"Do you remember, sir, that once when you were speaking to me severely, you said you were my friend? Well, why shouldn"t I be your friend, too?"
The look he bent down on me was that of a great personage positively dazed by an inferior"s audacity.
"I could be your friend," I stumbled on, in an absurd effort to explain myself. "I should like to be. There are--there are things I could do for you."
He put on his tall hat with the air of a Charlemagne or a Napoleon crowning himself. This increase of authority must have made me desperate. It is only thus that I can account for my _gaffe_--the French word alone expresses it--as I dashed on, wildly:
"I like you, sir--I can"t help it. I don"t know why, but I do. I like you in spite of--in spite of everything. And, oh, I"m so sorry for you--"
He moved away. There was n.o.ble, wounded offense in his manner of pa.s.sing through the wrought-iron grille, which he closed with a little click behind him. He stepped out of the place as softly as he had stepped in.
For long minutes I stood, holding to the side of the William and Mary chair, regretting that the interview should have ended in this way. I didn"t cry; I had, in fact, no longer any tendency to tears. I was thoughtful--wondering what it was that dug the gulf between this man and his family and me. Ethel Rossiter had never--I could see it well enough now--accepted me as an equal, and even to Hugh I was only another type of Libby Jaynes. I was as intelligent as they, as well born, as well mannered, as thoroughly accustomed to the world. Why should they consider me an inferior? Was it because I had no money? Was it because I was a Canadian? Would it have made a difference if I had been an Englishwoman like Cissie Boscobel, or rich like any of themselves? I couldn"t tell. All I knew was that my heart was hot within me, and since Howard Brokenshire wouldn"t have me as a friend I wanted to act as his enemy. I could see how to do it. Indeed, without doing anything at all I could encourage, and perhaps bring about, a situation that would send the name of the family ringing through the press of two continents and break his heart. I had only to sit still--or at most to put in a word here and there. I am not a saint; I had my hour of temptation.
It was a stormy hour, though I never moved from the spot where I stood.
The storm was within. That which, as the minutes went by, became rage in me saw with satisfaction Howard Brokenshire brought to a desolate old age, and Mildred and Ethel and Jack and Pauline, in spite of their bravado and their high heads, all seared by the flame of notorious disgrace. I went so far as to gloat over poor Hugh"s discomfiture, taking vengeance on his habit of rating me with the socially incompetent. As for Mrs. Brokenshire, she would be over and done with, a poor little gilded outcast, whose fall would be such that even as Mrs.
Stacy Grainger she would never rise again. Like another Samson, I could pull down this house of pride, though, happier than Samson, I should not be overwhelmed in the ruin of it. From that I should be safe--with Larry Strangways.
Nearly half an hour went by while I stood thus indulging in fierce day-dreams. I was racked and suffering. I suffered, indeed, from the misfortunes I saw descending on people whom at bottom of my heart I cared for. It was not till I began to move, till I had put on my jacket and was turning out the lights, that my maxim came back to me. I knew then that whatever happened I should stand by that, and having come to this understanding with myself, I was quieted.
CHAPTER XVI
Having made up my mind to adhere, however imperfectly, to the principle that had guided me hitherto, I was obliged to examine my conscience as to what I had said to Mr. Brokenshire. This I did in the evening, coming to the conclusion that I had told him nothing but the truth, even if it was not all the truth. Though I hated duplicity, I couldn"t see that I had a right to tell him all the truth, or that to do so would be wise.
If he could be kept, for everybody"s sake, from knowing more than he knew already, however much or little that was, it seemed to me that diplomatic action on my part would be justified.
In the line of diplomatic action I had before all things to inform Mrs.
Brokenshire of the visit I had received. This was not so easy as it may seem. I could not trust to a letter, through fear of its falling into other hands than hers. Neither could I wait for her coming on the following Tuesday, since that was what I wanted to prevent. There was no intermediary whom I could intrust with a message, unless it was Larry Strangways, who knew something of the facts; but even with him the secret was too much to share.
In the end I had recourse to the telephone, asking to be allowed to speak to Mrs. Brokenshire. I was told that she never answered the telephone herself, and was requested to transmit my message. Not to arouse suspicion, I didn"t ask that she should break her rule, but begged that during the day she might find a minute in which to see Miss Adare, who was in a difficulty that involved her work. That this way of putting it was understood I gathered from the reply that came back to me. It was to the effect that as Mr. Brokenshire would be lunching with some men in the lower part of New York Mrs. Brokenshire would be alone and able to receive Miss Adare at two. Fortunately, it was a Sat.u.r.day, so that my afternoon was free.
Almost everybody familiar with New York knows the residence of J. Howard Brokenshire not far above the Museum. Built of brick with stone facings, it is meant to be in the style of Louis Treize. It would be quite in the style of Louis Treize were the stonework not too heavy and elaborate, and the faade too high for its length. Inside, with an incongruity many rich people do not mind, it is sumptuously Roman and Florentine--the Brokenshire villa at Newport on a larger and more lavish scale. Having gone over the house with Ethel Rossiter during the winter I spent with her, I had carried away the impression of huge unoccupied rooms, of heavily carved or gilded furniture, of rich brocades, of dim old masters in elaborate gold frames, of vitrines and vases and mirrors and consoles, all supplied by some princely dealer in _objets d"art_ who had received _carte blanche_ in the way of decoration. The Brokenshire family, with the possible exception of Mildred, cared little for the things with which they lived. Ethel Rossiter, in showing me over the house, hardly knew a Perugino from a Fragonard, and still less could she distinguish, between the glorious fading softness of a Flemish fifteenth-century tapestry and a smug and staring bit of Gobelins. Hugh went in and out as indifferently as in a hotel, while Jack Brokenshire"s taste in art hardly reached beyond racing prints. Mildred liked pretty garlanded things _ la_ Marie Antoinette, which the parental habit of deciding everything would never let her have. J. Howard alone made an effort at knowing the value, artistic and otherwise, of his possessions, and would sometimes, when strangers were present, point to this or that object with the authority of a connoisseur, which he was not.
