Chapter 1

The Brown Study

By GRACE S. RICHMOND

Author of "Red Pepper Burns," "Mrs. Red Pepper," "The Twenty-Fourth of June," "The Second Violin," Etc.

1919

TO THE LIVING MEMORY OF EDWARDS PARK CLEAVELAND

CONTENTS

I. BROWN HIMSELF

II. BROWN'S CALLER--ONE OF MANY

III. BROWN'S BORROWED BABY

IV. BROWN'S SISTER SUE

V. BROWN'S UNBORROWED BABY

VI. BROWN'S PERSISTENT MEMORY

VII. BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES

VIII. BROWN'S BIDDEN GUESTS

IX. BROWN'S UNBIDDEN GUESTS

X. BROWN'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

XI. BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD

XII. BROWN'S OLD WORLD

XIII. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FLOOD

XIV. BROWN'S TRIAL BY FIRE

XV. BROWN'S BROWN STUDY

XVI. BROWN'S NEW WORLD

THE TIME OF HIS LIFE

I

BROWN HIMSELF

Brown was so tall and thin, and his study was so low and square, that the one in the other seemed a misfit.

There was not much in the study. A few shelves of books--not all learned books by any means--three chairs, one of them a rocker cushioned in a cheerful red; a battered old desk; a broad and rather comfortable looking couch: this was nearly all the study's furniture. There was a fireplace with a crumbling old hearth-stone, and usually a roaring fire within; and a chimney-piece above, where stood a few photographs and some odd-looking articles of apparently small value. On the walls were two small portraits--of an elderly man and woman.

This was absolutely all there was in the room worth mentioning--except when Brown was in it. Then, of course, there was Brown. This is not a truism, it is a large, significant fact. When you had once seen Brown in his study you knew that the room would be empty when he was out of it, no matter who remained. Not that Brown was such a big, broad-shouldered, dominating figure of a man. He was so tall and thin of figure that he looked almost gaunt, and so spare and dark of face that he appeared almost austere. Yet when you observed him closely he did not seem really austere, for out of his eyes, of a clear, deep gray, looked not only power but sympathy, and not only patience but humour. His mouth was clean-cut and strong, and it could smile in a rather wonderful way. As to the years he had spent--they might have been thirty, or forty, or twenty, according to the hour in which one met him. As a matter of fact he was, at the beginning of this history, not very far along in the thirties, though when that rather wonderful smile of his was not in evidence one might have taken him for somewhat older.

I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there was usually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough, shaggy coat and the suggestion of collie blood about him--though he was plainly a mixture of several breeds--Bim belonged to Brown, and to Brown's immediate environment, whenever Bim himself was able to accomplish it. When he was not able he was accustomed to wait patiently outside the door of Brown's small bachelor abode. This door opened directly from the street into the Brown Study.

The really curious thing about the study was that nobody in that quarter of the big city knew it was a study. They called the place simply "_Brown's_." Who Brown himself was they did not know, either. He had come to live in the little old house about a year ago. He was dressed so plainly, and everything about him, including his manner, was of such an unobtrusive simplicity, that he attracted little attention--at first. Soon his immediate neighbours were on terms of interested acquaintanceship with him, though how they got there they could not themselves have told--it had never occurred to them to wonder. The thing had come about naturally, somehow. Presently others besides his immediate neighbours knew Brown, had become friends of Brown. They never wondered how it had happened.

The Brown Study had many callers. It was by now thoroughly used to them, for it had all sorts, every day of the month, at any hour of the day, at almost any hour of the night.

II

BROWN'S CALLER--ONE OF MANY

A caller had just come stumbling in out of the November murk, half blind with weariness and unhappiness and general discouragement. Brown had welcomed him heartily.

"It's nothing in particular," growled the other man, presently, "and it's everything. I'm down and out."

"Lost your job?"

"No, but I'm going to lose it."

"How do you know?"

"Every thing points that way."

"What, for instance?"

"Oh--I can't tell you, so you'd understand."

