Part 8

"Well, now, morals, Charlie!" he continued, most agreeably. "Lor', the things our little gals do say nowadays! Make you laugh right out loud. Ain't it funny how innocent women can keep, now? Up and take their cocktails, yes, and smoke their cigarettes, and talk right out, white slave this, and red-light that, and all the time--no more _notion_!... Why, Charlie, you wouldn't believe the pretty-faced little gal, no more'n twenty-two years old, I heard making a public speech once, and what do you think her subject was? 'My plea,' says she, 'is a single standard of morality for men and women. Whatever man may do,' says she, 'that we claim woman's right to do also.'"

The old gasbag broke off to say, "How-do, Ed," to a passer in the filtering snow, knocked the ashes from his cigar with the large hand that was not clutching Charles, and resumed.

"Well, Charlie, I'd been sitting there meek as peaches while that little gal explained to us all about men and women, but when she gets that off, and right away asks if anybody in the audience has got any questions, seemed like I couldn't sit still any longer. 'Excuse me,' I says, standing up, 'but d'ye make a plea for the single standard of physical courage also, miss?' I says. 'What say?' she sings out, pretending not to hear me, while she tries to think what it said in that book she'd been reading. 'It's a little thing, miss,' I says, 'only an old fellow's way of saying if maybe Godalmighty didn't figure a little variety'd be a good thing in this hard world he gave us. When the ship goes down,' I says, 'do you call on your sisters for the single standard of courage, miss, or do you hold by the men's rule of the sea and the land, and hop into the lifeboats with the kids? Excuse a plain old fellow from speakin' up this way, miss,' I says, 'but seems to me maybe Godalmighty might have known what he was doing when he gave women more feeling, and men more fighting strength; when he appointed women to give life and men to guard it; when, as you might put it, he appointed some virtues for both to hold in common, and then some for each of 'em to grow and cultivate specially. And maybe, miss,' I says, 'Godalmighty made the distribution fairer than some of our college gals realize.' Well, Charlie, you ought to have heard the hand the crowd gave me, though there was some hissin' by Suffragettes, I own. And what d'ye think that cute-lookin' little thing does? 'I deny,' she sings out, her voice shaking, 'that God gave more strength to men. I deny there is a God,' she says. And right there she bu'sts out crying, and runs off the stage.... Yes, she did!--first speech in public maybe. Well, Charlie, all I say is, that's the kind of loose talk our gals're hearing all the time nowadays. And that," said Mr. Wing, coming to a halt before his own steps, and glancing hastily over his shoulder toward his door--"that's why I can't help feeling sorry for this little gal here that got into the trouble, and taking sides with her, too, against my public duty and morals. Why, Charlie, _she_ thought all the talk was meant, not seeing it was only half-foolin', like in a play."

Now it was that Charles Garrott's bored eye upon Uncle Oliver suddenly became fixed.

"Taking sides with her?" he said, speaking for almost the first time in the walk. "What do you mean?"

"Well, that's just what I did, the effect was," said Mr. Wing, his own eye wandering, "and against my conscience, too. Why, Charlie, if I wasn't an early retirer by habit, and this snow comin' on, too, I could show you quick enough where all this Single Standard was damfoolishness--unless, of course, you mean Perfect Purity, like I preach myself. And when a woman jumps up and hits a crack at marriage, that the rest of us are sacrificin' ourselves to build up for the good of Society, why, she's a bad woman, you can talk till you're black in the face, that had ought to be punished. Yes, and those that help her, they're lending encouragement to the enemies of the Republic, seems like, and they'd ought to be punished, too. But, shucks," said Mr. Wing, crushing the fire from the cigar against the iron railing, and putting the stump carefully in his pocket, "blood's thicker'n water, like they say. And I don't regret voting the way I did, though the majority was against me from the start."

The two men stood fronting each other in the silent street, and the young man's face had become rigid. And he was now perfectly aware of the faint gleam in the old man's eye, a gleam of distinctly malicious enjoyment.

