But instead of this making things better for Cally Heth now, it seemed to make them worse at once. She became considerably agitated; knew that he must see her agitation, and did not mind at all. And suddenly she sat down on the sway-backed sofa between the windows....

"I'm the last woman in the world ever to think of getting out of my groove," said Cally, her cheek upon her hand.

And then, with no premeditation at all, there came strange words from her, words clothing with unlessoned ease thoughts that certainly she had never formulated for Hugo Canning.

"And yet I feel that it might have been different. I've felt—lately—as if I haven't had much of a chance.... I think I have a mind, or had one ... some—some spirit and independence, too. But I wasn't trained to express myself that way; that was all ironed down flat in me. I never had any education, except what was superficial—showy. I was never taught to think, or to do anything—or to have any part in serious things. No one ever told me that I ought to justify my existence, to pay my way. Nobody ever thought of me as fit to have any share in anything useful or important—fit for any responsibility.... No, life for me was to be like butterflies flying, and my part was only to make myself as ornamental as I could...."

V. Vivian, who wrote articles about the Huns in newspapers, stood at the Cooney mantel. He did not move at all; the man's gaze upon her half-averted face did not wink once. His own face, this girl had thought, was one for strange expressions; but she might have thought the look it wore now stranger than any she had ever seen there....

"Maybe, it's that way with all women, more or less—only it seems to have been always more with me.... Money!" said the low hurried voice—"how I've breathed it in from the first moment I can remember. Money, money, money!... Has it been altogether my fault if I've measured everything by it, supposed that it was the other name for happiness—taken all of it I could get? I've always taken, you see—never given. I never gave anything to anybody in my life. I never did anything for anybody in my life. I'm a grown woman—an adult human being—but I'm not of the slightest use to anybody. I've held out both hands to life, expecting them to be filled, kept full...."

She paused and was deflected by a fleeting memory, something heard in a church, perhaps, long ago....

"Isn't there," she asked, "something in the Bible about that?—horse-leech's daughters—or something?—always crying 'Give, give'?..."

There was a perceptible pause.

"Well—something of the sort, I believe...."

She had seemed to have the greatest confidence that, if anything of the sort was in the Bible, this man would know it instantly. However, his tone caught her attention, and she raised her eyes. Mr. V.V.'s face was scarlet.

"I see," said Cally, colorlessly, out of the silence, "you had already thought of me as one of those daughters.... Why not?"

"Of you! Not in my life," cried V.V.... "I ... it's—"

"Why shouldn't you? I know that's what I am. You're—"

"Don't.... I can't let things be put upside down like that."

His difficulties, in the unhappy moment, were serious. His skin had turned traitor to him, sold out his heart. And now, if he had the necessity of saying something, his was also the fear lest he might say too much....

"If I ... I appeared to look—conscious, when you asked me that, it was only because of the—the strange coincidence. I—you compel me to tell you—though it's like something from another life."

He paused briefly; and when he went on, his voice had acquired something of that light hardness which Cally had heard in it before now.

"Once, a year ago, when I had never so much as heard your name, Commissioner O'Neill and I happened to be talking about the local factory situation, about the point of view of the owners or,—to be exactly honest,—the owners' families. By chance—I did use those words. And O'Neill said I was a wild man to talk so, that if I knew any of these people, personally, I'd never judge them so—so unkindly.... It was a long time before I saw ... how right he might be.... And that's what I tried to say to you the other day—when I spoke of knowing the people. I—"

"Yes, sometimes that makes a difference, I know." Had she not felt it only this afternoon? "But I'm afraid this isn't one of the times ..."

Cally rose, feeling that she desired to go. Nevertheless, glancing at his troubled face, she was suddenly moved by perhaps the most selfless impulse she had ever felt in her life.

"Please," she said, gently, "don't mind about that. I liked you better for it. I like people to say what they think. I've—"

"Do you? Then allow me to say that I'm not quite a bitter fool...."

The young man was advancing toward her, throwing out his hands in a quaint sort of gesture which seemed to say that he had had about as much of this as he could stand.

"For surely I don't think I am—I don't think I'm quite so dumb and blind as you must think me...." His repressed air was breaking up rapidly, and now he flung out with unmistakable feeling: "Do you suppose I could ever forget what you did last May! Not if I tried a thousand years!" said Mr. V.V.... "How could I possibly think anything of you, after that, but all that is brave and beautiful?..."

The two stood looking at each other. Color came into Cally's cheek; came but soon departed. The long gold-and-black lashes, which surely had been made for ornaments, fluttered and fell.

Out of the dead silence she said, with some difficulty:

"It's very sweet of you to say that."

Cally moved away from him, toward the door, deeply touched. She had wanted to hear such words as these, make no doubt of that. Among all her meetings with this man last year, she had only that May morning to remember without a stinging sense of her inferiority. And she supposed that he had forgotten....

"You see," she said, not without an effort, "I have been telling you my troubles, after all.... I—I'm afraid I've kept them waiting for you upstairs. I must go."

But she did not leave the parlor at once, even when Hen, hearing the door creak open, cried down that the infirmary was ready....

If Cally felt that she had somehow confessed her weakness to Mr. V.V.—about the Works, about life—and been forgiven by him, it seemed that even that did not quite settle it all. It must have been that one small corner of her mind refused to consider that all this was a closed episode.

She turned, with her hand on the knob.

"Shall you go to that meeting of Mr. Pond's next Wednesday—his meeting for workers? He has asked me to go."

The young man said that he would be at the meeting; that he hoped to see her there.

Cally hesitated again. Perhaps she thought of Hugo then; of perhaps the small unreconstructed corner of her mind grew more unrestful.

"I'm not sure that I'll be able to go," she said, slowly.... "Dr. Vivian—is your telephone number still the same—Meeghan's Grocery? I—I may want to speak to you some time."

Yes, it was just the same. Meeghan's Grocery.

V.V. stood looking at her from the middle of the floor, one hand raised to his hair in his characteristic gesture. His old-fashioned sort of face wore a faraway look, not so much hopeful now as wistful; a look which had been moving to Cally Heth, even in the days when she had tried to dislike him. But of this, the young man from the lonely outskirts was not aware; of the nature of his replies he had taken no note. In his ears whispered the subtlest of all his many voices: "She'll never speak to you, once that's printed. Tear it up. You've a right to your youth...."

"Good-bye," said Cally, "and thank you."

"Miss Heth," said Vivian, starting, hurriedly—"I—if I—if it should ever happen that I could help you in any way—it's not likely, of course, I understand that—but if it should ever happen so—promise me that you'll send for me."

But the girl did not make that promise then, her reply being: "You have helped me—you must know that.... You're the one person in the world who has."

* * * * *

Cally walked home alone, in the dying effects of a lovely afternoon.

She had left the Cooney parlor in the vein of one emerging from strange adventures in undiscovered countries. This queer feeling would hardly last over the solid threshold of Home, whose atmosphere was almost notoriously uncongenial to eccentricities of that sort. But it did linger now, as Cally trod somewhat dreamily over streets that she had long known by heart. Four blocks there were; and the half-lights flickering between sky and sidewalk were of the color of the girl's own mood.

In this moment she was not troubled with thought, with the drawing of moral lessons concerning duty or otherwise. Now Mr. V.V.'s unexpected last speeches to her seemed wholly to possess her mind. She was aware that they had left her curiously humbled.... Strange it seemed, that this man could be so unconscious of the influence he had upon her, had clearly had even last year. Stranger yet that he, whom only the other day she had thought of as so narrow, so religiously hard, should prove himself absurdly over-generous in his estimate of her.... Or no, not that exactly. But, at least, it would have been absurd, if it had not been so sweet....

The revolting corner of her mind seemed now to have laid down arms. Perhaps the girl's vague thought was that the feelings roused in her in the bunching-room had, after all, been unreasonable, even hysterical, as Hugo had plainly enough stated, as Hen herself had partly argued. Perhaps it was merely that all that trouble would keep, to be quietly pondered over at a later time. But rather, it seemed as if a mist had settled down over the regions of practical thought, hiding problems from view. The Works had somehow been swallowed up in that apologia she had made, Cally Heth's strange apology to Mr. V.V. for herself and her life.

Cally walked slowly along the familiar street, her thoughts a thousand miles in the blue. If the words of the good young man had humbled her, they had also mysteriously stirred and uplifted. She thought of his too trusting tribute, she thought of what they had said about women, their strength and their hope of freedom; and the misty pictures in her mind were not of herself—for well she had felt her weaknesses this day—but rather they were of a dim emerging ideal, of herself as she might some day hope to be. Vague aspirations were moving in her; new reachings of the spirit; dreams that spoke with strange voices....

And, companied by these ethereal fancies, she came, before she was aware of it, to the substantial steps of Home, where began the snuggest of all snug grooves....

