She grew mildly argumentative.
"I don"t see anything so terrible about wrong, when other people do it and are none the worse."
"May not that be because you"ve never tried it on your own account? It depends a little on the grain of which one"s made. The finer the grain, the more harm wrong can do to it--just as a fragile bit of Venetian gla.s.s is more easily broken than an earthenware jug, and an infinitely greater loss."
But the simile was wasted. From long contemplation of her hands she looked up to say in a curiously coaxing tone:
"You live at the Hotel Mary Chilton, don"t you?"
I caught her suggestion in a flash, and decided that I could let it go no further.
"Yes, but you couldn"t come there--unless it was only to see me."
"But what shall I do?"
It was a kind of cry. She twisted her ringed fingers, while her eyes implored me to help her.
"Do nothing," I said, gently, and yet with some severity. "If you do anything do just as I"ve said. That"s all we"ve got to know for the present."
"But I must see him. Now that I"ve got used to doing it--"
"If you must see him, dear Mrs. Brokenshire, you will."
"Shall I? Will you promise me?"
"I don"t have to promise you. It"s the way life works. If we only trust to events--and to whatever it is that guides events--and--and do right--I must repeat it--then the thing that ought to be will shape its course--"
"Ah, but if it doesn"t?"
"In that case we can know that it oughtn"t to be."
"I don"t care whether it ought to be or not, so long as I can go on seeing him--somewhere."
I had enough sympathy with her to say:
"Yes, but don"t plan for it. Let it take care of itself and happen in some natural way. Isn"t it by mapping out things for ourselves that we often thwart the good that would otherwise have come to us? I remember reading somewhere of a lady who wrote of herself that she had been healed of planning, and spoke of it as a real cure. That struck me as so sensible. Life--not to use a greater word--knows much better what"s good for us than we do ourselves."
She allowed this theme to lapse, while she sat pensive.
"What shall I say," she asked at last, "if he brings the subject up?"
I saw another opportunity.
"What can you say other than what I"ve said already? You came to me because you were sorry for me, and you wanted to help Hugh. He might regret that you should do both, but he couldn"t blame you for either.
They"re only kindnesses--and we"re all at liberty to be kind. Oh, don"t you see? That"s your--how shall I put it?--that"s your line if Mr.
Brokenshire ever speaks to you."
"And suppose he tells me not to go to see you any more?"
"Then you must stop. That will be the time. But not now when the mere stopping would be a kind of confession--"
And so, after many repet.i.tions and some tears on both our parts, the lesson was urged home. She was less docile, however, when in the spirit of our new compact she came on the following Monday morning.
"I must see him," was the burden of what she had to say. She spoke as if I was forbidding her and ought to lift my veto. I might even have inferred that in my position in Mr. Grainger"s employ it was for me to arrange their meetings.
"You will see him, dear Mrs. Brokenshire--if it"s right," was the only answer I could find.
"You don"t seem to remember that I was to have married him."
"I do, but we both have to remember that you didn"t."
"Neither did I marry Mr. Brokenshire. I was handed over to him. When Lady Mary Hamilton was handed over in that way to the Prince of Monaco the Pope annulled the marriage. We knew her afterward in Budapest, married to some one else. If there"s such a thing as right, as you"re so fond of saying, I ought to be considered free."
I was holding both her hands as I said:
"Don"t try to make yourself free. Let life do it."
"Life!" she cried, with a pa.s.sionate vehemence I scarcely knew to be in her. "It"s life that--"
"Treat life as a friend and not as an enemy. Trust it; wait for it.
Don"t hurry it, or force it, or be impatient with it. I can"t believe that essentially it"s hard or cruel or a curse. If it comes from G.o.d, it must be good and beautiful. In proportion as we cling to the good and beautiful we must surely get the thing we ought to have."
