As a matter of fact, that was all Mrs. Rossiter and I did say. I was so
relieved at not being thrown out of house and home on the instant that I
went back to Gladys and her lisping in French almost cheerily. You will
think me pusillanimous--and I was. I didn't want to go to Mrs. Applegate
and the Home for Working-Girls. As far as food and shelter were
concerned I liked them well enough where I was. I liked Mrs. Rossiter
too. I should be sorry to give the impression that she was supercilious
or unkind. She was neither the one nor the other. If she betrayed little
sentiment or sympathy toward me, it was because of admitting me into
that feminine freemasonry in which the emotional is not called for. I
might suffer while she remained indifferent; I might be killed on the
spot while she wouldn't shed a tear; and yet there was a heartless,
good-natured, live-and-let-live detachment about her which left me with
nothing but good-will.
Then, too, I knew that when I married Hugh she would do nothing of her
own free will against me. She would not brave her father's decree, but
she wouldn't be intolerant; she might think Hugh had been a fool, but
when she could do so surreptitiously she would invite him and me to
dinner.
As this was a kind of recognition in advance, I could not be otherwise
than grateful.
It made waiting for Hugh the easier. I calculated that if he entered
into some sort of partnership with his cousin Andrew Brew--I didn't in
the least know what--we might be married within a month or two. At
furthest it might be about the time when Mrs. Rossiter removed to New
York, which would make it October or November. I could then slip quietly
back to Halifax, be quietly married, and quietly settle with Hugh in
Boston. In the mean time I was glad not to be disturbed.
I spent, therefore, a pleasant morning with my pupil, and ate a pleasant
lunch, watching from the gable window of the school-room the great
people assemble in the breakfast loggia in honor of the Marquise de
Pompadour's mother. I am not sure that old Madame Poisson ever went to
court; but if she did I know the courtiers must have shown her just such
deference as that which Mrs. Rossiter's guests exhibited to this
withered old lady with the hooked nose and the lorgnette.
I was curious about the whole entertainment. It was not the only one of
the kind I had seen from a distance since coming to Mrs. Rossiter, and I
couldn't help comparisons with the same kind of thing as done in the
ways with which I was familiar. Here it was less a luncheon than it was
an exquisite thing on the stage, rehearsed to the last point. In
England, in Canada, luncheon would be something of a friendly haphazard,
primarily for the sake of getting food, secondly as a means to a
scrambling, jolly sort of social intercourse, and hardly at all a
ceremonial. Here the ceremonial came first. Hostess and guests seemed
alike to be taking part in a rite of seeing and being seen. The food,
which was probably excellent, was a matter of slight importance. The
social intercourse amounted to nothing, since they all knew one another
but too well, and had no urgent vitality of interests in any case. The
rite was the thing. Every detail was prepared for that. Silver,
porcelain, flowers, doilies, were of the most expensive and the most
correct. The guests were dressed to perfection--a little too well,
according to the English standard, but not too well for a function. As a
function it was beautiful, an occasion of privilege, a proof of
attainment. It was the best thing of its kind America could show. Those
who had money could alone present the passport that would give the right
of admission.
If I had a criticism to make, it was that the guests were too much
alike. They were all business men, and the wives or widows of business
men. The two or three who did nothing but live on inherited incomes were
business men in heart and in blood. Granted that in the New World the
business man must be dominant, it was possible to have too much of him.
Having too much of him lowered the standard of interest, narrowed the
circle of taste. In the countries I knew the business man might be
present at such a festivity, but there would be something to give him
color, to throw him into relief. There would be a touch of the creative
or the intellectual, of the spiritual or the picturesque. The company
wouldn't be all of a gilded drab. There would be a writer or a painter
or a politician or an actor or a soldier or a priest. There would be
something that wasn't money before it was anything else. Here there was
nothing. Birds of a feather were flocking together, and they were all
parrots or parrakeets. They had plumage, but no song. They drove out the
thrushes and the larks and the wild swans. Their shrill screeches and
hoarse shouts came up in a not wholly pleasant babel to the open window
where I sat looking down and Gladys hovered and hopped, wondering if
Thomas, the rosy-cheeked footman, would remember to bring us some of the
left-over ice-cream.
I thought it was a pity. With elements as good as could be found
anywhere to form a Society--that fusion of all varieties of achievement
to which alone the word written with a capital can be applied--there was
no one to form it. It was a woman's business; and for the role of
hostess in the big sense the American woman, as far as I could judge,
had little or no aptitude. She was too timid, too distrustful of
herself, too much afraid of doing the wrong thing or of knowing the
wrong people. She was so little sure of her standing that, as Mrs.
