Part 2

The development came by way of his good friend, Mary Wing, whom Charles reached at last with a certain sense of making port. Miss Wing, it must be known, was the assistant principal of the great City High School, where no woman had ever been before her, where she herself had arrived only after eight years' incessant battling upward. She was also, this long time, president of the State Branch of the National League for Education Reform, with the prospect of presently mounting far higher, to nothing less, if you please, than the General Secretaryship of that rich and powerful body. Considering her history and her exploits, it seemed that she should have been six feet tall, with a gaze like a Gorgon and a jaw like Miss Hodger's. But Mary Wing was actually a slight and almost fragile-looking creature, with quite girlish blue eyes in a colorless face that wore an air of deceptive delicacy.

She was two months older than her friend, Mr. Garrott, which made her thirty in December. And she was undoubtedly the most distinguished person in that strident room, not excepting (at the present writing) Mr. Garrott himself.

The assistant principal was discovered leaning against a bookcase, eating sandwiches in large bites, two bites to a sandwich, and paying no attention to the earnest talk of the group she seemed to belong to. "It must be the effect of speaking," she said to Garrott. "I'm ravenous. But goodness, there's no nourishment in these little paper things." And almost at once she demanded, firm as a Redmantler, if he had ever been to call on Dr. Flower; some cousin or other of hers, this was, who (through her connections in the educational world) had lately taken an appointment as lecturer at the Medical School. Charles had agreed to call on this worthy, it seemed, but naturally he hadn't done so.

She chided him for his remissness. It was a mild enough reproof, in all conscience; yet it was at that moment that he, with his diagnostic tendency, caught himself eyeing Mary Wing critically, as if she were any other Redmantler. And then he seemed to become aware that, without knowing it exactly, he must have been eyeing Mary Wing critically for some time past now.

"He'll need some patients, too, to eke out. I must look into that," said she, popping the second half of a sandwich into her mouth. "I suppose you don't know anybody who intends to be sick soon, in a costly way?"

He shook his head. He himself, he intimated, had no idea of getting sick merely to oblige her rural cousins.

"What does that girl do?" he added, almost irritably. "Didn't you tell me there was a girl, twenty-five years old? Why doesn't she work, and eke out?"

"She does work. She runs the house."

"Apparently you didn't see Mrs. Waldo's statement that quarter of an hour a day was quite enough for that so-called work."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it's false. Still there are ninety-six quarters of an hour in a day, people estimate. What sort of girl is she? Little nitwit, I suppose?"

"She's my cousin."

"Lots of people have little nitwits for cousins. Why doesn't she pitch in and earn her keep, like a free personality--as our friend Miss Hodger would say?"

Miss Wing was observing him with a strange air, resembling amusement. "You must really ask her that yourself some time, Mr. Garrott."

"I'll do it with pleasure, the first time ever I clap eyes on her."

"Well, then," said she, with a sudden laugh, "do it _now_!"

And thereupon, within ten seconds, the managing young woman had whisked him around a knot of Redmantlers, whisked him around the bookcase, and was saying in merry, efficient tones:--

"Angela, this is the famous Mr. Garrott you've heard so much about--my cousin, Miss Flower! Mr. Garrott's very anxious to--"

She paused wickedly, but after all finished without malice, "To make your acquaintance." And so Mr. Garrott did not have to ask the country cousin on the spot what she was thinking about not to earn her keep.

The girl had been standing against the other corner of the bookcase all the time, it seemed. She was talking, in a polite sort of way, to another guest--Mr. Tilletts, the wealthy and seeking widower--and fanning away tobacco smoke with a hand too small for the heavy odds. Mr. Tilletts was removed at once by the thoroughly competent Miss Wing.

Charles Garrott, recovered from the sudden little surprise, looked at the cousin with interest, and was at no loss for easy conversation. While he knew of Miss Flower very well, he pointed out, he had had no idea that she was here this evening. In fact, he hadn't gathered that Miss Flower went in for--well, for this sort of thing, exactly.

