The steps by which I came to be Stacy Grainger's librarian could easily
be traced, though to do so with much detail would be tedious.
After Hugh's departure for New York my position with Mrs. Rossiter soon
became untenable. The reports that reached Newport of the young man's
doings in the city were not merely galling to the family pride, but
maddening to his father's sense of pre-eminence. Hugh was actually going
from door to door, as you might say, in Wall Street and Broad Street,
only to be turned away.
"He's making the most awful fool of himself," Mrs. Rossiter informed me
one morning, "and papa's growing furious. Jim writes that every one is
laughing at him, and, of course, they know it's all about some girl."
I held my tongue at this. That they should be laughing at poor Hugh was
a new example of the world's falsity. His letters to me were only a
record of half-promises and fair speeches, but he found every one of
them encouraging. Nowhere had he met with the brutal treatment he had
received at the hands of Cousin Andrew Brew. The minute his card went in
to never so great a banker or broker, he was received with a welcome. If
no one had just the right thing to offer him, no one had turned him
down. It was explained to him that it was largely a matter of the off
season--for his purpose August was the worst month in the year--and of
the lack of an opening which it would be worth the while of a man of his
quality to fill. Later, perhaps! The two words, courteously spoken, gave
the gist of all his interviews. He had every reason to feel satisfied.
In the mean while he was comfortable at his club--his cash in hand would
hold out to Christmas and beyond--and in the matter of energy, he wrote,
not a mushroom was springing in his tracks. He was on the job early and
late, day in and day out. The off season which was obviously a
disadvantage in some respects had its merits in others, since it would
be known, when things began to look up again, that he was available for
any big house that could get him. That there would be competition in
this respect every one had given him to understand. All this he told me
in letters as full of love as they were of business, written in a great,
sprawling, unformed, boyish hand, and with an occasional bit of phonetic
spelling which made his protestations the more touching.
But Jim Rossiter's sources of information were of another kind.
"Get your father to do something to stop him," he wrote to his wife.
"He's making the whole house of Meek & Brokenshire a laughing-stock."
There came, in fact, a Saturday when Mr. Rossiter actually appeared for
the week-end.
"He wouldn't be doing that," Mrs. Rossiter almost sobbed to me, on
receipt of the telegram announcing his approach, "unless things were
pretty bad."
Though I dreaded his coming, I was speedily reassured. Whatever the
object of Mr. Rossiter's visit, I, in my own person, had nothing to do
with it. On the afternoon of his arrival he came out to where I was
knocking the croquet balls about with Gladys on the lawn, and was as
polite as he had been through the winter in New York. He was always
polite even to the maids, to whom he scrupulously said good-morning. His
wistful desire to be liked by every one was inspired by the same sort of
impulse as the jovial _bonhomie_ of Cousin Andrew Brew. He was a little,
weazened man, with face and legs like a jockey, which I think he would
gladly have been. Racin' and ridin', as he called them, were the
amusements in which he found most pleasure, while his health was his
chief preoccupation. He took pills before and after all his meals and a
variety of medicinal waters. During the winter under his roof my own
conversation with him had been entirely on the score of his complaints.
In just the same way he sauntered up now. He talked of his lack of
appetite and the beastly cooking at clubs. Expecting him to broach the
subject of Hugh, I got myself ready; but he did nothing of the kind. He
was merely amiable and, as far as I could judge, indifferent. Within ten
minutes he had sauntered away again, leading Gladys by the hand.
I saw then that in common with the other Brokenshires he considered that
I didn't count. Hugh could be dealt with independently of me. So long as
I was useful to his wife, there was no reason why I should be disturbed.
I was too light a thing to be weighed in their balances.
Next day there was a grand family council and on Monday Jack Brokenshire
accompanied his brother-in-law to New York. Hugh wrote me of their
threats and flatteries, their beseechings and cajoleries. He was to come
to his senses; he was to be decent to his father; he was to quit being a
fool. I gathered that for forty-eight hours they had put him through
most of the tortures known to fraternal inquisition; but he wrote me he
would bear it all and more, for the sake of winning me.
Nor would he allow them to have everything their own way. That he wrote
me, too. When it came to the question of marriage he bade them look at
home. Each of them was an instance of what J. Howard could do in the
matrimonial line, and what a mess he and they had made of it! He asked
Jack in so many words how much he would have been in love with Pauline
Gray if she hadn't had a big fortune, and, now that he had got her money
and her, how true he was to his compact. Who were Trixie Delorme and
Baby Bevan, he demanded, with a knowledge of Jack's affairs which
compelled the elder brother to tell him to mind his own business.
Hugh laughed scornfully at that.