She arrived with the intention, already well formed, of retiring forthwith to her room, and—probably—spending the whole evening there. But here, as it chanced, interruption fell across her thought. Just at her own door, Cally almost ran into a man who was standing still upon the sidewalk, as if waiting for some one: a tall old gentleman standing and leaning upon his cane. Cally came out of her absorption just in time to escape collision.

"I beg your pardon!..." she began, with manner, stepping back.

But then her feet faltered, and her voice died suddenly away, as she saw that this silent old man was her neighbor, Colonel John B. Dalhousie, whom she had never spoken to in her life.

The Colonel was regarding her with frightening fixity. The girl's descent from the empyrean to reality had the stunning suddenness of a fall: she showed it in her blanching face. Now, as the two thus stood, the old man raised a hand and swept off his military hat in a bow of elaborate courtesy.

"An apology from Miss Heth," said he, in a purring voice, "is the last thing on earth one of my name would have ventured to expect."

Doubtless the meeting had been obliged to come some day: Cally had often thought of it with dread, once escaped it by a narrow margin. That it should have come now, in the gentler afterglow of this curiously disturbing day, seemed like the grimness of destiny.... No fear of over-generosity here; no gleam in these eyes of brave and beautiful things....

"But you ask my pardon," the smooth-cutting voice went on. "It is granted, of course, my dear. You took my son's heart, and broke it, but that's a bauble. You took his honor, and I kicked him out, but honor's a name in a printed book. You took his life, and I buried him, but sons, we know, cannot live forever. What is there here to make a father's heart grow hard?"

Cally raised her hand to her throat. She felt suffocating, or else a little faint. From life she seemed to have stepped into the house of dead men's bones; and here she could see at play old emotions not met before in her guarded life: shrivelling contempt, undying hatred, immortal unforgiveness. Nevertheless, the subtlest stroke in the naked confrontation was that something in the father's expression, distorted though it was, reminded her of the son, whose face in this world she should see no more.

She tried to move past the face of her Nemesis, appeared physically incapable of motion; tried to speak, and had little more success.

"I—I'm—very sorry—for—" she said, indistinctly, and her ears were mocked with her ghastly inadequacy. "I—I've—"

"Sorry? Why, of course you are. Doubtless the little unpleasantness has marred your happiness at times. But I am gratified to know that you have other young men for your amusement, now that my son has withdrawn himself from your reach."

The old Colonel stooped further, brought his stabbing gaze nearer her. There were heavy yellow pouches under his eyes; his lower lip, not hidden by the stained white mustaches, twitched spasmodically.

"God looked and repented him that he had made man. I might wish that he'd made you a man—for just five minutes. But what do you imagine he thinks when he contemplates you and your work, my dear? Eh?... little she-devil, pretty little hell-cat!..."

Cally smothered a little noise between a cry and a sob. She started away, by sheer strength of horror; somehow got away from the terrible old face, ran up her own steps. Glancing whitely over her shoulder from this secure coign, she saw that Jack Dalhousie's father still stood unmoving on her sidewalk, staring and leaning on his cane....

She closed the door quickly, shutting out the sight.



XXX

How it sounded like an Epitaph, but still she would not cry; how she thinks of the Beach again, and hugs a Hateful Word to her Bosom; and Hugo starts suddenly on a sort of Wedding-Trip.

In her own room Carlisle was seized with a wild desire to cry. Her spirit, shocked past bearing, demanded this instant relief. But she fought down the loosening impulses within her, knowing their worse than uselessness; she had shed her heart's tears for this before now. And her need now was for strength; strength to meet her mother when need be, against whom key nor bolt brought privacy: strength, above all, to wipe out this mark set upon her forehead....

She resisted the impulse to fling herself face downward upon the bed, which would have been fatal; kept stoutly upon her feet. And presently, summoning all her courage, she stood at the window and peeped, pale-faced, between the curtains. All was well down there now. The old avenger was gone. There were only people passing serenely over the familiar sidewalk, and the sunlight dying where she had stood and learned just now that a lie has a long life.

Yes, the Colonel was gone: and with him, so it seemed, all veils and draperies, all misty sublimations. One doesn't idealize one's self too much, with curses ringing in one's ears.

Cally leaned weakly against the wall, both gloved palms pressed into the cold smoothness of her cheeks. Somewhere in the still house a door suddenly banged shut, and she just repressed a scream....

Old Colonel Dalhousie did not deal in moral subtleties, that was clear. Regret, penitence, sufferings, tears, or dreamy aspiration: he did not stay to split such hairs as these. His eye was for the large, the stark effect. And by the intense singleness of his vision, he had freighted his opinions with an extraordinary conviction. He had shouted down, as from a high bench, the world's judgment on the life of Cally Heth.

Twenty-four years and over she had lived in this town; and at the end to be called a she-devil and a hell-cat.

The girl's bosom heaved. She became intensely busy in the bedroom, by dint of some determination; taking off her street things and putting them painstakingly away, straightening objects here or there which did very well as they were. Flora knocked, and was sent away. On the mantel was discovered a square lavender box, bearing a blazoned name well known in another city. Fresh flowers from Canning, these were; and Carlisle, removing the purple tinsel from the bound stems, carefully disposed the blossoms in a bowl of water. Once in her goings and comings, she encountered her reflection in the mirror, and then she quickly averted her eyes. One glance of recognition between herself and that poor frightened little thing, and down would come the flood-gates, with profitless explanations to follow in a certain quarter. She avoided that catastrophe; but not so easily did she elude the echoing words of her neighbor the Colonel, which were like to take on the inflection of an epitaph....

After a time, when the dread of weeping had waned, Cally threw herself down in her chaise-longue near the window, and covered her eyes with her hand. And now with all her will—and she had never lacked for will—she strove to take her mind from what no piety or wit could now amend: struggling to think and remember how she had tried once, at a price, to set right that wrong she had done. For other comfort there was none: what she had written, she had written. She might give her life to the ways of Dorcas; she might beat her breast and fill her hands with pluckings of her gay hair. But she could not bring Dalhousie back to life now, or face his poor father as a girl who had done no wrong....

* * * * *

Life in the House moved on. There was a caller or two, who found the ladies excused; there was a telephone summons from Miss Evelyn McVey, whose desire it was to entertain Mr. Canning at dinner, but who now met only with a maid's message; and then, toward seven, there came mamma herself, who was, of course, not so lightly to be disposed of.

But Cally had fortified herself for the little visit, and passed the inspection without mishap. Mrs. Heth was acquiescent enough in her daughter's desire to dine upstairs, which saved the bother of hunting up another man in Hugo's stead, though involving regrettable waste of two covers already prepared. Mamma lingered for fifteen minutes making arch, tactful inquiries about the afternoon; but she noticed nothing more than was accountable for by the slight headache to which Carlisle frankly admitted. The little general's side remarks conceded no doubt whatever that Hugo would present himself very shortly indeed after dinner, for resumption of the agreeable matter in hand. They should have the library to themselves, she promised, company or no company....

Cally dined at a reading-table, set by the fire. Later, when the tray was gone and she was alone again, she relapsed into thoughts which had gained unwonted lucidity and vigor.

She had been thinking of the night, a year ago this month, to which everything in her life since seemed to run straight back. She had not certainly calculated the ruin of Dalhousie that night: rather her lack was that she had hardly cared what she did to him. In that narrow circle of engrossments where she had moved, mistaking it for the living universe, the great want, so it seemed now, was that she had never been asked to measure herself by moral standards at all. What she got: this was all that people looked at here, and according to this she had well managed her affairs, snug in the snugness of the horse-leech's daughters. She had been all for the walled little island,—as she had heard it called,—the island of the upward bound, where self-propelment was the test of right or wrong, and a marriage well above her the touchstone of a girl's sound morality. On this island such as Jack Dalhousie had no merit. What simpler than to kick him off, and turn away with your fingers in your ears?...

Improbable people these, no doubt, if you were of those who judged people by what they did, and never by what they had; hell-cats, perhaps, if you happened to be a father thus made sonless....

Her abasement now fairly met the portrait of her sketched by a stranger two hours since; outran what another stranger had said to her, one night in a summer-house. She looked back over a year, and seemed to see herself as truly one empty within, a poor little thing; common in her whole outlook, vulgar in her soul.... Yes, vulgar. Let her hug the hateful word to her bosom. How else could she have been made to feel so again and again, by an obscure youth who had no power over anybody but that he had kept his own face turned toward the stars?...

And when Cally's thoughts turned toward this present, struggling to show beyond doubt that that girl and this were not one, they ran perpetually into that new cloud of her own weakness which had unrolled above her to-day, and now spread and blackened over the skies.

