Part 11

Blank and Finney's letter had proved to be twin-sister to the remembered letter from Willcox Brothers Company. That is to say, it was rejection, flat and unqualified. But this time, after the first shock, Charles had perceived that he did not seem to be much surprised. It appeared that his expectation of the old novel had, after all, died violently on that other day. It was almost as if he himself had come to despise the old novel, because the publishers despised it--as if that were any reason...

From the mantel he had plucked a thick ledger entitled (on a neatly typed label), THE RECORD. This ledger was the great work of Judge Blenso's life, and large enough for twenty authors. Here the Judge set down, with much pains and a striking assortment of colored inks, the detailed progress of each of Charles's manuscripts: "When Finished," "When Sent Out," "Where Sent," "Editor's Decision," "Editor's Comments if Any," "Remarks," etc. On these pages, the essential part of "Bondwomen's" career (officially known as Entry 2) was thus recorded:--

_Comments _Decision._ if Any._

1. Willcox Brothers Company Adverse. Declined for financial reasons.

2. Blank and Finney do. do.

The Record now showed nine entries, including the novel. Entry I was "The Truth About Jennie," which the Judge had insisted on posting in, to give a tone of success to his work at the outset. Entries 3, 4, 5, and 6 were short stories; Entries 7, 8, and 9, the write-ups of Mary. The pages devoted to the write-ups made, as we know, stimulating reading, but with the fiction entries the case was otherwise. Here under "Comments if Any," the words "See printed form, on file," appeared with monotonous, indeed sickening, regularity. The Record did show, indeed, that the "Universal," in rejecting Entry 5,--"When Amy Left Home,"--had written a personal letter furnishing the Judge with this "Comment": "Excellently written, but claimed unsuited to his present needs. Let him hear from us again." Otherwise, rejection was unmitigated.

A scant showing for the work of four years, look at it how you would. One examining these coldly dispassionate annals would probably say, offhand, that there was but one form of writing Charles King Garrott was qualified to do: that was the write-up form. He had just read his two letters again, his acceptance and his rejection, side by side. Unusual and peculiar it seemed that the only writing he had sold for money, since "Jennie," was this series of articles designed to bring fame to Mary Wing. Of course, as far as that went, a man would like a little fame for himself, now and then....

"Why, I'm a fool to think I can write!" groaned the young man, suddenly. "I'm wasting my life! I ought to be carrying bricks up a ladder."

His fall from complacence was, indeed, complete. However, every writer knows these little ups and downs. It may be, that Charles did not believe his bitter words, even then. And now his secretary reëntered, checking thought.

"Well! Now for the express!"

Judge Blenso wore a new English mackintosh and an olive felt hat, rakishly turned up in front. No board of social investigators could have commended him for spending virtually all his wage upon his back; but the results seemed always to justify him none the less.

"And, my dear fellow!--you shouldn't worry, as the expression goes! Bandwomen's a charmin' novel, a charmin' sweet love-story, and James Potter Sons'll be sure to take it--gad, by the first mail!"

Having seen it with his own eyes in Willcoxes' famous letter, the Judge was now finally convinced that "Bandwomen" was the correct title of Entry 2, just as he had said in the beginning. Further argument being useless, the young man returned a vague reply.

"And there's that other idea of mine, too," said the Judge genially, halting with his package under his arm--"bringing your sketches of Miss Wing out in book form! Put in Entry 1, too 'Jennie's Truth,' if we liked--make a regular holiday giftbook! Gad, you know, Miss Wing's little pupils at the school would give us a whackin' sale!"

He went out blithe upon his duty. After an interval, the adoring voice of Mrs. Herman floated up, beseeching him to put on his ar'tics.

At the Studio table Charles sat, struggling to get down to work. He had put away The Record, put away embittered thoughts. But he did not get down to work with much success all the same, the reason being that his great Subject, unluckily, was no longer clear in his mind.

