An hour later I had what up to then I must call the greatest surprise of
my life.
I was crying by myself on the shore, in that secluded corner among the
rocks where Hugh had first told me that he loved me. As a rule, I don't
cry easily. I did it now chiefly from being overwrought. I was desolate.
I missed Hugh. The few days or few weeks that must pass before I could
see him again stretched before me like a century. All whom I could call
my own were so far away. Even had they been near, they would probably,
with the individualism of our race, have left me to shift for myself.
Louise and Victoria had always given me to understand that, though they
didn't mind lending me an occasional sisterly hand, my life was my own
affair. It would have been a relief to talk the whole thing out
philosophically with Larry Strangways. As I came from the house I tried,
for the first time since knowing him, to throw myself in his path; but,
as usual when one needs a friend, he was nowhere to be seen.
I could, therefore, only scramble down to my favorite corner among the
rocks. Not that it was really a scramble. As a matter of fact, the path
was easy if you knew where to find it; but it was hidden from the
ordinary passer on the Cliff Walk, first by a boulder, round which you
had to slip, and then by a tangle of wild rosebines, wild raspberries,
and Queen Anne's lace. It was something like a secret door, known only
to the Rossiter household, their servants, and their friends. Once you
had passed it you had a measure of the public privacy you get in a box
at the theater or the opera. You had space and ease and a wide outlook,
with no fear of intrusion.
I cannot say that I was unhappy. I was rather in that state of mind
which the American people, with its gift for the happy, unexpected word,
have long spoken of as "mad." I was certainly mad. I was mad with J.
Howard Brokenshire first of all; I was mad with his family for having
got up and left me without so much as a nod; I was mad with Hugh for
having made me fall in love with him; I was mad with Larry Strangways
for not having been on the spot; and I was most of all mad with myself.
I had been boastful and bumptious; I had been disrespectful and absurd.
It was foolish to make worse enemies than I had already. Mrs. Rossiter
wouldn't keep me now. There would be no escape from Mrs. Applegate and
the Home for Working-Girls.
The still summer beauty of the afternoon added to my wretchedness. All
round and before me there was luxury and joyousness and sport. The very
sea was in a playful mood, lapping at my feet like a tamed, affectionate
leviathan, and curling round the ledges in the offing with delicate
lace-like spouts of spume. Sea-gulls swooped and hovered with hoarse
cries and a lovely effect of silvery wings. Here and there was a sail on
the blue, or the smoke of a steamer or a war-ship. Eastons Point, some
two or three miles away, was a long, burnished line of ripening wheat.
To right and to left of me were broken crags, red-yellow, red-brown,
red-green, where lovers and happy groups could perch or nestle
carelessly, thrusting trouble for the moment to a distance. I had to
bring my trouble with me. If it had not been for trouble I shouldn't
have been there. There wasn't a soul in the world who would fight to
take my part but Hugh, and I was, in all my primary instincts, a
clinging, parasitic thing that hated to stand alone.
There was nothing for it then but crying, and I did that to the best of
my ability; not loudly, of course, or vulgarly, but gently and
sentimentally, with an immense pity for myself. I cried for what had
happened that day and for what had happened yesterday. I cried for
things long past, which I had omitted to cry for at the time. When I had
finished with these I went further back to dig up other ignominies, and
I cried for them. I cried for my father and mother and my orphaned
condition; I cried for the way in which my father--who was a good, kind
man, _du reste_--had lived on his principal, and left me with scarcely a
penny to my name; I cried for my various disappointments in love, and
for the girl friends who had predeceased me. I massed all these motives
together and cried for them in bulk. I cried for Hugh and the brilliant
future we should have on the money he would make. I cried for Larry
Strangways and the loneliness his absence would entail on me. I cried
for the future as well as for the past and if I could have thought of a
future beyond the future I should have cried for that. It was delicious
and sad and consoling all at once; and when I had no more tears I felt
almost as if Hugh's strong arm had been about me, and I was comforted.
I was just wiping my eyes and wondering whether at the moment of going
homeward my nose would be too red, when I heard a quiet step. I thought
I must be mistaken. It was so unlikely that any one would be there at
this hour of the day--the servants generally came down at night--that
for a minute I didn't turn. It was the uncomfortable sense that some one
was behind me that made me look back at last, when I caught the flutter
of lace and the shimmer of pale-rose taffeta. Mrs. Brokenshire had worn
lace and pale-rose taffeta at the lunch.
