In which she goes to New York, and is very Happy indeed.
Mrs. Willing was twenty-four, handsome, expensive, lively, and intensely fond of what she thought was pleasure. Willing was thirty-two, and had a close-clipped mustache: there were ten thousand men in New York whom you might have mistaken for him at twenty paces. He was assistant something on a nineteenth story downtown, and his scale of living continually crowded his income to the wall. The Willings--there were, of course, but two of them--had the kind of home which farmers' daughters so envy the heroines of "society" novels. They lived in a showy apartment hotel in the West Fifties, kept a motor-car, and went out for dinner. In fact "out" was the favorite word in the establishment: the Willings did everything but sleep "out."
"I can't bear to stick at home," said Mrs. Willing to Carlisle. "I've alwayslovedto go places."
And places they went from one end of Carlisle's visit to the other. The shops in the morning, downtown on a rush to lunch with Willing, back to Broadway for a matinee, back home at the double-quick to dress for dinner, to the theatre after dinner, to supper after the theatre. There was always hurry; there was never quite time to reach any of the places at the hour agreed.
"That's the fun!" said Florrie Willing. "Rush, rush, rush from morning to night. That's little old New York in a nutshell."
Carlisle had expected to be thoroughly diverted by the rattle, bang, and glitter in which the Willings lived, but in this she was only partially gratified. Pure restlessness, it seemed, had entered her blood: she was no sooner fairly settled in the Wrexham than she began to wish herself back home again. The vague thought pursued her, even at the places, that she was missing something; that she had stepped aside from, not into, the real current of her life. Dazzling indeed were some of the dining-places to which the experienced Willings took their guest, but somehow none of them seemed so really interesting, after all, as home. What was happening away off there on Washington Street? Suppose Mr. Canning should return ahead of time for his farewell visit--return and find her not there?...
"You're changed somehow, Cally," cried Florrie Willing, on the third or fourth day--"I can't just put my little patty on it, but I can see it all the same."
They had just rushed up from breakfast, which the Willings took in the apartment café, and were now dressing furiously to go shopping. Cally, surprised with her mouth full of hatpins, said of course she had; she was getting frightfully old.
"You never used to rest a cheek on a pensive hand, and stare five minutes at a time into eternity. Out with it!" said Florrie. "You're disappointed in love."
"That's it, too. I loved a tall pretty soldier, and he rode away."
"We'llnever ride away, at this rate. Get amoveon, Cally! We've slews and slews of places to go to."
Cally, who considered that she already had a move on, did her best to get on another one.
Young Mrs. Willing added: "Whatever became of the gay young thing with the eyelashes you flirted so outrageously with, the time we were up at Island Inn? What was his name--oh--Mr. Dalhousie?"
Carlisle winced a little in spite of herself.... Banquo could not have been more impossible to forget than this.
"Oh--why, he and I had the worst kind of smash-up--and he went away somewhere. I never like to think of him any more.... Let's fly!"
Fly they did, that morning and many others. It was all very different from life at home. Born and bred in a town where social life is large, constant, and gay, Carlisle could not help being struck by the fact that the Willings, roughly speaking, had no friends. One other young couple in the same hotel, the Jennisons, appeared to be about the limit of their intimate circle: a phenomenon, no doubt at least partly explained by the fact that the Willings moved every year, or sometimes twice a year, "to get a change." Thus, in the huge rabbit-warren, they were constantly cutting themselves off from their past.
"I can't endure to poke about in the same little spot year after year," said Florrie Willing. "If I don't have something new, I simply froth at the mouth and die."
However, Mr. Willing of course had his connections downtown, and knowing his duty in the premises, he would frequently "bring up" men in the evening, brisk, lively, ambitious young fellows like himself. One of the men so brought up fell abruptly and deeply in love with Carlisle, which helped considerably to pass the time away.
"You'd better hold on to Pierce," said Florrie, talking seriously as a married woman: "He's one of the coming men--dead certain to make a pile of money some day."
Cally said she'd dearly love to hold on to Pierce, but to herself she smiled, thinking if Florrie only knew. By this time she had been a fortnight in New York, and had decided to leave at the end of another week. Whatever else the visit was or was not, it had more than justified itself by providing her with just the perspective she needed, to see things once again in their true proportions. Distance seemed wonderfully to soften away all the horridnesses. Nothing had really happened. On the contrary, against this stimulating background it was reassuringly plain that everything was agreeably settled at last, or very soon to be so settled. More and more, as April drew steadily nearer, Mr. Canning towered shiningly in the foreground of her thought.
The days passed quickly enough. She and Florrie spent many absorbing mornings in the shops, Carlisle for the most part "just looking," under the coldly disapproving eyes of the shop-ladies. But her intentions were serious at bottom, in view of three hundred dollars which papa had privately given her, at the last moment, companied by a defiant wink. (The wink indicated collusion against mamma, whose design it had been to cut her daughter off penniless for the trip.) After a great deal of looking, for she was a thrifty buyer, Cally expended one hundred and twenty-five dollars for a perfectly lovely two-colored dress, bewitchingly draped, and seventy-five dollars for a little silk suit. Both were dirt cheap, Florrie agreed. She looked four times at a dear of a hat going begging for seventy dollars, but with only three hundred you have to draw the line somewhere, so Cally simply purchased a plain gray motor-coat lined with gray corduroy, which she really needed, at sixty dollars. She also sought a gift for papa, in recognition of his liberality, and finally selected a silver penknife as just the thing. The knife, luckily enough, could be got for only $2.50.
