Following the compliment there was a moment of fire-lit silence. And then Miss Grace's voice said softly and sweetly:
"You are looking at my ring. I'm wearing it—"
So that endedthat.
The tutor was on his feet so abruptly as to set the tea-things shaking.
"No! No, I wasn't—I swear! I must go at once," said Charles.
Unaware of the painful memories her womanly words evoked, Miss Grace naturally looked very much surprised.
"But—what'sthe matter? Why, you act as if it were something improper for you to look at my ring!"
"Absurd," said the tutor, with a gesture.
He had merely remembered, all of a sudden, something very important he had to do, that was all. Pardon his haste, but he had already stayed too long, he feared.
Indifferent to Miss Grace's bewilderment, he left at once, wondering if voluntary celibacy could not exist, and be respected, upon this earth. And next day, as he stood on the corner of Center Street awaiting his good, safe street-car—indeed, as he was in the very act of boarding the said safe car—the little Fordette chugged up behind and nipped him.
It was a pure accident, and he knew it. But he saw at once that no accident could well have been less opportune. It involved a discovery highly prejudicial to his future.
Angela, indeed, had not even seen Mr. Garrott. She had merely perceived, rounding the corner into her own street, that she was about to run over somebody, and had awkwardly clapped on her brake, just in time. Recognizing her friend in the person she had so nearly bumped, she gave a little feminine cry of mirth and excitement; and, while she apologized and laughed over the strange coincidence, Charles's car, of course, suddenly clanged away and left him. The rest followed, as the night the day.
Almost the first thing she said was: "Oh, isthiswhere you take the street-cars, when you haven't time to walk?"
Charles's reply indicated that he was very erratic and uncertain in these matters, taking the cars now at one point, now again in a totally different quarter of the city.
So the two friends, no longer constrained by misunderstanding, started off on the slow mile drive to Berringer's. In the course of this drive, Charles had his first justifying thought of Mary Wing in ten days.
He recognized, with deep misgivings, that this girl's attitude toward him was wholly ingenuous and natural, the "claim" he complained of but the spontaneous expression of her girlish conception of their relations. That, of course, was just the worst of it; in that naïveté (oh, surely this was the Naïve Sex!) was her soft strength. He, with his cursed weak politeness, knew not how to withstand her maidenly theory; she, on the other hand, had new means of putting it forward constantly. All was changed, he saw now clearly, from the instant when she came riding back into his life at the wheel of the ancient Fordette.
How was he to have any privacy of movement henceforward; how get from place to place?
Beside him, the girl was talking, with simple pleasure, of bridge. It appeared that she was thinking of having another party next week, in honor of Cousin Mary. Mr. Tilletts was very anxious to improve his game, she mentioned.
"And I think I'll invite you too," she said, with becoming coquetry—"even though you've never paid your party-call—for the other one!"
But why wasn't she sometimes at home, home-making? That was what he should like to know.
And aloud, he spoke with hard brightness of the weather.
Through her seemingly incessant practice, Angela drove better now; not efficiently or rapidly, but no longer with her first anxious air, stopping short when she saw a wagon a block away. This left her more freedom and enterprise for conversation. Mr. Garrott's meteorological comments soon petered out. Subtly, gently, her manner seemed to reprove him for wasting their time, as it were, on trivialities.
She said presently: "Did you ever read that book I lent you, Mr. Garrott—'Marna'?"
The young man groaned inwardly. He could not understand why he had not returned the book last week as he had intended—with or without the blossoms—instead of dilly-dallying along this way, till some point was made of it. True enough, Angela interrupted his loquacious apologies:—
"Oh, it isn't that! I really don't want the book at all. But—"
She drove a few feet farther—an appreciable interval at four miles an hour—and ended, rather wistfully:—
"I wondered if you weren't keeping it—for another reason. I mean—just because you didn't want to come to return it."
"Why, what an idea! Ridiculous!—"
"Mr. Garrott, you know youhaveseemed to—since—"
"You've no idea how overworked I am these days—never a minute to call my own! Why, there's your cousin, Mary Wing,—one of my best friends,—and I haven't so much as laid eyes on her—but once—since 'way before Christmas! Think of it! And that's—"
"You used to be willing to take alittletime for pleasure," said Angela, looking away from him, "before—we had that awful misunderstanding."
"It gets worse and worse all the time!" said Charles, hastily. "That's what I say! That's writing!—yes, indeed!—inexorable—once let it into your life, and it eats it all up—forcing a man to be a—a hermit for life, you might say. But there was something I was very anxious to tell you, Miss Flower. Let me see ... slipped me for the moment. Ah—oh, yes!—did you know Donald Manford's back again?"
"Oh! No, is he? I hadn't heard."
"Yes, old Donald got back Sunday, full of pride and honors...."
And then into the eyes of the worried young man there shot a faint gleam.
He had mentioned Donald absolutely at random, but the moment he heard the youth's name on the air, an idea exploded in his brain, leaving behind a dull hope. Unlike himself, Donald was a marrying man. Why, when you stopped to think of it, wasn't Angela the very girl for him? And why, then, shouldn't he, Charles, frankly reversing his purposes at the Helen Carson luncheon last month, bring together once more these two nice, simple cousins of the too-modern Mary, just as he had done that night at the Redmantle Club, when all the trouble had begun?
Of course, at the moment, Charles's "psychology" was not quite so elaborate as this. The thought, indeed, flashed through his brain in purely concrete form, thus: "That's it! I'll put her on to Donald."
Forthwith, he launched upon a voluble talk, an address, at once extolling Donald's character and throwing out suggestive commentaries upon it: how Donald had come home in the vein of a boy let out of school, seeming to feel that at last his playtime had come; how he (so different from himself, Charles) openly sought and hungered for pleasure now, was mad for some good times. And, observing closely, he thought that Miss Angela looked interested in his exposition, too, though hardly so interested as one might have liked, perhaps.
"Why, I didn't think he was that sort of person at all," said she.
"I've never seen a man change so—come out so—in my life! Landing this great job, you know!—it's taken a great weight off him. And then the thought that he has only a few weeks more at home, too—it's really revolutionized his character! Why, Miss Flower, the man's all but quit work! Really! He ..."
A knocking sense of disloyalty—to Mary's known plans—checked him, but briefly. What was that to him now? Had not Mary convinced him, once and for all, that she was more than competent to manage her own affairs? Deliberately, the young man released his valuable information:—
"Why, he leaves his office every afternoon at four o'clock—rain or shine—and walks up Washington Street, absolutely hunting for somebody to come and give him a little fun! But who is there to do it? He's been out of things so long, he hardly knows anybody! And then, too, Donald, beneath that—ah—standoffish manner of his, is really a shy man. What he needs most, really, is encouragement...."
To all of which Angela's final reply—delivered after a slight silence—was: "You seem to love to talk about Mr. Manford to-day, Mr. Garrott." And then she took the wind out of his sails completely by saying:—
"I don't think of Mr. Manford really as a friend of mine. You know—I often think you're the only real friend I've made, since we left Mitchellton."
During the remainder of the drive, Charles thought it best to affect an amiable absent silence. But that gained him nothing, any more than his treachery to Donald and Miss Carson. Before she released him at the now too familiar corner near Berringer's, the girl said, simply and seriously:—
"Mr. Garrott—aren't you reallyevercoming to see me again?"
