ThenMary would, perhaps, understand a little better whether or not amancould help her....
The author turned suddenly on the darkling street, moved by an instinct to look after his retiring enemy. By an odd coincidence, Principal Mysinger had been moved by an instinct to turn and look after him, Charles. Both men turned hastily round again.
So Charles, halting on the corner for his car, shook himself once again, reined in his imagination, and remembered that he was a modern and civilized being. For the moment, the reminder seemed to accomplish little. The blood continued to pound in the sedentary temples, redly. Charles saw that the idea of primitive male combat, over a manly woman's Career, was unmodern and grotesque. But the idea lingered all the same.
He spent the evening upon the first of his write-ups, scenarios shut fast in the drawer. This piece concerned Mary Wing the Educator, and the intention was to have Mary's friend, Hartwell, read, sign, and father it. Every precaution must be taken, of course, to give the whole thing a spontaneous air, avoiding the appearance of a concerted boom. By midnight, the first draft of the Educator write-up was finished, and, wearied, the young man picked up the "Post," where he had had eyes but for one story that morning.
Here his wandering glance fell presently upon this:—
Miss Angela Flower entertained at bridge last evening at the residence of her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Oscar P. Flower. Miss Flower's guests included a limited number of the younger set.
Miss Angela Flower entertained at bridge last evening at the residence of her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Oscar P. Flower. Miss Flower's guests included a limited number of the younger set.
At this description of himself and Fanny, Charles smiled, for almost the first time that day. But as he continued to gaze at that small hopeful item, his mirth faded, and soon he began to stroke the bridge of his nose, his look distinctly worried.
In the little house of the Flowers, Miss Angela sat forlorn at her favorite post. She entertained the younger set no more. It was the middle of December, and a cold rain poured. With a ragged bit of chamois, the old-fashioned girl polished her already comely nails. The window-curtain, shrunken and twisted with more than one washing, was hooked back on a convenient nail; now and then Angela picked up her shabby opera-glasses and peeped over into the fan-shaped sliver of Washington Street. But few pedestrians passed over there to-day, and the motor-cars of the Blessed slid by in curtains of waterproof.
It was the slack hour again, it seemed, leaving home-makers with idle hands. Even that subtle business to which but one modern authority gave a scientific rating, the Business of Supplying Beauty and Supplying Charm, was here at a complete standstill. The men of Angela's family, who must be refreshed and made joyful for their battlings in the world without, were at this hour out, battling. Mrs. Flower was lying down in her room, doing her own refreshing. As for the cook downstairs, she had her orders, and recked not of Charm. Angela, thus, had her strictly earned leisure; and, on the other hand, she had not those intenser occupations for leisure, reforms, fights, and attacks on Morals, such as engrossed the mind of her advanced Cousin Mary. As a womanly woman, she naturally thought a great deal about people, her friends, and as an unassisted stranger in the city, she really had very few friends to think about. Hence, it was the most natural thing imaginable if she was now wondering, for the thousandth time, what in the world had become of Mr. Garrott.
Angela could not understand about Mr. Garrott. He simply never seemed to walk any more. That she had hurt his feelings very badly that night after the bridge-party she had understood, from the start. But perhaps she had never meant to hurt them so badly as this; and that Mr. Garrott could vanish utterly from Washington Street had, indeed, not entered her thoughts. This, however, was precisely what Mr. Garrott had done, from the very day following the misunderstanding.
For so, in the lapse of days, had Angela generously come to think of the occurrence on the sofa. She and Mr. Garrott had had a terrible misunderstanding.
It was half-past four o'clock; the dreary day was shutting in. Angela looked down into her own back yard, which was small, mean-looking, not devoid of tin cans, and now running with dirty water. A dingy old shed or outhouse, where some previous tenant had thriftily stabled a horse, contributed not a little to the wintry desolateness of the scene. Beneath the window the cook, Luemma, emerged, a ragged print-skirt turned over her head, and emptied ashes into a broken wooden barrel. Angela yawned, and picked up a hand-glass.
The girl's more kindly view of Mr. Garrott's demeanor had been, of course, a gradual growth. Her mortification and rage against the young tribute-payer had lasted two days, at least, and chancing to see her poor Cousin Mary at this time,—who was now being talked about from one end of the town to the other,—she had taken occasion to speak most disparagingly of Mr. Garrott, though, of course, in an indirect manner. She had described him as a person of thelowest ideals. At this Cousin Mary had protested, quite indignantly; and, though Angela well knew there were phases of Mr. Garrott which her mannish cousin was not likely ever to see, that stout championship had doubtless done much to check her first resentment and make her see things in a truer light. Moreover, she was naturally a sweet-tempered creature, and the long days following, and the long empty walks, may have been just the things needed to appeal most subtly to her higher nature. After all, Mr. Garrott had been remarkably nice to her, paying her every attention from the beginning. And even if hehadbeen carried away, for once—what did that show ...
A ring at the doorbell made Angela jump a little. While the Flowers had a small house, they had a loud bell. Though its clanging nowadays rarely meant anything exciting, the diversion, on the whole, was not unwelcome. The young housekeeper rose, went out into the hall, and listened down over the banisters.
Below, there was nothing to listen to. Receiving only twelve dollars a month, Luemma seemed to think she must take out the residue of her wages in inefficience and impudence, and did; sometimes she answered the bell, sometimes she "had her hands in the lightbread," etc. The present seemed to be one of the latter times. The bell pealed again; a voice from the front called, "Angela!—are you dressed?"—and Angela, replying to her mother, went down to the door herself, smoothing her hair and trimming her waist as she went.
The caller proved to be none other than her disgraced cousin, Mary Wing.
"Well, Angela, how are you?" said she, entering confidently, and kissed Angela's cheek. "I hope I didn't break into your nap, or anything unforgivable like that?"
"Oh, no, indeed, Cousin Mary. How d' you do? I wasn't asleep."
Cousin Mary was enveloped from neck to heels in a becoming gray raincoat. Beneath that were seen glimpses of a costume rather elaborate for bad weather and a workaday world. Nor did Cousin Mary's manner seem in the least crushed or subdued, as morals demanded that the manner of a disgraced person should be.
All the same, Angela greeted her cordially enough, with only a faint conscientious stiffness traceable to her mother. For one thing, she was really sorry for Mary now; right or wrong, she genuinely wished they hadn't expelled her from the High School, and sent her off to a Grammar School, in a low quarter of the city. And then besides that, whatever Cousin Mary's strange ideas and behavior, the fact remained that she happened still to be one of her, Angela's, particular little coterie—that small group of friends and relatives with whom she herself seemed to be sadly out of touch just now.
Mary entered with the air of being in a hurry. In the car-shaped parlor she unbuttoned her coat, nevertheless, the Latrobe heater being, like the doorbell, small but powerful. Angela, seated on the famous sofa, said:—
"Cousin Mary, you're all dressed up! I believe you're going to a party!"
Mary glanced down at herself with indifference.
"No," said she, "but I've been to a little sort of one, a luncheon. And we didn't leave the hotel till half an hour ago, either—"
"Oh, a luncheon! They're fun, I think. Where was it?"
"At the Arlington—very fine and beautiful, but it took hours! That's why I'm so late getting around here. I've wanted specially to see you for several days, Angela, but I haven't seemed to find a minute, and this was my last chance. I wondered if you had any engagement for to-morrow afternoon?"
"No, indeed, Cousin Mary, I haven't any engagement."
"Then I want you to come with me to a lecture," said Cousin Mary, "at four o'clock."
The young girl's face, which had become brightly expectant at the mention of engagements, fell perceptibly. She covered her disappointment with a little laugh.