Though I cannot say that she accepted this doctrine, it helped her over a day or two, leaving me free for the time being to give my attention to my own affairs. Having no natural stamina, the poor, lovely little creature lived on such mental and spiritual pick-me-ups as I was able to administer. Whenever she was specially in despair, which was every forty-eight or sixty hours, she came back to me, and I did what I could to brace her for the next short step of her way. I find it hard to explain the intensity of her appeal to me. I suppose I must have submitted to that spell of the perfect face which had bewitched Stacy Grainger and Howard Brokenshire. I submitted also to her child-like helplessness. G.o.d knows I am not a heroine. Any little fright or difficulty upsets me. As compared with her, however, I was a giant refreshed with wine. When her lip quivered, or when the sudden mist drifted across her eyes, obscuring their forget-me-not blue with violet, my yearning was exactly that which makes any woman long to take any suffering baby in her arms. For this reason she didn"t tax my patience, nor had I that impulse to scold or shake her to which another woman of such obvious limitations would have driven me. Touched as I was by the aching heart, I was captivated by the perfect face; and I couldn"t help it.
Thus through the rest of February and into March my chief occupation was in keeping Howard Brokenshire"s wife as true to him as the conditions rendered possible. In the intervals I comforted Hugh, and beat off Larry Strangways, and sat rigidly still while Stacy Grainger prowled round me with fierce, suspicious, melancholy eyes, like those of a cowed tiger.
Afraid of him as I was, it filled me with grim inward amus.e.m.e.nt to discover that he was equally afraid of me. He came into the library from time to time, when he happened to be at his house, and like Mrs.
Brokenshire gave me the impression that the frustration of their love was my fault. As I sat primly and severely at my desk, and he stalked round and round the room, stabbing the old gentleman who cla.s.sified prints and the lady who collated the early editions of Shakespeare with contemptuous glances, I knew that in his sight I represented--poor me!--that virtuous respectability the sinner always holds in scorn. He could not be ignorant of the fact that if it hadn"t been for me Mrs.
Brokenshire would have been meeting him elsewhere, and so he held me as an enemy. Had he not known that I was something besides an enemy he would doubtless have sent me about my business.
In one of the intervals of this portion of the drama I received a visit that took me by surprise. Early in the afternoon of a day in March, Mrs.
Billing trotted into the library, followed by Lady Cecilia Boscobel. It was the sort of occasion on which I should have been nervous enough in any case, but it became terrifying when Mrs. Billing marched up to my desk and pointed at me with her lorgnette, saying over her shoulder, "There she is," as though I was a portrait.
I struggled to my feet with what was meant to be a smile.
"Lady Cecilia Boscobel," I stammered, "has seen me already."
"Well, she can look at you again, can"t she?"
The English girl came to my rescue by smiling back, and murmuring a faint "How do you do?" She eased the situation further by saying, with a crisp, rapid articulation, in which every syllable was charmingly distinct: "Mrs. Billing thought that as we were out sight-seeing we might as well look at this. It"s shown every day, isn"t it?"
She went on to observe that when places were shown only on certain days it was so tiresome. One of her father"s places, Dillingham Hall, in Nottinghamshire, an old Tudor house, perfectly awful to live in, was open to the public only on the second and fourth Wednesdays, and even the family couldn"t remember when those days came round. It was so awkward to be doing your hair, or worse, and have tourists stumbling in on you.
I counted it to the credit of her tact and kindliness that she chatted in this way long enough for me to get my breath, while Mrs. Billing turned her lorgnette on the room with which she must have once been familiar. If there was to be anything like rivalry between Lady Cissie and me I gathered that she wouldn"t stoop to petty feminine advantages.
Dressed in dark green, with a small hat of the same color worn dashingly, she had that air of being the absolutely finished thing which the tones of her voice announced to you. My heart grew faint at the thought that Hugh would have to choose between this girl, so certain of herself, and me.
As we were all standing, I invited my callers to sit down. To this Lady Cecilia acceded, though old Mrs. Billing strolled off to renew her acquaintance with the room. I may say here that I call her old because to be old was a kind of pose with her. She looked old and "dressed old"
so as to enjoy the dictatorial privileges that go with being old, when as a matter of fact she was only sixty, which nowadays is young.