From the table-drawer he had produced a stack of manuscript, an inch high; and now he sat, not reading it, but merely disapproving it _en masse_. The stack was his premature effort to begin, really to begin his new novel--six chapters of the new novel written, fifteen thousand words. Launching upon this draft an hour after he finished Mary the Freewoman, he had pushed on, night after night, at first with confident rapidity. Latterly, he had become conscious of an increasing sense of resistance. And now he knew that all this was mere waste stuff, accomplishing nothing but to show him what not to write.

Well, but what to write then? What did he really want to say? It was absurd; but he did not know. It really seemed that he saw too much to settle, with enthusiasm, upon anything. By constant accessions of fresh understanding, his centre of balance, his novel's chief prerequisite, was kept in a continuous state of flux....

Of "material" on the Unrest, Charles possessed a superfluity; of "plots," of "significant characters" and "illustrative incidents," his head was fuller than his pencil would ever write. His problem, of course, had always been for the fixed point of view and the moral "line." No longer could he be satisfied with that crude, simple line which had contented him in his first book, which still contented the other fellows: the line which "proved," as _Lily Stender_ proved, that economic independence was the automatic salvation of women. He knew that wasn't the whole story now. As for writing a book to show that Woman's Place was the Home, of course that had never crossed his mind, even when most strongly gripped by conservative reactions. His quest was for a framework which should develop conflicting values on a far finer scale.

Of course, what he should have liked to show was a wholly admirable woman: one who combined all the sane competence and human worth of the best new women, with the soft faculty for supplying beauty and charm of her old-fashioned sister. But that day in Mary's office had left him with the honest suspicion that such a goddess did not exist, and couldn't. From the other direction also, as noted, his delicate scales had been joggled, with unsettling literary effects. The too hasty manuscript on the writing-table by no means followed the "line" the author had first plotted, prior to his meditations in the Green Park, after the bridge-party. No, in this draft the Home-Maker was married and had three children in Chapter One. Through all, the desire to rebuke the egoism of the day had persisted, as clearly the point of view most inviting to him, fullest of possibilities. And now Miss Trevenna, in some way, had disturbed and unsettled him there too....

The rain beat against the Studio windows. The green-shaded lamp burned dully on the author's table. Big Bill, without surcease, ticked off the author's minutes. Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose, pondering deeply. Just now, as he turned the pages of his private book--where the essay form had long since been abandoned, where appeared the most surprising vacillations of authoritative opinion--he had made a somewhat striking discovery. It had suddenly come upon him that "Notes on Women" had, gradually but distinctly, dwindled down into "Notes on Mary," "Notes on Angela Flower," and "Notes on Flora Trevenna." In short, it appeared that, in the most unconscious way, he had been seeking to extract his "line" from his own story, as it were, from "life."

The discovery came upon the young man as most arresting and significant.

"And I don't know where I stand, that's just the trouble! I ought to wait awhile," he thought, aloud. "See how it all works out.... Things'll be turning up...."

On which--once more--Judge Blenso's picturesque head came sticking through the Studio door, and Judge Blenso's rich voice said, officially:--

"Young gentleman here with a letter, Mr. Garrott. Admit him?"

Returning to actuality with a slight start, Charles replied, "Admit him--certainly!" A day for letters, indeed!

Forthwith, the Judge standing aside, the young gentleman stepped into the Studio. A grave-looking young gentleman he proved to be, of some sixteen years, perhaps, with a dome-like forehead, a resolute mouth, and thick spectacles. He entered in silence, in silence held out the missive referred to.

"Good-evening," said Charles. "Thank you. This comes from--?"

"My sister, Angela Flower."

The young man's heart seemed to drop a little.

"Ah, yes! And--ah--is there--an answer?--"

"I'll wait and see," said Wallie Flower, following instructions, in a deep, calm voice.

"Ah, yes. Sit down a moment, won't you?"

