The Brown Study Part 12

"In your act, of course. I'm bound to acknowledge that it must take a brave man to cut cables the way you're doing--a mighty brave man."

"I don't care about being considered brave, but I won't be called a coward."

"I thought," said Atchison, trying to smile, "there was something in your Bible about turning the other cheek."

"There is," said Brown steadily. "And I do it when I come to your dinner.

But between now and then I'll knock you down if you insult the course I've laid out for myself."

The two men gazed at each other, the one the thorough man of the world with every sign of its prospering touch upon him, the other looking somehow more like a lean and hardened young soldier of the army than a student of theology. Both pairs of eyes softened. But it was Atchison's which gave way first.

"Confound you, Don--it's because of that splendidly human streak in you that we love you here. You've always seemed to have enough personal acquaintance with the Devil and his works to make you understand the rest of us, and refrain from being too hard on us."

At which Sue Breckenridge--who had been listening with tense-strung nerves to the interview taking place in her presence--laughed, with an hysterical little sob shaking her. Both men looked at her.

"Poor Sue," said Brown. "She doesn't like to have you quarrel with me, yet it's all she can do to keep from quarrelling with me herself! Between you, if you don't undermine my purpose, it will be only because I've been preparing my defenses for a good while and have strong patrols out at the weak points."

"I give you fair warning, I'll undermine it yet if I can," and Atchison gripped Brown's hand with fervor before he went away, charging Sue Breckenridge with the responsibility of bringing her brother to the dinner to be given that evening.

"Now, what"--said Brown, turning to his writing-table when Atchison had gone, and absently picking up a bronze paper-weight which lay there--"put it into his head to fire a dinner at me the moment he knew I was here?"

"We all have a suspicion," said Sue, watching him as she spoke, "that he and Helena are ready to announce their engagement. It may have popped into his head that with you here it was just the time to do it. Of course," she went on hurriedly, in answer to something she thought she saw leap into her brother's face, "we don't absolutely know that they're engaged. He's been devoted for a good while, and since he's never been much that sort with women it looks as if it meant something."

"It looks it on his part," said Brown, opening a drawer in the table and appearing to search therein. "Does it look it on hers?"

"Not markedly so. But Helena's getting on--she must be twenty-six or seven--and she always seems happy with him. Of course that's no evidence, for she has such a charmingly clever way with men you never can tell when she's bored--and certainly they can't. It's just that it seems such a splendidly fitting match we're confident there's ground for our expectations."

"I see. Altogether, that dinner promises well for sensations--of one sort or another. Meanwhile, shall we pitch into business?"

Together they went through Brown's apartment, which was a large one, and comprised everything which he had once considered necessary to the comfort of a bachelor establishment. As he looked over that portion of the place pertaining to the cooking and serving of food he smiled rather grimly at the contrast it inevitably brought to his mind. Standing before the well-filled shelves in the butler's pantry he eyed a certain cherished set of Sevres china, thinking of the cheap blue-and-white ware which now filled all his needs, and recalling with a sense of amus.e.m.e.nt the days, not so long past, when he would have considered himself ill served had his breakfast appeared in such dishes.

"It's all in the way you look at it, Sue," he exclaimed, opening the doors of leaded gla.s.s and taking down a particularly choice example of the ceramic art in the shape of a large Satsuma plate. "Look at that, now! Why should a chop taste any better off that plate than off the one I ate from this morning at daybreak? It tastes no better--I vow it doesn't taste as good. I've a keener appet.i.te now than last year, when Sing Lee, my Chinese cook, was cudgelling his Asiatic brains to tempt me."

"That's not the way I look at it," Sue answered mournfully. "To me it makes all the difference in the world how food is served, not to mention how it is cooked. Do you ever have anything but bacon and eggs at that dreadful place of yours?"

"Bless your heart, yes! I don't deny myself good food, child--get that out of your mind. Why, just night before last Jennings and I had an oyster roast, on the half-sh.e.l.l, over the coals in my fireplace. My word, but they were good! If Webb can give us anything better than that to-night he'll surprise me."

"Who is Jennings? A laundryman or a policeman?"

"Neither. Jennings is a clerk in the office of a great wholesale hardware house. He was down on his luck, a while back, but he's pulled out of his trouble. When his wife's called out of town, as she often is by the old people back home, he keeps me company. He's particularly fond of roasted oysters, is Jennings, since a certain night when I introduced them to his unaccustomed palate. It's great fun to see him devour them."

Sue shook her head again. She could seem to do little else these days, being in a perpetual state of wonder and regret over that which she could not understand--quite as her brother had said. He sent her away an hour before luncheon time, telling her that he would follow when he had attended to certain matters in which she could not help. Having put her into her car, he waved a cheery hand at her as she drove away, and returned to his apartment. He lingered a little at the lift to ask after the welfare of the young man who operated it, whom he had known in past days; but presently he was in his library again with the door locked behind him. And here for a brief s.p.a.ce business was suspended.

Before the big leather chair he fell upon his knees, burying his head in his arms.

"_Oh, good Father_,'" said Brown, just above his breath, "_only Thou canst help me through this thing. It's even harder than I thought it would be. I want the old life, I want the old love--my heart is weak within me at the thought of giving them up.... I know the temptation comes not from without but from within. It's my own weak self that is my enemy, not the lure of the life I'm giving up.... Give me strength--fighting strength.... Help me--'not to give in while I can stand and see_.'"

Presently he rose to his feet. He was pale, but in his face showed the renewed strength of purpose he had asked for. He set about the task of packing the few things he meant to take with him, working with a certain unhurried efficiency which accomplished no small amount in that hour before luncheon. Then he descended to find his sister's car waiting for him, and was whirled away.

