But where was money to come from? Little could be expected from Tommy, even at the best. As for the housekeeping allowance (on which home-makers properly rely for some personal "pickings"), that held out, alas, yet frailer hopes. So closely had her father and mother calculated the budget, indeed, that in three months she had squeezed but five dollars and a half out of it: this, though she had early investigated the cheaper cuts of meat and learned the desirability of never paying cash.
"Oh," thought the girl, again and again,—"if father'donlyget some patients!"
Mary Wing's pretty sitting-room had, indeed, established definitely in Angela's mind the close connection between money and work in an office. But, for the sound reasons explained by her to Cousin Mary, Angela could never consider work in an office as a possibility for herself. What, really, would become of the Home, while she went rushing daily to an office, to make money for her personal adornment? Besides, she could not but see that Cousin Mary was herself proof of the fact that going to an office had a very unfortunate effect upon a girl. Argue as you liked, the fact remained that, even in this so-called advanced age, the normal, sweet, attractive girls, the girls who were prominent socially, were never office-girls.
In short, how to get money without working for it? That, truly, was the great question confronting every nice girl, every womanly woman....
To Angela, it gradually came to seem that nothing pleasant was ever to happen to her again. Not only that, but the pleasantest sort of things seemed to be happening all the time to everybody else.
Returning Mary Wing's call one day, in the hope of news (Cousin Mary's disgrace was being generously forgiven, now that the Badwoman had gone away), Angela picked up two items that depressed her curiously. One was that Donald Manford had got that position he was trying for in Wyoming: that meant that one member of the coterie would vanish for good within three months' time. The other item concerned a remarkable series of articles about Cousin Mary that were coming out in the magazines all of a sudden, and which Cousin Mary said were written by Mr. Garrott, though admitting that his name wasn't signed to them. The Finchmans, whom Angela had met on the street, said, "How do you like having a celebrity for a cousin?" Cousin Mary, for her part, seemed to like being a celebrity immensely. Angela had never seen her in such high spirits; it really seemed in bad taste, considering the recent past. And, of course, Angela wondered a little if Mr. Garrott, the departed, wouldn't have written something about her, too, but for the misunderstanding.
A chance meeting with Mr. Tilletts, on the way home from this visit, hardly helped much. The seeking widower, afoot for once, had seemed hurried; he merely paused for a hasty word or two, and then was on his way again.
"Considering I haven't a soul to help me, I think I've done remarkably well," the girl protested once more, as if answering an inner voice, to her mother next day. "We've been here only a little while, and I have three men-friends already."
"Who is the third?" inquired Mrs. Flower.
When Angela mentioned Mr. Tilletts, her mother said, laconically: "He has never called."
"Men don't call any more, mother, I've said again and again! It's practically gone out."
Not feeling very well to-day, she lay in an old wrapper atop the sway-backed bed. Mrs. Flower sat, for company, by the outlooking window, dutifully stitching at a frilly "waist" which Angela had begun, but not finished. But her mother was a beautiful seamstress and really enjoyed an occasional task.
"Besides," said Angela, listlessly making a dimple in her pretty cheek with the end of a bone-handled button-hook, "I think Mr. Tilletts will call. He specially asked to—only a little while ago."
Mrs. Flower, after a speaking silence, observed: "Donald Manford never sent you the post-card from Wyoming."
"Well—all the time in the world hasn't passed yet, mother!"
"Your Cousin Ellie Finchman says he is deeply interested in this Miss Carson. She hears he has made her an offer."
"How could Mrs. Finchman possibly know that, mother? Besides,Idon't care! I like Mr.Tillettsbetter than Mr. Manford!"
Coming to bloom in the age of Chivalry, Angela's mother had enjoyed a great deal of "attention" before she decided to bestow herself upon the worthy Doctor. Hence it was constitutional with her to take a belittling position toward less successful young women, including even her own daughter. Equally natural was it for Angela, with no such opportunities as her mother had had, to hold fast to what successes she had, and even, it may be, for memory to magnify them somewhat. And yet, in the freemasonry of women, she never resented her mother's coolly judicial summaries, and in this case, frankly felt the maternal slap to be justified. Really, Mr. Manford had never paid her any direct attentions, which perhaps had something or other to do with her admiring him so little as yet.
On this day, the lonely young girl's spirits seemed to touch their nadir. Howcouldanything pleasant happen? There was no imaginable way.
"Oh, mother!" she exclaimed, with an exasperation rare to her. "Why,why, couldn't you and father give usonerelation that would help us? Did you everhearof any poor people before that didn't have asinglerich relation?"
Then she cried out: "Oh,pleasedon't mention Mrs. Ashburton!"
It was surely the most natural, reasonable, and human complaint in the world. In family talk, it had an established standing, too, having first been formulated far back at Hunter's Run. But now it was as if Angela had flung her challenge in the teeth of fate once oftener than fate could stand.
On the very next day, in brief, the fairy godmother came rolling up to the door.
We read how it is always darkest just before the dawn. Angela, who knew that pleasant things rarely just happened, indoors, had gone out, so it was that she missed the direct distribution of gifts. But, as it chanced, she had been having her first really good time, since the earlier part of the bridge-party. In fact, on Washington Street, at about the same time and place, she had met Mr. Tilletts again; and now he was not hurried at all. It pleasantly developed that Mr. Tilletts's doctor had ordered him to stop riding around in his great car, and that henceforth he would be walking constantly. Moreover, the genial gallant, after a considerable promenade, had taken Angela to tea at Mrs. Hasseltine's famous shop, and, at parting—sure enough—made a provisional engagement to call "one evening this week." Altogether, the coterie seemed in a fair way to pick up a new member, after all.
Whether fascinating or overplump, Widower Tilletts unquestionably possessed the magic power, wielded by man alone, to restore the self-esteem of a neglected young girl. Angela opened the front door of home in a livelier humor than had been hers for weeks. And so entering, she found her mother standing in the hall, and heard at once tidings which, though not for her exactly, yet made her forget herself altogether.
