Part 19

Mrs. Flower's decisive remark was that she must get on with her household duties. She gave Charles her limp hand again, again mentioned her daughter's distress, if she missed him; she bestowed upon him another pretty and somewhat significant smile; and then faded out of the Call, leaving behind a vague impression of feminine inadequacy and a button missing from her black waist.

So the young man was left with the worthy Doctor, who could speak so sarcastically to a defenseless woman, his wife. And for a space he found the tête-à-tête heavy going, indeed, and was more oppressed than ever with the essential meaninglessness of it all.

Angela's father did not look like a brute, but only dryer, queerer, shabbier, than before. He jerked his neck more, looked more unrelated to his environment. He was very civil, but he cocked his eye too much toward the ceiling, felt too little responsibility as to keeping a conversation going. Charles's efforts (hearty enough, despite the counter-feelings going on within him) seemed to bound off dead from that juiceless, withdrawn manner. Having refused a cigar (there was a little talk about smoking, but he couldn't keep it going), he proposed for discussion the Doctor's son Wallie, his education, abilities as a chemist, skill as a lamp-repairer, etc. The topic promised well, and did well for a couple of minutes, but petered out mysteriously and beyond resurrection. The Doctor's work out at the Medical School yielded almost nothing; the weather enjoyed but a brief and fitful run. Presently, Charles found himself fairly driven to Mary Wing, and her imminent departure to lead her own life; and this subject won a real success, though not of a sort he could take much satisfaction in. It quickly developed that Angela's parent held ante-bellum views on Woman, which he put forward with some dry zest, in the strange backhanded fashion noted by Charles in their previous meeting. After a very few exchanges, the old eccentric was delivering himself of paragraphs like this:--

"Ah, you throw out that suggestion? An interesting idea!--quite so!" (Charles had thrown out no suggestion of any sort.) "Your observation is that the Lord has formed woman specifically for the needs of family and the home--quite so!--and that efforts to change her destiny seem to result in constitutional perversion? Well, sir, I dare say the physicians would support your contention there, too. Who knows?"

Even "Marna," even Mary Wing, had never made Charles so conservative as this. Oddly enough, he found the Doctor's criticisms unwelcome; it was his turn to let a subject die from malnutrition. In the pause, he considered whether he had not called long enough now. About to rise, he chanced to note a worn volume of Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson" lying open on the table, and asked, with little hope, if the Doctor had read it. The old codger replied: "I am reading it now for the seventh time, sir." And to the young man's agreeable surprise, he at once uncocked his eye from the ceiling (where he seemed to have meant to leave it permanently), and began to talk along almost like a regular person.

During the remainder of the Call, conversation flowed very satisfactorily. It appeared that the War was one of this old codger's subjects, even as Woman was Charles's; and he talked well, too, now that he cared to, criticizing strategy as one having authority, revealing, behind that spare, intensely conservative manner, flashes of broad outlook and incisive speech which might have helped to explain why the Medical School had been glad to draw this man from Mitchellton to its staff. But the truth was that Charles Garrott heard scarcely a word of this excellent discourse. Once he had got Angela's father fairly going, he became captured and fascinated by a totally independent line of thought.

In short, the young man's gaze had returned to almost the first thing he had definitely noticed in the Home, to wit, the ash-tray on the Doctor's mantel.

The ash-tray was really a large saucer, or small plate, and the intriguing and really exciting thing about it was that it contained the remains of scarcely less than a dozen cigars. Just before he made the lucky remark about Henderson's "Life," the caller had inadvertently discovered two more cigar-ends, poised perilously on the mantel's edge; this it was that had started him reacting yet again. For, considering that the Doctor was out a large part of the day, lecturing, it appeared incredible that he could have achieved such astonishing results since morning. Rather, the mantel had the air of having stood undisturbed for some little time....

"If those men," he was saying, "had but shot another way, that night at Chancellorsville--"

"Ah, sir! the vast 'ifs' of history. And none bigger than that, it may be. Yet, as I say ..."

