I could, therefore, only scramble down to my favorite corner among the rocks. Not that it was really a scramble. As a matter of fact, the path was easy if you knew where to find it; but it was hidden from the ordinary pa.s.ser on the Cliff Walk, first by a boulder, round which you had to slip, and then by a tangle of wild rosebines, wild raspberries, and Queen Anne"s lace. It was something like a secret door, known only to the Rossiter household, their servants, and their friends. Once you had pa.s.sed it you had a measure of the public privacy you get in a box at the theater or the opera. You had s.p.a.ce and ease and a wide outlook, with no fear of intrusion.
I cannot say that I was unhappy. I was rather in that state of mind which the American people, with its gift for the happy, unexpected word, have long spoken of as "mad." I was certainly mad. I was mad with J.
Howard Brokenshire first of all; I was mad with his family for having got up and left me without so much as a nod; I was mad with Hugh for having made me fall in love with him; I was mad with Larry Strangways for not having been on the spot; and I was most of all mad with myself.
I had been boastful and b.u.mptious; I had been disrespectful and absurd.
It was foolish to make worse enemies than I had already. Mrs. Rossiter wouldn"t keep me now. There would be no escape from Mrs. Applegate and the Home for Working-Girls.
The still summer beauty of the afternoon added to my wretchedness. All round and before me there was luxury and joyousness and sport. The very sea was in a playful mood, lapping at my feet like a tamed, affectionate leviathan, and curling round the ledges in the offing with delicate lace-like spouts of spume. Sea-gulls swooped and hovered with hoa.r.s.e cries and a lovely effect of silvery wings. Here and there was a sail on the blue, or the smoke of a steamer or a war-ship. Eastons Point, some two or three miles away, was a long, burnished line of ripening wheat.
To right and to left of me were broken crags, red-yellow, red-brown, red-green, where lovers and happy groups could perch or nestle carelessly, thrusting trouble for the moment to a distance. I had to bring my trouble with me. If it had not been for trouble I shouldn"t have been there. There wasn"t a soul in the world who would fight to take my part but Hugh, and I was, in all my primary instincts, a clinging, parasitic thing that hated to stand alone.
There was nothing for it then but crying, and I did that to the best of my ability; not loudly, of course, or vulgarly, but gently and sentimentally, with an immense pity for myself. I cried for what had happened that day and for what had happened yesterday. I cried for things long past, which I had omitted to cry for at the time. When I had finished with these I went further back to dig up other ignominies, and I cried for them. I cried for my father and mother and my orphaned condition; I cried for the way in which my father--who was a good, kind man, _du reste_--had lived on his princ.i.p.al, and left me with scarcely a penny to my name; I cried for my various disappointments in love, and for the girl friends who had predeceased me. I ma.s.sed all these motives together and cried for them in bulk. I cried for Hugh and the brilliant future we should have on the money he would make. I cried for Larry Strangways and the loneliness his absence would entail on me. I cried for the future as well as for the past and if I could have thought of a future beyond the future I should have cried for that. It was delicious and sad and consoling all at once; and when I had no more tears I felt almost as if Hugh"s strong arm had been about me, and I was comforted.
I was just wiping my eyes and wondering whether at the moment of going homeward my nose would be too red, when I heard a quiet step. I thought I must be mistaken. It was so unlikely that any one would be there at this hour of the day--the servants generally came down at night--that for a minute I didn"t turn. It was the uncomfortable sense that some one was behind me that made me look back at last, when I caught the flutter of lace and the shimmer of pale-rose taffeta. Mrs. Brokenshire had worn lace and pale-rose taffeta at the lunch.
Fear and amazement wrestled in my soul together. Struggling to my feet, I turned round as slowly as I could.
"Don"t get up," she said in a sweet, quiet voice. "I"ll come and sit down beside you, if I may." She had already seated herself on a low flat rock as she said, "I saw you were crying, so I waited."
I am not usually at a loss for words, but I was then. I stuttered and stammered and babbled, without being able to say anything articulate.
Indeed, I had nothing articulate to say. The mind had suspended its action.
My impressions were all subconscious, but registered exactly. She was the most exquisite production I had ever seen in human guise. Her perfection was that of some lovely little bird in which no color fails to shade harmoniously into some other color, in which no single feather is out of place. The word I used of her was _soigne_--that which is smoothed and curled and polished and caressed till there is not an eyelash which hasn"t received its measure of attention. I don"t mean that she was artificial, or that her effects were too thought out. She was no more artificial than a highly cultivated flower is artificial, or a many-faceted diamond, or a King Charles spaniel, or anything else that is carefully bred or cut or shaped. She was the work of some specialist in beauty, who had no aim in view but to give to the world the loveliest thing possible.
When I had mastered my confusion sufficiently I sat down with the words, rather lamely spoken:
"I didn"t know any one was here. I hope I haven"t kept you standing long."
"No; but I was watching you. I came down only a few minutes after you did. You see, I was afraid--when we came away from Mrs. Rossiter"s--that you might be unhappy."
"I"m not as unhappy as I was," I faltered, without knowing what I said, and was rewarded to see her smile.