And yet she felt that it was not cowardice that tied her hands against the fainting girls in the bunching-room. Her strung nerves had carried it all deeper than that. She had spied on her father, found him out in guilt; he, it seemed, must for years have been leading a double life that would not bear looking at. How bring herself to confront papa, who had always been so affectionate and generous to her, with his discovered secret?...

If she but had some right, even, some standing from which to speak.... And here her new resolve was that when she saw Dr. Vivian at the Settlement next week, she would consult him directly: now asking him to say, not that she had no responsibilities about her father's business, but that she had them in abundance.

But deeper than this, beneath all the flutterings of her mind, there ran the increasing sense that, whatever the logic of it might be, responsibility was on her nevertheless: the supreme responsibility put upon free beings by the trust of a friend....

* * * * *

Hugo, it was presumable, would be detained with his Mr. Deming until the latter's departure, or near it. He could hardly appear before nine o'clock, or even nine-thirty; and perhaps he might not come at all. Cally had felt unable to agree with her mother's theory that she was required to sit awaiting Hugo's convenience there. At all events, she had early resolved to settle the point by definitely "retiring" before his possible arrival; relying upon a worse aching head to justify her with mamma, who was not of the few to be favored with fuller confidences.

But a little after eight, when this resolve was almost ready to shape into the deed, the sensible reasoning on which it was based was suddenly upset. The maid Flora came, bringing a new message from the preoccupied lover, brief but decisive.

The business entanglements, it appeared, had only got worse with talking. Hugo, beyond all expectation, found himself compelled to go back to Washington with his law-partner to-night; possibly to go on to New York to-morrow. Would Carlisle accordingly arrange to see him now, for a few moments?

"Now?"

"Yas'm, he say as soon as you c'd make it convenient."

The girl had risen sharply in the first complete surprise of Flora's message; she walked hastily across her floor. But having done these things, she did not at once give the obviously due reply. She stood by her dressing-table, staring fixedly at the colored woman, the aimless fingers of her left hand continually pulling out and putting back the silver top of a squat cut-glass bottle. She appeared to be thinking, weighing pros and cons: processes surely unnecessary to a pasteboard actor, sliding smoothly toward a manifest destiny.

She stood this way so long and so silent that Flora prompted with a giggle and further information.

"Miss Cyahlile, he say if you was to answer no, to say could he please speak to you a minute on the 'phone."

Upon that Miss Carlisle was seen to replace the bottle stopper with consciousness of movement, and to turn her slate-blue eyes briefly toward the ceiling, with no movement of her head at all.

"Very well ... Say that I'll see him at half-past eight, for a few minutes."

Flora, naturally, was not a woman without understanding the sign language of her sex. It might be that she had learned the color of the Canning money—and she had—but her dusky heart, like yours or mine, was not for sale.

"Yas'm—certny ... Yas'm. Or, Miss Cyahlile—I mout just say we 're mighty sorry—but not knowin' he was expected, and you feelin' po'ly an' all—you just this minute went to baid—an'—"

"No!—do as I say," said the young mistress, quite sharply. But, as her faithful friend turned away, she added in another voice: "You're a good girl, Flora.... Be sure to say just for a few minutes."

After the solitude and meditation came action at speed.

The maid vanished, the mistress slipped off her flowered negligee and drew hot water in the bathroom. She proceeded, with no want of experience or skill, to make herself beautiful for her lover: the lover who had seemed over a gulf from her this afternoon, and now what worlds away.... And if the rites were done somewhat hurriedly perforce, there was no lack of conscientiousness here. She, who had said that she had never paid her way through life, could only pay in what coin she had....

Events moved quickly. Flora, who was "on the doorbell" to-night because of the dinner-party, was soon back to say that Mr. Canning was in the library. She was sent ahead to make sure that the coast was clear.

Cally, in a soft black house-dress with an apricot waist-ribbon, went down the back-stairs. She passed through the busy pantry, where Moses and Annie were just ready for an expert entrance with the fish; went through the back hall, where Flora stood flashing her teeth beside the closed door of the dining-room; came to the side door of the library. This door Cally opened, and shut it again behind her....

It was a massive and dark-beamed room, softened now with the light of lamps and fire. Hugo stood in the middle of it, turning quickly at the sound of the door. He, whose afternoon had taken a course so different from his planning, still wore the clothes he had had on then, a dark gray walking-suit which well became his fine-figured masculinity. Over his brow there hovered a vexed business frown, nor did this altogether vanish as he advanced upon Carlisle, a lover's welcome springing imperiously into his eyes.

"Isn't this the devil's own luck?... Deming insists it all depends on me."

"You go at nine-thirty?"

"He says he'll manacle me if necessary. It's confoundedly important, you see—there are large interests involved. You know I wouldn't go otherwise. Don't you?"

"And to-morrow you go on to New York?"

"No!—There's only the remotest chance. I'll go bail to be back here to-morrow at five o'clock."

"Oh!... I—the message I got—"

"I put that in only to make absolutely sure of getting you.... Growing cunning, you see."

"Oh—I didn't understand," said Cally, colorlessly, continuing to look down at her pink fingernails.

She seemed to think of nothing further to say, but that appeared to make no great difference. Hugo moved nearer. If he had remembered his thought about her being too sure of him, it may be that the sight of her had rushed his senses, as it had often done before.

"You were so unlike your natural dear self this afternoon," he said, on the wooing note; and suddenly he had possessed himself of both her hands. "To-night—and we've only such a little time—you are going to make it all up to me ... Aren't you?"

Finding herself captured, the girl hastily raised eyes dark with trouble, looking at her lover for the first time. And so looking, she took her hands from his grasp with a hastiness which might have been a little rasping to a morbidly sensitive man.

"Don't!—please don't! I—don't like to be touched.... I—I can only act as I feel, Hugo."

She turned away hurriedly, passed him and went over to the fireplace. There she stood quite silent before the dull red glow, locking and unlocking her slim fingers, and within her a spreading coldness.

Behind her she heard the thundering feet.

"I hoped, you see," said Hugo's voice, disappointed, but hardly chagrined, "that you would be feeling a little more—well, like your own natural self, after your rest ... Particularly as all our plans for these two days have been so upset."

She replied, after a pause, in a noticeably constrained voice: "I haven't said that I don't feel my natural self. That's only your—your interpretation of what you don't like.... I—that seems to be just the trouble between us."

"Now, now!—my dear Cally!" said Hugo, soothing, if somewhat wearied to see still another conversation drifting toward the argumentative. "There's no trouble between us at all. I, for one, have put our little disagreement to-day out of my head entirely. I do feel that there's not much happiness in these so-called modernisms, but don't let's spoil our few minutes.... Why, Carlisle!" said Hugo, in another voice. "Why, what's the matter?"

She had astonished him by suddenly laying her arm upon the mantel, and burying her face in the curve of it. So close Canning stood now that he could have taken her in his arms without moving; but some quality in her pose discouraged the idea that she might desire comfort that way.

Carlisle's difficulties, indeed, were by no means over for the day. The conviction which had come upon her with the first full view of her lover's face—where Colonel Dalhousie seemed also to have set his afflicting mark—had suddenly grown overwhelming. She had made her draft for payment against an account where there were no more funds.

"Are you ill?"

"No," she answered, straightening at once.... "I ... I'm afraid—this is my natural self."

"Something troubles you?" said Hugo, with penetration.

She nodded, and turned away.

She had always been capable of independent action; it was her chief strength, however mamma might speak of flare-ups. But never in her womanhood had she felt less in tune for heroics and a scene. Life was shaking to pieces all around her.

"Hugo," she began, with difficulty, playing at arranging a slide of books on the table with hands like two blocks of ice ... "I—I hesitated about coming down at all, but now—I think ... As you are going away to-night, and would be coming back to-morrow entirely on my account ... I think I ought—"

"Why, my dear! What's all this about?... Do you mean you've let your feelings be hurt by my going off? Why, you—"

"It isn't that."

The nature of his understanding seemed to stir something in her, and she went on in a rather steadier voice:

"I've been thinking of something you said to me once—that I wasn't the girl you had asked to marry you ... It's taken me a long time, but I've learned that that was the truth. I'm not—"

She was checked, to her surprise, by a soft laugh.

"So that's been it!... I never imagined—no wonder!... Why, Cally! How could you suppose I meant it? Don't you know I was angry that day?—off my head? Would I—"

"But it's true! I'm not that girl at all—I feel differently—I—"

"Well! Let's not waste good time in mare's nests of that sort. Why, dear little girl, would I be here now, if I wasn't satisfied as no other man on earth—"

"But I'm not satisfied, Hugo."

Cally turned now, faced him fully, a faint color coming into her cheek. In the man's handsome eyes she had surprised an unmistakable complacence.

