X
BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
Donald Brown stood at the end of his hearth, his elbow resting on thechimney-piece, his eyes, narrowed a little between the lashes, intentlyregarding these latest guests of his. He was in the shadow, they were inthe strong light of the fire. A great lump of cannel coal, recently laidupon the red-hot embers and half-burned logs of the afternoon fire, hadjust broken apart with a great hissing and crackling of the pitchyrichness of its inner formation, and the resultant glow of rosy lightwhich enveloped the figures before the hearth, against the dullerbackground of the room, otherwise unillumined, made them stand out likefigures in a cleverly lighted tableau.
They were much more interesting to Brown, however, than anything he hadever seen in the set and artificial radiance of the calcium light. Heknew well every face there, and yet, after his year's exile and incontrast to the faces at which he had been lately looking, they formed amore engrossing study than any he had known for many months.
In the centre of the circle, in Brown's old red-cushioned rocker and mostcomfortable chair, sat Mrs. Brainard, the exquisitely sophisticated wifeof the distinguished specialist close by. Her graceful head, with itsslight and becoming touches of gray at the temples, rested like a finecameo against the warm hue of the cushion. Her brilliant eyes reflectedthe dancing firelight; her shapely hands, jewelled like Mrs.Breckenridge's, but after an even more rare and perfectly chosen fashion,lay in her silken lap. As his glance fell upon these hands some whimsicalthought brought to Brown's mind Mrs. Kelcey's red, work-roughened ones.He wondered if by any chance the two hands would ever meet, and whetherMrs. Brainard's would shrink from the contact, or meet it as that of asister, "under the skin."
Near her his sister Sue's dainty elegance of person showed like a floweragainst the big figure of Doctor Brainard, who sat at her elbow. Brainardhimself, with his splendid head and erect carriage, was always animposing personage; he had never seemed more so than now, with the faceof Patrick Kelcey, Andrew Murdison, and James Benson, the littlewatchmaker, in the background of Brown's mind with which to contrast it.Beyond Mrs. Brainard lounged Hugh Breckenridge--as nearly as one could besaid to lounge--in a plain, cane-seated chair without arms.
At one side of the group was Webb Atchison, the rich bachelor of theparty where all were possessed of wealth in plenty. Next Atchison satMiss Helena Forrest, the one member of the company who had not knownwhere she was going until well upon her way there. Upon her the glance ofthe man standing by the chimney-piece fell least often, yet there was noperson present of whom he was so unremittingly conscious. It may be saidthat from the moment that he had lifted her veil in his puzzled searchfor her identity, he had been conscious of little else.
There was not a single movement of Miss Forrest's hands--and she hadcertain little delightful, highly characteristic ways of helping out herspeech with slight yet significant motions--but had its place in Brown'smemory. She was not a frequent talker, she did not speak one word to SueBreckenridge's fifty; but when she did speak, in her voice of slow music,people listened. And yet one never thought of her, Brown remembered, as asilent person; the effect of her presence in any circle was that of apersonality of the active, not the passive, sort. The eyes of onespeaking must, involuntarily, be drawn to her because she was listening,if I may coin a phrase, vividly. As for her looks--she possessed thatindescribable charm which is not wholly a matter of beautiful features,but lies rather in such details as the lift of the eyebrow, the curve ofthe lip, the droop of the hair upon the brow. She was dressed much moresimply than either of the older women present, yet with the simplicity,it must be admitted, of the artist. She seemed somehow to make theirgoodly showing fade before her own, as a crimson flower draws from thecolour of one of delicate blue.
Well, take them separately or as a group, they were an absorbing study tothe man who had seen so little of their kind for so long past, yet knewthat kind by the wontedness of his lifetime. He seemed to himself somehowto be viewing them all, for the first time, from a vantage point he hadnever before occupied. Every word they said in their pleasantlymodulated, well-bred voices, with the familiar accent of the educatedenvironment from which they came, and from which he came--it was hisaccent, too, but somehow it sounded a bit foreign to him tonight--struckupon his ear with a new meaning. Each gesture they made, personal andfamiliar to him as they were, struck Brown now with its specialindividuality.
"It's not fair, Don," said Sue Breckenridge suddenly, "for you to standover there in the shadow and watch us, without our being able to see yourface at all."
"You don't realize," declared Brown, in answer to this assertion and thegeneral assenting, laugh which followed it, backed by Atchison's. "Hear,hear!" "that the group you all make in the light of my fire is a picturefar ahead of anything in Atchison's collection. I should be anunappreciative host indeed if I didn't make the most of it."
