by Basil King
CHAPTER XIII
I was relieved of some of my embarrassment by the fact that Mr. Graingertook command.
Having bowed over Mrs. Brokenshire's hand with an empressement he madeno attempt to conceal, he murmured the words, "I'm delighted to see youagain." After this greeting, which might have been commonplace and wasnot, he turned to me. "Perhaps Miss Adare will give me some tea."
I could carry out this request, listen to their scraps of conversation,and think my own thoughts all at the same time.
Thinking my own thoughts was the least easy of the three, for the reasonthat thought stunned me. The facts knocked me on the head. Since beforemy engagement as Mr. Grainger's librarian this situation had beenplanned! Mrs. Brokenshire had chosen me for my part in it! She had givenMr. Grainger my address, which she could have learned from her mother,and recommended me as one with whom they would be safe!
Their talk was only of superficial things; but it was not the clue totheir emotions. That was in the way they talked--haltingly, falteringly,with glances that met and shifted and fell, or that rested on each otherwith long, mute looks, and then turned away hurriedly, as if somethingin the spirit reeled. As she gave him bits of information concerningthe summer at Newport, she stumbled in her words, because there was nocorrelation between the sentences she formed and her fundamentalthought. The same was true of his account of yachting on the coast ofMaine, of Gloucester, Islesboro, and Bar Harbor. He stuttered andstammered and repeated himself. It was like one of those old Italianduets in which stupid words are sung to a passionate, heartbreakingmelody. Nevertheless, I had enough sympathy with love, even with aguilty love, to have some mercy in my judgments.
Not that I believed it to be a guilty love--as yet. That, too, I wasobliged to think over and form my opinion about it. It was not a guiltylove as yet; but it might easily become a guilty love. I remembered thatLarry Strangways, with all his admiration for his employer, had refusedhim a place in his list of whole-hearted, clean-hearted men because hehad a weakness; and I reflected that on the part of Mrs. Billing'sdaughter there might be no rigorous concept of the moralities. What Isaw, therefore, was a man and a woman so consumed with longing for eachother that guilt would be chiefly a matter of opportunity. To createthat opportunity I had been brought upon the scene.
I SAW A MAN AND A WOMAN CONSUMED WITH LONGING FOR EACHOTHER]
I could see, of course, how admirably I was suited to the purpose I wasmeant to serve. In the first place, I was young, and might but dimlyperceive--might not perceive at all--what was being done with me. In thenext place, I was presumably too inexperienced to take a line of my owneven if I suspected what was not for me to know. Then, I was poor and astranger, and too glad of the easy work for which I was liberally paidnot to be willing to take its bitter with its sweet. Lastly, I, too,was in love; and I, too, was a victim of Howard Brokenshire. If Icouldn't approve of what I might see and hear, at least I might bereckoned on not to speak of it. Once more I was made to feel that,though I might play a subordinate role of some importance, my own wishesand personality didn't count.
It was obviously a minute at which to bring my maxim into operation. Ihad to do what was Right--with a capital. For that I must wait forinspiration, and presently I got it.
That is, I got it by degrees. I got it first by noting in a puzzled waythe glances which both my companions sent in my direction. They weresidelong glances, singularly alike, whether they came from StacyGrainger's melancholy brown eyes or Mrs. Brokenshire's sweet, mistyones. They were timid glances, pleading, uneasy. They asked what wordswouldn't dare to ask, and what I was too dense to understand. I satsipping my tea, running hot and cold as the odiousness of my positionstruck me from the various points of view; but I made no attempt tomove.
They were still talking of people of whom I knew nothing, but talkingbrokenly, futilely, for the sake of hearing each other's voice, and yetstifling the things which it would have been fatal to them both to say,when Mr. Grainger got up and brought me his cup.
"May I have another?"
I looked up to take the cup, but he held it in his hands. He held it inhis hands and gazed down at me. He gazed down at me with an expressionsuch as I have never seen in any eyes but a dog's. As I write I blush toremember that, with such a mingling of hints and entreaties andcommands, I didn't know what he was trying to convey to me. I took thecup, poured out his tea, handed the cup back to him--and sat.
But after he had reached his seat the truth flashed on me. I was in theway; I was _de trop_. I had done part of my work in being the pretextfor Mrs. Brokenshire's visit; now I ought, tactfully, to absent myself.I needn't go far; I needn't go for long. There was an alcove at the endof the room where one could be out of sight; there was also the corridorleading to the house. I could easily make an excuse; I could get up andmove without an excuse of any kind. But I sat.
