What happened on the train after Mrs. Brokenshire and I had left it I
heard from Mr. Strangways. Having got it from him in some detail, I can
give it in my own words more easily than in his.
I may be permitted to state here how much and how little of the romance
between Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Brokenshire Larry Strangways knew. He knew
next to nothing--but he inferred a good deal. From facts I gave him once
or twice in hours of my own perplexity he had been able to get light on
certain matters which had come under his observation as Mr. Grainger's
confidential man, and to which otherwise he would have had no key. He
inferred, for instance, that Mrs. Brokenshire wrote daily to her lover,
and that occasionally, at long intervals, her lover could safely write
to her. He inferred that when their meetings had ended in one place they
were taken up discreetly at another, but only with difficulty and
danger. He inferred that the man chafed against this restraint, and as
he had got out of it with other women, he was planning to get out of it
again. I understood that had Mrs. Brokenshire been the only such
instance in Stacy Grainger's career Larry Strangways might not have felt
impelled to interfere; but seeing from the beginning that his employer
"had a weakness," he felt it only right to help me save a woman for whom
he knew I cared.
I have never wholly understood why he believed that the situation had
worked up to a crisis on that particular day; but having watched the
laying of the mine, he could hardly do anything but expect the explosion
on the application of the match.
When Mr. Grainger had bidden him that morning go to the station and
secure a drawing-room, or, if that was impossible, two parlor-car seats,
on the five-o'clock for Boston, he had reasons for following the course
of which I have briefly given the lines. No drawing-room was available,
because any that was not sold he bought for himself in order to set the
stage according to his own ideas. How far he was justified in this will
be a matter of opinion. Some may commend him, while others will accuse
him of unwarrantable interference. My own judgment being of no
importance I hold it in suspense, giving the incidents just as they
occurred.
It must be evident that as Mr. Strangways didn't know what was to happen
he could have no plan of action. All he could arrange for was that he
and I should be on the spot. As it is difficult for guilty lovers to
elope while acquaintances are looking on, he was resolved that they
should find elopement difficult. For anything else he relied on
chance--and on me. Chance favored him in keeping Stacy Grainger out of
sight, in putting Mrs. Brokenshire next to me, and in making the action,
such as it was, run smoothly. Had I known that he relied on me I should
have been more terrified than I actually was, since I was relying on
him.
It will be seen, then, that at the moment when Mrs. Brokenshire and I
left the train Larry Strangways had but a vague idea of what had taken
place. He merely conjectured from the swish of skirts that we had gone.
His next idea was, as he phrased it, to make himself scarce on his own
account; but in that his efforts miscarried.
Hoping to slip into another car and thus avoid a meeting with the
outmanoeuvered lover, he was snapping the clasp of the bag into which he
had thrust his cap when he perceived a tall figure enter the car by the
forward end. To escape recognition he bent his head, pretending to
search for something on the floor. The tall figure passed, but came back
again. It was necessary that he should come back, because of the number
on the ticket, the ulster, the walking-stick, and the golf-clubs.
What Stacy Grainger saw, of course, was three empty seats, with his
secretary sitting in a fourth. The sight of the three empty seats was
doubtless puzzling enough, but that of the secretary must have been
bewildering. Without turning his head Mr. Strangways knew by his sixth
and seventh senses that his employer was comparing the number on his
ticket with that of the seat, examining the hand-luggage to make sure it
was his own, and otherwise drawing the conclusion that his faculties
hadn't left him. For a private secretary who had ventured so far out of
his line of duty it was a trying minute; but he turned and glanced
upward only on feeling a tap on his shoulder.
"Hello, Strangways! Is it you? What's the meaning of this?"
Strangways rose. As the question had been asked in perplexity rather
than in anger, he could answer calmly.
"The meaning of what, sir?"
"Where the deuce are you going? What are you doing here?"
"I'm going to Boston, sir."
"What for? Who told you you could go to Boston?"
The tone began to nettle the young man, who was not accustomed to being
spoken to so imperiously before strangers.
"No one told me, sir. I didn't ask permission. I'm my own master. I've
left your employ."
"The devil you have! Since when?"
