"Hugh, darling, she's fond of you. She's fond of you all. If you could only have—"
"We couldn't." For the first time he showed signs of admitting me into the family sense of disgrace. "Did you ever hear how dad came to marry her?"
I said that something had reached me, but one couldn't put the blame for that on her.
"And she's had more pull with him than we've had," he declared, resentfully. "You can see that by the way he's given in to her on this—"
I soothed him on this point, however, and we talked of a general reconciliation. From that we went on to the subject of our married life, of which his father, in the hasty interview of half an hour before, had briefly sketched the conditions. A place was to be found for Hugh in the house of Meek & Brokenshire; his allowance was to be raised to twelve or fifteen thousand a year; we were to have a modest house, or apartment in New York. No date had been fixed for the wedding, so far as Hugh could learn; but it might be in October. We should be granted perhaps a three months' trip abroad, with a return to New York before Christmas.
He gave me these details with an excitement bespeaking intense satisfaction. It was easy to see that, after his ten months' rebellion, he was eager to put his head under the Brokenshire yoke again. His instinct in this was similar to Ethel's and Jack's—only that they had never declared themselves free. I could best compare him to a horse who for one glorious half-hour kicks up his heels and runs away, and yet returns to the stable and the harness as the safest sphere of blessedness. Under the Brokenshire yoke he could live, move, have his being, and enjoy his twelve or fifteen thousand a year, without that onerous responsibility which comes with the exercise of choice. Under the Brokenshire yoke I, too, should be provided for. I should be raised from my lowly estate, be given a position in the world, and, though for a while the fact of the mésalliance might tell against me, it would be overcome in my case as in that of Libby Jaynes. His talk was a pæan on our luck.
"All we'll have to do for the rest of our lives, little Alix, will be to get away with our thousand dollars a month. I guess we can do that—what? We sha'n't even have to save, because in the natural course of events—" He left this reference to his father's demise to go on with his hymn of self-congratulation. "But we've pulled it off, haven't we? We've done the trick. Lord! what a relief it is! What do you think I've been living on for the last six weeks? Chocolate and crackers for the most part. Lost thirty pounds in two months. But it's all right now, little Alix. I've got you and I mean to keep you." He asked, suddenly: "How did you come to know the madam so well? I'd never had a hint of it. You do keep some things awful close!"
I made my answer as truthful as I could.
"This was nothing I could tell you, Hugh. Mrs. Brokenshire was sorry for me ever since last year in Newport. She never dared to say anything about it, because she was afraid of your father and the rest of you; but she did pity me—"
"Well, I'll be blowed! I didn't suppose she had it in her. She's always seemed to me like a woman walking in her sleep—"