How Life was Gray and Everything was Horrid; how Carlisle went to Little Africa with Hen; how the Man spoke to her again, just the same, and what happened then; further, reporting a Confidential Talk with a Best Girl-Friend.
Hearing the whir of a slowing motor behind her, and her name called besides, Henrietta Cooney checked her practised pedestrian's stride and looked back over her shoulder. The Heth car, with Carlisle alone in it, rolled abreast of her at the curb.
"What on earth areyoudoing, Hen," asked her cousin, but hardly as if the matter interested her much--"up here at this time!"
"Servant chasing!" cried Hen, gaily. "My favorite outdoor sport. Hortense's left us. I got out early on purpose. You're looking mighty well, Cally."
Cally made a weary little face, which seemed to say that such matters as looks were very far from being of interest to her. It happened to be the fact, indeed, that she had never felt more depressed and bereft in her life: witness her hailing Hen Cooney, whom she had never cared much for, and less than ever after the way Hen had shown her real nature about the Works. Time's chances had brought her to this, that she preferred Hen's society above the company of her own thoughts. Gray and empty had been Cally's days since a New Year's moment in the library....
"But you'll not find any servants up here, my dear!--unless you expect to throw bags over their heads and kidnap them?"
"I'd like to," laughed Hen, friendly elbows on the car door. "And then give them the bastinado every hour on the hour. Think of Hortense's doing us so when we've all been perfect mothers to her for a year. But I've come up here just to get an address, from Mrs. J.T. Carney, and now I'm off to Little Africa, pleasant but determined."
"Jackson Ward?"
"No," said Hen, producing and consulting a scrap of paper, "it's South Africa this time--106A Dunbar Street. You know--down along the Canal."
"Hop in," said Cally, listlessly. "I'll drive you down there." "Perish the thought!" ejaculated Hen, in some surprise. "You don't want to go exploring the slum districts, finding out how the other half lives. I'll like the walk--"
But Carlisle insisted, being out only because she was bored with being in, and Hen hopped in, not altogether reluctantly. By request she repeated the Ethiopian address to the chauffeur, himself of that tongue and nation; and off the cousins bowled.
"Bored? How's this, Cally? I hear on all sides that it's the gayest winter in ten years. You're not tired of parties, at your age?"
"Oh, I'm crazy about them," said Cally, indifferently, yet drawing comfort from the sound of her own voice. "But one can't have parties every hour of the day, you know. There are always chinks to be filled up, and that is where one's background comes in. My background has a violent attack of indigestion just now. Everything's horrid.--Ohh! Whywilla dog take chances like that?..."
"How's Uncle Thornton?" said Hen, holding her hat on with a hand that looked hard-worked. "I don't believe I've seen him since that day we all came to dinner--"
"Oh, he's well, I suppose, but he's out of spirits a good deal of the time, which Iwillsay is unusual for papa. I think he's probably worried about business or ... Who was that old man that stared at me so? He looked as if I ought to know him."
"Where?" said Hen, glancing back. "Oh!--there under the tree? Why, that's Colonel Dalhousie. You know--"
"Oh!" said Cally, immediately regretting having spoken. To relieve the baldness of her exclamation, she added: "I thought he was a rather younger man than that."
"He's broken dreadfully in the last few months--that's probably why you didn't recognize him," said Hen, cheeringly. "They say the poor old man's grieving himself to death."
Through Cally quivered an angry wonder why it was that only disagreeable things happened nowadays. Why, why, when everything else was just as abominable as possible, need that old man go prowling around the streets, stopping on corners to stare at her?...
She went on quickly with a tinge of light bitterness in her voice:
"I'm sure it must be business, for there's a hard-times atmosphere hanging over the house, all of a sudden, and mamma is constantly remarking that there's a limit to my extravagance, etc., etc. She and I happen to be on dreadfully formal terms just at present, which is another of the joys of home. And to cap the climax," she added, with a burst of confidence only half mocking, "I'm in an absolutely suitorless condition--not a blessed swain to my name! I was never so destitute and forlorn in my life!"
Hen, struck from the beginning with the unusual note in her brilliant cousin's manner, laughed. She perceived that Cally wished to talk about herself, and talk complainingly, and Hen didn't mind.
"First time I ever heard such a complaint in this quarter. Is J. Forsythe Avery dead without my knowledge?"
"J. Forsythe is in New York. Robert's in the sulks. James Bogue, 2d, is in bed--measles, if you please ... Do you ever have the horrible nobody-loves-you feeling? Rather odious, isn't it?"
"Ghastly," said Hen.
"I'll be awfully glad to get away next month," continued Cally....
Interested by the hiatus in Cally's list of missing swains, Hen desired that this conversation should go on. Like most people, the Cooneys had of course heard of, and gossiped about, the open breach between their cousin and Mr. Canning a month ago, promptly followed by the great young man's departure from town. Through the masculine half of the local world, it was generally assumed that Miss Heth had actually rejected Mr. Canning. It was a rare tribute to the girl's attractions that not a few women also believed this, even though Cally's best girl-friends, like Mattie Allen, were perfectlysurenothing of the sort had happened....
Hen, a Cooney, had had a special reason for wondering if this interesting affair might not be "on" again. However, Cally, skipping the conversation along, was talking now of the visit she had in prospect to her friend, Mrs. Willing, Florence Stone that was, in New York. Florrie, she informed Hen, wanted her particularly for the Lenten weeks, promising that they would spend the sober penitential season in a hilarious round of theatres, restaurants, and shops. It appeared that this promising invitation had come only that morning, and Cally described it as a direct answer to prayer.
"Goodness, Cally! You talk as if you lived in a special kind of purgatory," said Hen. "I don't know anybody that has a better time than you."
"Is an everlasting round of gaieties, all exactly alike, your idea of a perfect time? What is the point or meaning of it all?" demanded Cally, the philosopher. "The whole trouble with me," she added, explanatorily, "is that I haven't budged from home in three months, and I'm simply bored deaf and dumb."
Hen might have replied that she hadn't budged for three years, but what was the use? She said instead: "When're you going to sail for Europe. May?"