Why again? When had he ever been to see her? And why all this talk of a misunderstanding?Hehad never misunderstood anything.
"Why, yes!—yes, certainly!—when I ever find a minute to see anybody! Ha, ha! But—when that'll be—"
It was her great merit in his eyes that she had never really reproached him. It seemed to cost her an effort to go on:—
"You've never forgiven me for—for saying what I did that night. You know you haven't! But if you'd ever come to see me—so that we could really have a talk—I feel I could make you understand that I—never really meant it!"
The maiden's gaze at once embarrassed and vastly depressed him. In it he read, as if spread upon a bill-board, her soft certainty that, though he himself might not realize it yet, he was her man....
In the restaurant, the four or five entirely masculine persons with whom Charles commonly lunched took note of his peculiar gloom. It was their whim to assume that a valued pupil had just discharged Charles without a character. Theirs was a crude and noisy wit. But the tutor ignored, hardly heard, their gibes. He sat withdrawn and silent over his chicken hash (for which Berringer had no less than fourteen different names). And before his fascinated mind's eye there unrolled an endless vista of driving duets, with the gentle feminine pressure closing down ever more and more irresistibly upon him.
What to do, what to do? That was the question. There did not seem to be a corner of the city now where the Fordette did not go poking its ugly mug.
All very well to say: Be bold, be cold. Refuse under any conditions to get into the Fordette. That, to him, was simply not a possible line of conduct. Inability to be successfully rude to people, even under the most favorable circumstances, had long been recognized as the damnable flaw in his character. And as to this very peculiar case—how could the roughest boor, the most thoroughgoing cad, repel and affront a nice young girl whom he voluntarily kissed but last month—one whose only fault, after all, was a fatal constancy?
Now he fairly confronted the two distinct and fundamental weaknesses in his position: the moral and the mechanical, the Kiss and the Fordette. A just thinker always, he would not deny, even now, that it was his own free-will act that had first altered everything. If he took the ground that he had kissed, with warmth, a girl he cared nothing on earth about, what sort of person did that make him? No better than a Frenchman, daft about La Femme. She, it could not be gainsaid, really paid him a finer compliment, took the nobler view of him, when she assumed that those salutes had signified something. She was not without right to her naïve confidence. And now that she had this maidenly expectancy firmly mounted upon a gasoline engine—do what he would, he could not escape a ripening affection. She would get a call out of him yet. There would be another bridge-party, and he would be at it. And after the bridge-party....
Alone with his thoughts among his noisy companions, Charles drew a handkerchief across his brow. A Home was, indeed, a sweet and beautiful thing. But the positive fact was that he, Charles, didNOTwant one made for him at present. And still, the soft advance that leads straight to Homes pressed resistlessly on.
Great Heavens, what a price to pay for one little kiss on a sofa!... Well, two or three little bits of kisses, then. What a price! What was the reason of it, where the justice?
He spoke aloud, for almost the first time at his lunch, with sudden heat: "I believe I'll move away from this town!"
The remark elicited a shout of laughter. In the midst of it, the tutor rose and stalked intently away. It had just occurred to him that he might force a quarrel on Angela, on some trivial pretext: pretend that she had hurt his feelings in some way—about not returning that book of hers, perhaps—something like that. The old dodge: a million men must have worked it. But even as he dallied with the notion, Charles knew very well that the ruthless strength was not in him. Besides, his thought now had taken a cold retrospective turn, interesting in its way: the sight of Talbott Maxon, grinning there, had roused old associations in him. Talbott was a good one to laugh! But the Oldmixon girls had had him laughing out of the other corner of his mouth.
How had he ever lost sight ofthatlittle affair?
People like G. B. Shaw might go about pretending that they had invented the idea of Woman the Pursuer. But the fact was that he, Charles, had personally discovered the elementary truth before he was out of his teens. Experience, you would have said, had driven it home unforgettably. All the way up to the old lady's who was studying French, tucked away in an obscure corner of the street-car, Charles was soberly going back over the instructive time he and Talbott had had with a group of Temporary Spinsters—all of five years ago—and wondering how under the sun he had ever allowed its lessons to grow dim.
That old trouble had started casually, too—how sharply it all came back now! At a dance it was, when Talbott, who was also fatally kind-hearted (and was pushed by a chaperon from behind, besides), had invited Susie Oldmixon to abandon the wall for the waltz. Of course, he had been stuck for four dances for his pains: of course Miss Oldmixon—a womanly girl—had misconceived the character of that long set-to; of course she invited him to a party in a day or two. Then it was that Talbott, sensing how things were going, had introduced him, Charles, much as a cowardly conscript offers a substitute. But the base act had gained him nothing; the Oldmixons produced a friend of theirs, Sarah Freed,—how he came to loathe the sight of Sarah!—and upon the instant, he and Talbott found themselves caught up together in a literally endless chain of little engagements, usually thus: a party, a party-call, another party, etc. Naturally, they had early had the bright thought of breaking the chain by not paying any party-call; and at once, this very same kind of soft pressure was put upon their weak chivalrousness: "Ethel thinks you must be mad with her," one or the other of the loyal sisters would say. "You know you've never paid your party-call." If they yielded, and went and paid their party-call, it was not considered that they had then discharged their duty like soldiers; no, by an inexplicable shift in the point of view, the call was straightway viewed as a personal "attention," and they were at once invited to another party. So it went: these girls had reduced to an intuitive science the feminine instinct for making one thing lead to another. Of course they were always offering to teach him and Talbott something, as auction or the Boston; always trying to lend them something—like "Marna"—which would have to be returned. And even if all the regulation pitfalls were fairly side-stepped, it really accomplished nothing, for in that case Sarah or the Oldmixons were sure to have a Visitor. Even Sarah Freed, of course, rather hesitated to ring you up on the telephone and say: "Please, please, come to see me! You know I haven't a thing in the world to do but sit and think about men, and you're the only man who has spoken politely to me since 1908." But none of the virgins minded at all ringing you up and saying, "Do come to see my Visitor."
The worst thing in it all (reflected Charles, with worriment, in the street-car) was that Sarah and the Oldmixons were far from being brazen hussies; they were really nice girls, only sharpened a little by tedium and the creeping fear of "failure." Odd though it seemed, they actually remained almost completely unconscious of their own processes. And still it had taken him and Talbott nearly a year to get out of the soft vicious circle; and still he remembered distinctly that they had then agreed upon the following as their invariable rule of conduct, thenceforward: Never be polite to a womanly girl, unless positive you want to marry her.
Ayear! And of course he had never kissed Sarah and the Oldmixons, either....
Charles went on his rounds in a humor of fatalistic despondence. The mood proved premature, decidedly: while there is life, there is hope. And it seemed that he, by too much thinking, had wrongly discounted the promising aspects of his case. He had builded rather better than he knew.
When his lesson with Miss Grace was over, at four-thirty that afternoon, the tutor said gloomily:—
"I can't stay for tea to-day. But I think I'll just stand here, and look out of the window a little while."
Of course, after yesterday, there could be no more tea-taking. Equally of course, caution was more needed than ever. "Don't wait for me," muttered Charles, reconnoitering, to Miss Grace. And then he forgot her entirely as his eye, shooting out the window, fell upon Donald Manford sauntering carelessly along, over the sunny street.