"Since this morning. I couldn't tell you, because when you left the
office after I'd given you the tickets you didn't come back."
"And do you call that decent to a man who's-- But no matter!" He pointed
to the seat next his own. "Where's the--the lady who's been sitting
here?"
Mr. Strangways raised his eyebrows innocently, and shook his head.
"I haven't seen any lady, sir."
"What? There must have been a lady here. Was to have got on at One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street."
"Possibly; I only say I didn't see her. As a matter of fact, I've been
reading, and I don't think I looked round during the entire journey.
Hadn't we better not speak so loud?" he suggested, in a lower tone.
"People are listening to us."
"Oh, let them go to-- Now look here, Strangways," he began again,
speaking softly, but excitedly, "there must be some explanation to
this."
"Of course there must be; only I can't give it. Perhaps the porter could
tell us. Shall I call him?"
Mr. Grainger nodded his permission. The colored man with the flashing
teeth came up on the broad grin, showing them.
"Yep," he replied, in answer to the question: "they was two ladies in
them seats all the way f'um Ne' Yawk."
"Two ladies?" Mr. Grainger cried, incredulously.
"Yes, gen'lemen. Two different ladies. The young one she got in at the
Grand Central--fust one in the cyar--and the ole one at a Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street."
"Do you mean to say it was an old lady who got in there?"
"Yep, gen'lemen; ole and cranky. I 'ain't handled 'em no crankier not
since I've bin on this beat. Sick, too. They done get off at Providence,
though they was booked right through to Boston, because the ole lady she
couldn't go no farther."
Mr. Grainger was not a sleuth-hound, but he did what he could in the way
of verification.
"Did the young lady wear--wear a veil?"
The porter scratched his head.
"Come to think of it she did--one of them there flowery things"--his
forefinger made little whirling designs on his coffee-colored
skin--"what makes a kind of pattern-like all over people's face."
Because he was frantically seeking a clue, Mr. Grainger blurted out the
foolish question:
"Was she--pretty?"
To answer as a connoisseur and as man to man the African took his time.
"Wa-al, not to say p'ooty, she wasn't--but she'd pa-ss. A little
black-eyed thing, an' awful smart. One of 'em trained nusses like--very
perlite, but a turr'ble boss you could see she'd be, for all she was so
soft-spoken. Had cyare of the ole one, who was what you'd call plumb
crazy."
"That will do." The trail seemed not worth following any further.
"There's some mistake," he continued, furiously. "She must be in one of
the other cars."
Like a collie from the leash he bounded off to make new investigations.
In five minutes he was back again, passing up the length of the car and
going on to examine those at the other end of the train. His face as he
returned was livid; his manner, as far as he dared betray himself before
a dozen or twenty spectators, that of a balked wild animal.
"Strangways," he swore, as he dropped to the arm of his seat, "you're
going to answer for this."
Strangways replied, composedly:
"I'm ready to answer for anything I know. You can't expect me to be
responsible for what I don't know anything about."
He slapped his knee.
"What are you doing in that particular chair? Even if you're going to
Boston, why aren't you somewhere else?"
"That's easily explained. You told me to get two tickets by this train.
Knowing that I was to travel by it myself I asked for three. I dare say
it was stupid of me not to think that the propinquity would be open to
objection; but as it's a public conveyance, and there's not generally
anything secret or special about a trip of the kind--"
"Why in thunder didn't you get a drawing-room, as I told you to?"
"For the reason I've given--there were none to be had. If you could have
taken me into your confidence a little--But I suppose that wasn't
possible."
To this there was no response, but a series of muttered oaths that bore
the same relation to soliloquy as a frenzied lion's growl. For some
twenty minutes they sat in the same attitudes, Strangways quiet,
watchful, alert, ready for any turn the situation might take, the other
man stretched on the arm of his chair, indifferent to comfort, cursing
spasmodically, perplexity on his forehead, rage in his eyes, and
something that was folly, futility, and helplessness all over him.
Almost no further conversation passed between them till they got out in
Boston. In the crowd Strangways endeavored to go off by himself, but
found Mr. Grainger constantly beside him. He was beside him when they
reached the place where taxicabs were called, and ordered his porter to
call one.
