The Brown Study
By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of "Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper," "The Twenty-Fourth of
June," "The Second Violin," Etc.
1919
TO THE LIVING MEMORY OF EDWARDS PARK CLEAVELAND
CONTENTS
I. BROWN HIMSELF
II. BROWN'S CALLER--ONE OF MANY
III. BROWN'S BORROWED BABY
IV. BROWN'S SISTER SUE
V. BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY
VI. BROWN'S PERSISTENT MEMORY
VII. BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES
VIII. BROWN'S BIDDEN GUESTS
IX. BROWN'S UNBIDDEN GUESTS
X. BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
XI. BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD
XII. BROWN'S OLD WORLD
XIII. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FLOOD
XIV. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FIRE
XV. BROWN'S BROWN STUDY
XVI. BROWN'S NEW WORLD
THE TIME OF HIS LIFE
I
BROWN HIMSELF
Brown was so tall and thin, and his study was so low and square, that the
one in the other seemed a misfit.
There was not much in the study. A few shelves of books--not all learned
books by any means--three chairs, one of them a rocker cushioned in a
cheerful red; a battered old desk; a broad and rather comfortable looking
couch: this was nearly all the study's furniture. There was a fireplace
with a crumbling old hearth-stone, and usually a roaring fire within; and
a chimney-piece above, where stood a few photographs and some odd-looking
articles of apparently small value. On the walls were two small
portraits--of an elderly man and woman.
This was absolutely all there was in the room worth mentioning--except
when Brown was in it. Then, of course, there was Brown. This is not a
truism, it is a large, significant fact. When you had once seen Brown in
his study you knew that the room would be empty when he was out of it, no
matter who remained. Not that Brown was such a big, broad-shouldered,
dominating figure of a man. He was so tall and thin of figure that he
looked almost gaunt, and so spare and dark of face that he appeared
almost austere. Yet when you observed him closely he did not seem really
austere, for out of his eyes, of a clear, deep gray, looked not only
power but sympathy, and not only patience but humour. His mouth was
clean-cut and strong, and it could smile in a rather wonderful way. As to
the years he had spent--they might have been thirty, or forty, or twenty,
according to the hour in which one met him. As a matter of fact he was,
at the beginning of this history, not very far along in the thirties,
though when that rather wonderful smile of his was not in evidence one
might have taken him for somewhat older.
I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there was
usually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough, shaggy
coat and the suggestion of collie blood about him--though he was plainly
a mixture of several breeds--Bim belonged to Brown, and to Brown's
immediate environment, whenever Bim himself was able to accomplish it.
When he was not able he was accustomed to wait patiently outside the door
of Brown's small bachelor abode. This door opened directly from the
street into the Brown Study.
The really curious thing about the study was that nobody in that quarter
of the big city knew it was a study. They called the place simply
"_Brown's_." Who Brown himself was they did not know, either. He had
come to live in the little old house about a year ago. He was dressed so
plainly, and everything about him, including his manner, was of such an
unobtrusive simplicity, that he attracted little attention--at first.
Soon his immediate neighbours were on terms of interested
acquaintanceship with him, though how they got there they could not
themselves have told--it had never occurred to them to wonder. The thing
had come about naturally, somehow. Presently others besides his immediate
neighbours knew Brown, had become friends of Brown. They never wondered
how it had happened.
The Brown Study had many callers. It was by now thoroughly used to them,
for it had all sorts, every day of the month, at any hour of the day, at
almost any hour of the night.
II
BROWN'S CALLER--ONE OF MANY
A caller had just come stumbling in out of the November murk, half blind
with weariness and unhappiness and general discouragement. Brown had
welcomed him heartily.
"It's nothing in particular," growled the other man, presently, "and it's
everything. I'm down and out."
"Lost your job?"
"No, but I'm going to lose it."
"How do you know?"
"Every thing points that way."
"What, for instance?"
"Oh--I can't tell you, so you'd understand."
"Am I so thick-headed?" Brown asked the question seriously. His eyes,
keen, yet full of sympathetic interest, rested inquiringly upon his
caller's face.
"It's in the air, that's all I can say. I wouldn't be surprised to be
fired any minute--after eight years' service. And--it's got on my nerves
so I can't do decent work, even to keep up my own self-respect till I do
go. And what I'm to do afterward--"
Brown was silent, looking into the fire. His caller shifted in his chair;
he had shifted already a dozen times since he sat down. His nervous hands
gripped the worn arms of the rocker restlessly, unclosing only to take
fresh hold, until the knuckles shone white.
"There's the wife," said Brown presently.
The caller groaned aloud in his unhappiness.
"And the kiddies."
"God! Yes."
"I meant to mention Him," said Brown, in a quietly matter-of-fact way.
"I'm glad you thought of Him. He's in this situation, too."
The caller's brow grew black. "That's one thing I came to say to you: I'm
through with all that. No use to give me any of it. I don't believe in
it--that's all."
Brown considered him, apparently not in the least shocked. The caller's
clothes were very nearly shabby, certainly ill-kept. His shoes had not
been blackened that day. He needed a hair-cut. His sensitive, thin face
was sallow, and there were dark circles under his moody eyes.
Brown got up and went out by a door which opened beside the
chimney-piece into the room behind, which was his kitchen. He stirred
about there for some time, then he invited Jennings out. There were
crisply fried bacon and eggs, and toast and steaming coffee ready for
the two men--Brown's cookery.
They sat down, and Brown bowed his head.
