At five minutes to three, precisely, I took my seat in the breakfast
loggia.
The front of the house with the garden looked toward Ochre Point Avenue.
The so-called breakfast loggia was thrown out from the dining-room in
the direction of the sea. Here the family and their guests could gather
on warm evenings, and in fine weather eat in the open air. Paved with
red tiles, it was furnished with a long oak table, ornately carved, and
some heavy old oak chairs that might have come from a monastery. Steamer
chairs and wicker easy-chairs were scattered on the grass outside. On
the left the loggia was screened from the neighboring property by a
hedge of rambler roses that now ran the gamut of shades from crimson to
sea-shell pink, while on the right it commanded a view of the two
terraces supporting the house, with their long straight lines of
flowers. The house itself had been built piecemeal, and was now a low,
rambling succession of pavilions or _corps de logis_, to which a series
of rose-colored awnings gave the only unifying principle.
Just now it was a house deserted by every one but the servants and
myself. Mrs. Rossiter, having gone out to luncheon, had been careful not
to return, and even the children had been sent over to Mrs. Jack
Brokenshire, on the pretext of playing with her baby, but really to be
out of the way. From Hugh I had had no sign of life since the previous
afternoon. As to whether his father was coming as his enemy, his master,
or his interpreter I could do nothing but conjecture.
But as far as I could I kept myself from conjecturing; holding my
faculties in suspense. I had enough to do in assuring myself that I was
not afraid--fundamentally. Superficially I was terrified. I should have
been terrified had the great man but passed me in the hall and cast a
look at me. He had passed me in the hall on occasions, but as he had
never cast the look I had escaped. He had struck me then as a master of
that art of seeing without seeing which I had hitherto thought of as
feminine. Even when he stopped and spoke to Gladys he seemed not to know
that I occupied the ground I stood on. I cannot say I enjoyed this
treatment. I was accustomed to being seen. Moreover, I had lived with
people who were courteous to inferiors, however cavalier with equals.
The great J. Howard was neither courteous nor cavalier toward me, for
the reason that where I was he apparently saw nothing but a vacuum.
Out to the loggia I took my work-basket and some sewing. Having no idea
from which of the several approaches my visitor would come on me, I drew
up one of the heavy arm-chairs and sat facing toward the sea. With the
basket on the table beside me and my sewing in my hands I felt
indefinably more mistress of myself.
It was a still afternoon and hot, with scarcely a sound but the pounding
of the surf on the ledges at the foot of the lawn. Though the sky was
blue overhead, a dark low bank rose out of the horizon, foretelling a
change of wind with fog. In the air the languorous scent of roses and
honeysuckle mingled with the acrid tang of the ocean.
I felt extraordinarily desolate. Not since hearing what the lawyer had
told me on the afternoon of my father's funeral had I seemed so entirely
alone. The fact that for nearly twenty-four hours Hugh had got no word
to me threw me back upon myself. "You'll be made to feel alone," Mr.
Strangways had said in the morning; and I was. I didn't blame Hugh. I
had purposely left the matter in such a way that there was nothing he
could say or do till after his father had spoken. He was probably
waiting impatiently; I had, indeed, no doubt about that; but the fact
remained that I, a girl, a stranger, in a certain sense a foreigner, was
to make the best of my situation without help. J. Howard Brokenshire
could grind me to powder--when he had gone away I should be dust.
"If I do right, nothing but right can come of it."
The maxim was my only comfort. By sheer force of repeating it I got
strength to thread my needle and go on with my seam, till on the stroke
of three the dread personage appeared.
I saw him from the minute he mounted the steps that led up from the
Cliff Walk to Mr. Rossiter's lawn. He was accompanied by Mrs.
Brokenshire, while a pair of greyhounds followed them. Having reached
the lawn, they crossed it diagonally toward the loggia. Because of the
heat and the up-hill nature of the way, they advanced slowly, which gave
me leisure to observe.
Mrs. Brokenshire's presence had almost caused my heart to stop beating.
I could imagine no motive for her coming but one I refused to accept. If
the mission was to be unfriendly, she surely would have stayed away; but
that it could be other than unfriendly was beyond my strength to hope.
