But just as he reached the corner, he was suddenly arrested by the sound of his own name, rolling loudly after him down the street.
"Donald! Hi, there! Stop!"
Donald halting, looked upward and all about him. Presently, through the top branches of an intervening tree, he descried Charles Garrott leaning far out of Mrs. Herman's third-story window. "Well?" called Donald.
"What's the matter? Where're you going?" demanded Charles in a voice that broke easily through the tree. "I said we'd drive down together!"
He was heard continuing in another tone: "No!Stop, Eustace! Don't go away—I want you!"
"Much obliged," shouted Donald, "but I'd rather walk."
Charles said something out the window, which Donald failed to catch.
"What say?"
"You come back!" cried Charles, beckoning, while passing pedestrians craned their necks upward. "Wait for me—just a minute—I'm all ready! And I've got to speak to you—about several things! About the package!"
But Donald, objecting to the attention they were attracting, shook his head decisively. "Haven't time now. Forgot something ... back to my rooms."
"If you haven't time to wait, you certainly haven't time to walk back to your rooms! You're going to miss your train with all this walking!"
That was pointed enough to cause Donald to pause again, and look at his watch for the twentieth time. He found that he still had twenty-five minutes, time enough, of course, but then he might have to hunt for the sweater, and there was the business of the luggage at the station, too.
Down through the branches boomed the strangely insistent voice of Charles: "Why, by George! You've only got twenty minutes. Here, take my car there, quick! You can barely make it, driving fast ..."
And in a lower voice he said: "After him, Eustace! Get him to the station as fast as you can. Don't fail this time."
Donald was hesitating, struck as Charles meant him to be, with the fear that his watch might be slow. He now called, with evidences of ill-humor and disturbance:—
"All right, then! But I can't stop for you."
"Oh, that's all right, old fellow—my matters can wait! I'll look out for the package! Just you catch your train, that's all!"
Continuing to lean out of the Studio window, Charles watched the dullard step into the old lady's tightly closed car, and whirl away—safe at last. As the car shot round the corner, he suddenly laughed aloud: a triumphant laugh, but charged with irritation, too.
Then Charles, aloft, drew head and torso back into the Studio, banged shut the window, and found Mrs. Herman just plumping the large white box of things for Mary down on his writing-table. The spectacle brought forward the other matter instantly. Of course, he had agreed to receive the box purely as a means of keeping an eye on Donald.
"Oh, yes—as to the package, Mrs. Herman, perhaps you wouldn't mind taking it down as you go, and just leaving it on the hall table? I—ah—shall probably call a messenger to take it—a little later."
"Certainly, Mr. Garrott," said Mrs. Herman, picking up the box again. "And oh, would you mind telling the Judge I'd like to speak to him a minute before he goes out?"
"Certainly, Mrs. Herman."
The landlady, lingering, said: "He seems in poor spirits, don't you think so, Mr. Garrott? His appetite is not what it was. And he goes out and takes these long walks, alone, day after day, or sits here by himself in the Studio. I don't think it's good for him. I think he broods."
"It's nothing serious, Mrs. Herman. He's annoyed with me, I fear, for giving up some physical culture exercises which he hoped might make a man of me yet. Also, for being such a continuous failure as a writer."
"But it's not your fault, Mr. Garrott! You do the very best you can, I'm sure. The Judge is unreasonable—that's what I say. Oh, I could coax him into a good humor easily enough, but I scarcely ever see him nowadays, except at meal times. I can't very well offer to go with him on his walks, can I?—but I'm sure the solitude is bad for him."
"Ah, you should get yourself a little Fordette, Mrs. Herman."
"And what is a little Fordette, Mr. Garrott?"
"Oh—simply a sort of wheeled device for going with people on their walks. I'm explaining it in a story. But," said Charles, "I won't fail to give the Judge your message."
Left alone, the young man stood for a space in the middle of the floor, gazing intently at nothing. Then he seated himself at his table and produced manuscript from the drawer. Then he put the manuscript back in the drawer, and stared at nothing again. Finally, he rose, opened the bedroom door quietly, and said:—
"Judge, I find I have to go out for a little while."
Judge Blenso, in the bedroom, received the friendly information, and then his message from Mrs. Herman, with only a cold "Very well!" He stood at a long board, balanced on two distant chair-backs, listlessly pressing the trousers he didn't have on; his instrument being a patent electric-flatiron, which consumed quantities of current, which indeed fairly gave the measure of his landlady's adoration. Catch Mrs. Herman letting Two-Book McGee use so much as an electric curling-iron in the Second Hall Back!
"And Judge," added Charles, conciliatingly, "please don't bother to take that manuscript to the express-office—I mean 'Bandwomen'—unless you really want the walk."
"Very well! I hear you! Good gad, very well!" said the Judge.
Charles shut the door, regretfully. It had been like this between them for some weeks now. Even his generosity in quietly yielding the name of his own only novel produced no softening effect on his secretary's cold bored disapprobation.
He put on hat and overcoat, descended two flights, picked up the box of things for Mary, and went out upon his errand. He walked slowly, down Mason Street to Olive, and at Olive turned south.
For the second time, Donald had contrived to force his hand in regard to Mary: he was conscious of resenting that. Still—of course he had never meant to let the old friendship end in estrangement, and doubtless the casual pretext of the box was better than the formal "call" next week he had had in mind. To appear as Mary's cheerer-up now was, indeed, considerably beyond him. Nevertheless, he was well aware that what Donald had told him in this connection had made an instant difference in his feeling, made him readier to be friends again. If only she had felt and realized all this in the beginning, if only she had showed him so that day over the telephone....
Still, feeling wasn't enough, unfortunately. There was this whole business about Donald, for instance. In one way he could think of that almost pleasurably. Mary seemed to suppose that if she but arranged a house-party and gave Donald a sound talking to in advance, the whole thing was settled, down to the orange-blossoms. It required him to revise her crude plannings, put in the omittedfinesse, and deliver Donald safely at the station. But Charles, pacing gravely toward the unpremeditated meeting, large box under his arm, found his thought of the episode continually seeking deeper levels. If, two weeks from now, Donald was still not engaged to Helen, whose was to be the responsibility of pushing him on? Not Mary's, evidently. Was not this youth, in fact, but one more of those countless intimate obligations which strong women must "hack away," when resolved to lead their own lives? Donald was the apple of Mary's eye. Normally speaking, she was ready to do anything for him. But it seemed that even Donald, if he crossed the trail of the Career, would have to look to himself.
Or, more probably, he, Charles, would have to look out for him.