From the Choristers' window, Charles gazed out at his young friend with moroseness and moody envy. What he had told Angela about this youth was (by chance) almost literally true. Donald—hitherto a hard worker, through Mary Wing's unceasing influence—wasvisibly relaxing the ties he was so soon to sever; hehadcome home in distinctly a holiday humor. And a lot of good that did him, Charles! Donald walked Washington Street there with utter free-and-easiness, with almost insolent impunity. Dull, lucky Donald! He, of course, did not have the devilish gift; Donald kissed no one. No one viewed Donald as her own true man; no home-maker chased him all over the city in a Fordette.
Behind him, Miss Grace pushed a flat button on the wall and said: "Tea'll be ready in a minute, Mr. Garrott. You really might as well stay, you know, as stand there looking out of the window."
The tutor made no reply. In fact, he did not hear Miss Grace. By strange luck, he was in the grip of an extraordinary, a truly fascinating experience. Quite suddenly, his ears had been captured by a sound from the street, a sound that had an arresting familiarity among all other sounds, a peculiar whirring, a rumbling, and a snorting, insistent, growing louder. Upon earth, was there but one noise like that?
Swifter than a bullet, Charles's eyes had gone speeding down the spacious street. And his heart leapt up within him as they lighted upon the self-propelling conveyance approaching—but half a block away, chugging steadily nearer....
Yes, his word to the wise had not been wholly wasted, it seemed. There rumbled the good little Fordette after unconscious Donald, gaining on him, gaining almost rapidly....
"Mr. Garrott, whatareyou looking at?"
"Oh!... Nothing," said the tutor in a muffled voice.
But in truth, he was looking, with breathless interest, at the fairest sight seen by him in many a long day. Safe behind the Choristers' curtains, with general joy, with the acute delights of a born strategist, Charles saw what had so often happened to him, happen now to poor old Donald.
By odd coincidence, it fell out that the re-meeting of Mary Wing's two cousins took place within fifty feet of the Choristers' window. What more natural than that Angela, in the moment of passing her home-come friend, should look over her shoulder and speak a pleasant greeting? Or that Donald, surprised and civil, should unconsciously take a responsive step or two toward the sudden speaker of the greeting? What more certain than death or taxes but that the Fordette should thereupon come to a halt—which it did so easily and naturally? (Oh, how perfectly simple it all was, as you stood off and watched, how gentle and friendly and inexorable!) Casual talk seemed to spring up: how easily Charles, peeping with starting eyes between the parted curtains, could imagine it all!—"I'm so glad to see you back! I've wanted so to congratulate you on your great success! I'm crazy to hear about Wyoming!" And presently those crucial words, so innocent-looking, so sweet: "Mr. Manford, won't you let me," etc. "Truly I'm just out for a drive." And—sure enough—oh, by George!Hooray!There was the poor fool grinning; there he was compressing himself, clambering right into the jaws.Ah, there, Miss Mary!...And there the two young people went snorting away up the street: perfectly normally, though something in Donald's cramped position, his long legs hunched up to his chin, did oddly suggest a captive, seized and bound.
The tutor astonished Miss Grace by bursting into a wild roar of laughter.
But of course, he understood, on cool analysis, that this really settled nothing. That exciting spectacle, which seemed to make the whole process so extremely concrete, represented a hope, nothing more. And the more this hope was scrutinized, the less substantial it seemed to become. Walking safely home in the golden afternoon, Charles suddenly recalled, with cold annoyance, a remark Donald had made, after his second walk with Angela in November: "Charlie, she worries me." And Angela, for her part,—though of course womanly, and hence agreeably plastic in her affections,—really seemed hardly more attracted to Donald, as yet. Charles thought he knew the reason, too. With a fresh chill, he recalled the look the girl had given him, on the corner near Berringer's, to-day.
Had he really "put her on" to Donald even in the remotest degree? Was it not highly probable that she, patrolling Washington Street at four-thirty, had been looking, not for Donald, but for another?
Of course, there could not be the slightest doubt that—for the present, at least—Angela preferred him to Donald, infinitely, unreasonably. And Angela usually got what she wanted, too, it seemed. For example, she had wanted to move her family from Mitchellton to this city, where he, Charles, lived. And she had moved.
He fell instinctively into a small manœuvre, which was merely this: that he quietly shifted forward his public itinerary by quarter of an hour. Next day, he started rapidly toward the street-cars at quarter before one, and shot out of Miss Grace's at quarter past four, sharp. Ultimate detection was certain, of course; but for the moment the trifling ruse did seem to win a hardly hoped-for respite in the headlong courtship. Neither on Friday, nor again on Monday, was the Home-Making Fordette so much as seen. And the next disturbance of the authority's delicate social scales, and of the author's Line, came, as might be said, from precisely the opposite direction.
In the Studio, matters had continued to progress backward. Once here, and the door safely shut, Charles had been steadily at work, the hymeneal shadow put resolutely from his mind. No writer's time, he had pledged himself, should go to somber meditations on the cosmic consequences of a kiss, still less to fruitless bitterness concerning wasted write-ups, the hardness of Egoettes, etc. Day by day, he had wooed that subtle calm of the spirit which is the bread and meat of authors; night by night, expended himself in the service of pure Letters. And it had all been for nothing.
Contrary to explicit resolve, in short, he had been making a fresh attempt at his new novel, hoping—rather weakly—that his mind wasn't quite so unsettled as he secretly knew it was. And, once more, he had been well punished for his rashness. Symptoms of weakness having developed increasingly through the week just past, on Monday evening Charles took his medicine, just before supper. Ten thousand words of brand-new manuscript lay in his drawer there; and he would be lucky if he could save a thousand of them for the novel that should be.
Of the "line" taken by this second abortive effort, the less said the better. It suffices to suggest that if Mary Wing had been a totally different sort of person, it might never have been undertaken at all.
Of all ways of spending the time known among men, unquestionably the most abominable, the most nerve-wrecking and devilish, is Thinking up a Book. Charles smoked box after box of cigarettes, couldn't sleep at night, talked in his sleep when he did, and was growing a scowl between his brows almost as dark as poor Two-Book McGee's—the interesting Type that was leading its own life and wished it weren't. The final conviction of the worthlessness of his work was hardly calculated to improve the young man's state of mind. He was, indeed, profoundly discouraged and concerned. For ten weeks now he had been struggling to isolate a point of view which would at once "carry" all his newer observations on his Subject, and command the support of his unqualified conviction. And to-night he seemed further away from his goal than he had been the day he finished "Bondwomen."
However, what brought Charles's humor to a sudden head this evening, what precipitated the fury in which Donald Manford found him—Donald, entering so happy and fine in the evening regalia which the match-making Mary seemed to clap on him every night nowadays—by chance had not to do with his own book at all, but with another's.
In short, the young author, very injudiciously in view of his resolve to think of Egoettes no more, had been dipping into "Marna."
This book of Angela's had long lain as a plague on the mind of Charles. For a space, he had not returned the book because of the estrangement, or misunderstanding; for another space, because of the swiftly ripening intimacy, compelling the general policy of lying low; and now a large fresh obstacle had risen, in the girl's unfortunate remarks directly connecting the return of her book with a call. Whether, after that, he could harden his heart to slip "Marna" back to her by the hand of the Judge—without any appreciative blossoms, needless to say—remained to be seen. So long as the situation remained as it was, Charles had decided simply not to take up the worry at all.