I had never seen her before except in glimpses or at a distance. I
noticed now that she was a little thing, looking the smaller for the
stalwart six-foot-two beside which she walked. She was in white and
carried a white parasol. I saw that her face was one of the most
beautiful in features and finish I had ever looked into. Each trait was
quite amazingly perfect. The oval was perfect; the coloring was perfect;
mouth and nose and forehead might have been made to a measured scale.
The finger of personified Art could have drawn nothing more exquisite
than the arch of the eyebrows, or more delicately fringed than the lids.
It might have been a doll's face, or the face for the cover of an
American magazine, had it not been saved by something I hadn't the time
to analyze, though I was later to know what it was.
As for him, he was as perfect in his way as she in hers. When I say that
he wore white shoes, white-duck trousers, a navy-blue jacket, and a
yachting-cap I give no idea of the something noble in his personality.
He might have been one of the more ornamental Italian princes of
immemorial lineage. A Jove with a Vandyke beard one could have called
him, and if you add to that the conception of Jove the Thunderer, Jove
with the look that could strike a man dead, perhaps the description
would be as good as any. He was straight and held his head high. He
walked with a firm setting of his feet that impressed you with the fact
that some one of importance was coming.
It is not my purpose to speak of this man from the point of view of the
ordinary member of the public. Of that I know next to nothing. I was
dimly aware that his wealth and his business interests made him
something of a public character; but apart from having heard him
mentioned as a financier I could hardly have told what his profession
was. So, too, with questions of morals. I have been present when, by
hints rather than actual words, he was introduced as a profligate and a
hypocrite; and I have also known people of good judgment who upheld him
both as man and as citizen. On this subject no opinion of mine would be
worth giving. I have always relegated the matter into that limbo of
disputed facts with which I have nothing to do. I write of him only as I
saw him in daily life, or at least in direct intercourse, and with that
my testimony must end. Other people have been curious with regard to
those aspects of his character on which I can throw no light. To me he
became interesting chiefly because he was one of those men who from a
kind of naive audacity, perhaps an unthinking audacity, don't hesitate
to play the part of the Almighty.
When they drew near enough to the loggia I stood up, my sewing in my
hand. The two greyhounds, who had outdistanced them, came sniffing to
the threshold and stared at me. I felt myself an object to be stared at,
though I had taken pains with my appearance and knew that I was neat.
Neatness, I may say in passing, is my strong point. Where many other
girls can stand expensive dressing I am at my best when meticulously
tidy. The shape of my head makes the simplest styles of doing the hair
the most distinguished. My figure lends itself to country clothes and
the tailor-made. In evening dress I can wear the cheapest and flimsiest
thing, so long as it is dependent only on its lines. I was satisfied,
therefore, with the way I looked, and when I say I felt myself an object
to be stared at I speak only of my consciousness of isolation.
I cannot affirm, however, that J. Howard Brokenshire stared at me. He
stared; but only at the general effects in which I was a mere detail.
The loggia being open on all sides, he paused for half a second to take
it and its contents in. I went with the contents. I looked at him; but
nothing in the glance he cast over me recognized me as a human being. I
might have been the table; I might have been the floor; for him I was
hardly in existence.
I wonder if you have ever stood under the gaze of one who considered you
too inferior for notice. The sensation is quite curious. It produces not
humiliation or resentment so much as an odd apathy. You sink in your own
sight; you go down; you understand that abjection of slaves which kept
them from rising against their masters. Negatively at least you concede
the right that so treats you. You are meek and humble at once; and yet
you can be strong. I think I never felt so strong as when I saw that
cold, deep eye, which was steely and fierce and most inconsistently
sympathetic all in one quick flash, sweep over me and pay me no
attention. _Ecce Femina_ I might have been saying to myself, as a
pendant in expression to the _Ecce Homo_ of the Praetorium.
He moved aside punctiliously at the lower of the two steps that led up
to the loggia to let his wife precede him. As she came in I think she
gave me a salutation that was little more than a quiver of the lids.
Having closed her parasol, she slipped into one of the arm-chairs not
far from the table.