At the corner of Washington Street, pausing, the meditative young man consulted his watch; he shifted the box for the purpose just as Donald had done a few minutes earlier. It was quarter past five, exactly. Donald would be at the station now, without doubt, safe on the train. Well, here was one thing he had done for Mary, at any rate, as he should not fail to indicate to her. And thus, insensibly, his thought slipped into the pleasurable vein again, the superior, masterful vein, and his mind composed the light ironic sentences with which he should make known to Mary her remissness and his own subtle services.
Stepping down from the curb in this brown study, he all but walked into a motor-car whirring by: a car that was stealing the wrong side of the street, and cutting close to the sidewalk at that. Charles stopped and stepped back, just in time. And then, all in the same breath, his ears, his eyes, and his nostrils telegraphed his brain what car, and whose, this was. It was the Fordette, none other, going at an unprecedented speed, now curving back dangerously to the side where it belonged. On a cloud of the dark smoke it sometimes emitted, Angela's girlish laugh came floating back to him distinctly. But Charles's gaze was fixed on the figure of the man who sat at Angela's side and held the Fordette wheel; and his eyes all but started from his head as he perceived that it was Donald....
Yes, it was poor Donald fast in the Home-Making conveyance: Donald, snatched, she alone knew how, from his wedding-coach.
The famous Secretary sat at her desk in the well-kept sitting-room. She sat in the midst of documents and letters; large white sheets of her Education League writing-paper lay before her, the topmost sheet nearly filled with her neat chirography. Oblivious to small happenings in the world without, the Secretary was deep in her distinguished correspondence. But her desk, as it happened, stood in the window, and the Secretary, after all, was not so immersed in her affairs but that she looked out into the Park now and then, sometimes for whole minutes together. She looked, too, into the quiet street before the house. And so it was that her eyes, in time, fell upon the familiar figure of Charles Garrott; striding all at once into her range, turning swiftly in at her door, vanishing again into her vestibule, scarcely five feet from where she sat.
Though thus aware that she was about to have a caller, Mary did not at once spring up to go and welcome him. She sat, entirely motionless, her permanently questioning gaze fixed on the spot where the caller had passed from view. The ringing of the bell scarcely seemed to penetrate her consciousness. But then, in a moment, she dropped her pen quickly, and rose. Standing, she locked her two hands together before her, very tight, released them again, passed out into the hall, and opened her front door.
"Good-afternoon! This is an unexpected pleasure," said she, in her natural voice, or very near it. "Come in!—or can you?"
Her visitor looked full at her from the vestibule, unsmiling.
"Oh, certainly—if you're not too busy! It's what I am here for. How do you do to-day?"
"That's nice! You don't often honor us, and—I feared you had merely stopped to leave that package."
"Ah, yes!—the package! Some things Donald got for you—I suppose you know? He asked me—"
"Oh! I'm afraid that was very much of an imposition—and I was really in no hurry for them at all."
She thanked him, relieved him of the pretextual box, laid it on the hall table, and, with inevitable but extreme infelicity, continued:—
"You saw Donald to-day, then?"
A small silence preceded his controlled reply "Oh, yes!—I saw him."
"I've just packed him off to a house-party at the Kingsleys'—to make love to Helen Carson. But perhaps he told you?"
In the large mirror overhanging the table, the eyes of the once excellent friends briefly encountered. She was puzzled by the quality of his grave gaze.
"He did mention a house-party, I believe. But—"
Turning away toward the sitting-room, Mary filled the pause with a little laugh: "But you think he won't make love to Helen, perhaps?"
The grave young man, following her, did not burst forth, even then. His restraint seemed curious, even to himself. Crossing Washington Street just now, he had been full enough of plain speech, for this young woman's good. "I've had quite enough of this!" he would say to her. "I can't and won't give up my afternoons, my life, to playing nurse to Donald. If you are satisfied to have him marry Miss Angela, well and good. If not—" and then a last warning, far sharper, far more direct, than the other. But then as he waited upon her steps, and then as he looked at her in the door, the springs of this trivial anger had seemed mysteriously to subside and dry up. No doubt the Career-Maker's own look had something to do with that. Her face in the afternoon light was seen to be thin and tired; he thought he detected faint circles under her eyes, a slightly pinched look about her nostrils. But beyond all that, beyond any question of "sympathy," or cheering-up, it seemed that the affair itself had suddenly shrunk in importance. Donald's folly, Angela's little foibles, seemed to matter less to Charles as he found himself looking again at the departing heroine of his write-ups.
So he discharged his bolt with restrained formality: "It isn't that. I was only wondering whether or not you had packed him off, as yet."
"Oh!—but haven't I?... I don't understand."
"I happened to see him a minute ago, driving on Washington Street with your cousin—Miss Angela."
It was clear that the topic had lost no interest for Mary, at any rate. She stopped short in the middle of the floor, utterly taken aback.
"Donald!—as you came here?"
And, instantly recovering from mere astonishment, her capable gaze flew to the little watch on her wrist.
Charles reassured her, as dryly as possible: "However, they were headed toward the station, and going as fast as they could. I think he will make his train."
"But—it's not possible, I'm afraid! His train goes at five twenty-two—it's just that now!... Ah, howcouldhe!"
Producing his own valued chronometer, the young man compared it with the educator's small trinket.
"I believe you're a little fast, aren't you? I'm five-eighteen. And it was just quarter past when I saw them, for I looked to see. That gave him seven minutes—"
"Yes—well!—but Angela's little car is so slow—"
"Oh!—it can go fast enough for practical purposes—I've observed. Besides, Donald may have telephoned and found that the train was late."
"Yes—that's true."
Mary Wing looked toward the window, characteristically composed again, but evidently concerned enough.
"Well, I hope so. It would be too stupid of him to miss it, after all ... I can't think how he happened to be with Angela—at the last minute this way."
"How, indeed? But sit down, do, and I'll tell you why it seems particularly—mystifying to me. I hope," the formal caller added, with a glance toward the busy-looking desk, "I'm not interrupting?"
The General Secretary said no, with some brevity.
In sentences less copious and biting than he had sketched out on the corner, Charles recited the history of his futile afternoon. He could not, indeed, believe it possible that Donald, having donned the solemn bridegroom look for Helen Carson, would deliberately throw it off again for the sake of a short drive in the Fordette: which, to say the least of it, could be had at any time at his desire. Nor was Donald really a born fool, who would miss a train through sheer childish carelessness. The inference was that, encountering Angela, accidentally (more or less), just after his second start, the youth had calculated that he still had time to spare; and so had consented to exchange the speedy limousine for the Fordette: quite probably in no spirit more serious than that of a venturesome lark. Charles's remarks, at least, took these generous grounds, reassuring as to the moment. And still a tinge of exasperation crept into his account of his wasted labors. And still something in him seemed to require that he should bring these small responsibilities home where they belonged, for once: leaving them on her doorstep, as it were, for her to jump over when she went away.