Mrs. Ashburton had been, and gone. Mrs. Ashburton was going to send Wallie to college, at once. Mrs. Ashburton was going to give Walliefive hundred dollars a year, till he had got his education.
This oft-cited lady, at last the waver of the magic wand, was Mrs. Flower's first cousin. Close friends in their girlhood, their ways had long ago parted; and, since Dr. and Mrs. Flower's visit to New York in 1896, amenities between them had hardly gone beyond an exchange of cards at Christmas. But now it happened that Mrs. Ashburton,en routeto a balmier clime than hers, had "broken her trip" here, after the frequent way of tourists, and, having duly viewed the sights of the city from a cab window through the morning, had bethought her to look up her resident kin. So the rich relation came to the little house on Center Street.
By chance, it was Saturday afternoon, and Wallie was alone in the house. It seemed that an experiment he had been working on for days had just turned out a failure, and he had opened all the windows and the front door by way of letting out the smell. But even then he did not see the lady standing on the steps, so intent was he on the large glass retort in his hand. His face was quite white, and beaded with perspiration. So Mrs. Ashburton had described it to Mrs. Flower, who came in to find her just leaving for hotel and train. She had asked: "What are you looking at that brown liquid so hard for?" "That's it; it's brown," Wallie had muttered, still without looking at her. "You mean it ought to have turned out white?" said she. "No, green," said Wallie, frowning and squinting. "Where'd the chlorine go to?" "Why do you care so much?" Mrs. Ashburton asked, more and more interested. "Why do Icare?" he said, scornfully; and then, as if becoming conscious of her, personally, for the first time, he turned his spectacles on her and said calmly: "You wouldn't understand, ma'am. A—a problem here.... Well, I don't understand it myself." And then, losing her again, as it were, he actually endeavored to shut the door, with the lady outside. Mrs. Ashburton had had to push against it, she said, and put her foot in the crack, to attract his notice. "I'm your cousin—your cousin!—Mrs. Ashburton!" she cried. "And I want to come in and talk to you, please." And this she had done, with the amazing result mentioned above.
Angela felt that the family tide had turned at last. She would scarcely have been human if it had not occurred to her how easily she might have been the one to be struck by the golden lightning; but such passing notions in no sense marred her sincere, though vicarious, joy over this great news. Moreover, it did seem, of course, that such a sum as five hundred dollars could not percolate into a family at any point without raising the whole level of prosperity very appreciably; and it was with whole-hearted happiness that she skipped upstairs to congratulate her lucky brother in the little bedroom she would not have to clean or "make" any more.
"Somethingverynice is going to happen tomesoon, too!" she thought gayly, as she undressed that night. "I feel it in my bones!"
Her mind naturally slanted toward her favorite brother, with an intuitive increase of hopefulness. And, true enough, it was from generous Tommy that the more personal blessings presently came, though in a form that had not entered Angela's dreams.
Tommy's reply to her sisterly letter promised at first, indeed, to be as disappointing as Mr. Garrott's had been, and for the same reason: it omitted the essential thing. Angela, having shaken the letter, and then shuffled the pages, early discovered that there was no thank-offering in it. Similarly, Tommy's sentences seemed to contain nothing more substantial than affectionate regrets: setting forth what a struggle he had trying to keep up with the set that Nina had always moved in; how he was five thousand dollars in debt now, getting deeper, and never had a nickel to jingle for himself, and that was the God's truth; how it had always been his dream to do something big for his sister, and certainly would do the same when old Mottesheard (Nina's father) died; how the old chap hung on in a way you wouldn't believe....
Angela read with a certain sense of chill. Truly womanly, she, of course, never questioned the superior claims of wives. And yet it did seem a little hard that Tommy (who made a large salary as a bond salesman, or something like that) should lavish everything on a girl he had never heard of three years ago, while she, his own sister—
And then, turning into the fourth page, she came on a passage which checked all minor-key reflections instantly. In their place, rose and grew a startled astonishment. Tommy, noting what she had written about her long, dull walks, was offering togive her an automobile.
At first, Angela simply could not take in this offer as a solid reality. It sprang upon her like some wild, exciting joke. She read, with her breath coming faster and faster, and her soft eyes as big as saucers:—
Now, Sis, I know a car may strike you offhand as a good deal of an undertaking for a poor family, but you'd find it wouldn't prove so at all. The car I have in mind for you is a little simple one, that you could easily run and manage yourself. A man from the nearest garage will teach you how to drive it in an hour. There'd be no upkeep at all, with the easy city use you'd give it—practically no expense of any kind but gasoline. The little car is old, of course, but still sound as a trivet, and it'll run till you wouldn't believe it on a gallon or so of juice....
Now, Sis, I know a car may strike you offhand as a good deal of an undertaking for a poor family, but you'd find it wouldn't prove so at all. The car I have in mind for you is a little simple one, that you could easily run and manage yourself. A man from the nearest garage will teach you how to drive it in an hour. There'd be no upkeep at all, with the easy city use you'd give it—practically no expense of any kind but gasoline. The little car is old, of course, but still sound as a trivet, and it'll run till you wouldn't believe it on a gallon or so of juice....
For a space the letter faded from the young girl's vision. Before her mind's eye flashed a series of entrancing pictures: pictures of herself, no longer the lone, slow pedestrian in a too large city....
And don't think you would be depriving us [Tommy went on]. Ninawillhave a new car every year, and we've really had no use for this one for some time. By the by, didn't you tell me there was an old barn in your back-yard, or an alley? Why wouldn't that do for your garage? Then you would have your car ready at hand, without storage cost, and could take it out at a moment's notice and go for a spin with your friends.Now think it over, Sis, and let me know if you want it. I can ship it at once, by prepaid express. Nina has a frank....
And don't think you would be depriving us [Tommy went on]. Ninawillhave a new car every year, and we've really had no use for this one for some time. By the by, didn't you tell me there was an old barn in your back-yard, or an alley? Why wouldn't that do for your garage? Then you would have your car ready at hand, without storage cost, and could take it out at a moment's notice and go for a spin with your friends.
Now think it over, Sis, and let me know if you want it. I can ship it at once, by prepaid express. Nina has a frank....
