Part 14

But deeper than all this, it seemed clear from the beginning that he was disappointed in his friend, personally. Had he not read into her all along, and put into the write-ups, a rather finer quality than she, in fact, possessed? Spinsters were entitled to a man's freedom to follow away their work--of course. But it seemed that he had never been able to imagine Mary as actually seizing this Right. And now, here she was doing it, with joy--the end of next month. Now behold her, whose praises he had so superfluously sung round the world--just an ordinary Redmantler after all, it seemed, exultantly striking off mother, home, friends; a female Egoist, no more, visibly engaged in "fiercely hacking away"....

He could, indeed, scarcely take it in. And stoutly he assured himself that his whole feeling about the matter would have been different--if only she had showed, at once, that this would be a wrench for her, that her thought was colored by a sense of values not connected with her Self. But no; it seemed that the new General Secretary had no thought to spare for the immaterial business of being a sister and being a daughter.

* * * * *

So Charles's call at the Wings' on the evening of his homecoming wore a complexion not contemplated by him when he had arranged the matter.

He had made this engagement, under the general misapprehension, in his reply to Mary's grateful letter last week. And now he had to keep it, however malapropos, resolved as he was that she should never sense any criticism or disapprobation in him. To seek to "influence" her, naturally never entered his mind. No, he was her casual spectator now and henceforward; he had dipped his oar in her affairs for the last time.

But the call was hardly much of a success, despite all efforts. Mary, having now had time to recapture her usual poise, no longer impressed one as being so unreservedly overjoyed with herself. It was noted that she kept referring to the write-ups, kept assuring him how delightful she found it to be a celebrity as well as a Secretary, etc., etc. The caller's intellect coldly gave her credit for "being very nice." However, no niceness could help much to drape the stark obtruding facts; no civilities seemed fitted to cope with the intangible wall suddenly sprung up in the old friendship. And if there had lingered in Charles's mind some revolting incredulity, some reactionary insistence that Mary could never really carry out the typical exploit of the Egoette, the talk this evening finally killed it. The famous educator's sentences made it clear, once and for all, that she was Leaving Home for good--for her own good, of course--on the 1st day of March succeeding.

Charles was determinedly "sincere" throughout the brief call, continuously and spuriously hearty. Inwardly, his resolve grew more and more fixed that this young woman, who was so rarely competent to Lead Her Own Life, should be permitted to lead it quite unassisted henceforth. For himself, he decided that his life should go to the unremitting service of pure Letters. But of such matters, of course, he permitted his agreeable chatter to yield no hint. Taking his departure upon a new wave of felicitations, he could but congratulate himself upon the trained adeptness of his mask.

And Mary, having shut the door upon her caller, stood leaning against it, her arched brows drawn together in a faint frown, her fine eyes faintly bewildered.

"Now what," she said, half aloud, "have I said or done, or left unsaid or undone, this time?"

And then she went slowly back to her mother's bedroom, where she found her mother with stockings to darn, and (taken unawares) her eyes a little red.

XIV

In the Home on Center Street, the shrunken curtain was rarely hooked back on the nail now. And on the ledge of the little window that gazed toward the Blest, the shabby opera-glasses gathered dust.

As is perfectly understood, Careers in the making are the stuff to make conservatives of others. Observing Egoettes, an authority, if male, inevitably reacts, thinking better and better of the gentle business of supplying beauty and supplying charm. Charles Garrott, in short, having repudiated all connection with the life of Mary Wing, was in just the proper frame of mind to applaud the life of Mary's so different cousin. And Charles did applaud it--certainly. But, of course, such purely scientific endorsement did not controvert another established known truth, namely, that, under certain circumstances and as applied to certain individuals, the supply of the soft commodities referred to may very well prove a little in excess of the demand.

The well-known thought first flickered back into Charles's mind on the third day of his homecoming. At the moment, he stood on the corner nearest Berringer's, having just dismounted there from Miss Angela's conveyance. On the fifth day of his homecoming, at the same corner, his reflections on supply and demand were assuming an increasing definiteness.

