In which Mr. Canning must go South for his Health, and Cally lies awake to think.
Midnight stillness hung over the House of Heth, five doors from Mr. Beirne's. Dim sounds from above indicated that Mrs. Heth, who had come in a few moments earlier, did not mean to sit up for anybody. She had, however, left the door "on the latch" as agreed. Carlisle and Mr. Canning passed within, out of the biting New Year.
It was like stepping into heaven to be at home again, after the rabble and rattle at Mr. Beirne's. Canning shut the door with something like a sigh.
"A lodge at last! We've had--well, a fragmentary time of it, haven't we?... That chap with the game foot is simply my hoodoo."
Carlisle winced a little. "Oh! Then you did remember him?"
"Could I forget my Beach supplanter, my giver of colds in the head? What's wrong with the fellow anyway?"
"Everything," said she. "Let's go into the library."
"Why should he remind me of a camp-meeting funeral, I wonder?" mused Canning, following behind--"or is it something I read in the book of Job?"
The girl answered with a vague laugh. Mr. Canning's odd but evident antagonism to the man she herself had such cause to dislike was agreeable to her, but the topic was not. She had had enough of the Vivians of this world for one night. She led the way through the dark drawing-room, and at the switch beyond the door turned the light into two soft-tinted dome-lamps. The library was massive rather than "livable"; it had books, which is more than can be said for some libraries; but they were chiefly books in stately sets, yards and yards of them just alike: a depressing matter to the true lover. However, it was at least solitude; solitude enveloped with an air of intimacy vastly agreeable and compensatory. It did not seem so certain now that the golden evening was ruined past hope....
"You and he seemed to be having a terribly earnest discussion," said Canning. "Of course I did my best to eavesdrop, but Miss Allen was so charming I caught only a word now and then."
"He was lecturing me about how my father ought to run his business. He always does...."
She replenished the dying fire with a soft lump, and poked it unskilfully, all but stabbing the life out of it. Canning, standing and staring half-absently into the soft glow, did not offer to relieve her of the poker. They knew each other very well by now.
"Only don't let's spoil our little party by talking about him," she went on--"he rubs me the wrong way so. And do please take off that polar overcoat. It positively makes meshiver...."
"Lecturing appears to be the fellow's specialty.... Well!"
He threw his overcoat, stick, and white gloves on the fire-settle, turned and glanced down at her. After the long and broken evening, he looked somewhat fatigued. Carlisle, already seated, was just beginning to unbutton her left long glove.
"Fine hours, fine hours these, for even a play sick-man! Yet I linger on...."
"You must stay," said she, "till the last person has gone from Mr. Beirne's."
The mantel clock stood at twenty minutes past twelve. With a little laugh she reached up and turned its small commemorative face to the wall.
"Or," she added, becoming grave, "are you really quite tired out with being with me?"
"I was hardly thinking that," said Canning.
He dropped into a chair and stared into the fire. Carlisle glanced at his face in profile; a virile and commanding face it was, and to her, singularly attractive.
"My thoughts were running in the contrary direction," said Canning. "Do you remember my saying long ago that once I began to gambol, I was never satisfied till I had gambolled all over the place? I suppose I need a guardian, but unluckily I have one. Miss Heth, I've some sad news--sad for me, I mean. I must go south to-morrow."
Carlisle turned her head with a little start.
"To-morrow! Oh,no!"
"No--you're right! Ican'tgo to-morrow! The day after at the farthest, or I suppose Heber'll be down after me with a couple of sheriffs."
"But I don't understand," she said, hurriedly. "What's happened? I--I hoped you would stay till the end of the week at least."
Canning's gaze remained upon the fire.
"So did I, though of course I've known I'd no business hanging on the skirt of Mason and Dixon's line this way. I might almost as well be in my office at home--tackling the pile of work that's been rolling up while I go on with this invalid's mummery.... Well, Heber's found me out, as of course the clever beggar would. He's been thinking, you see, that I was in Pineburst, at the least. I had a red-headed telegram from him this afternoon ordering me to move on to Palm Beach instanter, or he would bring my revered parents down on me like a thousand of brick--no small matter, I assure you.... Palm Beach--Havana, perhaps!--till winter breaks!... A happy New Year message, isn't it?"
"It's very sad for me," said Carlisle, looking away from him.
"Well, I can't say that I feel exactly hilarious about it, you know."
There fell a brief silence, in which the crackling of the large new coal became noticeable.
"Duty is a hard word, Miss Heth," said Canning. "A thousand times I've wished that I wasn't an only son--my family's one hopeful. But I am, alas.... And hence the little rest-cure...."
"Yes, it's hard," she answered. And instead of going on as some girls would, "Don't you think you couldpossiblystay a little longer?"--she added, in tones of comforting: "But of course you will enjoy Florida immensely. You know you'll find agreeable people, and plenty of fun--"
"Of course! It is my particular delight," said Canning, in his hoarsened voice, "to stay in an attractive place just long enough to fall in love with it, and then be whipped away like a naughty schoolboy."