"I'm not satisfied," she said, hurriedly, "to know that we are miles apart, and drifting further every minute. Don't you see there's no sympathy—no understanding—between us? What interests me, appeals to me, what is really my natural self—that only annoys you, makes you think—"

"I've been at fault there, I own," he interrupted, soothingly, nodding his head respectfully up and down. "To tell the truth, I've been so immensely interested in you,—in Carlisle the woman,—that I haven't seemed able to make proper allowance for your—your other interests. I promise to turn over a new leaf there. And, on your side, I am sure, you do realize, Carlisle—"

"Hugo," said the girl, desperately, "you don't understand me. I am trying to say that I can't marry you. I cannot."

Then the faint hum of voices from the dining-room down the hall became quite audible in the library. By the ebbing of color from Hugo's virile face, Cally knew that she had penetrated his satisfaction at last; but by the look in his eyes she learned that she had lodged no conviction in him.

"I hesitated when you asked me in September," said she, slowly, and trying her best to make her voice sound firm. "I should have made up my mind sooner—I've been to blame. I'm sorry to—"

He said in a slightly hoarsened voice: "What has happened since I left you this afternoon?"

What, indeed? Everything seemed to have happened.

"Something did happen ... But I—I don't think there's any use to talk about it."

"Tell me what has happened. I have a right to know."

"I will, if you wish—but it won't do any good.... I went out, to my cousins'. And at the door, as I came back, I—I met Colonel Dalhousie. He stopped me ... expressed his opinion of me. He said things that I—I—"

She stopped precipitately, with a break in her voice; turned from him.

"Oh!—I understand ... Poor little girl."

At the mention of the name of ill omen, Canning's strong heart had missed a beat. He had thought the old corpse buried past exhumation; the sudden rising of the ghost to walk had staggered for an instant even his superb incredulities. But with that sudden tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor. Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily over the forgotten past....

He tried to take at least one hand in loving sympathy, but found that the matter could not be arranged.

"The shock has upset you—poor darling! I understand. No wonder!..."

"No—I'm not upset ... I—Hugo, I can't marry you. I'm truly sorry—I've tried—but now I'm quite sure—"

"But this is madness," said Hugo's queer voice. "Don't you see it is as you say the words?... Not marry me—because an old ruffian waylaid you, called you—hard names—"

"No, but because what he said was true. No—of course that's not the reason ... I must tell you the truth ..."

Cally lifted misty eyes, beneath which faint circles were beginning to appear, and said with sadness:

"Hugo, I don't love you."

Then she watched, painfully, the last remnants of his assurance drop away from his face: and after that, she saw, with a certain fear, that she had still to make herself believed.

Hugo, supported not merely by his own justifiable confidences but by her mother's affirmations, could, indeed, put no credence in his ears. Many explanations were possible for this extraordinary feminine perversity; she had happened to mention the one explanation that was not possible.

"You don't know what you're saying," he began, huskily, out of the silence. "You're not yourself at all nowadays ... Full of new little ideas. You've taken a whim, because an old rascal ... whom I shall punish as he deserves—"

"No ... That helped me to make up my mind, perhaps. But I've learned I've never loved you—since you left me last year."

Cally moved away from Hugo, not caring to witness the breaking-up of his self-control. She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands. If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory.

"I'm to blame for not telling you before—when you were here last month," she said, with some agitation ... "Only I really didn't know my own mind ... All summer I seemed to ... just to take it for granted that—everything was the same—that I still cared for you. But—Hugo, I don't. I'm sorrier than I can say for what has been my fault...."

The young man had been standing like one in a trancelike illness, who can hear, indeed, with horrible distinctness, but can neither move nor speak. But now the increasing finality of her words seemed all at once to galvanize him; he shook himself slightly and took one heavy step forward.

"What you need is a protector, little girl—a man. I know about the summer—I suffered, too.... Of course. And in the loneliness—you've let yourself be affected.... The unrest of the day—"

"No, no! Please," said she, almost ready to scream—"don't think this is one of my new little ideas you speak of. I—it's true that we don't seem to think alike about things.... But I'd never have noticed that at all if I loved you. I'd want to think and do only as you wished. But I don't—"

"I've spoiled you ... letting you think you could have your way with me," said Hugo, in his thick and gritty voice. "You're mad to-night, little girl ... aren't responsible for what you say...."

Flicked in her spirit, she broke across his argument with a changed voice and gaze.

"Why is it madness not to love you?"

"It's not a thing to argue about now, I say. You do love me ... I know it. You'll marry me next month, that I swear. Why—"

"No!—when I love, I want to look up, and when I marry, I'll marry above me...."

That checked his queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with no more nervousness.

"And—don't you see?—I've not been able to look up to you since that day last year.... The day—I'm sorry to have to say it—when you came all the way down from New York to show me that you didn't care for a woman who was getting new little ideas about telling the truth...."

Canning's face was the color of chalk, his look increasingly stony; in his eyes strange passions mounted. Now he seemed, to intend to say something, but the girl's words flowed with gathering intensity.

"Why, think what you did that day, Hugo!—think, think! If I needed a protector and a man,—and I did,—that was the time for you to show me how protectors and men can act and love. If I was wrong, it seems to me that was the time of all times when you ought to have stood by me, protected me. But I was right—don't you know I was?... I—it was the first time I had ever thought about doing right—and you threw me over for it.... Of course I know there was a quarrel, but—you know perfectly well what you said. You said then, just as you say now, that I was shocked out of my senses, didn't know what I was saying. And then you said that people would point at me to the longest day I lived, so the thing to do was to hush it all up, or else I wasn't the girl you had asked to be your wife. Anything—anything—except that I should tell the truth.... So you went off and left me to bear it all alone. And then, when my heart had been broken into little pieces, when I'd cried my eyes out a hundred times, then, when all the trouble was over, and people weren't cutting me on the street,—then you came back. And even then you never said once that you were ashamed, or sorry for the way you'd treated me. You just came back, when I'd fought it all out without you, and whistled, and thought that I'd tumble into your arms.... Oh, it's natural, I suppose, for a woman to lie and be mean, and afraid of what people will say—for that seems to be the—the way they're brought up.... But—but—"

Her voice, which had begun to trail a little, dropped off into silence. She turned away; made a visible effort to control herself. And then there floated again into the still room the sounds of muffled revelry: strong Mrs. Heth making merry with her friends, a few of the best people....

"But I only hurt your feelings for nothing," said the girl, in quite a gentle voice.... "Hugo, try to forgive me if I've done you any wrong. But ... you—you have your train to make. Don't you think you'd better go now?"

Hugo's extraordinary reply was to seize her in his arms.

"Go?... Yes, and take you with me ... you little witch. Why, you're raving, little witch," said the hoarse, violent voice in her ear. "Gone out of your head with notions.... D'you think I'll let your life and mine be spoiled for a few minutes' crazy madness? You need to remember you're a woman, that's all.... Don't struggle. It's no use."

Her wild efforts to release herself, indeed, only drew his embrace tighter. His cheek rested upon her hair.

"Don't struggle, little witch. You've had your head too long. I'll make up your mind for you. You're going to marry me now. To-night. Don't tire yourself so. It's all settled. You belong to me—you see that now, don't you?..."

Now his hand was beneath her chin; he raised the still face she had kept so resolutely buried against his breast. And Cally felt his burning kiss upon her forehead, her cheek, upon lips that would nevermore be his.

"Little temptress ... you were so anxious for me to love you last year.... Doesn't this teach you that I'll never give you up? It's all settled now. We'll be married at once. I'll hold you this way—kiss you this way—till you learn to do what I say. Then you'll go up and put on travelling-clothes. Never mind lug...."

His wedding-trip ended in the middle of a word. His clasp had been weakened by that hand he had raised, and with the sudden strength of desperation his bride had broken from him. In an instant she had put the table between them.

Over ten feet of lamplit space, the lovers of yesteryear regarded each other. Both were white, both trembling. The girl now suffered a brief collapse; her face dropped into her upraised hands, through which, presently, her voice came brokenly:

"Go!... Go, I beg you...."

Canning stood panting, shaken and speechless. Upon him was the last measure of defeat. He had staked his passion and his pride in the supreme attack, and had been crushingly repulsed. Doubt not that he read the incredible portents in the heavens now. His face went from chalk to leaden gray.

He drew his tongue once across his lips, and said, just articulately:

"If I go—out of this room—alone ... as God lives, you'll never see me again."

It must have been something in Hugo's difficult voice, surely nothing in the words, that set a chord to stirring in Cally. She took her eyes from her hands, glanced once at his subtly distorted face. And then she stood silent by the barrier table, looking down, knotting and unknotting her yellow sash-ends....

That other night of humiliation in the library, which she had never been able to forget, had risen swiftly on the wings of memory. But, curiously, she felt no such uprush of shame now; her fury mysteriously ebbed from her. Even in this moment, still trembling from his familiar handling, still with the frightening sense of her life going to ruin about her, she felt a rising pity for her prince of lovers whom time and circumstance had brought to this....