"Well,—thank you, very much, Cousin Mary,—but you know I don't appreciate lectures very much. I'm not clever enough—"
"But this isn't an ordinary lecture. In fact, I shouldn't have used that word at all. It's a talk, a personal talk to women by a woman, and a wonderful one—Dr. Jane Rainey. You may have heard of her?"
"Well, I'm not sure. What is she going to talk about?" asked Angela politely.
"The subject that means most to every woman, no matter what she thinks or says! And Dr. Rainey, I do believe, knows more about it than anybody else living. Jane Clemm she was—but that was years ago, before you could remember. I got her to come here to speak, myself,—and expect to lose some money on the transaction, too,—heigho! But I don't mind really, it's such a privilege to have the whole subject lit up, from the modern point of view, by a speaker like this. Jane Rainey's a practicing physician, a fine human being, the mother of four children herself, and she—"
"But whatisher subject, Cousin Mary?"
"That's it!—marriage and motherhood."
Angela stared at her cousin, and then looked rather shocked. Next, faint color appeared in her smooth cheeks. It really seemed that Mary had learned nothing, from the painful lesson she had just received. Why did she have this persistent interest in the unpleasant side of life?
She said more decisively than was her wont: "No, Cousin Mary, I really don't think I'd care to go—thank you."
Mary Wing, checked in her forensic by Angela's expression, looked surprised, though, perhaps, not taken aback, and certainly not rebuked.
"Now, why not? I honestly hoped the subject would have a special interest for you. You—"
"For me!—Oh, no! I—"
"My dear, you know you told me once what your ambition was—to be a good wife some day, when the right man came for you. And that's the ambition of every normal woman, I believe,—or one of them,—no matter what else she may have in her head! Well, you see, that's exactly what this brilliant student—and woman—wants to advise us about—how to fulfill this ambition; how to prepare ourselves to be good wives and—"
"But I don't think of it that way at all, Cousin Mary. I hope," said Angela, pink-cheeked, but once more standing firm for propriety against all the astonishing Newness—"I hope I'll know how to be a good wife—to the man I love—without going to any lectures—"
"Do you think anybody on earth knows as much as that, just by intuition? It seems to me ... But perhaps your feeling is—you don't like the idea of a public talk on the subject?"
"I don't, Cousin Mary—frankly. I know I seem to you dreadfully behind the times—and all. But that's the way I was brought up to feel, and it's the way I do feel. I'm not advanced at all, I thought you knew."
There was a silence in the dingy little parlor, during which the pouring rain became audible.
"Of course I don't want to press you against your will, Angela," said Mary slowly. "You know that? But—I can't get away from feeling that being a good wife—and mother—in this awfully upset, transitional age, when men's ideals are changing step for step with women's—and perhaps a little in advance of them, who knows?—I believe it's the most complicated and difficult vocation in the world. Compared with it, any ordinary man's profession—like engineering, for instance—looks to me like simplicity itself. And, Angela, I can't believe that every woman is born with all this understanding, all this difficult expert knowledge in her head, any more than I believe that every man is born knowing by intuition how to be a good engineer. Of course we'd think it quite strange—shouldn't we?—if Donald, as a boy wanting to be an engineer, had thought he mustn't read any books that mentioned engineering, and must stop his ears if—"
Angela, feeling almost ready to stop her ears herself, interrupted with some warmth:—
"Cousin Mary, we simply don't understand each other! I don't think of—of romance—and marriage—as anything in the least likeengineering—not in the least! I don't think of them as subjects for lectures byexperts! And I was brought up to feel there were some things not very—suitable to talk about. I was brought up not to think about them at all."
"Of course, my dear!—I understand. But every woman thinks about marriage—doesn't she? She can't help it. Take me," said Mary, good-humoredly—"a confirmed old maid school-teacher who's just scandalized half the city, and been publicly dismissed from her job. I haven't the slightest idea of marrying, ever, and yet I think about it often, and would like to feel—"
"You do? Well, I am different. Idon'tthink about it."
"You don't think about marriage?"
"I never think of it at all," said Angela.
That settled Cousin Mary. After a brief pause she said, in the nicest way: "Well, then, forgive me, Angela, and forget everything I've said."
Angela forgave her readily enough. Shut your eyes to the horrid, unwomanly streak in her, and Mary Wing was really a very pleasant person. She had always said that, to her mother and others. So talk flowed easily into other channels, and the air of cousinly amity was soon restored. But just when that was accomplished, Mary rose unexpectedly to go, and Angela found herself left with several topics not yet mentioned at all.
"Oh, don't go yet!" said she. "I want to—"
"Imust! I really had no time at all to-day, but came anyway, whether or no. How pretty you look, Angela," said Mary, and kissed the now unblushing cheek again.
"I wish the lunch-party hadn't kept you so long! I haven't—"
"I do, too! A whole good afternoon! And the worst of it was," said Mary, eyeing her with a sort of speculative archness, "I stayed after everybody was gone just to talk to Charles Garrott, whom you dislike so much! Still," she added, with a fading of archness, "I had something to tell him for his own good, at least."
Cousin Mary's changes of expression were lost upon Angela. "Mr. Garrott! Was he at the lunch party?"
"He gave it—didn't I say? It was just a littlebon voyageparty for Donald—and Helen Carson! Donald's leaving to-morrow for Wyoming, you know, to be gone a month—"
"No—you hadn't told me.... Who else was at the lunch, Cousin Mary?"
"Oh, just those I've mentioned, and Fanny for chaperon, and Talbott Maxon."
Angela, naturally, felt more lonely and out of things than ever. In fact, she felt blankly depressed. Mr. Garrott's luncheon had included exactly her coterie, only she herself being omitted.
"Why do you say I dislike Mr. Garrott, Cousin Mary? Of course I like him very much. You know I told you long ago he was much the most attractive man I've met here."
"Well, but I thought you must have changed your opinion, when you told me the other day that his ideals were so low."
"Why, of course I didn'tmeanit, Cousin Mary! I thought you knew I was angry when I spoke."
The two cousins regarded each other, in the dark little hall by the hatstand. Angela felt her position to be annoying. But she explained with that complete lack of embarrassment characteristic only of women conscious of rectitude:—
"I can't tell youallabout it, even now. But what happened was that Mr. Garrott and I had a terrible misunderstanding, and at first I put all the blame on him, and was awfully mad with him, I admit. But since then, the more I've thought of it, the more I've seen that I was very unjust to him—in what I thought and said, too. He really has much more cause to be mad with me—now—than I have with him."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it. Don't quarrel—that's my motto," said the stormy Miss Wing. "And Mr. Garrott thinks you are charming!—I know, for he told me so. Well—"
"Yes—that's what has changed my feeling about it all, you see. Cousin Mary—when you see him again, you might just say—"
"My dear, I never see Mr. Garrott!" said Mary, rather hastily.
"Why, you've just seen him!"
"The first time for a week, and probably the last time for a month. He's going down to his mother's in the country on Saturday, to stay over Christmas and New Year's. Angela, I mustrun!"
Left alone, Angela remained standing in the hall for a moment, gazing into space, of which the hall really afforded little. Her despondency now had a certain edge; it did seem hard that, while her friends and relatives—and Cousin Mary, of all people—were going to jolly lunches of the younger set,herinvitations should be only to New-Womanlectures. And still, the girl's feeling had no bitterness, even now. Of course she understood that she would have been at Mr. Garrott's luncheon, too, but for the misunderstanding....
As she went upstairs, her mother called out to her, and Angela pursued her way to the front bedroom, as she had meant to do anyway. Here, her mother was discovered prone upon a pillowless lounge, dangerously facing a gaslight and reading a magazine which had no covers. Having laid the magazine, broken open, on her lap, Mrs. Flower listened attentively to her daughter's report of Mary's call, and at the end said:—
"I must say I think it's very kind of Mr. Garrott to stand by her in that way. Men secretly can never admire that sort of woman, whatever their theories may be. And that's just it—that explains Mary's whole lurid course. If she had ever had a ray of attention, of course she would never have dreamed of these wild goings on."