"I can mind my own business, Jack, and still keep an eye on yours,
seeing that you and Pauline are the talk of the town. If she doesn't
divorce you within the next five years, it will be because you've
already divorced her. Even that won't be as big a scandal as your going
on living together."
Mr. Rossiter intervened on this and did his best to calm the younger
brother down:
"Ah, cut that out now, Hugh!"
But Hugh rounded on him, shaking off the hand that had been laid on his
arm.
"You're a nice one, Jim, to come with your mealy-mouthed talk to me.
Look at Ethel! If I'd married a woman as you married her--or if I'd been
married as she married you--just because your father was a partner in
Meek & Brokenshire and it was well to keep the money in the family--if
I'd done that I'd shut up. I'd consider myself too low-down a cur to be
kicked. What kind of a wife is Ethel to you? What kind of a husband are
you to her? What kind of a father do you make to the children who hardly
know you by sight? And now, just because I'm trying to be a man, and
decent, and true to the girl I love, you come sneaking round to tell me
she's not good enough. What do I care whether she's good enough or not,
so long as she isn't like Ethel and Pauline? You can go back and tell
them so."
Jack Brokenshire came back, but I think he kept this confidence to
himself. What he told, however, was enough to produce a good deal of
gloom in the family. Though Mrs. Rossiter didn't cease to be nice to me
in her non-committal way, I began to reason that there were limits even
to indifference. I had made up my mind to go and was working out some
practical way of going, when an incident hastened my departure.
Doing an errand one day for Mrs. Rossiter in the shopping part of
Bellevue Avenue, I saw old Mrs. Billing going by in an open motor
landaulette. She signaled to me to stop, and, poking the chauffeur in
the back through the open window, made him draw up at the curb.
"I've got something for you," she said, without other form of greeting.
She began to stir things round in her bag. "I thought you'd like it.
I've been carrying it about with me for the last three or four
days--ever since Jack Brokenshire got back from New York. Where the
dickens is the thing? Ah, here!" She handed me out a crumpled card.
"That's all, Antoine," she continued to the man. "Drive on."
I was left with the card in my hand, finding it to be an advertisement
for the Hotel Mary Chilton, a place of entertainment for women alone, in
a central and reputable part of New York.
By the time I got back to Mrs. Rossiter's I had solved what had at first
been a puzzle, and, having reported on my errand, I gave my resignation
verbally. I saw then--what old Mrs. Billing had also seen--that it was
time. Mrs. Rossiter expressed no relief, but she made no attempt to
dissuade me. That she was sorry she allowed me to see. She didn't speak
of Hugh; but on the morning when I went she gave up her engagements to
stay at home with me. As I said good-by she threw her arms round my neck
and kissed me. I could feel on my cheek tears of hers as well as tears
of my own, as I drew down my veil.
Hugh met me at the station in New York, and we dined at a restaurant
together. He came for me next morning, and we lunched and dined at
restaurants again. When we did the same on the third day that sense of
being in a false position which had been with me from the first, and
which argument couldn't counteract, began to be disquieting. On the
fourth day I tried to make excuses and remain at the hotel, but when he
insisted I was obliged to let him take me out once more. The people at
the Mary Chilton were kindly, but I was afraid they would regard me with
suspicion. I was afraid of some other things, besides.
For one thing I was afraid of Hugh. He began again to plead with me to
marry him. Even he admitted that we couldn't continue to "go round
together like that." We went to the most expensive restaurants, he
argued, where there were plenty of people who would know him. When they
saw him every day with a girl they didn't know, they would draw their
own conclusions. As in a situation similar to theirs I would have drawn
my own, I brought my bit of Bohemianism to a speedy end.
There followed some days during which it seemed to me I was deprived of
any outlook. I could hardly see what I was there for. I could hardly see
what I was living for. Never till then had I realized how, in normal
conditions, each day is linked to the day before as well as to the
morrow. Here the link was gone. I left nothing undone when I went to
bed; I had nothing to get up for in the morning. My reason for existing
had suddenly been snuffed out.
It was a time for the testing of my faith. I was near the end of my
_cul-de-sac_, and yet I saw no further development ahead. If the
continuous unfolding of right on which, to use Larry Strangways's
expression, I had banked, were to come to a stop, I should be left not
only without a duty, but without a law. Of the two possibilities it was
the latter I dreaded most. One can live if one has a motive theory
within one; without it-- And then, just as I was coming to the last
stretches of what seemed a blind alley and no more, my confidence was
justified. Larry Strangways called on me.
I have not said that on coming to New York I had decided to let my
acquaintance with him end. He made me uneasy. I was terrified by the
thought that he might be in love with me. Why I was terrified I didn't
know; I only knew I was. I did not tell him, therefore, when I left Mrs.