I hated myself; I despised myself; but I sat. I drank my tea withoutknowing it; I ate my cake without tasting it--and I sat.
The talk between my companions grew more fitful. Silence was easier forthem--silence and that dumb interchange of looks which had the sympathyof something within myself. I knew that in their eyes I was a nuisance,a thing to be got rid of. I was so in my own--but I went on eating anddrinking stolidly--and sat.
It was in my mind that this was my chance to be avenged on HowardBrokenshire; but I didn't want my vengeance that way. I have to confessthat I was so poor-spirited as to have little or no animosity againsthim. I could see how easy it was for him to think of me as anadventuress. I wanted to convince and convert him, but not to make himsuffer. If in any sense I could be called the guardian of his interestsI would rather have been true to the trust than not. As I sat,therefore, gulping down my tea as if I relished it, it was partlybecause of my protective instinct toward the exquisite creature beforeme who might not know how to protect herself--and partly because Icouldn't help it. Mr. Grainger could order me to go, but until he did Imeant to go on eating.
Probably because of the insistence of my presence Mrs. Brokenshire feltobliged to begin to talk again. I did my best not to listen, butfragments of her sentences came to me.
"My mother spent a few weeks with us in August. I--I don't think sheand--and Mr. Brokenshire get on so well."
Almost for the first time he was interested in what she said rather thanin her.
"What's the trouble?"
"Oh, I don't know--the whole thing." A long pause ensued, during whichtheir eyes rested on each other in mute questioning. "She's changed,mamma is."
"Changed in what way?"
"Oh, I don't know. I--I suppose she sees that she--she--miscalculated."
It was his turn to ruminate silently, and when he spoke at last it wasas if throwing up to the surface but one of a deep undercurrent ofthoughts.
"After the pounding I got three years ago she didn't believe I'd comeback."
She accepted this without comment. Before speaking again she sent meanother of her frightened, pleading looks.
"She always liked you better than any one else."
He seconded the glance in my direction as he said, with a grim smile:
"Which didn't prevent her going to the highest bidder."
She colored and sighed.
"You wouldn't be so hard on her if you knew what a fight she had to makeduring papa's lifetime. We were always in debt. You knew that, didn'tyou? Poor mamma used to say she'd save me from that if she never--"
I lost the rest of the sentence by deliberately rattling the tea thingsin pouring myself a third or a fourth cup of tea. Nothing butdisconnected words reached me after that, but I caught the name ofMadeline Pyne. I knew who she was, having heard her story day by day asit unfolded itself during my first weeks with Mrs. Rossiter. It was asimple tale as tales go in the twentieth century. Mrs. Pyre had beenMrs. Grimshaw. While she was Mrs. Grimshaw she had spent three days at aseaside resort with Mr. Pyne. The law having been invoked, she hadchanged her residence from the house of Mr. Grimshaw
in Seventy-fifthStreet to that of Mr. Pyne in Seventy-seventh Street, and likewisechanged her name. Only a very discerning eye could now have told that inthe opinion of society there was a difference between her and Caesar'swife. The drama was sufficiently recent to make the topic a natural onefor an interchange of confidences. That confidences were beinginterchanged I could see; that from those confidences certainterrifying, passionate deductions were being drawn silently I could alsosee. I could see without hearing; I didn't need to hear. I could tell byher pallor and his embarrassment how each read the mind of the other,how each was tempted and how each recoiled. I knew that neither pointedthe moral of the parable, for the reason that it stared them in theface.
Because that subject, too, was exhausted, or because they had come to aplace where they could say no more, they sat silent again. They lookedat each other; they looked at me; neither would take the responsibilityof giving me a further hint to go. Much as they desired my going, I wassure they were both afraid of it. I might be a nuisance and yet I was asafeguard. They were too near the brink of danger not to feel that,after all, there was something in having the safeguard there.
A few minutes later Mrs. Brokenshire flew to shelter herself behind thisprotection. She fluttered softly to my side, beginning again to talk ofHugh. Knowing by this time that her interest in him was only a blind forher frightened essays in passion, I took up the subject buthalf-heartedly.
"I've the money here," she confided to me, "if you'll only take chargeof it."
When I had declined to do this, for the reasons I had already given, herface brightened.