"Why--I really don't, I'm afraid," said she in her soft voice. "I don't suppose I understand it all very well. I just came--because Cousin Mary invited me!"

She hesitated, then laughed, and finally said: "And you see, it's the first party I've been invited to since I came here to live!"

"And you like parties?"

"Yes, so much. Don't you?"

The remark, at, and as to, the Redmantle, seemed delightful.

"I did, when I was young and gay. Now, I never seem to have time to enjoy myself any more. You've been meeting a good many people, I suppose?"

"Well, no,--not many yet. Really hardly any." The girl laughed, and again showed a charming naïveté: "You're the very first man I've met since we came here--except Mr. Tilletts!"

"But that's a tremendous exception, Miss Flower. You appreciate that he's one of our leading swains?"

"Oh, _is_ he!" she said, a little disconcerted. "Why--I hope he didn't think I was rude! I thought he was--somebody's father, you see, or uncle...."

Charles Garrott regarded the cousin pleasurably, with no thought of cross-examination. He, the authority, it need scarcely be said, had recognized this girl at sight. Manifestly, she was none other than the Nice Girl, the Womanly Woman, whom he and all moderns were forever holding up to scorn. Doubtless it was merely the increased conservative reaction: but Charles, for the moment, seemed conscious of no scorn in him toward Miss Angela Flower.

The cousin was pretty; not beautiful, no throne-shaker; but pretty, and attractive-looking. Wholly normal she looked, quite engagingly so, with her fine clear skin, smooth dark hair, and large limpid eyes. In her manner there was something soft, simple, and sweet, an ingenuous desire to please and be pleased; Miss Flower was feminine, in short,--it could not be denied. In a company, where the women acted like men, and the men acted like the Third Sex, this girl seemed content to remind you, like her mothers, that she was a woman.

Her conversation, intrinsically speaking, was not remarkable. But--the insidious contrast again--in a Midst where everybody else was conversing remarkably, plain conversation itself became an episode, and a charming one. She spoke of bridge, saying that she and Cousin Mary were hoping to "get up a table" one night very soon; of Mitchellton, where she had lived seven years till September; of the maxixe and the smallness of the house Mary Wing had taken for them; a dozen such un-New simplicities. And then, as she happened to be saying something about the strangeness of the city, "just at first," Charles Garrott exclaimed suddenly, rather pleased:--

"There's a friend of yours, at any rate, Miss Flower--Donald Manford! The last one in the world you'd expect to meet here."

The engineer must have just come in; over bobbing heads, through waving arms, his fine figure and bronzed face had been suddenly glimpsed at the doorway. This young man was another cousin of Mary Wing's; she, indeed, had raised him by hand; and he looked hardly less alien at the Redmantle Club than Miss Angela Flower herself.

To Garrott's astonishment, Miss Flower did not know Donald from Adam.

"Is _that_ Mr. Manford?" she exclaimed, surprised apparently by her cousin's cousin's good looks. "Of course I've known _of_ him for the longest time, but--"

"Why, that's strange--he's like a brother to Mary Wing. But then," said he, reconsidering, "Donald's out of the city half the time, and does nothing but work when he's here."

"Oh! Cousin Mary said she was going to bring him to see us some time--but--"

He enlarged upon the young engineer's industry (trained into him by Miss Wing); explained how he was busier than usual just now in view of his coming trip to Wyoming; mentioned the great Mora dam and cut-off project, on which he expected a commission under Gebhardt himself.

"And your cousin Mary, too," he concluded, in the justest way, "is an awfully busy person, you see."

"Yes, of course, I know! She does work _terribly_ hard, doesn't she?"

After the slightest pause, the girl added: "It's such a pity she has to, don't you think so?"

On which Donald Manford dropped cleanly from Charles's mind, and he inquired with authoritative interest, artfully concealed: "How do you mean, exactly?"

"Well--I don't know--"

She looked at him, laughing a little, as if not certain how far she could say what she meant; but finding his gaze so extremely encouraging, she went on seriously:--

"Don't you think when a woman gets really wrapped up in business--and all that--she's apt to miss some of the best things of life?"