Carlisle slowly drew off her glove.
"I'm glad you've liked it here," said she.... "Shall you stop again, on your way back home?"
The man's eyes turned from the fire full upon her face. His voice changed a little.
"What do you think?"
"I only know what I hope," said she; and her gold-and-black lashes fell.
The firelight played upon her half-averted face, twisted shadows into the sheen of her hair, incarnadined her smooth cheek. Whiter and softer than swan's down gleamed her round bare shoulder, her perfect neck. Canning's blood moved. He turned more fully and leaned toward her, his elbow on her chair-arm.
"Could you think that all these happy days with you have meant so little to me?... You've a poor opinion of me, indeed. Didn't I say in the beginning that you did not know how to be kind?"
At his tone, the girl's breath came faster. She sat in silence pulling her long gloves between slim little hands.
"You are hard, Miss Heth," said Canning, slowly. And he added, with that touch of unconscious pride with which he always spoke of the Cannings, their position and serious responsibilities in the world: "When I compel myself to think of my duty toward my father and my family, I make sacrifices which ought, I think, to win me your approval. I've a place to fill some day.... But since you ask, I shall think also of myself. I shall come again to the old Payne fort."
She gave him a look which said that she was not really unkind. And Canning immediately possessed her ungloved hand in both of his. Her heart flattered at his touch; her hand seemed to feel that this indeed was where it belonged; but, on the whole, training and intuition appeared to indicate a contrary view. There was a moment of stillness, of acquiescence, in which she became aware that he bent nearer. And then Carlisle rose, with a natural air, taking the hand along with her, incidentally as it were. Standing by the fire, looking down into it, she said:
"The town will be empty without you."
Behind her, Canning had risen too, with a sort of sharpness. He was silent. And then it was borne in upon her that the proud young man was moving toward his trappings, to go....
"Your friendly words are much appreciated," said he, smiling. "But I observe that I've overstayed horribly."
The girl regarded him. Hardly since the first moments in Kerr's apartment, had she heard that ironical note in Mr. Canning's voice; and yet she understood at once, and was not alarmed. Gently as she had removed herself, he had felt himself rebuffed; and he could be abrupt at his pleasure.
Nothing good could come out of this horrid evening, but there would be another. And in her heart, besides, she did not believe that he would go away day after to-morrow....
"Perhaps you'll drive with me to-morrow afternoon?"
"Oh, I'd like to so much," she said, naturally, as if nothing had passed between them. "And I'm so sorry about to-night, really. You've been such a saint, and all for me. You deserve a beautiful reward, a big medal, at least, and instead, an icy five-mile ride--"
"Reward!" said Canning, wheeling, still smiling a little. "What under heaven does the inconsequent sex know of reward? Up they trip, and with one flip of a little high heel kick a man's settled plans topsy-turvy. And for this upsetting he must thank his stars if he gets in return one kind smile a week. Punishment, not reward, strikes me as the feminine idea...."
"I think," she said, a little embarrassed, "the only person I've really punished to-night is Me."
And she felt a twinge, half regret, half compunction, which was not tactical at all. After all, this man had been extraordinarily nice to her, and she was letting him go feeling that she did not appreciate it....
She offered him her left hand to say good-night, and invested the gesture with a sweet air of penitence.
"But don't speak as if you were displeased with me, just when I'm so sad about your going away....Areyou displeased with me--or do you like me very much?"
"I am displeased with you, and I like you very much."
As the small hand lingered with him, warming by contact, the man's clasp tightened. He brought up his other hand and folded it over it.
"I'll miss you dreadfully--you know that.... Very,verymuch? That's the largest amount of liking known, isn't it?"
"Then that's the amount ..."
Outside sounded the blasts of horns and the wheels of departing guests from Mr. Beirne's: 'low on the sand and loud on the stone.' In the soft-lit room no sound broke the nocturnal stillness except the mechanism of the clock, pushing busily toward the three-quarter mark. Carlisle was looking up at Canning with eyes full of unpremeditated sweetness. Into Canning's face the blood leapt suddenly. Without other warning, he leaned back against the heavy table, and took her almost roughly in his arms.
"I'm mad about you, you lovely little witch. Do you hear? It grinds my heart that I must leave you...."
The turbulence of the sudden demonstration swept the girl from her moorings. If she had seemed to invite it, it yet came quite unexpectedly. For the moment she stood still in Canning's embrace, yielding herself with a thrilled passivity, as one who, with a full heart, touches high destiny at last. And in that moment her cheek, hair, eyes, then at last her lips, felt the sting of his Catullian endearments....
But the moment of bliss in culmination passed with fainting quickness. The willing ear heard not. Unsteadied intuitions began to work again, chilling the girl's blood with the knowledge of wrong here, of glaring omission. And the more her gallant murmured, it seemed, the wider gaped the sudden lack....