But his story, inevitably, was one of ungallant efforts to evade impending pursuit. And when, to point up his lesson, he guardedly suggested a connection between the natural ambitions of Miss Angela, and the two complete transplantations of her family, Mary Wing seemed to gather more of his purely private thought than he had intended. One of her intent interrogative stares brought him to an unintended pause. And she commented quietly, but rebukingly, he considered:—
"You seem to have changed your opinion of Angela since last week."
There, of course, he hardly cared to justify himself. He could not well explain what Angela's resemblance to her mother had signified to him, and why he considered poor Dr. Flower the most magnificent romanticist in the world.
"I merely suggest," he said, with stiffening dignity, "that she does seem to be much interested in Donald—and he in her—now. I happen to know that he called on her twice the day he left for New York, and talked with her over the telephone this morning. But you mistake me, if you think I mean to criticize your cousin—personally. I hope I understand better than that how—all this—is as logical and mathematical as a natural law. How far in the other direction the education of women ought to take them ... that, of course, is not for me to guess.... My point is only that these—these perfectly logical ambitions—are strong enough to be taken seriously by those who mean to oppose them."
"Do you doubt that I take this seriously?"
"I have doubted it, I must admit.... Suppose this house-party comes to nothing, what do you mean to do?"
The former heroine of the write-ups did not answer him at once. She sat in a straight chair, half-sidewise, a considerable distance away; her arm was laid along the chair-back, her cheek sunk upon her hand. Something in the pose made the caller think of Donald's exaggerated statement, that he had never seen Mary so blue in his life.
When she spoke, it was not again to suggest, offhand, that he should save Donald by stepping in.
"You are right, of course," she said with a certain dignity herself. "I haven't been thinking of it as seriously as I should—evidently. Now—if this doesn't come to anything—I'll need some time to plan about it."
"It's going to be rather troublesome, I'm afraid. And you—I—"
"I'll make it my chief interest, you may be sure."
Then the stiff caller, examining his shirt-cuff as if he had never seen such an object before, released his logical comment:
"But I'm afraid you haven't left yourself a great deal of time, have you? Two weeks may prove rather a small allowance—for a difficult matter like this."
"Oh, I—hope there will be time enough. Meantime, I—"
"I hadn't realized you were going so soon, you see. That will add to the difficulties, I'm afraid. Donald says you expect to leave on the 20th."
He meant his rejoinders to be unanswerable, and she seemed to find them so. Glancing up from his cuff in the silence, Charles found his famous friend's eyes fixed upon him in a strange gaze, which her lids and lashes veiled at once. Had that look struck him from any other eyes in the world, he would have labeled it reproachful, without the smallest hesitation. But Mary was never reproachful: she scarcely thought enough of him for that; and, besides, the shoe was on the other foot, as she should know very well.
"I did say something of the sort last week, I believe—though no day was really settled on. But it was very nice of you," she went on naturally enough, but with too evident a wish to shift the conversation, "to take so much trouble about it to-day. I do appreciate all your interest in it—and I do believe it's going to turn out right, too. Donald certainly left me with that feeling, this afternoon. So don't let's bother about it any more now," said Mary. "I'd much rather hear—some more about your writing. I hope you've gotten the book well started now?"
But Charles, unique among the writers of the world, did not want to talk about himself to-day. No, he had found the topic for him now.
"No!—I haven't, I'm sorry to say. Your arrangements are all made, aren't they? Judge Blenso tells me you're going to live with Sophy Stein, who used to run the Pure Food laboratories here?"
Again her brief look seemed to thrust upon him like a hand, and again her reply glanced off:—
"Yes—I was planning to live with her. You knew her, didn't you, when—"
"I was going to say—if everything is arranged, perhaps you wouldn't need to start so early.... Of course, the idea of your friends here would be that you should wait till the last day."
As she neither approved nor rejected this amiable suggestion, Charles said: "How does that idea appeal to you?"
To his surprise, instead of answering his question, Mary rose abruptly and went over to her desk. He then assumed that she wished to show him some letter bearing on her arrangements for her new life. But it seemed that her movement had no such object. She merely stood there a moment, fingering her papers in an irresolute sort of way; and then, without a word, she moved a little farther, and stood, looking out of the window.
He said, at once with bewilderment and with increasing constraint: "Or possibly you don't wish me to know when you are going?"
Then Mary Wing turned in the dying light, and said, not dramatically at all, but in her quietest everyday voice:—
"No, I don't mind your knowing. I'm not going."
And still the authority on women did not understand.
"Not going—when?"
"I've decided not to accept the appointment."
And, sitting down, suddenly and purposelessly at her desk, the young woman of the Career added in a rather let-down voice: "I haven't told anybody at all yet. I just decided—last night."
Then came silence into the twilight sitting-room, surely a silence like none here before it. In the Wings' best chair, the caller sat still as a marble man, while the little noises from the street grew loud and louder. And then, quite abruptly and mechanically, he began to rise, exactly as if an unseen spirit were lifting him bodily by the hair. And he could feel all the blood drawing out of his face.
"Not going to accept the appointment," he echoed suddenly, in a queer voice.
And then, as if so reminded that his tongue possessed this accomplishment, he all at once burst out: "Why—but—why! Youhaveaccepted it! It was settled!—long ago!Not going!—what do you mean? Why, what's happened?"
The young woman seated so inappropriately at the desk, gazing so meaninglessly into pigeon-holes, made no reply. And now Charles Garrott was walking toward her, walking as the entranced walk, fascinated, staring with fixed eyes that had forgotten how to wink.
"What're you talking about? I don't know what you mean! Why, what's happened—what's gone wrong?"
Mary Wing grew restless under his questionings; she spoke with obvious effort: "Nothing's happened—nothing's gone wrong. I say, I simply decided that I wouldn't—take the position, after all. I decided I would refuse it. So I was writing to Dr. Ames—to explain ... That's all I can say."
But the man standing over her looked more spellbound than ever.
"Explain!—explain what?... Why—you can't put me off like this—can you?" said he, all his stiffness so shattered by her thunderbolt, all his struggle but for some effect of poise. "Youmustknow—I'm tremendously interested. And—I'm obliged to feel that something pretty serious has happened to make you—"
"No!—nothing has happened at all, I've said. I assure you—nothing."
"But ... You can't imagine how absolutely in the dark ... Do you mean you've found something else you'd rather do—here?"