"Well, then--good-bye!" he was saying, with his fatal pleasantness. "And thank you very much for the lift."

From the seat of Tommy's valuable donation, Angela was gazing up at him. And he saw that her face, which had been smiling, was touched with a brief seriousness.

"Oh, you know I've enjoyed it--so much! But--we never seem to have anything but these little bits of talks. I'm sorry.... Perhaps I'll see you to-morrow?"

"Ha!--quite likely!--yes! Thank you! Well!--_good-bye!_"

And he turned away toward luncheon and the good man-talk with a crescent uneasiness, having failed to point out--possibly failing to remember--that to-morrow was Saturday, and he would be off to the country again.

Day before yesterday, he had encountered the conveyance as he left the Demings' at one o'clock. To-day, he had overtaken it on his walk downtown--literally that, for he was a fast walker and a little absent-minded besides. Thus he had now enjoyed three peace-making drives with the girl he had once parted from forever, all in the course of his first five days at home. And now at the end of their third pleasant talk, particularly after these last prospective remarks of hers, Charles could not but feel that the true object of these re-meetings had been satisfactorily accomplished. Now the reconciliation was complete; now he felt no lingering shadow of doubt of his forgiveness for having once been a brute.

He did not regret the drives; he was very glad, indeed, to be good friends again; but his subtle instinct seemed to warn him that he and Angela would do best, would get along with the fewest misunderstandings, without a rapidly developing intimacy. And, taking the higher view, it clearly was not right, it was not moral, that a confirmed bachelor like himself should go on indefinitely monopolizing a nice young Spinster Home-Maker's time.

Returning to town on Monday, Charles, though in the kindest way, went to Berringer's by the Center Street car-line. He felt, indeed, that he was really looking out for the girl's higher good more than for his own: she lacked that competence to manage her own life, so harshly flaunted by others. All passed off well. On Tuesday he utilized the traction system again, with equally satisfying results. And then, on Tuesday afternoon, as he trod professionally from the old lady's who was studying French to Miss Grace Chorister's, he suddenly ran upon the Fordette again.

By an odd chance, the quaint little vehicle was standing still, directly in front of the Choristers'. His reconciled friend was out of it, standing by, bending well over the car, peering into it. Nevertheless, by some sixth sense, she saw him at once and, straightening up with a pleased smile, she waved and called:--

"Oh, Mr. Garrott!--how glad I am to see you! Do you know how to crank?"

He approached with the gallantest air, the most civil speeches. All the same, as he bent to his hard labor--for the Fordette proved dangerously stiff in the crank--and politely sought to explain how to avoid killing the engine for the future, he was conscious of a certain sense of rebellion.... Excellent, laudable, justifying things, beauty and charm; but the plain fact was that he, Charles, was simply not in the market for them at present, that was all.

The friendship, indeed, was well cemented now; the talk characterized with a growing confidence.

"Oh, how strong you are!" said Angela admiringly, as he finally got the old engine to spinning. "I do wish I could do it like that! Now you must let me pay you for your trouble!--won't you? I'm just driving around, really, so don't think--"

"Oh, thank you, but I go in here. Business hours, you know! Well! Now you're--"

"Oh, is this where you teach every afternoon?" asked Angela, with interest, gazing past him at the handsome stone "front" of the Choristers'. "Oh, yes, Miss Chorister.... How long does the lesson last?"

"Oh, an hour--usually. But, of course," added the young man, his eye wavering slightly, "that depends somewhat--on circumstances--"

"You don't get out till about half-past four, then? I do _wish_ you weren't so awfully busy! Mr. Garrott, have you been away again? I don't seem to have seen you at all for a good many days now."

"Yes! That's it!--been away again! I go away all the time--practically. And when I'm here, why, it's nothing but work, work, work, from morning to night, for me! It's a wonder to me I have a friend left, I have to be so horribly unsociable--_always_. But," continued Charles, "I'm glad I happened by in time to be of some help. By the by, hadn't you better get in and try her out? I don't like to rush on to my lesson till I know you're all right."