Hence Angela's book rested, gathering dust on the Studio mantel. And, chancing to come on it in his moody pacings after supper, the author had picked it up, in mere resentment at its being there. Standing hostilely, he permitted himself to skim a few pages of the stuff, toward the end. Next, with growing intention, he looked into the middle. And finally, he sat frankly down with "Marna" in the Judge's new easy-chair.
It had occurred to him that it was probably his professional duty to see what sort of line on the Unrest the other fellows were taking these days. This book here was enjoying an immense vogue; every newspaper reminded you that it was the Best Selling Book in America. What truth, then, did it have to tell? Or—put more simply—it may be that Charles had merely fallen a weak victim to the true writer's continual temptation and longing, viz.: to clutch at anything, anything, that will keep him from having to write, or think up.
Angela's book (which was so strangely unlike Angela) had come from the typewriter of a brilliant and industrious British Thinker. From the "literary criticism" and publisher's advertising that he read—and he seemed to read little else in these days—Charles had already gathered that "Marna" followed that simple "ultra-modern" line which to him, with his expanding knowledge, now seemed so oddly old-fashioned. In his standing skim just now, he had noted, with quickening distaste, how easilyMarnaaccomplished a glorious Career: as, indeed, a girl has small excuse for not doing, when she has an able author working for her night and day. In particular, he observed that her "demonstrating experiment in freer forms of union" turned out far more happily than poor unauthored Flora Trevenna's. As well as Charles could make out,Marna'sswain not only had a wife living when she met him, but was engaged to another woman besides. But when the splendid girl said to him, on page 478: "What a joy, beloved, to strike back at the grubby little people who're trying to fetter the love-spirit! Ah, but I'm glad you're married!"—after this, every one knew that it was all up withDe Bevoies, who, being a poet, could hardly be expected to argue back at agreeable talk of this sort. (Marnahad met him at an anarchist "social"; he was stunningly modern, and borrowed two pounds from her the first thing next morning.) Not long after the talkative but Higher Honeymoon on the Breton Coast,Mrs. De Bevoiesdied, with thoughtful promptness, and it was noted that the New couple at once adopted the old-established form of union, after all, and (of course) quickly became the toasts of London.
"George!...How easy writing would be," thought Charles, with great indignation—"if only the truth were as simple as that!"
And then, seated under the lamp Wallie Flower had so skillfully repaired, he turned to page 1, intent upon getting this other fellow's heroine, and her Career, at the point of origin. TheTwexhams, he learned, lived quietly, thirty miles from London. (Their address, if it is of the smallest interest, was Fernleigh Cottage, the Priory, Dean's Highgate, Lower-Minter-on-the-Mavern, Essex.)Marna Twexhamhad the striking beauty conventional among the Freewomen of fiction. Having had a year at college, attended several gatherings in the Redmantle Club vein, and read three or more books in which unmarried women told the truth about Life, she inevitably reached the conclusion that it was her duty to make herself free. Put in another way, she saw that it was her duty to go to London. For, of course, "young women of genius" understand perfectly that freedom is a matter of geography, a metropolitan consummation, as we might term it, and would properly smile at the antediluvian who maintained that people can be free in the suburbs, if they can be anywhere. ThusMarnasmiled at the old fogey, her father, who opposed her going to London to be free. It seemed that the old chap, for reasons Charles could not fathom, actually wanted to keep the girl with him. "There are dangers in London that a good woman knows nothing of," he said, warningly; butMarnaeyed him so knowingly that he changed his tune at once. "You are all we have left, Marny dear," he wheedled. "Don't go away from us—yet, at any rate." "Why is it assumed that a woman who does not choose to marry isleft?" asked the wise strong girl; and while her father scratched his head over this poser, she continued, firm but kind: "Really, you know, Dad, the idea that people have got to spend their lives together merely because of an accidental birth relation—really, you know, all that's jolly well played out. We've proved quite too awfully much about the beastly repressive influence of the family-tie." "But your sister!—poor invalid Muriel!" pleaded oldTwexham. "She loves you so much, she so dependent on you! It will kill her to—"Marna'ssmile, checking his maundering, was a great credit to her self-control (the author said). To set up playing checkers with a neurasthenic spinster, against a soul's sacred duty to itself and mankind! "Can't you really see, Dad," she said, quite patiently, "that a trained nurse can look after my sister much more efficiently than I can?" "It isn't that—exactly," faltered the moss-back parent. "It's your love she needs. And—I feel that youdobelong to us, Marny dear! I feel that—" "No, father," replied the glorious creature, gazing out the oriel window, over the terrace, rose-garden, etc., and into the morning sun. "I belong—out there! Such small abilities as I may possess," saidMarnawith exquisite modesty, "belong to the Race. Such small contributions as I may be able to make to the thought of my time, I dare not withhold. I cannot be weakly sentimental—and stay," she concluded, with some feeling. (And indeed Dean's Highgatewasa quiet, dull place; Lower-Minter-on-the-Mavern, also.) Presently, the old fellow broke down and wept, and thenMarna, repelled, eyeing him as if he were something odd and decidedly contemptible, said firmly ...
"Nasty little beast!" cried Charles Garrott, aloud.
He leapt from Judge Blenso's easy-chair, and glared about like one desirous of something to kick, and that right quickly. Then, with a flashing understanding of his need, he went springing toward the Studio window. And passionately he flung the window wide, and passionately he hurled the best-selling book in America forth into the winter night.
"Faugh!" shouted Charles.
Down in dark Mason Street, the shooting "Marna" struck the limb of a large tree, and caroming violently, bounded back against a passing old gentleman in a black felt hat, who looked like a Confederate veteran. The old 'un, starting with annoyance, clapped a hand to his shoulder, and gazed round and up; then, suddenly catching sight of the young man standing at the third-story window, he shouted something in a high angry voice, and brandished an aged arm with menace. But the young man merely continued to stand there, silently scowling down at him. So then the old gentleman, composing himself but resolved that he should not be smitten for nothing, picked up Miss Angela Flower's new book from the sidewalk before him, dusted it carefully with an experienced handkerchief, and hobbled away with it into the darkness.
"Disgusting little Egoette!" said Charles, scowling after him.... "And that's the sort of stuff that passes forthinkingnowadays! That's the stuff our women are reading, forming their—"
"Who're you cussing out the window, Charlie?" said Donald Manford's hearty voice behind him.
Charles wheeled sharply.
He resented being walked in on this way; resented all companionship from his kind just now; in especial, he resented Donald Manford's contented, care-free face. At the same time, this face of Donald's awakened other and different emotions, relative to the slim hope it embodied, and enjoining tact, some cunning.
So, controlling himself, Charles merely said: "Well? What're you horning in here for?"
"Dying for one glimpse of your sweet phiz. Nice welcome!" laughed the young engineer, exuberantly. "But how'd you ever get into a street-row, Charlie, out of your third-story window?"
"Oh!... Just talking to myself. Bad habit of mine," he said, with an effort. "You're rather flossy to-night!—out to give the girls a treat, I gather. Let's see. German, I suppose?" Laying his tall hat tenderly on the Judge's little typewriter-table, Donald acknowledged the soft impeachment.
"Well, who's the lucky lady, this time?—Or maybe you're stagging?"
"Who, me? Not on your life! I've got Miss Carson again—lucky thing!"