"I suppose that's one way of putting it—yes.... Why, I simply say that when the time came—I wasn't able to do it, that's all.... No, I didn't want to do it—that must have been it. Of course, people always do what they really want most."
"You didn't want to do what?... You know, that's just what I don't quite understand."
"But I've just told you," she protested; and there stopped short.
She had overcome the brief weakness which had seemed to seize her when, for the first time, she heard her intention declared aloud, the spoken word, it may be, imparting to it the last irrevocable stroke. She, the competent, would not be incompetent with her own great affair. And now, as if she reluctantly acknowledged some right he had to understand, she seemed to force herself to speak again, in a voice from which her self-control had pressed all tone.
"I mean that, when the time came, I couldn't pick up and go away—for good—no matter what was at the other end. I mean I wasn't willing to. I'd rather not."
She took a breath; and then tone came into her sentences, but it was only a sort of light hardness.
"I suppose it all came down to this—that I wasn't willing to leave mother—in the way I should have to leave her. I didn't want to. It was not possible ... And I'm afraid that's all I can say."
"But of course I understand you now," said the young man instantly, in the strangest mild voice.
"Then, if you will—please me—let's say no more about it."
To that stanch speech he made no reply: perhaps he did not hear it. Winter dusk had crept quickly into the pretty sitting-room. The tall figure motionless by the little desk grew perceptibly dimmer.
That understanding Charles spoke of had come upon him by successive shocks, each violent in its way. His had been the mere mad sense of a world too suddenly swung upside down, of the individual himself left standing brilliantly on his head. That had been just at first; and then perception had slid into him like a lance, and his feet had struck the solid ground with a staggering jolt. It was as if, at a word, all the supporting fabrications of his mind had turned to thin air, and out he fell headlong, at last, upon the real and the true. And this real and this true was Mary Wing, nothing else, standing where she had always stood; Mary, his best old friend, whom he had given his back to, belabored with harsh words, while she struggled at the crossroads of her life—to this. Now contrition, now humbleness had shaken the young authority, a poignant conviction of his failure, in understanding and in friendship. And then she spoke again, making it all quite perfect with simple words that he himself, in a dream, might have shaped and put into her mouth.I wasn't willing to leave mother.And after that, it seemed that nothing about himself could possibly matter in the least.
"You know," he said, quite naturally, out of the small silence, "I think it's beautiful that a girl like you can feel this way—a girl with your abilities—your usefulness and splendid success—and now this magnificent oppor—"
"Don't!—please don't! I hadn't meant to speak of it at all. I—we won't discuss it, please."
She spoke hastily, pushing back the papers she had been pretending to arrange, starting to rise. But that word or that movement seemed to galvanize the still Charles into the suddenest life.
"Discuss it!" he cried, in a new voice. "Why, we're going to have the greatest discussion you ever heard!"
For perhaps the strangest part of this destructive upheaval was that it seemed to leave every idea he had ever had about this Career completely reversed. One word from Mary Wing about not leaving her mother, and nothing seemed to matter but that she, in her fine recklessness, should not be allowed to sacrifice her triumph and her life.
"No!—please! It's settled now. And it only makes—"
But her friend, the authority, had flung himself into the chair beside her, like an excited boy, and he seized her wrist on the desk-leaf in an arresting grip.
"No, it isn't settled till it's settled right!—don't you know that? Is this your letter to Ames here? Let me tear it up for you now! Refuse the appointment! Why, MissMary! You can't think of such a thing! You!—a worker with a mission—and this your great call!—your big opportunity—yourduty! Yes, your—"
She interrupted his flowing modernisms to say, quite patiently: "You're hurting my wrist."
"Yes, and I'm going on hurting it till I see that letter torn up! Now, Miss Mary!—listen to me—for once—I beg! You won't suppose I don't understand—now—what made you sit down to do this, and I—I needn't say I admire you immensely for feeling so. But—don't you see—if life's hard, it's not your doing, and if it's hardest on mothers, you can't change the conditions by a hair's-breadth, no matter what you do.... Why, if you were going to marry Donald, and go off to Wyoming, the break here would be just as bad, but you'd never think it wasn't right—you'd know that these were the terms and conditions of life. Oh, you know all that as well as I! You know the duty isn't from children to parents—no, I swear, it's from parents to children, every time. And your mother'll be the first to say so—you know that, too! You know, when you tell her you're thinking of doing this, she'll go down on her knees to beg you to take your youth—and your life—and be free—"
He was deflected by one of Mary's normal level gazes, turned upon him. She said steadily:—
"How long have you been feeling this way?"
"Ten years! And then—for about five minutes."
"I had understood somehow—I don't know how exactly—that you always thought I should stay here."
The young man felt a flush spreading upward toward his hair, but would not lower his eyes.
"Perhaps I did have some such feeling—in a sort of—personal, illogical way. But if it's the last word I ever speak—you've destroyed the last shred of it."
He rose abruptly, without intention. Nothing in the world was clearer to him than that he and his reactions mattered little to her now; yet the desire mounted in him to explain how it was never the thing itself, but always the feeling about it, that had seemed so important to him. However, the school-teacher, with a little definitive gesture of the arm he had released, spoke first:—
"Well, never mind! Don't argue with me, please. It's as over and done with as something last year—"
But Charles, upon his unimagined task of persuading Mary to act as the Egoettes act, cried out: "No!—no! Argue! Why, d'you think I'll stand by and hold my tongue, while you sacrifice the great chance of your life, your particular dream—for a mere notion ofduty! I say, and I've always said, that freedom—and the right to do your work—belong to you, if to anybody in the world! You've—"
"Do you really suppose I've lain awake all these nights without learning what my own mind is?"
Having stopped him effectually with this dry thrust, she went on in another manner, not controversial at all, rather like one speaking to herself.
"And as for my freedom—that's not involved at all.... I was thinking just now that maybe this is just what freedom—responsible freedom—really is—means. It's having the ability and the desire and the fair chance to do a thing—and then not do it."
And then Charles Garrott knew, quite suddenly and finally, that this, indeed, was no talk in a book, but the realest thing in the world; that this incredible had really happened: that Mary Wing, the "hard" Career-Maker, was tossing her Career away....
He stood quite silenced, while she spoke her last decisive word.
"So you see you have a wrong idea of—what I'm doing, altogether. I appreciate your—being so interested—I value it, you know that," said Mary Wing in a controlled voice, hard even. "But I can't leave you thinking that I'm simply sacrificing myself—to my mother, for instance. It isn't that way at all. Of course, I'm no more to mother than mother is to me. It's not a sacrifice.... Or, rather—I'm in the position that people are always in—more or less. Either way, I've got to sacrifice—and this is the way I choose. But it's getting very dark. I must light the lamps."
