Part 15

During the remainder of the drive, Charles thought it best to affect an amiable absent silence. But that gained him nothing, any more than his treachery to Donald and Miss Carson. Before she released him at the now too familiar corner near Berringer's, the girl said, simply and seriously:--

"Mr. Garrott--aren't you really _ever_ coming to see me again?"

Why again? When had he ever been to see her? And why all this talk of a misunderstanding? _He_ had never misunderstood anything.

"Why, yes!--yes, certainly!--when I ever find a minute to see anybody! Ha, ha! But--when that'll be--"

It was her great merit in his eyes that she had never really reproached him. It seemed to cost her an effort to go on:--

"You've never forgiven me for--for saying what I did that night. You know you haven't! But if you'd ever come to see me--so that we could really have a talk--I feel I could make you understand that I--never really meant it!"

The maiden's gaze at once embarrassed and vastly depressed him. In it he read, as if spread upon a bill-board, her soft certainty that, though he himself might not realize it yet, he was her man....

In the restaurant, the four or five entirely masculine persons with whom Charles commonly lunched took note of his peculiar gloom. It was their whim to assume that a valued pupil had just discharged Charles without a character. Theirs was a crude and noisy wit. But the tutor ignored, hardly heard, their gibes. He sat withdrawn and silent over his chicken hash (for which Berringer had no less than fourteen different names). And before his fascinated mind's eye there unrolled an endless vista of driving duets, with the gentle feminine pressure closing down ever more and more irresistibly upon him.

What to do, what to do? That was the question. There did not seem to be a corner of the city now where the Fordette did not go poking its ugly mug.

All very well to say: Be bold, be cold. Refuse under any conditions to get into the Fordette. That, to him, was simply not a possible line of conduct. Inability to be successfully rude to people, even under the most favorable circumstances, had long been recognized as the damnable flaw in his character. And as to this very peculiar case--how could the roughest boor, the most thoroughgoing cad, repel and affront a nice young girl whom he voluntarily kissed but last month--one whose only fault, after all, was a fatal constancy?

Now he fairly confronted the two distinct and fundamental weaknesses in his position: the moral and the mechanical, the Kiss and the Fordette. A just thinker always, he would not deny, even now, that it was his own free-will act that had first altered everything. If he took the ground that he had kissed, with warmth, a girl he cared nothing on earth about, what sort of person did that make him? No better than a Frenchman, daft about La Femme. She, it could not be gainsaid, really paid him a finer compliment, took the nobler view of him, when she assumed that those salutes had signified something. She was not without right to her naïve confidence. And now that she had this maidenly expectancy firmly mounted upon a gasoline engine--do what he would, he could not escape a ripening affection. She would get a call out of him yet. There would be another bridge-party, and he would be at it. And after the bridge-party....

Alone with his thoughts among his noisy companions, Charles drew a handkerchief across his brow. A Home was, indeed, a sweet and beautiful thing. But the positive fact was that he, Charles, did NOT want one made for him at present. And still, the soft advance that leads straight to Homes pressed resistlessly on.

Great Heavens, what a price to pay for one little kiss on a sofa!... Well, two or three little bits of kisses, then. What a price! What was the reason of it, where the justice?

He spoke aloud, for almost the first time at his lunch, with sudden heat: "I believe I'll move away from this town!"

The remark elicited a shout of laughter. In the midst of it, the tutor rose and stalked intently away. It had just occurred to him that he might force a quarrel on Angela, on some trivial pretext: pretend that she had hurt his feelings in some way--about not returning that book of hers, perhaps--something like that. The old dodge: a million men must have worked it. But even as he dallied with the notion, Charles knew very well that the ruthless strength was not in him. Besides, his thought now had taken a cold retrospective turn, interesting in its way: the sight of Talbott Maxon, grinning there, had roused old associations in him. Talbott was a good one to laugh! But the Oldmixon girls had had him laughing out of the other corner of his mouth.

How had he ever lost sight of _that_ little affair?

People like G. B. Shaw might go about pretending that they had invented the idea of Woman the Pursuer. But the fact was that he, Charles, had personally discovered the elementary truth before he was out of his teens. Experience, you would have said, had driven it home unforgettably. All the way up to the old lady's who was studying French, tucked away in an obscure corner of the street-car, Charles was soberly going back over the instructive time he and Talbott had had with a group of Temporary Spinsters--all of five years ago--and wondering how under the sun he had ever allowed its lessons to grow dim.