Angela's mother was still a pretty woman, and long habit, it seemed, had impressed her voice with a permanent plaintiveness. She had kicked off her slippers for comfort; her high-bred feet were clad in faded cotton stockings; she herself looked high-bred and faded. Her air and tone were those of one to whom life had brought rude shocks—such as, that lovely woman's portion was sacrifice ever, and that men cared only for the first bloom of girlish beauty—and who found her only consolations in her religion, and in the noble words, My Duty.
"You must see her when she calls, I suppose, but that is all. Until she completely changes her ideas on all subjects, I cannot allow any intimacy. I cannot."
"She means to be nice to me, mother. And besides—that's the sort of connections you and father have given us, you know."
Mrs. Flower denied any responsibility whatever for the advanced Mary. She continued her remarks with interest, the theme being one of her favorites. Angela, having moved restlessly about the room for a time, had halted at the window. Hence, she gazed out at a board fence billed all over with advertisements of a celebrated spring tonic. A trolley-car went rumbling by, its wheels throwing off jets of icy rain-water. It had been a long, long day.
"The things women will do when they discover they're not attractive to men! They simply get defiant. They get all reckless and bitter!"
Into the narrow walkway below turned a very tall man, under a small greenish umbrella. In the silence of the house, the front door was heard to open and shut. Then there were footsteps along the hall below, and another door shut quietly, toward the back.
"Anything, anything to distract their minds!"
"Mother!—where on earth do you suppose fathergoes! His lecture was over at half-past three. If only,only, he'd try to get some patients! But he's not even in for his office hour half the time!"
"I'm sure I do not know," replied her mother, generally, and picked up her coverless magazine.
Angela fidgeted at the window, drumming on the dripping pane. Presently she said:—
"Oh, mother! Whycouldn'tyou or father have some relations that would help us! We're the only family I ever heard of that hasn't asinglerich relation!"
Her mother, not looking up, mentioned complainingly the branch of her family to which she always referred in such discussions.
"Much good the Ashburtons have done us!" said Angela truly, and also as usual. "When they think we're not good enough to speak to. I have nobody to help me but myself."
It was as if the girl was herself struck with the truth of her own observation. Her gaze out the window became thoughtful, and then intent. Suddenly, without more speech, she left the window and the room.
In the hall there came an interruption. An untutored voice bawled up, without the slightest preamble:—
"Sugar hasn't came!"
"All right," responded the young housekeeper, after a short annoyed pause.
And then, returning to her own room, she thought: "If I telephone from Mrs. Doremus's now, it'll be too late for supper. I'll have to ask Wallie—just to step around ..."
Angela shut the door behind her and lighted a flaring gasjet. Then she stood still, knitting her brows slightly, glancing about. She wanted writing-paper, and didn't know where to put her hands on any, exactly.
In the sharp light of the gas it was now seen that Angela's little bedroom lacked Beauty, of the purely objective sort: Beauty of that kind depending, as all know, on fathers being good providers, which was not the case here, alas. Everything in Angela's room was cheap when it was new, and everything was far from new now. A very large old walnut wardrobe occupied all one side of the room, awkwardly substituting for a clothes-closet. The bed was of yellow imitation-oak, and sagged considerably in the middle from worn-out springs. The bureau was to match; its somewhat wavy mirror was the nearest Angela came to a dressing-table; its three drawers would never quite shut, and frequently wouldn't quite open. There were also two chairs in the bedroom, one straight, one a re-seated rocker, and a small walnut work-table, which trembled dangerously if you brushed against it.
Nor was the room specially spruce, at the moment at least, people's tastes differing in these matters, even in the same family. Angela's young brother, for example, kept his small room shining like a new pin, and let himself personally go till he was a disgrace to the family. Angela, on the other hand, whose exquisite personal neatness had attracted the notice of Charles Garrott himself, was more or less indifferent about a room which nobody but the family ever saw. The door of the wardrobe stood open now, with one of the yellow bureau-drawers; a pair of shoes rested on the straight chair, with a pair of stockings curled on the rag-carpet below. On the sway-backed bed were strewn various things—a towel, two old summer dresses that she had been trying on a little earlier in the afternoon, a pair of soiled white gloves, a paper of pins and two new dress-shields.
In the drawer of the wardrobe, Angela presently found several sheets of note-paper, and, after a longer search, a single envelope. The envelope was not what it had been once. It had knocked about the world a bit in its time; its bright youth was gone. Upon its face was a dusky smudge, souvenir of some forgotten encounter, and, near the smudge, some hand had once written the word "Mrs.," and then lost heart and abandoned the whole enterprise. Still, it was possibly the only envelope in the house. Angela found, after due trial, that the smudge yielded, quite satisfactorily, to the eraser on the end of a pencil. As for the reminiscent "Mrs.," that was easily enough worked over into a "Mr.," though not, to be sure, without a slight blot.
Angela sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the rickety work-table into position before her. Having addressed the remainder of the envelope, after the "Mr.," she sat biting the penholder for a space. But when the business end of the pen was put into action, it went ahead quite steadily:—
Dear Mr. Garrott[wrote Angela from the bedside]:—When you left here the other night, I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again!I have been very sorry about our misunderstanding—and I have felt that I should not have said what I did. I have thought it all over, and I understand better now.When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me—and I will explain just what I mean. I couldn't that night.Yours most cordially,Angela Flower.
Dear Mr. Garrott[wrote Angela from the bedside]:—
When you left here the other night, I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again!
I have been very sorry about our misunderstanding—and I have felt that I should not have said what I did. I have thought it all over, and I understand better now.
When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me—and I will explain just what I mean. I couldn't that night.
Yours most cordially,
Angela Flower.
She had hardly written the final letter of her pretty name when the front door was heard to open again, this time with a bang. Having hastily tucked the note into the experienced envelope, Angela got downstairs before her little brother, Wallie, had finished taking off his dripping overcoat.
Wallie was quite the queerest, gravest boy Angela had ever known. In her whole life, she had never seen him laugh but once. That was one summer day in Mitchellton, when she, having undertaken to paper the walls of her room, had fallen backward off the stepladder into a bucket of paste. Wallie was an eccentric, undoubtedly. Still, he was admitted to be obliging enough about little things. Now he made no special objections to going for the sugar; and when Angela then asked him please to step by at the same time, and give the note to Mr. Garrott, he only said, with one of his absent stares: "Step by? That's six blocks further."
"Well, I haven't anybody else to take it for me, Wallie," said Angela, in a voice rather like her mother's.
"And, Wallie," she added, presently, "I'm not sure whether there'll be an answer or not. You'd better just ask him, that's the best way. Just say, after he's read it, 'Is there any answer?'"
To the host, the luncheon party at the Arlington had not once presented itself as a jolly gathering of any set, young or old. He had conceived it as a duty, and an expensive one; he approached it, truth to tell, with a certain secret complacence as to Mary Wing uppermost in his mind; and he left it (after Mary's private talk with him) with chastened reflections and a group of new reactions on the subject of Egoettes.
For two weeks, Charles had been very busy in the Studio. The luncheon stood as his first whirl in Society since Angela Flower's bridge-party. Donald Manford, departing to seek his biggest commission, seemed to need a friendly send-off. Miss Carson seemed to be indicated as the logical co-sharer of the same. At the Redmantle Club, as he had never forgotten, Charles had taken Donald bodily away from the firm beautiful girl Mary had selected to be his wife. Now, as it were, he was handing Donald back to her again—loyal Moderns all. Beyond the match-making, however, this function was intended to cheer up Mary, and to indicate to the Public that Charles Garrott was her supporter in adversity as in success. Thus, from every point of view, the "demoted" school-teacher was the real guest of honor, and the host, when not fomenting conversation of a matrimonial nature between the two young persons on his right, found a peculiar pleasure in conversing with her. Indeed, he could hardly look at Mary to-day without a lurking smile.