It was an innocent smile, without glee, a little sad in fact, but full of unutterable things like a very young child"s. I had never seen such teeth, so white, so small, so regular.
"I"m glad of that," she said, simply. "I thought if some--some other woman was near you, you mightn"t feel so--so much alone. That"s why I watched round and followed you."
I could have fallen at her feet, but I restricted myself to saying:
"Thank you very much. It does make a difference." I got courage to add, however, with a smile of my own, "I see you know."
"Yes, I know. I"ve thought about you a good deal since that day about a fortnight ago--you remember?"
"Oh yes, I remember. I"m not likely to forget, am I? Only, you see, I had no idea--if I had, I mightn"t have felt so--so awfully forlorn."
Her eyes rested upon me. I can only say of them that they were sweet and lovely, which is saying nothing at all. Sweet and lovely are the words that come to me when I think of her, and they are so lamentably overworked. She seemed to study me with a child-like unconsciousness.
"Yes," she said at last, "I suppose you do feel forlorn. I didn"t think of that or--or I might have managed to come to you before."
"That you should have come now," I said, warmly, "is the kindest thing one human being ever did for another."
Again there was the smile, a little to one side of the mouth, wistful, wan.
"Oh no, it isn"t. I"ve really come on my own account." I waited for some explanation of this, but she only went on: "Tell me about yourself. How did you come here? Ethel Rossiter has never really said anything about you. I should like to know."
Her manner had the gentle command that queens and princesses and very rich women unconsciously acquire. I tried to obey her, but found little to say. Uttered to her my facts were so meager. I told her of my father and mother, of my father"s mania for old books, of Louise and Victoria and their husbands, of my visits abroad; but I felt her attention wandering. That is, I felt she was interested not in my data, but in me.
Halifax and Canada and British army and navy life and rare first editions were outside the range of her ken. Paris she knew; and London she knew; but not from any point of view from which I could speak of them. I could see she was the well-placed American who knows some of the great English houses and all of the great English hotels, but nothing of that Britannic backbone of which I might have been called a rib. She broke in presently, not apropos of anything I was saying, with the words:
"How old are you?"
I told her I was twenty-four.
"I"m twenty-nine."
I said I had understood as much from Mrs. Rossiter, but that I could easily have supposed her no older than myself. This was true. Had there not been that something mournful in her face which simulates maturity I could have thought of her as nothing but a girl. If I stood in awe of her it was only of what I guessed at as a sorrow.
She went on to give me two or three details of her life, with nearly all of which I was familiar through hints from Hugh and Ethel Rossiter.
"We"re really Philadelphians, my mother and I. We"ve lived a good deal in New York, of course, and abroad. I was at school in Paris, too, at the Convent des Abeilles." She wandered on, somewhat inconsequentially, with facts of this sort, when she added, suddenly: "I was to have married some one else."
I knew then that I had the clue to her thought. The marriage she had missed was on her mind. It created an obsession or a broken heart, I wasn"t quite sure which. It was what she wanted to talk about, though her glance fell before the spark of intelligence in mine.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MARRIAGE SHE HAD MISSED WAS ON HER MIND. IT CREATED AN OBSESSION OR A BROKEN HEART, I WASN"T QUITE SURE WHICH]
Since there was nothing I could say in actual words, I merely murmured sympathetically. At the same time there came to me, like the slow breaking of a dawn, an illuminating glimpse of the great J. Howard"s life. I seemed to be admitted into its secret, into a perception of its weak spot, more fully than his wife had any notion of. She would never, I was sure, see what she was betraying to me from my point of view. She would never see how she was giving him away. She wouldn"t even see how she was giving away herself--she was so sweet, and gentle, and child-like, and unsuspecting.
I don"t know for how many seconds her quiet, inconsequential speech trickled on without my being able to follow it. I came to myself again, as it were, on hearing her say:
"And if you do love him, oh, don"t give him up!"
I grasped the fact then that I had lost something about Hugh, and did my best to catch up with it.
"I don"t mean to, if either of my conditions is fulfilled. You heard what they were."
"Oh, but if I were you I wouldn"t make them. That"s where I think you"re wrong. If you love him--"
"I couldn"t steal him from his family, even if I loved him."
"Oh, but it wouldn"t be stealing. When two people love each other there"s nothing else to think about."
"And yet that might sometimes be dangerous doctrine."
"If there was never any danger there"d never be any courage. And courage is one of the finest things in life."
"Yes, of course; but even courage can carry one very far."
"Nothing can carry us so far as love. I see that now. It"s why I"m anxious about poor Hugh. I--I know a man who--who loves a woman whom he--he couldn"t marry, and--" She caught herself up. "I"m fond of Hugh, you see, even though he doesn"t like me. I wish he understood, that they all understood--that--that it isn"t my fault. If I could have had my way--" She righted herself here with a slight change of tense. "If I could have my way, Hugh would marry the woman he"s in love with and who"s in love with him."
I tried to enroll her decisively on my side.
"So that you don"t agree with Mr. Brokenshire."