Read Ebook: The Brown Study by Richmond Grace S Grace Smith

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Ebook has 1028 lines and 48231 words, and 21 pages

THE TIME OF HIS LIFE

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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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'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.

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