Part 23

It was, indeed, as if the man himself was profoundly reacted upon by those proofs of his own interest which had so stirred the maiden. Unknown to any one, he had missed his train and important engagements for nothing else than to be here with this girl: and it was as if the fact of itself thrust her far forward in his imagination, wrapped her about with a new startling significance. Men didn't do these things for any girl that came along. Or, possibly, the heady sensations were but the cumulative results of a slower process, and the friendly vehicle now resting at the door had done its decisive work before to-day. At any rate, Angela soon observed that Mr. Manford's behavior was quite embarrassed and peculiar; and of course, in the womanly way, his manifestations reacted instantly upon her. The more peculiarly interested Mr. Manford showed himself to be in her, the more peculiarly interesting she found him. Stranger still, the more she found him advancing, the more it was in her mind to retreat. Or, no--not in her mind; it was, of course, much deeper than that. This reluctance could be nothing else than the ancient virginal recoil, somehow remembered, strange latter-day reminiscence of old flights through the woods.

Instinctively, Angela talked commonplaces. The man's replies showed that he hardly listened to her. As she recounted how her father had missed a lecture for the first time to-day, he interrupted brusquely:--

"What's that ring you're wearing?"

Oh, that; oh, an old family ring, she explained, that her mother had given her on a birthday once. He must have seen it a dozen of times. Mr. Manford said, on the contrary, that he had never seen it before in his life. So--was it the voluntary lingering, perhaps, a backward look through the leaves, as it were?--Angela lifted her hand for him to see. The hand was tightly clasped at once. "Where's that other ring--the one you were going to wear till--you know?" Oh, that one? She had given that one back to the person it belonged to. When? Oh, last week. Why? Because she knew then that she could never care for him. "Does that mean you know somebody you--you care for more?" She said that _that_ wouldn't mean anything so very much; and thereupon made an effort to withdraw her hand.

"There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time for leaving it to burn of itself." Put otherwise, Angela saw that Mr. Manford wasn't even glancing at her ring. However, her proper gesture to recover it accomplished no more than her commonplaces. For the cells and tissues of the gentleman, too, harbored ancestral memories, masculine recollections of agreeable old captures. And the touch and cling of the warm soft _her_ had seemed to set them all to singing, drawing him, drawing him. So far from recovering that hand of hers, in fine, the fleeing maiden abruptly lost possession of the other one.

Thus in the storied way, there approached the second Occurrence on a Sofa. It may have been only the last recoil; it may have been that that other occurrence, fruitless contact with the low ideals of man, had permanently injured the womanly trustfulness. There was, at least, a kind of terror among the mingled sensations, as Angela beheld the second event resistlessly approaching.

"Oh, please!... You mustn't ..."

And--so sardonically does life twine joy with sorrow in its willful tangle--it was as she spoke these words that Mrs. Flower, standing at the head of the dark stairs, first called Angela's name. However, that call died unheard. The mother's voice was low, the daughter, for her part, could be conscious of nothing but that this dear and imperious Mr. Manford was a very difficult person to resist. Perhaps something in her had been against resistance from the first; but now, over his inconclusive endearments, the pardonable inquiry sighed from her:--

"Oh, why do you do this? Tell me."

Angela's mother stood two steps farther down: "_Angela!... Angela!_"

But Angela, deep in her great business in the world, once again failed to hear the alarmed low summons. Now sweet nearer speech filled her woman's ear. For Mr. Manford, it is welcome to record, did not run, as the cads run, from that artless challenge: he met it ready, like a soldier and a gentleman. That touch of lips softer than a flower had taught this young man, once and for all, what it was he wanted; huskily his voice came from a swelling chest. "I love you!" said Miss Carson's anointed, unmistakably. And then, indeed, the maiden, unaware of all else, let her conquered cheek rest upon her victor's breast: still and awed with the discovery that she loved, and in the same breath thrilled with the knowledge that she was a Successful Girl.