Rossiter expressed it, she could be "queered" by shaking hands with
Libby Jaynes. She lacked authority. She could stand out in a throng by
her dress or her grace, but she couldn't lead or combine or co-ordinate.
She could lend a charming hand where some one else was the Lady Holland
or the Madame de Stael, but she couldn't take the seemingly
heterogeneous types represented by the writer, the painter, the
politician, the actor, the soldier, the priest, and the business man and
weld them into the delightful, promiscuous, entertaining whole to be
found, in its greater or lesser degree, according to size or importance
of place, almost anywhere within the borders of the British Empire. I
came to the conclusion that this was why there were few "great houses"
in America and fewer women of importance.
It was why, too, the guests were subordinated to the ceremonial. It
couldn't be any other way. With flint and steel you can get a spark; but
where you have nothing but flint or nothing but steel, friction produces
no light. The American hostess, in so far as she exists, rarely hopes
for anything from the clash of minds, and therefore centers her
attention on her doilies. It must be admitted that she has the most
tasteful doilies in the world. There is a pathos in the way in which,
for want of the courage to get interesting human specimens together, she
spends her strength on the details of her rite. It is like the instinct
of women who in default of babies lavish their passion on little dogs.
One can say that it is _faute de mieux_. _Faute de mieux_ was, I am
sure, the reason why Ethel Rossiter took her table appointments with
what seemed to me such extraordinary seriousness. When all was said and
done it was the only real thing to care about.
I repeat that I thought it was a pity. I had dreams, as I looked down,
of what I could do with the same use of money, the same position of
command. I had dreams that the Brokenshires accepted me, that Hugh came
into the means that would be his in the ordinary course. I saw myself
standing at the head of the stairway of a fine big house in Washington
or New York. People were streaming upward, and I was shaking hands with
a delightful, smiling _desinvolture_. I saw men and women of all the
ranks and orders of conspicuous accomplishment, each contributing a
gift--some nothing but beauty, some nothing but wit, some nothing but
money, some nothing but position, some nothing but fame, some nothing
but national importance. The Brokenshire clan was there, and the
Billings and the Grays and the Burkes; but statesmen and diplomatists,
too, were there, and those leaders in the world of the pen and the brush
and the buskin of whom, oddly enough, I saw Larry Strangways, with his
eternal defensive smile, emerging from the crowd as chief. I was wearing
diamonds, black velvet, and a train, waving in my disengaged hand a
spangled fan.
From these visions I was roused by Gladys, who came prancing from the
stair-head.
"_V'la, Mademoiselle! V'la Thomas et le ice-cream!_"
Having consumed this dainty, we watched the company wander about the
terraces and lawns and finally drift away. I was getting Gladys ready
for her walk when Thomas, with a pitying expression on his boyish face,
came back to say that Mr. Brokenshire would like to speak with me
down-stairs.
I was never so near fainting in my life. I had barely the strength to
gasp, "Very well, Thomas, I'll come," and to send Gladys to her nurse.
Thomas watched me with his good, kind, sympathetic eyes. Like the other
servants, he must have known something of my secret and was on my side.
I called him the _bouton de rose_, partly because his clean, pink cheeks
suggested a Killarney breaking into flower, and partly because in his
waiting on Gladys and me he had the yearning, care-taking air of a
fatherly little boy. Just now he could only march down the passage ahead
of me, throw open the door of my bedroom as if he was lord chamberlain
to a queen, and give me a look which seemed to say, "If I can be your
liege knight against this giant, pray, dear lady, command me." I threw
him my thanks in a trumped-up smile, which he returned with such sweet
encouragement as to nearly unman me.
I stayed in my room only long enough to be sure that I was neat,
smoothing my hair and picking one or two threads from my white-linen
suit. The suit had scarlet cuffs and a scarlet belt, and as there was a
scarlet flush beneath my summer tan, like the color under the glaze of a
Chinese jar, I could see for myself that my appearance was not
ineffective.
The _bouton de rose_ was in waiting at the foot of the stairs as I came
down. Through the hall and the dining-room he ushered me royally; but as
I came out on the breakfast loggia my royalty stopped with what I can
only describe as a bump.