"What an artful speech!" laughed Mrs. Brainard, lifting fine eyes in anattempt to make out the shadowy face above her. "It's well calculated todistract our attention from the fact that you are not changing yourposition by so much as the moving of an arm. We came to see you, man, notto show ourselves to you."
"We came to cheer his loneliness," put in Hugh Breckenridge with apeculiar, cynical-sounding little laugh for which he was famous. "Andwe find him up to his neck in boys. Jove! How do you stand theirdirty hands, Don? That's what would get me, no matter how good myintentions were."
"Those hands were every pair scrubbed to a finish, to-day, in honour ofThanksgiving. Do you think we have no manners here?" retorted Brown.
"That wasn't the dinner party you wrote me of when you refused to cometo mine, was it, Don?" questioned his sister.
"No. This was an after-dinner party, partaking of the 'lavin's,'" Brownexplained. "The real one was over an hour before."
"Do tell us about it. Did you enjoy it? Won't you describe your guests?"Mrs. Brainard spoke eagerly.
"With pleasure. The Kelceys are my next-door neighbours on the left. Mrs.Kelcey is pure gold--in the rough. Her husband is not quite her equal,but he knows it and strives to be worthy of her. The Murdisons, on theother side, are--Scotch granite--splendid building material. Old Mr.Benson, the watchmaker, is--well, he's full-jewelled. The others Iperhaps can't characterize quite so easily, but among them I find severaluncut gems of the semi-precious varieties. Of course there's considerablecommonplace material--if you can ever call the stuff of which humanbeings are made commonplace, which I doubt. There's more or less copperand brass, with a good bit of clay--as there is in all of us. And a dealof a more spiritual element which can't be measured or described, butwhich makes them all worth knowing."
He had spoken in a thoughtful tone, as if he took Mrs. Brainard'squestion seriously and meant to answer it in the same way. A moment'ssilence followed. Then Doctor Brainard said slowly:
"I suppose you don't find those priceless elements among the people ofyour abandoned parish. Down there we're all copper and clay, eh?"
"If you had been clay I might have done more with you," was thequick retort.
"And you can do things with these people, can you? Dig out the roughgold, polish the uncut diamonds, build temples of the granite--andperhaps mold even the clay into works of art?"
The answer to the ironic question was grave enough, and it came with aquietness which spoke more eloquently than fervid tones would have doneof the feeling behind it.
"No, Doctor, I can't hope to do those things. I'm not wise enough. Butthe things these people are going to do to me, if I'll let them, areworth coming for."
"They've done some of them already," murmured Mrs. Brainard. But nobodyheard her except Sue Breckenridge, who cried out:
"And you're not a bit homesick, Don, while you're living like this?"
"If you people won't come up here very often and make me remember whatbeing with you is like, I shall get on pretty well," said Brown's voicefrom the shadow.
"Then we'll come as often as we can," c
ried Sue triumphantly.
"No, you won't--not if you want to help me. My reputation as an indigentbachelor out of a job won't stand many onslaughts of company dressed asyou are. If you want to come to see me you must come disguised. I'mafraid I'm under suspicion already."
"Explain to them that we're the clay, they the uncut diamonds. That willlet you out," advised Doctor Brainard grimly.
"Ah, but you don't look the part," said Brown, laughing. "You look likewhat you are, a big jewel of a fellow, as my friend Mrs. Kelcey wouldsay. To tell the truth, you all seem like jewels to me to-night--and suchpolished ones you dazzle my eyes. Hugh, I'd forgotten what a well-cutcoat looked like. I remember now."
"You seem pretty well dressed yourself," remarked Atchison, peering upinto the shadow. "According to Mrs. Breckenridge, you go about dressed inmonk's cloth, and a shabby variety at that. This doesn't look like it."
"He was wearing a dreadful, old shiny serge suit when I saw him afortnight ago," said Sue. "And such a scarf-pin! Don, are you wearingthat same scarf-pin to-night? Do show it to them."
"Does choosing to live by himself make a man a fair target for all thequips and arrows of his friends?" Brown queried, at the same timewithdrawing obediently the little silver pin from his cravat and givingit into Atchison's outstretched hand. "Be just to that pin, Webb. It wasgiven me by a special friend of mine."
"How will you exchange?" Atchison inquired gravely, touching his ownneckwear as he examined the pin. A rare and costly example of thejeweller's art reposed there, as might have been expected.