His companion did not bow his but he dropped his eyes, letting his glance
rest upon the bacon.
"_Lord_" said Brown simply, "_we ask Thy blessing on this food. Give us
food for our souls, as well. We need it. Amen_."
Then he looked up at the caller. "Pitch in, Jennings," said he, and set
the example.
For a man who professed to have had his supper Jennings did pretty well.
When the meal was over Brown sent Jennings back to the fireside while he
himself washed the dishes. When he rejoined his visitor Jennings looked
up with a sombre face.
"Life's just what that card a fellow tacked up in the office one day says
it is:--'_one damned thing after another_,'" he asserted grimly. "There's
no use trying to see any good in it all."
Brown looked up quickly. Into his eyes leaped a sudden look of
understanding, and of more than understanding--anger with something, or
some one. But his voice was quiet.
"So somebody's put that card up in your office, too. I wonder how many of
them there are tacked up in offices all over the country."
"A good many, I guess."
"I suppose every time you look up at it, it convinces you all over
again," remarked Brown. He picked up the poker, and leaning forward began
to stir the fire.
"I don't need convincing. I know it--I've experienced it. God!--I've had
reason to."
"If you don't believe in Him"--Brown was poking vigorously now--"why
bring Him into the conversation?"
Jennings laughed--a short, ugly laugh. "That sounds like you, always
putting a fellow in a corner. I use the word, I suppose, to--"
"To give force to what you say? It does it, in a way. But it's not the
way you use it when you address Him, is it?"
"I don't address Him." Jennings's tone was defiant.
Brown continued lightly to poke the fire. "About that card," said he.
"I've often wondered just how many poor chaps it's been responsible for
putting down and out."
Jennings stared. "Oh, it's just a joke. I laughed the first time
I saw it."
"And the second time?"
"I don't remember. The fellows were all laughing over it when it first
came out."
"It _was_ a clever thing, a tremendously clever thing, for a man to think
of saying. There's so much humour in it. To a man who happened to be
already feeling that way, one can see just how it would cheer him up,
give him courage, brace him to take a fresh hold."
Jennings grunted. "Oh, well; if you're going to take every joke with such
deadly seriousness--"
"You took it lightly, did you? It's seemed like a real joke to you? It's
grown funnier and funnier every day, each time it caught your eye?"
But now Jennings groaned. "No, it hasn't. But that's because it's too
true to keep on seeming funny."
Brown suddenly brought his fist down on the arm of Jennings's rocker
with a thump which made his nerve-strung visitor jump in his chair. "It
_isn't_ true! It's not the saying of a brave man, it's the whine of a
coward. Brave men don't say that sort of thing. The sort of thing they do
say--sometimes to other men, oftener to themselves alone--is what a
famous Englishman said: '_If you do fight, fight it out; and don't give
in while you can stand and see_!' How's that for a motto? If that had
been tacked on the wall in your office all this while, would it have made
you feel like giving up, every time you looked at it?"
Brown's eyes were glowing. Jennings had slumped down in his chair, his
head on his hand, his face partly hidden from his host. There was silence
in the room.
Brown kept Jennings overnight, making a bed for him on his couch, where
he could see the fire. As Jennings sat on the couch, ready to turn in,
Brown came out from his bedroom, a long figure in his bathrobe and
slippers, and knelt down before the old rocking-chair. Jennings, in his
surprise, sat perfectly still, looking at him. He could see Brown's lean,
strong face in profile, the fine head--it was a very fine head, though
perhaps Jennings did not appreciate that--a little lifted, the eyes
closed. Brown prayed in a conversational tone, as if the One he addressed
were in the room above, with an opening between.
Then he rose, a little tender smile on his face, said, "Good-night,
old man," and went away into the inner room--the door of which he did
not close.
What did he leave behind him? What was in the air? Was this a common
room, a homely room, lighted only by a smoldering fire? What was it which
suddenly and unaccountably gripped George Jennings's heart, so that a sob
rose in his throat? What made him want to cry, like a schoolboy, with his
head on his arms? With all his long misery, tears had never once come to
his relief. His heart had been hard and his eyes dry. Now, somehow, he
felt something give way.
* * * * *
Jennings slept all night, and came out to breakfast with a queer,
shamefaced aspect, yet with considerably less heaviness of foot than he
had shown the night before. He ate heartily, as well he might, for the
food was extremely appetizing. When he got up to go he stood still by his
chair, seeming to be trying to say something. Seeing this, Brown came
over to him and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Yes, lad?" said he interrogatively. He was smiling and the smile
transformed his face, as always.
"I--feel better, this morning," stammered Jennings. "I--want to thank
you. I'm ashamed of the way I talked last night. It was as you said. I
knew better, but I couldn't seem to--to--"
Brown nodded. "Of course you knew better," he said heartily. "We all
know better. Every man prays--at some time or other. It's when we stop
praying that things get dark. Begin again, and something happens. It
_always_ happens. And sometimes the thing that happens is that we get a
good sleep and are able to see things differently in the morning.
Good-bye--and come back to-night."
"Shall I?" Jennings asked eagerly.
"Surely. We'll have oysters to-night, roasted on the half-shell over the
coals in the fireplace. Like 'em?"
"I never ate any that way," admitted Jennings. "It sounds good." And he
smiled broadly, a real smile at last.
"Wait till you try them," promised Brown.