XIII

BROWN'S TRIAL BY FLOOD

At nine o'clock that night, feeling a little as if he were in some sort of familiar dream, Brown, wearing evening dress for the first time in more than a year, sat looking about him. He was at Mrs. Brainard's right hand, in the post of the guest of honour, for Mrs. Brainard was playing hostess for her bachelor friend, Webb Atchison, in the apartment of the princely up-town hotel which was his more or less permanent home.

About the great round table were gathered a goodly company--the company of Brown's old friends among the rich and eminent of the city. Not only men of great wealth, but men distinguished in their professions, noted for their achievements, and honoured for their public services, were among those hurriedly asked to do this man honour. They had all been more or less constant members of his congregation during the years when he was making a name as the most forceful and fearless young preacher who ever ventured to tell the people of aristocratic St. Timothy's what he thought of them.

And they were gathered to-night to tell him what they thought of him.

They were sparing no pains to do so. More than once, while he parried their attacks upon his resolution to leave them permanently, parried them with a smiling face, with a resolute quiet voice, with the quickness of return thrust for which he was famous in debate, he was inwardly sending up one oft-repeated, pregnant pet.i.tion: "_Lord, help me through this--for Thy sake_!"

They were not men alone who combined against him with every pressure of argument; there were women present who used upon him every art of persuasion. Not that of speech alone, but that subtler witchery of look and smile with which such women well know how to make their soft blows tell more surely than harder ones from other hands. Among these, all of whom were women of charm and distinction after one fashion or another, was one who alone, though she seemed to be making no direct attack, was waging the heaviest war of all against Donald Brown's determination.

Atchison, in arranging the places of his guests, had put Helena Forrest at Brown's right, at the sacrifice of his own pleasure, for by this concession she was farthest from himself. Whether or not he understood how peculiarly deadly was the weapon he thus used against his friend, he knew that Helena was capable of exerting a powerful influence upon any man--how should he himself not know it, who was at her feet? He had no compunction in bringing that influence to bear upon Brown at this moment, when the actual word of withdrawal had not yet been spoken.

Yet as from time to time Atchison looked toward these two of his guests he wondered if Helena were doing all she could in the cause in which he had enlisted her. She was saying little to Brown, he could see that; and Brown was saying even less to her. Each seemed more occupied with the neighbour upon the farther side than with the other. Just what this meant Atchison could not be sure.

The dinner, an affair of surprising magnificence considering the brief hours of its preparation, drew at length to its close. It seemed to Brown that he had been sitting at that table, in the midst of the old environment in which he had once been carelessly happy and a.s.sured, for hours upon end, before the signal came at last for the departure of the women. And even then he knew that after they had gone the worst was probably to come. It came. Left alone with him, the men of the party redoubled their attacks. With every argument, renewed and recast, they a.s.saulted him. He withstood them, refusing at the last to argue, merely lifting his head with a characteristic gesture of determination, smiling wearily, and saying with unshaken purpose: "It's no use, gentlemen. I've made up my mind. I'm sorry you think I'm wrong, but I can't help that, since I believe I'm right."

They could not credit their own failure, these men of power, so accustomed to having things go their way that they were unable to understand even the possibility of being defeated. And they were being defeated by a man whom they had never admired more--and they had made him, as Sue Breckenridge had said, the idol of the great church--than now when he refused them. But they, quite naturally, did not show him that.

They showed him disappointment, chagrin, cynicism, disbelief in his judgment, everything that could make his heart beat hard and painfully with the weight of their displeasure.

Suddenly he rose to his feet. A hush fell, for they thought he was going to speak to them. He was silent for a minute, looking down at these old friends who were so fond of him; then he opened his mouth. But not to speak--to sing.

It was a powerful a.s.set of Donald Brown's, and it had never been more powerful than now, this voice which had been given him of heaven. They had often heard him before but now, under these strange circ.u.mstances, they listened with fresh amazement to the beauty of his tones. Every word fell clean-cut upon their ears, every note was rich with feeling, as Brown in this strange fashion made his plea, took his stand with George Matheson's deathless words of pa.s.sionate loyalty:

"Make me a captive, Lord, And then I shall be free; Force me to render up my sword, And I shall conqueror be.

I sink in life's alarms When by myself I stand; Imprison me within Thy arms, And strong shall be my hand."

When they looked up, these men, they saw that the women of the party had come back to the doors, drawn by an irresistible force.

In a strange silence, broken only by low-spoken words, the whole company returned to the living-rooms of the apartment. Here Brown himself broke the spell he had laid upon them.

Speaking in the ringing voice they knew of old, and with a gesture of both arms outflung as if he threw himself upon their friendship, he cried blithely:

"Ah, give me a good time now, dear people! Let me play I'm yours and you are mine again--just for to-night."

That settled it. Webb Atchison brought his hand down upon his victim's shoulder with a resounding friendly blow, calling:

"He's right. We've given him a bad two hours of it. Let's make it up to him, and let him have the right sort of send-off--since he will go. He will--there's no possible question of that. So let's part friends."

"I don't know," said Brown, smiling in the midst of the faces which now gave him back his smile, "but that if you are kind to me you'll test my endurance still more heavily. But--we'll risk it."

The scene now became a gay one--gay, at least, upon the surface. Brown was his old self again, the one they had known, and he was the centre of the good-fellowship which now reigned. So, for a time. Then came the supreme test of his life--as unexpectedly as such tests come, when a man thinks he has won through to the thin edge of the struggle.