"Oh, but what does it all matter when it"s a question of love?" she said, somewhat at a venture. "Love is the only thing, don"t you think?
It must make its opportunities as it can."
"You mean that love can be--unscrupulous?"
"Oh, I shouldn"t use that word."
"It isn"t the word I"m thinking of. It"s the act."
"Love is like war, isn"t it? All"s fair!"
"But is it?"
Her eyes rested on mine, not boldly, but with a certain daring.
"Why--yes."
"You believe that?"
She still kept her eyes on mine. Her tone was that of a challenge.
"Why--yes." She added, perhaps defiantly, "Don"t you?"
I said, decidedly:
"No, I don"t."
"Then you don"t love. You can"t love. Love is reckless. Love--" There was a long pause before she dropped the two concluding words, s.p.a.cing them apart as if to emphasize her deliberation. "Love--risks--all."
"If it risks all it may lose all."
The challenge was renewed.
"Well? Isn"t that better than--?"
"It"s not better than doing right," I hastened to say, "however hard it may be."
"Ah, but what is right? A thing can"t be right if--if--" she sought for a word--"if it"s killing you."
As she said this there was a sound along the corridor leading from the house. I thought Mrs. Daly had forgotten something and was coming back.
But the tread was different from her slow stump, and my sense of a danger at hand was such as the good woman never inspired.
Mrs. Brokenshire made no attempt to play a part or to put me off the scent. She acted as if I understood what was happening. Her teacup resting in her lap, she sat with eyes aglow and lips slightly apart in a look of heavenly expectation. I could hardly believe her to be the dazed, stricken little creature I had seen three months ago. As the footsteps approached she murmured, "He"s coming!" or, "Who"s coming?" I couldn"t be sure which.
Mr. Grainger entered like a man who is on his own ground and knows what he is about to find. There was no uncertainty in his manner and no apparent sense of secrecy. His head was high and his walk firm as he pushed his way amid tables and chairs to where we were sitting in the glow of a shaded light.
I stood up as he approached, but I had time to appraise my situation. I saw all its little mysteries illumined as by a flash. I saw why Stacy Grainger had kept track of me; I saw why, in spite of my deficiencies, he had taken me on as his librarian; but I saw, too, that the Lord had delivered J. Howard Brokenshire into my hands, as Sisera into those of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.
CHAPTER XIII
I was relieved of some of my embarra.s.sment by the fact that Mr. Grainger took command.
Having bowed over Mrs. Brokenshire"s hand with an empress.e.m.e.nt he made no attempt to conceal, he murmured the words, "I"m delighted to see you again." After this greeting, which might have been commonplace and was not, he turned to me. "Perhaps Miss Adare will give me some tea."
I could carry out this request, listen to their sc.r.a.ps of conversation, and think my own thoughts all at the same time.
Thinking my own thoughts was the least easy of the three, for the reason that thought stunned me. The facts knocked me on the head. Since before my engagement as Mr. Grainger"s librarian this situation had been planned! Mrs. Brokenshire had chosen me for my part in it! She had given Mr. Grainger my address, which she could have learned from her mother, and recommended me as one with whom they would be safe!
Their talk was only of superficial things; but it was not the clue to their emotions. That was in the way they talked--haltingly, falteringly, with glances that met and shifted and fell, or that rested on each other with long, mute looks, and then turned away hurriedly, as if something in the spirit reeled. As she gave him bits of information concerning the summer at Newport, she stumbled in her words, because there was no correlation between the sentences she formed and her fundamental thought. The same was true of his account of yachting on the coast of Maine, of Gloucester, Islesboro, and Bar Harbor. He stuttered and stammered and repeated himself. It was like one of those old Italian duets in which stupid words are sung to a pa.s.sionate, heartbreaking melody. Nevertheless, I had enough sympathy with love, even with a guilty love, to have some mercy in my judgments.
Not that I believed it to be a guilty love--as yet. That, too, I was obliged to think over and form my opinion about it. It was not a guilty love as yet; but it might easily become a guilty love. I remembered that Larry Strangways, with all his admiration for his employer, had refused him a place in his list of whole-hearted, clean-hearted men because he had a weakness; and I reflected that on the part of Mrs. Billing"s daughter there might be no rigorous concept of the moralities. What I saw, therefore, was a man and a woman so consumed with longing for each other that guilt would be chiefly a matter of opportunity. To create that opportunity I had been brought upon the scene.
