Mr. Brokenshire arrived on the 26th of June, thus giving us a few days'
grace. In the interval Mrs. Brokenshire remained in bed, neither tired
nor ill, but white, silent, and withdrawn. Her soul's tragedy had
plainly not ended with her skimming retreat through Clover Lane. In the
new phase on which it had entered it was creating a woman, possibly a
wife, where there had been only a lovely child of arrested development.
Slipping in and out of her room, attending quietly to her wants, I was
able to note, as never in my life before, the beneficent action of
suffering.
Because she was in bed, I folded my tent like the Arab and silently
vacated my room in favor of Mr. Brokenshire. I looked for some objection
on telling her of this, but she merely bit her lip and said nothing. I
had asked the manager to put me in the most distant part of the most
distant wing of the hotel, and would have stolen away altogether had it
not been for fear that my poor, dear little lady might need me.
As it was, I kept out of sight when Mr. Brokenshire drove up with
secretary, valet, and chauffeur, and I contrived to take my meals at
hours when there could be no encounter between me and the great
personage. If I was wanted I knew I could be sent for; but the 27th
passed and no command came.
Once or twice I got a distant view of my enemy, as I began to call
him--majestic, noble, stouter, too, and walking with a slight waddle of
the hips, which had always marked his carriage and became more
noticeable as he increased in bulk. Not having seen him for nearly three
months, I observed that his hair and beard were grayer. During those
first few days I was never near enough to be able to tell whether or not
there was a change for the better or the worse in his facial affliction.
From a chance word with the cadaverous Spellman on the 28th I learned
that a sitting-room had been arranged in connection with the two
bedrooms Mrs. Brokenshire and I had occupied, and that husband and wife
were now taking their repasts in private. Later that day I saw them
drive out together, Mrs. Brokenshire no more than a silhouette in the
shadows of the limousine. I drew the inference that, however the soul's
tragedy was working, it was with some reconciling grace that did what
love had never been able to accomplish. Perhaps for her, as for me,
there was an appeal in this vain, fatuous, suffering magnate of a coarse
world's making that, in spite of everything, touched the springs of
pity.
In any case, I was content not to be sent for--and to rest. After a
tranquil day or two my own nerves had calmed down and I enjoyed the
delight of having nothing on my mind. It was extraordinary how remote I
could keep myself while under the same roof with my superiors,
especially when they kept themselves remote on their side. I had decided
on the 1st of July as the date to which I should remain. If there was no
demand for my services by that time I meant to consider myself free to
go.
But events were preparing, had long been preparing, which changed my
life as, I suppose, they changed to a greater or less degree the
majority of lives in the world. It was curious, too, how they arranged
themselves, with a neatness of coincidence which weaves my own small
drama as a visible thread--visible to me, that is--in the vast tapestry
of human history begun so far back as to be time out of mind.
It was the afternoon of Monday the 29th of June, 1914. Having secured a
Boston morning paper, I had carried it off to the back veranda, which
was my favorite retreat, because nobody else liked it. It was just
outside my room, and looked up into a hillside wood, where there were
birds and squirrels, and straight bronze pine-trunks wherever the
sunlight fell aslant on them. At long intervals, too, a partridge hen
came down with her little brood, clucking her low wooden cluck and
pecking at tender shoots invisible to me, till she wandered off once
more into the hidden depths of the stillness.
But I wasn't watching for the partridge hen that afternoon. I was
thrilled by the tale of the assassination of the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg, which had taken place at
Sarajevo on the previous day. Millions of other readers, who, no more
than I, felt their own destinies involved were being thrilled at the
same moment. The judgment trumpet was sounding--only not as we had
expected it. There was no blast from the sky--no sudden troop of angels.
There was only the soundless vibration of the wire and of the Hertzian
waves; there was only the casting of type and the rattling of
innumerable reams of paper; and, as the Bible says, the dead could hear
the voice, and they that heard it stood still; and the nations were
summoned before the Throne "that was set in the midst." I was summoned,
with my own people--though I didn't know it was a summons till
afterward.