Rossiter; and in the whirlpool of New York I considered that I was
swallowed up. But here was his card, and he himself waiting in the
drawing-room below.
Naturally my first question was as to how he had found me out. This he
laughed off, pretending to be annoyed with me for coming to the city
without telling him. I could see, however, that he was in spirits much
too high to allow of his being seriously annoyed with anything. Life
promised well with him. He enjoyed his work, and for his employer he
had that eager personal devotion which is always a herald of success.
After having run away from him, as it were, I was now a little irritated
at seeing that he hadn't missed me.
But he did not take his leave without a bit of information that puzzled
me beyond expression. He was going out of Mr. Grainger's office that
morning, he said, with a bundle of letters which he was to answer, when
his master observed, casually:
"The young lady of whom you spoke to me as qualified to take Miss
Davis's place is at the Hotel Mary Chilton. Go and see her and get her
opinion as to accepting the job!"
I was what the French call _atterree_--knocked flat.
"But how on earth could he know?"
Larry Strangways laughed.
"Oh, don't ask me. He knows anything he wants to know. He's got the
flair of a detective. I don't try to fathom him. But the point is that
the position is there for you to take or to leave."
I tried to bring my mind back from the fact that this important man, a
total stranger to me, was in some way interested in my destiny.
"What can I do but leave it, when I know no more about it than I do of
sailing a ship?"
"Oh yes, you do. You know what books are, and you know what rare books
are. For the rest, all you'd have to do would be to consult the
catalogue. I don't know what the duties are; but if Miss Davis is up to
them I guess you would be, too. She's a sweet, pretty kitten of a
thing--daughter of one of Stacy Grainger's old pals who came to
grief--but I don't believe she knows much more about a book than the
cover from the print. Anyhow, I've given you the message with neither
more nor less than he said. Look here!" he exclaimed, suddenly. "Why
shouldn't you put on your hat and walk down the street with me, so that
I could show you where the library is? It's not ten minutes away. I've
never been inside it, but every one knows what it looks like."
Consulting my wrist-watch, I objected that it was but twenty minutes to
the time when Hugh was due to come and take me to walk in Central Park,
returning to the hotel to tea.
"Oh, let him go to the deuce! We can be there and back in twenty
minutes, and you can leave a message for him at the office."
So we started. The Mary Chilton is in one of the cross-streets between
Fifth and Sixth Avenues. I discovered that Stacy Grainger's house was on
the corner of Fifth Avenue and a corresponding cross-street a little
farther down-town. It is a big brownstone house, in the eighteen-seventy
style, of the type which all round it has been turned into offices and
shops. All its many windows were blinded in a yellowish holland staff,
giving to the whole building an aspect sealed and dead.
I shuddered.
"I hope I shouldn't have to work there."
"No. The house has been shut up for years." He named the hotel
overlooking the Park at which Stacy Grainger actually lived. "Anybody
else would have sold the place; but he has a lot of queer sentiment
about him. Of the two or three devotions in his life one of the most
intense is to his father's memory. I believe the old fellow committed
suicide in that house, and the son hallows it as he would a grave."
"Cheerful!"
"Oh, cheerful isn't the word one would associate with him first--"
"Or last, apparently."
"No, or last; but he's got other qualities to which cheerfulness is as
small change to gold. All I want you to see is that he keeps this
property, which is worth half a million at the least, from motives which
the immense majority wouldn't understand. It gives you a clue to the
man."
"But what I want," I said, with nervous flippancy, for I was afraid of
meeting Hugh, "is a clue to the library."
"There it is."
"That?"
He had pointed to a small, low, rectangular building I had seen a
hundred times, without the curiosity to wonder what it was. It stood
behind the house, in the center of a grass-plot, and was approached from
the cross-street, through a small wrought-iron gate. Built of
brownstone, without a window, and with no other ornament than a frieze
in relief below the eave, it suggested a tomb. At the back was a kind of
covered cloister connecting with the house.
"If I had to sit in there all day," I commented, as we turned back
toward the hotel, "I should feel as if I were buried alive. I know that
strange things would happen to me!"
"Oh no, they wouldn't. It's sure to be all right or a pretty little
thing like Miss Davis couldn't have stood it for three years. It's
lighted from the top, and there are a lot of fine things scattered
about."
He gave me a brief history of how the collection had been formed. The
elder Grainger on coming to New York had bought up the contents of two
or three great European sales _en bloc_. He knew little about the
objects he had thus acquired, and cared less. His motive was simply that
of the rich American to play the nobleman.
He was still talking of this when Hugh passed us and turned round.
Between the two men there was a stiff form of greeting. That is, it was
stiff on Larry Strangways's side, while on Hugh's it was the nearest
thing to no greeting at all. I could see he considered the tutor of his
sister's son beneath him.