The young broker who had fallen in love with Carlisle came up four times with Willing, called five times in between, and became host at two of the "out" evenings for the party of four. Carlisle forbore to give him any encouragement, though she rather liked his eyes, and the way his mouth slanted up at the right corner.
"I'm wild about you," said he, on her last evening,--his name, if it is of the smallest interest, was Pierce Watkins, Jr.,--"I'll shoot myself on your doorstep to-morrow if it'll give you even a moment of pleasure."
Carlisle assured him that she desired no suicidal attentions.
"You're the loveliest thing I ever looked at," said he, huskily. "God bless you for that, anyway. And no matter what else happens to me, I'll love you till I die."
"Don't look so glum, Mr. Watkins dear," said Cally.
They did not go to any matinee on the last afternoon, the reason being that it was Monday and there weren't any, except the vaudevilles, which were voted tiresome. Florrie and Carlisle lunched quietly at "home"; had a rubber of bridge afterwards in the apartment of Edith Jennison (who produced for the necessary fourth an acquaintance she had made last week in the tea-room of the Waldorf-Astoria); and rushed from the table for hats, veils, and a drive on the Avenue.
Carlisle was to leave at ten o'clock. Her trunks were packed; her "reservations" lay in the heavy gold bag swinging from her side. Home, somehow, beckoned to her as it had never done before. Besides, New York, with its swarming population (mostly with palms up) and its ceaseless quadruple lines of motor-cars, began to oppress her.
"It's too full of people," she laughed to Mrs. Willing as they shot down in the lift. "It's too big. Some day it will swell up and burst."
"Why, that's the fun of it, rusticus! How I love the roar!"
"I like it, too," said Carlisle. "But I do think it's nice to live in a city where you cansometimes cross Main Street without asking four policemen, and then probably having your leg picked off, after all."
They dashed across the onyx lobby for the main entrance, as fast as they could go, Mrs. Willing remarking that they were almost too late to catch the crowds as it was. From the small blue-velvet parlor, across the corridor from the clerk's desk, a tall man rose at the sight of them, and came straight forward. For a moment Carlisle's heart stopped beating as she saw that it was Hugo Canning.
He advanced with his eyes upon her, brought her to a halt before him. If the imps of memory must have their little toll at this remeeting, the flicker passed through her too quickly for her to take note of it. It woke no palest ghost of rebellion, to walk now. The girl's heart, having missed a beat, ran away in a wild flutter....
"Did my cards reach you?" said the remembered voice, without preface. "They just went up, I believe. But I see you mean to go out."
He looked a little pale under the lobby's brilliant lights, but never had he seemed so handsome and impressive. Carlisle looked up and looked down, and the sight of him there was an exaltation and heavenly fulfilment and a garland upon her brow.
"We must have passed them as we came down," said she. "How do you do? I had no idea you were in this part of the world."
He said that he was just off the train. She presented him to Mrs. Willing, who hardly repressed a start as she heard and identified his name.
"Will you come with us for a little drive?" said Carlisle. "We were just starting out to take the air. Or ..."
Florrie Willing looked intensely eager. Canning hesitated. The feminine intuitions, of which we have heard so much, naturally divined the cause of his hesitation, and Florrie rushed into the breach.
"You're excused from our engagement, Cally!" said she, with archness, and some nobility, too. "I know Mr. Canning doesn't care to parade the Avenue in our last year's model. You shall have the city to yourselves. Why not go up to the apartment?"
Carlisle glanced at Canning, who said: "You are very nice and kind, Mrs. Willing." Mrs. Willing looked at him as much as to say, "I can be five times as nice as that, if you only knew...."
When she had rushed off, Canning said: "Do you feel like a little walk?"
"Oh, how nice!" said Carlisle.
"Let's stroll up to the Plaza and have tea."
They went out, turned east and came into the Avenue, where, the afternoon being fine, one million people were methodically stepping on each other's heels. However, these were people without existence, even when they jostled into one.
The moment they were out of earshot of the listening clerk, Canning said, looking straight in front of him:
"Haven't you missed me at all, Carlisle?"
"Oh, yes! I seem to have done hardly anything else."
"I've been learning your name, you see," said Canning, after five steps in silence. "You won't mind?... Miss Heth would be a sham, after thinking nothing but Carlisle all these weeks."
She said that she didn't mind. His presence here beside her seemed to fill every reach and need of her being: here was what her soul had cried for, through all the empty days. It did not seem that she could ever mind anything any more....
"I'm very lucky to see you," she went on, quite naturally, "for I'm going back home to-night. Your six months' sentence isn't quite up yet, is it? Is it business that brings you?"
"What do you call business? Of course I've come," said he, "only to see you."
He went on, after a glorious pause: "And this is the second time--or is it the fourth or fifth? Did you happen to hear of me at Eva Payne's in January?"
"Oh, yes! Only not till four hours after you were gone."