The paper had fallen to my knee when I was startled to see Mr.
Brokenshire come round the corner of my retreat. Dressed entirely in
white, with no color in his costume save the lavender stripe in his
shirt and collar, and the violet of his socks, handkerchief, and tie, he
would have been the perfect type of the middle-aged exquisite had it not
been for the pitiless distortion of his eye the minute he caught sight
of me. That he had not stumbled on me accidentally I judged by the way
in which he lifted a Panama of the kind that is said to be made under
water and is costlier than the costliest feminine confection by Caroline
Ledoux.
I was struggling out of my wicker chair when the uplifted hand forbade
me.
"Be good enough to stay where you are," he commanded, but more gently
than he had ever spoken to me. "I've some things to say to you."
Too frightened to make a further attempt to move, I looked at him as he
drew up a chair similar to my own, which creaked under his weight when
he sat down in it. The afternoon being hot, and my veranda lacking air,
which was one of the reasons why it was left to me, he mopped his brow
with the violet handkerchief, on which an enormous monogram was
embroidered in white. I divined his reluctance to begin not only from
his long hesitation, but from the renewed contortion of his face. His
hand went up to the left cheek as if to hold it in place, though with no
success in the effort. When, at last, he spoke there was a stillness in
his utterance suggestive of an affection extending now to the lips or
the tongue.
"I want you to know how much I appreciate the help you've given to Mrs.
Brokenshire during her--her"--he had a difficulty in finding the right
word--"during her indisposition," he finished, rather weakly.
"I did no more than I was glad to do," I responded, as weakly as he.
"Exactly; and yet I can't allow such timely aid to go unrewarded."
I was alarmed. Grasping the arms of the chair, I braced myself.
"If you mean money, sir--"
"No; I mean more than money." He, too, braced himself. "I--I withdraw my
opposition to your marriage with my son."
The immediate change in my consciousness was in the nature of a
dissolving view. The veranda faded away, and the hillside wood. Once
more I saw the imaginary dining-room, and myself in a smart little
dinner gown seating the guests; once more I saw the white-enameled
nursery, and myself in a lace peignoir leaning over the bassinet. As in
previous visions of the kind, Hugh was a mere shadow in the background,
secondary to the home and the baby.
Secondary to the home and the baby was the fact that my object was
accomplished and that my enemy had come to his knees. Indeed, I felt no
particular elation from that element in the case; no special sense of
victory. Like so many realized ambitions, it seemed a matter of course,
now that it had come. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that for my own sake
and for the sake of the future I must have a more definite expression of
surrender than he had yet given me.
I remembered that Mrs. Brokenshire had said she would help me, and could
imagine how. I summoned up everything within me that would rank as
force of character, speaking quietly.
"I should be sorry, sir, to have you come to this decision against your
better judgment."
"If you'll be kind enough to accept the fact," he said, sharply, "we can
leave my manner of reaching it out of the discussion."
In spite of the tone I rallied my resources.
"I don't want to be presumptuous, sir; but if I'm to enter your family I
should like to feel sure that you'll receive me whole-heartedly."
"My dear young lady, isn't it assurance enough that I receive you at
all? When I bring myself to that--"
"Oh, please don't think I can't appreciate the sacrifice."
"Then what more is to be said?"
"But the sacrifice is the point. No girl wants to become one of a family
which has to make such an effort to take her."
There was already a whisper of insecurity in his tone.
"Even so, I can't see why you shouldn't let the effort be our affair.
Since we make it on our own responsibility--"
"I don't care anything about the responsibility, sir. All I'm thinking
of is that the effort must be made."
"But what did you expect?"
"I haven't said that I expected anything. If I've been of the slightest
help to Mrs. Brokenshire I'm happy to let the service be its own
reward."
"But I'm not. It isn't my habit to remain under an obligation to any
one."