III
BROWN'S BORROWED BABY
On the following Saturday, at five in the afternoon, the previous hours
having been filled with a long list of errands of all sorts, yet all
having to do with people, and the people's affairs, seldom his own, Brown
turned his steps home-ward. The steps lagged a little, for he was tired.
At the house next his own--a shabby little house, yet with rows of
blooming scarlet geraniums in tin cans on its two lower window sills, and
clean, if patched, muslin curtains behind the plants--Brown turned in
once more. Standing in the kitchen doorway he put a question:
"Mrs. Kelcey, may I borrow Norah for an hour?"
The person addressed looked up from her work, grinned a broad Irish
grin, pushed back a lock of bothersome hair with a soapy hand, and
answered heartily:
"To be shure ye may, Misther Brown. I says to mesilf an hour ago, I says,
'Happen he'll come for Nory to-night, it bein' Saturday night, an' him
bein' apt to come of a Saturday night.' So I give her her bath early, to
get her out o' the way before the bhoys come home. So it's clane she is,
if she ain't got into no mischief the half hour."
She dashed into the next room and returned triumphant, her youngest
daughter on her arm. Five minutes later Brown bore little Norah Kelcey
into his bachelor domain, wrapped in her mother's old plaid shawl, her
blue eyes looking expectantly from its folds. It was not the first time
she had paid a visit to the place--she remembered what there was in store
for her there. She was just two years old, was Norah, a mere slip of an
Irish baby, with a tangled mop of dark curls above eyes of deep blue set
in bewildering lashes, and with a mouth like a freshly budded rose.
Brown withdrew the shawl and knelt on the floor before her. Bim, who had
welcomed the two with eagerness, sat down beside them.
"You see, Bim," explained his master, "I had to have something human to
love for an hour or two. You're pretty nearly human, I know, but not
quite. Norah is human--she's flesh-and-blood. A fellow gets starved for
the touch of flesh-and-blood sometimes, Bim."
He bent over the child. Then he lifted her again and bore her into his
bedroom. Clean and wholesome she was without question, but he disliked
the faint odour of laundry soap which hung about her. Smiling at her,
playing with her, making a game of it, he gently bathed the little face
and neck, the plump arms and hands, using a clear toilet soap with a most
delicate suggestion of fragrance. When he brought her back to his
fireside she was a small honey-pot for sweetness and daintiness, and fit
for the caresses she was sure to get.
Brown sat down with her upon his knee. He had given her a tiny doll to
snuggle in her arms, and she was quiet as a kitten.
"Norah," said he, speaking softly, "you are adorable. Your eyes are the
colour of deep-sea water and they make havoc with my heart. That heart,
by the way, is soft as melting snow to-night, Norah. It's longing for all
the old things, longing so hard it aches like a bruise. It's done its
best to be stoical about this exile, but there are times when stoicism is
a failure. This is one of those times. Norah baby, would you mind very
much if I kiss the back of your little neck?"
Norah did not mind in the least.
"All right, little human creature," said Brown, placing her upon the
hearth-rug to play with Bim's silky brown ears, "you've given me as much
comfort as one of us is likely to give another, in a world where
everybody starves for something he can't have, and only God knows what
the fight for self-denial costs. Shall we have supper now, Norah and Bim?
Milk for Norah, bones for Bim, meat for Donald Brown--and a prayer for
pluck and patience for us all!"
IV
BROWN'S SISTER SUE
It was a rainy, windy, November night. Brown and Bim were alone
together--temporarily. Suddenly, above the howling of the wind sounded
sharply the clap of the old knocker on the door. Brown laid down his
book--reluctantly, for he was human. A woman's figure, clad from head to
foot in furs, sprang from the car at the curb, ran across the sidewalk,
and in at the open door.
"Go back to the hotel and come for me at twelve, Simpson," she said to
her chauffeur as she passed him, and the next moment she was inside the
house and had flung the door heavily shut behind her.
"O Don!" she cried, and assailed the tall figure before her with a furry
embrace, which was returned with a right good will.
"Well, well, Sue girl! Have you driven seventy miles to see me?"
was Brown's response. Bim, circling madly around the pair, barked
his emotion.
"Is this--" began Brown's visitor, glancing rapidly about her as she
released herself. "Is this--" she began again, and stopped helplessly.
Then, "O Don!" she said once more, and again, "O Don!"--and laughed.
"Yes, I know," said Brown, smiling. "Here, let me take off your furs.
It's pretty warm here, I imagine. Bim and I are apt to keep a lot of wood
on the fire."
"Bim?"
"At your feet--and your service."
The lady looked at the dog, who stood watching her.
"Your only companion, Don?" she asked.
"My best chum. He's so nearly human he understands at this moment that
you don't think him handsome. Never mind! We're used to it, aren't we,
Bim? Come over and take this chair, Sue. Are you cold? Would you like
something hot? Tea--or coffee?"
She sat in the chair he drew to the fire for her. As he looked at his
sister's charming, youthful face, and saw her sitting there in her
handsome street dress with its various little indications of wealth and
fashion--the gold-meshed purse on its slender chain, the rare jewel in
the brooch at the throat, the flashing rings on the white hands--he drew
in his breath in an incredulous little whistle.
"Is it really you, Sis?" he said. "You look pretty good to me, do you
know, sitting there in my old chair!"
She glanced at the arm of the old rocker, worn smooth by the rubbing of
many hands.