For our ruling passions are strong in death: more particularly, of course, when the death in question is not our own....

Yet her moment of exquisite peace was brief enough, poor child. Scarcely had the dearest words been spoken, scarcely had she known her awe and her thrill, when all was snatched from her. That other voice outside, more insistent, struck suddenly in to her unsteadied mind; too quickly, the surrendered cheek lifted. There was a swift upstarting, the abrupt parting of lovers: and after that fear descending, precipitate and dark as a cloud, over the new great joy.

The course of the succeeding hours was never clear in Angela's memory. There was a rush of unfamiliar and frightening activity. Donald was gone at a run for Dr. Blakie. She herself fled for Mrs. Doremus, on whose judgment her mother much relied. Mysteriously, Mrs. Finchman and poor Jennie appeared, tipping up the steps. Then Mr. Garrott stood suddenly in the hall, with Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing, all very grave and breathless, they had come so fast. Mr. Garrott must have left very soon; there was nothing for him to do; but Cousin Mary, who had once meant to be a doctor, took charge of everything from the start, and was very helpful. She slept that night in Wallie's room.

At ten o'clock, Donald left her to take Mrs. Wing home; but he, her new comforter, returned directly, in the sweetest way, to say good-night. Earlier in the evening Donald had dispatched a telegram to Mrs. Kingsley at Hatton, in which he said: "Serious illness in my family prevents coming." The due excuse was strong enough, in all conscience. But the matter had gone beyond illness now.

* * * * *

Thus it was that the strange day, already memorable to Charles Garrott, memorable, too, to Mary Wing, turned past all counting into the unforgettable day of Angela's life. Thus, into the little house in Center Street, life and death came stepping side by side.

After this day, there came another, and another and another: and still it seemed that death overshadowed life, and joy was overwhelmed in grief. The shadow of this first final parting seemed to close down on the young girl's happiness like a cover, and for a space her engagement was less real to her than the shut office downstairs, the empty seat at the table.

But youth, after all, is made for life, and thereby equipped with a merciful resilience. The passage of time, mere use, worked wonders. And Angela's blessing it was, no doubt, that from the beginning she had others than herself to think about, and the need for much activity. First and foremost, there was Donald, who was with her morning, noon, and night, whose first sight of her in a black dress had moved him almost to tears. It was not fair to the man who had won her that she should give way to a limitless melancholy. Beyond that, loomed the sudden colossal fact of the wedding, which would have to take place almost immediately; for her duty now was to her future husband, and the demands of his work must overcome her girlish shrinkings from such unwonted haste. And a wedding must mean clothes, at all times, and clothes, even at the plainest and simplest, must mean some thought and some diversion.

Insensibly, death turned back to life again. The great confused day of Angela's life was a week old; it was two weeks old; it was three. And winter now was fading from the softening air...

They were the quietest weeks imaginable. Except her mother and her _fiancé_, Angela saw no one for days together, not even Mary Wing. For Mary, as it happened, was sick at this time--her first illness in five years, so Mrs. Wing said. She had caught cold, it seemed, in the wet at the funeral, and the cold had developed into quite a serious attack of bronchitis, which kept her in bed two weeks or more. Thus the young couple, in their mourning, were left completely to themselves. In their isolation, in the still little parlor, they were planning at great length about their future, going over and over their new common problems from every possible angle. And the more Angela's fatherlessness was accepted as a permanent fact in the order of the future, the clearer it became that this fact must color and affect everything else.

In chief, this question of the girl's came more and more to the front of the loverly discussions: How could she go off to wild remote Wyoming, now that her mother was a widow?

XXII

It was March now, the mild March of an early spring. There came new days, zephyrous and sweet. All the world seemed to love a lover. But other matters were afoot in the world, too, necessarily: afoot even in the old coterie itself.