"You'd hardly guess, though, how I've been torn between my--wish, and what it pleases me to call my pride.... I was in Florida and going on to Cuba for February, at least, by special request of Heber. I thought I should like to see you again before I got so far away. Only when I came in sight of your door once more, I couldn't bring myself to knock...."
One interesting coincidence about the reasoning of beautiful ladies is that it is sometimes right. Continuing as they swung up the crowded street, Canning said:
"It seemed to me that ... However, that's no matter now. Unfortunately I've the devil's own temper. To be packed off so, and then to surrender without a condition--I needed more weeks of silent self-communion for that. I've had them now, under pretty skies where the moon shines bright o' nights. I believe the breezes have blown my humors away. I'm happy to be here with you, Carlisle."
"I like it, too.... How on earth did you ever find me?"
"Kerr's been writing me notes from time to time, you know. In one of them he mentioned that you were away from home. I wired him yesterday from Tampa for your address."
"Dear Willie!" said Carlisle. "Do you know I'm mad to be at home again?"
They came to the shining hotel, and passed into the tea-room, which was now rapidly filling up. The doorman greeted Mr. Canning by name. An obsequious majordomo wafted him and his lady, with smiles, to the little table of his choice. Many eyes were drawn to the young pair. He was a man to be noticed in any company, but in presence and in air she was his not unworthy mate. He himself became aware, even then, perhaps more than ever then, that this provincial girl stood transplanting to a metropolitan setting with unimpaired distinction....
"And tea-cakes, ma'am?" implored the loving waiter.
"Muffins," said Canning, and abolished him by a movement of his little finger.
Carlisle would have preferred the tea-cakes, but she loved Hugo's lordly airs.
He dropped his gloves into a chair, and there descended upon him a winning embarrassment.
"Tell me now, for my sins and my penitence," he said in a low voice, his strong fingers clasping a spoon, "that you have blotted away what is past."
She said that she had blotted it all away.
He went on, with considerable loss of ease: "I suppose the accursed dilettante habit has got into my blood. I needed these unhappy days and nights, for my soul's good--"
"Oh, please!" said Carlisle, her eyes falling from his grave face. "Let's not talk of it any more."
He stopped, as if glad to leave the subject; but after a silence he added with entire continuity:
"Your spirit's very fine.... It's what I've always admired most in women, and found least often."
The loving waiter set tea and muffins. Peace unfolded white wings over the little table. A divine orchestra played a dreamy waltz that had reference to a beautiful lady. Carlisle poured, and remembered from Willie's apartment that Canning liked one lump and neither cream nor lemon. He seemed absurdly pleased by the small fact. The topic of the Past having been finally disposed of, the man's ordinary manner seemed abruptly to leave him. His gaze became oddly unsettled, but he perpetually returned it to Carlisle's face. He appeared enormously interested in everything that she said and did, yet at the same time erratically distrait and engrossed. He became more and more grave, but simultaneously he gave evidences of a considerable nervous excitement within....
If Carlisle noticed these eccentricities at all, she could have had no difficulty in diagnosing them, having observed them in the demeanor of young men before now. The case was otherwise with Canning, to whom his own unsteadinesses were a continuing amazement. Heart-whole he had reached his thirtieth year, and his present enterprise had furnished him with the surprise of his life. He was, indeed, a man who had lately looked upon a miracle. He had watched three humiliating rebuffs turn under his eye, as it were, to so many powerful lodestones. He himself hardly understood it, but it was a truth that no degree of cunning on the part of this girl could have so captured his imagination as her spirited independence of him (in mamma's vocabulary, her flare-up). A man who held himself naturally high, he had been irresistibly magnetized by her repulses of him. Rebuffed, he had sworn to go near her no more, and had turned again, an astonishment to himself, and tamely rung her bell....
Canning looked and looked at Carlisle across the little table, and it was as if more miracles went on within him. Not inexperienced with the snarers, he had learned wariness; and now, by some white magic, wariness seemed not worth bothering for. If marriage was to come in question, his dispassionate judgment could name women clearly more suitable; but now dispassionateness was a professor's mean thumb-rule, too far below to consider. Of a sudden, as he watched her loveliness, all his instincts clamored that here and now was his worthy bride: one, too, still perilously not broken to his bit. But ... Was it, after all, possible? Was it conceivable that this unknown small-capitalist's daughter, rated so carelessly only the other day, was the destined partner of his high estate?...
"I can't bear to think of your going to-night," he exclaimed suddenly, with almost boyish eagerness. "You know this town is home to me. I can't explain how perfect it seems to be here with you."
She mentioned demurely her hope of his return to the Payne Fort in a month or so: a remark which he seemed to find quite unworthy of notice.
"Stay over till to-morrow, Carlisle! Let's do that! And we'll take the day train down together."
"Goodness! With my tickets all bought? And my trunks packed since morning?"
Canning glanced hurriedly at his watch. "I can arrange about the tickets in three minutes. As for the trunks, Mrs. Willing's maid will be only too glad to unpack them for you. Do--do stay."
She laughed at his eagerness, though at it her heart seemed to swell a little.
"And if they've already gone to the station?"