"Oh,mother!" cried Angela excitedly. "Tommy wants to give me an automobile!"
The heads of the Flowers lifted from their breakfasts as if jerked by a common string.
When the breath-taking letter had been read again, aloud this time, there followed a family symposium, the question being whether or not Angela could have the automobile. To her surprise and delight, it appeared that there was really no question; all the family wanted her to take the automobile; all agreed with Tommy that it would not be a prohibitive undertaking. Mrs. Flower, an habitual conservative, pointed out that there would be nothing to lose in any case: if having the automobile proved impracticable, Angela could simply sell it. Wallie said that, if the automobile came before he left for college, he would teach Angela how to run it himself, thus eliminating the expense of a man from the garage. And, finally, her father astonished her by saying that he would find the necessary funds—estimated at ten dollars—for repairing the abandoned shed, which now leaked dangerously, into a serviceable little garage.
At nine-thirty o'clock that morning Angela rushed out of the house to the nearest telegraph office, to dispatch her happy reply. Excited though she was, however, she did not forget to count the words:—
Crazy about it Tommy. Arrangements made. What kind is car?A. F.
Crazy about it Tommy. Arrangements made. What kind is car?
A. F.
Tommy's response came at bedtime:—
Car started to you this afternoon. It is a Fordette. Happy New Year.Tommy.
Car started to you this afternoon. It is a Fordette. Happy New Year.
Tommy.
The night before Wallie started North for college Angela went to him in his little bed-and-workroom and asked the temporary loan of seventy-five dollars. In the interval, she had learned that her father had a patient; it seemed, indeed, that he had had her for some time, only she was not an office patient, so nobody had known about her. Also, Angela anticipated that the housekeeping allowance would prove rather more squeezable now, with Wallie gone. Still, one cannot pass into the motor-car classes on a shoestring, of course; and Wallie, with his prodigal allowance and his handsome store in the bank, now literally rolled in wealth.
Brilliant prosperity, however, did not seem to have improved her little brother's character; he proved to be as reluctant as ever to "part." After a good deal of unworthy haggling, he agreed to lend Angela but fifty dollars, and actually entered the amount in a ridiculous little black book he kept for such things.
The joke of it was that fifty dollars was really more than Angela had expected. She went out from the interview well pleased. Her resolve was to spend thirty dollars of Wallie's loan on a new suit, and keep all the rest for gasoline.
They had all cautioned her, her father, her brother, the nice man who sold the gasoline, to pick the quietest streets, and to go very slowly. So, from the alley-mouth, her safe progress had been by Gresham Street straight to peaceful Mason, where the traffic was so reassuringly light; and now, as she rolled securely out Mason Street, there began to dawn within her a first shy confidence. She went as slowly as her well-wishers had meant, at least; prudently close to the known haven of the sidewalk she kept at all times; now and then she stopped short, just to see if she could, and always she could. Through all, was the indescribable thrill of really doing it for herself now; lingering incredulity but gave a sharper savor to delight. And she was continually excited with the consciousness of large new possibilities here, of personal power in quite a new dimension.
It was possible to go on indefinitely out Mason Street, but at Olive (always a quiet thoroughfare) she was seized with a sudden adventurousness. She decided to turn up Olive, in short; not meaning to stop at the Wings', of course, but just thinking that if the Wings were looking out the window as she went by, it would be quite a pleasant thing. The enterprise, once conceived, was carried out with perfect technical success; but at the moment of passing the Wings', unluckily, an enormous ice-wagon came lumbering close by, riveting her attention, leaving her not so much as an eyelid to wink toward people's windows. Hence, she never knew whether the Wings were looking out or not. But her confidence waxed. At Center Street the rumble of a street-car warned her to stop a moment—just in time, too, for the car was hardly two blocks away—and when the car had passed, what must she do but roll boldly across the tracks and into the altogether unexplored regions beyond!
What prompted her to do this? Of course, the natural thing was to turn down Center Street a block and get straight back to quiet Mason, which had been duly tried and not found wanting. Afterward, she remembered distinctly that she had been on the point of doing just that. Was it the new adventurousness that beckoned her on, instead? Was it something yet subtler and more mysterious? At any rate, here she was pushing into a quarter of the city where she had never set foot in her life, where, in all human probability, her foot alone would never have brought her. And lo, she had not gone a block into the undiscovered country when a wonder befell, and with a little jump, all but a little cry, she saw the lost member of her coterie rise suddenly before her.
He had come round the unknown corner just ahead, and was walking straight toward her. She became aware of the beating of her heart. All this, it must be understood, was the very first time that Angela had taken out her Fordette alone.
Mr. Garrott was just off the train. Two hours in a day coach might have cramped his long legs; there might have been cinders down the back of his neck. Nevertheless, he advanced with an unmistakably lively tread, continually slapping his leg with a folded periodical of a size and shape like "Willcox's Weekly."
Nor was the coterie member's presence on the Wings' street mere blind chance, either. Those remarkable articles in the magazines about Cousin Mary, which had but popped as a rumor into one of Angela's ears and out the other, had naturally occupied a somewhat more prominent place in the thought of their creator. He remained, indeed, dazzled by the completeness of the write-ups' triumph.
Charles had stayed in the country four days longer than he had intended. And in his extended absence his whole mine of publicity had gone off with a brilliant suddenness that had startled him. The successful sale of the third write-up before he left town had assured a decisivecoup, but the quick action the weeklies had given him went beyond all reason. He had not hoped that even the first of the write-ups could see print before the middle of the month, say; on the contrary, he had discovered the last and best of them—the one signed Charles King Garrott—on the train just now, in "Willcox's," for January 10th. In short, in the space of a Christmas holiday he, Charles, had spread the vindicating feats and features of his "demoted" friend to the four corners of the globe. Literally that, for did not the combined circulation of "Willcox's," the "Saturday Review," and "Hervey's National" exceed two million copies weekly (this on the word of the circulation managers themselves, a class of men whose consecration to the austerest veracity has passed into proverb)? Surely there remained few literate persons in the world to-day who could plausibly pretend that they had never heard of Mary Wing.