"It remains to be seen whether we sail at all or not," answered Carlisle, with a sudden mocking little laugh. "Mamma talks several times a day of cancelling our passage and shipping me off to Aunt Helen's farm for the summer. She's been tremendously droll with me of late...."
Droll, of course, was only the girl's derisive euphemism. The truth was that mamma's attitude, since hearing of the extraordinary rupture,--which her daughter refused either to explain or amend instantly,--had been nothing short of violent. Jangling scenes recurred daily.... Perhaps, indeed, it was mamma's relentless pressure that had brought about the gradual shifting, amounting to a total revolution, in Cally's own attitude. More probably, though, it was only the inevitable resurgence of her own sane fundamental purposes, temporarily swept away by purblind passion.
It is one thing to kick out your symbol of happiness in a burst of senseless rage. It is quite another to learn to live day by day without it.... Why, indeed, should she not yield obedience to poor mamma--at the least greet Canning's return with some mark of forgiveness, a tiny olive-branch?...
Henrietta Cooney's voice spoke, singularly apropos:
"You don't seem to be the only one who's been bored lately, Cally--that ought to comfort you! Chas and I saw Mr. Canning yesterday, and he looked bluer than indigo. Mad, too!"
Surprise betrayed Carlisle into a naked display of interest. Turning with a little jump, she stared at Hen with a kind of breathless rigidity.
"You sawMr. Canning yesterday!... Where?"
"Why, out on the old Plattsburg Turnpike," said Hen, certain now that the affair was not on again--"near the Three Winds Road. We happened to be taking a walk out there, and he dashed by on that beautiful big bay mare of Mr. Payne's, going like a runaway. He didn't look happy a bit ... You knew he was here, I suppose?"
By a very special effort, Carlisle had recaptured her poise: it was not her habit to confide her troubles to anybody, least of all to a Cooney.
"Oh, no!" she answered in a voice of careless frankness. "I don't know the first thing about his movements any more."
"Well, it seems he only came for over Sunday. A friend of Mr. Payne's told Chas he was here, on Saturday. He went off again on the noon train to-day."
"Oh!... Did he?"
"Looloo saw him at the station. She happened to be there, meeting a friend of hers."
Gone!--He had come, not seen her, and gone!... A wave of bitterness swept through Cally, impelling her to hit out at somebody.
"Of course. Isn't itfunnyhow your family always sees and hears everything?"
But Hen answered, entirely unmoved, in fact with an air of modesty: "Any family can do it who keep their eyes and ears open. For instance, good old Looloo heard where he checked his baggage to: Palm Beach, if it's of any interest to you."
"I don't believe it is, my dear. He'll be checking it back this way again very soon, I've no doubt. Are we going the right way for Dunbar Street?"
Hen shot at her a look of unconscious admiration. Her pretty cousin's indifferent air seemed to support the theory that she had actually rejected the prince of partis, which, in fact, was exactly what it was meant to do. Hen had never really thought that Cally had it in her. She threw her alert eye around to see where they were. The car had turned south at Twelfth Street, had crossed Centre, and was now rolling into a quarter of the town very different-looking, indeed, from Washington Street. Hen said they were all right for Dunbar Street and told Cally to cheer up. Much worse was coming, Hen said.
There was nothing personal in Hen's admonition, but the truth was that Cally, gazing fixedly at the passing sights, felt anything but cheerful at this moment. The Cooneys' tidings were staggering in their way.
What was the meaning of Mr. Canning's mysterious flying visit? That it had to do with her she did not question; and, tensely meditating, she presently found a hypothesis not unsatisfying after its kind. He had come with the hope that she would at last make some generous overture toward a reconciliation. More direct advances, after her three galling rebuffs of him, he naturally could not bring himself to make. Yet he had taken a long journey merely to put himself in her way--perhaps counting on a chance meeting, more probably expecting that she, hearing of his presence, would this time extend the sweet olive. The wormwood in it was that she would have been perfectly willing to extend the olive if she had only known....
The car, pushing through a mean and shabby neighborhood, offensive to refined eyes, ears, and nostrils, now turned into a narrow street brisk with the din of business, but by no means lovely to look upon. Recalling the Cooney presence, Cally suddenly stirred with the deadly self-protective instinct of her sex, and directed Hen to cease instantly all thinking about her and Mr. Canning. She did it, needless to say, scientifically, by saying with just the plausible degree of interest:
"I meant to ask you--what onearthwas the trouble with Hortense, Hen? I supposed she was a perfectfixturewith you, an institution!"
"What's the trouble with all the servants in this town?" cried Hen. "I tell you, Cally, I don't know what's going to become of us. Why ..."
She launched with zest upon the somewhat unoriginal thesis, and Cally relapsed into her own thoughts, which were full of rebellion at the bitter untowardness of her fate....
Much water had flowed under the bridge of sighs since the parting in the library. Passed long since, it seemed, was that uprush of burning humiliation; subdued was the betraying flare-up (mamma's favorite word nowadays)--vanished to thin air like a midsummer madness, delirium's delusion, hardly possible to understand, much less recapture, now. A day had hardly passed, after the second rejection of Mr. Canning at her door, before the thought of whistling him back again flashed luringly across Carlisle's mind. She repelled the thought, but it recurred, and she came to dally with it, ably assisted in that direction by mamma. What had he done to warrant such absurd melodramatics?... More and more her mind had fastened upon the genuine tenderness, the emotion, the man had shown in his last moment with her. In love with her without quite realizing it himself, he had in the moment of parting been swept away by his feelings, and had taken a not strictly authorized kiss or two. What Sir Galahad among men was proof against such a tripping in the presence of lovely and irresistible temptation?...
"Hortense gave you no notice at all?" she demanded out of a dream.
"Did you ever? Why, honestly, Cally ..."
He was to pause once again, to bid the Paynes farewell, on his final progress back to what he had once called lights and home. That would be in April, said Cousin Willie Kerr, when his six months' sentence ran out. The distant promise brought the girl no comfort now. Why, really, should she not take this new opportunity he had given her, and dispatch him a little note, saying in a friendly way that she had wanted to see him again? By day after to-morrow, he could be at her side....
