Brokenshire but love? What made me step in between you and Mr. Grainger and save him, as well as you, but love? Love isn"t emotion that leaves you weak; it"s action that makes you strong. It has to be action, and it has to be right action. There"s no love separable from right; and until you grasp that fact you"ll always be unhappy. I"m a mere rag in my own person. I"ve no more character than a hen. But because I"ve got a wee little hold on right--"
She broke in, peevishly, as she turned away:
"I do wish you"d let me go to sleep."
I got down from my high horse and went back, humbly, to my couch.
Scarcely, however, had I lain down, when the voice came again, in childish complaint:
"I think you might have kissed me."
I had never kissed her in my life, nor had she ever shown any sign of permitting me this liberty. Timidly I went back to the bed; timidly I bent over it. But I was not prepared for the sudden intense clinging with which she threw her arms round my neck and drew my face down to hers.
CHAPTER XIX
In the morning Mrs. Brokenshire was difficult again, but I got her into a neat little country inn in Ma.s.sachusetts by the middle of the afternoon. I had to be like a jailer dragging along a prisoner, but that could not be helped.
On leaving Providence she insisted on spending a few days in Boston, where, so she said, she had friends whom she wished to see. Knowing that Stacy Grainger would be at one of the few hotels of which we had the choice, I couldn"t risk a meeting. Her predominating shame, a shame she had no hesitation in confessing, was for having failed him. He would never forgive her, she moaned; he wouldn"t love her any more. Not to be loved by him, not to be forgiven, was like death. All she demanded during the early hours of that day was to find him, wherever he had gone, and fling herself at his feet.
Because I didn"t allow her to remain in Boston we had what was almost a quarrel, as we jolted over the cobblestones from the southern station to the northern. She was now an outraged queen and now a fiery little termagant. Sparing me neither tears nor reproaches, neither scoldings nor denunciations, she nevertheless followed me obediently. Sitting opposite me in the parlor-car, ignoring the papers and fashion magazines I spread beneath her eyes, she lifted on me the piteous face of an angel whom I had beaten and trampled and enslaved. For this kind of sacrilege I had ceased, however, to be contrite. I was so tired, and had grown so grim, that I could have led her along in handcuffs.
But once out in the fresh, green, northern country the joy of a budding and blossoming world stole into us in spite of all our cares. We couldn"t help getting out of our own little round of thought when we saw fields that were carpets of green velvet, or copses of hazelnut and alder coming into leaf, or a farmer sowing the plowed earth with the swing and the stride of the _Semeur_. We couldn"t help seeing wider and farther and more hopefully when the sky was an arch of silvery blue overhead, and white clouds drifted across it, and the north into which we were traveling began to fling up ma.s.ses of rolling hills.
She caught me by the arm.
"Oh, do look at the lambs! The darlings!"
There they were, three or four helpless creatures, shivering in the sharp May wind and apparently struck by the futility of a life which would end in nothing but making chops. The ewes watched them maternally, or stood patiently to be tugged by the full woolly b.r.e.a.s.t.s. After that we kept our eyes open for other living things: for horses and cows and calves, for Corots and Constables--with a difference!--on the uplands of farms or in village highways. Once when a foal galloped madly away from the train, kicking up its slender hind legs, my companion actually laughed.
When we got out at the station a robin was singing, the first bird we had heard that year. The note was so full and pure and Eden-like that it caught one"s breath. It went with the bronze-green of maples and elms, with the golden westering sunshine, and with the air that was like the distillation of air and yet had a sharp northern tang in it. Driving in the motor of the inn, through the main street of the town, we saw that most of the white houses had a roomy Colonial dignity, and that orchards of apple, cherry, and plum, with acres of small fruit, surrounded them all. Having learned on the train that jam was the staple of the little town"s prosperity, we could see jam everywhere. Jam was in the cherry-trees covered with dainty white blossoms, in the plum-trees showing but a flower or two, and in the apple-trees scarcely in bud. Jam was in the long straight lines which we were told represented strawberries, and in the shrubberies of currant. Jam was along the roadsides where the raspberry was clothing its sprawling bines with leaves, and wherever the blueberry gladdened the waste places with its millions of modest bells. Jam is a toothsome, homey thing to which no woman with a housekeeping heart can be insensible. The thought of it did something to bring Mrs. Brokenshire"s thoughts back to the simple natural ways she had forsworn, even before reaching the hotel.
The hotel was no more than a farm-house that had expanded itself half a dozen times. We traversed all sorts of narrow halls and climbed all sorts of narrow staircases, till at last we emerged on a corner suite, where the view led us straight to the balcony.
Not that it was an extraordinary view; it was only a peaceful and a n.o.ble one. An undulating country held in its folds a scattering of lakes, working up to the lines of the southern New Hampshire hills which closed the horizon to the north. Green was, of course, the note of the landscape, melting into mauve in the mountains and saffron in the sky.
s.p.a.cing out the perspective a mauve mist rose between the ridges, and a mauve light rested on the three white steeples of the town. The town was perhaps two hundred feet below us and a mile away, nestling in a feathery bower of verdure.
When I joined Mrs. Brokenshire she was grasping the balcony rail, emitting little "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" of ecstasy. She drew long breaths, like a thirsty person drinking. She listened to the calling and answering of birds with face illumined and upturned. It was a bath of the spirit to us both. It was cleansing and healing; it was soothing and restful and corrective, setting what was sane within us free.
Of all this I need say little beyond mentioning the fact that Mrs.