"You've been so good to me--so dear, so sweet--charmed away my hours as no one else could. Darling!... It's hard to be the stranger and the passer-by! I know you'll forget me, only too soon.... How can I tell you how grateful I am for all you've given me, in sweetness and happy days?..."
How, indeed, since this was the utmost of his wish of her?
The girl's blood warmed again with a leap, overflowing upon her fine skin. Understanding now came to her, with crushing force. Her knight made for her a pretty summary of an episode that was past. There was to come no coronation of words to ennoble these caresses: Mr. Canning, at parting, desired to thank her for her sweetness. And this was the high moment toward which she had been dancing on the fleece-pink of clouds through many days....
And then his arms about her were suddenly a burning and a torture; she felt a blush sweep her from head to foot, enveloping her as in a garment of fire, shaking her with a wild mysterious shame. And she took herself, almost with violence, from the enfolding embrace.
All tenderness, Canning came after her, Pan and his fleeing nymph....
"You darling, I've frightened you! Forgive my roughness. You can't know how your utter adorableness throws me off my guard...."
She turned to the mantelpiece, and, laying a rounded arm upon it, buried her face from his view.
Canning had come near, intending a gentler caress; but something in the dead unresponsiveness of her bowed figure abruptly allayed that intention. The complete repulse, the girl's silent emotion, had surprised him, indeed, like a box on the ears. Well he knew the feministic curve of advance and recoil. Yet he found himself unexpectedly, profoundly, stirred.
"I'm a brute," said he, presently, with an odd ring of conviction. "You go to my head like drink sweeter than was ever brewed. I've had a hard fight all these days to keep my hands off you...."
Carlisle raised her head and turned. Canning had expected to see her face stained with tears, or, more probably, flaming with (at least half-feigned) anger. His heart turned a little when he saw how still and white she was.
"You must go now, please," she said, in rather a strained voice, not looking towards him; and by some strange and subtle process of association she fell into words which she had used within the hour to another: "I don't wish to talk with you any more."
The man's handsome face flushed brightly. He said in a throbbing voice:
"I can't let you dismiss me this way. I can't endure it. Have I offended so--"
"I can't talk with you any more now. I must ask--"
"But you won't be so cruel! If I've offended, won't you make some allowance for my temptation? Am I a snow-man, to come so near and be unmoved? Am I to be a monk, because I live under sentence in a monastery? You ..."
To do him justice, he did not look in the least like either of these things. However, Carlisle missed his look. Standing with lowered eyes, she said again, colorlessly:
"Please leave me now--I beg you--"
"But I can't leave you this way!" said Canning. "It's impossible! You misjudge me so--"
"Then I must leave you," said Carlisle; and started to go past him.
But Canning blocked her way, his face, troubled with deep concern, more handsome and winning than she had ever seen it. Only she still did not see it. He thought, with a whirling mind, that this was carrying the thing rather too far; but he saw with chagrin and a curious inner tumult the entire uselessness of more argument to-night.
"I am heartbroken," he said, a little stiffly, "that I've brought you somehow to think so hardly of me. Your thought does a great wrong to the--respect and deep devotion I feel and shall feel for you." He wobbled the least bit over these words, as if himself conscious of a certain inadequacy, but went on with his usual masculine decisiveness: "Now it must of course be as you wish. But to-morrow I shall make you understand me better."
He picked up hat, coat, and stick, defeated, yet not spoiled of his air. But as he turned to go, and looked at her for his formal bow, he was all at once aware that she wore a wholly new dignity in his sight, a subtly enhanced desirability. Unexpectedly her marble loveliness shot him through and through, and he said in a low throbbing voice:
"You darling--darling! How can I bear to part from you like this? Forgive menow, Carlisle ..."
But Carlisle's only response was to move away toward the hall.
A moment later the front door shut, rather hard. Carlisle's second impassioned parting within an hour was over. She switched off the tall newel-post lamp, and went upstairs in the dark.
She was a long time in going to sleep. Not since she had the fever, as a little girl, was the great god of forgetfulness so elusive to her wooing. Not since the night at the Beach, and never in her life before that night, had the merry imps of thought so strung her brain upon a thumbscrew. Now came Self-Communion, rarest of her comrades, and perched upon her pillow.
All was plain now, by one instant of merciless illumination. She sufficed to beguile Mr. Canning's leisure for an invalid sojourn far from his normal haunts, but apart from that she had no existence for him. He could see her daily, monopolize her time, for these things happened to amuse him; he could make love to her, lead her in a hundred subtle ways to feel that her companionship was sweet to him; and then he could board a train and ride handsomely away, and woe is the word to the conquered. And by this freedom that he felt, and in particular by the license of his prodigal kisses, it appeared that she read the heart of his secret opinion of her.