Fear and amazement wrestled in my soul together. Struggling to my feet,
I turned round as slowly as I could.
"Don't get up," she said in a sweet, quiet voice. "I'll come and sit
down beside you, if I may." She had already seated herself on a low flat
rock as she said, "I saw you were crying, so I waited."
I am not usually at a loss for words, but I was then. I stuttered and
stammered and babbled, without being able to say anything articulate.
Indeed, I had nothing articulate to say. The mind had suspended its
action.
My impressions were all subconscious, but registered exactly. She was
the most exquisite production I had ever seen in human guise. Her
perfection was that of some lovely little bird in which no color fails
to shade harmoniously into some other color, in which no single feather
is out of place. The word I used of her was _soignee_--that which is
smoothed and curled and polished and caressed till there is not an
eyelash which hasn't received its measure of attention. I don't mean
that she was artificial, or that her effects were too thought out. She
was no more artificial than a highly cultivated flower is artificial, or
a many-faceted diamond, or a King Charles spaniel, or anything else that
is carefully bred or cut or shaped. She was the work of some specialist
in beauty, who had no aim in view but to give to the world the loveliest
thing possible.
When I had mastered my confusion sufficiently I sat down with the words,
rather lamely spoken:
"I didn't know any one was here. I hope I haven't kept you standing
long."
"No; but I was watching you. I came down only a few minutes after you
did. You see, I was afraid--when we came away from Mrs. Rossiter's--that
you might be unhappy."
"I'm not as unhappy as I was," I faltered, without knowing what I said,
and was rewarded to see her smile.
It was an innocent smile, without glee, a little sad in fact, but full
of unutterable things like a very young child's. I had never seen such
teeth, so white, so small, so regular.
"I'm glad of that," she said, simply. "I thought if some--some other
woman was near you, you mightn't feel so--so much alone. That's why I
watched round and followed you."
I could have fallen at her feet, but I restricted myself to saying:
"Thank you very much. It does make a difference." I got courage to add,
however, with a smile of my own, "I see you know."
"Yes, I know. I've thought about you a good deal since that day about a
fortnight ago--you remember?"
"Oh yes, I remember. I'm not likely to forget, am I? Only, you see, I
had no idea--if I had, I mightn't have felt so--so awfully forlorn."
Her eyes rested upon me. I can only say of them that they were sweet and
lovely, which is saying nothing at all. Sweet and lovely are the words
that come to me when I think of her, and they are so lamentably
overworked. She seemed to study me with a child-like unconsciousness.
"Yes," she said at last, "I suppose you do feel forlorn. I didn't think
of that or--or I might have managed to come to you before."
"That you should have come now," I said, warmly, "is the kindest thing
one human being ever did for another."
Again there was the smile, a little to one side of the mouth, wistful,
wan.
"Oh no, it isn't. I've really come on my own account." I waited for some
explanation of this, but she only went on: "Tell me about yourself. How
did you come here? Ethel Rossiter has never really said anything about
you. I should like to know."
Her manner had the gentle command that queens and princesses and very
rich women unconsciously acquire. I tried to obey her, but found little
to say. Uttered to her my facts were so meager. I told her of my father
and mother, of my father's mania for old books, of Louise and Victoria
and their husbands, of my visits abroad; but I felt her attention
wandering. That is, I felt she was interested not in my data, but in me.
Halifax and Canada and British army and navy life and rare first
editions were outside the range of her ken. Paris she knew; and London
she knew; but not from any point of view from which I could speak of
them. I could see she was the well-placed American who knows some of the
great English houses and all of the great English hotels, but nothing of
that Britannic backbone of which I might have been called a rib. She
broke in presently, not apropos of anything I was saying, with the
words:
"How old are you?"
I told her I was twenty-four.
"I'm twenty-nine."
I said I had understood as much from Mrs. Rossiter, but that I could
easily have supposed her no older than myself. This was true. Had there
not been that something mournful in her face which simulates maturity I
could have thought of her as nothing but a girl. If I stood in awe of
her it was only of what I guessed at as a sorrow.
