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Books by the AUTHOR OF "THE INNER SHRINE"
[BASIL KING]
THE HIGH HEART. Illustrated. THE LIFTED VEIL. Illustrated. THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS. Illustrated. THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT. Illustrated. THE WAY HOME. Illustrated. THE WILD OLIVE. Illustrated. THE INNER SHRINE. Illustrated. THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT. Illustrated. LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER. Post 8vo. IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY. Post 8vo. THE STEPS OF HONOR. Post 8vo. THE GIANT'S STRENGTH. Post 8vo.
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK Established 1817
"I've been thinking a good deal during the past few weeksof your law of Right"]
THE HIGH HEART
BY BASIL KING
AUTHOR OF "_The Inner Shrine_" "_The Lifted Veil_" _Etc._
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON
The High Heart
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1917
ILLUSTRATIONS
"I've Been Thinking a Good Deal During the Past Few Weeks of Your Law of Right" _Frontispiece_
The Marriage She Had Missed Was on Her Mind. It Created an Obsession or a Broken Heart, I Wasn't Quite Sure Which _Facing p._ 118
I Saw a Man and a Woman Consumed with Longing for Each Other " 192
"I've Had Great Trials . . . I've Always Been Misjudged. . . . They've Put Me Down as Hard and Proud" " 410
THE HIGH HEART
CHAPTER I
I could not have lived in the Brokenshire circle for nearly a yearwithout recognizing the fact that in the eyes of his family J. Howard,as he was commonly called by the world, was the Great Dispenser; but myfirst intimation that he meant to act in that capacity toward me camefrom Larry Strangways, on a bright July morning during the summer of1913, when we were at Newport.
I was crossing the lawn, going toward the sea, with little GladysRossiter, to whom I acted as companion in the hours when she was out ofthe nursery, with a specific duty to speak French. Larry Strangways wastutor to the Rossiter boy, and in our relative positions we were boundto exercise toward each other a good deal of discretion. We fraternizedwith constraint. We fraternized because--well, chiefly because wecouldn't help it. In the mocking flare of his eye, which contradictedthe assumed young gravity of his manner, I read an opinion of theRossiter household and of the Brokenshire family in general similar tomy own. That would have been enough for mutual comprehension had therebeen no instinctive sympathies between us; but there were. Allowing forthe fact that we were of different nationalities, we had the same kindof antecedents; we spoke the same kind of social language; we had thesame kind of aims in life. Neither of us regarded the position in theRossiter establishment as a permanent status. He was a tutor merely forthe minute, while feeling his way to that first rung of the ladder whichI was convinced would lead him to some high place in American life. Iwas a nursery governess only on the way to getting married. Matrimonywas the continent toward which more or less consciously I had beentraveling for five or six years, without having actually descried aport. In this connection I may relate a little incident which had takenplace between myself and Mrs. Rossiter after I had accepted my situationin her family. It will retard my meeting with Larry Strangways on thelawn, but it will throw light on it when it comes.
I had met Mrs. Rossiter, who was J. Howard Brokenshire's daughter, inthe way that is known as socially. I never understood why she shouldhave taken a house for the summer in our quiet old town of Halifax,unless she was urged to it by the vague restlessness which was one ofher characteristics. But there she was in a roomy old brick mansion Ihad known all my life, with gardens and conservatories and lawns runningdown to the fiord or back-harbor which we call the Northwest Arm, and afine English air of seclusion. In our easy, neighborly way she was wellreceived, and made herself agreeable. She flirted with the officers ofboth Army and Navy enough to create talk without raising scandal; andshe was sufficiently good-natured to be civil to us girls, among whomshe singled me out for attentions. I attributed this kindness to ourrecent bereavement and financial crash, which had left me poor aftertwenty-four years of comfort, and was proportionately grateful. It waspartly gratitude, and partly a natural love of children, and partly aspecial affection for the exquisite thing herself, that drew me tolittle Gladys Rossiter, to playing with her on the lawns, and rowing heron the Arm, and--as I had been for three or four years at school inParis--dropping into a habit of lisping French to her. As the childliked me the mother left her more and more to my care, gaining thus thegreater scope for her innocuous flirtations.