"Yes, I suppose I had. I oughtn't to stop you now."

His suggestion, indeed, had a striking reasonableness. Fortunately, the try-out proved quite successful, after only a little pushing and kicking. But the Fordette snorted from before the Choristers' very slowly, Angela looking back over her shoulder, smiling at him, a pretty and appealing look on her entirely feminine face.

Charles went up to his daily hour with Miss Grace, in a brown study.

Miss Grace, it must be known, was a Temporary Spinster, verging toward Permanence; she was round, gentle, blonde, by no means displeasing or ill-looking. Had the world been the normal place Old Tories took it to be, Miss Grace would undoubtedly have been one of those happy women who find themselves, at twenty-five, with a home, a husband, and three darling little curly-headed children; and there were a hundred signs that so she would have found full happiness indeed. But the world being not normal now, but, on the contrary, in Unrest, something remote had gone wrong with Miss Grace, parting her from her manifest destiny. Perhaps the panic of 1907 was to blame, or a decrease in the visible gold supply; perhaps the trouble was in that hard saying of the Redmantlers, that Love was going out. At any rate, here hung Miss Grace on the parent stem in Washington Street, a Waiting Woman: the non-understanding and unaccounted-for Anomaly in a disordered social system; an adult human being thirty-two years old, with nothing upon earth to do.

Miss Grace's subjects were Sociology and the History of the World. An agreeable soul herself, she noted that her tutor's manner this afternoon was taciturn and distrait. As he was concluding his remarks upon the thirty pages of Lester Ward that made her lesson, she noted that he lost his thread suddenly, and left a sentence permanently hanging in mid-air. Back into the tutor's head, in fact, the artless questionings of another had popped with arresting force: "_Is this where you teach every afternoon? You get out about half-past four?_" From taciturn, Mr. Garrott's manner became restless and rather irritable. And when the hour of four-thirty arrived, he did not snap his watch at Miss Grace and depart at once, according to his almost invariable habit. No, he moved in a novel manner, to the drawing-room window. And he stood there, oddly and irresolutely, gazing out, first up the street and then down.

Why had he mentioned that the lesson lasted an hour usually? Why hadn't he said, frankly, that it lasted till five or six o'clock, and often later?

Slowly but surely the idea was being established that it was the natural and usual thing for him and Angela to drive in the old Fordette every day. It was time for him definitely to break up this idea. Otherwise, what was to be the end of it all?--that was what he wanted to know. More and more he seemed to become aware of a gentle claim, an indescribable pressure, very soft, yet rather alarmingly sure. Why on earth couldn't she be satisfied just to be pleasant friends once more? Why all this talk of future meetings, of seeing you again all the time?

Miss Grace stood some distance behind her tutor, observing his strange behavior. Somehow her attitude wore the air of a typical expression of character. Miss Grace had flutterings, as witness her growing knowledge of the Merovingians; she even pretended to nibble fearfully at her tutor's occasional exhortations, that she cease her parasiting and go to work. But beneath such vague symptoms of Unrest, it was clear that she remained as her tradition and environment had fixed her, a Woman of Romance: that is to say, a being gladly content to serve as the spectator and audience of Man.

"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly, in her rather childlike voice, "I don't believe you are a bit busy this afternoon. You really must stay for tea. Nobody's coming in, sister's out, and you know you haven't stayed for perfect ages."

To her surprise, the unsocial tutor accepted at once. He remained with his pupil till quarter past five. Thereupon, he reached his Studio without interruption, entirely on foot.

Charles (thinking for the young girl's highest good) was rather pleased with this development. By accident, he seemed to have hit upon quite a satisfactory sort of _modus vivendi_: street-cars to Berringer's, and tea at Miss Grace's till dark. Next day he tried the programme again.

This time, it did not work out quite so well: the secret truth of the matter being that, at bottom, all Spinsters have certain well-defined points in common. That, in fact, is what makes them a class. And, speaking in the large, you may say that there is no such thing as a Permanent Spinster.