She went on to give me two or three details of her life, with nearly all
of which I was familiar through hints from Hugh and Ethel Rossiter.
"We're really Philadelphians, my mother and I. We've lived a good deal
in New York, of course, and abroad. I was at school in Paris, too, at
the Convent des Abeilles." She wandered on, somewhat inconsequentially,
with facts of this sort, when she added, suddenly: "I was to have
married some one else."
I knew then that I had the clue to her thought. The marriage she had
missed was on her mind. It created an obsession or a broken heart, I
wasn't quite sure which. It was what she wanted to talk about, though
her glance fell before the spark of intelligence in mine.
[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE SHE HAD MISSED WAS ON HER MIND. IT CREATED
AN OBSESSION OR A BROKEN HEART, I WASN'T QUITE SURE WHICH]
Since there was nothing I could say in actual words, I merely murmured
sympathetically. At the same time there came to me, like the slow
breaking of a dawn, an illuminating glimpse of the great J. Howard's
life. I seemed to be admitted into its secret, into a perception of its
weak spot, more fully than his wife had any notion of. She would never,
I was sure, see what she was betraying to me from my point of view. She
would never see how she was giving him away. She wouldn't even see how
she was giving away herself--she was so sweet, and gentle, and
child-like, and unsuspecting.
I don't know for how many seconds her quiet, inconsequential speech
trickled on without my being able to follow it. I came to myself again,
as it were, on hearing her say:
"And if you do love him, oh, don't give him up!"
I grasped the fact then that I had lost something about Hugh, and did my
best to catch up with it.
"I don't mean to, if either of my conditions is fulfilled. You heard
what they were."
"Oh, but if I were you I wouldn't make them. That's where I think you're
wrong. If you love him--"
"I couldn't steal him from his family, even if I loved him."
"Oh, but it wouldn't be stealing. When two people love each other
there's nothing else to think about."
"And yet that might sometimes be dangerous doctrine."
"If there was never any danger there'd never be any courage. And courage
is one of the finest things in life."
"Yes, of course; but even courage can carry one very far."
"Nothing can carry us so far as love. I see that now. It's why I'm
anxious about poor Hugh. I--I know a man who--who loves a woman whom
he--he couldn't marry, and--" She caught herself up. "I'm fond of Hugh,
you see, even though he doesn't like me. I wish he understood, that they
all understood--that--that it isn't my fault. If I could have had my
way--" She righted herself here with a slight change of tense. "If I
could have my way, Hugh would marry the woman he's in love with and
who's in love with him."
I tried to enroll her decisively on my side.
"So that you don't agree with Mr. Brokenshire."
Her immediate response was to color with a soft, suffused rose-pink like
that of the inside of shells. Her eyes grew misty with a kind of
helplessness. She looked at me imploringly, and looked away. One might
have supposed that she was pleading with me to be let off answering.
Nevertheless, when she spoke at last, her words brought me to a new
phase of her self-revelation.
"Why aren't you afraid of him?"
"Oh, but I am."
"Yes, but not like--" Again she saved herself. "Yes, but not like--so
many people. You may be afraid of him inside, but you fight."
"Any one fights for right."
There was a repetition of the wistful smile, a little to the left corner
of the mouth.
"Oh, do they? I wish I did. Or rather I wish I had."
"It's never too late," I declared, with what was meant to be
encouragement.
There was a queer little gleam in her eye, like that which comes into
the pupil of a startled bird.
"So I've heard some one else say. I suppose it's true--but it frightens
me."
I was quite strangely uneasy. Hints of her story came back to me, but I
had never heard it completely enough to be able to piece the fragments
together. It was new for me to imagine myself called on to protect any
one--I needed protection so much for myself!--but I was moved with a
protective instinct toward her. It was rather ridiculous, and yet it was
so.
"Only one must be sure one is right before one fights, mustn't one?" was
all I could think of saying.
She responded dreamily, looking seaward.
"Don't you think there may be worse things than wrong?"
This being so contrary to my pet principles, I answered, emphatically,
that I didn't think so at all. I brought out my maxim that if you did
right nothing but right could come of it; but she surprised me by
saying, simply, "I don't believe that."
I was a little indignant.