Charles Garrott, descending Miss Grace's steps on an afternoon that looked like April and felt like May, thought not of young Romance. What with the groom's absorption, and Mary Wing's unprecedented illness, the old principal friend had, indeed, heard little or nothing of the happy pair through these days. He had accepted the event, long since, once and for all, with fatalistic philosophy; and though the nuptials were now but six days distant, they were far from his mind in this moment, as, his hated tutor's stint done, he turned his long stride hurriedly toward Olive Street.

Charles, as we know, was not a caller. It was true that he had hardly seen Mary Wing since the day when she, the heroine of his write-ups, had so suddenly indicated herself as his larger heroine as well; true also that, in the engrossed and very fruitful solitude of the Studio succeeding, he had thought of her much, bookishly and otherwise. But these facts had not changed the essential nature of Charles. Still he was not a caller; still when he rang people's door-bells, it was morally certain that he had definite matters to urge upon their notice.

And so it was to-day. Charles, in a word, had conceived a new plan for helping Mary.

That she, the admirable, by way of reward for her smashing denial of the Ego, should find herself fixed for life as a grammar-school teacher, "demoted" and disgraced: this state of things had naturally seemed unendurable to Mary's good friend. That Mary did not need his help, that he recognized her now as competent, in the finest sense, to manage her own affairs henceforward, seemed to have little or nothing to do with the case. Hence, while she lay withdrawn from the battle of life with bronchitis, the helper had been elaborately at work on new lines: stalking School Board members for Mary, in fine, with great cunning. But this plan, unluckily, his fourth and most troublesome, had lately collapsed about his ears. It had cost the young man much valued time, and not a little money for lunches; and the net practical result of it had been to leave him angrily conscious of "influence," mysteriously pervasive, and by no means possessed by him. A friendly disposition toward Mary, personally, seemed to be everywhere joined to an unshakable conviction that she could not hope to get back to the High School before the fall, if then. Such was the fruit of five diplomatic conferences: the sixth had stopped Charles short. Young Dr. Hazen, who was almost as much Mary's representative on the School Board as Senff was Mysinger's, informed him that Mary herself had already canvassed over the Board with him, Hazen, and abandoned all hope in that quarter.

What, indeed, could he do for Mary Wing that she could not do better for herself?

The fifth plan concerned Public Opinion again, and a new use of the gift he had. It inspired less confidence in its author than any that had preceded it. And it was to submit it, in advance, for Mary's discussion and approval, that Charles now presented himself at the Wings' front door.

However, he met with a disappointment. Mary was out. She had gone to the Flowers' soon after luncheon--unexpectedly, it appeared--and, at half-past four, was not yet back. That seemed more or less surprising. Mrs. Wing, who had answered his ring, looked somewhat concerned, he thought. However, as it was agreed that Mary could not remain with Angela indefinitely, the caller decided, after brief hesitation,--for the Studio allured in these days as never before,--to wait for her.

So he came again into the sitting-room, and Mrs. Wing sat to keep him company. Naturally, there was but one subject for their conversation.

Charles liked Mrs. Wing. She always began every conversation with him by asking: "And how did you find your dear mother on your last visit?" Mary's mother had never seen his mother, and possibly never would, but (being a frightful sentimentalist) she assumed that all mothers are dear. It was next her habit to inquire whether Charles had written any stories lately, and why they never saw anything of his in the magazines. Such things tended to create a bond. And recently the tie had been strengthened by an unusually intimate talk on the subject of Mary, whose surrender of her great prize had, indeed, upset and distressed her mother even more than Charles had predicted.

To-day, again, Mrs. Wing appeared somewhat unlike her usual calm self. She omitted her inquiry about Charles's writing altogether (thus denying him his chance to mention the recent rather gratifying acceptance of Dionysius, no less), and the flattering things she kept saying of Angela had, to his ear, a faintly tentative ring, requiring his confirmation. But his first vague wonder, whether anything could have happened, was soon lost in other reactions. Thus, he had to wince a little in agreeing, once more, that Donald's future wife was a thoroughly "womanly girl." Few authorities enjoy denying the ripe sum of their own best thinking. But a later remark of Mrs. Wing's took a much deeper twist in his mind.