"What the devil were you walking with that fellow for?" he asked, after
Mr. Strangways had left us and while we were continuing our way up-town.
He spoke, wonderingly rather than impatiently.
"Because he had come from a gentleman who had offered me employment. I
had just gone down with him to look at the outside of the house."
I could hardly be surprised that Hugh should stop abruptly, forcing the
stream of foot-passengers to divide into two currents about us.
"The impertinent bounder! Offer employment--to you--my--my wife!"
I walked on with dignity.
"You mustn't call me that, Hugh. It's a word only to be used in its
exact signification." He began to apologize, but I interrupted. "I'm not
only not your wife, but as yet I haven't even promised to marry you. We
must keep that fact unmistakably clear before us. It will prevent
possible complications in the end."
He spoke humbly:
"What sort of complications?"
"I don't know; but I can see they might arise. And as for the matter of
employment, I must have it for a lot of reasons."
"I don't see that. Give me two or three months, Alix!"
"But it's precisely during those two or three months, Hugh, that I
should be left high and dry. Unless I have something to do I have no
motive for staying here in New York."
"What about me?"
"I can't stay just to see you. That's the difference between a woman and
a man. The situation is awkward enough as it is; but if I were to go on
living here for two or three months, merely for the sake of having a few
hours every day with you--"
Before we reached the Park he saw the justice of my argument.
Remembering what Larry Strangways had once said as to Hugh's belief that
he was stooping to pick his diamond out of the mire, I reasoned that
since he was marrying a working-girl it would best preserve the
decencies if the working-girl were working. For this procedure Hugh
himself was able to establish precedent, since we were in sight of the
very hotel where Libby Jaynes had rubbed men's nails up to within an
hour or two of her marriage to Tracy Allen. He pointed it out as if it
was an historic monument, and in the same spirit I gazed at it.
That matter settled, I attacked another as we advanced farther into the
Park.
"And Mr. Strangways is not a bounder, Hugh, darling. I wish you wouldn't
call him that."
His response was sufficiently good-natured, but it expressed that
Brokenshire disdain for everything that didn't have money which
specially enraged me.
"Well, I won't," he conceded. "I don't care a hang what he is."
"I do," I declared, with some tartness. "I care that he's a gentleman
and that he's treated as one."
"Oh, every one's a gentleman."
"No, Hugh, every one isn't. I know men right here in New York who could
buy and sell Mr. Strangways a thousand times, perhaps a million times
over, and who wouldn't be worthy to valet him."
His small wide-apart blue eyes were turned on me questioningly.
"You don't know many men right here in New York. Who do you mean?"
I saw that he had me there and, not wishing to be driven into a corner,
I beat a shuffling retreat.
"I don't mean any one in particular. I'm speaking in general." As we had
reached an empty bench and the afternoon was hot, I suggested that we
sit down.
We had been silent a little while, when he asked the question I had been
expecting.
"Who was the person who offered you the--the--" I saw how he hated the
word--"the employment?"
I had already decided to betray no knowledge of matters which didn't
concern me.
"It's a Mr. Grainger," I said, as casually as I could.
As he sat close to me I could feel him start.
"Not Stacy Grainger?"
I maintained my tone of indifference.
"I think that is his name. Do you know him? He seems to be some one of
importance."
"Oh, he is."
"Mr. Strangways has gone to him as secretary and, I suppose, knowing
that I was out of a situation, he must have mentioned me."
"For what?"
"As I understand it, it's librarian. It seems that this Mr. Grainger has
quite a collection--"
"Oh yes, I know." As he remained silent for some time I waited for him
to raise objections, but he only said at last: "In that case you
wouldn't have much to do with him. He's never there."
"No, I fancy not," I hastened to agree, and Hugh said no more.
He said no more, but I could see that it was because he was wrestling
with a subject of which he couldn't perceive the bearings. As far as I
was concerned he plainly considered it wise not to tell me that which,
as a stranger and a foreigner, I wouldn't be likely to know. He
consequently dropped the topic, and when he talked again it was of
trivial things.
A half-hour later, as we were on our way homeward, he exclaimed,
suddenly, and apropos of nothing at all:
"Little Alix, if you were to love anybody else I'd--I'd shoot myself."
His innocent, boyish, inexperienced face wore such a look of misery that
I laughed. I laughed to conceal the fact that I was near to crying.
"Oh no, you wouldn't, Hugh. Besides, you don't see any likelihood of my
doing it."
"I'm not so sure about that," he grumbled.
"Well, I am, Hugh, dear." I laughed again. "I've no intention of loving
any one else--till I've settled my account with your father."