"I can put my hand on ten men who will drive like the devil to bring them back."
"And if my mother confidently expects me for breakfast to-morrow?"
"I will write the telegram to her myself." He added: "Ah, you can't refuse me!"
Cally said: "I'm afraid you are one of the terrible masterful men that we read about, Mr. Canning. But--perhaps that's why I shall be glad to stay."
He thanked her with some unsteadiness, and said: "Where shall we dine?... And we could be excused from dressing, couldn't we? I can't bear to lose sight of you, even for an hour."
Of course he had his way there, too. In adjoining booths they did their telephoning, he to somebody or other about the reservations, she to leave a message for Florrie Willing. Later they dined in a glittering refectory, just opened, but already of great renown....
It was an unforgettable meal. So long as she lived, this evening remained one of the clearest pictures in Carlisle's gallery of memorabilia. Before the dinner was half over, Canning's immediate intentions became apparent to her. Doubts and hesitancies, if he had had any, appeared to recede abruptly from his horizon. With the serving of dessert, the words were spoken. Canning asked Carlisle to be his wife. He did it after an endearingly confused preamble, which involved his family and his natural pride in upholding and continuing the traditions of his house. Critically speaking, his remarks might have been considered too long and too much concerned with the Cannings; but of the genuineness of his love, Carlisle could not entertain a doubt. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out. She accepted Hugo with her eyes while an affectionate servitor offered her some toasted biscuit. She accepted the biscuit, too.
It was later agreed that the betrothal should not be announced for the present, except to the parents of the contracting parties. Canning had argued strongly for a day in June, but Carlisle at length carried her point that the interval was quite too short. It was now the 20th of March, The final decision, reached on the train next day, was that Canning should join Mrs. and Miss Heth abroad, in June or July, and the formal announcement of the coming alliance should be made then, from London or Paris. The wedding itself would take place early in October.
Of Happiness continuing, and what all the World loves; revealing, however, that not Every Girl can do what the French People once did.
The row of maiden's testimonials had received their crowning complement. The beginning at the Beach had touched its shining end. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had magically fallen out.
When Mrs. Heth heard the tidings (which she did within three minutes of Carlisle's arrival at home) the good lady hardly restrained the tears of jubilee. Having all but abandoned hope, she was swept off her feet by the overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and her attitude--for of course mamma always produced an attitude about everything upon the spot--was not merely ecstatic, but tender and magnanimously humble. For it was clear now that the daughter had outpointed the mother at the Great Game; Cally had justified her flare-up; and Mrs. Heth, with eyes nobly moist, begged forgiveness for all the hibernal harshnesses.
"You must make allowances for the natural anxieties of a loving mother's heart," said she, in the first transports.... "You've done me so proud, dear little daughter.Proud!... How Society will open its eyes!..."
"So he is coming to dinner with us!" she added a moment later, exulting with her eyes. "He will speak to your father then.... It's not too late to add a course or two. And we must have out the gold coffee-set...."
Canning dined in state at the House that night, with coffee from the gold set. Next evening, there were similar ceremonies. Accompanying Carlisle homeward on the day following their re-meeting, Canning had meant to return at once to New York; for his long furlough had now run out, and he had felt a man's call of duty upon him. Moreover, it was already arranged that he should come again for a real betrothal visit, sometime before the first of May. Yet he lingered on for four days now, a man magnetized beyond his own control. Radiant days were these.
In view of Carlisle's desire that her news should not tamely leak out, depriving the Announcement of its dueéclat, some little discretion was of course necessary at this period: else people would talk and say afterwards that they knew it all along. She saw that she must still make engagements which did not include her betrothed; she must meet the archnesses of her little world with blank looks above the music in her heart, with many evasions, and even, perhaps, a harmless fib or two. Nevertheless, the lovers secured many hours all to themselves. Shut from public view in Mr. Heth's study, and more especially in long motor rides down unfrequented by-lanes they were deep in the absorptions of exploring each other, of revealing themselves each to each. And to Carlisle these hours, marked upon their faces with the first fresh wonder of her conquest, were dazzling beyond description.
Spring was coming early this year, slipping in on light bright feet. And in the House of Heth there was felt a vernal exuberance, indeed: permeating papa even, extending to the very servants. Mr. Heth had received the news of the great event with profound satisfaction, asserting unequivocally that Canning was the finest young man he had ever seen. And yet, unlike mamma, his joy was tempered with a certain genuine emotion at the prospect of so soon losing the apple of his eye.
"You know the old rhyme, Cally," said he, pinching her little ear--"'Your son's your son all his life, but your daughter's your daughtertillshe becomes a wife.'... Don't let it be that way, my dear. You're all the son your old father's got...."
As to mamma, her feet remained in the clouds, but her head grew increasingly practical. She had been rather opposed to postponing the announcement, being ever one for the bird in the hand; but she had yielded with good grace, and within the hour was efficiently planning the "biggest" wedding, and the costliest wedding-reception, ever given in that town. By the second day she was giving intelligent thought to the trousseau--every stitch should be bought in Paris, except a few of the plainer things, in New York--and had finally decided that the refreshments at the reception should be "by Sherry." People should remember that reception so long as they all did live.