"Really," she said, slowly and dubiously, following a pause, "I have but one fault to find with Donald's choice, and that is--well, frankly, Angela seemed to care so little for Paulie and Neddy Warder.... And Donald was such a goose over them, dear boy."

As he did not see his way clear to replying to that, "I hope you're mistaken, ma'am," Charles merely smiled vaguely, and said nothing. But what he thought, on the delicate implication, was nothing about Angela at all--only that Donald had been rather less of a goose over Paulie and Neddy than Mary Wing had been....

Then the sitting-room clock ticked for a space, while Mrs. Wing communed with herself. And Charles, gazing out into the park, waiting for his friend, thought how it was that a young woman's work--even an extraordinary young woman like Mary--always subtly lacked just that ultimate touch of grim seriousness which justified the "fierce hackings away" of a man. For, as an abstract truth, there was positively no such thing as a Permanent Spinster: and women who were not spinsters, and normally desired Paulies and Neddies of their own, could not possibly fulfill their longings without serious complications to themselves, then and thenceforward. It was no human or escapable "tyranny" that had made Woman, to this degree, to her glory or her disaster, forever the victim of her sex: and, by the same token, fixed the final responsibility for the economic support of the family upon the shoulders of the predestined and uncompromised provider, Man....

Yes, then and thenceforward ... Could you, for example, imagine Mary Wing--who had had chances to marry before now, who might reasonably marry at any time--could you picture Mary packing off her three little darlings to a crèche every morning, that she might go and grow her soul at a desk somewhere? Maybe so; but he wondered....

He was thinking whether he could contrive to discuss the crèche and endowment arguments in his novel--for of course you could make a story carry just a certain amount of "solid stuff," and only dreary prigs of readers would lie still while you tried to feed them forcibly with a spoon--when all at once Mrs. Wing, near by, was heard to strike her hands together, with a little ejaculation.

"Oh, Mr. Garrott! I do believe Mary's at the High School all the time!"

That made the thoughtful visitor turn swiftly enough.

"At the _High School_?"

"It's so stupid of me!" she explained, with some relief, it seemed. "I've just remembered. You know, she never cleared her papers and things out of her office closet there, and it got on her mind when she was sick. And to-day, when she came in from school, she told me she had arranged with Mr. Geddie over the telephone--the man who has her office now--to go and attend to it this afternoon. Yes, that's it--I'm sure!"

"Oh!" said Charles, not a little perplexed. "And then, you mean--she decided to go to the Flowers' instead?"

"Well, to go there first--I suppose. Donald came in just as she finished lunch--to talk with her about something. Then, when he had gone, Mary told me she was going down to see Angela. It was all rather unexpected--and somehow the High School went out of my mind completely."

"But I hope nothing's happened?" he said quickly.

"Well--I don't know that there has."

Perplexity passed at once into the certainty that something had happened. The instant thought in the young man's mind was: What's Angela done now? Having risen, he gazed with direct inquiry at his elderly friend. But her eyes glanced away from him; and she put him off further by repeating: "It was stupid of me to keep you."

Mrs. Wing added that Mary was certainly at the High School now. Charles, turning disturbed away, remarked that perhaps he would still be in time to help with the office cleaning, and she said that was very kind of him.

"She'll be glad to see you, I know. Indeed, she has appreciated all you've done for her--those beautiful articles, for example--more than you quite realize, perhaps."

But the young man shook his head, and said with a kind of bitterness: "I've never done anything for her in my life."

And then, as he took the lady's hand to say good-bye, he asked abruptly: "But why shouldn't I know what's happened, Mrs. Wing?"

"Oh," said Mary's mother, and hesitated.

"Yes, why shouldn't you?" said she, and hesitated again.

"Well," she began again slowly, "it's nothing so serious, as I said,--just a fresh disappointment for Mary,--that is really all it amounts to with me. Very likely Donald has intimated to you that he was not going to Wyoming?"