"Then we can talk it over again." She rose as she spoke. "I can't stayany longer now--but we'll talk it over again. Let me see! This isTuesday. If I came--"
"I'm always at the Hotel Mary Chilton after six," I said, significantly.
I smiled inwardly at the way in which she took this information.
"Oh, I'll come before that--and I sha'n't keep you--just to talk aboutHugh--and see he won't take the money--perhaps on--on Thursday."
As nominally she had come to see me, nominally it was my place toaccompany her to the door. In this at least I got my cue, walking thefew paces with her, while she held my hand. I gathered that, the minutesof temptation being past, she bore me some gratitude for having helpedher over them. At any rate, she pressed my fingers and gave me wistful,teary smiles, till at last she was out in the lighted street and I hadclosed the door behind her.
It was only half past five, and I had still thirty minutes to fill in.As I turned back into the room I found Mr. Grainger walking aimlessly upand down, inspecting a bit of lustrous faience or the backs of a row ofbooks, and making me feel that there was something he wished to say. Hismovements were exactly those of a man screwing up his courage or tryingto find words.
The simplest thing I could do was to sit down at my desk and make afeint at writing. I seemed to be ignoring my employer's presence, but inreality, as I watched him from under my lids, I was getting a betterimpression of him than on any previous occasion.
There was nothing Olympian about him as there was about HowardBrokenshire. He was too young to be Olympian, being not more thanthirty-eight. He struck me, indeed, as just a big, sinewy man of thetype which fights and hunts and races and loves, and has dumb,uncomprehended longings which none of these pursuits can satisfy. Inthis he was English more than American, and Scottish more than English.He was certainly not the American business man as seen in hotel lobbiesand on the stage. He might have been classed as the Americanromantic--an explorer, a missionary, or a shooter of big game, accordingto taste and income. Larry Strangways said that among Americans you mostfrequently met his like in East Africa, Manchuria, or Brazil. That hewas in business in New York was an accident of tradition andinheritance. Just as an Englishman who might have been a soldier or asolicitor is a country gentleman because his father has left him landedestates, so Stacy Grainger had become a financier.
As a financier, I understood he helped to furnish the money inundertakings in which other men did the work. In this respect thedirection his interests took was what might have been expected of sovirile a character--steel, iron, gunpowder, shells, the founding ofcannon, the building of war-ships; the forceful, the destructive. Igathered from Mr. Strangways that he was forever making journeys toWashington, to Pittsburg, to Cape Breton, wherever money could beinvested in mighty conquering things. It was these projects that HowardBrokenshire had attacked so savagely as almost to bring him to ruin,though he had now re-established himself as strongly as before.
Being as terrified of him as of his rival, I prayed inwardly that hewould go away. Once or twice in marching up and down he paused before mydesk, and the pen almost dropped from my hand. I knew he was trying toformulate a hint that when Mrs. Brokenshire came again--But even on mypart the thought would not go into words. Words made it gross, and itwas what he must have discovered each time he approached me. Each timehe approached me I fancied that his poetic eye grew apologetic, that hisshoulders sagged, and that his hard, strong mouth became weak beforesyllables that would not pass the lips. Then he would veer away,searching doubtless some easier phrase, some more delicate suggestion,only to fail again.
It was a relief when, after a last attempt, he passed into the corridorleading to the house. I could breathe, I could think; I could look backover the last half-hour and examine my conduct. I was not satisfied withit, because I had frustrated love--even that kind of love; and yet Iasked myself how I could have acted differently.
In substance I asked the same of Larry Strangways when he came to dinewith me next day. Hugh being in Philadelphia on one of his patheticcruises after work, I had invited Mr. Strangways by telephone, begginghim to come on the ground that, having got me into this trouble, he mustadvise me as to getting out.
"I didn't get you into the trouble," he smiled across the table. "I onlyhelped to get you the job."
"But when you got me the job, as you call it--"
"I knew you would be able to do the work."
"And did you think the work would be--this?"
"I couldn't tell anything about that. I simply knew you could do thework--from all the points of view."
"And do you think I've done it?"
"I know you've done it. You couldn't do anything else. I won't go backof that."
If my heart gave a sudden leap at these words it was because of thetone. It betrayed that quality behind the tone to which I had beenresponding, and of which I had been afraid, ever since I knew the man.By a great effort I kept my words on the casual, friendly plane, as Isaid:
"Your confidence is flattering, but it doesn't help me. What I want toknow is this: Assuming that they love each other, should I allow myselfto be used as the pretext for their meetings?"