"Mr. Wing, what are you talking about?"

"Why, I thought you must have heard, Charlie, you seemed so kind of glum. Why, I thought you must be on your way from Mary's now."

He glanced again at his door, as if to say that he really must not be expected to stop for further conversation at this late hour. And then he said what exploded Miss Angela Flower off the horizon.

"Why, Charlie, you see the School Board fired Mary this afternoon. On account of this little friend of hers, Trevenna, that she--"

"WHAT?"

"Well, transferred's really the word, Charlie," said Uncle Oliver, edging up a step or two. "She's sent over as a teacher to Lee Grammar School, reporting Monday. Johnson Geddie's the new assistant principal at the High School, commencing Monday, too. Well, Charlie, good--"

Charles seized the burly arm in a grip sufficiently strong for a writer, and threw all his turmoil into three words: "_Who went over?_"

"Creamer and Honeykamp, I guess you mean. Of course, there was right smart feelin' aroused, and it seemed Creamer's got a growin' daughter in the High School, that's got to be protected and all. 'Twas only Mary's good record saved her being dropped entirely, I guess, considering how Mysinger'd worked the case up against her. Well, _good_-night, Charlie."

Wrenching away his arm, Mr. Wing rolled rapidly up the steps and vanished into the dark cave of his hall. But Charles stood still as a snow-man on the sidewalk, feeling as if the skies had fallen.

IX

So Mary Wing's name flared in newspaper headlines once again.

In matters of school politics, the editorial writers of the city were habitually gun-shy, but it was noted next morning that the reporters had treated Mary with marked consideration. "Of all the changes and new appointments ordered by the Board in its three-hour session," wrote the kindly youth on the "Post," "none created such amazement as the demotion of Miss Wing, she having for long been conceded to be possibly the most valued teacher in the city school system. Members of the Board, however, refused to explain their totally unlooked-for action, Chairman Garcin merely claiming that 'All changes were for the good of the schools.' Charges of politics were freely heard in the lobby, and one well-known citizen, who prefers not to be quoted at just this juncture, said," etc.

Reporters, as everybody knows, must severely repress their personal opinions and stick like mucilage to the bare facts. But which facts are the bare ones? Judicious selection is a wonderful thing.

However, one of Miss Wing's admirers read the "Post's" amiable sentences with no abatement of his burning indignation. Print made the thing immensely concrete, and that was all. In Charles's mind, every hard or critical thought of Mary had fallen instantly in the face of her astonishing disaster; "I told you so" was not in him. That his old friend's struggle upward had collapsed in sudden disgrace: this was bare fact enough to possess him completely throughout the tutorial day. Here fell a Modern principle from which he had never wavered, the great principle that a woman should have a fair field to work, and fair judgment, without prejudice of sex. All Mary Wing's success had been entwined with that principle; since she was in her teens, she had fought for it, in sunshine and in thunder; and in that town at least the way was smoother for all women henceforward, because of what she had done. And now to break her, after all these years, only because she, a woman, had refused to throw a stone at a mistaken sister ... By Heavens, this could not be endured.

Thus Charles communed with himself, crisply teaching the Elements, French and Sociology. And he snapped his watch at Miss Grace Chorister five minutes ahead of time and, writing forgotten, went rushing to the support of his "demoted" friend.

But he did not rush by way of the frequented promenade. As he had gone to lunch by street-car to-day, so his journey to the High School was conducted in the same discreet manner. Through all this unimagined disturbance about Mary, the young man had not lost sight of his last night's resolve, formed in the Green Park, as to Mary's so different cousin. Cad he might be; understand it she might not (in view of the kiss); but Charles was clear that it was for the best that he and Miss Angela should meet upon Washington Street no more.