"Get in," he said, then.
Larry Strangways protested.
"I'm going to--"
I must be sufficiently unlady-like to give Mr. Grainger's response just
as it was spoken, because it strikes me as characteristic of men.
"Oh, hell! Get in. You're coming with me."
Characteristic of men was the rest of the evening. In spite of what had
happened--and had not happened--Messrs. Grainger and Strangways partook
of an excellent supper together, eating and drinking with appetite, and
smoking their cigars with what looked like an air of tranquillity.
Though the fury of the balked wild animal returned to Stacy Grainger by
fits and starts, it didn't interfere with his relish of his food and
only once did it break its bounds. That was when he struck the arm of
his chair, saying beneath his breath, and yet audibly enough for his
secretary to hear:
"She funked it--damn her!"
Larry Strangways then took it on himself to say:
"I don't know the lady, sir, to whom you refer, nor the reasons she may
have had for funking it, but may I advise you for your own peace of mind
to withdraw the two concluding syllables?"
A pair of fierce, melancholy eyes rested on him for a second
uncomprehendingly.
"All right," the crestfallen lover groaned heavily at last. "I may as
well take them back."
Characteristic of women were my experiences while this was happening.
Bundled out into the station at Providence no two poor females could
ever have been more forlorn. Standing in the waiting-room with our bags
around us I felt like one of those immigrant women, ignorant of the
customs and language of the country to which they have come, I had
sometimes seen on docks at Halifax. As for Mrs. Brokenshire, she was as
little used to the unarranged as if she had been a royalty. Never before
had she dropped in this way down upon the unexpected; never before had
she been unmet, unwelcomed, and unprepared. She was
_bouleversee_--overturned. Were she falling from an aeroplane she could
not have been more at a loss as to where she was going to alight. Small
wonder was it that she should sit down on one of her own valises and
begin to cry distressfully.
That, for the minute, I was obliged to disregard. If she had to cry she
must cry. I could hear the train puffing out of the station, and as far
as that went she was safe. My first preoccupations had to do with where
we were to go.
For this I made inquiries of the porter, who named what he considered to
be the two or three best hotels. I went to the ticket-office and put the
same question, getting approximately the same answer. Then, seeing a
well-dressed man and lady enter the station from a private car, which I
could discern outside, I repeated my investigations, explaining that I
had come from New York with an invalid lady who had not been well enough
to continue the journey. They told me I could make no mistake in going
to one of the houses already named by my previous informants; and so,
gathering up the hand-luggage and Mrs. Brokenshire, we set forth.
At the hotel we secured an apartment of sitting-room and two bedrooms,
registering our names as "Miss Adare and friend." I ordered the
daintiest supper the house could provide to be served up-stairs, with a
small bottle of champagne to inspirit us; but, unlike the two heroes of
the episode, neither of us could do more than taste food and drink. No
kidnapped princess in a fairy-tale was ever more lovely or pathetic than
Mrs. Brokenshire; no giant ogre more monstrously cruel than myself. Now
that it was done, I figured, both in her eyes and in my own, not as a
savior, but a capturer.
She had dried her tears, but she had dried them resentfully. As far as
possible she didn't look at me, but when she couldn't help it the
reproach in her glances almost broke my heart. Though I knew I had acted
for the best, she made me feel a bad angel, a marplot, a spoil-sport. I
had thwarted a dream that was as full of bliss as it was of terror, and
reduced the dramatic to the commonplace. Here she was picking at a cold
quail in aspic face to face with me when she might have been. . . .
I couldn't help seeing myself as she saw me, and when we had finished
what was not a repast I put her to bed with more than the humility of a
serving-maid. You will think me absurd, but when those tender eyes were
turned on me with their silent rebuke, I would gladly have put her back
on the train again and hurried her on to destruction. As the dear thing
sobbed on her pillow I laid my head beside hers and sobbed with her.
But I couldn't sob very long, as I still had duties to fulfil. It was
of little use to have her under my care at Providence unless those who
would in the end be most concerned as to her whereabouts were to know
the facts--or the approximate facts--from the start. It was a case in
which doubt for a night might be doubt for a lifetime; and so when she
was sufficiently calm for me to leave her I went down-stairs.