Lessons at the Choristers' took place in the library, a stately room, yet charming, too. Into it, a dusky maid wheeled a double-tiered tea-table, all mahogany and glass, silver and china atop, little cakes and small enticements on the deck below. Talk of historical matters ceased. There sprang up light prattle of the little things Miss Grace knew and liked best.

The tutor, basking by the fireside and waiting for night, was not unhappy. Though he frequently lectured Miss Grace, through long use he really liked her. Now, he was also consciously grateful for her haven from the too social life of Washington Street. That he could not go on taking tea with Miss Grace every day for the rest of his life he, of course, knew well; but he would just take each day's problems as he came to them. Meanwhile, this Spinster supplied a quiet charm. Her hands hovered ministeringly over the tea-table. For a plumpish woman, she had noticeably small hands, graceful and white. When the tutor made her a civil compliment, she colored like a school-girl.

Following the compliment there was a moment of fire-lit silence. And then Miss Grace's voice said softly and sweetly:

"You are looking at my ring. I'm wearing it--"

So that ended _that_.

The tutor was on his feet so abruptly as to set the tea-things shaking.

"No! No, I wasn't--I swear! I must go at once," said Charles.

Unaware of the painful memories her womanly words evoked, Miss Grace naturally looked very much surprised.

"But--_what's_ the matter? Why, you act as if it were something improper for you to look at my ring!"

"Absurd," said the tutor, with a gesture.

He had merely remembered, all of a sudden, something very important he had to do, that was all. Pardon his haste, but he had already stayed too long, he feared.

Indifferent to Miss Grace's bewilderment, he left at once, wondering if voluntary celibacy could not exist, and be respected, upon this earth. And next day, as he stood on the corner of Center Street awaiting his good, safe street-car--indeed, as he was in the very act of boarding the said safe car--the little Fordette chugged up behind and nipped him.

It was a pure accident, and he knew it. But he saw at once that no accident could well have been less opportune. It involved a discovery highly prejudicial to his future.

Angela, indeed, had not even seen Mr. Garrott. She had merely perceived, rounding the corner into her own street, that she was about to run over somebody, and had awkwardly clapped on her brake, just in time. Recognizing her friend in the person she had so nearly bumped, she gave a little feminine cry of mirth and excitement; and, while she apologized and laughed over the strange coincidence, Charles's car, of course, suddenly clanged away and left him. The rest followed, as the night the day.

Almost the first thing she said was: "Oh, is _this_ where you take the street-cars, when you haven't time to walk?"

Charles's reply indicated that he was very erratic and uncertain in these matters, taking the cars now at one point, now again in a totally different quarter of the city.

So the two friends, no longer constrained by misunderstanding, started off on the slow mile drive to Berringer's. In the course of this drive, Charles had his first justifying thought of Mary Wing in ten days.

He recognized, with deep misgivings, that this girl's attitude toward him was wholly ingenuous and natural, the "claim" he complained of but the spontaneous expression of her girlish conception of their relations. That, of course, was just the worst of it; in that naïveté (oh, surely this was the Naïve Sex!) was her soft strength. He, with his cursed weak politeness, knew not how to withstand her maidenly theory; she, on the other hand, had new means of putting it forward constantly. All was changed, he saw now clearly, from the instant when she came riding back into his life at the wheel of the ancient Fordette.

How was he to have any privacy of movement henceforward; how get from place to place?

Beside him, the girl was talking, with simple pleasure, of bridge. It appeared that she was thinking of having another party next week, in honor of Cousin Mary. Mr. Tilletts was very anxious to improve his game, she mentioned.

"And I think I'll invite you too," she said, with becoming coquetry--"even though you've never paid your party-call--for the other one!"

But why wasn't she sometimes at home, home-making? That was what he should like to know.

And aloud, he spoke with hard brightness of the weather.

Through her seemingly incessant practice, Angela drove better now; not efficiently or rapidly, but no longer with her first anxious air, stopping short when she saw a wagon a block away. This left her more freedom and enterprise for conversation. Mr. Garrott's meteorological comments soon petered out. Subtly, gently, her manner seemed to reprove him for wasting their time, as it were, on trivialities.