He essayed a bright negligence which he was far from feeling: this thing had come suddenly. No amount of scientific argument, no recollection of sharp rebukes received, had ever convinced Charles that he had cut a fine figure in the affair on the sofa. Indeed, the very ease with which he had avoided all further consequences of his Rash Act, by the purely mechanical device of street-cars, had deepened, rather than diminished his consciousness of obligations unfulfilled, of caddishness, in short. To salute a girl tenderly after her bridge-party, and then never go within a mile of her again--well, that _was_ a little crude, say what you would.

Hence Mr. Garrott, opening Angela's envelope with the blurred "Mr.," anticipated bitter reproaches, anticipated being termed a brute again, and called on to be honorable without further delay. Hence again, as his eye leapt over the neat lines, and found only sweet forgiveness and generous friendliness, he felt a sudden upstarting of relief and gratitude. A more perfect note had never been written! Why, the charming girl wasn't expecting anything of him at all!

Or, rather, nothing at all worth mentioning. On a second glance through the perfect note, the hypercritical young man did observe an expression or two not up to the general standard, perhaps. "I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again." "When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me." On the whole, it could be argued that it was rather a mistake to put those sentences in. Fine as the note was, it would have been a little finer still without them. Yet, under the circumstances, what more natural? And of course, as far as that went, he and the city traction system had the issue in their hands.

So Charles looked up buoyantly at the bearer of good tidings, to speak.

The bearer, however, had clearly forgotten his presence. He had remained standing, three feet from the table-end, and was found to be gazing, in the most pointed manner, at the old Studio lamp. The grave face of Miss Angela's brother plainly expressed amusement, and a certain good-natured contempt.

"Hello!" said Charles, diverted. "Anything wrong there?"

Without turning, the boy answered with a small dry chuckle: "Yes. Pretty near everything."

"Well! I've noticed it hasn't been burning well. Need a new mantel, I suppose--"

"New mantel won't do you any good long's your air-draft's choked that way."

"Oh! So that's the trouble, is it?"

"That's one of them. P'r'aps you like it that way?"

The proprietor of the lamp having disclaimed such a fancy, the strange lad said: "Well, I'll fix it for you, then. Sit steady."

He reached up an arm long as a monkey's, which shed drops of water on the writing-table, and the green glow suddenly faded out, leaving the Studio in total darkness.

Out of the Stygian gloom Charles said: "There's another light there. I'll--"

"I know. Thought I might as well look into that one, too, while I'm at it. Just give your globe and chimney a minute to cool."

"Oh, of course!--certainly."

"Don't s'pose you want to stand a new mantel for the lamp?"

"I'm enough of a sport, but I fear there's not a new one in the house."

"Hold it for me, please," said the boy.

A pinpoint of light had appeared in the blackness; it moved toward Charles's hand. He received the little searchlight, let it go out, hastily found and pushed the button again. And then Miss Angela's brother began to take his lamp all apart, cleaning it, blowing through it at unexpected places, and wiping the parts with a dark oily rag, which, luckily enough, he seemed to have in his coat-pocket.

The lad's single-mindedness, his un-selfconscious matter-of-factness had attracted Charles at sight. He recalled what Mary Wing had told him of Wallie Flower's struggles to get an education. Thus, as the light-repairing proceeded in the almost total darkness, a conversation grew up, at first largely question and answer. And the upshot of it was that Charles, as a tutor, offered to instruct Wallie Flower, free gratis, in German and English, the two college entrance subjects in which he was still somewhat deficient.

This odd development came at the end of the talk, when the illuminating power of both Charles's and the Judge's lights had been notably improved. When the brother understood that further education was being offered him for nothing, a gleam came suddenly into his oddly mature gaze.

He almost exclaimed: "Do you know German?"

"You might say I wrote it."

He pondered. "That means you do know it?"

"Like a member of the family."

"Do you teach nights?"

"I'm going to teach you nights."

