The High Heart

by Basil King

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 Saturday, 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 façade 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 à 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 spacious 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 noble 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 nobility.

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 châteaux 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 massive 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 negligée, 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 passed 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 passed 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 pronounce. "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?"

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 glass 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 repetitions 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 passionate 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 God, 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. God 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 amusement 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 classified 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.

"You're English, aren't you?" Lady Cecilia began, as soon as we were alone. "I can tell by the way you speak."

I said I was a Canadian, that I was in New York more or less by accident, and might go back to my own country again.

"How interesting! It belongs to us, Canadia, doesn't it?"

With a slightly ironic emphasis on the proper noun I replied that Canadia naturally belonged to the Canadians, but that the King of Great Britain and Ireland was our king, and that we were very loyal to all that we represented.

"Fancy! And isn't it near here?"

All of Canada, I stated, was north of some of the United States, and some of it was south of others of the United States, but none of the more settled parts was difficult of access from New York.

"How very odd!" was her comment on these geographical indications. "I think I remember that a cousin of ours was governor out there—or something—though perhaps it was in India."

I named the series of British noblemen who had ruled over us since the confederation of the provinces in 1867, but as Lady Cecilia's kinsman was not among them we concluded that he must have been Viceroy of India or Governor-General of Australia.

The theme served to introduce us to each other, and lasted while Mrs. Billing's tour of inspection kept her within earshot.

I am bound to admit that I admired Lady Cecilia with an envy that might be qualified as green. She was not clever and she was not well educated, but her high breeding was so spontaneous. She so obviously belonged to spheres where no other rule obtained. Her manner was the union of polish and simplicity; each word she pronounced was a pleasure to the ear. In my own case life had been a struggle with that American-Canadian crudity which stamps our New World carriage and speech with commonness; but you could no more imagine this girl lapsing from the even tenor of the exquisite than you could fancy the hermit thrush failing in its song.

When Mrs. Billing was quite at the other end of the room my companion's manner underwent a change. During a second or two of silence her eyes fell, while the shifting of color over the milk-whiteness of her skin was like the play of Canadian northern lights. I was prepared for the fact that beneath her poise she might be shy, and that, being shy, she would be abrupt.

"You're engaged to Hugh Brokenshire, aren't you?"

The words were whipped out fast and jerkily, partly to profit by the minute during which Mrs. Billing was at a distance, and partly because it was a matter of now-or-never with their utterance.

I made the necessary explanations, for what seemed to me must be the hundredth time. I was not precisely engaged to him, but I had said I would marry him if either of two conditions could be carried out. I went on to state what those conditions were, finishing with the information that of the two I had practically abandoned one.

She nodded her comprehension.

"You see that—that they won't come round."

"No," I replied, with some incisiveness; "they will come round—especially Mr. Brokenshire. It's the other condition I no longer expect to see fulfilled."

If the hermit thrush could fail in its song it did it then. Lady Cecilia stared at me with a blankness that became awe.

"That's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. Ethel Rossiter must be wrong."

I had a sudden suspicion.

"Wrong about what?"

The question put Lady Cecilia on her guard.

"Oh, nothing I need explain." But her face lighted with quick enthusiasm. "I call it magnificent."

"Call what 'magnificent'?"

"Why, that you should have that conviction. When one sees any one so sporting—"

I began to get her idea.

"Oh, I'm not sporting. I'm a perfect coward. But a sheep will make a stand when it's put to it."

With her hands in her sable muff, her shapely figure was inclined slightly toward me.

"I'm not sure that a sheep that makes a stand isn't braver than a lion. The man my sister Janet is engaged to—he's in the Inverness Rangers—often says that no one could be funkier than he on going into action; but that," she continued, her face aglow, "didn't prevent his being ever so many times mentioned in despatches and getting his D. S. O."

"Please don't put me into that class—"

"No; I won't. After all a soldier couldn't really funk things, because he's got everything to back him up. But you haven't. And when I think of you sitting here all by yourself, and expecting that great big rich Mr. Brokenshire and Ethel, and all of them, to come to your terms—"

To get away from a view of my situation that both consoled and embarrassed me, I said:

"Thank you, Lady Cecilia, very, very much; but it isn't what you meant to say when you began, is it?"

With some confusion she admitted that it wasn't.

"Only," she went on, "that isn't worth while now."

A hint in her tone impelled me to insist.

"It may be. You don't know. Please tell me what it was."

"But what's the use? It was only something Ethel Rossiter said—and she was wrong."

"What makes you so sure she was wrong?"

"Because I am. I can see." She added, reluctantly, "Ethel thought there was some one—some one besides Hugh—"

"And what if there was?"

Though startled by the challenge, she stood her ground.

"I don't believe in people making each other any more unhappy than they can help, do you?" She had a habit of screwing up her small gray-green eyes into two glimmering little slits of light, with an effect of shyness showing through amusement and diablerie. "We're both girls, aren't we? I'm twenty, and you can't be much older. And so I thought—that is, I thought at first—that if you had any one else in mind, there'd be no use in our making each other miserable—but I see you haven't; and so—"

"And so," I laughed, nervously, "the race must be to the swift and the battle to the strong. Is that it?"

"N-no; not exactly. What I was going to say is that since—since there's nobody but Hugh—you won't be offended with me, will you?—I won't step in—"

It was my turn to be enthusiastic.

"But that's what I call sporting!"

"Oh no, it isn't. I haven't seen Hugh for two or three years, and whatever little thing there was—"

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 naïveté, 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.