And Mary (as Angela had noted) had appreciated these extraordinary services to the full. The letter she had written him in the country, after the appearance of the "Saturday Review" article, was uniquely grateful. A beautiful letter Charles had thought it; he had it in his inside pocket now. And the interesting thought it had raised was this: If his usually independent friend could be as grateful as that for the write-ups, what would she say when his whole plan worked out, and his Public Opinion had overwhelmed the School Board for her? Thus, on the train, after reading "Willcox's" piece three times, and now as he strode up the quiet back-street from the station, the author was intently plotting out the next, or practical, stage of his campaign, still unsuspected by her: the stage of the reprinting of the write-ups in the local papers, in fine, of repeated editorial endorsement of the same, of the outburst of letters from "Indignant Taxpayers," "High School Graduates," and "Old Subscribers"—practically all, of course, written by Uncle George Blenso and himself.
His thoughts proved increasingly stimulating to the home-come Charles. And when he came to Olive Street, he suddenly bethought him to turn up that way; not expecting to stop at the Wings', of course (for he had an engagement to call there this evening, much as if he hadn't been a modern at all), but merely thinking that if he should happen to meet Mary it would be quite a pleasant thing....
Having turned, the buoyant young man presently sent, as it were, a scouting eye on ahead. And it fell, not upon the friend he had made famous in a night, but upon an Object approaching.
The object was a conveyance, a little vehicle of the self-propelling type. It was an automobile, clearly; a runabout, you would have to term it, though certainly of a pattern adopted in no recent year. So steep and bobbed was this runabout's little body, so quaintly archaic its contour, that it stirred in the beholder dim recollections of the early days of the horseless age, of strange pictures seen in scientific magazines back in the nineties. Very slowly the little vehicle approached, but very loudly, too, with an increasing bias toward the sidewalk, with queer rumblings and groanings, with the oddest snorts.
Charles's puzzled eye lifted. And so it was that it encountered again the soft gaze that he had last seen misted in tears, upon a sofa. And so he heard the pretty voice, that had once referred to him as a brute, saying:—
"How do you do, Mr. Garrott!... I—I'm very glad to see you back!"
"Why—MissFlower!"
Sheer surprise had halted him in his tracks, and the self-propelling runabout, which had been almost stationary all along, became entirely so, right at the curb.
"When did you get home?" Miss Flower was finishing, laughing, a becoming color in her cheeks.
"I'm just in—this minute! How are you? I—ah—didn't realize at all that it was you." He had taken the small hand she offered, momentarily flustered, despite all effort, by the utterly sudden re-meeting. He was aware that the girl looked a little conscious, too. But something in her gaze seemed to be trying to tell him that bygones were bygones now; and she went on with reassuring naturalness:—
"I hope you had a nice holiday? I've wanted very much to see you, and thank you myself. About Wallie, I mean—your offering to teach him—"
"Oh!—Why,that!"
"It was really the nicest thing. I—haven't seen you since, but you don't know how much I—we all appreciated—"
With recovered poise the young man easily brushed aside these thanks. "But I'm awfully glad," he added, "that he didn't wait for me, after all."
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Youheard, then?"
He mentioned his letter from Mary Wing, causing her to say, "Oh," again.—"Wasn't itwonderful! I knew you'd be interested...."
She was prettier than he remembered—or was it merely that the new hat (trimmed but yesterday) was more becoming than the old?—and her gaze, though not reproachful a bit, had for him a quality subtly appealing. Of the lives and loneliness of young womanly women—of that forcedwaitingwhich dams up all energies unused, and hangs the spirit to thrash about in a void, working over each small event to a towering importance—of such matters, a man, even Charles, the authority, knew only through the powers of his imagination. Charles did observe, however, that this girl seemed very glad to see him. And he felt that he now reciprocated these feelings.
"But," said he, with a hypocritically pleasant look at the vehicle, "Santa Claus seems to have remembered you, too! This is something new, isn't it?" said Charles, though feeling that new was hardly the word.
"Yes,—aren't you surprised? My brother in Pittsburg gave it to me. I've just learned to run it! It was so exciting!"
And then, in a pretty, hesitating way, she said: "Won't you let me drive you—home, or wherever you're going? I'd like to, so much. I—want so to tell you all the news."
He protested that he could not think of using Miss Flower as a taxicab. But when she urged it, in pleasing, ingenuous sentences, and explained that she was out only to drive about anywhere, for practice, it did not occur to him to maintain the churlish negative. And, indeed, this was exactly what he had desired from the moment of reading her perfect note last month—sweet reconciliation in just such a casual way, admitting or entailing next to nothing.
So the returning author of the write-ups was to be seen carefully squeezing himself, and "Willcox's," into the seat of Tommy's delightful gift.
"Let's see—the engine's still going—isn't it?" said she, rather superfluously, it seemed, in view of the uproar. "Then I have to kick that and push this over...."
As the girl said, so she did, her look a little anxious, her young face flushed with excitement. And, sure enough, the vehicle, of a self-propelling type, suddenly shook itself with a few loud snorts, and jumped forward with a jar.
"And what sort of car is this?" resumed Charles, dissembling intense curiosity as mere sympathetic interest.
"It is a Fordette," replied Angela, not without pride.
As they wobbled round the corner, narrowly missing the sidewalk, she added in the same proud manner: "And this is my very first drive by myself."
The taking of the corner (she explained that she could not turn round alone yet) meant that he was not going to pass the Wings', after all; but Charles hardly noticed that. He had himself to look to, in his somewhat unusual position. However, the drive to the Studio, though noisy, was very short; her completely feminine inefficience as a driver, their snail's progress, could not extend it over many minutes; and the whole thing proved as easy and reproachless as could possibly have been wished. Light friendly talk was the note, flowing without embarrassment now. Angela told of the two great happenings in her family, seeming to count upon his interest, and getting it genuinely enough, too. He was glad, sincerely, that Luck had smiled on this girl, who had seemed to him not to be having much of a chance. But she was not one, even so, to take all the conversation to herself; it was a trait that he had noted, and liked, in her from the beginning.