It was a little note that mamma, though ignorant of the circumstances, had so specially recommended in the desolate weeks; had commanded, offered bribes for, cried for with real tears, blustered and threatened for with a purpling birthmark. In her own mind the girl had already worded many which met the situation with merely a front of sweet generosity, carrying no forfeiture of dignity, no real acknowledgment of surrender. What was the fibre of foolish hardness in her that resisted all mamma's importunities, all her own urgent wisdom?
"Five years ago," said Hen, "we paid eight dollars a month, and got really good ones. Now the greenest of them holds you up for twelve and fourteen. Hortense was simply bribed off...."
Cally roused, glancing about. "Papa says," she observed, absently, "it will all end in something like the French Revolution. Heavens! What a perfectly sickening street!"
"Isn't it?" said Hen, cheerfully. "Yet it's interesting too, Cally, for this is where the city makes all its money."
Money-making, indeed, Canal Street looked. Long processions of trucks rolled up and down it, giving motorists more time than they desired to look about. All around them, as the car moved slowly on, were warehouses, new and old cheek by jowl together; commission merchants, their produce spilled over the sidewalk; noisy freight yards, with spur-tracks running off to shipping-rooms of all descriptions; occasional empty ground used as dumps, littered with ashes and old tin cans; over all a thousand smells, each more undelectable than the last.
ButApril! You might as well say in another life. How could she ever get through the days till then?...
"I'm glad you're interested," she said aloud, sharply, thinking that this was exactly what came of giving a lift to the Cooneys. "I think it's simply disgusting.... Get us through this, William."
"It's familiar, at any rate. Let's see. Dunbar must be the next street over but one, isn't it?"
Cally, lifting a handkerchief to obliterate the adjacent odors of a gas-tank, said: "I haven't the smallest idea."
"Why, don't you like the rattle of business, Cally? Don't you like the bustle, the fine democratic air?--Why,hello! There's V.V.!"
Carlisle's head turned at once.
"He's signalling us," said Hen, waving back; and she nervily added: "Stop, William!"
Following Henrietta Cooney's look, Carlisle's eyes fell, sure enough, upon the tall figure of Dr. Vivian crossing the humming side-street straight toward them. Her glance caught him in the act of removing his derby, bowing in response to the cheeky salute of Hen....
"Ah, he's using a cane," added Hen, below her breath. "That means his foot is bad...."
"But he has no right to signalme," said Carlisle. "Drive on, William."
But she herself unconsciously spoke in an undertone, and the order appeared to be lost in the enveloping din. William, all but blockaded anyway, had come to a halt. Coincidentally sounded the voice of Hen, the pachyderm:
"Hello, V.V.! What're you doing way down here in the wilds? Not visiting the sick, without your little black bag?"
V. Vivian stood bareheaded at the side of Mr. Heth's (of the Works) shining car.
"How'do, Henrietta?--Oh, good afternoon, Miss Heth. No, I--I'm down here on other business this time...."
Carlisle, her eyes about on a level with the young man's interesting piscatorial necktie, had acknowledged his greeting by the smallest and frigidest inclination of her head. That done, feeling outraged by this whole proceeding, she at once looked ostentatiously in another direction.
The lame doctor, for his part, appeared a little embarrassed by the rencontre, or perhaps excited, one or both.
"I--it's a very fortunate coincidence, meeting you in this way," he began at once. "The fact was, I--ah--was just thinking of you at that moment, Miss Heth,--wishing very much to see you--"
Miss Heth turned her pretty head once more, this time with a sort of jerk. So the man pretended to have forgotten that she had ordered him not to address her again.
Now her eyes fully met those of Dalhousie's friend, and in that meeting she was conscious of an odd little shock, almost like a physical impact.... Why was it that this impossible man, with his ridiculous opinions, his wicked untruths, and his face so full of a misplaced hopefulness, kept coming like a destiny across and across her path? What was her silly weakness, that he never looked at her with those quite misrepresentative eyes without making her angry and unhappy?...
She felt herself, as it were, turning pale inside, but into her cheeks there sprang a cold color.
"You wished to see me?"
"Well, do put on your hat, V.V.," interjected Hen, matter of fact, but glancing round at Cally's voice. "You'll catch pneumonia...."
"Yes--thank you.... I'd like to enlist your help, if I could, Miss Heth. I've just come from the Works, you see," he hurried on with curious intensity--"where I went to try to right what seems to be a clear injustice. I wonder--do you remember the girl I happened to mention to you at my uncle's that night,--a buncher here at the Works?..."
His expression said that he was counting on her remembering. The girl in the car was looking him through and through. Hen Cooney disappeared from between them; the roar of traffic faded away.
"No, I don't remember," said Miss Heth, biting her lip a little.
"Oh!--the girl I wanted thematronsfor? Well, it's no matter," the tall young man said, with a belying look of youthful disappointment. But he went on with undiminished eagerness: "She's one of the best operatives in the Works, I assure you--a really valuable employee because she can get more work out of a machine than any two inexperienced girls. She's had over two years' practice, you see. This morning she reported again for work after nearly a month's illness in bed: she's had pleurisy. Well, MacQueen--the superintendent--declines to give her her place back."
"Why, what a shabby trick!" cried Hen....
She looked as if she desired to say much more, but she saw that V.V.'s eyes were fixed on Cally, whose father owned MacQueen, and forbore.
Cally's breast rose and fell. She saw what was coming now.... How did he dare--he who had so maligned her personally, who had so maliciously thrown bricks at papa and the Works--how did he dare to turn and beg favors from the objects of his slanders? This was the supreme impertinence. Now she would say to him what would destroy him from her ways forever....
V. Vivian was hurrying on, as if perceiving that he hadn't made the matter fully plain as yet: "It is quite a serious thing for her, because she can make more at the Works than anywhere else--she's a born buncher. And she and her mother are dependent on her earnings. It seems a--a great hardship that she should be thrown out this way, without any fault of her own...."
"Put-on-your-hat!" ordered Hen,sotto voce; and again repressed further remarks seething within her.