"Nor mine," I said, demurely.
He stared.
"What does that mean? I don't follow you."
"Perhaps not, sir; but I quite follow you. You wish me to understand
that, in spite of my deficiencies, you accept me as your son's wife--for
the reason that you can't help yourself."
Two sharp hectic spots came out on each cheek-bone.
"Well, what if I do?"
"I'm far too generous to put you in that position. I couldn't take you
at a disadvantage, not even for the sake of marrying Hugh."
I was not sure whether he was frightened or angry, but it was the one or
the other.
"Do you mean to say that, now--now that I'm ready--"
"That I'm not? Yes, sir. That's what I do mean to say. I told you once
that if I loved a man I shouldn't stop to consider the wishes of his
relatives; but I've repented of that. I see now that marriage has a
wider application than merely to individuals; and I'm not ready to enter
any family that doesn't want me."
I looked off into the golden dimnesses of the hillside wood in order not
to be a witness of the struggle he was making.
"And suppose"--it was almost a groan--"and suppose I said we--wanted
you?"
It was like bending an iron bar; but I gave my strength to it.
"You'd have to say it differently from that, sir."
He spoke hoarsely.
"Differently--in what sense?"
I knew I had him, as Hugh would have expressed it, where I had been
trying to get him.
"In the sense that if you want me you must ask me."
He mopped his brow once more.
"I--I have asked you."
"You've said you withdrew your opposition. That's not enough."
Beads or perspiration were again standing on his forehead.
"Then what--what would be--enough?"
"A woman can't marry any one unless she does it as something of a
favor."
He drew himself up.
"Do you remember that you're talking to me?"
"Yes, sir; and it's because I do remember it that I have to insist. With
anybody else I shouldn't have to be so crude."
Again he put up a struggle, and this time I watched him. If his wife had
made the conditions I guessed at, I had nothing to do but sit still.
Grasping the arms of his chair, he half rose as if to continue the
interview no further, but immediately saw, as I inferred, what that
would mean to him. He fell back again into the creaking depths of the
chair.
"What do you wish me to say?"
But his stricken aspect touched me. Now that he was prepared to come to
his knees, I had no heart to force him down on them. Since I had gained
my point, it was foolish to battle on, or try to make the Ethiopian
change his skin.
"Oh, sir, you've said it!" I cried, with sudden emotion. I leaned toward
him, clasping my hands. "I see you do want me; and since you do
I'll--I'll come."
Having made this concession, I became humble and thankful and tactful. I
appeased him by saying I was sensible of the honor he did me, that I was
happy in the thought that he was to be reconciled with Hugh; and I
inquired for Mrs. Brokenshire. Leading up to this question with an air
of guilelessness, I got the answer I was watching for in the ashen shade
that settled on his face.
I forget what he replied; I was really not listening. I was calling up
the scene in which she must have fulfilled her promise of helping Hugh
and me. From the something crushed in him, as in the case of a man who
knows the worst at last, I gathered that she had made a clean breast of
it. It was awesome to think that behind this immaculate white suit with
its violet details, behind this pink of the old beau, behind this
moneyed authority and this power of dictation to which even the mighty
sometimes had to bow, there was a broken heart.
He knew now that the bird he had captured was nothing but a captured
bird, and always longing for the forest. That his wife was willing to
bear his name and live in his house and submit to his embraces was
largely because I had induced her. Whether or not, in spite of his
pompousness, he was grateful to me I didn't know; but I guessed that he
was not. He could accept such benefits as I had secured him and yet be
resentful toward the curious providence that had chosen me in particular
as its instrument.
I came out of my meditations in time to hear him say that, Mrs.
Brokenshire being as well rested as she was, there would be no further
hindrance to their proceeding soon to Newport.
"And I suppose I might go back to my home," I observed, with no other
than the best intentions.
He made an attempt to regain the authority he had just forfeited.
"What for?"
"To be married," I explained--"since I am to be married."