"Am I so thick-headed?" Brown asked the question seriously. His eyes, keen, yet full of sympathetic interest, rested inquiringly upon his caller's face.

"It's in the air, that's all I can say. I wouldn't be surprised to be fired any minute--after eight years' service. And--it's got on my nerves so I can't do decent work, even to keep up my own self-respect till I do go. And what I'm to do afterward--"

Brown was silent, looking into the fire. His caller shifted in his chair; he had shifted already a dozen times since he sat down. His nervous hands gripped the worn arms of the rocker restlessly, unclosing only to take fresh hold, until the knuckles shone white.

"There's the wife," said Brown presently.

The caller groaned aloud in his unhappiness.

"And the kiddies."

"God! Yes."

"I meant to mention Him," said Brown, in a quietly matter-of-fact way. "I'm glad you thought of Him. He's in this situation, too."

The caller's brow grew black. "That's one thing I came to say to you: I'm through with all that. No use to give me any of it. I don't believe in it--that's all."

Brown considered him, apparently not in the least shocked. The caller's clothes were very nearly shabby, certainly ill-kept. His shoes had not been blackened that day. He needed a hair-cut. His sensitive, thin face was sallow, and there were dark circles under his moody eyes.

Brown got up and went out by a door which opened beside the chimney-piece into the room behind, which was his kitchen. He stirred about there for some time, then he invited Jennings out. There were crisply fried bacon and eggs, and toast and steaming coffee ready for the two men--Brown's cookery.

They sat down, and Brown bowed his head.

His companion did not bow his but he dropped his eyes, letting his glance rest upon the bacon.

"_Lord_" said Brown simply, "_we ask Thy blessing on this food. Give us food for our souls, as well. We need it. Amen_."

Then he looked up at the caller. "Pitch in, Jennings," said he, and set the example.

For a man who professed to have had his supper Jennings did pretty well.

When the meal was over Brown sent Jennings back to the fireside while he himself washed the dishes. When he rejoined his visitor Jennings looked up with a sombre face.

"Life's just what that card a fellow tacked up in the office one day says it is:--'_one damned thing after another_,'" he asserted grimly. "There's no use trying to see any good in it all."

Brown looked up quickly. Into his eyes leaped a sudden look of understanding, and of more than understanding--anger with something, or some one. But his voice was quiet.

"So somebody's put that card up in your office, too. I wonder how many of them there are tacked up in offices all over the country."

"A good many, I guess."

"I suppose every time you look up at it, it convinces you all over again," remarked Brown. He picked up the poker, and leaning forward began to stir the fire.

"I don't need convincing. I know it--I've experienced it. God!--I've had reason to."

"If you don't believe in Him"--Brown was poking vigorously now--"why bring Him into the conversation?"

Jennings laughed--a short, ugly laugh. "That sounds like you, always putting a fellow in a corner. I use the word, I suppose, to--"

"To give force to what you say? It does it, in a way. But it's not the way you use it when you address Him, is it?"

"I don't address Him." Jennings's tone was defiant.

Brown continued lightly to poke the fire. "About that card," said he. "I've often wondered just how many poor chaps it's been responsible for putting down and out."

Jennings stared. "Oh, it's just a joke. I laughed the first time I saw it."

"And the second time?"

"I don't remember. The fellows were all laughing over it when it first came out."

"It _was_ a clever thing, a tremendously clever thing, for a man to think of saying. There's so much humour in it. To a man who happened to be already feeling that way, one can see just how it would cheer him up, give him courage, brace him to take a fresh hold."

Jennings grunted. "Oh, well; if you're going to take every joke with such deadly seriousness--"

"You took it lightly, did you? It's seemed like a real joke to you? It's grown funnier and funnier every day, each time it caught your eye?"

But now Jennings groaned. "No, it hasn't. But that's because it's too true to keep on seeming funny."

Brown suddenly brought his fist down on the arm of Jennings's rocker with a thump which made his nerve-strung visitor jump in his chair. "It _isn't_ true! It's not the saying of a brave man, it's the whine of a coward. Brave men don't say that sort of thing. The sort of thing they do say--sometimes to other men, oftener to themselves alone--is what a famous Englishman said: '_If you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while you can stand and see_!' How's that for a motto? If that had been tacked on the wall in your office all this while, would it have made you feel like giving up, every time you looked at it?"