"Mr. Garrott," she said, at the first little pause, "aren't you going to have some stories out pretty soon now? You know you told me you were writing some—before you began your book?"
How gladly Mr. Garrott would have reported a little luck, too! But no, he was still known to Tables of Contents only as the author of write-ups. Somewhat ruefully, he explained to Angela his position about the editors; namely, that the sooner the lot of them came under the eye of a lunacy commission, the better for all concerned.
She became the comforter: "But perhaps they've accepted some of your stories while you were away so long!" He, however, knew that there was nothing in that.
"Well, no—no. You see, my—my relative who lives with me, Judge Blenso, looks after my mail when I'm away. And he's been sending me the casualty lists from time to time."
"But that story I liked so much—you told me a little about it one day—about Helena and her husband, don't you remember, who went off to the desert island—"
"Oh, that? That's been declined—yes, declined three times, if I remember rightly—"
"Really!But howcouldthey! I should think they would havejumpedat it! Why, I thought it was just wonderful...."
Her instinct for supplying charm was not amiss, it seemed.
"By the way," said the young author carelessly, as they curved into his own street, "have you happened to see this?"
And he not only showed Angela his "Willcox's," with the write-up in it, but bestowed it upon her, for her own. It developed that he had extra copies in his pocket.
Angela was very grateful for the magazine. Everything was as pleasant and friendly as possible. And at parting, she said, with only the slightest return of self-consciousness:—
"This has been a very short drive, Mr. Garrott! I hope we can have a real one some day soon."
To that the young man, standing on the sidewalk before his own door, replied with a courteous generalization. Wariness was reflexive with him, so to say. But then, as he looked at the soft young face, he seemed to become suddenly conscious of the essential caddishness of his past behavior, and of yet another feeling, too, less coolly judicial. Had not the Kiss, in fact, set this girl somehow apart from others, remaining as a subtle bond after all?
Pressing her slender hand, he added: "Meanwhile, I've enjoyed this one very much! You've been—extremely good to me."
"Willcox's" had given Mary the Freewoman a fine spread. The write-up occupied all of one of its large pages, with three paragraphs "Continued on Page 49," among the Men's Ready to Wear Clothing. Out of the middle of the text, the best of the portraits supplied by Fanny Warder gazed back steadily at the two relatives in the Studio. The famous Mary was seated in a flowered armchair, and seemed just to have looked round over her shoulder. Her delicate, quite girlish, face wore her characteristic look of faint, grave interrogation; her eyes were intent and fine.
"Gad, you know!" said Judge Blenso, who had seen Charles's name in print for the first time with an exclamation of pride and pleasure. "Why, it's stunnin', my dear fellow! Simply stunnin'!"
But the mind's eye of Charles, looking down at the life-like presentment, was seeing that confident gaze averted; the ear of his fancy was hearing the low sounds of womanly emotion in this quarter at last. That, of course, was just after he had gently said to her—why, it might be next week!—"Do you remember telling me one day that I couldn't help you at all? Why, Miss Mary, did you really suppose I'd let you go on as a Grammar School teacher tillMay!...."
"Bring 'em out as a holiday book—that's what I say! Why, good gad, Charles!—we only got twenty dollars for that piece there!"
The young man laughed absently, and removed his overcoat. A glance at Big Bill showed that it was just four o'clock. He had examined the mail, heard the secretary's unfavorable reports. The Studio, after nearly three weeks' holiday, suggested the necessity of work undoubtedly; he was as far from settling upon his Line as ever. But it seemed that he didn't feel like plotting scenarios to-day.
The "Post," the "State," the "Chronicle"—why shouldn't he go down there now, get the thing started at once?...
"Oh, Judge, by the way! Do you know whether Miss McGee ever brought back that book I lent her?—fat red book, called 'Marna'?"
"'Marna,' 'Marna'? Never heard of it. Yes, that's so, she did! Here it is!" said the Judge, and forthwith plucked Miss Angela's long-kept loan from the bookcase close by.
"That's it! Let's lay it here on the mantel. Then maybe I'll remember—"
"And borrowed a lot more, too!" exclaimed the Judge, suddenly laughing loud and long. "Gad, I lent her an armful, fact!—night we had the sleet-storm!"
"You did?—good! We'll convince her we're her true friends yet."
His secretary, having gazed at him a moment with brilliant blankness, suddenly exclaimed: "Why, Charles, my dear fellow, you're looking like a fighting-cock! You must have put on a stone—fine! Here, let me feel your muscle!"
Charles tried to evade that ceremony, but it was, of course, no use. Having caught him going through certain setting-up exercises one night, and being misled by the light remark he let fall, Judge Blenso was irrevocably convinced that the sedentary Charles had an affair of honor on his hands. The night he made this discovery—the very night Charles secretly began the exercises, of course, the night of the day he had seen Mysinger on the street—the Judge had become almost dangerously excited, springing from bed and walking about a long time in his pajamas, saying over and over: "The old blood'll tell! Gad, you know! It's the old blood!" All attempts to explain, then and since, had been utterly without effect.
However, a knock on the door interrupted the proceedings, and Mrs. Herman came walking into the Studio—a dark, round, rosy little body, beetle-browed but beaming.
"Such a popular man I never saw!" said she, roguishly. "One lady meeting him and driving him up from the station, another calling him up before he's hardly arrived, and goodness knows who'll be next!"
"Why, who's calling me, Mrs. Herman?"
"It's Miss Wing!—waiting at the phone! And no wonder, with all you and the Judge have done for her, I'm sure! Judge, I hope you find your new chair comfortable?"
Having received the unexpected summons with a peculiar start of gladness, the young man descended the stairs with the most agreeable anticipations. To do a valuable service for a friend is, with some natures, to become fonder than ever of that friend; and Charles, from the moment of reading her unprecedented letter, was aware that his original services to Mary had distinctly had these sentimental reactions. (For of course such naturesaresentimental, disgustingly so, and real Men—not to say realistic men—invariably hate and despise their friends, and speak to said friends at all only with a view to taking away their money or their wives.)