Never again should he show her this opinion, at least: he should board his train with no more sight of her. On this her thought was crystal-clear from the beginning. That such short shrift to Mr. Hugo Canning was suicidally impolitic, she naturally had no difficulty in realizing; the dread of reporting the affair to mamma had already shot through her mind. But for the moment these things seemed oddly not to matter. She was clearly in the grip of one of those mysterious "flare-ups" which her mother disliked and objected to so intensely: to such lengths borne by her recoil from Mr. Canning's familiarity. She had met the common fate of beauty. Flaming young men had kissed her before now. But none had kissed her without the desire of her love, none as the fair price exacted for a couple of weeks' lordly attentions. By their lightness, as by their passion, Canning's kisses had seemed to sear and scar. They had given her body to be burned. For this was the fulness of his desire of her, her favor to wear in his button-hole; and his thought stabbed at her, beneath his gallant's air, that by now he had fairly earned it.
In the dark as it was, the memory of her moment of revelation had turned the girl's face downward upon her pillow. How, oh how, had he come to image her on so low a plane? How did it come to be that men should have slighting opinions ofher, of all people, and so slap them across her face?...
It was the first time that such a thought of herself had ever risen before her mind, though in a sense not the first time she had had a pretext for it. Her painful meditations included brief note of Vivian, the eccentric stray across her path who had once considered her deserving of pity as a poor little thing. He, of course, was only an unbalanced religious fanatic, whose opinions were not of the slightest consequence to anybody, whom everybody seemed to take a dislike to at sight (except ignorant paupers like the Cooneys), and whose ideal type of girl would probably be some hideous dowd, a slum-worker, a Salvation Army lassie, perhaps. Yet this man had felt sorry for her at the Beach; he had done it again to-night.... And if he was quite out of her world of men, was of course not a man at all as she counted men, the same could not possibly be said of Mr. Canning, a man of her own kind in the royal power....
The thought of herself as vulnerable and vincible to the hostile sex had come upon the girl, fire-new, with disruptive force. It was pulling out the pin which held her life together. For if she was a failure in the subjugation of men, then she was a failure everywhere: this being the supreme, indeed, you might say the only, purpose of her life....
Below in the still house, the soft-toned chimes rang two; and, almost on the heels of that, it seemed, three. Step by step, Carlisle went back over all her acquaintance with Canning from their first meeting; and gave herself small glory. She had pursued him to the Beach; she had pursued him to Willie's apartment; and on both occasions, and since, she had used her arts to lure him into reversing the pursuit. A dozen times she had sought to lead him, so it seemed now, further than he ever had the slightest idea of going. Was it really a wonder that he, whose experienced eyes observed everything, had seen in her merely his ready plaything? Repulsed, he could wear an air of genuine tenderness, but never doubt that in his heart he was laughing at her, and had a right to....
And she herself ... Were these the pangs of unrequited love that tore her breast? In her desire to land the great catch, by hook or by crook, when had she paused to consult her heart about the glittering prospect? What else did it all mean but that she, calculating, had offered herself to him at the price of his hand, name, and enduring complement of happiness, and he, lightly responding, had rated her as worth, at most, only his counterfeit coin. Why else should the memory of the moment downstairs continually return to her like an affront?
She was of her world and time, not unsophisticated; but it chanced that she possessed a mind natively maiden. Through all her vigil, through all her questioning and novel self-criticism, her mind's-eye picture of Canning, as his arms went round her, ran like a torturing motif. The portrait became detestable to her. She hated him, she would hate him forever as the man who had cruelly revealed to her that love and his base brother can speak with the same voice and hand.
And next day, when a box of glorious and penitent blossoms was followed within an hour by Canning's card and presence at her door, the girl's resolution to see him nevermore held staunch. It held to deny him a second time on the afternoon following. After that it was subjected to no more tests. And the social columns of another morning made it known to the general public that the Paynes' distinguished house-guest had departed for points south.
How V. Vivian still felt the Same about the Huns, No Matter what Sam thought; also, how Kern Garland lost Something at the Works, and what made Mr. V.V. look at her That Way.
While Vivian was still engaged with his sick, O'Neill, recently returned from a three weeks' industrial tour of the State, stuck his head informally through the office door.
"Oh! Busy, hey?"
"This is the last, I think. Step into the waiting-room and come in when I whistle."
In three minutes Vivian whistled, and O'Neill instantly opened the door. It looked as if he had meant to come in just then anyway, and he had.
"Say, V.V.!--step out here!" he said in a low, interested voice. "There's a whiskered bum dodging around your back hall here, and if I'm not very much mistaken, he's got your Sunday pants!"
"It's Mister," said V.V., looking round from his secretary. "Shut the door."
"Oh!--Garland, hey? But he's swiped your best pants!"
"They were a gift," said V.V., with a touch of soberness. "Sh!he'll hear you."
"Oh!" said the Labor Commissioner again, and looked a little disappointed.
He shut the door and came on in, a substantial figure in his glossy suit. It was the 30th of January, and he had been taking on flesh since October.
"Well, when'dheblow in? Say, he's a ringer for Weary Waggles, all right."