It was toward the end of the summer that Mrs. Rossiter began to sigh, "Idon't know how I shall ever tear Gladys away from you," and, "I do wishyou were coming with us."
I wished it in a way myself, since I was rather at a loss as to what todo. I had never expected to have to earn a living; I had expected to getmarried. My two elder sisters, Louise and Victoria, had married easilyenough, the one in the Navy, the other in the Army; but with me suitorsseemed to lag. They came and saw--but they never went far enough forconquest. I couldn't understand it. I was not stupid; I was not ugly;and I was generally spoken of as having charm. But there was the factthat I was twenty-four, with scarcely a penny, and drawing nearer andnearer to the end of my expedients. I was not without some socialexperience, having kept house in a generous way for my widowed father,till his death, some two years before the summer when I met Mrs.Rossiter, brought with it our financial collapse. If he hadn't left alot of old books--_Canadiana_, the pamphlets were called--and rare firsteditions of all kinds, which I took over to London and sold atSothbey's, I shouldn't have had enough on which to dress. This businessbeing settled, I stayed as long as I decently could with Louise atSouthsea and Victoria at Gibraltar; but no man asked me to marry himduring the course of either visit. Had there been a sign of any suchpossibility the sisters would have put themselves out to keep me; but asnothing warranted them in doing so they let me go. An uncle and aunthaving offered to give me shelter for a time at Halifax, there wasnothing left for it but to go back and renew the search for my fortunesin my native town.
When, therefore, Mrs. Rossiter, in her pretty, helpless way said to meone day, "Why shouldn't you come with me, dear Miss Adare?" I jumpedinwardly at the opportunity, though I smiled and replied in an offhandmanner, "Oh, that would have to be discussed."
Mrs. Rossiter admitted the truth of this observation somewhat pensively.I know now that I took her up with too much promptitude.
"Yes, of course," she returned, absently, and the subject was dropped.
It was taken up again, however, and our bargain made. On Mrs. Rossiter'spart it was made astutely, not in the matter of money, but in the way inwhich she shifted me from the position of a friend into that of aretainer. It was done with the most perfect tact, but it was done. I hadno complaint to make. What she wanted was a nursery governess. My ownfirst preoccupations were food and shelter for which I should not bedependent on my kin. We came to the incident I am about to relate verygradually; but when we did come to it I had no difficulty in seeing thatit had been in the back of Mrs. Rossiter's mind from the first. It hadbeen the cause of that second thought on the day when I had taken her uptoo readily.
She began by telling me about her father. Beyond the fact that some manwho seemed to be specially well informed would occasionally say withawe,
"She's J. Howard Brokenshire's daughter," I knew nothing whateverabout him. But I began to see him now as the central sun round whom allthe Brokenshires revolved. They revolved round him, not so much fromadoration or even from natural affection as from some tremendous rotaryforce to which there was no resistance.
Up to this time I had heard no more of American life than American lifehad heard of me. The great country south of our border was scarcely onmy map. The Halifax in which I was born and grew up was not the bustlingCanadian port, dependent on its hinterland, it is to-day; it was anoutpost of England, with its face always turned to the Atlantic and theeast. My own face had been turned the same way. My home had beenliterally a jumping-off place, in that when we left it we never expectedto go in any but the one direction. I had known Americans when they cameinto our midst as summer visitors, but only in the way one knows thestars which dawn and fade and leave no trace of their passage on actualhappenings.
In the course of Mrs. Rossiter's confidences I began to see a vastcosmogony beyond my own personal sun, with J. Howard Brokenshire as thepivot of the new universe. With a curious little shock of surprise Idiscovered that there could be other solar systems besides the one towhich I was accustomed, and that Canada was not the whole of NorthAmerica. It was like looking through a telescope which Mrs. Rossiterheld to my eye, a telescope through which I saw the nebular evidence ofan immense society, wealthy, confused, more intellectual than our own,but more provincial too, perhaps; more isolated, more timid, moreconservative, less instinct with the great throb of national andinternational impulse which all of us feel who live on the imperial redline and, therefore, less daring, but interesting all the same. I beganto glow with the spirit of adventure. My position as a nursery governesspresented the opportunities not merely of a Livingstone or a Stanley,but of a Galileo or a Copernicus.