So, sitting down at the little telephone-table in the dark rear-hall, Charles smiled to himself and said, in a false voice:—
"Pardon me, but is this the famous Miss Wing, who—"
And Mary's voice seemed to spring toward him through the receiver, like an embrace: "Oh,King Charles!"
It was a little name she had made long ago by turning his first two names about, but reserved for rare occasions only. Rare also was it to hear this commonly contained voice so deeply stirred.
"Welcome home! I hope I didn't interrupt your work, but it seemed I couldn'twait! And, of course, I haven'thalfthanked you yet, haven't begun to tell you how much—how much—I appreciate all you've done for me...."
Once more, the fortunate Charles was brushing aside a lady's gratitude—rather generously, considering the infrequency of grounds of gratitude here. He laughed gaily into the receiver.
"The real point is, why under the sun did you connect me right away with the remarkable outburst of popular admiration? Hartwell went gossiping about, I suppose?"
"I didn't need Mr. Hartwell to tell me anything about that! But—"
"Aha! So Fanny told you about the photographs—"
"She never breathed a word—"
"Good-evening, Miss Holmes!—old Watson speaking! Will you kindly explain your—!"
"Why, of course there wasn't but one person on earth who could have done such a beautiful thing for me!"
All alone in the hall, Charles felt himself coloring with pleasure. However, the unwonted flush was not for long.
"I have to pinch myself," the girl's eager voice rushed on (did it sound just a thought more triumphant than even the author of the write-ups could have expected?),—"for every magazine I pick up is full of nothing but Me! I've just seen 'Willcox's'—oh, you don't know how much I liked that! You've simply taken my breath away! And then to come in and findthis!—everything beautiful happening to me at once! I—"
"What?Morehonors, celebrity?"
"The greatest!—the most wonderful! Mr. Garrott, what DO you suppose?"
Mr. Garrott hardly liked the slant the conversation was taking. The understanding was that whatever beautiful things happened to the Career were to happen exclusively through him now.
"Why!—I can't guess! Not—Has the School Board—"
"Pish for the School Board," cried the voice that was wont to be so calm. "You're talking tothe new Secretary of the League!"
"I'm....What?"
"The person you're conversing with, if you please, is the General Secretary of the National League for Education Reform!" Her happy laugh rang on the wire: "Are youstaggered? Well, I am, too! I simply can't begin to take it in...."
Had Mrs. Herman's house fallen about his ears, the young man at the telephone-table could, indeed, scarcely have been staggered more. His sense was of one falling headlong through space. He gripped the edge of the table with a large left hand, and for the instant there was no speech in him.
"I found the letter from Dr. Ames when I got in just now—oh, the nicest letter, explaining everything! And of course I wanted to tell you right away—you've been so good about wanting to help! Don't you remember, it was you who spoke of this as my brilliant revenge? We little thought then ..."
Wanting to help!Doubt not, that was the body blow. "No—no! And I—I really don't take it in—even now," he was saying, struggling desperately for his mask. "I—ah—I'd given up all—idea, you see! Why, I understood that wasall off! I—"
"Ofcourse—so had I! That's what makes it such a wonderful bolt from the blue! There was another candidate, you see—a college president, imagine!—and Dr. Ames says he felt he ought to be very discreet and reticent till it was all settled. But I was elected unanimously, and must be in New York to take charge of the office on March 1st...."
It was the complete collapse of his triumph and his hope: he would not be going to the newspaper-offices now. But that sentence, that concrete date, took the whole matter deeper still. Charles Garrott took a firmer grip on Mrs. Herman's little table. Now his voice came firmer, too:—
"The first woman secretary they ever had!... Why—it'simmense!"
In the ensuing dialogue, in which, for pride's sake, he sought to strike just the right felicitatory note, there was an instant when the possibility flashed upon him that the stunning event was itself but the unimagined by-product of the write-ups. The directors had decided not to give the distinguished post to an obscure provincial teacher, when all of a sudden his great broadside of fame for Mary had come roaring in among them. The thought, in this moment of utter frustration, seemed actually welcome to him. But it had hardly fluttered before Mary struck it dead, in the most incidental manner: incidental—since, to be just, she, having no knowledge whatever of his secret plans, could hardly guess what annihilation she was dealing out to them. It developed, in short, that her election, though held back a few days to be ratified by the trustees of the League's endowment fund, had actually taken place on December 27th. And it was too readily recalled that the first of the write-ups had not appeared till the following day.
"Yes—yes!... Fine holiday, thank you!—fine! But of course—no triumphs like this to report!..."
"Well!—I mustn't keep you now, of course!" said the victorious voice. "I'm looking forward to seeing you ..."
No, it was sufficiently clear that he had but labored to heap coals in Newcastle. It was just the case of the old write-up, last year; only now a thousand times worse. Often before, this desire in him to help, this spontaneous protecting instinct which seemed to be always flowing out here, had been rebuffed and defeated. But this time, his defeat seemed to be final. And, hanging up the receiver at last, the young man sat silent with the feeling that something valuable and important had suddenly departed from his life.
He felt that he had been rather imposed upon, but that didn't matter particularly. He felt beaten, as he had never been beaten before, and that seemed to matter a good deal. With an odd and profound sense of blank chagrin, he recognized, at last, that when Mary Wing had said that she didn't need his help, she had been merely stating a literal and obvious truth. How he had been such a fool as ever to think otherwise?
But deeper than all this, it seemed clear from the beginning that he was disappointed in his friend, personally. Had he not read into her all along, and put into the write-ups, a rather finer quality than she, in fact, possessed? Spinsters were entitled to a man's freedom to follow away their work—of course. But it seemed that he had never been able to imagine Mary as actually seizing this Right. And now, here she was doing it, with joy—the end of next month. Now behold her, whose praises he had so superfluously sung round the world—just an ordinary Redmantler after all, it seemed, exultantly striking off mother, home, friends; a female Egoist, no more, visibly engaged in "fiercely hacking away"....