"But why should you be married there?"
"Wouldn't it be the most natural thing?"
"It wouldn't be the most natural thing for Hugh."
"A man can be married anywhere; whereas a woman, at such a turning-point
in her life, needs a certain backing. I've an uncle and aunt and a great
many friends--"
The effort at a faint smile drew up the corner of his mouth and set his
face awry.
"You'll excuse me, my dear"--the epithet made me jump--"if I correct you
on a point of taste. In being willing that Hugh should marry you I think
I must draw the line at anything like parade."
I know my eyebrows went up.
"Parade? Parade--how?"
The painful little smile persisted.
"The ancient Romans, when they went to war, had a custom of bringing
back the most conspicuous of their captives and showing them in triumph
in the streets--"
I, too, smiled.
"Oh! I understand. But you see, sir, the comparison doesn't hold in this
case, because none of my friends would know anything more about Hugh
than the fact that he was an American."
The crooked features went back into repose.
"They'd know he was my son."
I continued to smile, but sweetly.
"They'd take it for granted that he was somebody's son--but they
wouldn't know anything about you, sir. You'd be quite safe so far as
that went. Though I don't live many hundreds of miles from New York, and
we're fairly civilized, I had never so much as heard the name of
Brokenshire till Mrs. Rossiter told me it was hers before she was
married. You see, then, that there'd be no danger of my leading a
captive in triumph. No one I know would give Hugh a second thought
beyond being nice to the man I was marrying."
That he was pleased with this explanation I cannot affirm, but he passed
it over.
"I think," was his way of responding, "that it will be better if we
consider that you belong to us. Till your marriage to Hugh, which I
suppose will take place in the autumn, you'll come back with us to
Newport. There will be a whole new--how shall I put it?--a whole new
phase of life for you to get used to. Hugh will stay with us, and I
shall ask my daughter, Mrs. Rossiter, to be your hostess till--"
As, without finishing his sentence, he rose I followed his example.
Though knowing in advance how futile would be the attempt to present
myself as an equal, I couldn't submit to this calm disposition of my
liberty and person without putting up a fight.
"I've a great preference, sir--if you'll allow me--for being married in
my own home, among my own people, and in the old parish church in which
I was baptized. I really have people and a background; and it's possible
that my sisters might come over--"
The hand went up; his tone put an end to discussion.
"I think, my dear Alexandra, that we shall do best in considering that
you belong to us. You'll need time to grow accustomed to your new
situation. A step backward now might be perilous."
My fight was ended. What could I do? I listened and submitted, while he
went on to tell me that Mrs. Brokenshire would wish to see me during the
day, that Hugh would be sent for and would probably arrive the next
afternoon, and that by the end of the week we should all be settled in
Newport. There, whenever I felt I needed instruction, I was not to be
ashamed to ask for it. Mrs. Rossiter would explain anything of a social
nature that I didn't understand, and he knew I could count on Mrs.
Brokenshire's protection.
With a comic inward grimace I swallowed all my pride and thanked him.
As for Mrs. Brokenshire's protection, that was settled when, later in
the afternoon, we sat on her balcony and laughed and cried together, and
held each other's hands, as young women do when their emotions outrun
their power of expression. She called me Alix and begged me to invent a
name for her that would combine the dignity of Hugh's stepmother with
our standing as friends. I chose Miladi, out of _Les Trois
Mousquetaires_, with which she was delighted.
I begged off from dining with them that evening, nominally because I was
too upset by all I had lived through in the afternoon, but really for
the reason that I couldn't bear the thought of Mr. Brokenshire calling
me his dear Alexandra twice in the same day. Once had made my blood run
cold. His method of shriveling up a name by merely pronouncing it is
something that transcends my power to describe. He had ruined that of
Adare with me forever, and now he was completing my confusion at being
called after so lovely a creature as our queen. I have always admitted
that, with its stately, regal suggestions, Alexandra is no symbol for a
plain little body like me; but when Mr. Brokenshire took it on his lips
and called me his dear I could have cried out for mercy. So I had my
dinner by myself, munching slowly and meditating on what Mr. Brokenshire
described as "my new situation."