She rose as she spoke, and having risen, bent again, to snap on, superfluously, her little desk-light. And as she so stood and bent, the large hand of Charles Garrott reached out suddenly, and began to pat her shoulder.
She seemed but a slip of a girl, no more, that he, Charles, could have tossed upon his shoulder, and so walked out upon a journey. But here, in a wink, she had shot up so tall upon his horizon that he himself, beside her, seemed to possess no significance at all. She might be right, she might be wrong: but, to him, the authority, this crashing negation of the Ego was the flung banner of a splendid trustworthiness, a fitness to lead her own life, indeed, such as should not be questioned henceforward. Never had this woman's independence of him spoken out to him with so clarion a voice as now. And still, over and through her unemotional firmness, the sense of what a giving-up was here swelled in him almost overwhelmingly. It was the brilliant prize of ten years' checkered struggle that his old friend to-day so stoically threw away. Here was a refusal which would touch every corner of her life to its farthest reaches....
So Charles Garrott's warring sensations, his humility and his pride in her, had instinctively expressed themselves in the awkward mute gesture of his sympathies.
By chance, it was Mary's more distant shoulder that his novel impulse had prompted him to pat and go on patting: so, from the accident of their positions, an eye-witness might have been with difficulty convinced that this man's arm was not actually about the slim figure of his friend. But a jury, without doubt, would have accepted the friend's attitude, her entire indifference to what was going on, as fair proof that this was purely a modern proceeding, and no caress. To ask why he did this clearly did not enter Mary's head. Had she been a man, indeed, or he her father, she could hardly have seemed more unaffected by Charles Garrott's unexampled ministrations.
With what speech he meant to accompany and justify his pattings, Charles had not stopped to think. He had, in fact, himself just become conscious of them, when Mary, straightening up, said suddenly in her normal voice:—
"There's the telephone ringing. Excuse me a minute."
She gave him a brief look in passing, which may have been intended as some sort of courteous acknowledgment of the pattings after all. And then she disappeared into the hall, putting an end to talk: inopportunely he felt; leaving him with, a vague sense of inartistic incompletion....
The young man stood still in the silent sitting-room, in a duskiness just punctuated by the small green glow of the desk-lamp.
One of those many minds of his, which are at once a writer's genius and his curse,—that completely detached, cool overmind which never sleeps, never ceases to scrutinize and appraise,—was quite conscious that Mary had held him off with a hand firmer than his own. There was a tremendous lot that he really needed to say, it seemed, in sheer admiration, sheer feeling; and, the truth was, she didn't wish to have him say it. No; her strength, though so far finer and more sensitive than the strength of the Egoette, was, indeed, not "soft." She would not sentimentalize even her own suicidal renouncing. As for weeping—he himself had seemed rather nearer tears than his iron-hearted friend....
But the intense thought of the central mind, of the net Charles, had never wavered from its great stark fact, that Mary Wing was going to stay at home—and be a school-teacher.... And why had he, who thought himself as observant as another authority, been staggered so by the revelation? Had not he himself divined just this subtler quality in her long ago, when he found and named her as the best type of modern woman?... But no, even in "Bondwomen," he had had reservations, it seemed; open doubts in the write-ups.
And now, Charles the author, in his turn, abruptly collided with a strange discovery. He stood rigid, startled.... This strength and this surrender, this power to act, this power to feel, this freedom fine enough to accept the responsibilities of freedom, and to have no part with that hollow Self-Assertion which traded round the world in freedom's name: what was all this but the rounded half of that true Line which, in the Studio, had so long eluded him? What had he wished to say about freedom so much as just this? And why need he search in his fancy now for his wholly Admirable Heroine?...
Mary Wing appeared suddenly in the door. Unmoving, the young man stood and gazed at her; and so vivid had his imaginings become that his stare was touched with no greeting, no recognition even. And then, even in the dusk, he seemed to see that she, his Heroine in the flesh, brought back a face more troubled than she had taken out, eyes colored with a fresh anxiety.
He spoke rather confusedly: "What was it? Is anything the matter?"
"Dr. Flower's very ill," she answered hurriedly. "He's had a stroke, or something. I'm afraid it's very serious. I must go there at once."
All the small fret of the earlier afternoon, every thought and association with which he had walked into this room just now had receded so fast and far that re-connection, all in a moment, was not easy. Charles, staring, seemed to say: "And who, if you please, is Dr. Flower?" And then his mind replied with a flashing picture of Angela's father, as he had last seen him, sitting forlorn among his cigar-stubs: and at once he touched reality again.
"Ah! I'm sorry!" said he; and then: "You must let me go with you."
"Well—thank you—if you like."
And Mary, already moving away toward the bedrooms, added then, in a colorless sort of way:—
"Who do you suppose telephoned me from there?"
"Who telephoned?—I don't know—"
She paused, half turned, looked back at him, hesitated, and then spoke but a single word:—
"Donald."
Brief though the reply was, it was sufficient to plant Charles Garrott's feet permanently upon the earth.
After an interval, with movements purely mechanical, he sought for his watch. It was quarter past six. And he understood everything then.
Charles thought that he understood everything now. In so far as he built a theory on the cold Argument from Design, he understood, of course, nothing whatever. The truth was that Angela had had other things than Mr. Manford to think of to-day. That she had gone out in her Fordette at all was only by the merest chance.
Trouble had come into the little house of the Flowers. As early as one o'clock, Dr. Flower had preëmpted the family attention. Coming in from the Medical School half an hour before his regular time, he had shut himself in his office, without explanation; and there he sat all afternoon, declining dinner with a shake of his head, and otherwise strangely uncommunicative and withdrawn. Reminded that this was Friday, which meant another lecture at half-past two, he only said in his puzzling way: "Quite so. I have no stomach for the small talk to-day." Mrs. Flower, stealing now and again to the dark office, doing her duty as wife and mother, returned each time more concerned by her husband's remoteness, less reassured by his grave statements that he was not sick, in stomach or elsewhere. The two women spent a long and uneasy afternoon. And at the critical moment of it—the moment when, a mile to the west, Charles Garrott leaned out of his third-story window—Angela sat anxious in her mother's bedroom, discussing whether or not they should take the responsibility of calling in Dr. Blakie, on the next block.
