I strained forward across my desk. I know my eyes must have been enormous.
"But was there--was there ever--anything?"
"Oh no; not at all. He--he never noticed me. I was only in the school-room, and he was a grown-up young man. If his father and mine hadn"t been great friends--and got plans into their heads--Laura and Janet used to poke fun at me about it. And then we rode together and played tennis and golf, and so--but it was all--just nothing. You know how silly a girl of seventeen can be. It was nonsense. I only want you to know, in case he ever says anything about it--but then he never will--men see so little--I only want you to know that that"s the way I feel about it--and that I didn"t come over here to-- I don"t say that if in your case there had been any one else--but I see there isn"t--Ethel Rossiter is wrong--and so if I can do anything for Hugh and yourself with the Brokenshires. I--I want you to make use of me."
With a dignity oddly in contrast to this stammering confession, which was what it was, she rose to her feet as Mrs. Billing came back to us.
The hook-nosed face was somber. Curiosity as to other people"s business had for once given place in the old lady"s thoughts to meditations that turned inward. I suppose that in some perverse fashion of her own she loved her daughter, and suffered from her unhappiness. There was enough in this room to prove to her how cruelly mere self-seeking can overreach itself and ruin what it tries to build.
"Well, what are you talking about?" she snapped, as she approached us.
"Hugh Brokenshire, I"ll bet a dime."
"Fancy!" was the stroke with which the English girl, smiling dimly, endeavored to counter this attack.
Mrs. Billing hardly paused as she made her way toward the door.
"Don"t let her have him," she threw at Lady Cecilia. "He"s not good enough for her. She"s my kind," she went on, poking at me with her lorgnette. "Needs a man with brains. Come along, Cissie. Don"t mind what she says. You grab Hugh the first chance you get. She"ll have bigger fish to fry. Do come along. We"ve had enough of this."
Lady Cissie and I shook hands with the over-acted listlessness of two daughters of the Anglo-Saxon race trying to carry off an emotional crisis as if they didn"t know what it meant. But after she had gone I thought of her--I thought of her with her Limoges-enamel coloring, her luscious English voice, her English air of race, her dignity, her style, her youth, her navet, her combination of all the qualities that make human beings distinguished, because there is nothing else for them to be. I dragged myself to the Venetian mirror and looked into it. With my plain gray frock, my dark complexion, and my simply arranged hair. I was a poor little frump whom not even the one man in five hundred could find attractive. I wondered how Hugh could be such a fool. I asked myself if he could go on being such a fool much longer. And with the thought that he would--and again with the thought that he wouldn"t--I surprised myself by bursting into tears.
CHAPTER XVII
In similar small happenings April pa.s.sed and we had reached the middle of May. Easter and the opera were over; as the warm weather was coming on people were already leaving town for the country, the seaside or Europe. Personally, I had no plans beyond spending the month of August, which Mr. Grainger informed me I was to have "off," in making a visit to my old home in Halifax. Hugh had ceased to talk of immediate marriage, since he had all he could do to live on what he earned in selling bonds.
He had taken that job when Mildred could lend him no more without dipping into funds that had been his father"s. He was still resolute on that point. He was resolute, too, in seeing nothing in the charms of Cissie Boscobel. He hated red hair, he said, making no allowance for the umber-red of Australian gold, and where I saw the lights of Limoges enamel he found no more than the garish tints of a chromolithograph.
When I hinted that he might be the hero of some young romance on Cissie"s part, he was contented to say "R-rot!" with a contemptuous roll of the first consonant.
Larry Strangways was industrious, happy, and prospering. He enjoyed the men with whom his work brought him into contact, and I gathered that his writing for daily, weekly, and monthly publications was bringing him into view as a young man of originality and power. From himself I learned that his small inherited capital was doubling and tripling and quadrupling itself through a.s.sociation with Stacy Grainger"s enterprises. For Stacy Grainger himself he continued to feel an admiration not free from an uneasiness, with regard to which he made no direct admissions.
Of Mrs. Brokenshire I was seeing less. Either she had grown used to doing without her lover or she was meeting him in some other way. She still came to see me as often as once a week, but she was not so emotional or excitable. She might have been more affectionate than before, and yet it was with a dignity that gradually put me at a distance.
