The High Heart Part 22

He roared with ironic laughter.

"You did have the gall!"

"Then you think they'll never, never accept me?"

"Not that way; not beforehand."

Hot rage rose within me, against him and them and this scorn of my personality.

"I think they will."

"Not on your life! Dad wouldn't do it, not if I was on my death-bed and needed you to come and raise me up. Milly is the only one; and even she thinks I'm the craziest idiot--"

"Very well, then, Hugh," I said, quickly; "I'm afraid we must consider it all--"

He gathered me into his arms as he had done before, and once more stopped my protests. Once more, too, I yielded to this masculine argument.

"For you and me there's nothing but love," he murmured, with his cheek pressed close against mine.

"Oh no, Hugh," I managed to say, when I had struggled free. "There's honor--and perhaps there's pride." It gave some relief to what I conceived of as the humiliation he unconsciously heaped on me to be able to add: "As a matter of fact, pride and honor, in me, are as inseparable as the oxygen and hydrogen that go to make up water."

He was obliged to leave it there, since he had no more than the time to catch his train for New York. It was, however, the sense of pride and honor that calmed my nerves when Mrs. Rossiter asked me to take little Gladys to see her grandfather in the afternoon. I had done it from time to time all through the summer, but not since Hugh had declared his love for me. If I went now, I reasoned, it would have to be on a new footing; and if it was on a new footing something might come of the visit in spite of my fears.

We started a little after three, as Gladys had to be back in time for her early supper and bed. Chips, the wire-haired terrier, was nominally at our heels, but actually nosing the shrubbery in front of us, or scouring the lawns on our right with a challenging bark to any of his kind who might be within earshot to come down and contest our pa.s.sage.

"_Qu'il est drle, ce Chips! N'est-ce-pas, mademoiselle?_" Gladys would exclaim from time to time, to which I would make some suitable and instructive rejoinder.

Her hand was in mine; her eyes as they laughed up at me were of the color of the blue convolvulus. In her little smocked liberty silk, with a leghorn hat trimmed with a wreath of tiny roses, she made me yearn for that ba.s.sinet between which and myself there were such stormy seas to cross. Everything was to be up to me. That was the great solemnity from which my mind couldn't get away. I was to be the David to confront Goliath, without so much as a sling or a stone. What I was to do, and how I was to do it, I knew no more than I knew of commanding an army. I could only take my stand on the maxim of which I was making a foundation-stone. I went so far as to believe that if I did right more right would unfold itself. It would be like following a trail through a difficult wood, a trail of which you observe all the notches and steps and signs, sometimes with misgivings, often with the fear that you're astray, but on which a moment arrives when you see with delight that you're coming out to the clearing. So I argued as I prattled with Gladys of such things as were in sight, of ships and lobster-pots and little dogs, giving her a new word as occasion served, and trying to keep my mind from terrors and remote antic.i.p.ations.

If you know Newport at all you know J. Howard Brokenshire's place in the neighborhood of Ochre Point. Anyone would name it as you pa.s.sed by. J.

Howard didn't build the house; he bought it from some people who, it seemed, hadn't found in Newport the hospitality of which they were in search. It is gloomy and fortress-like, as if the architect had planned a Palazzo Strozzi which he hadn't the courage to carry out. That it is incongruous with its surroundings goes without saying; but then it is not more incongruous than anything else. I had been long enough in America to see that for the man who could build on American soil a house which would have some relation to its site--as they can do in Mexico, and as we do to a lesser degree in Canada--fame and fortune would be in store.

The entrance hall was baronial and richly Italianate. One's first impressions were of gilding and red damask. When one's eye lighted on a chest or settle, one could smell the stale incense in a Sienese or Pisan sacristy. At the foot of the great stairway ebony slaves held gilded torches in which were electric lights.

Both the greyhounds came sniffing to meet Chips, and J. Howard, who had seen our approach across the lawn as we came from the Cliff Walk, emerged from the library to welcome his grandchild. He wore a suit of light-gray check, and was as imposingly handsome as usual. Gladys ran to greet him with a childish cry. On seizing her he tossed her into the air and kissed her.

I stood in the middle of the hall, waiting. On previous occasions I had done the same thing; but then I had not been, as one might say, "introduced." I wondered if he would acknowledge the introduction now or give me a glance. But he didn't. Setting Gladys down, he took her by the hand and returned to the library.

There was nothing new in this. It had happened to me before. Left like an empty motor-car till there was need for me again, I had sometimes seated myself in one of the huge ecclesiastical hall chairs, and sometimes, if the door chanced to be open, had wandered out to the veranda. As it was open this afternoon, I strolled toward the glimpse of green lawn, and the sparkle of blue sea which gleamed at the end of the hall.

It was a possibility I had foreseen. Mrs. Brokenshire might be there. I might get into further touch with the mystery of her heart.

Mrs. Brokenshire was not on the veranda, but Mrs. Billing was. She was seated in a low easy-chair, reading a French novel, and had been smoking cigarettes. An inlaid Oriental taboret, on which were a gold cigarette-case and ash-tray, stood beside her on the red-tiled floor.

I had forgotten all about her, as seemingly she had forgotten about me.

Her surprise in seeing me appear was not greater than mine at finding her. Instinctively she took up her lorgnette, which was lying in her lap, but put it down without using it.

"So it's you," was her greeting.

"I beg your pardon, madam," I stammered, respectfully. "I didn't know there was anybody here."

I was about to withdraw when she said, commandingly:

"Wait." I waited, while she went on: "You're a little spitfire. Did you know it?"

The voice was harsh, with the Quaker drawl I have noticed in the older generation of Philadelphians; but the tone wasn't hostile. On the contrary, there was something in it that invited me to play up. I played up, demurely, however, saying, with a more emphatic respectfulness:

"No, madam; I didn't."

"Well, you can know it now. Who are you?" She made the quaint little gesture with which I have seen English princesses summon those they wished to talk to. "Come over here where I can get a look at you."

I moved nearer, but she didn't ask me to sit down. In answer to her question I said, simply, "I'm a Canadian."

"Oh, a Canadian! That's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. It's nothing."

"No, madam, nothing but a point of view."

"What do you mean by that?"

I repeated something of my father's:

"The point of view of the Englishman who understands America or of the American who understands England, as one chooses to put it. The Canadian is the only person who does both."

"Oh, indeed? I'm not a Canadian--and yet I flatter myself I know my England pretty well."

I made so bold as to smile dimly.

"Knowing and understanding are different things, madam, aren't they? The Canadian understands America because he is an American; he understands England because he is an Englishman. It's only of him that that can be said. You're quite right when you label him a point of view rather than a citizen or a subject."

"I didn't label him anything of the kind. I don't know anything about him, and I don't care. What are you besides being a Canadian?"

"Nothing, madam," I said, humbly.

"Nothing? What do you mean?"

"I mean that there's nothing about me, that I have or am, that I don't owe to my country."

"Oh, stuff! That's the way we used to talk in the United States forty years ago."

"That's the way we talk in Canada still, madam--and feel."

"Oh, well, you'll get over it as we did--when you're more of a people."

"Most of us would prefer to be less of a people, and not get over it."

She put up her lorgnette.

"Who was your father? What sort of people do you come from?"