"But it's not a matter of believing; it's one of proving, of
demonstration."
"I've done right, and wrong came of it."
"Oh, but it couldn't--not in the long run."
"Well, then I did wrong. That's what I've been afraid of, and what--what
some one else tells me." If a pet bird could look at you with a
challenging expression it was the thing she did. "Now what do you say?"
I really didn't know what to say. I spoke from instinct, and some common
sense.
"If one's done wrong, or made a mistake, I suppose the only way one can
rectify it is to begin again to do right. Right must have a rectifying
power."
"But if you've made a mistake the mistake is there, unless you go back
and unmake it. If you don't, isn't it what they call building on a bad
foundation?"
"I dare say it is; and yet you can't push a material comparison too far
when you're thinking of spiritual things. This is spiritual, isn't it? I
suppose one can't really do evil and expect good to come of it; but one
can overcome evil with good."
She looked at me with a sweet mistiness.
"I've no doubt that's true, but it's very deep. It's too deep for me."
She rose with an air of dismissing the subject, though she continued to
speak of it allusively. "You know so much about it. I could see you did
from the first. If I was to tell you the whole story--but, of course, I
can't do that. No, don't get up. I have to run away, because we're
expecting people to tea; but I should have liked staying to talk with
you. You're awfully clever, aren't you? I suppose it must be living
round in those queer places--Gibraltar, didn't you say? I've seen
Gibraltar, but only from the steamer, on the way to Naples. I felt that
I was with you from that very first time I saw you. I'd seen you before,
of course, with little Gladys, but not to notice you. I never noticed
you till I heard that Hugh was in love with you. That was just before
Mr. Brokenshire took me over--you remember!--that day. He wanted me to
see how easily he could deal with people who opposed him; but I didn't
think he succeeded very well. He made you go and sit at a distance. That
was to show you he had the power. Did you notice what I did? Oh, I'm
glad. I wanted you to understand that if it was a question of love I
was--I was with you. You saw that, didn't you? Oh, I'm glad. I must run
away now. We've people to tea; but some time, if I can manage it, I'll
come again."
She had begun slipping up the path, like a great rose-colored moth in
the greenery, when she turned to say:
"I can never do anything for you, I'm too afraid of him; but I'm on your
side."
After she had gone I began putting two and two together. What her visit
did for me especially was to distract my mind. I got a better
perspective on my own small drama in seeing it as incidental to a larger
one. That there was a large one here I had no doubt, though I could
neither seize nor outline its proportions. As far as I could judge of my
visitor I found her dazed by the magnitude of the thing that had
happened to her, whatever that was. She was good and kind; she hadn't a
thought that wasn't tender; normally she would have been the devoted,
clinging type of wife I longed to be myself; and yet some one's passion,
or some one's ambition, or both in collusion, had caught her like a bird
in a net.
It was perhaps because she was a woman and I was a woman and J. Howard
was a man that my reactions concerned themselves chiefly with him. I
thought of him throughout the afternoon. I began to get new views of
him. I wondered if he knew of himself what I knew. I supposed he did. I
supposed he must. He couldn't have been married two or three years to
this sweet stricken creature without seeing that her heart wasn't his.
Furthermore, he couldn't have beheld, as he and I had beheld that
afternoon, the hand that went up palm outward, without divining a horror
of his person that was more than a shrinking from his poor contorted
eye. For love the contorted eye would have meant more love, since it
would have been love with its cognate of pity; but not so that uplifted
hand and that instinctive waving of him back. There was more than an
involuntary repulsion in that, more than an instant of abhorrence. What
there was he must have discovered, he must have tasted, from the minute
he first took her in his arms.
I was sorry for him. I could throw enough of the masculine into my
imagination to know how he must adore a creature of such perfected
charm. She was the sort of woman men would adore, especially the men
whose ideal lies first of all in the physical. For them it would mean
nothing that she lacked mentality, that the pendulum of her nature had
only a limited swing; that she was as good as she looked would be
enough, seeing that she looked like an angel straight out of heaven. In
spite of poor J. Howard's kingly suavity I knew he must have minutes of
sheer animal despair, of fierce and bitter suffering.