Later, as noted, Charles sobered. What Mary lingered to tell him, "for his own good," was that Flora Trevenna had gone away. As it was the one thing he had supposed Miss Trevenna incapable of doing, he was proportionately taken by surprise. But, for a moment, he saw in the tidings only that the great obstacle in his and Mary's way back to the High School, their common Old Man of the Sea, had been amazingly removed.
Endeavoring to conceal his immense relief, he said: "Gone away! Why, where'd she go to?"
Mary's reply was meant to shake him, and it did.
"Oh—anywhere! She went, not because she had anywhere to go, but just because she wouldn't stay here."
"But—I don't understand you! I thought this was where she wanted to stay."
"More than anything else in the world. And that was why she went—don't you see? She went because of her mother and father and sisters—whom you supposed she never gave a thought to. She went because of Mysinger and me."
The two advanced friends stood among the shrubs of the Arlington winter garden, beside a little tinkling grotto. In silence, Charles dropped a pebble down among the dusky forms of fish.
"Of course," said Mary, slowly, "I told her a story about—my trouble at the High School. But I could see that she knew all the time. I'm sure now that was what decided her to go—by herself. Some friend or other got her some sort of position—in Philadelphia. Of course she went without saying anything to me...."
Her voice, which could be so annoyingly calm at times, was deeply troubled. Charles expressed sympathies, with haste; and, indeed, he felt them now, oddly and disturbingly. It was as if Miss Trevenna, by that simple act of getting down off other people's backs, had too suddenly upset his whole opinion of her.
"Don't you think, after all," he said presently, "it may be easier for her somewhere else for a while, than—"
"Oh, easier in a way, yes! But I know she felt, and I think, too, that her only hope of really putting her life together again, ever, was here—where she broke it in two. To go and bury herself among strangers won't ever settle anything. Oh," exclaimed Mary, "if she could only, onlymarrynow! I suppose people might stop thinking of her as a pariah then, I suppose she might come back! But what's the use of hoping? She's still crazily in love with that man, you see."
"What!—sheis! Why'd she leave him then—?"
The former principal regarded him, drawing on her gloves. She had dark eyebrows, well-marked and unusually arched; they gave a peculiar intentness to her blue gaze, and a faint habitual interrogativeness. Now, perhaps at the young man's expression, she laughed, suddenly and naturally. Her spirit was not broken certainly.
"And women are really so awfully simple, too! Of course she left him, Mr. Garrott, because she didn't think he cared enough for her any longer to—justify her."
And, grave again, she asked, directly: "Have you really doubted that she has a higher ideal of love than half the good people who've wanted to run her out of the city and stone her?"
This, indeed, Charles had had no reason to doubt. He, of course, had never shared the low opinion of a woman, that she had but one virtue, and that one too crudely appraised. His complaint against this girl had been upon a wholly different ground—now abruptly fallen beneath his feet. He was troubled with the sense that this young figure, in vanishing, had suddenly touched the dignity of tragedy. He had remembered, with a little shock, that Miss Trevenna was not yet twenty-five years of age.
And still, he, the authority, knew that having a high ideal was not enough.
As the two moderns left the hotel, he said in a grave manner: "Let me take you home."
"No, don't think of it! I'm only going to the car-line," said Mary; and added absently: "I've been trying all week to go to see Angela, and now I must."
"Ah, yes!—certainly!" said the luncheon host hastily, and a look that could only be described as guilty flitted visibly over his face.
But this disappeared; the somewhat chastened authoritative look returned at once. Pursuing his tutorial round, Charles seemed able to think of nothing else but Mary's ill-starred friend, who had so damaged Mary, who had so staked and smashed her own life, on a sentence in a book.
And who put that sentence into a book, and who was going to wipe it out with another, if not he, Charles? Here, it might be, he had a pointer or two to give to that great compeer of his, the lady in Sweden.
He had done Miss Trevenna a serious wrong, of course; he had judged her by the company she kept. It was an age when cheeky "prophets" were shouting from every bush a New philosophy which amounted to this: that civilized society must be made accommodating to self-indulgent people. They did not mention, very probably they did not know, that it had not been easy to civilize society, and that self-indulgent people had not done the job. With such shallow egoists he had classed Miss Trevenna; and now, silent still, she had finely refuted him. There was, indeed, a quality not for little folk in this girl's fierce imprudences. At the test, she had repudiated the Ego, kicked off all the meanness and flabbiness of her teachings. But in the meantime, unfortunately, these teachings had done for her.
And it seemed to Charles Garrott, tramping intently along (for the downpour gave him the freedom of the streets to-day) that it would be a sweet and glorious thing if, say, a dozen of these leathern-lunged professors of a new chaos could be gathered up, from the studies and libraries where they sat so snug around the world, and brought here to share this girl's catastrophe and go with her in her exile. And by George!—they shouldn't squirm out by trying to blame it all on a mere ignorant Public Opinion either! No, he, Charles, having a lot of them together thus, would improve the occasion to explain, once and for all, that freedom was not a thing that any chance passer could pick up and use, like a cane; but, rather, the last difficult conquest of a unified race. He would inform them that it was only too fatally easy to act "free," at others' expense, the difficult and important thing being, precisely, not so to act. And as to love, he would hammer into their thick heads that the way to freedom wasNOTthrough the delightfully easy course of "demonstrating experiment" by self-elected Exceptional People, but by the far more difficult demonstration that men and women could be strong and constant in their affections, and trustworthy in their passions.
There, indeed, was a demonstration for Exceptional People to get to work on at once. Why write large books to declare that "the great love" was its own justification. Why waste good ink upon an ideal truism? On what day would a New book-writer teach men and women how to love greatly, or how to tell even a little love from love's baser counterfeit? So long as every schoolboy, drawn by a brief spark, will swear that his is the great love; so long as men greatly love one person this year, and next year quite another; so long as they will gladly deceive themselves, or ape emotions above them, lest they must deny themselves a passing indulgence: thus long would untrustworthy mortals need the hard restraint of Law.
"Why, if men and women had the quality of love needed to make 'freedom' work," thought the tutor suddenly, sloshing along toward the Choristers', "they wouldn't need the freedom! No, then they'd be perfectly satisfied with monogamous marriage."
Decidedly impressed with this epigram, Charles thought at once of "Notes on Women." To draw the ruined life of Miss Trevenna across the line of his new novel had, of course, come into his mind while he yet talked with Mary. But he was fully aware that not one novel, or five, would ever plumb bottom here.
Nevertheless, these thoughts pursued the young man through his lesson with Miss Grace Chorister, and up to the very door of the Studio. There, he suddenly became a working author again.
It was now five-thirty o'clock in the rainy afternoon. The demands of hospitality had forced the postponement of Miss Grace a full hour, and the cutting altogether of the old lady who was studying French. Entering his retreat thus belatedly, Charles shot a look ahead at the writing-table, according to his habit. A letter lay on the table, wearing a distinctly business air; and when the young man was still several paces off, he saw that the envelope bore the name of "Willcox's Weekly."
For the most part, Charles's communications from editors had come to him in long envelopes of an ominous, a rejectional, fatness. Now it was his hour to see other samples from the editorial envelope supply, square envelopes, gratifyingly thin. Breaking the square thin envelope of "Willcox's Weekly" with nervous hurry, Charles read:—
Dear Mr. Garrott:—We have pleasure in accepting your interesting sketch of Miss Wing, for early publication in theWeekly. Our "Persons in the Foreground" department is always in the market for entertaining material of this character.Check for $20 will follow in due course. We are, with thanks,Yours sincerely,Willcox's Weekly.