"All the Canning connection shall come," she cried,--"rely on me to get them here,--and all the most fashionable and exclusive people in the State. Every last one of them," said she, "except Mary Page."
After an interval, during which she sat with a glitter in her eye, she added explosively:
"I'llshow her whether I'm probable!"
The remark, it seemed, had rankled even in the moment of supreme victory....
Spring, too, it became, the quintessence of spring, in the young maiden's heart. Nature but symbolized the brilliant new life henceforward to be her own. And the more she came to discern her lover against his background of wealth, place, and power, the more she saw how brilliant that life was to be, the more she thrilled with the magnitude of her own accomplishment. Of himself in their new relation, Canning talked much in these days, and with an unaffected earnestness: of the high nature of the career they would make together; of his own honors and large responsibilities to come; in chief of his family, whose name it would be their pride to uphold through the years ahead. And the girl's heart warmed as she listened. What was all the storied dignity of the Cannings now but so much sweet myrrh and frankincense upon her own girlish altar?...
He was her maiden's ideal. He was her prince from a story-book, come true. If any flaw were conceivable in so complete a fulfilment, it might have been imagined only in this very fact of Hugo's all-perfectness. Marrying upward, in the nature of the case, involved a large material one-sidedness: that was the object and the glory of it all. Yet now, in her romantic situation, there woke new emotions in Cally Heth, and she dimly perceived that her lifelong ambition carried, through its very advantages, a subtle disadvantage to the heart. Unsuspected tendernesses seemed to stir within her, and she was aware of the vague wish to bestow upon her lover, to make him a full gift for a gift. However, it was clear that Canning had everything. For the priceless boons he was to confer upon her, she saw that she had nothing to give him in return, except herself.
With this return, Canning, for his part, seemed amply content. When the hour came when, for his manhood, he must report himself again to that office in New York which had not known his face since October, he took the parting hard. He was to return again before April was out, for a fortnight's stay preceding his betrothed's departure for Europe; yet he seemed hardly able to tear himself away....
"I hope we shall have a long life together," said he, a bright gleam in his handsome eyes, "but it's certain, my own dear, that we'll never be engaged but once...."
Moved herself by the farewells, she teasingly reminded him of his one-time impatience to fly back to lights and home. But Canning, straining her to his heart, replied that home was where the heart is, and was admitted to have the best of the argument.
Carlisle's world had been knocked far out of its ordered orbit. Hugo Canning, possessed by her, was so towering a fact that it threw the whole horizon into a new perspective. Between this shining state and the winter of discontent, there was no imaginable connection. Cause and effect must turn a new page, life's continuity start afresh.
So it seemed, in love's first bloom. And yet, circumstances being as they were, it was hardly possible that Carlisle should at one stroke completely cut herself off from the past, as Florrie Willing constantly did, as the French people once did, by means of their well-known Revolution.
In Hugo's absence (full as the days were with questions of the trousseau, rendered doubly exciting by mamma's princely attitude toward expense), Carlisle began to recognize once more the landmarks of her former environment. Doubtless a certain period of emotional reaction was inevitable, and with it the reassociation of ideas began. Canning was away a solid month. One day soon after his return,--it was on a lovely afternoon in early May, as they were motoring homeward after four hours' delightfultête-à-têtein Canning's own car,--Carlisle said to him:
"Oh, Hugo, what do you think I did while you were away? Subscribed a hundred dollars to a Settlement House! My own money, too,--not papa's at all!"
Hugo, whose intensity of interest in his betrothed seemed only to have increased during the days of absence, cried out at her munificence.
"So, you've money, in those terms--well!" said he. "Aren't you mortally afraid of being gobbled up by a fortune-hunter some fine day?"
"Agreatmany people have warned me about that--mentioning you specially, by the way. But I've always told them that you loved me for my fair face alone."
Canning made a lover's remark, a thoroughly satisfactory one.
"But don't you see," he added, "this business of your having money changes everything. I must double my working hours, I suppose! I'm too proud a man to be dependent on my wealthy wife for support."
"I'm glad to know you may be prosperous, too, some day, Hugo," said she; and, after a little more frivolous talk: "Did I mention that I'm soliciting subscriptions from visiting men for that Settlement I spoke of?"
"Great heavens!" cried Canning, amused. "Why, don't you think a Hundred Dollars is more than sufficient--for one little family?"
"They wouldn't say so," said Carlisle, laughing and coloring a little, "for they're asking for twenty-five thousand dollars and have raised about two so far. What could be more pitiful than that?"
Canning, who was driving his car to-day, as he occasionally liked to do, then asked, why was a Settlement? And as well as she could Carlisle retailed her rather sketchy information: how "they" planned to buy the deserted Dabney House, make it the headquarters for all the organized charities of the city, and use the rest of the great pile for working-men's clubs, night classes, lodgings, gymnasiums and so forth. Thanks to the influence of Rev. Mr. Dayne, Mrs. Heth had been induced to lend her name as a member of the Settlement Association's organization committee. But it was from her cousin Henrietta Cooney that Carlisle had got most of her facts, at a recent coming-to-supper while Hugo was away.
