CHAPTER V
I come at last to Hugh's defiance of his father. It took place not only without my incitement, but without my knowledge. No one could have been more sick with misgiving than I when I learned that the boy had left his father's house and gone to a hotel. If I was to blame at all it was in mentioning from time to time his condition of dependence.
"You haven't the right to defy your father's wishes," I said to him. "so long as you're living on his money. What it comes to is that he pays you to do as he tells you. If you don't do as he tells you, you're not earning your allowance honestly."
The point of view was new to him. "But if I was making a living of my own?"
"Ah, that would be different."
"You'd marry me then?"
I considered this. "It would still have to depend," I was obliged to say at last.
"Depend on what?"
"On the degree to which you made yourself your own master."
"I should be my own master if I earned a good income."
I admitted this.
"Very well," he declared, with decision. "I shall earn it."
I didn't question his power to do that. I had heard so much of the American man's ability to make money that I took it for granted, as I did a bird's capacity for flight. As far as Hugh was concerned, it seemed to me more a matter of intention than of opportunity. I reasoned that if he made up his mind to be independent, independent he would be. It would rest with him. It was not of the future I was thinking so much as of the present; and in the present I was chiefly dodging his plea that we settle the matter by taking the law into our own hands.
"It won't be as bad as you think," he kept urging. "Father would be sure to come round to you if you were my wife. He never quarrels with the accomplished fact. That's been part of the secret of his success. He'll fight a thing as long as he can; but when it's carried over his head no one knows better than he how to make the best of it."
"But, Hugh, I don't want to have him make the best of it that way—at least, so long as you're not your own master."
One day at the Casino he pointed out Libby Jaynes to me. I was there in charge of the children, and he managed to slip over from the tennis he was playing for a word:
"There she is—that girl with the orange-silk sweater."
The point of his remark was that Libby Jaynes was one of a group of half a dozen people, and was apparently received at Newport like anybody else. The men were in flannels; the women in the short skirts and easy attitudes developed by a sporting life. The silk sweater in its brilliant hues was to the Casino grounds as the parrot to Brazilian woods. Libby Jaynes wasn't pretty; her lips were too widely parted and her teeth too big; but her figure was adapted to the costume of the day, and her head to the slouching panama. She wore both with a decided chic. She was the orange spot where there was another of purple and another of pink and another of bright emerald-green. As far as I could see no one remembered that she had ever rubbed men's finger-nails in the barber's room of a hotel, and she certainly betrayed no sign of it. It was what Hugh begged me to observe. If I liked I could within a year be a member of this privileged troop instead of an outsider looking on. "You'd be just as good as she is," he declared with a naïveté I couldn't help taking with a smile.
I was about to say, "But I don't feel inferior to her as it is," when I recalled the queer look of incredulity he had given me on the beach.
And then one morning I heard he had quarreled with his father. It was Hugh who told me first, but Mrs. Rossiter gave me all the details within an hour afterward.
It appeared that they had had a dinner-party in honor of old Mrs. Billing which had gone off with some success. The guests having left, the family had gathered in Mildred's sitting-room to give the invalid an account of the entertainment. It was one of those domestic reunions on which the household god insisted from time to time, so that his wife should seem to have that support from his children which both he and she knew she didn't have. The Jack Brokenshires were there, and Hugh, and Ethel Rossiter.
It was exactly the scene for a tragi-comedy, and had the kind of setting theatrical producers liked before the new scene-painters set the note of allegorical simplicity. Mildred had the best corner room up-stairs, though, like the rest of the house, her surroundings suffered from her father's taste for the Italianate and over-rich. Heavy dark cabinets, heavy dark chairs, gilt candelabra, and splendidly brocaded stuffs threw the girl's wan face and weak figure into prominence. I think she often sighed for pretty papers and cretonnes, for Sèvres and colored prints, but she took her tapestries and old masters and majolica as decreed by a power she couldn't question. When everything was done for her comfort the poor thing had nothing to do for herself.