That old trouble had started casually, too--how sharply it all came back now! At a dance it was, when Talbott, who was also fatally kind-hearted (and was pushed by a chaperon from behind, besides), had invited Susie Oldmixon to abandon the wall for the waltz. Of course, he had been stuck for four dances for his pains: of course Miss Oldmixon--a womanly girl--had misconceived the character of that long set-to; of course she invited him to a party in a day or two. Then it was that Talbott, sensing how things were going, had introduced him, Charles, much as a cowardly conscript offers a substitute. But the base act had gained him nothing; the Oldmixons produced a friend of theirs, Sarah Freed,--how he came to loathe the sight of Sarah!--and upon the instant, he and Talbott found themselves caught up together in a literally endless chain of little engagements, usually thus: a party, a party-call, another party, etc. Naturally, they had early had the bright thought of breaking the chain by not paying any party-call; and at once, this very same kind of soft pressure was put upon their weak chivalrousness: "Ethel thinks you must be mad with her," one or the other of the loyal sisters would say. "You know you've never paid your party-call." If they yielded, and went and paid their party-call, it was not considered that they had then discharged their duty like soldiers; no, by an inexplicable shift in the point of view, the call was straightway viewed as a personal "attention," and they were at once invited to another party. So it went: these girls had reduced to an intuitive science the feminine instinct for making one thing lead to another. Of course they were always offering to teach him and Talbott something, as auction or the Boston; always trying to lend them something--like "Marna"--which would have to be returned. And even if all the regulation pitfalls were fairly side-stepped, it really accomplished nothing, for in that case Sarah or the Oldmixons were sure to have a Visitor. Even Sarah Freed, of course, rather hesitated to ring you up on the telephone and say: "Please, please, come to see me! You know I haven't a thing in the world to do but sit and think about men, and you're the only man who has spoken politely to me since 1908." But none of the virgins minded at all ringing you up and saying, "Do come to see my Visitor."

The worst thing in it all (reflected Charles, with worriment, in the street-car) was that Sarah and the Oldmixons were far from being brazen hussies; they were really nice girls, only sharpened a little by tedium and the creeping fear of "failure." Odd though it seemed, they actually remained almost completely unconscious of their own processes. And still it had taken him and Talbott nearly a year to get out of the soft vicious circle; and still he remembered distinctly that they had then agreed upon the following as their invariable rule of conduct, thenceforward: Never be polite to a womanly girl, unless positive you want to marry her.

A _year_! And of course he had never kissed Sarah and the Oldmixons, either....

Charles went on his rounds in a humor of fatalistic despondence. The mood proved premature, decidedly: while there is life, there is hope. And it seemed that he, by too much thinking, had wrongly discounted the promising aspects of his case. He had builded rather better than he knew.

When his lesson with Miss Grace was over, at four-thirty that afternoon, the tutor said gloomily:--

"I can't stay for tea to-day. But I think I'll just stand here, and look out of the window a little while."

Of course, after yesterday, there could be no more tea-taking. Equally of course, caution was more needed than ever. "Don't wait for me," muttered Charles, reconnoitering, to Miss Grace. And then he forgot her entirely as his eye, shooting out the window, fell upon Donald Manford sauntering carelessly along, over the sunny street.

From the Choristers' window, Charles gazed out at his young friend with moroseness and moody envy. What he had told Angela about this youth was (by chance) almost literally true. Donald--hitherto a hard worker, through Mary Wing's unceasing influence--_was_ visibly relaxing the ties he was so soon to sever; he _had_ come home in distinctly a holiday humor. And a lot of good that did him, Charles! Donald walked Washington Street there with utter free-and-easiness, with almost insolent impunity. Dull, lucky Donald! He, of course, did not have the devilish gift; Donald kissed no one. No one viewed Donald as her own true man; no home-maker chased him all over the city in a Fordette.

Behind him, Miss Grace pushed a flat button on the wall and said: "Tea'll be ready in a minute, Mr. Garrott. You really might as well stay, you know, as stand there looking out of the window."

The tutor made no reply. In fact, he did not hear Miss Grace. By strange luck, he was in the grip of an extraordinary, a truly fascinating experience. Quite suddenly, his ears had been captured by a sound from the street, a sound that had an arresting familiarity among all other sounds, a peculiar whirring, a rumbling, and a snorting, insistent, growing louder. Upon earth, was there but one noise like that?