Though I had not referred to it again, I had made a mental note of the
fact that Mr. Brokenshire was at Newport. If at Newport I knew he could
be nowhere but in one hotel. Within fifteen minutes I was talking to him
on the telephone.
He was plainly annoyed at being called to the instrument so late as half
past ten. When I said I was Alexandra Adare he replied that he didn't
recognize the name.
"I was formerly nursery governess to your daughter, Mrs. Rossiter," I
explained. "I'm the woman who's refused as yet to marry your son, Hugh."
"Oh, that person," came the response, uttered wearily.
"Yes, sir; that person. I must apologize for ringing you up so late; but
I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Brokenshire is here at Providence with
me."
The symptoms of distress came to me in a series of choking sounds over
the wire. It was a good half-minute before I got the words:
"What does that mean?"
"It means that Mrs. Brokenshire is perfectly well in physical condition,
but she's tired and nervous and overwrought."
I made out that the muffled and strangled voice said:
"I'll motor up to Providence at once. It's now half past ten. I shall be
there between one and two. What hotel shall I find you at?"
"Don't come, sir," I pleaded. "I had to tell you we were in Providence,
because you could have found that out by asking where the long-distance
call had come from; but it's most important to Mrs. Brokenshire that she
should have a few days alone."
"I shall judge of that. To what hotel shall I come?"
"I beg and implore you, sir, not to come. Please believe me when I say
that it will be better for you in the end. Try to trust me. Mrs.
Brokenshire isn't far from a nervous breakdown; but if I can have her to
myself for a week or two I believe I could tide her over it."
Reproof and argument followed on this, till at last he yielded, with the
words:
"Where are you going?"
Fortunately, I had thought of that.
"To some quiet place in Massachusetts. When we're settled I shall let
you know."
He suggested a hotel at Lenox as suitable for such a sojourn.
"She'd rather go where she wouldn't meet people whom she knows. The
minute she has decided I shall communicate with you again."
"But I can see you in the morning before you leave?"
The accent was now that of request. The overtone in it was pitiful.
"Oh, don't try to, sir. She wants to get away from every one. It will be
so much better for her to do just as she likes. She had got to a point
where she had to escape from everything she knew and cared about; and so
all of a sudden--only--only to-day--she decided to come with me. She
doesn't need a trained nurse, because she's perfectly well. All she
wants is some one to be with her--whom she knows she can trust. She
hasn't even taken Angelique. She simply begs to be alone."
In the end I made my point, but only after genuine beseeching on his
part and much repetition on mine. Having said good-night to him--he
actually used the words--I called up Angelique, in order to bring peace
to a household in which the mistress's desertion would create some
consternation.
Angelique and I might have been called friends. The fact that I spoke
French _comme une Francaise_, as she often flattered me by saying, was a
bond between us, and we had the further point of sympathy that we were
both devoted to Mrs. Brokenshire. Besides that, there is something in
me--I suppose it must be a plebeian streak--which enables me to
understand servants and get along with them.
I gave her much the same explanation as I gave to Mr. Brokenshire,
though somewhat differently put. In addition I asked her to pack such
selections from the simpler examples of Mrs. Brokenshire's wardrobe as
the lady might need in a country place, and keep them in readiness to
send. Angelique having expressed her relief that Mrs. Brokenshire was
safe at a known address, in the company of a responsible attendant--a
relief which, so she said, would be shared by the housekeeper, the chef,
and the butler, all of whom had spent the evening in painful
speculation--we took leave of each other, with our customary mutual
compliments.
Though I was so tired by this time that fainting would have been a
solace, I called for a Boston paper and began studying the
advertisements of country hotels. Having made a selection of these I
consulted the manager of our present place of refuge, who strongly
commended one of them. Thither I sent a night-letter commandeering the
best, after which, with no more than strength to undress, I lay down on
a couch in Mrs. Brokenshire's room. When I knew she was sleeping I, too,
slept fitfully. About once in an hour I went softly to her bedside, and
finding her dozing, if not sound asleep, I went softly back again.