I learned that Mrs. Rossiter's mother had been a Miss Brew, and that theBrews were a great family in Boston. She was the mother of all Mr.Brokenshire's children. By looks and hints and sighs I gathered fromMrs. Rossiter that her father's second marriage had been a trial to hisfamily. Not that there had been any social descent. On the contrary, thepresent Mrs. Brokenshire had been Editha Billing, of Philadelphia, andthere could be nothing better than that. It was a question of fitness,of necessity, of age. "There was no need for him to marry again at all,"Mrs. Rossiter complained. "If she'd only been a middle-aged woman," shesaid to me later, "we might not have felt. . . . But she's younger thanMildred and only a year or two older than I am." "Oh yes," was anotherremark, "she's pretty; very pretty . . . but I often--wonder."
She described her brothers and her sister by degrees. One day she toldme about Mildred, another about Jack, so coming toward her point.Mildred was the eldest of the family, a great invalid. She had beenthrown from her horse years before while hunting in England, and hadinjured her spine. Jack had just gone into business with his father, andhad married Pauline Gray, of Baltimore. Though she didn't say it in somany words I judged that it was not a happy marriage in the highestsense--that Jack was somewhat light of love, while Pauline "went her ownway" to a degree that made her talked about. It was not till the daybefore her departure for New York that Mrs. Rossiter mentioned heryounger brother, Hugh.
I was helping her to pack--that is, I was helping the maid while Mrs.Rossiter directed. Just at that minute, however, she was standing up,shaking out the folds of an evening dress. She seemed to peep at meround its garnishings as she said, apropos of nothing:
"There's my brother Hugh. He's the youngest of us all--just twenty-six.He has no occupation as yet--he's just studying languages and things. Myfather wants him to go into diplomacy." As I caught her eye there was asmile in it, but a special kind of smile. It was the smile to go withthe sensible, kindly, coaxing inflection with which she said, "You'llleave him alone, won't you?"
I took the dress out of her hand to carry it to the maid in the nextroom.
"Leave him alone--how?"
She flushed to a lovely pink.
"Oh, you know what I mean. I don't have to explain."
"You mean that in my position in the household it will be for me to--tokeep out of his way?"
"It's you who put it like that, dear Miss Adare--"
"But it's the way you want me to put it?"
"Well, if I admit that it is?"
"Then I don't think I care for the place."
"What?"
I stated my position more simply.
"If I'm to have nothing to do with your brother, Mrs. Rossiter, I don'twant to go."
In the audacity of this response she saw something that amused her, for,snatching the dress from my hand, she ran with it into the next room,laughing.
During the following winter in New York and the early summer of the nextyear in Newport I saw a good deal of Mr. Hugh Brokenshire, but neverwith any violent restriction on the part of Mrs. Rossiter. I sayviolent with intention, for she did intervene when she could do so. Onlyonce did I hear that she knew he was kind to me, and that was from LarryStrangways. It was an observation he had overheard as it passed fromMrs. Rossiter to her husband, and which, in the spirit of our silent_camaraderie_, he thought it right to hand along.
"I can't be responsible for Hugh!" Mrs. Rossiter had said. "He's oldenough to look after himself. If he wants a row with father he must haveit; and he seems to me in a fair way to get it. If he does it will behis own fault; it won't be Miss Adare's."
Fortified by this acquittal, I went on my way as quietly as I could,though I cannot say I was free from perturbation.
Perturbation caught me like a whiff of wind as I saw Larry Strangwaysdeflect from his course across the lawn and come in my direction. I knewhe wouldn't have done that unless he felt himself authorized; andnothing could give him the authorization but something in the way of amessage or command. To all observers we were strangers. We should havebeen strangers even to each other had it not been for that freemasonryof caste, that secret mutual comprehension, which transcends speech andopportunities of meeting, and which, on our part, at least, had littleexpression beyond smiles and flying glances.