The guests had gone, but the family remained. The last phase of the
details of the rite were also on the table. All the doilies were there,
and the magnificent lace centerpiece which Mrs. Rossiter had at various
times called on me to admire. The old Spode dessert service was the more
dimly, anciently brilliant because of the old polished oak, and so were
the glasses and finger-bowls picked out in gold.
Mr. Brokenshire, whom I had seen from my window strolling with some
ladies on the lawn, had returned to the foot of the table, opposite to
the door by which I came out, where he now sat in a careless, sidewise
attitude, fingering his cigar. Old Mrs. Billing, who was beside him on
his right, put up her lorgnette immediately I appeared in the entrance.
Mrs. Rossiter had dropped into a chance chair half-way down the table on
the left; but Mrs. Brokenshire, oddly enough, was in that same seat in
the far corner to which she had retreated on the occasion of my
summoning ten days before. I wondered whether this was by intention or
by chance, though I was presently to know.
Terrified though I was, I felt salvation to lie in keeping a certain
dignity. I made, therefore, something between a bow and a courtesy,
first to Mr. Brokenshire, then to Mrs. Billing, then to Mrs. Rossiter,
and lastly to Mrs. Brokenshire, to whom I raised my eyes and looked all
the way diagonally across the loggia. I took my time in making these
four distinct salutations, though in response I was only stared at.
After that there was a space of some seconds in which I merely stood, in
my pose of _Ecce Femina_!
"Sit down!"
The command came, of course, from J. Howard. The chair to which I had
once before been banished being still in its corner, I slipped into it.
"I wished to speak to you, Miss--a--Miss--"
He glanced helplessly toward his daughter, who supplied the name.
"Ah yes. I wished to speak to you, Miss Adare, because my son has been
acting very foolishly."
I made my tone as meek as I could, scarcely daring to lift my eyes from
the floor. "Wouldn't it be well, sir, to talk to him about that?"
Mrs. Billing's lorgnette came down. She glanced toward her son-in-law as
though finding the point well taken.
He went on imperturbably. "I've said all I mean to say to him. My
present appeal is to you."
"Oh, then this is an--appeal?"
He seemed to hesitate, to reflect. "If you choose to take it so," he
admitted, stiffly.
"It surely isn't as I choose to take it, sir; it's as you choose to
mean."
"Don't bandy words."
"But I must use words, sir. I only want to be sure that you're making an
appeal to me, and not giving me commands."
He spoke sharply. "I wish you to understand that you're inducing a young
man to act in a way he is going to find contrary to his interests."
I could barely nerve myself to look up at him. "If by the 'young man'
you mean Mr. Hugh Brokenshire, then I'm inducing him to do nothing
whatever; unless," I added, "you call it an inducement that I--I"--I was
bound to force the word out--"unless you call it an inducement that I
love him."
"But that's it," Mrs. Rossiter broke in. "That's what my father means.
If you'd stop caring anything about him you wouldn't give him
encouragement."
I looked at her with a dim, apologetic smile. It was a time, I felt, to
speak not only with more courage, but with more sentiment than I was
accustomed to use in expressing myself.
"I'm afraid I can't give my heart, and take it back, like that."
"I can," she returned, readily. She spoke as if it was a matter of
cracking her knuckles or wagging her ears. "If I don't want to like a
person I don't do it. It's training and self-command."
"You're fortunate," I said, quietly. Why I should have glanced again at
Mrs. Brokenshire I hardly know; but I did so, as I added: "I've had no
training of that kind--and I doubt if many women have."
Mrs. Brokenshire, who was gazing at me with the same kind of fascinated
stare as on the former occasion, faintly, but quite perceptibly,
inclined her head. In this movement I was sure I had the key to the
mystery that seemed to surround her.
"All this," J. Howard declared, magisterially, "is beside the point. If
you've told my son that you'd marry him--"
"I haven't."
"Or even given him to understand that you would--"
"I've only given him to understand that I'd marry him--on conditions."
"Indeed? And would it be discreet on my part to inquire the terms you've
been kind enough to lay down?"
I pulled myself together and spoke firmly. "The first is that I'll marry
him--if his family come to me and express a wish to have me as a sister
and a daughter."
Old Mrs. Billing emitted the queer, cracked cackle of a hen when it
crows, but she put up her lorgnette and examined me more closely. Ethel
Rossiter gasped audibly, moving her chair a little farther round in my
direction. Mrs. Brokenshire stared with concentrated intensity, but
somehow, I didn't know why, I felt that she was backing me up.
