There can"t be two rights, each contrary to the other. That"s not in common sense. If he does right then I shall be safe--whichever way I have to take it. Don"t you see? That"s where the success comes in as well as the secret. It can"t be any other way. Please don"t think I"m talking in what H. G. Wells calls the tin-pot style--but one must express oneself somehow. I"m not afraid, because I feel as if I"d got something that would hang about me like a magic cloak. Of course for you--a man--a magic cloak may not be necessary; but I a.s.sure you that for a girl like me, out in the world on her own--"
He, too, sobered down from his chaffing mood.
"But in this case what is going to be Right--written with a capital?"
I had just time to reply, "Oh, that I shall have to see!" when the children and dogs came scampering up and our conversation was over.
On returning from my walk with Gladys I informed Mrs. Rossiter of the order I had received. I could see her distressed look in the mirror before which she sat doing something to her hair.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "it"s just what I was afraid of. Now I suppose he"ll want you to leave."
"That is, he"ll want you to send me away."
"It"s the same thing," she said, fretfully, and sat with hands lying idly in her lap.
She stared out of the window. It was a large bow window, with a window-seat cushioned in flowered chintz. Couch, curtains, and easy-chairs reproduced this Enchanted Garden effect, forming a paradisiacal background for her intensely modern and somewhat neurotic prettiness. I had seen her sit by the half-hour like this, gazing over the shrubberies, lawns, and waves, with a yearning in her eyes like that of some twentieth-century Blessed Damozel.
It was her unhappy hour of the day. Between getting up at nine or ten and descending languidly to lunch, life was always a great load to her.
It pressed on one too weak to bear its weight and yet too conscientious to throw it off, though, as a matter of fact, this melancholy was only the reaction of her nerves from the mild excitements of the night before. I was generally with her during some portion of this forenoon time, reading her notes and answering them, speaking for her at the telephone, or keeping her company and listening to her confidences while she nibbled without appet.i.te at a bit of toast and sipped her tea.
To put matters on the common footing I said:
"Is there anything you"d like me to do, Mrs. Rossiter?"
She ignored this question, murmuring in a way she had, through half-closed lips, as if mere speech was more than she was equal to: "And just when we were getting on so well--and the way Gladys adores you--"
"And the way I adore Gladys."
"Oh, well, you don"t spoil the child, like that Miss Phips. I suppose it"s your sensible English bringing up."
"Not English," I interrupted.
"Canadian then. It"s almost the same thing." She went on without transition of tone: "Mr. Millinger was there again last night. He was on my left. I do wish they wouldn"t keep putting him next to me. It makes everything look so pointed--especially with Harry Scott glowering at me from the other end of the table. He hardly spoke to Daisy Burke, whom he"d taken in. I must say she was a fright. And Mr. Millinger so imprudent! I"m really terrified that Jim will hear gossip when he comes down from New York--or notice something." There was the slightest dropping of the soft fluting voice as she continued: "I"ve never pretended to love Jim Rossiter more than any man I"ve ever seen. That was one of papa"s matches. He"s a born match-maker, you know, just as he"s a born everything else. I suppose you didn"t think of that. But since I am Jim"s wife--"
As I was the confidante of what she called her affairs--a rle for which I was qualified by residence in British garrison towns--I interposed diplomatically, "But so long as Mr. Millinger hasn"t said anything, not any more than Mr. Scott--"
"Oh, if I were to allow men to say things, where should I be? You can go far with a man without letting him come to that. It"s something I should think you"d have known--with your sensible bringing up--and the heaps of men you had there in Halifax--and I suppose at Southsea and Gibraltar, too." It was with a hint of helpless complaint that she added, "You remember that I asked you to leave him alone, now don"t you?"
"Oh, I remember--quite. And suppose I did--and he didn"t leave me alone?"
"Of course there"s that, though it won"t have any effect on papa. You are unusual, you know. Only one man in five hundred would notice it; but there always is that man. It"s what I was afraid of about Hugh from the first. You"re different--and it"s the sort of thing he"d see."
"Different from what?" I asked, with natural curiosity.
Her reply was indirect.
"Oh, well, we Americans have specialized too much on the girl. You"re not half as good-looking as plenty of other girls in Newport, and when it comes to dress--"
"Oh, I"m not in their cla.s.s, I know."
"No; it"s what you seem not to know. You aren"t in their cla.s.s--but it doesn"t seem to matter. If it does matter, it"s rather to your advantage."
"I"m afraid I don"t see that."
"No, you wouldn"t. You"re not sufficiently subtle. You"re really not subtle at all, in the way an American girl would be." She picked up the thread she had dropped. "The fact is we"ve specialized so much on the girl that our girls are too aware of themselves to be wholly human.
They"re like things wound up to talk well and dress well and exhibit themselves to advantage and calculate their effects--and lack character.