The "Post's" story had made one thing certain at least: Mary did not mean to tear up her teacher's certificate and pitch it, with her resignation, in the faces of the School Board. In the still watches, Charles had thought she might be capable of just such reckless repartee; now he divined that she was reserving her resignation, to discharge it, like a bomb, upon her expected election as Secretary of the Education Reform League. That prospect in the Career blurred the situation considerably, without doubt. Still, the secretaryship was three months away, at the worst. And meanwhile the immediate problem thundered for attention, namely, how to get Mary back into the High School at the earliest possible moment? Charles, who as a man considered this problem his own no less than Mary's, arrived at the School with three promising plans in his head.

It was Friday, commonly a late day for Mary, but you could count on nothing on such a day as this. However, when he had dashed into the great building and up the two tall stairways, there sat the late assistant principal in her little office, hard at work before a regular man's desk. She was discovered deep in the sorting of papers, and swung around at his step with a start and a smile.

"Good-afternoon!--and excuse the mess, please! The notice to move caught me a little unawares, you see.--Don't look so solemn, please!"

Whatever emotions she might have wrestled with last night, when her light shone so bright over the park, it was clear that Mary Wing had put them all down to front the world to-day. Neither did she seem embarrassed by any memories of recent conversations on these topics, of hints dropped and too firmly repulsed. Her manner, her sensitive fine face, were as composed as ever.

It may be that this, at the outset, was slightly upsetting to Charles, who was himself not composed at all.

He scooped a pile of "The New School" from a chair and sat with an elbow upon the writing-leaf of her masculine desk. Dumping papers from pigeon-holes, Mary calmly explained how complete was her overthrow. Senff, who was known as Mysinger's "personal representative" on the Board, had preferred the charges, she said, recommending her outright dismissal from the schools. The train had been carefully laid; it appeared that Mary had received an official warning from the Superintendent--an obliging man, elderly and weak, whom Mysinger meant to succeed before long--all of two weeks ago. Beyond influence and politication, much weight was attached to the simple fact that Mysinger, as Mary's immediate associate and superior, felt this persistent antipathy toward her. All the same, the Board had debated the case a full hour.

"Dangerous ideas," she summarized. "I'm not a suitable person to have authority over the education of--young women and men."

"What they said about Socrates, too--"

"Yes, but I don't want a monument after I'm dead!"

She laughed, without self-consciousness, and said: "Oh, if I'd tried, of course, I couldn't have put a better club into Mr. Mysinger's hands. Ideas!--I'm really amazed I wasn't electrocuted on the spot. Of course it isn't as if I were a man, you see, with a right to have ideas. That's my real fault, from the beginning--at least with Mysinger. I'm a woman, and so should never have been suffered 'to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Dear St. Paul!"

It was rare to find bitterness in Mary. Charles asked hastily if there had been much talk about the building to-day. She said that the School had been buzzing with it.

"It's almost been worth having it happen, to see how many friends I've got. And the children are the best, of course. All afternoon my boys and girls have been streaming in here, in threes and fours--just to say they're sorry I'm going...."

A shadow fell on her oddly fragile-looking face, and the author struck the writing-leaf with a large fist.

"By George, you shan't go!"

"By George, I've got to," said Mary.

"Well, by George, you'll come right back. Listen to me."

Leaning forward over her desk, he eagerly unfolded his leading plan, elaborated by him in the night season. This plan involved an immediate appeal to the State Board of Education, which body had the power of overriding all acts of local school boards. Chalmers Brown, the young Attorney-General of the State and Charles's good friend, was an _ex-officio_ member of this august body. Brown would arrange to have a meeting called at once, ostensibly on other business, if necessary. Mary Wing would find herself triumphantly back in this office within two weeks from to-day. And as for--

But at the first mention of the State Board, Mary had begun to shake her head, and before Charles had got his plan fairly set out she interrupted him, rather (it seemed to him) as an older brother interrupts.

"No, I've thought that over very carefully. Mysinger's pull has me beaten there before I begin. I'd only be playing into his hand, don't you see--giving the State Board a public opportunity to indorse and approve my punishment."