Cissie Boscobel I didn"t meet during the whole of the six weeks except in the company of Mrs. Rossiter. That happened when once or twice I went to the house to see Gladys when she was suffering from colds, or when my former employer drove me round the Park. Just once I got the opportunity to hint that Lady Cissie hadn"t taken Hugh from me as yet, to which Mrs.
Rossiter replied that that was obviously because she didn"t want him.
We were all, therefore, at a standstill, or moving so slowly that I couldn"t perceive that we were moving at all, when in the middle of a May forenoon I was summoned to the telephone. I was not surprised to find Mr. Strangways at the other end, since he used any and every excuse to call me up; but his words struck me as those of a man who had taken leave of his senses. He plunged into them without any of the usual morning greetings or preliminary remarks.
"Are you game to go to Boston by the five-o"clock train to-day?"
I naturally said, "What?" but I said it with some emphasis.
He repeated the question a little more anxiously.
"Could you be ready to go to Boston by the five-o"clock train this afternoon?"
"Why should I be?"
He seemed to hesitate before replying.
"You"d know that," he said at last, "when you got on the train."
"Is it a joke?" I inquired, with a light laugh.
"No; it"s not a joke. It"s serious. I want you to take that train and go."
"But what for?"
"I"ve told you you"d know that when you got on the train--or before you had gone very far."
"And do you think that"s information enough?"
"It will be information enough for you when I say that a great deal may depend on your doing as I ask."
I raised a new objection.
"How can I go when I"ve my work to attend to here?"
"You must be ready to give that up. If any one makes any trouble, you must say you"ve resigned the position."
As far as was possible over the wire I got the impression of earnestness on his part and perhaps excitement; but I was not yet satisfied.
"What shall I do when I get to Boston? Where shall I go?"
"You"ll see. You"ll know. You"ll have to act for yourself. Trust your own judgment as I trust it."
"But, Mr. Strangways, I don"t understand a bit," I was beginning to protest, when he broke in on me.
"Oh, don"t you see? It will all explain itself as you go on. I can"t tell you about it in advance. I don"t know. All I can say is that whatever happens you"ll be needed, and if you"re needed you"ll be able to play the game."
He went on with further directions. It would be possible to take my seat in the train at twenty minutes before the hour of departure. I was to be early on the spot so as to be among the first to be in my place. I was to take nothing but a suit-case; but I was to put into it enough to last me for a week, or even for a week or two. I was to be prepared for roughing it, if necessary, or for anything else that developed. He would send me my ticket within an hour and provide me with plenty of money.
"But what is it?" I implored again. "It sounds like spying, or the secret service, or something melodramatic."
"It"s none of those things. Just be ready. Wait where you are till you get your ticket and the money."
"Will you bring them yourself?"
"No. I can"t; I"m too busy. I"m calling from a pay-station. Don"t ring me up for any more questions. Just do as I"ve asked you, and I know you"ll not regret it--not as long as you live."
He put up the receiver, leaving me bewildered. My ignorance was such that speculation was shut out. I kept saying to myself: "It must be this," or, "It must be that," but with no conviction in my guesses. One dreadful suspicion came to me, but I firmly put it away.
A little after twelve a special messenger arrived, bringing my ticket and five hundred dollars in bank-notes. I knew then that I was in for a genuine adventure. At one I put on my hat and coat, locked the door behind me, and went off to my hotel. Mentally I was leaving a work to which, from certain points of view, I was sorry to say good-by, but I could afford no backward looks.
At the hotel I packed my belongings and left them so that they could be sent after me in case I should not return. I might be back the next morning; but then I might never come back at all. I thought of those villagers who from idle curiosity followed the carriage of Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette as it drove out of Varennes, some of them never to see their native town again till they had been dragged over half the battle-fields of Europe. Like them I had no prevision as to where I was going or what was to become of me. I knew only--gloatingly, and with a kind of glory in the fact--that I was going at the call of Larry Strangways, to do his bidding, because he believed in me. But that thought, too, I tried to put out of my mind. In as far as it was in my mind I did my best to express it in terms of prose, seeing myself not as the heroine of a mysterious romance--a view to which I was inclined--but as a practical business woman, competent, up-to-date, and unafraid. I was afraid, mortally afraid, and I was neither up-to-date nor competent; but the fiction sustained me while I packed my trunks and sent a telegram to Hugh.