CHAPTER XIV
THE ISLAND COTTAGE
I have hitherto said nothing about the Bank, for the best of reasons—I hate it. I hated it, I think, from the day when a letter from one of my father's friends introduced me to it, until the day when the letter from the legal firm of which Roger's uncle had been the brilliant head released me from it. I do not think, however, that many people knew this. I did my work as well as I could, accepted my periodical advances in salary with a becoming gratitude, saved a little each year, and quieted my eruptions of furious disgust with the recollection of my mother's unhindered disposal of her little legacy since the day I left the university.
If anyone had told me that on a day in early autumn I should suddenly come into a thousand pounds a year and freedom, I should have caught my breath at the very idea, and here was the thing, a fact accomplished, and here was I, not only quite self-contained, but sober beyond my wont, and ready to take the Bank and all its stodgy horror upon my shoulders, if with it I might have had one thing—one woman! The world was before me, where to choose, all the far corners and reaches for which I had inherited the hunger with the blood that ran in my veins—and if I might only have been the first to find one lonely, insignificant point on the Atlantic coast, my heart would have journeyed there, content, and ceased (or so I thought) its wanderings. Truly our joys are tempered for us, and no shorn lamb was ever more carefully protected from the winds of heaven than we from too much joy. It is an actual fact that I regarded my resignation from the drudgery of twelve years, the disposal of my rooms and furniture, the heartening preliminaries with the lawyers, and my booking at the steamship company's offices, with less interest than the successful transportation of Margarita's wedding gift.
It was with a real thrill of pleasure that I drew out my small savings—a little over a thousand pounds—and with the breathless assistance of Sue Paynter and a famous actress of her acquaintance selected the most perfect single pearl to be purchased for that money. One of the heads of the great firm whose name has been long associated with American wealth and luxury himself lent a discerning hand to the selection, and for the first time I tasted the snobbish joy of sitting at ease in a dainty private room while respectful officials brought the splendours of the Orient to my lordly knees, and lesser buyers hung unattended over the common counters. Except in the purchase of my first gift for my mother—a tiny diamond sword-hilt, in memory of my father—I have never experienced so much pleasure.
It hung, a great blob of veined, milky whiteness, from a strong but tiny golden chain—a gift for a Rajah, not a bank-official! I had never expended so much, or half so much, upon a single purchase, and the pale, native thrift of Old and New England together glowed and thrilled scarlet in me, and the lucent, moonlike sphere flushed into a ruby before my dazzled eyes: I knew then how an eager chief will toss away a province for an emerald—if he may lay the jewel upon the neck of all the world for him!
I had the clasp engraved with her name—itself a pearl—and slipped the delicate case in my pocket. The great comedienne, whom I have always thought the sweetest of women—but one—talked a moment aside at the smiling request of the master jeweller and then whispered laughingly to Sue with the most artfully artless glance at me. Sue, who was a little drawn and white from her enemy neuralgia, murmured to me in French that I had the honour to render desolate Miss L——n R——l, the reigning stage beauty, who was greatly desirous of precisely that pearl and whose too vacillating admirer would doubtless enjoy his bad little quarter hour à cause de moi. I do not deny that this put a point to my satisfaction. I was, in fact, idiotically gratified—God and man that is born of woman alone know why.