"Why do you have such a chair?" she answered impatiently--or so it
sounded. "Why in the world, if you must live in a hovel like this, don't
you make yourself comfortable? Send home for some easy chairs, and rugs
and pictures." Her eye wandered about the room. "And a decent
desk--and--and--a well-bred dog!"
He laughed. "A better bred dog, in one sense, than Bim you couldn't
find. His manners are finer than those of most men. And as for this being
a hovel, you do it injustice. It was built at the beginning of the last
century by a titled Englishman, who used it for an office on his estate.
Look at the big oak beams. Look at the floor, the doors, the fireplace.
It's a distinguished little old house, Sue. Admit it!"
She shook her head. "I'll admit nothing, except that you are the most
eccentric fellow who ever lived, to come off here and stay all by
yourself, when you've been the idol of a congregation like St.
Timothy's--and might still be their idol, if you would take just a little
more assistance and not kill yourself with work. I've no patience with
you, Don!"
He did not reply to this. Instead, he asked again gently, "Shall it be
tea or coffee, Sue?" He stood in the doorway which led to the kitchen and
added, as she hesitated, that he could give her an excellent brand of
either. "Coffee, then," she chose, and sat staring into the fire until
her brother returned with his earthenware pot and the other essentials
for the brewing of coffee, all set forth on a small tray. When,
presently, he offered her a fragrant cup, she drank it eagerly.
"That _is_ good," she declared. "I didn't know you could cook. When did
you learn?"
"On my vacations in the woods. The guides taught me. LaFitte was a
wonderful cook--with certain limitations. I've picked up a few other
tricks as well. Would you like something to eat?"
"No, thank you."
She had studied him with attention as he knelt before the fire,
noting every detail of his appearance. She now put a question which
she had reserved.
"Just how well are you now?"
He looked up. "Don't I look well enough to satisfy you?"
"I can't tell. You are frightfully thin--"
"I never was anything else."
"Do you think this sort of thing is doing as much to make you well as
Doctor Brainard's prescription of a voyage and stay in the South Seas?"
"Much more."
"You must be dreadfully lonely."
He was sitting, Turk fashion, on the hearth-rug before her, his long
legs crossed beneath him, his hands clasping his knees. With the
firelight playing over his face and touching the thrown-back chestnut
locks of his heavy hair with high lights here and there, he looked
decidedly boyish. At her suggestion of his probable loneliness he smiled
and glanced at Bim.
"Bim," said he, addressing a curled-up mass of rough brown hair from
which looked out two watchful brown eyes, and which responded instantly
to the name by resolving itself into an approaching dog, "are we ever
lonely? Rarely, Sue. As a matter of fact, we have a good many callers,
first and last."
"What sort of callers?"
"Neighbours, and friends."
"You are in a horribly poor locality. I noticed as I came through. Do you
mean that you encourage these people to come to see you?"
"We use all the drawing powers we have, Bim and I."
"Do you mean to say," said she, bending forward, "that you are conducting
a _mission_--here, in this place? When you ought to be just trying to get
well? Oh, what would Doctor Brainard say?" Her tone was full of
consternation.
Brown threw back his head and laughed, a big, hearty laugh which did not
sound at all like that of an invalid.
"Brainard seems to be your special anxiety," he said. "Send him down to
see me. I'll make him some flapjacks. If there's any one who appreciates
good cookery it's Brainard."
"Don," said his sister slowly, studying the face before her, "what are
you trying to do?"
"Accomplish a little something while I'm marking time."
"You ought to be resting!"
"I am. This is child's play; compared with the parish of St. Timothy's.
And it's lots more fun!"
"You're an ascetic!"
"Never. No crusts and water for me--coffee and flapjacks every time."
Once more she bent toward him. "You are an ascetic. To live in this
place, and wear--What are you wearing? Old clothes and a--What on earth
is that scarf pin? A ten-cent piece?"
He put up his hand. "Benson, the little old watchmaker on the corner,
gave me that. No, it's not a dime. It pleases him immensely to see me
wear it. It's not bad, Sue. Nonsense!"
"It's not good--cheap!"
He sat smiling up at her, while she regarded him in silence for a minute.
Then she broke out again:
"Why--_why_ do you do it? Haven't you worked hard enough in your great
parish, without allowing yourself to spoil this rest you so much need?"
"Sue," said her brother, "the best cure for certain kinds of overwork is
merely more work, only of a different sort. I can't be idle and
contented. Can you?"
"Idle! I should like to be idle. I'm rushed to death, all the time. It's
killing me."
"Dressmakers and hairdressers--and dinners and bridge and the whole
routine of your set," said he. "It is indeed a hard life--I wonder you
stand it."
"Don't be ironic!"
"I'm not ironic. I realized, long ago, that it's the hardest life in the
world--and pays the least."
She flushed. "I have my charities," she reminded him. "I'm not utterly
useless. And my clubs--belonging to them is a duty I owe other women. I
try to fulfill it."
"But you're not happy."
"Happy! I've forgotten the meaning of the word. To tell the honest
truth, Don, I've been feeling for a long while that I didn't care--how
soon it ended."
"Poor little sister!"
A crashing blow upon the door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she
cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of
wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the
doorstep. No one? At his feet lay a bundle, from which sounded a wailing
cry. He picked it up, looked up and down a vacant street, closed the
door, and came back to Sue Breckenridge by the fire.
"I wonder if they chose the bachelor's doorstep by chance or by
intention," he said.
V
BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY
"Don! Don't take it in! They'll come back for it if you don't--they're
watching somewhere. Put it back on the doorstone--don't look at it!"