Now that he was at close quarters, with his work before him, he
proceeded to the task at once. In the act of laying his hat and stick on
a chair he began with the question, "Your name is--?"
The voice had a crisp gentleness that seemed to come from the effort to
despatch business with the utmost celerity and spend no unnecessary
strength on words. The fact that he must have heard my name from Hugh
was plainly to play no part in our discussion. I was so unutterably
frightened that when I tried to whisper the word "Adare" hardly a sound
came forth.
As he raised himself from the placing of his cap and stick he was
obliged to utter a sharp, "What?"
"Adare."
"Oh. Adare!"
It is not a bad name as names go; we like to fancy ourselves connected
with the famous Fighting Adares of the County Limerick; but on J. Howard
Brokenshire's lips it had the undiscriminating commonness of Smith or
Jones. I had never been ashamed of it before.
"And you're one of my daughter's--"
"I'm her nursery governess."
"Sit down."
As he took the chair at the end of the table I dropped again into that
at the side from which I had risen. It was then that something happened
which left me for a second in doubt as to whether to take it as comic or
catastrophic. His left eye closed; his left nostril quivered; he winked.
To avoid having to face this singular phenomenon a second time I lowered
my eyes and began mechanically to sew.
"Put that down!"
I placed the work on the table and once more looked at him. The striking
eyes were again as striking as ever. In their sympathetic hardness there
was nothing either ribald or jocose.
I suppose my scrutiny annoyed him, though I was unconscious of more than
a mute asking for orders. He pointed to a distant chair, a chair in a
corner, just within the loggia as you come from the direction of the
dining-room.
"Sit there."
I know now that his wink distressed him. It was something which at that
time had come upon him recently, and that he could neither control nor
understand. A less imposing man, a man to whom personal impressiveness
was less of an asset in daily life and work, would probably have been
less disturbed by it; but to J. Howard Brokenshire it was a trial in
more ways than one. Curiously, too, when the left eye winked the right
grew glassy and quite terrible.
Not knowing that he was sensitive in this respect, I took my retreat to
the corner as a kind of symbolic banishment.
"Hadn't I better stand up?" I asked, proudly, when I had reached my
chair.
"Be good enough to sit down."
I seemed to fall backward. The tone had the effect of a shot. If I had
ever felt small and foolish in my life it was then. I flushed to my
darkest crimson. Angry and humiliated, I was obliged to rush to my maxim
in order not to flash back in some indignant retort.
And then another thing happened of which I was unable at the minute to
get the significance. Mrs. Brokenshire sprang up with the words:
"You're quite right, Howard. It's ever so much cooler over here by the
edge. I never felt anything so stuffy as the middle of this place. It
doesn't seem possible for air to get into it."
While speaking she moved with incomparable daintiness to a chair
corresponding to mine and diagonally opposite. With the length and width
of the loggia between us we exchanged glances. In hers she seemed to
say, "If you are banished I shall be banished too"; in mine I tried to
express gratitude. And yet I was aware that I might have misunderstood
both movement and look entirely.
My next surprise was in the words Mr. Brokenshire addressed to me. He
spoke in the soft, slightly nasal staccato which I am told had on his
business associates the effect of a whip-lash.
"We've come over to tell you, Miss--Miss Adare, how much we appreciate
your attitude toward our boy, Hugh. I understand from him that he's
offered to marry you, and that very properly in your situation you've
declined. The boy is foolish, as you evidently see. He meant nothing; he
could do nothing. You're probably not without experience of a similar
kind among the sons of your other employers. At the same time, as you
doubtless expect, we sha'n't let you suffer by your prudence--"
It was a bad beginning. Had he made any sort of appeal to me, however
unkindly worded, I should probably have yielded. But the tradition of
the Fighting Adares was not in me for nothing, and after a smothering
sensation which rendered me speechless I managed to stammer out:
"Won't you allow me to say that--"
The way in which his large, white, handsome hand went up was meant to
impose silence upon me while he himself went on:
"In order that you may not be annoyed by my son's folly in the future
you will leave my daughter's employ, you'll leave Newport--you'll be
well advised, indeed, in going back to your own country, which I
understand to be the British provinces. You will lose nothing, however,
by this conduct, as I've given you to understand. Three--four--five
thousand dollars--I think five ought to be sufficient--generous, in
fact--"
"But I've not refused him," I was able at last to interpose. "I--I mean
to accept him."