The slum doctor, having neglected Hen's injunction hitherto, now obeyed it, though with inattention to the processes. He continued speaking, blind to all discouragements.... Would no one stop the God's fool, rushing with eager eyes to his doom?...
"I don't, of course, like to trouble you. But don't you think you could stop a moment, and say just a word to MacQueen--or to your father if he is in?..."
Now was the moment to demolish the irrepressible fanatic, who seemed incapable of understanding that his betters wanted none of him. And strange, oh, strange!--Cally Heth sat silent.... As the man reached the climax of his madness, the girl's hard challenging gaze, as if by some miracle of his ministering angels, had suddenly wavered and broken. Her eyes flitted from his face, rested fixedly on a hideous sprawling pile on the corner ahead, an abode of trade exceptionally repellent to all the senses. However, she was unaware of the detestable object, so confused was she by the odd frustrating weakness that suddenly possessed her, staying her hand in the act of delivering the mace-blow. It might be the very superlativeness of the man's temerity that disarmed her, paralyzing the hot will. It might be merely that ludicrous trusting look in his eyes, which somehow seemed to put him in the non-combatant class, like some confiding child....
"I know, of course," he was concluding with unfaltering expectancy, "a word from you will make everything right at once."
And Carlisle, her glance returning toward him, but not to him, heard with disquiet and mortification her own voice saying, not indignantly at all:
"You will have to speak to my father about it if--if injustice has been done. I--I haven't time to go to the Works now--"
"Time!" cried Hen Cooney, at last assuming control of things. "Why, good heavens, Cally! It wouldn't take us anytime! We're right there now!--and don't you think Uncle Thorntonoughtto be told how that brute's behaved ..."
Hen intended only an argument; but it happened that her explosive statement sprang out like a switchman, finally shifting the train of the talk.
"Oh!" said Cally, staring bewildered at her cousin. "Why--where are the Works--from here, I mean ...?"
Hen's strange look, confirmed her own confused conviction that she was appearing at an annoying disadvantage all at once. And forebodings possessed her, as of one walking wide-eyed into unsuspected perils.
"Youarelost, Cally, indeed. Why, my dear, we're right on the corner of Seventeenth and Canal now--they're leaning right up against your nose. There!"
Following Hen's nod, Cally's gaze rested again on the somewhat displeasing pile on the corner, this time with a seeing eye. Her fascinated stare took in with one sweep a dirty ramshackle building of weather-worn gray brick, spilling over the sidewalk and staggering away (as it looked) down the littered side-street: rather a small building, obviously old, certainly not fragrant, quite sinister-looking somehow....
The girl felt as if the skies were falling. She perceived that there was some mistake. "Oh ... You mean that is part of them? But the--the main part, I suppose, is--"
"No, this is all there is of 'em, Cally!" said Hen, suddenly with a kind note in her voice. And she waved upward toward a wire screen atop the ancient building, where large black letters spelled out:
THE HETH CHEROOT WORKS
"Is that the Works?"breathed the daughter of the Works, with a sort of stunned incredulity.
In her utter bewilderment, she was confused into glancing at Jack Dalhousie's friend, who stood silent upon the sidewalk, two yards away. Thus she surprised his translucent eyes fixed upon her with a look which she had seen there on two other remembered occasions. The eager confidence had, indeed, faded from his face, but not as she had designed that it should fade. The man had the grace to look away at once, seeming embarrassed: but in one glance she saw that he had read to the heart of what she felt, thus discovering the real birthplace of her Family. And his eyes had said to her, quite plainly, that of course he would not on any account ask her to stop now; and that, on the whole, God must pity her again for a poor little thing who did not even know where and how her own father made his money....
She could have cried for the angry mortification of this moment, but perhaps that confrontation steadied her as nothing else could have done. She said hurriedly, but with some degree of naturalness:
"Well--it certainly isn't pretty--Hen! But I don't suppose factories usually are. You know, I--haven't happened to be down here for a good many years...."
And then, catching the driver's eye, she nodded sharply to him to go on. In the cross-sweep of larger troubles, dismissed bunchers were naturally forgotten. The car started with a little jump.
"Why, aren't you going tostop?"
It was Hen Cooney who thus sounded the note of rather indignant surprise, not the man from the slums, who, understanding, stood tall and silent, lifting his old derby....
Cally, looking straight ahead, replied: "I can't stop now."
That left the whole matter indeterminate; nobody was committed to anything, one way or another. Hen Cooney earned Cally's undying resentment (at least for the remainder of the drive) by crying over her shoulder as the car rolled away:
"Of course Uncle Thornton'll give her her place back! Don't you worry, V.V.!..."
That night the subject of the Works was touched upon again, in the course of an extended talk between Carlisle and her friend Mattie Allen, a talk ranging intimately over various aspects of life and living. It took place in Carlisle's pretty bedroom, toward two o'clock A.M. In the earlier evening the girls had brilliantly attended the Thursday German (which was always held on Mondays), and now Mattie was spending the night: a ceremony which she dearly loved, especially the eleven o'clock breakfast in bed. They routed all hands out at eight at the Allens, regardless.
The two girls, Carlisle and Mattie, were the dearest friends in the world, being perfect natural foils, each made to appear at her best by the presence of the other. Many other bonds they had also, as the fact that, while each was charming and most attractive to men, they very rarely attracted the same men, thus obviating hostile jealousies. Speaking roughly, tall, athletic, handsome, normal young men loved Carlisle; while Mattie, though rarely appealing to these demigods, made instant killings with "clever" men, literary fellows, teachers of Greek, and promising young entomologists. Doubtless the comparatively favorable impression Mattie had made on Mr. Canning at the Beirne reception was due to the fact that he, though a demigod, had thought, at times, of writing a book....
"Mats," said Carlisle, apropos of nothing whatever, "have you ever heard people criticizing the Works--saying horrid things about conditions being unhealthy there, or anything of that sort?"
"Why, yes, dear, I have," said Mats at once, and sweetly. "Not very lately, though. I think there was an article in the paper about it, wasn't there, a month or two ago? Why?"
"What have you heard people say?" replied Carlisle.
"Well, I can't remember exactly, Cally, but it seems to me I heard them say the Government was going to have a new law about it, or something. Why?"
