who count."
There was white anger underneath my meekness.
"But perhaps I could get along with the people who don't count."
"Yes, you might--but Hugh wouldn't."
She dismissed the subject as one in which she took only a secondaryinterest to say that old Mrs. Billing was coming to lunch, and thatGladys and I should have to take that repast up-stairs. She was neverdirect in her denunciations of her father's second marriage. She broughtthem in by reference and innuendo, like a prisoner who keeps in mind thefact that walls have ears. She
gave me to understand, however, that sheconsidered Mrs. Billing a witch out of "Macbeth" or a wicked oldvulture--I could take my choice of comparisons--and she hated having herin the house. She wouldn't do it only that, in ways she could hardlyunderstand, Mrs. Billing was the power behind the throne. She didn'tloathe her stepmother, she said in effect, so much as she loathed herfather's attitude toward her. I have never forgotten the words she usedin this connection, dropping her voice and glancing about her, afraidshe might be overheard. "It's as if God himself had become the slave ofsome silly human woman just because she had a pretty face." The sentencenot only betrayed the Brokenshire attitude of mind toward J. Howard, butsent a chill down my back.
Having finished my notes and addressed them I rose to return to Gladys;but there was still an unanswered question in my mind. I asked it,standing for a minute beside the bed:
"Then you don't want me to go away?"
She arched her lovely eyebrows. "Go away? What for?"
"Because of the danger of my marrying Hugh."
She gave a little laugh. "Oh, there's no danger of that."
"But there is," I insisted. "He's asked me a number of times to go withhim to the nearest clergyman, and settle the question once for all."
"Only you don't do it. There you are! What father doesn't want doesn'thappen; and what he does want does. That's all there is to be said."