Of course he was good-looking. It has often seemed to me the privilegeof ineligible men to be tall and slim and straight, with just such aflash in the eye and just such a beam about the mouth as belonged toLarry Strangways. Instinct had told me from the first that it would bewise for me to avoid him, while prudence, as I have hinted, gave him thesame indication to keep at a distance from me. Luckily he didn't livein the house, but in lodgings in the town. We hardly ever met face toface, and then only under the eye of Mrs. Rossiter when each of usmarshaled a pupil to lunch or to tea.
As the collie at his heels and the wire-haired terrier at ours made abee-line for each other the children kept them company, which gave usspace for those few minutes of privacy the occasion apparently demanded.Though he lifted his hat formally, and did his best to preserve thedecorum of our official situations, the prank in his eye flung out thatsignal to which I could never do anything but respond.
"I've a message for you, Miss Adare."
I managed to stammer out the word "Indeed?" I couldn't be surprised, andyet I could hardly stand erect from fear.
He glanced at the children to make sure they were out of earshot.
"It's from the great man himself--indirectly."
I was so near to collapse that I could only say, "Indeed?" again, thoughI rallied sufficiently to add, "I didn't know he was aware of myexistence."
"Apparently he wasn't--but he is now. He desires you--I give you theverb as Spellman, the secretary, passed it on to me--he desires you tobe in the breakfast loggia here at three this afternoon."
I could barely squeak the words out:
"Does he mean that he's coming to see me?"
"That, it seems, isn't necessary for you to know. Your business is to bethere. There's quite a subtle point in the limitation. Being there,you'll see what will happen next. It isn't good for you to be told toomuch at a time."
My spirit began to revive.
"I'm not his servant. I'm Mrs. Rossiter's. If he wants anything of mewhy doesn't he say so through her?"
"'Sh, 'sh, Miss Adare! You mustn't dictate to God, or say he should actin this way or in that."
"But he's not God."
"Oh, as to that--well, you'll see." He added, with his light laugh,"What will you bet that I don't know what it's all about?"
"Oh, I bet you do."
"Then," he warned, "you're up against it."
I was getting on my mettle.
"Perhaps I am--but I sha'n't be alone."
"No; but you'll be made to feel alone."
"Even so--"
As I was anxious to keep from boasting beforehand, I left the sentencethere.
"Yes?" he jogged. "Even so--what?"
"Oh, nothing. I only mean that I'm not afraid of him--that is," Icorrected, "I'm not afraid of him fundamentally."
He laughed again. "Not afraid of him fundamentally! That's fine!"Something in his glance seemed to approve of me. "No, I don't believeyou are; but I wonder a little why not."
I reflected, gazing beyond his shoulder, down the velvety slopes of thelawn, and across the dancing blue sea to the islets that were merespecks on the horizon. In the end I decided to speak soberly. "I'm notafraid of him," I said at last, "because I've got a sure thing."
"You mean him?"
I knew the reference was to Hugh Brokenshire. "If I mean him," Ireplied, after a minute's thinking, "it's only as the greater includesthe less, or as the universal includes everything."
He whistled under his breath.
"Does that mean anything? Or is it just big talk?"
Half shy and half ashamed of going on with what I had to say, I wasobliged to smile ruefully.
"It's big talk because it's a big principle. I don't know how to manageit with anything small." I tried to explain further, knowing that mydark skin flushed to a kind of dahlia-red while I was doing so. "I don'tknow whether I've read it--or whether I heard it--or whether I've justevolved it--but I seem to have got hold of--of--don't laugh too hard,please--of the secret of success."
"Good for you! I hope you're not going to be stingy with it."
"No; I'll tell you--partly because I want to talk about it to some one,and just at present there's no one else."
"Thanks!"
"The secret of success, as I reason it out, must be something that willprotect a weak person against a strong one--me, for instance, against J.Howard Brokenshire--and work everything out all right. There," I cried,"I've said the word."
"You've said a number. Which is the one?"
Anxiety not to seem either young or didactic or a prig made my toneapologetic.
"There's such a thing as Right, written with a capital. If I persist indoing Right--still with a capital--then nothing but right can come ofit."