"But, great heavens! Mysinger's not the whole show here. You overrate--"

"He is, and he isn't. Some good men, like Creamer, are against me now, it's true. And yet, if Mysinger let either Board know that he wanted me back here, I'd come back to-morrow. He's that much of the show, Mr. Garrott."

Charles argued warmly. He was chagrined at the ease and decision with which the sure young woman brushed his arguments aside. Nor did the consciousness that she was probably sound in her positions soothe his masculine sense of the fitness of things at all. With a subtle loss of enthusiasm, he broached his second plan; and it too was summarily thrown out of court. That plan had called for an investigation of the "due cause" by the City Council--an intention attributed by the generous "Post" reporter to the well-known citizen, unnamed. Finding his supporting shoulder thus rejected, Charles demanded what was _her_ plan, then. And it seemed that Mary's plan was merely to wait until May, when the terms of three members of the local Board expired (all of them Mysinger men), and then to see to it that these places were filled with men friendly to her.

The plan seemed to the young man so feeble and remote, so uncharacteristic and tame, as to indicate a certain indifference in her. He sat eyeing her a moment with intent speculation, and then said deliberately:--

"That's good enough for publication purposes, I suppose. But--you're thinking of something very different, aren't you?"

"Am I?--what do you suspect?" said Mary, continuing her labors of paper-sorting.

"It's occurred to me that you have rather a brilliant revenge up your sleeve all the time. What'll you care for little pigs like Mysinger, when you go off as General Secretary of the League?"

The self-contained young woman surprised him by throwing both arms above her head and saying, passionately. "If I only could! Oh, oh! If I only could!"

Charles's gaze became fixed. "But you're going to, aren't you?"

Her arms fell and she said, in another voice: "No, I don't think I'm going to land it, you see!"

"Not going to--! Why, I thought you were practically sure!"

"That's the worst of it--I _was_, for a few wild weeks. Now I'm positive I'm not."

"Why!--but what's happened?"

"Oh," said she, light and calm again, "merely reading between the lines of Dr. Ames's letters. I hear from him all the time about the State work--once a week, at least. But he's never referred at all to the talk we had--about my being Secretary--from the first. Of course, I've wondered. And then yesterday--no, day before--I had a letter asking if I expected to be in New York any time before fall. He said he'd like to talk with me about my work here."

The straightforward sentences carried a painful conviction. Charles's eyes fell from his friend's face. For this crowning disappointment of hers he was distressed enough, indeed; and yet he was perfectly conscious that there was a side of him which could not lament at all. Publicly speaking, he had not honestly viewed the secretaryship as a "revenge"; since to get Mary out of the schools, by hook or crook, was the exact object in life of her adversary, Mysinger, who so earnestly held that woman's place was the Home. And then, there were those more personal and secret reactions in him, which had somehow recoiled from this development of the Career from the start.

"How long have you felt this way--that you weren't going to get it?"

"Oh--for two months now, at least."

"Two months! Why, you've never said anything about it to me!"

"Well, I don't remember your asking anything about it."

"No, because I supposed it was virtually settled--"

"Oh, no, indeed. In fact--oh, it was just a mad dream for me, of course! I'll live and die a Grammar School teacher."

"No! I swear you'll not!" And, seeing the way cleared of all extra-complications now, the young man flung out with unwonted exuberance: "You trust _me_! You'll come back here so quickly you'll not remember you ever went!"

But the male protectorship, he should have known well, scarcely thrived in this atmosphere. Mary tied a package of papers, gave him a look and smile, and dropped it efficiently into the suitcase at her feet.

"Well, that's on the knees of the gods as yet. Meanwhile--there's no use crying over spilt milk."

"My point is, don't you see, this milk shan't stay spilt! _I'm_ not going to wait till May to have you back here."

It was on the tip of his tongue to confide to her then, for her comfort, the third plan he had for her, a plan more circuitous and elaborate than either of his others, but yet, given time, his personal favorite from the beginning. However, Mary's little laugh checked him. The laugh may have been the best cover she had for feelings deeply bruised, after all, perhaps: but the breath of it chilled the young man's ardors effectually.