Between four and five we had a little scene. As I approached her bed she
looked up and said:
"What are we going to do in the morning?"
Afraid to tell her all I had put in train, I gave my ideas in the form
of suggestion.
"No, I sha'n't do that," she said, quietly.
She lay quite still, her cheek embossed on the pillow, and a great stray
curl over her left shoulder.
"Then what would you like to do?"
"I should like to go straight back."
"To begin the same old life all over again?"
"To begin to see him all over again."
"Do you think that after last night you can begin to see him in the same
old way?"
"I must see him in some way."
"But isn't the way what you've still to discover?" I resolved on a bold
stroke. "Wouldn't part of your object in going away for a time be to
think out some method of reconciling your feeling for Mr. Grainger
with--with your self-respect?"
"My self-respect?" She looked as if she had never heard of such a thing.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Hasn't it got everything to do with it? You can't live without it
forever."
"Do you mean that I've been living without it as it is?"
"Isn't that for you to say rather than for me?"
She was silent for a minute, after which she said, fretfully:
"I don't think it's very nice of you to talk to me like that. You've got
me here at your mercy, when I might have been--" A long, bubbling sigh,
like the aftermath of tears, laid stress on the joys she had foregone.
"He'll never forgive me now--never."
"Wouldn't it be better, dear Mrs. Brokenshire," I asked, "to consider
whether or not you can ever forgive him?"
She raised herself on her elbow and looked at me. Seated in a low
arm-chair beside her bed, in an old-rose-colored kimono, my dark hair
hanging down my back, I was not a fascinating object of study, even in
the light of one small, distant, shaded bedroom lamp.
"What should I forgive him for?--for loving me?"
"Yes, for loving you--in that way."
"He loves me--"
"So much that he could see you dishonored and disgraced--and shunned by
decent people all the rest of your life--just to gratify his own
desires. It seems to me you may have to forgive him for that."
"He asked me to do only what I would have done willingly--if it hadn't
been for you."
"But he asked you. The responsibility is in that. You didn't make the
suggestion; he did."
"He didn't make it till I'd let him see--"
"Too much. Forgive me for saying it, dear Mrs. Brokenshire; but do you
think a woman should ever go so far to meet a man as you did?"
"I let him see that I loved him. I did that before I married Mr.
Brokenshire."
"You let him see more than that you loved him. You showed him that you
didn't know how to live without him."
"But since I didn't know how--"
"Ah, but you should have known. No woman should be so dependent on a man
as that."
She fell back again on her pillows.
"It's easy to see you've never been in love."
"I have been in love--and am still; but love is not the most important
thing in the world--"
"Then you differ from all the great teachers. They say it is."
"If they do they're not speaking of sexual love."
"What are they speaking of, then?"
"They're speaking of another kind of love, with which the mere sexual
has nothing to do. I'm not an ascetic, and I know the sexual has its
place. But there's a love that's as much bigger than that as the sky is
bigger than I am."
"Yes, but so long as one never sees it--"
I suppose it was her tone of feeble rebellion that roused my spirit and
made me speak in a way which I should not otherwise have allowed myself.
"You do see it, darling Mrs. Brokenshire," I declared, more sweetly than
I felt. "I'm showing it to you." I rose and stood over her. "What do you
suppose I'm prompted by but love? What urges me to stand by Mr.
Brokenshire but love? What made me step in between you and Mr. Grainger
and save him, as well as you, but love? Love isn't emotion that leaves
you weak; it's action that makes you strong. It has to be action, and it
has to be right action. There's no love separable from right; and until
you grasp that fact you'll always be unhappy. I'm a mere rag in my own
person. I've no more character than a hen. But because I've got a wee
little hold on right--"
She broke in, peevishly, as she turned away:
"I do wish you'd let me go to sleep."
I got down from my high horse and went back, humbly, to my couch.
Scarcely, however, had I lain down, when the voice came again, in
childish complaint:
"I think you might have kissed me."
I had never kissed her in my life, nor had she ever shown any sign of
permitting me this liberty. Timidly I went back to the bed; timidly I
bent over it. But I was not prepared for the sudden intense clinging
with which she threw her arms round my neck and drew my face down to
hers.