There was an instant of stillness during which one could hear the
pounding of the sea.
"Does that mean that you want me to raise your price?"
"No, Mr. Brokenshire. I have no price. If it means anything at all that
has to do with you, it's to tell you that I'm mistress of my acts and
that I consider your son--he's twenty-six--to be master of his."
There was a continuation of the stillness. His voice when he spoke was
the gentlest sound I had ever heard in the way of human utterance. If it
were not for the situation it could have been considered kind:
"Anything at all that has to do with me? You seem to attach no
importance to the fact that Hugh is my son."
I do not know how words came to me. They seemed to flow from my lips
independently of thought.
"I attach importance only to the fact that he's a man. Men who are never
anything but their father's sons aren't men."
"And yet a father has some rights."
"Yes, sir; some. He has the right to follow where his grown-up children
lead. He hasn't the right to lead and require his grown-up children to
follow."
He shifted his ground. "I'm obliged to you for your opinion, but at
present it's not to the point--"
I broke in breathlessly: "Pardon me, sir; it's exactly to the point. I'm
a woman; Hugh's a man. We're--we're in love with each other; it's all we
have to be concerned with."
"Not quite; you've got to be concerned--with me."
"Which is what I deny."
"Oh, denial won't do you any good. I didn't come to hear your denials,
or your affirmations, either. I've come to tell you what to do."
"But if I know that already?"
"That's quite possible--if you mean to play your game as doubtless
you've played it before. I only want to warn you--"
I looked toward Mrs. Brokenshire for help, but her eyes were fixed on
the floor, on which she was drawing what seemed like a design with the
tip of her parasol. The greyhounds were stretched at her feet. I could
do nothing but speak for myself, which I did with a calmness that
surprised me.
"Mr. Brokenshire," I interrupted, "you are a man and I'm a woman. What's
more, you're a strong man, while I'm a woman with no protection at all.
I ask you--do you think you're playing a man's part in insulting me?"
His tone grew kind almost to affection. "My dear young lady, you
misunderstand me. Insult couldn't be further from my thoughts. I'm
speaking entirely for your own sake. You're young; you're very pretty; I
won't say you've no knowledge of the world because I see you have--"
"I've a good deal of knowledge of the world."
"Only not such knowledge as would warrant you in pitting yourself
against me."
"But I don't. If you'd leave me alone--"
"Let us keep to what we're talking of. I'm sorry for you; I really am.
You're at the beginning of what might euphemistically--do you know the
meaning of the word?--be called a career. I should like to save you from
it; that's all. It's why I'm speaking to you very plainly and using
language that can't be misunderstood. There's nothing original in your
proceeding, believe me. Nearly every family of the standing of mine has
had to reckon with something of the sort. Where there are young men, and
young women of--what do you want me to say?--young women who mean to do
the best they can for themselves--let us put it in that way--"
"I'm a gentleman's daughter," I broke in, weakly.
He smiled. "Oh yes; you're all gentlemen's daughters. Neither is there
anything original in that."
"Mrs. Rossiter will tell you that my father was a judge in Canada--"
"The detail doesn't interest me."
"No, but it interests me. It gives me a sense of being equal to--"
"If you please! We'll not go into that."
"But I must speak. If I'm to marry Hugh you must let me tell you who I
am."
"It's not necessary. You're not to marry Hugh. Let that be absolutely
understood. Once you've accepted the fact--"
"I could only accept it from Hugh himself."
"That's foolish. Hugh will do as I tell him."
"But why should he in this case?"
"That again is something we needn't discuss. All that matters, my dear
young lady, is your own interest. I'm working for that, don't you see,
against yourself--"
I burst out, "But why shouldn't I marry him?"
He leaned on the table, tapping gently with his hand. "Because we don't
want you to. Isn't that enough?"
