The High Heart Part 37

The first was that Hugh had met his father accidentally face to face, and that the parent had cut the son. Of that Hugh had told me nothing.

According to Ethel, he was more affected by the incident than by anything else since the beginning of his cares. He felt it too deeply to speak of it even to me, to whom he spoke of everything.

It happened, I believe at the foot of the steps of a club. Hugh, who was pa.s.sing, saw his father coming down, and waited. Howard Brokenshire brought into play his faculty of seeing without seeing, and went on majestically, while Hugh stared after him with tears of vexation in his eyes.

"He felt it the more," Mrs. Rossiter stated in her impartial way, "because I doubt if he had the price of his dinner in his pocket."

It was then that she gave me to understand that if it were not that Mildred was lending him money he would have nothing to subsist on at all. Mildred had a little from her grandfather Brew, being privileged in this respect because she was the only one of the first Mrs.

Brokenshire's children born at the time of the grandfather's demise. The legacy had been a trifle, but from this fund, which had never been his father's, Hugh consented to take loans.

"Hugh, darling," I said to him the next time I had speech with him, "don't you see now that he's irreconcilable? He'll either starve you into surrender--"

"Never," he cried, thumping the table with his hand.

"Or else you must take such work as you can get."

"Such work as I can get! Do you know how much that would bring me in a week?"

"Even so," I reasoned, "you'd have work and I should have work, and we'd live."

He was hurt.

"Americans don't believe in working their women," he declared, loftily.

"If I can't give you a life in which you'll have nothing at all to do--"

"But I don't want a life in which I'll have nothing at all to do," I cried. "Your idle women strike me as a weak point in your national organization. It's like the dinner-parties I've seen at some of your restaurants and hotels--a circle of men at one table and a circle of women at another. You revolve too much in separate spheres. Your women have too little to do with business and politics and your men with society and the fine arts. I'm not used to such a pitiless separation of the s.e.xes. Don't let us begin it, Hugh, darling. Let me share what you share--"

"You won't share anything sordid, little Alix, I can tell you that. When you're my wife you'll have nothing to think of but having a good time and looking your prettiest--"

"I should die of it," I exclaimed but this he took as a joke.

That had pa.s.sed in January. What Ethel Rossiter told me the next time I lunched with her was that Lady Cecilia Boscobel had accepted her invitation and was expected within a few weeks. She repeated what she had already said of her, in exactly the same words.

"She's a good deal of a girl, Cissie is." My heart leaped and fell almost simultaneously. If I could only give up Hugh in such a way that he would have to give me up, this girl might help us out of our impa.s.se.

Had Mrs. Rossiter stopped there I might have made some n.o.ble vow of renunciation; but she went on: "If she wants Hugh she'll take him. Don't be under any illusion about that."

Though my quick mettle was up, I said, docilely:

"Oh no, I'm not. But if you mean taking him away from me--well, a good many people have tried it, haven't they?"

"Cissie Boscobel hasn't tried it."

But I was peaceably inclined.

"Oh, well," I said, "perhaps she won't. She may not think it worth her while."

"If you want to know my opinion," Mrs. Rossiter insisted, as she helped herself to the peas which the rosebud Thomas was pa.s.sing, "I think she will. Men aren't so plentiful over there as you seem to suppose--that is, men of the kind they'd marry. Lord Goldborough has no money at all, as you might say, and yet the girls have to be set up in big establishments. You've only got to look at them to see it. Cissie marrying a subaltern with a thousand pounds a year isn't thinkable. It wouldn't dress her. She's coming over here to take a look at Hugh, and if she likes him-- Well, I told you long ago that you'd be wise to snap up that young Strangways. He's much better-looking than Hugh, and more in your own-- Besides, Jim says that now that he's with"--she balked at the name of Grainger--"now that he's where he is he's beginning to make money. It doesn't take so long when people have the brains for it."

All this gave me a feeling of mingled curiosity and fear when, a few weeks later, I came on Mrs. Rossiter and Lady Cecilia Boscobel looking into a shop window in Fifth Avenue. It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the day which I had off and on which I made my modest purchases. It was a cold, brisk day, with light snow whirling in tiny eddies on the ground. I was going northward on the sunny side. At a distance of some fifty yards I recognized Mrs. Rossiter's motor standing by the curb, and cast my eyes about for a possible glimpse of her. Moving away from the window of the jeweler's whence she had probably come out, she saw me approach, and turned at once with a word or two to the lady beside her, who also looked in my direction. I knew by intuition who Mrs. Rossiter's companion was, and that my connection with the family had been explained to her.