[Ill.u.s.tration: I SAW A MAN AND A WOMAN CONSUMED WITH LONGING FOR EACH OTHER]
I could see, of course, how admirably I was suited to the purpose I was meant to serve. In the first place, I was young, and might but dimly perceive--might not perceive at all--what was being done with me. In the next place, I was presumably too inexperienced to take a line of my own even if I suspected what was not for me to know. Then, I was poor and a stranger, and too glad of the easy work for which I was liberally paid not to be willing to take its bitter with its sweet. Lastly, I, too, was in love; and I, too, was a victim of Howard Brokenshire. If I couldn"t approve of what I might see and hear, at least I might be reckoned on not to speak of it. Once more I was made to feel that, though I might play a subordinate rle of some importance, my own wishes and personality didn"t count.
It was obviously a minute at which to bring my maxim into operation. I had to do what was Right--with a capital. For that I must wait for inspiration, and presently I got it.
That is, I got it by degrees. I got it first by noting in a puzzled way the glances which both my companions sent in my direction. They were sidelong glances, singularly alike, whether they came from Stacy Grainger"s melancholy brown eyes or Mrs. Brokenshire"s sweet, misty ones. They were timid glances, pleading, uneasy. They asked what words wouldn"t dare to ask, and what I was too dense to understand. I sat sipping my tea, running hot and cold as the odiousness of my position struck me from the various points of view; but I made no attempt to move.
They were still talking of people of whom I knew nothing, but talking brokenly, futilely, for the sake of hearing each other"s voice, and yet stifling the things which it would have been fatal to them both to say, when Mr. Grainger got up and brought me his cup.
"May I have another?"
I looked up to take the cup, but he held it in his hands. He held it in his hands and gazed down at me. He gazed down at me with an expression such as I have never seen in any eyes but a dog"s. As I write I blush to remember that, with such a mingling of hints and entreaties and commands, I didn"t know what he was trying to convey to me. I took the cup, poured out his tea, handed the cup back to him--and sat.
But after he had reached his seat the truth flashed on me. I was in the way; I was _de trop_. I had done part of my work in being the pretext for Mrs. Brokenshire"s visit; now I ought, tactfully, to absent myself.
I needn"t go far; I needn"t go for long. There was an alcove at the end of the room where one could be out of sight; there was also the corridor leading to the house. I could easily make an excuse; I could get up and move without an excuse of any kind. But I sat.
I hated myself; I despised myself; but I sat. I drank my tea without knowing it; I ate my cake without tasting it--and I sat.
The talk between my companions grew more fitful. Silence was easier for them--silence and that dumb interchange of looks which had the sympathy of something within myself. I knew that in their eyes I was a nuisance, a thing to be got rid of. I was so in my own--but I went on eating and drinking stolidly--and sat.
It was in my mind that this was my chance to be avenged on Howard Brokenshire; but I didn"t want my vengeance that way. I have to confess that I was so poor-spirited as to have little or no animosity against him. I could see how easy it was for him to think of me as an adventuress. I wanted to convince and convert him, but not to make him suffer. If in any sense I could be called the guardian of his interests I would rather have been true to the trust than not. As I sat, therefore, gulping down my tea as if I relished it, it was partly because of my protective instinct toward the exquisite creature before me who might not know how to protect herself--and partly because I couldn"t help it. Mr. Grainger could order me to go, but until he did I meant to go on eating.
Probably because of the insistence of my presence Mrs. Brokenshire felt obliged to begin to talk again. I did my best not to listen, but fragments of her sentences came to me.
"My mother spent a few weeks with us in August. I--I don"t think she and--and Mr. Brokenshire get on so well."
Almost for the first time he was interested in what she said rather than in her.
"What"s the trouble?"
"Oh, I don"t know--the whole thing." A long pause ensued, during which their eyes rested on each other in mute questioning. "She"s changed, mamma is."