She said presently: "Did you ever read that book I lent you, Mr. Garrott--'Marna'?"

The young man groaned inwardly. He could not understand why he had not returned the book last week as he had intended--with or without the blossoms--instead of dilly-dallying along this way, till some point was made of it. True enough, Angela interrupted his loquacious apologies:--

"Oh, it isn't that! I really don't want the book at all. But--"

She drove a few feet farther--an appreciable interval at four miles an hour--and ended, rather wistfully:--

"I wondered if you weren't keeping it--for another reason. I mean--just because you didn't want to come to return it."

"Why, what an idea! Ridiculous!--"

"Mr. Garrott, you know you _have_ seemed to--since--"

"You've no idea how overworked I am these days--never a minute to call my own! Why, there's your cousin, Mary Wing,--one of my best friends,--and I haven't so much as laid eyes on her--but once--since 'way before Christmas! Think of it! And that's--"

"You used to be willing to take a _little_ time for pleasure," said Angela, looking away from him, "before--we had that awful misunderstanding."

"It gets worse and worse all the time!" said Charles, hastily. "That's what I say! That's writing!--yes, indeed!--inexorable--once let it into your life, and it eats it all up--forcing a man to be a--a hermit for life, you might say. But there was something I was very anxious to tell you, Miss Flower. Let me see ... slipped me for the moment. Ah--oh, yes!--did you know Donald Manford's back again?"

"Oh! No, is he? I hadn't heard."

"Yes, old Donald got back Sunday, full of pride and honors...."

And then into the eyes of the worried young man there shot a faint gleam.

He had mentioned Donald absolutely at random, but the moment he heard the youth's name on the air, an idea exploded in his brain, leaving behind a dull hope. Unlike himself, Donald was a marrying man. Why, when you stopped to think of it, wasn't Angela the very girl for him? And why, then, shouldn't he, Charles, frankly reversing his purposes at the Helen Carson luncheon last month, bring together once more these two nice, simple cousins of the too-modern Mary, just as he had done that night at the Redmantle Club, when all the trouble had begun?

Of course, at the moment, Charles's "psychology" was not quite so elaborate as this. The thought, indeed, flashed through his brain in purely concrete form, thus: "_That's it! I'll put her on to Donald._"

Forthwith, he launched upon a voluble talk, an address, at once extolling Donald's character and throwing out suggestive commentaries upon it: how Donald had come home in the vein of a boy let out of school, seeming to feel that at last his playtime had come; how he (so different from himself, Charles) openly sought and hungered for pleasure now, was mad for some good times. And, observing closely, he thought that Miss Angela looked interested in his exposition, too, though hardly so interested as one might have liked, perhaps.

"Why, I didn't think he was that sort of person at all," said she.

"I've never seen a man change so--come out so--in my life! Landing this great job, you know!--it's taken a great weight off him. And then the thought that he has only a few weeks more at home, too--it's really revolutionized his character! Why, Miss Flower, the man's all but quit work! Really! He ..."

A knocking sense of disloyalty--to Mary's known plans--checked him, but briefly. What was that to him now? Had not Mary convinced him, once and for all, that she was more than competent to manage her own affairs? Deliberately, the young man released his valuable information:--

"Why, he leaves his office every afternoon at four o'clock--rain or shine--and walks up Washington Street, absolutely hunting for somebody to come and give him a little fun! But who is there to do it? He's been out of things so long, he hardly knows anybody! And then, too, Donald, beneath that--ah--standoffish manner of his, is really a shy man. What he needs most, really, is encouragement...."

To all of which Angela's final reply--delivered after a slight silence--was: "You seem to love to talk about Mr. Manford to-day, Mr. Garrott." And then she took the wind out of his sails completely by saying:--

"I don't think of Mr. Manford really as a friend of mine. You know--I often think you're the only real friend I've made, since we left Mitchellton."