Mrs. Rossiter spoke to me that evening with a suggestion of reprimand,
which was letting me off easily. I was so sure of my dismissal, that
when I returned to the house from the shore I expected some sort of
_lettre de conge_; but I found nothing. I had had supper with Gladys and
put her to bed when the maid brought me a message to say that Mrs.
Rossiter would like me to come down and see her dress, as she was going
out to dinner.
I was admiring the dress, which was a new one, when she said, rather
fretfully:
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that to father. It upsets him so."
I was adjusting a slight fullness at the back, which made it the easier
for me to answer.
"I wouldn't if he didn't talk like that to me. What can I do? I have to
say something."
She was peering into the cheval glass over her shoulder, giving her
attention to two things at once.
"I mean your saying you expected both of those preposterous things to
happen. Of course, you don't--nor either of them--and it only rubs him
up the wrong way."
I was too meek now to argue the point. Besides, I was preoccupied with
the widening interests in which I found myself involved. To probe the
security of my position once more, I said:
"I wonder you stand it--that you don't send me away."
She was still twisting in front of the cheval glass.
"Don't you think that shoulder-strap is loose? It really looks as if the
whole thing would slip off me. If he can stand it I can," she added, as
a matter of secondary concern.
"Oh, then he can stand it." I felt the shoulder-strap. "No, I think it's
all right, if you don't wriggle too much."
"I'm sure it's going to come down--and there I shall be. He has to stand
it, don't you see, or let you think that you wound him?"
I was frankly curious.
"Do I wound him?"
"He'd never let you know it if you did. The fact that he ignores you and
lets you stay on with me is the only thing by which I can judge. If you
didn't hurt him at all he'd tell me to send you about your business."
She turned from the glass. "Well, if you say that strap is all right I
suppose it must be, but I don't feel any too sure." She was picking up
her gloves and her fan which the maid had laid out, when she said,
suddenly: "If you're so keen on getting married, for goodness' sake why
don't you take that young Strangways?"
My sensation can only be compared to that of a person who has got a
terrific blow on the head from a trip-hammer. I seemed to wonder why I
hadn't been crushed or struck dead. As it was, I felt that I could never
move again from the spot on which I stood. I was vaguely conscious of
something outraged within me and yet was too stunned to resent it. I
could only gasp, feebly, after what seemed an interminable time: "In the
first place, I'm not so awfully keen on getting married--"
She was examining her gloves.
"There, that stupid Seraphine has put me out two lefts. No, she hasn't;
it's all right. Stuff, my dear! Every girl is keen on getting married."
"And then," I stammered on, "Mr. Strangways has never given me the
chance."
"Oh, well, he will. Do hand me my wrap, like a love." I was putting the
wrap over her shoulders as she repeated: "Oh, well, he will. I can tell
by the way he looks at you. It would be ever so much more suitable. Jim
says he'll be a first-class man in time--if you don't rush in like an
idiot and marry Hugh."
"I may marry Hugh," I tried to say, loftily, "but I hope I sha'n't do it
like an idiot."
She swept toward the stairway, but she had left me with subjects for
thought not only for that evening, but for the next day and the next.
Now that the first shock was over I managed to work up the proper sense
of indignity. I told myself I was hurt and offended. She shouldn't have
mentioned such a thing. I wouldn't have stood it from one of my own
sisters. I had never thought of Larry Strangways in any such way, and to
do so disturbed our relations. To begin with, I wasn't in love with him;
and to end with, he was too poor. Not that I was looking for a rich
husband; but neither was I a lunatic. It would be years before he could
think of marrying, if there were no other consideration; and in the mean
time there was Hugh.
There was Hugh with his letters from Boston, full of high ambitious
hopes. Cousin Andrew Brew had written from Bar Harbor that he was coming
to town in a day or two and would give him the interview he demanded.
Already Hugh had his eye on a little house on Beacon Hill--so like a
corner of Mayfair, he wrote, if Mayfair stood on an eminence--in which
we could be as snug as two love-birds. I was composing in my mind the
letter I should write to my aunt in Halifax, asking to be allowed to
come back for the wedding.