The great man contented himself with saying, "Oh, you will!"
I ignored the tone to speak with a decision and a spirit I was far from
feeling.
"Yes, sir, I will. I shall not steal him from you--not so long as he's
dependent."
"That's very kind. And may I ask--"
"You haven't let me tell you my other condition."
"True. Go on."
I panted the words out as best I could. "I've told him I'd marry him--if
he rendered himself independent; if he earned his own money and became a
man."
"Ah! And you expect one or the other of these miracles to take place?"
"I expect both."
Though the words uttered themselves, without calculation or expectation
on my part, they gave me so much of the courage of conviction that I
held up my head. To my surprise Mrs. Billing didn't crow again or so
much as laugh. She only gasped out that long "Ha-a!" which proclaims
the sporting interest, of which both Hugh and Ethel Rossiter had told me
in the morning.
Mr. Brokenshire seemed to brace himself, leaning forward, with his elbow
on the table and his cigar between the fingers of his raised right hand.
His eyes were bent on me--fine eyes they were!--as if in kindly
amusement.
"My good girl," he said, in his most pitying voice, "I wish I could tell
you how sorry for you I am. Neither of these dreams can possibly come
true--"
My blood being up, I interrupted with some force. "Then in that case,
Mr. Brokenshire, you can be quite easy in your mind, for I should never
marry your son." Having made this statement, I followed it up by saying,
"Since that is understood, I presume there's no object in my staying any
longer." I was half rising when his hand went up.
"Wait. We'll tell you when to go. You haven't yet got my point. Perhaps
I haven't made it clear. I'm not interested in your hopes--"
"No, sir; of course not; nor I in yours."
"I haven't inquired as to that--but we'll let it pass. We're both
apparently interested in my son."
I gave a little bow of assent.
"I said I wished to make an appeal to you."
I made another little bow of assent.
"It's on his behalf. You could do him a great kindness. You could make
him understand--I gather that he's under your influence to some degree;
you're a clever girl, I can see that--but you could make him understand
that in fancying he'll marry you he's starting out on a task in which
there's no hope whatever."
"But there is."
"Pardon me, there isn't. By your own showing there isn't. You've laid
down conditions that will never be fulfilled."
"What makes you say that?"
"My knowledge of the world."
"Oh, but would you call that knowledge of the world?" I was swept along
by the force of an inner indignation which had become reckless.
"Knowledge of the world," I hurried on, "implies knowledge of the human
heart, and you've none of that at all." I could see him flush.
"My good girl, we're here to speak of you, not of me--"
"Surely we're here to speak of us both, since at any minute I choose I
can marry your son. If I don't marry him it's because I don't choose;
but when I do choose--"
Again the hand went up. "Yes, of course; but that's not what we want
specially to hear. Let us assume, as you say, that you can marry my son
at any time you choose. You don't choose, for the reason that you're
astute enough to see that your last state would be worse than the first.
To enter a family that would disown you at once--"
I kept down my tone, though I couldn't master my excitement. "That's not
my reason. If I don't marry him it's precisely because I have the power.
There are people--cowards they are at heart, as a rule--who because they
have the power use it to be insolent, especially to those who are
weaker. I'm not one of those. There's a _noblesse oblige_ that compels
one in spite of everything. In dealing with an elderly man, who I
suppose loves his son, and with a lady who's been so kind to me as Mrs.
Rossiter--"
"You've been hired, and you're paid. There's no special call for
gratitude."
"Gratitude is in the person who feels it; but that isn't what I
specially want to say."
"What you specially want to say apparently is--"
"That I'm not afraid of you, sir; I'm not afraid of your family or your
money or your position or anything or any one you can control. If I
don't marry Hugh, it's for the reason that I've given, and for no other.
As long as he's dependent on your money I shall not marry him till you
come and beg me to do it--and that I shall expect of you."
He smiled tolerantly. "That is, till you've brought us to our knees."
I could barely pipe, but I stood to my guns. "If you like the
expression, sir--yes. I shall not marry Hugh--so long as you support
him--till I've brought you to your knees."
If I expected the heavens to fall at this I was disappointed. All J.
Howard did was to lean on his arm toward Mrs. Billing and talk to her
privately. Mrs. Rossiter got up and went to her father, entering also
into a whispered colloquy. Once or twice he glanced backward to his
wife, but she was now gazing sidewise in the direction of the house and
over the lines of flowers that edged the terraces.
