The Brown Study Part 3

"Idle! I should like to be idle. I'm rushed to death, all the time. It's killing me."

"Dressmakers and hairdressers--and dinners and bridge and the whole routine of your set," said he. "It is indeed a hard life--I wonder you stand it."

"Don't be ironic!"

"I'm not ironic. I realized, long ago, that it's the hardest life in the world--and pays the least."

She flushed. "I have my charities," she reminded him. "I'm not utterly useless. And my clubs--belonging to them is a duty I owe other women. I try to fulfill it."

"But you're not happy."

"Happy! I've forgotten the meaning of the word. To tell the honest truth, Don, I've been feeling for a long while that I didn't care--how soon it ended."

"Poor little sister!"

A cras.h.i.+ng blow upon the door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the doorstep. No one? At his feet lay a bundle, from which sounded a wailing cry. He picked it up, looked up and down a vacant street, closed the door, and came back to Sue Breckenridge by the fire.

"I wonder if they chose the bachelor's doorstep by chance or by intention," he said.

V

BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY

"Don! Don't take it in! They'll come back for it if you don't--they're watching somewhere. Put it back on the doorstone--don't look at it!"

"Why, Sue!" he answered, and for an instant his eyes flashed reproof into hers. "On such a night?"

"But what can you do with it?"

"Make it comfortable, first."

He was unwrapping the bundle. The child was swathed none too heavily in clean cotton comforters; it was crying frantically, and its hands, as Brown's encountered them in the unwinding, were cold and blue. There emerged from the wrappings an infant of possibly six weeks' existence in a world which had used it ill.

"Will you take him while I get some milk?" asked Brown, as naturally as if handing crying babies over to his sister were an everyday affair with them both.

She shook her head, backing away. "Oh, mercy, no! I shouldn't know what to do with it."

"Sue!" Her brother's tone was suddenly stern. "Don't be that sort of woman--don't let me think it of you!"

He continued to hold out the small wailing bundle. She bit her lip, reluctantly extended unaccustomed arms, and received the foundling into them.

"Sit down close by the fire, my dear, and get those frozen little hands warm. A bit of mothering won't hurt either of you." And Brown strode away into the kitchen with a frown between his brows. He was soon back with a small cupful of warm milk and water, a teaspoon, and a towel.

"Do you expect to feed a tiny baby with a teaspoon?" Sue asked with scorn.

"You don't know much about babies, do you, Sue? Well, I may have some trouble, but it's too late to get any other equipment from my neighbours, and I'll try my luck." She watched with amazement the proceedings which followed. Brown sat down with the baby cradled on his left arm, tucked the half-unfolded towel beneath its chin, and with the cup conveniently at hand upon the table began to convey the milk, drop by drop, to the little mouth.

"I don't see how you dare do it. You might choke the child to death."

"Not a bit. He'll swallow a lot of atmosphere and it may give him a pain, but that's better than starving. Isn't it, Baby?"

"You act as if you had half a dozen of your own. What in the world do you know about babies?"

"Enough to puff me up with pride. Mrs. Murdison, my right-hand neighbour, is the mother of five; Mrs. Kelcey, on my left, has six--and two of them are twins. One twin was desperately ill a while ago. I became well acquainted with it--and with the other five."

"Don!" Again his sister gazed at him as if she found him past comprehension. "You--_you!_ What would your friends--our friends--say, if they knew?"

Putting down the teaspoon and withdrawing the towel, Brown snuggled the baby in his left arm. Warmth and food had begun their work in soothing the little creature, and it was quiet, its eyelids drooping heavily.

He got up, carried the baby to the couch, with one hand arranged a steamer rug lying there so that it made a warm nest, and laid the small bundle in it.

Then he returned to his chair by the fire. He lifted his eyes for a long, keen look into his sister's face, until she stirred restlessly under the inspection.

"Well, what do you see?" she asked.

"I see," said Brown slowly, "a woman who is trying to live without remembering her immortality."

She s.h.i.+vered suddenly, there before the blazing fire. "I'm not sure that I believe in it," she said fiercely. "Now I've shocked you, Don, but I can't help it. I'm not sure of anything, these days. That's why--"

"Why you want to forget. But you can't forget. And the reason why you can't forget is because you do believe in it. Every day people are trying to forget one of the greatest facts in the universe. They may deny it with their lips, but with their hearts they know it is true."

She did not answer. Her brother drew his chair closer, leaned forward, and took one of the jewelled hands in his. He spoke very gently, and in his voice was a certain quality of persuasion which belongs not to all voices which would persuade.

"Sue, make room in your life for a little child. You need him."

Her glance evaded his, flashed past his to the small, still bundle on the couch. Then, suddenly, into her unhappy eyes leaped a suspicion. She straightened in her chair.

"You don't mean--you're not suggesting--"

He smiled, comprehending. "No, no--nothing like that. Your heart isn't big enough for that--yet. It's the mothers of children who make room for the waifs, or those who have long been mothers in heart and have been denied. You don't belong to either of those cla.s.ses, do you?"

She drew a stifled breath. "You don't know what you are talking about, Don. How could you, a bachelor like you?"

"Couldn't I? Well, Sue, if fathers may be divided into the same two cla.s.ses, I might be found in one of them."

She stared at him. "You? Oh, I can't believe it. You could have married long ago, if you had wanted to. You could have married anybody--simply anybody!"

"You do me too much honour--or discredit, I'm not just sure which."

"But it's true. With your position--and your money! Rich and brilliant clergymen aren't so common, Donald Brown. And your personality, your magnetism! Men care for you. Women have always hung on your words!"

He made a gesture of distaste; got up.

"Sterility of soul is a worse thing than sterility of body," said he.

"But sometimes--G.o.d cures the one when He cures the other."