I filled in the hours wondering how Larry Strangways looked at me when
there was only Mrs. Rossiter as spectator. I knew how he looked at me
when I was looking back--it was with that gleaming smile which defied
you to see behind it, as the sun defies you to see behind its rays. But
I wanted to know how he looked at me when my head was turned another
way; to know how the sun appears when you view it through a telescope
that nullifies its defensive. For that I had only my imagination, since
he had obtained two or three days' leave to go to New York to see his
new employer. He had warned me to betray no hint as to the new
employer's name, since there was a feud between the Brokenshire clan and
Stacy Grainger which I connected vaguely with the story I had heard of
Mrs. Brokenshire.
Then on the fourth day Hugh came back. He appeared as he had on saying
good-by, while I was breakfasting with Gladys in the open air and Broke
was with his mother. Hugh was more pallid than when he went away; he was
positively woe-begone. Everything that was love in me leaped into flame
at sight of his honest, sorry face.
I think I can tell his story best by giving it in my own words, in the
way of direct narration. He didn't tell it to me all at once, but bit by
bit, as new details occurred to him. The picture was slow in printing
itself on my mind, but when I got it it was with satisfactory
exactitude.
He had been three days at the hotel in Boston before learning that
Cousin Andrew Brew was actually in town and would see him at the bank at
eleven on a certain morning. Hugh was on the moment. The promptitude
with which his relative sprang up in his seat, somewhat as if impelled
by a piece of mechanism, was truly cordial. Not less was the handshake
and the formula of greeting. The sons of J. Howard Brokenshire were
always welcome guests among their Boston kin, on whom they shed a
pleasant luster of metropolitan glory. While the Brews and Borrodailes
prided themselves on what they called their Boston provinciality and
didn't believe to be provinciality at all, they enjoyed the New York
connection.
"Hello, Hugh! Glad to see you. Come in. Sit down. Looking older than
when I saw you last. Growing a mustache. Not married yet? Sit down and
tell us all about it. What can I do for you? Sit down."
Hugh took the comfortable little upright arm-chair that stood at the
corner of his cousin's desk, while the latter resumed the seat of honor.
Knowing that the banker's time was valuable, and feeling that he would
reveal his aptitude for business by going to the point at once, the
younger man began his tale. He had just reached the fact that he had
fallen in love with a little girl on whose merits he wouldn't enlarge,
since all lovers had the same sort of things to say, though he was surer
of his data than others of his kind, when there was a tinkle at the desk
telephone.
"Excuse me."
During the conversation in which Cousin Andrew then engaged Hugh was
able to observe the long-established, unassuming comfort of this
friendly office, which suggested the cozy air that hangs about the
smoking-rooms of good old English inns. There was a warm worn carpet on
the floor; deep leather arm-chairs showed the effect of contact with two
generations of moneyed backs; on the walls the lithographed heads of
Brews and Borrodailes bore witness to the firm's respectability. In the
atmosphere a faint odor of tobacco emphasized the human associations.
Cousin Andrew emphasized them, too. "Now!" He put down the receiver and
turned to Hugh with an air of relief at being able to give him his
attention. He was a tall, thin man with a head like a nut. It would have
been an expressionless nut had it not been for a facile tight-lipped
smile that creased his face as stretching creases rubber. Coming and
going rapidly, it gave him the appearance of mirth, creating at each end
of a long, mobile mouth two concentric semicircles cutting deep into the
cheeks that would have been of value to a low comedian. A slate-colored
morning suit, a white pique edge to the opening of the waistcoat, a
slate-colored tie with a pearl in it, emphasized the union of dignity
and lightness which were the keynotes to Cousin Andrew's character.
Blended as they were, they formed a delightfully debonair combination,
bringing down to your own level a man who was somebody in the world of
finance. It was part of his endearing quality that he liked you to see
him as a jolly good fellow no whit better than yourself. He was fond of
gossip and of the lighter topics of the moment. He was also fond of
dancing, and frequented most of the gatherings, private and public, for
the cultivation of that art which was the vogue of the year before the
Great War. With his tall, limber figure he passed for less than his age
of forty-three till you got him at close quarters.
On the genial "Now!" in which there was an inflection of command Hugh
went on with his tale, telling of his breach with his father and his
determination to go into business for himself.
"I ought to be independent, anyhow, at my age," he declared. "I've my
own views, and it's only right to confess to you that I'm a bit of a
Socialist. That won't make any difference, however, to our working
together, Cousin Andrew, for, to make a long story short, I've looked in
to tell you that I've come to the place where I should like to accept
your kind offer."