Canning, listening, was glancing about him. Having made an adventurous run to-day by way of the old Spring Tavern,--he had plotted it out himself, with maps and blue-books,--they had reëntered the city by the back door as it were, and now spun over unaccustomed streets.
"I didn't know you went in for charity, my dear."
"Oh, a cousin of mine is drumming up funds for this, you see...."
Not clearly understanding it herself, how could she explain the impulse which had led her to offer Hen, without being dunned at all, her royal subscription? Perhaps she had a vague feeling that this would prove, to the complete satisfaction of the public, that she and her family were far from being shameless homicides, dead to all benevolent works. It appeared that mamma had already subscribed fifteen dollars to the Settlement, on personal solicitation of Mr. Dayne, but of course you could not prove anything much for fifteen dollars.
Hugo, having turned to look at Carlisle, lost interest in Settlements. His gaze became fixed, and it said, plainer than ardent print, that, if he had many possessions, here was far the best and dearest of them....
"Where's that ripping little hat you wore yesterday? You know--a brown one, sort of a toque, I suppose--all old rose inside?"
"Why, Hugo!... Don't you like this hatextremely?"
"Rather! Only, if there is a choice, I do think I'd vote for the toque.... You've gone and spoiled me by giving away how you can look when you try."
Carlisle laughed merrily. She was glad to have her lover so observant of what she wore, even though he did not know nearly so much about clothes as he imagined.
"It's not a toque at all," said she, "but I'll wear it for you to-morrow, provided you promise me now to run away from that tiresome secretary and come to lunch."
"Done! At one-thirty o'clock."
"That's the exact luncheon hour, as it happens, but I notice that many of the best fiancés make it a practice to report for duty at least half an hour before the gong. Itlooksso much better."
"Running and eating's no better than eating and running, you allege. There's some small merit in the contention.... What of those sterling fiancés who punch the time-clock a full hour before the whistle?"
"Oh, dear me, Hugo, are there any like that?"
"There's but one now in captivity, I believe. I--Hello!... Missed him, by Jove!"
"What was it? A cat?"
"Didn't you see? Our old hoodoo--that camp-meeting chap!..."
"Oh!"
"I wonder what ill wind he's blowing this time.... Poetic justice if I'd knocked him into the middle of next week."
Carlisle had involuntarily looked back, struck with a sense of coincidence, and also with the odd feeling of having received a douche of cold water. They were, it seemed, rolling along through old South Street, and behind her, sure enough, she saw the looming shape of the ancient hotel, which the Settlement Association could have for twenty-five thousand dollars cash. Of the "camp-meeting chap," however, she saw nothing: presumably, having evaded justice, he had already disappeared into his lair. Nevertheless she was effectually reminded that this man was still in the world.
"Is this where the fellow lives?" said Canning, also glancing back down the dingy street. "I thought somebody said he'd come into money from his lamented uncle."
She confirmed the conjecture, and Hugo then observed:
"Well, I'll give him a month to discover that it's his duty to God to remove to a more fashionable neighborhood."
"Oh! Do you think so?"
"Have you ever known one of these smooth religious fellows who wasn't keen after the fleshpots when his chance came?"
Carlisle laughed and said she hadn't, having indeed known few religious fellows of any kind in her young life. But she was struck with this new proof of Hugo's essential congeniality with her. His penetrating comment, born, it seemed, of that curious antipathy which she had noticed before, fell in astonishingly with trends of her own.
Many weeks had passed since Carlisle had decided to oust this religious fellow definitely from her thoughts, as belonging so clearly to that past upon which she had now turned a victorious back. And in these expulsive processes, she had found herself greatly assisted by the young man's confession of hypocrisy, as she regarded it, on this very subject of giving away money. Perhaps this had seemed a frail club once; she herself had hardly put much strength in it in the beginning; but she had been resolute, and time had strengthened her convincingly, according to her need. For if the man was a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones within, then clearly his opinions of people and their families were not of the slightest importance to anybody, so what was the good of anybody's thinking of them?...
Not to let the conversation lag, she had remarked, with no pause at all:
"It's strange our nearly running over him, just then and there. That old shack is the Dabney House, and you know it's he who got up the Settlement idea."
"No, I didn't know it," said Canning, slowing down to take a corner which led on to civilization. "Still," he added, "I shan't let that stay my generosity. I resolved three blocks back to subscribe five hundred--just to throw you in the shade--and I will not be deterred."
Having been duly applauded for his prodigality, he inquired: "How much, by the way, is the good doctor donating out of his forty thousand?"
"Not a cent!" said Carlisle, who had questioned Hen on this very point.
It was thus, indeed, that circumstances had given demolishing weight to her club. "If I had money I'd probably hang on to every cent," the man had said, that winter morning on his uncle's doorstep; and now he had money, a lot of it, and hanging on he undoubtedly was. Hen herself had confessed it, with a certain defiance, trying to create the impression that the man was merely reserving his funds for some other good purpose....
The triumphant ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were the inner processes which led him to say:
"Does he make any charge for the thought?... Well, it's a fine thought, all the same; a fine work. On reconsideration I raise my subscription to a thousand. Hang the expense!..."
There was another gay burst of felicitation, after which Carlisle became somewhat silent. Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street, spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were thingseversettled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?...