From the large heaped saucer, with its ring of spilled ashes, the detective eye flitted over the room, briefly, somewhat guiltily, yet uncontrollably. It received an impression of dust on the table, dust on the bookshelves, disorder pervasively, and a waste-basket brimful of trash. Finally, the eye rested anew on the Doctor himself, with his frayed collar and joyless mien. And all the time, under the mask of the caller, a question was irresistibly rising and thrusting itself upon the attention of the authority: What housekeeper had charge of this untidy little room, what home-maker was in the business of supplying beauty and charm to this jaded gentleman?

Unaware that he was being thought of in these terms, Angela's father reverted austerely to the Seven Days' fighting around Richmond....

The scientific inquiry had a perfectly proper answer, of course. In the truest sense, Mrs. Flower was the housekeeper in question; that faded belle, with the button off her waist, owed the beauty and charm due in this quarter. Not for nothing did she have that distinctly inefficient voice. And the moment Charles thought of that voice, his mind, with a sort of jump, made a link, and he understood at once why the Doctor's strange speech, eavesdropped by him outside the door, had seemed to have the quality of a parody. Of course! This dry husband, with the sick-man's face, had merely been giving back, in a masculinized version, a reminder not infrequently heard on the lips of womanly women, when married. Before he had invented that ironic retort, how often had Angela's father heard it said: _I'm your wife, and the mother of your children...._

"And what," the civil caller said, "do you think of Mary Johnston's picture of Jackson? I assume, of course, you're familiar with--"

"A brilliant achievement, sir. Indeed, astonishing--for a woman," said the conservative Doctor, jerking his neck; and resumed.

But the young authority found his reactions oddly and increasingly disturbing, and shortly rose to go. He had become certain, abruptly, that he had party-called long enough.

His eccentric host, who had appeared so dryly indifferent to his coming, seemed, on the whole, to regret his departure. And Charles, perceiving this, found himself feeling rather sorry for him. But he showed his sympathies, not by offering to stay longer or to come again, but by inviting Angela's father to lunch with him at Berringer's, one day very soon at his convenience.

"I feel that we should further the acquaintance," he said, as they shook hands, "because of--ah--my long friendship for your--that is, for your wife's cousin."

And then he had a new surprise; for, though the Doctor's lips twitched a little at his correction, showing that he was not altogether devoid of humor, it was with instant seriousness that he said:--

"I do insist upon the distinction, you allege? Well, I'm free to say to you, sir, that I have but scant sympathy with these fantastic modern notions. If all women did as my wife's young cousin does, what, pray, would become of the Home?"

"Ah, what?" said Charles.

And as he thought of Mary Wing's charming and beautifully kept sitting-room, he seemed to feel his head going round. Surely, he had never before seen conservatism so magnificent as this.

"Meanwhile, come in again, sir, when you find time. I have few callers, and have appreciated your visit--"

"Yes!--thank you!"

"My daughter will be sorry--"

And then, as the Doctor opened the door, and his lusterless eye looked out, he added with an approach to grave pleasure in his voice:--

"Ah, here is Angela now--just in time."

The caller's eye went slipping down the hall; and so it was. In the light of the open front door, her rural swain behind her, the young home-maker stood by the hatstand, examining the two returned books she had just found there. What chance had brought her back thus early, cutting off his retreat? Had she passed and seen his hack standing there, and wondered?

But, curiously, Charles's bachelor shrinking from this re-meeting seemed suddenly to have vanished. All his determined championship of the Type, dating back to the Redmantle Club, all his personal sense of honorable obligation, had mysteriously thinned to nothing in half an hour in Dr. Flower's office. In some way that defied analysis, the interior of the Home seemed to have wiped out Angela's girlish claim, the ash-tray had overcome the Kiss. And Charles, bidding her father farewell, went walking down the narrow hall with a tread firm as a soldier's.

Angela had turned at the sound of voices; she stood gazing somewhat uncertainly into the dimness (for she was a little short-sighted without the opera-glasses, and perhaps this was only a patient). The instant of recognition of her friend was marked with an exclamation, almost a cry, of pleasure; and she started toward him with the happiest surprised welcome.