When Mrs. Rossiter had gone back to her seat, and J. Howard had raised
himself from his conversation with Mrs. Billing, he began again to
address me tranquilly:
"I hoped you might have sympathized with my hopes for Hugh, and have
helped to convince him how useless his plans for a marriage between him
and you must be."
I answered with decision: "No; I can't do that."
"I should have appreciated it--"
"That I can quite understand."
"And some day have shown you that I'm acting for your good."
"Oh, sir," I cried, "whatever else you do, you'll let my good be my own
affair, will you not?"
I thought I heard Mrs. Billing say, "Brava!" At any rate, she tapped her
fingers together as if in applause. I began to feel a more lenient
spirit toward her.
"I'm quite willing to do that," my opponent said, in a moderate,
long-suffering tone, "now that I see that you refuse to take Hugh's good
into consideration. So long as you encourage him in his present
madness--"
"I'm not doing that."
He took no notice of the interruption. "--I'm obliged to regard him as
nothing to me."
"That must be between you and your son."
"It is. I'm only asking you to note that you--ruin him."
"No, no," I began to protest, but he silenced me with a movement of his
hand.
"I'm not a hard man naturally," he went on, in his tranquil voice, "but
I have to be obeyed."
"Why?" I demanded. "Why should you be obeyed more than any one else?"
"Because I mean to be. That must be enough--"
"But it isn't," I insisted. "I've no intention of obeying you--"
He broke in with some haste: "Oh, there's no question of you, my dear
young lady. I've nothing to do with you. I'm speaking of my son. He must
obey me, or take the consequences. And the consequences will last as
long as he lives. I'm not one to speak rashly, or to speak twice. So
that's what I'm putting to you. Do you think--do you honestly
think--that you're improving your position by ruining a man who sooner
or later--sooner rather than later--will lay his ruin at your door and
loathe you? Come now! You're a clever girl. The case is by no means
beyond you. Think, and think straight."
"I am thinking, sir. I'm thinking so straight that I see right through
you. My father used to say--"
"No reminiscence, please."
"Very well, then; we'll let the reminiscence go. But you're thinking of
committing a crime, a crime against Hugh, a crime against yourself, a
crime against love, every kind of love--and that's the worst crime of
all--and you haven't the moral courage to shoulder the guilt yourself;
you're trying to shuffle it off on me."
"My good woman--"
But nothing could silence me now. I leaned forward, with hands clasped
in my lap, and merely looked at him. My voice was low, but I spoke
rapidly:
"You're talking to bewilder me, to throw dust in my eyes, to snare me
into taking the blame for what you're doing of your own free act. It's a
kind of reasoning which some girls would be caught by, but I'm not one
of them. If Hugh is ruined in the sense you mean, it's his father who
will ruin him--but even that is not the worst. What's worst, what's
dastardly, what's not merely unworthy of a man like you but unworthy of
any man--of anything that calls itself a male--is that you, with all
your resources of every kind, should try to foist your responsibilities
off on a woman who has no resources whatever. That I shouldn't have
believed of any of your sex--if it hadn't happened to myself."
But my eloquence left him as unmoved as before. He whispered with Mrs.
Billing. The old lady was animated, making beats and lunges with her
lorgnette.
"So that what it comes to," he said to me at last, lifting himself up
and speaking in a tired voice, "is that you really mean to pit yourself
against me."
"No, sir; but that you mean to pit yourself against me." Something
compelled me to add: "And I can tell you now that you'll be beaten in
the end."
Perhaps he didn't hear me, for he rose and, stooping, carried on his
discussion with Mrs. Billing. There was a long period in which no one
paid any further attention to my presence; in fact, no one paid any
attention to me any more. To my last words I expected some retort, but
none came. Ethel Rossiter joined her father at the end of the table, and
when Mrs. Billing also rose the conversation went on _a trois_. Mrs.
Brokenshire alone remained seated and aloof.
But the moment came when her husband turned toward her. Not having been
dismissed, I merely stood and looked on. What I saw then passed quickly,
so quickly that it took a minute of reflection before I could put two
and two together.
Having taken one step toward his wife, Howard Brokenshire stood still,
abruptly, putting his hand suddenly to the left side of his face. His
wife, too, put up her hand, but palm outward and as if to wave him back.
At the same time she averted her face--and I knew it was his eye.
It was over before either of the other two women perceived anything.
Presently, all four were out on the grass, strolling along in a little
chattering group together. My dismissal having come automatically, as
you might say, I was free to go.