"Sometime in the night," replied the young man, tilting back in his swivel-chair. "Mrs. G. found him in the entryway when she went down for the milk, asleep in the Goldnagels' hall-rug. I'm afraid he's only come to be outfitted again, and she will not be firm with him, no matter what she promises.... By the way, they were not my best trousers at all, except in a sort of technical sense. Never had 'em on but once, at a funeral.--Well, how was the lunch with the Governor?"
The Commissioner, having pushed a new brown derby to the back of his head, walked about.
"Pretty good," said he--"we had a very satisfactory talk. One of his cigars I'm smoking now. I told him what I'd noticed around the State, and gave him an outline of the legislation I want next year. Said my ideas were just right. Paid me some nice compliments. Speaking of legislation," added the Commissioner, flicking cigar-ash on the bare floor with a slightly ruffled air, "you'll be interested to hear I've been down to Heth's since I was in the other day. Saw Heth himself...."
The doctor remarked that he had been thinking of Heth's, not five minutes before.
"I let Corinne go back to work this morning, you see--not that she's well again yet by a good deal, or that that's the place for her at any time. However.... You saw Mr. Heth himself?"
"Yair. I saw him--last time I'll fool with him, too! Says he guesses the law's good enough for him. Told me pointblank he wouldn't spend a cent till he had to. How's that for public spirit?"
Having halted by the secretary, the Commissioner looked down at his friend in the open manner of a speaker confident of sympathy.
"Trouble is," said the friend, frowning and sketching circles over some yesterday's memoranda, "Mr. Heth probably doesn't know anything about it himself. Got a lot of other interests, you see. He allows that blackguard MacQueen an absolute free hand at the Works--takes everything he says for gospel. He probably--"
"Don't you fool yourself, V.V.! Heth's too smart a man to turn over his principal business to anybody. And I'm sick and tried of jollying with him. Say, remember that letter you wrote in the 'Post' last fall?"
It appeared that V.V. did recall the thing, now that Sam mentioned it. He said introspectively:
"So you think he's still got a grudge about that?... Well, I'm sorry, but that letter was all true, Sam, absolutely true, in all particulars.... Why," said he, "what's the use of talking? You can't have omelettes without breaking eggs. You cannot."
"That's right. 'S what I came to talk about. Now, what do you say to another strong letter to-morrow, right in the same place. These--"
"Anotherletter!..."
"You betcher--hurt their feelings, anyway, if it don't do anything else. I guess you had it right, that a heavy dose of public opinion is--"
"Well, no," said V.V., frankly--"no.... Another letter would be a mistake, at just this stage of the game--a great tactical blunder--"
"Why d'you think that?" said Sam O'Neill, rather taken aback.
"Why do I think it, you say? Well, I--I know it."
"Well, I don't know it. It's a blame good thing to make these swell obstructionists feel ashamed of themselves. Let 'em see their names right in print. As for damages, Heth's shown that he's afraid to go into court--"
But V.V. waved aside the idea of a suit. "The whole thing," said he, "is merely a question of tactics. Things are going along very satisfactorily as they are. There's a drift on, a tendency--you might say. The clothing people have come in. Magees have come in. Why, they've agreed to do every blessed thing you asked--fireproofed stairways and fire-doors, ventilators and rest-rooms--"
"That makes the attitude of these others all the worse. I tell you they've practically told me to go to hell."
The good-natured Commissioner spoke with a rare touch of irritation. To have bagged all four of the offending local plants, without the aid of law and relying only on personal influence and tactful pressure, would undoubtedly have been a great card for the O'Neill administration. Moreover, Mr. Heth's manner of superior indifference yesterday had been decidedly galling.
"Well, give 'em a little more time," counselled V.V., lighting a pipe which looked as if it had had a hard life. "You must make some allowance for their point of view, Sam. Here's Mr. Heth, just to take an example,--not making much this year, you say, and mortgaged up pretty well, besides. Well! Just when he's probably getting worried about his book-keeping, down you drop on him and ask him as a favor to you to put up a new building, which is practically what--"
"He'll have to do it, too. If he don't do it now, I'll have a law next year that'll get him right in the neck."
"Exactly.But--mark my words, he won't wait for the law, now that we've got this drift going. Don't you be deceived by what he may say now in--in pique. Give him a little chance to adjust himself to the new idea, that's all. Rome wasn't built in a day, Sam--as you've said."
"Look here, old horse, what's struck you?"
"How do you mean, what's struck me?"
The two young men gazed at each other.
"You're pipin' a mighty different tune than you were when you wrote that letter. I've noticed it for some time."
The look of the fine-skinned young man at the desk changed perceptively. O'Neill was made to feel that his remark was in questionable taste, to say the least of it.