The statement was received with cheerful detachment, while Cousin Andrew
threw himself forward with his arms on his desk, rubbing his long, thin
hands together.
"My kind offer? What was that?"
Hugh was slightly dashed.
"About my coming to you if ever I wanted to go into business."
"Oh! You're going into business?"
Hugh named the places and dates at which, during the past few years,
Cousin Andrew had offered his help to his young kinsman if ever it was
needed.
Cousin Andrew tossed himself back in his chair with one of his brisk,
restless movements.
"Did I say that? Well, if I did I'll stick to it." There was another
tinkle at the telephone. "Excuse me."
Hugh had time for reflection and some irritation. He had not expected to
be thrust into the place of a petitioner, or to have to make
explanations galling to his pride. He had counted not only on his
cousinship, but on his position in the world as J. Howard Brokenshire's
son. It seemed to him that Cousin Andrew was disposed to undervalue
that.
"I don't want to hold you to anything you don't care for, Cousin
Andrew," he began, when his relative had again put the receiver aside,
"but I understood--"
"Oh, that's all right. I've no doubt I said it. I do recall something of
the sort, vaguely, at a time when I thought your father might want-- In
any case we can fix you up. Sure to be something you can do. When'd you
like to begin?"
Hugh expressed his willingness to be put into office at once.
"Just so. Turn you over to old Williamson. He licks the young ones into
shape. Suppose your father'll think it hard of us to go against him. But
on the other hand he may be pleased--he'll know you're in safe hands."
It was a delicate thing for Hugh to attempt, but as he was going into
business not from an irresistible impulse toward a financial career, but
in order to make enough money to marry on, he felt obliged to ask, in
such terms as he could command, how much money he should make.
"Just so!" Cousin Andrew took up the receiver again. "Want to speak to
Mr. Williamson. . . . Oh, Williamson, how much is Duffers getting now?
. . . And how much before that? . . . Good! Thanks!"
The result of these investigations was communicated to Hugh. He should
receive Duffers's pay, and when he had earned it should come in for
Duffers's promotion. The immediate effect was to make him look startled
and blank. "What?" was his only question; but it contained several
shades of incredulity.
Cousin Andrew took this dismay in good part.
"Why, what did you expect?"
Hugh could only stammer:
"I thought it would be more."
"How much more?"
Hugh sought an answer that wouldn't betray the ludicrous figure of his
hopes.
"Well, enough to live on as a married man at least."
The banker's good nature was proved by the creases of his rubber smile.
"What did you think you'd be worth to us--with no backing from your
father?"
The question was of the kind commonly called a poser. Hugh had not, so I
understood from him, hitherto thought of his entering his kinsfolks'
banking-house as primarily a matter of earning capacity. It wasn't to be
like working for "any old firm." He had prefigured it as becoming a
component part of a machine that turned out money of which he would get
his share, that share being in proportion to the dignity of the house
itself and bearing a relation to his blood connection with the
dominating partners. When Cousin Andrew had repeated his question Hugh
was obliged to reply:
"I wasn't thinking of that so much as of what you'd be worth to me."
"We could be worth a good deal to you in time."
There was a ray of hope.
"How long a time?"
"Oh, twenty or thirty years, perhaps, if you work and save. Of course,
if you had capital to bring in--but you haven't, have you? Didn't Cousin
Sophy, your mother, leave everything to your father? I thought so. Mind
you, I'm putting out of the question all thought of your father's coming
round and putting money in for you. I'm talking of the thing on the
ground on which you've put it."
Hugh had no heart to resent the quirks and grimaces in Cousin Andrew's
smile. He had all he could do in taking his leave in a way to save his
face and cast the episode behind him. The banker lent himself to this
effort with good-humored grace, accompanying his relative to the door of
the room, where he shook him by the shoulder as he turned the knob.
"Thought you'd go right in as a director? Not the first youngster who's
had that idea, and you'll not be the last. Good-by. Let me hear from you
if you change your mind." He called after him, as the door was about to
close: "Best try to fix it up with your father, Hugh. As for the
girl--well, there'll be others, and more in your line."