The High Heart Part 13

He nodded.

"Is she--is she anything like me?"

"No one is like you," he exclaimed, with something that was almost bitterness in the tone. "Isn't that what I'm trying to make you see?

You're the one of your kind in the world. You've got me where a woman has never got a man before. I'd give up everything--I'd starve--I'd lick dust--but I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, and I'd cling to you and keep you." He, too, risked Gladys's presence. "But you're so d.a.m.n cool, Alix--"

"Oh no, I'm not, Hugh, daring," I pleaded on my own behalf. "I may seem like that on the outside, because--oh, because I've such a lot to think of, and I have to think for us two. That's why I'm asking you if you found Libby Jaynes like me."

He looked puzzled. "She's--she's decent." he said, as if not knowing what else to say.

"Yes, of course; but I mean--does she strike you as having had my kind of ways? Or my kind of antecedents?"

"Oh, antecedents! Why talk about them?"

"It's what you've been doing, isn't it, for the past half-hour?"

"Oh, mine, yes; because I want you to see that I've got a big a.s.set in Cousin Andrew Brew. I know he'll do anything for me, and if you'll trust me, Alix--"

"I do trust you, Hugh, and as soon as you have anything like what would make you independent, and justified in braving your family's disapproval--"

He took an apologetic tone. "I said just now that we couldn't sc.r.a.pe along on less than twelve thousand a year--"

To me the sum seemed ridiculously enormous. "Oh, I'm sure we could."

"Well, that's what I've been thinking," he said, wistfully. "That figure was based on having the Brokenshire position to keep up. But if we were to live in Boston, where less would be expected of us, we could manage, I should think, on ten."

Even that struck me as too much. "On five, Hugh," I declared, with confidence. "I know I could manage on five, and have everything we needed."

He smiled at my eagerness. "Oh, well, darling, I sha'n't ask you to come down to that. Ten will be the least."

To me this was riches. I saw the vision of the dainty dining-room again, and the nursery with the ba.s.sinet; but I saw Hugh also in the background, a little shadowy, perhaps, a little like a dream as an artist embodies it in a picture, and yet unmistakably himself. I spoke reservedly, however, far more reservedly than I felt, because I hadn't yet made my point quite clear to him.

"I'm sure we could be comfortable on that. When you get it--"

I hadn't realized that this was the detail as to which he was most sensitive.

"There you go again! When I get it! Do you think I sha'n't get it?"

I felt my eyebrows going up in surprise. "Why, no, Hugh, dear. I suppose you know what you can get and what you can't. I was only going to say that when you do get it I shall feel as if you were free to give yourself away, and that I shouldn't have"--I tried to smile at him--"and that I shouldn't have the air of--of stealing you from your family.

Can't you see, dear? You keep quoting Libby Jaynes at me; but in my opinion she did steal Tracy Allen. That the Allens have made the best of it has nothing to do with the original theft."

"Theft is a big word."

"Not bigger than the thing. For Libby Jaynes it was possibly all right.

I'm not condemning her. But it wouldn't be all right for me."

"Why not? What's the difference?"

"I can't explain it to you, Hugh, if you don't see it already. It's a difference of tradition."

"But what's difference of tradition got to do with love? Since you admit that you love me, and I certainly love you--"

"Yes, I admit that I love you, but love is not the only thing in the world."

"It's the biggest thing in the world."

"Possibly; and yet it isn't necessarily the surest guide in conduct.

There's honor, for instance. If one had to take love without honor, or honor without love, surely one would choose the latter."

"And what would you call love without honor in this case?"

I reflected. "I'd call it doing this thing--getting engaged or married, whichever you like--just because we have the physical power to do it, and making the family, especially the father, to whom you're indebted for everything you are, unhappy."

"He doesn't mind making you and me unhappy."

"But that's his responsibility. We haven't got to do what's right for him; we've only got to do what's right for ourselves." I fell back on my maxim, "If we do right, only right will come of it, whatever the wrong it seems to threaten now."

"But if I made ten thousand a year of my own--"

"I should consider you free. I should feel free myself. I should feel free on less than so big an income."

His spirits began to return.

"I don't call that big. We should have to pinch like the devil to keep our heads above water--no motor--no butler--"

"I've never had either," I smiled at him, "nor a lot of the things that go with them. Not having them might be privations to you--"

"Not when you were there, little Alix. You can bet your sweet life on that."

We laughed together over the expression, and as Broke came bounding out to his breakfast, with the cry, "h.e.l.lo, Uncle Hughie!" we lapsed into that language of signs and nods and cryptic things which we mutually understood to elude his sharp young wits. By this method of _double entendre_ Hugh gave me to understand his intention of going to Boston by an afternoon train. He thought it possible he might stay there. The friendliness of Cousin Andrew Brew would probably detain him till he should go to work, which was likely to be in a day or two. Even if he had to wait a week he would prefer to do so at Boston, where he had not only ties of blood, but acquaintances and interests dating back to his Harvard days, which had ended three years before.

In the mean time, my position might prove to be precarious. He recognized that, making it an excuse for once more forcing on me his immediate protection. Marriage was not named by word on Broke's account, but I understood that if I chose we could be marred within an hour or two, go to Boston together, and begin our common life without further delays.

My answer to this being what it had been before, we discussed, over the children's heads, the chances that could befall me before night. Of these the one most threatening was that I might be sent away in disgrace. If sent away in disgrace I should have to go on the instant. I might be paid for a month or two ahead; it was probable I should be. It was J. Howard's policy to deal with his cashiered employees with that kind of liberality, so as to put himself more in the right. But I should have to go with scarcely the time to pack my boxes, as Hugh had gone himself, and must know of a place where I could take shelter.

I didn't know of any such refuge. My sojourn under Mrs. Rossiter's roof had been remarkably free from contacts or curiosities of my own. Hugh knew no more than I. I could, therefore, only ask his consent to my consulting Mr. Strangways, a proposal to which he agreed. This I was able to do when Larry came for Broke, not many minutes after Hugh had taken his departure.

I could talk to him the more freely because of his knowledge of my relation to Hugh. With the fact that I was in love with another man kept well in the foreground between us, he could acquit me of those ulterior designs on himself the suspicion of which is so disturbing to a woman's friendship with a man. As the maid was clearing the table, as Broke had to go to his lessons, as Gladys had to be remanded to the nursery while I attended to Mrs. Rossiter's telephone calls and correspondence, our talk was squeezed in during the seconds in which we retreated through the dining-room into the main part of the house.

"The long and short of it is," Larry Strangways summed up, when I had confided to him my fears of being sent about my business as soon as Hugh had left for Boston--"the long and the short of it is that I shall have to look you up another job."

It is almost absurd to point out that the idea was new to me. In going to Mrs. Rossiter I had never thought of starting out on a career of earning a living professionally, as you might say. I clung to the conception of myself as a lady, with all sorts of possibilities in the way of genteel interventions of Providence coming in between me and a lifetime of work. I had always supposed that if I left Mrs. Rossiter I should go back to my uncle and aunt at Halifax. After all, if Hugh was going to marry me, it would be no more than correct that he should do it from under their wing. Larry Strangways's suggestions of another job threw open a vista of places I should fill in the future little short of appalling to a woman instinctively looking for a man to come and support her.

I shelved these considerations, however, to say, as casually as I could: "Why should you do it? Why shouldn't I look out for myself?"

"Because when I've gone to Stacy Grainger it may be right in my line."

"But I'd rather you didn't have me on your mind."