I ignored this. "If it's because you don't know anything about me I
could tell you."
"Oh, but we do know something about you. We know, for example, since
you compel me to say it, that you're a little person of no importance
whatever."
"My family is one of the best in Canada."
"And admitting that that's so, who would care what constituted a good
family in Canada? To us here it means nothing; in England it would mean
still less. I've had opportunities of judging how Canadians are regarded
in England, and I assure you it's nothing to make you proud."
Of the several things he had said to sting me I was most sensitive to
this. I, too, had had opportunities of judging, and knew that if
anything could make one ashamed of being a British colonial of any kind
it would be British opinion of colonials.
"My father used to say--"
He put up his large, white hand. "Another time. Let us keep to the
subject before us."
I omitted the mention of my father to insist on a theory as to which I
had often heard him express himself: "If it's part of the subject before
us that I'm a Canadian and that Canadians are ground between the upper
and lower millstones of both English and American contempt--"
"Isn't that another digression?"
"Not really," I hurried on, determined to speak, "because if I'm a
sufferer by it, you are, too, in your degree. It's part of the
Anglo-Saxon tradition for those who stay behind to despise those who go
out as pioneers. The race has always done it. It isn't only the British
who've despised their colonists. The people of the Eastern States
despised those who went out and peopled the Middle West; those in the
Middle West despised those who went farther West." I was still quoting
my father. "It's something that defies reason and eludes argument. It's
a base strain in the blood. It's like that hierarchy among servants by
which the lady's maid disdains the cook, and the cook disdains the
kitchen-maid, and the proudest are those who've nothing to be proud of.
For you to look down on me because I'm a Canadian, when the commonest of
Englishmen, with precisely the same justification, looks down on you--"
"Dear young lady," he broke in, soothingly, "you're talking wildly.
You're speaking of things you know nothing about. Let us get back to
what we began with. My son has offered to marry you--"
"He didn't offer to marry me. He asked me--he begged me--to marry him."
"The way of putting it is of no importance."
"Ah, but it is."
"I mean that, however he expressed it--however you express it--the
result must be the same."
I nerved myself to look at him steadily. "I mean to accept him. When he
asked me yesterday I said I wouldn't give him either a Yes or a No till
I knew what you and his family thought of it. But now that I do know--"
"You're determined to try the impossible."
"It won't be the impossible till he tells me so."
He seemed for a second or two to study me. "Suppose I accepted you as
what you say you are--as a young woman of good antecedents and honorable
character. Would you still persist in the effort to force yourself on a
family that didn't want you?"
I confess that in the language Mr. Strangways and I had used in the
morning, he had me here "on the hip." To force myself on a family that
didn't want me would normally have been the last of my desires. But I
was fighting now for something that went beyond my desires--something
larger--something national, as I conceived of nationality--something
human--though I couldn't have said exactly what it was. I answered only
after long deliberation.
"I couldn't stop to consider a family. My object would be to marry the
man who loved me--and whom I loved."
"So that you'd face the humiliation--"
"It wouldn't be humiliation, because it would have nothing to do with
me. It would pass into another sphere."
"It wouldn't be another sphere to him."
"I should have to let him take care of that. It's all I can manage to
look out for myself--"
There seemed to be some admiration in his tone.
"Which you seem marvelously well fitted to do."
"Thank you."
"In fact, it's one of the ways in which you betray yourself. An innocent
girl--"
I strained forward in my chair. "Wouldn't it be fair for you to tell me
what you mean by the word innocent?"
"I mean a girl who has no special ax to grind--"
I could hear my foot tapping on the floor, but I was too indignant to
restrain myself. "Even that figure of speech leaves too much to the
imagination."
He studied me again. "You're very sharp."
"Don't I need to be," I demanded, "with an enemy of your acumen?"
"But I'm not your enemy. It's what you don't seem to see. I'm your
friend. I'm trying to keep you out of a situation that would kill you if
you got into it."
I think I laughed. "Isn't death preferable to dishonor?" I saw my
mistake in the quickness with which Mrs. Brokenshire looked up. "There
are more kinds of dishonor than one," I explained, loftily, "and to me
the blackest would be in allowing you to dictate to me."