"Why, Sue!" he answered, and for an instant his eyes flashed reproof into
hers. "On such a night?"
"But what can you do with it?"
"Make it comfortable, first."
He was unwrapping the bundle. The child was swathed none too heavily in
clean cotton comforters; it was crying frantically, and its hands, as
Brown's encountered them in the unwinding, were cold and blue. There
emerged from the wrappings an infant of possibly six weeks' existence in
a world which had used it ill.
"Will you take him while I get some milk?" asked Brown, as naturally as
if handing crying babies over to his sister were an everyday affair with
them both.
She shook her head, backing away. "Oh, mercy, no! I shouldn't know what
to do with it."
"Sue!" Her brother's tone was suddenly stern. "Don't be that sort of
woman--don't let me think it of you!"
He continued to hold out the small wailing bundle. She bit her lip,
reluctantly extended unaccustomed arms, and received the foundling
into them.
"Sit down close by the fire, my dear, and get those frozen little hands
warm. A bit of mothering won't hurt either of you." And Brown strode away
into the kitchen with a frown between his brows. He was soon back with a
small cupful of warm milk and water, a teaspoon, and a towel.
"Do you expect to feed a tiny baby with a teaspoon?" Sue asked
with scorn.
"You don't know much about babies, do you, Sue? Well, I may have some
trouble, but it's too late to get any other equipment from my neighbours,
and I'll try my luck." She watched with amazement the proceedings which
followed. Brown sat down with the baby cradled on his left arm, tucked
the half-unfolded towel beneath its chin, and with the cup conveniently
at hand upon the table began to convey the milk, drop by drop, to the
little mouth.
"I don't see how you dare do it. You might choke the child to death."
"Not a bit. He'll swallow a lot of atmosphere and it may give him a pain,
but that's better than starving. Isn't it, Baby?"
"You act as if you had half a dozen of your own. What in the world do you
know about babies?"
"Enough to puff me up with pride. Mrs. Murdison, my right-hand neighbour,
is the mother of five; Mrs. Kelcey, on my left, has six--and two of them
are twins. One twin was desperately ill a while ago. I became well
acquainted with it--and with the other five."
"Don!" Again his sister gazed at him as if she found him past
comprehension. "You--_you!_ What would your friends--our friends--say, if
they knew?"
Putting down the teaspoon and withdrawing the towel, Brown snuggled the
baby in his left arm. Warmth and food had begun their work in soothing
the little creature, and it was quiet, its eyelids drooping heavily.
He got up, carried the baby to the couch, with one hand arranged a
steamer rug lying there so that it made a warm nest, and laid the small
bundle in it.
Then he returned to his chair by the fire. He lifted his eyes for a long,
keen look into his sister's face, until she stirred restlessly under the
inspection.
"Well, what do you see?" she asked.
"I see," said Brown slowly, "a woman who is trying to live without
remembering her immortality."
She shivered suddenly, there before the blazing fire. "I'm not sure that
I believe in it," she said fiercely. "Now I've shocked you, Don, but I
can't help it. I'm not sure of anything, these days. That's why--"
"Why you want to forget. But you can't forget. And the reason why you
can't forget is because you do believe in it. Every day people are trying
to forget one of the greatest facts in the universe. They may deny it
with their lips, but with their hearts they know it is true."
She did not answer. Her brother drew his chair closer, leaned forward,
and took one of the jewelled hands in his. He spoke very gently, and in
his voice was a certain quality of persuasion which belongs not to all
voices which would persuade.
"Sue, make room in your life for a little child. You need him."
Her glance evaded his, flashed past his to the small, still bundle on the
couch. Then, suddenly, into her unhappy eyes leaped a suspicion. She
straightened in her chair.
"You don't mean--you're not suggesting--"
He smiled, comprehending. "No, no--nothing like that. Your heart isn't
big enough for that--yet. It's the mothers of children who make room for
the waifs, or those who have long been mothers in heart and have been
denied. You don't belong to either of those classes, do you?"
She drew a stifled breath. "You don't know what you are talking about,
Don. How could you, a bachelor like you?"
"Couldn't I? Well, Sue, if fathers may be divided into the same two
classes, I might be found in one of them."
She stared at him. "You? Oh, I can't believe it. You could have
married long ago, if you had wanted to. You could have married
anybody--simply anybody!"
"You do me too much honour--or discredit, I'm not just sure which."
"But it's true. With your position--and your money! Rich and brilliant
clergymen aren't so common, Donald Brown. And your personality, your
magnetism! Men care for you. Women have always hung on your words!"
He made a gesture of distaste; got up.
"Sterility of soul is a worse thing than sterility of body," said he.
"But sometimes--God cures the one when He cures the other."
"But you never prescribed this strange thing before."
He smiled. "I've been learning some things out here, Sue, that I never
learned before. One of them is how near God is to a little child."
"You've learned that--of your neighbours?" Her accent was indescribable.
"Of my neighbours--and friends."
It was time for her to go. He helped her into her great fur coat and
himself fastened it in place. When she was ready she turned from the
window from which she had tried in vain to see her surroundings, and
threw at her brother a question which seemed to take him unawares.
"Don, do you know anything about Helena these days?"
Though his face did not change, something about him suggested the mental
bracing of himself for a shock. He shook his head.
"She's dropped everything she used to care for. Nobody knows why. Her
mother's in despair about her--you know what a society leader Mrs.