And it was so arranged, the lessons to begin directly after Christmas. The boy became briefly embarrassed, boggling over his thanks. But Charles cut him short. "I'm doing it because I want to. That's the only reason I ever do anything."

Relieved, Miss Angela's brother turned to the door, for all the world like one who had come to mend the lamps, and nothing else.

"By the way," said Charles, casually. "Thank your sister for her note, and say that I'll send an answer by mail."

He was left pleased with the interview, and with himself. In the generous gift of three hours a week to Angela's brother, he perceived something fitting and compensatory. If obligation existed--and it did, in a way--did not this discharge it, subtly and modernly? Kiss the sister on the sofa, tutor the brother in the Studio--what more fair or honorable than that?

One thing had rather struck him, of course--Wallie Flower's saying that he had hated to come away from Mitchellton. This, it seemed, had been chiefly due to Mr. Bush, the boy's science teacher at the Mitchellton Academy, whom Wallie clearly adored, whose eyebrows he had blown off in an experiment only last summer. As he had previously understood that both the Doctor and Mrs. Flower had also been attached to Mitchellton, it really appeared that Miss Angela was the only member of the family who had actually desired to make the move. And she had moved.

But this thought--like the hypercriticisms on the note--merely knocked at the door of the young man's mind and passed on. He felt himself warming anew toward this simple Type, with its charming friendly instincts and its sweet forgiveness of the stormy ways of men. On his return from his holiday, he resolved that he would give Angela some token of his regard more substantial than a note by mail: send her, say, with that book of hers, a costly box of appreciative blossoms.

XII

Unlike the ladies in the books, Angela, regrettably enough, did not get a "sheaf of letters" every morning. Mr. Garrott's answer to her note, which lay beside her breakfast-plate on the second day following, was, indeed, her only mail that week. Hence it was with feelings of excitement that she seized a table-fork and hastily slit the envelope.

Angela read:--

DEAR MISS FLOWER:

May I say how deeply I appreciate your note? And will you please believe that I have blamed myself entirely for what you so generously call our misunderstanding? While, of course, I must continue to blame myself, you cannot know how pleasant it is to be permitted to feel that you have forgiven me.

With the deepest appreciation, and all the good wishes of the season, believe me,

Yours sincerely,

CHARLES KING GARROTT.

It must be said of this note that it was the sort that puts its best foot foremost. First impressions of it were agreeable, but it did not wear. On the second reading, Angela perceived that, though as nice as possible, Mr. Garrott's reply said nothing about calling, which, in a manner of speaking, was the true subject of the correspondence. By the time she had read the reply half a dozen times, she found it flatly disappointing. Two days later, when she heard through Cousin Mary Wing that Mr. Garrott had gone to the country, not to return till after the New Year, she was conscious of a sudden and pervading hopelessness.

The feeling applied, not to her principal friend alone, but to all the conditions of her life.

Angela understood, of course, that Mr. Garrott's remarkable offer to tutor Wallie for nothing was an attention to her, and a very handsome one. Still, it was not just the sort of attention that a young girl prizes most, perhaps; and in especial it did not meet the needs of this particular situation. To have a busy man-friend teaching German to your little brother on your account is very flattering, indeed; but it does not necessarily lead to the early clearing-up of a personal misunderstanding. That Mr. Garrott had been much worried by their misunderstanding, all along, Angela had known, by means of that womanly intuition of which we read so much; now his note said so, in so many words. But, manlike, he still did not see that, at heart, she was the same girl that had attracted him so in the beginning, and that if he would but call, she would make everything as it had been before.

How was she ever to see him again now?