"Does it do you any harm?"
"Does it do them any good?"
"Couldn't you let that be their affair?"
"How can I, when I'm dragged into it?"
"If you're only dragged into it to the extent of this afternoon--"
"Only! You can use that word of a situation--"
"In which you played propriety."
"Oh, it wasn't playing."
"Yes, it was; it was playing the game--as they only play it who aren'tquitters but real sports."
"But I'm not a sport. I've the quitter in me. I'm even thinking offlinging up the position--"
"And leaving them to their fate."
I smiled.
"Couldn't I let that be their affair?"
He, too, smiled, his head thrown back, his white teeth gleaming.
"You think you've caught me, don't you? But you've got the shoe on thewrong foot. I said just now that it might be their affair as to whetheror not it did them any good to have you as the pretext of theirmeetings; but it's surely your affair when you say they sha'n't. Theirmeetings will be one thing so long as they have you; whereas withoutyou--"
"Then you think they'll keep meeting in any case?"
"I've nothin
g to say about that. I limit myself to believing that in anysituation that requires skilful handling your first name isresourcefulness."
I shifted my ground.
"Oh, but when it's such an odious situation!"
"No situation is odious in which you're a participant, just as no viewis ugly where there's a garden full of flowers."
He went on with his dinner as complacently as if he had not thrown meinto a state of violent inward confusion. All I could do was to summonHugh's image from the shades of memory into which it had withdrawn, andbeg it to keep me true to him. The thought of being false to the man towhom I had actually owned my love outraged in me every sentiment akin tosingle-heartedness. In a kind of desperation I dragged Hugh's name intothe conversation, and yet in doing so I merely laid myself open toanother shock.
"You can't be in love with him!"
The words were the same as Mrs. Billing's; the emphasis was similar.
"I am," I declared, bluntly, not so much to contradict the speaker as tofortify myself.
"You may think you are--"
"Well, if I think I am, isn't it the same thing as--"
"Lord, no! not with love! Love is the most deceptive of the emotions--topeople who haven't had much experience of its tricks."
"Have you?"
He met this frankly.
"No; nor you. That's why you can so easily take yourself in."
I grew cold and dignified.
"If you think I'm taking myself in when I say that I'm in love with HughBrokenshire--"
"That's certainly it."
Though I knew my cheeks were flaming a dahlia red, I forced myself tolook him in the eyes.
"Then I'm afraid it would be useless to try to convince you--"
He nodded.
"Quite!"
"So that we can only let the subject drop."
He looked at me with mock gravity.
"I don't see that. It's an interesting topic."
"Possibly; but as it doesn't lead us any further--"
"But it does. It leads us to where we see straighter."
"Yes, but if I don't need to see straighter than I do?"
"We all need to see as straight as we can."
"I'm seeing as straight as I can when I say--"
"Oh, but not as straight as I can! I can see that a noble characterdoesn't always distinguish clearly between love and kindness, or betweenkindness and loyalty, or between loyalty and self-sacrifice, and thatthe higher the heart, the more likely it is to impose on itself. No oneis so easily deceived as to love and loving as the man or the womanwho's truly generous."
"If I was truly generous--"
"I know what you are," he said, shortly.
"Then if you know what I am you must know, too, that I couldn't do otherthan care for a man who's given up so much for my sake."
"You couldn't do other than admire him. You couldn't do other than begrateful to him. You probably couldn't do other than want to stand byhim through thick and thin--"
"Well, then?"
"But that's not love."
"If it isn't love it's so near to it--"
"Exactly--which is what I'm saying. It's so near it that you don't knowthe difference, and won't know the difference till--till the real thingaffords you the contrast."
I did my best to be scornful.
"Really! You speak like an expert."
"Yes; an expert by intuition."
I was still scornful.
"Only that?"
"Only that. You see," he smiled, "the expert by experience has learnt alittle; but the expert by intuition knows it all."
"Then, when I need information on the subject, I'll come to you."
"And I'll promise to give it to you frankly."
"Thanks," I said, sweetly. "But you'll wait till I come, won't you? Andin the mean time, you'll not say any more about it."
"Does that mean that I'm not to say any more about it ever--or only forto-night?"
I knew, suddenly, what the question meant to me. I took time to see thatI was shutting a door which my heart cried out to have left open. But Ianswered, 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 heuttered the words, very slowly and deliberately:
"I won't say any more about it--for to-night."