Dear Mr. Garrott:—
We have pleasure in accepting your interesting sketch of Miss Wing, for early publication in theWeekly. Our "Persons in the Foreground" department is always in the market for entertaining material of this character.
Check for $20 will follow in due course. We are, with thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Willcox's Weekly.
Having read these few lines once, the author, still standing, read them again, and yet again. Upon his lip was the faint smile it had worn when he looked at Mary at the luncheon—before she began telling him things for his good. He was fairly entitled to wear this smile; but now it seemed in danger of becoming fixed for life.
He was selling write-ups of Mary like hot cakes; there was no other word for it. He had written and sent out three write-ups—an unprecedented number about a single person—and now he had sold two of them already. He had hoped to plant, say, one write-up among the weeklies—to get quick results—and now he had planted two in the weeklies. Moreover, the third write-up had been in the hands of a famous weekly for ten days now.
That he had managed it all with remarkable adroitness, the young man could not conceal from himself. Cunningly enough, he had based all the write-ups on the fact that Mary Wing, at thirty, had risen almost to the top of a large city school system, where no woman had ever risen before. For that made Mary a public figure; that justified the write-ups. But, the bait thus thrown, he had given to each eulogy a special character and thesis of its own, always with an eye to local effects. This piece here, for example, which "Willcox's Weekly" found so extremely interesting and entertaining, concerned Mary the Freewoman, and touched delicately yet with vigor upon her late persecution for righteousness' sake. And this piece, the most personal and the best of the lot, alone bore the signature of Charles King Garrott. He had got Hartwell to sign one, Elsie White Story, President of the State Equal Suffrage League, to sign another. And only yesterday, Mrs. Story had telephoned thatherpiece (Mary the "Feminist"—only you may be sure Charles had not used that horrible word) had been gobbled up by the "Saturday Review," and sent around the "Review's" delightful letter.
So Charles could recall Mary's hard saying, that day at the High School, with a sense of triumph now. She, who had said he couldn't help her, had rather overlooked this gift he had, his power and his art. Unquestionably, the thing was going to break big: she would have the surprise of her life....
"Great heavens!How I can write!" suddenly exulted the young man, throwing out his arms. "I'll beat 'em all some day!"
Upon which, exactly as at a cue in a play, the door from the bedroom opened, slowly and quietly. And there stood Judge Blenso in the crack, a flat package in his hand.
Between uncle and nephew there passed a long stare. The uncle began to turn a little pale. But it was the nephew who spoke first, nervously and yet expectantly too:—
"Prepare yourself, Charles, my dear fellow! I much fear it's 'Bandwomen'!"
It was a long time before he was alone again.
There were moments in every writer's life, of course, when he was obliged to wish frankly that he didn't have to have a secretary. What a writer most wanted at times was solitude, just a chance to sit quietly and think things over.
A great while Judge Blenso had pottered about under his little red "Nothing But Business, Please" sign. Now he was posting elaborate entries in his secretary's book, now he sang sweetly to himself over wrapping-paper, paste, and twine. For if his sedentary employer's failure to blow up, this time, had momentarily nonplussed the Judge, the sight of the letter from "Willcox's Weekly" had raised him to the highest spirits again at once. That distant people, entire strangers, were actually proving willing to exchange real money for words written by Charles there, and typed by him, Judge Blenso,—here was a delightful thing, full of novelty and promise. And nothing would do, of course, but that he must start the rejected novel out upon another journey to New York without loss of a moment's time. Businessbeforepleasure, rainorshine. That washisway.
But he went at last, to make his toilet for the express-office. And Charles, alone, sat taking stock, with no more exultation.
Blank and Finney's letter had proved to be twin-sister to the remembered letter from Willcox Brothers Company. That is to say, it was rejection, flat and unqualified. But this time, after the first shock, Charles had perceived that he did not seem to be much surprised. It appeared that his expectation of the old novel had, after all, died violently on that other day. It was almost as if he himself had come to despise the old novel, because the publishers despised it—as if that were any reason...
From the mantel he had plucked a thick ledger entitled (on a neatly typed label),THE RECORD. This ledger was the great work of Judge Blenso's life, and large enough for twenty authors. Here the Judge set down, with much pains and a striking assortment of colored inks, the detailed progress of each of Charles's manuscripts: "When Finished," "When Sent Out," "Where Sent," "Editor's Decision," "Editor's Comments if Any," "Remarks," etc. On these pages, the essential part of "Bondwomen's" career (officially known as Entry 2) was thus recorded:—
The Record now showed nine entries, including the novel. Entry I was "The Truth About Jennie," which the Judge had insisted on posting in, to give a tone of success to his work at the outset. Entries 3, 4, 5, and 6 were short stories; Entries 7, 8, and 9, the write-ups of Mary. The pages devoted to the write-ups made, as we know, stimulating reading, but with the fiction entries the case was otherwise. Here under "Comments if Any," the words "See printed form, on file," appeared with monotonous, indeed sickening, regularity. The Record did show, indeed, that the "Universal," in rejecting Entry 5,—"When Amy Left Home,"—had written a personal letter furnishing the Judge with this "Comment": "Excellently written, but claimed unsuited to his present needs. Let him hear from us again." Otherwise, rejection was unmitigated.
A scant showing for the work of four years, look at it how you would. One examining these coldly dispassionate annals would probably say, offhand, that there was but one form of writing Charles King Garrott was qualified to do: that was the write-up form. He had just read his two letters again, his acceptance and his rejection, side by side. Unusual and peculiar it seemed that the only writing he had sold for money, since "Jennie," was this series of articles designed to bring fame to Mary Wing. Of course, as far as that went, a man would like a little fame for himself, now and then....
"Why, I'm a fool to think I can write!" groaned the young man, suddenly. "I'm wasting my life! I ought to be carrying bricks up a ladder."
His fall from complacence was, indeed, complete. However, every writer knows these little ups and downs. It may be, that Charles did not believe his bitter words, even then. And now his secretary reëntered, checking thought.
"Well! Now for the express!"
Judge Blenso wore a new English mackintosh and an olive felt hat, rakishly turned up in front. No board of social investigators could have commended him for spending virtually all his wage upon his back; but the results seemed always to justify him none the less.
"And, my dear fellow!—you shouldn't worry, as the expression goes! Bandwomen's a charmin' novel, a charmin' sweet love-story, and James Potter Sons'll be sure to take it—gad, by the first mail!"
Having seen it with his own eyes in Willcoxes' famous letter, the Judge was now finally convinced that "Bandwomen" was the correct title of Entry 2, just as he had said in the beginning. Further argument being useless, the young man returned a vague reply.
"And there's that other idea of mine, too," said the Judge genially, halting with his package under his arm—"bringing your sketches of Miss Wing out in book form! Put in Entry 1, too 'Jennie's Truth,' if we liked—make a regular holiday giftbook! Gad, you know, Miss Wing's little pupils at the school would give us a whackin' sale!"
He went out blithe upon his duty. After an interval, the adoring voice of Mrs. Herman floated up, beseeching him to put on his ar'tics.
At the Studio table Charles sat, struggling to get down to work. He had put away The Record, put away embittered thoughts. But he did not get down to work with much success all the same, the reason being that his great Subject, unluckily, was no longer clear in his mind.
