His difficulty in phrasing this question made me even more sorry for him than I was already. I decided, both for his sake and my own, to walk up frankly and take the bull by the horns. "They"re generally strangers; but sometimes people come whom I know." I looked at him steadily as I continued. "I"ll tell you something, sir. Perhaps I ought not to, and it may be betraying a secret; but you might as well know it from me as hear it from some one else." The expression of the face he turned on me was so much that of Jove, whose look could strike a man dead, that I had all I could do to go on. "Mrs. Brokenshire comes to see me."
"To see--you?"
"Yes, sir, to see me."
The staccato accent grew difficult and thick. "What for?"
"Because she can"t help it. She"s sorry for me."
There was a new attempt to ignore me and my troubles as he said:
"Why should she be sorry for you?"
"Because she sees that you"re hard on me--"
"I haven"t meant to be hard on you, only just."
"Well, just then; but Mrs. Brokenshire doesn"t know anything about justice when she can be merciful. You must know that yourself, sir. I think she"s the most beautiful woman G.o.d ever made; and she"s as kind as she"s beautiful. I"ll tell you something else, sir. It will be another betrayal, but it will show you what she is. One day at Newport--after you"d spoken to me--and she saw that I was so crushed by it that all I could do was to creep down among the rocks and cry--she watched me, and followed me, and came and cried with me. And so when she heard I was here--"
"Who told her?"
There was a measure of accusation in the tone of the question, but I pretended not to detect it.
"Mrs. Rossiter, perhaps--she knows--or almost anybody. I never asked her."
"Very well! What then?"
"I was only going to say that when she heard I was here she came almost at once. I begged her not to--"
"Why? What were you afraid of?"
"I knew you wouldn"t like it. But I couldn"t stop her. No one could stop her when it comes to her doing an act of kindness. She obeys her own nature because she can"t do anything else. She"s like a little bird that you can keep from flying by holding it in your hand, but as soon as your grasp is relaxed--it flies."
Something of this was true, in that it was true potentially. She had these qualities, even if they were nipped in her as buds are nipped in a backward spring. I could only calm my conscience as I went along by saying to myself that if I saved her she would have to bear me out through being true to the picture I was painting, and living up to her real self.
Praise of the woman he adored would have been as music to him had he not had something on his mind that turned music into poignancy. What it was I could surmise, and so be prepared for it. Not till he had been some time silent, probably getting his question into the right words, did he say:
"And are you always alone when Mrs. Brokenshire comes?"
"Oh no, sir!" I made the tone as natural as I could. "But Mrs.
Brokenshire doesn"t seem to mind. Yesterday, for instance--"
"Was she here yesterday? I thought she came on--"
I broke in before he could betray himself further.
"Yes, she was here yesterday; and there was--let me see!--there was an old gentleman comparing his j.a.panese prints with Mr. Grainger"s, and a middle-aged lady who comes to study the old editions of Shakespeare. But Mrs. Brokenshire didn"t object to them. She sat with me and had a cup of tea."
I knew I had come to dangerous ground, and was ready for my part in the adventure. Had he asked the question: "Was there anybody else?" I was resolved, in the spirit of my maxim, to tell the truth as harmlessly as I knew how. But I didn"t think he would ask it. I reckoned on his unwillingness to take me into his confidence or to humiliate himself more than he could help. That he guessed at something behind my words I could easily suspect; but I was so sure he would have torn out his tongue rather than force his pride to cross-examine me too closely, that I was able to run my risk.
As a matter of fact, he became pensive, and through the gloom of the half-lighted room I could see that his face was contorted twice, still with no effort on his part to hide his misfortune. As he took the time to think I could do the same, with a kind of intuition in following the course of his meditations. I was not surprised, therefore, when he said, with renewed thickness of utterance:
"Has Mrs. Brokenshire any--any other motive in coming here than just--just to see you?"
I hung my head, perhaps with a touch of that play-acting spirit which most women are able to command, when the time comes.
"Yes, sir."
He waited again. I never heard such overtones of despair as were in the three words which at last he tried to toss off easily.
"What is it?"
I still hung my head.