"Perhaps," said she, out of the silence, in almost a natural tone, "I ought to feel very—angry and—and indignant.... But I don't. I only feel sad.... Hugo, why need there be any bitterness between us? We've both made a mistake, that's all, and I feel it's been my fault from the beginning. If you seem to take me—rather—lightly.... I must have taught you to think of me that way.... And you'll soon see how—how superficial my attraction for you was, soon forget...."

Strangely, these mild words seemed to affect Hugo more than anything done or said before. In fact, he appeared unable to bear them. He had checked her speech suddenly by lifting his hand, in a vague way, to his head; and now, without a word, he turned away, walking blindly toward the door.

She, in silence, followed his going with dark eyes that looked half ready to weep.

By the door into the hall, through which she had come a little while before, the broken young man paused. His face was stony gray, touched with livid streaks. Standing, he looked unseeingly about the room, around and over her; then at last at her. It had seemed to be his intention to say something, to claim the woman's privilege of the last word. But now, when the moment arrived, there came no words.

For once Hugo must be indifferent to anti-climax, must fail to leave a lady's presence with an air. Standing and looking, he suddenly flung out one arm in a wild, curious gesture; and on that he opened the door, very quickly.

The door shut again, quietly enough. And that was all. The beginning at the Beach had touched an end indeed. Hugo was gone. His feet would thunder this way no more.

* * * * *

But the latter end of these things was not yet. One doesn't, of course, kick out of one's groove for nothing.

Cally, returning after a time to her own room, did not go at once to bed, much as she would have liked to do that. She sat up, fully dressed, by a dying fire, waiting for what must come. She waited till quarter to eleven, so long did the dinner-guests linger downstairs. But it came at last, just as she had known it would: on gliding heels, not knocking, beaming just at first....

The interview lasted till hard upon midnight. When it ended, both women were in tears. Cally retired to a fitful rest. At nine o'clock next morning, papa telephoned for Dr. Halstead, who came and found temperature, and prescribed a pale-green medicine, which was to be shaken well before using. The positive command was that the patient should not get out of bed that day.

And Cally did not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen, but less easily shutting herself from the operations of her mind.

And at night, when the troubled brain slips all control, she dreamed continually of horrors. Horrors in which neither Hugo nor mamma had part: of giant machines crashing through floors upon screaming girls, of great crowded buildings falling down with frightful uproars and bedlam shrieks. Through these phantasms the tall figure of Colonel Dalhousie perpetually moved, smiling softly. But when Cally met the doctor of the Dabney House in her dreams, the trust was gone from his eyes.



XXXI

Second Cataclysm in the House; of the Dark Cloud obscuring the New Day, and the Violets that had faded behind a Curtain, etc.; but chiefly of a Little Talk with Mamma, which produced Moral Results, after all.

The foolish nightmares receded; the sad faces of a dream dwindled again into air; and she waked suddenly in the sunshine to find herself quite well. This she knew with the first opening of her eyes. The familiar objects in the room, the face of the morning, wore the unmistakable well look. Wellness there seemed within, too, refreshment in body, mind, and spirit. Life called to the young and the strong, and the sunlight, streaming royally through the shuttered windows, was the ringing reveille of a new day....

But Cally Heth, having waked to life, lay on in bed. She heard the summons, was strong to answer it; but was held back as by a high surrounding wall. She was like a tied bird, unfolding wings with the heart to soar, and continually brought down by the shortness of her tether.

She had waked to overspreading gloom in the House of Heth; but this she could have fronted cheerfully to-day, fortified to charm it away, for herself and others. If events of late had been sweeping her along too fast, one emotion crowded unsteadyingly upon another, nature, stepping in, had put the gentle punctuation where it was needed. Hers was the resilience of youth. And the second cataclysm in the House, even at its worst (which was what mamma had made it), was hardly comparable to the first. There was no spiritual abasement this time, no sense of calamity and worlds at end. Rather, indeed, the contrary: and it was here that was found the seriousness of it all, in that now the smash-up was her own deliberate doing. Cally had hardly needed her mother's savage outbreak to make her feel how definite a parting was here with the ideals and aspirations of a lifetime. She saw that one whole phase of her girlhood had passed away forever. Or, it might be, this that she had said good-bye to was the dim figure of her girlhood itself....

In these thoughts there was sadness, naturally. Hugo's going had been with the noises of breakage, the reverberations of the day of judgment. But Cally had had four days to put her house in order; and she felt that she would have waked almost happy to-day, but for this stranger cloud that still hung so dark upon the horizon....

It was such a day as October in this climate brings week on week, gloriously golden. Cally breakfasted in bed. Toward ten o'clock, as she was slowly dressing with the maid's assistance, word came that her mother desired her presence in the administrative bedroom below.

"Very well, Annie," said the girl, listlessly. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

The message came as something of a surprise, though a disciplinary intent was easily surmised behind it. In the interview the other night, mamma had formally washed her hands of Cally and all her flare-ups, more than intimating that henceforward they would live as comparative strangers. Since then there had come nothing from the staunch little general, who also had remained in her tent, not ill, but permanently aloof and unreconciled. Very different, as it chanced, was the note struck by papa, who had come twice a day, and sometimes thrice, to the sick-room, ostentatiously cheery in his manner, but obviously depressed underneath by the dreary atmosphere enveloping the house. Never, it seemed, had papa been tenderer or more affectionate than in these bedside visits: so that Cally, with her sense of a guilty secret, could hardly bear to look at his kind, worried face.

And she had opened her eyes on the day of wellness with the knowledge that she must put her hand to this cloud now, though she brought down the skies with it. Nothing, it was clear, could be worse than this. To-night, after dinner, she must follow her father into the study, say what she must say. Her mind had returned and clung to the solid arguments of Hen and others. She knew that the memory of the bunching-room had got upon her nerves; entwined and darkened itself with other painful things; assumed fantastic and horrid shapes. Perhaps the dreaded interview would not be so very bad, after all. Surely her father could not wear that kind look for nothing....

Dressed, Carlisle stood at her window a moment, greeting somewhat sadly the brilliant day. Her desire was to stop the footless workings of her mind; to go out and do something. But all that she could think of to do was to return to Baird & Himmel's emporium and complete that shopping for the Thompson kinsfolk which had been so suddenly interrupted last week. And, that occupation exhausted, she would go on to Mattie Allen's, and probably stay there for luncheon. Tame achievements, but better than staying longer in this room.

Here on the broad window ledge, behind the concealing curtain, there stood a bowl of flowers. They were violets, dry and discolored now. The girl's eyes, just as she was turning away toward her mother, fell upon them, and she stopped, overtaken by memory. These were Hugo's flowers, his last gift to her. She herself had placed them here, that eventful afternoon five days ago, and not thought of them again till this moment.... Was that, which seemed like an echo from some previous life, only five days ago?

She stood looking down at the mass of sere bloom, touched the withered tops lingeringly with her finger-tips. It was her tribute to the dead, no more. The departed knight had dropped backward out of her heart with a speed and smoothness which showed that he had, indeed, had small foothold there since May. Less and less had Cally felt any impulse to judge or blame Hugo, impute "badness" to him; it was she who had changed, and never he. But how, why?... 'Was it something done, something said?' Strange to remember now the hurried journey to the Beach last year, that afternoon in Willie Kerr's apartment....

"Throw out those flowers in the window, Flora.... They've been faded for days."

She went down the stairs in that inner state which her country had once found unendurable: she was half slave and half free. And on the stairs she forgot Hugo entirely. She was thinking, in her loneliness and depression, of Vivian, who had pledged his help to her; wondering if she could ask him to come and give her his help now,—at four o'clock this afternoon, perhaps, when the house would be quiet and her mother napping. Her wish was to talk with him, to show him all her difficulty, before she saw her father. She felt that she could tell anything to Mr. V.V. now....

Cally tapped respectfully upon a closed door, and said "Mamma?" Bidden to enter by the strong voice within, she braced herself a little, and opened the door....

Mrs. Heth sat toward the bay-window of a spacious bedroom, dignified by an alcove and bright but for the half-drawn shades. It was observed that she wore her second-best robe de chambre, and was otherwise not dressed for the inspection of the best people. So indifferently was her fine hair caught up atop her head that the round purplish spot on her temple was left plainly visible: always an ominous sign....

"Good morning, mamma. I hope you're feeling better to-day?"

"Physically, I am quite well," said her mother, only half turning her head.

"Oh, I'm glad.... It's such a beautiful day. I hoped you would feel like going out for a drive."

"I hardly feel like going out—as yet.... Sit down."

Cally sat in the chair prescribed by a gesture. The eyes of the two women met for the first time since they had parted in tears. And Cally, seeing her mother's bereaved face, had to crush down a sudden almost overpowering impulse toward explanation, reconciliation at any cost. However, she did crush it down. There was nothing to explain, as mamma had pointed out in the midnight.