"I'll not exchange, thank you."
"Neither will I," declared Atchison, leaning back with a laugh andpassing the pin on down the line.
Hugh Breckenridge gave the obviously cheap and commonplace little articleone careless glance, and handed it to Miss Forrest. She examined itsoberly, as if seeking to find its peculiar value in its owner's eyes.Then she looked at Brown.
"This has a story, I am sure, or you wouldn't care so much for it," shesaid. "Are we worthy to hear it, Mr. Brown?"
His eyes met hers, though as he stood she could barely make outthat fact.
"I should like you to hear it."
"Come out of the darkness, Don, please!" begged his sister again.
The others echoed the wish, and Brown, yielding against hiswill--somehow he had never wanted more to remain in the shadow--took achair at one end of the hearth, where he was in full view of them all."It was given me," said Brown, speaking in a tone which instantlyarrested even Hugh Breckenridge's careless attention, though why it didso he could not have said, "by a man whose son was wearing it when hestood on a plank between two windows, ten stories up in the air, andpassed fifteen girls over it to safety. Then--the plank burned throughat one end. He had known it would."
There fell a hush upon the little group. Mrs. Brainard put out her handand touched Brown's shoulder caressingly.
"No wonder you wouldn't exchange it, Don," she said, very gently.
"Was the father at your dinner, Don?" Doctor Brainard asked, after aminute.
"Yes, Doctor."
"So you wore it to please him," commented Sue.
"He wore it," said Helena Forrest, "as a man might wear theVictoria Cross."
"Ah, but I didn't earn it," denied Brown, without looking up.
"I'm not so sure of that," Mrs. Brainard declared. "You must havedone something to make the father feel you worthy to wear a thing hevalued so much."
"He fancied," said Brown--"he and the mother--that there was a slightresemblance between my looks and those of the son. And they have a finermemorial of him than anything he wore; they have one end of the burnedplank. The father has cut the date on it, with his son's name, and ithangs over the chimney-piece."
"What a tragic thing!" cried Sue, shuddering. "I don't see how they cankeep it. Do tell us something else, Don. Doesn't anything amusing everhappen here? Oh--what became of the baby?"
Brown rose suddenly to his feet. "I'm forgetting my hospitality," saidhe. "I'm going to make you all some coffee. The baby, Sue, is at Mrs.Kelcey's, next door. Having only six of her own, she could easily makeroom for the seventh."
"Tell us about the baby," demanded Webb Atchison. "Has Don gone into thenursery business, with all the rest?"
Sue began to tell the story, describing the night on which she made herfirst visit to her brother. Brown disappeared into the kitchen and soonreturned, bringing with him, as was his entertaining custom, thematerials for brewing his coffee upon the hob.
"You remember," he said, as he came, "the way this room was cleared foryour reception?"
"By an avalanche of boys, who swept everything, hurly-burly, into outerdarkness," supplied Breckenridge.
"You can guess, perhaps, what the kitchen must be looking like,can't you?"
"Indescribable," murmured Sue. "You're not going to invite us to put itin order for you, are you, Don?--and wash all those dreadful, gaudyplates and cups?"
"Just take a look out there, will you?"
Sue shook her head, but Mrs. Brainard went to the door, followed byAtchison and Miss Forrest. They looked out upon a low-ceiled,lamp-lighted room, in absolute order, in which was not a trace of thelate festival-making except the piles of clean dishes upon the table,under which lay Bim, nose on paws, alert eyes on the strangers.
"Magic?" queried Mrs. Brainard. "Surely those noisy boys couldn'taccomplish such a miracle?"
"Never. Though I suspect they were put to work by a good general, for theborrowed chairs are gone and so are several other bulky articles. There'sno difficulty in guessing who did the deed," said Brown, busy with hiscoffee-making.
He served his guests presently with a beverage which made Atchisonexclaim: "The old chap certainly knows how to make the best stuff I everdrank. When I tasted this brew first I invited myself to come out andstay a week with him, but he wouldn't have me."
"You're too polished an article for his hand; he wants his work-stuffraw," Doctor Brainard said again. Evidently this point rankled. Brownlooked up.
"I'll challenge you to stay and have it out with me, Doctor," said he.
"Thank you, I came for no other purpose," retorted the doctor coolly."These people brought me up to have a look at you, and I'm not going backtill morning."
"That's great!" Brown's face showed his pleasure.