"Who was that?" said Canning, suspending conversation to bow, with Carlisle, to a passing female pedestrian.
"Oh," she laughed, a little vexedly, roused from her meditations--"just one of my poor relations."
"Ah?" said he, a trifle surprised.
A far cry, indeed, from the celebrated dowager, friend of diplomats and presidents, to Miss Cooney of Saltman's bookstore, in a three-year-old skirt. And how like Hen, instead of quietly looking the other way, to yell out some Cooneyesque greeting and wave that perfectly absurd umbrella....
To Hen it was, a day or two later, that Carlisle mailed the two Settlement checks, hers for a hundred and Hugo's for ten times that amount. She licked the stamp with intense satisfaction. However, the rewards of her generosity seemed somewhat flat. Hen, indeed, called her up immediately upon receipt of her communication, and contents noted, with excited thanksgiving. However, that was all: the checks were turned over to Mr. Dayne, and there the matted ended. Carlisle was oppressed with a sense of anti-climax. She even thought of sending another and larger check straight to Dr. Vivian.
Canning, it developed rather to Carlisle's surprise, took his business quite seriously. His indolences of the sick-leave period were now sloughed from him. He had returned this time, not merely with his favorite car and mechanic for the afternoon excursions, but accompanied by mysterious "papers" and a man stenographer; and, occupying rooms in the New Arlington Hotel, gave his mornings and even some of his evenings religiously to work.
"Why, Hugo, are you alawyer?" cried Carlisle, when he first explained these matters to her.
"I am, and a pretty keen one," said he.
"And do you know how to reorganizebanks?"
"I can reorganize 'em like the devil," said Hugo sincerely; for if a man does not want a woman to boast a little before now and then, he does not want her at all....
His papers and his telegrams, his periods of engrossment in business and telephone-calls from his secretary, seemed to invest him with a certain new dignity. A subtle change in his manner was now perceptible. It was as if he had moulted some of the gay plumage of the wooing-season, and unconsciously begun to gather something of the authority of the coming head of a great house. Like many men who have long enjoyed but eluded the wiles of lovely woman, Canning clearly contemplated the married estate with profound gravity. In his absence he had communicated his good news to both his parents, though one was in Boston and the other, his father, in Washington: testifying, in short, before a Congressional Investigation Committee. He was not especially detailed as to what they had said, beyond their general expressions of pleasure; but it was clear that he regarded it as of the first importance that they should be pleased.
Matters now, indeed, began to assume a distinctly serious and responsible complexion. The days of purely idyllic romance seemed to slip behind; the engagement more and more took shape as the gateway to an alliance of institutional consequence, entailing far-reaching reactions in various directions. Mamma's remarks made it plain that, with Cally's establishment as Mrs. Hugo Canning, her own career of brilliant aspiration had reached its final goal. Even papa's future seemed to be affected to its roots. Already he spoke with satisfaction of taking a smaller house next year; ultimately of "retiring" to an undefined "little place in the country," toward which in recent years his talk had slanted somewhat wistfully....
Mrs. Heth and Carlisle were to go to New York on the 20th of May, do a few days' preliminary shopping there, and sail on the 26th. Canning's visit lasted till near the middle of the month, running over his allotted two weeks. And deepening intimacy only brought into stronger relief his great advantages of position, antecedents, and experience; only showed Carlisle the more clearly how distinguished, cultivated, and superior a man she had won. With her pride, there came now, it seemed, a certain new humility. She was aware that never in the days of the thundering feet had she been so desirous of pleasing Hugo as now: when he was no shining symbol or distant parti, but the exceedingly personal and living man who was so soon to call her to the purple. She caught herself at times, with some amused surprise, in the deliberate processes--editing her vocabulary, manner, and wardrobe, for example, in the light of the preferences she intuitionally read in his eye. So, as the husbandly dignity descended upon him, she found herself possessed by something of the wifely duty....
Whenever was this ticklish business of the dovetailing of two lives accomplished without some small mutual effort? No more could be said than that Carlisle felt, in rare and weak moments, a certain sense of strain. An immaterial subtlety this, properly out of the range of mamma's concrete observations. But papa's heart was tender: did he possibly suspect that his darling might feel herself just a little overshadowed at times?
He called Cally into the study one evening before dinner, and with a mysterious air handed over to her a bulky packet of very legal-looking papers.
"Why, papa! What is it?"
"Stock!" answered papa, with a chuckle. "Mostly Fourth National. There's a little more than fifty thousand dollars there in your hand, Cally."
"But--why, papa!... You don't mean it forme!"
"A little weddin' present from your old father. I meant to give it to you next fall, and then I thought, why wait? Had it all put in your name to-day."
"Oh--papa!..."
She threw her arms around his neck, suddenly and oddly touched; not so much by the gift, for she would have plenty of money soon, as by this evidence of her father's affectionate thought.
"Your daughter's your daughter till she becomes a wife...." remarked Mr. Heth. "It won't be that way, will it, Cally, eh?"
"Never in the world.... Oh, papa, how sweet--howgood--you are to me!..."
"You've got a fine man," said papa, presently, patting her cheek. "But my judgment is it's always just as well for a girl to have a little money of her own. Feels independent. You'll have more when I'm gone, of course. That'll give you a little better'n three thousand a year. Non-taxable, too."