He might have laughed at the quaint deliciousness of that, to him, Charles Garrott. But he didn't.

"That's the great question your sex is working out, isn't it?" he said, carefully. "I don't suppose work--just moderate, useful occupation--ever hurt anybody much, do you?"

"Oh, no!--of course not. That's just what I believe, too. I believe everybody ought to have work to do. But--all the work isn't teaching or going to an office--or being a public speaker--do you think so?"

"Oh, never. No, indeed."

She hesitated and said, laughing: "I know _I_ find it work enough just keeping a house and doing the housework--and being a daughter and sister!"

It was at that point that Charles's purely conventional look altered, his inmost self pricking up its ears, as it were. And a moment later the simple girl said, in the naïvest way imaginable, what seemed immediately to stick in his scientific Woman lore like a burr:--

"Of course I haven't studied and read like Cousin Mary, but truly it seems to me that--just making a home is sometimes all the business a woman could possibly attend to...."

He stood looking down at her in the strangest way, engrossed with novel reflections. She would have been astonished had she guessed how her chance phrase had set this man's mind to working, behind the pleasant mask. In her innocence she clearly did not understand, even after all the speeches, how at the Redmantle Club we talked of all businesses, and everybody's business, but never the business of making a home.

The reactionary talk proceeded for a space. But shortly, there were signs that the meeting was about to adjourn. And it was clear to Charles, as a true writer of a philosophical tendency, that he should be glad to be alone for a space now, and to think.

He said suddenly:--

"Miss Flower, I want very much to introduce Donald Manford to you, before I go. May I do it now? Won't you promise to hold fast to this bookcase, and not budge till I come back?"

The girl promised. She seemed pleased by his thought of her, but sorry over his own impending departure. "Oh, do _you_ have to go now?" she said, and her woman's eyes seemed to add quite plainly: "I'd lots rather talk to you than meet Mr. Manford."

The young authority smiled at her, and disappeared into the company. Directly, he was back again, the engineer in tow.

Donald, found conversing in a nook with another handsome guest, a Miss Helen Carson, had rather resisted removal and been hauled off, truth to tell, in some ill-humor. But Charles, for his part, felt warmly pleased with himself, bringing together these two nice, normal cousins of Mary Wing's. The girl too, looked pleased; her eyes were shining, a pretty color tinged her young cheek.

"I'm so glad to meet you, Mr. Manford, at last. We're really sort of connections, aren't we--once removed!"

"Yes, I believe so!--that's fine. Delighted to know you," said Mr. Manford. "I hope you enjoyed the speeches this evening?"

"Well--that's hardly a fair question!" laughed Miss Angela, looking from one man to the other. "Are you a--regular member?"

The query brought applauding laughter from Mr. Garrott and a weak groan from Mr. Manford. "You mean I look like one? Oh, that's a blow! No, honor bright," he added, "I leave all the advanced stuff to Mary."

Then Charles took his leave, in the friendliest manner. He felt, in an odd sort of way, that there had sprung a kind of bond between this girl and him, all the realer in that she, of course, was so unconscious of it. So kindly did he feel toward Mary Wing's cousin, indeed, that when she hoped, in her charming natural way, that he would come to see them some time soon, he, though anything but a caller, actually came very near promising to do so.

Miss Flower's eyes regretted his going; they were feminine eyes. Charles smiled into them again, pressed her hand, and turned away toward the Studio, to think.

By the door, he ran again into Mary Wing. The educator had changed her position, but was still eating sandwiches. She beckoned Charles nearer, in her confident way, and said:--

"Do you remember my telling you how much I wanted to see Donald settled before he went off, and sketching a few of the qualifications the girl must have? And your saying that what I wanted was a syndicate?"

He remembered, he said.

"See how I treasure up your _bon mots_. Well, there she is."

And she nodded down the room, not even in the direction of her cousin from the country, but to none other than Miss Carson, now found conversing with the heated Pollock.

"Oh," said Garrott.