The re-meeting was effected by the hatstand, where Charles had stood on the day he had borrowed the book he now came to return. Water had flowed under London Bridge since then. Mr. Jenney, owner of the celebrated ring, was presented. He was a long-legged, gangling, curly-headed youth, with a face that was beautiful in its way, no less; and it must have been a frank face, too, since Charles, the observer, immediately had the fellow's whole secret. Here was Mr. Jenney's fair ideal, his high star and lady of dreams; and his full reward for his pure devotion was to be kept hanging on, a masculine anchor to windward--just in case, as they say. Still, he might prove the _deus ex machina_ of the issue yet.

At the moment, however, little was seen of Mr. Jenney, since, almost in the first breath, his star said: "Oh, Dan, father's in now, and he'll want _so_ to see you!"--and Mr. Jenney straightway withdrew obediently. One gathered that obedience was his fatal quality.

Thus the unheroic Charles confronted his Temporary Spinster at last, in her dark home-hall. And she, not guessing the new philosophic resistance within him, said, with the gayest confident air, and no little archness, too:--

"Well, Mr. Garrott!... Did you decide to pay your party-call?"

Charles smiled.

"I've been promising myself to come in for some time," he said pleasantly. "I had several excellent excuses, you see. For one thing, there was your book, which I've appropriated all this time--"

"Oh, that! I just saw it there--and thought I must have missed you! That would have been too mean, after all this time!" She glanced toward the hatstand, adding: "And--Mr. Manford gave you that other one to bring back, I suppose?"

"No--ah--we came together, but, of course, he left when he found that you were out. I wanted especially to pay my respects to your father, so--"

"I'm awfully glad he kept you for me.... How are you now? You don't know how I've missed you, since you had to stop walking entirely!"

"I've been extremely well, thank you. Or--at least--I've been pretty well--"

"Oh, I know you haven't been well!--you just try to make light of it! Mr. Manford told me you were breaking yourself down from overwork--you oughtn't to do it! And then that night when I phoned, and your Secretary said you were sick from not taking any exercise, I was worried, truly I was! I wanted to write you a little note--but--"

"A mere temporary indisposition, not worth a moment of your thought," said Mr. Garrott. He was wholly recovered now.

"I'm so glad. You really do look well! It's been ages since I've seen you! But why," she said, laughing up at him prettily, "am I keeping you standing at the door like this! Come in the parlor."

"I'm sorry, but I really can't, thank you. I must be going."

She stopped in complete surprise. "Going! Oh, you mustn't go _now_!--when I've just come in! Why, you _couldn't_!--"

"My time's up, you see, and more. Writing," said Charles sententiously, "is a dreadful taskmaster. But I've explained all that--"

"I know!--but you're here now! You can surely take a _little_ time, Mr. Garrott--when I haven't seen you for days and days--"

"I've already overstayed my scant allowance, you see, with your father. But I'm glad to have had a little glimpse of you, at any rate."

On the whole, he had sought to speak in his usual voice and air; but now he saw that his new power of firmness had disclosed itself to her not too sensitive ear. The liquid eyes under the becoming new hat regarded him with sudden inquiry, puzzled and speculative....

To think seriously ill of this girl, because, perhaps, she was not an enthusiastic cleaner of the parental home, was not in Charles, the man, whatever the authority might have to say. Her soft and unlessoned youthfulness, confronting him, disarmed all criticism. But the chance resemblance to her plaintive mother had seemed, oddly, to strike him much deeper. Looking down at this virginal sweet freshness, by the hatstand and the books, the young man had been full of the elusive sense that as the daughter looked and charmed now, so the mother had looked once; and beyond her present air of alluring femininity, he seemed persistently to be seeing Angela at fifty, sitting idle in an unswept room and continually reminding a worn-out husband of her sacrifices and her service.... Pure fantasy, was it, a fiction-writer's imagining born of a superficial likeness? Or was there a deeper, a more romantic, kinship between the girl who set so naïve an estimate on the value of her kiss, and the woman who would plume herself through an indolent lifetime on the ancient history of her maternity?...