This last was a popular word with Mattie, whose mind in relation to her own sex was distinctly interrogatory. All evening, mostly by indirect methods, she had been examining Carlisle in regard to Mr. Canning, and his strange visit....
"Oh, nothing," said Carlisle, gently patting her face with a steaming cloth.
Mattie selected a hairbrush from her little spend-the-night kit.
"You know what perfectnutsit is to people," said she, "to think they have anything the least bit disagreeable on people they know."
"Isn't it?" replied Carlisle, with a repressed note of strong irritation. "Everybody has plenty of time to attend to everybody's business but their own."
Mattie glanced at her, wondering interestedly what had happened to Cally. However, she made no answer to the philosophic sarcasm, being now engaged in giving her hair one hundred and twenty-five brisk strokes before retiring, and not wishing to lose the count.
Half an hour the girls had been in the flowing negligee stage, but they were still intensely busy with the Eleusinian mysteries.
After an interval Carlisle said: "I wonder how many of the people who criticize would put Turkish baths and--and dens in the Works if they had to do it out of their own pockets.... Why under thesunshould they?"
"Of course," said Mattie. "(Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.)--I think you're perfectly right, dear...."
"If people don't like the Works as they are, why should they raise heaven and earth begging for jobs there? I wish somebody'd explain that."
"Of course. (Twenty-five.)--And how could Mr. Heth spend thousands and thousands of dollars on such things without taking itright out of your mouth, don't you see?... Oh,gosh!"
"What?"
"Broke my best finger-nail--that's all! Just the tiniest rap on the chair. Where's the file, dear? Oh, Cally, remember, twenty-five.... How provoking!--I do think I've got the brittlest I ever saw ..."
Presently Carlisle, in a flowing silken robe, rose, went over to her dressing-table, seated herself and picked up a round cut-glass jar with a silver top. The jar contained cold cream, or something of that sort. Mattie, having filed down her nail, was now faithfully brushing again, in the forties. Her eyes followed Cally; rested upon her as she sat. These eyes, large, dark, and grave, with the sweetest, curlingest lashes, had been the turning-point in Mattie's life. She had early recognized their unique merits and values, and round them, with infinite pains, she had built up her "type." And now at twenty-three, she was sweet, artless, and full of adorable intellectual dependences, deliciously stupid (with the spectacled young men), and her favorite expression was "poor little Me."
Mattie, brushing, looked at Carlisle, and wondered if she possiblyhadrefused Mr. Canning, and, if so, why Mr. Canning had skipped back just to stay over Sunday and not go near her, and why Cally was so mysterious and secretive all of a sudden. She always told Cally every single thing about her affairs, reporting in detail what was "the most" each man said to her, and always bringing her their letters to read, even Mr. Dudley's, who wrote such perfectly beautiful ones. Cally had always done the same with her, till lately, but now she was aperfect clam. Not a word would she tell about Mr. Canning, and to-night J. Forsythe Avery had proposed at last (Cally said), but she barely mentioned the fact, as if it were of no interest, and declined positively to repeat his words, which was always the interesting (and also the convincing) part of it....
"What's the matter?" said Mattie, aloud and alertly.
Cally, sitting and rubbing cold cream (or whatever it was) had suddenly given a long sigh. At her friend's question, she turned half round, but did not cease the rubbing.
"Mats, don't you ever get sick and tired of all these things we do to ourselves to make us look pretty and attractive and--desirable?"
Mattie, looking rather shocked, said: "Why, what things do you mean?"
"Oh, these things!... Massage and manicure and primp!--hot baths and lotions and primp!--sleep and a little exercise to make pink cheeks and primp some more. Hours and hours every day just to coddling our little bodies! Isn't it all rather sickening, when you really stop to think?"
"I must say," answered Mattie, quite stiffly, "I can see nothing sickening about it. I think it's a woman's duty to look just as well as she can."
Carlisle rested her arm on her chair-back, and went on rubbing.
"Duty?--I wonder. Duty to whom, do you mean?"
"To everybody, to the world, to society."
"I was just trying to think," said Cally, "and it's quite fun. I believe I'll do it at least once a week after this.--What would we think of a man who spent four hours a day decorating himself, everlastingly working at himself to look pretty?"
Mattie opened her wide eyes yet wider. She was now plaiting her well-brushed hair, and looked very sweet and girlish.
"Why, that's averydifferent thing, Cally! The same qualities aren't expected of men and women--or they couldn't complement each other! Women areexpectedto be sweet and attractive, while--"
"Expected by whom?" quizzed Cally, and screwed the top down on her cold cream (if such, indeed, it was).
"By everybody," said Mattie, falling back upon her tried phrase, "by the world, by--"
"Why shouldn't it be expected of men to look nice, too, just as much? Why should we have to do the whole performance? Why shouldn't we give some of all this time to something useful, as men do?--cultivating our minds, for instance?"
"But don't yousee, Cally?--that isn't expected of us! Men simply donotcare for clever women," cried Mattie, who had built up a considerable social success on that very principle.
"Why should we letthemdecide for us what we're to be? Why?--Why? That's just what they do! We're human beings just as much as they are, aren't we?... Oh, I'm sick of men," cried Cally.
"You're sick of men!" echoed Mattie, aghast as at a blasphemy.
Cally nodded slowly, her lovely eyes on her friend's tremulous face.
"Oh, it's the men who make us put in all this time tricking up ourselves to look pretty. You know it, too, for you just gave yourself away.... Oh, Mats, wouldn't it be great to appeal tosomebodysometimes in some other way!"
Mattie, apparently on the verge of tears, murmured her complete inability to follow Cally's strange talk. Observing her, Carlisle gave a reassuring little laugh and rose abruptly. Not that it made any special difference, but she didn't care about setting her best friend's alert wits too busily to work.
"Dear old Mats!--Don't take me so dreadfullyseriously. It's all what I read in a magazine article to-night before the German, waiting for Robert to come. He thought he was displeased with me, and came very late, on purpose. You don't seem to like it?"