He could, indeed, scarcely take it in. And stoutly he assured himself that his whole feeling about the matter would have been different—if only she had showed, at once, that this would be a wrench for her, that her thought was colored by a sense of values not connected with her Self. But no; it seemed that the new General Secretary had no thought to spare for the immaterial business of being a sister and being a daughter.
So Charles's call at the Wings' on the evening of his homecoming wore a complexion not contemplated by him when he had arranged the matter.
He had made this engagement, under the general misapprehension, in his reply to Mary's grateful letter last week. And now he had to keep it, however malapropos, resolved as he was that she should never sense any criticism or disapprobation in him. To seek to "influence" her, naturally never entered his mind. No, he was her casual spectator now and henceforward; he had dipped his oar in her affairs for the last time.
But the call was hardly much of a success, despite all efforts. Mary, having now had time to recapture her usual poise, no longer impressed one as being so unreservedly overjoyed with herself. It was noted that she kept referring to the write-ups, kept assuring him how delightful she found it to be a celebrity as well as a Secretary, etc., etc. The caller's intellect coldly gave her credit for "being very nice." However, no niceness could help much to drape the stark obtruding facts; no civilities seemed fitted to cope with the intangible wall suddenly sprung up in the old friendship. And if there had lingered in Charles's mind some revolting incredulity, some reactionary insistence that Mary could never really carry out the typical exploit of the Egoette, the talk this evening finally killed it. The famous educator's sentences made it clear, once and for all, that she was Leaving Home for good—for her own good, of course—on the 1st day of March succeeding.
Charles was determinedly "sincere" throughout the brief call, continuously and spuriously hearty. Inwardly, his resolve grew more and more fixed that this young woman, who was so rarely competent to Lead Her Own Life, should be permitted to lead it quite unassisted henceforth. For himself, he decided that his life should go to the unremitting service of pure Letters. But of such matters, of course, he permitted his agreeable chatter to yield no hint. Taking his departure upon a new wave of felicitations, he could but congratulate himself upon the trained adeptness of his mask.
And Mary, having shut the door upon her caller, stood leaning against it, her arched brows drawn together in a faint frown, her fine eyes faintly bewildered.
"Now what," she said, half aloud, "have I said or done, or left unsaid or undone, this time?"
And then she went slowly back to her mother's bedroom, where she found her mother with stockings to darn, and (taken unawares) her eyes a little red.
In the Home on Center Street, the shrunken curtain was rarely hooked back on the nail now. And on the ledge of the little window that gazed toward the Blest, the shabby opera-glasses gathered dust.
As is perfectly understood, Careers in the making are the stuff to make conservatives of others. Observing Egoettes, an authority, if male, inevitably reacts, thinking better and better of the gentle business of supplying beauty and supplying charm. Charles Garrott, in short, having repudiated all connection with the life of Mary Wing, was in just the proper frame of mind to applaud the life of Mary's so different cousin. And Charles did applaud it—certainly. But, of course, such purely scientific endorsement did not controvert another established known truth, namely, that, under certain circumstances and as applied to certain individuals, the supply of the soft commodities referred to may very well prove a little in excess of the demand.
The well-known thought first flickered back into Charles's mind on the third day of his homecoming. At the moment, he stood on the corner nearest Berringer's, having just dismounted there from Miss Angela's conveyance. On the fifth day of his homecoming, at the same corner, his reflections on supply and demand were assuming an increasing definiteness.
"Well, then—good-bye!" he was saying, with his fatal pleasantness. "And thank you very much for the lift."
From the seat of Tommy's valuable donation, Angela was gazing up at him. And he saw that her face, which had been smiling, was touched with a brief seriousness.
"Oh, you know I've enjoyed it—so much! But—we never seem to have anything but these little bits of talks. I'm sorry.... Perhaps I'll see you to-morrow?"
"Ha!—quite likely!—yes! Thank you! Well!—good-bye!"
And he turned away toward luncheon and the good man-talk with a crescent uneasiness, having failed to point out—possibly failing to remember—that to-morrow was Saturday, and he would be off to the country again.
Day before yesterday, he had encountered the conveyance as he left the Demings' at one o'clock. To-day, he had overtaken it on his walk downtown—literally that, for he was a fast walker and a little absent-minded besides. Thus he had now enjoyed three peace-making drives with the girl he had once parted from forever, all in the course of his first five days at home. And now at the end of their third pleasant talk, particularly after these last prospective remarks of hers, Charles could not but feel that the true object of these re-meetings had been satisfactorily accomplished. Now the reconciliation was complete; now he felt no lingering shadow of doubt of his forgiveness for having once been a brute.
He did not regret the drives; he was very glad, indeed, to be good friends again; but his subtle instinct seemed to warn him that he and Angela would do best, would get along with the fewest misunderstandings, without a rapidly developing intimacy. And, taking the higher view, it clearly was not right, it was not moral, that a confirmed bachelor like himself should go on indefinitely monopolizing a nice young Spinster Home-Maker's time.
Returning to town on Monday, Charles, though in the kindest way, went to Berringer's by the Center Street car-line. He felt, indeed, that he was really looking out for the girl's higher good more than for his own: she lacked that competence to manage her own life, so harshly flaunted by others. All passed off well. On Tuesday he utilized the traction system again, with equally satisfying results. And then, on Tuesday afternoon, as he trod professionally from the old lady's who was studying French to Miss Grace Chorister's, he suddenly ran upon the Fordette again.
By an odd chance, the quaint little vehicle was standing still, directly in front of the Choristers'. His reconciled friend was out of it, standing by, bending well over the car, peering into it. Nevertheless, by some sixth sense, she saw him at once and, straightening up with a pleased smile, she waved and called:—
"Oh, Mr. Garrott!—how glad I am to see you! Do you know how to crank?"
He approached with the gallantest air, the most civil speeches. All the same, as he bent to his hard labor—for the Fordette proved dangerously stiff in the crank—and politely sought to explain how to avoid killing the engine for the future, he was conscious of a certain sense of rebellion.... Excellent, laudable, justifying things, beauty and charm; but the plain fact was that he, Charles, was simply not in the market for them at present, that was all.