From the table-drawer he had produced a stack of manuscript, an inch high; and now he sat, not reading it, but merely disapproving iten masse. The stack was his premature effort to begin, really to begin his new novel—six chapters of the new novel written, fifteen thousand words. Launching upon this draft an hour after he finished Mary the Freewoman, he had pushed on, night after night, at first with confident rapidity. Latterly, he had become conscious of an increasing sense of resistance. And now he knew that all this was mere waste stuff, accomplishing nothing but to show him what not to write.
Well, but what to write then? What did he really want to say? It was absurd; but he did not know. It really seemed that he saw too much to settle, with enthusiasm, upon anything. By constant accessions of fresh understanding, his centre of balance, his novel's chief prerequisite, was kept in a continuous state of flux....
Of "material" on the Unrest, Charles possessed a superfluity; of "plots," of "significant characters" and "illustrative incidents," his head was fuller than his pencil would ever write. His problem, of course, had always been for the fixed point of view and the moral "line." No longer could he be satisfied with that crude, simple line which had contented him in his first book, which still contented the other fellows: the line which "proved," asLily Stenderproved, that economic independence was the automatic salvation of women. He knew that wasn't the whole story now. As for writing a book to show that Woman's Place was the Home, of course that had never crossed his mind, even when most strongly gripped by conservative reactions. His quest was for a framework which should develop conflicting values on a far finer scale.
Of course, what he should have liked to show was a wholly admirable woman: one who combined all the sane competence and human worth of the best new women, with the soft faculty for supplying beauty and charm of her old-fashioned sister. But that day in Mary's office had left him with the honest suspicion that such a goddess did not exist, and couldn't. From the other direction also, as noted, his delicate scales had been joggled, with unsettling literary effects. The too hasty manuscript on the writing-table by no means followed the "line" the author had first plotted, prior to his meditations in the Green Park, after the bridge-party. No, in this draft the Home-Maker was married and had three children in Chapter One. Through all, the desire to rebuke the egoism of the day had persisted, as clearly the point of view most inviting to him, fullest of possibilities. And now Miss Trevenna, in some way, had disturbed and unsettled him there too....
The rain beat against the Studio windows. The green-shaded lamp burned dully on the author's table. Big Bill, without surcease, ticked off the author's minutes. Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose, pondering deeply. Just now, as he turned the pages of his private book—where the essay form had long since been abandoned, where appeared the most surprising vacillations of authoritative opinion—he had made a somewhat striking discovery. It had suddenly come upon him that "Notes on Women" had, gradually but distinctly, dwindled down into "Notes on Mary," "Notes on Angela Flower," and "Notes on Flora Trevenna." In short, it appeared that, in the most unconscious way, he had been seeking to extract his "line" from his own story, as it were, from "life."
The discovery came upon the young man as most arresting and significant.
"And I don't know where I stand, that's just the trouble! I ought to wait awhile," he thought, aloud. "See how it all works out.... Things'll be turning up...."
On which—once more—Judge Blenso's picturesque head came sticking through the Studio door, and Judge Blenso's rich voice said, officially:—
"Young gentleman here with a letter, Mr. Garrott. Admit him?"
Returning to actuality with a slight start, Charles replied, "Admit him—certainly!" A day for letters, indeed!
Forthwith, the Judge standing aside, the young gentleman stepped into the Studio. A grave-looking young gentleman he proved to be, of some sixteen years, perhaps, with a dome-like forehead, a resolute mouth, and thick spectacles. He entered in silence, in silence held out the missive referred to.
"Good-evening," said Charles. "Thank you. This comes from—?"
"My sister, Angela Flower."
The young man's heart seemed to drop a little.
"Ah, yes! And—ah—is there—an answer?—"
"I'll wait and see," said Wallie Flower, following instructions, in a deep, calm voice.
"Ah, yes. Sit down a moment, won't you?"
He essayed a bright negligence which he was far from feeling: this thing had come suddenly. No amount of scientific argument, no recollection of sharp rebukes received, had ever convinced Charles that he had cut a fine figure in the affair on the sofa. Indeed, the very ease with which he had avoided all further consequences of his Rash Act, by the purely mechanical device of street-cars, had deepened, rather than diminished his consciousness of obligations unfulfilled, of caddishness, in short. To salute a girl tenderly after her bridge-party, and then never go within a mile of her again—well, thatwasa little crude, say what you would.
Hence Mr. Garrott, opening Angela's envelope with the blurred "Mr.," anticipated bitter reproaches, anticipated being termed a brute again, and called on to be honorable without further delay. Hence again, as his eye leapt over the neat lines, and found only sweet forgiveness and generous friendliness, he felt a sudden upstarting of relief and gratitude. A more perfect note had never been written! Why, the charming girl wasn't expecting anything of him at all!
Or, rather, nothing at all worth mentioning. On a second glance through the perfect note, the hypercritical young man did observe an expression or two not up to the general standard, perhaps. "I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again." "When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me." On the whole, it could be argued that it was rather a mistake to put those sentences in. Fine as the note was, it would have been a little finer still without them. Yet, under the circumstances, what more natural? And of course, as far as that went, he and the city traction system had the issue in their hands.
So Charles looked up buoyantly at the bearer of good tidings, to speak.
The bearer, however, had clearly forgotten his presence. He had remained standing, three feet from the table-end, and was found to be gazing, in the most pointed manner, at the old Studio lamp. The grave face of Miss Angela's brother plainly expressed amusement, and a certain good-natured contempt.
"Hello!" said Charles, diverted. "Anything wrong there?"
Without turning, the boy answered with a small dry chuckle: "Yes. Pretty near everything."
"Well! I've noticed it hasn't been burning well. Need a new mantel, I suppose—"
"New mantel won't do you any good long's your air-draft's choked that way."
"Oh! So that's the trouble, is it?"
"That's one of them. P'r'aps you like it that way?"
The proprietor of the lamp having disclaimed such a fancy, the strange lad said: "Well, I'll fix it for you, then. Sit steady."
He reached up an arm long as a monkey's, which shed drops of water on the writing-table, and the green glow suddenly faded out, leaving the Studio in total darkness.
Out of the Stygian gloom Charles said: "There's another light there. I'll—"
"I know. Thought I might as well look into that one, too, while I'm at it. Just give your globe and chimney a minute to cool."
"Oh, of course!—certainly."
"Don't s'pose you want to stand a new mantel for the lamp?"
"I'm enough of a sport, but I fear there's not a new one in the house."
"Hold it for me, please," said the boy.
A pinpoint of light had appeared in the blackness; it moved toward Charles's hand. He received the little searchlight, let it go out, hastily found and pushed the button again. And then Miss Angela's brother began to take his lamp all apart, cleaning it, blowing through it at unexpected places, and wiping the parts with a dark oily rag, which, luckily enough, he seemed to have in his coat-pocket.
The lad's single-mindedness, his un-selfconscious matter-of-factness had attracted Charles at sight. He recalled what Mary Wing had told him of Wallie Flower's struggles to get an education. Thus, as the light-repairing proceeded in the almost total darkness, a conversation grew up, at first largely question and answer. And the upshot of it was that Charles, as a tutor, offered to instruct Wallie Flower, free gratis, in German and English, the two college entrance subjects in which he was still somewhat deficient.
This odd development came at the end of the talk, when the illuminating power of both Charles's and the Judge's lights had been notably improved. When the brother understood that further education was being offered him for nothing, a gleam came suddenly into his oddly mature gaze.
He almost exclaimed: "Do you know German?"
"You might say I wrote it."
He pondered. "That means you do know it?"
"Like a member of the family."
"Do you teach nights?"
"I'm going to teach you nights."
And it was so arranged, the lessons to begin directly after Christmas. The boy became briefly embarrassed, boggling over his thanks. But Charles cut him short. "I'm doing it because I want to. That's the only reason I ever do anything."
Relieved, Miss Angela's brother turned to the door, for all the world like one who had come to mend the lamps, and nothing else.