"I wish you wouldn't speak as if I were a band of travelling bagmen. I'm not piping or tuning in any way. I say now precisely what I've said all along. Rouse these people to their responsibilities, and you can tear up your factory laws! Different cases require different methods of--"
"Why, last fall--"
"Now, Sam--here! Arguing's no good--I'll tell you what. Suppose you just leave Heth's to me. Go ahead and hammer the Pickle people if you think that'll do the slightest good. But you leave Heth's to me for a while."
"Well! That's an order," said the Commissioner, somewhat derisively, yet looking interested, too. "And what'll you do with them?"
"All that I care to say at present," replied the tall doctor, apparently choosing his words with care, "is that I--ah--feel everything's going to work out very satisfactorily in that quarter."
O'Neill stared at him, the gubernatorial cigar forgotten. "Oho!... You've met the Heths personally?" "I've met some of them personally, as you call it,--far as that goes."
O'Neill, puffing again, digested this information speculatively. Presently he looked knowing and laughed.
"Say, remember my saying to you, time you wrote that letter, that if you knew any of these yellow captains and horse-leeches' daughters personally, you'd feel mighty different--"
"But I don't! I don't! You don't seem to get me at all, Sam. I've just shown that my position's exactly--"
"They're a lot of Huns, and that's why they'll shell out thousands and modernize their plants just because you ask 'em?"
The two men eyed each other again, O'Neill good-natured and rather triumphant. V.V., for his part, was smiling just a little sternly.
"Sam," said he, "you thought I was a mad ass to write a letter a few months ago. Now time passes and you say I was quite right, and won't I please write you another in to-morrow's paper. This time, I tell you that a letter will only do harm--great harm--"
"'Phone, Doctor!" bawled a husky young voice from below. "Aw, Doctor! 'Phone!"
"All right, Tommy!" shouted Doctor.
Rising to his height, he shot at O'Neill: "And once more you'll see I'm absolutely right! I don't change, my dear fellow, the simple reason being that I've got a guiding principle that doesn't change. I must answer that 'phone."
"Well, I'll trot along with you. I've got to get on up the hill...."
They headed together for the door. By reason of the prohibitory expense, Dr. Vivian had no telephone of his own, but through the courtesy of Meeghan's Grocery just across the street (which establishment was in receipt of medical attendance gratis), the initiate could always "get a message" to him. Commissioner O'Neill, at once puzzled and somewhat impressed by his friend's air of confidence, resumed conciliatively:
"Now, jokin' aside, V.V., what's the proposition? D'you honestly think Heth can be made to clean up by your persuading his wife or daughter to ask him to? Is that it?--You met 'em at your uncle's reception, I s'pose?"
But V.V.'s reserve had fallen, like a mysterious wall between. "You say you're at the end of your rope," said he, stepping with his long stride into the hall. "Well, suppose you give me a few months, that's all."
The two friends descended the long stairs in silence. Vivian's meditations were rather tense. He recalled the hard words of the Severe Arraignment; he remembered the unforgivable speech he had made in the summer-house; before his mind's eye rose the moment in his uncle's lamplit den when he had told the girl to her face that her father was a homicide. Sacrificing natural inclinations to kindliness, he had done and said these things. And Sam O'Neill, knowing practically nothing of the facts in the case, had the nerve to stand up ...
O'Neill, descending, reflected that old V.V. was undoubtedly a queer one. Chuck full of hazy optimism, he was of late. Hazy optimism: O'Neill repeated the phrase, liking it. Still it was possible he might manage to work on the girl's feelings--O'Neill was sure it was the girl--whatever that was worth. He was a kind of appealing fellow, and did have connections with the swells, though it was really he, O'Neill, and Mrs. O., who ought ...
"Well, be good," said he, as they emerged from the decayed grand entrance. "I'm breakin' in a new stenographer--troubles of my own. See you again in a day or two."
"All right. And by the way," said the tall doctor, speaking with polite restraint, "please don't get it into your head that I'm letting up on these people, or anything of that sort. As a matter of fact, my tendency is all the other way. Not to judge them too harshly--not to do the--the most serious injustice--that's whatI'vegot to guard against...."
He turned away, bareheaded in the mild January sunshine, and crossed to Meeghan's, where his telephone call proved to be from Rev. Mr. Dayne, desiring a personal conference later in the day. Cumbered with many cares though he was, the kind-faced Secretary of Charities had been captured at sight by Vivian's plan of buying the old Dabney House, and bringing it to life again as a great Settlement. The problem now engrossing both was how to raise the necessary money, twenty-five thousand dollars being a large sum, particularly with the benevolent field just swept clean by the Associated Charities canvass. However, the tireless Secretary seldom despaired, V. Vivian never. The young man promised eagerly to call on Mr. Dayne, whom, in common with most of the rest of the world, he admired immensely.
Hanging up the receiver, Vivian purchased a five-cent box of blacking, a commodity not ranking among Meeghan's best sellers, and returned to make ready for his professional rounds. In the closet of his bedroom, where he went for hat and coat, he was struck with the brooding sense of something lost, and readily recalled the episode of the trousers. He became conscious of a certain feeling of destitution. Undoubtedly the whole question of new clothes would have to be taken up seriously some day. For the present there did not lack a sense of economic precariousness: it was he and these trousers against the world....
