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 G.o.d 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 _msalliance_ might tell against me, it would be overcome in my case as in that of Libby Jaynes. His talk was a pan 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 att.i.tude 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 ent.i.tled 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Hohenberg to this young prince; and perhaps not even that. She was n.o.ble--_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 a.s.sa.s.sinations 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.