"By the way," said Charles, casually. "Thank your sister for her note, and say that I'll send an answer by mail."
He was left pleased with the interview, and with himself. In the generous gift of three hours a week to Angela's brother, he perceived something fitting and compensatory. If obligation existed—and it did, in a way—did not this discharge it, subtly and modernly? Kiss the sister on the sofa, tutor the brother in the Studio—what more fair or honorable than that?
One thing had rather struck him, of course—Wallie Flower's saying that he had hated to come away from Mitchellton. This, it seemed, had been chiefly due to Mr. Bush, the boy's science teacher at the Mitchellton Academy, whom Wallie clearly adored, whose eyebrows he had blown off in an experiment only last summer. As he had previously understood that both the Doctor and Mrs. Flower had also been attached to Mitchellton, it really appeared that Miss Angela was the only member of the family who had actually desired to make the move. And she had moved.
But this thought—like the hypercriticisms on the note—merely knocked at the door of the young man's mind and passed on. He felt himself warming anew toward this simple Type, with its charming friendly instincts and its sweet forgiveness of the stormy ways of men. On his return from his holiday, he resolved that he would give Angela some token of his regard more substantial than a note by mail: send her, say, with that book of hers, a costly box of appreciative blossoms.
Unlike the ladies in the books, Angela, regrettably enough, did not get a "sheaf of letters" every morning. Mr. Garrott's answer to her note, which lay beside her breakfast-plate on the second day following, was, indeed, her only mail that week. Hence it was with feelings of excitement that she seized a table-fork and hastily slit the envelope.
Angela read:—
Dear Miss Flower:May I say how deeply I appreciate your note? And will you please believe that I have blamed myself entirely for what you so generously call our misunderstanding? While, of course, I must continue to blame myself, you cannot know how pleasant it is to be permitted to feel that you have forgiven me.With the deepest appreciation, and all the good wishes of the season, believe me,Yours sincerely,Charles King Garrott.
Dear Miss Flower:
May I say how deeply I appreciate your note? And will you please believe that I have blamed myself entirely for what you so generously call our misunderstanding? While, of course, I must continue to blame myself, you cannot know how pleasant it is to be permitted to feel that you have forgiven me.
With the deepest appreciation, and all the good wishes of the season, believe me,
Yours sincerely,
Charles King Garrott.
It must be said of this note that it was the sort that puts its best foot foremost. First impressions of it were agreeable, but it did not wear. On the second reading, Angela perceived that, though as nice as possible, Mr. Garrott's reply said nothing about calling, which, in a manner of speaking, was the true subject of the correspondence. By the time she had read the reply half a dozen times, she found it flatly disappointing. Two days later, when she heard through Cousin Mary Wing that Mr. Garrott had gone to the country, not to return till after the New Year, she was conscious of a sudden and pervading hopelessness.
The feeling applied, not to her principal friend alone, but to all the conditions of her life.
Angela understood, of course, that Mr. Garrott's remarkable offer to tutor Wallie for nothing was an attention to her, and a very handsome one. Still, it was not just the sort of attention that a young girl prizes most, perhaps; and in especial it did not meet the needs of this particular situation. To have a busy man-friend teaching German to your little brother on your account is very flattering, indeed; but it does not necessarily lead to the early clearing-up of a personal misunderstanding. That Mr. Garrott had been much worried by their misunderstanding, all along, Angela had known, by means of that womanly intuition of which we read so much; now his note said so, in so many words. But, manlike, he still did not see that, at heart, she was the same girl that had attracted him so in the beginning, and that if he would but call, she would make everything as it had been before.
How was she ever to see him again now?
At nineteen, youth accepts life's vicissitudes unquestioningly, but at twenty-five, a womanly woman (if still without a home, a husband and three curly-headed little children) has had time to whittle a number of observations to a fairly sharp point. Angela thought her situation a hard one, and it was. Wealth, influence, valuable connections—these aids were not for her. All the ordinary opportunities enjoyed by girls "in society," she lacked—in chief, opportunities of meeting people casually, as at parties, of seeing the same people again and again, under the most agreeable auspices. Her family simply failed to put her in a party position, as it might be called; in consequence of which, it came to this, that really her only meeting-place for the few people she knew was on the street, walking. And even at the best, of course, that method (by the mere laws of choice and chance) was most unsatisfactory.
Suppose that Mr. Garrotthadbeen taking walks all the time, for instance, but, by reason of her having called him a brute, was choosing other streets—how was she to know? A city is a big place, and one young girl in a tight skirt cannot walk very fast or far, or cover a large amount of space in a given time.
"Marna" alone was outstanding; and it carried but the slenderest anticipations. Moreover, that question, all these depressing questions, were academic now, and would be for weeks to come. The little coterie had scattered far, and she had no means of filling the empty places.
There followed the dreariest days Angela had known since winter before last in Mitchellton.
"How can youexpectanybody to notice us, mother?" she exclaimed, one day. "The family of a poor, obscure doctor, living in ahuton a back street, with not a living soul to help us! I think it's remarkable I accomplish as much as I do."
It was on this day, a cold Sunday afternoon shortly before Christmas, that the lonely girl carried out a good intention she had had in mind for some time. She wrote a long, intimate, sisterly letter to her favorite brother Tommy, who had got so far away since he married money in Pittsburg.
Angela had just come in from a freezing, eventless walk with Fanny Warder. (Fanny, who as Mrs. Flower said, had made a great success of her life, marrying at twenty, seemed to be on an indefinite "visit"; there was talk, of course.) Having first thawed her hands at her register, which was supposed to waft up heat from the stove in the dining-room below, but didn't particularly, Angela drew up her rocking-chair into the zone of ostensible warmth. She sat with one slender foot curled under her, by a trick that no man has ever mastered. And this time she had not searched for the formal tools of a note-writer, but employed a stub of a pencil and a pad upon her lifted knee.
"Dearest Tommy," wrote Angela, and followed with a solid paragraph of very affectionate greeting. She went on:—
Well, Tommy, I promised to write you how things were, after we got settled down. I must say the outlook is rather discouraging at times—and home isn't what it was as you remember it! Do you remember what fun we used to have even in Hunter's Run—driving in to "the balls"—and how fine it was in Mitchellton as long as you were there? Well, everything issadlychanged now! Wallie, I'm afraid, hasn't improved as he gets older, he seems to rarely or never think of anybody but himself—and, of course, having fun is simply something hedoesn't care for! He shuts himself up in his room every night, making horrible mixtures in a "sink" he's put in—that smell up the whole house, and neverdreamsof contributing to the housekeeping expenses—though he's been raised now toten dollars a week! Father is sadly changed, he gets quieter and quieter all the time.Sometimes I'm really worried about him, he's soindifferent! He never jokes any more, and doesn't try to get any patients, though Iknowhe could get lots with his reputation. He seems despondent, Tommy, and sometimes doesn't even come in for his office-hour—and the other day he lost a patient that way that the Finchmans sent, she waited half an hour and then went! But though he may have liked the country life better; and let us allvegetate; that can't be it—for he certainly made no objection when the familyconsensusseemed to be that we should move here! Of course, we have to face the fact that he and mother aren't verycongenial, it is her problem, and while I wouldn't criticize mother for worlds and she certainly does her duty as wife and mother—I do think it's agreat mistakefor her to always make her attitude a sort ofreproach, saying how "she's sacrificed herself to him" and all—you know what I mean—Mother really gets along better than any of us—especially as I now doallthe work of the entire house!