"Idon'tlike to hear you talk so, Cally, even in fun," replied dear old Mats, rather stiffly. "You've been strange all evening, and you told me you didn't care whether you ever saw Mr. Canning again or not. It isn't a bit like you."
"It certainly isn't, as mamma frequently remarks," said Cally, her laugh dying. "Well, I'm going to be just like myself after this, never fear.... Gentlemen always welcome. We strive to please."
She put an arm over her friend's shoulder, and in this true-friendship attitude they strolled through the little entry and connecting bath to the spare-room at the back where Mattie always spent the night.
"I feel terribly sorry for poor Mr. Beirne," said Mattie, in a just voice. "You know he had a sinking-spell, and they were saying to-night he can't possibly get well."
"Yes, I know," said Carlisle, stifling a yawn. "By the way, I must leave cards there to-morrow. Remind me. Climb in, dear. I'll tuck you in."
"I haven't said my prayers," said Mattie, standing by the bed. "Cally, suppose he dies and leaves a lot of money to that cunning nephew of his! You know--Dr. Vivian--that I introduced to you that night at his house? They say Mr. Beirne's terribly fond of him."
Cally nodded in reply, her gaze entirely blank. It appeared that in this world there was escape neither from the nephew nor from the topic of him.
"But what do you suppose he'ddowith it," queried Mattie, who was a dear romantic thing--"living off down there in the Dabney House? Somebody told me he didn't care atallfor money, only think!"
"Perhaps he'd feel differently if he had any," said Cally. "Papa says coming into money's a sure cure for Socialism and everything of that sort."
"Why, don't you think he's terriblysincere?... Don't you think lame people usually are, somehow?"
"My dear child, I don't see why I should think about him at all. Besides, Mr. Beirne will leave his money to the Masons. Now for some beauty slumber--I'm quite ready for it, too! Sleep well, Mats dear."
They kissed, and parted for sweet dreams. At the door, Cally, pausing, said:
"Oh, Mats, go with me to Madame Smythe's to-morrow? I'm buying things for New York."
But Mats could not reply, being already at her devotions....
In her own room, Cally prayed briefly with preoccupied thoughts, and rising, removed her thin blue robe, switched out the lights, raised shades and windows. In the quiet street below, a cat trotted silently, swallowed up as she watched in an immense flickering shadow from the tall street light. The girl stood a moment, looking down, a strange wish in her heart.
She wished for a confidante, some one to tell her troubles to. Mamma, of course, was impossible in this connection; you never told things to mamma, and besides, they were barely on speaking terms most of the time now. Mattie was hardly less out of the question: a girl with many excellent merits and her best friend, but the last person you would ever dream of giving yourself away to. But then you really could not trust anybody as far as that. In all the world there was no one to whom she could go and freely pour out her unhappiness and her heart.
A self-contained and self-sufficient girl, she now felt lonesomely that it would be a great comfort to talk everything over with somebody. Things seemed only to get worse by being kept locked up so tight in her own bosom. Everything was changing so, just in a little while; you could not go by the old landmarks any more. Only a few weeks ago life had been more serene, more secure and halcyon than ever before. Now, as from the clouds, one hard stroke fell after another; old established certainties exploded with a bang all about. Nothing seemed to be fixed or to be relied upon any more, nothing seemed to be settled. How had she fallen only this afternoon, supposing herself high-born of great institutions, to find herself in the turning of an eyelash merely the creature of an ugly little rattletrap!... But no,--no! That was simply ridiculous. Business was like that. No one had ever really supposed that a factory could possibly be anything different....
Agitating such matters as these, Cally Heth got into bed and pulled up the covers. She repelled the thought of the Works, as she had done, all evening. Nevertheless the last thing she thought of as she dropped off to sleep was Dr. Vivian, as he stood and looked up at her from the dingy sidewalk. She wondered whether she would have agreed to speak to papa about that girl, if only the Works hadn't looked soawful....
In which Catty tells a Certain Person that she isn't Happy--very.
The question recurred next day. The strange ubiquity of the nephew persisted. When Carlisle called about noon to "inquire" after her respected neighbor, who had lain four weeks in mysterious coma, her ring was answered and the door opened by young Dr. Vivian. He had seen her coming, through the window.
"Oh!--good-morning, Miss Heth!" said he, in a manner indicating the experiment of pleased surprise, tempered with a certain embarrassment.... "What a glorious day outdoors, isn't it?--almost spring.... Won't you come in?"
Miss Heth replied, as she would have replied to the housemaid (who, indeed, could herself be spied just then, pausing, down the dimness of the hall):
"Good-morning. No, I stopped to ask how Mr. Beirne is to-day. We hope there is better news?"
The young man stepped at once out into the vestibule.
"Oh! That's kind of you," said he, his pleasure gaining strength. "I'm happy to say that thereis,--the best news. He's going to get well."
"I'm so glad to hear it," replied Miss Heth....
If, in despite of herself, there was a trace of stiff self-consciousness in her voice and air, how was she to be blamed for that? There is a breaking-point for even the most "finished" manner, and the sight of this man to-day was like a rough hand on a new wound. A great wave of helplessness had broken over her, as the opening door revealed his face: how could you possibly avoid the unavoidable, how destroy the indestructible? And it seemed that, since yesterday, he had robbed her of her one reliable weapon....
The tall young man pushed back his light hair. He was smiling. The mild winter sun streamed down upon him, and his face looked worn, as if he wanted sleep.
"We had a consultation this morning--three doctors," he went on, in the friendliest way. "They're sure they've found out where the trouble is. A little operation, of no difficulty at all--I've done it myself, once in the hospital!--and he'll be walking the street in a fortnight."
"That is good news, indeed. We have been so--sorry about his illness."
"Thank you--it's a tremendous relief to me, of course. He seemed so very ill last night...."
Standing under his eye in the tiled vestibule, Carlisle produced, from her swinging gold case, not her card, but those of Mr. and Mrs. B. Thornton Heth, and extended them in a gloved hand.
"May I leave these?" she said, with the reemergence of "manner." "My mother and father will be delighted to learn that Mr. Beirne is soon to be well again."
"That's very kind. I know my uncle would be--willbe--much gratified by your interest and sympathy."