The room had the further resemblance to a scene on the stage since, as I was given to understand, no one felt the reality of the friendliness enacted. To all J. Howard's children it was odious that he should worship a woman who was younger than Mildred and very little older than Ethel. They had loved their mother, who had been plain. They resented the fact that their father had got hold of her money for himself, had made her unhappy, and had forgotten her. That he should have become infatuated with a girl who was their own contemporary would have been a humiliation to them in any case; but when the story of his fight for her became public property, when it was the joke of the Stock Exchange and the subject of leading articles in the press, they could only hold their heads high and carry the situation with bravado. It was a proof of his grip on New York that he could put Editha Billing where he wished to see her, and find no authority, social or financial, bold enough to question him; it was equally a proof of his dominance in his family that neither son nor daughter could treat his new wife with anything but deference. She was the maîtresse en tître to whom even the princes and princesses had to bow.
They were bowing on this evening by treating old Mrs. Billing as if they liked her and counted her one of themselves. As the mother of the favorite she could reasonably claim this homage, and no one refused it but poor Hugh. He turned his back on it. Mildred being obliged to lie on a couch, he put himself at her feet, refusing thus to be witness of what he called a flattering hypocrisy that sickened him. That went on in the dimly, richly lighted room behind him, where the others sat about, pretending to be gay.
Then the match went into the gunpowder all at once.
"I'm the more glad the evening has been pleasant," J. Howard observed, blandly, "since we may consider it a farewell to Hugh. He's sailing on—"
Hugh merely said over his shoulder, "No, father; I'm not."
The startled silence was just long enough to be noticed before the father went on, as if he had not been interrupted:
"He's sailing on—"
"No, father; I'm not."
There was no change in Hugh's tone any more than in his parent's. I gathered from Mrs. Rossiter that all present held their breaths as if in expectation that this blasphemer would be struck dead. Mentally they stood off, too, like the chorus in an opera, to see the great tragedy acted to the end without interference of their own. Jack Brokenshire, who was fingering an extinct cigar, twiddled it nervously at his lips. Pauline clasped her hands and leaned forward in excitement. Mrs. Brokenshire affected to hear nothing and arranged her five rows of pearls. Mrs. Billing, whom Mrs. Rossiter described as a condor with lace on her head and diamonds round her shrunken neck, looked from one to another through her lorgnette, which she fixed at last on her son-in-law. Ethel Rossiter kept herself detached. Knowing that Hugh had been riding for a fall, she expected him now to come his cropper.
It caused some surprise to the lookers-on that Mr. Brokenshire should merely press the electric bell. "Tell Mr. Spellman to come here," he said, quietly, to the footman who answered his ring.
Mr. Spellman appeared, a smooth-shaven man of indefinite age, with dark shadows in the face, and cadaverous. His master instructed him with a word or two. There was silence during the minute that followed the man's withdrawal, a silence ominous with expectation. When Spellman had returned and handed a long envelope to his employer and withdrawn again, the suspended action was renewed.
Hugh, who was playing in seeming unconcern with the tassel of Mildred's dressing-gown, had given no attention to the small drama going on behind him.
"Hugh, here's father," Mildred whispered.
Her white face was drawn; she was fond of Hugh; she seemed to scent the catastrophe. Hugh continued to play with the tassel without glancing upward.
It was not J. Howard's practice to raise his voice or to speak with emphasis except when the occasion demanded it. He was very gentle now as his hand slipped over Hugh's shoulder.
"Hugh, here's your ticket and your letter of credit. I asked Spellman to see to them when he was in New York."
The young man barely turned his head. "Thank you, father; but I don't want them. I can't go over—because I'm going to marry Miss Adare."
As it was no time for the chorus of an opera to intervene, all waited for what would happen next. Old Mrs. Billing, turning her lorgnette on the rebellious boy, saw nothing but the back of his head. The father's hand wavered for a minute over the son's shoulder and let the envelope fall. Hugh continued to play with the tassel.