While brushing his hat in the bedroom, Vivian wondered if Mister had yet donned the gift articles, and how he looked in them. He fell to musing about Kern's erring parent, thinking what a strange life he led. It was many and many a year ago since Mister and society had parted company; and through all this time, it was certain that every hand had been against him. In many cities he had stood before sarcastic judges, and been sent on to serve his little time. Adown highways unnumbered he had sawed wood, when necessary; received handouts, worn hand-me-downs; furnished infinite material for the wags of the comic press. Long he had slept under hedges and in ricks, carried his Lares in a bandana kerchief, been forcibly bathed at free lodging-houses in icy winters. Dogs had chased him, and his fellow man: he had been bitten by the one and smitten by the other. Ill-fame and obloquy had followed him like a shadow. And yet--so strong and strange are our ruling passions--nothing could wean him from the alluring feckless ways which had heaped all these disasters upon him....
Thus and otherwise philosophizing, V. Vivian slipped on his overcoat (which had so far escaped Mr. Garland's requisitions) and flung wide the office windows to rid his chambers of the medical smell. He had had a busy morning, his habit of having no billheads, while regarded as demoralizing by professional brethren of the neighborhood, being clearly gratifying to the circumambient laity. It was now getting toward noon, and the doctor was in a hurry. Besides calls on his sick, he was very anxious to get uptown before dinner and inquire after his uncle Armistead Beirne, who had lain ill, with a heavy, rather alarming illness, since a day or two after his New Year's reception. This call was purely avuncular, so to say, Mr. Beirne employing a reliable physician of his own....
The young man picked up his doctor's bag and opened the door. At the far end of the long hall, where the Garlands' apartments were, he caught a glimpse of a skirt, just whisking out of sight. He thought he recognized the skirt, which was a red one, and called, in surprise:
"Corinne!"
There was no answer.
"Corinne!" he called, louder. "Is that you?"
Sure enough, Kern's face peeped out of a door, a long distance away.
"It's me, and it ain't me," she cried, mockingly. "I'm herein-cog."
And her head bobbed back out of sight again.
"What're you talking about?" called Vivian into the emptiness. "Did you feel too weak to work?"
"Like in the books," said Kern, and stuck her head out again with a giggle. "Why, I thank you kindly," she went on in a mincing stage voice. "I'm feeling very, very,verywell, my Lord Dook, Mr. V.V. On'y I decided I'd spend to-day lazyin' at my writin'-desk, readin' over my billy-doox from peers of the rellum, 'stead of working my hands and legs off in that nasty,nasty, NASTY--"
"Stop that cuckoo-clock nonsense!" called Mr. V.V., starting to walk towards her. "What are you doing here, I say?"
"I'm helping mommer soak colliflower, Mr. V.V. Honest!" "But why didn't you stay at the Works? Come, stop this foolishness, Corinne, and answer me sensibly."
The girl's cheek rested against the door-facing. She stopped her foolishness.
"Mr. V.V., I'm fired."
A bullet would not have stopped Mr. V.V.'s advance more abruptly.
"You're WHAT?"
Kern nodded slowly a number of times. "I wasn't goin' to tell you till I got me another job, and maybe never, on'y you caught me--"
"Come here," said Mr. V.V. in rather a queer voice. "Walk," he added, as she began to take the long hall at a skip.
Kern came at a walk. Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor, though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and following three weeks of idleness. However, after her sex, her present overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from Mr. V.V.'s face.
"It's on'y some of that sickenin' MacQueen's foolishness," she called out from some distance away--"and I was tired of workin' in that old nasty place anyway. Up and said he didn't have no job for me. Didn't haveajob for me. So I just laughed at him and stayed round a little while, havin' a good time, and then he happened up to the bunchin' room and told me to git. So I gitted ... Lor, Mr. V.V.! I can find all the good placesIwant. Goodness me, sir! I'll get more orfers of jobs--"
"Come into the office," said Mr. V.V., turning back.
In the office, Kern, acting under medical instruction, sat down on the horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple story in detail.
In these weeks, while she had gone down with mild pleurisy, been successfully "tapped" and haled back to something like an economically valuable condition, the work of the world had marched on. That another operative sat now on Kern's stool and manipulated Kern's machine might appear natural enough, as the superintendent, it seemed, had insisted with his sour smile. But this was not to consider Kern's exceptional skilfulness, known and recognized throughout the Heth Works. Replace a girl who could bunch sixty-five hundred cheroots in a single day? No, no, you could hardly do that....
For this dismissal there was an explanation, and it was not hidden from the young physician. He spoke slowly, struggling not to betray the murder in his heart.
"The devil's doing this because he knows you're a friend of mine. He hits you to punish me.... By George, I'll show him!"