But Angela did not think that her father was ill, exactly: it was more as if his increasing queerness had reached a sort of climax. And now, by chance,—or was it destiny, in this its favorite mask?—he quite suddenly got over his mysterious attack; and the deepening worry lifted from her young shoulders. Of his own accord, her father emerged from the office and his unusual aloofness together, and came walking upstairs to the bedroom, speaking with his own voice—speaking, indeed, more freely than was his wont. He said at once that his headache was better now: this being his first reference to his head at all. As if struck by his daughter's troubled expression as he entered, he smiled at her and patted her cheek in the kindliest way; and then, becoming thoughtful, unexpectedly produced a two-dollar bill from his trousers pocket, and handed it to her with some characteristically strange words about her dowry, words which afterwards she could never quite remember. There followed some commonplace family talk, entirely reassuring.
And it was only then, in the certainty that everything was all right again, that Angela allowed herself to recall her own affairs once more. It was only then, with the thought that her recovered father very likely wished to talk alone with her mother, that she left the bedroom and her two parents together. At the door, she mentioned that probably she would go out and get a little air, before it was time for supper.
The old clock in the dining-room downstairs had then just struck five. However, very little more time could have elapsed before the relieved young girl, hatted and coated, issued hurrying from the kitchen door, toward the garage that had once been a shed. Yet another minute, and she was rolling from the alley-mouth.
To snatch Mr. Manford from his wedding-coach: was this the calculation that sent Angela forth in the fair eve of the disquieting day? Perhaps such a raid and capture would not have seemed quite a crime to her, or to any woman that ever lived. But nothing, of course, was further from her thoughts. That she might conceivably meet Mr. Manford while she took the air, and even exchange a few words with him, Angela did, indeed, think, and hope. But this mild maidenly fancy was as innocent as it was rightfully hers. Good reason she had to know that a little chat in passing, if so be it should come about, would be no less acceptable to Mr. Manford than to herself. Had he not told her by telephone this morning that if he could find so much as a minute in this rushing day, he would spend it in calling on her?
On the eleventh floor of the Bellingham, Donald stood hastily rolling his new sweater into a brown-paper parcel. Now into Washington Street, the little Fordette came curving and snorting toward him: toward him, no doubt, in a spiritual, as well as a geographical sense. And still the full depth of the young girl's design was simply this: that her new principal friend, going off for a gay week-end among maidens more blest by opportunity than she, might go with a last pleasant thought of her.
For Mr. Manford was Angela's principal friend now; there was no longer the smallest doubt of that. On that day of culminating results last week, when the unusual line of vehicles had stood before her door, the stalwart engineer had definitely moved up to first place in her thoughts. Not only had Mr. Manford called for an hour and three-quarters that day, while Dan Jenney cooled his heels in the office, and then went off for a walk alone: but then also he had first shown, by unmistakable signs, that he was truly interested in her. Moreover, in the very same moments, by a strange and rather exciting coincidence, she found herself becoming almost certain that she was truly interested in Mr. Manford. She must have been pretty certain, even then, for it was that night after supper, just before she started off to the theater with Mr. Tilletts, that she had told Dan Jenney in the parlor, sadly but firmly, that it could never be, and given him back his ring.
And since then, the shy girlish surmise had been further fed. One pleasant happening continued to lead to another. When she had asked Mr. Manford, half-jokingly, to send her some picture post-cards from New York, for her collection, it was—again—purely from the instinctive wish to know that she remained in her new admirer's thought, even when he was far away. But he had sent her not only stacks of the loveliest post-cards, showing the Flatiron Building, the Statue of Liberty, and other well-known sights, but also the most beautiful book, called "Queens"—a book of gorgeous pictures of American girls, all in color, by one of the most famous artists in Chicago. Of course, common politeness demanded that she should thank him—for "Queens," if not for the post-cards—just as soon as he got back. And the resultant talk, quarter of an hour over the telephone, had been just as satisfying as possible....
Thus it was nothing less than a complete realignment of the coterie that had taken place, this week. For if Mr. Manford had advanced rapidly in the young girl's thought, even more rapidly, of course, had her old principal friend dropped backward out of it. After the unattractive way he had showed his pique that day, Angela had thought about Mr. Garrott, indeed, only long enough to take a final position about him. That position came simply to this, that if he was the sort of person who expected to take liberties with you all the time, then he was not the sort that she, Angela, cared to have anything to do with. She recalled now her early premonition, that Mr. Garrott was a man of low ideals. And she was glad to remember how she had put him in his place, the night he had showed his real nature, and positively refused to compromise her standards, simply to keep him on, as so many girls would have done.
Now, in the tail of the complicated day, Angela thought only, and with right, of her engineer. Rapidly up the Street of the Rich she drove, and alert she kept her eyes. But, in truth, the hope in her heart had been but a slim one; and now, with each passing block, she felt it growing slimmer. When she got as far as the Green Park, and saw the time by the church-clock there, it dwindled away blankly to nothing: the worry about her father had kept her in till too late, just as she had thought all along. In short, her mind's eye was picturing Mr. Manford already seated in his train, when he suddenly made her start and jump by appearing at her elbow.
The meeting was his doing altogether. The maid scanned the sidewalks as she proceeded; the man in a closed conveyance came skimming down the middle of the highway. Nothing on earth could have been easier than for him to skim on by her unseen, and nobody a whit the wiser. On the contrary, he must have given the order to stop with instantaneous alacrity. The very first Angela knew of Mr. Manford's nearness at all was the sight of his head sticking out the door of a great car, just ahead of her.
The door was open; the car was coming to a standstill; Mr. Manford was signaling. Nimbly, with an inner leap of happiness, the girl complied with his obvious wishes.
The two self-propelling vehicles, the big one and the little, stood side by side in the middle of Washington Street, while passing chauffeurs detoured around them with looks that cursed as they went. Between the vehicles, on the asphaltum, stood Mr. Manford, dark head bared, speaking sweet, hasty parting words: explaining what a terrible rush he had been in since eight o'clock this morning, saying (and looking) how sorry he was not to have been able to call. Eager manly words and self-conscious manner, he was all that a girl could have wished. But then he stopped himself, quite abruptly, as if he had recollected something, and put out his hand with the solemnest look. "Good-bye!" he said, and seemed to sigh, as if he never expected to see her again.
But Angela did not take Mr. Manford's hand. Possibly these two minutes should have filled the round of her expectancy; possibly not. Now there rose in her a graceful thought which the sight of her admirer in a conveyance of his own had momentarily rolled flat.
Lifting her soft eyes to his, she said: "I wish—is there time for me to drive you to the station? Or had you rather...?"
"By Jove!" said he, staring. "Thatisan idea!"
The two normal young people gazed at each other through five seconds of intense silence. When the man's gaze broke, it was only to fling it upon the watch he had hurriedly jerked out. And that movement seemed to settle everything. One glance was enough to satisfy the young bridegroom that there was time. He so announced, and proceeded accordingly.