"Indeed," said the author, coldly.
"And a pippin she is too! Talk about clever, Charlie! By Jove, there's a girl that makes a fellow use his cocoa all the time, let me tell you!"
Charles sat down heavily at his writing-table, and lit a cigarette. Mary Wing managed her affairs well, indeed. He spoke with mysterious bitterness:—
"Youareblossoming out! If anybody'd told me last year that you'd be praising one of the new highbrow sisters, I'd have kicked him downstairs for a liar."
"When a girl can look like that, my boy—"
"Developing into a regular man-flirt too, aren't you? Last I heard of you, you were driving up Washington Street with Miss Flower."
Instead of resenting the odious epithet, Donald's face was seen to assume a pleased smirk.
"Ho!—had your spies on me, have you? Why, did we pass you to-day?"
Charles's heart seemed to leap a little. "Why, no," he said, sweetly. "I was speaking of one day last week. So you stole another drive to-day—you sly rascal!"
"Don't know that you'd call it driving, exactly. Where'd that brother of hers dig the little four-wheeler, d'you s'pose? I thought that kind were extinct, same as the Dodo—"
"Why, I think it's a very nice little car, Donald! Small, old-fashioned, yes—but very comfortable and—easy-going. I've—ah—had a—a number of pleasant drives in it. The real trouble is," said Charles, with immense carelessness, "she honestly doesn't know how to manage it very well as yet. And I, of course, don't know how to teach her—unfortunately."
Having seated himself in Judge Blenso's chair, Donald was lighting, with a lordly air, one of Judge Blenso's cigars; the Judge himself being at his club, through lack of interest in the Studio. Extinguishing his match by waving it languidly back and forth, the youth said, with a faint reminiscent smile:—
"Well, I gave her a pretty good lesson this afternoon, far as that goes. Had a very fairish time, too. Nice little girl, she is."
The author gazed, with a sort of nervous incredulity. He laughed hurriedly.
"Nice!—well, I should say so! She's—she's charming! You'll have to look pretty sharp if you want any more drives there—too much competition! But, of course, she may not bebookishenough, to suit your new taste—"
"Oh, bookish, no. She's not that sort. I'll tell you what your little friend is, Charlie," said the young engineer, with an air of insufferable conceit. "She's whatIcall a womanly woman."
Charles averted his eyes. This simple fool's quick response to the "putting on" treatment almost passed belief. Unquestionably, Donald was far more receptive to feminine influences now, than he had been in his industrious pre-Wyoming days; again, mere use, mere custom and propinquity, were famous for accomplishing just these wonders. Still, Charles's philosophic overmind, contrasting this grin on Donald's face with that unflattering remark of his last November, threw out a different concept, viz.: that perseverance in a woman is a marvelous thing.
But the hope, though it shot up delightfully, was a thin one yet. Dull Donald went on knowingly:—
"But speaking of the competition, what's happened to you, old horse?"
"How do you mean, happened to me?"
"Your little friend says you used to meet her nearly every day for a drive, but now you haven't been seen for days. I told her you'd probably changed your hours a little, as I'd seen you at lunch earlier than—"
"You did?" said the author, looking at the engineer with unconcealed annoyance. "Well, you were mistaken, that's all! You had no business to say anything of the sort. Of course, my hours may vary a little—in fact, they vary a good deal. Great heavens, I—"
"Well, don't get peevish about it!—friendly tip I'm giving you, that's all. She thinks you're mad with her—do you get me? Says you've never forgiven her for something she said to you once—some misunderstanding you had—you know, I guess—"
"Why, damnation, we neverhadany misunderstanding! I'mbusy! I don't undertake to start to lunch at a certain particular second—"
"Well, don't tell it to me!" said Donald, cheerfully. "Trot along and explain it to her, that's the way.—I say, Charlie—change the subject—did I tell you what old Gebhardt said to me the first day we looked over the plans? About my concrete bridge over Sankey River?"
And then the childish egotistical youth was off. It seemed, indeed, that the monologue ensuing was what he had come for; it seemed that he had dressed himself one hour too early for the German with just this most agreeable of all purposes in his mind: to sit and have a good long talk about himself. Charles received his boastings with restless boredom, marking meaninglessly on the pad before him, moodily biding his time. He could have kicked Donald for his stupidity in mentioning his trifling change of hours; but of course his need was to get the conversation back to Angela quietly, without arousing the slightest suspicion. His need was that Donald should agree to give Angela regular lessons in driving the Fordette, every day through the lunch-hour.
But Donald, happening to note the face of Big Bill, came suddenly to his feet: and then, as suddenly, gave the talk an unlooked-for turn.
"I say, Charlie! How about you and old Blenso for the Wings' apartment?"
Charles's head came slowly round. "How about what?"
"Dashed sight more comfortable than up your two flights here!"
"The Wings' apartment is for rent?"
"Didn't you know that, old stick-in-the-mud? What's the matter with you? Mary's been hunting a tenant for two weeks."
Charles, finding it unnecessary to state that he had not seen Mary for exactly that length of time,—barring one very transient meeting on the street,—merely indicated, without any polish, that, not being a gadabout ass like some, he made no pretense of keeping up with all the latest tittle-tattle.
He then asked, in a voice indicating no interest in the subject: "What's Mrs. Wing going to do?"
"Going to North Carolina to live with Fanny."
"With Fanny!... I suppose she didn't consider going with Miss Mary?"
"Couldn't stand the pressure. Why, New York would kill her off like a fly! And besides, she doesn't want to get too far away from the Warders, you know. Of course, Fanny can't make her very comfortable just now—but we talked it all over and that seemed the best arrangement, all round."
"I see."
"Mary can't turn back now, of course. Well, Charlie," said Donald, earnestly, "I don't hold with her fool notions, and all that but hang it all!—she's no ordinary woman, and this is no ordinary job. Those people are giving her two assistants and $5000 a year. What d'you know about that for a poor little girl?"
He was struggling to get into his overcoat without "breaking" his shirt-front—going at once, evidently. But Charles had lost sight of his strategic intentions.
"Well, how about you two old chaps for the furnished apartment—February fifteenth, if you want it?"
Charles observed that he couldn't look at it. Donald, as if only stimulated by his host's taciturnity, became sentimental.
"First Mary, then Mrs. Wing, then me—this is going to be a break-up, Charlie, do you realize it? I'm beginning to feel it, too, let me tell you! Jove," said Donald, putting on his shining head-piece and bringing the conversation back to himself simultaneously—"now that I come right down to it,Idon't want to leave this good old town!"
He departed, to his unconscious match-making. Charles, left alone, merely sat on at his table. And all that he thought of Angela Flower now was of an insignificant remark she had let fall, the first time they had walked together: "Mr. Garrott do you know whoMarnareminded me of? Somebody you admire a great deal...."
And then for half an hour, his writer's mind insisted on working over and over that detestable conversation betweenMarnaand her father, and changing it a little, just a little touch here and there, to make it fit smoothly upon Mrs. Wing and Mary....
"I tell you," said the lonely authority, suddenly, bringing his fist down on the table with a thump,—"this whole Movement's a failure if it lessenswoman's lovableness! I tell you the whole object of this Movement is to make womenmore lovable!"