The girl opened her mouth to speak: but there came a welcome diversion. A step was heard on the wooden verandah, and the two young people, turning their heads together, saw a liveried servant at the still open door, bowing, speaking:--

"Miss Flower, marm?"

"Yes--I am Miss Flower."

"Fum Mr. Tilletts, marm," said the servant, extending a note. "And he say please don't you trouble to write, if you'd kindly send an answer by me, marm."

"Oh! All right."

Having said, "Excuse me, Mr. Garrott," Angela opened and glanced through her note, and then remarked: "Mr. Tilletts wants me to go to the theater with him to-night. How nice!"

Her back to the servant, she made a little deprecating face at Mr. Garrott; but her voice seemed pleasurably stirred all the same, and her answer to the chauffeur was:--

"Thank Mr. Tilletts, and say Miss Flower'll be very glad, indeed, to go, and will be ready at quarter past eight."

Charles wondered afterward if the opportune Tilletts had not subtly assisted his own withdrawal; but for the moment it rather seemed otherwise. While Angela spoke to the servant, he had turned hastily toward his overcoat; and now her hand fell upon his arm, with just a touch of the spoiled darling air, or at least with that added confidence which comes to a girl with these concrete evidences of her success.

"No, you mustn't! Don't go yet. _Please!_"

"I'm compelled to, unluckily. I very rarely allow myself the pleasure of calling at all, you know, and--"

"But you _have_ allowed yourself the pleasure, now, Mr. Garrott! Oh!--don't be so _firm_! Come in--for only a minute! You can surely spare me a minute--when I ask you to specially--"

"It is literally impossible."

Angela had extended her small hand to lead him into the parlor. Now she let it fall at her side, and stood looking at him with a conscious expression on her face, a pretty expression, but one that he scarcely liked. Of course both of them knew that it was by no means literally impossible for Mr. Garrott to come in, for only a minute. But doubtless a womanly girl could be trusted to find an explanation for his peculiar speeches that plucked their stingers from them, as it were.

"You're so strange. You're displeased with me, I can see that. Why?--because I wasn't in when you called? Why, I'm nearly always out on fine afternoons!"

"I know that," ventured the young man.

"If you'd just told me in advance.... Don't you know I'd never have gone out with Dan Jenney, if I'd dreamed you were going to call?"

He knew this also, only too well; but this time he only said: "A caller must take his chances, of course. By the way, let me thank you very much, again, for lending me that book. I found it immensely interesting."

"Oh!--'Marna'? I didn't want you to come just for that.... Did she make you think of Cousin Mary at all?"

He smiled distantly, turned away, and put on his overcoat.

This was done in entire silence; Angela urged him to stay no longer. But when he turned, hat in hand, to say good-bye, she stood confronting him again, very near. There was a faint flush on her smooth cheek; her woman's eyes were very bright; her look upon him was sweet, self-conscious, and wistful, oddly appealing. Rarely had he seen her look more girlishly desirable.

"Mr. Garrott, why have you always been different to me since that night--of my bridge-party?"

"Different?" queried Mr. Garrott.

"Oh, you know you have! You know you've never really got over what I said to you--and all that dreadful misunderstanding!"

And he knew then that this nice girl would go to her grave thinking of him as a lover whose confidence in his suit had been reft from him by a too sharp rebuke. Well, so be it. He was content that she should have that satisfaction: let that stand as a further liquidation of the old obligation, a bonus payment on the esteemed Kiss.

"You know you've never forgiven me!"

"I've never had anything to forgive you, Miss Flower."

"Then you've never believed I've forgiven you! I've tried to show you that I have, that I've truly appreciated all the nice things you've done for me--but you've still been different."

It was doubtless his imagination, but she seemed to be a little nearer as she said, with a pink and winsome hesitancy:--

"Can't I make you believe that I--I've really always been the same?"