"My dear young woman, I dictate to men--"
"Oh, to men!"
"I see! You presume on your womanhood. It's a common American expedient,
and a cheap one. But I don't stop for that."
"You may not stop for womanhood, Mr. Brokenshire; but neither does
womanhood stop for you."
He rose with an air of weary patience. "I'm afraid we sha'n't gain
anything by talking further--"
"I'm afraid not." I, too, rose, advancing to the table. We confronted
each other across it, while one of the dogs came nosing to his master's
hand. I had barely the strength to gasp on: "We've had our talk and you
see where I am. I ask nothing but the exercise of human liberty--and the
measure of respect I conceive to be due to every one. Surely you, an
American, a representative of what America is supposed to stand for,
can't think of it as too much."
"If America is supposed to stand for your marrying my son--"
"America stands, so I've been told by Americans, for the reasonable
freedom of the individual. If Hugh wants to marry me--"
"Hugh will marry the woman I approve of."
"Then that apparently is what we must put to the test."
I was now so near to tears that I suppose he saw an opening to his own
advantage. Coming round the table, he stood looking down at me with that
expression which I can only describe as sympathetic. With all the
dominating aggressiveness which either forced you to give in to him or
urged you to fight him till you dropped, there was that about him which
left you with a lingering suspicion that he might be right. It was the
man who might be right who was presently sitting easily on the edge of
the table, so that his face was on a level with my own, and saying in a
kindly voice:
"Now look here! Let's be reasonable. I don't want to be unfair to you,
or to say anything a man isn't justified in saying to a woman. I'm
willing to throw the whole blame on Hugh--"
"I'm not," I declared, hotly.
"That's generous; but I'm speaking of myself. I'm willing to throw the
whole blame on Hugh, because he's my son. I'll absolve you, if you like,
because you're a stranger and a girl, and consider you a victim--"
"I'm not a victim," I insisted. "I'm only a human being, asking for a
human being's rights."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, rights! Who knows what rights are?"
"I do. That is," I corrected, "I know my own."
"Oh, of course! One always knows one's own. One's own rights are
everything one can get. Now you can't get Hugh; but you can get five
thousand dollars. That's a lot of money. There are men all over the
United States who'd cut off a hand for it. You won't have to cut off a
hand. You only need to be a good, sensible little girl and--get out."
Perhaps he thought I was yielding, for he tapped his side pocket as he
went on speaking. "It won't take a minute. I've got a check-book here--a
stroke of the pen--"
My work was lying on the table a few inches away. Leaning forward
deliberately I put it into the basket, which I tucked under my arm. I
looked at Mrs. Brokenshire, who was leaning forward and looking at me. I
inclined my head with a slight salutation, to which she did not respond,
and turned away. Of him I took no notice.
"So it's war."
I was half-way to the dining-room when I heard him say that. As I paused
to look back he was still sitting sidewise on the edge of the table,
swinging a leg and staring after me.
"No, sir," I said, quietly. "It takes two to fight, and I should never
think of being one."
"You know, of course, that I shall have no mercy on you."
"No, sir; I don't."
"Then you can know it now. I'm sorry for you; but I can't afford to
spare you. Bigger things than you have come in my way--and have been
blasted."
Mrs. Brokenshire made a quick little movement behind his back. It told
me nothing I understood then, though I was able to interpret it later. I
could only say, in a voice that shook with the shaking of my whole body:
"You couldn't blast me, sir, because--because--"
"Yes? Because--what? I should like to know."
There was a robin hopping on the lawn outside and I pointed to it. "You
couldn't blast a little bird like that with a bombshell."
"Oh, birds have been shot."
"Yes, sir; with a fowling-piece; but not with a howitzer. The one is too
big; the other is too small."
I was about to drop him a little courtesy when I saw him wink. It was a
grotesque, amusing wink that quivered and twisted till it finally
closed the left eye. If he had been a less handsome man the effect would
have been less absurd.
I made my courtesy the deeper, bending my head and lowering my eyes so
as to spare him the knowledge that I saw.