Swifter than a bullet, Charles's eyes had gone speeding down the spacious street. And his heart leapt up within him as they lighted upon the self-propelling conveyance approaching--but half a block away, chugging steadily nearer....

Yes, his word to the wise had not been wholly wasted, it seemed. There rumbled the good little Fordette after unconscious Donald, gaining on him, gaining almost rapidly....

"Mr. Garrott, what _are_ you looking at?"

"Oh!... Nothing," said the tutor in a muffled voice.

But in truth, he was looking, with breathless interest, at the fairest sight seen by him in many a long day. Safe behind the Choristers' curtains, with general joy, with the acute delights of a born strategist, Charles saw what had so often happened to him, happen now to poor old Donald.

By odd coincidence, it fell out that the re-meeting of Mary Wing's two cousins took place within fifty feet of the Choristers' window. What more natural than that Angela, in the moment of passing her home-come friend, should look over her shoulder and speak a pleasant greeting? Or that Donald, surprised and civil, should unconsciously take a responsive step or two toward the sudden speaker of the greeting? What more certain than death or taxes but that the Fordette should thereupon come to a halt--which it did so easily and naturally? (Oh, how perfectly simple it all was, as you stood off and watched, how gentle and friendly and inexorable!) Casual talk seemed to spring up: how easily Charles, peeping with starting eyes between the parted curtains, could imagine it all!--"I'm so glad to see you back! I've wanted so to congratulate you on your great success! I'm crazy to hear about Wyoming!" And presently those crucial words, so innocent-looking, so sweet: "Mr. Manford, won't you let me," etc. "Truly I'm just out for a drive." And--sure enough--oh, by George! _Hooray!_ There was the poor fool grinning; there he was compressing himself, clambering right into the jaws. _Ah, there, Miss Mary!..._ And there the two young people went snorting away up the street: perfectly normally, though something in Donald's cramped position, his long legs hunched up to his chin, did oddly suggest a captive, seized and bound.

The tutor astonished Miss Grace by bursting into a wild roar of laughter.

* * * * *

But of course, he understood, on cool analysis, that this really settled nothing. That exciting spectacle, which seemed to make the whole process so extremely concrete, represented a hope, nothing more. And the more this hope was scrutinized, the less substantial it seemed to become. Walking safely home in the golden afternoon, Charles suddenly recalled, with cold annoyance, a remark Donald had made, after his second walk with Angela in November: "Charlie, she worries me." And Angela, for her part,--though of course womanly, and hence agreeably plastic in her affections,--really seemed hardly more attracted to Donald, as yet. Charles thought he knew the reason, too. With a fresh chill, he recalled the look the girl had given him, on the corner near Berringer's, to-day.

Had he really "put her on" to Donald even in the remotest degree? Was it not highly probable that she, patrolling Washington Street at four-thirty, had been looking, not for Donald, but for another?

Of course, there could not be the slightest doubt that--for the present, at least--Angela preferred him to Donald, infinitely, unreasonably. And Angela usually got what she wanted, too, it seemed. For example, she had wanted to move her family from Mitchellton to this city, where he, Charles, lived. And she had moved.

XV

He fell instinctively into a small manoeuvre, which was merely this: that he quietly shifted forward his public itinerary by quarter of an hour. Next day, he started rapidly toward the street-cars at quarter before one, and shot out of Miss Grace's at quarter past four, sharp. Ultimate detection was certain, of course; but for the moment the trifling ruse did seem to win a hardly hoped-for respite in the headlong courtship. Neither on Friday, nor again on Monday, was the Home-Making Fordette so much as seen. And the next disturbance of the authority's delicate social scales, and of the author's Line, came, as might be said, from precisely the opposite direction.

In the Studio, matters had continued to progress backward. Once here, and the door safely shut, Charles had been steadily at work, the hymeneal shadow put resolutely from his mind. No writer's time, he had pledged himself, should go to somber meditations on the cosmic consequences of a kiss, still less to fruitless bitterness concerning wasted write-ups, the hardness of Egoettes, etc. Day by day, he had wooed that subtle calm of the spirit which is the bread and meat of authors; night by night, expended himself in the service of pure Letters. And it had all been for nothing.