"Why," exclaimed Mary, the moment her eyes had followed her nod, "I wonder where Donald is!"

He decided to pretend not to hear. Gazing at Miss Carson in the light of this information, he was ready to concede that she seemed a sound enough modern choice. Well-connected, well-to-do, and completely educated, the young lady in question, while now taking "two years out" to please her mother, was next year going to work, to please herself--of course, in Social Service. Young and alluring Miss Carson looked, indeed. But something in the mould of her smooth chin, confronting the young man who had none, seemed to serve notice that, though she was beautiful, she knew that Women's Egos must be free.

"Don't you think she may be a little firm? I mean, for Donald?"

"Firm? Not a bit!--she's human and competent. Heavens!--you don't want Donald to marry a helpless little silly, do you? But what on earth became of him, did you notice? I made him come here after me specially to meet her, and I had them talking so nicely--"

Then Charles said firmly: "I just introduced him to Miss Flower. It seemed you'd neglected to do so. By the way, your cousin's charming."

"Oh," said Mary, rather drawn-out.

And, after a rebuking pause, she added in pedagogic tones: "Well, I'm sorry you took him away from Helen. I'm serious about this match, you see. It would almost reconcile me to giving Donald up."

The young man's look at his old friend was certainly critical now. And he refused to feel in the least sorry for his interference with her cool eu-marital scheme. For, taking even the most liberal view, Modernity was for Moderns; probably always would be. What under the sun did a fellow like Donald want with a wife who would prove him wrong about a cosine, and keep him up jawing about Mrs. Gilman till two o'clock in the morning?

* * * * *

From the Turkish air of the Redmantle, Charles Garrott passed out into the bracing November night. Two blocks farther along, he passed the door of another club, a completely male one. And down the wide steps, between the columnar lights, there came shambling a large, loose-jointed, round-faced man in a brown felt hat, and joined him.

"Well, Charlie."

"Good evening, Mr. Wing."

Having caught stride, the two men walked on in silence. This Mr. Wing was Mary's Uncle Oliver, an interesting individual in his way, member of the City School Board, and in the business world known sometimes as a "capitalist," sometimes again as a loan-shark. When in the vein, Mr. Wing could be conversational enough, and his morose air at present indicated that he had lost not less than three dollars at the Bellevue Club card-tables this evening.

When they had proceeded some three blocks in total silence, Charles, emerging from his brown study, said idly:--

"Mr. Wing, do you believe in the Woman's Movement?"

Hearing no reply to his query, he glanced around, and found Mr. Wing slowly shaking his head. It seemed to be a time-gaining sort of shake; it undertook to hold the floor temporarily, promising good sound argument to follow. Charles waited. But Uncle Oliver did not speak; he only continued to shake his head, slowly and profoundly. And when the two had traversed half a block in this provisional sort of way, the money-lender suddenly turned up the steps of the house where he lived, still shaking his head.

Halfway up the steps, he looked back over his shoulder, and said:--

"Well, good-night, Charlie."

"Good-night, Mr. Wing."

III

The first thing the author did, on opening the door of the Studio, was to look at the clock. Big Bill pointed to but five minutes of eleven. Good! There remained a clean hour and a half before he would have to cease work and go to bed, to wake up a private tutor.

All the lethargy of the earlier evening seemed to have vanished now, under the strong reverse stimulus of the Redmantle Club. Having turned up the light in his gas-lamp, the young man stood a moment, thinking intently, and then sat down at his writing-table. The table was twelve years old, and had been to college and law-school. It was worn and stained, but still strong, and bore up, besides the lamp and clock, not only a large array of writer's paraphernalia, but a considerable floating miscellany, too, including a clipping or so, several unanswered letters, a stray tobacco-pouch, a thick exercise-book, and the particular volume on Women he happened to be reading at the moment. Ignoring these, the proprietor drew from the back of his table drawer a capacious brown-paper folder, and from the folder plucked three typewritten sheets, held together with a clip.