For he, of course, had never thought—like the author of "Marna" for example—that passionate love was the only sort of love worth mentioning. In that narrow sense, in her sufficiently cheap faculty for stirring the senses of men, it was clear that woman, whatever she did or left undone, would always remain "lovable." But as to love in broad and human terms—well (to keep the subject wholly impersonal); could any one in his senses callMarnaa lovable being? No, her creator, in his determination to show how strong and "free" she was, had quite unconsciously made her a harsh and vain self-worshiper, revolting to decent persons. Had he, as we might say, thus inadvertently given the whole thing away? Was it finally true that a woman could not claim and lead her Own Life, except at a heavy price—paid down in her best treasure? Was the ruthless Career-Maker but the logical other-form of the waiting, the too pursuing, Maker of Homes?
From his drawer, Charles presently pulled out the former exercise-book which had enjoyed the great rise in the world. In this book, he had written no sentence since his remembered Notes on Flora Trevenna. Now he set down with a firm hand:—
What is called the Woman's Movement is seen, in the last analysis, to be only every woman's struggle between two irreconcilable impulses in her own nature.
What is called the Woman's Movement is seen, in the last analysis, to be only every woman's struggle between two irreconcilable impulses in her own nature.
Having written that sentence, the young man stared at it long. To him it was like a bright beam of light, turned upon the roots of his peculiar problem. For if these two impulses were in truth irreconcilable, why need he go on struggling to reconcile them in a heroine he could unreservedly admire?
With the sun of a new noon, with the recurring need of obtaining sustenance from one's environment, there came again the more practical problems of this weary world.
At ten minutes past one on this day, Tuesday, Charles went slipping from the house of the little Deming boys to that of the old lady who was studying French. She lived, luckily, but three doors away. She was a very lively old lady, and possessed her tutor's high regard. But that she might represent help to him, that she could personify the tutelary god of Bachelors rushing at last to his aid, had simply never crossed his mind.
The old lady's regular lesson-hour was, of course, two-thirty o'clock. But, as it happened, she had had her last instruction in the French language for some time to come, it having popped into her head, and that of the old gentleman her husband, to go to Palm Beach for a three weeks' vacation. Hence her tutor's presence in her drawing-room at this unwonted hour seemed to be due to mere chance (though who knows?). In short, as he saw it, he had merely "stopped by" to deliver a list of irregular verbs, which the old lady was to master completely while at the Beach.
Having stopped, Charles did not start again upon the instant: far from it. Friday's and Monday's run of luck had not been expected to keep up indefinitely, at the best. And Donald's blundering remark betraying his ruse had inevitably suggested the idea of experimenting a bit with opposite tactics, to wit: quietly turning his schedule backward, for variety's sake, and starting to lunch very late. Thus it was that Charles, having said all he had to say to the old lady, lingered to say it all again, and again, clinging verbosely to his oldest living pupil as it were, while one eye shot perpetually out the front window, close beside which he had taken up his position.
For the third time, the old lady promised to be studious on her holiday.
"Don't you remember how well I knew the plurals of the-ounouns yesterday?" said she, chipper as a boy. "Well, my husband had heard them every one to me the night before!—that was how I did it! Well, don't you see, I'll make him hear me the verbs every afternoon while he's taking his nap—over and over!"
"Exactly, ma'am. Do just that. Have him hear them over and over—every afternoon. That's the only way really to master them—the only possible way. And as I say—be sure to take along your dictionary and your Fontaine's 'Fables,' and read three or four pages every day—except Sunday. I said that just now, I know. But, ma'am, it's one of those things that—ah—can't be said too often—"
Here the tutor's eye, reconnoitering out the window again, fell upon a motor-car just coming to a standstill before the old lady's door. He started, nervously. But, of course, this was not the Fordette: it was five times too big, at least.
And he said, in a quickened voice: "Whose car is that standing out there?"
"Why, mine, of course! Eustace stops for orders before going down to bring my husband up and I just sign to him out of the window if there's nothing. Indeed I hoped you wouldn't make me read my 'Fables' while I was away, but I will if you say so, for of course I'm going to learn French. And you take care of yourself, young man. You haven't looked well to me for several days."
"I'm not quite well, ma'am, I fear," said Charles. "I was just thinking I'd better let Eustace drive me down with him, if you don't mind. I—ah—scarcely feel like walking to-day."
"Of course. And have him bring you up again when he takes my husband back, why don't you? My dear young man, I reproach myself. I'd have had him call for you at the Demings' and take you down every day, but you know you always said you loved to walk."
"I did—I used to—but—ah—I rather think I've been overdoing it, of late. I've been walking more than is good for me. Well!—thank you very much. I'll go and get right in, shall I?"
Having wished his aged pupil a happy journey once more, Charles started toward the door, much pleased with his lucky stroke. And then, all at once, a splendid idea burst upon him, a vast and brilliant possibility. And in exactly the same instant, he heard the chipper voice of the old lady speaking again behind him, rather thoughtfully:—
"I wish I could persuade you to use my car altogether while we're away.... But I suppose you'd think that fearfully—fearfullyeffete!"
"What?"
It must have seemed odd to her, the instantaneousness with which her tutor sprang round. And then he began to move back toward her, very slowly, round unwinking eyes glued upon her.
"Ah—what did you say?"
"You look astounded. I suppose you're offended at the suggestion. Now, really—why not take my car while I'm away?" said the old lady. (What a dear, what a darling old lady she was, to be sure!) "Why are you young men so reckless with your health, breaking it down with all this foolish walking, up and down—"
"Oh, ma'am!" stammered Charles. "I—I hardly know what to say. I'm not offended in theleast—feeling as I do at present. But I—I really—"
"Then I'll make you do it!" she said, with the greatest energy. "I'm going to exert all my will-power—I'm chock full of it, I warn you!—and make you use the car regularly from now on, and stop this walking. Promise me! I'll have Eustace report to you every morning for his orders, and you are to use him as your own ..."
The tutor stood like a man entranced. Before his mind's eye there were unrolling the most enchanting pictures: pictures of the same series that had fascinated Angela's mind's eye when her brother had offered her the Fordette, but of precisely the opposite intention; pictures of himself whizzing securely from point to point, here or there at his careless ease, all walking henceforth reduced to the mere hurried crossing of sidewalks....
"But I—I'm afraid it would be an imposition! I don't deny it would be a—a pleasure—a benefit—feeling as I—"
"Then that's settled! Imposition, nonsense! As it happens, you will be doing us a favor. Why, wasn't my husband saying only last night that Eustace, having nobody at all to look after him, was certain to spend these three weeks in one long spree, and be worn to a shadow when we get back? His habits are so unfortunate, I warn you about that—"
"It's so—awfully—kind of you, ma'am! I hardly know how to—"
"Not another word!—leave all the rest to me. And you really don't look well, young man. Now, shall I have Bruce make you something,—oh, very nice,—before you start down? Oh, why, bless you, I take a julep myself whenever I feel the least bit like it!"
Then the ardor of his gratitude really touched the old lady, even though it seemed excessive for her small courtesy. Later, looking out the window, to sign to Eustace, she saw that the young man was actually laughing to himself with pleasure, as he went down the front steps. She thought him a very strange young man.