Who shall know the heart of a woman? The thing was done, the inquiry over. The most punctilious inquirer could have bowed now, and walked away down the steps. Cally imperceptibly hesitated.
She had four times met this man, and he had three times (at the lowest computation) driven her from his presence. That thought, unsettling in its way, had leapt at her somewhere in the night: she had sought to drape it, but it had persisted somewhat stark. And now had not he himself taught her, by that hateful apology which seemed to have settled nothing, that there were subtler requitals than by buffets upon the front?...
The pause was psychological purely, well covered by the card-giving. Words rose to Cally's tongue's tip, gracious words which would show in the neatest way how unjust were this man's opinions of her and her family. However, the adversary spoke first.
"I'm so glad to--to see you again, Miss Heth," he began, with a loss of ease, twirling the B. Thornton Heth cards between long thin fingers--"to have the opportunity to say.... That is--perhaps you'll let me say--you mustn't think the Works are so--so disappointing as perhaps they may seem, just at first sight. You know--"
Her flushing cheeks stopped him abruptly; and she had not usually found him easy to stop.
"But I didn't think they were disappointing atall! Not in theleast!"
The young man's eyes fell.
"Oh!" he said, with noticeable embarrassment. "I--only thought that possibly--as you--you had not happened to be in the factory district for--for some time,--that possibly you might be just a little surprised that things weren't--well, prettier. You know, business--"
"But I wasn't surprised at all, I've said! I knew exactly what it was like, of course. Just exactly. And I consider the Works--very pretty... for a factory."
She gazed up at him indignantly from beneath a little mushroom hat lined with pink, challenging him to contradict her by look or word. But he swallowed her dare without a quiver.... Good heavens, what girl worth her salt would endure apologies on behalf of her own father, from one so much, much worse than a stranger to her? It may be that V. Vivian liked the lovely Hun the better for that lie.
"Well," he said, compounding the felony with a gallant gulp, "I--I'm glad you weren't disappointed--"
She could certainly have retired upon that with all the honors, but the fact was that the thought of doing so did not at the moment cross her mind. She found the conversation interesting to a somewhat perilous degree.
"I supposeyouridea is," she said, and it showed her courage that she could say it, "that a factory ought to be a--a sort ofmarble palace!"
"No. Oh, no. No--"
"But itisyour idea, is it not, that it's my father's duty to take his money and build a perfectly gorgeousnewfactory, full of all sorts of comforts and luxuries for his work-girls? Thatisyour idea of his duty to the poor, is it not?..."
There it was, the true call: what ear could fail to catch it? Out they came running from the city again, the old scribes with new faces; pouring and tumbling into the wilderness to ask a lashing from the grim voice there.... Only, to-day, it must have been that he did not hear their clamors. Surely there was no abhorrence in these eager young eyes....
"Well--personally, I don't think of any of those things just as a--a duty to the poor--exactly."
"Oh! You mean it's his duty to himself, or something of that sort? That sounds like the catechism.... Thatiswhat you meant, is it not?"
"Well, I only meant that--I think we might all be happier--if ..."
An uproar punctuated the strange sentence. Mr. Beirne's butler had chosen to-day to take in coal, it seemed; a great wagon discharged with violence at precisely this moment. Two shovelers fell to work, and an old negro who was washing the basement windows at the house next door, the Carmichaels', desisted from his labors and strolled out to watch. It was the most interesting thing happening on the block at the moment, and of course he wanted to see it.
Carlisle stared at Mr. Beirne's nephew, caught by his word.
"Oh!..." said she. "So you think my father would be much happier if he stripped himself and his family to provide Turkish baths and--and Turkishroomsfor his work-girls? I must say I don't understand that kind of happiness. But then I'm not aSocialist!"
She said Socialist as she might have said imp of darkness. However, the young man seemed unaware of her bitter taunt. He leaned the hand which did not hold the cards against a pilaster in the vestibule-side, and spoke with hurried eagerness:
"I don't mean that exactly, and I--Ireallydon't mean to apply anything to your father, of course. I only mean--to--to speak quite impersonally--that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all--isn't it rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that the real way to be happy was just in the other direction. That was all I meant.... Don't you think, really," the queer man hurried on, as if fearing an interruption, "it stands to reason it's not possible to be happy through money? It's sosegregating, it seems to me--itmustbe that way. And isn't that really just what we all want it for?--to make a--a sort of little class to ourselves, to wall ourselves off from the rest--from what seems to be--life. It elevates in a sense, of course--but don't you think it often elevates to a--a sort of rocky little island?"
They seemed to be personal words, in despite of his exordium, and V. Vivian boggled a little over the last of them, doubtless perceiving that he was yielding fast to his old enemy (as indicated to O'Neill) and once more being too severe with these people, who after all had never had a chance....
Cally looked briefly away, up the sunny street. She raised a white-gloved hand and touched her gay hair, which showed that, though she hesitated, she was perfectly at ease. She had just been struck with that look suggestive of something like sadness upon the man's face, which she had noticed that night in the summer-house. She herself was inclined to connect this look with his religiosity, associating religion, as she did, exclusively with the sad things of life. Or did it come somehow from the contrast between his shabby exterior and that rather shining look of his, his hopefulness incurable?...
She replied, in her modulated and fashionable voice: "I don't agree with you at all. I'm afraid your ideas are too extraordinary"--she pronounced it extrord'n'ry, after Mr. Canning--"for me to follow. But before I go--"
"They do seem extraordinary, I know," broke from him, as if he could not bear to leave the subject--"but at least they're not original, you know.... I think that must be just the meaning of the parable of the rich young man.--Don't you, yourself?"
"The parable of the rich young man?"
She looked at him with dead blankness. Passers-by hopped over the coal-hole and glanced up at the pair standing engrossed upon the doorstep. Such as knew either of them concluded from their air that Mr. Beirne was worse again this morning.
V. Vivian's gaze faltered and fell.
"Just a--a little sort of story," he said, nervously--"you might call it a little sort of--allegory, illustrating--in a way--how money tends to--to cut a man off from his fellows.... This man, in the sort of--of story, was told to give away all he had, not so much to help the poor, so it seems to me, as to--"
"I see. And of course," she said, vexed anew--how did she seemalwaysto be put at a disadvantage by this man, she, who could put down a Canning, alas, only too easily and well?--"of course that's just whatyouwould do?"