Forrest has always been. She can't understand Helena--nor can anybody."
"She's not ill?"
"Apparently not; she's as wonderful to look at as ever, when one meets
her--which one seldom does. The girls say she walks miles every day,
so she must be well in body, though even that doesn't assure Mrs.
Forrest. I thought, possibly, you might know. You and Helena used to
be such friends."
"We are still, I hope."
His sister's eyes were not easily to be deceived, and they were positive
they saw pain in the eyes which met her own.
"Don," she said softly, "may I ask you one question?"
"Please don't."
"When you were a little boy, and you got hurt in any way, you used to run
away and hide. Are you--hiding now?"
His eyes grew dark with sudden anger, but he replied with self-control:
"You will have to think what you like about that, Sue. If that is the way
the thing looks to you--so be it!"
The sound of the returning car made Mrs. Breckenridge speak hurriedly:
"I didn't mean to be unkind, Don boy. Nobody knows better than I that you
are no coward. Only--only--you know an ascetic denies himself things that
he needn't. And--you _are_ an ascetic!"
"Can I never convince you of your mistake about that?" he answered; and
now his lips smiled again, a little stiffly.
She embraced him once more, stopped to say beseechingly, "You won't keep
that baby here, will you, Don?" and, receiving his assurance that he
would consult with his neighbours in the morning as to the welfare of the
foundling, took her departure.
Left alone Brown went back into the quiet room. The baby was stirring
among its wrappings. Bim, who had roused himself to see the visitor off,
came and poked his nose into the bundle.
"We never know what's coming, Bim, do we?" asked Brown of his
companion. "Sometimes it's what we want, and sometimes not. But--if we
are to teach others we must be taught ourselves, Bim. And that's what's
happening now."
VI
BROWN'S PERSISTENT MEMORY
"I wonder," he said to himself an hour later, "if it's any use to go to
bed at all!" He was walking the floor with the baby in his arms. Bim,
puzzled and anxious, walked by his side, looking up at the small bundle
with a glance which seemed to say, "What in the world are we going to
do with it?"
Whether the feeding from the teaspoon had disagreed with its digestion
could not be discovered, but clearly the baby was unhappy. It was quiet
when walked with but upon being put down immediately set up such an
outcry that the bachelor, unaccustomed, could not listen to it with
stoicism. Therefore, when he had endured the sound as long as he could,
he had taken the little visitor up and was now walking with it, himself
in bathgown and slippers.
"It may be a pin, Bim," said he suddenly.
He sat down before the fire, laid the baby upon its face on his knees
and began cautiously to investigate. He loosened the tiny garments one
by one, until he had reached the little body and could assure himself
that no sharp point was responsible for the baby's discomfort. He
gently rubbed the small back, wondering, as he did so, at the
insignificant area his hand nearly covered. Under this treatment the
wailing gradually quieted.
"Bim," said he resignedly, "we shall have to sit up with him--for a
while, at least."
Bim walked over to the window.
"No," said his master, "we can't disturb our neighbours at this time of
night. We must see it through. If we can manage to read, it will make the
time go faster."
He reached for a book, opened it at a mark, and began to read, his hand,
meanwhile, steadily maintaining the soothing motion up and down the
baby's back. But his thoughts were not upon the page. Instead, they took
hold upon one phrase his sister had used--one phrase, which had brought
up to him a certain face as vividly as the sudden presentation of a
portrait might have done.
"_She's as wonderful to look at as ever_."
Was she? Well, she had been wonderful to look at--there could be no
question of that. He had looked at her, and looked, and looked again,
until his eyes had blurred with the dazzle of the vision. And having
looked, there could be no possible forgetting, no merciful blotting out
of the recollection of that face. He had tried to forget it, to forget
the whole absorbing personality, had tried with all his strength, but the
thing could not be done. It seemed to him sometimes that the very effort
to efface that image only cut its outlines deeper into his memory.
The baby began to cry afresh, with sudden, sharp insistence. Brown took
it up and strode the floor with it again.
"Poor little chap!" he murmured. "You can't have what you want, and
I can't have what I want. But it doesn't do a bit of good to cry
about it--eh?"
The knocker sounded. Bim growled.
"At this hour!" thought Brown, with a glance at his watch lying on the
table. It was nearly two in the morning.
Holding the baby in the crook of his arm he crossed the floor and opened
the door gingerly, sheltering the baby behind it.
"Is it the toothache, Misther Brown?" inquired an eagerly pitiful voice.
"Or warse?"
Mrs. Kelcey came in, her shawl covering her unbound hair--his next-door
neighbour and little Norah's mother. Her face was full of astonishment at
sight of Brown in his bathgown and the baby in his arms.
"I'm mighty glad to see you," Brown assured her. "I don't know what to do
with him, poor little fellow. I think it must be a pain."
"The saints and ahl!" said Mrs. Kelcey. She took the baby from him with
wonted, motherly arms. "The teeny thing!" she exclaimed. "Where--"
"Left on my doorstep."
"An' ye thried to get through the night with him! Why didn't ye bring him
to me at wanst?"
"It was late--your lights were out. How did you know I was up?"
"Yer lights wasn't out. I was up with me man--Pat's a sore fut, an' I was
bathin' it to quiet him. I seen yer lights. Ye sit up till ahl hours, I
know, but I cud see the shadow movin' up and down. I says to Pat, 'He's
the toothache, maybe, and me with plinty of rimidies nixt door.'"