He gave his machine-god standing orders, which, after all, proved simple enough. Eustace and the Big Six were to pick him up at the little Deming boys' every day at one o'clock, and drive him to lunch; Eustace and the Big Six were to call for him at Mrs. Herman's every afternoon at half-past three, and take him to and from the Choristers'. Those, positively, were the only danger-points, these the small arrangements by which peril was to be circumvented. And he had not overrated the value of his brilliant gift from fortune; the arrangements, being made, were executed with the happiest success. In the fine big limousine of the old lady (la grande jolie limousine de la vieille) Charles pursued his daily rounds in complete security, and he hardly saw the shadow of another meeting now.
Or rather, there was the possibility of but one more meeting; and, that scarcely seemed to matter, now that he had so clearly won back his voluntary celibacy.
At Saltman's bookstore, he had purchased a fresh copy of the odious "Marna," and in his new kindness and good-will toward all, he finally resolved to return the book in person, and to ask for Angela at the door, to boot. Utter freedom of the city upheld his native dislike for being a mere rude boor. And by one simple venture, he could honorably liquidate all claims, pay at one stroke all the various calls demanded of him: the book-call, the party-call, and the call in acknowledgment of the Kiss.
Even if Angela should happen to be at home when he called, the isolated meeting could hardly lead to trouble. But, after all, of course, the point was to fulfill rather the letter of a call than its essential spirit. Charles thought it decidedly for the best that Angela should not be at home at the time. Thus he further procrastinated, awaiting an afternoon so sweet and balmy that every owner of a self-propelling vehicle would be morally certain to be out in it.
And then, while he so dallied about the Call, while his own days continued to reel off smooth as clockwork, a faint new cloud began to steal over his first careless happiness. Having finally saved himself, the unheroic bachelor felt his deadened consideration for others slowly and reluctantly stirring into life.
The first time he in his speedy limousine passed captive Donald in the Fordette, Charles was even more pleased than he had been that other day, at Miss Grace's window. By chance, he overhauled the little conveyance on the second day of the new era, as he shot away from the Choristers' at half-past four o'clock; and, captivated by the sight of the simpleton engineer in his own old place, he could not resist leaning forward as he drew abreast, knocking on the window and waving gayly to the two nice normal cousins of Mary. He saw that Angela, recognizing him, gave him one swift surprised stare. And then the old lady's Big Six leapt by her, as the limited leaps by a tank in the night, and he sat back convulsed with a brilliant diplomat's delights.
He, indeed, had put her on. Clearer and clearer it grew that he could beat Mary Wing at match-making, if at nothing else under the sun.... Let her look to herself!
But the second time Charles had this interesting experience—just two days later, on his drive to Berringer's—he did not knock on the window, or laugh, or even smile. No, this time he sat still on his luxurious seat, looking straight ahead. And presently he found himself arguing, very earnestly and conscientiously, and somewhat as follows:—
While it might be true that for the moment Angela liked him best (entirely owing to the tender feelings aroused by the Kiss) no one could deny that a match between her and Donald would be a far more suitable thing. In fact, such a match would really be very suitable, indeed, whatever cold-blooded eugenists like Mary Wing might think. Talk as you liked, Donald was not at all the man to be happy with a girl who firmly and continually "made a fellow use his cocoa." On the contrary, Donald was the mere simple, primitive male who wanted a woman that he could "protect," feel superior to and be coddled and attended by. And any fair-minded person must admit that Angela, whatever little faults or foibles she might seem to have, was precisely this sort of girl. Harsh nonsense about her Sacred Duty to the Race was not in her.
Did she, indeed, have any faults—real faults of character, that is? Womanly though she was, she was no idler, no parasite like Miss Grace, for instance, but a genuine worker, accustomed to pay her own way by the practice of a highly specialized and difficult business. This business, at best, was a monotonous and grinding one; she herself was a stranger, poor and lonely. Was it so wicked, then, that in her leisure-hour she should wish to drive out occasionally, and meet her young friends?
The Big Six, "Marna," the matter of the Wings' flat, doubtless each had contributed in its way to put Angela back in her true light: the light she had shone in before the days of the wooing. Admit, if you liked, that for the moment her purely feminine, or pursuing, side might seem to be just a little over-developed: that, argued Charles, was but a temporary, and really a proper and necessary manifestation. The Home that Angela was at present engaged in making was Dr. and Mrs. Flower's Home. The Will in things had it that every girl should have a Home of her own to make. There lay the momentary source of Unrest: considered rightly, the Fordette was merely the ingenious instrument employed by the Will for working out its high designs. Once that was accomplished, once Angela was established in her own little nest as Donald's sweet true wife, then, beyond doubt, her essentially womanly side would at once spring into full possession of her. Then she would fairly settle to her life-work of making her own Home, while supplying large quantities of just the sort of beauty and charm that engineers appreciate most.
Moreover (concluded Charles's argument of the case) marriage was clearly a matter where quixotism was misplaced, and a man's first duty was to himself. And, finally, of course he would never have put her on to Donald, if he had known that the old lady was going to lend him her limousine. But he had not known: and that was the old lady's fault if anybody's.
On the night of this day, by chance,—the day of Donald's known fourth drive in the instrument of the Will,—as Charles lay prone upon the Studio lounge, feebly thinking up, Judge Blenso suddenly opened the Studio door and said: "Charles! A lady at the 'phone!" Instantly coming to an elbow, Charles inquired who this lady might be; and the Judge (whose manner toward his relative had markedly changed, since Charles was known to have abandoned his exercises and foregone his affair of honor) replied with great coldness: "It's Miss Rose. Come along!" "Miss Rose?" repeated Charles, slowly beginning to rise. "Why, I don't—" "Yes, yes, I said! Miss Rose! No!—let me see! Miss Flower—something of the sort! Good gad, how long're you going to keep her waiting?" But Charles, remembering the promised bridge-party in a flash, said: "I'm sick, Judge," and lay back on the lounge forthwith. "Ah—just say, please, that you found me lying down—not well at all. She might leave a message, if necessary." To which the Judge replied, disgusted: "I don't wonder you're sick, the sickenin' life you lead! By gad, sir!—can't evenwalk!..."
No message came back other than that Miss Flower was sorry to hear he wasn't well. But the little incident, though nothing came of it, showed clearly that she wasn't going to give him up without a struggle, Donald or no. He could never feel completely safe until she was married, and that was the truth. And he still had that cursed book to return, too.
But it seemed that his higher nature, once aroused, would not go quietly back to sleep again. The first glad selfish days were over. When, on the Tuesday following, he again saw Donald as Angela's willing captive, when, shooting by, he observed the fatuous youth ogling and smirking over his predicament, as much as to say that there was no such person as Helen Carson, then Charles's face became very grave, his look intensely thoughtful. And when he reached Berringer's that day, he ordered—sure enough—"Wait for me, Eustace." And when he emerged from Berringer's, at a little before two, he said, in the face of all resolves:—
"To Olive and Washington Streets, Eustace. And then turn and go slowly out Dean Street, toward Lee Grammar School."
Partly because she was not ready to resign her place in the schools, partly, perhaps, to heighten the dramatic stinging quality of what she called her "brilliant revenge," Mary Wing had kept her greatcoupa secret for the present. So she, famous wherever weekly periodicals were read round the world, honored officer-elect of a powerful national organization, walked daily, in sun and rain, to a grammar school as before.