Mrs. Heth cleared her throat, though her voice seemed sufficiently strong.

"I understood from Flora that you were getting up this morning," said she, "so this seemed the appropriate time for me to see you, and learn something about your plans, regarding your future."

"My plans?"

"As you have so completely overthrown your parents' plans for you, I can only assume that you have others of your own."

Cally sat with her hands folded in her lap. A look of curious wistfulness flitted across her face.

"No, I haven't any special plans."

"I'm surprised to hear you say so. You surely do not expect to go on this way the rest of your natural life, do you?"

"I don't understand, mamma. Go on in what way?"

"In this way. In occupying the central position in my home, in allowing your parents to sacrifice their lives to you, in receiving lavish evidences of regard and affection which you evidently have not the slightest wish to return."

There was a considerable silence.

"I have a sort of plan there," said the girl, slowly. "I don't want you—and papa—to go on—giving me everything. I want," she said, with a slight tremor, "to take—to be just as little expense as I can after this."

"Oh!... Then what you want to do is to withdraw altogether from society—and go to work to earn your own living?"

Carlisle raised her eyes. "Is that what you want me to do, mamma?"

"It is not a question of what I want in this house any longer, it seems.... I am pointing out to you, Carlisle, that the independence of action you have lately taken upon yourself is a serious matter, to be looked at from more than one side. It is not becoming," said Mrs. Heth, watching her daughter's face closely, "to bite the hand that feeds you."

To this the girl had no reply. Beneath her mother's somewhat vivid metaphor, she perceived a truth, and that truth the tragic weakness of her position. But she did not know now that large books had been written about this weakness, and many more would be....

Mrs. Heth having allowed the silence to continue a moment, educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its strange little downy mustache, and resumed:

"With no plans of your own, you have lately thrown away the best opportunity you will ever have in your life. Now there are only two theories on which I can explain this conduct—so totally unlike your usual good sense. One is that you have permitted yourself, without my knowledge, to become interested in somebody else.... Have you?"

"No—oh, no!... No, of course not."

"That I felt confident of," said mamma, though not without a certain note of relief. "Confident.... Yet—to touch the second point,—as you look toward the future, you do expect to marry some day, do you not?"

The daughter seemed restive under this cross-examination. She turned away from the maternal scrutiny, and, resting her arm upon her chair-back, looked toward the shaded window.

"Yes—I suppose so.... That seems to be all I'm fit for.... But—since you ask me, mamma—I would like, in the meantime, not to be so ... so plainly labelled waiting.... I'd like," she said, hesitatingly, "to have one man I meet—see me in some other light than as a candidate for matrimony."

"That," said Mrs. Heth, firmly, "will never be, so long as you retain your youth and beauty, and men retain their nature....

"And why should you wish it otherwise?" continued the dominant little lady. "Despite all the loose, unwomanly talk in the air, you do realize, I see, that marriage will always remain the noblest possible career for a woman."

Cally remembered a converse of this proposition she had heard one day at the Woman's Club. She answered with light bitterness:

"When I said just now that I was fit for marriage, I meant marriage, mamma—a wedding. Of course, I'm not fit to be anybody's wife...." She paused, and added in a voice from which the bitterness had all gone out: "I'm not fit to be anybody's mother."

"There, there!" riposted mamma, briskly. "I think that's enough of poor Henrietta Cooney, and her wild, unsuccessful notions."

There was another brief silence; the silence of the death of talk.

"You're in a dangerously unsettled state of mind, my daughter—dangerously. But you will find, as other women have found, that marriage will relieve all these discontents. I myself," said mamma, with a considerable stretching of the truth, "went through the same stages in my youth—though, of course, I was married much younger than you.... Now, Carlisle, I have refused to believe that your quarrel with Hugo is irreparable."

Carlisle started as if slapped. Had mamma jerked her by a string, she could not have turned more sharply. The little general, leaning forward, swept on with hurried firmness.

"I see, of course, that you have taken your quarrel very seriously, very hard. You feel that in your anger you both said terrible things which can't possibly be overlooked. But, my child, remember that the course of true love never did run smooth. There have been few engagements which weren't broken off at least once, few marriages when the wife didn't make up her mind—"

"Mamma!" said Cally, rousing herself as from a cataleptic sleep. "You can't have understood what I told you that night. This was not a quarrel at all, in any sense—"

"I know! I understand! I withdraw the word cheerfully," said mamma, in just that tone and manner which made the strange similarity between her and Hugo. "But what I want to say, Cally, is this. Hugo is still in Washington. Willie Kerr, to whom I talked by telephone last night, had a telegram from him yesterday. Now, my child, men do not take women's angry speeches quite as seriously as you think. Hugo is mad about you. All he wants is you—"

"Oh, please—please! Don't say any more. You don't—"

"No, hear me out! See for yourself if my plan is not diplomatic and feasible, and involves no surrender of pride. I shall send Willie Kerr on to Washington this afternoon. He will go ostensibly on private business with one of the Departments,—though I will, of course, pay all expenses,—and putting up at Hugo's hotel, will meet him as if by accident. In their talk Willie, who is tact and loyalty itself, will perhaps mention your sickness, though without comment. Gradually the impression will come to Hugo that if he returns, with, of course, suitable apologies—"

"Mamma," said Cally, starting up, very white, "if you do any such thing as that I'll go away somewhere. I will go and earn my own living.... I'll go and live with the Cooneys!"

The two women gazed at each other. Over the mother's face there spread a slow flush; the round, purple birthmark darkened. Cally spoke again, with deadly earnestness.

"I did think you understood about this.... If you persuade Hugo to walk down from Washington on his knees.... I'll not see him."

Mrs. Heth, curiously, had been brought down in full flight: perhaps by the force of that wild upstarting, perhaps by the grisly threat about the Cooneys. Carlisle in a flare-up had always required a certain handling. The worst of the mad girl was that she was really capable of doing these unspeakable things she mentioned.

"So you refuse pointblank," said Mrs. Heth, in a muffled sort of voice, "to carry out your parents' wishes."

"About this—I must. I'll do anything else you want me to, anything.... And, mamma, this isn't papa's wish," said the girl, with some emotion. "He told me—the other night—that I mustn't think of marrying anybody I didn't care for. He said he had never thought the same of Hugo—"

Then mamma smote the flat arm of her morris-chair, and sprang up, exploding.

"That's it! Shove it off on your poor, generous father!... How characteristic of your whole behavior! Why, you ought to be ashamed to mention your father's name!" cried mamma; and, indeed, Cally was, though for reasons not known to her mother....

Mrs. Heth walked the floor, in the grip of those agonies which the defeat of her will brought her in poignant measure. It may be that her faith in her diplomatic plan had never been triumphantly strong. Now, certainly, her purposes were punitive only, and her flowing sentences well turned to her desire....

"You suppose your father's overjoyed to have his delightfully independent daughter thrown back on his hands—of course!" she was remarking. "True, you've heard him say a thousand times that he was going to sell his business as soon as you married and buy himself a place in the country and begin to have some pleasure of his own. But, of course, that was only his little joke! Yes, yes!" said mamma, brandishing her arms. "What he really wants is to go on slaving and toiling and worrying his heart out to keep you in pampered idleness and luxury, indulging your lightest whim without regard—"

"Mamma, mamma!—do, please!" the girl broke in. "If papa has been working so hard on my account—and I didn't know that—then I don't want him to do it any more. I wish he would sell—"

"Oh, I've no patience with your deathbed repentances! Don't you know your father's involved in serious worries at this moment, entirely on your account? Do you think a few dramatic speeches from you can undo—"

"Worries on my account? No, I didn't know of any.... What worries?"

Cally had stood listening with a kind of numbed listlessness, ready to go at the first opportunity, now that the real purpose of the interview was discharged. But suddenly she perceived a new pointedness in her mother's biting summaries; and she turned, with a slightly startled look in her eyes.

Her mother returned the gaze with savage sarcasm.

"Oh! You never heard of the Labor Commissioner and his hired character-assassin, I suppose! Never—"

"Yes, but I didn't know any of that was on my account."

"No, no, indeed! You thought it was just a little whim of your father's to keep his factory in a condition that's been a scandal in the community. Fighting off legislation—bribing inspectors—just his little bits of eccentric self-indulgence. You thought that ten thousand dollars I gave to the Settlement grew on a tree, I suppose. You—"

"Mamma," said Cally, in a strained voice, "what on earth are you talking about? I want to understand. What did that money you gave to the Settlement have to do—"

"Don't you know he needed it for his business?" cried mamma, advancing menacingly. "I tell you he'd put it by to spend it on the Works this fall, and stop these attacks on him. And why did I have to take it from him, but on your account, miss?—to try to clear the family name from the scandal you brought upon us—"

"What?"