We"ve developed the very highest thing in exquisite girl-mechanics--a work of art that has everything but a soul." She turned half round to where I stood respectfully, my hands resting on the back of an easy-chair. She was lovely and pathetic and judicial all at once. "The difference about you is that you seem to spring right up out of the soil where you"re standing--just like an English country house. You belong to your background. Our girls don"t. They"re too beautiful for their background, too expensive, too produced. Take any group of girls here in Newport--they"re no more in place in this down-at-the-heel old town than a flock of parrakeets in a New England wood. It"s really inartistic, though we don"t know it. You"re more of a woman and less of a lovely figurine. But that won"t appeal to papa. He likes figurines. Most American men do. Hugh is an exception, and I was afraid he"d see in you just what I"ve seen myself. But it won"t go down with papa."
"If it goes down with Hugh--" I began, meekly.
"Papa is a born match-maker, which I don"t suppose you know. He made my match and he made Jack"s. Oh, we"re--we"re satisfied now--in a way; and I suppose Hugh will be, too, in the long run." I wanted to speak, but she tinkled gently on: "Papa has his designs for him, which I may as well tell you at once. He means him to marry Lady Cissie Boscobel. She"s Lord Goldborough"s daughter, and papa and he are very intimate. Papa knew him when we lived in England before grandpapa died. Papa has done things for him in the American money-market, and when we"re in England he does things for us. Two or three of our men have married earls"
daughters during the last few years, and it hasn"t turned out so badly.
Papa doesn"t want not to be in the swim."
"Does"--I couldn"t p.r.o.nounce Hugh"s name again--"does your brother know of Mr. Brokenshire"s intentions?"
"Yes. I told him so. I told him when I began to see that he was noticing you."
"And may I ask what he said?"
"It would be no use telling you that, because, whatever he said, he"d have to do as papa told him in the end."
"But suppose he doesn"t?"
"You can"t suppose he doesn"t. He will. That"s all that can be said about it." She turned fully round on me, gazing at me with the largest and sweetest and tenderest eyes. "As for you, dear Miss Adare," she murmured, sympathetically, "when papa comes to see you this afternoon, as apparently he means to do, he"ll grind you to powder. If there"s anything smaller than powder he"ll grind you to that. After he"s gone we sha"n"t be able to find you. You"ll be dust."
CHAPTER II
At five minutes to three, precisely, I took my seat in the breakfast loggia.
The front of the house with the garden looked toward Ochre Point Avenue.
The so-called breakfast loggia was thrown out from the dining-room in the direction of the sea. Here the family and their guests could gather on warm evenings, and in fine weather eat in the open air. Paved with red tiles, it was furnished with a long oak table, ornately carved, and some heavy old oak chairs that might have come from a monastery. Steamer chairs and wicker easy-chairs were scattered on the gra.s.s outside. On the left the loggia was screened from the neighboring property by a hedge of rambler roses that now ran the gamut of shades from crimson to sea-sh.e.l.l pink, while on the right it commanded a view of the two terraces supporting the house, with their long straight lines of flowers. The house itself had been built piecemeal, and was now a low, rambling succession of pavilions or _corps de logis_, to which a series of rose-colored awnings gave the only unifying principle.
Just now it was a house deserted by every one but the servants and myself. Mrs. Rossiter, having gone out to luncheon, had been careful not to return, and even the children had been sent over to Mrs. Jack Brokenshire, on the pretext of playing with her baby, but really to be out of the way. From Hugh I had had no sign of life since the previous afternoon. As to whether his father was coming as his enemy, his master, or his interpreter I could do nothing but conjecture.
But as far as I could I kept myself from conjecturing; holding my faculties in suspense. I had enough to do in a.s.suring myself that I was not afraid--fundamentally. Superficially I was terrified. I should have been terrified had the great man but pa.s.sed me in the hall and cast a look at me. He had pa.s.sed me in the hall on occasions, but as he had never cast the look I had escaped. He had struck me then as a master of that art of seeing without seeing which I had hitherto thought of as feminine. Even when he stopped and spoke to Gladys he seemed not to know that I occupied the ground I stood on. I cannot say I enjoyed this treatment. I was accustomed to being seen. Moreover, I had lived with people who were courteous to inferiors, however cavalier with equals.
The great J. Howard was neither courteous nor cavalier toward me, for the reason that where I was he apparently saw nothing but a vacuum.
Out to the loggia I took my work-basket and some sewing. Having no idea from which of the several approaches my visitor would come on me, I drew up one of the heavy arm-chairs and sat facing toward the sea. With the basket on the table beside me and my sewing in my hands I felt indefinably more mistress of myself.
It was a still afternoon and hot, with scarcely a sound but the pounding of the surf on the ledges at the foot of the lawn. Though the sky was blue overhead, a dark low bank rose out of the horizon, foretelling a change of wind with fog. In the air the languorous scent of roses and honeysuckle mingled with the acrid tang of the ocean.
I felt extraordinarily desolate. Not since hearing what the lawyer had told me on the afternoon of my father"s funeral had I seemed so entirely alone. The fact that for nearly twenty-four hours Hugh had got no word to me threw me back upon myself. "You"ll be made to feel alone," Mr.
Strangways had said in the morning; and I was. I didn"t blame Hugh. I had purposely left the matter in such a way that there was nothing he could say or do till after his father had spoken. He was probably waiting impatiently; I had, indeed, no doubt about that; but the fact remained that I, a girl, a stranger, in a certain sense a foreigner, was to make the best of my situation without help. J. Howard Brokenshire could grind me to powder--when he had gone away I should be dust.