"I'm afraid you must, though! This milk--"

"I decline. Trust me, I say. I intend to help you here."

But her reply was to put into words of one syllable, at last, what her manner had been saying plainly from the beginning:--

"My dear friend, you _can't_ help me, in this."

She added, quietly snapping on a light: "Don't worry your head about it any more, please. Whatever, can be done,--I can and will do it, you may be sure."

It was odd how completely this silenced the young man. It was as if she had suddenly blown up the whole line of their communication.

And it seemed to Charles, all at once, that Mary had accidentally stated exactly what was the matter with her, as a woman and a friend. It seemed to him suddenly that ever since he had known this girl he had been going to her and saying, "Look here, I'll help you do such and such," and she, in one way or another, had always been replying, "Why, _you_ couldn't help ME!"

The conversation between the two old friends thus abruptly thinned out. It became almost desultory on his part, not untouched with dignity. And as they so chatted of Lee Grammar School and its unfavorable location, he, the authority, was eyeing Mary Wing askance, unmistakably reacting.... Was hardness, then, the necessary corollary of "independence"? Was it true, exactly as Old Tories said, that a woman could not grapple long with actuality without rubbing away that natural sweetness and charm of hers which, it might be, the grim world needed more than duplicate Careers? Certainly there was no charm for him in this slip of a girl's self-assertion: "I'm a better man than you, don't you know it?" Splendid, indeed, was her Spartan calm in a defeat serious in every way, and with the peculiar sting conferred by Miss Trevenna's fame. Why was it that he would have warmed to her so infinitely more, have felt quite a new depth of affection for her, if, rather, she had turned to him helpless and wildly weeping, "Help me! Help me, friend, or I perish!"

"And at least you'll get out much earlier in the afternoons," he was observing courteously....

But his secret thought continued to engross him, this fantastic thought of Mary weeping. Now he remembered Miss Angela's girlish outburst last night, after the bridge-party; and he saw that there was something subtly fitting, engaging on the whole, in a woman's weeping over her troubles. But Mary, of course, could not weep; she simply didn't have the plant, as you might put it. No--you could picture Mary asking you to sit on the sofa and look at her ring, more easily than weeping.

And then, becoming aware of a teacher hovering about in the corridor near the door,--a fellow named Hartwell it was, who had long seemed rather attentive to Mary,--Charles Garrott rose to go, a mere polite caller.

"Isn't it time you were knocking off?"

"I think I'd better clear up a little more of this, now that I'm at it."

"I wonder if I couldn't help you with some of that?"

"Oh, no, thank you." (Why, of course he couldn't help HER, even to tear up old papers.) "Nobody could understand it but me. But I've--appreciated your visit."

He wished her a good-afternoon. In a stately silence, he traversed the spacious corridor, stalked down the handsome stairways. For the moment, he could not get his thought back to the concrete; the sting of defeat possessed him, the bitterness that is the portion of the friend of women. And then, in this mood, shaking the dust of the High School from his feet, he encountered, of all inopportune people under the sun, Miss Flora Trevenna.

He came upon the unhappy girl standing in a corner of the outer vestibule, beyond the great bronze doors; she stood alone, looking off down the twilight street. Her head turned at the sound of Charles's feet; recognition came hesitatingly into her glance, and she bowed, smiling remotely in the absent or reserved way which seemed to be characteristic of her. It was clearly on a second thought that she spoke suddenly, in her fluty voice:--

"Oh!--could you tell me whether Miss Wing is still in the building?"

Pausing, his hat stiffly raised, the young man said that Miss Wing was. "You'll find her in her office--on the third floor at the front, you know."

"Thank you."

But, as he bowed and passed on, the Badwoman made no move to enter and ascend. She stood as he had found her, waiting, aside: a solitary and withdrawn figure, for the moment to the perceiving eye not untouched with pathos.