I was meditating on it still when, in the course of the following
afternoon, I was sitting in a retired grove of the hillside wood
waiting for Hugh to come and find me. He was to arrive about three and
Miladi was to tell him where I was. In our crowded little inn, with its
crowded grounds, nooks of privacy were rare.
I had taken the Boston paper with me in order to get further details of
the tragedy of Sarajevo. These I found absorbing. They wove themselves
in with my thoughts of Hugh and my dreams of our life together. An
article on Serbia, which I had found in an old magazine that morning,
had given me, too, an understanding of the situation I hadn't had
before. Up to that day Serbia had been but a name to me; now I began to
see its significance. The story of this brave, patient little people,
with its one idea--an _idee fixe_ of liberty--began to move me.
Of all the races of Europe the Serbian impressed me as the one that had
been most constantly thwarted in its natural ambitions--struck down
whenever it attempted to rise. Its patriotic hopes had always been
inconvenient to some other nation's patriotic hopes, and so had to be
blasted systematically. England, France, Austria, Turkey, Italy, and
Russia had taken part at various times in this circumvention, denying
the fruits of victory after they had been won. Serbia had been the poor
little bastard brother of Europe, kept out of the inheritance of justice
and freedom and commerce when others were admitted to a share. For some
of them there might have been no great share; but for little Serbia
there was none.
It was terrible to me that such wrong could go on, generation after
generation, and that there should be no Nemesis. In a measure it
contradicted my theory of right. I didn't want any one to suffer, but I
asked why there had been no suffering. Of the nations that had knocked
Serbia about, hedged her in by restrictions, dismembered her and kept
her dismembered, most were prosperous. From Serbia's point of view I
couldn't help sympathizing with the hand that had struck down at least
one member of the House of Hapsburg; and yet in that tragic act there
could be no adequate revenge for centuries of repression. What I wanted
I didn't know; I suppose I didn't want anything. I was only
wondering--wondering why, if individuals couldn't sin without paying for
the sin they had committed, nations should sin and be immune.
Strangely enough, these reflections did not shut out the thought of the
lover who was coming up the hill; they blended with it; they made it
larger and more vital. I could thank God I was marrying a man whose hand
would always be lifted on behalf of right. I didn't know how it could be
lifted in the cause of Serbia against the influences represented by
Franz Ferdinand; but when one is dreaming one doesn't pause to direct
the logical course of one's dreams. Perhaps I was only clutching at
whatever I could say for Hugh; and at least I could say that. He was not
a strong man in the sense of being fertile in ideas; but he was brave
and generous, and where there was injustice his spirit would be among
the first to be stirred by it. That conviction made me welcome him when,
at last, I saw his stocky figure moving lower down among the pine
trunks.
I caught sight of him long before he discovered me, and could make my
notes upon him. I could even make my notes upon myself, not wholly with
my own approval. I was too business-like, too cool. There was nothing I
possessed in the world that I would not have given for a single
quickened heart-throb. I would have given it the more when I saw Hugh's
pinched face and the furbished-up spring suit he had worn the year
before.
It was not the fact that he had worn it the year before that gave me a
pang; it was that he must have worn it pretty steadily. I am not
observant of men's clothes. Except that I like to see them neat, they
are too much alike to be worth noticing. But anything not plainly
opulent in Hugh smote me with a sense of guilt. It could so easily be
attributed to my fault. I could so easily take it so myself. I did take
it so myself. I said as he approached: "This man has suffered. He has
suffered on my account. All my life must be given to making it up to
him."
I make no attempt to tell how we met. It was much as we had met after
other separations, except that when he slipped to the low boulder and
took me in his arms it was with a certainty of possession which had
never hitherto belonged to him. There was nothing for me but to let
myself go, and lie back in his embrace.