"Oh, can't it!"
"I know it sounds like a platitude--"
"No, it doesn't," he interrupted, rudely, "because a platitude issomething obviously true; and this isn't."
I felt some relief.
"Oh, isn't it? Then I'm glad. I thought it must be."
"You won't go on thinking it. Suppose you do right and somebody elsedoes wrong?"
"Then I should be willing to back my way against his. Don't you see?That's the point. That's the secret I'm telling you about. Right works;wrong doesn't."
"That's all very fine--"
"It's all very fine because it's so. Right is--what's the word WilliamJames put into the dictionary?"
He suggested pragmatism.
"That's it. Right is pragmatic, which I suppose is the same thing aspractical. Wrong must be impractical; it must be--"
"I shouldn't bank too confidently on that in dealing with the great J.Howard."
"But I'm going to bank on it. It's where I'm to have him at adisadvantage. If he does wrong while I do right, why, then I'll get himon the hip."
"How do you know he's going to do wrong?"
"I don't. I merely surmise it. If he does right--"
"He'll get you on the hip."
"No, because there can't be a right for him which isn't a right for me.There can't be two rights, each contrary to the other. That's not incommon sense. If he does right then I shall be safe--whichever way Ihave to take it. Don't you see? That's where the success comes in aswell as the secret. It can't be any other way. Please don't think I'mtalking in what H. G. Wells calls the tin-pot style--but one mustexpress oneself somehow. I'm not afraid, because I feel as if I'd gotsomething that would hang about me like a magic cloak. Of course foryou--a man--a magic cloak may not be necessary; but I assure you thatfor a girl like me, out in the world on her own--"
He, too, sobered down from his chaffing mood.
"But in this case what is going to be Right--written with a capital?"
I had just time to reply, "Oh, that I shall have to see!" when thechildren and dogs came scampering up and our conversation was over.
On returning from my walk with Gladys I informed Mrs. Rossiter of theorder I had received. I could see her distressed look in the mirrorbefore which she sat doing something to her hair.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "it's just what I was afraid of. Now I supposehe'll want you to leave."
"That is, he'll want you to send me away."
"It's the same thing," she said, fretfully, and sat with hands lyingidly in her lap.
She stared out of the window. It was a large bow window, with awindow-seat cushioned in flowered chintz. Couch, curtains, andeasy-chairs reproduced this Enchanted Garden effect, forming aparadisiacal background for her intensely modern and somewhat neuroticprettiness. I had seen her sit by the half-hour like this, gazing overthe shrubberies, lawns, and waves, with a yearning in her eyes like thatof some twentieth-century Blessed Damozel.
It was her unhappy hour of the day. Between getting up at nine or tenand descending languidly to lunch, life was always a great load to her.It pressed on one too weak to bear its weight and yet too conscientiousto throw it off, though, as a matter of fact, this melancholy was onlythe reaction of her nerves from the mild excitements of the nightbefore. I was generally with her during some portion of this forenoontime, reading her notes and answering them, speaking for her at thetelephone, or keeping her company and listening to her confidences whileshe nibbled without appetite at a bit of toast and sipped her tea.
To put matters on the common footing I said:
"Is there anything you'd like me to do, Mrs. Rossiter?"
She ignored this question, murmuring in a way she had, throughhalf-closed lips, as if mere speech was more than she was equal to: "Andjust when we were getting on so well--and the way Gladys adores you--"
"And the way I adore Gladys."
"Oh, well, you don't spoil the child, like that Miss Phips. I supposeit's your sensible English bringing up."
"Not English," I interrupted.