Contrary to explicit resolve, in short, he had been making a fresh attempt at his new novel, hoping--rather weakly--that his mind wasn't quite so unsettled as he secretly knew it was. And, once more, he had been well punished for his rashness. Symptoms of weakness having developed increasingly through the week just past, on Monday evening Charles took his medicine, just before supper. Ten thousand words of brand-new manuscript lay in his drawer there; and he would be lucky if he could save a thousand of them for the novel that should be.

Of the "line" taken by this second abortive effort, the less said the better. It suffices to suggest that if Mary Wing had been a totally different sort of person, it might never have been undertaken at all.

Of all ways of spending the time known among men, unquestionably the most abominable, the most nerve-wrecking and devilish, is Thinking up a Book. Charles smoked box after box of cigarettes, couldn't sleep at night, talked in his sleep when he did, and was growing a scowl between his brows almost as dark as poor Two-Book McGee's--the interesting Type that was leading its own life and wished it weren't. The final conviction of the worthlessness of his work was hardly calculated to improve the young man's state of mind. He was, indeed, profoundly discouraged and concerned. For ten weeks now he had been struggling to isolate a point of view which would at once "carry" all his newer observations on his Subject, and command the support of his unqualified conviction. And to-night he seemed further away from his goal than he had been the day he finished "Bondwomen."

However, what brought Charles's humor to a sudden head this evening, what precipitated the fury in which Donald Manford found him--Donald, entering so happy and fine in the evening regalia which the match-making Mary seemed to clap on him every night nowadays--by chance had not to do with his own book at all, but with another's.

In short, the young author, very injudiciously in view of his resolve to think of Egoettes no more, had been dipping into "Marna."

This book of Angela's had long lain as a plague on the mind of Charles. For a space, he had not returned the book because of the estrangement, or misunderstanding; for another space, because of the swiftly ripening intimacy, compelling the general policy of lying low; and now a large fresh obstacle had risen, in the girl's unfortunate remarks directly connecting the return of her book with a call. Whether, after that, he could harden his heart to slip "Marna" back to her by the hand of the Judge--without any appreciative blossoms, needless to say--remained to be seen. So long as the situation remained as it was, Charles had decided simply not to take up the worry at all.

Hence Angela's book rested, gathering dust on the Studio mantel. And, chancing to come on it in his moody pacings after supper, the author had picked it up, in mere resentment at its being there. Standing hostilely, he permitted himself to skim a few pages of the stuff, toward the end. Next, with growing intention, he looked into the middle. And finally, he sat frankly down with "Marna" in the Judge's new easy-chair.

It had occurred to him that it was probably his professional duty to see what sort of line on the Unrest the other fellows were taking these days. This book here was enjoying an immense vogue; every newspaper reminded you that it was the Best Selling Book in America. What truth, then, did it have to tell? Or--put more simply--it may be that Charles had merely fallen a weak victim to the true writer's continual temptation and longing, viz.: to clutch at anything, anything, that will keep him from having to write, or think up.

Angela's book (which was so strangely unlike Angela) had come from the typewriter of a brilliant and industrious British Thinker. From the "literary criticism" and publisher's advertising that he read--and he seemed to read little else in these days--Charles had already gathered that "Marna" followed that simple "ultra-modern" line which to him, with his expanding knowledge, now seemed so oddly old-fashioned. In his standing skim just now, he had noted, with quickening distaste, how easily _Marna_ accomplished a glorious Career: as, indeed, a girl has small excuse for not doing, when she has an able author working for her night and day. In particular, he observed that her "demonstrating experiment in freer forms of union" turned out far more happily than poor unauthored Flora Trevenna's. As well as Charles could make out, _Marna's_ swain not only had a wife living when she met him, but was engaged to another woman besides. But when the splendid girl said to him, on page 478: "What a joy, beloved, to strike back at the grubby little people who're trying to fetter the love-spirit! Ah, but I'm glad you're married!"--after this, every one knew that it was all up with _De Bevoies_, who, being a poet, could hardly be expected to argue back at agreeable talk of this sort. (_Marna_ had met him at an anarchist "social"; he was stunningly modern, and borrowed two pounds from her the first thing next morning.) Not long after the talkative but Higher Honeymoon on the Breton Coast, _Mrs. De Bevoies_ died, with thoughtful promptness, and it was noted that the New couple at once adopted the old-established form of union, after all, and (of course) quickly became the toasts of London.

"_George!..._ How easy writing would be," thought Charles, with great indignation--"if only the truth were as simple as that!"