Thus, for the second time in fifteen minutes, Eustace and the Big Six were sent empty about their business. And Donald, dressed to "kill" the Carson house-party, sprang to the wheel of Angela's Fordette.
"I'll hop her along," cried he, laughing with the excitement of the thing, as he made the turnabout, "till she won't believe it'sher!"
And so he did, as old Charlie Garrott, passed unnoticed on the next corner, could have testified, and did. Ten full blocks Donald proceeded toward his train at a wholly honorable, indeed dangerous, celerity. And then his single-mindedness began imperceptibly to yield.
It was, indeed, touch-and-go with Mary Wing's male cousin, here at the turning-point of his life. Had he not forgotten his sweater—well, who knows? Now as the station grew steadily nearer, now as the pretty and familiar voice spoke at his side, one thing was leading to another, and his nervous fidgeting increased.
It occurred to Donald, not for the first time, that he was being rushed about a great deal here lately, with never a minute he could call his own. Managed around all the time—that was about the size of it, here lately: railroaded along into things, with no chance at all to stop and think quietly what he wanted to do.... Then, in a quiet stretch before the turn at Ninth Street, he looked down at the beguiling soft creature beside him, whom he had come to know so easily, so quickly, and so well. His gaze rested upon the rounded girlish bosom, rising and falling with tender young life, at the neck fair as a lily where the V of the thin white waist liberally revealed it, at the big eyes of a woman looking back at him so dark and sweet. And he was surprised at the sensations the look of these eyes now had power to draw up out of him. How? Why? Had absence made the heart mysteriously fonder? Or was it something in the intimacy of this swift adventure together—her sharing his dash for the train like some one who belonged to him?...
"I wish I didn't have to run off this way," he muttered, restively, after a long silence.
"I'll miss you," said she, and the dark eyes fell.
He found the simple reply oddly stirring, arresting, and significant. He was going to be away only three days, and she, this dear, different fellow-being whose gentle weakness already seemed to depend on him, was going to miss him. At some risk, for they now bounced through the traffic of Center Street, he looked down at her again. And once again the sum of all Donald's observations was this, that Angela was a Woman....
No jawing here about the isms of the day, Browning—Tosti—no, Tolstoy—those chaps; no arguing back at you over things a man, of course, knows most about. No; this girl was all Woman....
"I suppose," said she, all at once, "there isn't a train just a little later you could take?"
By singular chance, the thought of the later train had that second knocked at Donald's own mind. Marveling at the coincidence, he hesitated, and answered weakly:—
"Well, there's sort of a train at 7.50—a local. But—this is the train they're expecting me by."
She made no reply. Glancing down, he got no answering glance: she was looking, large-eyed and wistful, into empty space. Her silence, that look, seemed in some subtle way to lay hold on whatever was best in the young man, compellingly. Beyond his understanding, they seemed to envelop Donald with a sudden profound pressure, immensely detaining.
Now, over lower roofs, the station clock-tower, two blocks away, shot suddenly up into the fading sky before them. They saw together that it was twenty minutes past five.
"Oh, hurry!... You've caught it, haven't you?"
The speech, for some reason, pressed more than the silence. He answered, shortly: "Remains to be seen." Down the long hill, the little Fordette raced and rattled. The young man's hard breathing became noticeable. And the broad entrance of the station was but half a block away when, with abrupt violence, he threw out his clutch and jammed on his brake.
"I've missed it!" said he, in a voice that brooked no argument.
Tommy's valuable gift had stopped with a hard bump. Angela did not mind the inconvenience. Her eyes were rewarding her principal friend. Her heart seemed to turn a little within her. Into her cheeks flowed the sweet warm pink.
Together, the two normal young people laughed, suddenly, a little unsteadily. Then, with gayety and some suppressed excitement, they sat discussing an important point, viz.: what to do with their two hours' holiday, before the later train?
It was quickly decided that they should go home. Angela's Home was the one intended; Donald it was who decided the point, as befitted the man. He flung out a commanding hand to notify whom it might concern that he purposed to face about, yet again. And the faithful Fordette, which had set forth with so frail a hope, turned and snorted homeward with the great victory of its career.
Angela sat with shining eyes. She would not have been a woman, she would not have been human but a plaster saint on a pedestal, if her natural happiness had not had the added poignancy of a triumph among her sisters. Just how far Mr. Manford considered himself interested in Miss Carson, she had never yet been able to determine exactly; but that beautiful damsel's position in the scheme of things she, of course, understood perfectly. If her own intuitions had lacked, there were the plain hints Cousin Mary had given her only the other day. Hence, since last week, it was impossible to view Miss Carson other than as a rival, an enemy almost, and one possessing all the odds. For Miss Carson was rich and prominent, with powerful family connections behind and around her, and every possible opportunity and advantage: while she, Angela,—as we know,—had practically not a single rich relation on earth, and not one soul to help her but herself. And still—here was Mr. Manford at her side.
They stepped up on the verandah of the home; and the girl remembered the anxiety of the afternoon. But, listening as she opened the front-door, she heard from above the distinct murmur of her mother's voice, talking to her father, and knew again, with fresh relief, that all was well. Mr. Manford having accepted an invitation to stay to supper, she disappeared briefly to confer with Luemma—bribing Luemma with the promise of her old black skirt, in short, to go out and purchase certain extras, in honor of the guest. Returning again, she found her guest standing in the dark hall exactly where she had left him, motionless, a strange absorbed look on his masculine face. And as he met her eyes, there in the dimness by the hatstand, some of the fine color seemed to ebb from his cheek.
They went into the parlor, and sat down on the dented sofa; and her conquest, still, was but part of a day that had belonged to another. But now it quickly became clear that matters had taken a headlong jump, beyond all calculation.
It was, indeed, as if the man himself was profoundly reacted upon by those proofs of his own interest which had so stirred the maiden. Unknown to any one, he had missed his train and important engagements for nothing else than to be here with this girl: and it was as if the fact of itself thrust her far forward in his imagination, wrapped her about with a new startling significance. Men didn't do these things for any girl that came along. Or, possibly, the heady sensations were but the cumulative results of a slower process, and the friendly vehicle now resting at the door had done its decisive work before to-day. At any rate, Angela soon observed that Mr. Manford's behavior was quite embarrassed and peculiar; and of course, in the womanly way, his manifestations reacted instantly upon her. The more peculiarly interested Mr. Manford showed himself to be in her, the more peculiarly interesting she found him. Stranger still, the more she found him advancing, the more it was in her mind to retreat. Or, no—not in her mind; it was, of course, much deeper than that. This reluctance could be nothing else than the ancient virginal recoil, somehow remembered, strange latter-day reminiscence of old flights through the woods.