Well, Tommy, I promised to write you how things were, after we got settled down. I must say the outlook is rather discouraging at times—and home isn't what it was as you remember it! Do you remember what fun we used to have even in Hunter's Run—driving in to "the balls"—and how fine it was in Mitchellton as long as you were there? Well, everything issadlychanged now! Wallie, I'm afraid, hasn't improved as he gets older, he seems to rarely or never think of anybody but himself—and, of course, having fun is simply something hedoesn't care for! He shuts himself up in his room every night, making horrible mixtures in a "sink" he's put in—that smell up the whole house, and neverdreamsof contributing to the housekeeping expenses—though he's been raised now toten dollars a week! Father is sadly changed, he gets quieter and quieter all the time.
Sometimes I'm really worried about him, he's soindifferent! He never jokes any more, and doesn't try to get any patients, though Iknowhe could get lots with his reputation. He seems despondent, Tommy, and sometimes doesn't even come in for his office-hour—and the other day he lost a patient that way that the Finchmans sent, she waited half an hour and then went! But though he may have liked the country life better; and let us allvegetate; that can't be it—for he certainly made no objection when the familyconsensusseemed to be that we should move here! Of course, we have to face the fact that he and mother aren't verycongenial, it is her problem, and while I wouldn't criticize mother for worlds and she certainly does her duty as wife and mother—I do think it's agreat mistakefor her to always make her attitude a sort ofreproach, saying how "she's sacrificed herself to him" and all—you know what I mean—
Mother really gets along better than any of us—especially as I now doallthe work of the entire house!
The young writer paused, staring chillily at the register. She rarely looked out the window now, hers being the blank certainty that there would be nothing to see. Moreover, it was dusk. So, rising presently, she lighted the gas, and resumed her sad sisterly letter.
Of her mother she wrote in some detail: of the various friends of her girlhood she had renewed acquaintance with, and how she was always exchanging calls with Cousin This or Martha That, who was So-and-So before she married. To Angela, it had really seemed funny how all these connections of her mother's, whose social possibilities they had so often discussed before they left Mitchellton, had resolved themselves into dejected old ladies who had had unhappy marriages, and whose children had also had unhappy marriages, as a rule, or were in some other way unavailable as friends. Out of five families thus exhumed by Mrs. Flower, positively only one unattached young person had emerged, and this one, named Jennie Finchman (!), while certainly well-meaning, was a shy, anxious, painfully homely little thing who had never had a good time in her life, and gave all her pocket-money to a mission in the Dutch East Indies.
Well, Tommy [continued Angela], I've tried to give you a picture of the new home like I promised—and I only wish it was more encouraging! As for myself—the only outside person I had to help me was Cousin Mary Wing, and she is a "New Woman," as I wrote you in my Thanksgiving Day letter, and doesn't go with anybody butadvanced olderpeople!—and, besides, she got into a terrible scrape, poor dear, and was dismissed from the school! Cousin Mary, it's only fair to say, has done more for me than anybody else, introducing me to her older woman friends—who have called on me, and several have invited me to teas, lectures, and etc.! But, of course, none of them weresocialpeople really, or at least of the younger set—and I practically haven't been invited to a single party, except "dove ones"! The one exception was a meeting of an "advanced club," where I met several attractive men, who have been as nice to me as you couldpossibly expect.But the truth is, Tommy, money counts a great deal more here than it did in Mitchellton; all the girls who are prominent socially have wealthy families behind them! I think I would hold up the family end quite well on very little—but I have hardly a decent "rag to my back," myclotheslet everybody know I am a person ofno importance, so the little inner circle sees no reason to take me up,—mother and I have figured that with onlyfifty dollarsI could get a really nice new suit, and a simple evening dress as well,—and perhaps hat and shoes, all of which Isorely need! But, of course, poor father simply hasn't got such a sum, and Wallie puts all his in the bank—for college next year, he has $240 there now! Tommy, you know I don't mean to accuse the family of being selfish,—father told us in advance that we would be poorer here,—but besides that—nobody in the family but you ever seemed tounderstandthat a girl can't accomplish anything unless she is given some sort of achance. Even mother doesn't understand, she just thinks "things happen"! She is always telling how inherday men would work hard all day "superintending the farms"—and then at night ride twenty miles on horseback, to just talk for an hour to some girl of no special attractions! I can't make her see that men simplyaren't like thatany more.
Well, Tommy [continued Angela], I've tried to give you a picture of the new home like I promised—and I only wish it was more encouraging! As for myself—the only outside person I had to help me was Cousin Mary Wing, and she is a "New Woman," as I wrote you in my Thanksgiving Day letter, and doesn't go with anybody butadvanced olderpeople!—and, besides, she got into a terrible scrape, poor dear, and was dismissed from the school! Cousin Mary, it's only fair to say, has done more for me than anybody else, introducing me to her older woman friends—who have called on me, and several have invited me to teas, lectures, and etc.! But, of course, none of them weresocialpeople really, or at least of the younger set—and I practically haven't been invited to a single party, except "dove ones"! The one exception was a meeting of an "advanced club," where I met several attractive men, who have been as nice to me as you couldpossibly expect.
But the truth is, Tommy, money counts a great deal more here than it did in Mitchellton; all the girls who are prominent socially have wealthy families behind them! I think I would hold up the family end quite well on very little—but I have hardly a decent "rag to my back," myclotheslet everybody know I am a person ofno importance, so the little inner circle sees no reason to take me up,—mother and I have figured that with onlyfifty dollarsI could get a really nice new suit, and a simple evening dress as well,—and perhaps hat and shoes, all of which Isorely need! But, of course, poor father simply hasn't got such a sum, and Wallie puts all his in the bank—for college next year, he has $240 there now! Tommy, you know I don't mean to accuse the family of being selfish,—father told us in advance that we would be poorer here,—but besides that—nobody in the family but you ever seemed tounderstandthat a girl can't accomplish anything unless she is given some sort of achance. Even mother doesn't understand, she just thinks "things happen"! She is always telling how inherday men would work hard all day "superintending the farms"—and then at night ride twenty miles on horseback, to just talk for an hour to some girl of no special attractions! I can't make her see that men simplyaren't like thatany more.
The concluding paragraph of the letter merely described the writer's own daily round, especially touching on the dull walks, so rarely broken by a familiar face, which remained almost her only form of recreation. Here Angela decided to put in one sentence in a less reserved vein, which she did: "Well, Tommy, if you mean to make any thank-offerings to 'the poor' this Christmas, you know where they will bemost appreciated!" But, as she loved her brother devotedly, it was also natural for her to return to a sweet and generous note in farewell: "For your sake, Tommy, I am glad you aren't here, with all the trials and hardships, but out in the world having a happy life of your own!"
The completion, stamping, and sending-off of the letter to Tommy left Angela with a sense of definite accomplishment. It was as if something pleasant had happened in the family at last, or at least was going to happen very soon. Unfortunately, however, this agreeable feeling, having such small relation to reality, was born but to sicken and die. Time proceeded with no pleasanter happenings than before, and a letter from Daniel Jenney, of Mitchellton—whose ring had caused the trouble—became a positive event.
By now, no doubt, the first natural excitement of "going to the city" to live had subsided. Enthusiastic anticipations had been rubbed bare by hard actuality, poverty, Finchmans, and so on. By this time also the young home-maker had systematized her housekeeping, as she herself said, and commonly ordered from butcher and grocer by means of Mrs. Doremus's telephone, three doors away. With experience, too, Angela had cut down the daily area of cleaning and polishing, from her first youthful excesses. Small incentive there was to rub your fingers to the bone on a house which was hopeless from the start, and which practically nobody but her mother's sad friends ever set foot in. Thus—and also through the all but eccentric indifference of the men of her family to beauty and charm—Angela had more time than ever for thinking. And the more she thought, the more clearly she saw that social progress in a strange city was solely a matter of what might be called favorable self-advertisement, and that this sort of advertisement, in her case at least, was solely a matter of just a little money.