Brokenshire, in spite of herself, entered into a period in which her taut nerves relaxed and her over-strained emotions became rested. It was a kind of truce of G.o.d to her. She had struggled and suffered so much that she was content for a time to lie still in the everlasting arms and be rocked and comforted. We had the simplest of rooms; we ate the simplest of food; we led the simplest of lives. By day we read and walked and talked a little and thought much; at night we slept soundly.
Our fellow-guests were people who did the same, varying the processes with golf and moving pictures. For the most part they were tired people from the neighboring towns, seeking like ourselves a few days" respite from their burdens. Though they came to know who Mrs. Brokenshire was, they respected her privacy, never doing worse than staring after her when she entered the dining-room or walked on the lawns or verandas. I had come to love her so much that it was a joy to me to witness the revival of her spirit, and I looked forward to seeing her restored, not too reluctantly, to her husband.
With him I had, of course, some correspondence. It was an odd correspondence, in which I made my customary _gaffe_. On our first evening at the inn I wrote to him in fulfilment of my promise, beginning, "Dear Mr. Brokenshire," as if I was writing to an equal. The acknowledgment came back: "Miss Alexandra Adare: Dear Madam," putting me back in my place. Accepting the rebuff, I adopted the style in sending him my daily bulletins.
As a matter of fact, my time was largely pa.s.sed in writing, for I had explanations to make to so many. My acquaintance with Mrs. Brokenshire having been a secret one, I was obliged to confess it to Hugh and Mrs.
Rossiter, and even to Anglique. I had, in a measure, to apologize for it, too, setting down Mrs. Brokenshire"s selection of my company to an invalid"s eccentricity.
So we got through May and into June, my reports to Mr. Brokenshire being each one better than the last. My patient never wrote to him herself, nor to any one. We had, in fact, been a day or two at the inn before she said:
"I wonder what Mr. Brokenshire is thinking?"
It was for me to tell her then that from the beginning I had kept him informed as to where she was, and that he knew I was with her. For a minute or two she stiffened into the _grande dame_, as she occasionally did.
"You"ll be good enough in future not to do such things without consulting me," she said, with dignity.
That pa.s.sed, and when I read to her, as I always did, the occasional notes with which her husband honored me, she listened without comment.
It must have been the harder to do that since the lover"s pleading ardor could be detected beneath all the cold formality in which he couched his communications.
It was this ardor, as well as something else, that began in the end to make me uneasy. The something else was that Mrs. Brokenshire was writing letters on her own account. Coming in one day from a solitary walk, I found her posting one in the hall of the hotel. A few days later one for her was handed to me at the office, with several of my own. Recognizing Stacy Grainger"s writing, I put it back with the words:
"Mrs. Brokenshire will come for her letters herself."
From that time onward she was often at her desk, and I knew when she got her replies by the feverishness of her manner. The truce of G.o.d being past, the battle was now on again.
The first sign of it given to me was on a day when Mr. Brokenshire wrote in terms more definite than he had used hitherto. I read the letter aloud to her, as usual. He had been patient, he said, and considerate, which had to be admitted. Now he could deny himself no longer. As it was plain that his wife was better, he should come to her. He named the 20th as the day on which he should appear.
"No, no," she cried, excitedly. "Not till after the twenty-third."
"But why the twenty-third?" I asked, innocently.
"Because I say so. You"ll see." Then fearing, apparently, that she had betrayed something she ought to have concealed, she colored and added, lamely, "It will give me a little more time."
I said nothing, but I pondered much. The 23d was no date at all that had anything to do with us. If it had significance it was in plans as to which she had not taken me into her confidence.
So, too, when I heard her making inquiries of the maid who did the rooms as to the location of the Baptist church. "What on earth does she want to know that for?" was the question I not unnaturally asked myself. That she, who never went to church at all, except as an occasional act of high ceremonial for which she took great credit to her soul, was now concerned with the doctrine of baptism by immersion I did not believe.
But I hunted up the sacred edifice myself, finding it to be situated on the edge of a daisied mead, slightly out of the town, on a road that might be described as lonely and remote. I came to the conclusion that if any one wanted to carry off in an automobile a lady picking flowers--a sort of _enlvement de Proserpine_--this would be as good a place as any. How the Pluto of our drama could have come to select it, Heaven only knew.
But I did as I was bid, and wrote to Mr. Brokenshire that once the 23d was pa.s.sed he would be free to come. After that I watched, wondering whether or not I should have the heart or the nerve to frustrate love a second time, even if I got the chance.
I didn"t get the chance precisely, but on the 22nd of June I received a mysterious note. It was typewritten and had neither date nor address nor signature. Its message was simple:
"If Miss Adare will be at the post-office at four o"clock this afternoon she will greatly oblige the writer of these lines and perhaps benefit a person who is dear to her."
The post-office being a tolerably safe place in case of felonious attack, I was on the spot at five minutes before the hour. In that particular town it occupied a corner of a brick building which also gave shelter to the bank and a milliner"s establishment. As the village hotel was opposite, I advertised my arrival by studying a display of hats which warranted the attention before going inside to invest in stamps.
As I was the only applicant for this necessary of life, the swarthy, undersized young man who served me made kindly efforts at entertainment while "delivering the goods," as he expressed it.
"English, ain"t you?"
I said, as usual, that I was a Canadian.
He smiled at his own perspicacity.
"Got your number, didn"t I? All you Canucks have the same queer way o"
talkin". Two or three in the jam-factory here--only they"re French."
I knew some one had entered behind me, and, turning away from the wicket, I found the person I had expected. Mr. Stacy Grainger, clad jauntily in a gray spring suit, lifted a soft felt hat.