Brown's eyes were glowing. Jennings had slumped down in his chair, his head on his hand, his face partly hidden from his host. There was silence in the room.

Brown kept Jennings overnight, making a bed for him on his couch, where he could see the fire. As Jennings sat on the couch, ready to turn in, Brown came out from his bedroom, a long figure in his bathrobe and slippers, and knelt down before the old rocking-chair. Jennings, in his surprise, sat perfectly still, looking at him. He could see Brown's lean, strong face in profile, the fine head--it was a very fine head, though perhaps Jennings did not appreciate that--a little lifted, the eyes closed. Brown prayed in a conversational tone, as if the One he addressed were in the room above, with an opening between.

Then he rose, a little tender smile on his face, said, "Good-night, old man," and went away into the inner room--the door of which he did not close.

What did he leave behind him? What was in the air? Was this a common room, a homely room, lighted only by a smoldering fire? What was it which suddenly and unaccountably gripped George Jennings's heart, so that a sob rose in his throat? What made him want to cry, like a schoolboy, with his head on his arms? With all his long misery, tears had never once come to his relief. His heart had been hard and his eyes dry. Now, somehow, he felt something give way.

* * * * *

Jennings slept all night, and came out to breakfast with a queer, shamefaced aspect, yet with considerably less heaviness of foot than he had shown the night before. He ate heartily, as well he might, for the food was extremely appetizing. When he got up to go he stood still by his chair, seeming to be trying to say something. Seeing this, Brown came over to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Yes, lad?" said he interrogatively. He was smiling and the smile transformed his face, as always.

"I--feel better, this morning," stammered Jennings. "I--want to thank you. I'm ashamed of the way I talked last night. It was as you said. I knew better, but I couldn't seem to--to--"

Brown nodded. "Of course you knew better," he said heartily. "We all know better. Every man prays--at some time or other. It's when we stop praying that things get dark. Begin again, and something happens. It _always_ happens. And sometimes the thing that happens is that we get a good sleep and are able to see things differently in the morning. Good-bye--and come back to-night."

"Shall I?" Jennings asked eagerly.

"Surely. We'll have oysters to-night, roasted on the half-shell over the coals in the fireplace. Like 'em?"

"I never ate any that way," admitted Jennings. "It sounds good." And he smiled broadly, a real smile at last.

"Wait till you try them," promised Brown.

III

BROWN'S BORROWED BABY

On the following Saturday, at five in the afternoon, the previous hours having been filled with a long list of errands of all sorts, yet all having to do with people, and the people's affairs, seldom his own, Brown turned his steps home-ward. The steps lagged a little, for he was tired.

At the house next his own--a shabby little house, yet with rows of blooming scarlet geraniums in tin cans on its two lower window sills, and clean, if patched, muslin curtains behind the plants--Brown turned in once more. Standing in the kitchen doorway he put a question:

"Mrs. Kelcey, may I borrow Norah for an hour?"

The person addressed looked up from her work, grinned a broad Irish grin, pushed back a lock of bothersome hair with a soapy hand, and answered heartily:

"To be shure ye may, Misther Brown. I says to mesilf an hour ago, I says, 'Happen he'll come for Nory to-night, it bein' Saturday night, an' him bein' apt to come of a Saturday night.' So I give her her bath early, to get her out o' the way before the bhoys come home. So it's clane she is, if she ain't got into no mischief the half hour."

She dashed into the next room and returned triumphant, her youngest daughter on her arm. Five minutes later Brown bore little Norah Kelcey into his bachelor domain, wrapped in her mother's old plaid shawl, her blue eyes looking expectantly from its folds. It was not the first time she had paid a visit to the place--she remembered what there was in store for her there. She was just two years old, was Norah, a mere slip of an Irish baby, with a tangled mop of dark curls above eyes of deep blue set in bewildering lashes, and with a mouth like a freshly budded rose.

