The High Heart Part 16

"Oh, then this is an--appeal?"

He seemed to hesitate, to reflect. "If you choose to take it so," he admitted, stiffly.

"It surely isn't as I choose to take it, sir; it's as you choose to mean."

"Don't bandy words."

"But I must use words, sir. I only want to be sure that you're making an appeal to me, and not giving me commands."

He spoke sharply. "I wish you to understand that you're inducing a young man to act in a way he is going to find contrary to his interests."

I could barely nerve myself to look up at him. "If by the 'young man'

you mean Mr. Hugh Brokens.h.i.+re, then I'm inducing him to do nothing whatever; unless," I added, "you call it an inducement that I--I"--I was bound to force the word out--"unless you call it an inducement that I love him."

"But that's it," Mrs. Rossiter broke in. "That's what my father means.

If you'd stop caring anything about him you wouldn't give him encouragement."

I looked at her with a dim, apologetic smile. It was a time, I felt, to speak not only with more courage, but with more sentiment than I was accustomed to use in expressing myself.

"I'm afraid I can't give my heart, and take it back, like that."

"I can," she returned, readily. She spoke as if it was a matter of cracking her knuckles or wagging her ears. "If I don't want to like a person I don't do it. It's training and self-command."

"You're fortunate," I said, quietly. Why I should have glanced again at Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re I hardly know; but I did so, as I added: "I've had no training of that kind--and I doubt if many women have."

Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re, who was gazing at me with the same kind of fascinated stare as on the former occasion, faintly, but quite perceptibly, inclined her head. In this movement I was sure I had the key to the mystery that seemed to surround her.

"All this," J. Howard declared, magisterially, "is beside the point. If you've told my son that you'd marry him--"

"I haven't."

"Or even given him to understand that you would--"

"I've only given him to understand that I'd marry him--on conditions."

"Indeed? And would it be discreet on my part to inquire the terms you've been kind enough to lay down?"

I pulled myself together and spoke firmly. "The first is that I'll marry him--if his family come to me and express a wish to have me as a sister and a daughter."

Old Mrs. Billing emitted the queer, cracked cackle of a hen when it crows, but she put up her lorgnette and examined me more closely. Ethel Rossiter gasped audibly, moving her chair a little farther round in my direction. Mrs. Brokens.h.i.+re stared with concentrated intensity, but somehow, I didn't know why, I felt that she was backing me up.

The great man contented himself with saying, "Oh, you will!"

I ignored the tone to speak with a decision and a spirit I was far from feeling.

"Yes, sir, I will. I shall not steal him from you--not so long as he's dependent."

"That's very kind. And may I ask--"

"You haven't let me tell you my other condition."

"True. Go on."

I panted the words out as best I could. "I've told him I'd marry him--if he rendered himself independent; if he earned his own money and became a man."

"Ah! And you expect one or the other of these miracles to take place?"

"I expect both."

Though the words uttered themselves, without calculation or expectation on my part, they gave me so much of the courage of conviction that I held up my head. To my surprise Mrs. Billing didn't crow again or so much as laugh. She only gasped out that long "Ha-a!" which proclaims the sporting interest, of which both Hugh and Ethel Rossiter had told me in the morning.

Mr. Brokens.h.i.+re seemed to brace himself, leaning forward, with his elbow on the table and his cigar between the fingers of his raised right hand.

His eyes were bent on me--fine eyes they were!--as if in kindly amus.e.m.e.nt.

"My good girl," he said, in his most pitying voice, "I wish I could tell you how sorry for you I am. Neither of these dreams can possibly come true--"

My blood being up, I interrupted with some force. "Then in that case, Mr. Brokens.h.i.+re, you can be quite easy in your mind, for I should never marry your son." Having made this statement, I followed it up by saying, "Since that is understood, I presume there's no object in my staying any longer." I was half rising when his hand went up.

"Wait. We'll tell you when to go. You haven't yet got my point. Perhaps I haven't made it clear. I'm not interested in your hopes--"

"No, sir; of course not; nor I in yours."

"I haven't inquired as to that--but we'll let it pa.s.s. We're both apparently interested in my son."

I gave a little bow of a.s.sent.

"I said I wished to make an appeal to you."

I made another little bow of a.s.sent.

"It's on his behalf. You could do him a great kindness. You could make him understand--I gather that he's under your influence to some degree; you're a clever girl, I can see that--but you could make him understand that in fancying he'll marry you he's starting out on a task in which there's no hope whatever."

"But there is."

"Pardon me, there isn't. By your own showing there isn't. You've laid down conditions that will never be fulfilled."

"What makes you say that?"

"My knowledge of the world."

"Oh, but would you call that knowledge of the world?" I was swept along by the force of an inner indignation which had become reckless.

"Knowledge of the world," I hurried on, "implies knowledge of the human heart, and you've none of that at all." I could see him flush.

"My good girl, we're here to speak of you, not of me--"

"Surely we're here to speak of us both, since at any minute I choose I can marry your son. If I don't marry him it's because I don't choose; but when I do choose--"

Again the hand went up. "Yes, of course; but that's not what we want specially to hear. Let us a.s.sume, as you say, that you can marry my son at any time you choose. You don't choose, for the reason that you're astute enough to see that your last state would be worse than the first.

To enter a family that would disown you at once--"