She reported her new wealth to Hugo, quite proudly, within two hours. For he had proved willing this evening to purloin night hours from his grave duties as attorney-at-law, and by telephone had easily cajoled Carlisle into breaking an engagement she had made for other society. In the nicest sort of way, Canning agreed that her father had made her a handsome dowry. He added, holding her hand tight, that she was to let him do something for her, too, on their wedding day. Of course she must have her own money; all she could spend.
"I can spend lots, my dear. You'll find me a frightfully expensive young person.... There are cigarettes in the drawer, Hugo. I bought the kind you like, this time...."
She got one for him, struck the match herself. He watched her, loafing lordly; very handsome and dear he looked in his beautiful evening clothes.
And thence, in the lamplit privacy of the little study,--Mr. Heth having fared forth to a Convention "banquet,"--the talk ranged wide. Late in the evening, it returned again to Carlisle, as the possessor of large independent funds, a topic of pleasurable possibilities from her standpoint.
She said idly: "Do you believe it makes you happy to give away money, Hugo? That's a rule I heard somewhere."
"Unquestionably one of the most refined ways known of tickling one's little vanity.... How full of good deeds you are these days. You're thinking of the poor again, I'm right?"
"I must have been. There's nobody else who'd take money from you, is there?"
"Oh, isn't there? I must introduce you to high finance some day."
"Well," said Carlisle, "I meant just to give it away--to anybody--just to show how free and superior you are, or something.... Silly, isn't it? What's your happiness rule, Hugo?"
He replied with the readiness of a man who has been over this path long ago:
"To have the capacity to want things very much, and the ability to get them."
And he squeezed the little hand he held, as if to say that he had both wanted much and gotten much.
Carlisle was much struck with this rule, which she now saw to have been her own and mamma's all their lives long. After duly complimenting Hugo upon it, she said:
"Here's another one, a man told me once: 'Cultivate your sympathies all the time, and do something useful.'"
"That's orthodox! It was a young curate with a lisp who told you, I'll wager."
"Very warm!" she laughed, struck again by his astuteness. "It was your hoodoo--Dr. Vivian! And, oh, now that I think of it, he gave me that other pointer, too,--about giving away money."
Hugo replied: "The man seems to be dripping with wise old saws, in a thoroughly inexpensive sort of way.... Well, we'll show him something about giving away money some day."
He was silent a moment, and Carlisle then remembered her thought of another large subscription to the Settlement, which she, for her part, could easily make now with fifty thousand dollars all her own. But Canning obliterated all such reflections by turning and taking her abruptly in his arms.
"Thisis what I want to make me happy. Darling--darling!..."
They sat on the shabby old leather lounge which papa had held fast to, by winter and by summer, for thirty years. Here they had sat down soon after eight o'clock, and now the soft-toned chimes in the hall had just sounded eleven-thirty. In the first days of their engagement, Carlisle had observed that Hugo was "very demonstrative." And now, at the end of their loverly evening together, he became suddenly and strangely moved, professing, in a voice unlike his own, his inability to live longer without her. Then, ignoring all their elaborate plannings, he abruptly begged her to marry him in June, as he had first asked her....
"Why, Hugo!" she said, surprised and a little uncomfortable. "That's so much dear foolishness--and not a stitch of clothes made yet! October's just around the corner.... Do sit up, Hugo dear. There's papa, I think."
Hugo sat up. Reason reasserted its sway. But later, Carlisle remembered this moment with a dim sense of trouble, not entirely new.... She wondered with a certain disquiet whether all this was some everlasting difference between men and women, or whether she, Carlisle, was by nature a cold and undemonstrative sort of person? Indeed, there did seem to be a falling short in her somehow; for if not with herself and the expressions of her love, with what was she to return Hugo's royal gifts?...
There were three more days; and then young lovers must say farewell. In little more than a week they would meet again in New York; but still this seemed a real parting to both. It was the 13th of May, the day which marked the end of three weeks of cloudless skies. The rain long predicted by the weather sharps had come in the night, and the dreary downpour continued throughout the day. Each of the young pair seemed somehow conscious that the first chapter in their joint story had reached an end. Better days they might certainly have, but never again days just like these....
"Keep well, dear heart," begged Canning at the last, "and take care of all your loveliness for my sake."
Proud of her beauty he ever was, and especially now when she was so soon to meet his mother in New York. And at the final parting, he said, visibly moved:
"Understand me, Carlisle, you are mine through all eternity. Whatever happens to you or me, this is a love that shall not die."
Saying which, having now lingered to the last possible moment, he dashed from her to his waiting taxicab--his own car having already gone by express--with just five minutes to catch his train.
From the drawing-room window, Carlisle waved her hand to him; kissed it, too, since nobody was looking. And then the car leapt forward and shot away out of sight down the glistening street. Hugo was gone, and Carlisle was alone.
She stood at the window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she? No girl lived with more all-embracing reasons for being superlatively happy. What, then, was the lack in her?--or was this some lack in the terms of life itself? Was it the mysterious law of the world that nobody, no matter what she had or did, should ever long keep the jewel happiness unspotted by a doubt?