Extending his hand, the voluntary celibate replied, with cheerful reassurance: "I believe it now, Miss Flower. Absolutely. Positively. And now I must run."

Angela did not seem to see the hand he offered. She continued to look at him, and something seemed to die out of her face,--a momentary expectancy, was it, or the mere native optimism of youth? Her gaze turned away from his face, turned back again; and then she suddenly gave a little laugh, an odd laugh, half angry, half sad:--

"Oh, I do think you're absolutely--_obtuse_!"

And Charles then knew that, whether she realized it or not, Angela was giving him up.

But still she did not see his farewell hand. Her eyes, going past him again, had become fixed with a new expression, arresting him, and now she said, in another tone, what he found perhaps the most interesting remark in the duologue:--

"Here's Mr. Manford back!"

Charles wheeled, with a little jump.

And sure enough, there, beyond the glass of the door, was the form of the young engineer, incredibly returning. Yes, there he came back again, poor, vain, grinning, flattered fool, who only the other day had said: "Charlie, she worries me."

With one last look at Mr. Garrott, Angela turned to open the door for Mr. Manford. The greeting smile succeeded the good-bye reproach. And even in this disturbed moment, the writer's mind was subtly struck with the symbolism of that gesture: and once again this girl was a type to him, sister of a million sisters. Even so, must the womanly Spinster, through all her seeking days, turn from the man who does not desire her little offerings of beauty and charm, to the man who--well, possibly may. And it really wasn't right, wasn't fair....

"Old Sherlock!--sees the Fordette outside--guesses who's at home now!" the man who possibly might was saying, with a tone of buoyant intimacy and a repellent smirk. "I thought you weren't going to forget me altogether!... Oh! And there's Charlie-boy, too! Feeling better, old top?"

Charles looked through him in silence.

But when Angela drifted by them into the parlor--for she avoided any formal farewell with her former principal friend--and he was passing Donald to the door, he bent and flung into the youth's long ear one futile taunt:--

"Fool, I suppose she lent you the sequel!"

* * * * *

Before the dingy little house of the Flowers', there stood a line of waiting vehicles. The passer would have said that a reception, or perhaps a wedding, was going on within.

To the left, Mr. Tilletts's shining sedan still stood at the broken curb. The driver, having paused to exchange badinage with Walter Taylor, was just mounting to his seat. Full in front of the house stood a conveyance more in character with the unpretentious street: Charles Garrott's aged hackney-coach, in short. On the other side, at the nose of the hack-horse and properly leading the procession, stood the stout little Fordette, resting now from its labors. There only lacked a bicycle for Mr. Jenney, and something--a donkey, let us say--to stand for Donald Manford.

And Angela, indeed, had accomplished this; here was her true creative work, here her self-expression made visible. She it was who, poor and obscure, with nobody to help her, had drawn these vehicles and these gentlemen thronging about her door.

"Where toe, suh?" cried Walter Taylor, flourishing his whip.

"Number 6 Olive Street."

The fare spoke all but automatically, out of his new genuine disquiet. However, he corrected himself at once: "No--wait a minute."

If his position that she was just the wife for Donald lay silently abandoned somewhere behind him: if the business could no longer be viewed as Donald's idle-hour amusement, but all at once had come to look decidedly serious: still, what under heaven was the use of giving Mary another and more rousing warning? He had warned Mary once, and what was the result? Two calls from Donald to Angela in the course of a single afternoon. No; if the labor of taking off was now to follow "putting on," it was clear that some hand far subtler than the too manly Mary's would have to do the job. And he knew whose hand was plainly indicated, too....

And then the young man remembered, with a surprising uprush of relief and freedom, that this day was Friday, and Donald was off to New York to-night, within an hour or two. And the foolish youth would be gone a solid week, too, with Mr. Jenney and Mr. Tilletts left in possession of the field.

Thus, Walter Taylor, on his box, received a small surprise. Instead of giving him a new number, Mr. Garrott unexpectedly produced a dollar-bill from his pocketbook, and tossed it up to him with a sudden laugh.

"That's all, Walter. _I'll walk!_"

XIX