I came to myself, as it were, on hearing him whisper, with his face
close to mine:
"You witch! You witch! How did you ever manage it?"
I made the necessity for giving him an explanation the excuse for
working myself free.
"I didn't manage it. It was Mrs. Brokenshire."
He cried out, incredulously:
"Oh no! Not the madam!"
"Yes, Hugh. It was she. She asked him. She must have begged him. That's
all I can tell you about it."
He was even more incredulous.
"Then it must have been on your account rather than on mine; you can bet
your sweet life on that!"
"Hugh, darling, she's fond of you. She's fond of you all. If you could
only have--"
"We couldn't." For the first time he showed signs of admitting me into
the family sense of disgrace. "Did you ever hear how dad came to marry
her?"
I said that something had reached me, but one couldn't put the blame for
that on her.
"And she's had more pull with him than we've had," he declared,
resentfully. "You can see that by the way he's given in to her on
this--"
I soothed him on this point, however, and we talked of a general
reconciliation. From that we went on to the subject of our married life,
of which his father, in the hasty interview of half an hour before, had
briefly sketched the conditions. A place was to be found for Hugh in the
house of Meek & Brokenshire; his allowance was to be raised to twelve or
fifteen thousand a year; we were to have a modest house, or apartment in
New York. No date had been fixed for the wedding, so far as Hugh could
learn; but it might be in October. We should be granted perhaps a three
months' trip abroad, with a return to New York before Christmas.
He gave me these details with an excitement bespeaking intense
satisfaction. It was easy to see that, after his ten months' rebellion,
he was eager to put his head under the Brokenshire yoke again. His
instinct in this was similar to Ethel's and Jack's--only that they had
never declared themselves free. I could best compare him to a horse who
for one glorious half-hour kicks up his heels and runs away, and yet
returns to the stable and the harness as the safest sphere of
blessedness. Under the Brokenshire yoke he could live, move, have his
being, and enjoy his twelve or fifteen thousand a year, without that
onerous responsibility which comes with the exercise of choice. Under
the Brokenshire yoke I, too, should be provided for. I should be raised
from my lowly estate, be given a position in the world, and, though for
a while the fact of the _mesalliance_ might tell against me, it would be
overcome in my case as in that of Libby Jaynes. His talk was a paean on
our luck.
"All we'll have to do for the rest of our lives, little Alix, will be to
get away with our thousand dollars a month. I guess we can do
that--what? We sha'n't even have to save, because in the natural course
of events--" He left this reference to his father's demise to go on with
his hymn of self-congratulation. "But we've pulled it off, haven't we?
We've done the trick. Lord! what a relief it is! What do you think I've
been living on for the last six weeks? Chocolate and crackers for the
most part. Lost thirty pounds in two months. But it's all right now,
little Alix. I've got you and I mean to keep you." He asked, suddenly:
"How did you come to know the madam so well? I'd never had a hint of it.
You do keep some things awful close!"
I made my answer as truthful as I could.
"This was nothing I could tell you, Hugh. Mrs. Brokenshire was sorry for
me ever since last year in Newport. She never dared to say anything
about it, because she was afraid of your father and the rest of you; but
she did pity me--"
"Well, I'll be blowed! I didn't suppose she had it in her. She's always
seemed to me like a woman walking in her sleep--"
"She's waking up now. She's beginning to understand that perhaps she
hasn't taken the right attitude toward your father; and I think she'd
like to begin. It was to work that problem out that she decided to come
away with me and live simply for a while. . . . She wanted to escape
from every one, and I was the nearest to no one she could find to take
with her; and so-- If your sisters or your brother ask you any questions
I wish you would tell them that."
We discussed this theme in its various aspects while the afternoon light
turned the pine trunks round us into columns of red-gold, and a soft
wind soothed us with balsamic smells. Birds flitted and fluted overhead,
and now and then a squirrel darted up to challenge us with the peak of
its inquisitive sharp little nose. I chose what I thought a favorable
moment to bring before Hugh the matter that had been so summarily
shelved by his father. I wanted so much to be married among my own
people and from what I could call my own home.