It was seen that the topmost of these sheets bore a heading: MARY WING. And for some moments the author of them sat in stillness, conning over the lines that followed: the magnanimous lines he had prepared with such pains long ago, and then tamely put to sleep in a drawer.

He had composed this eulogy last winter, to help Miss Wing in her campaign for the assistant principalship of the High School. His plan, of which she knew nothing to this day, had been cunning and complete. First he would get this "write-up" into the "Persons in the Foreground" department of "Willcox's," the famous and enormously circulated weekly; then he would have the "Post" reprint it; finally he would induce all the local papers to print glowing editorials demanding, "Is this prophetess to be without honor in her own country?" Unquestionably a most helpful plan; but characteristically, Mary had not waited for it. By some "pull" she had, she had put her little matter through months ahead of schedule, and Judge Blenso had just finished typing the "write-up," late one winter's afternoon, when Charles was summoned to the telephone to be greeted by the first woman assistant principal in history. He, of course, had been delighted with her success. And yet--had he not felt even then that the episode was typical of a positively manly independence?

Now he read over his forgotten words with cool judiciality:--

Her name was in newspaper headlines before she was out of her teens; and many and many a time since. She wished to be a doctor, and the Medical School would not take her in. And shortly this slim girl, with her sweetly-cut chin and ethereal eyes, had raised the whole State on the issue of principle thus thrown down: Did a woman have the right to study, or not? She stormed the courts for an injunction, she set the legislature by the ears for a special act. The story of her personal interview with the Governor, at the height of the disturbance, is often told to this day; but never by any friend of the Governor's. And then, when she was within a step of winning the long fight, her father died suddenly and she faced the immediate necessity of earning a living.

Farther along, the author's eye found the particular passage that had been in his mind from the start, the part about the National League for Education Reform. Having recounted how the bequest of Rufus B. Zecker's millions had "assured the permanence and ultimate triumph of the League's programme," the generous "puff" went on:--

What the National League contemplates is nothing less than the remaking of our entire educational system, on the basis of a new perception of truth, namely: that education is, not learning at all, but purely the process of fitting the individual for effectual relations with his (or her) environment. With the League's propaganda to that end, under the brilliant leadership of Horace Gurney Ames, Miss Wing has been closely associated for the past seven years. Her work here has been, indeed, the dominant part of her career....

The dominant part of her life, he would better have written. And that was precisely the trouble.

The sheets dropped from the young man's hands, and he gazed unwinking at the green translucence of his lamp. His mind skipped back to a day in early September, when Mary and her mother had come home from their two weeks in the metropolis--Mrs. Wing still looking rather crushed from the overwhelming rush of New York, Mary radiant with the hope that before long she might go back to New York, to stay there the rest of her life. For on that journey she had abruptly learned that the League directors had their eyes upon her with reference to their General Secretaryship, which was to become vacant next March. Undoubtedly, the brilliant Dr. Ames had sounded her pretty directly on this point. Undoubtedly, too, it would be another long step up for Mary, making her, in the educational world at least, a figure of national consequence. Once again, of course, Charles Garrott had been delighted. And yet it was clear to him now that his Modernity had first felt conservative reactions on that very day.

Through the shut door of the bedroom there came a gentle snoring. After the day's secretarial labor, Judge Blenso slept well. Charles rose and walked his carpet, much worn with a writer's meditative pacing.

The wisest of us generalize from the instances that lie nearest us. How far this young man's views on Woman had been moulded by contrasting the maturing uselessness of his pupil Grace Chorister, say, with the fine efficience of Miss Wing, he himself could not have said. But at least he knew that Mary Wing had long embodied the best of the whole Movement for him. He had held her up, in season and out, as a perfect example of the New Woman at her best. And Mary Wing was that, he declared it now; the real thing, as different as possible from the hollow shams of the Redmantle Club. Of course--of _course_--she had a right, just the same right that a man had, to put away her mother, her family and friends, and follow away the star of her work. But ... if only she showed a little more appreciation of values apart from My Career; if only you could imagine Mary sometimes speaking of Being a Daughter and Being a Sister.