She turned her attention to the tiny creature in her lap. She
inquired into the case closely, and learned how the child had been
fed with a teaspoon.
"To think of a single man so handy!" she exclaimed admiringly. "But maybe
he shwallied a bit too much air with the feedin'."
"He swallowed all the air there was at hand," admitted Brown, "and
precious little milk. But he seemed hungry, and I thought he was too
little to go all night without being fed."
"Right ye were, an' 'tis feedin' he nades agin--only not with a shpoon.
I'll take him home an' fix up a bit of a bottle for him, the poor thing.
An' I'll take him at wanst, an' let ye get to bed, where ye belong, by
the looks of ye."
"You're an angel, Mrs. Kelcey. I hate to let you take him, with all you
have on your hands--"
"Shure, 'tis the hands that's full that can always hold a bit more. An' a
single man can't be bothered with cast-off childher, no matter how big
his heart is, as we well know."
And Mrs. Kelcey departed, with the baby under her shawl and a motherly
look for the man who opened the door for her and stood smiling at her in
the lamplight as she went away.
But when he had thrown himself, at last, on his bed, wearily longing for
rest, he found he had still to wrestle a while with the persistent image
of the face which was "wonderful to look at," before kindly slumber
would efface it with the gray mists of oblivion.
VII
BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES
"There, Tom, how's that? Does it droop as much as the one on the
other side?"
Tom Kelcey, aged fourteen, squinted critically at the long festoon of
ground-pine between the centre of the chimney-breast and the angle of the
dingy old oak-beamed ceiling.
"Drop her a couple of inches, Misther Brown," he suggested. "No, not so
much. There, that's the shtuff. Now you've got her, foine and dandy."
Brown stepped down from the chair on which he had been standing, and
stood off with Tom to view the effect.
"Yes, that's exactly right," said he, "thanks to your good eye. The room
looks pretty well, eh? Quite like having a dinner party."
"It's ilegant, Misther Brown, that's what it is," said a voice in the
doorway behind them. "Tom bhoy, be afther takin' the chair back to the
kitchen for him."
Mrs. Kelcey, mother of Tom, and next-door neighbour to Brown, advanced
into the room. She was laden with a big basket, which Brown, perceiving,
immediately took from her.
"Set it down careful, man," said she. "The crust on thim pies is that
delicate it won't bear joltin'. I had the saints' own luck with 'em this
toime, praise be."
"That's great," said Brown. "But I haven't worried about that. You never
have anything else, I'm sure."
Mrs. Kelcey shook her head in delighted protest.
"The table is jist the handsomest I iver laid eyes on," she asserted,
modestly changing the subject.
"It is pretty nice, isn't it?" agreed Brown warmly, surveying the table
with mixed emotions. When he stopped to think of what Mrs. Hugh
Breckenridge would say at sight of that table, set for the Thanksgiving
dinner her brother, Donald Brown, was giving that afternoon, he
experienced a peculiar sensation in the region of his throat. He was
possessed of a vivid sense of humour which at times embarrassed him
sorely. If it had not been that his bigness of heart kept his love of
fun in order he would have had great difficulty, now and then, in
comporting himself with necessary gravity.
Mrs. Kelcey herself had arranged that table, spending almost the entire
preceding day in dashing about the neighbourhood, borrowing from Brown's
neighbours the requisite articles. Brown's own stock of blue-and-white
ware proving entirely inadequate, besides being in Mrs. Kelcey's eyes by
no means fine enough for the occasion, she had unhesitatingly
requisitioned every piece of china she could lay hands on in the
neighbourhood. She had had no difficulty whatever in borrowing more than
enough, for every woman in the block who knew Brown was eager to lend her
best. The result was such an array of brilliantly flowered plates and
cups and dishes of every style and shape, that one's gaze, once riveted
thereon, could with difficulty be removed.
When Brown had first conceived this festival it had been with the idea
of sending to the nearest city for a full equipment, if an inexpensive
one, of all the china and glass, linen and silver necessary for the
serving of the meal. But upon thinking it over it occurred to him that
such an outlay would not only arouse his new friends' suspicion of his
financial resources, it would deprive them of one of the chief joys in
such a neighbourhood as this in which he was abiding--that of the
personal sharing in the details of the dinner's preparation and the proud
lending of their best in friendly rivalry.
Therefore the table, as it now stood before him in all but complete
readiness for the feast, bore such witness to the warmth of esteem in
which the neighbourhood held him, not to mention its resourcefulness in
fitting together adjuncts not originally intended for partnership, as
must have touched the heart of a dinner-giver less comprehending than
Donald Brown, late of St. Timothy's great and prosperous parish.
To begin with, the table itself had been set up in its place in the front
room by Tim Lukens the carpenter, who when he was sober was one of the
cleverest of artisans. Starting with two pairs of sawhorses and
continuing with smooth pine boards, he had constructed a table of goodly
proportions and of a solidity calculated to withstand successfully the
demand likely to be made upon it. Over this table-top Mrs. Kelcey had
laid--without thought, it must be admitted, of any intermediary padding
such as certain mistaken hostesses consider essential--three freshly and
painstakingly laundered tablecloths, her own, Mrs. Murdison's, and Mrs.
Lukens's best, cunningly united by stitches hardly discoverable except by
a too-searching eye.