It was a house for life in perpetual state, with no state to maintain.
Stafford House, Holland House, Bridgewater House, to name but a few of the historic mansions in London, were made s.p.a.cious and splendid to meet a definite necessity. They belonged to days when the feudal tradition still obtained and there were no comfortable hotels. Great lords came to them with great families and great suites of retainers. Accommodation being the first of all needs, there was a time when every corner of these stately residences was lived in. But now that in England the great lord tends more and more to be only a simple democratic individual, and the wants of his relatives are easily met on a public or co-operative principle, the n.o.ble Palladian or Georgian dwelling either becomes a museum or a club, or remains a white elephant on the hands of some one who would gladly be rid of it. Princes and princesses of the blood royal rent numbered houses in squares and streets, next door to the Smiths and the Joneses, in preference to the draughty grandeurs of St. James"s and Buckingham Palace, while a villa in the suburbs, with a few trees and a garden, is often the shelter sought by the n.o.bility.
But in proportion as civilization in England, to say nothing of the rest of Europe, puts off the burdensome to enjoy simplicity, America, it strikes me, chases the tail of an antiquated, disappearing stateliness.
Rich men, just because they have the money, take upon their shoulders huge domestic responsibilities in which there is no object, and which it is probable the next generation will refuse to carry. In New York, in Washington, in Newport, in Chicago, they raise palaces and chteaux where they often find themselves lonely, and which they can rarely fill more than two or three times a year. In the case of the Howard Brokenshires it had ceased to be as often as that. After Ethel was married Mr. Brokenshire seldom entertained, his second wife having no heart for that kind of display. Now and then, in the course of a winter, a great dinner was given in the great dining-room, or the music-room was filled for a concert; but this was done for the sake of "killing off"
those to whom some attention had to be shown, and not because either host or hostess cared for it. Otherwise the down-stairs rooms were silent and empty, and whatever was life in the house went on in a corner of the mansard.
Thither the footman took me in a lift. Here were the rooms--a sort of flat--which the occupants could dominate with their personalities. They reminded me of those tiny chambers at Versailles to which what was human in poor Marie Antoinette fled for refuge from her uncomfortable gorgeousness as queen.
Not that these rooms were tiny. On the contrary, the library or living-room into which I was ushered was as large as would be found in the average big house, and, notwithstanding its tapestries and ma.s.sive furniture, was bright with sunshine and flowers. Books lay about, and papers and magazines, and after the tomb-like deadness of the lower floors one got at least the impression of life.
From the far end of the room Mrs. Brokenshire came forward, threading her way between arm-chairs and taborets, and looking more exquisite, and also more lost, than ever. She wore what might be called a glorified _neglige_, lilac and lavender shading into violet, the train adding to her height. Fear had to some degree blotted out her color and put trouble into the sweetness of her eyes.
"Something has happened," she said at once, as she took my hand.
I spoke as directly as she did, though a little pantingly.
"Yes; Mr. Brokenshire came to the library yesterday."
"Ah-h!" The exclamation was no more than a long, frightened breath.
"Then that explains things. I saw when he came home to dinner that he was unhappy."
"Did he say anything?"
"No; nothing. He was just--unhappy. Sit down and tell me."
Staring wide-eyed at each other, we seated ourselves on the edge of two huge arm-chairs. Having half expected my companion to fling the gauntlet in her husband"s face, I was relieved to find in her chiefly the dread of detection.
As exactly as I could I gave her an account of what had pa.s.sed between Mr. Brokenshire and myself, omitting only those absurd suggestions of my own that had sent him away in dudgeon. She listened with no more interruption than a question or two, after which she said, simply:
"Then, I suppose, I can"t go any more."
"On the contrary," I corrected, "you must come just the same as ever, only not on the same days, or at the same hours--or--or when there"s any one else there besides the visitors and me. If you stopped coming all of a sudden Mr. Brokenshire would think--"
"But he thinks that already."
"Of course, but he doesn"t know--not after what I said to him." I seized the opportunity to beg her to play up. "You are all the things I told him you were, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, don"t you see you are?"
But my appeal pa.s.sed unheeded.
"What made him suspect? I thought that would be the last thing."
"I don"t know. It might have been a lot of things. Once or twice I"ve rather fancied that some of the people who came there--"
Her features contracted in a spasm of horror.
"You don"t mean detect--" She found the word difficult to p.r.o.nounce.
"You don"t mean de-detectives watching--me?"
"I don"t say as much as that; but I"ve never liked Mr. Brokenshire"s man, Spellman."
"No, nor I. He"s out now. I made sure of that before you came."
"So he might have sent some one; or-- But it"s no use speculating, is it? when there are so many ways. What we"ve specially got to know is how to act, and I think I"ve told you the best method. If you don"t keep coming--judiciously--you"ll show you"re conscious of having done wrong."
She sighed plaintively.
"I don"t want to do wrong unless I can"t help it. If I can"t--"
"Oh, but you can." I tried once more to get in my point. "You wouldn"t be all I told Mr. Brokenshire you were if your first instinct wasn"t to do right."
"Oh, right!" She sighed again, but impatiently. "You"re always talking about that."
"One has to, don"t you think, when it"s so important--and so easy to do wrong?"