For once Howard Brokenshire was disconcerted. Having stepped back a pace or two, he said in his quiet voice, "What did you say, Hugh?"
The answer was quite distinct. "I said I was going to marry Miss Adare."
"Who's that?"
"You know perfectly well, father. She's Ethel's nursery governess. You've been to see her, and she's told you she's going to marry me."
"Oh, but I thought that was over and done with."
"No, you didn't, father. Please don't try to come that. I told you nearly a fortnight ago that I was perfectly serious—and I am."
"Oh, are you? Well, so am I. The Goldboroughs are expecting you for the twelfth—"
"The Goldboroughs can go to—"
"Hugh!" It was Mildred who cut him short with a cry that was almost a petition.
"All right, Milly," he assured her under his breath. "I'm not going to make a scene."
That J. Howard expected to become the principal in a duel, under the eyes of excited witnesses, I do not think. If he had chosen to speak when witnesses were present, it was because of his assumption that Hugh's submission would be thus more easily secured. As it was his policy never to enter into a conflict of authorities, or of will against will, he was for the moment nonplussed. I have an idea he would have retired gracefully, waiting for a more convenient opportunity, had it not been for old Mrs. Billing's lorgnette.
It will, perhaps, not interrupt my narrative too much if I say here that of all the important women he knew he was most afraid of her. She had coached him when he was a beginner in life and she an established young woman of the world. She must then have had a certain beauté du diable and that nameless thing which men find exciting in women. I have been told that she was an example of the modern Helen of Troy, over whom men fight while she holds the stakes, and I can believe it. Her history was said to be full of dramatic episodes, though I never knew what they were. Even at sixty, which was the age at which I saw her, she had that kind of presence which challenges and dares. She was ugly and hook-nosed and withered; but she couldn't be overlooked. To me she suggested that Madame Poisson who so carefully prepared her daughter to become the Marquise de Pompadour. Stacy Grainger, I believe, was the Louis XV. of her earlier plans, though, like a born strategist, she changed her methods when reasons arose for doing so. I shall return to this later in my story. At present I only want to say that I do not believe that Mr. Brokenshire would have pushed things to an issue that night had her lorgnette not been there to provoke him.
"Has it occurred to you, Hugh," he asked, in his softest tones, on reaching a stand before the chimney which was filled with dwarfed potted palms, "that I pay you an allowance of six thousand dollars a year?"
Hugh continued to play with the tassel of Mildred's gown. "Yes, father; and as a Socialist I don't think it right. I've been coming to the decision that—"
"You'll spare us your poses and let the Socialist nonsense drop. I simply want to remind you—"
"I can't let the Socialist nonsense drop, father, because—"
The tartness of the tone betrayed a rising irritation.
"Be good enough to turn round this way. I don't understand what you're saying. Perhaps you'll take a chair, and leave poor Mildred alone."
Mildred whispered: "Oh, Hugh, be careful. I'll do anything for you if you won't get him worked up. It'll hurt his face—and his poor eye."
Hugh slouched—the word is Mrs. Rossiter's—to a nearby chair, where he sat down in a hunched position, his hands in his trousers pockets and his feet thrust out before him. The attitude was neither graceful nor respectful to the company.
"It's no use talking, father," he declared, sulkily, "because I've said my last word."
"Oh no, you haven't, for I haven't said my first."
In the tone in which Hugh cried out there must have been something of the plea of a little boy before he is punished:
"Please don't give me any orders, father, because I sha'n't be able to obey them."
"Hugh, your expression 'sha'n't be able to obey' is not in the vocabulary with which I'm familiar."
"But it's in the one with which I am."
"Then you've probably learnt it from Ethel's little servant—I've forgotten the name—"
Hugh spoke with spirit. "She's not a servant; and her name is Alexandra Adare. Please, dad, try to fix it in your memory. You'll find you'll have a lot of use for it."