"Canadian then. It's almost the same thing." She went on withouttransition of tone: "Mr. Millinger was there again last night. He was onmy left. I do wish they wouldn't keep putting him next to me. It makeseverything look so pointed--especially with Harry Scott glowering at mefrom the other end of the table. He hardly spoke to Daisy Burke, whomhe'd taken in. I must say she was a fright. And Mr. Millinger soimprudent! I'm really terrified that Jim will hear gossip when he comesdown from New York--or notice something." There was the slightestdropping of the soft fluting voice as she continued: "I've neverpretended to love Jim Rossiter more than any man I've ever seen. Thatwas one of papa's matches. He's a born match-maker, you know, just ashe's a born everything else. I suppose you didn't think of that. Butsince I am Jim's wife--"
As I was the confidante of what she called her affairs--a role for whichI was qualified by residence in British garrison towns--I interposeddiplomatically, "But so long as Mr. Millinger hasn't said anything, notany more than Mr. Scott--"
"Oh, if I were to allow men to say things, where should I be? You can gofar with a man wit
hout letting him come to that. It's something I shouldthink you'd have known--with your sensible bringing up--and the heaps ofmen you had there in Halifax--and I suppose at Southsea and Gibraltar,too." It was with a hint of helpless complaint that she added, "Youremember that I asked you to leave him alone, now don't you?"
"Oh, I remember--quite. And suppose I did--and he didn't leave mealone?"
"Of course there's that, though it won't have any effect on papa. Youare unusual, you know. Only one man in five hundred would notice it; butthere always is that man. It's what I was afraid of about Hugh from thefirst. You're different--and it's the sort of thing he'd see."
"Different from what?" I asked, with natural curiosity.
Her reply was indirect.
"Oh, well, we Americans have specialized too much on the girl. You'renot half as good-looking as plenty of other girls in Newport, and whenit comes to dress--"
"Oh, I'm not in their class, I know."
"No; it's what you seem not to know. You aren't in their class--but itdoesn't seem to matter. If it does matter, it's rather to youradvantage."
"I'm afraid I don't see that."
"No, you wouldn't. You're not sufficiently subtle. You're really notsubtle at all, in the way an American girl would be." She picked up thethread she had dropped. "The fact is we've specialized so much on thegirl that our girls are too aware of themselves to be wholly human.They're like things wound up to talk well and dress well and exhibitthemselves to advantage and calculate their effects--and lack character.We've developed the very highest thing in exquisite girl-mechanics--awork of art that has everything but a soul." She turned half round towhere I stood respectfully, my hands resting on the back of aneasy-chair. She was lovely and pathetic and judicial all at once. "Thedifference about you is that you seem to spring right up out of the soilwhere you're standing--just like an English country house. You belong toyour background. Our girls don't. They're too beautiful for theirbackground, too expensive, too produced. Take any group of girls here inNewport--they're no more in place in this down-at-the-heel old town thana flock of parrakeets in a New England wood. It's really inartistic,though we don't know it. You're more of a woman and less of a lovelyfigurine. But that won't appeal to papa. He likes figurines. MostAmerican men do. Hugh is an exception, and I was afraid he'd see in youjust what I've seen myself. But it won't go down with papa."
"If it goes down with Hugh--" I began, meekly.
"Papa is a born match-maker, which I don't suppose you know. He made mymatch and he made Jack's. Oh, we're--we're satisfied now--in a way; andI suppose Hugh will be, too, in the long run." I wanted to speak, butshe tinkled gently on: "Papa has his designs for him, which I may aswell tell you at once. He means him to marry Lady Cissie Boscobel. She'sLord Goldborough's daughter, and papa and he are very intimate. Papaknew him when we lived in England before grandpapa died. Papa has donethings for him in the American money-market, and when we're in Englandhe does things for us. Two or three of our men have married earls'daughters during the last few years, and it hasn't turned out so badly.Papa doesn't want not to be in the swim."
"Does"--I couldn't pronounce Hugh's name again--"does your brother knowof Mr. Brokenshire's intentions?"
"Yes. I told him so. I told him when I began to see that he was noticingyou."
"And may I ask what he said?"
"It would be no use telling you that, because, whatever he said, he'dhave to do as papa told him in the end."
"But suppose he doesn't?"
"You can't suppose he doesn't. He will. That's all that can be saidabout it." She turned fully round on me, gazing at me with the largestand sweetest and tenderest eyes. "As for you, dear Miss Adare," shemurmured, sympathetically, "when papa comes to see you this afternoon,as apparently he means to do, he'll grind you to powder. If there'sanything smaller than powder he'll grind you to that. After he's gone wesha'n't be able to find you. You'll be dust."