As to looks and appearance, Charles had always recognized Mary as one of the variable women. She was not indifferent on those subjects, he judged, but the utilitarian supremacy of work in her life commonly produced that effect. Mary rarely went to parties any more; but at her flat in Olive Street she often enough entertained at dinner, strategically, a person or two of consequence in the educational or political world. Charles (being, of course, of not the slightest help to anybody) had never been invited to but one of these little dinners. On that solitary occasion, the look and air of his friend in evening dress had considerably surprised him, and in several other ways, including the dinner, he had absorbed agreeable impressions of Mary not tallying with other impressions. However, pretty clothes and pretty manner were deemed too good for every day, it seemed; for the realities, Mary dressed as plainly as she acted. And now, trudging homeward along this slightly squalid street, she looked, it must be admitted, not like a shining celebrity at all, but just like an ordinary person, a school-teacher, and rather a fatigued one at that.
So, at least, thought the author of the write-ups, catching sight of her through the glass over Eustace's shoulder, noting the somewhat droopy manner of her walk. But he reflected, there was no satisfying some people. And hastily clutching up the speaking-tube of the old lady, he gave the order which brought his great car to a standstill; and so stepped forth upon the sunny sidewalk, just in front of her.
The General Secretary looked up, with a small start at finding herself intercepted. She saw Charles Garrott, and her face changed perceptibly, though under what impulse he could scarcely have said. That his recent demeanor must have seemed slightly puzzling to her, the young man was, however, sufficiently aware: and now he was all at once conscious of a want of ease within himself, a rare and odd constraint.
Hence he fell instinctively into his lightest and most mask-like tone: "Well met! I was hoping I might run on you somewhere out this way. Do get in and let me take you home."
Mary accepted at once, with pleasure.
"But whose beautiful car is this you're using now?" she went on easily. "I was sure I saw you whiz by in it the other day."
"Oh, this!—yes!—I must tell you about it."
So due explanations covered the start of the drive. Establishing his famous friend in the old lady's limousine, Charles told, in modified, expurgated form, how he had got possession of it. For Angela's benefit, he had lately informed Donald that he was unwell from overwork: that was why he had to ride in a closed car wherever he went. Report of this had unluckily reached Mary, it seemed, necessitating more explanation: that he was not sick at all, unless you would count writer's sickness, etc., etc.
"And this saves such a lot of time, getting around, too—which is no small thing."
The conclusion of the explanation was followed by a small silence: scarcely one of the golden sort, but rather a dearth of conversation such as had once been rare between these two. But Mary, whose manner seemed as usual, or perhaps only the least bit more polite, broke it at once, saying cordially:—
"So you have an extra hour for your own work now? That's splendid! And how's your new novel getting on?"
"Oh!—not at all, thank you! I've made two starts, but both of them proved false, I regret to state. So now I'm back at zero again. It's a hard business, writing a book.... And as far as I can make out, I'm specially handicapped by having all sorts of foolish theories as to what a novel ought to be. If I were only a good plain realist now, how simple life would be!"
His tongue loosened; he found himself embracing the chance topic, so hard and impersonal, so beautifully remote from everything that fretted his mind. He had come, magnanimously, to give one fair warning about Donald; but no doubt he planned it that his warning should fall casually, half-buried in other talk. There was such a thing as being too generous for self-interest, of course. Or possibly Charles perceived that the sound of his own voice, running surely along on a subject of which he knew everything, and she knew nothing, gave him just that sense of easy command of the situation which his manly need demanded.
Mary had said courteously: "You think realism is so much easier to write?"
"I've never tried, of course—but doesn't it impress you so? You remember old Meredith said distinctly, that was the cue for little writers. And I must say I think he had an idea what he was talking about. In fact," continued Charles, with unwonted loquacity, while his limousine rolled rapidly, "if I were old and generally recognized as the dean of American novelists—kindly do not laugh—and was visited for counsel by a young writing fellow who had no literary abilities except industry—why, I should say to him at once, 'My dear young man, become a realist, of course. That is really the only line where you will find your want of abilities a positive advantage. If you possess any shred of humor, charm, insight, sympathy, idealism, so-called,—above all, idealism,—and if you are cursed with any sense of form and unity, and feel that a story ought to have a beginning and an end, and beaboutsomething in the mean time,—why, trample on all this as you would on so many snakes,' I should say to him. 'Get it fixed firmly in your dull mind that life is dreary and meaningless, or has but a material meaning, if you like, and that sound fiction must behave accordingly. Then,' I should say to my young friend, 'if you will but choose as your heroine a young girl with more looks than character—and not necessarily such a lot of looks either—who comes up to the city to get on, it is inconceivable to me that even you could fail to score a great realistic success.'—'But,' we can imagine this fellow, this nonexistent admirer of mine, saying, 'I don't understand you. What am I, as a creative author, to put in to take the place of the insight, humor, unity, and all the rest that I've eliminated?' 'My poor boy, I've just told you,' I should reply. 'Industry and pessimism. That is all a realist knows and all he needs to know. You tell me you have the industry. I tell you that the pessimism is the easiest little trick to pick up in the world.' But," said Charles, in his own voice, "I fear, Miss Mary, I 'm putting you to sleep with all this musty shop-talk—"
"Indeed, no!—it's extremely interesting," said the heroine of the write-ups, very civilly, but looking straight ahead. "You don't often talk about your work."
"Haven't often had the chance," thought Charles. And if that was considerably unjust, he did not seem to mind at all, but rather was pleased by the knowledge that Mary observed his copious ironic manner, and found it baffling and queer.
"Well,—in conclusion, as you public speakers say,—I was only going to add that I didn't know enough to swallow my own medicine. The trouble seems to be—Well, take the horrible thing called sentiment now, that makes a sophisticated realist so sick. I look about me and, try as I will, I seem to see the disgusting thing very much alive and kicking—not something made up by a fourth-class writer to tickle shopgirls, but actually playing a prominent part in the hard world round me, all the time, everywhere. I seem—"
"I don't see how any one could deny that!"
"It wouldn't seem so, would it?" said Charles respectfully, and a sudden faint gleam came into his eye. "But really isn't that what they do, in effect? Here am I, as an observer, seeing men and women all round me doing things they don't want to do, giving up things they do want to do"—did his voice, too, acquire a thin edge?—"for immaterial reasons that can only be traced to some inner ideal—hated word! And then here am I, as a writer, required to deny all these observations of mine—and for what reason? Merely, as far as I can make out, to keep some sour chap with a defective liver, probably a German to boot—why are Germans so pessimistic, do you know?—from calling me a sentimental ass. Of course we admit," he prattled on, taking note of the passing streets, "that sentiment is weak and childish and Victorian, and 'idealism' is the screaming joke on Western civilization. Still, isn't it my only business as a writer to find out whether or not these contemptible things do act and react in the life I see? And if they do—must I represent the contrary, merely to please the peculiar taste of a small sad school that has no God but a second-hand mannerism bagged from dear old Europe?—By the way, are you in a special hurry now?"
"Why, no. Not at all."
"Good!—Eustace," called Charles through the tube, "drive more slowly."
And then, feeling himself completely master of the situation now, the young man said with quite a gay laugh:—
"And to add to all my other troubles, I've deliberately gone and taken Woman for my subject! That will make you smile! You remember you warned me in advance it was a theme I didn't know the first thing about."
But Mary was not observed to smile.
"I did say that, in fun once," she said, punctiliously, after a perceptible pause—"but, of course, I didn't mean it—in any literal sense. Indeed, I think—"