The friendship, indeed, was well cemented now; the talk characterized with a growing confidence.
"Oh, how strong you are!" said Angela admiringly, as he finally got the old engine to spinning. "I do wish I could do it like that! Now you must let me pay you for your trouble!—won't you? I'm just driving around, really, so don't think—"
"Oh, thank you, but I go in here. Business hours, you know! Well! Now you're—"
"Oh, is this where you teach every afternoon?" asked Angela, with interest, gazing past him at the handsome stone "front" of the Choristers'. "Oh, yes, Miss Chorister.... How long does the lesson last?"
"Oh, an hour—usually. But, of course," added the young man, his eye wavering slightly, "that depends somewhat—on circumstances—"
"You don't get out till about half-past four, then? I dowishyou weren't so awfully busy! Mr. Garrott, have you been away again? I don't seem to have seen you at all for a good many days now."
"Yes! That's it!—been away again! I go away all the time—practically. And when I'm here, why, it's nothing but work, work, work, from morning to night, for me! It's a wonder to me I have a friend left, I have to be so horribly unsociable—always. But," continued Charles, "I'm glad I happened by in time to be of some help. By the by, hadn't you better get in and try her out? I don't like to rush on to my lesson till I know you're all right."
"Yes, I suppose I had. I oughtn't to stop you now."
His suggestion, indeed, had a striking reasonableness. Fortunately, the try-out proved quite successful, after only a little pushing and kicking. But the Fordette snorted from before the Choristers' very slowly, Angela looking back over her shoulder, smiling at him, a pretty and appealing look on her entirely feminine face.
Charles went up to his daily hour with Miss Grace, in a brown study.
Miss Grace, it must be known, was a Temporary Spinster, verging toward Permanence; she was round, gentle, blonde, by no means displeasing or ill-looking. Had the world been the normal place Old Tories took it to be, Miss Grace would undoubtedly have been one of those happy women who find themselves, at twenty-five, with a home, a husband, and three darling little curly-headed children; and there were a hundred signs that so she would have found full happiness indeed. But the world being not normal now, but, on the contrary, in Unrest, something remote had gone wrong with Miss Grace, parting her from her manifest destiny. Perhaps the panic of 1907 was to blame, or a decrease in the visible gold supply; perhaps the trouble was in that hard saying of the Redmantlers, that Love was going out. At any rate, here hung Miss Grace on the parent stem in Washington Street, a Waiting Woman: the non-understanding and unaccounted-for Anomaly in a disordered social system; an adult human being thirty-two years old, with nothing upon earth to do.
Miss Grace's subjects were Sociology and the History of the World. An agreeable soul herself, she noted that her tutor's manner this afternoon was taciturn and distrait. As he was concluding his remarks upon the thirty pages of Lester Ward that made her lesson, she noted that he lost his thread suddenly, and left a sentence permanently hanging in mid-air. Back into the tutor's head, in fact, the artless questionings of another had popped with arresting force: "Is this where you teach every afternoon? You get out about half-past four?" From taciturn, Mr. Garrott's manner became restless and rather irritable. And when the hour of four-thirty arrived, he did not snap his watch at Miss Grace and depart at once, according to his almost invariable habit. No, he moved in a novel manner, to the drawing-room window. And he stood there, oddly and irresolutely, gazing out, first up the street and then down.
Why had he mentioned that the lesson lasted an hour usually? Why hadn't he said, frankly, that it lasted till five or six o'clock, and often later?
Slowly but surely the idea was being established that it was the natural and usual thing for him and Angela to drive in the old Fordette every day. It was time for him definitely to break up this idea. Otherwise, what was to be the end of it all?—that was what he wanted to know. More and more he seemed to become aware of a gentle claim, an indescribable pressure, very soft, yet rather alarmingly sure. Why on earth couldn't she be satisfied just to be pleasant friends once more? Why all this talk of future meetings, of seeing you again all the time?
Miss Grace stood some distance behind her tutor, observing his strange behavior. Somehow her attitude wore the air of a typical expression of character. Miss Grace had flutterings, as witness her growing knowledge of the Merovingians; she even pretended to nibble fearfully at her tutor's occasional exhortations, that she cease her parasiting and go to work. But beneath such vague symptoms of Unrest, it was clear that she remained as her tradition and environment had fixed her, a Woman of Romance: that is to say, a being gladly content to serve as the spectator and audience of Man.
"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly, in her rather childlike voice, "I don't believe you are a bit busy this afternoon. You really must stay for tea. Nobody's coming in, sister's out, and you know you haven't stayed for perfect ages."
To her surprise, the unsocial tutor accepted at once. He remained with his pupil till quarter past five. Thereupon, he reached his Studio without interruption, entirely on foot.
Charles (thinking for the young girl's highest good) was rather pleased with this development. By accident, he seemed to have hit upon quite a satisfactory sort ofmodus vivendi: street-cars to Berringer's, and tea at Miss Grace's till dark. Next day he tried the programme again.
This time, it did not work out quite so well: the secret truth of the matter being that, at bottom, all Spinsters have certain well-defined points in common. That, in fact, is what makes them a class. And, speaking in the large, you may say that there is no such thing as a Permanent Spinster.
Lessons at the Choristers' took place in the library, a stately room, yet charming, too. Into it, a dusky maid wheeled a double-tiered tea-table, all mahogany and glass, silver and china atop, little cakes and small enticements on the deck below. Talk of historical matters ceased. There sprang up light prattle of the little things Miss Grace knew and liked best.
The tutor, basking by the fireside and waiting for night, was not unhappy. Though he frequently lectured Miss Grace, through long use he really liked her. Now, he was also consciously grateful for her haven from the too social life of Washington Street. That he could not go on taking tea with Miss Grace every day for the rest of his life he, of course, knew well; but he would just take each day's problems as he came to them. Meanwhile, this Spinster supplied a quiet charm. Her hands hovered ministeringly over the tea-table. For a plumpish woman, she had noticeably small hands, graceful and white. When the tutor made her a civil compliment, she colored like a school-girl.