Mrs. Rossiter made the presentation in her usual offhand way.

"Oh, Miss Adare! I want to introduce you to Lady Cecilia Boscobel."

We exchanged civil, remote, and non-committal salutations, each of us with her hands in her m.u.f.f. My immediate impression was one of color, as it is when you see old Limoges enamels. There was more color in Lady Cissie's personality than in that of any one I have ever looked at. Her hair was red--not auburn or copper, but red--a decorative, flaming red.

I have often noticed how slight is the difference between beautiful red hair and ugly. Lady Cissie's was of the shade that is generally ugly, but which in her case was rendered glorious by the introduction of some such pigment, gleaming and umber, as that which gives the peculiar hue to Australian gold. I had never seen such hair or hair in such quant.i.ties, except in certain pictures of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for which I should have supposed there could have been no earthly model had my father not known Eleanor Siddall. Lady Cissie's eyes were gray, with a greenish light in them when she turned her head.

Her complexion could only be compared to the kind of carnation which the whitest of whites is flecked in just the right spots by the rosiest rose. In the lips, which were full and firm, also like Eleanor Siddall's, the rose became carmine, to melt away into coral-pink in the sh.e.l.l-like ears. Her dress of seal-brown broadcloth, on which there was a sheen, was relieved by occasional touches of sage-green, and the numerous sable tails on her boa and m.u.f.f blew this way and that way in the wind. In the small black hat, perched at what I can only describe as a triumphant angle, an orange wing became at the tip of each tiny topmost feather a daring line of scarlet. Nestling on the sage-green below the throat a row of amber beads slumbered and smoldered with lemon and orange and ruby lights that now and then shot out rays of crimson or scarlet fire.

I thought of my own costume--naturally. I was in gray, with inexpensive black furs. An iridescent buckle, with hues such as you see in a pigeon's neck, at the side of my black-velvet toque was my only bit of color. I was poor Jenny Wren in contrast to a splendid bird-of-paradise.

So be it! I could at least be a foil to this healthy, vigorous young beauty who was two inches taller than I, and might have my share of the advantages which go with all ant.i.thesis.

The talk was desultory, and in it the English girl took no part. Mrs.

Rossiter asked me where I was going, what I was going for, and whether or not she couldn't take me to my destination in her car. I declined this offer, explained that my errands were trivial, and examined Lady Cissie through the corner of my eye. On her side Lady Cissie examined me quite frankly--not haughtily, but distantly and rather sympathetically.

She had come all this distance to take a look at Hugh, and I was the girl he loved. I counted on the fact to give poor Jenny Wren her value, and I think it did. At any rate, when I had answered all Mrs. Rossiter's questions and was moving off to continue my way up-town, Lady Cissie's rich lips quivered in a sort of farewell smile.

But Hugh showed little interest when I painted her portrait verbally.

"Yes, that's the girl," he observed indifferently, "red-headed, long-legged, slashy-colored, laid on a bit too thick."

"She's beautiful, Hugh."

"Is she? Well, perhaps so. Wouldn't be my style; but every one to his taste."

"It you saw her now--"

"Oh, I've seen her often enough, just as she's seen me."

"She hasn't seen you as you are to-day, and neither have you seen her. A few years makes a difference."

He looked at me quizzically.

"Look here, little Alix, what are you giving us? Do you think I'd turn you down now--for all the Lady Cissies in the British peerage? Do you, now?"

"Not, perhaps, if you put it as turning me down--"

"Well, as you turning me down, then?"

"Our outlook is pretty dark, isn't it?"

"Just wait."

I ignored his pathetic boastfulness to continue my own sentence.

"And this prospect is so brilliant. You'd have a handsome wife, a big income, a good position, an important family backing on both sides of the Atlantic--all of which would make you the man you ought to be. Now that I've seen her, and rather guess that she'd take you, I don't see how I can let you forfeit so much. I don't want to make you regret the day you ever saw me--"

"Or regret yourself the day you ever saw me."

If I took up this challenge it was more for his sake than my own.

"Then suppose I accept that way of putting it?"