His child-like, wide-apart, small blue eyes regarded me with growing
astonishment as I made my point clear.
"For Heaven's sake, my sweet little Alix, what do you want that for?
Why, we can be married in Newport!"
His emphasis on the word Newport was as if he had said Heaven.
"Yes; but you see, Hugh, darling, Newport means nothing to me--"
"It will jolly well have to if--"
"And my home means such a lot. If you were marrying Lady Cissie Boscobel
you'd certainly go to Goldborough for the occasion."
"Ah, but that would be different!"
"Different in what way?"
He colored, and grew confused.
"Well, don't you see?"
"No; I'm afraid I don't."
"Oh yes, you do, little Alix," he smiled, cajolingly. "Don't try to pull
my leg. We can't have one of these bang-up weddings, as it is. Of course
we can't--and we don't want it. But they'll do the decent thing by us,
now that dad has come round at all, and let people see that they stand
behind us. If we were to go down there to where you came from--Halifax,
or wherever it is--it would put us back ten years with the people we
want to keep up with."
I submitted again, because I didn't know what else to do. I submitted,
and yet with a rage which was the hotter for being impotent. These
people took it so easily for granted that I had no pride, and was
entitled to none. They allowed me no more in the way of antecedents than
if I had been a new creation on the day when I first met Mrs. Rossiter.
They believed in the principle of inequality of birth as firmly as if
they had been minor German royalties. My marriage to Hugh might be valid
in the eyes of the law, but to them it would always be more or less
morganatic. I could only be Duchess of Hohenberg to this young prince;
and perhaps not even that. She was noble--_adel_, as they call it--at
the least; while I was merely a nursemaid.
But I made another grimace--and swallowed it. I could have broken out
with some vicious remark, which would have bewildered poor Hugh beyond
expression and made no change in his point of view. Even if it relieved
my pent-up bitterness, it would have left me nothing but a nursemaid;
and, since I was to marry him, why disturb the peace? And I owed him too
much not to marry him; of that I was convinced. He had been kind to me
from the first day he knew me; he had been true to me in ways in which
few men would have been true. To go back on him now would not be simply
a change of mind; it would be an act of cruel treachery. No, I argued; I
could do nothing but go on with it. My debt could not be paid in any
other way. Besides, I declared to myself, with a catch in the throat,
I--I loved him. I had said it so many times that it must be true.
When the minute came to go down the hill and prepare for the little
dinner at which I was to be included in the family, my thoughts reverted
to the event that had startled the world.
"Isn't this terrible?" I said to Hugh, indicating the paper I carried in
my hand.
He looked at me with the mild wondering which always made his expression
vacuous.
"Isn't what terrible?"
"Why, the assassinations in Bosnia."
"Oh! I saw there had been something."
"Something!" I cried. "It's one of the most momentous things that have
ever happened in history."
"What makes you say that?" he inquired, turning on me the innocent stare
of his baby-blue eyes as we sauntered between the pine trunks.
I had to admit that I didn't know, I only felt it in my bones.
"Aren't they always doing something of the sort down there--killing
kings and queens, or something?"
"Oh, not like this!" I paused. "You know, Hugh, Serbia is a wonderful
little country when you've heard a bit of its story."
"Is it?" He took out a cigarette and lit it.
In the ardor of my sympathy I poured out on him some of the information
I had just acquired.
"And we're all responsible," I was finishing; "English, French,
Russians, Austrians--"
"We're not responsible--we Americans," he broke in, quietly.
"Oh, I'm not so sure about that. If you inherit the civilization of the
races from which you spring you inherit some of their crimes; and you've
got to pay for them."
"Not on your life!" he laughed, easily; but in the laugh there was
something that cut me more deeply than he knew.