"She brings me money for poor Hugh."
He started back, whether from anger or relief I couldn"t tell, and his face twitched for the fourth time. In the end, I suppose, he decided that anger was the card he could play most skilfully.
"So that that"s what enables him to keep up his rebellion against me!"
"No, sir," I said, humbly, "because he never takes it." I went on with that portrait of Mrs. Brokenshire which I vowed she would have to justify. "That doesn"t make any difference, however, to her wonderful tenderness of heart in wanting him to have it. You see, sir, when any one"s so much like an angel as she is they don"t stop to consider how justly other people are suffering or how they"ve brought their troubles on themselves. Where there"s trouble they only ask to help; where there"s suffering their first instinct is to heal. Mrs. Brokenshire doesn"t want to sustain your son against you; that never enters her head: she only wants him not--not"--my own voice shook a little--"not to have to go without his proper meals. He"s doing that now, I think--sometimes, at least. Oh, sir," I ventured to plead, "you can"t blame her, not when she"s so--so heavenly." Stealing a glance at him, I was amazed and shocked, and not a little comforted, to see two tears steal down his withered cheeks. Knowing then that he would not for some minutes be able to control himself sufficiently to speak, I hurried on.
"Hugh doesn"t take the money, because he knows that this is something he must go through with on his own strength. If he can"t do that he must give in. I think I"ve made that clear to him. I"m not the adventuress you consider me--indeed I"m not. I"ve told him that if he"s ever independent I will marry him; but I shall not marry him so long as he isn"t free to give himself away. He"s putting up a big fight, and he"s doing it so bravely, that if you only knew what he"s going through you"d be proud of him as your son."
Resting my case there, I waited for some response, but I waited in vain.
He reflected, and sat silent, and crossed and uncrossed his knees. At last he picked up his hat from the floor and rose. I, too, rose, waiting beside my chair, while he flicked the dust from the crown of his hat and seemed to study its glossy surface as he still reflected.
I was now altogether without a clue to what was pa.s.sing in his mind, though I could guess at the age-long tragedy of December"s love for May.
Having seen Ibsen"s "Master Builder," at Munich, and read one or two books on the theme with which it deals, I could, in a measure, supplement my own experience. It was, however, the first time I had seen with my own eyes this desperate yearning of age for youth, or this something that is almost a death-blow which youth can inflict on age. My father used to say that fundamentally there is no such period as age, that only the outer husk grows old, while the inner self, the vital _ego_, is young eternally. Here, it seemed to me, was an instance of the fact. This man was essentially as young as he had been at twenty-five; he had the same instincts and pa.s.sions; he demanded the same things. If anything, he demanded them more imperiously because of the long, long habit of desire. Denial which thirty years ago he could have taken philosophically was now a source of anguish. As I looked at him I could see anguish on his lips, in his eyes, in the contraction of his forehead--the anguish of a love ridiculous to all, and to the object of it frightful and unnatural, for the reason that at sixty-two the skin had grown baggy and the heart was supposed to be dead.
From the smoothing of the crown of his hat he glanced up suddenly. The whip-lash inflection was again in the timbre of the voice.
"How much do you get here?"
I was taken aback, but I named the amount of my salary.
"I will give you twice as much as that for the next five years if--if you go back to where you came from."
It took me a minute to seize all the implications contained in this little speech. I saw then that if I hoped I was making an impression, or getting further ahead with him, I was mistaken. Neither had my interpretation of Mrs. Brokenshire"s character put him off the scent concerning her. I was so far indeed from influencing him in either her favor or my own that he believed that if he could get rid of me an obstacle would be removed.
Tears sprang into my eyes, though they didn"t fall.
"So you blame me, sir, for everything."
He continued to watch his gloved hand as it made the circle of the crown of his hat.
"I"ll make it twice what you"re getting here for ten years. I"ll put it in my will." It was no use being angry or mounting my high horse. The struggle with tears kept me silent as he glanced up from the rubbing of his hat and said in a jerky, kindly tone: "Well? What do you say?"
I didn"t know what to say; and what I did say was foolish. I should have known enough to suppress it before I began.