"A scandal," continued mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his presidency at the bank."

The good lady easily saw that she had struck the right punitive note at last. Indeed, the question now, Cally's peculiarities being considered, was whether she had not struck it rather too hard. The girl's face had suddenly become the color of paper. The intense concentration of her gaze was painful in its way, slightly disconcerting to mamma.

"Do you mean," said Cally, in quite a shaky voice—"do you say that papa—meant to improve the Works this fall—and that you—that I—"

"I mean exactly what I say," said Mrs. Heth, resolutely. "And I say it's high time you were beginning to understand your position in this family, as a guide to your strange behavior. Do you suppose your father enjoys being under attack all the time? Haven't you heard him say a hundred times, that it was bad business to let things go at the Works? Where were you six years ago when he said we'd have to economize and put up a new building, and I prevented him for your sake, arguing that you were just coming out and were entitled to—"

"Six years!... Why ... why, then I'm responsible for it all!... Why—I've been on his back all the time!"

"I'm glad you realize it at last.... Oh, well!" said her mother, throwing out both hands and speaking with a kind of gruff tolerance,—"there's no use to cry about it."

"I'm not crying," said Cally.

She was, indeed, not crying as her mother had usually seen her cry; not with storm and racking. Nevertheless, two indubitable drops suddenly glittered upon the gay lashes, and now fell silently as Cally spoke.

"But I could cry," said she, "I'm so happy ... I'm so glad, to know it's all been my fault.... You don't know ... I went to the Works the other day—"

"Oh, you did!" said her mother, bitterly, but enlightened a little. "And have been criticizing your father, I suppose, the father who has sacrificed—"

"He'll forgive me.... He must. I'll find a way."

Mrs. Heth, flinging herself down in her chair again, said in a voice full of sudden depression: "I should say you owed him apologies, for that among other things.... Well, I give you up."

Cally stood unmoving, slim hands locked behind her head, staring toward the window. Gone was the albatross from her young neck, melted the cloud from the azure round. Wisdom had come with such startling unexpectedness that she could not take in all that had happened to her just now. But all that mattered was as plain and bright as the sunshine waiting for her out there. She, and not papa whom she had so wronged in her thoughts, had made the bunching-room what it was; she, and nobody else, should make it better after this. And through the splendid confusion of sensations that, mounting within, seemed to float her away from this solid floor, she heard one clear voice sounding ever louder and louder. It was the voice of the prodigal, chastened and penitent: "I will arise and go to my father."

Cally turned toward the door.

Her mother, stirring from her heavy rebuking apathy, said: "Oh, there's no use bothering him now to say you're sorry. You've not thought of him all these years ..."

"That's why I can't wait—now," said Cally. "And besides, there's something else I want to speak to him about.... A—a business matter."

Mamma demanded an explanation. And Cally, pausing briefly at the door, turned upon that censorious gaze a face radiant as the morning.

"I'm going to give him my fifty thousand dollars to build a new Works with.... Won't you please help me make him take it?"

But what her mother may have replied to this request failed to overtake Cally, flying down the hall to the telephone....

* * * * *

The bedroom conference, it was seen, had not been wholly fruitless, after all. Mrs. Heth's last stand for Hugo—like Hugo's last afternoon—had taken a slant not anticipated by her, but at least wholesome and moral in its effects. Cally's dreaded accusing interview in the study gave place, beyond all imagining, to an unpremeditated outpouring by telephone, in which her chief fear was only of making a perfect little silly of herself. And lastly, Mr. Heth, called summarily from a directors' meeting at the Fourth National Bank, was overflowed with such a wave of feminine incoherence and emotionalism as he found great difficulty in associating with his usually self-contained little daughter....

Papa indeed, knowing nothing of any conference or of any dark cloud either, was treated to the astonishment of his life. When he finally understood that the house was not in flames, or his wife stricken with a deadly malady, when he began to get some notion of what all the strange pother was about, his replies, for the most part, took the following general directions: (1) that little Callipers was out of her mind with her sickness, didn't know what she was talking about, crazy, and the greatest little goose that ever was; (2) that she had no business ever going to the Works, but that was all right now, and he didn't want to hear another word about it; (3) that he couldn't stop to talk such foolishness in business hours, and she'd better go and lie down and rest and get her senses back; (4) that he gave her that money for herself, and when he got dependent on his little daughter, he'd let her know; (5) and that there, there, not to bother him now, we'd see, after lunch....

Sufficiently vague replies these; yet they seemed to leave the daughter in no doubt whatever that the matter which had all in a moment become dear to her heart was as good as settled. For when papa terminated the conversation by smartly ringing off, she immediately called another number: Jefferson 4127, this one was, which, as the book shows (only she did not look at the book) is the number assigned to Meeghan's Grocery, down by the old Dabney House....

However the untutored voice at Meeghan's reported that Doctor was out on his rounds and not to be reached before one o'clock. So Cally had to defer for a little while the happiness she would have in telling the lame wanderer across her path that, after all, his eyes had not put their trust in her in vain.

Later she sat again on a revolving seat at Gentlemen's Furnishings, eagerly purchasing shirts, cost not exceeding one dollar each, for James Thompson, aged thirteen, of up-country. It happened to be her work to do in the world, and she was doing it.

She was waited upon at the popular counter by Miss Whirtle herself, whom Cally remembered by figure if not by name; and she was so extremely agreeable and mollifying in her manner that the Saleslady's arrogance thawed away, and they were soon discussing questions of neck-sizes and sleeve-lengths in the friendliest intimacy. There were collars and neckties purchased, too,—these items Cally added on her own account, being in the vein of making presents to people to-day,—and here Miss Whirtle's taste was invaluable in assisting one to decide which were the nobby shapes and swell patterns and which the contrary. The robust one patted her transformation many times at Miss Heth, invited her at parting to call again; and later on—that night, it was—reported the whole conversation in detail in the Garland dining-room, imparting, we need not doubt, her own witty flavor to it all.

In Baird & Himmel's Cally met several other acquaintances, and finally Evey McVey, who was delighted to see her out again, but seemed to be examining her rather curiously, doubtless with reference to Hugo and what had happened in that quarter. Evey herself complained of being tired; so Cally drove her second-best friend to the McVey residence in the car, but pleaded duties at home against getting out for a little visit.

And then, bowling homeward in the brisk airs, she could return to her own thoughts again, which, as by the rubbing of an Aladdin's lamp, had suddenly become so happy and so absorbing. Later, she must think about mamma, and with what time and solaces she could close that breach. But in these hours her thought was all for her father, whom she seemed just to be beginning to understand for the first time in her life....

Now all the imaginative dreads and nightmare terrors were faded away, and she felt beneath her feet the solid sanity of Hugo's self. She had seen the Works on an exceptionally bad day; she had gone there, overdrawn and ignorant, looking for horrors; what she had actually seen and felt had been mysteriously intensified a hundredfold by her violent encounter with Colonel Dalhousie. For all that she knew, to this very moment, the Works might be, indeed (as the beautifully tactful girl Corinne had said), the best place to work in town.

But what Cally was thinking now was that, in sitting in judgment on her father, she had blindly judged him as if he were a free man—she, of all people, who had felt so poignantly the imprisoning powers of a groove. Now it appeared, as by a sudden light upon him, that papa had always been clamped fast in a groove of his own, exactly as she had been; a groove fixed for him by his place in society, by the way other men ran their cheroot factories,—for, of course, papa must do as his competitors did, or be crowded out, and the hardest-driving, meanest man set the pace for the kind ones, like papa,—and last and chiefly by the extravagances of a wife and daughter who always cried "give, give," and didn't care at all where the gifts came from. How could papa possibly be free with two costly women on his back all the time?... Strange that she hadn't grasped all this clearly, the minute she had recognized herself as a horse-leech's daughter....

Now the first thing to do, obviously, was to get off papa's back at once. Her fifty thousand dollars would be a sound starter there; of course papa would take it, since she wanted him to so much. And her mind, as she drove, kept recurring to this symbol, kept bringing up pictures of the new Works that would be, built perfect with her money. She saw it considerably like the beautiful marble palace of her childhood's thought, the pride of Canal Street without, and within wonderfully clean, spacious and airy, and most marvellously fragrant. In this new palace of labor, faints and swoons were things undreamed of. Trim, smiling, pretty girls, all looking rather like French maids in a play, happily plied their light agreeable tasks; and, in especial, the cheeks of poor Miller (who had stoutened gratifyingly) were observed to blossom like the rose.

Yet the creator of all these wonders was well aware that she was not giving her dowry to Miller, exactly....