The foundations thus laid, the setting of the table had been a delightful
task for Mrs. Kelcey, assisted as she was by Mrs. Murdison, who
frequently differed from her in points of arrangement but who yielded
most of them upon hearing, as she frequently did, Mrs. Kelcey's verbal
badge of office: "Misther Brown put me in charge, Missus Murdison. He
says to me, he says, 'Missus Kelcey, do jist as ye think best.'" Together
the two had achieved a triumph, and the table now stood forth glowingly
ready for its sixteen guests, from the splendid bunch of scarlet
geraniums in an immense pink and blue bowl with an Indian's head on one
side, to the sixteen chairs, no two exactly alike, which had been
obtained from half as many houses.
As for the dinner itself, there was no patchwork about that. Brown
himself had supplied the essentials, trusting that the most of his guests
could have no notion whatever of the excessively high cost of turkeys
that season, or of the price of the especial quality of butter and eggs
which he handed over to Mrs. Kelcey to be used in the preparation of the
dishes which he and she had decided upon. That lady, however, had had
some compunctions as she saw the unstinted array of materials an
astonished grocer's boy had delivered upon her kitchen table two days
before the dinner, and had expressed herself to Mrs. Murdison as
concerned lest Mr. Brown had spent more than he could well afford.
"'Tis the big hearrt of him that leads his judgment asthray," she said,
exulting none the less, as she spoke, over the prospect of handling all
those rich materials and for once having the chance to display her
skilled cookery. "I said as much as I dared, lest I hurrt his pride,
but--'Tis but wanct a year, Missus Kelcey,' says he, an' I said no more."
The thrifty Scotswoman shook her head. "The mon kens nae mair aboot the
cost o' things than a cheild," said she. "But 'twould be, as ye say, a
peety to mak' him feel we dinna appreciate his thocht o' us."
So they had done their best for him, and the result was a wonderful
thing. To his supplies they had surreptitiously added small delicacies of
their own. Mrs. Kelcey contributed a dish of fat pickles, luscious to the
eye and cooling to the palate. Mrs. Murdison brought a jar of marmalade
of her own making--a rare delicacy; though the oranges were purchased of
an Italian vender who had sold out an over-ripe stock at a pittance. Mrs.
Lukens supplied a plate of fat doughnuts, and Mrs. Burke sent over a big
platter of molasses candy. Thus the people of the neighbourhood had come
to feel the affair one to which not only had they been bidden, but in
which they were all in a way entertainers.
The boys of the district, also, had their share in the fun. Though not
invited to the dinner proper, they had been given a hint that if they
dropped in that evening after their fathers and mothers had departed
there might be something left--and what boys would not rather "drop in"
after that fashion, by the back door, than go decorously in at the front
one? So they had been eager to furnish decorations for the party,
according to Brown's suggestion, by going in a body to the woods three
miles away and bringing back a lavish supply of ground-pine. They had
spent two happy evenings helping Brown make this material into ropes,
while he told them stories, and there was not a boy of them all who would
not cheerfully have lent his shoulders to the support of the dinner-table
throughout the coming meal, if it had suddenly been reported that Tim
Lukens's sawhorses were untrustworthy.
"Now, Misther Brown, I'll be goin' home to see to the twins and get me
man to dhress himsilf, an' thin I'll be back. Have no fear--av'rythin's
doin' foine, an' the turrkey's an ilegant brown jist beginnin' to show.
If I'm not back in tin minutes ye moight baste him wanct, but have no
other care."
"I'll be delighted to baste him, thank you," Brown responded. "And I
have no cares at all, with you in charge. I only hope you won't be too
tired to enjoy the dinner. You've been busy every minute since dawn."
"Shure, 'tis the labour of love makes the worrk aisy," she responded, and
then, attacked by a sudden and most unusual wave of shyness, disappeared
out of the door.
Brown, standing with his back to the fire, smiled to himself. Well he
knew that since the suffering three-year-old twin son of the Kelceys had
spent the night in his pitiful arms and in the morning taken a turn for
the better, the entire Kelcey family would have made martyrs of
themselves for his sake. It was quite true that that sort of thing, as
his sister, Mrs. Breckenridge, had intimated, was not precisely in
accordance with the prescription of Dr. Bruce Brainard, distinguished
specialist. But if that night had been his last, Donald Brown could not
have spent it in a way more calculated to give him pleasure as he closed
his eyes. Surely, since life was still his, the love of the Kelceys was
not to be despised.
As he dressed for the dinner Brown considered his attire carefully. He
could not venture to wear anything calculated to outshine the apparel
of his guests, and yet to don the elbow-worn, shiny-backed blue serge of
his everyday apparel seemed not to do them quite honour enough. He had
not many clothes with him, but he had brought one suit of rough homespun,
smart indeed from the viewpoint of the expensive tailor who had made it,
but deceivingly unconventional to the eye of the uninitiated. This he put
on, taking particular pains to select a very plain cravat, and to fasten
in it with care the scarf-pin bestowed upon him by old Benson, the little
watchmaker on the corner below. Through the buttonhole in the lapel of
his coat he drew a spicy-smelling sprig of ground-pine, chanting
whimsically as he did so a couplet from Ben Jonson:
"Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast."
VIII
BROWN'S BIDDEN GUESTS
And now, promptly on the stroke of two, the dinner guests arrived, not a
man or woman of them later than five minutes after. Even Mrs. Kelcey,
though she had rushed into the kitchen two minutes earlier by the back
door, now entered formally with Patrick, her husband, by the front, and
only the high flush on her cheek and the sparkle in her blue-black eye
told of a sense of her responsibilities.