At nineteen, youth accepts life's vicissitudes unquestioningly, but at twenty-five, a womanly woman (if still without a home, a husband and three curly-headed little children) has had time to whittle a number of observations to a fairly sharp point. Angela thought her situation a hard one, and it was. Wealth, influence, valuable connections--these aids were not for her. All the ordinary opportunities enjoyed by girls "in society," she lacked--in chief, opportunities of meeting people casually, as at parties, of seeing the same people again and again, under the most agreeable auspices. Her family simply failed to put her in a party position, as it might be called; in consequence of which, it came to this, that really her only meeting-place for the few people she knew was on the street, walking. And even at the best, of course, that method (by the mere laws of choice and chance) was most unsatisfactory.

Suppose that Mr. Garrott _had_ been taking walks all the time, for instance, but, by reason of her having called him a brute, was choosing other streets--how was she to know? A city is a big place, and one young girl in a tight skirt cannot walk very fast or far, or cover a large amount of space in a given time.

"Marna" alone was outstanding; and it carried but the slenderest anticipations. Moreover, that question, all these depressing questions, were academic now, and would be for weeks to come. The little coterie had scattered far, and she had no means of filling the empty places.

There followed the dreariest days Angela had known since winter before last in Mitchellton.

"How can you _expect_ anybody to notice us, mother?" she exclaimed, one day. "The family of a poor, obscure doctor, living in a _hut_ on a back street, with not a living soul to help us! I think it's remarkable I accomplish as much as I do."

It was on this day, a cold Sunday afternoon shortly before Christmas, that the lonely girl carried out a good intention she had had in mind for some time. She wrote a long, intimate, sisterly letter to her favorite brother Tommy, who had got so far away since he married money in Pittsburg.

Angela had just come in from a freezing, eventless walk with Fanny Warder. (Fanny, who as Mrs. Flower said, had made a great success of her life, marrying at twenty, seemed to be on an indefinite "visit"; there was talk, of course.) Having first thawed her hands at her register, which was supposed to waft up heat from the stove in the dining-room below, but didn't particularly, Angela drew up her rocking-chair into the zone of ostensible warmth. She sat with one slender foot curled under her, by a trick that no man has ever mastered. And this time she had not searched for the formal tools of a note-writer, but employed a stub of a pencil and a pad upon her lifted knee.

"Dearest Tommy," wrote Angela, and followed with a solid paragraph of very affectionate greeting. She went on:--

Well, Tommy, I promised to write you how things were, after we got settled down. I must say the outlook is rather discouraging at times--and home isn't what it was as you remember it! Do you remember what fun we used to have even in Hunter's Run--driving in to "the balls"--and how fine it was in Mitchellton as long as you were there? Well, everything is _sadly_ changed now! Wallie, I'm afraid, hasn't improved as he gets older, he seems to rarely or never think of anybody but himself--and, of course, having fun is simply something he _doesn't care for_! He shuts himself up in his room every night, making horrible mixtures in a "sink" he's put in--that smell up the whole house, and never _dreams_ of contributing to the housekeeping expenses--though he's been raised now to _ten dollars a week_! Father is sadly changed, he gets quieter and quieter all the time.

Sometimes I'm really worried about him, he's so _indifferent_! He never jokes any more, and doesn't try to get any patients, though I _know_ he could get lots with his reputation. He seems despondent, Tommy, and sometimes doesn't even come in for his office-hour--and the other day he lost a patient that way that the Finchmans sent, she waited half an hour and then went! But though he may have liked the country life better; and let us all _vegetate_; that can't be it--for he certainly made no objection when the family _consensus_ seemed to be that we should move here! Of course, we have to face the fact that he and mother aren't very _congenial_, it is her problem, and while I wouldn't criticize mother for worlds and she certainly does her duty as wife and mother--I do think it's a _great mistake_ for her to always make her attitude a sort of _reproach_, saying how "she's sacrificed herself to him" and all--you know what I mean--

Mother really gets along better than any of us--especially as I now do _all_ the work of the entire house!

The young writer paused, staring chillily at the register. She rarely looked out the window now, hers being the blank certainty that there would be nothing to see. Moreover, it was dusk. So, rising presently, she lighted the gas, and resumed her sad sisterly letter.