Brown withdrew the shawl and knelt on the floor before her. Bim, who had welcomed the two with eagerness, sat down beside them.

"You see, Bim," explained his master, "I had to have something human to love for an hour or two. You're pretty nearly human, I know, but not quite. Norah is human--she's flesh-and-blood. A fellow gets starved for the touch of flesh-and-blood sometimes, Bim."

He bent over the child. Then he lifted her again and bore her into his bedroom. Clean and wholesome she was without question, but he disliked the faint odour of laundry soap which hung about her. Smiling at her, playing with her, making a game of it, he gently bathed the little face and neck, the plump arms and hands, using a clear toilet soap with a most delicate suggestion of fragrance. When he brought her back to his fireside she was a small honey-pot for sweetness and daintiness, and fit for the caresses she was sure to get.

Brown sat down with her upon his knee. He had given her a tiny doll to snuggle in her arms, and she was quiet as a kitten.

"Norah," said he, speaking softly, "you are adorable. Your eyes are the colour of deep-sea water and they make havoc with my heart. That heart, by the way, is soft as melting snow to-night, Norah. It's longing for all the old things, longing so hard it aches like a bruise. It's done its best to be stoical about this exile, but there are times when stoicism is a failure. This is one of those times. Norah baby, would you mind very much if I kiss the back of your little neck?"

Norah did not mind in the least.

"All right, little human creature," said Brown, placing her upon the hearth-rug to play with Bim's silky brown ears, "you've given me as much comfort as one of us is likely to give another, in a world where everybody starves for something he can't have, and only God knows what the fight for self-denial costs. Shall we have supper now, Norah and Bim? Milk for Norah, bones for Bim, meat for Donald Brown--and a prayer for pluck and patience for us all!"

IV

BROWN'S SISTER SUE

It was a rainy, windy, November night. Brown and Bim were alone together--temporarily. Suddenly, above the howling of the wind sounded sharply the clap of the old knocker on the door. Brown laid down his book--reluctantly, for he was human. A woman's figure, clad from head to foot in furs, sprang from the car at the curb, ran across the sidewalk, and in at the open door.

"Go back to the hotel and come for me at twelve, Simpson," she said to her chauffeur as she passed him, and the next moment she was inside the house and had flung the door heavily shut behind her.

"O Don!" she cried, and assailed the tall figure before her with a furry embrace, which was returned with a right good will.

"Well, well, Sue girl! Have you driven seventy miles to see me?" was Brown's response. Bim, circling madly around the pair, barked his emotion.

"Is this--" began Brown's visitor, glancing rapidly about her as she released herself. "Is this--" she began again, and stopped helplessly. Then, "O Don!" she said once more, and again, "O Don!"--and laughed.

"Yes, I know," said Brown, smiling. "Here, let me take off your furs. It's pretty warm here, I imagine. Bim and I are apt to keep a lot of wood on the fire."

"Bim?"

"At your feet--and your service."

The lady looked at the dog, who stood watching her.

"Your only companion, Don?" she asked.

"My best chum. He's so nearly human he understands at this moment that you don't think him handsome. Never mind! We're used to it, aren't we, Bim? Come over and take this chair, Sue. Are you cold? Would you like something hot? Tea--or coffee?"

She sat in the chair he drew to the fire for her. As he looked at his sister's charming, youthful face, and saw her sitting there in her handsome street dress with its various little indications of wealth and fashion--the gold-meshed purse on its slender chain, the rare jewel in the brooch at the throat, the flashing rings on the white hands--he drew in his breath in an incredulous little whistle.

"Is it really you, Sis?" he said. "You look pretty good to me, do you know, sitting there in my old chair!"

She glanced at the arm of the old rocker, worn smooth by the rubbing of many hands.

"Why do you have such a chair?" she answered impatiently--or so it sounded. "Why in the world, if you must live in a hovel like this, don't you make yourself comfortable? Send home for some easy chairs, and rugs and pictures." Her eye wandered about the room. "And a decent desk--and--and--a well-bred dog!"