Instinctively, Angela talked commonplaces. The man's replies showed that he hardly listened to her. As she recounted how her father had missed a lecture for the first time to-day, he interrupted brusquely:—
"What's that ring you're wearing?"
Oh, that; oh, an old family ring, she explained, that her mother had given her on a birthday once. He must have seen it a dozen of times. Mr. Manford said, on the contrary, that he had never seen it before in his life. So—was it the voluntary lingering, perhaps, a backward look through the leaves, as it were?—Angela lifted her hand for him to see. The hand was tightly clasped at once. "Where's that other ring—the one you were going to wear till—you know?" Oh, that one? She had given that one back to the person it belonged to. When? Oh, last week. Why? Because she knew then that she could never care for him. "Does that mean you know somebody you—you care for more?" She said thatthatwouldn't mean anything so very much; and thereupon made an effort to withdraw her hand.
"There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time for leaving it to burn of itself." Put otherwise, Angela saw that Mr. Manford wasn't even glancing at her ring. However, her proper gesture to recover it accomplished no more than her commonplaces. For the cells and tissues of the gentleman, too, harbored ancestral memories, masculine recollections of agreeable old captures. And the touch and cling of the warm softherhad seemed to set them all to singing, drawing him, drawing him. So far from recovering that hand of hers, in fine, the fleeing maiden abruptly lost possession of the other one.
Thus in the storied way, there approached the second Occurrence on a Sofa. It may have been only the last recoil; it may have been that that other occurrence, fruitless contact with the low ideals of man, had permanently injured the womanly trustfulness. There was, at least, a kind of terror among the mingled sensations, as Angela beheld the second event resistlessly approaching.
"Oh, please!... You mustn't ..."
And—so sardonically does life twine joy with sorrow in its willful tangle—it was as she spoke these words that Mrs. Flower, standing at the head of the dark stairs, first called Angela's name. However, that call died unheard. The mother's voice was low, the daughter, for her part, could be conscious of nothing but that this dear and imperious Mr. Manford was a very difficult person to resist. Perhaps something in her had been against resistance from the first; but now, over his inconclusive endearments, the pardonable inquiry sighed from her:—
"Oh, why do you do this? Tell me."
Angela's mother stood two steps farther down: "Angela!... Angela!"
But Angela, deep in her great business in the world, once again failed to hear the alarmed low summons. Now sweet nearer speech filled her woman's ear. For Mr. Manford, it is welcome to record, did not run, as the cads run, from that artless challenge: he met it ready, like a soldier and a gentleman. That touch of lips softer than a flower had taught this young man, once and for all, what it was he wanted; huskily his voice came from a swelling chest. "I love you!" said Miss Carson's anointed, unmistakably. And then, indeed, the maiden, unaware of all else, let her conquered cheek rest upon her victor's breast: still and awed with the discovery that she loved, and in the same breath thrilled with the knowledge that she was a Successful Girl.
For our ruling passions are strong in death: more particularly, of course, when the death in question is not our own....
Yet her moment of exquisite peace was brief enough, poor child. Scarcely had the dearest words been spoken, scarcely had she known her awe and her thrill, when all was snatched from her. That other voice outside, more insistent, struck suddenly in to her unsteadied mind; too quickly, the surrendered cheek lifted. There was a swift upstarting, the abrupt parting of lovers: and after that fear descending, precipitate and dark as a cloud, over the new great joy.
The course of the succeeding hours was never clear in Angela's memory. There was a rush of unfamiliar and frightening activity. Donald was gone at a run for Dr. Blakie. She herself fled for Mrs. Doremus, on whose judgment her mother much relied. Mysteriously, Mrs. Finchman and poor Jennie appeared, tipping up the steps. Then Mr. Garrott stood suddenly in the hall, with Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing, all very grave and breathless, they had come so fast. Mr. Garrott must have left very soon; there was nothing for him to do; but Cousin Mary, who had once meant to be a doctor, took charge of everything from the start, and was very helpful. She slept that night in Wallie's room.
At ten o'clock, Donald left her to take Mrs. Wing home; but he, her new comforter, returned directly, in the sweetest way, to say good-night. Earlier in the evening Donald had dispatched a telegram to Mrs. Kingsley at Hatton, in which he said: "Serious illness in my family prevents coming." The due excuse was strong enough, in all conscience. But the matter had gone beyond illness now.
Thus it was that the strange day, already memorable to Charles Garrott, memorable, too, to Mary Wing, turned past all counting into the unforgettable day of Angela's life. Thus, into the little house in Center Street, life and death came stepping side by side.
After this day, there came another, and another and another: and still it seemed that death overshadowed life, and joy was overwhelmed in grief. The shadow of this first final parting seemed to close down on the young girl's happiness like a cover, and for a space her engagement was less real to her than the shut office downstairs, the empty seat at the table.
But youth, after all, is made for life, and thereby equipped with a merciful resilience. The passage of time, mere use, worked wonders. And Angela's blessing it was, no doubt, that from the beginning she had others than herself to think about, and the need for much activity. First and foremost, there was Donald, who was with her morning, noon, and night, whose first sight of her in a black dress had moved him almost to tears. It was not fair to the man who had won her that she should give way to a limitless melancholy. Beyond that, loomed the sudden colossal fact of the wedding, which would have to take place almost immediately; for her duty now was to her future husband, and the demands of his work must overcome her girlish shrinkings from such unwonted haste. And a wedding must mean clothes, at all times, and clothes, even at the plainest and simplest, must mean some thought and some diversion.
Insensibly, death turned back to life again. The great confused day of Angela's life was a week old; it was two weeks old; it was three. And winter now was fading from the softening air...
They were the quietest weeks imaginable. Except her mother and herfiancé, Angela saw no one for days together, not even Mary Wing. For Mary, as it happened, was sick at this time—her first illness in five years, so Mrs. Wing said. She had caught cold, it seemed, in the wet at the funeral, and the cold had developed into quite a serious attack of bronchitis, which kept her in bed two weeks or more. Thus the young couple, in their mourning, were left completely to themselves. In their isolation, in the still little parlor, they were planning at great length about their future, going over and over their new common problems from every possible angle. And the more Angela's fatherlessness was accepted as a permanent fact in the order of the future, the clearer it became that this fact must color and affect everything else.
In chief, this question of the girl's came more and more to the front of the loverly discussions: How could she go off to wild remote Wyoming, now that her mother was a widow?