Descending from the car at her own door, Cally encountered Mr. Pond, of the Settlement. The dark-faced Director was loafing, oddly enough, on Mrs. Mason's steps, which had once been Mr. Beirne's, four doors from home. He raised his hat about two inches at the sight of her, returned his watch and some typewritten papers to his pocket, and came forward.

"Don't run," said he, unsmiling. "I want to know plainly whether or not you are coming to my meeting to-morrow. Yes or no."

Cally laughed gaily. There was a radiance within her, and she liked this man increasingly. Several times they had met, since their antagonistic talk at the Settlement; and in the blunt Director's manner she had lately observed that creeping change which she had witnessed in men as stalwart, before now....

"Don't look so fierce," said she, "for I'll not be bullied. Or at least not till you explain why you're hanging around in front of the neighbors' at twelve o'clock in the morning—you who always pretend to be so frightfully busy."

"Waiting for Vivian. And I am busy, confound him.... Not too busy, as you see, to take a kind interest in your welfare—"

"Oh!... Is Dr. Vivian there—at the Masons'? Why, what are you waiting for him for?"

"Seems to me you ask a good many questions for an idler."

He stood on the sidewalk, looking up at her with his hawk-eyes, a man yet in the early thirties, but of obvious power.

"We're going to buy second-hand benches, if you must know," continued he. "He says he can show me where to get 'em cheap. Anything else?"

"No-o—except ... How much will the benches cost? Perhaps I—might be able to contribute something—"

"I don't want your old money," said Pond. "When are you going to be serious about serious things?"

"I think now," said Cally ... "Only, you see, I don't know anything at all."

"I'll teach you," said the Director.

Cally, standing on the broad white slab before her own door, did not answer. Her glance had turned down the street: and at this moment there emerged from the Masons' door the tall figure of V. Vivian, the article-writer, who would never have to put anything in the papers about papa now. He saw her instantly, and over his somehow strange and old-fashioned face there broke a beautiful smile. He lifted his hat high, and, so holding it at height, posed as if for a picture, gave it something like a wave, as in double measure of greeting and good-will. A proper salutation from friend to friend; and the sunlight gleamed on his crisp fair hair....

Cally's return greeting was somewhat less finished. She gave the lame doctor one look of brilliant sweetness; and then she said to him, "Oh, how do you do?"—in a voice that he could not possibly have heard. Next she said, "Yes, I'll be at the meeting to-morrow," with her back turned squarely toward Mr. Pond. And then she opened her door and went in quite quickly, leaving the Director staring intently at a crack in the sidewalk....

Within, Cally perceived that she had acted rather unreasonably, missing the opportunity to tell Mr. V.V. that she desired to speak with him: but that, of course, was only because she had not wanted to interrupt and detain two busy men at their labors. The oversight, besides, was easily to be remedied; though she did not again send the clear call for Meeghan's. She decided to write a brief note instead, and did, asking her friend if he could come and give her his help about a matter—say at four o'clock that afternoon. The note was dispatched, not by old Moses this time, but by the hand of an urchin in a blue uniform, who was deep in "Lady Helen, the Fair Ghoul," as he bicycled, but apparently reached his destination in due course.

And V. Vivian, once again, was not disobedient to the heavenly summons.



XXXII

Time's Jests, and now the Perfect Apology, to stand a Lifetime in Brick and Stone; concluding with a Little Scene, which she will remember while she lives.

She had called him untruthful once for speaking the truth about the Works. Now she would make her apology due, to stand a lifetime in brick and stone. This Cally did for the man of the slums to-day; and this she meant him to understand without much speech, since speech, in the circumstances, would be somewhat difficult.

But then, of course, she could know nothing of those colloquies Mr. V.V. had had in his time with O'Neill, the hard-joking Commissioner, of inner conflicts he had had of late all by himself. Nor did she even take it in how far her advancing thought of him, and of all this subject, had outrun anything she had ever put into word or deed before. So she was far from imagining what a miracle she made for him this afternoon, like a midsummer dream come true; far from guessing how he, with his strange unconsciousnesses, would think of it all as just a beautiful but detached happening, a glorious coincidence....

He wore for this meeting, not his holiday raiment of blue, with the sprigged waistcoat that his Uncle Armistead might have left him, but that selfsame suit she had seen upon him all last year; including that other memorable day in her life when she had come clicking down the stairs to find the tall outlander standing here in her familiar background. Only there was no feeling in her now that he was an alien in the Heth drawing-room. No, here V. Vivian seemed to belong to-day, the best and worthiest thing in the room.

To her, that was; but it was not so with others. The one speck in the perfect balm was that, to have this man here at all, she had had to manage it secretly, as if it were something discreditable....

The greetings were over; they were seated; he was advised that it was about a building matter that she desired his help; and even when, as talk progressed, she placed her building lot for him at Seventeenth and Canal Streets, the doctor's manner, which was quite eager and interested and pleased at being summoned for help, showed no signs of understanding.

"Seventeenth and Canal Streets," he repeated, alert and businesslike. "Yes? It's to be a business building, then?"

"There's a building there now, but I'm going to pull that one down," said Cally. "I don't like it."

And at this moment it was that she saw consciousness burst into the unconscious; burst with the strong suddenness of an explosion.

"Seventeenth and Canal Streets!... That's the Heth Works corner!"

"That's the building I'm going to pull down. I—I've taken a dislike to it."

The tall young man came to his feet, slowly, as if hoisted from above by an invisible block and tackle. All in a moment, his face had become quite pale.

"What do you mean?" he asked, in a queer clipped voice.

"I mean ... I don't think you will have to say anything about my father in your articles.... We're going to build a new Works—now!"

He stood staring a second like a man of stone; and then turned abruptly from her and walked away. But in that second she saw that his petrifaction was already scattering, and his face wore the strangest look, like a kind of glory....

So Cally thought that he understood now; and that was all the reward she wanted. Sitting silent, she looked after his retreating back. She perceived, with a queer little twitching in her heart, that the polished spaces upon Mr. V.V.'s right elbow had thinned away into an unmistakable darning. And then it came over her quite suddenly that the reason he wore this suit to-day was probably that he had given his blue suit away, to one of his sick. She seemed quite sure that that was it. And oh, how like him, and like nobody else in the world, to give away his best one, and keep the patches for himself....

And the first thing that he said, returning to her after his thunderbolt surprise, seemed also beautifully characteristic of his strange faiths.

"Well, it's wonderful," said he, in quite a natural voice. "Of course, the greatest thing that will ever happen to me.... And yet—it may seem strange to you—but I've felt all along—I've felt—that something like this might probably happen any time."

Moved as she was, Cally could have smiled at that. But when she saw the intense honesty of his face, which still wore that half-startled yet shining look, the look of a man with a sudden secret all his own, she did not smile, and her own thought was given quite a new course.

"Perhaps you're a nice sort of mind-reader," said she, gently, "for you were right to feel that way, at least as far as my father is concerned. I specially wanted you to know about that. Papa has been planning for six years to put up a new building—only last month he had arranged to spend quite a lot of money in repairs. I just came to understand all this to-day. The trouble has been," said Cally, looking up at the old family enemy with no sense of hesitation or reluctance—"I've always been too expensive, you see. I've never left him any money to carry out his plans...."

She would not say anything about horse-leech's daughters, not, of all things, wanting to embarrass him to-day. But possibly his mind filled in a hiatus here, and there was no mistaking that what she said about her father impressed him profoundly.

"I ... I really seem to have known. You might call it a sort of—of premonition—if you wanted to ... Though you'll naturally not think I've acted that way."

Mr. V.V. stood by a spindly table, carefully examining a small but costly vase, the property of Mr. Heth, of the Cheroot Works; and now he went on with a kind of diffident resolution, the air of one who gives a confidence with difficulty, but must do so now, for his honor.

"You may remember my telling you once that I was—was sorry to write the factory articles you just mentioned. The truth is I've hated to write them—especially as to—as to the Works.... It's just the sort of thing I've wanted for a long time to write, too. I had the argument thought out down to the bone. Oh, they're good.... I—I was going to send the first lot to the 'Chronicle' this week.... And yet—well, it's been pulling against the grain somehow, every line of the way. It seemed strange.... And now I see that I must have felt—known—all along.... But," said the strange young man, setting down the vase and hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, "I—I realize that this must sound most unconvincing to you. Probably foolish. No matter...."

But Cally felt by now that she understood him better than he understood himself.

"No, I think I understand," said she. "And if you hadn't felt that way—don't you see?—it never would have happened."

He turned on her another strange look, at once intensely interested and intensely bewildered. But she glanced away from it at once, and would give him no chance to ask her what that might mean.

"I've got so much I want to tell you, so much I want to ask your advice and help about," said she, rising, with a change to what she regarded as an excellent business voice and manner. "Perhaps we ought to go into executive session at once—and let's go into the library, too! I know you're awfully busy, but I do hope you've come prepared to make a good long visit."