The caller stared at her dumbfounded.

"Not going to Wyoming! Why!--why not?"

"Well, he feels, in his new circumstances," said Mrs. Wing, uneasily, "that it would be more suitable to accept the position in New York. But--I really had little opportunity to discuss it with Mary. She seemed--to be frank--much disturbed, she had so set her heart on this work in the West--"

"More _suitable_!... How?"

"Well, for one thing--it doesn't seem fair to separate Angela so far from her mother, as would have to be the case in Wyoming."

But into Charles's mind there had suddenly popped back a stray remark let fall by Donald, in the only talk he had had with him for weeks: "I tell you, Charlie, it's pretty rough on a girl to be dragged off to live in a shack nine miles from nowhere!" A mere passing observation, that he had paid no attention to at the time--but was that it? Was that the reason why another of Mary Wing's most cherished plans must suddenly cave in?

He stood utterly dismayed.

"So Mrs. Flower," he asked, with some want of composure, "is going to live with them in New York?"

"Oh, no,--not for the present, I believe. She feels, and so do I, that young couples should be left to themselves to make their start. But they will be so near that they can visit back and forth--which would be impossible if Donald--"

"But Mrs. Flower can't live here by herself?"

"Well, no," said Mrs. Wing, and fussed with books on the table. "That has been the great problem, of course. Dr. Flower's death has complicated the situation sadly. I believe the present plan is for Wallace--the boy, you know--to come back and live with her--just for the next few months, while Donald and Angela are finding themselves."

Charles stood without a word. But perhaps his look betrayed what he felt, for Mrs. Wing threw out her hands with a helpless gesture, and cried: "Well, he is the man of the family now!"

"However," she added, turning away, "perhaps Mary will be able to hit upon some other arrangement. That is what she went there for--to talk the whole situation over with Angela."

But Charles, who had always thought of Angela as "soft" and Mary as "hard," seemed somehow quite certain that that talk had accomplished nothing. With brief speech, he moved toward the door. Doubtless struck with the fixed gravity of his look, Mary's mother, who had been an old-fashioned girl herself once, said with an effort, and yet firmly too:--

"It is life itself that is hard. Marriage means--readjustment. That is the only comment to make."

It was precisely the point on which the silent young man did not agree with her. To him, as to her, all the sharp force of this tidings was, indeed, in Mary's new overthrow. And yet for the moment there seemed to be room in him for nothing else but comments on the vast void in Mary's so different cousin.

Angela was wanting in the responsible qualities of a full-grown human being. Her fatal lack was in human worth. It was the sum of all he had thought about her since the day he had called upon her poor father. It was the cap and climax of all he meant to say about her in his New Novel.

So Charles took his leave with an abstracted face.

In the drawer of the Studio table, there was growing now, night by night, a fresh stack of manuscript, steady and firm upon a new Line. Mary Wing had straightened out this Line for Charles: Mary who had taught him once and for all that a woman could be finely independent, and still uphold the interdependence which held the world together. Yet Mary, the admirable, was after all but his "contrast" and his foil: it was for the peculiarities of her opposite that he had finally whetted his pencil. And, in the intense and retrospective thinking which went along with the best writing he had ever yet done, the young man considered that he had got to the bottom of Angela's case, and her sisters', quite thoroughly explored the souls of the Waiting Women of Romance.

But this news of her, these final touches as to the Nice Girl's brother and her future husband, seemed to fling at him, as it were, a last conclusive chapter for his "Notes on Women." That marriage meant readjustments he, the authority, doubtless understood as well as another. That this marriage might make it necessary for Wallie Flower to be readjusted out of his education: even that was allowed as conceivable. But that the very first act of Angela's new life should be to influence her husband in the direction of his weakness, and, as it seemed, of her own good comfort--what was this, indeed, but a brilliant certification of all the grounds of his own attack?...