"Don't be impertinent."
"I'm not impertinent. I'm stating a fact. I ask every one here to remember that name—"
"We needn't bring any one else into this foolish business. It's between you and me. Even so, I wish to have no argument."
"Nor I."
"Then in that case we understand each other. You'll be with the Goldboroughs for the twelfth—"
Hugh spoke very distinctly: "Father—I'm—not—going."
In the silence that followed one could hear the ticking of the mantelpiece clock.
"Then may I ask where you are going?"
Hugh raised himself from his sprawling attitude, holding his bulky young figure erect. "I'm going to earn a living."
Some one, perhaps old Mrs. Billing, laughed. The father continued to speak with great if dangerous courtesy.
"Ah? Indeed! That's interesting. And may I ask at what?"
"At what I can find."
"That's more interesting still. Earning a living in New York is like the proverbial looking for the needle in the haystack. The needle is there, but it takes—"
"Very good eyesight to detect it. All right, dad. I shall be on the job."
"Good! And when do you propose to begin?"
It had not been Hugh's intention to begin at any time in particular, but, thus challenged, he said, boldly, "To-morrow."
"That's excellent. But why put it off so long? I should think you'd start out—to-night."
Mrs. Billing's "Ha-a!" subdued and prolonged, was like that tense exclamation which the spectators utter at some exiting moment of a game. It took no sides, but it did justice to a sporting situation. As Hugh told me the story on the following day he confessed that more than any other occurrence it put the next move "up to him." According to Ethel Rossiter he lumbered heavily to his feet and crossed the room toward his father. He began to speak as he neared the architectural chimneypiece, merely throwing the words at J. Howard as he passed.
"All right, father. Since you wish it—"
"Oh no. My wishes are out of it. As you defy those I've expressed, there's no more to be said."
Hugh paused in his walk, his hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket, and eyed his father obliquely. "I don't defy your wishes, dad. I only claim the right, as a man of twenty-six, to live my own life. If you wouldn't make yourself God—"
The handsome hand went up. "We'll not talk about that, if you please. I'd no intention of discussing the matter any longer. I merely thought that if I were in the situation in which you've placed yourself, I should be—getting busy. Still, if you want to stay the night—"
"Oh, not in the least." Hugh was as nonchalant as he had the power to make himself. "Thanks awfully, father, all the same." He looked round on the circle where each of the chorus sat with an appropriate expression of horror—that is, with the exception of the old lady Billing, who, with her lorgnette still to her eyes, nodded approval of so much spirit. "Good night, every one," Hugh continued, coolly, and made his way toward the door.
He had nearly reached it when Mildred cried out: "Hugh! Hughie! You're not going away like that!"
He retraced his steps to the couch, where he stooped, pressed his sister's thin fingers, and kissed her. In doing so he was able to whisper:
"Don't worry, Milly dear. Going to be all right. Shall be a man now. See you soon again." Having raised himself, he nodded once more. "Good night, every one."
Mrs. Rossiter said that he was so much like a young fellow going to his execution that she couldn't respond by a word.
Hugh then marched up to his father and held out his hand. "Good night, dad. We needn't have any ill-feeling even if we don't agree."
But the Great Dispenser didn't see him. An imposing figure standing with his hands behind his back, he kept his fingers clasped. Looking through his son as if he was no more than air, he remarked to the company in general:
"I don't think I've ever seen Daisy Burke appear better than she did to-night. She's usually so badly dressed." He turned with a little deferential stoop to where Mrs. Brokenshire—whom Ethel Rossiter described as a rigid, exquisite thing staring off into vacancy—sat on a small upright chair. "What do you think, darling?"
Hugh could hear the family trying to rally to the hint that had thus been given them, and doing their best to discuss the merits and demerits of Daisy Burke, as he stood in the big, square hall outside, wondering where he should seek shelter.