"What I should do?"
"Ifyouhad a lot of money, of course you would give it all away at once, for fear you might be cut off--segregated--rocky island--and so forth?"
To her surprise, he laughed in quite a natural way. "Uncle Armistead, who's usually right, says I'd hang on to every cent I could get, and turn away sorrowful.... Probably the only reason I talk this way is I haven't got any.... That is--except just a--a little income I have, to live on...."
No doubt he said this hypocritically, self-righteous beneath his meekness, but Cally was prompt to pounce on it as a damning confession. She flashed a brilliant smile upon him, saying, "Ah, yes!--it's so much easier to preach than to practice, isn't it?"
And quite pleased with that, she proceeded to that despoiling of him she had had in mind from the beginning:
"Before I go, I started to tell you just now, when you interrupted me, that I was in rather a hurry yesterday, and didn't have time to--to say to you what I meant to say, to answer your request--"
"Oh!" said he, rather long drawn-out; and she saw his smile fade. "Yes?"
"I meant to say to you," she went on, with the same "great lady" graciousness, "that I shall of course speak to my father about the girl you say was unjustly dismissed. It's a matter, naturally, with which you have nothing to do. But if an injustice has been done by one of his subordinates, my father would naturally wish to know of it, so that he may set it right."
The little speech came off smoothly enough, having been prepared (on the chance) last night. For the moment its effect seemed most gratifying. The young man turned away from her, plainly discomfited. There was a small callosity on the pilaster adjacent to his hand, and he scratched at it intently with a long forefinger. Standing so, he murmured, in the way he had of seeming to be talking to himself:
"I knew you would ... Iknew!"
She disliked the reply, which seemed cowardly somehow, and said with dignity: "It's purely a business matter, and of course I make no promises about it at all. If therehasbeen any injustice, it was of course done without my father's knowledge. I have noideawhat he will do about it, but whatever he decides will of course be right."
The man turned back to her, hardly as if he had heard.
"The trouble is," he said, in an odd voice, harder than she had supposed him to possess, "I didn't trust you. I--"
"Really that's of no consequence. I'm not concerned in it at--"
"I was sure all the time you would--be willing to do it," he went on, in the same troubled way. "I wassure. And yet last night I went off and spoke to somebody else about it--a man who has influence with MacQueen--John Farley--a--a sort of saloonkeeper. Corinne is back at work this morning."
The girl struggled against an absurd sense of defeat. She wished now--oh,howshe wished!--that she had gone away immediately after giving him mamma's and papa's cards....
"Oh!" she said, quite flatly.... "Well--in that case--there is no more to be said."
But there he seemed to differ with her. "I'd give a good deal," he said slowly, "if I'd only waited.... Could you let me say how sorry I am--"
"Please don't apologize to me! I've told you before that I--Idetestapologies...."
"I was not apologizing to you exactly," said V. Vivian, with a kind of little falter.
"I--haven't anything to do with it, I've said! It's all purely a business matter--purely!" And because, being a woman, she had been interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she could not forbear adding, with indignation: "I can'timaginewhy you ever thought of coming to me, in the first place."
"Why I ever thought of it?" he repeated, looking down at her as much as to ask whom on earth should he come to then.
"If you had a complaint to make, why didn't you go direct to my father?"
"Ah, but I don't know your father, you see."
"Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?"
The man's right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a little.
"Well," he said, hesitatingly, "we've been through some trouble together...."
Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.
She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as that. Staying, she desired to contradict what the alien had said, but she could not do that either. The complete truth of his remark had come upon her, indeed, with a sudden shock. This mandidknow her. Theyhadbeen through trouble together. Only, it seemed, you never really got through trouble in this world: it always bobbed up again, waiting for you, whichever way you turned....
And what did this lame stranger have to do with her, that, of all people on earth, his eyes alone had twice seen into her heart?...
She looked suddenly up at him from under the engaging little hat, and said with a smile that was meant to be quite easy and derisive, but hardly managed to be that:
"Supposing that you do know me, as you say, and that I came to you to prescribe for me--as a sort of happiness doctor.... Would you say that to give away everything I had--or papa had--would be the one way for me to be--happy?"
"Happy?..."
He curled and recurled the corners of the Heth cards, which did not improve their appearance. He gazed down at the work of his hands, and there seemed to be no color in his face.
"To be happy.... Oh, no, I shouldn't think that you--that any one--could be happy just through an act, like that."
"I could hardly give away more than everything all of us had, could I?"
"Well, but don't you think of happiness as a frame of mind, a--a sort of habit of the spirit? Don't you think it comes usually as a--a by-product of other things?"
"Oh, but I'm asking you, you see.... What sort of things do you mean?"
He hesitated perceptibly, seeming to take her light derisive remarks with a strange seriousness.
"Well, I think a--a good rule is to ... to cultivate the sympathies all the time, and keep doing something useful."
Carlisle continued to look at his downcast face, with the translucent eyes, and as she looked, the strangest thought shimmered through her, with a turning of the heart new in her experience. She thought: "This man is a good friend...."
And then she said aloud, suddenly: "I am not happy--very."
She could not well have regarded that as a Parthian shot, a demolishing rebuke. Nevertheless, she turned upon it, precipitately, and went away down the steps.
These events took place, in the course of ten minutes upon a doorstep, on the 31st of January. On the 27th of February, Carlisle departed, from the face of her mother's displeasure and all the horridness of home, for her Lenten visit to the Willings. Through the interval the dreariness of life continued; Canning was reported in Cuba; she had abandoned all thought of a little note. The nephew she saw no more; but it chanced that she came to hear his name on many lips. For on the cold morning of the birthday of the Father of his Country, old Armistead Beirne, whom three doctors had pronounced all but a well man, was found dead in his bed: and a few days later, by the probation of his will, it became known that of his fortune of some two hundred thousand dollars, he had left one-fifth to his eccentric nephew in the Dabney House.