The intensity of his face, which in all moods looked somehow kind-of-sorrowful to her, made Kern quite unhappy. She was moved by a great desire to soothe Mr. V.V., to conjure a smile from him....
"Lor, Mr. V.V.! What do you and 'me care for his carryin's on? We can get on heaps better without him than he can without Me! The Consolidated'll jump down my throat--"
"You are going back to the Works," spoke Mr. V.V., in his repressed voice.
"Oh!" replied Kern, trying not to look surprised. "Well, then, all right, sir, Mr. V.V. Just whatever--"
"I'll give him one chance to take you back himself. I'll assume, for his sake, that there's a misunderstanding.... If he refuses, so much the worse for him. I shall know where to go next."
"Oh!--You mean John Farley?"
It was a shrewd guess. John Farley, sometime of the sick, and ever a good friend of the Dabney House, was known to hold past-due "paper," of the hard-driving Heth superintendent.
But Mr. V.V., continuing to speak as if something pained him inside, only said, "I was not thinking of Farley...."
The young man stood silent, full of an indignation which he could not trust himself to voice. Yet already he was beginning to put down that tendency to a too harsh judgment which, as he himself admitted, was his besetting sin ... Perhaps there was some misunderstanding: this contemptible business hardly seemed thinkable, even of MacQueen. At the worst, it was MacQueen personally and nobody else. No argument was needed to show that the owners would not for a moment tolerate such methods in their Works. Merely let them know what sort of thing their superintendent was up to, that was all. O'Neill should see ... Mr. Heth, to be sure, he did not happen to know personally....
"Well, then. That's all settled," Kern was saying, eagerly, "and I '11 go back to MacQueen or not go back, just whichever you want me, and don't less think about him any more. Oh, Mr. V.V.--"
"He can consider himself lucky if he doesn't losehisjob for this day's work."
"Mr. V.V.,what d'you think?"cried Kern; and having caused him to turn by this opening, she fixed him with grave eyes, and hurried on: "Well, there was a man here named Avery, and he was ridin' his automobile slow down a dark road and his lamps went out. And there was two men walkin' down the road, and he ran over one of them. So he turns back to see if the man was hurted, and the road bein' so dark he runs over him again. So he turns back again, scared he had killed him, and then the other man that had hopped into the ditch, he sings out to his friend, 'Get up, you damn fool,he's comin' back!'"
Having quite failed to follow Kern's cheer-up narrative, Mr. V.V.'s stare remained blank, engrossed; but presently he was caught, first by the silence, then by his little friend's wide and intensely expectant gaze, just beginning to fade into childlike disappointment. He promptly burst into a laugh. It began as a dutiful laugh, but Kern's expression soon gave it a touch of genuineness.
"Ha, ha!" said he. "That's a good one! Well, where on earth did you get that one?"
"Off Sadie Whirtle!" cried Kern; and springing up gleefully from the sofa, began to pirouette and kick about the bleak office.
The young man watched her, buttoning his overcoat, his specious merriment dying.... For all the high wages she earned, the Works was of course the last place on earth for her; but for the moment that did not happen to be the point.
"Was it not bein' a lady to say the word like he did?" said Kern, swaying about and waving her arms like wings. "I told Sadie Whirtle it wasn't netiquette, but Sadie she said it wasn't funny without you used the swear. And I did want to make you laugh.... She druther be funny than netiquette, Sadie said."
The young man picked up his bag again, his face intent. "I'm late with my calls," said he. "Tell your mother that I mayn't be back for dinner."
"Sadie she heard a lady say damn once right out, a customer in the store, in a velvet suit--"
"Now stop that foolish dancing, Corinne."
Kern stopped dancing. She still looked a little pale from her illness, which had cost her seven pounds. That morning she had donned her working-clothes expectantly, but she had changed since coming in, and that accounted for her favorite red dress. The dress was a strict copy of the slender mode; she looked very small, indeed, in it. She wore a brave red ribbon in her hair, a necklace of red beads, and a long gilt chain which glittered splendidly as she moved.
"What makes you look at me that way, Mr. V.V.?"
The young man gave a small start and sigh.
"You must take better care of yourself, Corinne," said he, from the depths of troubled thought. "I shall certainly do something better for you later on. That I promise."
"Why, I feel very,verywell, Mr. V.V., truly."
"You're much too clever and pretty to be wearing your life out at this sort of thing.... Much too dear a little girl...."
Kern turned away. Mr. V.V. had never said such a thing to her before, and he now made a mental note that he must be careful not to do it again. He had honestly intended only a matter-of-fact statement of simple and, on the whole, pleasant truth; but Kern, with her sensitiveness and strange delicacy, too clearly felt that he had taken a liberty. All her gaiety died; her cheek seemed to flush a little. She walked stiffly past Mr. V.V. to the door, never looking in his direction.
"I'll go soak the colliflower, sir," she murmured, and slipped away into the hall.