He laughed. "A better bred dog, in one sense, than Bim you couldn't find. His manners are finer than those of most men. And as for this being a hovel, you do it injustice. It was built at the beginning of the last century by a titled Englishman, who used it for an office on his estate. Look at the big oak beams. Look at the floor, the doors, the fireplace. It's a distinguished little old house, Sue. Admit it!"

She shook her head. "I'll admit nothing, except that you are the most eccentric fellow who ever lived, to come off here and stay all by yourself, when you've been the idol of a congregation like St. Timothy's--and might still be their idol, if you would take just a little more assistance and not kill yourself with work. I've no patience with you, Don!"

He did not reply to this. Instead, he asked again gently, "Shall it be tea or coffee, Sue?" He stood in the doorway which led to the kitchen and added, as she hesitated, that he could give her an excellent brand of either. "Coffee, then," she chose, and sat staring into the fire until her brother returned with his earthenware pot and the other essentials for the brewing of coffee, all set forth on a small tray. When, presently, he offered her a fragrant cup, she drank it eagerly.

"That _is_ good," she declared. "I didn't know you could cook. When did you learn?"

"On my vacations in the woods. The guides taught me. LaFitte was a wonderful cook--with certain limitations. I've picked up a few other tricks as well. Would you like something to eat?"

"No, thank you."

She had studied him with attention as he knelt before the fire, noting every detail of his appearance. She now put a question which she had reserved.

"Just how well are you now?"

He looked up. "Don't I look well enough to satisfy you?"

"I can't tell. You are frightfully thin--"

"I never was anything else."

"Do you think this sort of thing is doing as much to make you well as Doctor Brainard's prescription of a voyage and stay in the South Seas?"

"Much more."

"You must be dreadfully lonely."

He was sitting, Turk fashion, on the hearth-rug before her, his long legs crossed beneath him, his hands clasping his knees. With the firelight playing over his face and touching the thrown-back chestnut locks of his heavy hair with high lights here and there, he looked decidedly boyish. At her suggestion of his probable loneliness he smiled and glanced at Bim.

"Bim," said he, addressing a curled-up mass of rough brown hair from which looked out two watchful brown eyes, and which responded instantly to the name by resolving itself into an approaching dog, "are we ever lonely? Rarely, Sue. As a matter of fact, we have a good many callers, first and last."

"What sort of callers?"

"Neighbours, and friends."

"You are in a horribly poor locality. I noticed as I came through. Do you mean that you encourage these people to come to see you?"

"We use all the drawing powers we have, Bim and I."

"Do you mean to say," said she, bending forward, "that you are conducting a _mission_--here, in this place? When you ought to be just trying to get well? Oh, what would Doctor Brainard say?" Her tone was full of consternation.

Brown threw back his head and laughed, a big, hearty laugh which did not sound at all like that of an invalid.

"Brainard seems to be your special anxiety," he said. "Send him down to see me. I'll make him some flapjacks. If there's any one who appreciates good cookery it's Brainard."

"Don," said his sister slowly, studying the face before her, "what are you trying to do?"

"Accomplish a little something while I'm marking time."

"You ought to be resting!"

"I am. This is child's play; compared with the parish of St. Timothy's. And it's lots more fun!"

"You're an ascetic!"

"Never. No crusts and water for me--coffee and flapjacks every time."

Once more she bent toward him. "You are an ascetic. To live in this place, and wear--What are you wearing? Old clothes and a--What on earth is that scarf pin? A ten-cent piece?"

He put up his hand. "Benson, the little old watchmaker on the corner, gave me that. No, it's not a dime. It pleases him immensely to see me wear it. It's not bad, Sue. Nonsense!"

"It's not good--cheap!"

He sat smiling up at her, while she regarded him in silence for a minute. Then she broke out again:

"Why--_why_ do you do it? Haven't you worked hard enough in your great parish, without allowing yourself to spoil this rest you so much need?"

"Sue," said her brother, "the best cure for certain kinds of overwork is merely more work, only of a different sort. I can't be idle and contented. Can you?"

"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!"